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As Above, So Below
Artist's Notes;
So I wanted to save my process for when I posted the final piece since my WIP post was simply the teaser so yaaaaay I get to yap about these two lovely ladies woooooo!
So in my WIP I wanted to give Beryl a diamond-like silhouette to fit with her gemstone motife and because I thought it would work with her outfit, but then ran into the issue of the anatomy. I ended up relying on the silhouette provided by her clothing to get the idea across without the weird anatomy issues and also to make the drawing more dynamic. The way I drew her gold-circle scarf (guess that's what I'm calling it now) also changed to accommodate for this change in pose and I think it ended up benefitting the composition and working with the movement of her hair. Speaking of, I also changed how her bangs looked because I wasn't really liking the shape I gave them initially and also added a few more strands to her ponytail so it balances out the flowiness of Arcana's hair better. One thing you'll notice is that I didn't put in all of the minute details of their designs, mainly just getting the shapes down because the point wasn't really to do every single little thing 100% accurate to their in game models. I really like how I managed to translate Beryl into my style, and I learned more about simplifying the human form into shapes than I did previously because I initially struggled with it in the first draft.
Arcana on the other hand was way easier to draw than Beryl. Her design was very simple to simplify in my style and I really like how her hands turned out. I wanted to give her the "As Above so Below" pose because first of all, it was referenced in A Flowing Feast's main story and it worked with her parallels to Christianity. It also worked with the gesture of her body which I angled to mirror Beryl's when upside down. Drawing her Great-Goop-Gown(tm) was pretty fun, and I ended up rendering it with that classic Manus Vindictae blue, and the style I rendered that in helped with rendering Beryl's dress to match. I also adjusted the anatomy of Arcana's face, as I tried to do something with the eyes where they're both going in the same direction to follow where she's looking but it ended up bugging me with the drawing flipped so I changed it to how I'd normally orient the eyes, which I think was a good move on my part.
The background was a bit of a nightmare to figure out, though I settled on an Art-Deco design to match the era Beryl is from, and also because I liked how the geometric lines in the design I made contrasted with the very organic shapes present in how I drew Beryl and Arcana. With the overall piece there may be some things that I drew on the wrong sides (i.e. the gold tear going down Arcana's face) but that's just how the cookie crumbles when you're doing a composition like this where you want both of the characters mirroring each other to look good right-side up and upside down.
And now this is the part where I talk about these two and their dynamic because I think these two are super interesting together and I love this ship so much.
Whenever I think about a ship with the "Toxic Yuri" label I always think about how both parties are impacted by the relationship. Actually this is just what I do with ships in general, since I find it makes making daydreams about the potential fanfic you could write with them but just don't have the time to a lot more interesting. I think everyone in the fandom can agree that Arcana is clearly a god of some kind, there is no mortal explanation for half of the shit she does. Beryl knows this, she actually likes this because she finally has some surprise in her life. Hell, maybe she's also kind of scared because she's pushed right out of her comfort zone with a higher power. I imagine that Arcana doesn't really have any attachment to mortals, but she finds Beryl quite entertaining to toy with. When the two of them are together she would often push the limits on just how much Beryl can actually comprehend before she breaks. And also, maybe she feels a sort of kinship with Beryl. A shared detachment with the world that makes her quite fond of that poor diviner, maybe even some pity that a mortal was forced to handle knowledge only beings like her should have. Hell, maybe the true reason she pushes how far Beryl's mind can go in the hopes that she could have someone as an equal. Not a worshipper praying to her out of fear, not a mortal in fear of her, but someone who can actually stand at eye level with her. Meanwhile, Beryl is torn between her desire for freedom from fate's wisdom, but also the security of knowing how everything will play out around her. How Arcana's unpredictability could put herself in danger one day, how it could put her daughter in danger. So, against her own wants she dives deeper and deeper into trying to comprehend all that is Arcana. But even though she knows that future is impossible, she also wants to relish in the company of someone else who could possibly understand her, so she isn't alone watching the riverbed of fate.
To Arcana, Beryl is like Icarus. She loves seeing just how far those wax wings of hers can carry her until they burn up in the sun's blazing heat. The higher Beryl flies, the closer she gets to truly comprehending the incomprehensible, the more Arcana respects, and grows fond of her.
And even if Beryl is unable to truly comprehend her, even if she dies in the pursuit of understanding her, Arcana would never be able to truly forget her.
