#Xaphen

[koruga]

Number 6 for your oc questions?

6: Two OCs of yours that look alike despite not being related?

I reuse a lot of elements of my OC designs, and sometimes whole-cloth recreate them cross-fandom or in new projects. The first thing that comes to mind, though, is Xaphen (they/them) and Uriel (they/she) from my angel stories -- both of them are flame-based, and while their 'true' forms are relatively different-looking, their human guises ended up looking really similar, mainly due to my choice for their hair.

They used to look even more similar, but I've defined their designs throughout the years -- this story is around a decade old, and my art's improved a lot since then.

For a somewhat sweeter answer, though, my OC Edith Truscott-Fanshawe (she/her) shares a lot of visual similarities with my friend @cadyllonflow's OC Solana Bradshaw (she/her), and they're both English as well, though from different parts of the country. As a result, Lana often ends up adopted (or at least accepted, if she's too old for adoption proceedings) into the Truscott-Fanshawe family, giving her the loving home she so deeply deserves!

They're also both autistic, though they present very differently -- Edie's expression rarely changes, but she loves Lana with a ferocity unmatched.

[ixiino]

[anissapierce]

Xaphen is such a fun character... love her boundless well of nervous and general other energy

[karagin22]

Everything is darkest," Xaphen mused, "before the dawn."

"That, my brother, is an axiom that sounds immensely profound until you realize it's a lie.” Alg Tar

[incorrect-primarchs-quotes]

Xaphen, showing the sketch of a daemon he saw: This is how it looked like, sire.

Argel Tal: Why it has so many arms?

Xaphen: Those are its horns!

Lorgar: Drawing is not your strongest suit.

Cyrene: It looks just like it to me.

Xaphen: Finally! Thanks yo-

Xaphen:...

Argel Tal:...

Xaphen: Why do you feel the need to do that?

[a-humbletoymaker]

I had quite a bit of trouble doing Xaphen because I’m not super familiar with goth fashion, nor am I aware the goth fashion trends of the 90s. That being said, I just kinda did what felt right for her.

[ID start: the picture shows a crochet doll of the character Xaphen from Brimstone Valley Mall. She has 2 shades of pink and gold hair that is pulled up into uneven pigtails. Some of the hair is loose and on evenly frames her face. She has black eyes and pale skin. She’s wearing a burgundy strapless bra with a gray skirt. She is wearing a black coat that goes past her knees and matching Planck shoes. End ID]

[ask-the-crimson-king]

WOOT BETRAYER THOUGHTS!

Very neat first posting but also excellent choice of first quote, it is a wonderful part of the opening of this novel and helps set up A Lot within it. A friend of mine is listening to the audiobook right now, more for Angron and the WE than Lorgar and the WB, so I'm interested about what he has to say too.

But nonetheless hitting the stuff about Guilliman conquerering for himself and not the emperor is very good and somewhat accurate. After all he does go on to make the Imperium Secundus but also knows to Not rule it himself, which is interesting. Basically to avoid Horus'ing himself.

(If you aren't aware, post-Ruinstorm Guilliman thinks that Terra has fallen and creates an empire with Sanguinius and the Lion, establishing Sanguinius as the Emperor, himself as Lord Warden, and the Lion as Lord Protector)

Also Lorgar and Angron both having their "damage" equivocated here is neat to pick up on. Especially the destructiveness of their ways of thinking and the loop Lorgar is kind of caught up in. I will say I think there's one other self-destructive thing here that isn't directly mentioned (probably because it's kind of Hit On Perpetually) but very good point. The dichotomy between them throughout the novel, especially with the context of Butcher's Nails (small aside -- one of the reasons why I think Lorgar is so obsessed with saving Angron is because one of the eldar they fought called him the 'son of the Blood God' and Lorgar went "OH so THAT'S why-" from that audiodrama), is just wonderful. Both are broken but in different ways and in different degrees. I am a bit of a Lorgar simp so I think Lorgar is """better off""" than Angron in terms of literal brainrot up until that one passage where he covers everything in overlapping text and wonders "if this is what madness is like" and then all things just descend from there.

But nonetheless very good first round of thoughts(tm) I am happy to be able to see others takes on book because I think is good book and I also like discussing book.

okay so, Betrayer thoughts. part one of potentially a bunch

what i've been doing, bc i'm reading this on my clunky old aged e-reader and it doesn't like it when i highlight long bits, and so what i've been doing is highlight a single word when i have thoughts about a passage and then go look back at that passage when i wanna articular those thoughts. so! let's go through my highlights so far

the first one is "Guilliman", from the very first chapter. the passage:

"Young warriors undergoing the process to become Ultramarines, alongside the hosts of uniformed, disciplined soldiers that were proud to serve the XIII Legion. / Damn Guilliman and his empire within an empire. Armatura, the war-world, was merely one globe in the Five Hundred Worlds. How did one man raise such vast armies? How did one Legion command such might? / He [Khârn] knew the answer, unwelcome as it was. Here was the gift of an unbroken primarch. Here was an unflawed genius at play, unburdened by a pain engine. While Lorgar wasted time with the mysteries of the aether and Angron tasted blood from his malfunctioning mind, Guilliman of the Ultramarines had reshaped an entire subsector into the Imperial ideal. Not even Horus had managed that."

SO. thoughts about this passage (no read more rn since i'm on mobile, I apologize):

first of all, i have talked in depth about my thoughts re: how Guilliman is a successor to the emperor and their similarities in why they believe themselves to be better rulers of anything because they look at something being ruled and think "i could do it better. idk i'm just built differently". I don't remember if i posted it to this blog or just talked about it with friends, but i'll seek my words out and either reblog or post them

second of all, i would love to see Khârn's face if he heard the rumors that some of Guilliman's army's girth comes from absorbing the II and XI legions. honestly i think this paragraph is him projecting which like same but it says a lot more about him than Guilliman

third of all, i think it's also fun, and also in service of the novel's whole thing, that Lorgar's faith is equated to Angron's Nails. if i felt unfair, i would joke about it calling catholicism brain damage, but what i think it's doing, personally, is that it's equating their self-destructive thought processes they're caught in loops of. both Lorgar's continuous need to believe in something against all evidence that it might be harmful or in fact might not want his faith, or might only want it for nefarious purposes —the emperor, who accepted Lorgar's worship on the condition that it motivated him to work fast and hard enough at what the emperor considered Lorgar's born purpose; the Chaos gods, who want Lorgar primarily to get back at the emperor and to facilitate their own worship throughout humanity; and Angron, who Lorgar doesn't believe in religiously but who Lorgar definitely believes in more than he actually knows him, and who's purposefully hurt his entire legion for believing in him while being offered by the wrong person—; both Lorgar's belief in all that, and Angron's obsession with pain —his own, and others'— and how his own pain is seen as a reason or justification for all of his actions —both by him and by others, even when that's not the best takeaway exactly—, both of those things are the engines of pain that drive both of those primarchs forward, and they're, y'know, engines of self destruction

fourth of all, "not even Horus had managed that" is a fascinating line; you can have a lot of takes on it, but i personally think it really shows how Guilliman is not actually doing anything the emperor particularly wants. sure, Guilliman is conquering, but he's conquering under his own banner. the emperor made the primarchs to conquer under his; Guilliman is too much like the emperor, though, so the only banner he really knows how to conquer under is his own. it's sort of a callback almost to the conversation in The First Heretic where KP and Erebus and Lorgar all talked about how each primarch inherited some aspects of the emperor; Guilliman inherited his need to be the decision-maker of any given enterprise even if it doesn't involve him, i'd say, the most out of the primarchs. again, my knowledge of Guills is pretty barebones, so this totally might be an erroneous take, but i think it's fun, which is what matters to me in the end, & it's probably not the worst primarch take i've posted online anyway

[tagedeszorns]

After more than two years I'm trying to return to tumblr because it's more intuitive for me than insta and I can add more ramblings to my pics than at twitter.

But I still want to draw dick. And I don't know how strict the famous flag-bot is nowadays. So I'm carefully testing the waters. Full on spacedick with barbs and frills (Slaanesh has standards, you know) still has to go on twitter, I guess.

But maybe Argel Tal-D is acceptable?

Argel Tal, Word Bearer, Captain of the Gal Vorbak, later Senior Partner of a Demon, then Lord of the Vakrah Jal after Isstvan 5. I enjoyed reading his story and found him refreshingly pragmatic and comprehensible. On the one hand steadfastly devoted to Lorgar, on the other a loyal friend to Xaphen, Cyrene or even Kharn. His experiences during the mission in the Eye of Terror are formative and described just vaguely enough that the horror remains on the edge of the tangible, which makes it all the more horrific. I would have wished him to survive the Heresy and terrorise the Empire from the Eye for a long time to come. But - Erebus just happens sometimes.

[coolyo294]

“THE SEVENTH CAPTAIN hauled himself back to his feet, stumbling once and righting himself before his armour’s stabilisers needed to compensate. He was one of the first Word Bearers to rise. The others still struggled, shivering on hands and knees, or were locked in muscle spasms, their twitching limbs disturbing the dust.

Argel Tal helped Xaphen up, receiving a grunt of thanks.

+Word Bearers, hear me well. You, among all my Legions, are guilty of failure. You number more warriors than any other, excepting the XIII. Yet your conquests are the slowest, and your victories ring hollow+

It hurt too much to look directly at the figure of white-gold light, haloed by coruscating psychic fire, telling them with words of thunder that all their lives had been wasted.

+You linger on compliant worlds for years after final victory, driving the populace into the worship of false faith, seeding cults of the naive and the deceived, erecting monuments to lies. All you have done in the Great Crusade is for naught. While all others succeed and bring prosperity to the Imperium, you alone have failed me+”

[coolyo294]

so i’m picking my way through some of the horus heresy novels and this part from first heretic 

“Sight returned, banishing the grotesque feeling of helplessness. Such emotion was anathema, prickling at Argel Tal’s skin with a thousand insect legs.

He managed to look through his dimmed visor, seeing a towering figure deep in a corona of agonising white light. Around the figure, cloaked and gold-armoured warriors hefted unique spears with practiced ease. Each one was the size of an Astartes, and no Astartes could fail to recognise them.

‘Custodes,’ he managed to speak through teeth gritted at the light’s intensity.

‘It’s…’ Xaphen stammered. ‘It’s the…’

‘I know who it is,’ Argel Tal exhaled the words through clenched teeth. And that’s when the voice hit him, hit them all, in a wave of invisible force.

+Kneel+ it whispered with the power of a hammer to the forehead. There was no resisting. Muscles acted instantly, no matter that many hearts fought not to obey. Argel Tal was one of them. This was not fealty, nor worship, nor service. This was slavery, and his instincts rebelled at the enforced devotion even as he obeyed it.

One hundred thousand Word Bearers kneeled in the dust of the perfect city, rendered prone by Imperial decree.

A Legion was on its knees.”

is fucking good

[incorrect-primarchs-quotes]

Argel Tal: I found something that you're not gonna like.

Argel Tal: *Show her a piece of paper*

Cyrene: Well, it sounds like a sheet of paper, but I guess you're referring on what is on the sheet of paper.

-Later-

Xaphen: What's this?!

Xaphen: *Show her the piece of paper*

Cyrene: I don’t know! Seriously, what's wrong with you guys, I'm blind! *angrily points to her eyes*

Xaphen, showing the sketch of a daemon he saw: This is how it looked like, sire.

Argel Tal: Why it has so many arms?

Xaphen: Those are its horns!

Lorgar: Drawing is not your strongest suit.

Cyrene: It looks just like it to me.

Xaphen: Finally! Thanks yo-

Xaphen:...

Argel Tal:...

Xaphen: Why do you feel the need to do that?