“I dream in phosphorescence
Bleed through spaces
See you drifting past the fog
But no one told you where to go
We dive through crystal waters
Perfect oceans
But no one told me not to breathe
And now the weightlessness recedes”
Sleep Token – Take Me Back To Eden
There is something interesting about the idea of Eden because people almost always imagine it from the positive side of the story. We picture paradise before anything happened to it. Everything prior to the fall. Before knowledge complicated its innocence. Before something beautiful became something you could lose. We imagine the gates still open and everything exactly where it belongs. What we don’t spend nearly as much time thinking about is what Eden could look like to someone standing outside of it.
That’s part of why Sleep Token’s Take Me Back To Eden draws me in the way it does. There is longing throughout the song, but I’ve never listened to it and heard it as a simple request to rewind everything. There is way too much damage, awareness, anger, desire, and transformation packed into it for that. Whatever Eden represents, the person asking to return to it isn’t the same person who originally left it.
You can go back to a place. I’m not sure you can ever go back as the exact person who left it. That idea became the center of this photo almost accidentally. I knew I wanted to do something epic (epic to me at least) with TS-Creation’s Archdemon Infernal Edition, and after photographing the Archangel Divine Edition recently, the obvious direction would have been to go completely evil with it. Darkness instead of light. Demon instead of Angel. Infernal instead of Divine.
Instead, I kept my wings, and somehow that made the whole thing considerably more interesting. There was something about putting something so unmistakably divine against the Archdemon armor that immediately made the scene feel less predictable. It created a contradiction I didn’t really want to explain away. If anything, I wanted to lean further into it. The wings weren’t there to soften everything else or pull the character back toward the light. They just belonged there, even if they probably shouldn’t have.
That became the point where the shoot stopped being simply about creating a look around the Infernal Edition and started becoming something bigger. I wasn’t trying to decide whether he was divine or demonic anymore. I was more interested in what happened when I stopped treating those things as mutually exclusive. That’s also when Take Me Back To Eden started making more sense as the soundtrack, because the image had found the same kind of tension I hear in the song.
The TSC Archdemon Infernal Edition (PBR) has exactly the kind of presence I’ve come to expect from TSC‘s larger fantasy sets. This isn’t armor designed to disappear into a scene. It becomes the scene. The silhouette is enormous, with the layered plate, exaggerated shoulders, spikes, claws, and demonic detailing building outward until the avatar feels less like someone wearing armor and more like something the armor itself has transformed.
That’s one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about working with TS-Creations sets. There are details everywhere, but they aren’t simply decoration thrown onto a suit of armor. The shapes help create the look. The shoulders almost become creatures of their own, the chest and abdominal pieces feel more organic than manufactured, and those sharp lines running throughout the set keep pulling everything toward something much more predatory. The PBR materials make an enormous difference too, especially in a scene like this where I’m throwing a frankly ridiculous amount of light around. The gold catches differently across every surface while the darker recesses preserve enough definition that all of that sculpting doesn’t disappear into one giant shiny mass.
The Infernal Edition also gives you all three versions of the Archdemon armor: ARCHDEMON – RADIANT, ARCHDEMON – ECLIPSE, and ARCHDEMON – CRIMSON. If you don’t need the full Infernal Edition and already know which direction you want to take your look, each of those versions can also be purchased separately. I always like having options, especially with something this elaborate, but it’s nice that you don’t have to buy the larger edition just to get the one color you’re actually going to use. You can see them all below in case you’re curious. I’m also sponsored so while I didn’t spend on this one, I would have if I wasn’t.
For this shoot, though, I didn’t want the obvious red or black version of an infernal character (especially since I leaned dark with the Archangel shot). I wanted gold. I wanted white. I wanted light.
I wanted something that could still plausibly have belonged to Eden once. Something fallen, but not stripped of everything it used to be. That’s where the TSC Archangel Divine Wings (PBR) completely changed the character for me. I’ve already photographed these with the Divine Edition, where their purpose felt obvious. They belonged there. Here, attached to the Archdemon armor, they become something else entirely.
They’re still enormous animated Bento wings with their own Flight AO, Glide Mode, Wing Shield and Avatar AO support, which makes them much more than something you attach long enough to take a photograph. Their size is important too because they can actually stand against armor this elaborate without being swallowed by it. In this photo they fill almost the entire frame (intentionally), and I love how the feathers move between gold and black while those brilliant points of light burn through them.
But more than any individual feature, I love what happens when you put these two TSC releases together. The Archdemon armor doesn’t suddenly become divine because I gave it angel wings. The Archangel Divine Wings don’t stop being divine because I attached them to something demonic. Both things remain true at once. That feels incredibly appropriate for Take Me Back To Eden.
One of the things I’ve always loved about Sleep Token is how little interest they have in being just one thing. Take Me Back To Eden can be beautiful and almost fragile before becoming enormous, angry and crushing, then somehow find its way somewhere else again. Those extremes don’t cancel each other out. They make the song what it is.
The more I’ve listened to it, the less I hear Eden as simply a destination. You can miss what existed before everything became complicated while also knowing too much now to pretend none of it happened. You can want something back without actually wanting to erase everything that came after it.
I think that’s the contradiction I wanted this look to carry. I’m not standing there waiting to be redeemed. I also don’t look particularly interested in apologizing for becoming what I might have become. There is something left of whatever came before, though, and maybe the wings are the most obvious proof of it. They aren’t hidden or broken. They’re enormous. They’re still carrying light. If this avatar fell from somewhere, whatever happened afterward didn’t manage to take everything with it.
That’s where Take Me Back To Eden gets more interesting to me than simply longing for paradise. There is recognition buried underneath the longing. Sometimes we don’t really understand what something was until we’re far enough away from it to see the difference. By then, going back isn’t really going backward anymore. You’re bringing everything you’ve learned, everything you’ve lost, and everything you’ve become with you.
So what happens if Eden actually opens the gate again? Who walks through it?
For the avatar underneath all of this armor, I wanted that same conflict to continue instead of suddenly turning into a completely different character once you reached the face. I’m wearing VELOUR’s PICASSO HOMME Skin for Legacy in DEMON/SILVERWING across the body with VELOUR’s NIGHT KING Skin for the face. The silver and darker tones were exactly what I wanted against all of that gold because another warm tone started disappearing into the armor. Instead, the skin gives the character something colder and almost carved from stone.
I added [AURO]’s Rune Carver in Gold across the face, which is a relatively small detail compared to everything else happening here, but it became one of those details I wouldn’t want to remove. The runes carry some of the gold away from the armor and directly onto my avatar, almost as if whatever power is running through everything around him has left its mark there too.
Then there are the /Vae Victis\ “Haeresis” Carapace Horns [PBR], which make sure we’re not trying to pretend this is simply an angel wearing particularly aggressive armor. I love the way the horns build upward and outward behind the crown, almost creating a second halo around the head. Except this one is sharp, twisted and unmistakably demonic.
[ContraptioN]’s Depthglass Eyes finish the face and manage to hold their own despite just about everything in this image trying to steal attention from them. They have this strange glassy quality that works especially well against the NIGHT KING skin. Between the eyes, the runes, the horns and the skin, the face becomes its own smaller version of everything happening across the rest of the image.
The scene needed to survive all of this too. I started with [+Oblivis+] The Final Boss Stage – Dark Royal, which feels appropriately named considering what eventually ended up standing in front of it. The dark architecture and gold detailing gave me the foundation I needed without competing with the avatar, while still making the entire scene feel considerably bigger than the frame we’re seeing.
Then I added the /Vae Victis\ “Animus” Fractured Mana Tower [PBR], and that’s when the environment stopped feeling like a throne room and started feeling like something was actively happening to it. The fractured structures, suspended pieces and enormous columns of light let me break apart some of the symmetry while creating the impression that whatever power exists in this place might be a little too much for the place itself to contain.
That’s when the scene finally clicked for me. This wasn’t Eden. Maybe it was what remained after Eden. The light is still there, but it isn’t gentle anymore. The architecture is fractured. Pieces of the world are suspended around me. The gold hasn’t disappeared, but neither has the darkness. Standing in the middle of all of it is someone or something that looks like it remembers exactly what this place used to be.
That’s ultimately where Take Me Back To Eden lands for me. There is a difference between wanting your past back and wanting to understand what remains of you after everything that happened since. Sometimes there isn’t a clean version of ourselves waiting somewhere behind us. There is only the person who went through all of it and eventually looked back.
Maybe that’s why I don’t see the darkness in this image as something the light needs to defeat. The Archdemon Infernal Edition armor. The Archangel Divine Wings. The horns. The runes. The gold. The darkness. The pieces of something enormous breaking apart behind me. None of them diminish the others.
There’s no need to choose whether I belong to Heaven or Hell for the photo to work. I don’t need to remove the horns before I’m allowed to keep the wings. Whatever Eden was, and whatever happened after I left it, both are part of me now. I remember both, and somehow I survived both. Who knows, perhaps being taken back to Eden was never about becoming who I was before. Maybe it was about finding out whether Eden would still recognize me. Credits for everything can be found below as always, until next time…
“I guess it goes to show, does it not?
That we’ve no idea what we’ve got
Until we lose it (Until we lose it, until we lose it)
And no amount of love will keep it around
If we don’t choose it (Choose it)
And I don’t know what’s got its teeth in me
But I’m about to bite back in anger
No amount of self-sought fury
Will bring back the glory of innocence”
Sleep Token – Take Me Back To Eden
Credits:
~Him~
Head: LeLUTKA.Head.NOA.4.0 ~ Jaden Nova
Head Applier: VELOUR: NIGHT KING Skin for Evo X (SILVERWING) ~ Kiria Mama
Hair: [MFCNT] THOR Bun – Grooming Hair – LeBarbier Alpha
Hairbase: LeLUTKA.EvoX.Hairbase.044 (BOM) ~ Jaden Nova (Comes with the LeLUTKA NOA Head)
Eyes: [ContraptioN] Depthglass Eye ~ Walton Wainwright
Eye Base: Avi-Glam. Arcane – Pack 3 – 302 ~ Eye Daddy
Ears: {Aii} + Vamp Ears (bom.EVOX) + ~ Lulu Resident
Beard: [MFCNT] Ducky Skunk Beard & Stache – LeBarbier Alpha
Beard Layer: [MR] Jimmi Facial Hair for EvoX Heads Style 1 ~ Daniel Whiskers
Body: [LEGACY] Athletic Edition (1.7.1) ~ MeshBody Resident
Skin: VELOUR: PICASSO HOMME Skin for Legacy (DEMON/SILVERWING) Picasso Neck ~ Kiria Mama
Carvings: [AURO] Rune Carver // Face EvoX // GOLD (FULL) ~ Auric Arcane
Horns: /Vae Victis\ – “Haeresis” – Carapace Horns [PBR] ~ Grimoire Hexem
Armor: TS-Creations Archdemon Infernal Edition (PBR) ~ Topa Adamski
Wings: TS-Creations Archangel Divine Wings (PBR) ~ Topa Adamski
Heart: /Vae Victis\ – “Eternal Vow” Broken Heart – 2k members gift ~ Grimoire Hexem
~Scene~
Stage: [+Oblivis+] The Final Boss Stage – Dark Royal Pillars Cracked ~ OblivisSolem Resident
Towers: /Vae Victis\ – “Animus” – Fractured Mana Tower [PBR] ~ Grimoire Hexem
Pose: ::Poseidon Poses:: – Nazgul ~ Gryphon Vendetta
