InBrightestDay

And as a pagan-friendly Christian, I appreciate that.

Me too.  The good news is that they seem to have saved the other towers, as well as the historically vital artwork inside, so while this was bad, it could have been much worse.

Does anyone know how it started yet?

Quote

Yup – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity being one such example with a, uh, Nordic Jesus. I’m sure some of the modern white supremacists pull the same shit.

Fucking Nazis ruin everything…

Quote

“Oh, wait, you the first born? Yeah, you be afraid. If it’s any consolation I don’t like this any more than you do, kid. Pharoh being stubborn.”

I actually had the Archangel Azrael reminiscing about that very thing in an unpublished story.  It’s not a funny memory, though.

Also, it’s kind of weird that you mentioned this, given that Passover starts in just over a week.

Quote

I accidentally looked at Lovecraft rather than his fictional universe and created the world’s most racist angel, Klandalphon

Strangely for a Judeo-Christian angel, he’s rather averse to Jewish people.

Quote

responsible for all of the Aryan Jesus imagary

I may regret asking this question, but is Aryan Jesus actually a thing, or are we just talking about paintings depicting Jesus as white rather than Middle Eastern, like The Last Supper?

Also…

Quote

Klandalphon

It’s always good to know that Kevin’s ME-teor joke is very much in the JayDee spirit.

Quote

If I might reccomend a work? Check out the webcomic,  freefall.

I’m actually familiar with Freefall, even if I haven’t actually read it.  The website Atomic Rockets, which is a useful if sometimes hard to navigate resource for physics equations and potential spaceship designs, has referenced Freefall more than a few times, even using images from the comic as illustrations.

Quote

Also, given support of skeletal structure and some readings of the Bible the wings are more likely to be mid-lower back or hips.

I have actually seen some pictures of angels with wings that are either attached lower down on the back or at the hips.  The latter is strangely popular in anime-inspired works, along with small demonic wings attached at the hip.

If we’re going to talk about skeletal structure, then mid-back makes some sense, since the wings would have their own scapulae rather than being mounted on the ones being used for the arms (removing conflicts over muscle attachments) and would put the wings closer to the center of mass of the human body.  Having said that, it does look a little strange to me, and it would likely conflict even worse with the sword, since now the scabbard would be knocking into the humerus of the left wing instead of passing underneath it, and the angle it would have to be at would be even more restricted than it would with shoulder-mounted wings.

I’m really not a fan of hip-mounted wings.  I feel like as soon as those things start flapping you’re going to end up with the torso hanging forward from the hips during flight, which is not the most majestic image.

Ultimately, though, I don’t know that realism matters that much here.  these are preternatural organisms, after all; they treat the laws of physics more like polite suggestions than anything else, so where the wings are mounted is, as far as I can tell, more a matter of personal preference.

Speaking of which, what did you mean about interpretations of the Bible?  I ask because the only times I recall angels actually being described are in Ezekial 1 (which describes Cherubim and mentions that they have four wings, but never mentions where the wings attach to the body) and Isaiah 6 (which describes Seraphim, but again doesn’t say anything about where the six wings are attached), and maybe Zechariah 5 (verse 9 describes women with wings like those of a crane or stork, who may or may not be angels; again, no word on how the wings are attached).

Quote

I can link some tutorial examples

Feel free!  I’m always happy to learn about new stuff.

Also, this has nothing to do with anything, but while scanning Deviantart to find pictures of the various wing arrangements, I ran across this, which I am linking to because it’s just really cool and creepy.

Quote

Kizzy gets around it by not forming a physical sword at all, but basically a flame light sabre.

Lupa: “Wait, Kizzy likes Star Wars too?”

Shannon: “Yeah.  One time, after I set up a Tinder profile for her, she made me watch the Holiday Special...”

So, since Thundercloud brought up the sword, I figure I should at least share what I was thinking about.

First, obviously, as the one who has actually made a sword designed to be drawn from the back, Thundercloud, you’re the expert here.  What I’m about to say is just the thought process that went into trying to visualize what this thing would look like.  Just ignore it if it doesn’t make sense (or say Luzurial’s using magic...which she totally could be).

So, in Whore of Heaven, JayDee described Luzurial having a sword longer than her torso sheathed on her back (assuming Luzurial is 6 feet tall, that means the sword is a little more than 3 feet long).  The overhand draw looked really cool in my head, so I kept that for The Woman in the Statue, but then I was like “Crap!  The wings!”

Assuming Luzurial is like the majority of people, she’s right handed, so the scabbard is likely angled so that the hilt sticks out over her right shoulder.  In every depiction of angels or demons I’ve seen, the wings are shown as being attached to the scapulae (shoulder blades), but where on the scapulae varies, so the gap between the attachment points could conceivably be big enough that you could get the sword to pass between them while still having enough of an angle for the hilt to be reached over her shoulder.  Of course, this means that the other end of the scabbard has to pass either over or under one of her wings (the left wing, assuming a right-handed draw).

Passing over the wing is just fine when Luzurial is on the ground and doesn’t have to use her wings, but the second she needs to take off it’s gonna be super awkward, so it made more sense to me that the sword would pass under her left wing.  This is where angels have a serious advantage over demons.  Demonic wings are traditionally based on those of bats and thus have a wing membrane that must be joined to the torso to keep that section of the membrane taut, but angel wings are traditionally based on those of birds, and feathers maintain their shape without being glued to the torso.  Assuming there’s a bit of a gap between the secondary feathers and the attachment point (angels aren’t usually depicted with tertial or scapular feathers, just the primaries and secondaries), the part of the scabbard we need to deal with should be able to fit between the wing and the torso.

Now it’s true, of course, that when beating the wings, the scabbard could mess with some of the secondary feathers (those closest to the body) on the downbeat.  Thing is, because the wings are attached to the back of human scapulae, they actually don’t have the full range of motion that bird wings would; they can’t drop more than a few degrees past the horizontal because a human torso gets in the way.  This would mean that angels and demons would produce less thrust with each wingbeat, but I’m fairly certain magic is being employed here, since the wingspan generally isn’t big enough to loft a human-sized being anyway.  TL;DR, because the wings don’t actually have to go down that far, the scabbard shouldn’t interfere with the secondary feathers too much.

As far as what she does when actually drawing the sword, I think the scabbard is likely to have a non-traditional design, similar to the back scabbard from Shadow of Mordor, which covers the point and the edges of the sword, but is partly open so that she doesn’t have to draw the sword through the full length of the scabbard.

Drawing and sheathing it (especially the latter) would still be pretty tricky, but given that Luzurial is fourteen billion years old, I’m willing to bet she’s had so much practice she’s got it down to a fine art by now.

Again, I’m not pretending to be informed about this.  This was just what I was kind of picturing in my head.

Quote

I have been trying to design armour for succubae, that might get a few sentences of description, and have been just pouring over so much armour through history, fashion, to make it practical, sexy, and work with them damn wings.

That’s similar to what I’m experiencing.  Most of the science was just done because I wanted to be able to throw a number in there and wanted it to be accurate.  How long does it take Abaddon (the dark matter asteroid) to go from Jovian orbit to Earth?  If I give Abaddon a certain mass, how big will the explosion be upon impact given its mass and impact velocity?  I just wanted the numbers to be real (or as real as I could make them) instead of being pulled out of thin air.  The only part that will actually come up in multiple chapters will be the Torus, since it’s where the characters will spend pretty much the entire story.

And I really sympathize with regard to armor and other equipment working on a being with wings.  I actually spent a long time thinking about Luzurial’s sword for The Woman in the Statue, specifically because it’s supposed to be sheathed on her back, and I kept trying to figure out how it would be angled so that she could reach back and draw it, but also so that it wouldn’t interfere with her wings.  That never even gets discussed in the story; I just wanted to be able to visualize it so that it made sense to me.

Quote

I researched life in Wales at the end of the Roman occupation for one story, and wound up using a soap recipe based on horse chestnuts for another story. Yes, I overthink things….

It’s really cool to see that you all do this too.  Not only does it make me feel better, it’s just awesome to know how much thought all of you are putting into your stories.

Quote

haha. Reminds me of just looking up underground rivers and six hours later I was reading equations for nuclear physics.

Out of curiosity, what did the nuclear physics have to do with the story?