All the promises of my love will leave with you You'll forget about me, you'll forget about me Next to the station I will cry just like a kid Because you're leaving Because you're leaving Because you're leaving Why are you leaving?

for context before i get into why this fits the fic so well:

the premise of steel is that after all the links die, they meet in a version of heaven. reunions happen and their shared spirit is singing and rejoicing because yay everybody is together! everything is as it should be! nothing is missing, the eight of them are finally together again.

but no, they weren't complete, (they're a set, do not separate), because someone is missing.

warriors isn't there? they forgot him??? how could they have forgotten him, even for a moment??? their brother??? it gets worse, bc when they start searching for him, they're told that a hero of warriors doesn't exist. his whole era doesn't exist.

dun dun DUN

so my theory is that warriors, the self-sacrificial, the bottom of the barrel self-esteem, mr. i-don't-deserve-any-of-this-in-fact-i-deserve-the-worst, hero of warriors is the cause of his own deletion from history, memory, and celestial being. it wasn't hylia or lana or cia, it was warriors who decided that nobody will miss him so actually, it's not even a sacrifice if he deleted himself from memory to save something or someone.

YOU SEE THE PERFECTION OF THE FIRST TWO LINES??? DO YOU SEE IT???

All the promises of my love will leave with you You'll forget about me, you'll forget about me

(but also if my theory isnt correct the lyrics can still apply which is great)

WARRIORS

i started drawing May 2nd at 8:20 pm, my procreate file says. and apparently i posted a wip the same day XD. this was after my family moved during my 2 week break and i only had a couple of days left to draw and i was so relieved to sit down and draw again.

i honestly feel like i have to draw to live, it was killing me not to

i had two goals for warriors's animation

i decided wars is going to smile while he's saying these devastating lines. he's going to have the saddest smile you've ever laid your eyes on with love in his eyes.

he's going to die. and he's going to die in a way that'll make your heart wail. i wanted his death to be awful and tragic and he's going to be dead for the majority of the video

i also just love the first line. the way i interpret it is that his love for them will stay with them, he's letting them and his love for them go, he'll be with them, his love will be with them, but they won't remember him or his love. but also, ultimately he's breaking the promise of his love by making them forget him.

(also i was inspired by @mirensiart to start adding a beauty mark under wars's right eye! and in japanese it's called a 泣きぼくろ, pronounced "nakibokuro," translating to "tear mole." and according to folk belief, it can mean someone is prone to crying, is crying on the inside, that they have a tragic life, etc. LINK TO WHERE I GOT THE QUOTE and i will be adding it on every warriors fanart from now on, thank you very much)

MASK AND TUNE

next lines were perfect for tune and mask

Next to the station I will cry just like a kid

in my head "station" was replaced by "portal".

and "i will cry just like a kid" makes me think of how both tune and mask grew up to be the men that they are because of wars and without wars. and that's their BIG BROTHER! WARS RAISED THOSE TWO RASCALS. so they're going to cry like a kid even with their years and their experiences because thATS THEIR BIG BROTHER SUFFERING AND DEAD AND GONE AND FORGOTTEN.

so this is when i made the damning mistake of thinking:

"wouldn't it be sad if they both turned to look at warriors (dead)?"

in the original animation meme, the main animations were the eyes and the mouth. characters would just move their eyes to look at each other and they would lip sync the lyrics. that's it. because animation memes have a set format and the format is usually simple bc THEYRE SUPPOSE TO BE DONE SIMPLY AND QUICKLY

BUT NO! MY DUMBASS WAS LIKE "wouldn't it be sad—" AND I MADE IT SO MUCH MORE COMPLICATED AND IT TOOK ME SO MUCH LONGER AND COLORING WAS MY ENEMY. ANIMATION TAKES SO LONGGGG

but it was worth it. i love what i made and i love that i could give back to elle.

the character acting for mask was fun to do. it's fun making that kid cry. mask looks away from wars first bc he doesn’t want to confront the truth of it but eventually forces himself to face it. And when he does, he’s looking at wars still for just a moment hoping he’ll look back. he's also the more angry looking of the two because he's angry this is happening, angry at warriors, angry at himself, angry angry angry. he's holding on to the scarf, he's holding on to wars, he wants him back, give him back.

tune is the braver one, he's the one who has more of an understanding of what's happening with wars, but he's trying to keep it together. for himself, for wars, for mask. which is why he turns to wars first, he says "because you left" directly to wars's corpse first, knowing what he’ll see and he still looks bc he owes wars that much and he needs to be brave for mask, but he’s still his captain’s baby tune and he can’t stop himself from breaking down.

Also I saw some people who were doing the trend change the last “bc you are leaving” into “why are you leaving?” And I loved that, I thought it really added more angst. I thought it might be something the Spanish language does where there can be two meanings of the sentence but maybe it’s just a mistranslation. if someone knows, educate me!

Finally, i wanted both of them to rest their heads against wars just to hurt people, just to be quirky

AMARANTHS

at some point in the process, i asked elle "do you have a specific flower that represents steel?" and elle said amaranths, specifically the "love lies bleeding" one

something like this:

and i looked up what amaranth meant in flower language and ugh! poetic! ELLE’S MINDDDDD!!!

an imaginary flower —(remember legend saying "I can't feel him. Not like he's too far away, but like he'd never been there at all." remember how they were told "There is no Hero of Warriors.")— that never fades (remember Time saying "If it weren't for my own memories of him, it would be as though he had never existed." remember how "Legend brushed softly over the bond with the captain, and he wasn't the only one" how sky claimed what's his "I want all of them – of us – together. I don't want what remains to be bigger or stronger. I want the people that should be here to be here")

"love lies bleeding" and "an imaginary flower that never fades" (remember how he did fade in their memory even for a moment, remember how they were told he wasn't real, remember how warriors left all of his love for his boys, remember how he lied bleeding, here I'll remind you)

LAST FEW QUESTIONS

the things that gave me the most trouble was the color and the background.

coloring because, i had the animation done! i got a wave of dopamine and it felt like i was done because hey! they were moving! it's done right? WRONG you gotta color, idiot! but i knew it would look better with color so i buckled down.

the background! a similar problem, i wanted to be finished so bad because if i didn't finish that weekend, it meant that i would have to wait until next weekend to finish and i could taste it, i could lick the finish line. i do think i rushed it, i at one point considered leaving the amaranths out because i wanted to keep the scarf because i love the idea of wars and his love still supporting and enveloping them as symbolized by his all-encompassing scarf,

but then bc of the scarf i had no room for the amaranths except for the gap between the two ends of the scarf. so it looks a bit unfinished and the blue definitely is ALL ENCOMPASSING. i think if i rendered the scarf better i would be more satisfied because it looks a bit odd to me.

And I also added the amaranths bc i honestly had no choice. they’re pivotal. they gotta be there.

A little thing I overlooked until it was too late was that tune and masks tears shouldn’t be going straight down their face when they’re laying down, they should be going to the sides. but I noticed late in the game and I said screw physics and continued on my way

Overall though! i still love it!

something that surprised me was that i did enjoy coloring! even if i would rather not have done it XD. I think i like the way i rendered the boys and i learned a new way to color!

also wars lost his color and warmth because the hero's spirit left him.

lastly:

how dare I??? HOW DARE YOU!

everybody, you got the wrong guy, it's elle you should be upset at! /joke.

*points in elle's direction* this is all her fault! it's her you want!

FINAL THOUGHTS

did you guys know elle leaves some of the best comments??? i remember elle first by how she commented on my first ever warriors and mask video and her comment really made an impression on me. and every time there was a whiff of mask and wars and tune she'd be there in the comments. finally i got curious enough to go look at her profile and found that she has an ongoing fic. I read it and it grabs me by the neck. I start yelling back at elle about her fic just like she yelled about my art.

i also love dropping hints in my wips. i love showing people a small puzzle piece and when the puzzle was done they point and say that's what that piece was for?!?! and i did this to elle for weeks, she got a bunch of sneak peaks and she says she didn't expect it in her comments but i don't know if i believe her honestly bc i thought i was being pretty obvious and she was just too nice not to point out that the jig was up.

elle has such a beautiful, painful understanding of these characters. every time she talks about them it opens my mind!!!

im glad you liked the animatic, elle! again thank you for writing and sharing steel with us <3<3<3

EXTRA & ITS GOING INTO BIGGER FIC SPOILERS:

the animation meme usually has all of the characters look up at the same time in the beginning of the video, but! for this one, I had wars look up alone and die before the other two looked up. because they were too late. they missed each other.

in the fic, what really stuck with me is a scene where wind yells at mask/time "I did the best I could, but I had to do it backwards!" both tune and time missed their chances to help wars for their own reasons and i wanted to convey that through how they look up after wars dies and also how they look at wars at different times, tune looks first, mask looks second, it doesn't matter in the end because wars is already dead.

also also, wars never looks at either one of them. he can't bear to. so ultimately he misses his chance.

isn't that fun :D