I Just. The Parallels In Hector And Isaac’s Designs Are So Good.

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?

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

Masterlist for Other Works of Mine

Because I’m realizing how disorganized/bad at tags I am. One Shot Works: https://salthaven.tumblr.com/post/610893687539564544/an-odd-day-for-a-normal-girl (Description: Marinette is a normal girl. No Miraculous, nothing unusual in her life…except she’s in love with the Ladybug holder and is best friends with Chat Noir. Oh, and she’s being thrown into some dumb fake dating situation. Great.)

https://salthaven.tumblr.com/post/190458693897/a-ladys-scout-and-the-salt-within-her-soul (Description: Marinette is assumed to be a hero scout for Ladybug, and shows her salt by…making gifts?)

https://salthaven.tumblr.com/post/189729234197/what-do-you-think-of-this-marinette-is-with-both (Description: Marinette just wanted a break, and so she created an illusion. A fake fight, fake Akuma, to get everyone off of her back. She didn’t expect it to lead to Hawkmoth’s defeat.) (An Ask)

https://salthaven.tumblr.com/post/189536099637/not-too-much-salt-alya-and-nino-get-lila-to (Description: Alya gets Lila to babysit so she and Nino can go on a date. However, an angry ex-babysitter gets Akumatized and decides to create an army of children…and Lila values herself over Alya’s siblings.) (An Ask)

https://salthaven.tumblr.com/post/189336564692/from-white-to-purple-she-leans-into-him-eyes (From White to Purple…a ‘what if’, where Chat Blanc!Adrien didn’t get left in his own world, but came to Marinette’s. Spoilers for Chat Blanc!) (Based on a prompt I saw) Stupid and in Love:

Part One: https://salthaven.tumblr.com/post/188416406372/stupid-and-in-love-origins 

Part Two: https://salthaven.tumblr.com/post/188544944147/stupid-and-in-love-origins-part-two

Part Three: https://salthaven.tumblr.com/post/188616423957/stupid-and-in-love-origins-part-three 

Part Four: https://salthaven.tumblr.com/post/189108091812/stupid-and-in-love-p4

Part Five: https://salthaven.tumblr.com/post/189779609402/stupid-and-in-love-p5

“you’re not alone anymore  Blake “

Female Fett Cosplay

Albuquerque Comic Expo 2012 - Gallery here

Image by Sal Galindo

Is he shocked because of Raven speaking or because Summer said she had a girlfriend.

I heard Raven speaks in her bird form to scare the shit out of people.

Commission info

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.

more pink portraits 💕

Zombie AU Part 2 

“ it wasn’t supposed to be like this, we were leaving to a better place. we were packing our supplies the previous day …. and the next day I killed him, I killed my uncle.

I wonder if ruby hates me? I don’t blame her, I hate myself too.  

still I don’t care whose blood I get on my hands as long as my little sister is fine” Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |Part 4 |Part 5 | Part 6