sigma series railjack

aim for the head and may the saints look away

[railjacks]

I will say that the lotus calling the zariman your home is actually ten thousand times more fucked than natah or margulis calling it your birthright or legacy and I do like that. There's an ambiguity to "rightful:" it can, like birthright or legacy, designate that which is yours by right (i.e. legally or perhaps morally, ethically), but it can also mean that which is proper or fitting. Your "rightful" place in history, to pick a common usage, would be the one you ought to be assigned by virtue of your actions and deeds. It is not just owed to you, but substantively correct for you by some given metric or rubric.

I do like that a whole lot. margulis is comforting and natah forthright, but the lotus is knowing: she words it as though she somehow knows with certainty this is the end of the zariman's long journey, that this is your best and only chance to reclaim it from the void. That the Zariman Ten Zero not only was your home, but that it should be your home now. But what special foreknowledge can she really lay claim to, at this point?

Both the Operator and Drifter are very explicit about not wanting to be on the Zariman and about very strongly associating it with everything terrible that has happened to them for obvious reasons. Then here comes the Lotus, fully healed and self-actualized—you can tell she's self-actualized because even though she has re-adopted the identity crafted for her by The Worst Man Ever, she has imagined herself a new look with a higher neckline and whoops! still no face or name—to say "return to the site of your greatest traumas. It is where you belong. Don't worry: I just know these things :)"

Sure thing! Thanks, space mom!

[railjacks]

really like this exchange between quinn and the operator/drifter because that little verse...well, let's look at it in full:

We shall not fear to take the leap Across the gulf to fare Though all betwixt is dark and deep, A home awaits us there

(before we get further, a bonus note. the zariman verse is written in ballad meter, which means you can easily sing it to a whole host of songs. try auld lang syne or house of the rising sun or the original pokemon theme!)

Anyone else immediately notice the, imo, syntactic ambiguity? Where does home await? The obvious read is of course what Quinn says, "Tau," or "across the gulf" as the poem frames it, like so:

We shall not fear to take the leap Across the gulf to fare Though all betwixt is dark and deep, A home awaits us there

But it's not, in my opinion, clear enough as to be completely unambiguous. It would be perfectly reasonable to read these lines and interpret "there" as referring to the location most recently mentioned before the use of there. To the crew of the Zariman, the "all betwixt" was just empty space. But we now know it as a place: the Void. And of course, it was home to the children who would become the Tenno for a long time. Possibly years.

We shall not fear to take the leap Across the gulf to fare Though all betwixt is dark and deep, A home awaits us there

Your rightful home. Because you lived there, for a time?

Or because you were always meant to live there?

[railjacks]

ordis: thank goodness we managed to keep jade's motes out of the hands of parvos granum, operator. her light should be kept safe from those who would misuse it as the orokin did. operator: mhmm ordis: and it was a beautiful tribute to rebuild her frame in her honor operator: for sure ordis: well, the system won't save itself. back to--operator WHAT are you DOING operator: *cramming jade's frame into the helminth's giant mouth* operator: ...feeding helly? ordis: WHY? operator: so i can use the jade light ophanim eyes on other fra--um. uh. hm. ah. no reason?

[railjacks]

immediately regretting my decision at the end of the new war because the natah line in angels of the zariman CLEARS the other two. i do enjoy the false persona of the lotus but given the direction the game seems to be heading i probably should have gone natah...alas.

i do like that their lines cover the gamut. a birthright is something you have been implicitly owed since before you were born and should have been given at birth, but also something that could be in the past. the phrase "rightful home" implies it's where the tenno should be now. and of course, "legacy" implies the future (though one can also have been left a legacy, rather than intend to leave one, which wraps us back around to birthright).

also only the lotus relates to you as a tenno, while natah and margulis both use "child" (though margulis specifies that the operator/drifter is a child only in relation to her and not with respect to maturity, while natah is clearly referring to the character directly as a child). i like this inasmuch as the sentient emphasis on reproduction (in the most and least abstract sense possible, with all the early talk of wombs) and margulis's foster mother relationship both dominate their view. the tenno-lotus relationship is almost a parent/child one...but not quite, since it also implicates handler/operative and CO/soldier dynamics. fun little wrinkle.

[railjacks]

currently baking a jade in my foundry and it's not unlikely i end up helminth'ing her pretty quick to put ophanim eyes on everything (if it's what it sounds like, it seems pretty much ideal for lazy xaku runs etc), and a part of me was like ehhhhh it seems really good but it also seems thematically inapt for many frames (no joke this is what's keeping me from grinding grendel for nourish)

then I realized that because of how jade shadows plays out, again, the operator is transference'd into jade as she gives birth to the first baby warframe, and presumably only jacked out a little before she died. gonna treat it like helminth'ing ophanim eyes onto everything i have is just a lingering side effect/psychic echo/void manifestation of those events

[railjacks]

throwing ophanim eyes onto kullervo to teleport behind a group of enemies, slow&armor strip them while casting collective curse, then sniping the (now-slowed) closest one to deal weakpoint sniper damage to everyone affected...hang on now...and they're slowed so you can keep building sniper combo...

[railjacks]

it's so fucking funny there's all this buildup for paracesis and then all that happens is ballas steals it and stabs the lotus

but don't worry! ordis remakes it for the operator, and they bring it to the final confrontation so...goddammit, ballas can steal it and stab the lotus again

my earnest hope is that it shows up in tau when we finally get there somehow. and then someone uses it to stab the lotus again and the operator gets absolutely no value out of it whatsoever, once again

[railjacks]

currently baking a jade in my foundry and it's not unlikely i end up helminth'ing her pretty quick to put ophanim eyes on everything (if it's what it sounds like, it seems pretty much ideal for lazy xaku runs etc), and a part of me was like ehhhhh it seems really good but it also seems thematically inapt for many frames (no joke this is what's keeping me from grinding grendel for nourish)

then I realized that because of how jade shadows plays out, again, the operator is transference'd into jade as she gives birth to the first baby warframe, and presumably only jacked out a little before she died. gonna treat it like helminth'ing ophanim eyes onto everything i have is just a lingering side effect/psychic echo/void manifestation of those events

[railjacks]

"The Prisoner seems to think you and he have unfinished business. Shall I let him out so that you can conclude it?"

[technorotting]

Kullervo when no prime..

[railjacks]

You crave the sun, Kullervo.

by first appearance:

Warframe (2013-present) // Andrew Tobias, The Best Little Boy in the World (1973) // Elias Lönnrot, Kalevala (1835) // Alan Downs, The Velvet Rage (2005) // Andrea Mantegna, Untitled [Saint Sebastian of Vienna] (c. 1470) // T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land" (1922)

[railjacks]

just put together that kullervo is a "*teleports behind you* nothing personnel kid" guy oooooh my god i'm losing it

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obviously cephalon cy is supposed to invoke a particular character type, like this dry, prone to understatement, occasionally sardonic voice in your ear is very familiar. he particularly reminds me of the various ground control and awacs characters in the ace combat franchise, which of course makes perfect sense.

so when he says "aim for the head and may the saints look away," obviously we're doing a war is hell, we are about to do terrible violence kind of thing. but it is fun that the only pre-collapse saint we know of is 𝖌𝖆𝖚𝖘𝖘, 𝖘𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖆𝖑𝖙𝖗𝖆, and their "miracle" was singlehandedly putting down an anti-orokin revolt with extreme force. not hard to reach an interpretation where the gaze of saints in the orokin empire was something to be feared even by the innocent faithful, and their intercession something to be avoided at all costs.

[railjacks]

i'm sure i am the ten millionth person to do this but nonetheless

TRANS AM

[railjacks]

pulling screenshots for a longer post on warframe and camp that may never materialize but i think this is the funniest moment in warframe so far

guy who had his face eaten by leopards: soon your people will all be destroyed...

ancient warrior of legend displaced in time piloting a mech that's a relic from the long-destroyed empire they once served that is covered in coins for the ferryman and has a literal skull face: uh-huh sure go on

[railjacks]

the people will tell you, oooh, lavos warframe so fun, lavos warframe so versatile, lavos warframe so many button press, lavos warframe war crimes, lavos warframe non-LOS nuke, lavos warframe valence formation. and I'm not saying any of that ISN'T true.

but this is how you know the minds and hearts of the people are closed. for those who see with the mind and heart, instead of the eye, know the truth contained in the leverian: lavos warframe toxic transhumanist snakeman enemies-to-lovers prisoner-warden yaoi.

[railjacks]

unspeakably disappointed that we never got the "ordis befriends squirrel-rat-things that help him maintain the landing vehicle during the new war time skip" quest. like are you kidding me? what could have been...

ordis, defender of small rodents, you mean the world to me...

[railjacks]

already appreciated the choice to make your operator gender the opposite of your starting frame choice, but jade shadows, wow. think it's genuinely very sincerely interesting in a game so textually interested in parenthood and motherhood in particular for warframe to make your character, regardless of gender, participate in the experience of giving birth. an inspiringly transgressive choice, especially for a game which, like most, has a mostly male audience.