I Love Folks Asking For No Spoilers For The Rest Of Gideon The Ninth After They've Read It. "Please No

i just want them to see each other again :(

what if 200 children were killed so you could be born and you carried this guilt with you and you thought you were the most rotten most awful thing in the universe and then your parents killed themselves bc of you so that’s 202 deaths and you were the saddest most desperate loneliest girl in the entire universe and you thought you would never be loved and then a girl loves you so much she KILLS HERSELF for you. so that’s 203 deaths. she loves you so much she wants to be one with you she wants to mingle your souls and so she kills herself even though she knows you’ll hate her for it. and THEN you have to perform a lobotomy on yourself so you’ll forget her so you can’t consume her soul completely so there’s still a part of her that’s alive and untouched by you. because you would rather keep her in a shackle inside your mind than lose her completely to yourself. and also there’s ghosts in your brain. well this all happened to my buddy harrow

you should be addicted to shutting the fuck up

You wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid

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.

Listen. The Picture of Dorian Gray should not be hard to adapt. Drag Ben Whishaw or Nick Hoult or somebody out of the opium dens to play Lord Henry, it's not as if we're strapped for gorgeous dissolute twinks. Kidnap 20-year-old Heath Ledger from the year 1999 to play Dorian. Summon the ghost of Pier Paolo Pasolini from Hell and tell him that if he doesn't direct another indescribably awful gay arthouse pornohorror, the fascists will win. And - this is crucial - make it gay, but in the worst way possible. I want it to set the discourse back 15 years. People should walk out of the theater asking if gay marriage should be legal.

It simply is not that difficult.

nona cow theory

before i read nona the ninth, i saw spoilers that convinced me nona was the soul of the cows john killed. reading the book only further confirmed this

I'm giving Anastasia a try, on the fence

actual tears running down my face

rotating john gaius in my head and how he is both a coloniser and a victim of colonisation and how, when presented with the opportunity to rebuild all of society from the ground-up, chose not to model it after his own oppressed culture, but instead after an aesthetic VERY CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH WHITE SUPREMACY (neoclassicism), and how his daughter is the only thing in his entire, expansive empire that he named in his language in ten thousand years, and how he perpetuates the cycle he himself was a victim of. tearing my hair out tazmuir WHEN I GET YOU

these violent delights by micah nemerever — fav quotes

"Whatever I do has to mean something. I need to make something beautiful, something that lasts. I don't know what, but I have to, if I want my life to matter at all."

"Beautiful things are supposed to hurt."

"You could do anything to me and I'd let you."

"Tell me you love me, at least. Please. I need to know somebody does."

"They wanted each other in the way of flesh wanting to knit itself together over a wound."

"I kill them because they're beautiful, and it's the only way I can keep them."

"What a lonely, dreary thing it is to know the truth."

"I miss you to pieces. Yours always."

"He'd forgotten ever being angry. He felt gentle and endlessly patient; if Julian had asked, he would have happily cut his chest open and handed over his heart, his lungs, every part of himself piece by piece."

"I can't tell you how happy I am to see you" he said, and for a moment Paul couldn't imagine, much less remember, that anything in the world existed outside the two of them.

"Paul lay with his head on Julian's lap, trying to map constellations into the sun-darkened freckles on his knees, while Julian combed his fingertips gently through Paul's hair."

"They kissed each other breathless between each promise."

"They could only stitch themselves back together if they did something irreversible."

"Hard to trust you if you're going to maim me."

"The worst damage humans do isn't rooted in malice but in thoughtlessness."

"I know why you fuck me like you wish you could kill me."

"They were wild and delirious and invincible, and it was strange that no one else could see it."

"Familiar smells, familiar sounds, a life still marred by all its old fractures and disappointments."

"It was the first time he could believe Julian when he spoke this way, as if they were one mind, one heart, one pair of lungs."

"All I want to do is make you happy, and you're the unhappiest person I've ever met."

"I love you. By now you ought to be able to let me fucking tell you."