#which is im pretty sure way too drawn out and detailed

[ganondoodle]

a panel from the rough draft that i like alot (hes catching hylias punch with his own hand, in case its too scribbly to see)

(comic wip)

[palskippah]

Oooh mareach preg ftw!

Ngl Im kind of curious, how did mario and peach handle the birth? 😳

Hi! Yess 😭 Them expecting babies is so cute to me ;-;

They (mostly Mario) handled the labor and birth like champs, although at the beginning both had the downside of panicking, but later on they had the help of people with more experience than them (Luigi or the doctors) or that were less panicky during the situation (like Toad). Mario was scared shitless bc giving birth is intimidating, but once he's with Peach and Luigi he's much calmer.

Btw I don't think I'll set this on stone, bc there's other ways the labor and birth could've gone that I also had thought of and actually written or drawn askdlsa but I'm sharing this one bc I like it c: Like, Toad's singing (like that person at tiktok that dresses up as him and sings shakira's songs?? them) makes him laugh too hard and that makes him break his water and he's like 🧍 bc he doesn't realize at first and all-

Under the cut there's a much more (I mean it 😔) detailed description of how it went! It's pretty long (mostly the labor part) and you'll scroll a lot sorrie, I thought of shortening it, but then left it like it is- the moments are separated by star emojis, so if you wanna skip to the birth, go ahead jiji

Birth isn't explicit but I'll give you a warning about it anyway! Also, it's kinda cartoonish (I think? maybe not) for the fun of it, I'm not a big fan of serious stuff sdlksdks

BTW! here's the bebis :'v

[Nettarina was born like half an hour before Mariella was, so she had more experience with being out in the harsh, cold world out of the womb- so she was peacefully sleeping while her twin was being delivered akjsdkd

Imagine those scenes in TV where there's in the first plane a very peaceful thing going on and at the background there's a ruckus- something like that but with Nettarina wrapped in her warm blanket and sleeping comfortably in her bassinet, and in the background there's Mario grabbing the hell out of Peach's and Luigi's hands while he pushes and grunting in effort and the other two are encouraging him and stuff, she doesn't wake up at all despite the noise.]

Also, there are some drawings that are kinda vague about birth- and also the newborn baby will not look like an actual just newborn baby bc that's too much 🧍

Anyways, enjoy the thingie if you read it!

🌟So! The whole thing is very fast and tiring- like when Mario wakes up, he doesn't even hope he'll go into labor that day, and before the sun even sets, he already had both babies in his arms.

Also, I read that first-time pregnancies are a tiny bit more likely to go past full-term and I was like sure why not, let's put Mario in situations. So, he's overdue by just a few days and honestly the babies are really taking their time with getting there, and that's why he isn't even worried that particular day that he'll go into labor.

Also, the doctor had said they'd have to consider induction if the babies didn't make act of presence in the next week. Bc twins usually are expected to arrive like at the 38th week, where they are already full-term, and over that is considered overdue- so maybe Mario is like 38 weeks-and-something pregnant in this day where he has the babies.

🌟 About the labor-

For when Mario goes into labor, I'm torn between doing it sitcom-like, where Peach for ABC reason is very far away from Mario, and she has to go through frustrating drawbacks to get to him quickly, or go with that it happens when they're together and all comfortable and stuff sdkjskd

But going with the first option, imagine Peach is at a meeting that she definitely didn't want to go to, where the king was adamant about her presence and of other royals to see the matter (which in Peach's opinion, could've been handled via email!), so she couldn't send in Toadsworth to sort it through.

Peach warned the host king that Mario could go into labor at literally any minute, and she wished to stay with him when it happened (Mario was supposed to go into labor a few days ago, she was really anxious about it!), but the other thought she was being overdramatic, surely Super Mario would be fine without the princess for a few hours.

Many royals think that way initially, whenever Peach requested that meetings be held at her castle, or that may Toadsworth go in her behalf, since she doesn't want to leave Mario's side for too long. But, they wholly understand when they see Mario, who definitely looks like he's ready to pop. Others are more understanding, because they have been the pregnant person being fretted over, or the partner that frets, so they indulge the princess on her requests.

And well, she was overly worried the whole meeting, and barely paid any attention. At the beginning Peach texted Mario every few minutes to make sure he was okay and calm her anxiety, but after one too many judging looks from the host king, she apologized and asked one of the servants to take her phone until the meeting was over, knowing she'd keep using it otherwise- she had duties to attend as a princess, despite her worries as a soon-to-be mom.

Meanwhile, back at the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario had woken up not long ago, stretching as much as he could and groaning because he slept like hell. His back hurt a lot, like was usual lately. He briefly wondered when the babies would dignify themselves to show up, so he could have a proper night's sleep finally (as if! with two newborn babies it wouldn't be very likely), because they overstayed long enough, he was supposed to have them in his arms by now, while also he wished Peach was there to just magic his pain away.

Mario resigns himself to hurt and keep being pregnant for a few days more. He throws a look at his side, and then checks his phone, smiling at Peach's (fretting) texts, so he starts answering to each of them, while getting himself more comfortable on their bed.

[Good morning my love! 😚😚😚] Good morning bella mia :33 [Are you awake? 🥰🥰] I am [Maybe not, it took you a lot of time to fall asleep 🤕 just wait until the little rascals are born, I'll give them a harsh lecture right away] Me too bc my back hurts like a beach I wish you were here to make it better :c [I love you] I love you very much too! [Te amo mi amorchito pechocho💓] Ti amo la mia luce 💖 [Mi amore] 🥰 [Wake up mi amore] I did :D pick your phone peachy [King Calami keeps talking about I don't know what hepl] Pay attention and don't pick your phone peachy [Mario 🥺🥺] Peachy <3

Peach appears offline from not long ago; and Mario hoped she actually had put her focus on the meeting. After that, Mario does the extenuating routine of getting off of bed, showering, grooming, dressing on his own -which proves much harder than when Peach just does it for him, especially with the overalls and shoes, but he's in the mood for them, so he tries anyway (and almost falls off the bed trying to reach his feet- but at least no one's there to see him struggle). He does all this while feeling a bit restless the whole way, but it's been a few days of the same feeling, since the babies weren't born when they were supposed to.

Mario has a very late breakfast and then spends a while just nibbling on treats and lazing around (Resting! You're resting - says for the nth time a voice that sounds like Peach's). He made some plans with Toad over text, and soon he met Mario at the lounging room in the castle, ready for a walk around Toad Town.

Mario wasn't very sure if he still wanted to go, still feeling like something (read: labor) was about to happen. Toad offered staying at the castle, if he wasn't sure, and they could eat ice-cream right there too and maybe watch a movie, or just walk through Peach's gardens. The thought of the ice-cream stall at the middle of Toad Plaza makes him salivate and reconsider- oh his damned cravings. Also, to walk and enjoy the sun and bustling streets would do him good, so they go.

The walk to Toad Town is very slow but filled with conversation (mostly from Toad). At certain times Mario felt cramps on his belly, but he has been feeling them from weeks ago, so he doesn't get too worried about them. At the platforms Toad very carefully helps him. And while they walk down the steps, Mario looks at the pipes systems and all the toads going through them, which was a much quicker way of getting anywhere. Not for the first time Mario lamented that traveling through pipes was not safe for him anymore, and it made him too dizzy anyways (and in some of them he didn't even fit any longer- but whatevs).

Through the walk many toads greet both of them as usual, some commenting lightly about the babies not being there yet, which had Mario chuckling politely (bc, of course they're not there yet, Mario is clearly still huge!) and by the time they get to the ice-cream stand Mario's too tired and feeling kinda out of breath, so Toad tells him to sit and wait for him to get the ice-cream, and Mario does so gratefully.

When he's at the bench, the cramps only get worse, and he briefly wonders if maybe they're contractions- He hopes they are, because the babies are overdue and he is tired as hell of carrying them, but also- he wishes it's not the case, he doesn't want them to come out yet because he is still way too nervous of giving birth. Either way, the cramps hurt and are uncomfortable, and after a while they stop, and he realizes he'd have to pay closer attention to them, lest he actually was in labor.

Toad gets back with their stuff and they eat and talk and it's very nice, because the day is sunny and calm, and the babies aren't as energetic as other times (which is always good, because they would beat up Mario's ribs, bladder and whatever was in their way whenever they kicked or stretched).

Suddenly Mario feels a particularly bad cramp, and he has to take a moment to breathe through it, wincing in pain and placing his hand where he's kinda feeling it. It catches Toad's attention, and he gently pats Mario's arm to be of comfort.

Toad then gasps excitedly, "Wait- are you having contractions yet?"

Mario shakes his head, then signs, "I don't think so."

"Aw... I want to meet your babies already, Mario," Toad laments, taking a sad lick from his ice-cream cone. "I want to receive my Uncle Toad title from you too."

Mario smiles at him and shakes his head again, in amusement, the toad had said years back that he was happy to receive the title from Luigi, and now from Mario, as if they were some sort of university of unclehood by simply becoming parents.

At some moment, their conversation takes a turn towards Mario's relationship with Pauline, for some reason. Toad can't believe Mario had sung with the Pauline! And why is he just now finding out about it?!

It leads to Toad begging Mario to sing something for him someday, and Mario saying he can beg all he wants. Toad shakes his head in feigned disappointment and says, "I would never deprive you from my singing skills, Mario!" And Mario does a 'really? prove it' face, so Toad graces him with the most off-key, shrillest and loud cover of Pauline's Jump Up, Super Star!

It had Mario laughing almost hysterically- it probably wasn't even that funny, but he was caught off-guard bc Toad started off strong with the main vocals and from then on, his singing didn't get any better. He was holding his belly while trying not to drop his ice-cream and waving slightly at Toad with it to stop- or he's sure he'll... oh- have an accident.

Mario stops laughing all of a sudden and looks down with a grimace. For a few seconds he thinks not again! because he has two heavy babies resting right over his bladder, he can't help it sometimes! But this time it's much more than usual, and he can't even stop it.

He turns to Toad in panic and embarrassment, because he's sitting in the middle of the crowded plaza and there's no way other toads won't notice! Toad notices his exalted state and stops singing. He tilts his head in confusion and worry.

Mario signs "I peed myself."

"Oh- that's huh..." Mario looks more embarrassed. "That's okay! Don't worry, bestie, I'm going to fix it. You just stay here, Mario!"

Toad shoves the rest of his ice-cream in his mouth and while he munches the waffle cone, he jumps out of the bench and scoots somewhere in the crowded place. Mario huffs in discomfort, throwing nervous glances around him, hoping no one suddenly decided to speak to him. He looks at his cone still in his hand, melting down. He gives it some licks, entirely out of anxiety, because he doesn't have much appetite anymore.

Toad returns soon enough, carrying a folded blanket with himself. Very subtle, especially with the nice weather and Mario in his long overalls. The man kicks himself mentally for being picky about Toad's ideas, when his friend is clearly trying. Toad jumps on the bench and gets closer to whisper to Mario, "I asked some friends to bring you clothes. Don't worry though, I told them to be discreet about it- also got this blanket so we can walk to a bathroom."

Toad sits back down beside Mario on the bench, to wait for the other toads. Mario decides to occupy that brief time by finishing eating his ice-cream, and rubbing his belly while silently scowling at the babies for putting him in situations. When the toads arrive, carrying a little bag, they discreetly leave it on the bench, and walk casually in the other direction, not even looking at Mario or Toad. Mario lets out a relieved sigh, glad that they left them alone. Toad stands on his seat and extends the blanket, leaving it ready to use over the bench, and then jumps back to the floor.

"Let me help you up," he says, extending his little hands to him with a big smile. Mario smiles a bit funnily, knowing that Toad wasn't precisely strong enough to pull him up.

After much effort from both, Mario is on his feet, and he has to suppress a disgusted shiver, because the wetness is very uncomfortable and has gone cold. Toad notices his discomfort and hurries to hand the blanket to Mario, who wraps it around his shoulders. The toad makes sure it covers all the damp spots, and then they get to it, looking for the nearest bathroom either of them can think of.

Toad peaks his head in a restaurant, and quietly asks the receptionist to use the bathroom without being clients, who refuses, being strict about their rules, but Toad says with a knowing smile, 'it's for Mario' and the other toad quickly agrees for them to just come along, anything for the Mushroom Kingdom hero! (But Mario's sure it's because he's very pregnant, it's obvious).

When Mario's inside and Toad's doing guard outside the door, he strips from his wet clothes and rummages through the little bag, pulling out one of his red maternity dresses and underwear. He smiles to himself in relief as he thinks 'perfetto...' because having to ask for help from Toad to put on his overalls would probably be the last drop in the glass for Mario to- to have a breakdown or something.

When he's almost done and letting the dress down his arms, he feels such a strong cramp in his belly that he's just sure it must be a contraction. Mario panics for a few seconds because his arms are stuck in the dress and he's in pain and all he sees is red! He has to double over and support his weight with his hands against the wall the best he can, while he tries to quiet down his pained groans and tightly closes his eyes.

When it passes, he gives himself a bit of time to catch his breath back, and then quickly lowers the dress the rest of the way, to dress himself properly. Mario then holds his belly, looking around the bathroom nervously. He slowly paces on the small space in building panic- he's sure it was a contraction! It was way too strong- and- and the accident? What if that was his water?

He stops waddling and looks down at his belly, placing his hands on it as if silently asking the babies if that was the very important liquid that signaled that he was indeed in labor. Mario notices that he's breathing way too quickly, so he tries to do the breathing exercises that Doctor Toadlina taught him to do- he clenches his fists tightly over his belly while the babies move leisurely as if their mamma wasn't freaking out.

Outside, Toad hums to himself patiently, giving Mario all the time he needs to get comfortable in the changing of clothes. He nods to passing waiters and clients alike, with a big smile.

Back inside, finally Mario's calm enough to think of what he should do now if the babies are coming- he immediately thinks of Peach and that she's far away and literally on another whole kingdom, with no pipe system attached to theirs! Mario scrambles as fast as he can for his phone, feeling his hands and his lower lip trembling in fright.

He calls her and places the phone by his ear, while trying still to breath calmly and failing spectacularly. His fear only spikes up when it sends to voicemail. Mario calls a couple more of times, each without success. He tries to write to her instead, being a bit difficult with his shaking fingers and his blurring gaze due to the tears.

Pech I don't wanna scare you but i think I'm in laborr Pelsa answer Nd come back soon I'm very scared

He holds his phone in his hands for a while, still trying to convince himself that everything will be okay... Mario frowns and looks to the side for a second, those words remind him of something.

Everything will be okay...? Right, Luigi! Mario should call Luigi. He calls him this time and smiles in relief when his twin answers right away.

"Ciao, fratellone!" Luigi says happily.

Mario's smile drops when he realizes just then that he must talk if he called- Oh, fuck! What an idiot! He's bringing more despair for himself on his own!

He opens his mouth and then closes it and shakes his head- why does he never think things through?! He curses himself, now with tears of frustration in his eyes and the thought of just hanging up and texting instead goes through his mind.

"Bro? Mario? Is everyth-" Mario quickly hangs up and goes to text him. He blinks his tears away the best he can and writes down while his phone rings and the notification of Weegee calling... appears just above the chat.

M in labor nd pach isn't here Can you come ?

A few seconds pass when Luigi answers:

On my way Where are you going to be?

Mario sniffles and thinks quickly, should they go to the castle, or maybe just wait for Luigi to get to the restaurant? Mario didn't want to be in that bathroom all alone, he felt too scared and defenseless. But he doesn't think he had the energy to go to the castle quick enough either.

Gret toadcimu restornat Oki I'll be right there bro Pls be calm Everything will be okay I promise Are you with someone? Let them help you Mario To stay cal M Ok

Mario opened Toad's chat this time, feeling at least a tad bit calmer now that he knew his brother was on the way.

Tod Come in pls

A short moment later, a knock sounds at the door, and Mario unlocks it and let his friend in, Toad closes the door and looks at Mario in thinly veiled worry when he notices his tears and panicked expression.

"What's wrong, Mario?"

"I'm in labor," he has difficulty even signing, his hands trembling too much. Toad seems to have difficulty to understand what he signed too, but when he does, he opens his eyes widely and seems absolutely ready to start panicking. Mario braces himself for his shrilly screaming, but the toad shakes his head quickly and sets his face on a determined expression, that Mario would not be surprised if he started speaking in a very deep voice.

"We have to go to the castle, then! I'll tidy this up, you- you just focus on not having the babies yet and calm down. Calm down, Mario!" he says in his regular voice, with a very subtle hint of panic that Mario can easily ignore for his own sake. The toad starts gathering his wet clothes in the little bag, then hurries on folding the blanket while Mario focuses on doing the breath exercises.

Another contraction hits in and Mario has to lean against the wall again, groaning in pain and holding his back. He feels like it lasts even longer and hurts worse than the previous- how is that possible? They were supposed to grow very gradually in intensity and time!

He feels a hand on his back, and he turns to look at Toad, with a pained expression on.

"Do I call the princess?" His friend knows Peach isn't in the Mushroom Kingdom, but Mario shakes his head. She didn't answer him, it'd probably be the same for Toad.

Mario breathes through the contraction the best he can, and when it's over he tells Toad that Luigi's on his way. The toad nods and leads them slowly to the outside of the restaurant, going through the tables occupied by many toads since it was lunch time, saying his thanks to the receptionist (and Mario awkwardly nods at them in thanks too).

Toad looks around quickly, looking for a bench for Mario to sit on, when he spots one, he leads them in its direction.

Just as Toad is helping Mario to take a seat, they hear, "Bro!" and Mario straightens up right away, looking around for his twin, almost losing his balance, and he and Toad and Luigi all panic that he'll fall, but Mario manages to keep standing as he grabs onto Toad's cap and the other hand supports his back, while Luigi runs to his side.

When Mario and Luigi are close to each other, the first thing Mario does is hug his twin, feeling like he wants to cry. And he does, actually, while Luigi gently shushes him and holds him tightly (albeit a bit awkwardly due to Mario's belly in the middle).

"It's-a okay, Mario, I'm here," Luigi says, subtly trying to catch his breath, he surely must have run all the way from the pipe that connected their kingdoms to the Great Toadchimu restaurant. Mario nods and buries his face on Luigi's shoulder, feeling much less scared than he did moments ago. The only thing to truly make him feel complete would be that Peach was there with him too.

Luigi takes care of the situation and instructs Toad to please get him a super mushroom so he could easily carry Mario to the castle. Once he eats it, he goes up the hills on a careful walk to not accidentally drop Mario or jostle him too much, while Toad hurriedly walks beside them, carrying Mario's stuff and calling Peach's father to let the doctor know they were on their way (and so were the babies-).

Back at Peach, the blessed (cursed) meeting that seemed like it lasted hours just ended, and the (damned) King Calami finally let them leave, but of course, he invited all the royals to have lunch first. But Peach is absolutely ready to tail it out of there and return to her own kingdom and to her Mario.

After exchanging quick pleasantries with the rest of royals, and passive-agressive words with King Calami that left no space to argue her reasons and determination to leave, the king kindly instructed a worker to prepare a vehicle for Princess Toadstool, as she's in such a hurry to leave already, and isn't even able to stay for lunch. The servant bows and leaves to do as instructed.

Peach smiles while inside she wishes unpleasant things for the king. She bows her head and walks calmly out of the meeting room, but one of the servants standing at the doors stopped her, "Princess Toadstool, your phone, your highness."

Right! Peach smiles thankfully as she receives it and immediately checks her notifications while walking out of the room. Her smile drops when she sees the three missed calls from Mario. With worry she clicks on the notification that says [New messages from Marito❤️] and her smile comes back in full force again while reading Mario's responses to each of her texts. And finally, her smile fully drops as does her stomach, all the way to her feet, when she reads the five last messages.

Mario's in labor?! Peach anxiously hurries to walk in a direction, then halts and turns around and prepares to walk the other way, then realizes she doesn't even know where she is supposedly going, and she's just panicking. Peach looks at her phone and quickly calls Mario's number, while trying to calm her breathing as she places a hand on her chest. There's no use on her losing her mind, she needs to stay calm.

Peach gets more anxious with each ring, until the line picks up and she jumps into talking.

"Mario, are you okay? Where-?"

"Princess, it's-a me!" She gets interrupted. It's Luigi.

"Luigi! Where is Mario?!" So much for keeping calm, she mentally scolded herself.

"He's-a with me, don't worry, we're-a going to the castle, oki? We'll wait for you there, Toad talked to Toadsworth, so he can notify the royal doctor."

"Hi! Princess, it's me, Toad, Mario's best friend- he's good and he's not talking now!"

Peach lets out a mildly relieved sigh, at least they had the situation under control.

"I hope you are okay, Mario," she says, lacing her words with the most fondness she can, while she smiles. "Please wait for me, I'll be there as soon as I can."

Luigi chuckles after a while, "He says he will, and he loves you, and you're his very beloved light- Hey! Don't-a hit me, I'm-a just adding-!"

Peach giggles to herself, imagining Mario swatting Luigi.

"I love you so much too, mi chaparrito bigotón pechocho," she says, allowing herself to be utterly corny, at least Luigi wouldn't get it.

"Aw please, Peach, that's so cheesy!" said Luigi while laughing and Peach's face burned. Right, he knows some Spanish, Daisy is teaching him only the things that are convenient for him to learn- like Peach's terms of endearment. When she hears Mario's own chuckles, she's glad she said what she said, despite her embarrassment. She smiles brightly, "I'll be there very soon, Mario! Stay strong, I love you!"

"Wait, when you're-a on your way here try ta do a videocall," says Luigi before she can hang up.

"Okie-dokie! Bye!"

Peach allows herself to jump in place for a few seconds, while holding her phone to her chest, closing tightly her eyes and smiling so widely that her cheeks hurt. Mario's in labor! They'll finally meet their babies! How exciting! She must get there as soon as possible.

As if on cue, the servant that King Calami talked to was walking to get closer to her. Peach walked to reach them quicker, expecting for them to tell her that her vehicle was ready.

"Your highness, I'm very sorry-" Oh great. "-but we have a few complications with the long-journey vehicles. But if you're willing to wait, by late afternoon-"

Peach shakes her head worriedly; Mario needed her now! Not by late afternoon- and she'd get to the Mushroom Kingdom by night if that were the case!

The servant patiently waits for the princess to arrange her thoughts, as she seems lost on her own mind.

What could she do? What to do... There wasn't a pipe system between this kingdom and hers, so she couldn't go quickly there, and the journey on any vehicle was longer than two hours, but there were closer, neighboring kingdoms to this one, that had agreed to install the pipes! She could go to them first, and then go to her wished destiny!

Peach is struck with a feeling-like-an-idiot urge to facepalm, because that's literally the way she got into King Calami's kingdom to begin with. She sighs, lamenting that her first-time parent panic is affecting her good reasoning.

"Are there available any vehicles for shorter journeys?" she asks with a falsely calmed smile.

The servant nods, "Yes, your royal highness. The smallest allow for a very fast travelling- but they fit only one member inside, you'd have to leave on your own."

Peach quickly nods, "Yes, I will- It's perfect. I'll, um- arrange for my toads to return the vehicle safely once I no longer use it, yes?" she says, trying to be convincing.

The servant nods and leads Peach to the room where the vehicles are (a royal garage i guess?), while mentioning how they will not notify the who was in charge (whoever that is-) first, if all because the princess looked so antsy that it was making the servant a bit nervous too.

Peach apologized for her clearly anxious state, delightedly (and unsubtly terrified) saying that Mario's in labor and she's in a hurry to leave. The servant looks back at her in surprise, because why didn't she say so before?!

After that, things go very quickly, both the servant and Peach hurry to get to the vehicle, where Peach puts her few belongings in and hops in, ready to drive as quickly (and safely-) as she can to the nearest kingdom with a working pipe system to the Mushroom Kingdom.

As she puts on her seatbelt, the servant, whose name Peach still doesn't know, bows respectfully, "I wish you luck and very healthy babies, your royal highness!" Peach smiles and nods hurriedly saying 'thank you so much!', and she starts her journey towards Mario.

Back with Mario, they are received by Toadsworth already fretting over the whole situation, while Luigi takes him to his bedroom, where Doctor Toadlina and two young toad nurses are already setting everything to attend his birth.

Luigi leaves Mario gingerly on the bed, in a sitting position. On the way up the hills Luigi asked Toad to take the time between each of Mario's contractions. They were way too close to each other if Mario supposedly started labor not long ago, Luigi is sure it must have been much earlier.

The doctor informs what will be done from then on, to pass labor and check his contractions and to check his dilation depending on how the labor progresses and the babies' position and all that (vague labor stuff, y'know 🧍).

Luigi (after asking one of the nurses to pinch him hard to wear off the super mushroom effect-) gently helps Mario into a more comfortable sleepshirt and underwear, while he makes some light conversation to distract him from his worry at Peach's absence. Toad isn't let in, and he asks to at least be updated if anything important happens, like the babies being born or Mario needing something. Doctor Toadlina politely closes the door on his face with a, "Thank you, Toad, we'll let you know!" while the nurses lightly giggle as they arrange water bottles, and very light snacks in their little coffee table, and arrange Mario and Peach's bed for more practical use, tying the bed drapes as tightly as possible to avoid them becoming a burden for any of them.

Mario breathes slowly and tries to keep himself as calm as he can, while closing his eyes as Luigi helps him to lay on the bed for a check up, Doctor Toadlina puts on a glove meanwhile. He feels Luigi's own gloved hand caressing his hair.

"It's-a okay, bro," he says softly, and Mario turns to look at him with a small smile, that turns wobbly after a second. He just wishes Peach was there too.

After the check-up, the doctor muses that he must be very far along in labor, because his dilation is very advanced. She announces that in no time he would be ready for the pushing stage. Mario nods with a very nervous smile, glad and also terrified to hear so.

So, Mario and Luigi do anything for him to dilate further, like walking around the spacey room, or doing different exercises together (the ones Luigi remembers from when he was in labor, and also the ones the toad doctor recommends them).

They are face to face a bit far away from the bed, both with their feet a bit apart and hands on their hips, both moving them in a swaying motion- Mario thinks his twin is doing much better than he is, and briefly wonders if he's doing it wrong himself, but then remembers that Luigi's not even pregnant, and Mario smacks himself mentally for being an idiot again, always realizing things too late. He shakes his head, he's not even sure anymore if it's the pregnancy brain or he's always been like this.

Luigi frowns, "No? But I thought you already settled on tha names-"

Mario blushes a bit, now realizing he and Luigi were supposedly talking. He shakes his head again with a bashful smile, letting Luigi know to just ignore him. His brother smiles comprehensively. "You're-a not even paying attention- Is your mind on tha princess? She hasn't called yet..."

Mario frowns and settles his gaze on the nurses quietly talking among themselves, a bit sad about the matter. He supposes she's still busy getting to their kingdom if she can't call, but still...

Back at Peach, she just exited the outskirts of King Calami's kingdom, now entering the long, deserted road that connected both realms. Now that the risk of running over someone were diminished almost to zero, she pulls out her phone, finally she can videocall Mario! She thumbs around on it, throwing brief glances at the road, and then back. As the phone dials she keeps it in her hand, not about to risk it flying away from the speed she was driving at.

The other end picks up and her big smile falls a bit when it's Toad's face that receives her, she muses that Mario must be a bit busy, then!

"Hello, Toad!"

"Hi, Princess Peach!"

"Where's Mario?"

"Oh, he's inside with the doctors and Luigi, he left his phone with me- when they kicked me out. I'll hand it to him, don't hang!"

The brothers end up going to the balcony for Mario to take some air after he realizes he's again way too nervous (so close to giving birth and Peach's nowhere to be seen!), while Luigi pats his back, and he leans on the railing. Mario looks up to the sky, the day is so nice and sunny, and it feels ironic with the way he feels- all heated up and tired already.

He gets another contraction and his hands clench on the railing while he whimpers and winces. Oh, Peach should get there sooner, she could help him to not feel pain! He tries to breathe through it as he's been doing it since they started, while Luigi rubs his lower back. It almost feels like the same rubs Peach usually did to ease his pain with her magic, only that Luigi's just brought him emotional comfort and nothing more.

They hear some commotion at the door that leads to the hall and both twins turn to look and see (nosey 🤨) what's going on. It's Doctor Toadlina scolding Toad-

"I told you already! You can't come in, Toad, only the queen and the princess can, Mario needs people that can bring him comfort and support-!"

"Yeah, I know, that's why I need to give him his phone, it's the princess!"

Mario gasps, Peachy is calling?!

He turns to Luigi and signals with his head for him to go deal with it. Luigi nods and leaves his side briefly (not before throwing a dirty look at Mario for ordering him around-) to go to the toads and see the situation. Mario doesn't have to wait long for Luigi to come back, talking to his phone with it in front of his face. Mario's heartbeat gets quicker at the idea of finally seeing Peach. When he sees her, he smiles brightly at Peach's face, being hit with a lot of wind and making her hair fly behind her.

"Hi, Mario!"

From then on, Peach and Mario talked as if she were right there with him, while Luigi did as an interpreter - given that the princess couldn't look too long at her phone while she was driving -, and Mario felt much better about the matter, now only longing that she was physically close to him.

He keeps doing exercises and staying hydrated and complaining from the contractions - at which Peach reassures she's going to calm all his pain away once she got there! -, while the doctor checked every now and then the position of the babies and stuff.

At a certain moment the connection halts because Peach had to go through the pipe system- and after that Mario had to resist the urge to laugh at her, because Peach was clearly running as fast as she could while still trying to keep her face on the camera. Mario also felt the excitement that she was very close to getting there. The background behind her changed fast from the outside of the castle to the main floor, and then to the hall where their quarters were, and finally she all but bolted inside the room, making Doctor Toadlina jump in fright and the nurses squeal in surprise.

"Mario!" she says, phone held in her hand. "Where- where are you?" She looks at the room, at the exalted toads, and then at her phone, looking at Mario's happy face.

"We're-a here!" says Luigi while waving his arm from the balcony's entrance.

"Oh!" she all but glides through the room, after saying quick hi's to the medical toads. And when her and Mario are finally face to face, they embrace the other so tightly and tenderly that Luigi quietly leaves to give them some privacy. Mario exhales in utter relief, at finally feeling completely safe. And Peach let her chin rest over his hair.

They walk to the bed and Peach lovingly helps Mario to sit close to the pillows, while the plumber keeps his hands at all times in hers.

Doctor Toadlina suggests Peach changes her royal clothes into something less cumbersome, so Peach obliges- and Mario reasonably knows it's better that way and it wouldn't take her very long, but he looked worried when she started to back away, in direction to their wardrobe- she smiled and said she wouldn't take long. Yet he still held into her hands until she pulled back too much, and they slipped from his.

At Mario's very puppy-kicked eyes, Luigi laughs and says Peach will be back to his side soon! Mario wipes his eyes and lays back on the pillows, smiling a bit ashamed of his reaction. Soon enough, Peach gets back from the bathroom where she changed, with her hair tied up, her crown still on and dressed in a white shirt and pink trousers, without her gloves or her blue brooch.

From there, Peach takes Luigi's place and is the one to help Mario with the exercises and helping him walk around or lay down or help with his contractions. She uses her healing magic several times each hour to numb his pain, and Mario sighs in relief each time she does. Also at certain times they sit at the little coffee table while she feeds him nibbles from the light snacks the nurses left. Luigi is glad to simply sit back as back-up support until the birth, enjoying the lovebirds' interactions, which in his opinion are adorable.

(Y'know those moms that do their make-up all pretty for when they give birth?) Since Mario had been crying and wiping his eyes so much, let's say his eyeliner had kind of wore off almost completely- and, in a moment of relative calmness while they waited for Mario to be able to push, Peach went to their bathroom and came back with his eyeliner. She proceded to apply it while humming to herself, as she has done many other times (this post!), while Mario smiled all relaxedly. He wasn't in pain, the babies were barely moving or bothering him, and both his girlfriend and brother were there with him (as were the doctor and nurses), so he was feeling all safe, although tired.

Mario doesn't feel pain anymore, but he is still so very tired. And the next few hours of labor and contractions became taxing way too soon, feeling the pressure at his pelvis as the babies got ready to be born and all that. As Peach helped him walk around, he finally decided he had enough of that, so he squeezed her arm to let her know, and from then on he kept himself out of his feet.

He looked tiredly at his brother from time to time, looking for additional support, while Luigi said comforting words, because he knew all too well how Mario was feeling. He spent the last moments before pushing mostly supporting his weight on the bed while on his knees, or laying propped up against the pillows, or sitting at the edge, all while still trying to vaguely do the exercises to help dilation and stuff.

🌟 During the whole ordeal Toad is outside and so is Toadsworth, because none of them were let in, for Mario's (and the medical toads) comfort. The old toad is more or less a nervous mess, so Toad takes on distracting the soon-to-be grandpa, while his daughter and son-in-law (never mind that Peach and Mario weren't married, he'd consider him so if he wished!) were going through the whole thing.

Mario at most was grunting or groaning loudly and stuff, not really screaming or anything, so from outside they couldn't hear much- which was more worrying than comforting, bc they couldn't guess what was going on.

Almost a couple of hours later, one of the nurses peaks their head out, excitedly saying that the first baby has been delivered and it was a healthy baby girl. It leads to Toadsworth being all tears while Toad excitedly (and quietly) celebrates.

Maybe he (or maybe even Luigi) had been keeping their friends updated on the matter? They have a big friend group chat or something and he's been writing the few updates he has been getting, like:

First baby's a girl!!!👶🥳🥳

And he receives a bunch of confetti emojis and crying faces and excited replies in the next few minutes, and asking for pictures (which are sent by Luigi a lot later, when Mariella had been born too, and Mario was sleeping and so were the babies).

🌟 During the birth-

The birth of each baby is extremely quick.

Doctor Toadlina gives the ok to Mario that he's free to push, but he's nervous and he quickly turns to look at Luigi, with his eyes teary and clearly very scared. His brother hugs him and is quick to reassure him that it'll all be okay bc he's right there with him (the meaning behind the words is that as long as they're together everything will be okay :''''v cries in brotherly love), and Mario smiles and nods.

Despite that, he is still feeling terribly nervous, but he's determined to do it anyways (because what other option does he have? Not give birth? He has to do it!), so he firmly grabs Peach and Luigi's hands. He takes a deep breath to brace himself- and then he exhales and takes another breath. Then he quickly looks at Peach with a pout. She smiles brightly back, full of encouragement- so he takes one last breath.

And then, he pushes with all the strength he can muster, holding and clenching Peach's and Luigi's hands firmly, not bothering to hold back (so maybe it feels like the man is trying to break their fingers, but Peach and Luigi don't say anything about that, of course-)

(pipipi kinda sad of these drawings, in the sketches they looked better and like he was really putting force into it skdjks whatevs I lost them)

After the first push, the doctor is pleased to notice that he made a lot of progress right away. And Mario's all slumped back on the pillows and trying to catch his breath, but he smiles very slightly bc he's making it despite his tiredness, woo! Peach and Luigi congratulate him quietly on his efforts, while the princess squeezes his shoulder and his brother pads at his sweaty face with his wrist. That helps too in giving him more determination to keep pushing with all he got.

The thing is that (for the sake of funny, remember) Mario is very strong and it takes one more, really strong push and the first baby pops out in the whole sense of the expression. She just shots out and Doctor Toadlina is definitely caught off guard, but she still manages to hold the baby, the thing is that she stumbles back, and she would've fallen if the assisting nurse toads hadn't hurried to help her stay upright, all caught by surprise.

She's like obviously surprised, as are Peach, Mario and Luigi (who actually took a lot of effort to push his own baby out, so he's like 'wowie bro :0'), but she quickly snaps out of it and congratulates the now officially moms for their baby girl, while the baby cries with all her little lungs' strength, looking too big in the doctor's arms.

Then she instructs the nurses to cut the umbilical cord and do all the procedures to check on the baby's health, while Peach cries because "A baby girl! that means we'll have two baby girls! Oh, Mario!" and Mario looks almost heartbroken that they had to take their baby away (he knows it's for her own wellness, but he just wants to see and hold her already), but then smiles widely at Peach's words, and at his bro's excited congratulations and hugs.

Doctor Toadlina offers Peach to hold their first born so she can bring her to Mario, but Peach is kind of scared and feels shaky from excitement, so she hurriedly tells Luigi to hold their baby instead, since he has more experience. And when he does, Luigi first holds her to Mario's face, and after making the baby kiss his cheek, he places her in Mario's arms.

When the baby is placed in his arms, Mario can't help all his tears because she's so cute! (she's actually a bit ugly, like any newborn baby is) and small (not really, she's bigger than average, especially for a twin pregnancy), and she's utterly perfect (that part's true).

Peach and Mario lean their heads together while admiring their baby (and having so many tears running down their cheeks, but they don't care).

"Oh, Mario- she's perfect," Peach barely chokes out, feeling her heart overwhelmingly full. She turns to him and kisses his head a bunch of times, while Mario smiles brightly. "You did great!"

Then Doctor Toadlina tells Mario that, given baby two's position, it'd be a while for them to be born, so he's allowed to rest and maybe take a quick nap if he wishes to. And Mario takes up on the offer right away.

He leans his head back on the pillows and, with his baby still held in his arms, he knocks out immediately. Peach lets out a surprised but amused giggle. And Luigi shakes his head in amusement too, he gently brushes Mario's hair from his forehead, and then pats his head tenderly. Mario's arms go a bit lose around the baby, but Peach and Luigi make sure he still holds her firmly, supporting his arms with their hands. While Mario naps they whisper about the baby, and how cute she is, with her little cheek squished against Mario's chest.

Peach notes all the physical features that she notices, the clearest one being her round Mario™ nose! And her brown hair, and her little dot eyes, so similar to how she knew Mario's were when he was a baby!

(Mario and Peach totally fall in love when they see their oldest baby- and fall in love again with the second- who arrives almost half and hour later.)

🌟 Once both babies are in Mario's arms, Luigi takes 23429 pictures of the three while claiming that each picture is absolutely perfect, because Mario looks happy in them (and the babies look adorably ugly- like newborns usually do), and Peach, while crying her eyes out, says how she's going to put all 23429 of them in their photo album (that so far has many pictures of Mario's pregnancy process-).

Mario's sure he looks terrible, because despite his joy he feels really exhausted, he can barely keep his eyes open enough to look at Luigi's phone while he snaps several pictures, and even though Peach ran her fingers through his hair to fix it up a bit for that moment, he knew it probably was still a mess.

It's just that everything happened so quickly and it was taking its toll on him, but at least he's very glad that both babies (baby girls! They're Mariella and Nettarina!) are in his arms already.

After everything is done, and he knows his babies are going to be well-cared for, Mario just passes out the rest of the night, and nothing wakes him up. When the babies start to get fussy because they feel hungry, Peach and Luigi take care of them, and they keep doing it for the whole rest of the afternoon and night, all while quietly speaking among themselves how cute the baby girls are and how much they look like either Mario or Peach (definitely more like Mario). Peach tears up almost each time she looks down at the babies' little faces, but it's out of her overwhelming happiness, while she whispers to herself: 'stars, they're finally here!'

At some moment, Peach hands Mariella to Luigi's arms so she can drink some water, since the baby seemed adamant about not joining her twin (and mamma) in sleeping.

"I feel very dehydrated-" she says quietly and then serves herself a glass from their coffee table. Peach makes the mistake of looking back to her brother-in-law and the little bundle of light green blankets in his arms, and she has to cover her mouth to sob again, turning to look at her glass. Oh, she was so small! And so real and there already! She hadn't felt this overwhelmingly happy since... maybe ever. And also, Peach is sure the lack of sleep has something to do with her very emotional state.

"I don't blame you, you've-a cried so much, Peach," mutters Luigi distractedly, as if he hadn't been crying a lot too, while very gently rocking one of his newborn nieces as the baby slowly blinked at him.

She had a round nose like all the Marios did (he, his bro and Magma-), and very relaxed little eyebrows, and almost a full head of reddish chestnut hair. And her little mouth was not even pouting, but Luigi couldn't help but think that she (and her sister, since they were identical) reminded him very much of when Magma was a newborn, and just placed in his arms (he also briefly remembered Mario's and Bowser's weeping when they saw her properly, and he huffed a laugh to himself).

-By the end, Peach puts only some (but still many) of the pictures in their family album, several of Mario holding the girls, either smiling or kissing them, others of her holding them, others of both new moms with their babies, and others of Luigi holding his nieces.

🌟 The next morning, Mario wakes up and the first thing he does is stretch as much as he can, realizing that he actually slept pretty well (and he was even laying on his back!). He feels a bit sore and all but less... heavy. He looks down to his body and sees his still round and swollen belly, but much less than it should be if he had two babies inside. He panics for all of a few seconds as he looks around the room, and a huge relief envelops him as he sees the two wooden bassinets that hadn't been there the day before, until the previous afternoon, when one of the nurses brought them in from the nursery to lay the babies.

He looks at the other two sleeping adults in the room, at Peach sitting in one of the armchairs in their room, with her cheek against her fist in what must be an uncomfortable position, with her crown still placed perfectly on top of her head. And to Luigi, sprawled at the foot of the bed, hatless and snoring slightly.

He smiles to himself slightly and slowly gets out of bed, wincing a bit because he still feels kind of tender from the previous day and the toll it had in his body. Mario waddles sluggishly to the bassinets and his soft smile turns bright as he looks at the little babies' faces. They're still as perfect as they were the day before, when he had them in his arms.

He looks at the oldest baby, Nettarina, wrapped in the red-pink blanket, just like he and Peach accorded that the first baby to be born would be, and then to Mariella, who's wrapped in light green. And whose little dot eyes are blinking open. Mario gets closer to her bassinet, and he leans a bit while smiling softly to her.

"Hi, baby," he whispers, holding out a hand to lightly caress her very soft cheek with a finger. Mariella just keeps blinking, with her little closed fists close to her face. She does a big yawn with her eyes tightly closed, and then she keeps looking and blinking in Mario's direction.

She was just born yesterday, and of course her vision was just terrible, but Mario still smiled at her widely as if to show her how happy he was that she was finally there. After a while the baby fell asleep, all while Mario kept looking at her.

He spent some very good minutes on his feet beside his babies, until Peach stirred awake and, upon seeing Mario standing, scrambled to her feet and with a smile asks how he's feeling-

The morning goes all nicely and stuff while both new moms (and uncle!) spend the time caring for the babies and tending to them. When it's the afternoon and Mario's feeling much better, they first let Toadsworth in -who got there early to ask for Mario's and the babies' state- and he's all weepy while looking at his grandbabies!

Maybe a few days later their friends meet their babies, as do their niblings and Daisy and all :''v

[some-mari-thoughts]

im ootl, whats up with the manga? i havent been reading

Nice! Probably its best u dont

From ok to bad:

Events have been rearranged to unknown extent to adapt to faster pace.

We start with the christmas memory dream instead of headspace, and we are introduced to everyone that way. The dream is very very short.

We then go to start 3 days left skipping the phobia fight for its unneeded at this point, and see kel, basil and aubrey (no mention of their friend groups)

Sunny freaks out and leaves to white space right upon ending Aubrey fight (after seeing a photo of Mari) and thats where we meet mari properly

That said, Mari. In the dream/memory she is introduced via visual horror, stress rising as soon as she comes into frame and when we see her face it is already kinda terrifying! Her name and sight alone continues to scare sunny into panic for the entirety of chapter. Almost as if he is scared of her rather than anything else

We dont feel any easier as we meet Dream Mari either because she sneakily guilt trips us about taking too long and making her wait

Sunny is treated a bit better but he is freaking out almost the entire time we see him and his reactions seem a bit misplaced. I am also pretty sure he doesn't even get to throw up the steak. He does get several gay tension moments which shippers are extatic about but for me doesnt make it literally any at all better or easier. Just raises my brow higher. Seems like its the only place where manga will have any success. The sunburn lovers are also happy bc in the dreamworld omori gets to help aubrey out instead of kel

Other events have been slightly changed. We start with not seeing any of the hooligans which leaves us with aubrey alone. So she alone is doing a lot more bullying than she originally was doing. Then she also focuses on bullying sunny alone and verbally hitting where it'll hurt, also reminding him that mari is dead here instead of church (which causes him to collapse and then slice her with the knife)

What does not help is the artist consistently fails to make a good line of motion or guide the viewers eye where it needs to go, so 90% of people will first miss that 1 - aubrey doesnt hit basil in the head with her bat, but trips him instead; 2 - she then seemingly misses at kel and aims to hit sunny straight across with the bat; 3 - Easily missable detail that sunny stops freaking out as he handles the knife, either bc of smth abt him or bc of omori (unclear, sunny is the one drawn there), 4 - Sunny looks like he is trying to kill Aubrey; 5 - Unclear who is panicking and thinking "no" as Sunny readies the knife

The manga is not at all beginner friendly and in theory can only be enjoyed by a member of the fandom. Well. It fails at that too bc only very specific ppl will be actually happy abt this retelling. (Shippers. And another subset of ppl who are there for different reasons)

The artstyle is making anyone with good internet background tense and for good reason too (shotacon/CP classic artstyle) People have spoken out about more evidence to the manga's artist drawing messed up things (including for OMORI fandom) not too long ago. Omocat's rep is once again in shambles and i cant and wont defend her til we get a goddamn good explanation

[triflesandparsnips]

I'm not seeing enough deep-dive nonsense about the new Good Omens season 2 poster drop on my dash, and by god that means I must be the one to deliver it.

For those who haven't seen it yet, behold:

...there's a lot in here to go a wee bit feral over, if one was so inclined, and lord knows I love an inclination.

The Obvious Stuff

1. There Was Only One Bed Chair

This is the bulk of the commentary I've seen, and tbh, it's pretty great. "I am bored/busy and ignoring you but also what is personal space, never heard of her, we will not be taking questions at this time."

Notably, however, this is the second time we've seen them back to back-- the majority of the poster art we saw for the first season had them side by side. In both cases they're in a position to face some third thing together-- the difference, perhaps, is that side by side might imply equality of situation, while back to back implies implicit trust that the other won't stab you there.

2. The bookshop

Aw, look at them. Look at it. What a glorious little mess. This is them in London. Arizaphale looks pleased with the situation; Crowley looks bored af but he's also squished up on that one dang chair, so there's a "cat sitting next to you because parallel play and mirroring are the Best Interactions" feel to it.

3. Tea and wine

Arizaphale's got a teacup, Crowley's got a wine glass, this is very Them and indicative of their Vibes. Tbh, I think this is just a nice bit of design work, but it's worth calling out.

4. The outside street

The shop across the way is using a Gothic and reads "GIVE ME" before being cut off. No clue what it means, but it probably means something.

5. The tagline

The previous tagline we got was "Something's going down in the Up" (with that grey feather falling between their black and white wings)-- this tagline reads "Everyday it's a-getting closer."

Easiest interpretation is, oho, we're getting closer to the second season, and gosh there will be some Plot in it. And sure, yes, it works for that too, huzzah. But leaving aside the "it" and what that may mean-- "a-getting" is a fascinating word choice. It evokes similar constructions like, say, the somewhat obscure "Sumer is icumen in" (a song about the changing of the seasons and also encouraging a cuckoo to go lay some eggs in other birds nests if u no wat im sayin eyyyyy)-- and the significantly less obscure protest song "The Times They Are A-Changin'", whose ending stanza is:

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin'

And the first one now

Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin'

Gosh.

Now the Real Fun Starts

This poster is a composite image (as so many ads are), composed of different bits and pieces to form a whole impression -- based on fun stuff like relative pixelation and whatnot, you can often tell what portions of an image were there to start with, and what were specifically added in after the fact. How packed this poster is in tiny details -- which is exactly where I would hide fun hints to things -- is generally a cue for me to take a closer look, and I have been, I think, rewarded.

1. The books with legible titles

Zoom in on Aziraphale's book-- he's reading Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. The "two cities" in play are Paris and London, and the book is set before and during the French Revolution.

It's the story of a man who had been previously imprisoned in the Bastille for 18 years, and then was released to go live with his daughter -- who he has never met, what with the whole "imprisoned" thing -- in London.

The opening paragraph is:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

The pile of books in the foreground have two visible titles: the topmost one is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (a "novel of manners" that's considered a heavy-hitting romantic classic, and also yes the leads are both prideful and prejudiced and it takes an entire book for them to clear that up) and Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (a young adult coming-of-age adventure story about a kid who finds himself on an adventure with a bunch of pirates to discover buried treasure).

Of note: A Tale of Two Cities, Pride and Prejudice, and Treasure Island also all have note tabs sticking out of them, and are the only books that have them. This is reminiscent of how Arizaphale studied and referenced Agnes Nutter's prophecies.

Some of the books beneath the window technically have titles, but they appear to be about as pixelated as the rest of that section, and so I suspect they're just part of the scenery.

Similarly, most of the books on the background shelves are like that as well, except:

Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (A satirical novel set in World War II; Wikipedia briefly explains that "the novel examines the absurdity of war and military life through the experiences of Yossarian and his cohorts, who attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their service requirements so that they may return home." The book also coined the phrase "catch-22," which is a situation someone can't escape because of paradoxical rules-- in the case of the book, you can't ask to be evaluated for insanity so that you can be exempt from flying dangerous missions, because "anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.")

Iain Banks's The Crow Road (and a first edition, perhaps? I haven't read it, but apparently it's a Scottish family drama about a perfect murder against the backdrop of the 1990s Gulf War. Its opening line is "It was the day my grandmother exploded." The phrase "the crow road" is a euphemism, in the book, for death.)

Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim (Sparknotes says it's "the story of a man named Marlow's struggle to tell and to understand the life story of a man named Jim" -- a young man who goes to sea, makes a terrible and cowardly decision while following his leaders, and then spends the rest of his life haunted by it.)

There's at least one extra, partially obscured title:

It appears to read "THE BODY ------ and ------", which makes me wonder if it's an anthology of murder mystery short stories.

Leaving aside the uncertain book, commonalities between many of these books include:

soldiers, war, and the horrors/absurdities thereof

doubles and parallels

death and murder

a young/inexperienced protagonist thrown in with more experienced/weirder folk

fragmented and out of order narratives, sometimes having to be pieced together from multiple viewpoints

...pirates

2. The strange but noticeable inserts

There are several images that have been inserted into the poster that -- unlike the teacup and wine glass mentioned above -- don't seem to make a lot of contextual sense and are therefore, perhaps, extra information. These include:

a. the three lizard boys

b. the broken smartphone

c. the matchbox with the quote on the side

d. the camera

e. this statuette that seems suspicious

f. this record and scroll that seem out of place

g. the clockface with the missing hand (which may be just for the Aesthetic, but whatever, I'm including it)

What do they mean? No clue. I suspect it will become apparent as we get trailers and/or the actual show.

In Conclusion

Uh.

Look. Design teams can do all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. All of this could mean absolutely nothing.

But.

Using my magical powers of bullshit deduction, I might look at all this, and that grey feather falling from the earlier poster, and say... well... the war's still ongoing, yeah? So maybe... maybe there needs to be a new angel keeping an eye on things on Earth. Or an eye specifically on Aziraphale and Crowley.

And that would look SUSPICIOUS, right? So this is an angel who's maybe... a little bit Fallen. For the sake of the Mission. Like, they've agreed to sin just a lil bit, just enough to justify being thrown out of Heaven, and they're not actively in Hell because they're, oh, just stopping off, or maybe just going really slowly, or maybe they were sent back up from Hell because they were still "too good" and all that Pureness of Spirit was stinking up the place--

Whatever. Point is, they're on Earth, they're very confused, it sure would be nice if these very Established metaphysical elders could give them a few hints about how to get on. We'd then get to enjoy a Guide to Living a Totally Normal Human Life given by these two disaster dorks, plus whatever nonsense is derived from, idk, various extraneous plot shenanigans, probably involving a Murder and maybe a MacGuffin Maltese Falcon.

And most importantly: this new angel? Wow no they couldn't possibly be a spy because again WOW, what kind of angel would deliberately Fall? Wouldn't that require doing the wrong thing to do a right thing? ...okay maybe, but can it really be wrong if it was done by command? ...well, wait, it surely must be wrong because otherwise the mechanism wouldn't have worked-- but then, wait, which thing was the wrong thing--

And Aziraphale and Crowley would watch this bouncing volley of cognitive dissonance with great interest, also possibly while holding hands.

[dippersguidetotheunexplained]

ok i know all these antennas and dishes were probably just drawn randomly but can you play with me in this space for a minute i want to speculate. for fun

these two antennas on the left are pretty clearly yagi uda antennas (ones even drawn with enough detail that you can tell which way its pointing. drew a little arrow to show). yagis are very directional so since theyre both pointing in different directions i assume theyre being used for different things. they have all kinds of applications but its my post so im going to blindly speculate and say well, if i was in panic mode i would probably want an easy way to communicate with my apocalypse bunker at the very least as a failsafe and well a yagi can work for that as long as its pointed in the right direction. as for other potential uses well i would probably also want to keep as ear out for local law enforcement since i assume portal operation has got to be breaking some kind of laws and once again you can use a yagi to do that. from what i understand its a little overkill considering how small gravity falls is but whatever itll work probably

as for the giant seti looking satellite dish after looking into a bit im actually pretty confident that this is an early tv dish, in the late 70s/early 80s satellite tv was kind of just starting out so thats just how big the dishes were apparently

^ heres a picture of a commercially available satellite dish from around that time (which was going for over $30k in the early 70s btw... yikes) and the resemblance is really really close imo. person in the pic was interviewed about his setup in 1981, so the dates match up too. so despite the really dramatic scifi kind of look to such a huge dish i think the purpose of it was actually relatively mundane. it seems that programing was a bit limited at this point in time so im not sure what exactly hed be watching but who knows, maybe someone was broadcasting some scifi shows for him to keep up on

the tiny satellite dishes on the shacks roof are little bit more of a mystery to me since as previously mentioned tv dishes were fucking huge at this point so theyre definitely not for that. honestly i dont know a lot about parabolic antennas. might get back to this later

[synthaphone]

long post talking about making neopets style art, but not in a way that's useful or coherent or proofread

idk why of all the things that i struggle to do, the thing i keep coming back to trying to pull off is 'imitate the neopets art style circa 2004-2007'. i'm really proud of the stuff i make in that style, but i've always got a nagging feeling about how there's like, very few applications for this very specific skill i'm building, and i could be spending this time improving at anatomy or perspective or anything else. i guess that's just the power of 'wanting to learn something really bad' combined with, critically, 'believing im really close to figuring it out'

there's something about the line weights on a lot of old pets that's really hard for me to capture, and i've gone through a bunch of different ideas of why that is- like, maybe its easier to do in flash, or its something about the way i have the pressure sensitivity set up on my pen, or maybe the official artists also carefully shaped and weighted their lines while scaling the drawing down every so often to make sure they 'feel right' on a small scale (lol), or maybe its that shit that artists who've been inking shit for a long time learn how to do intuitively that i'm just not at the level of yet.

i'm looking at this smug bastard like. how do they decide which lines should be thick vs thin. my instinct is to go thicker on the corners of points like the ear tips, but this artist went thinner, and i think weighted the lines heavier on the undersides of shapes where the shadows are? neo artists aren't immune to stuff that frustrates me when i'm making pet art either, almost every pet has some part of their lineart that makes a weird tangent with the damn Circle. the linework on the hands straight up isn't clear at all, but i can tell what the pose is from how the shoulders are positioned and the expression of the character, so i guess that doesn't really matter at the end of the day

im pasting the lines i'm working on next to existing pets with varying levels of detail, but it might be too early to tell if they have the right level of clarity. i'm also i'm back in photoshop because that's easier for me, but maybe i should have tried flash again- doing the art in vectors does give the finished image that hard to detect Crispness that i'm always chasing

in order, these were drawn in photoshop in 2019, photoshop in 2022, and Flash in 2024. i was going to be like 'oh god, the Vully DOES look sharper than the centibyte, it must be Flash' but honestly i got the halloween one to look pretty close?? maybe i scaled down my photoshop images differently in 2019............ i think i've also gotten better at mimicking the lineart style, so it could also be that, but that doesn't account for why the top one looks kind of blurry in comparison. am i crazy. is it visible to anyone else.

anyway ive gone off on a tangent. for some reason this is what i'm obsessed with doing so i'm just gonna keep on trucking until something else seizes my attention instead i guess

[terraliensvent]

Can we mention and call attention to how their website looks now? They don't seem to check the final work at all. Some items like Gummy Eye, Shell Pot, and Inchsect are larger than the rest of the items, which makes them stick out of the line, which is just ugly.

Also now the images for forest and grassland locations have just a huge weight, which makes the foraging page take an unreasonable amount of time to load. Guys, I just want to make a couple clicks and go about my business again, why should I have to wait for the site to load because your images weigh so much?

And continuing with the artist thing. Items are drawn in different styles and it seems like the current owners don't think about how things end up looking at all. And I just don't understand why? I thought the new owners were more interested in the quality of the species, but it looks like I was wrong.

This all goes to show that the moderation doesn't seem to check at all how certain pages are displayed and working.

the item sizes thing i remember being way more egregious than this (or maybe it has to do with the fact im on mobile), but the funny thing about lorekeeper is that the size of items and awards and stuff is determined by the size of the image. im pretty sure you have to edit the css if you want the site to automatically resize the images.

the heavy images issue is also something ive noticed, they NEED to compress the images for the foraging locations because if it loads like shit now, imagine what itll be like when they all have insanely large image files to boot up when people just wanna do 3 clicks. its incredibly easy to compress images, you can do it right from your browser and usually theres no way to even tell the difference between a compressed image and a non-compressed (at least when its been resized like the foraging locations are). the same issue comes up with the items, inventories take forever to load now and i think the problem is because EVERY NEW ITEM IS ON A 1000x1000 CANVAS. for reference, lorekeeper recommends 100x100 for items. you do NOT need a canvas that big, and it shows they dont really know how to make items.

listen, i dont mean to hate on terra artists or whatever, just gonna point out examples

the problem with using such a big canvas for items is that you create a lot of tiny details that arent needed for an item icon. think of items in video games, you want to make something visually appealing and recognizable with as little detail as possible. the pincher potion, gummy eye, and silk wyrm are good examples of this, limited palettes, strong linework, and enough contrast/strong silhouette to be recognized from far away. i think the fur pop, shell pot, and moonfin are examples of how not to do items. the fur pop is too overly rendered, and the linework is very thin and small within the actual lollipop. the moonfin and shell pot both have small details (ie. the tassel on the moonfin’s arrow + the bits of fur on the shell pot) and the rendering issue from before. reminder that these are eventually going to be used as emojis on the discord, theyll be incredibly hard to read at such a small size plus incredibly unrecognizable to users familiar with the old items. in addition, the shell pot lacks direction in design, it reads more as an item that would grant a tail trait or a mist trait, not shell/exoskeleton. fallen tail, monstera bat, and horseshoe beetle also have these issues, but theyre similar enough to the old items that people will probably still recognize them.

like, look at these iconic items. they are so popular because theyre simple and recognizable from a distance, you can make them as big or as small as you want, you can see it from 10 feet away and still know what it is. THATS good item design.

i think this goes back to “mods hiring their friends,” you just pick people on a personal bias and dont consider the level of skill in making specific items because item design is not the same as making fully finished rendered art. it takes a different eye and you need to think of different principles than you would when making a full piece.

and heres the thing, that doesnt even necessarily mean the art is bad. the fur pop for example, has a very distinct and eye catching style; however, the issue is that theres no uniformity WHATSOEVER. these dont look like theyre all part of the same world, if all the items were done in the same gritty rendered style of the fur pop i would say its a great set, its the fact that you have some items that are incredibly simple, some that are “gritty,” and some that are just silly.

if nothing else, at the very least PLEASE make your canvas smaller and compress your images, youre making the site painful to use (and thats especially an issue when your site has so little functionality anyways)

[struck-by-the-rain]

haha hey you know that ask game you reblogged. what if. the prompt i gave you from it...... was all of them . grins EVILLY

UMMM!!!! TEEHEEE!!!! hi anon here's the dissertation u requested from this ask game, obviously im doing joe and sk (Ziggy) bc who else would i be able to answer 30 questions about??? i went into detail w all of these

under cut bc loooong and theres some doodles

1. What’s their love languages?

love languages are pseudoscience but as i said in a post before (and as u can see from my art and hopefully writing lmao) they're a very physically affectionate couple to me! to paraphrase my ramble from a bit ago, they're both the type of autistic person to thrive on physical touch but Joe's spent most of his life being extremely lonely and touch-starved. so I think Ziggy (whos like. a very clingy cat kinda) just loves to be rly gentle and affectionate w Joe in a way he never thought he'd ever experience or deserve. sobs a little (idk i make em v v sappy bc. comfort ship)

2. Do they have a dynamic trope? (enemies to lovers, sunshine x grumpy, etc?)

i dont knowwwwwwww but if i ever end up putting tha things i wanna write/finish writing on ao3 theyd probs be tagged friends to lovers which i assume is what the question's asking? and probs also hurt/comfort kinda i guess, in both "directions" but i def think Joe has more Problems in his life than Ziggy, especially when they first meet, so it just goes that way (again, comfort ship. i project my problems onto both of them but maybe more on joe soooo)

3. Who cooks? Who cleans up? Who’s banned from the kitchen?

Joe's a good cook I think, out of necessity (because his dad was such a terrible one) and also he takes it up as a hobby! not too sure about Ziggy, im tempted to say he sucks a bit at it n is just a bit clumsy and incompetent. 6switcher also lives with Ziggy and Joe and he's kind of like, a 3rd (platonic) member of the relationship and cooks for them all occasionally!!!

4. What’s their favorite sleeping/cuddling positions?

again they're like velcro around each other so i think they always hold each other when sleeping,, its v. comforting for both of them!!! i went thru my art tag and ive literally drawn them snoozing like 9 quintillion times and kinda similar each time,,,, the comfy cozies,,,

also really liking the hc that space kickers are kinda catlike in some ways so maybe sometimes Joe wakes up and like. his arms numb because Ziggy's curled up like a cat and is lying on it or Ziggy's sprawled out in the most bizarre sleeping position possible.

5. Who does what chores?

They have a cat (remix 9) that was also originally Joe's so he probably looks after that side of things, and as I said Joe also does the majority of the cooking I think!!! Other than that I can't really see them particularly dividing things out in a special way, maybe bc they r both autistic they have sensory hangups around certain things and the other takes charge! and again 6switcher lives w them so does some of it

6. Do they go out often or prefer to stay indoors?

When they first meet Joe is still living in the basement and they meet behind Senior's back, so they pretty much have to spend all their time out and about! which they both enjoy. When they move in together I still think they do a lot of fun things together out and about :) especially bc I imagine Ziggy's place is in the middle of a big city w lots of stuff to do!! and they also play for the same football team! but I think they're both good at looking at each other and deciding to skip a plan/social gathering

7. Who is the more romantic one?

i dont knowwwwwwwwwwwwww they are literally just. so sappy to each other. maybe I'd say Ziggy - they call Joe a bunch of really sappy petnames and gives him physical affection a loooot

8. Do they have any favorite activities to do together?

football :)))) Ziggy teaches Joe how to play, Joe teaches Ziggy to be happy w/ doing the sport for fun and not professionally (Zig had 2 retire early when he was young)! I think they also like to watch football games together (either at the stadium or on tv)!! also I think there's a market (like a night market!!) near where they live so they visit there quite often. ohhh and stargazing sniffle

9. Baths or showers together? Do they like elaborate ones with bubbles and flower petals?

probably not - Ziggy likes 2 take really cold baths/showers while Joe likes 2 take really hot ones bc in my mind palace space kickers are adapted to colder temperatures than humans! maybe they tried a few times but it didn't work out bc they kept arguing! but I think they'd both be fans of really long fancy baths n run them for each other

10. Who drives and who picks out the music?

Ziggy drives a silly little stereotypical ufo, Joe picks out the music (usually the rockers)

11. What’s a song that describes their relationship? Or, what’s the song that they’ve deemed “their” song?

as much as Ziggy isn't a huge fan of the rockers (Joe is), "that one song" (the rockers 2 song,,, enjoy my shitty in universe name) is their song because they had their first kiss/got together as a couple at the battle of the bands!!! so that 1 ig

12. Who gets up the earliest? Who has the worst sleep schedule? Who is the sleepiest?

Another hc I've thought already abt before is they have different sleep schedules, partially because they're different species! Ziggy goes to sleep later/wakes up earlier than Joe and also spends time awake in the night/napping, a bit like a cat kind of! they should maybe consider getting seperate beds but they are wayyyy too clingy w each other to consider that dfjkdjdjd. Joe's the sleepier one I think, especially before they move in w/ each other and he's overtired from training so much and probably has a bit of an unhealthy habit of denying himself sleep. he's the kind of guy to say "oh i'm fine, i'm tired but i don't need to sleep now!" and then Ziggy will play with his (remaining) hair for 2 minutes while they're watching tv together and he'll be like honk shoo honk shoo. i think in general he struggles to sleep normally but doesn't when Ziggy is there :')

13. What’s their opinions on PDA?

hypocritical,,, they both tend to be annoyed by others doing it, but are very pda-y themselves

14. Who does fashion shows after a mall trip and who watches and compliments them?

Ziggy is a v. fashionable guy and considers buying/modifying/making clothes a hobby, and probably even gets suuuper into it and likes to do lil mock fashion shows for Joe (like walking up and down the room as if it's the catwalk).

He also likes to buy Joe clothes n stuff, at first he buys Joe kinda fancy fashion-y things (wiimix7 outfit!!!) and then learns what he acc likes to wear (rly comfy cozy sweaters n stuff).

15. Do they go on vacations together? Where is their favorite place to visit?

they visit Joe's home planet quite often because he gets homesick and also ends up with earthling family other than senior. and they probs go to the beach there too or smth :)

16. What’s their favorite “domestic bliss” moment? Do they cook/clean together? Do they like to go out shopping together?

Joe has a growing collection of earthling plants (part of their apartment is slowly turning into a jungle) to feel more at home, and they love looking after them together, and Ziggy loves to listen to Joe talk about the different plants and how he's making sure they're all happy!!!

17. What does a relaxing night in look like for them?

very cliche but they cuddle up (under a blanket if its cold) and watch TV every night until one of them (usually Joe) starts falling asleep... Usually things like football games or like, shows/movies from their respective planets which they feel is important to introduce the other to. idk its just a mega important part of their routine to both of them :)

18. What does a date night out look like for them?

uhhhhhh idk Ziggy takes fuckin forever to get ready and pick an outfit and stuff a lot of the time! I think they live in a big city on Ziggy's planet w a lot of stuff to do so they have p varied date nights,,, stuff like going for nice dinners or concerts or watching the space/cosmic dance together! but tbf i think their fav date nights r like,, just stargazing together on a quiet hillside or something. i think if they're at a concert or a restaurant or whatever they often end up stargazing together anyway bc they both get overwhelmed easily n go and sit outside to chill for a bit

19. How do they silently/subtly express their love for each other?

when Joe was still living in the basement, letters! they communicated mainly by post during that period of their relationship and I think they'd just,,, include little inside jokes or send each other little heart candies n stuff. when theyre together i think theyd do things like subtly holding/touching hands or one holding on to the others coat or whatever,,, like idk theyre just always holding on to each other whether subtly or not

20. What clothes/accessories do they steal from each other?

Ziggy steals all of Joe's sweaters, even the ones he buys for Joe as a gift, bc they're oversized and really comfy and just like,,, feel like a big hug to him!!! Joe also lends him a pink rockers t-shirt one day so they can match at the battle of the bands and it becomes Ziggy's fav pyjamas! idk if Joe steals any of Ziggy's extensive wardrobe bc a lot of it isn't his style, though i could see him taking a liking to Ziggy's scarves :)

21. Which of their friends/family pokes fun at them for them getting flustered/affectionate?

6switcher basically bullies them 24/7, and Ziggy likes to playfully make fun of Joe for getting super flustered, often after doing something intentionally to make him flustered

22. How do they apologize after arguments?

I think Joe overapologises and overexplains a lot (now im thinkin Ziggy would do the same as well. but especially Joe), but he'd also default to baking something for them. I think Ziggy would just come and wrap their arms around Joe after they've had an argument

23. Do they like pick up lines?

They both see pick up lines as kind of cringe and would use them as a joke/bit! I think they both don't get why anyone would use those kind of things unironically

24. What are their favorite places to kiss on their partner(s)? What are their favorite types of kisses?

Zig likes to kiss Joe all over,,, but their fave is the very tip of Joe's nose, like it just makes him completely melt every time. I like to draw/imagine them also kissing him on the forehead n cheeks a lot. I hc space kickers as having patterns on their skin, I think Joe finds Ziggy's really really pretty so he likes kissing each of the lil spots and stuff on his shoulders and arms and stuff sniffle... ye

25. What is their dream home? Do they buy a place together? Who plans the decorations and who does the heavy lifting?

When they first meet and are long distance they both dream of living like,, anywhere together. I think they're pretty happy in Ziggy's little apartment, but eventually I imagine them moving to Joe's planet (because he missed it a lot) in a lil house and maybe running a kids football academy or smth! Idk exaactly what the interior decor is like but probs like,, cozy and full of plants n sunlight (projecting my dream home dreams onto them lmfao)

26. Do they have any pets or kids?

They have a cat and a fuck tonne of plants

27. Who would propose? What would their wedding be like?

im so unsure of which 1 would propose to the point where im considering the sappy gay relationship trope where they both propose at the same time!!! Whoever proposes, I think they'd do it outside live house ogu where they had their first kiss for sentimental reasons... I think Joe especially would want to get married bcs he has like,, no family or anything after running away from the basement (before he reunites w his mum), and he'd see getting married as a big part of leaving his past behind him and also becoming part of Ziggy's family! I think their wedding would have a mix of both earthling and sk traditions (whatever they are), space gramps would officiate it, 6switcher would be the best man and idk. gay space marriage (old art below)

28. What’s something that reminds them of their partner(s)? Do they have anything on them daily as a reminder (a photo, phone background, tattoo, clothing/accessory, etc)?

before they live together i think they know where each others planets in the night sky are and they look out for them every night, and probably also swap clothes so they can feel closer to each other! Joe has an old film camera that his dad stored in the basement and he takes pictures of em as lil mementos :)

29. What is something they can never agree on? How do they meet in the middle?

They spend a lot of time deliberating about whether to move back to Joe's home planet and maybe disagreeing on that! Joe misses it sometimes and has family/friends there, while Ziggy's job/football team/friends/family are on their planet. They compromise by makin lots of visits before/after they move I think, idk. I also think they never agree on like, how hot the room should be bc theyre adapted to diff temperatures lol

30. Free space! Say something about this ship that you want to say!

im SOOOO normal about them they make me ILL!!!! and ive learned like 90000000 art things just to draw better pics of them!!!!!!! and they bring me so much genuine comfort!!!!!!! as an extra thing I think they'd speak mix of each other's languages to each other

thanks for reading this far and thank you anon for enabling me

[kidfoundonstreets]

LOVEBRUSH CHRONICLE. YOU LIKE?

ill try to keep it brief 1/20397

lovebrush chronciles is an otome game deisgbed by team/company I AM ACTUALLY NOT SURE DESPITE YOU SEEING IT EVRRYTIME YOU ENTER THE GAME HOLD ON neteaze games (passion of gamers) and it is about altnerate universes, time fuckery, and school life.

the game begins introducing itself as a regular otome school life sim (my condolences to the fans who fell for william first sight only to find out hes not an actual love interest trust me i see u i feel u) but then WHAM BAM!! just when u thougut ur girl best friend was lookin kinda cute she gets X_x in this summon circle and you jump in to save her only to find out youre now in a royal cage surrounded by people that needa sacrifice you to save themselves from their own doom. oh and youre not in your own world anumore good luck have fun

so now here goes the different plots and paths with the love interests. the way i playrd it was as they introduced it, which was ayn aklaid lars claerence. no cael route yet which rips me apart every night. the love interests seem to have consistent values throughout most universes despite all of their diferet upbringings which i find pretty cool considering schoollife and royaltylife are two completely drastic diferent things, and also i nejoy how mc is written with more character and an amazing design to match the rest of the beautifully drawn cast

on that topic the art is GORGEOUS. i have never seen such beautiful detailed art in a game before and i assure you it will not disappoijnt. the graphics and smoothness of the game are especially a great touch. THERES A MINI STORY FOR EACH CARD BTW SR AND UP ITS SO GOOD becasenit feels as if the creatoes actually put care and give a shit into whar theyre writing and drawing and even in little events the absolute quality and depth of the cast shines theough its just i cannot express how much you need to play tjis game if you like dating sims ITS FREE TOO??,×*#&@ IMSO SAD WHY ID OBEYEME GETTING SM ATTENTION WHEN THIS IS SITTJNGHERE HUH dont get me wrong i too was in that hole but trust me brother there is only one man worth it there and obeyeme sure as hell isnt gonna do it justice with its 200+ chapter peobably plotline

anywya its 11 pm and ibhave no idea how to organize this post so ill just go through the cast

he is my plaything

ANYWAY ayn is so maahh hes the stupid cat that sleeps on me at night HE USED YO BE MY FAV AND WAS EXACTLY MY TYPE OFF THE BAT ITS SO IRONIC HES MY LEASY LIKED NOW but hes still very good and god you need to see this

^^ bisexual dilemma

^^ HIS EMO PHASE

i like him as a side piece, he has a nice personality but it doesnt stick out to me as much as the rest but i heavily respect the enjoyers of him

Aigh now

HHHRHRGGGHWH HHRGGBW WHWHWBW W SLSOPE9282B3BDND BSHSJW W GHENRBR .R FJJGGW HJ W..B GHN.F. H . THROWSUP aklaid my dear my darling ! i lvouou my little STARBOY my favorite my self sacrificing devoted prince who acts soo nice but is the cause of his own decay. smooochh I ADORE HIM dude one time he almost dies and mc is like "i am so sorry" and hes smiling qhile saying "nono! this is the happiest ivebeen" GET THERAPY

lars is my favorite lesbian

im onsessed w him hes always fun no matter where he is and yet they still dont dumb him down the moments where hes serious only add to his character his charm is unexplainable his rizz unatainable you could never

my TRUE favorite lesbian

MY FABORITE MY FABORITE KY DAVROITE I WAS SO WORRIED HOW I WOULD ENKOY HIM BECAUSE SO KUCH WAS UNKNOWN BUT AHGGWDHHSHW HIS ROUTE HIS DEPTH EVERYTHING IT MAKES ME SO SADITS HWARTBREAKING DUDE "HAIR HOLDS MEMORIES" IM GONNA SOB INTO MY HANDS I CANT BELIEVE I LOVE A MAN NAMED CLARENARENCNEUXIHQBQ SHUTOROSHUSITP oh and he really likes cats :D

i have run out of images but cael caught my eye since the beginning and i dont know whats wrong with him is he my parental figure my wife my side piece my worst enemy my hater my lover my killer my doomer my caretaker my one-time-leave-you-for-nine-months

i genuinely cannot stand him hes the one who i always run to and check on firstin efents and stories not claerence not lars not alkaid but fucking CAEL.

i cant help it maybe in the end my heart really belongs to him because im still waiting for his route and for him to show moreemotion and maybe break down or slowly go through the agony of learning to accept love despite everything despite you

this is the only part i feel a little uneased about in the writers hands.. they are very capable hands.. but will they do him right.. hes so stupidly simple but not it makes me grit my teeth and die

◇°♡○♤○£▪︎¥°₩`£•♡○◇○♡♤◇•◇•♡☆

THANK YOU EVERYPONY FOR REASING IF YOU DID PLEASE SMASH THAT OIKE AND SUBACRIBE BUTTON FOR MORE UNHINGED RANTS IM SORRY FOR BEING AUSTISTIC AND MAY DO IT AGAIN ♡♡ GOD BLESS

[ubercharge]

im not sure if anyone asked you yet, but thoughts on the dunmeshi anime?

thanks for asking! sometimes i forget i exist here as a person cuz i just log on to queue random stuff without making posts 💀

it's pretty rare for me to watch an anime without ever reading the manga, and there've been stellar adaptations recently. ONK, kisekoi, BTR, frieren, CSM just to name a few. in a landscape where we're used to being disappointed as readers who have a frame of reference before watching a show, i had very, very high hopes for the dunmeshi adaptations that weren't quite fulfilled.

i'll dump everything under a cut since i actually have a lot to say, sorry if you were expecting it to be brief 😎

the lines in the artistic style are good, nicely translating the characters into animated format. really no notes there. definitely a nicer comparison for char designs between manga and anime vs. tonsuki and tensura who both have incredible manga styles that the anime stumble over (though in the latter's case, i don't think they were aiming for it sadly)

the shading has been fine, but weakened by the colour choices. some of the dungeon scenes (e.g., living armour stuff) are lit with a medium blue which helps to sell the idea of the scene being in a place not lit by fire (and contrasts it with the making camp & cooking scenes), but the lack of dark shading flattens some of these very well-drawn images.

the earlier chapters don't have the same level of detail as newer ones, but the art style is still fantastic - it's expressive with high contrast and shows action and impact perfectly well. manga will often times have a naturally easier way with contrast due to it being in black & white, but i don't think that means anime should just give up on contrast in favour of playing ineffectively with colour.

here's a night shot of fern from frieren. the choices made here allow for the shading to stand out from the flats and give her more definition overall while still being relatively simple (just flats + shading)

when dunmeshi has more "normal" lighting conditions, it does a lot better. similar to fern up there, there's about the same amount of difference between the flats and shadows, so i really wish they did a better job on the dungeon scenes since they're going to have to deal with non-torchlit scenes plenty. i won't argue that the living armor scene certainly has some kind of a sickly, alien mood to it, but tl;dr i think it should've had darker shading if not also being less green. this largely applies to every other blue-green lit scene they've done.

looking at kui's coloured drawings in the ed gives me an idea of what could've been and it makes me sad to lose out on colour choices more similar to that (even if they obviously can't have her level of detail on top of it)

some of the backgrounds haven't been too interesting but some have been good, overall it's probably fine. plus you can only draw and detail repeating bricks so many times before the viewer gets bored of looking at them anyway, i guess.

the animation is really fun and expressive. it's trigger, so they don't keep scenes stiffly on-model when they want characters moving around. this is good because it helps to sell both action and comedy moments!

the music overall i haven't really cared for? the BGM has not been particularly moving, interesting, or memorable - mostly generic. and i've seen too many fantasy shows for my own good, so i might be harder to impress (but i even remember tenken had a good BGM song or two to make a fight dramatic and that show was barely above average at best)

i'm biased not being particularly into bump, so i would've selected a different artist for the OP (i actually did like the bump OP from SxF though, come to think of it). before anyone makes a wisecrack based on what i've watched lately, no it doesn't have to be yoasobi.

i maybe feel the ED song would've been better for the OP, i don't like the largely peaceful bit of the OP with very still visuals. the OP is where you reel people in! it should be an eye-catching hook, representative of what to expect with some extra sauce on top.

the ED is great, total bop. it's a fine time for slower visuals as an enjoyable wind-down from the episode, so less or no animation is no big deal. plus kui's art is absolutely gorgeous! it all perfectly fits that "end of work" fun and lighthearted mood they were going for.

i largely enjoy the voice acting. i would've personally gone for a less "old man" voice on senshi because he's really not that old for a dwarf, but they obviously wanted to make it clear he was the older, wiser, knowledgeable character.

this might be my own personally most blasphemous opinion, but i would've picked a different VA for falin. i want to make it clear i absolutely adore saori hayami - she's incredible and one of my faves. with that said, her voice fits the character, so maybe it's just because i've heard her too often which is not her fault by any means! i love the voices for laios, marcille, and chil.

it seems netflix's subs go off of the official EN TL of the manga, which makes sense, but i've talked about how i don't like it more than ehscans' TL (which is one of the single best TLs i've read for a series, official or otherwise) and that holds true for the anime ("mad sorcerer" is cooler AND less clunky than "lunatic magician"). i prefer less localisation stuff and/or quirkiness in my subs and more direct translation for both manga and anime.

as for the changes/additions they've made to the show, some of them have been alright and some i didn't care for. they really want to sell marcille as the funny joke character which is why they had her being chased by the basilisk instead of having doni & fionil like it was in the manga which was better for the pacing and had good impact vs a funny clip of marcille running back and forth.

i don't dislike when adaptations add or change stuff, but placing them cleanly is important. dunmeshi is already really funny! i don't think it needs help being funnier by reaching for the cheap laugh. when laios sees two people running for their lives from a basilisk and he just goes "wow that's a bad way to run from that monster", it's already lowkey hilarious - all the more so followed by marcille telling mr. monster-know-it-all to go rescue them if he knows what's up and him rescuing them by making himself big and chicken squawking real loud (which embarrasses marcille and chil, but c'mon guys, at least his idea worked!). i feel like the comedy in laios' funny hero moment is undercut by forcing the marcille butt of the joke moment in the anime.

dunmeshi is already incredibly good at just about everything it does. i feel if an adaptation wants to add or change something, it's often better amplifying a strength or shoring up a weakness in the source material. BTR adds a lot to the source (not hard considering the source is a 4koma) and makes already funny things even funnier. the "we should all get social media" scene is elevated to iconic status with the visual of bocchi glitching out + the VA's inhuman screech. i can't say where i'd really want to change or add stuff to dunmeshi, since it really feels so good and whole, but i'm sure there's room in the process of translating manga panels to animated scenes, and i think the direction overall could've been better (comparing most shows to BTR isn't fair i know because BTR is directed & adapted so well it's hydrogen bomb vs. coughing baby territory)

i've mostly said negative stuff, but i don't want it to sound like i hate or even really dislike the adaptation. i think when it comes to a series you really love, you want to see the best adaptation possible within reason, and the disappointment of stuff not being quite what you were hoping for is amplified by so many other recent adaptations being so good.

dunmeshi does not have a bad anime by any means, but a lot of that is thanks to the source material's quality. if they do another season, i hope they have more time/budget/whatever because i think a lot of the parts it does have are good parts! but in this case, i wasn't hoping for good; i was hoping for great.

trigger makes great shows with wacky storylines (in some ways, the same one wacky storyline, but that's a different discussion) and dunmeshi, being directed by someone who's worked on a bunch of trigger stuff (largely sci-fi leaning), maybe needed some more direction from people who've worked on fantasy stuff? i can't say for sure what would've been enough to take the show over the top, but though i generally don't hope for much from adaptations, i really did have higher hopes for this one than it ended up achieving.

overall it seems i'll end up scoring the show a 7 or 7.5 when i finish the season, though there's certainly still room to wow us all. whatever you feel about the adaptation, whether you liked it or not, whether or not you've read the manga, feel free to comment your thoughts below or in my inbox. let's keep it free of manga spoils for anime-only watchers, though!

[astranauticus]

post mortem for my orv animatic bc i have lots of thoughts and yall are gonna hear all of them (that is a threat)

first is the obligatory special thanks/plagiarism declaration section but a lot of the shots in this are inspired by the original changgwi lyric video which like. please watch it there's a reason this song is a classic animatic song on bilibili like the music is good but the video definitely helped. also speaking of bilibili, special shoutout to this arknights chongyue animatic that introduced me to the song that will haunt the next 8 months of my life!

the original inspiration was the thought that the verse of the spirit telling the story of its own death felt very yjh coded but it took like another week of stewing on it to have the idea of using the final chorus for the dkos arc which was the moment i decided i have to actually make this thing

going strictly by when i started putting pen to paper (pencil to ipad screen? whatever) this took almost exactly 5 months since i created the first drafts in february but the first 3 months ish from february until may were also my school semester so. most of the progress (id say about >60%) was done in the last two months of me working on this every moment i wasnt at work (or playing project sekai, for some reason)

also! funny little detail but counting the drafts and some discarded frames my procreate stack for this thing has exactly 49 artworks in it! neat little easter egg i guess (yeah 51 wouldve been more fitting but whatever)

this fully slipped by both me (at 2am) and my friend whom i sent the finished version to (fighting the flu) but in the final edit i didn't actually include the second half of the last lyric?? it's 'i will take you to the mountain god' i apparently just wrote 'i will take you' and never finished the rest LMAO

speaking of the lyrics i dont speak korean and im not a huge fan of most english translations of this song that exists so on multiple occasions i was so tempted to just use the chinese cover someone on bilibili did because then i'd at least be confident i know where the fucking line breaks were (there's one line at the end where im pretty sure i didn't edit on the line breaks correctly but that was more of an intentional compromise because the timings would've been off otherwise. anyway) tbh the only reason i didnt do that is the atmosphere and delivery of the original song is. really unbeatable like the cover's also pretty good but it doesn't quite achieve the same effect

also speaking of things i fucked up im aware i drew sys in the wrong outfit for the dkos fight but like. ok full disclosure my orv reference folder is a complete mess (theres like 400+ images in there. for some reason) so on net ive gotten character outfits wrong while working on this thing like at least 3 times bc id just grab a random webtoon screenshot from my folder and go w it. it's just that by the time i realised i fucked up i'd already finished drawing all of sys's frames and i was too lazy to go back and change all of them LMAO

anyway yeah some other random things i wanted to whinge about:

there's a lot of effects i wanted to do that didn't quite come across due to. lack of skill/time/patience/all of the above but the one im really annoyed about is the yhk postchorus bit with the 3 circles bc. first off i think i drew those while halfway dozing off on the train to school once because uh. yeah

anyway poor drawing aside id really wanted to recreate the sort of. drawn-in effect on the circles and lines that the original lyric video had but i could NOT for the life of me figure out a way to execute that in capcut so. here we are (also you cant put transitions on overlays in capcut so that's why those also looked so bad. youre welcome)

honestly my timeline for this in capcut looks pretty ridiculous bc if you want to do word by word animations/effects you need to pay for the pro version so my workaround was just to have like five thousand text layers with 1-2 words on it each (do not recommend btw)

speaking of the text im a moron so i kinda forgot to account for the text when drawing frames and wow you can tell. yeah next time im just hand writing the text fuck this

and i have some more thoughts that are. mild to moderate webtoon spoilers so past this will be the spoiler warning line

__________________________________________________________

actually my original plan was to upload this the day dkos dies in the webtoon but a. i genuinely did think it was gonna be yesterday like i dont pay for the early access episodes so i was just kinda going off orvtwt LMAO b. i could feel myself burning out on this like the last few frames i drew for this were fucking dogshit so i figured either i finish it soon or i wont finish it at all

i will probably still draw something for dkos' death day though for those who celebrate (basically when i was thumbnailing for one of the frames in this i ended up with one that didnt fit the video aspect ratio at all but still looks pretty good so im promoting it to a full drawing. so look forward to that)

like for an idea of how fucking sick of this shit i was by like. last week pretty much like for the last few frames of the dkos fight i straight up forgot to draw dkos' wings and had to add them in halfway through editing last night. like that's how fucking out of it i was by then lmaoo

looking back its actually kinda funny cuz the whole put this up when dkos dies thing was my plan since february but i had literally no way of knowing when that would be especially since the webtoon stopped going with the novel chapter numbers exactly (i could.. guesstimate but my original estimation was in june so yknow. real useful) but like i can find evidence of me panicking about that deadline since may. why did i do that

given that deadline i knew i cant really include stuff from the novel past the dkos arc but man. the amount of times i wanted to use something from later (ESPECIALLY 1863 arc). i actually have another idea i want to test out thats like full epilogue spoilers partially because working on this for so long made me realise i really want to make more epilogue content <- what

yknow how i mentioned discarded frames yeah i had to draw dkos' death 3 times because the first two compositions just never quite panned out. i mean the current one is also pretty unreadable with the colour scheme but trust me the previous ones were way worse christ alive

[yandereshingeki]

omggg so i was in the middle of making a pizza and i realized that im now able to come and say hi :> hiii forest ! thank u sm for all of ur compliments on my drawings on aleks' prev blog <3 ive just checked ur art tag and omgggg ure amazing at drawing im speechless ! for how long have u been drawing ? and which are ur fav and least fav things to draw? im v curious but u can answer those questions only if u feel like it <3 just wanted to thank u for being nice overall !

HI CANNIBAL ANON!! I am so sorry this took so long to respond to, you sent it just as I was heading out for work and I wanted to wait to answer it so here i am!!

You’re absolutely welcome, all of your drawings are absolutely adorable!! You’re so talented, I love seeing all the little doodles you do!! And you and lunita are so cute 😭😭 I could cry

And thank YOU for enjoying my art!! :,) I’m comfy with answering anything so dw!!!

I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember, but if we’re being specific I’m pretty sure I started taking art more “seriously” around the age of 5 (that was when I looked at tutorials and started drawing a lot more! I actually still have the first notebook I started to draw in, and i have almost every sketchbook I’ve drawn in saved so I could probably go back and watch myself progress if i wanted to ejdhwkehka)

personally I also really love to draw bodies!! I love drawing all the lines and details in the skin & figuring out the way that the body looks when it bends and twists certain ways! I love studying muscles & bones to try and improve too, its my favorite part about drawing agahsjshea (if we’re taking about a favorite thing to draw tho, I absolutely love drawing my blorbos… especially eren, hes so easy for me to draw)

i’d say my least favorite thing would be clothes, because even though i enjoy it sometimes, clothing is sooo hard for me to figure out ;; not just for drawing, but also figuring out what to make a character wear?? I’d rather just keep them naked tbh but thats not always possible 😭😭

And let me say thank you to you again!! I was honestly so surprised seeing you follow me sjegajveksje im honored 😭😭 🫶 Appreciate you sm cannibal!!

[yarn-drag0n]

#mARTch challenge day 2 - inspirations

Im writing since the things off this list that Id want to draw are a circle diagram with "favorite thing to draw"

Animals and plants are probably the biggest source of inspiration. Especially lesser known animals and weird plants. I like looking into flower symbolisim and stuff too, the idea of being able to communicate complicated ideas with a coded visual language is appealing to me. Tho probably not a lot of people know flower symbolisim of hand (i dont either) its just a way to guide myself in picking which flower... i feel similarly about gemstones and minerals. I like drawing them and i love looking at them, but i think its harder for me to capture the "essence of beauty" in a stone than a plant or animal. I think birds and fish are the most fun for me to draw and I love learning about them. They all have really different life cycles and "personalities". They can also be very colorful and I'm drawn to that. Same with insects, they are funny little guys, and they have great features to incorperate into other creatures.

Similar to animals I love mythological creatures. They are probably on of the most consistent and lasting sources of inspiration for both my art and writing. Its a pretty much never ending topic, its why i went with it as the theme for my long term comic project Tidal Lines. I also just love learning about and drawing weird little guys. Tsuchinoko are an eternal favorite. Dragons also, since they can be so many different ways. The dragons in breath of fire 4 are some of my favorite and a very early (like age 7) source of inspiration to draw and think about dragons.

Those are like the main inspiration for subjects i like to draw... in terms of actual drawing style its a bit more difficult to talk about since I tend to just draw "however it wants to be drawn" in the way that I can manage. In a sense the tactile elements of the medium are the inspiration. I love the way watercolors control, and love watching it and ink on the page. I dont do a lot of "style studies" and sometimes I think i really should.... Id like to be influenced by the art of yoshitoshi abe, range murata, clamp, miyazaki (especially the nausicaa comic and his pencil+water color style). I also would like to be able to draw in a more simple but appealing way, the style of digimon adventure is one I like a lot for that quality. I think once i list these out I can see the influences in my "style" but im not sure if one would think of it nessecarily... im always interested to hear what people think my art looks like and compaires to, since i feel like i can't really tell.

Oh, the way I draw noses is consiously chosen because of Secret Saturdays and early Soul Eater. Its changed a bit, because I wanted ways to get more variation, but its something in the way I draw faces that can be directly traced back to those styles.

I am also inspired just gennerally by the marriage of visual art and storytelling. I like being able to include character and worldbuilding details visually. In a sense it feels more naturalistic to present these sorts of details visually, and when I see nice examples of it in other works its really exciting. There is a lot of this in miyazaki's films.

I am also inspired by people who can get "messy" or scraggly lines to look good and give a vibe. Randal's friends is a comic that i think of, and I want to draw with more looseness and weirdness.

I am very much inspired by my friends who draw. Drawing together and working on our art and talking about it and showing each other is one of the main things that keeps me encouraged to keep drawing.

TLDR i am inspired by everything in the world, all beaings and stories and my friends :>

[1d1195]

I feel like it has gone by quickly?? But at the same time THE CONCEPT OF TIME IS SO WEIRD TO ME I SERIOUSLY DONT KNOW ANYMORE LOL and Friday I was a bit busy :( it was a friends birthday so I out! But trust me I was ITCHING to pull up tumblr, read and talk to you! You know I love your book recs! And honestly that book sounds creepy! But you’re right I probably would end up reading it and liking it! Definitely added to my list! But I am surprised that you read it solely because you like “easy reads” , things that basically aren’t too stressful! Glad it wasn’t horrible though lol

I SERIOUSLY CANT LOOK THAT MAN IN THE EYES😭 when i turned in my exam to him my heart was beating out of my chest! And UGH IM A SUCKER FOR A HEIGHT DIFFERENCE LIKE MY BRAIN GOES CRAZY!! And idk he’s such a hot DILF lol and YES I DID SEE THOSE HARRY PICS AND I SWEAR I FELT LIKE DROPPING ON MY KNEES FOR THAT MAN😵‍💫😩 he looks so good it makes my head all fuzzy lol

Trust me I WAS CRAZY TOO!! All I wore were band t shirts and merch during my emo phase like I had no normal clothes or clothes that weren’t from hot topic bahaha and honestly I see why you were team Edward! I FINALLY saw the Twilight movies this past summer for the first time! I was never drawn to it when it was popular or the books BUTTTTT if I did have to chose I would have been team Edward lol there was no competition in the first place lol and yes I knew ALL the emo bands lore and stuff! Specifically twenty one pilots’s lore which is all lot lol but taht was like when i was 11 lol now i simply CANNOT due to lack of brain power lol

ANOTHER COUPLE MIGHT BE GETTING ENGAGED?! HELLO?! IM GONNA CRY FOR SURE!! And I’m sure part 4 will be great! You’re really great with coming with such detailed and unique! And you take such classic tropes and give your spin on it! I genuinely think you’re so talented Sam!

What’s crazy is that in my head I call you “ Samantha” when you literally do something crazy in your stories or like make me giddy?? Like “omg SAMANTHA!!!?” Idk if any of that made sense lol anyways Noah would have been cute! But Kyle is definitely more of a frat boy name lol and yeah I know about icebreaker never read it but I’ve definitely seen the girlies go crazy over it lol

My Kyle is literally so sweet! I met him at my schools IT services thing and he helped me out! Then I saw him again and he’s very nice!

And you know I love your long responses and I love you!!!-💜

HAHAHAHAHA I TALK TO MYSELF ALL THE TIME. I CONSTANTLY say “get it together Samantha.” That’s hilarious. I love that! If you’re inclined you gotta let me know which part/line in particular you do that for every once in a while 😭😂💕 please do not apologize for having friends and plans and being social. I’m glad you went out! That sounds like fun! My best friend and I are November birthdays so we celebrate the whole month of our births (our significant others LOVE it almost as much as we do, obviously).

The book was SO CREEPY. Stress level 12/10. So OBVIOUSLY I know the deeper meaning behind “don’t judge a book by its cover” but I’ve literally never picked up a book without judging its cover. Or at the very least the back cover. I’m pretty close with my sister so I often give books about sisters a thorough twice over. ALL THIS TO SAY I had no idea what it was going to be about when I picked it up hehehehe

Omg I could cry. Height difference, DILF, unable to look him in the eyes ughhhh I will also cry. I’m swooning just thinking about it 😭 I gotta write a professor/TA situation one of these days 😍😍😍

I don’t think I had an emo phase. A pseudo emo phase for sure. I never got into bands the way I was supposed to (but if I hear Fall For You I turn into a puddle). I’m obsessed with the image. I am spiraling at the idea you only saw Twilight last summer. I went to the midnight premieres I’m CRYING 😂

I have a lot of ideas in my head but they all boil down to happily ever after, marriage, 2.5 kids, and a white picket fence. I feel bad yall gotta keep reading the same story over and over 😂

Okay Kyle def is more of a frat name that was also what I thought when I switched it over. Noah was too cute I think hehehe maybe another story.

OBSESSED WITH YOUR KYLE MEET CUTE. CAN’T WAIT TO WRITE ABOUT IT 😍💕

Have a lovely start to your week bestie! 💕💕

Xoxo

P.s. Don’t read my update tomorrow if you’re having a good day lol I have been struggling with seasonal depression (I think it’s just regular depression actually at this point. But ya know) I am being dramatic honestly. Please don’t worry about me but regardless I’m probs going through an emo phase NOW hahahahahaha so it’s a little bit of a tear jerker imo

[fateology]

1 + 15?

HI to the two of you c-:

1. book you’ve reread the most times?

Oh God I fear the answer to this im pretty sure i have to say Nora sakavic all for the game series. Because I ripped an epub of it to kill time in class back in sec school and I just had it on my laptop ready to look at when I got bored so I read it a lot I literally cannot say much to defend it at all because it’s like. Simply not good. But also you have to understand that it is even if it isn’t. like if you need practice suspending your belief and you love sports with dramatic interpersonal team situations like me it’s perfect. Also if you like the clock motif in Goncharov Neil Josten did the trapped in a life of violence with your pipe dream of safety and escape slowly ticking away thing too and served cunt

15. recommend and review a book

YAYYYY alright let’s go with Jonathan strange & Mr Norrell I’m gonna copy paste stuff I wrote on my Instagram and like edit it a little

JS&MN was the most entertaining book i read in a while despite its length (if you liked Piranesi you might not like it as much, they’re quite different although both distinctly by the same author). What Clarke is really good at is evoking scene/situation/detail in a way that’s almost cinematic, makes for really great tableaux in that you can picture any Clarke scene as a sexily composed charcoal illustration, which JS&MN has! seriously here’s a speedrun: tarot cards drawn with the same eerie card every time, the sound of dolorous bells from another world, a proper lady shooting someone in the middle of a perfectly white snow day, this guy steps out of a mirror and then several, great stuff

She also writes with this particular restraint that’s very british where the humour and the horror and the mystique are all measured exactly - in the book there’s a sort of slow descent from frivolous victorian society to the fucked up underworld necromantic shit strange gets up to during the napoleonic wars and her tone fits both. Not to mention how sexy the necromancy was. The Duke of wellington is there. Goya does a chalk drawing Strange surrounded by corpses

Though honestly i think the best part of the book were the footnotes i love the depth of the scholarship clarke creates and especially the small folk tales about john uskglass/the raven king because like for the whole book she builds this mythology around him and (spoiler of sorts) honestly i expected there to be a grand climax where he shows up and does some kind of showy plot relevant display but his actual appearance is like only quietly extraordinary and the one person who sees him doesn’t even remember the encounter because at this point uskglass has receded into his myth such that he’s become intangible and the plot (which is about its titular characters first and foremost) can’t extract him from his status as a folk hero because that would take away the power he has over english magic

Ultimately though JS&MN is about people who have been deprived of their autonomy and voice reclaiming hold on the narrative and it’s really satisfying as a whole story. As characters Strange and Norrell are less remarkable to me than Stephen Black/Childermass/Lady Pole etc and when the storylines converge and resolve the length of the book feels deserved; the ending isn’t fully closed though and the balance of bittersweet is really good. It’s 782 pages and I liked all of them

[thenightwolf51]

I wonder how everyone discovered what their gifts were because they dont know before the ceremony and Antonio seemed pleasantly surprised when the toucan started talking to him so it can be assumed that they dont immediately know after either. Some of them seem more obvious than others and they had some hints from their rooms and doors, though i dont know if the details on the doors changed over time even if it's safe to say the silhouette at least did. But other gifts seem to be more subtle to activate or require very specific circumstance to be used.

Pepa's door isn't the most obvious, simply depicting a shining sun behind her and a cloud below her but i can see a happy rainbow forming over her head when the image appeared and it probably wouldn't take very long to realize the weather changes with her mood, especially if that rain cloud showed up with every tantrum. And its easy to think her room could be full of clouds that shift with her mood, becoming stormy or clear while she's inside.

I cant begin to guess what Dolores' room looks like but even if her door wasn't pretty obvious, with how her silhouette cups her ears and the soundwaves etched in, i imagine it was hard to miss and awfully painful for the 5 year old to suddenly be able to hear up to at least a mile away. Especially if her ceremony was attended by as many people as Antonio's was, all those heartbeats beating at max volume and their footsteps stomping on the tile when they all left. Poor baby

Isabela's probably didn't take long to figure out what her gift was, the flowers on her door are vague but her room has never even heard of subtlety, but it might have been a while before she learned how to actually use it outside the flowers that we see pop up in her hair when she's startled. Maybe flowers started blooming everywhere she walked for a while or were constantly falling out of her hair.

Camilo's door is also pretty subtle with various figures outlined behind his silhouette in a sort of nesting doll type way and his room is also one im not too sure about, unless it's full of costumes and mirrors. It probably wouldn't be too easy to figure out his gift though like Isabela we do see him instinctively shift when startled. Maybe those first few weeks or months he accidentally shifts into anyone he's looking at, like a constant mirror.

We got to see Antonio's and it was probably the most obvious. His door shows him surrounded by animals, his room has plenty to talk to, and as soon as he got his gift animals seemed to be drawn to him and showed up to greet him.

Luisa's gift was probably best hinted at from the image of her holding a weight on her door. The official art book describes her room as being mostly barren stone (with possibly a hidden amusement park for her to let loose) which doesn't immediately make me assume strength and im not sure how long it would've taken people to let a 5 year old try to lift something incredibly heavy. Unless she decided to move some boulders in her room during the ceremony.

Julieta's gift is one that needs certain circumstances to work but it was likely figured out within a year. Her door is detailed with herbs and shows her holding a mortar and pestle, which is used both for mixing or grinding medicine into paste or powder and for making seasonings, guacamole, or oils. And id like to imagine her room could have its own kitchen or garden full of fruits, veggies, berries, and herbs. Her gift wouldn't be immediately apparent but its easy see it has something to do with cooking and the food's healing properties would likely be discovered the first or second time someone taste tested for her

Finally, Bruno's precognition was probably the hardest to figure out. The hour glass on his door hints at his gift dealing with time but that gives quite a few options like freezing, slowing, or rewinding time or even time travel or retrocognition (which is seeing the past as opposed to the future). And his room doesn't give any hints mostly being a large broken cavern full of sand and stairs, though its likely fallen into disrepair over the years due to a combination of him not using his gift, him not entering his room, a reflection of the family's feelings for him, and his own mental state. And his gift has such a particular set of requirements that has to be met to be used (large open area, circle of sand, burning leaves) that he wouldn't have just figured it out on his own. Not unless the requirements were loose enough to count standing in a sand box or his room as a "circle of sand" and he just instinctively felt a need to burn some leaves or the "requirements" are actually a focusing technique/ritual he developed and he had a vision when his door formed. With his track record though it probably wouldn't have been a good vision and probably ruined the mood a bit. Actually nevermind, I want to believe his first vision was of his mother giving him and his sisters a big proud hug.

Its interesting to think about them all trying to figure out and cope with there gifts, especially considering they get them when they're 5 years old

(Update: I was wrong about the silhouettes on the doors changing, about to do another post)