Cherubim is currently holding me at knifepoint

I have a bit of a backlog rn with ideas ive compiled over the past couple of months,,, Although since it is pride month i was considering doing a short lilikana Karma (alnst) animation to test out the classic apple animation pipeline lol, I haven't forgotten about Sanity Krush either but that's going to take a long time since it requires a lot of drawing (i have a storyboard already completed!!!!)

I also have some ideas for ultrakill stuff, I've really been getting attached to the game and I really want to make stuff in relation to it (esp considering so many people liked that Tripping Angel animation ..... my goodness I wasn't expecting that much attention for it),,,, i need to draw minos,,,, more gabriel,,,, mv2 since i was bribed to do that,,,,

Keeping in mind though college is probably going to take a large amount of my free time away in august,,,, I'm majoriting in art and I hear the first year courses are incredibly work heavy but I'll try to keep things up and at it here!!! I think college will actually give me a better opportunity to finish writing fic quicker lol i swear im really close to finishing ch3 of svg still (me saying that even though i havent touched it in a month SIIGHHHHH.....)

Does Lilikana fit them at all???? Maybe like...... 30% sorta. Vaguely. You never know. I can always make crazy crossovers work somehow. Dect is absolute peak though i kept forgetting to read it for months but just now randomly did. Hashtag yay yippie

I kind of hate doing lineart because I'm usually in the mindset that it must be perfect and clean or else I'll die but this is pretty messy and it looks decent from a distance so im just not going to worry about that uhhhh (more yap below)

I've seen people talk about the tragedy of the women involved in LODV and i ABSOLUTELY AGREE that they deserve better. Oh my god. That kind of motivated me to write the fic in the first place because maylis specifically speaks to me a lot 😭😭 i mean she went out of her way to try and save people but got punished for it and now she has to live with the trauma forever, I'm very sure she's internalized a lot of that pain because she's in an enviroment for the majority of her life where she's unable to really speak out about it, Anyways Sateriasis is a shithead and I need him to die 500 times at the minimum via burning to make up for his sins

Illotte is Minos. Both Illotte and Minos experienced a situation in which their wife had an affair, and their firstborn child happened to appear as some sort of monster. For Minos, this is the Minotaur. Illotte had Cherubim, and both Minos and Illotte share a great resentment over their respective children. There's also been a lot of reinterpretations of the Minotaur that theorize that it could've been a severely deformed child??? I don't know exactly where this idea originated from but multiple books seem to share this sort of concept, ex. House of Leaves. I've kind of been obsessively researching about this topic all over the place and I found that Friedrich Dürrenmatt wrote a poem about the Minotaur in which he thought of it as the victim of it's own circumstances trapped in a labryninth of mirrors rather than being a heartless monster, HONESTLY reminds me quite a lot about how Cherubim was locked in the basement (physically acting as a labryninth, so to speak) but even when he got out he was constantly reminded of how he was considered inhuman by his peers (so he's still technically stuck in that feeling of isolation, as society places him in a metaphorical cage.... or labryninth ....) it's also commonly stated that people were sacrificed to the Minotaur, being thrown into the labyrinth alongside it, which I think links back to Sateriasis' own abductions, in a way. Keeping everyone that he torments in the same place he too was once trapped in.

But this also brings into question the idea of Theseus, the man who killed the Minotaur. Given that some interpretations of his encounter with the Minotaur, I think that Cherubim himself is ALSO Theseus— Or at least— Theseus is "Duke Venomania". He essentially drstroyed his previous identity as Cherubim through his contract, which had only been able to be achieved through self-impalment. Another thing which I think kinda supports this is how Cherubim's identity can be compared to the Ship of Theseus paradox, where if Cherubim's identity is fully erased, is he still Cherubim? To what extent is he still the man that he killed? Honestly I dunno, I just thought it was pretty interesting to point out. I doubt mothy would've done all that intentionally but considering that part of Sateriasis' name has minor greek influences, I can't say that for sure.

I kinda imagine Lilien possibly feeling a lot of guilt due to the way Lukana was able to partially loosen herself from the brainwashing, even if only slightly. Honestly I feel like its left a bit up to interpretation as to what exactly made Lukana’s brainwashing loosen up. Like we know it was a combination of shock at Sateriasis’ apathy towards Lolan’s death as well as Lilien’s presence after thinking for months that she was ok with never seeing her again. The actual mental mechanics of the brainwashing being loosened are left vauge but I always thought it was because Lukana was characterized as being an extremely empathetic and caring person (might just be me but I don’t think her powers and magic potential had much to do with that since it didn’t really get much in the way of the Duke brainwashing her in the first place).

But yeah, I feel like Lilien felt horrible about this for a while because in HER mind, if Lukana was able to partially shake off the spell, then why couldn’t she as well? Why wasn’t reuniting with Lukana, after months of them being apart and Lilien being super worried, enough to make her partially shake off the spell as well? Granted, like mentioned earlier, a huge part of what made Lukana shake off the spell slightly was the shock of Venomania not caring about one of the women dying, especially because Lukana was the only one to see him express said apathy so blatantly and without shame. Thats the most logical explanation. But trauma doesn’t care about logic a lot of the time. Even if she technically understood the circumstances, emotionally, Lilien just becomes fixated on the fact that she was a contributing factor in Lukana becoming more lucid, and the reverse didn’t happen for her. Basically all of this combined made Lilien feel like perhaps she didn’t love Lukana as much as Lukana loved her (sorta paralleling alnst and how Mizi’s survivors guilt caused her to feel like maybe she wasn’t as desperate for Sua as much as Sua was for her, therefore letting her sacrifice herself.)

I also think Lukana felt very guilty in a somewhat similar way for giving her matching bracelet to Sateriasis, since the bracelets held much symbolic value about her relationship to Lilien, especially because theres no indication in the novel that she ever recovered it, which implies she lost it and it just stayed on Venomania’s corpse. In general, I think they both have some immense guilt that is very common in SA survivors but their internal reasons are slightly different. The end of the novel says Lukana felt extremely guilty about not being able to gain back enough control to fully free herself and escape the duke, which to me read a lot like the guilt many victims experience in the form of “why didn’t I do anything to stop it?”. And I imagine Lilien felt like perhaps her trauma wasn’t as valid because she didn’t endure it for as long (ofc just to clarify my views on this, every bit of self-invalidation, self blame and guilt they direct towards themselves about literally anything in this situation wasn’t actually their fault, and is the trauma speaking)

And I think this is partially what fueled Lilien’s side of the unhealthy codependency I mentioned in the first ask, possibly acting very overprotective. I think to some extent they were both overprotective towards each other and very anxious without one another, but I think the circumstances definitely made Lilien especially overprotective, and this was definitely only made worst by the fact that at the peak of this period for them, Lukana was pregnant and IR was already starting to track them down to take Lukana’s body for herself.

(This turned out wayy longer than I wanted to, so sorry about that, but yeah…..🥲)

UWAGHH OH MY GOSH ACTUALLY THIS IS SO PEAK i adore this. Lilien is just so interesting as a character i think with how imperfect she is as a person, Lukana being there and being seemingly perfect and wonderful in her eyes HAS to have some sort of impact on her psyche like that, I totally agree. Honestly pains me how there's literally no fanfics about them ever because the points you always make about them are incredible and I'd love to see them play out in such a narrative

Limbo — Allen

Lust — Still yet to be decided (yes you'd think Venomania would work for this but there's another layer that would fit him better thematically)

Gluttony — Banica (pretty obvious)

Greed — Gallerian (also obvious)

Wrath — Nemesis

Heresy — MAYBE Riliane?

Violence — .... also undecided,,, I might switch nemesis around and put her here while Kayo can be wrath considering Envy doesn't exist as a layer??? Violence has very explicit depictions of warfare and glorifies dying for various causes so that's really my only argument here.

Fraud — Sateriasis (considering his acts were more out of fraud instead of lust, I mean his whole gimmick is that he committed identity theft for the sake of wanting to be loved)

Treachery isnt out yet so I can't draw anything for it 💔

At least this'll be the last big event before exam week in May which I'd rather do 5 times over than have to experience art show week because it stresses me out so bad ohmygoooddddd,,,, I'm so grateful though that I'm not behind in school at all and I'll be able to draw during the event yayayay!!!!! Also I bought more Gabriel merch which should be coming in 2 days from today woop woop

I fear Lukana's hair appears deathly purple in the current lighting she's situated in but i PROMISE its pink (i added the back lighting specifically to make it more obvious)

Also, I got Mikulia's sketch + explanations below the cut :]

i always tried to imagine gabriel to an IrohaRingo song…

UWHAAUGEUAGSQG AHH REALLY?? FINALLY OMG I've been trying to hard to get people to listen to STEAKA, they're truly underrated and I'm so glad you like them too oadgqudvqudvqudbw,,,, im already planning out a second animation with Sanity Krush (although it isn't for Ultrakill, rather the Lunacy of Duke Venomania) just because that one's specifically been a brainworm for about a year at this point LMAOO