"And this instability was made even more precarious by the fact that within it two contrary forces were pulling at me, contending for supremacy. One was the instinct of self-preservation. The second force—which was bent. even more profoundly, more intensely, upon the complete disintegration of my inner balance—was a compulsion toward suicide, that subtle and secret impulse to which a person often unconsciously surrenders himself."
hiiii im making a self indulgent ass post w/ all the fun little details i packed into tip the ferrymen pages up til today (excluding all the stuff thats foreshadowing for later spoilers) im gonna put it all under the cut though!!!
so hi. funny little bg details in ferrymen that i think is fun:
pg2 - Russel's grave! his last name, Marek, is named after an NPC in a really old dnd campaign my buddy jay ran for us back in high school
pg8 - there's a lot here so im just showing all of it LMAO. ambrosia bar back alley in the bg, one of eddie's murals is on the wall, eileen's missing poster is on the left, and as a lil spoiler: one of the ghosts in the background is gonna be a major character in arc 2!
pg20 - one of joey's drawings is of a younger nathan and the other is a blue cowboy, if you know what thats a nod to you know lol
pg20 - Eddie's gifts for the fortunes include a cat angel statue, white lillies (often used in funerals), and a blue candle. most of this is just supposed to be a nod towards who's leaving these gifts
pg33 - this is kinda hard to see due to the coloring (which i plan on going back and fixing at a later date) but the title of this book is "the wonderful world of elevators" which is a taz reference
pg37 - this is more a production fun fact but i made the eyes on the shadow creature in esther's portrait by just heavily editing a photo of my eye lol
pg37 - as eddie sneaks away from the vargas's, he glitches out which is meant to show that he's using his shapeshifting powers. foreshadowing!
pg45 - foreground detail so everyone noticed it but eddies just kinda chilling here when the vargas's enter andy's library
pg46 and pg81 - bim bim the bear's tears match esther's death injuries, he also copies joeys expressions throughout the first arc!
pg52 - the author of this book is mai's dad, arthur!
pg54 - eddie's "tell" when she's shapeshifted as someone else is that the scar over her eye stays no matter what. this isn't the only instance of this, but emily's disguise makes it the most obvious!
while we're at it-- eddie can mimic the blank eyes of ghosts because he knows they have blank eyes from watching paranathan, but he doesn't know what their death injuries like so they can't mimic them.
pg60 - the environments in sarah's station are made of cardboard cut outs, mimicing the kinda toy-like feeling of a giant train model
pg68- anime sparkles
pg71 - my favorite example of bimbim mimicking joey's expressions
pg74 - this is obvious i just really wanna point out nathan blushing when he sees how fucking tall eddie is
pg76 - when stumbling across the recreation of the murder scene, joey and eddie stare at the replica of the murder weapon in horror while nathan looks ahead at the portrait on the wall. nathan has seen this scene before back when it actually happened, it wouldn't be shocking to him but the museum of grief lizzie's made for herself would. eddie and joey, who have never seen the scene before, focus on the replica weapon.
pg83 - joey and esther bein BUDS
theres a few for page 84 so here we go:
one of eddie's murals is on a wall next to an ad for spectech, the mural is mocking eli
glenn and henry from a certain dnd podcast
more missing posters but theyre mega small so lol
pg86 - this is not a small detail i just really, really wanna point out nathan's cut off expression when eddie says this and how joey reacts to it being able to see what the audience cant. makes me insane
pg93 - ghost boxers. this isn't obvious but its 10x funnier if you know that its paranathan merch
pg100 - the newspaper changes to read "He's dead you're still here" when nathan starts to dissasociate
pg104 - this was a self indulgent lil thing for me but my players characters in our interstitial campaign are hidden back here!
pg114 - one of the background ghosts from pg8 is right here highlighted in red
pg117 has two things!
one of the background characters is holding a paranathan phone case
steve and alex of mc fame. this reference wasnt intentional at first but a friend pointed it out while i was coloring and i thought it was funny as hell and just ran with it
pg118 due to A Shenanagin in the tip the ferrymen discord server, corporate art style babe ruth is now a thing in this comic
pg127 - eddie seeing eli in the same room as them and just immediately deciding to leave
theres a bunch more but those are all foreshadowing for BIG spoilers later and this is mostly lil easter eggs/goofs/etc HFJSDHFKDS