♦ Roses and Birds Sticker Progress + Some Lore♦

Some of the stickers I've been working on over the past week ♥ There's a bunch more merch I did over the past week, some is silly, some is more symbolic and serious like this, but I really, really do like this black and white + red style a lot, so I might do more of these types of pieces in the future. I'm likely gonna research on demand printing over the next week or so and hopefully I figure out the whole shop situation soon :D

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I love random lore dumps about all the symbolism in the books, so I hope you don't mind my rambling haha

Birds are a pretty repeating thing within the entire Grimport Misfits series. The most "on the nose" one was Rick calling FJ little dove ever since their first meeting (mostly because neither of them knew FJ's name when they first met, and Rick is pretty notorious for giving everyone cute little nicknames, even to people he doesn't specifically like haha). Even long after they found out his identity, Rick always found "Dove" to be more suited as FJ, to him, presented love, peace and hope he hadn't felt since losing Loretta. Doves were also an element he used in the tie pins I've mentioned in the public posts, as a symbol of their bond.

Crows were an extremely overpopulated species of birds in Grimport. Thus, people generally didn't like them and treated them as pests (not to mention that Grimport, with its extremely underdeveloped infrastructure and horrendous amount of exposed wires cowering the city skies, was not a bird-friendly place, often leading to them setting off fires and getting stuck in the phone lines at least several times a day). Rick liked them, though, because he felt it wasn't exactly their fault they ended up living in Grimport of all places, and always fed them when they were around. Crows, to me, also symbolize what Rick is in the story. In general, crows are often seen as both the carriers of death and bad luck, but also freedom and new beginnings. A little paradox, like Rick is supposed to be. They were also the unwelcome guests, the loud nuisances, the ones always causing trouble within Grimport, yet when Rick cared for them, they could be so very sweet and loyal to their core.

There is also a general theme of a bird Rick sees in every part of The Kostrov Traces. It's not any specific bird, just a random one he notices, which goes along with the titles of each part of the trilogy - CAPTURE - WANDERING - ESCAPE - It's a bird that symbolizes his life path since leaving the Underground, almost like an echo of events to come.

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There's a million more things but I'll leave these for other posts hehe. Thank you everyone for joining this little family here, I hope you're all enjoying it here so far!