#oddberry analysis

Lilia is definitely more emblematic of all three fairies as he raised Silver, a human, since he was a baby in his cottage that is the same as the fairies.

His bad cooking and eagerness towards having a baby definitely comes from Fauna. However, Diasomnia is comprised of three fae and a human, and there’s little elements of the fairies in Malleus and Sebek also!

Malleus as Flora

Malleus prefers Silver in pink as Flora does Aurora (in such a fun callback to the pink and blue debate of Aurora's dress but with Silver's cape!)

Though in some retellings of Sleeping Beauty, the kingdom's sleep is attached to the Princess's curse, in Sleeping Beauty 1959, Flora is the fairy who decided to put all the humans to sleep, just as Malleus did during his overblot.

Funnily enough, she did so because she was worried about how upset the kingdom would be once they found out Aurora's curse came into fruition. In a way, she is also using a sleep spell to preserve people's happiness just as Malleus intended.

Flora also tries to hide her emotions as Malleus has had to. Lilia also does this to some extent, but Malleus does so more for the safety of others and, especially with Silver, not wanting others to feel sad.

Sebek as Fauna

Sebek and Fauna both respect following the rules set up by their superiors. Fauna doesn't want to disobey Aurora's arrangement to a prince as it isn't their place to do so, just as Sebek repeatedly struggled with disobeying the will of Malleus in book 7.

Fauna and Sebek are also both very emotional, Sebek even quotes her ‘I love happy endings’ while crying watching Silver and his family dance happily

Lilia as Merryweather

Lilia prefers Silver in blue as Merryweather does Aurora!

Merryweather is protective, often trying to fight to defend Aurora and needing to be held back by the other fairies. She even kills diablo! The same can be said about Lilia, who is adept at fighting with a military background and sacrificed himself for Silver twice in book 7

Merryweather wants Aurora to do what she wants with her life, even declaring that she doesn't think Aurora should marry a prince if she doesn't want to, just as Lilia wants Silver to be free to live whatever life he wants and not be burdened by the past

In conclusion, although a lot of these traits are definitely shared amongst the three/primarily held by Lilia, I do like seeing a bit of the three fairies in Silver's current fae found family as opposed to just the three fairies that spelled him to sleep 400 years ago. Twst please give me more of this dynamic please please pleaseeeee 🥺

Going crazy over Kalim acknowledging the power he has over Jamil and that they did not grow up as equals.

Even though a Jamil who acts like his best friend is what would be more convenient for him, he would rather try to genuinely befriend the real Jamil, flaws and all, over being content with something he isn’t.

But him being the one to make Halloween a bigger celebration in NRC, being a student before Crowley involved, likely existing long before Malleus was hatched and before they started putting magestones in pens,

He could’ve been one of the students at Ramshackle dorm when it was still used and wasn’t decrepit (it was the first dorm room on the whole campus)

Depending on how and when he died, he could be buried at Ramshackle’s graveyard for being significant to the school

The original Ramshackle fence is also similar to the frame of Skully’s picture that Crowley has

Since Crowley says he is an alumnus and he graduated, his ghost appearing/claiming he’s 16 is a little strange. So either he died young after all, he chose to make his ghostly form him as a student/unconsciously became a ghost as his student self, or lied about his age. Either way, ghost logic doesn’t have time follow anything.

In Twst, it’s said repeatedly that blessings and curses are virtually the same thing, but are differentiated only by how they either positively or negatively affect the person who is spelled. 

This is interesting because of this, in some cases, spells meant to be blessings turn into curses, which a number of characters suffer from. Some curses can also be a blessing. 

There are now at least four characters who are canonically cursed in some form, with some being more explicitly stated as cursed, others implied, and some we don’t even know what’s truly going on, so I’ll be going over everything that we do know because this magic system is mysterious and I want to know more. 

Idia Shroud, the late original Ortho Shroud, STYX’s director (Idia’s father) and the late Aidne Shroud (Idia’s grandmother) have all been generationally cursed for hundreds of years since their ancestor was punished for trying to revolt against their rivals, the Jupiter Family. 

Their curse manifests itself as firey blue hair and the ability to incinerate blot at such a speed that overblot is impossible. 

The inability to overblot can be interpreted as a blessing, but if the Shrouds don’t produce blot/live in close proximity to blot, the curse will attack their magic force and destroy it, possibly harming their lives as well. 

Because of this, the curse makes the Shrouds uniquely qualified for blot research and protecting the rest of the world from the massive phantoms created by hundreds of overblotters across history. 

This curse prevents Idia from living a normal life and, as Idia has done research on himself and the family, concluded that it is the curse is unbreakable (as most curses appear to be) 

Idia also confirms that Grim is cursed, except Grim’s curse seems to be so old and complex that he can’t decipher what it is. Grim does have blot resistance, and its theorized that he’s a direbeast fused with some other kind of animal and possesses almost human-like intelligence. 

Idia is able to conclude that someone casted an ancient spell on Grim, but the person who did it and the purpose of the spell is unknown. 

This, paired with Grim’s insatiable desire to eat blot stones produced by overblotters, hasn’t been touched upon by the plot again as of right now, but the chimera creature that resembles Grim from the prologue is an indicator that we will find out what this curse is at some point. 

Next is Silver’s curse, which is different from everyone else because it was intended to be a blessing from the very start. 

And it was a blessing for around 400 years…Until he woke up and started experiencing negative effects from the spell, which made it a curse. 

This is more on the theorizing side since Silver’s sleeping problem is brought up only once in Book 7 and not touched on again. By the end of Book 7, his sleeping issue still isn’t talked about. Given the new guest room and chat voice lines that just dropped on JPN server, it’s implied that Silver is still struggling with his uncontrollable sleeping habit and he is not cured of his curse. 

But again, we won’t know if that’s actually the case until the story continues. 

People rightfully speculate that the reason behind his sleeping issue comes from his original blessing, which was to sleep until found by someone who loves him. He was in ageless sleep until he was found by Lilia, and then he started to age like a normal child but fell asleep suddenly with no explanation. 

It’s stated multiple times in vignettes and once in main story that Silver has been taken to doctors for his sleeping issue and no one was able to find anything, implying that curses are virtually undetectable outside of the STYX technology Idia has access to. 

The blessing met its criteria and him being awake proves that it has been broken, but the reason why he’s experiencing negative effects from something that saved his life is unknown and hopefully it’ll be explained later on. Lilia also theorizes that the spell may have fallen apart due to how unpredictably long he spent under it, but that was probably just him assuming he didn't meet the spell's criteria.

Given what we know, I theorize that, in some cases, excessive amounts of exposure to powerful magic can be harmful to people, especially humans who were spelled at such a young age. 

This is how a blessing can change into a curse, it’s now a part of him whether he wants it there or not. 

Maybe his body is just used to being asleep, he was like that for 400 years and has only been awake for 18 years. Maybe there’s something else at play, we don’t know. 

We have enough evidence to assume that he’s part of the cursed club (also he’s twisted from Aurora who is very famously cursed lol) 

But he’s in the same place as Grim where you know it’s there but you’re not entirely sure why. 

Lastly, Malleus has joined the cursed club as of the end of Book 7.

The Senate “blessed” him, and their intention truly was blessing. However, the effects of the blessings have become more of a curse to Malleus. 

Malleus himself even interprets himself as cursed. 

He was blessed to be so powerful that no one could do him any harm, however, because of his power he was harming everyone around him, including his loved ones, which is something that kept Malleus isolated and repressed.

Because the curse hindered his ability to express emotion, he was robbed of what he actually wanted, which was the ability to be happy, sad, and being able to hug someone without the fear of hurting them. 

Malleus is the best example of blessings and curses being virtually the same thing. What was a blessing in the eyes of the senate was a curse in Malleus’s perspective. 

Because of what happened, Malleus’s curse isn’t ‘broken’ per se, but he can no longer physically perform the kind of magic he was able to perform when both his horns were intact. 

I don’t know if there’s anything Idia, Grim and Silver can do to break the effects of their curses but we’ll have to see as the story goes on.

We don't get to see much of Kalim's family, but he is the oldest child of the Asims and has many younger siblings that he's pretty involved with-

Whenever Kalim can, he tries to interact with his younger siblings as much as possible- carrying them around, reading them stories, and playing games with them.

I'm sure Kalim doesn't have to interact with or spend time with all of his siblings, he is the heir and a very important too. But Kalim enjoys spending time with his siblings, and seems especially affectionate towards the younger ones.

Many of Kalim's siblings are around Cheka's age and even younger, and you can get a glimpse of how he interacts with little kids through his interactions with Cheka in the Sunset Savanna hometown event and the anthology manga

With kalim's older younger siblings however, he doesn't seem particularly super close to them either because of some 'cheeky phase' they develop when they grow over 10, or because the ones closest in age to Kalim may have complicated feelings over being 'spares' and that Kalim is the big important heir to the Asim fortune- Kalim makes it clear that he loves his siblings even if they act like Ace did in Playful Land (which is completely go off on a rant about how Kalim is spoiled)

Kalim can even act like an older brother towards Jamil despite being the younger one of the two by 9 months.

Although Jamil is definitely parentfied and Kalim was overly reliant on Jamil, Kalim has had moments where he's been protective over and even strict with Jamil when he's concerned,

There is a part of Kalim who is a caretaker deep down. He's someone who might feel responsible for making sure all of his siblings feel loved and seen, and he wants Jamil to be safe too. Given his willingness to be independent and not rely so much on Jamil, I'm sure he'll be implementing a lot of his brotherly skills to become someone Jamil and underclassmen can feel they can rely on in the future.

Silver was hidden away for his whole life until NRC- He never went to any human or fae towns & only interacted with his family, Sebek's family,& animal friends. Pretty much no one knew he existed as Silver, much less as the lost prince too. But now Sage's Island knows he exists,

If his day fairy guardians are still alive, they might've thought he was gone for good because they couldn't find him. If they had descendants I'm sure they might've talked about a lost prince. If they're still here, would they want him back? and for what reason?

I know, for the sake of jokes, that's it's easy to equate bad cooking with inedible purple sludge. However, there are different forms of bad cooking that are edible, just not pleasant, and Lilia falls under this category.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure his little cooking experiments are also in reference to Fauna from Sleeping Beauty, who misunderstood how to bake a cake. His mess-ups and comedic lack of understanding of humans and domestic things is definitely a charming reference to the three good fairies, but the reasoning as to why he's like this is sweet in itself.

I'm not someone who thinks he's 'perfect' or 'horrible' at parenting, it's not that black and white. He's a man who means well but makes mistakes, his cooking experiments come from a place of genuine care, even if they don't turn out well.

Lilia has never been good at cooking. In the past, he would eat rats and lizards he found on the ground.

He also has the unique ability to eat things that aren't edible.

Lilia lived his life for 700 years eating whatever edible or inedible thing he found. He doesn't have a good sense of taste and operated on 'anything is fine so long as I get to eat'

But that changed when he adopted Silver.

Malleus lived with his grandmother in a palace filled with servants who made his meals. Lilia could make him an easy-to-make treat and that'd be fine, Malleus was already provided for.

But Silver has no one but Lilia taking care of him.

Now Lilia had to learn how to take care of someone, a helpless baby from a weaker species he knew nothing about, and this was one of Lilia's first concerns when it came to raising Silver.

Lilia actually did extensive research on this subject.

Obviously he hunted, evidenced by his desire to put unique kinds of proteins in Silver's meal, but he started to research what really humans need to grow up strong.

In his vignette for the Chip & Dale event, he actually talks about how he read up on what spices were healthy and nutritional for humans, confirming that he has done an extensive study outside of the baby-rearing books he and Malleus looked at when Silver was a baby.

Lilia was also concerned that what he was feeding Silver wasn't enough, as his only comparison was Malleus and other fae. The weird meats and other ingredients Lilia likes adding to food always have some kind of nutritional value to them, and he mistakenly thinks that combining a bunch of different food groups together in one big dish is healthy (in a weird sort of way it would be, but it would taste vile)

Ultimately, the way Malleus and Silver describe Lilia's cooking is how it's 'distinctive,' with no cohesion for flavor and texture, making it unappetizing...But not quite inedible.

Yes, Lilia doesn't have a good sense of taste because he can eat everything and anything. Yes, his mix of foods that don't taste good together makes his cooking gross...But it was never just for the sake of comedy.

This is someone who wants his human child to grow up strong and healthy, and he's applying his own inexperienced fae logic to what he thinks will be good for Silver.

I was wondering why Kalim and Jamil's outfits were so similar and Kalim's home turning into Jamil's, and I know a part of it is saving on assets since chapter 7 is HUGE, but I think there's a lot of symbolism in there too.

In this fake school, this is their school uniform. For Kalim, the colors are white and blue, and dream Jamil wears that, conforming to Kalim's idealistic view of him. The same is true for the opposite, inverting the colors to be red and black to suit Jamil's vision.

Jamil taking Kalim's home and making it his own I think is both showing how Malleus has very shallow ideas of what happiness means to people and also Jamil's inability to perceive life outside of servitude and Kalim.

We know what his real dream is- to be free and travel the world. But in this dream, he takes over Kalim's life and steals what, deep down, he believes should belong to him since a lot of what Kalim gets (like good grades, talent, etc.) is due to Jamil's sacrifices and undermining himself.

He's instructed by the adults in his life to make sure Kalim is happy at the expense of his own happiness, so of course in this 'happy dream' taking what Kalim has equals happiness, except it's not him.