[ 💭 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they believe they’re worthy of being loved ?
ADAM: It really depends on the day! Manz is constantly oscillating between "I am literally everyone's dad, I am the first man ever, I am a nigh immortal mortal, I lived in Eden, this is going to ruin the world tour" and "I screwed all of humanity over, I am part of the first failure ever - and the first man to get divorced TWICE, I don't deserve to be nigh immortal, I ruined my chance at eternal happiness in Eden, my biggest achievement in my career is my Colgate sponsorship." Of course, at the end of the day, the former is more of a cover for the latter -- more of a mask that even he buys into.
That all said, I think he doesn't always believe he's worthy of being loved, but he also wants love. He's been divorced twice because he's been very much in love twice! And he loves love! But does he deserve to be loved?
AZRAEL: Azrael is a true study in peacefully accepting a life where love is unlikely. As such, she doesn't consider it much, but if she were to sit down and ponder it... she does believe so. Not out of some grandiose borderline delusion, not out of an inflated ego, but out of a simple "I do my job, I offer peace" fact. She is not expecting to be loved, she is not craving love the way Adam is/has, but she doesn't believe she's not worthy of being loved.
i. no exit, jean-paul sartre // ii. "for the sake of brevity," tiny moving parts // iii. lincoln in the bardo, george saunders
✦ Is that T'NIA MILLER joining Las Vegas from the heavens? No, wait—it’s none other than AZRAEL (AZALEA BLACKWOOD), posing as a THIRTY-EIGHT year old mortal working as a FUNERAL DIRECTOR. They're Heaven’s own OMEN. Born as an 𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋, they’re said to be IMPARTIAL and DECISIVE, though whispers accuse them of ALOOF and UNWAVERING, especially after the War in Heaven shattered their innocence. When I picture them, I see GLOVED HANDS, DUST FALLING LIKE THE FIRST SNOW, A DERELICT PATH DIVERGING FROM A GOLDEN TRAIL, and hear the heavenly choir sing DESPERATION (1ST VOWS) just for them. Their purpose still lingers despite the constant threat awaiting them, will they heal the rift between Heaven and Hell… or tear it wider? ✦
QUICK FACTS
full name: azrael azalea blackwood
date of birth: arbitrarily assigned "january 3rd, 1987"
zodiac big three: capricorn sun, cancer moon, scorpio rising
gender & pronouns: does not care & she/her
sexual + romantic orientation: homosexual & greyromantic
species: archangel
ability: death manipulation ( the ability to induce death, as well as manipulate the cause )
origin: heaven
enneagram: 5w4
mbti: istj
temperament: melancholic
alignment: neutral good
current residency: small house on the outskirts attached to a funeral parlor
current occupation: funeral director
chosen silly musing:
THE STORY
“Grim Reaper” - a monster; “The Ferryman” - a neutral party; “Angel of Death” - ultimate peace.
Azrael was all three. She was not often renowned for her ability to aid in creating and determining life, as she had with God’s first creations, but she felt no frustration over it. Her purpose was to do what no one else wished to; her purpose was to reap. And there was beauty in it – a beauty her fellow angels had never seemed to appreciate as much.
More than anything, there was a line in the sand, a clear separation between where she, as the ferryman, would escort each soul she took.
Black and white was greatly appreciated.
For as much as Azrael had hesitated in regard to the war between angels, she was, perhaps, one of the angels who needed to fight the most. If it had all begun with the creation of humanity, if it had all begun with the dust that she had presented to God to form the first man – humanity, the first man, the prime reason everything began to crumble – then she could not sit idly by. She could not allow her power, allow her status, to go to waste. As reluctant as she was to aid in the killing of those she once regarded as her brothers and sisters, as overwhelming and tragic as all of the bloodshed was, she had no choice but to join.
Collecting what may have been left of the souls, collecting those she had loved and lost, collecting those who had taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way, found her retreating. She was not easily overwhelmed – she was a divine being who dealt with Death on a more than daily basis – but it seemed as though no one but herself understood the gravity of it all. There was one permanence in this life, there was one certainty, and that one certainty – that one thing everyone waited for, mortal or conditionally immortal – was Death.
The one permanence.
But she could not – she could not – fall from grace. An angel having an existential crisis was a far cry from an angel turned demon, was it not? An angel who, upon the Death of God, began wondering what her bloody meaning had become… an angel who had helped create… an angel who had never considered herself power-thirsty before… So she joined the Las Vegas strip, created a funeral parlor, provided the immortal souls she escorted with just as much respect in their mortal bodies. She knew how to speak of Death in a way no other could, knew how to talk to those in mourning in a way no other could – she could still do something good.
Because she was good, wasn’t she?
She had to be.
HEADCANONS
In the past, she has often appeared to those who were struggling in their final moments as a gentle presence. She would not ignore them, she would not collect them -- she would kiss them to provide a moment of love in their mortal world. Very much inspired by this.
Once someone who went through the motions with her duty as the Angel of Life and Death -- someone who simply did it because it was her job, not because it sparked joy -- she has begun taking pride in it. Contrary to popular belief, she believes she may have the kindest purpose of all her fellow angels.
-- also the most tragic.
Less of a headcanon and more of a tidbit -- because of her relationship with death, I'll be capitalizing it in her threads! Aka death = Death.
When Azrael is about to offer the kiss of death, black wings protrude from her back.
Heehoo this is Azrael, Archdevil of Death who has a horrendous god complex.
Also he loves cats and has many large and small, WILL spend all day lounging around on pillows mostly naked eating sweets, and spend hours in a hot hot bath in a gold tub.
player: pl4yer & azrael ( @usernameazrael )
location: floor 49, by the seaside
some people --- or the very few who knew what happened here --- might have found it morbid to see four sitting on a picnic blanket by the very waters in which other players tried to drown him --- where both his blood and his cursor first ran red ---- but four had always loved the ocean, even when the world knew him only as youngho. and while he was just as impressed as the cobblestones and architecture of velia’s cities as the next player was, he was never able to really shake the feeling of how manufactured it all was. yes, it was manmade like all cities were, even in real life, but there was another deceptive layer just underneath it --- in a technology class weeks before velia’s worldwide release, a teacher had explained to them how it was impossible to code everything a world like velia. and he couldn’t stop thinking about how everything in velia was just a shell of data, empty and hollow until someone forced it to split open, where more pixels would magically appear to make the item seem just real enough to be believable. oasis might have been just as fabricated, but there was something about it that had always felt so real to him. the way that the waves tumbled and crested over each other always felt too random to be simulated by a computer, and the grains of sand crumbled under his feet just like they had in real life.
he barely lifted his eyes from the ocean’s horizon even when he heard footsteps approaching on the sand. ‘ hi, azrael, ’ he said. ‘ i packed a couple of sandwiches from the pub if you want to sit down and eat lunch for a bit before we head out. ’
