#and also because the wings and ears and crowns felt too cluttering

[bunnieswithknives]

YO I LOVED YOUR ANIMATIC ON YOUTUBE

Also, are you on the "Peri's a bit more magically powerful but suppresses it bandwagon"? Because I noticed that Wanda and Cosmo have regular human ears while Peri doesn't.

Eneways Have a Good Day!!

YOU KNOW WHAT I actually hadn't heard that headcanon yet when I made the animatic but the more I think about it the more in love I am with the idea.

I would be so ironically tragic if part of Peri struggling so much to look human was a direct result of how powerful his magic is and having to suppress it ♥

POV the one thing you want most in the world ia specifically unavailable to you and you only because of something many would call a gift

[knight-a3]

Hazbin Hotel Sketchbook 2: Part 2

Masterpost

Morningstars

I will have some design notes under the cut, so stay tuned.

Charlie and Lilith's snakes are all named.

Notes under the cut to minimize clutter. I'll try to keep it brief since I've talked about a lot of this before, and plan to go into more detail in dedicated character posts later.

Between dolls, snakes, apples, circuses, ducks, etc, there were just too many motifs/thematic elements to shove onto just Lucifer. So, I streamlined and distributed. Lucifer is goat themed, Lilith is snake themed. Charlie is a mix of the two. I also use this to partly to imply that "the Devil" is not solely Lucifer. But humans mistake various different demons as one character.

Charlie:

Her goat traits were inherited from Lucifer. Hooves, ears, etc. Also the tail. Her hair is designed to look like a goat tail.

Snake traits were inherited from Lilith. Vertically slitted eyes, hair snake, etc. Also doll cheeks and pale skin.

I had considered having her hair be totally made of snakes like Medusa, but that seemed annoying to draw, so I just did one. His name is Hugh, short for Hubris, which is a synonym for pride.

Lucifer:

He has far too many motifs in general. He needed streamlining.

Apples- I reduced this because I think it would be more fitting for Adam and Eve. Eve as the first to eat the fruit, and Adam because... Adam's apple, I guess.

Doll- I know Charlie is meant to resemble a porcelain doll. And in-universe gets it from her dad. But I don't really understand why, so I took it away from him and gave it to Lilith.

King- He does not have any real authority. It's a prison, and even Lucifer is caged. Nobody bothers to respect him. So the "crown" on his hat resembles a gate or cell bars

Ducks- I never understood the choice to associate Lucifer with ducks. And thematically, I can't really justify it. So...um... sorry, but no rubber duckies.

Goat- From what I understand, goats as a demonic symbol comes more from pagan influences rather than the Bible. Overall, Lucifer is a goat because he's been assigned the blame for all the evil in the world. He's the scapegoat. Placing sin on Scapegoats was a Jewish practice during Yom Kipper.

Lightbringer- the word lucifer is used once in some translations of the Bible to describe the arrogance of the King of Babylon in the book of Isaiah, but not as a name. Instead of directly translating the Hebrew word that meant "light bringer," "morning star," "dawn bringer," or "shining one," the Latin term was used. Lucifer often referred to the "star" that is the planet we now call Venus. It would be used to represent pride because it rose and fell before the sun. So the instance of lucifer in the Bible isn't even used as a name, and didn't even refer to the Devil. I say all this because I think it fits the scapegoat theme, and it's why I put a star on his tail.

Wings- Seraphim are described as having 3 sets of wings. Rather than deal with all that or even try to figure out the anatomy of that, I just gave them three sets of primary feathers, which sort of imitates the 6-winged look but is easier for me to draw.

Speaking of his wings. He lost them when he fell. So he does not have wings at all anymore. If he did, they'd be more like dragon wings.

Lilith:

Lilith is not a biblical figure. The word lilith was used once in just some English translations of the Bible. And it's referring to a type of demon, and not used as a name. Other translations change the term to shriek-hawk or similar terms, and is listed with various other night creatures. Lilith as a character appeared in Jewish lore, and was likely satirical. But away from theology and onto hazbin lore...

Because Lilith was originally created as a wife for Adam, she felt treated like an object or plaything rather than a person. So when she fell, she picked up a little bit of a doll motif that isn't prominent in these drawings. I essentially traded the doll features instead of horns. I'm still workshopping specifics.

She was just as involved(if not more so) with offering the fruit to Eve. Thus, she gets the motif of the snake. I didn't want to make her hair entirely snakes, because the long flowing hair seemed like a prominent design feature for her. So I opted to give her 7 hair snakes, one to represent each deadly sin/ring of hell. They're all named.

Pride= Vani (Vanity), she's the one on the top of her head.

Greed= Ava (Avarice)

Lust= Libby (Libido)

Envy= Desi (Desire)

Gluttony= Tony

Wrath= Irene (Ire/Irate)

Sloth= Sloth (too lazy for an actual name). He's the one coiled around her neck, usually sleeping. He also comes from the left side of her head.

Vaggie:

I leaned into the moth elements in her design. I think it was the Condalia Silk moth that I used as as my main reference.

When she fell, she was transformed into a demon like everyone else. So she isn't really an angel anymore and bleeds the same as the other sinners. Not even Lucifer really counts as an angel anymore, due to the corrupting nature of hell.

When Vaggie regains her wings, they are no longer angel wings but are instead moth wings to match the rest of her. They actually double as her hair via magic logic because I like it that way, and it lets me reference some of her older designs.

[bunneclair]

I have something for you guys ….

here are my redesigns of the four known 7 deadly sins from the hellaverse! I’ll go in order explaining.

Here’s Lucifer — the adjustments I made were primarily to his hair and smaller features, such as giving him goat eyes, a snake themed cane, and pulling more classical and biblical inspiration forward. I love a lot of the artistic liberties in the Hellaverse designs but I do think that him being a curly-redhead is a pretty important thing that I hated to see left out of his design. I also gave him hooves and claws because I felt like he was a bit too human compared to the other sins, and wanted to make him stand out a bit more!

Next is Asmodeus! My main focus was to make it more evident which sin he represented — while I love Ozzie’s design, I felt like his color palette could be slightly more representing of the sin of lust, so I shifted toward warmer toned colors such as red and purple, while sacrificing the green and blue. I wanted to bring across more gender-fluidity since lust is something I think it is important to represent through various gendered lenses and so I went for the whole upper-half masculine lower-half feminine thing that you see here with a vest+button up and a long slit skirt! I also wanted to show more heart motifs that appear to be evident in ironically all of lust and its inhabitants besides Ozzie most of the time, and so I curved his tail and head feathers in a way that made heart shapes, and I placed Bull and Ram in a way where they’re more visible and stand out more so as their own little entities since it’s implied they’re separately sentient.

My girl Beelzebub! I LOVE her design, but I do feel like it leans heavier toward hellhound (and fox somewhat) and not enough toward her insect features, so I gave her Bee stripes as well as putting more emphasis and effort into her wings. I kept the multicolored lava lamp hair and belly but made an extra effort to highlight the gold in it to emphasize the honey/bee theme, while also placing this texture in other places such as her paws and inner-ears. I also gave her a honeycomb crown, and more loose-fitting flowy clothing to display her fun and laid-back nature, while referencing her bee themes again by adding a yellow gradient meant to mimic pollen that gets stuck on bees during their pollination process. I also gave her the funky bug eyes :) anddd sorry but I took away the mohawk, it just felt too cluttered for me to draw among other things.

Here’s Mammon! I may be biased but I love his design so much already that it was difficult to change a whole lot. However, I did find things that I wanted to change. For one, you may notice there are hat and no-hat versions of Mammon here, and that’s because I wanted to display the broken imp-like horns I gave him. In biblical mythology, Mammon often disguised himself as someone who was poor or in need so that he would be able to garner profit from pity, and I think that there is no better way to represent that than ripping off his favorite little brand-baby. I edited a lot of the black in his color palette to be gold instead, as well as adding gold to the fingertips of his gloves as a reference to Midas’ touch. I gave him more of a spider-like appearance since according to a lot of the fandom his species is fairly ambiguous, and I made his shirt (or whatever you call that lol) a bit shorter and less cluttered because I often struggled with drawing it. I also attempted to adjust his proportions a bit as I feel like the designs for the fat characters in Helluva and Hazbin often struggle a bit with proportions and it feels important to me to better represent them.

That’s all I got, but I also created my own takes on the sins that haven’t been revealed yet, which may end up being one of my next posts! I’m doing my best to stay active in the art community and this media has given me some motivation and fuel. Any input is welcome as long as we stay positive ❤️

Reminder as well that my commissions are very open!

[bookswitchcraftandcats]

Rainy Days (Part 3 of 4)

Link to AO3 -----  Part 1  Part 2   

It is later than I said I would post it, I’ve been busy, Sorry!

Summary: Emma and Julian are in charge of the London Institute for a week and find a box that once belonged to Cordelia Carstairs and contains poems written to her by James Herondale. The story switches between Emma and Julian and oneshots about things that happened in Jordelia's life to inspire the poems.

Sorry if the formatting for the poems is messed up, I tried.

TW: There is demon fighting and someone gets hurt.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

“Well that one was…” Julian trails off as they both kind of laugh. They felt kind of weird reading something that was pretty personal to them. They put that poem back in the box and started to look for another when Emma’s phone buzzed. She grabbed it from the shelf she left it on. It was a text from Clary.

“Looks like we are going to New York next week,” Emma says. Jace and Clary were needed in Idris for a meeting and wanted them to run the institute while they were gone. It would only be for a few days and they loved New York anyways.

Jace and Clary had been to L.A. recently, though their vacations were far and few with the stress of running and institute. They spent the day by the ocean catching up and having fun. They also played an incredibly competitive game of volley ball and Julian and Clary worked on some painting.

“What are Jace and Clary doing?” Julian asks.

“I don’t know, something in Idris.” Jace and Clary had been going to Idris a lot lately helping to sort things out, after the cohort had been defeated there had been a lot of work to move stuff back to the shadowhunter's home country. 

Hopefully they could just have a relaxing weekend, maybe even find another old jewelry box filled with her ancestors' stuff, though that was highly unlikely. They had been trying to have a relaxing weekend for the past 6 years and were epically failing at something that seemed so easy. Cristina had even made fun of her for it because of how often she tried to take a couple days off and then got dragged back to work. She said Emma and Julian were a “magnet for trouble.”

“Maybe we can go see a show on Broadway next week,” Julian says thoughtfully, “We haven’t been on a fancy date in a while.” 

They really hadn’t been out much, Alec had them all around the world helping because they were so short on people and her and Julian had existence running an institute. They didn’t mind it really, if they did all they had to do was say the word and they would be home, but they loved to travel and explore different institutes. It gave them ideas for what they could do back in LA. 

“That sounds great,” she says. She picks up another poem titled Daisies.

Daisy

I want to take you to the green meadow, Where the sky is blue and wild flowers grow. And where there is everlasting spring and peace, So that we can escape the natures of city life.

I want to take you to were the songbirds sing, Where even the dragon finds fitful sleep. Hope flows through that warm calming breeze, Inviting us to enjoy the wonders the world has to show.

There is no one I'd rather explore it with than you, Nothing it can show me will be as extraordinary as you, And there you'll find a woven crown of white flowers, Because you are always and forever my queen, my Daisy.

Cordelia and James were out on patrol the night before their first anniversary. There had been an increase in demon activity in London with the recent stormy weather. Tonight was no exception to this weather pattern, it was raining cats and dogs while the couple wandered the streets.  

“I hate the rain,” Cordelia says, James responding with a quiet laugh. 

“Hopefully we can find this demon soon so we can go sit by a fire,” he says. 

They were tracking a demon that had been wreaking havoc in the train stations for the past week. They had almost had it yesterday but it just got away. They were now using a tracking rune and a bit of it’s blood that was spilled during the fight. It led them to an abandoned warehouse by the Thames River. 

They cautiously entered the warehouse and the door slammed shut behind them, closing off the light of the full moon and  leaving them in pitch black darkness. They could hear the rain against the metal roof, some of the water was dripping through it onto the floor. Cordelia pulled out the witchlight that Alastair had given her and it lit up the dusty building. 

“Well this is underwhelming,” James said, “for a demon layer it really lacks style.” Cordelia gave him a look and then went to explore further into the warehouse. She stepped in a puddle of black slime. 

“We need a vacation,” she says with a sigh while looking at her shoe. James nodded. 

Out of the corner of the room they could see two glowing eyes as a demon moved out from the shadows. Cordelia had a feeling it was not the only one. James pulled out a knife and hit the creature with deadly accuracy. They hear a flutter of wings and scales above. They are definitely not alone. 

Cordelia unsheathes Cortana, the bronze sword lighting up the dark room. She could see her reflection in the blade, her hair was pulled up in preparation for a battle but a few strands were coming loose and she was wearing gear. She looked at James, both of them had a determined look in their eyes. They started fighting as the demons swarmed down from above. It was all arcs of gold and light from seraph blades. Cordelia wielded her sword as though it was an extension of her own arm and James’s knives never missed their mark. 

James pulled out a seraph blade and named it Raphael. He yelled something at Cordelia but she was too focused to understand it before it was too late. The demon’s claw grabbed her shoulder as she spun and swung Cortana at it turning it to dust. 

They quickly took out the rest and were both exhausted from fighting. James noticed the cut on Cordelia’s shoulder and ran to help her as she practically collapsed into his arms.  The world went dark as she fell into James’s arms. 

When she woke up they were at the institute and she was laying on one of the beds in the infirmary. Her shoulder was bandaged and she could see multiple iratzes. She was feeling much better. She looked over and saw James reading a book next to her bed. He saw her and smiled. 

“What happened?” She asked, holding her still sore shoulder. 

“We found the demon hideout, thankfully you finished them all off,” James said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Cordelia glanced at the clock and smiled.

“It’s technically our anniversary you know.” She said, “It’s past midnight.”

“I know,” James said with a confident smirk, the door opened and his parabatai walked in. Both boys looked far too smug about whatever idea they had come up with. 

He gestured to Matthew standing by the door. 

Mathew walked back in holding a bouquet of daisies tied together with a bow. There was also a small envelope that he handed to James and then left. 

“Happy anniversary Daisy,” James said and kissed her. 

She opened the card and saw a poem written out on the left side. 

“Thank you James, happy anniversary.” Cordelia said happily and returned his kiss.

Tag list: @fortheloveofthecarstairs  @thehotfaeriethreesome  @shadowrunner2000  @alastair-esfandiyar-carstairs1 @surrounded-by-exquisite-clutter @gabtapia  @niathesanctuary-bolastair-kanej @all-thestoriesaretrue

Let me know if you want to be added or removed from the tag list :)

[no6secretsanta]

Impermanence

to: @aowyn

from: @crowmunculus

Happy new year! I’m still the world’s slowest writer but I hope you enjoy this canonverse angst-with-a-happy-ending fic!

.

The other day there was a sparrow trapped in the grocery store; it beat itself to death against a skylight, thinking it was freedom. Nezumi tried to see the metaphor in it, but mostly what he saw was the tiny body crumpled against dirty linoleum, black bead doll’s-eyes squinted shut, little feet curled into fists against its downy breast. 

He understood the feeling at the time, and he understands it now, somehow more claustrophobic in Shion’s sparsely-furnished studio apartment than he had ever been in the clutter of the underground room. And it’s not just that the apartment is in No. 6, it’s that Shion is in it, older than before with that unerring ability to see through Nezumi’s shit only sharpened with time.

When the two of them were at each other’s throats in the West Block, one of them, usually Nezumi, would leave until the red haze of rage had settled. You can’t avoid your roommate that well when the only other room is the only bathroom. It’s awkward, stuck in the same space as someone palpably angry at him, but it’s the bitter cold of early January outside, and Nezumi is afraid that if he leaves now he’lll never come back. Which would defeat the whole purpose of returning to begin with, really. 

So this is how they’re spending their shared day off: in opposite corners of the room, not speaking. Shion had always been skilled at making his silences loud and his tenure as a politician had honed that skill into an instrument of torture. It sets Nezumi on edge, that tense feeling of possibility, the static in the air before a lightning strike. He wanted that silence to break and worried he’d be the one to break it just to hear it break.

It’s not you, it’s me, flits inanely across his thoughts before Nezumi can shoot it down with prejudice. That would make it sound like Nezumi wanted to end whatever it was between them, and that was also part of the problem, wasn’t it, that Nezumi had been living with Shion in No. 6 for months without either of them putting a name to their relationship. 

For Shion the reason is likely something stupid and romantic, like not needing the reassurance of a label to know how he felt. For Nezumi, it’s fear, simple fear. The same fear he’d traveled the world to escape or to discard in pieces out in the wasteland. Fear was what had held his tongue from speaking the truth last night when Shion suddenly said, apropos of nothing, “We should buy a house.” 

They’d been watching old prewar Christmas movies together from bed, Nezumi only half-awake with his head resting in Shion’s lap over the covers, Shion’s fingers reverent while he combed them through Nezumi’s long hair. “We?” he said weakly, a mistake that opened the floodgates of Shion babbling excited words like water. 

“I can cover most of the down payment for the houses I’ve been looking at, I’ve had more time to build up my savings and I don’t want to deplete yours like that, but I’ve been looking into it and with my credit rating we could get a good interest rate on a mortgage, and if we’re careful with our spending we might even be able to pay it off early within ten years -” Ten years echoed in Nezumi’s head before the rest of Shion’s words were drowned out by a rush of ringing white noise in his ears so loud he couldn’t hear his own thoughts. 

There was something inside Nezumi, something old and cruel, that took over in his moments of weakness, especially - especially around Shion. His lips moved without any conscious thought behind the action and what came out was “Would your credit rating be enough of a draw for a prospective seller to overlook the fact that I legally did not exist until two years ago?” 

He felt the muscles in Shion’s legs go tense beneath him and that same cruel impulse lifted his head and moved him away until their bodies no longer touched. He clenched his hands shut into fists to keep them from shaking. 

“Plenty of people from the West Block have citizenship paperwork only made after the wall fell,” Shion said calmly, if rigidly. “You know that.” 

Nezumi did know that. He knew because Shion had reassured him as much when Shion helped him navigate the paperwork for his new state-funded health insurance, something he’d never before had or imagined he ever would have. He also knew that the new streamlined pathway to citizenship for West Block residents lacking formal paperwork was one of Shion’s crowning achievements on the Reconstruction Committee. He knew this, and because of what he was he used that knowledge as a blade. 

“I know it was awfully presumptuous of you to go ahead and make mine for me when I wasn’t here,” Nezumi said, staring at the wall behind Shion’s left shoulder as if the ugly popcorn drywall fascinated him instead of simple, stupid fear keeping him from looking Shion in the eye. 

“You promised you’d come back,” Shion said, “Whether or not you would ever choose to use the documentation was up to you, but I at least wanted to give you the option.” His voice was clipped, icy in a way Nezumi did not know how to decode, another reminder that for all Nezumi had grown and changed in their years apart, Shion had too, in ways Nezumi may never be allowed to know. “If I was being presumptuous, it was in presuming you wanted to come back.” 

With that, he sat up and walked to the bathroom, closing the door softly behind himself. He had moved slowly enough that Nezumi could have responded in time, grabbed his hand and asked Shion to wait, to let him explain, but Nezumi could not explain to even himself, so instead he let him go. 

He laid back down on the bed, the blankets still warm from Shion’s body heat, and listened to the dialogue of It’s A Wonderful Life muffled through the awful ringing still in his ears, the words warped by the noise into nothing but meaningless sounds. Mercifully, he fell asleep before Shion returned.

But Shion was of course there in bed with him when Nezumi woke the next morning, because where else was he supposed to sleep? Shion had slept curled on his side faced away, his back to Nezumi’s back. Seeing Shion so vulnerable always made Nezumi feel vulnerable too. Before Nezumi got out of bed, he pulled the covers up higher and smoothed them out, carefully layered back on top of Shion and tucked in around him. 

Then he brewed a pot of coffee and fixed up a cup for Shion first. He set it on the nightstand expecting the smell to eventually wake Shion up, but then saw that Shion was already awake. “G’morning,” Shion mumbled, and that had been the only thing Shion had said to him all day. 

Nezumi knows what Shion expects of him but he doesn’t know if it’s something he knows how to give, even if he wants to. And he does want to, he wants to wake up every day at Shion’s side even if they’d gone to bed angry, wants to commit to this, all of this, even the parts that scare him speechless.

Shion, as always, ends up being the brave one. He speaks first and says, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that last night.” Nezumi dares to lift his head from his book and is captured in Shion’s gaze, held hostage by the honesty and warmth in his eyes.

He means it. Shion really thinks he’s the one who should be apologizing, and Nezumi has to choke back a surge of incredulous anger. It’s not fair to Shion that Nezumi keeps lashing out against him when the one he’s really angry at is himself. “Don’t apologize,” Nezumi says, but it’s sharp and sounds like an accusation. He closes his eyes, forces himself to just breathe, slowly in and out, and continues, softer, “I shouldn’t have said what I did. It wasn’t right to belittle how hard you’ve worked to fix this place.” And make it somewhere I could live. “There was no reason for it except to piss you off.” When Nezumi chances a look, Shion doesn’t look convinced, still with that concerned, horribly earnest expression on his face. 

“You’re always sarcastic, I shouldn’t have taken it so personally -”

“Maybe I shouldn’t be,” Nezumi cuts him off, and his ears are ringing again, “I shouldn’t be sarcastic about things that actually matter. I didn’t mean it. I only said it because - because…” His tongue sticks to the roof of his dry mouth. He still can’t explain it to Shion, even now. He was supposed to be better than this by the time he returned. 

He doesn’t hear Shion crossing the room to reach him and flinches on instinct when Shion touches his wrist, but catches himself in time to grab Shion’s hand in his own before he can finish pulling away. 

“It’s okay, Nezumi,” Shion says, gently squeezing his hand. He’s kneeled on the wooden floor in front of Nezumi’s chair, Nezumi’s hand now cradled in both of his, the contact both a manacle and a comfort. “I brought it up too suddenly. I don’t want to pressure you or make you feel uncomfortable. We don’t have to talk about it now.” He’s as genuine as he always is, but it’s also an excuse for Nezumi’s sake, it’s Shion giving him an easy out. 

Nezumi looks past Shion to the window on the far wall, the blue sky beyond it, thinks about a broken neck and broken wings and how desperate a creature would have to be to die that way.  

“In the West Block. Before you were there with me,” Nezumi says, haltingly, “The one thing, the only thing I could rely on staying the same day in and out was…” He stalls out again, and Shion brings Nezumi’s hand to his lips, kisses his knuckles like a knight pledging fealty. “…The only constant was that everyone who had ever cared about me would still be dead. And it was a relief that they were still dead because that meant I couldn’t lose them again.”

Hope, in Nezumi’s experience, hurt more than grief. Death was permanent, inarguable; hope is a chronic ache. It hurts to even look at Shion sometimes. 

Shion’s soft, even breaths tingle against Nezumi’s skin. He focuses on that, the rhythm of it, the barely-there whisper of sound, and the roaring in his head ebbs away as Shion replaces it. “I’ll still want you in ten years,” Shion says with the weight of an oath. “Whether we’re living here or in a house - that’s not what matters to me.”

“I know,” Nezumi says, and he does know. Shion could be happy living in a cardboard box beneath an overpass so long as Nezumi was there with him. “I wouldn’t object to a larger floor plan, though.” 

Shion’s responding smile is bright as to be blinding. Helpless to him in the best way, Nezumi smiles back, pulls him in closer, and gives in, for the moment, to hope.