#arknights reynell

[adorablegorilla]

I have a lot of thoughts about Reynell but I have to wait to share most of them because most people won't have finished the event story in only two days. But god he's such a well-written character. He is, for lack of a better term, the perfect "sympathetic douchebag." He's a nepo baby. He's blind to the struggles of the less fortunate. He's achieved nothing on his own merit. He has daddy issues. He doesn't realize value of his own life. He mistakes his respect for struggling artists as actual understanding. He's like if Ebenholz was twice as insufferable and three times as pathetic. He's even gay

[rabbitpilot]

🐴🦊

[dezertvideogames]

Reynell and Miłosz were so cute! I can't get them out of my head

[plsleafmelon]

oh that art man and his secretary are gay huh.

[laurarolla]

Arknights Rainbow Six collab has a number of things going for it, not least of which is that it made me think about my feelings and perspective on the origins of Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy's troubling political ideologies, and how a lot of that history has been forgotten in the years since the franchise has been in the hands of Ubisoft.

It's a story about art, artists, capitalism, grifters, community, and how political and monetary power interact with all of those things. It also has one of my favorite antagonists in the game so far with Reynell, and gives all the Rainbow cast members a chance to be heartfelt characters.

Also makes fun of NFTs, which, while definitely dated by now, is still great to see. Shame it's in a gacha game, really.

[kindauglypikachuicon]

Some of my thoughts on Arknights x Rainbow Six Siege collab event, “Operation Lucent Arrowhead”

Yes so put on this maid outfit and cat ears Fuze ✨

Doc feeling distressed at the people around him unable to pronounce croissant ‘correctly’ so cute! 💕

Quaso is canon guys

And Doc has wide hips good to know teehee :3c

OoO…..Yo Reynall and Miłosz have something between them and it’s called LOVE~

The Rainbow Six team to the rescue!!

This is a badass piece of art

And that’s when I knew that the love between Reynell and Milłosz is requited

Reynell you have no idea how lucky you are to still have Miłosz who fucking loves you for who you are despite the shit you tried to pull wtf. If Miłosz somehow comes across Rhodes Island I would hand him an invitation to work there cause he’s cool (so pspspspspspspspsps!!!)

Barbecue party art to end it off nicely (it’s so weird to see how ‘animefied’ Iana, Frost and Ash looks when you compare them to their original game forms

Cool event story ! 👍✨ It’s been a long while since I’ve read one since it’s always so much baggage to experience new things and I thought, “Why not”, and I made myself read this in a span of a few days

[unseelieseraph]

Reynell Arknights forcefem

[knockoffmordred]

Word Salad on Ela and Lucent Arrowhead While Ash's moment is more cathartic and the event more raw, Ela's is also thematically great, imo. Besides the event's topic being about Art and its importance being a very Arknights thing to talk about (insert that one orouborosorder essay on Arknights and Art (I still can't get over that, ngl)), Reynell and Ela are actually a bit like a foil to each other. Ela's monologue during the beatdown was not only a supplement to the kinetic recalibration on Reynell's brain, it also shows her characterization in R6. Her father was a commander of GROM, a Polish Special Forces unit, and the Bosak sisters were practically raised to follow his footsteps. Ela, however, got herself expelled from the military high school they were attending. After that, she had a brief stint in Fine Arts, and then joined a PMC, then left and got accepted at GROM after her father's death, joining the same unit he was in to honor his legacy. She's insightful like her father, she can see the little details in her surroundings and the people around her (and she gets frustrated when others are not as observant). She has an artistic streak, not only does she make art, she's described to have this creativity one would see when working with artists, it's apparently even seen in how she acts during operations. She's also known to go out at night, giving donations to the poor, blankets, food, sometimes at the very least a cigarette, and then she listens to their stories. She uses these conversations not only as a way to gain more perspectives, but also as motivation. It's part of why she even ended up as a member of Rainbow. She doesn't like the status quo, and she wants to try to reshape it. So we can see why she immediately sides with the street artists, she saw in them not only skill, but the artistry in them, how they turned their struggles and pain into something beautiful, and she understands and respects it. (You could also see the first bit with her finding a fake art piece.) The other reason to why she got into Rainbow is her desire to prove herself to her father, even if only posthumously and despite her seeing him as an exceptional but flawed man. This is something you could see in her monologue. She joined the same unit her father was in as a way to honor and remember him and make amends. This also drove her to lead high risk ops and to set unrealistic standards on herself. This is what makes her own moment, imo, pretty good, she saw someone who could have been like her, but instead was practically her opposite. She saw a man who refuses to understand those he thought beneath him, he only has a superficial idea of the street artists and decided he truly understood them. She saw a man who could have honored her mother and became an artist, but instead meekly followed his father's footsteps, then developed this self-indulgent, practically masturbatory way of "freeing" the artists he allowed to suffer under the whims of the rich, almost managing to let the fruits of the labor of others to burn just so he can say that he's a rebel and feel good about himself. (I think it's made worse because it seems like he could still be like Ela, the old Reynell wasn't gone, he was just hiding, occasionally showing through at certain points in the story. Like while his plans are...interesting, it seems like he is trying to fight.) Both events are great, imo. They show a great blend of both worlds. Originium Dust is serious, shows the darker side of Terra and had 1st Squad interact with it to give us a clearer image of both. Lucent Arrowhead meanwhile shows off an important concept in Arknights while managing to blend it wonderfully with an R6 character's story. Although I guess Lucent Arrowhead's impact was affected by the fact that people would need to know Ela beforehand. Also, I feel like giving us a visual on The Dancers and their destruction could have enhanced the story. Like seriously I wanted to see what the dancing robots looked like.

Man, the shift in tone between Originium Dust and Lucent Arrowhead is pretty fucking wild, and I think it's best characterised by the emotional catharsis of the protagonists of either event - Ash and Ela.

I'm going to elaborate below the cutoff in case someone sees this and hasn't finished reading Lucent Arrowhead yet.

Originium Dust is much beloved for the insight into the life of the Infected, the little and least wanted people on Terra, and especially how they die and why Infection is so feared. It is not a happy story, not even remotely. It is not funny and is as straight as a lance at the end of which is taped the message "NOTHING, NOT EVEN ROCK CANCER, JUSTIFIES BRUTALITY AND ABUSE AGAINST THOSE WHO CANNOT DEFEND THEMSELVES".

It is an isekai story where a bunch of serious, professional military operators from their world's most distinguished pan-national special forces coalition are displaced in space and time and must reckon with life in a new world where much of the mores they took for granted are cast aside in the name of expediency (because goddamn Terrans treat the Infected so much worse than the world treats people with chronic and terminal illness and disability).

Lucent Arrowhead, in comparison, is much more of a fun story. It has jokes, like the way Mateo is a completely incompetent buffoon, Doc having a breakdown at people mispronouncing croissant, or - particularly - the NFT scene. It is still about how shitty people are to the infected, but it lacks that singular focus of Originium Dust.

And this really is best exemplified by the conclusion to the arcs of the two protagonists, Ash and Ela.

At the end of Operation Lucent Arrowhead, Ela finally gives in to what she wants to do and delivers a correctional beating to a goddamn idiot and selfish jackass to instill proper morals. She's pretty calm, collected and knows exactly why she's doing this - she's offended at Reynell's selfish stupidity, and wants him to reconsider his life choices.

You can see it in the art. This is the face of someone for whom giving someone a morals-improving beating is not too far out of the ordinary, someone who is making a deliberate, conscious choice. Someone whose story did not push her anywhere near a breaking point.

You can probably guess where I'm going.

Because the counterpoint to that CG - which is clearly and delibeately evoking the comparison to what happened at the end of Originium Dust - is Ash's breakdown.

Every single bit of this CG is drawn to make it clear that this is someone at wit's end, someone who hit their breaking point and whose reaction to witnessing personally and upfront some of the vilest, most horrible cruelty towards the least deserving man she has met in this new world was to start punching and keep going until literally pulled off of her target by her friends. The blood, the facial expression, the glasses, everything is meant to make it clear that this is someone thrown completely off balance, and it works.

Because Originium Dust isn't trying to be funny, it's not trying to make jokes, it's simply making abundantly clear what happens to the least and weakest. Originium Dust released (on CN) in March 2021, height of the lockdowns, half a year after Chapter 8, back when this game was still about the plight of the Infected rather than the latest iteration of Something Is Bad In Victoria. It wanted to make an important point and didn't let anything - levity or otherwise - intrude on that.

I think Lucent Arrowhead is an OK event. But Originium Dust was better, in significant part because it pushed its cast so much harder into Terra and its horrible no good very bad realities, because it made its protagonist lose her cool at the crushing injustice of it all.

[adorablegorilla]

They got pathetic richboys with daddy issues at the function

[rabbitpilot]

awesome commission I got from a friend earlier before!

[adorablegorilla]

How it feels to fumble a bishie butler boy

[rabbitpilot]

🥺

[rabbitpilot]

The tip of my digital pen is on fire

[rabbitpilot]

Birthday gift for a friend

[rabbitpilot]

So I'm basically two thirds of the way through the story of r6 crossover in eng (I'm a slow reader in English, and it's the first time I read Arknights' story in eng so please forgive the slow speed), this Miłosz/Reynell brainrot has become worse than I could have image ajdhwlskzhshssjsks how I want to do more doodles of them!!! but it's already middle of the night here so I'll finish what's left in the morning, and maybe do some drawings then.