#spoiler cw

[jezabatlovesbats]

[haxorus612]

Arknights Pull Priority Guide - Future Event Spoilers

Pull priority guide from post lucent arrowhead to delicious in dungeon collab. Ranked from highest-value operator to lowest, at the end I'll discuss which banners to prioritize.

#1: Stop playing ga cha games

#2: Odda.

brings Ho'olheyak's previously unique niche of a rapid-fire uplift to a five star package. While he's more limited in what enemies he can lift, he more than makes up for it with better uptime and splash AOE. It's rare that 5 stars get to compete directly with 6 stars. For that alone, he's absolutely worth your time. Just like ho'olheyak before him, he's got excellent synergy with one particular IS4 relic.

#3: Nymph.

so far the only applicator of the "fear" status effect, which is distinct from Degenbrecher's frighten. It's a unique status that forces enemies to walk backwards for a short time. It has a lot of potent use cases, especially against slower enemies. Like most of our entrants here, her notable skill has a reasonably low SP cost.

#4: Laios Touden.

a character fully unique to arknights from one of the manhwas, i think it's called "Dig Dug's Dungeon Dining"? It was part of the konami collaboration. Anyway, he, like odda, brings a 6-star utility to a lower rank. Frighten is a fairly powerful effect, fully canceling an enemy's auto-attacks, but on a purely-offensive operator like degenbrecher, it didn't quite have a central place on her kit. Laios has much tankier stats as a dreadnought, and his frighten has a long duration and low SP cost.

#5: Logos

What logos brings to the table is straight out of the matrix: he can slow down and potentially delete nearly any projectile with his s3. It's flashy, and when used cleverly can save you a lot of grief. However, it's hardly applicable to every situation. Some of the most dangerous ranged enemies don't use projectiles at all, and some "projectiles" ignore his skill anyway. It's certainly not universal, but when it's useful, it's fun and powerful.

#6: Ascalon

She doesn't bring anything fully unique, but what she does bring is a bit stronger and weirder than most operators before her. Like Ela, she has a skill that inflicts "accuracy reduction" on enemies, with a 50% chance for any enemy attack to miss instead of Ela's 40%. It has some distinct use cases from dodge, notably stopping certain damage-over-time effects that would result from a hit. On top of that, she can slow aerial enemies with her s2 without damaging them, which looks very funny. Overall, a useful and unique operator.

Honorable mentions: Chilchuck Tims - Unlike Folinic, who only gives herself resistance environmental effects, Chilchuck gives full immunity. He's also kind enough to share with any allies within his range. Ulpianus - Technically the first operator to be able to redeploy himself with a skill, but it's hardly different from just. Y'know. redeploying an operator normally. Can still be very useful, especially when rapidly swapping between lanes. Narantuya - Also applies accuracy reduction to enemies, but despite the infinite application time, its range and chance leaves much to be desired. Instead of a 50%, it's only 20%. Lutonada - Extremely adorable. Also, shifting utility on a defender is completely unique if you've never heard of croissant.

Which Banner Should I Pull On?

While it's easy to get caught up in the hype of a new limited banner, Logos' cool utility is barely applicable to more than a handful of sick compilations. Try to grab someone more reliable, like Laios Touden, who will scream at your enemies! With that in mind, here are my recommendations:

This banner has two of my recommended operators: Pallas' Bodyguard, and the Janitor Director Ascalon, and one of my honorable mentions, Lutonada. 3 for the price of 1 is the best deal you'll get here!

logos banner: He might not be the most widely applicable, but you can't go wrong with something that entertaining. Still, I wouldn't recommend pulling too hard. Missing out on him isn't the end of the world.

HUH??? what? why is grain buds on this banner? what's she doing down there??? omg save this child

Nyumph is also fully unique! She's got style in spades, too, nothing like those bountiful boring blue banners up above.

And with that, we've come to the end of arknights. I did think it was weird that they did end of service on their Fyodor Dostoevsky collaboration, Dungeon In Delicious, but you never really know how these things are going to go aha. Thanks for reading, hope you have a nice day!

This banner has 1 main pick, Laios, and one of my honorable mentions, chilchuck. With 2, that's greater than one, and therefore much higher value than the other banners except ascalon's where you can Definitely pull odda. Really try to pull odda from that one, i dare you. If you don't you can come to my house and break my legs. I'll even post my address under the cut:

[lastborne]

Tell me about if/when Maheen learns what happened to Alloran, how she reacts. What does she do about the hive mind?

Headcanon - @crookedtouch - Spoilers for the end of Act 3.

Magic infuses the land of Faerûn, people who were once dead can be brought back to life, and if not wholly, than as a ghoul or skeleton. Telepathically able to send messages with Sending. Because of that, the fabled 'twinepathy' of our world exists in theirs.

That being said, she absolutely knew something was going on with him when he started to block that bond. She had tried to warn their parents, their siblings. But everyone claimed it was just a part of growing up. She knew different, knew something was wrong when the bond went completely silent before coming back fuzzy. She could no longer tell where he was in the vague sense she could before. It was like he was in multiple places at once.

Finding the hive mind when going to destroy the Steel Watch had her break in a way that finally let her understand on some level what her elder sister went through. Even more so the dark corners of her mind whispered. Alloran and her had been attached at the hip since that very first day. 'She remembers sideway glances with him before bursting into giggles and their mama's experated exhaling chuckle when they spoke in 'twin-speak.' before running off to play in the backyard.

Remembers finally accepting she didn't carry the innate magic of their bloodline and remembers him stealing a book and giving it to her, whispered words of encouragement, that if anyone could study magic and learn, so could she, she wasn't going to be left behind.

Alloran who just wanted to help people, who curved and trained his magic to heal rather than hurt was now hurting people outside his control. When her mind touched his, there was a feeling of confusion followed by panicked fear as he was able to push through the tadpole control before being smothered again, a faint pleading for release before nothing.

It took everything in her to destroy that jar that was what was left of him, but she did so in an empty sense, eyes hazed with trying to control her tears. Her brother was gone, so why did she feel his blood on her hands? She didn't seem to hear her friends as she continued on to destroy the foundry, when they left and all they had to do was hunt down Gortash for the final stone. Her head was silent in a way she loathed. The little static feeling in the back of her head was gone, and even though it meant that something was wrong, at least he was still there. Now there was nothing, and she was alone.

The irony, only hit her until later in that, when she passed the bodies of her parents in the hall that she felt her magic react in a way it had never before, and used all her training to keep it from exploding out of her. Rage was building, felt like it was burning her from the inside, not only had Gortash taken her brother, but her parents too? Were her older siblings okay? Did she lose them too?

Seeing that man, hearing his mocking tone had her yelling in rage alongside Karlach, her magic bursting out of her and wildly snapping at anything close by. She wasn't strong, never thought about using a weapon once she started her studies, but she didn't need to be physically strong when her magic lashed out and was strong enough that the only reason she swung her mace was for cathartic revenge at the sound of bone crunching under metal. She may not be able to hurt him emotionally, but she could make damn sure no other family would have to go through what she did.

[savior-of-humanity]

I’ve been playing God of War: Ragnarok lately and Man. Oh Man. Oh my god. (spoilers and rambling below the cut)

Okay so first and foremost, I should clarify that I have not beaten the game yet. I’m currently only up to Vanaheim at the moment. That being said, there are spoilers for the game up to this point, so reader beware.

Anyways.

I really, really love how this game makes references to stuff you’ve done in 2018 (to clarify, I platinum’d that game, but I never beat it on Give Me God of War difficulty), though I’ve only really seen references to gear you’ve gotten from stuff like, say, the special armor you can get from completing Niflheim (FUCK NIFLHEIM ALL MY HOMIES FUCKING HATE NIFLHEIM), and freeing the Valkyries/beating Sigrun. So far the most prominent examples I can think of are;

- Thor mentioning Sigrun in the first time you fight him

- Brok (and Sindri?) asking about the Niflheim armor (or at least I’m assuming that’s what they were referring to when the dialogue came up)

- Atreus mentioning the Valkyries when Freya shows up to Beat Your Ass

Speaking of Thor.

That moment??? When he fucking kills you and brings you back to life with his hammer??? Holy shit. HOLY SHIT. OUGHHHH MY GOD. IT THREW ME FOR SUCH A FUCKING LOOP WHEN IT HAPPENED.

I also fucking POGGED SO HARD when the game switches to playing as Atreus when he’s sneaking out to go see Freya. Like, oh my god? Honestly I think I enjoy playing as him a little more than I do Kratos but that might just be my bias talking tbh.

I also REALLY like how the game handles the temporary companions you get when Kratos/Atreus aren’t around, and how they’re unique in their own ways. Sindri staying on the sides but throwing debuffing attacks at enemies, Brok stunning enemies so that you can execute them, Angrbroda using her Paint Magic(?) and summoning a bird, and Freya with her hexing magic. (I’m thinking Atreus might be able to get access to similar abilities since her abilities are needed to break certain obstacles, i.e the fungus vines)

Also. I was kind of expecting Atreus to have a sort of “mini-Spartan Rage” ability since we briefly saw him Rage back in 2018 before he became very ill, but him BEING ABLE TO TURN INTO A FUCKING WOLF IS THE COOLEST SHIT EVER. I’m hoping that maybe we can choose different animal forms for him to shift into since so far he also has a Bear Form but I’m not counting on it personally.

Just. Man. I have so much fucking love for this game.

[riteburdened]

B.aizhu story quest spoiler warning

I'm kind of a bit emotional about how Hu Tao's great uncle continued to wear WFP styled clothing even though he left permanently to tread a path that's at ideological opposites to the rest of the family. Despite the fact he couldn't go home to them, he retained those symbolic ties. I love that.

[goldenpeng]

...Yeah, Xiao relates to this strongly.

[starrytrees]

[from right to left]

very real dungeon meshi manga redraw !!

[kavaleyre]

• The Hanged Man •

“Compared to what Falin went through? This is nothing.”

[cleolinda]

AITA for banning my husband and father in law from the delivery room due to their intensely stressful/creepy behavior during my pregnancy?

There’s a famous Reddit post from 2020 where a pregnant woman wrote that her husband and father-in-law were a little too comfortable with their certainty that she was absolutely going to die in childbirth just like her husband’s late mother. It was to the point where her FIL was insisting that she go ahead and put all her clothes into storage, because she was obviously going to die in the hospital and it would save them the grief of packing up her things afterwards. Like. It was WILD.

When I tell my husband [that she feels suspicious of her FIL], he calls me paranoid, but I feel like my FIL WANTS me to die; his whole life identity for the past 35 years has been “amazing single dad” (never dated or had close friends or even hobbies really), and it seems like he’s looking forward to being able to guide my husband through what he went through. At this point, I’d honestly be happy to never see my FIL again, and I certainly don’t want him in the delivery room, especially since he told me he was “putting [his] foot down” about me not being “allowed” to have an epidural…. My husband, in addition to backing his dad on everything, acts like my due date is my death date, and has completely pulled away from me.

The commenters (and me, honestly) were convinced that the husband and FIL were either going to kill her outright to fulfill this expectation, or just make decisions about her care that might conveniently let her die.

And then she never posted again.

Over the last four years, people have frequently mentioned that post, always leading to a thread of people saying, “Oh god, I still worry about that woman.” I did too. It became one of those famous unresolved posts that people always wondered about.

Until yesterday, when someone on r/BestOfRedditorUpdates dug up a 2022 update she had posted on a different account:

TLDR; I had a beautiful and healthy baby girl, and I divorced my ex-husband. I lived, obviously.

She writes that she put her foot down about having her own mother in the delivery room rather than her FIL (!), and she WOULD be getting an epidural. Her husband lost his shit. And in his outburst, he let slip--

I admittedly lost my temper, and told him that I wasn’t going to die- it wasn’t my fault his father’s trauma wormed it’s way into his head, and that he needed to fix it without taking it out on me. He yelled at me that he didn’t need therapy. That caught me a little off guard; I asked him why he went to his therapist and was given advice about my death if he felt he didn’t need it. His expression gave it away, and he caved not long after. It turns out there was no therapist. It was just his dad. During the times he was supposed to be at therapy, he was with his dad. I’m still fuming.

And that was when she got the fuck out.

I’ll wrap this up- I’ve got an adorable little toddler tugging at my leg atm. I’m alive, I’m happy, and I’ve got my baby in my arms. Life is good.

I truly never thought we'd see a resolution to this, and I feel like there's probably a good number of people who remember it, so I thought you might want to know.

ETA: Brilliantly, I put the link in at the top; here it is again for convenience.

[jezabatlovesbats]

Luz's face in the last one, though! (sniff)

revelations

[jezabatlovesbats]

"Making other people feel bad doesn't make you more interesting. I thought it did for a minute, but I was wrong. When we're tempted to be mean, maybe we should ask ourselves, 'What am I really feeling?' Jealousy? Insecurity?"

- Hailey Banks, 2023

[mageofpanic]

go go little star

[hunny-pp]

"all better now."

ref. ivan the terrible and his son ivan on 16 november 1581 (1883-1885) - ilya repin (below cut)

[raskolovey]

currently reading 20th century boys and oh god sadakiyo and fukubei are faggots aren't they

[someones-there-1]

randomly got the motivation to return to my tma spiderman au silliness. venom jon (someone said jenom and i’ve unable to get it out of my head ever since)

ok lore wise [beware tma spoilers] jon having the symbiote is equivalent to him becoming an avatar. he dies end of s3 era and oliver banks gives him the symbiote, and he relies on feeding the symbiote to survive. the symbiote itself isn’t sentient (there are instances of this in the comics so don’t come at me for that) he just has to feed it either trauma (s4 era) or straight up eat people (s5 era). martin is all for it because he’s a monster kisser

[overlymetaromantic]

Dungeon Meshi, or as I like to call it, Marcille's-increasingly-difficult-to-ignore-revelations-that-her-endless-devotion-to-Falin-may-in-fact-be-more-rooted-in-lesbianism-than-she-originally-thought