#arknights scenarios

[arknights-hcs]

chongyue headcanons bc unfortunately i have feelings for this man and i will be a tsun about it if someone asks me:

is the type that wants to learn about anything and everything as possible. if you have an extremely niche interest or stuff that's really under the radar, he'd go on about to do research about it or ask you straight up to listen to you talk.

even though he's a big lover for food (if anything specially noodles), i feel like he would butcher anything else if there's no proper guidance so expect the first couple of dishes he makes for you is going to be not as good as you hoped 😭. but he is trying!! and if you're from a certain region or country, he'd try his best to learn that region's cuisine to impress you.

is the type to show his intents more with actions than words. like don't get me wrong, he can be very straightforward but he likes to use his actions to speak for him more. he wants cuddles? he's coming up behind you to give you a hug and a kiss on your cheek. you have some food left on your cheek? he'd smudged it off with his thumb then eat it himself. are you cold? he's handing his coat over to your shoulders to wear. he's just a genuine sweetheart like that <3

since he himself had a very rigorous routine on the landship, he would try to help you settle in a routine that's best fit you in your life. he'd motivate you to try harder and give you affirmations while doing the activity with you. he's someone that i can see that challenges your current living style but in a way that makes you venture out more. but i can also see him before leaving for morning training to destroy the operators' pysche and physical limitations, he's also the type to leave you a kiss on your forehead while you snore away in your bed together before leaving.

all in all, he's someone that is filled with so much love and it shows in everything he says and do to you. he treats you with so much love and whenever he looks at you it's almost as if you're just his entire world and it's so endearing to see for everyone.

[arkiwii]

did you know that blaze x weedy is a cool rarepair? and also did you know that they interact and are close in canon which can be seen in their operator records? and did you know they kinda raised rosmontis together? and also also did you know my friend @towerofrabble is a very cool person who kinda invented the ship and you should absolutely check her blog? and also did you know tha

[zeravmeta]

serious arknights question

since some birds and crocodiles have a symbiotic relationship where the birds pick out bacteria/other detritus from crocodile teeths while they provide shelter in return

which liberi is gonna be doing that monogatari toothbrushing scene with tomimi

funniest answers only

[kotkamoon]

Tower Defense Moment

I know AK isn’t the only Tower Defense game but. I didn’t expect this layout in an action game

[animalpetcel]

Path of Life Ramblings (Story Spoilers below)

mentally I compare Mylnar and Ulpianus a lot. They're both the 1 dude of previously all female groups (the Nearls and the Abyssal Hunters) and both hold the title of being basically the Eldest and one of the strongest of the group were a lot of the overarching lore comes from.

But, I dislike Mylnar. Mainly bc of how mean he is to Blemishine in her debut event and I kinda always hated how he felt like he wanted to drag everyone else into his permanent pity party (his voicelines making him out to be a complete Eeyore didn't help either). I'm guessing that he gets better in his own event (bc I still found him annoying in Near Light), but it's taking me a while to sit down and read it bc I still hold a grudge for how he treated Blemi (who is one of my fav characters) And what I heard from people who play CN during Path of Life's original announcement made me worried that I would fine Ulpianus either boring, or as irritating as Mylnar.

But that wasn't the case! Despite Ulpianus' withdrawn and similar stick up his ass attitude, it was easier to see that he like, cares about the other Hunters and other characters like Underflow & Jordi even when he's still refusing to actually team up with anyone else! I was actually really concerned about him by the end, bc what he's doing is incredibly dangerous and he doesn't even have someone to help him/witness the info he's about to gain if he loses himself to the seaborn. So I'm excited to see what happens when the other AH finally catch up to him, whether it be to help or capture him, or both. And maybe he also needs a lecture about how wonderful working with a team can be instead of wanting to carry everything himself.

I do have to say that it's also, kinda weird that Path of Life is when he's playable? Like, it ends with him vanishing to gain the knowledge that the Seaborn/Matus has on the past of the Aegir/The Firstborn, the danger of him maybe losing himself the same way Martus did and the other AH vowing to find him and bring him in for like, an actual explanation of everything. But now he's just...on the landship...still completely lucid....with an epilogue of his experiences being in his files...kinda working with the other AH now but not really

It feels kinda anti-climatic? Honestly it felt kinda weird how the narrative kept kinda asking us to doubt if he was still in the right mind when he never did or said anything for us to really doubt him besides like, refusing to work with others or explain more than what he viewed as the bare minimum. Also I kinda wanted him to like, actually have a moment where he accepts the other AH's help and officially joins them under Gladiia's command.... Tho it also kinda feels like Ulpianus was basically the only person they could have had as a 6* this event. The rest of the AH already released and Jordi & Irene are too early in their developments still to get alters. Lucilla's screentime would be too criminally low given what the story is trying to accomplish as well. I guess...maybe Underflow could have worked as the 6*? But I'm not super certain. And then it feels too early for Gladiia's moms as well.

But hey I'm glad I don't hate him. Now my next wish is that the next AH event finally lets Andreana and Iridescence join the fray. I kinda feel like Aegir would be interested in the church of the deep creating a half-abyssal, given their own difficulties with the procedure. (Also I just want Andreana to be more present in AH stuff....please HG...)

[totallynotsarkaz]

I am forever in debt with Istina for feeding me RosaZima despite it WAS HER FREAKING (temp)FAREWELL PARTY

[k-4-ni]

He's so fucking pretty.

He's so bbg omgggg

[astranauticus]

not sure if this counts as an AU but.. thinking about the Per Aspera crew as horror game bosses like.. you are wandering through a forested mountain range and you know somethings wrong because the forest shouldn't be this eerily silent, this devoid of life, and then you hear the crash of falling trees and there is a hand that is half your size glowing golden in the night and it is grabbing you and its claws are digging into your flesh and you see the spines running down the golden arm that is far too long as it lifts you over a crater in mountain, over a coiled, serpentine thing with a visage that is not of this world, and if you look closely you can see the shape of a child curled at the centre of the thing, golden hair reflecting the glow of the creature and if you listen closely you can hear her sobbing, 'Don't hurt me, I don't want to do this'. you are sailing through the astral sea when you see an ephemeral, resplendent spelljammer cutting through the starry waters and you rejoice because you have been lost on the seas for so so long, so you board the ship looking for help, supplies, anything, and you are greeted by a blue fire genasi (you wonder, do those even exist? but you can't get off the ship now because where else will you go?) and she tells you she is the captain of this ship but as far as you can tell there is no crew on board, and if she is not appearing right behind you from a trapdoor you've never noticed she is always in the engine room 'fixing the ship' even though the ship seems to be sailing perfectly fine ('Where are we going?' you ask her once and she doesn't even turn to look at you, 'Don't worry about it') and if you are ever so unlucky as to damage the ship in any way, you begin to catch flashes of red and orange out of the corner of your eye, a fire genasi wearing the woman's face who whispers at you with hollow, angry eyes 'Don't you fucking dare hurt my ship'. you are sailing through the astral sea when you see a rotting, decaying spelljammer, so badly damaged it's barely moving although you have to wonder how it's even staying afloat at all, and out of some morbid curiosity you climb on board and the deck of the ship is in no better shape than the hull, the marks of hard-fought battle - scars in the wood from sharp blades and arcane energies, stains of blood and oil splattered about - still fresh but you know time doesn't pass on the astral sea so who knows how long ago this all took place, and as you climb below decks you start to notice the writings on the walls, pieces of parchment nailed to every surface and connected with fraying, rotting threads, or words etched directly into the wood, the deep gouges barely readable, and you start to hear the creaking and clanking of rusted machinery slowly moving about and you turn a corner to see a figure standing in a room facing the wall, slowly scratching yet more of that unintelligible writing into the bones of the ship, and it turns as the rusted dented mechanite stares at you with eyes ablaze and he asks 'Who are you? Where is my crew?' as sparks of arcane lightning begins to arc through the room. you are running through a feywild forest and you know, even without the figure chasing you, that you have made a horrible mistake, you should have known better, should have been more careful, should have kept your impulses in check, and now you are being chased through an unfamiliar forest and the figure, the Hunter pursuing you knows this realm like the back of his hand, knows every tree and shrub and vine that is slithering up to grasp at your ankles, and you glance back desperately to catch any glimpse of your pursuer but there is no pursuer, he has hidden himself with some arcane trick or some innate power or just the knowledge that this realm is his home, and you hear his voice even though you cannot see him as he cries out 'You should not have hurt my family. Prepare to face the Hunter of Hundkiln'

sorry no Vhas yet maybe I'll update with one for him once we get more of his whole deal

[crehador]

so i. was prepared. to spark chalter today. was sitting at 295 and had the funds to do five more

296th pull

and

??????

wtf do i do now 😭

[makeitlookdecent]

shaking

[tainbocuailnge]

a lot of arknights gameplay discussion is built on certain assumptions about how people (are supposed to) play arknights, often without being aware that these assumptions are being made, and thus the common gamepress (rip)/reddit assessments of whether an operator is good or bad will be assessing their suitability for a style of play that is not remotely universal, but is still assumed to be universal, because it is the playstyle of the people who are writing these assessments.

this post is not about which playstyle is better, but rather about the way people talk about operator design and viability. if your way of playing arknights aligns with the assumptions that redditors often have about how to play arknights, then their advice is very useful, they are usually correct in their assessment of how suitable an operator is to that particular playstyle. it's also a single player game and how anyone else plays it has no bearing on what I'm doing myself, so in that sense it doesn't really matter to me that redditors talk about arknights in a way that doesn't align with how I play arknights.

I think reddit-style discussion is keeping a lot of players from experimenting and discovering that they actually like a different way of playing arknights more though, because they're caught in the idea that if this is how people talk about arknights, then that must be the right way to play arknights. I also think it causes a lot of players to view a lot of units in a bad light, or rather, they are assessing these operators by metrics that the operator is not trying to meet.

lucilla is often called a bad or poorly designed unit because her debuffs only affect regular enemies instead of the elites that would usually be the main threat. however, the debuffs she applies are very potent when they apply, so when her conditions are met she performs exactly as intended. in gamemodes where regular enemies can grow really bulky like IS or CC or SSS, or maps featuring bulky enemies that nonetheless are not categorised as elites like sarkaz wither aegis, lucilla successfully achieves her intended purpose of outperforming existing hexers in specific scenarios (her fragile can reach the highest value in the game and its only condition is whether the enemy is elite or not) without being a direct upgrade (the rest can actually debuff elites). not many players value what lucilla offers, but if you like engaging with and working around map and operator gimmicks, lucilla is a good operator for you.

wisadel is good at instantly clearing whole sections of the map, which is something many players value, but if you don't /want/ to instantly clear whole sections of the map because you want to actually engage with the map mechanics, she is not a good operator. she performs just as well as lucilla at her intended role, the difference is that wisadel's intended role aligns with the redditor assumption of how to play arknights while lucilla's doesn't. this friction between the assumed way of playing and the way many people actually play was highly visible during the icebreaker games, where a lot of players started bringing aak just to get rid of the other guy's wisadel so that she couldn't blow up the map before they got to actually play it.

"is this operator good" is a question that includes many unspoken metrics, including ones that the person asking might not actually want to judge an operator by. it can be a useful shorthand to speed up discussion of where and how one might want to use an operator, but it is only useful if these unspoken metrics are actually consistent between all participants of the discussion, which in practise is rarely the case. someone who is talking about how one might use lucilla doesn't want to hear that gnosis is better or that it'd be easier to just blow everyone up with wisadel, and someone who is looking for easy to use broadly applicable operators doesn't really want to hear that lucilla is actually really good in specific situations.

the more nicheknights I play and watch, the more I come to doubt how useful it is to talk about operators as being "good" or "bad" to begin with. across all of arknights there is not a single operator that is objectively unuseable. I would also argue that nearly every operator is capable of doing what they're intended to do. every operator has a combination of qualities that is completely unique to them, which means every operator can be in a strategy that relies on that specific operator's qualities to succeed. u-official was specifically designed to be as useless as possible as a joke, and high-level challenge players have still found various uses for a 3dp ranged unit that doesn't attack + doesn't take up deployment slots + can stun enemies + can temporarily make allies stop blocking.

exploiting the unique qualities of operators that are often overlooked for easier to use alternatives is the core principle of nicheknights. the fewer options you have and the more you try to cut down on the amount of operators used, the more each individual operator's unique qualities will shine. just earlier today I saw a clear that used a combination of the aspd debuff inflicted by zaaro and the fact that manual deactivation skills will cancel attack animations to delay mr. nothing's attacks long enough that every attack he does will trigger his stun talent, largely preventing zaaro from doing anything.

arknights also has immense variety in map and enemy design, so use cases for operators often dismissed as too niche to bother actually occur fairly often. every single chapter and story event introduces both new map mechanics and new enemies that make use of those mechanics. often the less straightforward a unit is, the more ways they have of interacting with these mechanics to open up potential new strategies. even without any self-imposed challenges, different gamemodes all have various restrictions and opportunities that make certain operator qualities more or less desirable, and the combination of collectibles and risks you pick in IS or CC can completely change how you approach each map. in RA you can straight up build the map yourself to be as beneficial to your operator of choice as possible.

beehunter's high attack speed but low damage made her fairly unremarkable until the game introduced hitcount-based mechanics. corroserum is rarely built because ifrit had been in the game so long already by the time of his release and he's not ifrit, but just the past month there have been two separate maps where a large amount of silenceable enemies approach the blue box in a straight line for him to trivialise. warmy is arguably the most difficult to use unit in global right now because the only way to inflict the burn status that her s2 capitalises on is using her s1, but now there's path of life letting just anyone inflict burn so she's free to use s2 anyway. if the situation where your gimmick unit of choice can shine doesn't exist yet it will be created sooner or later, because these units were created to have their gimmicks exploited.

arknights is a highly varied strategy game that offers many different ways to engage with its mechanics, including some ways to not actually engage with the mechanics and just explode everything instead. the game offers these options so exploding everything isn't the wrong way to play arknights, but the game also offers many other options so it's not the right way to play arknights either, it's just one of the many ways available. an operator that seems way too gimmicky or specialised to see much general use is not poorly designed, they are designed for a particular playstyle that simply differs from the playstyle that is assumed in a lot of operator discussion. units like lucilla or tsukinogi or leto aren't meant for players who ask "when would I ever use this when I have far easier options", they're meant for players who ask "what strategy would allow this combination of qualities to shine".

this is the issue at the root of why a lot of perfectly serviceable operators get stamped as being bad, and also the answer to the question of why arknights would be releasing these bad operators in the first place. crownslayer is a bad unit for the type of player that want to kill everything as fast as possible, but she's great for players who like gimmicks and weird interactions. many recent 5* are bad units for powergamers because they're trying to not to intrude on their existing subclass colleagues by doing something more conditional instead, or they're experiments for new subclasses that don't have an immediate obvious use case. many times throughout the game's history a new operator has been dismissed as bad only to turn out to be very powerful if you play them the way they're designed to, like dorothy, gnosis, ebenholz, and even specter alter.

all of which is to say, operator discussion would be a lot more useful to everyone involved if it talked about what situations would make the best use of the operator's abilities, rather than whether the operator is Good according a metric that is rarely even properly specified.

[arkiwii]

What do you think of Saria / Silence / Ptilopsis? Silence has two wings, and Joyce was very affectionate in the manhua...

that's! an amazing question! you can get a cookie

so I actually did condidered it at some point. I have absolutely nothing against polycule ships, and I do headcanon some characters as poly, so I was wondering hey, maybe I should consider Saria/Silence/Ptilopsis! I started by reading a few fanfictions, and I ended up with the conclusion "it's very cute"

and. that's all

I'm not against the ship, and I'm ok with it, but I just can't be into it - and the main reason comes from Ptilopsis herself. you see, she's such an amazing and complex character, and I ended up with a few headcanons about her. I'll explain it;

firstly, I can't decide whenever I want to imagine that Joyce does have romantic feelings for Olivia, or not. I don't want to say "she doesn't have them because of device #9" - she had proven a lot that she can feel things, she just can't express them well. so saying that she can't feel love is very wrong. but in any cases, I came with a conclusion; even if she was in love, she wouldn't even recognize it. my main example is with how seems to struggle to understand the concept of affection, and it's proven in her operator record:

it's taking place after Rhine Lab... is she doubting her friendship with Silence??* not saying she never considered Silence as a friend, but I think she's... unaware. it's like she can feel things, but can't process what she's feeling. so if she was in love, would she even know? does she think she's even able to feel love?

*(adding that it might just be a joke. in Silence's operator record, she does "register Silence as a friend". but it's because Silence said that Joyce was her friend. and when Silence reminds her again "you're my friend", she felt the need to confirm it? and she notes it in her diary, too. a diary where she writes things she doesn't want to forget. it's like she forgets that she's not just "Dr. Silence's assistant".)

and the second reason is, even if she was in love, even if she realized it... I don't think she would say it or want to engage in a relationship.

she knows that she's dying, and she cares a lot about Silence. she really does. but Olivia is going through a lot - Joyce knows that her death would cause a lot of pain for Olivia. because she's Olivia's friend - now imagine if she was Olivia's partner. that would cause way more pain. I don't think Joyce would allow this to happen, she wouldn't want. as she says, she wants them to have a happy ending, even if it means that Olivia has to be happy with someone else.

Ptilopsis is a very tragic character. love is a strong and beautiful feeling, and my god, you can write so much story about it. I can understand that people would want her to be in a relationship, after all, we all want her happy, and I wanr her happy too! but I'm a dumbass bound to "the scenario" and I tend to build headcanons and ships based on if it brings something interesting or not. and I think Ptilopsis is an amazing example of "to love is to want the person you love happy, even if it's without you".

and I also want to add that Joyce is happy either way! well, she says that she's satisfied with her life. it could have been better, but she doesn't mourn it. despite what device #9 brought in her life, it also gave her another view on life, and opened her eyes to things she never saw before. and she thinks it's suffisant

ANYWAY SO big tl;dr - they're cute and I don't mind it at all, but I can't ship them because it would bring nothing but pain when she'll be gone. and I fucking love drama and angst and bittersweet scenarios

[zeravmeta]

Arturia in the Kagareich: teehee! la~lala~lala~ im super duper excited to meet the witch king! -does a twirl- oohhh I bet he's gonna be so cool and wise! I'll surely learn what I need here! I bet the others are having as much fun as I am!

Everyone else:

[bobbile-blog]

Not sure if anyone’s said this yet but now that we have Laterano events plural I’m fascinated by their (imo) very deliberate choice of protagonists, and there are almost a couple of layers of narrative going on there. I struggle a little figuring out how to get this into words but specifically I think they’re chosen to be people who can carry a narrative without contradicting the orthodox morals of the church. There’s a LOT of vaguely anti-authoritarian rambling below the cut so please kindly bear with me and my English major brain.

I can’t really start there though. One of the reasons this is so brain hurty is how deeply it’s woven into the storyline, so to start, I have to verbalize how Laterano and Arknights writing more generally is different from other, similar settings. Because like, I hear the words “morally negative church in a grimdark setting” and my brain immediately shuts off. Come on, that’s so far beyond low-hanging fruit, if you’ve seen any grimdark setting ever you know exactly what that looks like. And sure, it was fine the first two or three times you saw it, depending on your tolerance for that kinda thing, but it gets boring quick and even when it was new it was kinda uninteresting story-wise. “Religion is always fake because it inspires hope which means everyone who takes meaning from it is either a corrupt grifter or naive and misled” isn’t just edgy nonsense, it’s also basically useless as an actual critique. It tells you absolutely nothing except how to tune out a particular kind of story, and a story that tries to get you to hear less is doing its job wrong.

So, Arknights does something different. Instead of denying the premise of the church entirely, it actually takes it at its word. Laterano is, in almost every definition of the word, a paradise. It is basically unmatched in terms of actual quality of life, with its only competitors being the Durin cities and maybe Aegir, and is worlds apart from now much the rest of Terra sucks. More than that, though, the paradise is specifically tailored to the worldview of a religion with a strong central authority - when I say it takes it at its word, I mean the authoritarian bits too. Laterano is a city that lives in perfect order and peace because everyone follows the law perfectly and they all understand each other and never fight. Empathy is really important for this, as it allows for a believable amount of superhuman societal order. Laterano has very little crime, political drama, or quarrels in general. It’s the promises of a strict higher authority actually taken at face value: everyone follows the rules and that means they have effectively unfettered freedom, because they don’t want to break the rules and therefore they can do anything they want.

Laterano is specifically written to be a believable paradise in a setting that has none, so that when the story then turns around and criticizes that setting, it has significantly more weight. Even when the promises of paradise are taken at face value, there are still issues that cannot be addressed because the system is inherently flawed even in the imaginary scenario where it works. Even worse, the problems that poke holes in the imaginary perfect scenario are the same problems that they face in the real world, like “how do you deal with the interpretation of scriptures” and “hey there’s this racism thing I keep hearing about should we be worried about that or what”. Because of the way this imaginary perfect system works, we then look back on our real world in a new light and understand it a little better. It’s good critique.

Okay so how did we get here and what does this have to do with the protagonists? Well, this starts with Fiametta in Guide Ahead, because she’s a really weird protagonist. This is a cold take at this point but despite being the character on the front of the box, she has very little to actually do with the central conflict of the event. Most of the conflict is handled by Ezell first and Andoain second, and Fiametta mostly putters around putting holes in people until the finale where Andoain receives the answer he’s been looking for, he turns to explain it to the world, and he runs into the only person in the whole of Laterano who does not care about his motivations or his revelation. Her role, in other words, is to replace the climax of Andoain’s story with her own, and in doing so she makes it much harder to actually get a resolution and a meaning out of the story (this should not be taken as a criticism of her character, let me cook). Guide Ahead’s ending is hazy, with only small piecemeal resolutions to its conflicts, and for the longest time that was just the way the event was written and it stood on its own.

But now, Hortus de Escapismo is out and the monkey brain see patterns. Specifically, with the choice of protagonists. Because Executor is definitely different from Fiametta as a protagonist, but there’s one particularly important connection between the two, and that’s that as I mentioned in the beginning, they allow for stories don’t contradict orthodox morality. Fiametta we went over, as she’s uninterested in any of Andoain’s morality and just wants him dead. Executor, though, is purely focused on his mission and views the world through that lens. He only wants to achieve his objective, and while helping the needy is in line with the stated objectives of the church and he does do so when able, it’s secondary to his assigned task. He does change as he gets further into the story, and we’re not gonna ignore that, but we’ll be back to it later. What I mean is more that he is designed as a person who is able to lead a story that doesn’t contradict with the morals of Laterano. He sees the injustice and suffering around him, but that’s not his job, so he doesn’t need to solve it to have a complete story with a happy ending.

This is where it really gets complicated, so I apologize if I don’t explain this very well. I see this as us dealing with multiple layers of fiction: the events of the story, the perspective of the church, and our perspective as readers. Back to the first point - authoritarian institutions almost always use stories to sell people on their brand of order. Simple stories, simple enough that even calling them myths seems like overselling it a little, your “Saint George slays a dragon” kinda thing. This is the point of the second layer, the perspective of the church. I don’t really have an in-world justification for this layer - maybe you could make the argument that it has to do with Law’s perspective on things, but I don’t totally buy that - I think it’s more in a weird narrative transition space for people who don’t read very carefully. Regardless, Fiametta and Executor’s shared indifference to the questionable circumstances surrounding them is designed to let them tell a story to prop up the existing order. Their protagonist status and their missions are specifically constructed to allow them to ignore the suffering around them, and as such ignore the larger questions that might poke holes in the larger order. They’re both playing out the story of Saint George, where they go and find a bad guy and kill them and that’s all there is to it. The story is designed and told specifically for that “that’s all there is to it”.

But, as we said earlier, this is a good critique, and as such it intentionally undercuts this story with the third layer: what we actually see as readers. We are shown the suffering and the injustice, and then get to see our protagonists ignoring that to pursue their goals. This is what gives Guide Ahead’s ending its unique texture, which sets it apart from every other event with a vaguely unresolved ending. We have seen the actual issues with Laterano, and also watched our protagonist explicitly ignore them in favor of her own story. It’s unsatisfying in a way that only really makes sense to me if we as the readers have an understanding of intentional authorship. Whether it be Yvangelista XI or Law or The Actual Real Life Pope, there are issues here that we want to see a resolution to but people are choosing not to address them. Again, it’s good critique. Not only does it push the reader to unpack and understand the actual real-world technique, but it also helps blunt it. You have just seen a plot and protagonist ring uncharacteristically hollow. You then look around to see why that is, and you realize there are many things that should have been resolved that weren’t. The next time you see a story resolve with that same hollow-ness, you know where to look. Surprise! Harry Potter was propaganda the whole time. It’s okay, it was never good, you were just twelve.

I guess the last thing is where we go from here, because Executor’s story breaks this mold somewhat. In Hortus de Escapismo, he has to deal with a mission that isn’t actually bounded by his normal rules, and because of that he actually does have leeway to help the people around him. He starts as someone who is totally mission-focused, but by the end of the event he’s done a total 180 and is blocking Oren’s attack, which makes the mission harder but helps the non-mission-critical civilians of the monastery. He breaks from the rigid thinking of “kill the bad guy and that’s all there is do it”, and gives his attention to the people he isn’t supposed to see. I think this is an indication of the direction we’re going to be headed in the future with Laterano events. The events aren’t going to get better - they’re going to keep being just as morally murky and complicated as in the past - but the characters are going to get better at handling it, and when they do, they’re going to actually start to change things for the better.

Goddamn that was a lot of writing for 1 AM. I still have a. Lot of thoughts on this event with stuff like empathy and Lemuen and Federico being an autistic icon(my beloved) but I’m going to leave things there, I think, because if I write for any longer my phone is going to crash when I try to post this. Anyway if you actually made it to the end thanks for listening to me rambling and I hope that made sense. Cheers.

[frostdemigod]

Lads, new endfield trailer dropped and we see some stuff. I'll put my entire thoughts and stuff under the read more for spoilers sake but also because I ramble a lot

A Surtr clone(?) and an Aurora clone

And I know they're clones for one reason. Just like Angelina, they were infected. Endfield has no cure for oripathy, at least from what I remember. So they would make clones and do memory transplants like Angelina did, but her files show that she is clearly her own person, she looks the same and has the memories and stories of the old Angelina, but she knows she isn't her.

Warfarin is alive, as mentioned from Angie's files, and she probably isn't a clone, mainly due to sarkaz having insane lifespans. Surtr would probably be the same if she wasn't infected. Oripathy isn't gonna spare her for 300 odd years, so her being a clone is probably a guarantee. Unless the oripathy meds had an advancement great enough to stall her infection for that long, until it became cheap enough to manufacture constantly. I know Eyja's oripathy got worse so Surtr isn't entirely safe, although her infection level is still pretty low in arknights.

But isn't this like. Super sad? Imagine seeing someone who looks exactly like one you shared memories with, spent time together with... They have those memories, and they look just like them. But they aren't the same person. They have their own personality and everything. They just have the memories injected in there.

They're not the people you used to know. They never will be.

I just find this like super depressing... the more I think about it the less I want to see the old ak cast in endfield, show me future generations like the new ch'en and stuff! That's cool! They lived a happy life and the family is still going! Continuing traditions, mentioning history, reminiscing about their ancestors. I love that idea! The world truly feels like it moves!!

But seeing someone you used to know as a ship of theseus situation... that like... really hurts man. Yeah they probably wanted to try the clone thing, but it isn't perfect. It's not like a robotic body you just plug in a program into and it's good to go. You're just injecting some of the past in there but they doesnt become the person the memories are from.

Like, am I weird for this incoherent rambling about the logistics of this? That I don't want to see characters I like basically cloned in this manner, because it gives me an inexplicable sadness about the situation. That our best solution to oripathy is a copy-paste method that we haven't even perfected yet as a "cure" or some medication to delay the inevitable.

The chances of Shana appearing in endfield are nonexistent. She doesn't even have a story appearance in arknights itself aside from her operator record. I know that if we do get more old cast, it would probably be the infected ones too, and this genuinely makes me happy in a twisted way. I don't want to see her like that. It'd hurt. So the chances being as slim as they are is soothing, but it isn't 0. That's what terrifies me.

Imagine I somehow was put in a couple century stasis and woke up and saw my brother the same as before. I imagine he went through the same as me, we talk, everything is normal. But then I learn that he isn't my brother, just has the memories and same body but his personality is different, his likes, dislikes, fears, it's all different... I'd be terrified man. I want to scream, run away, cry. It's like a skinwalker, some scenario straight out of a horror setting. Arknights is a terrifying setting as is. But this makes it much, much more eerie. So with every returning operator, the sadder the setting of endfield makes me.

[aliceoverzero]

Arknights lore continues to be insane

Babel event spoilers below . . .

What a mess. Finding out that the Originium project is human instrumentality via contagious protomatter is interesting. What threat was so horribly insurmountable to Doctor's people that the best solution they had was to create a grey goo scenario that also subsumes everyone into a simulated reality? It does explain the alternate version of events glimpsed through the dialogue in Kal'tsit's Remnant skin, as Originium has become more successful at its original purpose in that outcome.

This means Dorothy unwittingly reinvented a crude imitation of Originium via the transmitter fluid, which so far is only mildly less terrifying as I don't think it's been established to be capable of self-replicating. My favorite Warcrimes Jerboa has been made to look even more insane by an event she has nothing to do with, because holy shit girl.

Speaking of alternate means of making the many into one, is Terra operating under some passive rule of carcinization but for human instrumentality? Between Originium, Dorothy's transmitter and the Seaborn we're already at three different methods/interpretations of the same goal that are/were trying to unite all people on a fundamental level.

All those "if I met original Doctor I would be filled with the strength needed to beat them to death with my bare hands" types of posts are right. It's not that this fucker was unempathetic, they actually cared for people deeply, it's that they did care but ultimately twisted that caring towards serving their original goals. "It's fucked up that people are suffering right now, but I can end all suffering by having Originium consume the universe and integrate everyone into the Minecraft server that is running on it."

Fuck, every time we're shown Kazdel culture it's fucking bleak. The only way to be notable as a Sarkaz is to be a successful mercenary, and they perpetuate a habit of using toxic-masculinity bravado to cover up and downplay the fact that they were deprived of education. Literacy and just general wider knowledge of the world is a luxury to have in Kazdel.

This event has really made it feel like the Victoria arc is what the current writers want people to consider to be Arknights' real main story. The Lungmen arc can't be outright dismissed because of how much it's used to characterize so much of the main cast, but I do get the impression it's something that we're being further encouraged not to linger on. I get the sentiment. Those first few main story chapters are a rough read, made even rougher depending on when you started playing and what event stories you can contrast against it. I talk pretty regularly about arknights with my sister who started playing just before Lone Trail originally dropped, and comparing that writing against the Lungmen arc is an abyssal power gap that does make the main story harder to trudge through.

That said I do wish Babel was positioned better from a narrative perspective. I've spent the Victoria arc up to this point sitting on a lot of questions of "who the fuck is this guy" that were only answered just now. I'd probably have appreciated what's going on with Theresis, Theresa, Manfred and Ascalon a lot more in my original reading if I had been given the context for the baggage between them and why they're all this way.