#merkabah

[crybabyboyscout]

Beside me, my beautiful sleeping cat child and a glass (a mug) of Taylor Port 🪴🍷

[beamattack]

merkabah

(ko-fi)

[hello-there]

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[shindynegarden]

Happy Pride month

[rockclassics]

Fruit of life Star Tetrahedron Merkabah The Vitruvian Man

[eerieayres-smt]

"And you, stringless puppet?" - Lucifer

Nanashi joining with Merkabah.

(Based on actual IV Apocalypse ending. Teeechnically you can choose Law in that game, lol) Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse © Atlus Artwork © EerieAyres

[jinxekkotimebomb]

Genuinely really interesting to think about Jonathan is possibly a trans man, adds more weight to his struggles with wanting to be redeemed by the law and have security in the world even if it means erasing everyone else's free will. Also his fused form with Merkabah has breasts.

[ya-kiri]

Just giving my thoughts. I finally finished Persona 3, 4 and 5, so I'm back to playing mainline SMT. I've returned to SMT 4 Apocalypse and I'm at like the at like 6th moon phase portion of the game. There is one moment I have to scratch my head and call bullcrap on and that's Isabeau's return. At this point of the story, Nanashi and the gang we're thrown in prison by Merkabah after a failed infiltration to Mikado to gather intel. They take everyone's stuff and are being sentenced to be executed, at the same time Isabeau is absent possibly being held somewhere else. The next time we see her she is still alive, and that she was put on probation to join Merkabah's samurai and fight for them. Are you kidding me? Of course the first second we see her she wastes no time joining with us again. I'm sorry but I have to say that this is very nonsensical. Don't get me wrong I like Isabeau and would never want anything bad happen to her, but come on. Instead of killing Isabeau, the one's who is the right hand and one of the leading figures in Flynn's crusade to liberate Tokyo from the angels and demons, Merkabah lets her off with a warning with the blind expectation that she'll work for him and his samurai as part of a "probation." Maybe you can make the argument, 'oh it's because he used to be Isabeau's friend Jonathan, so there are some lingering attachments" but this is the same guy who wants any threats to his cause dead and destroyed, which include Flynn, Lucifer/former fellow Samurai Walter, Nanashi's gang and Tokyo (whom they call the people of, "filth"). Also, even if Merkabah has this whole "there is no greater honor than to serve the lord" mentality, I don't think that it's to the point that he's naive enough to think that someone like Isabeau will follow him. This is the same guy who immeadiately spotted Nanashi's gang in the crowd (granted the infiltration plan was flimsy to begin with) and sentences them to death, but gives Isabeau, an even bigger threat, a warning with no way of assuring her allegiance or obedience? They couldn't just say she just somehow found a way to escape, or have us rescue her, just something other than the reason they give. Again, the second we meet up with her again, she wastes NO TIME joining up with us again. Yeah, so much for that plan Johnny boy. I am enjoying the game by the way. Sorry for this long tangent, I just wanted to put my thoughts into words.

[thebladeblaster]

Happy 10th Anniversary to the best mainline game!!! Shin Megami Tensei IV!!!

Please Atlus IV is 10 years old. Please remember it exists.

[zebratoys]

I’m feeling grace shimmering from above. 🤍✨💫 

[sspacegodd]

Free-range Organic Flower of Light.

[alephskoteinos]

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.

[crybabyboyscout]

✨🌟 Nov’s Eye View Instagram 🌟✨

[jupiter-777]

opening of doors/love is oneness

To be careful with the fragility of someone else's mind and humanity IS LOVE! To not only understand it from their point of view but to care for it actively... to consider where the other stands. to momentarily dissolve so that i can even see it to begin with.

when we shut others out its called a stonewall. its v bad for your heart chakra and physical heart itself.

meaning say goodbye to the wall so the beam can shoot thru

move that boulder out from the cave entrance

or move that bus , ty idk.

[littleghostie]

19/365