#v1 is happy with both but it is glad gabe lets it see the other face more often :]

[cherubchoirs]

Oh I am soooo feral in love with the way Gabriel’s true face looks after his fall! It has this incredibly “gaze unto the abyss which in turns gazes unto you” vibe I love it. And something about the endless cavity just aaaahhhh. Where once was a flame burning with holy passion and devotion is now an endless and consuming maw of rock and sorrow. Does he let V1 pet the bone feathers I must know.

(reference to this!)

aaaaaa thank you!!!! i really wanted his design to reflect "the fire is gone" motif, to be left burned and melted from flames that once composed his very being. his defining feature as one of the four archangels, the eagle that blazed brilliantly to adorn his head, has been ripped out from the very core of his being to leave behind a cavernous abyss that was once the fount of his heavenly fire. just as he had burned endlessly with the fire of god's love, so now he is endlessly empty and his anatomical crown is split so all may see the vessel bereft of its sacred contents. and his face is petrified into that state, it may never heal or change to stand in contrast to the ever-changing, living flames that had consumed him before. only his eyes move encased in sockets that desperately want to freeze them in the same way, but he refuses to cry the tears that should forever lock them in place.

v1 definitely pets the feathers :] gabriel rarely removed his helmet before he fell, and only did so once allowing v1 to actually see him, so it thrills in having so much unbarred access now as gabriel learns to accept himself. it wants to touch him, hold him, experience a closeness it hasn't been able to have to this point....it's a bit overwhelming for gabe at first, feeling unworthy of so much affection and thinking v1 must be doing so as consolation. but it becomes increasingly apparent it's enamored with his face, finding it far more compelling, more beautiful in its aesthetic sense with it being scarred. like all the new features he's acquired, it shows what he chose, it's an unmistakable emblem of his autonomy. this is its gabriel, the one that it loves and knows...and besides all that, it just plain thinks he looks good yk

[cherubchoirs]

whenever i listen to Wine and Wheat by Madds Buckley, every time i just find myself thinking about your Gabe and V1... My Love Is Sick by the same artist makes me think of Michael and V2 and aaaa i love these archangels and their funny robots!! i love your writing and art for them so so so much

ooouuughghhh yesss the interplay between gabriel's love and his deconstruction is SO important and that's just what this makes me think of....an angel's entire being and status is defined by their relationship with their faith, it is central to what they are, so his severing, no matter how necessary, sees him panic- and grief-stricken many times throughout the process. his relationship with v1 is really his only anchor, something he clings to especially early on when he's sent so adrift and more often than not feeling tainted and corrupt - yet in v1 he feels moved by that faith so core to what he is. v1 has radically altered everything about his world, it destroyed the paradigms it was built on only to rapidly construct something new, something wholly individual to gabriel, yet it also awakened his faith after so long of it lying dormant in the cold halls of hell. i talked about the line "now this is a fight worthy of god's will", spoken by gabriel as the apostate of hate, but that line is pivotal to what he's experiencing - it is rapture, religious ecstasy of the self and of the one that evoked it, v1 reviving his love of god in the total absence of that very deity. it is an explosive moment, it is redefining and empowering, but its other side is blasphemy, sacrilege, profanity. and gabriel cycles through both, at once bursting with all that he is and loving v1 to the point of worship, but then devoured by the sin of his guilt, by his hellish punishment...how he must contend with it even, that his happiness isn't permitted. for so long he is forced to believe he is incomplete without the love of god and that his joy in himself and v1 is transient, illusory, and evil at its root.

GLAD I CAN GO CRAZY ABOUT MIKE AND V2 TOO....their relationship is very much defined by two parties who do NOT want it. michael in particular has never gotten close to anyone, not since the age of innocence, far too traumatized by his losses to ever seek out even friendship. v2 believes its deeper emotional life is its failing in hell, setting it apart from all the other machines, and besides....it sees the death in this world. anything could go at any second, and mike is topping that list. so when they do start falling in love with one another, it absolutely feels like a sickness. michael's state can't be ignored, particularly as it progresses and it begins causing bouts of severe illness - it feels cruel to him to let v2 in knowing he's dying, and v2 hates that it seems to have fallen for the one person in all this guaranteed to leave it. but it just. it's too much for both of them, how much they see themselves in the other, how much they can be understood on a level no one else is able to, and all the reminders of michael's time winding down soon serves as no barrier. v2 calls on him when it needs help, soon it's the only one beside raphael that he trusts to care for him when he's sick, and they lean on the other for all the support they can't find outside one another. the way this will end isn't quiet between them, they both acknowledge michael's rot, far beyond what the other archangels do...but v2 won't leave him now. it will work on a treatment for as long as mike lives, it will talk him through his grief and share in it with him, and it will be with him whenever this ends.