#eastern minds

[nickolashx]

Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou (1994)

Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou is an unnerving 1994 point-and-click adventure game by Japanese artist Osamu Sato.

Rin wakes up to find that his soul has been stolen by a living island known as Tong-Nou. In his quest to restore his soul, he reincarnates as several different creatures, fulfilling their respective lives.

[espeonseal]

chibi moeified-kinda characters of silly quirky games

[andoutofharm]

omg…..smfs anniversary tomorrow

[dykedvonte]

Do you have anything you've been thinking on but just haven't made a post about it yet? Also I'm really enjoying your fic!

I have a few things but it's likely mostly headcanons that I consider somewhat disconnected from my analysis.

Curly's parents had him old, only child, died shortly after he graduated and got the pony express position. It was the last big thing they saw him do which is a reason he stayed for so long.

Doesn't admit how much their death affected him

Jimmy has a largish family. One of the cases of too many kids to keep tract of, parent never really noticed any of them nor their behaviors

Anya lived in a lot of houses growing up, regular supportive family that just struggled to support themselves.

Became a nurse largely to avoid their financial struggles but mostly because she felt too many people weren't being cared for and advocated for in the world properly

Swansea likes high top sneakers most. Likes how snug they fit and how they shield his ankles at work

Curly has a bit of a caffeine problem since he can’t sleep. Can occasionally be found wandering the ship at “night” when he had some too late or just couldn’t sleep.

Daisuke knows a little about a lot of things. Starts conversations with “did you know” a lot but please don’t ask him deeper questions

Curly has known Jimmy longer but has worked with Anya and Swansea longer, met them during his middle years, met Jimmy shortly before college.

Swansea rents a house, Daisuke’s family lives in a big nice apartment, Curly has a condo, Anya live in a small one bedroom apartment and Jimmy has a studio.

Curly's home is very disconcerting. It's too normal to a like uncanny degree.

Anya is ambidextrous but prefers her left.

Anya and Curly are both not native English speakers so occasionally they forget words and bond over the mutual mocking they get from the rest of the crew. Daisuke knows some Japanese but is still learning, never picked it up as a kid

Only Swansea and Daisuke know how to drive, Earth in my mind is very post capitalist so only older people and like the extremely wealthy can afford cars.

It's also like walkable just due to how many businesses are in your face. Probably strict living vs shopping districts

I have more but the way that I headcanon about them is like too long.

[lunarharp]

shirahama-sensei reminded me she has a thing for the teacher from pokemon s/v so i randomly went off on an au where qifrey is the professor. etc

[rabbitprayer]

No desire to convert to catholicism but the desire to kind of pretend that no schisms ever happened.

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Spines of Interest: Niche Nonfiction Edition.

[beaudesoleil]

who up here dragoning thy eastern mind again (hi kai)

[thecurioustale]

The "Middle West"

I was recently watching Trump speak (not something I typically do 🤢), and the most interesting thing he said had nothing to do with anything he was actually talking about: It was that he used the term Middle West to refer to that generally north-central part of the United States, centered on the Mississippi River, that is neither the South nor the Northeast (nor the Mid-Atlantic, but that's really just a subcategory of the Northeast that Northeasterns use to not get lumped in with each other).

We all know it today as the Midwest. But in times past it was much more commonly known as the Middle West.

(Tangent: It is also one of many geographical region-name reminders of our national East Coast beginnings, as America has like six different kinds of "West": the Midwest, the Southwest, the (Pacific) Northwest, the Mountain West / Interior West, the West Coast / Pacific West—and that's not counting the deprecated terms (such as "Far West," i.e. distinguished from the Midwest) or the old Northwest (which would've referred to places like Ohio and (what we know as) West Virginia)!)

Over the course of the 20th century, "Midwest" became an increasingly common form of the term, eventually overtaking "Middle West" in popularity and, by our lifetimes, completely replacing it. The only people who still use "Middle West" today are very old. I'm only aware of the term's existence because I'm a fan of midcentury media and if you go watch (for example) old Dragnet episodes from the 1950s you'll hear the term used.

I was looking at the Google Ngram Viewer to get a sense of the relative usage frequencies of these terms, and I noticed something interesting: Not only has "Middle West" been driven almost extinct from active usage, but "Midwest" itself has also declined precipitously in the 21st century. People today are not calling the Midwest the "Midwest," at least not with the frequency and relevancy they once did. I was curious if this was another permutation of the usage, so I also looked up "Midwestern" (which I included in the link above), thinking that maybe people nowadays are calling it the clunkier "the Midwestern states" / "the Midwestern US," but the adjectival has declined in step with "Midwest." It really does seem to be that people are just using this geographical category less often.

Perhaps unsurprisingly: the sociopolitical cohesiveness of the Midwest has significantly diminished over time. I think most Midwesterners would still recognize and affiliate with the term if you applied it of them to their faces, but increasingly I think many of them do not think of it in their daily lives as a personal or cultural identifier. Which has many fascinating implications that I'm not going to get into.

(Another Tangent: I feel like I've talked about specifically this "Middle West / Midwest" thing on Tumblr before, but I feel that way about half of everything because after all I've been writing down my thoughts for over 20 years and I've been having thoughts for considerably longer than that, and it's often not clear to me what I've talked about publicly and where.)

Anyway, this entire post is really just me scratching the itch of verbal brain noise about the orange guy using a term in a public address that I never hear people use in the present day. A little piece of lost language, hearkening back to a completely different era and world.

[nickolashx]

Chu-Teng (1995)

Chu-Teng [中天] is an unnerving point and click adventure game developed by OutSide Directors Company. It is the sequel of Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou.

Chu-Teng follows the story of Rin, who is appproached by the supernatural being, Nanshu, to help retrieve his facial parts that are scattered apart while he was fighting through the darkness in Ge-Teng.

Download it here

[espeonseal]

horror games yipee!!! (late late halloween art tho..)

[bestial4ngel]

Screaming and biting things thinking about interview with the vampire season 2

[donutcats]

listen I can understand kyutaro calling kazuki chronically unfunny but oil baron came out of NOWHERE and makes me laugh every time I think about it. like yeah miri your incredibly quiet, socially stunted, autistic father deals in the oil industry. kyutaro PLEASE explain your thought process I’m BEGGING

[naminoor]

The new post of mr Jalapeño drives me insane

LIKE WTH

ELPENOR WANTED TO LEAVE PERIMEDES BEHIND BECAUSE APPARENTLY PERIMEDES IS DEPRESSED⁉️ AND ELPENOR JUST WANTS TO MAKE HIM HAPPY 😭

“You don’t know him like i do” Something you wanna say to the room Elpenor?

These two fictional/ancient greek men that got cut are making me mentally ill wth.

Anyways just wanted to get that out of my head bc my friend is getting tired of me rambling abt these two 🥲

[supergreatfrien]

Trying out Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou for an hour

When a living island-head steals your soul, there's no choice but to make the quest to yank your soul back out of it.

[misterradio]

WAIT some osamu sato lost media was found & uploaded hold on a minute

OBSERVE COMPU MOVIE!!

(typical bright & flashing imagery warning!)