#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

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Spines of Interest: Niche Nonfiction Edition.

[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.

[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.

[bestial4ngel]

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

[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]

weird obscure PSX/Old PC games with cult followings

some more rpg horror guys since you've all been so kind

[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 🥲

[beaudesoleil]

yue-yin

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Replenishing the Nonfiction Stack; or, We're Calling the Book Buying Ban a Wash, Officially.

I am not, apparently, immune to coupons for niche nonfiction that's directly up my alley (octopus minds and RUSSIAN OWLS, hello??? Thanks, bookshop!).

I thought perhaps the BURGLAR'S GUIDE would also be covered under said coupon, since it was publisher-specific (alas: it was Not, but we might as well bundle for shipping purposes). And then while I was shopping IRL for gifties I found a copy of ROOM, which has been on my list for...ever? So! Hopefully these will hold me over on the nonfiction front for a minute!

[misterradio]

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

OBSERVE COMPU MOVIE!!

(typical bright & flashing imagery warning!)

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

Is North Korea actually bad

It is not what you have been told it is. There are many bad things about the government of North Korea, there are many bad things about those running it, but it is not what you have been told it is.