Latest Posts by khayltille - Page 8

Oh NO. Had the most horrific thought, my heart is hurting. Thought I’d share.

To preface: So, we entertain the running joke about calling Bruno “Hernando” and “Jorge” when his hood is up/bucket is on - we’re playing along! It’s fun! This was a cute little joke by the screenwriters to show that this is a silly, theatrical, creative man who has definitely gotten a bit more eccentric in his decade of loneliness and solitude - UNDERSTANDABLE. Look at all of us after only 21 months, come on.

The deeper level to it that I also acknowledge is that he assumes aliases to get through the things that scare him, in an intentional way, like hey if it isn’t “Maldito Bruno” sneaking out to the kitchen, spackling the cracks, mixing plaster, etc maybe none of that bad luck will leak out, maybe no one will catch me, maybe it’ll be okay, maybe the fix will stick, maybe it will just go right this time. It’s Hernando, it’s Jorge, they’re brave and they fix things and they DON’T cause bad things to happen.

This is a headspace we see from him with his vision ritual and superstitious tics as well, and it is is a VERY common set of internal rules to be working from when you have OCD. (“If I can do it perfectly, nothing will go wrong” - I go into that in a lot more detail in my post about the mechanics of his visions, which I’m STILL working on bc it’s turning into a gd essay)

BUT.

Are we forgetting that Bruno has grown up USED to being one of three? The triplets are a unit - they each have their strengths and weaknesses, they protect each other, they assume different roles to get through difficult times. Consciously or not, would he not need those roles to be filled in their absence?

We have Pepa - the weather-wielder, bold and brave and terrifyingly tempestuous, always ready to stand in front, be the loudest, take the initiative, defend her family - undaunted in the face of any conflict that might make her gentler siblings shrink.

So we have Hernando, who patches the cracks and is afraid of NOTHING.

We have Julieta - the one who heals wounds with her cooking, warm and kind and calm, steady and supportive and observant and tactile - the glue that keeps the three of them together when her more anxious siblings feel ready to shatter.

So we have Jorge, who makes the spackle meant to heal the cracks in the casita and keep everything from falling apart.

He needs his sisters. So, in their absence, he constructs characters that can take up the mantle of protector, of healer, while he tries to maintain the distance he thinks is necessary to keep his family safe.

It’s just him, of course, fixing things from behind the scenes to try and prevent a future only he has witnessed. And he knows this.

What he doesn’t realize, naturally, is that his sisters need him, too. His foresight, his careful attention to detail, his knack for stories, his unerring kindness and humility, his quiet words of support. They are stronger together, always, and they’ve all been scattered and hurting for so long.

they probably need to talk

Bruno’s room?? Analysis??? Theory? Headcanon?? Thingy???

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Encanto Spoilers!!!

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Okay, I promise this will get to Bruno’s room but for starters, I think I should talk about how the casita’s rooms are implied to work. Sorry but it’s important!!

In both the film and the concepts, it very much seems that the casita’s rooms reflect a combination of who their owners are to others, and who their owners want to be. We only see a small handful of rooms in the film but this is best seen in Isabela’s room, which is a perfect, flowery, empty room. There isn’t any furniture that we can really see besides her hanging bed, the rest is all for show, literally advertising how perfect she is with topiaries of herself making “perfect, practiced poses”. This is who she wants, and strives to be for others, but secretly worries that she is lacking in identity outside of what she portrays to others.

Why is this important? Because her room changes with her. In “What Else Can I Do” her entire room shifts and changes just as she does– the more she explores herself and the freedom and passions she never knew she was capable of, the room grows more colorful and wild and more difficult to navigate with her.

The concepts for Luisa’s room were similar– her room concepts consisted of various training areas with a secret room that led to an amusement park– a place where she could just relax and be a kid, but that she felt the need to hide it from others to appear strong. Jared Bush also recently confirmed that Pepa’s room never had “a place for her to let loose”, that that was “part of her problem”-- insinuating she’s been taught to compartmentalize and suppress her emotions instead of letting them go.

So now… we talk about Bruno.

So firstly. No way did Bruno’s room always look like… that. Casita would have never given a five-year-old that room. And it logically doesn’t make sense!! We know from extra content that when Bruno first got his gift he was the “golden child”-- that people were impressed by his gift to see the future, it was only when they believed that he caused bad things to happen that they rejected him. Does Bruno’s room really reflect that golden child?

One thing I noticed was that the wood to Bruno’s room is… hardwood. Underneath all that sand and rock is the remnants of the beginnings of a normal room. It seems like such an odd choice and detail to put there when the rest of the room is all built into natural surroundings. It looks like the remnants of a living space that’s just been covered up to the point of becoming unlivable. And when we examine the specific ways this room has become unlivable, it starts to paint a very interesting picture about Bruno and how he perceives himself.

So we know that over the years Bruno’s reputation has shifted from the “star child of the family” to the Madrigal that no one talks about except in hushed whispers– the one that people are afraid of and dislike. We know from implications as well as discussions from Jared Bush that Bruno had already started isolating himself long before leaving to protect Mirabel.

So what better way to isolate yourself than a literal mountain of spiraling stairs?

They’re so impossibly long that it’s clearly meant to keep most sane people out (sorry Mirabel, it’s true). And we know he didn’t have a shortcut, he used the excuse of the tower having a lot of stairs as a reason to not live there. But again, and I can’t stress this enough, no way did casita give a five-year-old that amount of stairs (and in such a dangerous fashion!).

They’re there to keep people out. Now whether this is because Bruno just wants to avoid them and keep people away from him, whether this is to keep people from harassing him for visions, or maybe (and likely) a combination of both, isn’t explicitly stated. We know that Bruno’s visions can be both emotionally and physically exhausting and draining– to the point of physical pain and weakness. It isn’t much of a surprise that he would want to avoid people asking for visions.

But personally? I think it was also out of a desire to protect people as well. He really starts to internalize this idea that he makes bad things happen, so the more he can avoid people, and the visions, the better. The more he hides away, the more a burden it all becomes, the longer and longer the stairs get.

They’re eventually disconnected completely from the door with an enormous gap. I think this was the last straw when Bruno broke the vision and left, and his door stopped glowing. It disconnected from the inner sanctum completely and the entire room disconnected from the casita. When Bruno disconnected from his family. When he rejected his gift, and with it, himself.

Mirabel knows the casita to the point of even being able to understand its non-verbal communication like she would anyone else, and she seems shocked that it cannot help in Bruno’s room, implying that this isn’t the norm for the magical rooms. His room is cut off because he is cut off. And the deleted scene “Chores” contributes to this idea. Félix says that “his room turned all rotten and gross and Abuela was like ‘no one is ever allowed in there again.’” We know that Alma forbids anyone from going into Bruno’s room because it’s ‘off-limits”, and we can clearly see how dangerous and unstable the room has got, so this isn’t out of the realm of possibility for film canon either. Like Luisa said, his room is off-limits for a reason.

His room refused to let anyone find that vision.

AND NOW FOR THE BEST PART. THE INNER CAVERN.

So after Mirabel risks her life to get to the inner part of Bruno’s room, we finally see these relief sculptures of Bruno on the walls. There’s no beating around the bush, they are terrifying. Empty eyes, blank expressions, gaping mouths. (And they pretty much prove that Bruno’s room didn’t look this way because they display the steps of his ritual, which Jared confirmed he invented himself later on after receiving his gift.) It’s a terrifying depiction of himself, meant to scare people away. He’s considered a curse, treated like the village bogeyman, and he’s clearly internalized these ideas about himself because his room reflects it so much here, in the same fashion that Isabela’s room flaunts the topiaries of her perfect posed stature.

But here’s something I have to mention. The designers did not simply pull this design out of thin air. It is heavily inspired by existing Colombian architecture… specifically burial tombs. The Tierradentro tombs, located in the southwest region of the nation in the Inzá municipality, were made somewhere between 600 and 900 CE and served as a burial site for elite groups. Their structural and decorative features are entirely unique and not found anywhere else on Earth, and the geometrical patterns within them signify the individuals buried there.

So. Bruno’s room is based on an existing gravesite. That’s a lot to unpack.

Bruno feels that he, or at least the version of himself that his family wants from him, is dead. The star child. He had tried to cling to this idea, to be someone they could be proud of, but he just doesn’t know how. His family no longer understands him. He feels like a stranger who has replaced the person they used to love, who’s now buried in a literal tomb of self-doubt.

A tomb that Mirabel almost dies in because of how unstable and disconnected it has become. A tomb that follows an infinitely long spiral staircase up to a room filled with spiraling imagery– all to find a man who truly has spiraled. And one who isn’t there because he is so terrified of hurting people.

Bruno’s room looks the way it does because of his warped self-image that has become so twisted over the years. This internalized perception that he hurts people- that he causes these twists of fate- and while I think he knows on a logical level that this isn’t how his gift works, clearly doubt has infected the way he feels. We can see it in the way he treats Mirabel, wanting to push her away at first because he’s scared he’ll somehow hurt her, refusing to do visions, refusing to help until she tells him that the family needs him. And that’s all he ever wanted, really.

Maybe his next room won’t have all those stairs.

CANON ENCANTO TIMELINE REVEALED SO FAR

(As best I can put it together based on all revealed info*)

? 1873/1874:

Pedro born

?? 1874/1875:

Alma born

November 11 1897/1898:

Felix born

December 7 1896/1897/1898:***

Festival of Little Candles🇨🇴

Alma & Pedro Madrigal meet

??? 1897/1898/(Early!)1899:***

Alma & Pedro married

October 17 1899:

Thousand Days War starts🇨🇴

Madrigal Triplets born

Villagers flee

Pedro dies

Miracle and Encanto created

Early 1900:

Town of Encanto founded****

June 19 1901:

Agustin Rojas** born

October 17 1904:

Triplets Gift Ceremony

(July 28 1914 – Nov 11 1918: WWI 🌍)

?¿ & ¿?:

Julieta & Agustin married

Pepa & Felix "married in a hurricane!"

August 7 1928:******

Isabela Rojas Madrigal** born

August 31 1928:******

Dolores Madrigal born

November 14 1930:

Luisa Rojas Madrigal** born

August 7 1933:

Isabela Gift Ceremony

August 31 1933:

Dolores Gift Ceremony

December 28 1934:

Camilo Madrigal born

March 6 1935:

Mirabel Valentina Rojas Madrigal** born

November 14 1935:

Luisa Gift Ceremony

(Sept 1 1939 - Sept 2 1945: WWII 🌍)

December 28 1939:

Camilo Gift Ceremony

March 6 1940:

Mirabel Gift Ceremony

Bruno's Vision

Bruno disappears to walls

May 21 1945:

Antonio Madrigal born

(April 9 1948 - 1958: The Violence🇨🇴)

May 21 1950:

'Welcome To The Family'

Antonio Gift Ceremony

'Waiting On A Miracle'

May 22 1950:

'Surface Pressure'

'We Don't Talk About Bruno'

Isabela & Mariano's proposal dinner

'What Else Can I Do'

Casita collapses

Mountain splits

Mirabel runs away

May 23 1950:

'Dos Orugitas' apologies

'All Of You' starts

Summer 1950:*****

Rebuilding of Casita

Dolores and Mariano start dating

???? 1950

'All Of You' finale

Miracle returns

*Years calculated based on a combination of confirmed ages, probable course of events, the approximate timeline of early 1950s given for the main story, and in Agustin's case the fact that he was confirmed to be born on a Wednesday which makes 1901 the most probable year. Theoretically I suppose the triplets could be less than a full year older than Agustin, thus bumping everything else up another year, but 1899 makes more sense to me.

***Alma and Pedro could have met earlier, but a short timeline seems more likely based on time period in my opinion, and given that triplets are almost always early 10m10d isn't too short for an absolute minimum time-frame.

**Mirabel's full name, and thus Agustin's lastname and her sisters full lastname revealed in deleted scene concept art

****Apparently revealed in a picture somewhere, I haven't seen it but it would make sense with my math

*****There's no way it takes them less than a couple months to re-build a house that big, even with the whole town helping

******1928 chosen as their birth year to make them 21 in main story as claimed by most sources, but 22 by the finale to match the rest

I don't want to be cringe, but I just had a vision that Bruno in a modern version of Encanto would upload his rat soap operas to youtube with titles like "RAT_WEDDING.mp4" (because he's an old man who doesn't know much about Youtube) and they would blow up in the ARG world because people would be convinced that there was some secret underlying message or code, especially once they realized that he was totally filming this in someone's walls. The only person who gets it is Dolores, whom the videos are intended for.

Encanto's director Jared Bush answered more questions about the movie on twitter! (part 2)

(Part one)

Encanto's director Jared Bush answered more questions about the movie on twitter! (part 1)

(Part two)

Agustín tells Bruno His Secrets

inside casita!

Bruno wouldn’t necessarily have gotten a lot of pressure to get married, especially once his sisters did and there were a couple of grandkids. There’s a place in Catholicism for single people who serve the community. People who really feel that call should presumably go be a priest or a nun or monk, but that’s not always possible … and being a literal prophet is probably an acceptable alternative. And it would be a help to the family to have an adult who is not distracted by their own courtship/family and can be backup for whatever’s necessary.  

If you’re writing period-appropriate attitudes, ace/aro Bruno would get a surprising lack of shit. 

As a Latine and someone diagnosed with OCD, I want to talk about Bruno and how he is presented in the film.

A lot of Latinos, specifically Colombians, have argued that Bruno can’t have OCD because he performs standard superstitious rituals like knocking on wood, crossing his fingers, etc.

It is important to note that superstition is incredibly common in Latino communities. I have family and friends who partake in superstitious rituals in overt ways without being diagnosed with OCD. I believe the heightened spirituality and expression in Latino communities compared to gringo communities in the US is why so many Latinos are defending his rituals and are pushing back against Bruno being seen as OCD since he is performing standard rituals within the community. This post is not to argue that these rituals aren’t common superstitions, nor that it’s wrong to interpret him as not having OCD. This is more to discuss why people interpret him as having OCD and to clarify some misconceptions about the relationship of OCD and superstitious rituals.

Let’s discuss how OCD works and then why it might apply to Bruno Madrigal.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a subset of other anxiety disorders. People with said disorder frequently have intrusive thoughts or urges that force them to perform a certain action to ease this anxiety (compulsions). These compulsions can literally be anything. It can be repeating a certain phrase, walking a certain way, or even self destructive. These actions are designed as a preventative measure to ease anxiety, but ironically they have the opposite effect by producing more anxiety if the action is performed and only produce temporary relief.

These actions might be things that lots of neurotypical people do (ex. sorting books by color). What matters for the diagnosis is that the person in question feels like they have to perform the action and feel immense distress when they don’t.

So, how does that compare to superstitions? Superstitions are rituals that people perform also to prevent bad things from happening. The difference here is context. When people perform superstitious rituals, they do not experience immense distress at not performing the action correctly or at all. For example: “I’m hoping it doesn’t rain on my wedding day. Knock on wood.” The person in question is specifically performing this action to prevent rain from occurring on their wedding day. They do not feel like they have to perform the ritual and do not experience extreme distress as a consequence for not performing the action.

For someone with OCD, the ritual is far more specific, repetitive, and includes a deep sense of dread when not performed. For example: “I just thought that I might have rain on my wedding day, so I must knock exactly three times and if I don’t do the pattern exactly right, I will have to re-perform this action until it is. I will also have to do this ritual every single time I think of rain on my wedding day because then I jinxed it by thinking about it.” The repetition, sense of dread, and how long the ritual is present all indicate that this is a compulsion rather than just warding off bad luck.

OCD and superstitious rituals are often extremely difficult to distinguish from one another which is why it is difficult to divorce them when interpreting text. In fact, the two are often tied together because they follow the same, “If I don’t do X, then Y will happen, so I must do X,” logic.

Let’s look at Bruno now. He has a few ritualized activities. He knocks on wood while saying, “Knock, knock, knock on wood,” ending with knocking on his head.

[GIf Description: Bruno Madrigal is walking down a hallway. He begins by holding his breath and crossing his fingers. He releases his breath and begins knocking on wooden planks as he passes them ending with him knocking himself on the head.There is text at the bottom of the gif that says, “knock knock knock knock knock! knock on wood!” /end ID]

He avoids stepping on cracks while singing, “Sana, sana, colita de rana. Si no sana hoy sanara mañana.”

[Image Description: A screenshot of page 62 of the official Encanto script. The script says, “Tio Bruno: ‘Sugar.’ (he tosses sugar on her)/ And keeps walking past rows of Hanging Aloe Plants, then does a hop skip and a jump over a series of cracks on the ground. / Tio Bruno (continued): ‘Sana sana, colita de rana.’ “/end ID]

He throws salt and sugar over his shoulders.

[Gif Description: Bruno Madrigal is sitting in a rainforest clearing. He is closing his eyes and holding a pile of salt in his right hand. He flings the salt over his left shoulder and lights a match. There is text that says, “swoosh,” as he performs the ritual. /end ID]

He holds his breath and crosses his fingers when walking through entrances/exits or sometimes down hallways.

[Gif Description: Bruno Madrigal is crossing his fingers and holding his breath as he walks down a hallway. /end ID]

All of these are pretty standard rituals for superstition and bringing on good luck. I’ve certainly known people who openly knock on wood and throw sugar over their left shoulder, particularly in Latino communities. However, what matters is how it is presented and whether it is compulsory. So, let’s look at how it is presented in the film. 

He performs these rituals at very specific times in the story. His knocking on wood and holding his breath are the most common so we’ll look at those first. He knocks on wood in three separate instances. The first and second instance is when he first meets Mirabel just before and after he enters the area of the house with the cracks he has patched. The third time is when he is entering the secret entrance into the walls of the house. As for holding his breath and crossing his fingers, he first performs it when entering the hallway with all of the cracks. The second time is when he is entering the portrait into the walls.

In the first instance of both rituals, he stops the conversation he is having with Mirabel to perform these rituals and then resumes acting as if nothing happened. The final instance is at the end of a conversation with Mirabel. Superstitious behaviors don’t tend to be disruptive or distracting. Usually people knock on wood after ending a sentence whereas Bruno performs this ritual while Mirabel is speaking to him, disrupting the flow of conversation. It is also important to note that Bruno is unique for performing them, further othering his character.

OCD, is usually single-minded. Individuals can avoid performing the ritual, but doing so causes immense distress. The obtrusiveness of the action indicates that it is more likely OCD than superstition.

Looking at how it is presented in the text, it appears that these rituals are supposed to be strange and unique to Bruno. Nobody else performs them and Mirabel is confused by them.

Let’s look at what this might mean thematically.

In the film, Bruno is clearly presented as awkward and socially anxious. We can easily interpret this as a consequence of him living in the walls for a decade with Mirabel asking, “How long have you been down here?”  when Bruno introduces her to Hernando and Jorge. While she doesn’t necessarily react the same way to his various rituals, these superstitious actions can be seen as a consequence of his isolation. He is clearly supposed to be considered the weird uncle, so incorporating heightened superstition plays into that role and adds to his stigmatization as being “Bad Luck Bruno.” Having OCD would make sense as an interpretation merely to add to his othering in the film and clear instability after being isolated for so long. What’s more, Bruno can be interpreted as the “Identified Patient” in the family with how he was treated like there was something wrong with him. This constant blame and othering from his family would likely push him to want to prevent further isolation because of his bad luck. Furthermore, it feeds into a common experience in Latino households to diminish the neurodivergence/ other disabilities of members in the household. It is not that uncommon for Latino households to ignore neurodivergence because “everyone is like that.”

Personally as someone with OCD and a Latine, I read Bruno as having OCD because he performs rituals to, what appears to be, a compulsory level. He may have reasons for these compulsions and common superstition might be part of it, but this is true for my own compulsions as well. I also have to avoid stepping on cracks. I learned about the superstition of stepping on a crack and thus had to perform precise rituals in order to avoid stepping on them. I experienced and continue to experience major distress because of this superstitious ritual. Yes, it is a common superstition, but it became a compulsion for me because the bad luck became an anxiety trigger.

Looking at how Bruno is presented, it’s entirely possible that this is what happened to him based on what we know. He is related to Bad Luck and ostracized for it. He performs common rituals to ward off bad luck. He is further ostracized for said strange behavior.

Now, there is evidence online for him being OCD outside of the text by the writers.

[Image Description: A screenshot of page 61 of the Encanto script. The script says, “Tio Bruno: (tapping a wall, OCD) Knock, knock, knock. Knock on wood.” /end ID]

Clearly, he was intended to have OCD by the writers. Now, most people are not going to pull up the script to see that he is intended to have OCD explicitly by the text, but there is still evidence in the film to support it as I laid out above.

A lot of Latinos don’t want to acknowledge the possibility of him having OCD because it feels like normal aspects of our culture are being erased. The fact Bruno has OCD does not negate his latin culture, nor does it negate how superstition is tied to Latinos. Just because I relate to Bruno and his OCD doesn’t mean he’s no longer Latino and it doesn’t suddenly mean you and/or  your family have OCD. We’re all part of the same community and we’re all going to relate to certain characters in different ways. This is more just to state that superstitious rituals can be OCD rituals as well.

TL;DR: Bruno Madrigal was intended to be OCD by the text, but many Latinos are hesitant to agree because they feel it erases common Latino superstition. It is not uncommon for superstitions to become OCD compulsions and it is often difficult to distinguish the two in general which is why people interpret Bruno in different ways.

WAIT WAIT WAIT

Okay so the triplet’s outfits are their own colors right?? Blue for Julieta, yellow for Pepa, and green for Bruno—

Except I just noticed that while Julieta and Pepa’s outfits are completely their own colors right

underneath Bruno’s green ruana am I crazy or does he almost (or used to?) match Abuela

And by extension what does this say about the triplet’s personalities, relationships with Alma, individualism/dependency/what have you because with how symbolic everyone ELSE’s colors are (like Isabela’s dress being more purple than blue reflecting how she’s Alma’s favorite, etc) it’s gotta mean Something right

What i love here is that everyone is excited to go back and feel casita also, but Bruno is the only one staying so anxious. What is it Bruno? You feel your powers returned? Not used to being carried away by casita? Anxious about returning in the house you help rebuild?

Damn it he's so cute.

I love the thought of Dolores being super into the rat novelas so let's add on to that.

She loves all of Bruno's rat productions.

Game shows? She roots for rat number 2 to win the new car. She hopes ratchelorette chooses ratchelor number 1. She rolls her eyes when when the red rat family get three strikes and lose the money when the number one answer was clearly chocolate.

And the sports. She gets really excited when her favorite team get to the finals. It takes all her self restraint to not yell out 'GOOOOOOOOOOL' along with Bruno's whisper yelling. She hears him hold a ratlympics and of course she supports the Colombian team, especially in the archery, hearing him say how much farther back they keep moving the targets has her biting her nails.

And what if he does other things?

Like spooky mystery stories that have her shivering and covering herself with her blanket.

Rom coms that maker her laugh and cry.

But of course the telenovelas are her favorite.

Dolores LIVES for the drama.

Encanto is on Disney+ for Christmas, so here’s another piece of meta that no one asked for but 

As much as I like Bruno, I don’t think he’s actually immune to the whole “trying to do the right thing but causes harm instead” itis that plagues the rest of the family 

Like, to start with, his disappearance after Mirabel’s gift ceremony. He thought he was trying to do the right thing, but he didn’t really stop to think about the emotional and psychological harm that would cause his family. (Even Alma was probably retraumatized IMO, given that her darkest moment was someone she loved disappearing from her.) 

And yes, Pepa has her whole “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” song, but she’s also the first person to run and hug him when he returns and I bet 100% that it’s easier to be pettily mad at Bruno then to be sad all the time (and potentially flood the Encanto.) 

BUT that’s not even the main thing I want to talk about: Instead I’m talking about him fixing the cracks. 

“Wait, why is that a bad thing?” You might be asking. 

Simple: He’s only fixing the symptom, and he’s hiding from the rest of the family the fact that there’s even a problem in the first place. He’s spackling up the cracks so that everyone only sees smooth “perfect”/”strong” walls. No one is aware of the faults, so they operate under the assumption that everything is fine, until the cracks get so big that they can’t be ignored any longer.    

tl;dr A Madrigal takes a course of action that they think is for the best based on their own history of trauma without really acknowledging how it would hurt their family emotionally/psychologically. They then spends their time focusing on covering up the cracks/issues in the Casita/Familia Madrigal allowing it/them to project a facade of strength and perfection without actually unpacking the underlying cause of damage. 

Am I talking about Bruno or Alma? 

tl;tl;dr Bruno takes after his mother 

(editing to add: this is not an Anti-Bruno post or an Anti-Alma post. I left the theater caring for all the members of the family.) 

There’s so many stairs in Casa Madrigal

Hello!

Lately, this blog is mainly Encanto related, so if you get here looking for content about this beautiful movie, welcome! (previously, it was a Coco related blog, so I also have a lot of old content about it here)

Since I’ve been posting here my Encanto fics over these last weeks, and I’m still writing more, I wanted to make a pinned master list to put them all together. If you take a look at them, I hope you enjoy them, and thank you very much in advance for your time and comments and/or reblogs. They’re highly appreciated!

So welcome to the There’s so many stairs in Casa Madrigal collection!

It will always be the three of us When Pepa met Félix and she met Agustín, Julieta knew this would happen. They were in that age, after all. Everyone was making big decisions, choosing their paths. Everyone, except Bruno. Because, even if his look was always fixed in the future, he had never been fond of changes.

The life of her dreams Isabela was very different when she was twelve. She was louder, funnier, more energetic, more vocal, more ridiculous, a total jokester. She was braver, too. That’s why she didn’t hesitate when she asked Bruno for a vision. She really wanted to know if the life of her dreams would be hers someday. But she regretted it later, of course. Because her uncle’s vision taught her an important lesson: even good omens could turn into bad news.

And everyone always assumes the worst Three times in a row, Bruno was asked to look into his nieces’ future. The first one was Isabela, a perfectly good omen turned into an awful warning under his mother’s perfectionist look. The last one, the one that changed everything, was Mirabel, that fateful night full of fear and anxiety about a vanished door. But the one that hurt the most, the one that really made him reach his limit, was the second one. A request in the tiny voice of his dearest niece and a vision that made him wonder what was the point of having a miracle that felt like a curse.

In our darkest moment The triplets knew perfectly the story of the miracle’s origin. But even so, Bruno had wondered many times how would it be to live through something so extreme. Losing everything in a blink, turning around and discovering your life had radically changed forever in a matter of seconds. It was something that had given him nightmares when he was younger, and he had concluded he didn’t want to fully understand it. It was too much. The night Mirabel didn’t get her gift, however, he had no choice but to finally understand.

I’ll keep it updated as I post more! :D

Yeah, about that plate...

I think everybody has felt the punch of feels because of Bruno’s plate drawn on his little table, but there’s something that caught my attention since the first time I watched the movie and I wanted to talk about it: where he drew that plate.

Bruno’s table is a direct extension of the family table, it’s in perfect alignment with the one his family uses every day. And he didn’t draw the plate beside that crack in the wall to actually see his family while he’s pretending to be sat with them. He didn’t draw it at the head of his table to face the wall either, which would be like sitting right behind Alma. He drew it on the right side.

Except Alma, who always occupies the head of the table (obviously), there’s no way to know if they always sit in the same order or not. We only see them eat two times: breakfast in the morning of the fateful day and dinner with the Guzmán for Isabela’s proposal, and both times the table has a different arrangement. But I think each Madrigal has indeed a specific seat assigned, and their usual order is this:

Antonio, Dolores, Isabela, Camilo and Agustín at Alma’s right, and Félix, Pepa, Mirabel, Luisa and Julieta at Alma’s left (let’s remember that in this moment abuela had moved Mirabel to her side, but she was originally sat between Pepa and Luisa).

During the dinner, there’re guests there occupying two extra seats and altering the order, but each movement can be easily tracked.

Mariano and his mother have to sit next to Alma, and Isa has to sit beside Mariano, so Pepa and Félix move to the opposite side of the table. Julieta, as the bride’s mother, sits in front of Mariano’s mother too. Luisa could’ve kept her seat, but Mirabel has to sit in front of Dolores to keep an eye (or both eyes) on her, and Agustín sits beside Mirabel for the same reason. But everything else is more or less the same. Camilo, Dolores and Antonio remain in their side of the table, as well as Mirabel; in fact, Camilo is occupying his seat, he hasn’t moved at all.

During the breakfast outside (and during dinner), they’re not using their plates, but we can see Mirabel setting the table with them at the beginning of the movie, right before the Family Madrigal song. And she’s arranging the plates in the same order. More important: in this moment, after the disastrous dinner, we can see the plates arranged in that same order again.

Those plates are there for no reason, the Guzmán just left, everything’s a chaos, it has no sense that the family has removed the dinner to set those plates and leave them there. This is just a narrative device, because Mirabel is peeking through the crack from Bruno’s hideout, she’s seeing what he sees, and she’s seeing a table in which every member of the family has a specific seat with their name.

And what’s Bruno’s seat?

At Alma’s right. He has always sat at his mother’s right, and he has kept doing it even from inside the walls, because that’s his seat (probably the one Antonio occupies now).

To be honest, it’s not just about Bruno’s plate. What I love the most about this thing is all those combos with the rest of the family: if that was Bruno’s seat, that would mean Dolores used to sit right beside his tío; Dolores and Isa always sit together; Antonio always sit beside his big sis; Pepa and Félix always sit side by side, and Julieta and Agustín always sit face to face; Mirabel always sit beside Luisa. Agustín was the one who took care of Camilo when they were eating, and Pepa was the one who took care of Mirabel. And I think every single one of these combinations, as a reflection of their family life, is just wonderful.

Okay, we all are sure that Pepa and Bruno drifted apart after her wedding day, but just imagine Bruno already feeling somewhat distant from his sister.

Like, he’s just started getting blamed for his visions. And he really needs to let all his strange emotions out, but his mom is off the table because she would HATE how he feels and lecture him about it. Julieta, though kind and loving, wouldn’t really understand. So that leaves Pepa.

But who is he to bring up a bad gift to Pepa? Who is Bruno to complain about his gift when he can just… turn it off. Pepa’s gift literally manifests clouds over her head and ruins days, crops, and clothing. Sure it’s still beneficial to the community, but he can tell that it makes Pepa stressed out.

And then after he tries to get her to calm down she blames him for making her gift act up. She claims that she hates him, and shuns him. Now the only person who could understand… is gone.

Their relationship is so tragic, and I love it.

Trivia from Encanto (2021) dir. Byron Howard, Jared Bush (insp)

Little something with Doug’s voice. Audio from “Man Without a Plan” by Marc Laidlaw.

disk horse this, discourse that, the storm’s end siege was 282-283 and stannis was born in 264 iirc, so that makes him 18/19 when this happened. ‘he’s pure iron, he’ll break before he bends,’ no shit he’ll break before he bends

What do you think Tolkien's Dwarves' religion looks like?

like Terry Pratchett’s, but taken seriously.

A glorious fuck-ton of perspective angle references (per request).

[From various sources.]

love ur hk designs! how did u come up w/them? do u have any notes?

aww thank you so much anon !! i DO in fact have notes but theyre a lot so [cracks knuckles] lets go thru this --

i love designing and humanizing characters as its a real fun brain exercise and such, but humanizing the hk characters has really given me a lotta gusto that perplexes even me ?? either way im not complaining its very fun and im glad to elaborate on all (bc its a bit much) the thought that went into these!!

Image Description: Digital art of humanoid Hollow Knight Characters. Quirrel, Hornet, the Knight, and the Hollow Knight are all hanging around a bench and looking at the camera. The Knight is sitting on the bench, their legs dangling off, and holding their helmet. The Hollow Knight, all bandaged up, is sitting on the ground but leaning their head on the back of the bench. Quirrel is standing and leaning on the bench back, making a thumbs up and smiling a big smile. Hornet is also standing, though she rests three of her hands on the bench with an unimpressed expression. End ID.

in this post i’ll be talking about inspirations and show off the designs of the knight, hornet, quirrel, thk, the dreamers, and some less polished higher beings designs -- and go over it all with my neverending commentary! everything's under the cut in order to spare y'all's dashes LMAO

one must begin with groundwork. try to figure out what aspects of the character you want to be most important. do you want their silhouette to be immediately recognizable? are you inspired by a particular time period or region, or want to set it in that time period or region? do you want to prioritize colors? are you willing to let go of silhouette / direct visual relatability in lieu of emphasizing personality in the little details of appearance? try to strike that balance and see what is to your taste.

you should also consider how seriously you want to take things. will you consider things down to material and essentially fabricate hallownest's textile economy or do you just want to ball off of vibes? (i like incorporating historical garments and feels into things because i think they're neat, but i do get silly here. maybe i'll bow to my inner desire to ground everything some day and take another stab at, well, all of this.)

there are some things you can easily render turning bug to person (as i love diverse face shapes so you’ll see a trend of pointy in game, pointy here) and some that are much harder. either you can go for what is straightforward and easy for someone to be like “oh hornet head shaped mask! that must be hornet!” or you can not do that! your humanizations, your rules. hollow knight has a very simple, curve and shape-based art style, so you can incorporate a lot of subtle details on that! you can also do any other motif and really lay into it -- if you look at my monomon i have all these that are jellyfish-esque: her gown shape, her choker, her braids, the embroidery on her gown, etc.

or you can ignore all my advice and do what you want! i’m not the boss of you.

so , FIRST THINGS FIRST: aesthetic inspirations ! i did a few passes based on a variety of regions but i decided go with a pre-modern era european influence, largely because of the general influences and vibes i saw in the in-game architecture and appearances for things and places. i decided to land my inspirations anywhere from the 1500s to late 1700s / veery early 1800s, though im just aiming for fantastical with a heavy side of inspiration.

i decided to have individuals from before the fall of hallownest have look inspirations from Later in this time frame with those after being Earlier to get this kind of ‘technology and society has backslid’ idea. that, and because i thought the aesthetics of later monarchist europe -- l’ancien regime and all that, if you will -- quite fitting with hallownest right before its fall. because of this extremely broad time frame (300 years!) and also me just generally not trying to be concerned with ‘historical accuracy’ as this is both non-historical and very fantastical, there’s going to be a mess of silhouettes and such -- though i do love a rich deep dive into history, this is a time for fantasy fun and nonsense :-)

i decided to constrain myself with a few internal rules: one being the inspirations i draw on, and another main one being regarding masks. i decided to restrict mask wearing to as little as possible -- no shade to people who include masks in their gijinkas! i think they look wonderful with them And are lore relevant! but i felt like me, personally, using masks would keep me at times from being at the very top of my design experimentation game. so, as a little sort of fun challenge, i’m keeping away masks as much as possible in these people’s everyday wear. this means it is harder to keep silhouettes, but my priority is less 100% sticking close to silhouettes (though that is something to consider) and more evoking enough motifs and such to where they’re recognizable.

SO LET’S BREAK DOWN SOME DESIGNS!

Image Description: A reference sheet with various views of a humanized Knight. They’re a pale little humanoid thing armed with a shortsword, their skin and hair that same color of off-white, and always maintaining that same wide-eyed, small-mouthed, and neutral (yet almost determined?) look. They’re dressed in virtually rags from neck to boots, and all dark colors - navy blues, greys, dark brown leather, and even the deepest blacks. Charms are studded to their outermost cloak (and there seems to be a pair of vestigial, black-soaked wings under said outer cloak). They have a flat, square face, and a flat, square nose, though their corners are blunted. Their hair should be straight but it has gone long unbrushed; it stops in bangs at their forehead then cascades to their chin, where it hugs their jaw, especially at two points on the left and right where two ticks stick out on each side.

They can be seen also wearing headgear: a chainmail hood with old, yellowed horns poking out at either temple. They are also shown with their hair up in a little bun, or in two pigtails remniscient of their canon horns (one can thank Mato!). There is a little drawing of their exposed arm, showing how all their joints are harshly segmented, as if an insect or porcelain doll. In the corner, their dark shade chases after them. End ID.

an idea i wanted to play with for the knight -- and any of the vessels, for that matter -- is that of the uncanny. they are almost human! (as im approaching these humanizations with the idea of ‘human au’ and less so ‘everyone must be humanoid’, the higher beings are markedly less human here. ill get to that in a bit.) i decided to go for the concept that the knight is a living porcelain doll -- hollow, white, uncanny. they’re probably not shiny -- their surface probably feels like it was once porcelain smooth but is now ever so slightly abraded -- and theyre also not LITERALLY a doll. they do have a crackable exterior, yes, and are hollow, yes, but their segmented joints and such are less ‘doll’ and more ‘insect exoskeleton segments’. thank their dad (though i always thought he was more of a tapeworm / platyhelminth. but that aside--)

them being this humanoid non-human lends to some fun details! this is an example i like but is extraordinarily hard to communicate thru just stylized art: their eyes cannot close as they have been ‘carved’ that way & their pupils are just a hole into their void interior, and thus if you look at their face at an angle or profile you can see a little ridge / rim of the thin layer of their eye-white ‘porcelain’. they are also virtually dressed in rags, though the bottom cloak layer of those rags are wing-shaped, but still vestigial w/o the monarch wings, like in-game. and the two little hair-ticks on either side of their chin are meant to evoke their horns! :-)

Image Description: Various views of a humanized Hornet. She’s a thin, lithe person, with a long thin face wider at the top than the bottom and a thin chin. She has four eyes, and four arms. She has brown skin, with the exception of a patch of pale skin in the shape of her canon head right over her nose, with the ‘horns’ extending up into her scalp. There’s a flash of white coming from her forehead amongst her curly black hair, which is tied back into a bun by a hairtie shaped like two lightly curving pale horns. She has a long and pointy nose with a thin bridge, but it is crooked slightly. She largely has an unimpressed and stern look on her face.

She wears a bright red cloak with three weaverling buttons on the front, and white embroidery on the collar, back, and hem. The design on the back is a heavily stylized spider: a round body of eyes, with floral arms extending out from the junction between the body and the curving leaf-mandibles. Underneath her cloak she wears a white top with gold embroidery down the center (that goes up her neck to the underside of her jaw, and can be optionally decorated or plainly wrapped in white) and a bodice that is black on the sides but gold and white in the center at her torso. Tied to her belt is a silver chatelaine with sewing supplies. She has red puffy sleeves, slitted to show white fabric showing through, and black forearm-length fingerless gloves. There are a few more sketches: one of her with a double-horned hennin (her formal wear, maybe she wore when young), one of her as a child shouting excitedly for her ma, and a tiny her standing unimpressed next to a wide-eyed Knight. End ID.

hornet was kind of difficult, particularly because… of her head shape… but i fired out several solutions! the double-horned hennin (the funny two-cone hat) is from history, though the idea was scrapped as i imagine hornet in the present, as you see her, would not be of a mind to wear such finery. thus, i decided to give her a hairpiece shaped into horns, to evoke that silhouette. much more practical. (same idea goes with her patch of pale skin.)

as i mentioned this is a not-strictly-humans scenario, so i decided to splurge on the weavers and spiders and give them some differing anatomy, ie some extra arms and eyes. as a treat. i havent entirely sussed out (lol) the exact logic of her wear -- turns out making real things fantasy makes them, construction-wise, rather odd -- and is always subject to change. hornet wears things rather simple, for practicality reasons; and though her outfit is highly fictionalized (lmao) her garments under her cloak are somewhat based off of the portraits by cranach the elder. (all weaver clothings generally would feature repeating shoulder puffs. not leg-of-mutton style, but moreso in the image of the 1530s-40s. you'll see this more on herrah.)

the knight is a bit too ’young’ to have these features be quite apparent so they are the exception, but the trend with the ‘pale lineage’ is that of very pointed chins, long faces, and thin long noses. you'll see this on the hollow knight and the pale king, and you almost see this with hornet. she is still somewhat her father's creature, though he was never quite in her life.

Image Description: Various views of a humanized Quirrel. He's a portly brown man (with warm-toned skin) with a squat (but not comically so) face, a pointy and stick-out nose, freckles concentrated around the top of his nose and where his eyes meet, relaxed, monolidded black eyes, and straight black hair. His hair falls short onto his forehead and comes down his cheek in sideburns, but is pulled back into a low bun -- though it is usually covered by a dark grey-blue headscarf. He has silver plate armor on his upper body, upper arms, and over his thighs, with a sash winding 'round his waist and holding up his scabbard; he too wears long black gloves, and thigh-length leg gaiters over brown breeches. Covering his neck is a white neck stock. He has a bit of a hunched posture, his hips and neck both leaned forward; his belly is well-rounded, and his long legs are rather spindly.

He is also seen younger, before the fall of Hallownest. Here he has less wrinkles, though his face is much the same. His black hair is tied back in a headscarf (though actually short here); and he's clad in a segmented grey coat, high collar with a white cravat, green vest with rich gold embroideries, high knee stockings covering brown breeches, and over all that a segmented cropped tailcoat. He dresses pretty well, as befitting his station -- but not as well as he could (science gets messy!) End ID.

Image Description: Various views of a humanized Quirrel. He's a portly brown man (with warm-toned skin) with a squat (but not comically so) face, a pointy and stick-out nose, freckles concentrated around the top of his nose and where his eyes meet, relaxed, monolidded black eyes, and straight black hair. His hair falls short onto his forehead and comes down his cheek in sideburns, but is pulled back into a low bun -- though it is usually covered by a dark grey-blue headscarf. He has silver plate armor on his upper body, upper arms, and over his thighs, with a sash winding 'round his waist and holding up his scabbard; he too wears long black gloves, and thigh-length leg gaiters over brown breeches. Covering his neck is a white neck stock. He has a bit of a hunched posture, his hips and neck both leaned forward; his belly is well-rounded, and his long legs are rather spindly.

He is also seen younger, before the fall of Hallownest. Here he has less wrinkles, though his face is much the same. His black hair is tied back in a headscarf (though actually short here). He has a couple possible outfits: a more realistic one, a dark greatcoat with multiple capelets over a sky blue waistcoat, high collar with a white cravat and pin, high black hosen with brown breeches; and an alternate one: a segmented grey coat, high collar with a white cravat, green vest with rich gold embroideries, high knee stockings with brown breeches, and over all that a segmented cropped tailcoat. He dresses pretty well, as befitting his station -- but not as well as he could (science gets messy!) End ID.

quirrel was both easy and hard. to mimic his segments i decided to give him plate armor -- reasons for this are fairly obvious i imagine LMAO (segments!) (though his armor isn’t based on or accurate to any particular armor style. this is because i do not like drawing armor.) for his outfit pre-fall of hallownest, i gave him some breeches and leggings, as is typical for his very regency / turn of the century inspirations, but those give him the effect of white legs. to sort of mimic the black legs he has in-game, i instead gave him black thigh gaiters! i could have gave him long boots (and i imagine he did have a pair) but 1 i liked the gaiters more 2 i forgor :(

a fun little add-on eagle-eyed viewers (?? i feel like a youtuber saying that) may spot is that the brooch on his neckcloth is an isopod shell! in some illustrations i draw this brooch directly on the cloth / above the knot and not on the draped part. no man would wear a stickpin / brooch like that on his tie in real life. i just don’t like drawing knots. younger quirrel also features more teals and greens in his design, along with gold accents, to fit more with the archive’s colors. (even in the present day, hidden under his headscarf, he uses a green ribbon to tie his hair back.)

honestly, he and monomon were the main reasons i decided to extend the period outside of late medieval. it’s their fault! not only did monomon fit really well to the dress silhouette of one of these later decades, but i really wanted quirrel to have a napoleonic / regency feel. this is largely because with the enlightenment there came the rise of natural philosophers and the scientific sorts of fellows, which have become sort of their own iconic archetype in the public consciousness (and in fiction. stephen maturin my beloved.) i thought that would fit him well, and so i went for it.

Image Description: Various views of a humanized Hollow Knight. They’re a very tall and svelte hollow humanoid, almost gangly in their proportions. They have a very elongated face with a straight, aquiline nose, large almond-shaped eyes, and a permanent expression that is all at once solemn, neutral, and melancholic. They look a lot like their father. They’re pale white on their skin and hair -- hair that is parted in the center at the forehead and tucked behind more hair, which cascades down to their torso when not tied up. Framing their face on either side are two slightly shorter bits of hair with three little spikes on each.

As the Pure Vessel, they stand straight and tall, completely cloaked in deep grey cloaks and holding a broadsword in firm gloved hands. Over their cloak is pale silver-white armor, with three-layered spaulders, a cuirass, and a helmet with large horns. Holding the Radiance within them, their cloak is torn and their armor and helmet are gone, with their hair splaying out loose. One of their boots is missing, exposing a segmented leg. Their right arm is gone, and a crack runs down their face down their forehead, into their eye, and down their cheek, exposing a bright yellow light from within. Still, they clutch their sword. In a corner of the image a tiny Hollow Knight looks with wide eyes at an even tinier, shouting Hornet. End ID.

the hollow knight’s design was fairly straightforward as i had figures out their siblings before them. even their armor -- which has been pointed out to be largely ornamental and they do not actually use it when fighting -- was easy to transpose. i was, admittedly, trying to avoid helmets (especially those that completely cover the face, though their’s isn’t) largely because i just dislike drawing them, but i felt i really HAD to with the hollow knight and so i just went for it !

i purposefully gave them a sort of gangly and out-of-proportion feel to them -- i like to think their grace is that of a stick-legged bird, like a heron or flamingo... someone stretched them in taffy help! /j but it also speaks to their true delicacy and fragility - both emotionally and literally. they’re a perfect hollow creation, but could very easily fall... or something like that !

but-- yeah, as i mentioned earlier, their design was a natural conclusion to come to from that of their relatives, so there’s not much new to say about them!

next, let’s look at the dreamers!

Image Description: The three dreamers, standing primly. In order from left to right there is: Herrah the beast, Lurien the watcher, and Monomon the teacher.

Herrah is a tall brown and broad-set, wide-shouldered woman. She has six eyes and an aquiline nose, and curly hair; on her head she wears a horned metal helmet and a dark blue bandanna covering the lower half of her face. From her neck there is a waist-length dark blue-grey cloak that cascades out behind her back. She wears a pale grey-blue doublet with a full skirt; on her arms there are rows of pinched pale fabric to look puffed, and her forearms are covered in dark grey fabric to the knuckles. She has striped grey spanish breeches and black hosen and shoes. One pair of arms is crossed, the other pair of arms rests on the hilt of a thin sword.

Lurien is a short brown man with an upside-down droplet shaped head. He has very short wavy hair and a long straight nose; a large teardrop shaped mouche is placed at the bridge of his nose and between his eyes. He has a navy blue cloak draped over his entire body; underneath he has a white circular millhouse ruff that hugs close to his neck, a black doublet, black breeches, and white hosen. He has two strings of beads: around his neck with a king’s idol, and in his hands -- which hold each other -- with a silver pomander.

Monomon is a tall black woman with an oval-shaped head, a wide nose, and a long, thin neck. She wears a rather unadorned teal gown with a wide, almost bell shape skirt, split down the center. At the top of the bell meeting the waist are two layers of teardrop shapes in light cyan fabric emitting out, similar to those on a jellyfish. At the bottom of the bell are more cyan embroideries, this time of floral motifs in the general shape of jellyfish. Her sleeves can either be puffed (for inaccuracy but design fun) or unpuffed (for accuracy) and then drape to the elbow, and she wears forearm-length white gloves. Her stomacher is green, with lighter green designs: four eye-like ovals, two smaller ones on top of the larger ones, with floral decorations around them. She has a dark blue headscarf, but seen coming out of it are four braids. End ID.

first to clarify: monomon’s braids are floating so you can see her gown easier! it’s not literal :-) second to clarify: in this sort of little half-baked au-thing i decided to make their masks a part of the spell. that is, their mask is one of the seals binding them to their slumber, and all that good rot. this means they follow my no-mask rule when not sleeping AND their masks remain relevant (namely, quirrel taking monomon’s mask to her.)

the dreamers are all based off of different centuries and it is pretty easy to tell with them standing side by side, hah! hell, they even go in order: herrah i largely based on the 1500s, lurien the 1600s, and monomon the 1700s...! that was unintentional.

herrah largely has this kind of puffiness to her body segments in the game, and so my first thought was immediately: 1500s style puffs. the sleeve puffs (as also seen on hornet, and they were often slitted. think the og disney snow white!) and also the very wide and puffy breeches (which i always thought were hilarious). unlike hornet’s hairpiece, i gave her a helmet to show her horns! i felt it fit her more than it did hornet -- maybe it’s just me, but i feel like hornet wouldn’t be one for metal armor. in formal or dressy wear she likely switches the helmet for a headdress like a hennin or escoffion.

however, i am feeling not 100% satisfied with her design as it is right now, though i do think it works on the levels of thought i put into the other designs. i dunno! i’ll change it when i feel like it -- such is the nature of these :-)

ngl i put the least effort into lurien out of the 3 dreamers… sorry king i just don't care much about you comparatively… im pretty content with his design though! i decided to base him off of the more subtle and understated north europe fashions, as i felt they’d fit him. however, the bigass ruff is the biggest staple of this design for me (in my mind at least!) it’s drawn from the period and it also introduces a big round shape into his general design (when his in-game design is literally Round + drapey cloth LMAO)

i decided to have him wear largely black to show status! normally in this time period richer folks would wear black - which may seem odd and plain to us but is rather telling of status as rich, deep black is quite hard to dye. however i still gave him a dark blue cloak to more allude to his ingame design.

i imagine he is devout from the few bits of in-game characterization we get -- hence the idol. he also has a pomander! they were medieval scent-objects thought to keep away miasma, or plague air. (they contained strong scents! it was for the same reason plague doctors stuffed their beaks with herbs: good scents keep away bad air! or so they thought.) i draw people with them a lot -- i just think they’re neat things and one of my favorite medieval objects :-)

as for the thing on his face - a mouche! what are mouches? i recommend you watch mina le's wonderful video on the subject -- she could explain it far better and in a more entertaining way than i.

i had SO MUCH FUN with monomon! (and i think that’s easy to see, hah!) dresses and gowns from the latter 1700s (though not yet regency like quirrel is -- dresses got kinda tube-shaped in regency) really do give the look of a jellyfish bell. a thin waist (comparatively speaking from the wideness of her dress -- though one can also look to the corset) would mimic monomon’s sort of thin neck (??) you see right before the grey-blue cloth in her in-game design. and since she isn't wearing a mask here, i put the imagery of the two pairs of eyes on her stomacher instead! wide puff and then pinching / thin segments is kind of the theme of her entire design - in her dress, in her sleeves (though it's innacurate and also optional tbh), even in her neck and head. sort of bowling ball -esque i suppose! (sorry monomon.)

her braids being similar to her tentacles was an idea i believe inspired by @valdotpng​ 's depiction of her, and it's a great idea ! another allusion to jellyfish is the four little oval shapes i put on the skirt of her dress, to mimic that on jellyfish. (those are, in fact, their gonads.)

i haven’t drawn them, but if you or i were to draw them while in sleep then there would be cloth completely covering their shoulders and up, and the mask over where their face would be. just like in game !

last but not least i have some tentative sketches of some higher beings !

Image Description: Sketches of some higher beings.

The Pale King is a segmented worm with several rows of arms; he wears a rather simple white robe with embroidered trim. He has a svelte, high-cheekboned face, with a long aquiline nose and long straight hair with some pulled back in a bun -- his entire surface, skin and hair, is entirely pale white. Atop his hair he has a spiked crown. However, that human face is a false magical add-on; this ‘face’ is detachable, with the true head and mouth at the ‘crown’.

The White Lady is a large tree-woman; she has a oval face and delicate, pointed nose, but out of where her hair would be if she were a human extends out innumerable tree branches out in every direction. from the branches and to her face and downward are dignified wrinkles of bark. She is, however, restrained and bound in magical cloth.

Unn is a large hunched woman, her form covered almost completely in water plants that droop down to the lake she comes out of. Amongst the shadows of the fronds peeks a weary smile, though all else is covered. However, out of the plants peeks out two eyes on stalks. She is smiling down at a very small Knight.

The Radiance’s face is entirely obscured in darkness, and long hair flows down from her sun-ray crown. Out of her back come countless moth wings, large and small, each one covered in countless eyes of various sizes, though the lower wings turn into longer ray-like fronds. From under the wings comes a long-nailed hand, which is held up to her hair-covered chest. End ID.

outside of the pale king and mmmaybe the white lady im rather unsure about these...!!! radiance i’ve barely thought about -- so ill have to work on her a bit more ! this is more of a sketch of general motifs and the direction i wanna go in

as aformentioned i wanted to take more non-really-human designs for the gods. they’ve just got a different spin on their in-game motifs, with ‘humanoid’ added to the blender as well. for example-- the pale king is still the rather insectoid-wormoid-wyrm that he is in the original, but what he is trying to do here is appear like that of a man and not a common bug. (an extra thought tidbit: the lines on his face and wyrm body are meant to evoke the seals of binding, though they’re rather simplified here they’d be more detailed in an actual polished picture.)

since they aren’t meant to be human we get fun stuff like literal tree woman white lady, and all that !! it’ll be fun to think some more on it.

NOW, that’s it for the characters for this post! i’ll go over more if people want ‘em lmao but i cant let this post go on forever HAH....

a few more scrap thoughts:

1 there is a common thread amongst Hallownest clothing, despite the decade differences, that i want to keep in mind when drawing these characters, to maintain consistency and believability that they're from the same region. the main thing is embroidery and just general decorative choices! i’ve tried to involve a mix of straight and curvy lines (heavy emphasis on lines in these designs in fact) along with floral motifs. though not a direct inspiration, try thinking about the motifs of real life period decorations, paired with the swirling curves balanced with geometric / curved / straight lines of the ui menus and such in the game !

2 hallownest would still have insectoid iconography in its art and its architecture -- the gods they worship are still rather insectoid, after all. and there is still no reason they wouldn't use insects in their iconography the same way european cultures have historically used bird and mammal motifs. as for what their architecture would be -- i think in game is a perfectly fine, but also i’d tentatively throw the dart at gothic with some dashes of late romanesque.

3 my art, me drawing these designs, is horribly inconsistent. that’s fine with me!! these are all for fun -- i think putting metric tons of thought into these are fun, as much as i think making tweaks depending on how i’m feeling is fun.

with ALL OF THIS IN MIND… i bid thee, reader, adieu! i hope you enjoyed my ramblings! id love to hear your own thoughts about all this and feel free to ask me questions about characters i haven’t mentioned here, an aspect you’re curious about, or anything at all! hopefully it made sense! (and if you wish to and are feeling either exceptionally charitable or exceptionally inspired, i give my express permission to draw all these, just please @ me so i can see it! i’m bad at social media so i don't like, check tags and stuff.)

:-) <3

So let's talk about Quirrel, huh?

He's easily one of the most loved characters in this game, and for really good reasons. He is a nice friendly face we can find around the kingdom, and he provides good company, advice and some thoughts about the places he visits. But later on, we find out he has a duty with this kingdom, and that he was called back to fulfill it.

One thing I personally always liked about him is that he is often respectful about the places he visits. He isn't there to steal, look for glory, or take advantage of this ruins. He believes he was drawn to Hallownest by the tales of other travellers, and his obsession about uncharted places.

But if you peer into his thoughts, this never feels quite natural. He remembers people he shouldn't he knows of places he should not know of, and this all comes clear once he reaches the Archives and the truth of his journey is revealed to him.

And in a way that changes everything he's ever seen. His thoughts at the Blue Lake are:

"To live an age, yet remember so little… Perhaps I should be thankful? All tragedy erased. I see only wonders…"

And isn't it painful? Because suddenly, the places in this kingdom aren't just some distant lands to him, they were part of his life, his home. Maybe he passed next to the very place he used to live in and yet he probably didn't even notice. There are people lost in memory, that he used to know and never found out what happened to them.

So now, him going about the guards in the city being in eternal duty, the miners working endlessly, or just any simple wanderer are viewed in a new light. That could have been him, or anyone else. That those were people who had friends, family, vibrant and unique personalities, and yet he and a few others are there to witness Hallownest in its decay.

The Archives are a whole other thing too. Did he remember Uumuu for what it was, or did he just know its weakness like an instinct? Is it worse to know and have the duty to destroy it, or to not know and feel like the decision was robbed from him? In the end, when that is done and he stands in front of Monomon's tank, he knows what he is there to do, and now he knows why. But it still feel overwhelming, because all he has then is hindsight. Yeah, he may remember the wonders of the land, but it is a place that's changed. Whatever led him to take this duty is gone, and the scenario he finds is one where Monomon, the last trace of the world he used to know, is choosing to end her life and what she stood for initially, in order for the Knight to achieve their goal (which at this point is still uncertain).

I just, think of the walk from the Archives towards the resting grounds. Did he pass by the City? Did he go through the Infected Crossroads? Did he, with his gained knowledge, visit the other dreamers in this new light?

And what is there for him to grieve when there is so much there that was lost you don't even know where to start? When it feels so arbitrary that he was even granted this second chance? When he becomes aware that there were definitely parts of his life, significant ones, that he won't be able to pay respects to?

But yeah, at least he got the chance to see this place he cared about once again, as it is shown to him, despite its past history.

And that's Quirrel

Ghost caught on camera

let's talk about the way we talk about sigma

and i’m not just saying this because i’m a hater or because i find the woobification of characters annoying (although i am, and i do, but that’s neither here nor there) but i AM saying it cuz it’s no longer mildly annoying so much as it is just hurtful and exhausting due to the casual ableism it perpetuates. whether it’s consciously or not, it’s there and i’m pointing it out cuz a lot of people probably don’t even realize what they’re saying (i hope) so i wanna spell it out crystal clear.

*granted, these are sentiments i’ve seen far more often on twitter or tiktok than on here (and i know complaining about stupid takes on either site is like going to the beach and getting mad about all the sand, but bear with me) but it’s ABSOLUTELY something that i see a lot on here too and i'm starting to get incredibly fed up with it all. someone's gotta fuckin say it.

im going to put the majority of this under a readmore because i've got a lot to say on the topic but here's the long and short of it:

you guys have GOT to stop acting like sigma is a poor little helpless confused manipulated innocent little uwu baby. like, for real. stop saying that shit. stop lamenting about “waahhh poor science granpa doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening around himmm 🥺🥺🥺”. stop acting like he’s being held captive or abused by talon despite evidence to the contrary so you can make your little “uwu i can’t wait for overwatch to save him and Fix Him uwuwuw” posts. and for the love of all that’s holy, if i see one more person say or imply that he was better off when he was being forcibly institutionalized than he is now working for talon, i’m going to start fucking attacking people with my teeth like a chimpanzee.

it's incredibly fucking weird and alienating for literally anyone who experiences even a fraction of the things yall are pointing out as proof of his incompetence. and before any of you hit me with the "oh it's not that deep 🙄" im gonna tell you right now that i dont care and im going to be mad about it anyway cuz its my party and i can post whatever i want.

ANYWAY!!

to continue my point, not only is it weird and infantilizing and demeaning and belittling to those of us who deal with literally any of the myriad of things going on with him that i’ve seen people point to as proof that he ‘needs to be fixed’ — memory lapses, time loss, dissociation, auditory hallucinations, disordered thought, just straight up being autistic, hyperfocus and/or complete lack of focus, panic attacks or meltdowns, i cannot overstate how many of the ‘weird’ things he does are just autistic traits so i’m gonna say it a second time for good measure — and those are all just things that i personally have in common with him (which is part of the reason i’m as mad about this as i am to make this post, but i digress).

to single out these things, all of which are completely reasonable for someone who is autistic, who is traumatized, who suffered through a prolonged period of forced confinement, and/or who has literal brain damage, and NONE of which are nearly as tragic and doomed as people are making them out to be, that’s all bad enough on its own!

but to point out these traits and then turn around and use them to color every single interaction he has with another character, every single thing he says, and tie it back to his traaaagic broken mind and how he’s clearly losing his grip on reality just feels… insanely othering in a way that’s really exhausting.

like, for fucks sake, a solid 80% of his character interactions could be lifted near verbatim from conversations i’ve had in real life with my friends, family, coworkers, you name it, all of which were friendly and usually in jest — hell, 9/10 times when i let out a random non sequitur or lose my train of thought or forget what i’m doing, nobody even bats a fucking eye! they sure as hell don't accuse whoever i’m talking to of abusing me because they expressed mild annoyance at my bad joke.

i’ve genuinely seen someone get all worked up and construe his one interaction with sombra where he comments on her tendency to disappear and reappear in odd places as evidence that he’s got dementia and is slipping away from reality altogether… and not, yknow, a nod to her fucking cloaking ability and translocator and the fact that she uses both very frequently just for the hell of it. that one still fucking baffles me i'm sorry. if i hadn't seen it with my own eyes i'd honestly think it was a joke. like. cmon now

another thing that makes it even worse is that most of this is also just…. not even grounded in canon. if this was the way blizz was writing him, it’d be one thing. it would still be shitty and ableist, but blizzard handling their oooh spooky scary mentally ill character badly is about as surprising as the sun rising every morning. i can't say i wouldn't still be upset to see people continuing to perpetuate it, but i wouldn't be AS mad, i guess.

but SO. MANY. of the popular takes on his character are either never concretely stated or outright contradicted by his ingame dialogue and interactions and it drives me insane!!! idk WHERE y’all are getting this shit but so many people are reaching so hard to make him a tragic sad uwuwuw glass bones and paper skin pathetic little meow meow that they’re going out of their way to misinterpret source material so they can shout from the rooftops about how sad and pathetic and unaware they think people like me must be.

i keep seeing people talk about how he probably has no idea that talon is a terrorist group, that he doesn’t know what talon IS, or that he doesn’t even know that he WORKS for talon, and it’s starting to go from mildly annoying to infuriating. this shit has literally no basis in canon aside from conjecture based on the fact that he’s Known to be mentally ill!! i don't see even half as many people getting this all up in arms about widow, who we KNOW FOR A FACT was literally kidnapped and experimented on and brainwashed by talon. like. that's her WHOLE THING. meanwhile sig literally just works there and people are clamoring for ovw to come """""rescue"""""" him as if hes like, a lab animal or something instead of a grown man who happens to not be particularly bothered by the fact that he works for talon.

this is something that's addressed in game MULTIPLE TIMES - he’d far prefer to watch an ant crawl on the ceiling than listen to s76 trying to ‘talk sense into him’, not because he can’t hear him or anything either, it’s pretty clear from his tone and cadence that he’s actively choosing to ignore him. when baptiste points out the fact that he’s fully capable of leaving talon if he wanted to, he doesn’t deny it or act confused or like that’s a strange thing to say, he just seems a little bemused that someone would think he WANTS to leave. yeah, he sure could— but why would he bother?

he's not "totally unaware of what he's doing" in the fucking slightest - hell, i'd argue that his new map-exclusive lines and interactions prove that he's MORE grounded now than he was in ovw1. yes, he gets a little confused on occasion when he can't quite remember the last time he's been somewhere. (memory lapses are just kind of like that. i had several while writing this post, in fact! it just fucking happens sometimes. it's really not the end of the world. frustrating, yeah, but i promise you we can manage just fine).

i guess the question i'm asking is: is it really all that difficult for to fathom that he might just... WANT to be there? that he might just straight up not care what talon is up to, so long as he's able to keep doing his research as he sees fit??

and for the record, before anyone takes this and runs with it and we lose the plot of this post, i am NOT SAYING that the very idea of wanting him to leave talon is #problematic or anything. i dont care, really. do whatever you want. what i do care about is just like.... being mindful about what we're saying and WHY we're saying it. it's reaching a point where people are somehow managing to look at the ass backwards already ableist as hell decisions blizz has already made with him and decided "hey, i bet i can find a way to make that even worse!"

like the thing that i think a lot of ppl gloss over is that a large majority of the talon aligned heroes have little to no interest in the actual ‘goals’ of the organization (to the point where we still don’t entirely know what talon wants or why they exist, lmfao) so much as it just being a means to an end. like we can all conceptualize that sombra is pretty much just there because it gives her access to more resources she can use towards her own goals, moira is there for research opportunities and funding that she’d never get elsewhere due to the nature of her work, i can only imagine that ramattra’s alliance with talon (and thus null sector’s as a whole) is purely situational because it provides advantages he considers useful, reaper is pretty much just there because they’re against overwatch therefore he can use it as an avenue for his revenge, even doomfist doesn’t really seem to hold as much stock in talon as an organization as he does use his position as a tool to achieve his goals, if it stopped being useful he would likely just walk away.

in opposition to the overwatch aligned heroes who all seem to be coming together solely for the sake of this like, ideal of Overwatch as a concept being this paradigm of good and justice and doing what’s right, and rallying behind their faith in the organization and what it symbolizes… i genuinely don’t think any of the talon operatives really care all that much about talon at all. it’s just a job. like, sure, we’re doing cartoon supervillain shit, but the pay is decent and we’ve got benefits and i can continue to do my own thing on the side, no questions asked. it’s honestly a pretty sweet deal.

all of that to say i really don’t see why people seem so averse to the idea of sigma having that same mindset. like yeah, he’s not exactly thrilled to be using his research and abilities to assist in acts of violent terrorism, but does he have many other options? he says it himself in that interaction with baptiste, talon gives him everything he needs - funding, resources, something to fall back on after being in total isolation for decades and coming out with absolutely nothing. it’s a guaranteed safety net — so long as he’s with talon, there’s absolutely no chance of anyone dragging him off or locking him up again, and so long as he contributes when he’s needed, he’s free to pursue his research to his heart’s content. does he regret it? sure, sometimes. i think they all do. i doubt there’s a single talon-aligned hero who genuinely believes what they’re doing is genuinely morally correct and sound. but ultimately in his mind he didn’t have many options left, so he had to settle for something he knew would at least guarantee his safety and continued freedom. it doesn’t really mean he’s being manipulated or held against his will any moreso than most of the other talon heroes, imho. he’s not proud of it, but hey, it pays the bills.

i feel like he regards it with a similar level of resentment/annoyance as i felt towards my horrible soul sucking corporate retail job of several years - like don’t get me wrong, the company i worked for absolutely sucked and i HATED how they operated, policy was bullshit and so much of it was unnecessary and needlessly counterproductive. but i also really connected with my coworkers in the same situation AND i got to get paid to do stuff i already would have been doing on my own anyway, and ultimately the experience i got and connections i made were really helpful in pursuing what i actually wanted to be doing with my life. it’s like if your shitty day job required you to kill people but they also like, got you hooked up with a place to live and a healthcare provider and all that shit and paid for all of your living expenses no questions asked AND gave you a decent budget to screw around with so long as every now and then you showed them what you were making and maybe used it to kill people more efficiently sometimes. i wouldn’t exactly feel any amount of loyalty to the company paying me but i wouldn’t exactly be in a hurry to quit either