tissue paper <3 i'm so fond of this partial scene that i wrote ages ago, but i don't know how or when it will finally emerge from the WIPs folder. initially it was sabriel, then i rewrote it to be dean&gabriel so i could include it in Lay Me Down, now i have it in its own file to see if i can turn it into something standalone. probably this will depend on if i decide i am motivated to work on Lay Me Down again ever 😅
anyway, it's just a snapshot of a quiet bedsharing moment, reflecting on the differences between receiving comfort/support from a human compared to angels or gods. the file is titled that because of the sentence, "For a human being, Dean is tall and strong, but in the scheme of things, he’s very, very small, and so fragile that Gabriel might as well be wrapped in tissue paper."
Feel like I'm cheating with this one so feel free not to answer but I've always been curious about a dvd commentary on your gabriel/kali poem "she is fierce and fearsome"? 👉👈
omg yay ok ok! idk why this would be cheating, poetry analysis is my favorite <3 (poem is here)
first shout out to whisper for the gabriel/kali prompt for the exchange; i very seriously doubt i ever would have gotten around to writing anything for kali and her too-chatty chair boi without that inspiration!
gabriel's adventures in figuring out how to be not-gabriel are so interesting to me...i have thought more about the very early days of that, with adapting to being an untethered angel and finding a role in the norse pantheon and learning about existing long-term in a human or at least human-ish body, but his growth would certainly have continued over time. he's an entity that seems to have his share of curiosity about things, and nordic religion wasn't static so there would continue to be changes regardless. it doesn't suuuper matter when this poem is set, but in my mind, it is after gabriel is well-established and comfortable as loki, and has started to be interested in expanding his social circle to include gods from elsewhere. he's stable enough to be able to willingly give bits of himself to others who deserve it, and WOW does he think kali deserves it.
the way kali is described here is at least attempting to be a combination of things he feels are different about her compared to him, and qualities that overlap between his identities as loki and as the archangel gabriel. she has a frightening, commanding, absolute presence that would be at least somewhat similar to how angels are (She moves like fire and flame, / Rage, wrath, and cities burned — gabriel certainly knows about what it's like to move like that from his old testament days...) but she's not following anyone's orders, which is much more a god thing than an angel thing — though she carries that differently from how 'loki' carries his own godhead. she smiles and laughs and understands games and trickery like loki does, but she's not sneaking around trying to steal freya's jewelry; she's decked out in jewels of her own, having no need to hide anything about herself, which gabriel can't relate to under any of his names anymore. so like, i guess game recognizes game here, but also kali does everything she does with her whole chest in a way gabriel maybe more associates with angels than with his own experiences as a god, which is eye-opening and super attractive! he's not trying to emulate her; he's good with being sly and full of lies, but it's exciting to be reminded of what unabashed directness was like (both to embody and to experience) from someone who is not at ALL like an angel in other ways. it's comforting and new all at once.
so, what better way to show his admiration than by disguising one of the most valuable "things" he has, that symbolizes the parts of his old self that she reminds him of, that he no longer has any use for, that he carries around like it owns him but that she could wear in a way where it's clear she owns it? the halo marks gabriel as something he doesn't want to be anymore, but it's still a part of him so he doesn't want to just discard it; giving it to her is a devotional sacrifice that is huge but is no hardship for him at all. there's a kind of freedom in entrusting someone new with his angelicness, even though (or maybe because) she doesn't know that that's what he's giving her — to an extend it binds him to her, but that's better than being bound to heaven — and he has proven to himself already that being halo-bound isn't enough to keep him tied to something he doesn't want to be tied to, if he changes his mind.
he disguises it as a marigold partly because it fit my rhyme scheme and partly because they have relevant symbolic meaning. they're associated with the sun, which idk feels like a gabriel sort of symbolism to go with, and they represent joy, which is very much how he feels about all this. my understanding is that they are popular flowers to have at hindu weddings, and this poem is like...not quite that exactly, but is certainly an expression of some sort of commitment that is at least similar in tone to a wedding (at least from one of their perspectives lol). they ALSO have associations with lost love, which is inevitable for gabriel when thinking about things he might miss about everyone he left behind when he left heaven, but that loss was deliberate, and the sadness of it is small in comparison to the new love and excitement he has found.
also since it is a structured poem: the rhyme scheme was honestly a bitch but was fun as well...aba bcb cdc ded, etc. it's sort of a braided rhyme, i guess? every line ending word flows into a new rhyme, so things that seem to stand out when they're introduce become the central structure of the rhyme of the next trio of lines — a bit how many of the aspects of what gabriel admires about kali flow back into aspects of himself, which in turn flow back again into aspects of her.
i'm actually going to do three for this because i'm struck with the need to encapsulate my preteen music experience as holistically as possible lol
gimme! gimme! gimme! (a man after midnight) BUT specifically the cover by the a*teens. still a bop tbh
give me novacaine — green day. whole american idiot album was huge for me, my best friend gave it to me as a going away gift when i was moving when i was 12 and it was all i listened to for like a year
helena — my chemical romance. i was at the same friend's house watching mtv and this music video and feel good inc by gorillaz were on back to back and in that moment i was like "oh for sure one of these two things is going to define the person i become" and helena won lol
18: A song from the year that you were born
baby got back — sir mix-a-lot
27: A song that breaks your heart
ok again i can't pick just one so: west coast (lana del rey), and bells for her (tori amos)
2. Is it easier to draw someone facing left or right (or forward even)
left by a mile, i am a right-handed stereotype in this way. although i do think there is something to be said for facing forward, which is easier sometimes and with some people!
7. A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate
oil paint! it's SO gorgeous. back when i did mostly traditional media i used to try to make acrylic look as oil-like as possible a lot of the time. but i've never actually tried it
17. Do you eat/drink when drawing? if so, what
i can't eat while drawing. i forget to drink while drawing too a lot of the time tbh, but i always have a glass of water handy (tbh i always have a glass of water handy when i'm doing anything...) sometimes i'll have some wine or a cocktail perhaps while drawing but not often. i have a tendency to forget about my physical environment when i draw 😅
butler ⇢ is there a character you wish you could develop further?
Uhmmm I need to develop them all further, to be honest. I haven't thought about my original projects in a while. Currently, the original project I'm most interested in working on is a T4T mob story set in the 60s in the US, but the main characters, Luca and Arthur, are Italian (well, Arthur is Italo-Americano). I'd love to actually just. Take the time to know them better and do one of those writer games where you answer a bunch of questions from the character's perspective.
There is also another project I really want to work on, a "monsterfucker" (let's call it that) romance. Another queer romance. I want to develop both characters further, and I still haven't picked a name for the human, so...
