Me Posting On Tumblr:

To whichever God of any region is listening, I’ll praise you if you make this the most tolerable year we had since 2020 started, please don’t let Apollo hit this post with misfortune, civilization can’t take one more bad year it’s on rickety, crumbling ground already, another will collapse everything.

An abyssal looking shadow seen while throwing out trash at night

“What… the hell?”

From within the metal shell, was not some foolish engineer or scientist trying to play hero like you expected, but some kind of… mass.

It kind of looks like a fetus, but the parts don’t even look human in the slightest. The mass seems to be attached to the suit, actually the suit seems a bit hollow.

Upon closer inspection, the suit contained no mechanisms within, just layers of metal in strange patterns, which was disturbing as just a few moments ago you two were flying above the buildings before you grounded your foe.

You aimed the blaster at the thing.

“What are you? Some alien playing human?”

The thing made lots of different sounds with each attempt sounding more and more human, until it could be understood.

“Not aliens. Our kin have lived in this land for a long time, but repeated monster attacks forced us to stay hidden from the world. Monsters you brought from their homes to feel like some bit shot crook.”

I need info from this freak, NOW.

“Hell’s your suit made of?”

“Shell. From scrap metal and our own fluids.”

“The flight?”

“Special bladders.”

“What about those beams?”

“Heard of those blood spraying lizards, it’s something similar.”

“Okay, you’re a mutant snail or something, why play hero?”

“ Like I said, this was our land, and not only are you trespassing, but you proceeded to wreck it with your stunts. That won’t do.”

“Ya know this is live broadcasted around the country right?”

“And we thank you, we struggled to find a way to show ourselves to the world.”

Enough stalling.

Remove them.

“Say your prayers, freak.”

“We don’t fear death. We will simply be replaced by another with skills that surpass your current ones.”

“What does that mean.”

“Our kin survived a long time with our fast adaptations and evolutions. We will soon out pace and eradicate you from this land.”

It started laughing before you vaporized it.

You then say a few words to the camera crew that picked up the whole exchange before returning to your lair.

If what it said was true, then a stronger creature is on its way soon, with the tricks that remove all yours.

If you want to rule it all, you need to keep adapting, lest the freaks take you out for good.

Let the games commence.

"Now behold! Behold as I unmask your...beloved...hero...?" The villain's voice trailed off as he tore open said hero's crippled mech suit on live TV, only to reveal something quite...unexpected.

we've done it again folks

I’m too lazy and tired to go outside to trick or treat so digital with have to do.

If you want you could stop here and I could give you whatever I could find

Happy Hollow's eve peeps!

@dimiclaudeblaigan asked for a tutorial on how to begin drawing. Good news! If you can draw a funky looking stick man, you have already started!

I think that stick people are a great starting point for artists because of the things you can learn from them that will be important later on.

If you are able to draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can easily put together a stick person.

Congratulations! You have started to draw. :)

A stick person is a very minimal artistic representation of a real life person. It is simple yet recognizable, and is widely used in art, media, and signage.

But what can a stick person teach us about drawing people that look more like… well, people? Lets have a look!

By simply adding a few more lines, we can add a pair of eyes and a mouth. Maybe even a little triangle nose! Or half circles for ears. We can now draw a face, which provides a basis for all sorts of expressions.

These simple additions can allow us to explore the wide range of human emotion and individuality.

This may seem like the basics of the basics. But that is what we want! In order to get to the point where we are able to draw complex, elaborate representations of humans and objects, we will need to start with simple shapes like lines and circles and build our understanding from there.

For instance, lets give our stick person some cool new features, such as hands and feet. I chose little squiggly circles to represent hands, and triangles to represent feet.

We can go a step further and modify the body of the stick person to include shoulders, hips, elbows and knees. These parts of the human body are quite complex in real life But here, all we need to do is add a few simple lines and dots to our stick person.

The lines provide some additional structural elements to our stick person's body, which are the shoulders and the hips. The dots indicate the points of articulation - elbows and knees, the places where the arms and legs bend!

Now we can use our stick person to show us an even wider range of human movement, action, and expression.

Our little drawing of a human being is evolving! All it took was adding a few more lines and shapes here and there.

By elongating some of the existing lines and making the head an oval instead of a circle, we can give our stick person proportions that resemble that of a real life human.

By this point, we have managed to add more complexity to our stick person simply by using our ability to draw lines, circles, and other basic shapes!

These basic ideas are the building blocks that will enable us to create more complex shapes.

The next part may be a considerable step up if you are absolutely new to drawing, but I have decided to include it in order to show you how complex objects like the human body can be built from shapes that are a bit more complex than circles and lines.

For example. Two ovals and a rectangle can be combined to create a cylinder.

Six squares can be combined to create a cube, or a box. Here, each square is distorted slightly depending on which way the cube is facing.

Note that the back faces of the cube and the bottom of the cylinder are hidden. These shapes allow us to visualize that which should not normally visible.

A sphere from all perspectives can be represented by a circle. But we can make it more like a sphere by adding lighting and shadow if we so desire.

Cubes, cylinders, and spheres are examples of 'solid shapes' because they consist of 3 dimensions.

Lets see how these solid shapes can be used to compose the human body.

By stacking three cylindrical objects, we can create a torso. Two spheres have been added to form shoulders, while a smaller cylinder forms the neck.

An arm is an alternating sequence of spheres and cylinders connected together. Note that the hand has been simplified for this example.

We can apply these solid shapes to the rest of the body to give us a more recognizable representation of the human form. It doesn't even have to be perfect. And just like that, our stick figure now has a silhouette that is unmistakably a person!

In the above examples, notice that we kept the stick person at the beginning while building up the shapes and solids around it. This is because the stick person serves as a guide for positioning the body and its various parts -> also known as posing.

You can do the same thing to everyday objects! Here, I drew a wine glass by stacking these three dimensional solid shapes.

The cup and its contents are two ovoid shapes that were cut in half. The stem is a very thin cylinder shape. The base is a cylinder with a slightly wider bottom.

Solid shapes help inform us how objects and parts of the human body may appear from different perspectives.

For example, a sphere can be used to demonstrate how the human head appears when looking up or down, turned to the side, or tilted at an angle.

With these examples, I hope I have managed to convinced you that if you can draw a circle and a couple of lines, you can draw a person! You just have to train your eye to recognize the simple shapes within complex objects. Try it with everyday objects as well! Or even your favourite media! A drawing subject can be as simple or as complex as you envision it to be.

Once you have mastered that, there are many aspects of drawing you can explore from here that may require you to seek additional resources or a fellow artist's advice.

Last of all, remember that drawing is an iterative process. Even if you draw something correct the first time, you will need to draw it again and again to get it right all times! And by making small changes like the ones we explored in this tutorial, your drawings will gradually transform!

I hope what I've demonstrated here are enough to provide the basics of how to get started with drawing objects and people, and also to help refresh more experienced artists. :) Hopefully I didn't go too off topic with what was requested, and let me know if there are any more questions I can answer.

Cheers :3

Sometime on this site, you can find the info you need, mostly due to people having a hyper fixation on a certain topic. So sometimes the clowns can have knowledge.

Are sharks actually smooth? I keep seeing people saying they aren't but also others saying they are and now I'm confused :(

sharkskin is completely covered with tiny tiny grooved teeth, which gives it some interesting properties!

these denticles are aligned in one direction with the jagged edges pointing back towards the tail, which breaks fluid mechanics in some weird completely bullshit ways that gives it basically no water resistance in that one direction.

this, in effect, means that sharks are INCREDIBLY smooth and can go as fast as they like in any direction, provided that the direction in question is forward.

however, if the shark tried to go backwards, or if you ran your hand down it the wrong way, the opposite effect would take place- the sharp edges of the denticles would create SUPER water resistance and shred the bejeesus out of your hand.

if you’re going to pet a shark, make sure you go from the head back!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Finally, thank you Atlus for directly acknowledging this in his demon haunt dialogue

(Spoilers under cut, but if you're past at least the third area or don't mind spoilers, you can go right ahead to a long and hopefully interesting post!)

Which means that this...

(Above image I found in a Megaten reddit post, though I think it was originally from Pixiv?)

... Is actually acknowledged as a canon part of both Arioch's and Metatron's backstory! (Holy excited screeching)

I know I sound like I'm freaking out, but this is quite significant for a few reasons.

First off, SMTV is the first time both Arioch and Metatron are together in a mainline game, as Arioch was first introduced in SMTI (1992) (unless you count his appearance in Megami Tensei II (1990)), while Metatron was first introduced in SMTII (1994). Arioch has made few appearances afterward, only showing up in spin-off titles such as Devil Survivor 1 and 2, Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon, Shin Megami Tensei: Liberation Dx2, and Devil Children White Book. Metatron, on the other hand, has pretty much become a mainstay in both mainline SMT and spin-off games, including Persona. (And yeah, I was kinda disappointed that Arioch was in the vanilla game and his lore explicitly mentions Enoch, but nothing happens if you bring Arioch to the fight against Metatron in the Temple of Eternity. Either way, I'm just glad their former relationship was mentioned via demon haunt dialogue.)

Related to #1, Vengeance is probably the first time any demon has explicitly said Metatron's name when he was once human - that is, Enoch. Previous characters who have mentioned the name Enoch are Naoya (Devil Survivor) and Mido (SMTIV; this game in particular has Mido give out a quest for Flynn that basically asks "bring me Enoch, a man who fused with an angel"), who are both human.

I've read a bit about the Book of Enoch since I used to be skeptical on the "guardian angel of Enoch" bit in Arioch's lore, and it turns out that it's more or less accurate!

From 2 Enoch 33 (<- is that how you write it?):

•And I will give you, Enoch, my mediator, my archistratig, Michael, on account of your handwritings and the handwritings of your fathers – Adam and Sith and Enos and Kainan and Maleleil and Ared your father. •And they will not be destroyed until the final age. So I have commanded my angels, Ariukh and Pariukh, •whom I have appointed on the earth as their guardians, and I have commanded the seasons, so that they might preserve them so that they might no perish in the future flood which I shall create in your generation.

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The only thing that was slightly different/messed up in Arioch's SMT lore is that he's described as Enoch's guardian angel, whereas in Enoch 2 (or at least the translation in the link) it says that Arioch was one of the guardians for Enoch's and the previous antediluvian patriarchs' writings. Although I guess Arioch was still a guardian angel in that he was guarding a human's property, so maybe I'm just splitting hairs there.

Also, because I've been kinda disappointed with Metatron's Magatsuhi Skill with Sandalphon (I guess guaranteed item drops are cool, but really? I expected something more badass from the lategame Herald), here's my idea of a periapt + Magatsuhi Skill for Metatron and Arioch instead.

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Vengeful Heavenly Swords Periapt: Enables the Magatsuhi Skill Vengeful Heavenly Swords when the saint turned archangel and his former guardian angel are brought together.

Effect: Severe Light and Dark attack to all foes. Ignores affinity resistance and pierces through. Chance of instakill when striking weakness. (Basically deals one combined AOE Light and Dark attack that pierces through Light and Dark resistances, but has the possibility to also instantly kill enemies weak to Light and/or Dark, though the instakill effect doesn't work on bosses.)

Animation description: Arioch holds up his sword Storm Bringer (which is a sword mentioned in his SMTI A-Mode DDS dictionary entry), which charges up with dark lightning. Meanwhile, Metatron holds a hand up to the heavens, and from a ray of light, a gleaming sword imbued with white lightning floats down toward his hand; this is the Sword of Methuselah, a sword once given to his son Methuselah by God to kill demons. The two of them briefly look at each other with a "Let's do this!" attitude before they swing their respective swords toward the enemy. Their sword swings create waves of light and dark lightning, which then combine into a single wave of light and dark lightning. The combined holy and unholy wave slams into the enemy and deals severe, piercing damage.

"But Vulture!" you cry out, "Why would Metatron wield his son's sword and kick serious demon ass with it along with Arioch? Has he ever used a sword before?" And the answer, is yes, he has and he absolutely can! Want proof? See the skills Heaven's Blade (Persona 4), Sword Dance (Persona 5), Sword Dance (Persona 5 Strikers), which are what Metatron could learn in those games. For an even earlier example, see the skill Deathbound, which is a skill that deals heavy Sword damage in games like his debut game SMTII.

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This isn't much, but funnily enough, I wrote an FE support conversation-style fic featuring Arioch and Metatron (bc I absolutely loved the idea of demon haunts and imagined them to explore the demons' lore and backstory; turns out that's pretty much true!) before Vengeance was released, and Arioch does call him Enoch there. It even acknowledges that Metatron used to be human and had children, including Methuselah. You can read it here: The Youth and His Former Guardian

Anyway... that's all I have for this long post. I'm absolutely going to keep pushing towards the endgame so I can have them in my party and kick ass together.

what if Alhaitham's boob gem is something he had glued to himself in his childhood out of scientific curiosity and hasn't been able to get it off ever since like flint lockwood