Is He Shocked Because Of Raven Speaking Or Because Summer Said She Had A Girlfriend.

“you’re not alone anymore  Blake “

I've pondered before about Nico recreating Agnus's research and granting herself a bug-like Angelo transformation. And as cool and hot as that would be, I never felt sure it was in character.

However, a plot point in the Machiavelli Duology (all details in my pinned post) is that after Machiavelli and Arius II are dealt with, the Ouroboros Corporation would fall under Nico's control.

And this would be incredibly stressful for her.

She can't just be tinkering in her workshop and flirting with any female coworkers who pass by all the time, she has to make important business decisions about stuff like finances and public relations.

And she can't just quit, because everyone who's gunning for her job is evil and would commit crimes against humanity in the name of science and profit given the opportunity. Nico's having a hard time transitioning Ouroboros to more ethical practices, and she has good intentions.

I could see the stress taking a toll on her mental health, leading her to consider courses of action she otherwise wouldn't.

What if her smoking got worse? She goes from smoking two or three cigarettes a day to at least a whole pack.

What if she got cancer?

What if, suddenly, her mortality became very apparent? And the outcome where someone with malicious intentions inherits Ouroboros becomes inevitable, and imminent?

Not so long ago, a friend brought to my attention a passage from Deadly Fortune that really sheds some light on how Nero sees the world.

He believes that there's no inherent morality to the universe, except for the morality imposed upon it by those in power. It's essentially Vergil's "might controls everything" slogan, but as a real ideology instead of a mere reaction to trauma.

The same friend shed some light on Nero's feelings toward Kyrie. As much as he admires her selflessness and compassion, he acknowledges that as a human civilian, she has no strength to act on her ideals. This is precisely why he believes he has to be strong, to stand up for what Kyrie believes in.

This makes me wonder what would happen if Kyrie's ideals changed.

In my "Kyrie gains demonic minions like V's" plot (all details in my pinned post), Kyrie allows many Fortunians to be subjugated and tormented by demons she has chosen not to form pacts with, due to their cruelty toward her and her family, and for taking her kindness for granted. Would Nero stand by her as he always has?

With the above in mind, I'm inclined to say no. He would relate to Kyrie's bitterness, and might take a little too long to admit that she's crossing a line, but ultimately he loves Kyrie for her goodness, not the other way around.

At the same time, I'm not sure he believes in those ideals strongly enough to stand against Kyrie. She's his role model, his reason for fighting. If she no longer fit into that role, I think Nero would just walk away.

In that passage mentioned above, Nero remarks on a scene in Devil May Cry 4, where Kyrie shields a child from an attacking Scarecrow with her own body. Nero remarks on the futility of the gesture, that they'd both get torn apart anyway. This sheds some light on another scene from Devil May Cry 5, after Dante loses to Urizen, when Nero callously walks away from the Qliphoth as a civilian is impaled by a root. He believes in himself less than ever in this moment, and he isn't one to throw his life away for a good cause if he knows it's hopeless.

Nero fights for Kyrie and her ideals, and if he could no longer believe in that, I don't even think he'd continue being a devil hunter. He might even lose his powers, Spider-Man 2 style, as it is implied that he gets his powers back at the end of Devil May Cry 5 because he found a new reason to fight. He might get some menial job to make ends meet, but he really has nothing to live for at that point.

And what I like about this outcome is that it finally presents an opportunity to tie the Kyrie plot into the Machiavelli Duology (also explained in my pinned post). If the Kyrie plot and her falling out with Nero happened before the Trish/Lucia/Lady side of events really kick off, it could explain why he doesn't get involved. Maybe Nico alludes to what went down in Fortuna, mentions trying to get in touch with Nero, but to no avail.

As for what solves this whole mess...

I think I've said before that I like the idea of Dante being the one to get through to Kyrie. He helps her understand that fighting for the good of humanity doesn't have to mean being nice to them, as he consistently does the right thing while also being an unpleasant jerk very frequently. Kyrie finds a way to be true to herself without totally giving in to hate.

And conversely, perhaps Vergil is the one who gets through to Nero. He's the furthest thing from Kyrie's ideals of kindness, and yet Nero stepped in between him and Dante to save him anyway, which began Vergil's own path to healing and growing. Nero did this primarily because he remembers the pain of losing Credo, even after the awful things he participated in. Nero realizes that if saving someone like Vergil can be worthwhile, then it'd be foolish to give up on Kyrie.

I could imagine Vergil encountering a depowered Nero, and provoking him to fight, announcing his intent to make good on his promise not to lose this time. Mocking him about his lost power, until Nero becomes motivated (hehe) enough to trigger and kick Vergil's ass again.

RWBY Zombie AU part 3

“ when all of this started  eight months ago I realized that I shouldn’t trust anyone… in this world we live in  people would do anything to stay alive even if it meant sacrificing their family, friends or  loved ones.

Am not sure why I helped her ? I don’t even know why I offered her to stay ? I can’t even find the answer in my own mind… perhaps I needed someone to talk to , or maybe I was afraid of leaving this world alone with no one to remember me .. or was it just out of kindness . sympathy .empathy…”

part 1 |part 2 | part 3 | part 4 |Part 5 | Part 6

Miraculous Master Post

Hello! Here’s the master list of all my stuff! I have no idea if I’m doing this right so if I’m not, please let me know and I’ll try to fix it!

Miraculous College AU:

Part 1

Contains class salt, Lila salt, and Adrien salt

Miraculous Career Choice AU:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4 (Jasonette child) coming soon

Contains minor class salt, Lila salt, Gabriel salt, Adrien salt, and Maribat Jasonette

Bio Mom Au 

Starfire Part 1

Starfire Part 2

Zatanna Part 1 coming soon

Contains class salt, Lila salt, Adrien salt, Minor Chloe salt, and potentially more salt to be added.

Requests: Organized by ships or other stuff

Timinette:

New Phone Who Dis?

Contains class salt, Lila salt, Adrien salt, Alya salt, Chloe redemption, and probably more I don’t remember.

Daminette:

Revenge Never Looked So Good

Contains class salt, Lila salt, Adrien salt, Alya salt, a lotta salt.

Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Panthère de Nuit

Contains class salt, Lila salt, Adrien salt, Alya salt, a lotta salt. This is super long so I suggest taking an intermission, stretching your legs, and going to the bathroom around the sewing machine part. 

Edit: Fixed tagging

A collection of NPCs from Breath of the Wild. Seriously this game has so many wonderful designs it makes me jelly as hell! Mina, Ivee, Prima, and best-nonfish-bro Hudson

✨ Wisdomverse: Masterpost ✨

Welcome!

This masterpost covers Lin’s Wisdomverse; comprised of:

Wielders of Wisdom: a Zeldas-meet AU comic series

The Secrets We Keep: a parallel LU story featuring the Links

Wielders and Secrets take place in the same universe and their stories will intersect at times. However, you do not need to read one to understand the other.

🦋 Wielders of Wisdom 🦋

Timeline (TBA)

Information

Character Introductions

Sun, Dot, Lullaby [Details]

Tetra, Dawn, Fable [Details]

Dusk, Artemis, Flora [Details]

Phantom, Aurora [Details]

Spirit, Silent

Intro (fic)

Chapter 1 [The Founder’s Call]: Start | Latest

Interlude 1 [Echo of the Past]: Start

Extras: Reunited | Failure | Delivery | Statue | Tears | Painting | Tea | Magic | Science | Moments | Remlit | Abscond | Smash | Morning | Echo | Monopoly | Moments 2 | Dining | Poll

Zelda+Link Duos: Bladesaw (Flora) | Sail (Tetra) | Safe (Dawn)

🧩 The Secrets We Keep 🧩

Timeline

Main Story

Extras: Trap | Shadows | Dream | Tea | Waves

RWBY Zombie Apocalypse Part 7 Previous|  Read from the beginning | Next chapter

more pink portraits 💕

Let us see the terror of heaven

I was thinking a while ago today about the way angels are consistently designed in Shin Megami Tensei vs the way the Law alignment is sort of steadily portrayed in later games. It's a weird trip but hopefully where I'm going will become clear.

Most of Shin Megami Tensei's angels actually hue fairly close to the "traditional" image of angels, as fair-looking winged humans. We see this for instance in Shin Megami Tensei's Angel.

In nearly all of the angels in the Tenshi clan:

And of course, the Four Archangels/Seraphs/Heralds. Let's just use Uriel as an example here:

There's also Haniel and Kazfiel whose designs both follow traditional Christian depictions of seraphs. We'll bring up Haniel's art here:

But then we get to Shin Megami Tensei II where we really start to see the "Biblically accurate angels" trope emerge in earnest, where we see the more human/Hellenistic-looking angels alongside some pretty eldritch entities in the Daitenshi clan. For example, Tzaphkiel:

Or how about Ophanim, which seems to be based around Ezekiel's vision of the cherubim:

And then of course there's SMT 2's Satan:

Devil Summoner and Soul Hackers can be seen as developing the inhuman aesthetic of SMT's angels as extending from the "Biblically accurate angel" trope. Let's start with the Tenshi clan in Devil Summoner:

And some of the Daitenshi:

Then Soul Hacker's Tenshi:

And Daitenshi:

With Shin Megami Tensei IV it seems that one of the guest artists, Keita Amemiya, took the inhuman direction for angel design to the nth degree in terms of his approach to demon design in general as reflecting the idea of angels and demons as artificial beings.

At this point I should get to where I'm going here. For a while, at least a decade ago, I might have favoured the idea of the angels as strictly inhuman, or even artifical, possibly to convey the externality and alienness of the repression of the order of God. Keita Amemiya seemed to really lean on that idea, though the designs were certainly rather poorly executed at least for the Four Heralds. But thinking about it, I think the older designs for the Four Seraphs appeal to me for more than just being the classic designs from SMT 1 and 2.

Even though the "Biblically accurate" design direction is very suitably weird both for SMT's context and the linking of the strange and alien to representation of dreadful aspects of divine awe, I find that the more humanlike representation of angels in the context of the Law alignment works better for what, in my mind, I prefer to see. To understand where I'm going, let's look at SMT IV and Apocalypse. Here, the Law alignment is much as it is in SMT I and II, in that it can understood in terms of a single-minded devotion to the order of God, and to the extent that the forces of Law are ruthless in their actions, willing even to wipe out all of Tokyo in order to preserve the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado. In Apocalypse, you see YHVH's "true form" as a monstrous chimera the likes of which, as I remember Eirikr noting, you would probably see as the formulaic final boss of literally any JRPG.

To my mind, it serves to very obviously signify YHVH as unambiguously evil, which, oddly for SMT, is represented as similarly unambiguously demonic. Of course it might be argued that the conceits of Sethian "Gnosticism" are also in play. I think that the opposite approach would be better. SMT IV's approach seems to tie the order of God and the atrocity that the forces of Law undertake to uphold as, all along, the manifestation of a demonic will. But the better idea for me is that all of the same atrocity is done not by monsters but by the traditional figures of light.

Every scheme to dominate the universe, and every massacre that follows to support it, every terror that befalls mankind for its perceived failure, I prefer that we see all of it under the auspice of the traditional figures of light. That would be a far more fitting adage of the inversion that SMT is known for. As Valerio Mattioli said of Rome as portrayed by Luchino Visconti, hell lies in the celestial vaults. And what better way to illustrate that then all of the violence and terror of Law being the instrument not of monstrous chimeras but of celestial form. Of a "beauty" that hides unfathomable violence within itself. And I don't want SMT to be the only place where you can find this idea. Oh no no no I think more media should play with that idea, more art should go all in on this kind of aesthetic-moral inversion.

Update: it occurred to me that I've forgotten something. I forgot to talk about SMT V.

When it comes to SMTV, we see echoes of SMTIV Apocalypse's handling of Law and the violence of order, in that it both reasserts its treatment of that as the affect of an actually demonic will and presents Abdiel's desire to reassert God's order as a plunge to towards the demonic. Hence you see the angel Abdiel transform from sort of an angelic Princess Padme in gold armour into an actual fallen angel, who even gets reclassed as the only Law-aligned member of the Fallen clan.

Not to mention her attempt to become a Nahobino resulting in a transformation into a giant demon centaur whose design seems to recall Sirene's fusion with Kaim in Devilman.

Of course, in context this is all supposed to emerge from the premise of God's death, Abdiel's denial of that death, and the resulting desperation to restore order. But, again, that desire as strictly the affect of the classically demonic to me misses the point. Yet, given the obvious resonances with Nocturne, where three of the main characters merge with their demonic sponsors, it's worth pointing to an obvious contrast: Baal Avatar.

And moreso, the fact that before you see Baal Avatar you witness Chiaki slaughter the Manikins, ramble about how the strong deserve to crush the weak, and then in a flash of light three out of the four archangels (namely Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel) appear as her allies, which you fight.

Now there's a setting where the representatives of Social Darwinist violence and atrocity also make no bones about what guides them: the idea that they're making the world beautiful and promoting the ultimate good. Their radiant appearance is not to be understood as a deception covering up some inner demonic nature or demonomania but instead only reflects their seemingly divine conceit. It's not only that they believe they are paragons of virtue. Everything they do, they do as figures of light. And you, a monster among monsters, a cursed being in the world of demons, might oppose them and might just stop them if you choose to. It's really hard to think of anything else that has that angle. It's also somewhat concerning to think that future games might miss the mark.

The development exemplified by Abdiel's transformation into literally a fallen angel ultimately lends not only to certain ideas about the hope that there might be something "unambiguously good" about Law, but also the idea that all the bad things about it are all about concert with the demonic, which is ultimately familiar to the conceit that all of the negative aspects of Christianity are simply the manifestations of a falsification of Christianity, that the "real" blasphemers, heretics, and demons are actually just Christian fundamentalists. But I'm not interested in that idea. I'm interested in the worst that humanity has to offer being contained in its loftiest aspirations of order and in turn represented in the figures of light, because I'm interested in the idea that it is in the name of "the Good" that atrocity always manifests, and for which we cast it into a shadow of the human, in evil.

What we are striving to forget is that the worst deeds in the world are always either utterly human or surely the work of God. Nothing demonic could come close. So let us see more inversion that reflects that insight. The insight that, so far, SMT is among the few media to portray, let alone portray as brilliantly as it often has.