Part of the below script is from “Il Procione Tarantina”, originally posted to DA on October 26, 2022. The artwork associated with it will not be posted to my blog due to its use of AI-generated assets, however, the script is still worth salvaging and expanding upon. The artwork above, drawn for National Spaghetti Day (January 4), does not use any AI-generated assets.
[Grime/Griswold household, morning. Gilda is in her tarantella dress, sitting in a chair in the living room, having her makeup done by her grandmother Sharon]
Sharon: “Alright, Gilda. Stay still.”
[Gilda grips the seat of her chair as she has a coat of mascara applied. She bats her lashes as Sharon puts the wand back]
Gilda: “Sono una bella scrofa! I feel ready to dance already!”
Sharon: “Well, you’re not. You still need your hair done.” [grabs a brush and takes it to Gilda’s hair] “I hope you do well at the Cultural Showcase today. Redfeather pulled a lot of strings to get you in, and… who was it that you got to dance with you again? Some girl with a boy name?”
Gilda: “Yeah. Randi Haggard, an old friend of Wendy’s.”
Sharon: “Right, her. And remember, you’re representing the commune, and Marc Davis, and since she goes to Milt Kahl, Milt Kahl. That’s the reputation of three institutions you’ve got riding on this. Don’t let any of them down with a bad performance from either of you.”
Gilda: [as she has her hair put into a bun] “We both agreed she owed me one, since I was her assistant in her magic show. Also it turns out she has Istallion ancestry. Heronese, not Tarantina, but still Istallion, and that’s good enough for me. I wouldn’t have agreed to tarantella publicly if I didn’t do it with an Istallion.” [with the bun styled, Sharon inserts bobby pins to put it in place] “Oh, and don’t worry, if anyone’s gonna ruin the reputation of Marc Davis today, it’s gonna be Margo. She was assigned to do her report on the country of Kyrgyzstan.”
Sharon: “Kyrgyzstan? I’ve never heard of it.”
Gilda: “Neither did I. Margo entered it as a joke because she saw it’s a meme on some quiz site. Sporcle, I think it’s called. She did it to troll her cultural studies teacher, and didn’t think it’d actually be accepted. But it was, and now she’s stuck with doing her report on it. And having to dress like she’s from Kyrgyzstan, and having to make traditional Kyrgyzstani food, too.”
Sharon: “Oh boy, if I know that Margo, this won’t end well.”
Gilda: “It’ll be up to her tri-fold. April made a Kyrgyzstani-style outfit for her, she hates it because of course she does, and I figured out how to make… well, a vegetarian version of something called ‘beshbarmak’. It’s chopped meat, I used tofu, mixed with egg noodles and an onion sauce.”
Sharon: “Oh, so that’s why the kitchen smelled funny the other day.”
Gilda: “Yeah. I also made some for here. I’m having the rest of the Tetrad over, too, so they can have some too.”
Sharon: “Well, I can’t wait to try it. And whatever Wendy and April have.” [beat] “Hey, what countries are they doing?”
Gilda: “April’s doing Scotterland, don’t think I need to explain why it should be trivial for her. And Wendy’s doing Belkium, because she was too slow to call France. Still shouldn’t be hard for her, given she is French herself, and Belkians speak French. Also she does like the Tintin books.”
Sharon: [adjusts Gilda’s bun to make sure it’s tight, then picks up a hair comb, decorated with flowers and ribbons] “What about the food? What food will they be presenting? April did haggis, didn’t she?”
Gilda: [as the comb is inserted, between her crown and her bun] “Ew, gross, no! She made tablet, that’s crystallized milk, butter, and sugar, and Wendy… well, the food part was easy for her, because she didn’t have to make anything. She bought waffles.”
Sharon: “Is that allowed?”
Gilda: “It oughta be allowed. She thought smart, not hard.” [beat] “Alright, let’s see it.”
[Sharon hands Gilda a mirror. Gilda looks at her reflection, plays with her hair ribbons for a bit, then smiles]
Gilda: “Okay, now I’m ready to dance!” [stands up and dances…] “But not alone to the tarantella because that’s bad luck.” […as she sings “Don’t Cry” by Ken Laszlo] 🎵 What do you think about it? / Do you think that is to hide your pride? / What are you doing about yourself? Baby you can tell me, don’t be so afraid and / Don’t cry 🎵 [the doorbell rings] “That’s Randi.”
[Gilda goes to the front door and opens it. Randi is already in full tarantella attire]
Randi: “Morning, Grime!”
Gilda: “Morning, Haggard! You got the routine down?”
Randi: “Of course I did, spent all night on it. We’re gonna knock them dead. And hopefully show the town there’s more to us than pizza and Mario and saying ‘mamma mia’.”
Gilda: “Oh, trust me, we will. Hey, when we come back, will you join us for… what me and my friends made for the showcase?”
Randi: “Yeah, sure. As long as there’s no meat in anything. Remember, I’m one of those fruit-eating chiropterans, not a blood-sucking one.”
Gilda: “Well, the dish I made for Margo’s Kyrgyzstan presentation, it is usually a meat dish, but I made it vegetarian. I’m sure you’ll like it.”
Randi: “What’s it called?”
Gilda: “Beshbarmak.”
Randi: “Besha-wha?”
Gilda: “You’ll like it.” [calls to Terence] “Terence, we need a ride!”
Terence: [comes downstairs] “Alright, alright, let’s get you to your nerd thing.” [spins keys around]
[later that day, the Tetrad (plus Randi) unwind at the Grime/Griswold household, dressed in the traditional attire of the countries they represented]
Gilda: [claps and rubs hands together] “Alright, guys, ready to try some cultural food?”
Margo, Wendy, April, Randi: “Oh yeah.”
Wendy: “Even though waffles aren’t really cultural to us, they’re just a frozen food aisle staple.”
Gilda: “But you know what is!” [pulls out the beshbarmak from the oven] “Beshbarmak!”
Wendy, April: “Woo!”
[Margo rolls her eyes while Randi just stares, though still visibly interested]
Gilda: “I’d never heard or even had any interest in trying this had Margo not decided to present on Kyrgyzstan! For that matter, I wouldn’t have even heard of Kyrgyzstan.”
[the conversation continues as Gilda sets the beshbarmak down, to get the plates out for everyone]
April: “She thoot she’d play a jook, an’ look where it got ‘er! Stuck presen’in’ oan the moost o’scure countreh in the showcehse!”
Wendy: “But, she did get an ‘A’ on it. With our help, but she managed it.”
Margo: “I wouldn’t have guessed anybody in this town had Kyrgyzstani blood in them. Let alone somebody in our class!”
Randi: “Yeah, but you know what, Hynde? The fact they liked your presentation so much goes to show how well you represented their culture.”
Margo: [beat] “Yeah, I guess so.”
Randi: “No, not ‘you guess so’. You did good. Be proud.”
[Gilda lays the plates down for everyone, before serving the beshbarmak]
Gilda: “And of course, this was for Margo’s presentation, so she gets the first helping of beshbarmak.” [puts the beshbarmak on Margo’s plate]
Wendy: “Right on the waffles!” [places waffles on her plate and holds it up] “I wanna try it as a topping.”
Gilda: “Well then.” [places a small helping of beshbarmak atop Wendy’s waffles. She then serves April (who has already put a serving of tablet on her plate), Randi, and herself, before going over to the microwave and pulling out a plate of spaghetti]
Randi: “Geez, Grime, two plates of pasta? You sure you got the stomach for it?”
Gilda: “I’m not just sure, I’m pasta-ive. Haha!” [beat. April chuckles] “There we go. April likes my puns.”
April: “Behd puns’re a weakness o’ mine, ah ‘dmit.”
Gilda: [sits down, placing her spaghetti plate next to her beshbarmak plate] “I’ve got a lot of pasta puns in me. Probably as many pasta puns as your girlfriend has stories about me getting spaghettified.”
April: “Yeah, Jazz’s got a… vereh zaneh ‘magination.” [cringes, whispers] “She’s e’en written a storeh ‘boot meh turnin’ intae an ovine fro’ eatin’ haggis.”
Gilda: “Alright, now let’s say grace.” [she and the rest put their hands together, fall silent, and…]
Tetrad, Randi: “GRAAAAACE!!!” […break out of their prayer fake-out to start animalistically scarfing their food down]
Happy National Spaghetti Day, everyone! I decided as a New Year’s resolution, that I’m gonna make at least one artwork a month, celebrating National [whatever] Day. Not traditional holidays like Halloween and Christmas or whatever, but the fun stuff. Like National Retro Day (February 27th), or Mario Day (March 10th), or Sonic the Hedgehog’s anniversary (June 23rd). All of which I have drawn artwork celebrating before. But I want to be more unique; maybe I will draw artwork for all of those this year, but I also want to try artwork for ‘national days’ I haven’t drawn for before. Like for today (January 4th), which is National Spaghetti Day.
To the artwork.
Since this artwork is about spaghetti and thus Italian culture, I decided this would be a good opportunity to draw Gilda in her tarantella outfit. Remember, Gilda’s Italian. Well, Istallion, in Grunvaliverse terms. I don’t know if I’ve said this before, but in universe, her surname is an Anglicization of ‘Grimone’. Her father dropped the ‘O’ and the ‘N’ from his surname so he could more easily break into acting.
The title is just a pun, there’s no fresh pasta assets in this image. The floor you see here, which is supposed to be wood and stone, was created through a mix of randomly-placed orange dots, inpainting, and my recently-developed ‘color turner’ effect. The sunlight on the floor proved quite troublesome; ASP crashed several times trying to blur it to the level I wanted. I eventually settled on a gaussian blur after several attempts at a zoom blur failed.
I figured out how to draw the spaghetti quite easily; at its most simple level, it’s just a few circles with lines running through them. And extra bumps between the lines, and a few loose noodles, drawn in for realism. I pulled it off pretty well for… what I think is my first attempt drawing spaghetti.
Now to the script.
As stated in disclaimer, I wrote the first part of it back in October. I was inspired to write it by my Twitter friend @jemibuni, who came up with a fictional Scandinavian country called ‘Doveland’ for a Eurovision parody she runs. She even went as far to come up with a culture and history for it, and actually managed to fool me briefly into thinking that it was a real country. Once I realized Doveland was fictional, however, I praised her anyway, as it reminded me of a cultural showcase from my high school days, that had presentations on various countries, as well as cultural dances, food, and even tarot card readings and a henna tattoo station. I remember wanting to participate in it with a Kyrgyzstan presentation the year my class that got to present, but I never got to, because my folks didn’t like the idea of me doing a ‘stan’ country.
…yeah, I’m from one of those households. I still wish I got to present to this day.
But hey! At least I get to write one of my characters presenting on Kyrgyzstan. Albeit on a middle-school level, not the high-school level I was denied the opportunity to present it on.
For those unaware of what Kyrgyzstan is, it’s a landlocked country in Asia, west of China, that has existed since the 9th century. Despite its close proximity to China, it actually has stronger political ties to Russia, having once been part of the USSR. Its capital city is called Bishkek, and it has a population of around seven million people. If you’re a Westerner that has any prior knowledge of Kyrgyzstan, it’s probably because you’re a user of Sporcle, where the country has become a meme due to how often people get stumped on its spelling on geography quizzes.
Anyways, entering an obscure country into a cultural showcase as a joke, seems like exactly the kind of thing Margo would do. Which is why I wrote her doing so here. Maybe I should also make an artwork of her actually presenting. It’d be funny to see her wearing an outfit she hates, educational for those that want to know about Kyrgyzstan, and also it’d fill the void in my life that’s existed for… over half a decade at this point, of getting to educate people on Kyrgyzstan beyond its place as Sporcle’s biggest running gag.
Since today is a day celebrating pasta, and the script made several references to beshbarmak (a traditional Kyrgyzstani meal that includes egg noodles), I decided to expand on the script here. I kind of have only a beginning and an end of a story here, but hey, at least it’s a way of giving my old work new life.
Speaking of giving older work new life, remember that the comic adaptation of my first Grunvale/OTOG script, “Gaming in the Gild-ed Age”, drops January 22nd on my alternate, art-focused Twitter account, @TheOfficialOTOG! It’s been months in the making, and I hope you enjoy it!
Until then, though, take care, stay safe, get vaccinated, reject crypto, don’t go toucha any Italian ursine’s spaghet, and happy new year.
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Grunvale/OTOG is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it, as long as you credit me as the creator of the series.
I assume Ken Laszlo wrote “Don’t Cry”, since he performed it. However, I don’t know what record label released the song. I assume either Time, Memory, or SAIFAM, since that’s what Wikipedia says. It’s hard to find copyright information on obscure media.
The artwork was made at a resolution of 5076×2160 (aspect ratio 2.35:1).
The Gallery of Stormy Adler 