I HAVE NEED OF ANGELS! enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. but finally understand this--i have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain!

mael of the four archangels by percival (he/him, 30+). a study of regaining identity, guilt, and the dawn. rules under readmore.

and by this i mean they preen, but they do need help in some areas because they can't just reach all the feathers, so really preening is something that can be done by close family members or an intimate partner, because goddess wings can be damaged or even torn off that's been shown with nanashi's scars-

ludociel used to help mael preen when he was little. ludociel was basically the only person mael would let help. elizabeth has never helped mael preen because he didn't know how to ask.

so, that makes escanor worthy not only of the grace but of the power of a goddess. escanor, a human. and the goddess clan was sorta shitty lbrh, but anyway. escanor sure had it rough, but he met meliodas and he met merlin and the other members of the seven deadly sins and like honestly escanor shows that he’s shockingly aware of situations at all times. he has a right to be proud of his power. he knows when he doesn’t have the power to fight. he doesn’t use this unimaginable power for his gain, but for OTHERS. 

which is one massive difference between escanor and mael. mael worked hard for sunshine and then he used it honestly to further his growth, to have more power and that was because he was just tired of being looked down on. but escanor? uses sunshine to protect the people he loves . in the end, that even kills him . he had such loyalty, and a wonderful support network, and mael didn’t have that. every time there’s the flashback, elizabeth asks him ‘ did you have another fight with your brother ’, so obviously, the family situation wasn’t always great — 

oh good, i get to talk about the correlation between “pride” and “sunshine” because there is one! ok, so sunshine in itself, for a recap, is a power that grows in strength with the time of day. a person with the grace of sunshine is strongest at noon and weakest just when the sun sets lmao. escanor is the example here, because escanor, a human, shows drastic change as opposed to mael, a goddess, whose base power is already way higher than any human. but anyway, mael was proud of holding this grace. it gave him the strength he always wanted. his clan loved him, his enemies feared him, his brother was proud of him! and so he sorta. showed off that power. he took out high-ranking demons because he was showing off that power. he became the angel of death — and this ties into how estarossa’s vicious personality is still something that mael had the potential for, but the commandment made it worse but i digress. 

without the grace of sunshine, mael doesn’t have this pride in himself, but rather in his older brother, ludociel, who he thinks is the coolest thing since sliced bread. ludociel is “my esteemed brother”, and so on so forth, mael always talks about ludociel and highlights all the cool things about him! his leadership, his power, and how it was ludociel who encouraged him to keep working. who supported him when others wouldn’t. mael straight up grew his hair long so that he would look more like ludociel and if that isn’t idolizing i don't know what is. 

ok! so, mael is represented by the sun if we translate things like that. his older brother, ludociel, says that humans worshipped the goddesses ( and that it went to their heads ), but in the end, goddesses are more like angels than they are Actual Deities. because the deities of the world ( the demon king, the supreme deity ) are capable of absolutely nuking even the strongest members of their respective groups ( meliodas and elizabeth ). it is by the will of the supreme deity that “the four archangels” even HAVE all the power they display, as she bestowed them with “grace”. mael, the sun, is strongest at noon, as his grace amplifies his power respective to the time of day ( meaning he’s most vulnerable at midnight ). ludociel’s grace is called “flash” and it seems like super-speed and i’m sure it does other things but do i really know ... no. sariel is “tornado”, capable of commanding the winds. tarmiel is “ocean”, which is exactly what's on the label, but they’ve got this Bass Boosted shit because of the will of a REAL GODDESS. this makes the supreme deity mael's own patron, because she's the patron of the entire goddess race.  

despite not being real gods, even other members of the goddess clan have worshipped mael. as the strongest of the archangels, the goddess warriors pray to him when they go into battle ( and ask him for salvation when they die ) and that’s supremely fucked up, because fucking hell, he reveled in that. and worse it was uhh, well, when he was a kid, he didn’t know how to fight and he didn’t have that power and he was looked down on but now that he has power and worship, things got messy as heck. because he liked that. he liked having people grovel and worship the spaces he was in even if he was only there for a moment and it's all this super mega maladaptive response to being picked on as a kid? mael get therapy challenge... 

there are definitely temples that were dedicated to the four archangels, although they’re in ruins now, and people don’t pray to goddesses anymore. while mael misses that, he also knows deep down that it was so BAD for him and he’d be really thrown off if someone did that to him in the present like holy shit? he's not an idiot, he knows it was bad and it made his mental state worse in a manic sort of way, and he doesn't want that 

i do these for every blog, i actually :) go me, didn’t reuse an old one :) so anyway! 

mael’s scars just stayed regardless of whether he obtained them before becoming estarossa or after. 

some of them are in fact! from his battle 3000 years ago with bellion. just because bellion was supremely outclassed doesn’t mean he didn’t actually land a hit when he oneshotted the other goddesses. those scars are a bitter reminder to mael of the anger that the demon clan felt at what the goddess clan was doing. they’re physical marks of the pain his bigotry brought to others that he can very clearly see ( & so can others! ) 

he, of course, has the scar from when escanor COMPLETELY trashed him when he was estarossa. a reminder of a person he thinks was far more worthy of sunshine than he ever was or will be. a reminder of a person who he believes he sent to die because he gave sunshine back even though he KNEW escanor’s body couldn’t handle that. a mark that he was a coward & had someone else fight his battles. 

as estarossa, he also has some scars from being attacked by other goddesses & likewise from being mael, has some scars from demon attacks. 

here’s a fun fact! using sunshine isn’t easy on the hands! so he does have many old burn scars! sunshine is overwhelming in power & it would be shocking if he HADN’T sustained backlash in some form! 

𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞, all those years ago when he watched his older brother in awe ( ludociel had learned how to put everything into his grace, his body was his weapon beyond the holy light, beyond a blade ). he is not the person that the other goddesses made him out to be; this god of the sun. & he is not the person that the demon clan painted him as; the angel of death. now, more than ever, mael knows how lost he is. he feels lost! 

still, ludociel is there ( it feels just as it did in the past, his brother doing everything he could to comfort him ). despite everything, ludociel is there. & he says things that reach into the depths of the younger goddess’ soul. of course he does; it’s always been that way. 

you can stop trying to run after me, now. 

      can he, really? 

it’s alright for you to rest. 

      he wants to rest.  

you can unpack it all when you’re ready. 

you know what would solve this?

he can see nothing wrong with remaining laid back — rather, this is a part of the power he carries ( once upon a time, estarossa had been so eager to be just like his older brother; & meliodas had said many a time that he would be ), his traitorous older brother’s commandment of love. piety must’ve been easier; zeldris could feel whatever emotions he wanted, although estarossa knows better than to resent him. what a pain if he somehow fell to his own commandment ( he’d really get a scolding, then! ). 

do you intend to spend your entire revival dozing off? 

so not counting the dk the most powerful demon is chandler, an elderly & fat character. media doesn’t do that a lot, putting characters who aren’t traditionally attractive or young in roles where they’re powerful & respected ( & chandler is in fact meliodas’ master, he absolutely curbstomps the sins when they try to fight him & that’s on low battery mode i guess? )

on top of that , the most powerful goddess not counting the SD ( & elizabeth, as we don’t know what tf her power levels are ) is ludociel, who is coded most certainly as blind, & there may be more disabilities in there, so that’s a disabled character in a position where they are also highly respected, which also doesn’t seem to be common in the media (but it’s definitely more common than putting a fat character in a position of respect)