Me: Hmm Time To Google Something

making every conversation into being about The Character with the same reliability and conviction of a youth pastor going “you know who else partied? our lord and savior”

actual tears running down my face

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.

the age-old discussion as to whether or not ben barnes was poor casting for dorian gray is incredibly funny to me like yes we know that dorian is supposed to look like an innocent blond cherub instead of a dark luciferian daddy long leg prince of sin because literature but it all comes down nitpicking in the end because i’m just sure that oscar wilde the man himself would have been salivating over ben every waking minute of his damn life if he were here

ok i'm sleepy and having emotions and i'm not gonna grab my copy to pull the specific quotes but. you remember that scene in htn where mercy and augustine are arguing. i think it's the "you have rendered yourself unlovable" one. and augustine tells her that he could kill her if he wanted. he could do it without a second thought, could stub her out like a cigarette beneath his shoe, and john would forgive him? john would understand? augustine is his favorite, and they all know it, to such a degree that mercymorn ceases to matter in the slightest?

cool great. now remember that time when john killed mercy? without a second thought? stubbed her out beneath his shoe? and then he turned to augustine and he said, you understand why i did that, right? you know that you're my favorite? you know i love you? she doesn't matter. we can put this behind us. augustine, can't you forgive me?

and augustine says no, john. no, i can't.

cause i'm thinking about that and i'm tearing my hair out. i'm eating the drywall. her death was too far. it was too far and augustine couldn't forgive him. he was right about john, probably more right than he realized, but he could never have brought himself to do it. it was unforgiveable.

i fucking love the locked tomb there are lesbians and death magic and tumblr memes and a character called We Suffer and also one called Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity

the butch herself for mascmarch :)

you should be addicted to shutting the fuck up

You wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid

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."

nona the ninth will always be one of the most beautiful and most painful books in the world to me because. it is about love in its every possible form. it's about the love you have for someone who takes care of you and the love you have for those you care for. it's about loving someone after seeing all their rough edges and ugly sides and choosing to love someone even if it hurts and even if you know it might doom you. it's about not choosing to love someone, but loving them anyway because sometimes it's not up to you to choose. it's about loving the dogs on the street and the stranger you met at the park and the child that never speaks to anyone in class. it's about loving the creases in someone's face when they laugh and the way their hips sway and how they can't stand still. it's about your love for the sea and the pang of grief at the tought that it is being poisoned. it's about the immense pain that comes with the loss of someone you loved. it's about bearing that loss, it's about letting that cut burn because its presence means that there was love. and that cannot be taken away. you have loved, you have been loved, and you always will. and the fact that it hurts and it ends doesn't erase the fact that at the end of the day, it's always love at the core of it all. in its every form and expression, by turning into rage, or kindness, or utterly destructive force, it all starts and ends in love. you can't remove that. you can't take loved away.