Seven Heavenly Virtues - Blog Posts

Another old piece, this was part of an AU I had of the homunculi.

It was a 7 heavenly virtues AU since that hasn’t been done before surprisingly?? This is supposed to Kindness, aka Envy. I plan on drawing the rest but, it’s taking some time.

Also, I forgot their wings so, there’s an alternate picture with small bs excuse for wings pffft

When it comes to artistic personification of the deadly sins, Lust is usually the ONLY ONE ever designed to be the OBJECT of the sin rather than the sinner. Greed? They tend to design some one who LOOKS greedy. Sloth? Lazy person. A lot of these design choices kinda reveal how the creator views people in general (wow you made Gluttony or Greed fat, how original, so groundbreaking) but LUST? Lust is usually just… a hot chick. Who makes OTHERS lust but she herself often isn't running around acting inappropriately horny or anything. She's just kinda there. Maybe a bit flirty but otherwise the whole intent is to make the AUDIENCE feel attraction and that's how they associate it with lust. The Greed character won't make the viewer feel greedy but by god with Lust this is all we GOT. (Before you ask, I only half-count the FMA versions of these characters since they had these names but their origins were more complicated than Being Literal Sins)

I want all or nothin' here. Make the personifications ALL like Lust, maybe! Make it so their designs are only hinting at these things but the MAIN THING they can do is make OTHERS feel these things. Greed? He's a crypto guy who can manipulate people into screwing over others for easy cash. Sloth? The dude commenting "lol who cares, no one cares, just chill" at even the most horrible tragedies in the news (We can also change this one to Apathy and throw THAT deadly sin in, I just like that concept as a sin), make Wrath a reactionary podcaster or something. Make them make OTHERS sin.

Or, go the other way, and have them all LOOK like the sinners, and include Lust IN THAT. Just design some gooner who hasn't seen a real woman in six weeks and comments on every selfie they see online judging them for not looking like an anime waifu.

COMMIT TO THE BIT, PEOPLE, this mixed-up message is WEAK

So, I just rewatched the pilot for The Gaslight District and a thought occurred to me. During Ken's confrontation with Temperance, the audience is specifically led to believe that the secret the Virtue is keeping for Ken directly relates to Mel and her being the prophesied human, but I don't think it actually is. Like, obviously there is some connection there, but there are signs throughout the episode of Ken's ongoing animosity to the Virtues that feels to me like it's more than just him being protective of Mel. Obviously, that could be chalked up to his (possible) torture at their hands in the Inferno, but then why would they intentionally make the scene so weighty and mysterious. Mel's secret is known to the audience basically right off the bat, so there's clearly more to what's going on and I think I might have figured out what. I think...and stick with me here...Ken IS a Virtue. Sort of. There're those weird flashes of color whenever he gets uncontrollably angry, where half of his brain is highlighted. That's got to be more than just an aesthetic choice, right? Why the mystery of it all if it's not important. So, my theory is, that the version of Ken the Butcher we see in the Inferno, is not fully him. Not yet at least. I think that a Virtue replace half of the Butcher's brain with its own. It makes a certain amount of sense; the Virtues are basically just brains after all. Now, why would a Virtue do this, why would one of the seeming leaders of Paradise Lost physically bond themselves to the body of a rotling, which they all seemingly have nothing but disdain for? I think it has something to do with the rotling's immortality. The Virtues don't appear to be immortal in the same way, not based on what we've seen so far at least. I also think the reason might have something to do with which Virtue Ken might have gotten his half-brain from. I think it was Kindness. Not only is it the one that fits most closely with the name Ken, but I think it really fits with his personality too. You can tell how much he cares about people; not just Mel, but everyone. Everyone except the Virtues that is. It also sort of works narratively. All of the other heavenly virtues could easily be corrupted into concepts related to purity, duty or other sort of authoritarian ideals, but you can't really do that with true kindness. It seems pretty obvious to me that whatever the relationship between the Virtues and the rotlings is, it is clearly the Virtues who hold most of the power. I wouldn't be surprised if they turned out to be responsible for the apocalypse of the distant past (there is some obvious biblical symbolism there with the flood and the whale), or even the Black Hand and the rotling's horrific immortality. I imagine the supposed embodiment of kindness itself would have a hard time going along with things at that point, especially if the Virtues were then planning on wiping all of the rotlings out. It might even drive them to take drastic action. I think there's something poetic about the idea that Kindness is engaging in such cruelty as we see Ken perpetrate in the show in order to prevent something even worse from happening. I also definitely think that Temperance was the one who performed the surgery, hence why they knew the truth of everything. The butcher's knife, possibly the entire butcher persona, is there to explain away the headwound that would never really heal on a rotling body. Speaking of bodies, I think that what's left of the original Kindness, the other half of their brain and what not, is what is inside the pseudo-egg thing inside of the laboratory that Temperance is seemingly keeping alive for some reason. Thoughts?

*Small edit because I was wrong about the knife being there in the flashback scene