closeups !!!

little analyses + bonus pictures under the cut :D

more stuff under the cut :D

i have always said that many of the crane wives' songs have vivid thaw!quackity energy.

but this one song of theirs has such strong thaw!q energy in particular that it would feel out place to me if it went on my thaw!quackity playlist. so i thought i'd share my ideas about it here, since it's not going to be on the big playlist analysis ^_^

(click under the cut to see a lyrical breakdown explaining how it applies to early thaw!q)

atol!soot and thaw!quackity

sky gods' favorites

speak two languages (common & ancient + common & the language of the archipelagos)

have chronic pain from an injury (back + eye) and there's the possibility that their younger selves will suffer a little less than they did when they get it (massaging newly formed scar tissue + more potions instead of vinegar)

tortured people that are or have to do with dream

have a country that they love a lot, and use the thought of to distract from their other thoughts

father (even if quackity is in denial)

brother(figure) to tommy.

distrust anything relating to the gods, and doesn't follow them

are the first ones to beat the sky gods (in their fucked up games + in a gambling match against them)

Trust Issues(TM)

wear masks in front of people, hiding all of their vulnerabilities

thoughts about making their younger-selves match (soot to a higher extent)

minds have been fucked with by the sky gods (darkness from their Games + madness from the broken vow to them)

despise the ram and fantasize about getting revenge on him (also, wants to hang his head over the white house + mounts his horns and others' horns in his office)

and probably more that i'm forgetting

--------younger-selves section--------

atol!wil and thaw!q

MCs both slowly losing their sense of identity from before the events of their stories

Dissociation(TM) after realizing just How Much harm their storytelling inadvertently caused (not only for his older-self, but just in general, since so many people died in a war that was supposed to be fictional and only a few people + for his older-self after q realized the implications of all his remarks)

their first kills are mobs that were very high in magic (a Fresh fresh zombie + phantom), and they were both to protect other people (tommy + tntduo). and they had literally no idea what they were doing (accidentally ripped open the thing + made it choke on a poker chip without meaning to)

fit in almost seamlessly with the world, especially in comparison to the other people sent there

their older-selves being weirdly comfortable with them on their first day (soot thinking that wilbur not shrugging off his constant physical affection meant that he was ok with the closeness + quackity making those "suggestive" quips at q)

flirted with quackity or soot, though not really meaning it.

both "from" very dark times in their older-selves' lives. coincidentally, both either from a war, or else right before one (if you count like. 3 years before as Right before but)

older-selves threatened to kill them and made them answer questions when they first arrived (simone + ace of spades). (also the injuries the older-selves caused both nod to trauma that they have and that their younger-selves will experience eventually: wilbur's back scrape against the wall nodding as well as foreshadowing to the acid tears that scarred his back + q's bruised wrists nodding to what happened in manberg and foreshadowing to the burgundy cosmos and serenity park...)

their older-selves are very used to violence, and expect them to be the same way

^ they have to get used to violence quicker than anyone else sent here as a result of that, just so they won't get immediately found out.

got very violent against dream and regretted it after they realized just what they had done, and who they had become

progressively become more and more like their older-selves over the course of their stories

+more that technically haven't happened in thaw yet, but i can practically smell them off in the horizon...

atol!phil and thaw!charlie

have to come to terms with no longer having human features (wings and talons + Literally Everything.)

must figure out how to work their non-human features without being too suspicious to people (phil knocking things and people over with his wings + charlie needing to figure out how to keep himself solid and not drip slime everywhere)

their horror over seeing their non-human traits being mistaken as something else by others ("philza must have made him ashamed of his talons" + "he's sad my skeleton gift to him is melting :(")

are absolutely horrified by the violence and disregard for life being displayed in this world. and how desensitized everyone is to it.

very worried for the people in this world, Especially the MCs.

have been taken away from their partners when they were sent to the shattered!verse

still have some hope of returning home

the first character they meet is someone who caused loads of trauma to the MC's older-selves. they get very bad vibes from them, even though they aren't sure why exactly at first

atol!dream and thaw!wilbur (youngerbur)

been in the shattered!verse just as long, if not longer than the MC.

becomes very much like their older-selves

MC immediately distrusts them and hurts them (watches him get tortured and punches his face + bruises wrists)

their older-selves aren't trusted by the MCs' older-selves, so that tends to translate to the MCs also not trusting them

they meet the MC for the first time once the MC is acting almost indistinguishably from their older-self

terrified of, and feels betrayed by, the MC

has the memories of their older-selves (currently unsure if this is due to godly interference or not, but if it is, that's another similarity.)

actively go to where the MC is (pogtopia + las nevadas), which just causes suspicion, since they aren't supposed to be able to find the place/get in. and are considered enemies of the place (maybe not #1 enemies, as that would be the ram for both, but they're still pretty close on that list)

i'm using "younger/older-self" for everyone, since youngerbur's identity has not yet been officially confirmed as of writing this, so it might not be accurate to say cc for him. plus, so many ccs have changed that they're hardly the ccs at all anymore yk

MC is referring to the person that the first chapter is about and whom the story mostly centers around.

Wilbur whispered, staring into Q's eyes as though he was searching for something– or someone.

I'm somebody who escaped from a shipwreck but is still going to drown because he can't bring himself to take his fucking armor off, even as he realizes that he's sinking further and further from where he should be, down until he can't breathe anymore and his vision's going black, and everything is so, so heavy, but he just can't do it, Q thought.

I'm a pathetic little house cat that tries to act like the King of the Jungle, as though that'd make him any less in over his head.

I'm a pale imitation of Quackity, too cruel to be human, yet too human to actually be cruel.

I'm nothing now. Just an empty shell where there's supposed to be a person. A sad combination of traits that just cancel each other out and do absolutely fucking nothing for anybody. Until not even I know what I'm supposed to be anymore.

I'm hurting and I think I've forgotten what it's like to not be constantly pushing away the pain and memories of the past.

I'm a haunted house that's full of ghosts and demons and so, so much torment, that people are either terrified of even stepping foot inside of it, or else they see it as some sort of gimmicky joke that they can laugh at.

And I'm both at the same time. Both painfully, bone chillingly real and yet somehow still superficial. A sick juxtaposition of all that is real and fake, coagulating into a single fucking entity of confusion that isn't sure if the blood he sees spattering the floorboards is real or fake anymore. Or if it's even his…

I'm burning up inside and yet I've never felt as cold as I do now.

I'm pushing people away whether I mean to or not, and I see people being scared of me and I hate it because that's not who I am, but I also love it because that means I'm safe. That means that they won't ever think of crossing me. That I won't get hurt again. And I hate that I feel that way. I hate it…

I'm everything that I was afraid of when I got here. Nothing like how I was before. I'm… I'm…

"I'm stronger." was the reply Q managed to force out, times more confident than he actually felt. Those two words felt like fireants that were biting his tongue. He wasn't stronger, not at all. If anything, he was the exact opposite. But Wilbur didn't need to know that. Q refused to let anybody gain an advantage over him ever again. And so, he just let the lie sit in the air, weighing uncomfortably on his chest, as Wilbur looked at him with an unreadable expression on his face. The inscrutablity made Q more nervous than he wanted to admit. But he didn't let it show. Or couldn't.

as always, check out @alexanderwesker 's fic here !!!

and obviously, i had to abridge some parts of the story, since i was already doing double the requirement of panels, and i didn't really want to do like 14 more just so i could include tHAW!slime and q's whole crisis on LN being real and stuff yk ^^;

chapter 1 + 2 comic

full thing

panel closeups + analyzing

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panel 1

panel 2

if i ever get a chance to foreshadow q's change to becoming more like quackity, you know i'll immediately jump on that shit. and i did in this panel. here, the sun shines a little more in his left eye, and you can even see a sunbeam cutting through it. idc if that doesn't make sense in the situation, i feel like it solidifies the parallel between him and quackity, and that's all i really wanted for this part tbh.

panel 3

the intention with this panel was to make q seem as small, alone, and exposed as possible, so as to draw (haha) on the essence of what this walk through the desert is a metaphor for.

panel 4

ignore how his hair makes him look emo here. it's for the ✨️ symbolism ✨️

"what symbolism, tumblr user ifievertoldyou?" i'm glad you asked, imaginary person.

for one, i really wanted las nevadas' lights to reflect in just his left eye, to nod to that eye becoming his blessed eye later on.

for another, i kinda wanted him to only see out of one eye, to foreshadow him meeting, and eventually becoming more like, quackity.

(also i gave the little box of the arial view of him running a purple tint to represent how the sky gods are watching him go through all of this.)

panel 5

i made the las nevadas sign look a lot like the las vegas sign, but i also tried incorporating things from the las nevadas flag onto it, like the little star with the ace of spades, and i also leaned more into the flag's color pallette (though it's still pretty close color-wise to the las vegas sign)

i also had the sign popping outside of the box because of how good las nevadas is at grabbing your attention, and to demonstrate how she's so much larger than life.

panel 6

i kept in mind here that q's shoes kinda look like half boots, and i also drew upon the reference of his meet-up pics with phil.

also, the shoes have just a hint of that wine red that's all over the pariah district and has come to represent quackity. ;]

and obviously, him stepping onto the not-asphalt was symbolic of him crossing the threshold, so there's that.

panel 7

i originally intended for this comic to be longer (and who knows? maybe one day i will continue it), but this frame was intended to also be in the flashback when q has to figure out what quackity's lucky card is. that's why there's a whole frame with just the double doors (and also to cause anticipation, and transition into him meeting quackity, but yeah-)

panel 8

quackity! his little box is super red, in contrast to q's purple box in panel 4, because that's quackity's magic (and favorite) color, so it represents him.

his desk has a las nevadas star on it too, simply because i couldn't think of anything else to put on there lmao, but also, when looking at the LN flag, i can't help but think that the star represents quackity, since it's his magic color and it's all sharp around the edges like how he tends to be, and the ace of spades that is inside of it is more representative of q, since he has the blessed eye, and it's the same as his magic color and whatnot.

misc things:

the color of the gutters get progressively more red than purple as the comic goes on, to symbolize las nevadas and quackity coming into q's life. though the purple is still there, because so are the sky gods ;]

the same goes with the punctuation marks. it starts out purple (with a red outline to foreshadow his future and stuff), but then that eventually inverts itself when he sees the lights of las nevadas. (and quackity's question mark is much more red than q's, although the purple outline is still there, just less noticeable.)

the first person narrative boxes are red, while the captions are purple. again, this stands for the divide between q and the sky gods, since the sky gods are in control of the story, while q is (for now) in control of his own thoughts. wine red is more of quackity's own color, while purple is also the color of the sky gods. so when it's just q's thoughts, they're red, to distinguish him from the sky gods, and also to maybe hint at him becoming more like quackity in the future.

also, i didn't get to do any frames showing his forearms besides the first panel, but just know that q rolled up his sleeves as soon as he realized he was in a desert, as he wanted to avoid getting more hot than he had to. i thought it was important to draw him in a long sleeve shirt though since his bruises were most likely covered up when he met soot.

i know the lights look kinda purple in panel 8, but i swear they're pink, the blue sky just makes them seem more purple. quackity isn't being blasphemous, i promise.

every single red thing in this comic was drawn using the same colored pencil, to show how important quackity is in las nevadas, as well as q's story.

visual foreshadowing and color symbolism: *exists*

me: oh man, this shit fucking slaps

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thanks for making it all the way to the end !! i hope you enjoyed it, because i spent wayy too much time thinking about and making all this stuff to not share it with y'all :p