Arknights' deep and expansive worldbuilding often tricks people into expecting complete realism from it in every part of its setting which often leads to them feeling like the game isn't answering these expectations - as seen for example with the criticism to Masses' Travels and how it didn't really develop Laterano's body of faith and spiritual practices or how Terran countries and politics can feel exxaggerated in how they're playing up their specific traits too much - but in my opinion that's not really the intended way to approach Arknights. I see the game as far more interested in metaphors than it is in the verisimilitudeness of its own world & politics and its regions as set pieces that mostly exist as stages for specific themes more than an exercise in complex worldbuilding for its own sake.
Things like how Siracusa is played up so much as a country governed by the mafia to the point it didn't even have a police force before I Portatori dei Velluti, or how Ursus subsituted faith in God with faith in the State, or how Victoria as whole is an atheist country are all examples of this. These things are not strictly realistic, but they do their job perfectly because they're intended to work on the metaphorical level - again, they're better seen as stages than as perfect equivalents to real countries.
Nuance is added later by the interactions between the different regions and the individual characters' relation to them and the way they try to change their country into something better, thus making them more complex, and Arknights does spend quite a lot of words in narrating their history so I don't think it's strictly wrong to get interested in how everything works and be absorbed by the worldbuilding (we do have a very good big ass lorebook I'm quite insane about), and everytime the game does develop them more it's always a nice added bonus, but I don't think of that as the primary function and find it a bit unfair to what the story is going for most of the time to focus too much on its lack of realism. Masses' Travels didn't really need a deep and complex dive on the workings on Lateran faith for its themes to work because it's not intended to act like a real life religion does. Laterano is a metaphor (for many things, not just catholicism) and as such its faith only needs to be explored as much as it's needed to build that metaphor (compared to how Kjerag is more directly exploring a specific in-universe religion and how it affects every level of a country and as such it gains more from going in-depth).
You can even see how that metaphor is changed whenever Lateran faith is exported to other countries - other stages - as it's warped around their specific themes; it assumes a very different form in Iberia, Siracusa and Bolívar. Only thing the faith itself needed to do as far as each of these stories was concerned was to exist, because the conversation was about the impact of faith and the variety in how it's utilized and you don't really need to know its inner workings for that. The most extreme version of that is how Abnormal Spectrum was able to discuss faith in Ursus and make a perfectly good multi-layered metaphor without even needing religion or the idea of God to exist in it; that was such an insane thing to do and yet they nailed it so well that I've been thinking about that ever since. I guess I just love my metaphors #mymetaphors
I love how much of a villain Gordon is in this event. He's a corrupt mid-level bureaucrat who uses his position to embezzle belongings from immigrants! He's letting a bunch of business grifters skirt by safety regulations to make himself look good for the expo! He has a secret lair where he displays a collection of his ill-gotten spoils! He's also kinda racist! He even has a subordinate whose sprite was recycled from the banker lady in CW. In any other story he would have been the main antagonist. Instead he becomes a playable operator while literally still working for the ATAO lol.
I wouldn't have called Tin Man being the actual main antagonist of the story, but it was also fun to be reminded that he pretty much just, runs the CIA and everything that entails.
Why are people in the notes going "actually they probably just meant The One Who Hopes" as if names can't hold multiple meanings anymore and as if the authors of a story that puts heavy emphasis on language (where Originium itself is defined as a new language & the protagonists are direct successors of an organization called Babel) couldn't possibly mean anything by basing the name of one the most central characters in the middle of all of this on a time people in real life actually tried to make a new universal language
Also wanted to add something the hosts themselves pointed out during the stream: her name is Kal'tsit Esperanta, not Kal'tsit *the* Esperanta like the way every other alter would be named, suggesting that Esperanta is not an adjective but more like a completion of the name Kal'tsit, reminiscent of a surname.
In Chinese her name is written as 凯尔希·思衡托 with the same middle dot you'd use to separate a given and surname transliterated to Chinese. Contrast to e.g. Skadi the Corrupting Heart being written as 浊心斯卡帝 which lacks the separator and also has the two parts written in reverse order because "Corrupting Heart" functions more like an adjective here.
How well does Kal'tsit go in Disco Elysium? In the Mercenary Tribunal? Does she bother doing the Political Vision and Church Club sidequests?
I don't know, but I do have an idea of what a DE skill system in her day to day life would look like.
OPERATING THEATRE — It has been almost 54 hours, and yet the scalpel in your hand moves as swiftly as a Sarkaz's witchblade, carefully excising rock, shrapnel, and necrotic flesh from the body on your operating table, which now breathes in slow, gentle steps. The patient is stable despite having lost their tail, a leg, a ribcage, and part of their face. There is no doubt in your mind: this patient would surely have flatlined if it had been anyone but you in the Operating Room, and perhaps even still had you been late by a single second.
OPERATING THEATRE — Operator Suzuran pads the sweat from your face with a little cloth, while Operator Folinic leans back, teetering dangerously close to losing her composure. The smaller girl is slightly too short to pat your brow, you notice her standing on her tiptoes to reach you.
FOLINIC — "I-I can't believe it. She's alive! Doctor Kal'tsit, how did you..." Your student's hands flail at chest level, grasping for the words tumbling from her lips. "I mean, she wasn't even breathing. Gavial was sure we had found a corpse!"
ESPRIT DE CORPS [Trivial: Success] — Something deep beneath your skin glows with the praise of the medical staff. If you believed people had souls, you'd say yours was singing.
INTERFACING [Easy: Success ] — This was but a simple testament to skill honed over literal eons. The Reaper has been your nemesis since the world was young, you would be remiss to lose a match you could fight blindfolded and with Mon3tr tied behind your back.
PERCEPTION [Formidable: Success ] — Although, something's slightly different. Something's slightly wrong. Your fingers that had embodied the very meaning of precision until now tremble ever-so-slightly. Your mind has lost its laser focus. A stinging sensation echoes through the crystals in your shoulders and into your torso. Now that this arduous task is over, you are searching for something else.
YOU — "What is it?"
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Challenging: Success] — I'll tell you what it is. What you are feeling is pain, and what you're looking for is relief. Fortunately, relief's right there on the table, just a little swipe away. Dihydrohydroxycodeinone, AKA, Oxycodone.
YOU — "Stay professional."
FOLINIC — A blush creeps across your student's face, the picture of an innocent schoolgirl caught doing something embarrassing; though this one happens to be a young adult, and a licensed medical professional at that. "You're right. I'm sorry, Doctor Kal'tsit. Suzuran, call the other assistants, we need to move her to the recovery room."
OPERATING THEATRE — The child hurries out of the theatre with a squeak, and soon after four more medics enter through the doorway, preparing to move the patient. You shuffle past them in a daze and exit into one of the landships many corridors, the dozens of hours in the theatre finally weighing on you all at once.
FOLINIC — "Doctor Kal'tsit, perhaps we should end our shift early and get some rest? I'm sure Warfarin would be more than willing to cover for us. "
ELECTROCHEMISTRY — Don't ignore me, Doc. You're a patient too, are you not? And all the patients on this landship deserve nothing less than the finest treatment and relief available. Go back there and grab it. Go on. Or if not the drugs, why not stop by the canteen for a drink? The Gods know that you could really get buzzed right about now.
VOLITION [Easy: Failure] — You're barely holding yourself together. You do need something right about now.
YOU — "Absolutely not while we're still on the job ."
FOLINIC — "You're right! You're right. Sorry again, Doctor Kal'tsit. I'll go make my rounds in the East Wing then." Your student hobbles off, her body so mired in exhaustion that her gait reminds you of Operator Whislash returning from an open bar. You stop to call after her and explain you have simply been talking to yourself and of course she can rest, but something urgent demands your attention instead.
CORRIDOR — Your nemesis stands before you, shoulders folded in and mask pointed towards the floor. It appears as if the Doctor has something to say to you.
SUGGESTION [Trivial: Success ] — They're making themselves look small. Looks like somebody fucked up somewhere.
COMPOSURE [Medium: Success ] — Okay, I know it looks bad, but no matter what they say, if you lose it here you're going to look like the bad guy again. Inhale. Exhale. Loosen up those shoulders. Whatever happens, everything will be alright.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY — Actually, scratch what I said about drugs or alcohol. I know exactly what you need right now and whatever this clown is about to say is not going to matter anyway.
THE DOCTOR — "Hey Kal'tsit. So um, we may have lost two, no three, no, four cars? Like not lost-lost, I mean they caught fire. More like exploded really. From attacks. Oh and you'll probably see us in the evening news tonight, I kind of told the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms, and Originium that Rhodes Island was smuggling drugs into Columbia and that donut chain Mama John's backstabbed us by stealing our supply. I had a good reason for this, honest."
1. Scold them.
2. [Authority - Heroic 15] Threaten to bring this up with Amiya in your next job performance review
3. [Composure - Godly 16] "It is alright. I am sure you had your reasons. The important thing was that you made it back to the landship safely."
4. [Electrochemistry - Impossible 19] Demand a quickie. Right here, right now.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Impossible: Failure] — You understand what it is you need. That agitation in your thoughts, that twitching in your arms, that won't be calmed by drugs! The itch you feel is one you recognize best soothed not by substance, but by skin. You'd rather it be anyone else, but at the same time there really is nobody else it could be but them. Steeling yourself, you swallow your pride and push the magic words out of your mouth.
YOU — "Fuck off."
THE DOCTOR — "Yeah, I expected as much."
COMPOSURE — Mayday! Mayday! We're losing them!
YOU — "Shit! No! Fuck, I mean, fuck you!"
THE DOCTOR — "Alright, alright I get it! I'll leave you alone now."
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT — Now is not the time for words, seeing as you're saying none of the right ones. Now is the time for action.
SAVOIR FAIRE [Challenging: Failure] — Your body moves on its own. The plan? Yank The Doctor in close by the arm then use one of Mon3tr's limbs to sweep them off their feet while you pull them into some utility closet. The slick moves will smoothen over your earlier blunders, and the biometallic tendril coming out of your spine will be weirdly hot. To your great misfortune however, you find yourself willing Mon3tr to emerge a little too forcefully, and your aim happens to be a little too inaccurate. The force of Mon3tr's tendril slamming across The Doctor's chest sends them flying, through the fiberglass, out the window, and down one hundred and fifty meters of landship into the ground below.
PERCEPTION [Challenging: Success ] — You can hear their screaming grow fainter as they continue to fall. Another scream, however, grows louder as it rings, and appears to be actually moving toward you. Despite your dazed state, you notice the shadow of a small, screeching rabbit swiftly move past you and dive out the window as well after the Doctor, exhibiting all the grace of a high diver competing in a Minoan sporting event. I'm telling you, absolutely perfect form.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success ] — Seeing as our current coordinates happen to be in the middle of the Sargonian wastelands, I strongly suggest following after Doctor and Amiya as the wildlife here is known to include walking originium-infested corpses, as well as metal arthropods that can grow to the size of your apparently quite flammable cars.
DRAMA — Still six hours left to end of shift.
idly lookin thru is5 stuff today i'm reminded of how effective the originium rhombus is. neat little symbol builds n builds, even if it's never explained outright. it was strong n persistent even before those pupils. it's fun.
just looking at its use in is5, it's more prominent than usual in some of the art, but still in keeping with the general pattern. even players who aren't reading will see amiya wearing that symbol and realize something is Up.
interesting framing in the ending 2 prophecy.
also used in the is5 ui theme for the store and headhunt pages, naturally. shares this with the is4 theme too, and the misty one. not takin these as diegetic in any real way.
it shows up in the catastrophe idea, which makes sense, but not in its upgraded version (furnace).
it's most prominent in the catastrophes epoch icon. still makes sense.
surprised to see it in another epoch.
none of the rest get the originium square. might just be a throwaway visual flourish but it caught my eye. Rely Makes U Think...
Wei wasn't playing Candela really IS fucked to hell.
I LOVE Candela Sanchez because our first introduction to her is Wei telling Fumizuki "Honey, there's a /reason/ I've been seenzoning this woman for a literal decade she's fucking crazy and she scares the shit out of me" and Fumizuki's like "Ah but crazy enough to deal with your family problems for you, no?" And sends out both Ch'en and Lin Yühsia to her without telling the other.
Then we meet Candela and she's like "Oh Hiiiiiii! Any family of Wei Yenwu's is family to me, you know I've always dreamed of being his sworn sister. Please, call me Auntie Candela my darling niece, you're adopted now! Here's a credit card, unlimited credit of course, the city will pay for anything your heart desires, oh and here's my blonde boytoy deputy he'll show you around and get you whatever you want. By the way, I know you two darlings love to play detective, so I left an active terrorist plot for you to solve as a game! Yaaaaaay! Oh but if you're ever tired then please, just enjoy the city instead! No one can do as much as touch you while you're under my protection. No one. Okay I gotta go do Mayor stuff now tata~"
And you're left thinking wow okay that was weird but she seems really sweet and then the rest of the story happens and it's nonstop punches to the face like
"Candela Sanchez thinks the Mayor of Siesta's a little bitch who doesn't know what real power looks like."
"Candela Sanchez puts herself above the Sun."
"Candela built an independent city-state in the middle of three warring governments, two of which are backed by foreign powers. Not only are they unable to threaten her, but she maintains absolute power over them within Dossoles territory."
"Candela's Dossoles is actually the most powerful criminal empire in Bolivar. She maintains absolute control over the region because she created and then controlled the production of goods and entertainment that rakes in an unbelievable amount of money worldwide. Not only are the three governments unable to take her out, they're not willing to in the first place. The suffering peoples of Bolivar on all factions see her corrupt and excessive city as paradise, and she knows this."
"Not only does Candela not care about a terror threat on Dossoles, she actively welcomes it as a means of entertainment. She has such an iron grip over the city that she acts as if she's literally invincible."
"The actual reason she takes no heed to threats to her life and to her city is because she has tied her identity to the ideal of Dossoles, and she believes that she has created a situation where Bolivarians can no longer live without "Dossoles" as a concept. A people constantly under threat of foreign intervention and civil war will desire a city of pleasure and even if Candela and Dossoles were to be destroyed, the Bolivarians would rebuild Dossoles themselves. For someone like her who sees Dossoles as an extension of herself, she has become immortal."
"Candela would have provided arms and a military force to Pancho for him to have begun a war for the rest of Bolivar if only he had thought of asking her. She's so confident in Dossoles that she would back a leader who thought of her city as an insult to the ideals of Bolivar itself and would have burned it to the ground if he could. Alas, Pancho instead searched for backing from a Lethianan sponsor, and they don't have what it takes to beat her."
And by the end of it you're just like wow. Okay. For once in his life, Wei Yenwu was telling the truth—this woman is completely insane. No wonder he met her once, established a trade partnership to get on her good graces, and then never set foot in Dossoles ever again.
There's been a lot of words spilled about Priestess recently. As much as she puts on airs of being calm and analytical, the most interesting bit of dialogue from this event is also one of the exceedingly rare times where she directly expresses frustration at something:
It paints an interesting picture of why she's Like That. Imagine being stuck in the same dream for 13,000 years with nothing to do except replaying the conversations you had in the past with your SO. Eons spent thinking about one person and the future you would create together.
Maybe the obsession did exist in some capacity before, but it also sounds like a great portion of it came about because the alternative was a lifetime inside the Mind Torture Machine 3000. It's similar to how Past Doctor made the choices they did in Babel because of their memories of the past and the influence that Priestess had on them. Priestess is undoubtedly chasing a memory of Oracle, though the specific mechanisms by which these two are fucking each other up might be different.
Also interesting how the whole event is about Laterano getting put into a dream as the first step in paving the way for assimilation into Originium. Guess where Priestess got the idea from.
I won't be able to dive right in because deadlines, but on this Mon3trmas Eve, I do want to nail my colours to the mast and say Priestess has been unfairly maligned by much of the fanbase.
What did she ever do to you? She's your old-time bestie who's been nothing but supportive. She's been by your side helping out all this time, but she's not pushed things while you figure out your amnesia. You show up on her doorstep and she thinks you want to say hi, but she respects your needs when you say you have other things to do.
She's the nega-monologuer who pops up in your brain to give some light-hearted relief when things are at their most serious. She runs all your autos for you. Have you thanked her for that? She runs the Annihilations for you. She gets the gacha currency for you. She is the gacha currency. For you.
Sure, maybe she helped create an all-consuming rock that kills people. Maybe. Like you're innocent. It was a group project! You worked so well together, you were BFFs, and this is how you treat her?
The Empires of Terra are Seaborn-coded: a look at Arknights' take on individual vs collective
I once pointed out how Arknights' stories could often be divided into Reunion or Seaborn depending on whether they focused more on change obtained through social and political movements or through confronting or even altering the nature of humanity, with Originium standing at the center as it lends itself to both narratives.
The two are however much more intertwined than what this might imply and it's not as simple as "one is more fantastical and the other is more grounded": Seaborn type stories explore social and political themes just as much by using the supernatural element as a pretext (the way governments and people respond to it, or the ways society might push someone to turn away from humanity) while Reunion type stories often apply the supernatural to give a more literal, "corporeal" form to the ideology of a given regime, sometimes making direct comparisons between them and the horrors lurking on Terra - think for example about how Kashchey's fascist ideology taking root in Talulah was made concrete by turning the Deathless Black Snake into a "dark god", a very real "parasite" that takes over her mind the moment she starts ceding ground to these ideas; or how the racism and ableism of the Sankta "takes form" with their Empathy, which connects them on a emotional level while at the same time forming a chasm that sets them apart from those who can't conform to it.
Let's look a bit deeper at the latter cases and how all this connects to the themes of the story.
[Very long post below, with spoilers from about everything]
Assimilation is a recurring motif in Arknights, central to all in the Seaborn side: from our favorite sea critters to the Collapsals, from Originium to Dorothy, all do it in some way - but it's somewhat overlooked how much these same lens are used to describe human empires. The "empire" as a collective entity is often presented as a kind of mockery of We Many, lacking the same sincere level of selflessness, with its agents acting as if they're carriers of some level of righteousness while treating individual existences as weightless and expendable in favor of the continued expansion of the greater entity; something that Arknights chooses to present with the same gravity and monstrous atmosphere it instills into its fantasy monsters.
A favorite example of mine is the confrontation between the Nachzehrer King and the Duke of Wellington in Absolved Will Be the Seekers.
Compared to the gritty politics that made up much of the Victoria Arc, the last few chapters of part 2 grew more and more in scope, going as far as constructing a war that has nothing to envy of the climaxes of even the highest scale epics: Amnannam the first Catastrophe ravaging the land and turning the sky red; armies of Sarkaz marching relentlessly on the scorched battlefield; undying Sudarim warriors showing up everywhere; the King of the Withered Court overseeing the conflict from atop his throne. In this scenario Nezzsalem is indistinguishable from the dark lord trying to take over the world in the grand finale of a stereotypical high fantasy novel.
Even more than the vampires (whose horror element was mostly relegated to Duq'arael) the Nachzehrers are hyped up as the big, bad "monsters" on the side of the Royal Court, and are in general some of the people most reminiscent of the Seaborn in the whole story (how they accepted the never-ending struggle as their way of life; how they grow and improve by feeding off war and death, assimilating the strength of those they defeat; their spreading of decay). Just like the Sanguinarch's obsession with blood purity and how it's made very literal by his being a vampire making it about actual blood works as an exaggerated caricature of the Victorian nobility, the Nachzehrers obsessing over war and death in their "purest" state do the same for the Victorian army,
But when they're confronted by the forces of Dublinn and the Duke of Wellington, the other side seems hellbent on proving how the "originals" are no less than their fantastical counterparts (ignore Eblana performing necromancy for a moment, even if it also works very well as a direct comparison to the Nachzehrers), the ship that conquered so many battlefields almost being described as alive.
The Duke, showing up with a normal old warship and leading normal soldiers, is presented with no less horror and fanfare than Nezzsalem himself - almost as if to tell him that no matter how much cool fantasy terminology he might be shrouded in, ultimately there's nothing so special about feeding off war: Victoria is just as much of a monster that expands on the land and assimilates all it tramples on.
This is something Nezzsalem himself recognizes by making a direct comparison between the way both of them "consumed" their opponents.
(it's also interesting how the Duke of Wellington is technically not even a Victorian anymore but stands on the Taran side; he himself can be said to be someone who was assimilated and turned into the empire's strength, looking at the way Victoria "devoured" Tara by annexing its territory while making sure to erase any trace of its cultural identity).
This isn't even the first time Victoria's war machine has been described in such monstrous terms - the climax of The Rides to Lake Silberneherze remains poignant, the army being presented as an entity in constant need of fresh lives to use as nourishment so that it can keep existing.
With the way Degenbrecher guards Kjerag from the endless influx of exchangeable soldiers, you can almost make a comparison to Dario's last stand against the ever-growing horde of Seaborn in Stultifera Navis. Just like Dario carried the light of civilization to resist the expansion of We Many over the land, Degenbrecher carries the spirit of Kjerag on her back while resisting Victoria.
(she's sort of a hero of the people - people we got to know intimately and care about during the course of her event. she's not fighting for an abstract idea of the country but a concrete one, made up of all those who inhabit it)
Now let's look at a case where the empire is literally shown as a monster assimilating everything it touches.
Ursus' Emperor's Blades are created through a ritual that powers them up by merging them with Collapsals. If you've played IS4 or watched U Takes Terra you'll know just how scary the Collapsals are - they're definitely one of the most unsettling existences in the game. If the Royal Guard is so fearsome it's not only because of their strength but because they're carrying the aura of demons within themselves.
In Here a People Sows, a single body 'infected' by Collapsals being buried in the soil was enough to corrupt the rice fields of Dahuang - big enough to be one of the main sources of food for Yan - for over a thousand years, only held back by a Sui using her Feranmut powers to stop its advance. This is the kind of power that was weaponized by Ursus to create its greatest military force, turning that all-corrupting effect into a very literal manifestation of its expansionism.
From the in-game boss' description:
Every Royal Guard is as a dominion; the land beneath their feet is all the territory of Ursus.
No matter where they go, wherever an Emperor's Blade stands becomes Ursus - it's almost reminiscent of the Seaborn's Nethersea Brand forcefully turning any habitat into their own territory.
Bringing the discussion back to the ocean for a bit, the three main elements making up the children of the sea in their basic state are: a main directive to do anything for the survival of the collective, individual Seaborn readily sacrificing themselves to feed their kin; endless expansion of their habitat, as they're always in need of further nourishment to further their growth; evolution through facing new threats, often assimilating whatever they overcome back into them.
This is a way of life that prompts them to actively seek out new challenges so they can grow and expand, with no clear end goal in sight until they transcend to the next level even after the entire world becomes their domain, something they lament despite it being the main directive of the Many and individual Seaborn being seen as acting on instinct and not caring about their own struggle.
From the Sublimation encounter in Mizuki and the Caerula Arbor:
The collective seeks survival, and survival is suffering. Therefore, we continue to evolve, overcoming flaws, facing nature, fighting external foes. Extinction is cunning and hungry, and it will tear us apart at the slightest sign of weakness. Therefore, we have adapted and addressed our shortcomings. From emerging out of the seas, from contacting Originium, we have expanded our territory and come into contact with deadly threats, until we fully understand, until they become food. Now, the land and sea are our paradise, but we continue to grow. Life remains suffering. We need a bigger home. Before we welcome the evolutionary singularity, He who leads our future must give Himself an answer: Who am I?
Nachzehrers aside, this is fundamentally how the empires operate, seeking out suffering and prioritizing the growth of (their idea of) the nation as a concept over the lives used as a fuel for their continued existence. This is something that both the Trilby Asher in All Quiet Under the Thunder and the Emperor's Blade in Roaring Flare spell out quite clearly, glorifying and mythologizing war because they believe it will make their respective nation stronger, justifying the losses as necessary sacrifices. Both of these chapters focused very intimately on the suffering war and oppression were bringing to the common people, only for agents of the state to show up to reveal how all of it was by design.
The Royal Guard even uses "nutrients" as a metaphor to make the Seaborn comparison as on the nose as possible.
These scenes mirror each other enough, these two even get similar answers from Ines and Patriot respectively, both denying there being any meaning in war - and even if there was, nothing gives them the power and authority to decide in which direction history should go.
The Trilby Asher gives priority to this ideology even over his own desire and wishes, the role as an agent of the empire getting precedence over his dream to be a poet and retire somewhere peaceful - in a way resembling Harold, someone who also prioritized the conquest of Kjerag in the name of Victoria over his own desire and appreciation for the peaceful, happy life he was experiencing there, and in fact it was the Trilby Asher who urged him to take action.
We know the way for humans to resist being fully assimilated into the Seaborn collective is to have a strong sense of self and individuality, attachment to your own humanity (like with Alfonso and Garcia), or some kind of emotion or personal desire they just can't afford to lose - we see this in Deepcolor's operator record, where she explains how she kept her sense of self despite her appreciation for the Seaborn because she refused to lose her love for art, while similarly the priest couldn't let go of his curiosity.
(also reminiscent of how the Sui siblings managed to form their own identity after separating from the greater Sui, each of them focusing on a different cultural aspect and gaining a strong individuality over the years despite their origins as fragments of a whole; or if you let me stretch the Seaborn metaphor a bit, how Tara's first step to regain its own identity and separate from Victoria was to study history and resurrect their culture. It's no coincidence the events about We Many have such a big focus on art).
These two almost seem to mirror the Trilby Asher, whose artistic passion was weaker than his extreme nationalism, as well as the Emperor's Blade in A Walk in the Dust, who despite his curiosity regarding the nature of Kal'tsit's existence was only able to think of it in terms of how much she could've served "her country" by becoming an asset of Ursus.
It's no coincidence that Nachzehrers, Trilby Ashers and Emperor's Blades are all groups made up of masked, faceless members. They exist as an extension of their ideology, discarding their life as people in favor of a "collective" even while remaining very human and emotional underneath. They actively suppress their own individuality to let themselves be "assimilated" by a system.
Mártus, the one who awakened the Seaborn in the first place - even if he did so for much grander and more selfless reasons rather than some lame nationalism, his country and even his species being the first things he abandoned - has a debate with Kal'tsit in Path of Life that's reminiscent of theirs, narrating how he chose to discard everything about humanity (or any other species), every branch that he personally judged to be an impediment to the progression of life, single-handedly deciding to carry the torch in the name of the Predecessors. As Patriot would put it, a form of arrogance.
Once again, Kal'tsit argues in favors of what's been sacrificed for the greater good. The doubts and concerns of humanity are precious, she says; they're not something to discard, because every decision should be properly weighted, rather than mindlessly going forward uncaring about the costs of your actions.
We also have an example of an empire that has some sort of literal will subconsciously acting on its citizens to make them prioritize the greatness of the country over their own morals with the Güldenesgesatz, the Golden Movement of Leithanien, the force uniting the country and imposing an inviolable order upon it - pretty much a concrete manifestation of nationalistic ideas seeding in the mind of people since their youth through propaganda. It even takes form as their national anthem.
These exchanges from Zwillingstürme im Herbst are self-explanatory, showing Gerhard's despair at his inability to see the Witch King, one of the worst dictators in history, as the evil he really should be seen as, because his status as the rightful ruler of Leithanien had a supernatural influence over him. The country had something to gain from his rule of terror - and that somehow weighs more on his mind than all the atrocities he committed.
Fremont takes the role of Ines and Patriot in arguing against Gerhard, especially in regards to the glorification of suffering, remarking that there's nothing special about it.
(it's cool how we keep getting bad guys assigning higher meaning to things and good guys who take a hard stance against it and choose to only see the cold reality as it is; the latter also being Sarkaz who are intimately connected to and aware of the harsh reality of war from the perspective of those who are living it in first person so they have very little to romanticize, at least in Ines and Patriot's case, as Fremont's view is that of a scholar and not a mercenary.)
While sacrificing yourself for the others or for a greater purpose is often seen by humanity as a virtue, Amaia in Stultifera Navis calls it a form of egoism - something considered remarkable by us because it's rare in the first place, one of the reasons she considers the Seaborn, sacrificing themselves so naturally, a superior life-form. In fact the idea that there's some kind of nobility in dying for your country is actively weaponized by the Royal Guard trying to turn the infected into Ursus Soldiers. The selflessness of the Seaborn, whenever applied to humanity, always ends up being bastardized into something crueler and more self-centered, making them vulnerable to being used for the means of people in power.
Even Amaia, just like Deepcolor and the Priest, couldn't escape from humanity. As she lets herself be consumed by the Endspeaker, she asks for it to "remember her" even as she wants to be freed from being human, and the Herald goes on living while carrying the weight of all that she was.
The level of rejection of the self shown by the Seaborn seems to be repeatedly put as inherently at odds with humanity, and it's why all these systems that expect people to let go of their individual self so they can be assimilated into human society keep showing more and more cracks.
This is where Arturia comes in, someone deeply connected to both the Empathy of Laterano and the Golden Movement of Leithanien, who rather than outright rejecting the existence of such systems connecting people as one wants to use that concept as a foundation and expand it. Her utopia is about giving weight to each person's life and ego, including everyone rather than only connecting a single group of people who fit into an arbitrary system and increasing the distance between them and those who fall outside of it.
While she accepted suffering as an inevitable part of life that must be confronted if one wants to grow, she wants to guide people through it so that all can make it to the other side, rather than cutting the branches deemed as "too weak" or "holding back the collective" because "that's how the world works".
This is one of the reasons why the climax of Zwillingstürme more than around a big epic fight with the dark lord revolves around an ideological clash between her and the Witch King, Terra's greatest dictator.
Herkunftshorn is talked about in a way that makes it seem like he's warping history around him, the same way his palace encompasses all of the Leithanien in the Kargereich. He had an individuality so strong it became a form of assimilation, his presence looming over Leithanien not only through the Remnants idolizing him and committing atrocities in his name but even through the very people who opposed and defeated him, whose lives were warped by that fateful day, leaving them unable to get over it, to be truly freed from him.
Arturia explicitly takes a stand against this - against the idea of the Witch King, all he represents. All his strength crumbled on itself, and even when he appeared in the event, he's barely more than a memory. During the entire Leithanien plotline, his followers kept going after a mere ghost.
She tells him the exact nature of his mistake: all that he built fell with him, all his power was wasted on cruelty due to his ideology centered around his own might. There's no need for a soul - an ego - as overpowering as his, because lasting change can be obtained only through collective action, through building a system that allows all people, strong and weak, to work together.
While some of her words and objectives might resembles those shown from earlier antagonists, she stands apart from them due to her belief in the need for weakness to keep existing, rather than seeing it as something that must be eliminated. Like Kal'tsit told Mártus, the "fragility" of humanity he discarded was important.
At the same time, being the pinnacle of individualism, the Witch King could see the fault in Arturia's utopia - because in her grand dream of helping everyone, she forgot to leave space for herself. She let her ideal suffocate her own ego to the point of reaching ultimate selflessness, becoming empty, living only through others. Again, a level of rejection of the self that's at odds with humanity; something that makes it so that she can't pursue her dream of true equality as long as she doesn't learn how to include herself in it.
(a possible parallel to Theresa strongly believing in humanity's potential to overcome fate and realize her ideals while at the same time having no hope for herself, fighting for a world she has no place in. No wonder she's a walking corpse during every story set in the present)
With Arturia but also with the Seaborn the story leans towards the need for connection between "kin", but also how that's imperfect if it's at the cost of your identity (see also: Dorothy's Vision. She and Arturia should really sit down and have a talk). The Endspeaker evolves by assimilating Amaia with all her emotions and beliefs. Mizuki can only lead the Seaborn to their final stage if he can understand who he is, and in general materialized that path for them thanks to his strong individuality. Meanwhile the empires of Terra, uncaring about the worth of single lives, are "tearing this land asunder".
There's a sort of "aggressively centering" the average person that's omnipresent in Arknights. From the Witch King falling because of the intervention of one of his servants, to Damazti (the oldest in the Royal Court, more ancient than even the Nachzehrer King) being bored by the powerful leader with a special lineage who's schemed around an entire war while their life is deeply impacted by a humble teacher, to great heroes like Patriot readily putting their lives deemed as uniquely important by others on the line to help those deemed as irrelevant, to the plethora of normal people making up the immense cast of both NPCs and playable Operators who get a significant role, to Theresa starting out as a tailoress, to Amiya carrying the weight of the world as an outblood child with no grand background.
In this context, the choice of keeping most of Reunion's members masked and turning them into a faceless horde - insisting on keeping up the act even in cases where they're already being thoroughly humanized like with the Yetis - is very poignant: it's almost like they're reversing the way the empires' special orders of faceless agents of the state with no individuality go about dehumanization by hammering down how behind each of these masks there's a real person, not a pawn, not a branch you can simply cut off, but a human being.
Fundamentally even when taken to its highest scale Arknights is still a story about medicine, about finding the cure to a malignant disease (read: the themes of assimilation and corruption spreading being so important because it's just the highly fantastical counterpart to the concept of transmissible infection), even if the concept was expanded to healing "social ills" because Oripathy in itself is only half of the struggle of the infected. The same way a doctor rejecting a patient because they're not someone important or they personally decided they would be better off dead so they can only keep healing "worthier" patients would be no good as a doctor, the same applies to one who aims to "heal" society. While Amaia criticizes humanity as inferior to the Seaborn because of the extreme attachment to our own individual lives and ego, and she might have a point, her perspective is too much on the other extreme; the idea of life as something so easily discarded is what the Rhodes Island side keeps strongly opposing. A world where as many patients as possible make it is what the main cast believes is worth fighting for, rather than one where you let half of them die to give as "nourishment" to the other half.
The central debate surrounding all this seem to verge on if there's a point where sacrifice becomes not only correct but something to actively pursue, whether it's explored in terms of the growth of the state or the debate is brought to a global scale. Kal'tsit's argument is that even if such a thing was necessary she'd see no meaning in going forward if you need to discard the things that make you want to live in the first place (and the Seaborn are in fact shown as living a life of "eternal torment"); Mártus' argument is that these things will not persist anyway since life will die out if not by doing anything to survive.
(Not too dissimilar to how Originium also makes sure humanity lives on, but in a state so deeply altered and bringing so much suffering it might be the same thing as extinction; and that's the main "enemy" being resisted in the game as a whole.)
(Also cool that it's Kal'tsit who's doing most of the debating here, since she herself is an artificial creation that's been said to be closer to the Seaborn by Carmen who nonetheless managed to find a purpose and an ego on her own, living as a person rather than just AMa-10.)
But in many instances, like with Arturia, or with Guard being the one to change Reunion's direction, or with Amiya, the story seems to put that focus on helping the "weaker branches" as a practical solution and not just a moral one. The great leaders of Terra with their grand aspirations keep dying or failing, while those who refuse to see the world through the lens of strong vs weak, or who would themselves have been discarded by the judgement of the Emperor's Blades and the Trilby Ashers and the Deathless Black Snake, are the ones truly keeping the torch of civilization lit and who are actually progressing and changing Terra.
(see also: the Law of Laterano calculating that the best choices for the new Saints and a concrete hope for survival were two of the Sankta who least conformed to the Empathy and the status quo of the city, instead of any of the properly aligned ones)
Despite Mártus' focus on having life go on no matter the sacrifices and his readiness on discarding every other living being to preserve the Seaborn as the only creatures he saw fit to survive in the end, when the children of the sea reach their ultimate stage in Mizuki and the Caerula Arbor they not only heal the entire planet, making all life bloom on Terra, but also reach a state of understanding and co-existence with humanity rather than finalizing their extinction like what both sides of the debate expected to happen. Even the perfect lifeform he bet everything on ultimately chose to allow the existence of those who were left behind - after all, the children of the sea were a creation made by the predecessors to forward life, not an apocalypse device. Their final state was reached thanks to Mizuki in the first place, someone who started as, and went back to be, a human. While Amaia says that "only the mediocre would presume that the Seaborn becoming closer to humanity is any form of evolution", she still believes in the need for the Seaborn to be more open to multiple perspectives rather than single-mindedly focusing on a single path - something she was proved right about.
Neither mankind nor the Seaborn truly need to discard the other to survive as long as alternatives are viable (even Mártus sees hope in Skadi and the Doctor working together). They need to progress in similar ways for life on Terra to go on. The two narratives remain deeply linked, both to each other and to the core message Arknights has been working towards since the beginning.
As usual, it looks like this will be the punchline.
Since Sankta halos are canonically used for personality tests, do you think Arturia's parents saw her get one that resembles a black shattered crown and went "surely there's nothing wrong her"
near the tail end of yesterday's 6th anniversary stream arknights dropped an IS6 promo trailer in the form of a retro promo ad for some place called the "jie garden" that turns out to be analog horror. it's pretty cool
watch it here (bilibili)
there's a number of funky (creepy) things that happen that are easy to miss - and i missed a bunch myself, so I decided to watch it again now and write down all the things i spotted/the bilibili comments pointed out
(first things first: the 'jie' in 'jie garden' isn't the same 'jie' as the dead sui sibling, but it's definitely punning on it. there is literally no way they're not referencing her.)
the video subtitle: "A thousand years ago a tianshi sought to live in seclusion, and therefore built this garden as a place to retreat from society."
however, the audio says 'coffin chamber' (mu4shi4 - 墓室) instead of retreat from society (bi4shi4 - 避世)
much more under the cut, bc this is a LONG post:
the sign in the pond is probably supposed to be something like "this pond is dangerous, please keep away" but with the censored text it reads "pond please come close" :)
"About three hundred years ago, after consultation with the tianshi's descendants,
a section of Jie Garden was opened to the public,
and over time, it has become a good place for the residents of Baizao to visit on their days off."
after the text gets censored, the last section becomes, simply: "a place for the residents of Baizao."
white (bunny?) silhouette appears here after a flash of white. hello!
this text - "do not touch" is mirrored. in other words, it's you, the viewer, behind the glass!
the chinese comments here remark on how the tickets to the garden (pictured) look awfully like the kind of paper money you burn as offerings to the dead
(also, when they read out that phone number, the text briefly changes to 80808-88808. no idea what this is supposed to imply though)
the video then changes to talking about 8 "do not do this" warnings that guests to the garden should avoid
spot the difference! on the sign on the bottom right, the text changes from "Deep water, keep a safe distance" to "Water, keep a safe distance" as a character vanishes
by "do not" number 3, the news byron on the bottom now just says "Today's weather " without talking about the weather at all (at the beginning of the video, it said "Today's weather: cloudy") people of baizao, you good?
6: "do not make a racket". screen goes black, and then it comes back weird
7: "don't damage the articles" (articles as in items/objects etc. - 器物) . except the character 器 is briefly replaced by 祭 before disappearing:
note that 祭物 means sacrifices. rip to this guy and his now mysteriously blacked out face
8: "do not trespass into restricted areas". only, some freak shit starts happening with the video - there's a quick blink-and-you-miss-it frame of a cemetery:
and, among other things, "do not trespass into restricted areas" transforms into " want town":
and then rapidly becomes "sui area":
love whatever's going on in the background here.
then a bunch of "sui" characters appears on screen:
I like that in an alternate timeline where Theresa and Theresis ruled as twin kings of Kazdel and Doctor and Kal'tsit weren't in the picture, they still end up adopting Amiya anyway and raising her. However without the technology to extend her life, Amiya dies of oripathy and their powerlessness to save her becomes their greatest regret.
It's interesting how the text describes Civilight Eterna as being able to commune with alternate versions of itself to pass information along, so this Theresa and Theresis — who never went to war with each other and now rule a powerful, independent Kazdel — see the alternate reality where the civil war happened and Amiya became king. Unthinkable to them to burden a child, and yet now that they see it... Maybe they would do that.
I wonder if one of the two saw the horrible canon timeline where Kazdel's suffering is tenfold and briefly considered its worth if only because it's the one where their child lives.
This ending was really good because it really seems to ask you what kind of sacrifices are worth it. Kazdel gets a happy future where Babel's dream is realized and Sarkaz live in harmony with the other races. But, even aside from Amiya, there's still the problem of Oripathy. And according to the end books, it's clear that the twins didn't achieve this ending through entirely peaceful means either. Kal'tsit is in jail presumably for leading the assault on Kazdel 200 years ago, which means they're also in no way prepared for whatever crisis is going to be triggered once they break open the starpod. It's the world that Doctor once described as "a beautiful but fleeting dream".
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