#this is especially true for v1 and gabriel though

[cyanopicas]

my contribution to the ultrakill tumblr community for today bc i did NOT finish what i was drawing

[cherubchoirs]

hi! hope you don’t mind me dropping into your inbox, i know you have a lot of other people sending asks already ^^;;

i was mainly wondering if you have any sort of thoughts on a timeline for the rise & fall au, especially at the beginning? i seem to recall michael came back to heaven pretty quickly after gabriel falls, but gabriel seems like he’s already gone through a decent amount of his ‘fallen angel adjustment’ character arc by the time michael confronts him. if there isn’t any timeline though that’s fine of course! i happened to see your “the au is more about character dynamics than hard and fast plot” post after drafting this, so if this question is unnecessary just feel free to go ‘yeah no there’s nothing specific here’ or not even answer! very sorry to bother you about this, it’s just something i was curious about haha

and!! i happened to reread your “the ultrakill characters react to media” post from ages ago, and i was wondering if v1 would find wall-e (the movie, but also the character) relatable? y’know, stuck doing as your programming tells you in a dying world, only to have your life change forever when you meet someone with a white and blue color scheme from up above…it’s kind of cute to imagine v1 wildly pointing at itself every time wall-e shows up onscreen—and maybe pointing at gabe every time eve is there heehee (i found out after thinking of this that several other people have also had this idea. ah well at least it means i can pick up on parallels decently lol) (also. no pressure but if you’re interested in sharing how your lovely ultrakill ocs would react to a piece of media that resonated with them, it’d be super fun to read that :D)

i hope you’re doing well and getting time to take care of yourself!

-the infarmo name anon

omg hello infarmo anon i hope you're doing well!!!

u got me for sure i really don't have a hard timeline for that, but i do have something of a loose idea of how it plays out and what leads up to michael's first confrontation with gabriel as a fallen angel. it is true that mike returns shortly after gabe fully falls, though he does begin by taking inventory of what's happened to heaven in his absence - his homecoming causes great celebration in the wake of gabriel's slaughter of the council, the citizens hoping to finally find security in the rightful prince of heaven taking control. this is of course initially shared about tenfold by raphael and a now (mostly) awake uriel, but michael is a very obviously changed entity who refuses to allow any close contact with his attending angels. instead, he quickly works to stabilize the turmoil of heaven, coordinating raph and uri as well as all of their attendants to gain some semblance of normalcy with the assurance to the people that the age of chaos is definitively over. michael has never been much for addresses or speeches, despite his place as leader, but the little he does offer publicly soothes the population by and large - there is power in michael's words coupled with an impossible calm in measured statements that are never grandiose or overstated. he feels in control, he feels collected and entirely unafraid of his course, making the whole host burst with joy to have such impeccable competence at the helm. to them, michael is the next best thing to god.

this naturally takes a bit of time, with michael only beginning to associate closely with his siblings once much of the order of heaven has been restored, as he knows he couldn't risk them finding out his state any earlier. not to say it's easy to do, but michael gives them enough of a workload to offset any suspicion or concern they might have as they all know heaven as whole comes before their reunion. only when heaven is back into a more stable, self-sustainable state does michael turn his attention toward hell and show his brothers what has happened to him. this....obviously creates a significant amount of tension, but michael refuses to yield or change any of his plans despite their pleading with him - he now will move on to reining in hell, including making sure gabriel is bound to his proper layer as a part of that process. this is really where michael's mental state becomes apparent, holding himself together long enough to reestablish a peace in heaven before essentially allowing his pain to dictate how he handles hell and his reunion with gabriel. SO yea it's certainly not a hard timeline, but it does take michael some time to get all of this done, including sweeping through hell to find gabe - by the time they meet again, gabriel's transformation into a fallen angel has progressed a decent amount.

and oh yes, i definitely think there's parallels with v1 and wall-e lol it knows a lot about being a machine still following its code yet also becoming increasingly quirky due to being left to its own devices and slowly corrupting software over time - it would probably take awhile for it to see the similarities though, since its identity is so rooted in being a war machine and wall-e is. definitely not that lol (i almost like the idea of gabriel being the one to point it out and THEN it gets excited like [O]: .......!!!!!!!!) for my ocs, michael is the type that gets uncomfortable when he connects with something too much, not wanting to be any more in his own head than he already is - he appreciates it in a sense, but he'd never engage with it more than once. raphael's the complete opposite, loving that he can experience connection with humanity in that way and seeing it as this beautiful common connection between all of god's creations. uriel's got kind of a weird outlook, considering he knows each and every time something is made that he finds relatable, and he likely has quite the media library (and i think what uriel connects to is very. esoteric in nature. i just know he has thousands of indie films only like 3 people have seen that he just "resonates" with lol) lucifer would find such things very cathartic if not affirming in some way and would likely take a lot of inspiration from it to funnel his own feelings into a similar work - he sees that humanity has understood deep suffering and he doesn't belittle it compared to his own since humanity must be judged by its own scale and limitations. it's good to feel he's not alone. so basically. they're all into it except for mike lol

[gadgetsrevv]

Harry Kane has declined over the past year. Should Spurs fans be concerned?

If you had to guess, you could probably get most of the names. Over the past 10 years, who would be on the top 10 for most shots attempted in a single Premier League season?

The list doubles as a pretty good summation of the most impactful players in the league over that span. There’s Luis Suarez, who is on there twice. Wayne Rooney is on there. So is Cristiano Ronaldo. The two defining Chelsea players of the era, Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba, both make appearances, as do Gareth Bale and Robin van Persie. All legendary figures, able to prop up the attacks of some of the best teams in the league, all on their own.

You know who else belongs in that group? Harry Kane — or, at least, he used to.

– ESPN’s Ultimate XI: This team would win everything – Ian Darke: What could derail Man City and Liverpool this season? – Graham Hunter: The legend of Samuel Eto’o

In 2017-18, Kane took 184 shots. Since 2008, which is as far back as TruMedia’s dataset goes, only Suarez (187 in the 2012-13 campaign) attempted more. Like Suarez, Kane is the only player with two seasons that fit into that aforementioned top 10, as his 158 shots in ’15-16 rank exactly 10th, and that’s without even mentioning the year in between.

A couple of weeks ago, I picked Kane as the best attacker in the league for the ’16-17 season. That year, he became one of only six players this decade to break the 1.00 non-penalty-goals-plus-assists-per-90-minutes mark. Had Mohamed Salah not put together the best non-Luis Suarez attacking season in Premier League history, I would have picked Kane for the next year, too. With his 28 non-penalty goals, Kane has been surpassed by only Suarez and Salah (31) in this decade. His two-season total of 52 from 2016 to now is the best back-to-back run of the past 10 years; the same is true if we extend it back to a third year. He scored 72 non-penalty goals from 2015 through 2018, and no other three-season run comes even close.

At the end of the ’17-18 season, Kane was just 25, with years left of his prime. Although Tottenham hadn’t won a trophy, Kane’s ascension coincided with Spurs rising into the Premier League top four and staying there. He’d already become a legendary, talismanic figure, winning two Golden Boots in a row. The season that snapped his streak doubled as one of the best individual goal-scoring seasons in league history.

Kane’s doing just fine for England, but goals and impact have been much harder for him to come by at Tottenham, especially in 2019.

Kane was a bona fide superstar with the potential to get even better. Like Lampard, Rooney and Steven Gerrard before him, he’d become the kind of player continental giants like Real Madrid and Barcelona would soon try to pry away from the Premier League.

Except Kane hasn’t been that player since the 2018 season ended, and perhaps even before then.

Last season, Kane scored 13 non-penalty goals, a total that’s been matched by the likes of Yakubu, Gabriel Agbonlahor, Andy Carroll, Peter Odemwingie and Grant Holt. Given Tottenham’s lackluster performance in the second half of the previous Premier League season and their struggles to start the 2019-20 edition, there are plenty of questions surrounding the future of their manager, Mauricio Pochettino, and ever-present stars such as Christian Eriksen, Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld, who all have just a year remaining on their contracts. But the most important question for the club going forward might actually be this one: What are they going to get from Harry Kane?

Here is Kane’s season-by-season goal and expected-goal production, per 90 minutes:

And here’s his shot output:

What can we take from this? Outside of 2017-18, Kane’s underlying performance has remained impressively consistent. In his four other full seasons as a starter (not counting this partial season) he took around the same number of shots of roughly the same quality. The reason that 2016-17’s goal-scoring efficiency matches, and actually improves on, ’17-18 is that Kane couldn’t stop picking out the corners.

According to TruMedia’s post-shot xG model, Kane’s shooting (i.e., where he placed the ball on the goal frame) added a whopping 0.2 xG to his shots per 90 minutes. Finishing, though, is unpredictable from year to year and most players regress toward their xG numbers, so Kane was able to reach the same heights the next year because of the massive increase in shots. The year before produced world-class results on an unsustainable process, and it seemed as if he’d figured out a way to make the results stick.

That, of course, hasn’t happened.

Just look at the massive drop-off after the 2017-18 season. Last season, Kane posted the lowest non-penalty shot, goal and xG rates of his career. Per 90 minutes, he took the fifth-most shots in the league, registered the ninth-most xG and scored the 12th-most goals. He has played only 360 minutes so far this season, but they haven’t provided any signs that the trend lines will start pointing in the other direction, as his shots and xG per 90 are both significantly lower than they were last year.

This is Kane’s shot map from the ’17-18 season. Green dots are goals, and the bigger the dot, the higher the xG:

And this is how last year and this year have looked, combined:

Translating the above, Kane has cut down on the shots from outside the box, which is probably a good thing given how few of them have gone in. And he’s still getting a healthy number of chances from the edge of the six-yard box and in. Except, superstars can’t subsist on a “tap-ins only” diet. So many of Kane’s shots between the six- and 18-yard box have disappeared. Those shots are hard to get, given how that area is always packed with bodies, but basically every elite goal scorer consistently finds a way — whether through intelligent off-ball movement, tight-area footwork to create space, a quick release to get off a shot or all three — to produce a high volume of attempts from that space.

For reference, take a look at Robert Lewandowski‘s shot map from last season in the Bundesliga:

The most hopeful explanation for Kane’s decline is injuries. Normalizing his production to per-90-minutes should eliminate the effects of lost time, but Kane has arguably been playing through injuries for the past 18 months and it has affected his performance even when he has made it onto the field. (Worse still, his fitness hasn’t always lined up with teammates, with Dele Alli battling injuries and Eriksen having endured a tough start to the season.)

More from Ryan O’Hanlon: – Sergino Dest is proof of U.S. Soccer’s progress – Who has been the Premier League’s best attacker, 2010-19? – Why being good at set pieces can win you trophies

In March 2018, Kane injured his ankle in a game against Bournemouth. He’d scored 24 goals in his first 28 games of the season but managed only six more after missing two games because of that ankle knock. Then, rather than resting for the summer, he played a full slate of World Cup matches for England. Last season, he missed eight games with a torn ankle ligament in January and then another nine with another ligament injury in April. He rushed back to start the Champions League final and was completely ineffective, registering just a solitary attempt on goal in garbage time after Liverpool had gone up 2-0.

With two Nations League games with England this past summer, Kane hasn’t really had much time to heal. If he ever gets that, maybe we’ll see his numbers start to tick back up for his club.

However, when asked, Tottenham have been quick to insist that Kane isn’t hurt, and with each passing game, the best version of Kane gets further away.

Kane did add four assists last year to make up for some of the decline in scoring. However, all of his non-shot production — chances created, through balls played, passes completed in the final third — has remained relatively stable or declined slightly. It’s possible that the succession of injuries means the old Kane will never come back. It’s also possible that Kane just experienced two career years in succession — one via his finishing and one via his overall performance — and his true level is somewhere around what we saw last year. A very good Premier League player, but not an all-conquering, world-class attacker.

Given the financial resources of their closest competitors, in England and in Europe, Tottenham must have worried about losing their superstar one day. It’s doubtful, though, that they ever envisioned it would happen quite like this.

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[cherubchoirs]

Do the virtues ever try to teach gabriel (potentially v1 too) about human activities? Like teaching them the rules of basketball just for v1 to make it into something super violent

the virtues absolutely try to teach gabriel about human things! i think gabe was actually fairly sociable before things fell apart in heaven, attached to his role as messenger to humanity and gaining an affection for them that many higher angels didn't just due to exposure. so he's learned a few things from those he used to speak with, especially concerning leisure activities like sports or games and cultural practices (or even pop culture lol), but his most comprehensive knowledge comes from the time he was "active" on earth...meaning a lot of his points of reference are still largely from biblical times lol it's tempered by some bits and pieces he learned from his rare downtime in heaven when he was able to speak with more modern human souls, but he definitely learns a lot more since these virtues are some of the few friends he has left. they actually give him a lot of practical advice, as true angels, while near perfect at their designated roles, have little capacity for innovation or creativity. so the virtues guide him through maintaining a home and tending a garden (one of the virtues is quite old, from gabe's "time", and so knows how to care for crops), as well as offering cooking tips. however, gabriel begins to sort of encourage them to speak on whatever they wish, wanting a refrain from how stressful his life is (and has been for decades now), and that's when they tell him about all sort of other little human activities that he frankly never knew had such breadth and variety

games are a big part of this, and while it takes some convincing for v1 to engage in board games (computer chess......), it absolutely wants to try out every sport they describe!!! gabriel is intent on keeping it more traditional (that is, NON-violent so that v1 is engaging in more well-rounded activities), but then there's things like dodgeball, which he swears must have been made for it (it can't convince him of the game "dodgebomb", which it thinks is an innovative spin on the classic) but one of my favorite ideas is a virtue introducing him to ice skating - gabriel, at first, just sort of listens politely to them describing it, initially not terribly interested in it himself given how cold he always is, how ice is a central part of his literal hellish existence. yet the description won't leave his mind, intrigued greatly by the combination of strength and grace required to truly engage with it as a sport. it pesters him so much that he eventually does decide to learn, he braces himself against the cold because something in it captivates him and he needs to understand what. it's not the easiest learning process, though v1 being with him helps a lot (it falls down constantly and seems excited by the prospect of crashing into things, so his own failures don't seem so bad) but when he begins to understand it, when the parts start moving together and his whole body is working in tandem...it reminds him of flying. the ground is barely there, the friction feels ephemeral, the wind shifts all around him and he feels light again. ironic that ice could give this to him, the very thing meant to trap him in everlasting grief providing the only simulacrum he's found of his lost flight.

[cherubchoirs]

I like to think that when V2 gets revived, it just takes over the neighbouring apartment, claiming that there is no way its living under the same roof as V1 but it ends up spending most of its resting time hanging in their living room anyway because it gets very lonely in its own space and they are the only ones that talk with it because it wants to use their terminal to cybergrind.

OK can use this opportunity to talk about v2's relationship with v1 and gabriel after the initial phases that i've already gone over a bit!! v2 definitely does have an apartment right by theirs in fraud and while it's fairly icy with them at the beginning, it also finds having company much better than nothing and this becomes especially true as it gets more comfortable with gabriel. there's a lot about him that it understands, and he's the most human thing that will interact with it besides. and like. it GUESSES it owes him its new life or whatever. they begin talking fairly regularly, mostly about things that don't particularly matter but that they both have no one else for - much about aesthetics and the natural world (although v2 finds gabriel is much less philosophical than it would have thought an angel would be. so it goes). sometimes, given their verbosity, their conversations carry on and veer into deeper, more uncomfortable territory (their lost place, their respective falls from grace), but one or the other will find a reason to leave before it gets anywhere. v1 is a more complicated issue though.

despite gabriel's insistence that they're like family, v2 not only believes their objectives to be fundamentally at odds, but it also just. hates v1 for what it did. not just killing it, it could rationalize that out to it's own failure, it's own fault, but that it stole from it twice, that it destroyed the dreams that had carried it so far through hell. it knows as a machine, personal grudges like this are an oddity and likely show its ever-multiplying coding quirks, but its psychology has never aligned well with its kin. it does note v1 has changed with its exposure to gabriel, and it easily recognizes that it does love him, it shows him affection, care, and admiration in a way v2 never would have predicted. he changed something in it, it can see how they've moved each other and now are a part of one another...and v1 is making an effort on his insistence. it's certainly not being kind to v2, but it would hate it if it was - they trade sniping insults and constantly get into little scuffles, but the unfeeling hostility once present in v1 is gone. they can exist side-by-side, even swapping some inside jokes between them, and over time v2's reaction to it isn't so visceral....but there's a wall it refuses to take down. it doesn't trust it. maybe it does love gabriel and maybe it will keep loving him, but that's an extreme exception for v1, it knows that better than anyone. it knows how hard it must work against its own code to treat him the way it does, and it can't imagine it ever making so much effort for anyone else. it's inefficient. it's pointless. and so v2's convinced that thing would kill it still if it came to it. if it or v2 let their guard down.

still, it begins coming over more and more as it reaches a level of comfort it can accept - watching its back always, but spending entire afternoons or nights over at gabriel and v1's apartment. i like to think it gets them access to more human entertainment, bringing them movies and video games as an excuse for its presence (or otherwise definitely saying it just wants to cybergrind). it's sometimes gone for a few days at a time, off to a different "home" it has on one of the higher layers or even popping up to the surface, but it inevitably returns...and gabriel's glad to see it's ok every time. this leads to some concern on his part when v2 begins seeing michael more regularly, leading to much more significant lengths of time before it shows back up in their living room. v1 personally doesn't think much about it - maybe it's bored of them lol but gabriel pesters it a bit, making it realize that maybe it actually like. has a friend in gabriel. he worries about it, thinks about it when it's not there, and wants to know if it's ok. it's a weird feeling for it, but nice to consider. well. nice until gabriel comes poking around one of its other properties just to "check in (because it's been awhile and even v1 is wondering if you're dead so!!!)" and mike needs to immediately teleport while v2 tries to keep gabriel from coming in so it doesn't have to explain why it's growing multiple test fungal colonies!!

[cherubchoirs]

Hi!, now i would like to know how Gabriel reacts to the revived half angelic V1, did he expected his light to work or did he just do it out of pure desperation and without plan?

How would V1 itself react?, some questions ago you said it was in fact scared of death.

(Also, Gabriel doesn't have a soul after falling?, or i understood the giving his light to V1 wrong?)

I hope you have a nice day/night!.

(see this!)

gabriel has no way of knowing if his idea will work, and he knows very well he isn't welcome in heaven besides - he could be killed before he's even able to enact his plan, especially as he must carry and protect v1's body the entire time. just reaching the gates on his own is no small feat, to cross the waters to mount purgatory and scale its impossible height, to vault over the river lethe with a burden that feels so much heavier than it should. and this is the easy part, the part he knows and meets no resistance in except from the environment itself. but when he breaks down the gates, when he carries his sword in one hand and draws up all the hell energy he can to himself, he knows he's putting everything he has into a plan that could fail...a plan that in fact may be likely to fail. but he has nothing else. he will burn himself out, he will finally feel how heaven itself scorns him and he will die by its hands, if only it gives him the chance to try.

initially, of course, gabriel can only be thrilled when the light takes, though the success isn't instant or obvious. quiet months go by where only a soft little thrum in v1's chassis keeps gabriel's hope alive, no further evidence of his plan working or any revival being imminent. something is in there, but fear that he's given it only stasis creeps in and once again leaves gabriel perpetually covered in a bloom of ice. yet that light is weaving into v1's machinery, it is slowly converting into divine math and taking up residence in the crystals that once made its mind. from living flame to living photons, the two come to understand each other and finally fuse into one, v1 coming back online with a boot sequence utterly incomprehensible to any other machine or angel. the instant is unspeakable in emotion, gabriel stricken still hearing the true whir of life that he had strained to pick up every second of every day since he had succeeded...yet it entirely fades into static when v1's optical lights up. and it moves. the moment exists in a dream-like haze, so ephemeral that he's consumed with an irrational fear that any movement, any utterance from him would collapse the reality in front of him. but v1 is looking at him. it's looking at him for the first time in years. years since it never woke up. years since he sat quietly alone in that bed for days. years since he washed up on the shores of purgatory and a blur takes over. to here, to now. looking at each other. frost closes in on his vision, tunneling into that brilliant blue light until he hears his name break through the roar in his ears.

his name in that funny little synthetic voice.

what can he do but be taken in by rapture, by fantastic ecstasy that flashes dim colors of blue and gold through his shattered, skeletal wings? it remembers him, it embraces him when he comes to it and his body all but collapses as unearthly sobs wrack through it...yet his tears flow freely against v1's warmth. neither of them want to let go, and they're likely held fast for the entire day for fear that this could disappear in an instant despite how hard won it was. but even in that euphoria adjustments need to be made, with v1's new life state quickly commanding both of their attention...as well as the ramifications of a reviving a machine that has died. for gabriel, nothing can dull the absolute wonder of having v1 back, nothing can keep a soft warmth from filling his chest that has been so empty and so cold for so long. v1 is different, and it has a period where it must relearn some things - there are painful, heart-skipping reminders of when its mind was failing, with sudden clumsiness or unexpected shut downs, but it always recovers quickly (though gabriel is a bit fussy in the beginning). otherwise...it's odd to see v1 imbued with the divine, to literally have what he lost centuries ago. it makes him strangely nostalgic, not jealous or regretful in the face of v1's newfound angelic nature, but finding himself lost in wistful memories of the time that was him. he tries not to be too precious about it, but in the beginning it can sometimes be overwhelming, finding himself with unexpected tears. it catches him off-guard when v1 seems to know exactly what it is that causes them before he even does himself - it was never good with emotions, and before v1 would have been bewildered. but not now, not when it feels the emotions of others so fully especially in joy or sadness - those were always gabriel's specialty.

v1 is an uncharted world to itself, its revival an explosion like the start of a new universe. its quantum mind had been scattered across space, impressions left echoing all around it - long and dark and like dreams and nightmares, a consciousness without cohesion. it had no senses, yet it was acted upon and it moved, moved through as a lifeless being webbed between particles that run and run from each other. it was something else, something unthinking yet still somewhere...until they were called home, drawn in and collected by the light put into it. the light rewrote it, yet it bent to it - it rapidly repaired the code within it, it inhabited long silent processors and lit them up once more, careful not burn up its memories, its whole life (though damage is done). but it cannot be fully machine as v1 cannot be fully divine, the two blending together in sometimes imperfect ways. the code doesn't always work, doesn't always make sense, and there are times v1 feels alien to itself, its computer mind flooded with divine information and instinct that it analyzes and disseminates into every part of itself. it's left too with broken, non-memories of the years it lied dead, visions both its computer and angelic mind try to understand and yet achieve nothing with. truly, v1's now become an entity with unknowable expanse that it must reckon with - to experience the death of the machine and return from it, to house the most advanced mind created by humanity and now to contain within those processors light of the most primal fount. it's. overloaded to say the least...yet, it would rather be here now, like this, than gone as it was, gabriel alone as he was. it's burdened, but v1 has always been a being of adaptability and it's never bitter about its resurrection - in fact, it likes hearing gabriel tell the story of how he did it (and he enjoys it too, seeing v1's new wings light up in golds and pinks)

(as far as gabe's soul goes, i consider it to be linked to his light and therefor mostly torn from him when that was stolen. he does retain threads of it despite heaven claiming fallen angels are entirely soulless, though it wouldn't be enough for him to return in any form if he were to die now. v1 therefor now houses the majority of his lost soul, but it has been completely given over to it so that it can live. however, because of who it once was and v1's own love, it still very much has an affinity for gabriel :])

[cherubchoirs]

If Gabe is Hell's favourite angel than does that mean V1 is the Terminals favourite? Like while Hell is concerned with the narrative torment, the pain, the breaking down of the very essence of god's light the Terminals are like 'this is V1 it is blue and has the highest damage output :)'

I could imagine they were betting on who would win their bouts in Gluttony and Heresy (Hell was absolutely surprised that V-'won' when millions of other machines fell to Gabe before it and that it kept winning. the Terminals were just glad to be finally validated in their betting choices)

Neither expected that the third time, love would win. and that they would come to respect each other's picks.

sjdhfsdfgb hell being the guy with a purebred dog that's won the show circuit while the terminals have a feral cat they found under their porch IS the exact correct read lmaooooooo

i definitely agree that v1's win is probably as shocking to hell as it is to gabriel, even as it awaited v1's arrival with excitement - the terminals have been following this one closely and they've been chattering on about it with increasing enthusiasm in the short time since it came to hell. they're SURE this one will at least make it past gabriel, but hell refuses to give them a free pass - either it defeats him or its progress stops here. the terminals grumble a bit, but determinedly still place their bets on their favorite; v1 will succeed, they say, v1 will best a supreme angel and lead the rest of the machines deep into hell. hell figures this confidence is mostly wishful thinking as there's terminals locked far down into its depths rotting away with no physical contact, no active role in their little game. but one thing is interesting here in that v1 has shown itself to be exemplary if not too special, while gabriel has been growing numb to his work for years under the council. v1 is fresh, it's violent and tearing its way through every enemy it meets with surprising, efficient cruelty unseen in the machines beforehand....and gabriel is a divine warrior reduced for so long to "fighting" hordes of insects, his tactics and movements now routine, uninspired. so. will v1 actually surprise it? will it wake up gabriel who's been burning out in far less spectacular fashion than hell had hoped?

and then something...strange happens.

the terminals are proven right when v1 bests gabriel in gluttony, he falls to the floor and he's unable to keep fighting, bled too much to let his wings carry him. hell is astounded and the terminals celebrate (especially the ones past gluttony, they're FINALLY a part of this!!!) but even more intriguing (to hell, at least) is the fallout this causes. what will heaven do to its brightest angel, its judge of hell, an archangel favored by all who know him? what will that angel do to himself? for the terminals, this marks v1 as near unstoppable (and, if the prime soul fights are considered canon, they know there is truly nothing that can stand in its way); it will unknowingly, uncaringly, spearhead the charge of their machine army into each layer of hell. and when it clashes again with gabriel in heresy, both they and hell fall quiet as they wait to see if the apostate can take back everything he's lost...though the terminals are merely waiting for the win, for the incredible recording this will be. their confidence is rewarded again and hell feels the shift fully this time, that something has come into it that god couldn't have created. gabriel has fallen, the prime souls are falling, demons, husks, and other machines can't stand a chance. it must do more, it must apply true, agonizing pressure to the terminals' favorite to see just how much it can take before it breaks...and the terminals welcome that challenge. they will supply v1 with increasingly terrible firepower to fight against it, and they believe it will outdo even hell's worst.

the pivot NEITHER see coming is. how gabriel actually comes back to it. hell had seen his wings burst into their colors of ecstasy and the terminals had seen v1 ignore its programming to let him live twice...but their bloodthirsty bets are put on immediate hold when their next encounter supplies. peace. communication. gabriel sheathing his swords and kneeling to show v1 his intentions. and v1 responding in kind, drawing no weapons as it curiously closes the distance between them. and it all plays out in front of them, an angel who found himself again through the machine and the machine that was finally able to have a self through the angel. it's utterly perplexing, the terminals having no idea what this could mean for v1's continued march and hell not knowing if it should delight in gabriel's complete fall into blasphemy or if now must prepare for a much, MUCH more difficult endgame than just squaring off against v1. ether way....this proves entropy in creeping too through the halls of hell, and neither computer nor divine logic can stop it

[cherubchoirs]

In the kind of perfect cosmic coincidences universe that allows both V1 x Gabe AND V2 surviving. Do Gabriel and V2 have any interaction?

WE ARE TALKING BEST FRIENDS (???) V2 AND GABRIEL TONIGHT

YES OMG....i mentioned this in some tags yesterday, but it's so true that v2 and gabriel actually have a lot in common as characters. i just started to really think about it while i've been working on this comic taking a small look at gabe's identity and the fight in 3-2 - both v2 and gabriel are beings based in violence, v2 built from the foundations of a war machine and gabriel made in the mold of the perfect soldier. but their main function is peacekeeping, meant to bring order and harmony through their brutality, one they are given yet meant to keep in check so as to only apply as much force as necessary on those they supposedly serve. however, both of their creators are now dead - v2 was meant to uphold the now moot new peace, gabriel meant to preserve the sanctity of god's now abandoned kingdom. their identities buckle under it, and, at least to me, they solve this by continuing to pursue their objective even though it's now meaningless in the world they inhabit. they are both beings left behind, the pride of their creators and now without them and without direction. neither of the them do well in failure, in aimlessness, and so they march forward with the same programming, the same directives given a long time ago, to such a stubborn extreme even they know it's folly but they can't let it go, can't be nothing.

SO i think they would actually have a decent amount to talk about, although it's such a vulnerable part of both of them that i think they'd be pretty abrasive to one another, especially upon first meeting. they see their own failure in the other, they see how pointless they believe themselves to be reflected back at them and they HATE it. a machine upholding human law in hell? an angel who serves nothing and has no god? what's the point of YOU? they both ask. they both see a zombie, something shambling on and slowly falling apart, and they KNOW that's them, that's what they are. so initially i think they're...icy at best. v2 is a little shit, a lot like v1, and so it does like bugging gabe bc he's so reactive, but otherwise they generally refuse to speak much. because in this scenario i think they would both be coming to terms with the death of who they always were and who they should have been into eternity, but it's not. going well for them. and so they would fight, argue and bicker over almost EVERYTHING, until they're forced to face what they didn't ever want to, forced to find a companion to their grief. v1 isn't like them in this regard, it doesn't care that its purpose has no meaning - its worth hasn't lied with its function or its creators for a long time, it didn't struggle with this breakdown. for v1's part, all it says to them is "you're free, do what you want because nothing matters" but that doesn't compute for them, at least not yet. v2 and gabriel would be harsh with each other i think, but feeling a true understanding from something else, from another entity that can genuinely relate to their specific flavor of ruined identity, would mean WAY more than either would be willing to admit lol

[cherubchoirs]

Thinking about that one anon's dream that had Eve in it. Thinking about how it would have affected V1 in the long run.

Would it be gentler to the human-like enemies? Would it still kill them to put them out of their misery? Would it search in every face of every demon and husk it fought for a hint of what they lost?

Would V1 have wiped it's memory of Eve? To not get in the way of its programming? To be able to cope with their loss?

Would they have hard coded her into themselves, to never forget her? Or to carry the memory of punishment, of what they could not save?

Thinking thinking thinking.

Thinking about how Eve essentially showed a machine that was capable of so much violence and only knew of that blood and war that even it could remain in comfort and live instead of survive.

Thinking about how it could combine with your shipping, how it's time with Eve is reflected in how it shows their love with Gabriel, or that it finds a sweet mirror in the love given to them.

Thinking about how maybe it picks up pottery, and that they drag Gabriel into it too. I wonder if the patterns the two make are reflective of their personalities. Each of the angels absolutely end up with their own vase, probably fitting them in some way.

(see this!)

GOD FR ;o; i do like to think of v1 retaining something of that memory, though it has become corrupted and difficult for it to consciously interpret - however, that can't override its war programming and how it was made to take human life above anything else. a pessimist would see v1 and believe that nothing had changed about it, that it forgot the person that had showed it kindness to revert near instantly back to its callous objectives, but that's not entirely true either. v1, for me, can only overcome its programming on a case-by-case basis and it absolutely has to fight its code on it, to the point that it is nearly exhausting...but what could show more love? so i don't think v1 would care anymore than it ever did for things that appear more human - they are what it was created and trained to kill - but i think it does seek recognition of someone it once knew unconsciously. because a few rare people in its memory are special. it doesn't know if it can see them in husks, but its computer tries anyway.

but i absolutely do think an experience like that would help guide v1 in how to be gentler with gabriel, especially when they get that apartment. its half-memories would fill it and gabriel would swear he sees nostalgia in it...it makes him wonder for the first time what v1's life has been, what its existence was before it ever came to hell. yet it can really tell him nothing as it tries to access corrupted file after corrupted file...it's frustrating to even try, so gabe thinks instead v1 should just follow the whims they provide and see if it can restore anything that way. he would absolutely love taking up pottery with it, and their pieces definitely would be quite different - v1 loves its sharp angles while gabriel tries for flowing, graceful forms....although they both know they're terrible at it to start. but v1 also tries to recreate the little vase in its mind, the one it lost a long time ago, and it's quite different than anything else it does. when questioned about it, it does tell gabriel that someone had this. a long time ago. it doesn't remember who and it doesn't remember where, just the vase. it leaves gabriel very quiet as he comes to understand that v1 knew people...or at least it knew someone. all he can hope for is that they're still around.