Birdzman - BirdDude

Gang I’ve run into a problem

I can’t. I can’t draw beetle (Marzenie) … I don’t know what it is but every time I try (which I have three times now) I completely blank on what to do with her… this feels crazy but I think I gotta completely rework her concept so uh

Ideas welcome !!! Clegfly already gave me a great idea but I’d feel bad just nabbing it from them like that so I’ll stray away from that realm of concepts for now

Anyway. This sucks soooo bad… I might even need to update the map depending on how big of change it is because the whole concept was based around beetle- GAH I MIGHT EVEN HAVE TO CHANGE KIM TOOOOOO

EDIT: HOLY SHIT I GOT IT I KNOW I KNOW WHAT TO DO HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHSHWWUWUSIWONI FEEL SO SMART I KNOW EXACTLYWHAT TO DOOOOOOOOOOO💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥

Fun fact about Marzenie:

The red tendrils from, HIM/Sunny’s parasite are based on “the crawl” from YouTube analog horror series vita carnis <3

This stuff is basically what Basil is hallucinating plaguing his best friend

It's like, 6 am for me right now and to wake up to such a lore dump is such a nice surprise!! (^o^)

THE BEETLE IDEA IS SO SMART!! I LUV IT!!!

Aubrey definitely would be the hardest boss, and I can't wait to see her!!! (´ω｀)

Ougghhhh I'm so tired, so sorry if this is a bit short...

But! I'll be sure to post some of my art of the Marzenie au as soon as my csp gets itself together!! ﾟ+.ヽ(≧▽≦)ﾉ.+ﾟ

the moment you’ve all been waiting for

Ziemia

Or as I’ve been calling her up until now- Rat Mari! Now to tell you the truth Rat Mari/Ziemia took me AGES to properly figure out and when I was first getting started with Marzenie I had no idea what to do about Mari- then I had the rot metaphor idea and decided “rats in the shape of a person is pretty horrible I could do that!”… thus, Mari shaped rat pile and some wooden limbs in there too for vague symbolism reasons? Which. What I mean by that is that I’m drawing a similarity between her and Sol

The whole thing with Sol is the idea of perfection, a person is not capable of perfection and so he must be a doll, must be wood and light and no more- Mari was once perfect too, but her idea is tainted and gone and all that remains is rot. Do you see what I’m saying here? I’m not sure honestly I’ve been brainfogged as hell lately and started this drawing two days ago only to finish it NOW, and to be totally honest the design isn’t everything I wanted from it… but it dawned on me sometime lately that what I do want would be very tedious to draw

I cannot physically draw enough rats for me to be happy with so I compromised with not that many rats- and they aren’t very good rats either I’m not that great with animals … anyhow! Why Ziemia? Well. I think I’ve brought it up before but the in-world explanation for this character is that she was once a nature goddess, like how Sol is a god of the sun- but she was tainted by something terrible and consumed by pests, so Ziemia (in my rudimentary understanding of the polish language thanks to imperfect software because I don’t actually know polish and am doing my best to choose correct translations) is a word that means Earth. There were alternate translations and other words I could’ve used, but I picked Ziemia because it’s 1: a relatively simple word that matches the other ones I’ve used and 2: sounds enough like a name that I find it easy to call a character that and 3: is relatively easy to pronounce for … what I imagine to be my mostly English speaking audience? What five of you there are- other then @/birdzman ! Who I think might actually be polish? Not sure but shout out to you if you’re reading this!! Not fully sure if I’m right but if so then uhhh I apologize for being a dumb little American because I doubt I’m doing these translations right, anyhow!

Rat Mari/Ziemia isn’t just accociated with rats, I also want her to have themes of decay and other scavenger animals such as maggots or worms, the focus on rats is to do with Marzenie’s setting, I guess the idea is that Rats invade homes in winter to survive, whereas bugs mostly die off in winter regardless of available human homes to inhabit, so rats are one of the only pest animals which persist through the snow, which is why they might appear in some places outside Ziemia’s tree area, whilst other associated creatures would be unique to that area

Last but not least of my statements on this character, Ziemia does not represent the grief of Mari’s death, but rather the tangible brutality of it, how death feels in the eyes of a child, the inherent horror of a corpse, of knowing a person was once alive is no longer so, the horror of feeling their body stiff and cold in your arms, arms that once held you … this is what the rot theme comes from, one of Basil’s frequent hallucinations is of her body, decaying on the rope, decaying where he left her.

Cough. YAY!!!!!

nham nham hmmmm delicious

happy birthday, aubrey! 🐰

I am a grown ass adult and I still get nausea when I feel like I'm in trouble. They're gonna send me to the principals office and take away my toys for a week. Can you just fucking kill me instead of making me stew in my fucking anxiety

It’s late but I’ll just post it now anyway… Musial family tree

I made the base with an app I have for oc stuff and then drew over it, a little bit of elaboration on all the characters I’ve neglected give substantial information on, it’s still not much but yk… and for Basils father and grandfather I shared doodles of their Marzenie designs too since those haven’t come up yet

Two extra points to add to this:

1, for Basils grandfather I didn’t go into his death but the specifics are that he a construction worker and was working on a run down bridge when the structure collapsed, he drowned when he became trapped under the rubble and wasn’t able to swim up

2, for Basia’s older sister/Basil’s great aunt, I imply it a little but would rather spell it out…her face is scared because she was trying to save her sister when she got stuck outside during an air strike, the oldest was just shy of the explosion that killed he youngest, her face was disfigured and her arm had to be amputated due to severe burns, she also walked with a cane for the rear of her life until eventually killings herself out of guilt for not being able to save her little sister, Basia never talks much about either of them

Hey who wants Marzenie memes? Nobody? Nobody asked for this? Don’t care!!

Have them anyway!

Okay that’s all

happy birthday, basil! 🌻

NEW AU STUFF YESSSJSKAKAKS

charlene omg

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE DESIGN!!! THE SWORDS THE HELMET THE CHAINMAIL...chefs kiss.

Ooiuguhhh I've got to draw her sometimes..

I don't have much too say bcoz I'm running late somwhere sadly!!

After much wait, the Weaponsmith!!!

So for the AU’s purposes this is Charlene- she was one of the first ideas I came up with! Something about giving her a sword helmet just stuck with me, as you may guess she’s the “weapon shop” character to go with Maverick being the item shop (and yes by the way I did put them in the same pose. It looks good)

Anyhow, the flower nestled in her chainmail is Goldenrod! Elaboration below ⬇️

This is goldenrod, goldenrod was my pick for Charlene because it can simultaneously represent both encouragement and caution, I use this as a shorthand for “make good choices” which is the sort of character I see Charlene has, she’s responsible in perhaps the most burdensome sense

Charlene is not only the one looking out for the hooligans, but as the youngest of her siblings is left to take care of their aging mother while her brother just sits in his room all day gaming instead of doing anything for either of them (this man is fully capable of getting off his ass to get his mom’s medication from the pharmacy but simply chooses not to) and her other siblings have all moved away and gone about their own lives

Charlene as a character is depicted as many things she doesn’t seem to want to be, responsible, quiet, imposing- we know she probably doesn’t like how she’s perceived because she makes an effort to dress in a cutesy sort of way, she isn’t trying to be this intimidating person, it’s just her build is all, and in addition to the idea of being left responsible for other peoples duty’s when she’s still just a teenager, the contrast in the first place is why I like goldenrod as her flower

Unfortunately Basil has a hard time keeping this reality in his mind, he feels bad for it but Charlene scares him, he gets really nervous around her even though she’s never said anything bad about or towards him- so in his mind Charlene manifests as someone scary but harmless, helpful even

(Sidenote, I like to headcanon that other then Aubrey Basil actually knows Charlene the best and has known her longest, they Arendt exactly friends? But their mom/grandma respectively were so they spent time together as kids, it’s that really quiet sort of acquaintance you have with the kid your parent sticks you with and tells you to be friends with- they don’t consider each other friends exactly, they just know each other)

Also I tend to headcanon Charlene as transfem, that has nothing to do with anything that’s just a thought I have about her