I Know, I Know, Another Wip.

making painted fully rendered illustrations every day is hard work but i am only a little bit in agony (strong emoticon) i dont have a united theisis on these guys, i just like outfits n stuff. there is nothing to my art

more work doodles

2 guys who forcibly desensitized themselves to positive emotions and love for other people despite being kind deep down in a house together. what will go wrong

Okay, but what if Nuru learned to read body language and micro expressions to become a better queen for her kingdom and make it easier for her to deal with the politician's of the others? It would make sense why she never trusted Hugo to begin with since she can see he's lying and it wouldn't take her too long to understand his real motive once she gets the whole story from Varian or Yong. She could read Hugo like an open book and I just know Hugo would get so damn frustrated to meet someone he can't trick, not to talk about how he would react when Nuru will learn about his little crush for Varian. She would be his nightmare until the betrayal, when Varian will think that everything was just a cruel joke on him and Nuru will be the only one to know that Hugo is telling the truth when he says he didn't want things to end that way

Just thinking about Varian inheriting his evil laugh and psychotic expressions from his mother and giving both Quirin and Donnie some fucked up flashbacks about Ulla

So, I just rewatched the pilot for The Gaslight District and a thought occurred to me. During Ken's confrontation with Temperance, the audience is specifically led to believe that the secret the Virtue is keeping for Ken directly relates to Mel and her being the prophesied human, but I don't think it actually is. Like, obviously there is some connection there, but there are signs throughout the episode of Ken's ongoing animosity to the Virtues that feels to me like it's more than just him being protective of Mel. Obviously, that could be chalked up to his (possible) torture at their hands in the Inferno, but then why would they intentionally make the scene so weighty and mysterious. Mel's secret is known to the audience basically right off the bat, so there's clearly more to what's going on and I think I might have figured out what. I think...and stick with me here...Ken IS a Virtue. Sort of. There're those weird flashes of color whenever he gets uncontrollably angry, where half of his brain is highlighted. That's got to be more than just an aesthetic choice, right? Why the mystery of it all if it's not important. So, my theory is, that the version of Ken the Butcher we see in the Inferno, is not fully him. Not yet at least. I think that a Virtue replace half of the Butcher's brain with its own. It makes a certain amount of sense; the Virtues are basically just brains after all. Now, why would a Virtue do this, why would one of the seeming leaders of Paradise Lost physically bond themselves to the body of a rotling, which they all seemingly have nothing but disdain for? I think it has something to do with the rotling's immortality. The Virtues don't appear to be immortal in the same way, not based on what we've seen so far at least. I also think the reason might have something to do with which Virtue Ken might have gotten his half-brain from. I think it was Kindness. Not only is it the one that fits most closely with the name Ken, but I think it really fits with his personality too. You can tell how much he cares about people; not just Mel, but everyone. Everyone except the Virtues that is. It also sort of works narratively. All of the other heavenly virtues could easily be corrupted into concepts related to purity, duty or other sort of authoritarian ideals, but you can't really do that with true kindness. It seems pretty obvious to me that whatever the relationship between the Virtues and the rotlings is, it is clearly the Virtues who hold most of the power. I wouldn't be surprised if they turned out to be responsible for the apocalypse of the distant past (there is some obvious biblical symbolism there with the flood and the whale), or even the Black Hand and the rotling's horrific immortality. I imagine the supposed embodiment of kindness itself would have a hard time going along with things at that point, especially if the Virtues were then planning on wiping all of the rotlings out. It might even drive them to take drastic action. I think there's something poetic about the idea that Kindness is engaging in such cruelty as we see Ken perpetrate in the show in order to prevent something even worse from happening. I also definitely think that Temperance was the one who performed the surgery, hence why they knew the truth of everything. The butcher's knife, possibly the entire butcher persona, is there to explain away the headwound that would never really heal on a rotling body. Speaking of bodies, I think that what's left of the original Kindness, the other half of their brain and what not, is what is inside the pseudo-egg thing inside of the laboratory that Temperance is seemingly keeping alive for some reason. Thoughts?

*Small edit because I was wrong about the knife being there in the flashback scene

I loved th angst of the gang finding out about Varian past crimes and all. But I can't help but laugh at the concept of Hugo sweating bullets knowing dang well he's going to betray Varian in the end and thinking "Donella wants me to betray HIM OF ALL PEOPLE?????"

It was in the moment that Hugo realizes he f-ed up