Henry Ossawa Tanner's depiction of the Annunciation will always be my absolute favourite but I really do think there is something so ethereal and endearing about his study before the official artwork was completed.
The way Mary sits with almost no visible features but you can still tell that her hands are clasped in prayer- the angel Gabriel manifesting as a single stroke of light as the paint and room seems to contort around him. Easily one of the all timers.
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I love that neil is pure of heart, dumb of ass, and also deeply fucked up
He’s just a little guy! All his friends love him and want him to take care of himself! He’ll totally kill that guy for you though. He protects his friends by mouthing off to horrifically dangerous people. He can’t tell that he’s being flirted with. He always respects his boyfriend’s boundaries and is hyper-vigilant about consent. He also got too distracted listening to his worstie scream in pain after his bf broke the guy’s arm to pay attention to his team checking on him despite the fact that the aforementioned bitch nearly killed him on national TV. He got his bf to agree to stop protecting him so that andrew wouldn’t feel responsible when he was inevitably killed. He comforted himself while being held by the FBI by replaying his father’s execution in his mind over and over. His only regret was that his mom didn’t live long to see his dad dead. But! He’s also so sorry that he upset his boyfriend by getting kidnapped. He put a hit out on a rapist over lunch. He insults the FBI. He challenged the yakuza and won and watched his enemy get executed and then was so giddy over it that his team wanted to know what was up and he lied to them. He’s a fucked up little guy. A Creature even. Morbid as hell. Deeply unserious. Protective as fuck with a mean, vindictive streak a mile wide. Would do anything up to and including killing someone for his found family. What a guy. Damn.
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No Man Left Behind / Something Worth Dying For
REQUESTS / BLOG EVENT
Request from @razzbberry - Palette #1 - Alpha-17, Cody - Death of the Cynic in Me
Notes and close-ups beneath the cut!
Notes: I think Seventeen would, both subconsciously and consciously, keep his cynicism as long as possible. It’s how he thinks the world works, but it’s also a survival tool. It’d be a very, very slow death.
It’s put to the test with Cody — not because Cody is special among his fellow clones, but because he’s one of the first that bothers to fight Seventeen on his own terms. The argument is always the same. Cody wants to talk about what he hopes to be, someday, after he is a soldier. Seventeen thinks he’s stupid to think that’s possible, or that he’d be capable. Cody knows it, and he, might not be. Seventeen thinks it’s even more stupid, in that case; what a waste of energy.
It develops. When they’re older, and in the thick of war, one day Cody risks his life for the chance to save a brother that was going to die anyway. Seventeen yells at him for fifteen minutes once he’s conscious about luck and stupidity and the trouble it’s causing Seventeen and the false hope it’s engendering in others. Cody says he can disagree all he likes, but he doesn’t give a fig, respectfully. Seventeen thinks Cody can go try to get blown up again, if he thinks so.
There’s no point fighting for a better tomorrow; they’re bought and paid for to fight for something else, FOR someone else. Seventeen is prepared for being fodder, as a result. He’s prepared for unfairness and the bleak life that they’re living. Instead he watches as Cody defeats odds time and time again, somehow managing to balance being an exceptional military leader with a secondary war to live for something more, running himself ragged and — inexplicably — gaining ground. Each of those little victories are a little death for Seventeen’s cynicism; a chipping away. A little seed of Cody’s brand of hope takes root, awkward and begrudging, fond and tentative.
Then Order 66 happens. Cody’s efforts for a better life are in vain, and Cody himself-
Cody may never know that Seventeen was right abut just how helpless they were. Now he only knows that Seventeen is a traitor, apparently, because Seventeen — for once in his life — was the lucky one and his chip malfunctioned.
And Seventeen could say ‘I told you so’. He could rest, vindicated and resigned, in the fact that every dream Cody built up and everything he thought was worth dying for is pointless, now — as he always suspected it would be.
But it isn’t fair, even by Seventeen’s standards.
“What are you doing,” Rex will rasp, caught in a strange role reversal as Seventeen paints an armor set with Cody’s golden colors. “He’s not coming back, Seventeen. He can’t. It’s pointless to keep going after him, you need to stop.”
“No,” Seventeen will answer, unbothered, “I don’t think I will.”
“We can’t — we can’t keep hoping,” Rex says, because he means he will probably have a breakdown if he imagines there is even a pitiful possibility he could save his brothers and then have to turn away from that scrappy chance for the greater good and Rebellion, and all that. “We’ve got to move on.”
“Go on.” Seventeen will invite sincerely, one brow raised because he knows Rex better than that.
“Do you want him to shoot you?” Rex will finally yell, all knotted up at the thought of losing Seventeen too, even though it’s funny because Seventeen was never kind to Rex.
“He can try,” Seventeen will say, touching up the last of the paint. He will stand, wiping his fingers, and pick up his pack. “See you when we get back, then.”
Alt version:
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