Antonio and the theme of "blue-blackness"
(Originally on Tumblr on 03/13/2023.)
manage to finish.” Alejandro had attempted winking. It’d barely worked, but Antonio seemed to get the gist, smile turning into a crooked grin.
But he’d seemed like he wanted to say something, and had taken the quickest breath, and Alejandro had watched for that short time Antonio didn’t speak at all, struggling with his words.
In some ways, Antonio tried to hide it, but everything about him was dark. The awareness and memory of it came back to Alejandro: his blue-black Chandrani uniform, his blue-black taste in clothes, his blue-black ocean song hair, and the Chandrani beauty of his face more than enough of their classmates gushed about, often right up to Alejandro’s face.
Alejandro had always tried to discreetly search for it—if Antonio had any discreet moles on his own upon that enviously smooth red-brown skin, despite their both being 15, excepting the dark hair of his jaws that he shaved meticulously. He’d never find a single one, and knowing Fernando’s face had an unmistakable one upon it, had always felt strangely satisfied understanding more of their current differences.
It wouldn’t matter if one appeared in the future. Antonio would still be who he was. He’d always known it.
Antonio with brown skin and red eyes is pulling Alejandro's arm against his chest, holding it. Antonio is smiling with furrowed brows at Alejandro while mostly submerged back against the ocean, with only his face and part of his head and a part of his chest and abdomen unsubmerged.Antonio Chandrani-Rivera has an important theme of "blue-blackness" and the latest comic's last panel really reminded me of it!
Might center the next comic on that theme.
There's this Bangla song called "Krishnakoli ami tarei boli" and I only recently realized I've listened to it a huge amount of times because of my parents... Now I do not know if it influenced that Antonio Chandrani-Rivera theme, but I think even if I did file it away subconsciously, it's unlikely.
It's partly due to how I wanted Antonio's fantasy-counterpart South Asian side of the family to be ocean mages for many years (Antonio's magic centered on the ocean from the beginning because I was vibin' about it), and from the beginning since my teens I made the fantasy-counterpart Latine side of Antonio's family ~shadow~ mages for the simple reason of being a stereotype Emo Kid in the 2000's.
There's Antonio Chandrani on the left wearing his family's dark blue Chandrani uniform (with stars, moons and waves on it) covered in blood. His skin is brown in tone and his eyes are fuschia; he's looking toward Alejandro on the other side of the picture with a tilt of his head. Behind him is a dark sea, dark waves, a starry sky, a dark night, and a bright aqua moon. On the right Alejandro stands there looking somewhat morose yet smiling; his long hair is violet in color tone, his skin is light bronze, his tunic is pinkish and has sun and green decoration along the shirt collar and two odd white sun designs on the lower part of it. Behind him is galactic space with the implication of two literal stars that look like Earth's (sheer white).Over time I really cinched wanting Antonio and Alejandro to be a sun-moon(-and-ocean-and-darkness) pair. Will hopefully be even more obvious soon.
(Honestly a [positive] tweet by Hideki Naganuma pushed me to drop this post here too.)