Oughhh I'm Finally Posting Something Unrelated To Omori

"when they lay me to rest beside you, may they see this scar and think i am a part of your matching set. may they never know how i was alone."

happy birthday shoko my love 👏

Okay wait wait wait. Actually. Which I of these characters is there the most hype to see in Marzenie?

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!!!!!

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

OWL UPON YE

Ok so this is Alter Boy’s actual appearance, that other one is just how he’s usually presented, I’ve mentioned before how he’s a very antagonistic character towards Marze despite not directly attacking him, but that’s only half true- Alter boy DOES attack Marze but only in very specific situations

It has to do with my idea of Marzenie having multiple routes (game-like talk again), in my head this fight is part of the good ending route

(which can be taken as a metaphor for a lot of things but the interpretation I’m going with is that Basil has to learn to confront his paranoia’s around others, drawing on how Alter Boy is a very inaccurate representation of Kel based more on Basil’s inner anxieties and bitterness then who Kel actually is, to confront him is to push aside this warped perspective and begin to trust that others aren’t out to get him)

Anyhow- I had the idea for Alter Boy spinning his head around pretty early on but it was combined with several other scattered ideas that hadn’t been decided upon- so certain things I’ve said have since become inaccurate, as to why he’s green? Well believe or not but that’s a very very silly nod to him and reflection being related, mirrors are technically green! Look it up it’s very interesting

Also slight tinges of color in Marzenie look cool to me. There’s that too

That’s about all I have to say in regards to this, Alter boy being a weird owl creature isn’t super relevant- it’s one of those rule of cool moments where I disregard symbolism because I thought an idea I had was scary/visually cool enough to use anyway, I just had it in my head that if Marzenie were a game it would be MORTIFYING if his overworld sprite suddenly spun its head around to lead into the fight- even if I can’t execute this it’s still a very fun idea to me, and I’ve thought about using it for an animation later on

Last thing: His face gave me a lot of trouble so here’s a little demo of all the ones I went through trying to get it right ⬇️

As much as I torment him it makes me soooooo happy seeing all the art of Basil lately, my favorite guy ever!! His special birthday month!! Because a lot of people posted their stuff late Bewutibwyuehbeuwdjeu, which is highly reasonable because it isn’t a venue memorable date

Marzenie time guysss

Here’s the Basil design!

Other versions plus a little elaboration on the design:

Cloakless + wing design versions

So for the sake of specificity I’ve been calling him “Marze” whenever I refer to the in-dream version of Basil, Same naming convention as (Hikik)Omori, but don’t be mistaken, Marze is not an individual like Omori is, Marze is a costume- just the suit that Basil wears while venturing the horrors of his mind, Marze is merely how Basil conforms himself to the world of Marzenie, none of the characters there are really human so it’d be out of place if Basil himself was (this can be viewed as a form of self-dehumanizing on Basil’s part but it’s mostly for the artists sake- the meta explanation is just as important as the in-world one)

Now for the design itself:

maybe the symbolism here is really obvious but I wanna explain it anyway, the Deer parts (antlers and legs) are representative of Basil’s general personality as a whole- he’s skittish and vulnerable yes but when forced deer do fight back, an idea that’s very important to Marzenie given it displays Basil LITERALLY fighting to survive against his inner struggles, that and the creator (me) really likes deer … so there’s that

Otherwise, the wings are Moths wings, which seems like it’s a really simple connection to Sunny and the idea that Moths are drawn to light but it’s a little more literal in Marzenie because it’s not just that Sunny is Basils sun in a metaphorical way it’s that in Marzenie he actually IS, in the world of Marzenie there is a Sun-God character that is very obviously just Sunny, which is both about bit about Basil’s view of Sunny as someone without flaw but also about just how much Basil relies on him… or rather the IDEA of him

Sun-God-Sunny is a very important presence in Marzenie because it’s his very absence that’s made Marzenie what it is, returning to that Map art I made for a moment here

Within Marzenie it’s not just that Sunny is a god but that he’s a dead/‘sleeping’ god, and in his absence the world has become cold and dark (which necessitates that lantern in the desgin above)

Yes Basil had issues before the incident but having friends and having SUNNY made that bearable and something he could have gradually put behind him, being abandoned so suddenly in such a traumatic way has thrown Basil’s mind into a state of eternal darkness, the world of Marzenie is cold and dark and dangerous, and all of this is the most literal possible representation of the damage Sunny’s absence has inflicted on Basil’s mental state

Sunny’s character in Marzenie being the Sun god is also why the center of it and the beginning of the journey is a church, the only hope Basil has anymore is that Sunny will return and they can be friends again, so he’s build an alter in his mind dedicated to this hope, this prayer

Also religious imagery is fun <3, also it’s a parallel to the church of something and how Basil’s house is at the center of Vast forest (and thus the center of Sunny’s mind, they center their places of safety around each other, even if for Basil that place is a tiny candlelit alter in the center of a dark woodland while for Sunny that Place of safety is EVERYTHING in his mind, so vastly different and yet sort of the same <- does any of this make sense? Probably not, who cares, it’s my AU and I WILL ramble as much as I like ok)

more people need to draw mari with a knee brace!!

awww they're so happy.. (^○^)(^○^)(^○^)

SHATTERED AND ROTTEN, DO YOU STILL LOVE ME?

This could never be canon but let’s just imagine for a moment…

I had this idea earlier today (since this is a scheduled post that’s yesterday but lets just pretend) and thought to myself that it’s been way too long since I drew something silly for Marzenie, so here’s this! I call them ShatterSwarm and they’re kinda cute actually

I don’t have much to say, they’re just cute okay? All forms of heromari usually are, mirror boy and his rats (plural) gf

It would be really funny if this was someone’s first interaction with Marzenie … in case it is uh…. That’s what the tag is for but you might have to scroll ABVGYAUYGUUAYVAYJGACHFUAVUHFTA