Apropos of nothing, here's my personal headcanon in regards to Mario and Luigi's surname.
Now, it's been generally announced and accepted that the brothers' last name is "Mario," shackling them with the somewhat awkward full names of "Mario Mario" and "Luigi Mario." My take on this is that the family's original last name was "Marianetti" (likely coming from the more common "Marinetti"). This name was changed to "Marionetti" when the boys' grandmother came over from Italy. (A common occurrence in record keeping at immigration at the time. Someone probably had bad handwriting and smudged a pencil stroke somewhere. It happened in my family for sure).
In Brooklyn, their father went by the last name "Marionetti," which ended up shortened to just "Mario," as oftentimes he would be addressed by his surname only. (Think, "Hey, Mario! Get over here!" as opposed to "Hey, Marionetti! Get over here!")
So, the boys are born and get their names. (Their father's middle name was Mario, and so our Mario, being the oldest, inherits his father's middle name as his first name. Luigi's name maybe comes from the middle name of some uncle who is long out of the picture).
So we have "Mario Marionetti" and "Luigi Marionetti." Which, their surname being a mouthful, gets shortened to "Mario" more often than not, just like their father. And thus we end up with "Mario Mario" and "Luigi Mario," culminating in the "Mario Brothers."
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The story of my 3-year-long quest to identify a very rare bird
So I've been trying almost since I moved here to figure out what bird made this strange call that I sometimes heard near my house:
I tried to google "european bird that sounds like a laughing hyena?" and also to imitate the noise over the phone for a friend who once took an online bird course, but she had no idea. (Well, she said "that's a hyena." I said, "but I hear it all the time! Near my house!! Wait I'll do it better." She said, please stop making a hyena noise :(( and I stopped because the cats thought I was losing my mind)
Eventually I managed to record the actual bird call on my phone, and used a Shazam app for birds—but once again, no luck. The first app I tried just assumed it was being trolled and was like "it's you, isn't it? That's not a bird that's your stupid human laugh, you're making fun of me. I'm not an idiot"
The second birdsong app was more insecure and apologised a lot for failing to identify my bird. I thought it must be a rare bird! (The only uncommon bird I know of in this region is the vulture but it sounds less like a hyena and more like if elephants were birds.) Every time I heard the call (usually during the day) I opened the window trying to a) get a better recording so my app would finally have an epiphany, and b) see something flying off a tree.
At one point I was cutting brooms in the pasture and heard the call very loudly, as if the bird was just a few metres away, and it wasn't coming from the sky. I googled every possible version of "flightless (?) bird that nests in thorny bushes?" and found nothing, and started wondering if it was actually a mammal. But I couldn't think of any plausible local mammal that would make this sound—definitely not a fox or badger, who say WAOOHHH, and nothing like the polite whistle of marmots. We've got pine martens in the woods and I found a video called "mating pine marten scream bark" and thought oh!! that must be it! ... but then I listened to it and it sounded like yiiiaaaaaeeeeee, like if you stepped on a baby banshee's toe, nothing at all like the heheeheuruurhh of a hyena who just heard a good joke.
Anyway, this morning I was in the pasture and I once again heard the hyena laugh! I was standing by the moose butler tying up the hay net, away from any trees or shrubs and the call came from just behind me. I turned around thinking there was absolutely no way for the mystery bird to hide, it had landed on the ground behind me and this time I was going to see it!
And
it was HER:
Absolutely no doubt. I saw Pampy's throat vibrating along with the last echoes of the hyena laugh. All these years I've been saying that llamas are very quiet animals who just make cute little "hum-hum" sounds (I rarely hear adult llamas humming to one another, it's mostly for mother llamas to communicate with their baby and with me) and I had no idea that the shrieking hyena-bird I occasionally heard outside my house was Pampelune! I googled "llama alarm cry" and immediately found youtube videos featuring llamas making this exact sound. There was a stray dog nearby this morning that Pandolf eventually chased away, so maybe Pampy was the first to hear him and sounded the alarm. Maybe she uses this cry to tell Pan to go do his guard dog job, because he left the pasture and ran into the woods when she made the sound (while I was turning round like "aha! you can't run, hyena-bird!")
I wanted to share this discovery! I've had llamas for nearly 4 years and I'm only now finding out that they can laugh like hyenas when the situation calls for it. I feel bad for the poor birdsong app that I've repeatedly gaslighted feeding it a llama call and insisting that it identify this bird for me while it hung its head in shame like "I swear I don't have your bird in my database. I'm so sorry. I'm a bad app."
Llamas are fascinating creatures. Please experience their majestic alarm call again, and be alarmed:
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removed from any shipping its genuinely notable to me that rodya seemingly latches on to gregor from the start. of course shes doing her little facade (and if you go back to the earlier episodes now, its a lot more egregious and easier to notice) but its curious that out of any of the sinners, its him she actively chooses to interact with and drop a nickname on first
shes very very teasing especially initially and seems to target him for his arm, a lot of her comments being based on him being bugmoded. it honestly could look cruel especially with the full context we have now, though notably these do all take place pre-gregor revelations, but if you jump to this being a signifier of rodya bullying/wanting to get actual pain or upset out of gregor you'd have to skip over this scene
which is both silly but also i feel pretty significant for understanding something about the two of them and their relationship:
gregor is not actually a helpless pushover who lets himself be walked over and he will speak up if a line is crossed for him
rodya can read and understand when he's distressed, gets hesitant and will back off. her intention is not actual upset from gregor
what's important to me in my read of rodya is that she does have a facade, deliberately to be charming and likable, but i dont think her buttonpushing/ragging on of gregor (and later the other sinners) is actually entirely part of that, i think its the opposite. showing real honest affection is something difficult to her, so she skips a few steps and jumps straight into poking fun like you would with someone youve known a long time.
I think her "true" personality isn't cold and calculative, from further story context i interpret it as more jaded and sarcastic. these moments to me read as a sort of fumble or early mask slip, she's not baring it all with these bits but she has singled out gregor in her mind and is particularly hovering (based on how the majority of both of their interactions throughout are from the very start with eachother) around him, trying to get closer in an awkward way.
I think people miss that theres a lot you can take and learn about rodya from their interactions, whether its because of a focus on shipping or trying to outright deny there is anything going on there at all
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