#S2 screenshot blocking analysis

[drconstellation]

Questioning the Questioner

Blocking in Scenes in S2: No. 1

Since I'm procrastinating a bit on the meta writing for various reasons (its happening, but slowly,) why don't I throw some short pieces on S2 blocking at you. Here's a related parallel pair.

As always, we need to remember that the screen right is the morally right angelic side, and the screen left is the shady demonic side.

Here we have Aziraphale's initial questioning of Gabriel upon his arrival in the bookshop. Gabriel is on the screen right of Aziraphale, so takes the moral angel side, while Aziraphale sits on the demonic left side of the screen. Aziraphale is asking most of the questions in this scene, so it seems the right place to be. Both of them are in the light, though, there are no shadows here for these two angels.

But notice the balance of the setting - Gabriel is more towards the middle of the shot, and is placed over the centre of the rug. This turns out to be no accident, but a very particular placement.

You might be familiar with the portal under the oculus, which turns out to be part of a Solomon's Magic Circle. But there is a side part to this array, which is placed exactly where the office section of the bookshop is, which can be used to summon and control both angels and demons. It's a place where the truth is demanded. It's just a shame that Gabriel can't seem to remember the answers to the questions that need to be answered.

The second screenshot in this pair is part of the "cupperty" sequence.

In comparison to the above screenshot, we have Muriel looking at her "cupperty" while conversing with a combined Aziraphale and Crowley team in S2E3. I did a more detailed meta around the tea here, but let us just address Crowley nearly sitting in Aziraphale's lap the dynamics of the moment.

Muriel, an angel, is sitting on the screen right. They are all in heavenly white, and there is even a beam of light focused on her cupperty. They have come to ask questions to verify the 25 lazurii miracle that was performed the other night.

On the other side, the screen left, we have Aziraphale and Crowley sitting together as one. As they sit in the shadows, they act as a team, Crowley asking questions to Muriel with a teasing kind of playfulness while Aziraphale tries to coach her on - both things Crowley the demon is known to do.

And how do we know this a significant shadow? The windows are on the east side of the shop, and its morning, just before Aziraphale heads off to Edinburgh. Also we have also just seen some of the side characters conversing in the coffee shop while ordering their morning coffee.

We have the same two chairs being used as well. Muriel sits on the ladder chair this time, while the more experienced angel/demon pair occupy the more comfortable lounge chair that is still positioned on the Magic Triangle.

We even have hot beverages in play. Gabriel's hot chocolate is more about comfort, while the cups of tea are about establishing a connection to Earth.

[hellyrossum]

bits of r.u.r. that remind me of severance (or are otherwise interesting)

r.u.r., also known as rossum's universal robots, is a czech play from the early 1920s that i first heard of years ago. it's notable in the canon of science fiction for introducing the word "robot" to the english language, derived from the czech word "robota" meaning "servitude / forced labor". it's a play about artificial life made to be workers, and what happens when those workers rebel against their masters. and it features a woman named helena.

that's how the play was recently brought to the forefront of my mind. between the releases of s2 eps 2 and 3, i was looking up the meaning of the name helena and other people/characters who have been given that name, in search of any potential inspirations for severance's helena having been named as such. when i found this play's helena, helena glory, the bit of context i read seemed so insane a coincidence that i decided to read the full play (thank you project gutenberg), in case of any other connections. and, well.

(this is going to be less a proper analysis of the play than a summary that highlights particular sections/ideas. if you're a fan of severance's capitalism critique and philosophical exploration of what makes someone worthy of being considered a person, i highly recommend reading / listening to / watching r.u.r. for yourself!)

backstory for the play: the og mr. rossum invented a substance that could serve as the building blocks of artificial life. he wanted to pursue the further development of this artificial life for philosophical reasons, to see if humanity could effectively replace god, but his nephew took over and was only interested in using them to get rich. by the time of the play proper, robots are used all over the world as cheap labor.

in act 1, a young woman named helena glory goes to a factory that makes and "employs" robots. helena is the daughter of an industry titan, but she reveals that she's here as representative of the Humanity League, a group that wants to liberate the robots. (you see why reading just this on the wikipedia page caught my brain on fire, right. the double life of it all.)

at the factory, helena proves to be not actually that knowledgeable about the robots; her initial response to seeing one, a secretary named stella, is to insist she must be human because she's too lifelike, and then when the managers of the company come in she assumes that they must also be robots (and makes her case to them for their own liberation), only to learn they're not. harry domin, the chief manager, told her that the employees and officials are robots, but then (after they all have a laugh at her expense) he says of course the managers aren't; a robot could never. bosseshumans are still necessary, as the top of the hierarchy, telling the workersrobots what to do. (but isn't the fact that managers could be confused for robots telling in itself? looks at people's early theories about cobel and milchick. and miss huang.)

the six men all insist that the robots are simply tools/machines, but helena belives they have souls — or, if not, then they should get to have them. this is the philosophical conflict that essentially fuels the rest of the play, and so here is where i start posting screenshots.

guys. is this not. the literal philosophy behind creating innies (as workers, at least). you make a worker who only knows work, will forever only know work, and they will only think of work (right?).

there's something very lumon to me about this bit also:

(i'm not going to screenshot it but. would you believe me if i said shortly after this there's a reference to pineapples.)

and then. the bit where a certain someone's name started blaring in my head.

i don't even need to say it. you're thinking of her too, aren't you.

immediately after this we learn that the head scientist is currently working on developing pain nerves for the robots, which is. so normal. so normal to build the experience of pain into your artificial workers so they don't gum up your production line with their injuries. so they learn how to behave correctly. so normal.

in the interest of not including every moment of the play in this post, we'll skip ahead to when the act ends: dormin says he's fallen in love with helena and traps her into an engagement with him, saying that if she doesn't accept his proposal on the spot, one of the other five men will have her. yeah. as it turns out, this story is not only about how workers are treated like property/resources, but also how women are. another thing it has in common with severance :)

in fact, if that last plot point has you thinking about some disturbing implications that were brought to the forefront in the latest severance episode (s2ep9), you are not alone. neither are you alone if it has you thinking of s2ep7. put a pin in that.

now for act 2, we skip ahead 10 years and find ourselves in domin's home, on an island. the men are waiting for a certain ship to arrive at the harbor that will be their ticket to safety. see, after years of the robots becoming more and more central to the economy — and the military — the robots have, who could've guessed, started a world-wide revolution. the ship will be the men and helena's arc, so to speak; a safe place for them to wait out the violence.

(they plan to take control back from the robots, in the end, and part of those plans includes making them "national" robots instead of "universal" ones, essentially designing different races of them, for the sake of creating divisions between them. which is pretty on-the-nose social commentary... and also reminiscent of the way lumon seeded fear and resentment between the different severed departments.)

helena has not yet been informed of any of this. we see her have this very noteworthy (imo) exchange with her nurse nana:

but then she reads the news and learns not only of the uprisings and assassinations, but also that, in the past week, not a single human being has been born. importantly, even as some of the robots have somehow developed human emotions and the desire for self-determination, the one thing that has kept them distinguishable from humans is their inability to reproduce; they require the manuscript from the original rossum to be able to make more of themselves. the manuscript that helena, upon realizing that humans have stopped having kids precisely because the robots are making them superfluous, burns.

before that, though, she speaks with one of the in-house robots, radius, who's been having "episodes" of destroying things.

this convo, in addition to making me foam at the mouth, establishes something very important that we later learn is true of the robot revolution as a whole. the robots don't want to coexist as equals with humans; they want to conquer humanity. they carry the human's belief in domination and seek to pay back the cruelty that has been shown to them in kind.

("What I want is for her to wake up while the life drains out of her and to know it was me who did it.")

[screenshot from much later but to prove the point:]

speaking of that cruelty. some more lumon ass testing floor as shit:

DR. GALL: [...] do you know, I don’t believe the rascal is a Robot at all any longer. HELENA: Doctor, has Radius a soul? DR. GALL: (Over to couch) He’s got something nasty.

and it's after that that helena thinks to ask about dr. gall's other experiment, and i drop the bomb i've kept hidden from you all:

yup :) there's an innierobot helena too :) modeled after the real one :) "If you were to wake up only for a moment you would kill me for having made you.” yeah. yeah she would. yeah.

here is where i remind you of the pin we put in the men all treating human helena as property, no more a person than the robot workers. of the similarities to the subtext of jame and helena-helly's dynamic in s2ep9, and of dr. mauer and gemma in s2ep7. this man who (like every other guy in the play) is infatuated with helena made a version of her who's literally property. he experimented on her. he continues to monitor her. he sees her as braindead and useless, but lovely. she's a failure.

there's a lot of interesting stuff that happens / is discussed in the next act and a half but i'm going to try to stick to highlights. tl;dr the robots raid the island; domin laments that he was trying to create a world where man was free of labor with the robots (to which i say: there are plenty in history who've said they're acting to free all of mankind from drudgery by assigning that drudgery to a group they consider nonpersons); he has a vision of exactly how he and his friends are going to die(???); and then dr. gall confesses:

DR. GALL: I changed the character of the Robots. I changed the way of making them. Just a few details about their bodies. Chiefly—chiefly, their—their irritability. [...] I was transforming them into human beings.

(remember that helly r core line about the soul? does it first show itself with the gnashing of teeth?)

the thing is, he did not have this idea on his own. helena (human helena) asked him to do it.

perhaps it was a noble pursuit, from a certain point of view. but you could also argue that it wasn't, that she only wanted it for selfish reasons — for the robots to understand and accept humanity, out of fear of what they would do otherwise — not for the sake of broadening their own horizons and possibilities. (remember that it's been ten years since her activist days, and now she lives in a house where multiple robots are "employed" as servants.) i'd say it's reminiscent of milchick's attempted reforms in season 2, in a way.

it also makes me think about the end of s2ep9; how mark, devon and (presumably) cobel are betting on innie mark understanding and helping them with saving gemma without really taking his own wants and agency into account. same applies to reghabi; for all her talk in s1ep6 of mark having brought his innie into this world for his own convenience, she sure doesn't do anything in s2 to advocate for getting innie mark's consent for the reintegration procedure or just. considering what his perspective on this will be.

of course, since helena, human as she is, is still considered property by the men around her, they don't ask her perspective either when deciding how they'll deal with the robots at their door — and when she points it out, her husband calls her a child. and yet, the men go on to say this:

queen of the final human empire, eh. queen in name only, most likely, right. that doesn't sound familiar at all :)

we're basically at the end now, i promise. the act closes with the robots breaking in and all the humans getting killed — not just the ones we know, but all humans on earth. all minus one: alquist, formerly the rossum company's builder (the closest of all the men to a standard worker).

we see in the final act that he's been put by the robots to the task of recreating the formula for producing more robots, more artificial life, and has had no success. in desperation, the robots volunteer to let alquist dissect them to find the answers, but he recognizes their fear of death and can't bring himself to do it.

(compare this fear of death evident in the robot leader flinching away from alquist even after he volunteers himself for dissection to this bit from all the way in act 1 (which reminds me in an agonizing way of mark and ms. casey's convo in s1ep8):

DOMIN: You see, Miss Glory, the Robots have no interest in life. They have no enjoyments. They are less than so much grass.

one of the robots chastizes alquist for his failure, for not being as "strong" as them. he falls asleep. and then, two different robots enter the scene. one we know, one we don't. they speak of the beauty of the sunrise; and an abandoned cottage they found with two dogs who licked their hands; and each other. they laugh.

laughter makes you human, or is at least a sign of humanity. finding humor, joy in something other than your purpose. (thinks about helena laughing at helly's coupon-cutting joke. thinks about helena letting herself laugh out loud at the dieter story.)

now, here is where we return to that pinned point one final time.

thankfully, helena is spared. primus offers himself in her place, which moves helena to tears. she then offers to go instead of primus, threatening to kill herself otherwise. to which primus responds:

and that's the end.

... so. it's not like anyone at lumon (minus maybe possibly milchick?) is just going to let mark and [gemma] [helly-helena] leave together. certainly dr. mauer, or jame eagan, wouldn't be so magnanimous.

maybe this is more a vision of the end of the series as currently only exists in dan erikson's head than of the finale we're getting in a few days. or maybe it's nothing to severance at all.

but. i have heard what that final shot of ep10 is going to be. and for those who know... do you see it? how it's both an echo and the opposite?

that's going to be my final word on this play for now, because i spent nearly my full work shift on this and i suspect i'm nearing my word count. i hope you severance fans got something out of this*, even though it was more summarizing and pointing at things than active analysis. tl;dr you should read / watch / listen to rossum's universal robots

*specifically @kendrysaneela since you asked for this. hope you enjoyed :)

[rimeiii]

Some more analysis with the WHB gameplay!

Mostly about character classes, because there's some new things in the gacha trailer - including what seems to be a change in class icons. (or maybe the icons were placeholders previously? hm.)

(I will not be commenting on the gacha animations because I for the life of me cannot get over the fact that the placeholders for Belphie, Ferusama, and Asmo look like. Fucking pocong. Indonesians know what I'm talking about.)

Everything under the cut because this shit is long. I'm waiting for the maintenance in Arknights to end right now so...

So, this is the screenshot used in the gacha trailer. Toto (to the right of Beelzebub), I recall, was briefly seen in the previous trailer (2nd one I believe), where his icon was the one used for Marbas in the current iteration, and is used to denote a close range unit and marksmen. Which is why I think the icons in the previous trailers were more or less placeholders.

Anyways, we're seeing four main class icons in the meantime. There's a sword, a shield, what seems to be a cross, and a target.

Going by context clues alone, sword units deal close-range, melee damage. They probably have decent block (1-2), a high attack stat, and skills/ults that would most likely be DPS-focused or for survivability. Something like Nearl Alter?

See, Nearl Alter (The Radiant Knight) is a DPS-focused unit who deals true damage that cannot be mitigated. Sky-high HP and ATK as a Dreadnought Guard, which specializes in high melee damage. All three skills of her focuses on damage, with her first skill being infinite duration and giving her an increased attack range, her second skill making her a pseudo-Executioner/Fast-Redeploy unit without taking up a deployment slot, and her third skill being the bread and butter of her true damage skillset. Honestly, I would love to see some unique skillsets like this for WHB I'm ngl.

Next are shields. We briefly saw a shield character in Mammon in the second trailer (Bimet in the gacha trailer), and they're units with 3 block. As the name implies, they'll block enemy units from advancing, usually to let a more dedicated DPS unit take them out. Not quite sure how things will work in WHB, but from my experience, unless we're talking about a defender specifically built for dealing damage (read: Duelist, Fortress, and Juggernaut archetypes to an extent in Arknights), their attack stat isn't super impressive.

Common strategies with using Defenders in Arknights is to deploy all ranged/DPS Operators before deploying your Defender, because ranged Operators tend to be squishy and enemies capable of dealing ranged damage will attack the last deployed Operator in their attacking range. Some Defenders even have skills or are archetypes that help them tank better, even going so far as to reward being attacked! Hoshiguma's second skill, for instance, reflects a portion of physical damage back at her attacker, and Mudrock gains shields every few seconds that nullifies a damage instance and heals her (Juggernauts like Mudrock cannot be healed directly).

Not so sure how targeting is going to work in WHB, however. Maybe they'll attack the closest unit? Because it doesn't seem like redeploying in the middle of battle will be an option here.

Let's talk about the cross next! In the gacha trailer, the character in question associated with the cross is Marbas, whose character description all but says he is a healer. Which makes sense thematically. However, will he be a melee unit or a long-ranged healer, is what I want to know?

Arknights brain is real because yes, there are healing defenders in that game, under the subclass known as Guardians. There are also traditional medics, however - they're ranged units and tend to be squishy as well. Just saying though, having someone like Marbas be a ranged unit is such a waste of his huge, strong body...

All three of Saria's skills heal - single-target healing (S1), AoE healing (S2), and AoE healing plus debuffing enemies (S3). The same thing can be said about Shining - her first skill boosts her healing, her second skill casts a physical shield, and her third skill buffs the defense of every unit in her range.

And finally, the target (Zagan in the gacha trailer). Most likely, they're going to be the marksmen, if we're going with the descriptions given in-game. Ranged units that are usually able to deal large amounts of damage, but are comparatively squishy compared to most other units. Having one of Leviathan's units be a marksman is fueling all of my Sniperknights needs actually

Exusiai is such an insane sniper for shredding low-DEF enemies. You see her third skill? Yeah. She just deals more damage per hit, has a faster attack speed, and each attack hits more times consecutively. This is the sort of physical attack that works well with Defender units, and I hope we get synergies like this in WHB!

I do wonder if we'll get any more classes apart from these four. Path to Nowhere has umm 6 classes I believe? Meanwhile Arknights has 8 classes, in which each class is separated into several subclasses or archetypes to accommodate different playstyles. Because believe it or not, Decel Binders (slows enemy movement, like Suzuran and Glaucus) and Summoners (summons units to attack enemies onto the battlefield, like Ling and Deepcolor) belong in the same class, Supporters.

I'm still holding out for hope that the game will have different playstyles within the same archetype or class, to keep things fresh and not just become a pure DPS check. Like, did you know that in Arknights, we have what amounts to a fast-redeploy Marksman sniper in April, who has camouflage and can take out ranged enemies with ease? And for Executioner specialists, we not only have the DPS-focused Texas Alter (The Omertosa), but also the tank/bait that is Gravel? Having a variety like this keeps the game interesting and allows for reasonable difficulty without making enemies HP sponges, and I do wish WHB will have varieties like this!

or maybe i'm hoping for too much

BONUS: potentially crack, but I have some speculation of the type of characters some of these WHB characters could be in Arknights terms...I hope I didn't miss anyone, dear god.

Naberius: Wolf motif. Let him be a useful Vigil that would be awesome right aha...especially since Vigil's a Siracusan citizen and that place is ruled by the mafia...my man is so bad compared to previous free 6*s Gladiia and Lumen, help

Ronove: Dude has a knife in his art (which implies Executioners or Agents), but I'll be real, with his description I'd rather he be something like a Bard unit, who buffs surrounding friendlies. Something like Skadi Alter (The Corrupting Heart)...

Dantalian and Phenix: Executioners. Both of them. They go in, beat enemies up with high DPS, then go out. Again and again. That's Texas the Omertosa in a nutshell baby-

Leraye: Said to be a long-range marksman. He'd be a Deadeye like Ambriel, for sure - hell, Ambriel can attack out of her range with her second skill. Or Fartooth, with her infinite straight-line range on S3.

Belial: Similar to Leraye, he's said to be a long-distance penetrating assassin. Deadeyes actually target those with the lowest DEF first, which probably isn't 100% accurate to his description, but hey, quick HP shred.

Amon: Short-range? Gun??? Heavyshooter, like Pozyomka and Schwarz????

Stolas: Scattershot, according to his description. Probably a Spreadshooter like Aosta. Now we just need a Broca and a Chiave to complete the ABC gang-

Bael: Following the ABC gang theme, what if he plays like Broca, as a Centurion (deals melee physical damage to all enemies the unit is currently blocking)? He's a "short-distance fixed torture king" according to his preview description...and it doesn't look like he's holding a gun, either. He'd probably be very destructive in close quarters - a Centurion's specialty.

Foras: Space divider??? A friend of mine, a fellow Arknights player, speculated that this might mean he's a Push Stroker or a Hookmaster (probably Push Stroker because no way you're pulling anything with a coffin), or potentially a unit capable of shifting enemies (think Croissant S2). We honestly don't know.

Bathin: Is actually in a similar state of confusion with Foras. Dimension splitter? The actual fuck? Will he be able to reroute enemies by separating space (i.e. placing roadblocks or riot piles) or would he also be a unit who can shift enemies?????

Buer: His teaser art has a doggo around him, and mentions him making a contract with a dog demon iirc. Perhaps he would work as a Summoner...maybe not to the extent of OP-ness that is Ling, though. Though his preview does mention he's also a healer...Kal'tsit with Mon3tr? Or an Incantation Medic (a healer that can deal damage) like Reed Alter (The Flame Shadow) or Hibiscus Alter (The Purifier)?

Morax: The words "lunatic healer" makes me think about Warfarin for some reason, even though her playstyle is buffing her allies in battle, not transferring of wounds from patient to healer like Morax's character description implies.

Marbas: As stated earlier, I'd be immensely disappointed if Marbas isn't a sort of Guardian Defender. Waste of his muscles. Plus his teaser mentions his violence is dangerous to both angels and demons alike...Saria's passive has her gain stackable stat buffs while she's on the field.

Zagan: You know...he's a sniper, sure, but I'd like his talismans to come into play as a gimmick of sorts. Perhaps a mechanic like Lee, whose second skill "marks" an enemy for increased aggro, before exploding it for Arts damage...

Andrealphus: I see a scythe. I immediately think of Reaper Guards, like La Pluma, Highmore, or Executor Alter (The Ex Foedere).

Gusion: Ohhh this actually pains me. I love him, and I desperately want him, but his role description as a "short-distance destroyer" makes me think of Crusher Guards like Quartz...and holy fuck I hate using them. I used Quartz once on an IS3 run and I swore off using her immediately.

Paimon: The fact he has "saboteur" in his description makes me think he's more of a Supporter unit, most probably a Decel Binder or a Hexer. Someone who can apply debuffs.

Barbatos and Sitri: They have things in front of them - a coffin for Barbatos and an iron maiden (????) for Sitri. Would they act as shields? Defenders, perhaps?

Bimet: Confirmed a Defender from the preview. Kinda reminds me of Hoshiguma's skin with the spirits floating around.

Astaroth: Look I know he's a sniper but holy hell would it be hilarious if he'd be an annoying shit like Geek Supporters...casually inflicting grievous harm while actually buffing their allies...the self-stun meme on Spuria and Aak casually killing low-DEF allies with his fucking Durian Stimpack...

Eligos: Self-sacrifice tanker...there's two ways we can go about this. Either he's a Juggernaut (Defenders who cannot be healed directly) or he's the Gravel type of Executor Specialists (Fast redeployment time, we use her to tank strong attacks like Faust's arrows or Viviana's candle burst)