A Treasure Plant AU Ive Been Working On!

Shes such a freak

You're cold.

You're warm.

prey animals

(hunter is pictured with lilies, goldenrod, and plum blossoms, for perseverance, purity, and the changing of seasons. caleb is pictured with lobelia, which means arrogance, malevolence, and it used to be used as an emetive by appalacian herbalists. turns out, empty isnt the same as clean. who would have thought)

boy of sorrows

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

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

disintegration

(for the human realm au drawing; Hunter is in a wheelchair because of a TBI (traumatic brain injury) that also is the source of his scars. He has seizures and mental health issues as well, along with not recalling the source of the injury. Nevertheless he's enough in recovery to be head hall monitor and altar boy at the esteemed Catholic private school Gravesfield academy, where his uncle is the principal and the head priest, as well as Hunter's sole caretaker while his mother is in prision and his dad is deployed in the army.)

Adding on to my recent posting, I want to say this: If you do not accept moments in which belos is genuine, you fundamentally miss what makes him terrifying.

Belos loved his brother very dearly. The only times we have ever seen him genuinely happy were when caleb was still in his life, he keeps his old coat in pristine condition, uses his art to decorate and symbolize his glorious empire, some could say he idolizes the human realm so much because that's when caleb was still around, still loving him. Belos's love for Caleb is in everything he does.

Which is terrifying when you think about Belos's crimes, and one by one, they all lead back to love. Trying to kill everyone on the boiling Isles-it's all because Caleb married a wild witch and left Belos all alone. Hunter's existence and the genuine love he has towards him? It's love more like a worshiper at an idol's feet- belos worships hunter more than hunter does him, tries to lock him in his mind forever so he never leaves him after Hunter finds out the truth, refuses to kill hunter only because he needs Caleb to come home with him no matter what. He recreates his brother over and over and it hurts him every time but he kills him because they need to love him the most.

In kings tide, he offers Luz mercy. Belos empathizes with her, away from home, a symbol of who he still thinks he is, painfully nostalgic for the past. But why does he love the human realm so much? Why does he miss the past?

Because that's when Caleb was his.

The idea that Belos is a "narcissist who can't love anyone" is, first of all, kind of abelist to real people with NPD, secondly, patently untrue, everything he does is because of love, and thirdly, missing the point of why Belos is disturbing. Because he thinks doing these things in the name of love is just. It exhonerates him in his mind, that him loving his brother to death means all of this means something, when really Belos is at a point where his love for Caleb is more of a religion than the one he's performing.

Belos is supposed to be loving and warm. That's how he lures in his prey, convinces Hunter to devote his life to him, how he wins over an island of people he wants to kill. He loves, and it's real as rain, but his love is like cancer. It kills everything in you but itself.