#yjhuri

[radio-zephyr]

【Then leaf subsides to leaf, So Eden sank to grief 】

tragedy of the 999th round

id in alt :D turn up brightness/click for quality, and as always, rambles below the cut :] v

i love 999th round's characters, they are all so very dear to me. In this piece I really wanted to focus in on 999yjh and uriel, specifically that moment where yjh is wasting away from the outer god contract, and uriel is cradling his crumbling body, begging him to stay awake and unable to do anything to stop his decay. The pose inspo originally came from this photo: (disclaimer that if this photo has any really troubling connotations im not aware of, please let me know!)

i wanted to take this and make the pose a bit more desperate, mournful, tragic. the original already has such a feeling of tragedy, quietness, tenderness that i wanted to preserve, and i tried to show it in the way uriel has interlaced her fingers through yjh's hand, cradling it and lifting it so carefully as she hunches over his body, her other hand gripping his shoulder and refusing to let go.

Uriel herself is missing her wings. I wanted to show her powerlessness in the face of these circumstances. It doesn't matter who she is, what she has accomplished, in this moment there is nothing she can do to save him. The halo is frazzled, breaking apart-what can uriel do? what will she do now that yjh's gone? how could she ever let the person she loves go？

And yjh- the blankeness of his face - I wanted to have a feeling of desolation- so close yet so far, brought to ruin by his own convictions, sacrificing himself over and over for his companions, culminating here-here, where he cannot go on, wasting away. The bright starburst over his heart-he is about to regress, doomed again to his hell of eternity.

The eyes weren't originally planned, but i had to include secretive plotter somehow, just because i love how he, in his attempt to get 999th yjh to succeed, realized that he was the one who had doomed himself. Idk, something something going back in time to try and fix things doesn't work, that horror at the realization that you were doomed from the start, that you were the cause, etc. So I had to include him somehow, desperately gazing down upon the scene.

Overall I wanted to capture a feeling of the tragedy and tenderness of 999th round's yjh and uriel's relationship, this devastating moment caught in an almost gossamer thread of time, where everything is picture perfect, like a painting commemorating those final feelings. Not sure if that's what i achieved, but i'm pretty happy with the result :D

And i'm just realizing, but the colors look different on mobile vs desktop :0 its a bit washed out on desktop..hm.

Closeups (of the parts I really liked) :3 (as you can tell i spent a lot of time on the clothes. they were really fun to do :0 i think i'm starting to really figure out how i like to shade them :D)

And here’s a fun alternate version I did for fun v

[orphiclovers]

I headcanon Uriel and Yoo Joonghyuk being together in the 999th regression specifically because she was attracted to his overwhelming 'goodness' in this round, them being really happy with each other etc just to make this moment even MORE painful