Latest Posts by craneo87me - Page 5

A claim repeatedly brought up online, in some media, in antiquated “scholarly” works, as well as seemingly in the online lectures of a certain Canadian self-help guru who shall not be named here is that the „storm god slays chaos serpent” motif – so called “chaoskampf” - found especially commonly in the mythologies of ancient Middle East and Anatolia represents some allegorical tale about the fall of primordial matriarchy and associated religious figures, or a broader triumph of some abstract masculine principle over feminine. This assumption is entirely ahistorical, and its spread is only possible due to the fact that despite being among the oldest recorded stories of the world, the myths of Mesopotamia and culturally related areas remain largely unknown to the modern audience, making it easy for various dubious authorities to claim they contain what’s not exactly present in them. See, the problem is… the „chaos dragons” in most versions of this narrative aren’t even female. Additionally, most if not all of them aren’t vilified echoes of older figures, but merely antagonists devised for already popular gods and heroes and figures which belonged in both these categories at once to defeat. They’re not demonized “primordial earth and sea mothers” or whatever, they’re cheesy, hammy over the top saturday morning cartoon villains of their era. Like the titans in Greek mythology, Apep in Egyptian, and so on, the likes of Tiamat, Yam or Illuyanka never served a purpose different than that of an antagonist for an established figure. And, most importantly, only one of them, Babylonian Tiamat, famous for her role in the Enuma Elish (the epic describing the deeds of Marduk, the lead god of Babylon) and not much more, is female – and even Tiamat was likely developed based on older figures of such mythical antagonists, like Ugaritic Yam.

biblical accurate angels will always be better and more creative than normal angels, even if it it is a newer thing id rather have giant eye filled angels of power and other worldly beauty than those dumb baby faced fucks. Just look at kirby monsters, monsters with eyes just fuck

Holy fuck is this the real angel that Ezekiel saw????

I feel like a lot of the biblically accurate angel crowd seem to feel like depictions of angels are too "boring" or they're not religious themselves and think angels are only depicted in the Bible/Christianity. Which is doing such a big disrespect to the gorgeous Jewish and Islamic artwork of angels from hundreds of years ago!

Oh yeah, I saw this all the time when researching this for the Fan Myths last year. Any jokey memes about it are inevitably founded in earnestness.

Even here, "boring babi halo dog" is much closer to reality (relatively) than some imagined "eldritch" nightmare which as a concept has barely been around for 100 years. 😭 At this point, it's basically a test to see who does or doesn't possess enough perspective to see through the meme.

You're right though. While I can't think of much Jewish angel art prior to the 20th century, angels in Islam are imagined quite beautifully with their often kaleidoscopic bird wings.

Best friends forever 💖

My boy magolor for the ask thing

deceptive wizard time

favorite thing about them - ngl, his personality is a joy. even when he's a huge jerk, he's incredibly entertaining, one of the best written characters in the entire series

least favorite thing about them - id like him to like. actually play a Role in his re-appearances instead of having pointless cameos because he's popular. c'mon hal, you literally brought him back from the dead, use him.

favorite line - "You are such a cool dude!"

brOTP - uh. Well it's canonical fact that he really wants to be friends with Kirby, so let's go with that. I imagine he at least used to be buddies with Marx at some point.

OTP - Marxochilly gang ngl

nOTP - idk honestly? though people that ship him with kirby make me feel uncomfortable

random headcanon - the reason he returned to popstar specifically is that despite him having questionable moral compass, he STARTED to genuinely feel companionship with kirby, dedede, meta knight and bandana dee and wanted to make amends. like his star allies guest star description says, he wants to be friends... and conquer the universe together. he might be shady, but he's hungry for positive social interaction.

unpopular opinion - while i'm all for magolor redemption, people woobify him a bit too much a bit too often. like he did some genuinely shitty things in the past, he literally tried to conquer the universe, he backstabbed people that genuinely trusted him. he should be held accountable because his current attempts at making amends were not the greatest. (gifting theme park is not a redemption)

song i associate with them - "under my control"

favorite picture of them -

is probably one those details that are just here to look cool and nothing else, it doesn't make that vishnu "non-vishnu" and they can stay there

Asking you because I can't find anything about it myself. What are those two long objects strapped onto Vishnu's back, near his shoulders? Are they non-specific items that represent snakes or do they have an established identity?

I have no idea!

Have seriously been wondering about these for the longest time. If you know what these could be, drop me a line!

dedede's stance on nfts

How satanic are SMT games?

If you have to ask this question, perhaps Shin Megami Tensei isn’t for you. If your idea of Satan is a guy with red skin, horns, and a penchant for planting dinosaur bones in scientifically sound locations to fool believers into thinking the world is more than 6000 years old, then it’s definitely not for you. After all, when actual Satan appears in SMT, which isn’t often, he is usually a member of God’s retinue, exists separately from Lucifer, and looks like this:

I know first-hand that SMT’s Satan is a bit too big of a blue breasted pill to swallow for some people, and used to get into many arguments at certain websites over how it didn’t represent the “real” Satan. The thing is, this Satan doesn’t represent the modern incarnation of “The Devil,” but rather has a role based on the original Jewish conception of the obstructing spirits of YHVH that appear in the Hebrew Bible. SMT knows that there’s more to Satan than just the caricature familiar to most today.

But as for being “Satanic,” that perception is more often than not based on false pretenses. Despite actually containing Satan/Lucifer, SMT is about as Satanic as the more famously accused properties like D&D, Pokemon, or Harry Potter–in other words, not explicitly Satanic. Playing SMT is not likely to influence you to make blood sacrifices, worship goat idols, enact crazed orgies, or hang out in front of Hot Topic. In fact, SMT usually gives you the choice of buying into Lucifer’s shtick or punching him (or his cronies) in his smirking face. You can summon Hellish demons…or you can choose not to and summon angels instead. 

Still, anything can be in opposition to a set of beliefs from the “right” perspective. Think of all the mundane things that are blasphemous to Boko Haram or Islamic State, or even how many people get up in arms over the words of news pundits from either side of the political spectrum. That said, Shin Megami Tensei’s basic descriptors would probably cause it to be branded “Satanic” by sheltering parents afraid of outside influence on their children. But that’s the real answer: the real “danger” would not come from the very presence of Satan or Satanic rituals but being introduced to new ideas about real-world religions and philosophies that could broaden someone’s perspective and thus challenge their core beliefs. This is represented by the Lucifer/Satan dichotomy: Lucifer represents this freedom from ignorance, while Satan would challenge you to accept your findings in support of your own beliefs (think Job). Both may be scary prospects at first, but the choice of accepting one or the other, rejecting both, or treating SMT as no more than a video game is ultimately up to you.

just saw a post where someone calls Amaterasu “deviation from the usual solar/lunar gender roles” and i’m morbidly curious where do people even get the idea that there’s some transcendent universal idea that moon is female and sun is male since it’s virtually impossible to muster arguments in its favor Arguably the highest profile lunar deity in history of the world, Nanna-Suen was male. Not even the notion that gender of sun and moon deities will inevitably differ from each other within one culture rings true in any capacity, since ex. in ancient Egypt both sun (Ra et al.) and moon (Khonsu, Yah, Thoth) were generally male, same goes for Mesopotamia (Nanna-Suen, Shamash) or for contemporary hinduism (Chandra, Surya)… And the fact that Ugaritic Shapash is female even though Akkadian Shamash is male shows that even within one cultural sphere the gender of celestial bodies is hardly something defined on the deepest most primal level. On top of that female solar deity is hardly an outlier, Hittites had more than one including one residing in the underworld.

I wonder if I’ll ever let go of the fact that they used nephilim in the singular when it is in fact the plural

In re: Apple Frakking Tumblr Over

OKAY So ever since the Tumblr announcement over Apple's TOS for the app staying on the AppStore, I've been seeing so many posts spreading so much information AND misinformation.

If you haven't seen the post, click here, but basically it boils down to Apple's TOS for what Apps can and can't exist on the AppStore are pretty damn draconian. Famously Discord had to disallow ios app users from entering Not Safe For Work/Mature servers. Discord also put in a work-around to this but I'll get to that. Anyway, those TOS Apple's put in place are now affecting tumblr.

Misinfo #1: Tumblr is deliberately making the app experience unusable - False

Tumblr is doing what Apple is telling them to do. Apple is the one making the iOS version of the app unusable. Not tumblr. Although their enforcement of Apple's wants is rather obnoxious this isn't tumblr's fault. It's Apple's. Direct your ire to Apple, not tumblr, because this is directly their doing.

Misinfo #2: Tags have been ganked. - Well yes, but actually no.

It's true tags are borped on the iOs app BUT!!! "Banned tags" work just fine in the web version of tumblr, or the Android app. All the tags I've seen in the "banned tags" lists going around work just fine on my phone (I have android) or on my laptop. THE TAGS ALSO WORK FINE ON THE BROWSER ON MY IPAD. That's right, easy way to get around iOS shennangannery? Use the Tumblr website. It looks (and runs) just like the app. There are even other features on the website that aren't on the app. So if you're an iOS user frustrated by how the tumblr app now works, log in on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, literally any internet web browser, and boom bam. Your original tumblr experience is back. Original bugs and all. Screenshot below of my android phone, and the tumblr website being able to access "banned tags." Also a screenshot of the post from the wip tumblr saying that experiences on Android and the website will not be affected.

Misinfo #3: Tumblr's doing nothing to combat the ultra-censorship on their iOS app - Maybe

In their post, staff said they're working on a work-around. They left details pretty vague, as is staff's wont, but they aren't exactly out of options. This is where I get back to what Discord did when Apple did the same thing to them. Essentially you would have to go onto Discord on your laptop and allow access to not safe for work servers on iOS. It's a setting only found in the laptop/desktop version of discord. (see screenshot for proof) I believe Tumblr is probably working on something similar. To allow users to have the original experience by going through the website. For now you still have the browsers on your phone. Also screenshotted, where staff said in their post they're working on a workaround.

All this to say, you guys need to stop freaking out. Yes, tumblr is broken, tumblr's been broken for a hot minute, but you know what? This latest censorship dirge is not tumblr's fault. It's apples. And there are workarounds, pretty piss easy workarounds like using your browser instead of your app. It's not even that much more difficult. I know this is frustrating, but being reactionary and spreading misinformation isn't going to do anything but harm people who are looking for solutions.

Ever since I learnt bout angel tiers as a kid I always wanted to draw em all but only now did i get around to it-

Wanted to have it where they progressively get more abstract and inhuman the higher the tier goes cause who doesnt love a lil cosmic horror? I also took some liberties with the descriptions of all the angels cause lotta them kind of overlap and sound similar.

What are your thoughts on what a kirby rpg would look like?

First of all. It should be directed by Kumazaki and written by Mie Takase. Then it will be 11/10 by default.

But that aside, in terms of gameplay I think there's lots of possibilities of adapting Kirby's copy ability into jrpg mechanics. I think I would make it so Kirby would be basically this game's Eevee but ADVANCED. He can change his "typing" from "normal" after defeating certain enemies and he can keep it, but he won't be able to level up after certain point if he keeps it on to balance things out. Which would force the player to change up his copy abilities and try different ones, levelling up various skills.

To balance things out, I think party members that are not Kirby also should have the ability to use copy ability typings, but not the same way Kirby does. It would work like elements in Star Allies where they are applied on their base ability (for example, Dedede's Hammer) which allows for wider variety of coverage and potential new skills. Here it doesn't have the same limitation as Kirby, but since party members are stuck with the same base typing all the way, it's encouraged to mix things up to allow for better strategy.

Of course this idea still needs some fleshing out, but I think I explained the gist of it.

Also, while I think it will be turned based, I want it to be turn based in the same way Mario RPGs are, you have action elements in the gameplay. Blocking, dodging, pressing button at the right time to make your hit more meaningful. Said action elements would change up depending on what kind of typing you currently have.

sketched some Magolors today! fun fact when I was a kid & I first beat Return To Dreamland I literally thought I killed Magolor & he wouldn’t come back in any other games cuz he was permanently ded LOL

anyways I think under his hood he’s KINDA like Hyness but like. more cutesy? idk, I can’t imagine he has chameleon eyes bc his eyes are oval-shaped, and I don’t think he has Hyness’ nose either bc his face is too close to his scarf, there’s not rlly much room for it. So… he kind of looks like a cat tbh. Maybe this has some implication of like… Magolor being the Halcandran version of whatever Hyness is?? or Hyness being Halcandran himself? idk I’m not exactly up to date on my kirby lore

King Dedede gijinka! So now, the full RTDL set is complete! (unless you count the other 3 kirbys. Idk how to portray them though, I don’t think they should just be recolored Kirby clones bc I like the idea that Kirby changes color when using abilities like in NIDL and Super Star… so it’d get confusing if the other Kirbys looked exactly like the main Kirby)

As you could probably guess, Dedede is the oldest of the group. I imagine he’s something like a father figure to Bandanna Dee (and all the other Waddle Dees perhaps, since they are mostly his henchmen). Unlike the other 3, Dedede doesn’t tend to dress lighter for adventures & usually just wears the same outfit. He is prone to changing hammers though, since he’s always open to improve his weapon’s functionality. The hammer he’s got here is actually pretty small by his standards, he usually prefers to keep a heavier one on hand. 

I like to think of Dedede as a part-time hero, part-time villain. I think he’s capable of being a good guy when he wants to, and when Dreamland is in danger from an outside force, but… sometimes he just likes to cause trouble when things get too peaceful, because he finds it boring. LOL. Tbh I still like the idea that he’s the self-proclaimed king of Dreamland (like they didn’t have a monarchy before he arrived LOL) so I think I’ll keep it. Plus, clearly he’s at least semi-decent at being king, since even outside threats from elsewhere in the universe can recognize him as one (…even if they do end up kidnapping or possessing him because of it)! Also,

Dedede is balding, so he’s really adamant about keeping the hat on, even underwater. Though I’m still trying to string together a kirby series timeline (Super Star, Squeak Squad, & Amazing Mirror are RLLY hard to place for me) I imagine Dedede used to have a full head of hair back in his old days (Dreamland thru Dreamland 3 perhaps? Since I imagine they took place in succession) but it eventually fell out over time. Perhaps as a result of stress from Dark Matter possession? since that happens to him a lot.

Speaking of the Kirby timeline, do you see Kirby’s Dreamland and Kirby Super Star Ultra’s Spring Breeze subgame as separate events or the same event? Personally, I think they’re different enough to be separate & perhaps when Kirby finds out about Dedede’s plan in Spring Breeze he’s like “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS AGAIN??” & Dedede’s like “I was bored, okay??!!” or smth lol

Shin Megami Tensei Devill Summoner World Guidance: Angels (and friends)

Kaneko Kazuma’s comments on his designs for the angelic hierarchy (minus Seraph), Demiurge, Abraxas, Black Maria, Metatron, Sandalphon and Lailah.  Beware of… odd inspirations.

Translation over here!

[inhales deeply] the phrase "biblically accurate angels" is a misnomer because the depictions of angels as divinely beautiful humans with feathered wings AND the depictions of them as eldritch abominations covered in eyes are both correct, they simply describe angels from different levels of the hierarchy, in this essay i will-

♡♡♡♡♡

A while ago I did presentation clarifying misconceptions regarding Dedede's character, using nothing but canonical facts coming from the games and official tie-ins like info from japanese websites, I gave it an update, which is why I'm posting about it again, give it a look :)

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1JL7EAKTaEehpyObRJmyQy6mUbNMb97Ds/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=102814556732081877986&rtpof=true&sd=true

TODAY IS A HOLIDAY

this outright looks like it comes from devil children/demikids, hey maybe it WAS a design for aitvaras that would appear in those games but they scrap it and i guess either doi or atlus we’re lazy and just re used it

Aitvaras. A.I.T.V.A.R.A.S AiTvArAs

What the fuck is this

Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy’s first law of Equivalent Exchange.

September by Earth, Wind, and Fire, but it’s actually the windy, chilly 21st of September. Your friend is eating a crisp apple beside you on your back porch. Your neighbor is mowing the lawn. This is the kind of day that makes you wish it could be autumn year-round.

Requested by @yamslam <3 I hope you like it!!

i'm just going to ask, what's your opinion of Tzaphkiel's design?

It's fine! Essentially a clever reuse of the quad-wing template seen on other Heralds. (T)Zaphkiel is a Throne, so an Ophan, and thus the eye seems okay even if I still prefer anthropomorphism.

The Two Sides

the whole squad