Andsilvered - Yet Another Of Devotion's Casualties

the locked tomb series is really like. maybe love doesn't conquer all. maybe love is not pure and good and holy. maybe love is not a white dove come to save you from yourself. maybe it won't fix you. maybe it'll make everything worse. maybe love is dirty and ugly and terrifying and awful. maybe it'll kill you. maybe it'll warp you into something unrecognizable. maybe love is a parasite and by the time you realize it's there, it's too late to tear it out of you, no matter how badly you might want to. maybe it's a cordiceps fungus, tangled up in your nerves, making you do things you'd never ordinarily do. maybe love is a dog with its jaw locked on your arm. maybe love is an angry ghost. maybe love is a brain hemorrhage, a seizure, two weeks of sleeplessness and cracking open your own tibia unanesthetized in a bathroom. maybe it's the ocean you'll drown in. maybe it's poison. maybe it's scary and filthy and difficult and bad for you.

so what now? are you going to stop? are you even going to try?

no. of course you aren't.

hey do you guys know why harrow's name is written as "harrow nonagesimus" in the book sometimes? like i feel it only happens when she's being vulnerable or in a very intimate moment... is there an actual reason/deep meaning behind it or am i just crazy? i'd like to know y'all thoughts

some examples below the cut

from harrow the ninth (chapter 53):

gideon the ninth:

(chapter 19. "look at the key moron, not me" moment)

(chapter 20. harrow calls gideon by her name for the first time)

(chapter 24. gideon hugs harrow moment)

(chapter 25. when gideon needed harrow's help to keep jeannemary safe)

(chapter 26. when gideon wakes up from her nightmares)

(chapter 31. literally the pool scene)

death of the divine ✸

as your flatter talk shivers down my spine i hear the Holy One exposing all the lies (Lord, forgive me, i know my flesh needs to die) x

baal / lucifer / michael from angels before man and angels & man by @nicosraf

close-ups + work progress under the cut

og sketches

cleaned up sketch (i can't perceive my own messy sketch's coherency ok)

1st version. didn't like how thick the lineart and the colour palette isn't clicking with me. is so i scrapped it. decided i want to do frame/illuminated manuscript thingy so i added frame and re-centered michael.

i kind of winged it for the final version, so i don't have progress of me picking colour palette or compositions. idk how i did it, i just did it, it was hard. i had a bad day so i blanked out the entire day to just lose myself in this illustration. and then uh. tada.

now some close-ups:

and some notes:

i know i want lucifer's skin to come across as "gold", so i keep picking his colour in the orange spectrum. bcs yanno--the sun (morningstar). naturally baal is more red leaning, which i think also suits his lion associated imagery well (because lion -> strength card (in tarot deck) -> red. idk, it's how my brain is)

originally michael doesn't wear an armour. i decided last minute to put him in one because fuck it; (1) armour cool and (2) i am a masochist ig

both baal and lucifer wear lipgloss. this is entirely dedicated to rafael's (the author. not the angel.) suffering. they share lipgloss by kissing, you fools.

michael has "jellyfish" hairstyle because. the front bob kinda reminds me how catholic friars/monks in certain schoolings cut their hair in that bob hair? yknow the one?? ya?? anyway it's for that imagery.

both baal and lucifer's legs are caging michael. bcs they're what ground him (vices/temptations) ahahahahaa

i actually asked rafael (author not the angel) and he said he imagined baal is a brunette, which is the same like i had in mind. except that baal asked that he got depicted as a wizened old man/wizard. so now he gets a beard and his hair is white. (he also insisted i gave him a stylish beard)

if u look closely at the jewelries the demons wore; one of lucifer's rings and baal's visible earring have gemstones the colour of michael's eyes

in return, michael's sash is the colour of the demons

baal has a ring with heliodor (yellow) for lucifer, and lucifer has a(nother) ring with red ruby for baal

baal's other gemstones are topaz and lucifer's are yellow jasper

both demons have pearl necklaces. they're supposed to represent michael('s wings ahahahahahaahaha)

my headcanon is that michael's wings are brown like sparrow's actually. BUT during the war, god gave him more power and authority and my understanding is that he got tempered into a perfect sword; so his wings turned white. when book 3 came out and they finally bang (I FUCKING HOPE THEY DO. RAFAEL. THIS IS FOR YOU RAFAEL.) his wings will turn brown againehehhehe

lucifer's coat has wing-like cut at the ends to represent his no longer existing wingsbye

michael is blue because one time i shared this imagery with rafael; michael wearing blue because of the same reason virgin mary is depicted in blue. god's favourites are in blue; fated to suffer and be left behind.

fin.

saints against god

we are so back

ib; flower idea credit to @potato-lord-but-not ..? (hope tag okay)

i would be feral abt t4t paldulcie

adds such a great layer to the ambiguously erotic long distance mentorship situation… dulcinea as a trans elder… i’m frothing at the mouth

SEE i wasn't thinking of Dulcie as a trans elder in this situation, I think Juno Zeta would put her her son on blockers aged 10 and be the kind of mom to have a toddler portrait tattoo redone to be like, still extremely binary but now the baby is dressed in blue with a baseball cap.

specifically I want to explore the experience of being trans and having these kind of... long distance, no faces, text only relationships where you can feel fully affirmed and the disconnect that then exists between your real world experience, and how this interacts with of course also being critically ill and not wanting anyone to see you because of that. the compounded body horror and also then, intimacy when there IS someone you trust to see you sick, see you naked, and the way that interacts with the vulnerability and exhaustion of sickness,

and there's another layer I really want to explore regarding how critical illness i.e. cancer can often impede or slow medical transition while ALSO drastically shortening the time in which one has to make these decisions. to quote my favorite movie "there is still time", but what if there isn't? what is there ISNT time? what if you're dying, and you want to die in the body you want to be remembered in, but you don't know if you'll get there? there's a horror in that. this quote from harrow the ninth:

"“The only thing that ever stopped me being exactly who I wanted,” she said, “was the worry that I would soon be dead … and now I am dead, Reverend Daughter, and I am sick of roses, and I am horny for revenge.”"

i think this would add to Palamedes' like... "i need to cure her i need to save her" and also heighten Dulcinea's rebellious streak (she wants cigarettes!!! she hates roses!!!) while also interacting with how she DID, in fact, decline Palamedes' proposal. she decided to stay where she was. there's so much here. im getting dangerously close to getting really personal here on tumblr dot com but im shaking the bars of my cage

another tlt comic, ianthe's new arm.

(guys this took me 60 plus hours... please say something nice to me..)

you think this is hot wait til you go to hell for working at gofundme or tumblr and being paid to mark Palestinians trying to survive as spambots

please be nice to me. i am a thousand years old and very shy