#hellbent

for real, darlington is such a tragic character.

searching for the arcane ever since he was a kid, training for something more that he can't even see, the parents who literally didn't want to parent him and tried to freeze him out of black elm, the conservative and kinda abusive grandpa who turned sick and paranoid and asked an underage danny to mercy kill him (and he did it), living by himself and scraping by until he made the hiram elixir without any knowledge of or guidance by the societies and was found passed out hours later by a mailman on the stairs of the house he'd fought with his everything to keep.

sandow appears at his hospital bed, offers him the key to everything he's ever wanted, and danny becomes darlington. he becomes dante. then he becomes virgil. somewhere inbetween he embodies lethe. he'd been going through the dante applications when sandow called in and basically said, "hey, we went ahead and recruited someone who was born able to do what you've always wanted to do and almost died trying. here's her file."

and we know alex's history - that file is incredibly fucking concerning to say the least. and darlington tries, he really tries to make her feel at ease, to make everything easy and digestible for her, and what does he get? the aurelian ritual blows up in his face and he has to lie to defend the lethe delegation. he learns why and begins to understand alex, but he's still ill-equipped to deal with someone like her, someone who's been through so much. then the halloween party at manuscript, a complete shitshow of getting drugged, practically assaulting his dante under the influence, but also seeing himself as a knight in the mirror with a sword in his back, seeing alex as queen mab. understanding it and yet not knowing what it means throws him in for a loop. he starts to figure alex's mysterious past out, but even more than that, he incidentally starts to figure the nexuses out, and sandow can't afford him to. getting swallowed by the hellmouth while alex lets it happen is one thing, blaming himself for it all is another.

a whole year of rebuilding black elm in hell, torturing and getting tortured, and crying out to alex, because no one else can hear him (and who could know his soul?) and he's somehow connected to her of all people, the puzzles and the games, the murders, being spat out both man and monster . having killed his parents and trying to come to terms with not being able to not love them despite all they've done. now also being chained to alex for life in servitude, finding out his virgil didn't even like him, going back to hell with the intention to surrender himself, escaping but accidentally indirectly propping the door to hell open, his grandpa's gray still talking about legacy after everything he's sacrificed, finding said virgil's body in his car trunk. GOD.

Before October, I did a small project with my family's support, and I was able to sell several copies of these figures as fan-stickers at conventions in October.

The Mystery Skulls fan group in Ecuador is small, but I managed to get in touch with them, and they loved these models! I'll make more in the future…

Characters by @mysterybensmysteryblog and cool team!!!

Music franchise by @mysteryskulls

Art by me!!!

And because, of course, I am the one holding the pencil and needed to make myself a wee bit happy. 💛✨️

Belial belongs to Hellbent from @magicshop-games