#in my head not on paper yet

[cryptids-lobelia-garden]

I’m currently thinking about a time traveler Whumpee (we’ll call him V) who did very VERY bad things in the past (like, nearly world ending bad things) and has joined a time protecting organization to try to fix it

(Btw this is Pokémon except I don’t really know much about canon bc I’m still working on getting all the games played and I’m also adding tons of my own stuff, just absolutely making tons of shit up, also most of the Pokémon understand human speech and some can speak it sort of vibe. Also if you know who this is about no you don’t, there’s only like 1 canon character in here)

Anyway, V didn’t know what he was doing at the time, but he almost broke spacetime and almost everyone at the organization hates him over it- in fact, pretty much everyone wants him dead over it, because he single-handedly created a MASSIVE problem that they’ve spent a LONG time trying to fix. The only reason he’s alive is one (1) member of management saw his skills in research and stuff and was like “hey wait stop we should offer him a position in tracking down other time criminals”

So he’s left scared and pretty much fending for himself here, and the guy he’s put under (E) takes him under his wing.

But here’s the thing: there’s a couple people at this organization who DON’T want to hurt V. But V doesn’t know this bc E is playing into his fears to keep him kind of isolated, telling him everyone else here is out to get him, yadda yadda, and then he’s turning around and telling everyone else V is still not a great person

And V wants to fix things, he really does, and he’s trying REALLY HARD to fix things but everyone still looks at him like he’s a criminal and he doesn’t know why because he’s helped stop a LOT of bad things now, but the people that WERE kind to him avoid him by now and the rest still hate him and E’s treatment of him is getting worse

V is smart though, and he eventually figures it out. But by the time he does, nobody will ever believe him, because everyone thinks he’s a manipulator. A liar.

And that’s when things get worse. Because E knows he can get away with just about anything now.

Thinking about E getting a little careless with how he hurts V. Usually he keeps things where they’ll be hidden, but one day, something incriminating is just a little too visible, and management brings V in to talk and he doesn’t want to because he knows these people aren’t going to believe him bc E is pretty high up in the agency and he doesn’t want to make things worse for himself, but it’s the one person on management that likes him (we’ll call him A) and A eventually convinces V to show him the scars

And A is like “…oh shit. Who did this?” And V decides to tell the truth because there’s no point lying at this point, the word liar is etched into his skin a thousand times over, A’s not going to believe a single word, right? Besides, it’s not like E will hear about this.

Well, A listens and E gets fired and V gets put in his rank bc V’s actually one of the best members of the team he was put on, much to his surprise. And things get better, and people start getting used to V and he even gets a few friends

But one day while V is out on a job stopping a time loop or something E is there and he like almost dies

And the agency realizes E wasn’t supposed to be in that time loop. E found a way to travel through time without the agency’s tech.

So once V heals up, he gets sent after E, because E’s been capturing legendaries and stuff from a bunch of different times and just fucking shit up and yeah it’s a whole thing

V goes to a specific time and ends up meeting one of the people who stopped him (C) and C is really suspicious of him at first but when V explains the situation C is like “..oh” and decides to help him out and they team up

Well, V finds E and it starts a big fight and E throws C off a cliff and almost kills V but C is OT human and he survived and climbed his way back up and just straight up kills E (accidentally on purpose) and he rushes V to the hospital

And V’s just. So done at this point, with the agency and with time travel and with everything so he’s like “can I just stay with you I won’t cause any trouble” and C’s like “yeah sure” and they live together domestically now and it’s cute

……anyway uh. Yeh. This started as me trying to figure out how exactly I could write a redemption arc for V and it turned into a (realizing everyone hates him/realizing why/hating himself over it/letting himself be hurt over it/realizing that’s Not Good but not having anywhere to go/finally making it out/trying to actually fix everything/managing to fix things/being tired of being hurt and finally finding peace) arc, and. God.

Currently I have three different hyperfixations going, and it’s Pokémon, Adventure Time, and Epithet Erased is sitting on the back burner but has never really left (speaking of epithet erased Giovanni Potage is really REALLY gender). So. Help.

Btw uh. Like. Are people going to judge me if I? Start talking about who the specific characters I’m talking about are?? Haha I know probably no, I’m just Worried. Uuuuhh anyway yeah that’s the entire plot for a thing I want to write at some point when I finish another thing I’m already writing so uh. Yay

[pastelpaperplanes]

Art Dump!!

want to see me draw a floating head? want to see me do it again? want to see me do it again? want t

[giantenemyrobot]

Working designs for my silly au

[hellenhighwater]

Hmm....how hard can large scale mosaic possibly be? I feel like my plans for the room I'm working on could use something really shiny and impactful and maybe I want to make a fold-down cutting table and maybe I want to do it out of mosaic, even though that will be ungodly heavy.

It's a fun idea. I'm not sure if it's a good idea.

I haven't done mosaic since a one-off high school art class but I feel like the component skills are ones I already have, sooooo....

I have been keeping to a blue and gold celestial theme for both my guest room and my art workspaces, because if and when I move those spaces are likely to be combined. Cutting table, even though it would be for a different room, falls in the same vein, so I'm thinking something with a nice dark night sky and maybe some branches or leaves...

[rrogueamendiares]

Artblock ft. assorted unfinished triguns

[skullsemi]

Believe it or not this account is not dead, I just have been too busy these days so might as well sketch a tired detective, he's got a lot to do but I believe in him

[s-ccaam-era-crepe]

no one prepares you for the exhilaration and happiness that you get from hitting submit on the forms to change your name legally btw

[julijbee]

i kind of miss when he had genuine beef with a 12 year old and wanted him dead.

[erotetica]

Akasha, still mortal. Designing her was challenging given the lack of extant reference, but this is what I came up with:

Apparently she was turned in 4000 bce, so I based my research in the Uruk Period of Mesopotamia (which was named for the Sumerian city of Uruk, now Iraq, where Rice said Akasha is from). In 4000, Kaunakes we’re not yet in style for Sumerians, instead wearing more straight-fitting kilts/net-dresses. I believe those also conformed to the rule of higher status =ankle length, lower class = knee length, so that’s what I did

On the fabric color—I read a paper that posited the ‘net’ of the net dress shown on the cylinder seal linked above/attached below, was actually a dyed pattern. The cylinder seal is dated @ ~3000 bce, BUT there is evidence of ochre-dyed cloth from Çatalhöyük, in Anatolia, from at least 5700 bce, so I think fabric dyeing in a less complicated pattern sounds feasible for 4000 bce.

Given 4000 was also the Chalcolithic Age/Copper Age in Mesopotamia, I wanted to include something copper. While I couldn’t find extant copper jewelry-jewelry, I did find these pins, and iirc Sumerian wrap-clothing was held with pins anyway

Re: necklaces, Akasha’s is based on this one.

I went with Iraqi-Lebanese actress Zahraa Ghandour as (partial) facial reference

Some assorted refs I don’t think are included in the links:

[semothekat]

me when im crazy about two characters that dont even know each other.

Thank you to @oathofkaslana for writing the id for this!!

[whatwooshkai]

HES TOO SMUG‼️‼️BRO DOES NOT HAVE THAT MUCH CONFIDENCE‼️‼️

[blank-house]

either I'm blind or Elio doesn't have his tattoos yet in that photo. But I'm also too damn flustered to look at it closely so idk bcpnaoljh

No you’re right! He doesn’t have his tattoos in that photo. Haha it’s because this was commissioned before the idea had been canonized in lore.

[robotsafari]

i made a lil nobody underling for Naminé. for fun.

the Oracle isnt much of a fighter but when backed into a corner it can use a confuse-like spell that gives you immense brain fog for a while. you wont forget anything long term but those who pursue it will forget why they were even chasing the Oracle in the first place and hopefully move onto something else.

[thatonesimp-e]

Team paper 2

Im actually going to explode

[sisterdivinium]

It’s the questions that keep us going, that taunt us so we’ll come back again and again, whether we’re given any “definitive” answers which we might each interpret differently or left to wonder and imagine possibilities all on our own.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this, warrior nun.” Doesn’t this line invite us to ask who Adriel might be talking to, exactly?

Of course Ava currently occupies the rank of warrior nun that gives the show its name… But we also know Ava is not a nun and that her qualification as a warrior is recent (setting aside the psychological fortitude she surely possesses as a survivor of the traumas that have shaped her past, to be sure). Even from his prison, Adriel was aware of the happenings in the outside world, be it from his connection to the divinium once used in his armour, be it thanks to informants such as Vincent in whatever modes of communication they might have had between them — so Adriel knows this, he knows of how unconventional it is for Ava to be the warrior nun. Isn’t it possible that, in this moment, he’s not talking to her, at least not as Ava Silva, the individual?

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this, warrior nun.” Only a couple of months have elapsed since Adriel has been freed of his tomb and made Ava’s direct acquaintance. Why would he make a reference to the millennium spent beneath the Vatican to her while calling her by her title rather than her name? It certainly cannot be a mention of those two months, as those are negligible in the conscience of an immortal being who has already waited a thousand years for reckoning.

He isn’t hinting at a vengeance against Ava Silva, as herself, even if she is the one standing in front of him in flesh and blood; he’s orchestrating a vengeance against “the warrior nun”, the abstract class of those responsible for his captivity in the first place.

It’s hard to say he necessarily sees Areala in Ava when he says “warrior nun”. Perhaps so, perhaps not. But he does seem to see in the current halo bearer an avatar of someone (or multiple “someones”) he intends to defeat, the echoes of the past embodied in a single woman, a vessel through which their voices may yet ring after they are long gone. Perhaps he can see more than any of us can — just as he sees the wraith demons and passes the ability on to Lilith, might it not be possible for him to see something else when he looks at Ava or, at least, in the direction of the halo?

Could the halo, as once suggested to me by @ghostofcatscradle, carry some of its previous bearers’ “essence” — providing one explanation to Ava’s “meetings” with Shannon or Areala in season one — preserving some portion of them even as it inhabits another woman’s flesh? Could that be readily visible to a being of Adriel’s species and provenance, as the wraiths are?

Or could he think he saw something? Adriel is posed as a much more powerful creature than a human, with much more knowledge at his disposal. He mentions how no human can carry the halo for long before becoming somehow twisted — but what if there is truth in the reversed idea as well and his own long stay on Earth has warped him? Sometimes we find that those deemed “mad” are the most lucid, but would it be such a strange inversion to consider that this amazing being who boasts of his greater lucidity might be the greatest madman himself? He barely attempts to solve the contradictions so clear to Ava when she points out how his discourse of wanting to save the world from Reya's oppression is unaligned with his own forceful, violent methods of combat which cause suffering to the same creatures he claims to champion. Perhaps he comes from a pre- or post- logic realm. Perhaps he is insane. Maybe he is just a power-hungry sophist who will use whatever justification is at hand to legitimate his own selfish cause.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this, warrior nun.” Vindication, yes, but in what form? At the end of season one, Adriel sought to seize the halo, yank it out of Ava and be done with it. In season two, he wants a fight instead of just trying to reach for it and accomplish his goals. Yes, his plans concerning Reya had just been spoiled… But if he had been “waiting a long time”, then this battle is not about what just happened in regards to Reya and the ark. It’s ancient, it’s personal. It’s not just the halo anymore — was it ever?

When Ava resurrects, is that the halo’s doing? When Mother Superion is brought back to life, is that the halo’s handiwork? Could it be sentient as some like to hypothesise it is? Or, as an object said to have been stolen from Reya, is it accomplishing her mysterious will by manifesting such powers? Or could it be that the equivalence between Reya and God made by Michael after a lifetime under the former’s spell is not as true as he was led to believe and there might be another, grander, perhaps even will-less entity pulling the strings?

Or could it be that the miracle is not divine, but Ava’s? Perhaps not even just hers, but something available only to humans, that Suzanne might carry as well, something that recognised her as it recognised Ava while she was brought back. There are no records of the halo resurrecting people…

… But it is said to give different bearers different powers. How or when does a bearer develop a new ability? Is there a limit to how many she can find and use? Might they not overlap sometimes?

Moreover, in an environment that firmly believes the halo is a weapon against its enemies, did anyone ever bother to ask whether it could do the opposite of slaughter, if it could be used for purposes unrelated to war against so-called Hell? It takes Jillian, an outsider to the Order, to voice that curiosity.

For each possibility listed above as far as who is behind performing miracles, what accompanying conclusions might there be?

The halo as a sentient object seems to open less interesting consequences than a world where a higher force has confusing aims or is truly neutral and both favours and hampers the living; or one where even common people, even “freaks”, as Ava calls herself more than once, are capable of miracles, of changing their world given the right support and tools.

We don’t actually need hard, official answers.

It’s the suggestions, the maybes, the could bes that really hook us in — is it any wonder that the more dedicated avatrice shippers are so focused on the potential for that time period spent in Switzerland, off-camera, which we did not witness?

The questions are inexhaustible — even with just eighteen total episodes, even when there was yet so much to see. If we can keep asking questions, if we see the beauty in them and how much more enticing they can be compared to a creator’s answers or incomplete plans (Mary taking vows and replacing Superion, really?!), we’ll have perhaps even more on our plates than another season would have given us. Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t mourn the loss of a continuation but merely to duly cherish what we have effectively received and give it its due attention.

It’s what’s left unsaid or unexplained, it’s what even creators might say isn’t set in stone and still open for debate (such as the halo being sentient or not); the blanks, the doubts and possibilities are where we come in with our understanding or our own stories. Why? How? What if?

Keep finding questions to ask... And Warrior Nun lives on.

[sysig]

@vernors tags are so incredibly correct (Patreon)