underconcretestars

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Lily studies from life

#celestial-fang

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Mabel

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Alright, Shakespeare fans!

I am a robber and I have broken into your house and stolen your most precious belonging. I will not give it back unless you pick just one play from each genre (comedies, tragedies, histories, romances) to call your favorite. What do you say?

(If you haven’t read any plays in a certain genre, you can forgo answering for that one.)

(History lovers: the plays count individually. Ex: you cannot say your favorite is the entirety of the Henriad)

#romances? what are the 'romances?' i was only taught of them as - #comedies tragedies and histories! do you mean the late romances? #divvying up the comedic romances seems a bit something - the two are linked. #anyway! let me see... #much ado about nothing with a midsummer's night dream coming hot #richard iii i can't not pick this one even to shake the grain call it pride in place #coming in for tragedies... titus andronicus come on you knew it with The Play and timon in close second and third #i'm going to just call the tempest a 'grand romance' and consider it clear and away the front-runner. #but if what the friend i'm reblogging from this one holds - #troilus and cressida is also up there. absolutely underrated

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Hope it's all right to reblog and go on about this while cleaning up and getting ready for another day; I liked your response, quite a lot. Since I've been on a bit of a kick as of late...

I've always felt that Nocturne, and basically all the games from Strange Journey back to SMT I, are very willing to put you into a role where characters are not likable. That doesn't mean bad, or that the player won't like them. But that they are flawed, perhaps cruel, perhaps not acting in the player's best interest. This is exceptionally true in Nocturne, and can really rankle players who want to have human friends who support them in a particularly cruel and uncaring world - also, the Vortex World. Why I think Nocturne's characters get dismissed as 'flat' or the above is that they rely a lot on environmental storytelling, but also because the setup for Nocturne has something we rarely see in a school-setting. Your entire friend group does not like one another. The main character is basically treated as an accessory to Isamu and Chiaki, and they - barely tolerate one another. That does not mean they are evil or unlikable themselves, but before everything goes round-shaped, it's clear that you're all held together through spit and glue, essentially. I think that asks a lot of players, many of whom don't want to admit that their own friendgroups - might have been more like that than they'd have liked to admit - and that they were either a bit like the Demifiend, or like one of either Isamu or Chiaki. Similarly, most characters treat the Demifiend as something of a reliable doormat. Even with all his power, even with the option to be dismissive or snide or sarcastic - It's a given he'll do what he's asked to do. I feel like that's incredibly good environmental storytelling, it held up when I was a sprout, and it help up better now. The amount of characters that call out the Demifiend for being gullible, simple, or otherwise just say that it's easy to tell him what to do and have him do it is pretty impressive, given the spare, well-used dialogue. And I think it makes the potential to go for the True Demon Ending a bit stronger; that isn't just the Demifiend giving in to things, but potentially paralleling a similar journey to many other demons. People see Isamu, and perhaps recall people who were fun to be around but maybe weren't there when needed - or would've thrown them under the bus. Some might look at Chiaki, try to focus just on the fact that she 'goes off the deep end' and miss that from her point, she never changed at all. She describes everything that's happened as being terrible - as 'the worst thing that could possibly happen to me.' and missing that I think misses a lot of depth crammed into denim. But all of that is fine, really; I prefer the way Nocturne tells it's story and others may prefer otherwise. Nonetheless, I wanted to weigh in, so that's my two macca, that is.

I think a lot of the frustrations around Nocturne's story stem from the characters lacking depth outside of their Reasons. This is particularly bad if none of the Reasons resonate with the player. I felt like the Reasons were more straw man ideologies meant to be rejected than actual ethoses that real people would believe in. Also the plot suffers after the Obelisk with the sudden appearance of unexplained Magutsuhi deposits and Hiriji's out of character betrayal.

I can't agree with this after playing through the game recently.

I paid particular attention to Isamu, who is usually seen as a flat and unsympathetic. But he has that initial motivation (finding Takao), slightly modifies it (saving Takao), gets absolutely clowned on twice in a row (imprisoned in Ikebukuro and Kabukicho), decides he's had enough and retreats into the Amala Network, then decides on his Reason in an area of the Network filled with other demons seeking solitude which helps to define it.

He also finds his Magatsuhi deposit in the Amala Temple, which is described as "abandoned" and thus reflects Musubi. Similarly, Chiaki gets her Magatsuhi from the Manikins' Mifunashiro, literally by killing them before summoning Baal Avatar. Hikawa's is confusing though since he already gathered enough Magatsuhi with the Nightmare System then finds more in the Diet Building where he summons Ahriman; either I missed something (did it have to do with the Obelisk?) or it's just not a particularly killer narrative flaw. But Isamu is a totally fine character.

The Reasons not resonating with the player... well, that's down to the player, I guess. Does the game imply Yuko's non-Reason Reason is the best? It might.

Hijiri's turn I wouldn't say is out of character either. Most of the game he's telling you where to go and soaking up information from the Amala Terminals. It gets to his head and he makes his move. He just gets caught by Isamu, who seems to be telling the truth that Hikawa was using the Demi-fiend to do things to achieve his own ends.

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Vivianite | Leonie I Mine, Auerbach, Upper Palatinate, Bavaria, Germany

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Content Warning: Explicit Language

Mash Up Your Bootz Party-Mix Mash-Up - "Love Will Tear You Apart (She Wants Originality)"

artists sampled are She Wants Revenge, Joy Division, and Bauhaus

Suggested by @underconcretestars

#yoooooo! good to see this hit the list my friend! #it's such a good mix i'm still quite pleased to have stumbled on it on a demo disc

[underconcretestars]

構造物230203

#doumyakutosi #artists on tumblr

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#smt3 nocturne #smt iii #shin megami tensei: nocturne

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Sirene (devilman)

#saprophilous

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Fluorite Friday!

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Let's call it a shield-wall.

The idea that there are people 'in your court.' 'At your side.' 'friends.'

Repeated, over and over, as a mantra. I trace their line in lies spoken; they lead nowhere. Consistently, the circles close and the knife returns to its home. Promising, of course, that they don't mean to hurt me. But that's obvious. Looking outside the conjoined circles - I see the bloodied wretches. Whom have always been the target of salivating friends. Friends are human beings; they speak pleasantly of kindness and empathy and justice and solidarity and help and mutual aid and love and goodness and the common man and it's always the common man and the hero of the common men and all he needs is to wet his spear right in the blood of someone whom I shouldn't even care about because they're not a friend. How distant are the stars; I can no longer say. I want to grind their mantra against diamond edges; To discard everything they value and see it burnt as a prayer. Should this be what friendship is, I'd happily have none. For if you cannot defend the people you like least - Your lies mean nothing to me, at all. Even still, the wall closes in.

#ah. i'm just so... i will never accept any of you as 'good' #you can flatter yourselves all you want and continue to pretend. #the wakefulness of reason promotes humans; with apologies to goya. #... at the end of the day this is just another way of writing 'i miss my wife. i hate it here and i want to leave.' #but isn't everything. but isn't /everything./

[underconcretestars]

🎃 The Grimwood Girls - Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School. Happy (early) Halloween! 🎃 👻 Animated GIF version below - ✨ mild blinking lights warning.

#ghoul school is a perennial classic and the fact i didn't throw it into my horror month challenge #is a personal failing. but that said this is really nice fang-tastic work

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an unpleasant awakening

in a copy of konrad von würzburg's "trojanerkrieg", ca. 1441

source: Nürnberg, GNM, Hs. 998, fol. 15r

#lady in the top-centre in 'red' has That Look #those who know - know. #i'm not saying that the awakened fellow knew what he was in for. #i'm not saying that all. but the implication...

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Studying from the Dunhuang murals

In Chinese 岩彩, they used ground up gemstones and gold which doesn’t fade even after thousands of years. But your boi is broke so I have to achieve the same effects with watercolor and gouache

#this is excessively cool! i wanted to reblog your tallboys BUT; #watercolours and gouache lend an ephemeral beauty to the study. #i think that's worthy of praise too. a friend of mine whose medium is wood uses tea to stain their work. #that creates a different colouration and sealing. basically i just think it's fantastic great work

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Did another piece of Morrigan some time ago! I keep forgetting to post things :”DDD

had fun playing as her in a villain themed D&D campaign

#love what you did with the talons. #harpyposting #the above is just a tag so i can find any post i reblog in this vein. that's it that's the tag.

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恶人登场

#kexiu-0415 #i love them your honour