Here for the eldritch and horrifying

Drom. 30+. Gacha game sideblogging. Always Arknights, with rotating side games. I post sporadically and unexpectedly, and I add ids to stuff. profile pic drawn by @hwakurori on instagram

[theabysscomeshome]

As of now this is a multi-fandom blog for gacha games! Therefore I will be implementing more consistent tagging, especially for fandoms. Below are my custom tags that insulate me from the horrors of main tag tumblr:

Arknights - f: powered by apocalypse ore

Global News - Now on a sideblog My account - drom plays arknights CN spoilers - drom watches cn content Abyssal Hunters - a murder of fish

Arknights: Endfield - f: apocalypse ore goes to space

Morimens - f: sad children the game

Path to Nowhere - f: wholesome jailor x prisoner bonding

Wuthering Waves - f: what's the specbio for soundwaves

Ash Echoes - f: buy one human experiment get the second for half price

Reverse 1999 - f: so you have a mother

Genshin Impact - f: pay no attention to the gods behind the curtain

Honkai Impact 3rd - f: this is a story about love and it will end with love

Honkai Star Rail - f: any monster by another name

I tag characters with 'ch: name' and tag explicitly romantic posts with 'shipping'. I don't tag ships, because I cannot be bothered trying to decide what to do with posts that could be either gen or ship and this isn't a ship-centric blog, BUT if I ever reblog an explicitly romantic post for a ship I know people probably have blacklisted I will add the common shipnames. If there's a ship you have blacklisted you want to make sure I tag just let me know and I will make a note of it.

[thegreatyin]

my toxic arknights trait is that i like when playable characters are actual scum of the earth. making them playable is an interesting narrative decision all by itself and i'd rather have a racist grandpa on the roster than a unanimously morally correct cast of friends. this is just my personal take though if you think otherwise that's obviously fine lol

[wreathedinthorns]

inescapable chain

[c-xx-c-xx]

😈

[aestheticallypleasinganimeboys]

Caecus - Morimens

[wreathedinthorns]

consumption

[moriimens]

my fave encounter artworks from morimens (inspired by this post)

[raisengen]

Stronghold Protocol focuses on country-based Alliances. I can't remember any previous event that placed as much emphasis on these groupings; arguably, it goes against the usual liberal logic of Arknights, where our choices define us more than mere birth and accident.

Still—showing that these borders aren't rigid, Muelsyse the Multicultural Elf brings along the Damazti Isomorph item: when equipped alongside a "passport" item, it adds on an additional Alliance to the operator, allowing them to share in their effects and bonuses. This gives flexibility, but differences in passport acquisition and bonus applicability mean that some countries are much friendlier than others.

This allows for a gameplay-based structural xenophobia ranking list to guide your border-crossing shenanigans:

1. Laterano. Not only is it hard to get their passport (high-rarity item with no special acquisition mechanics), you won't get anything out of the item itself or the Alliance basic bonus unless you have a rare ammo skill. The least welcoming by far.

2. Aegir. They WILL eat you. They won't give you anything unless you assimilate into their mutual cannibalism culture. At least they only need 5 operators to activate their full bonus, so they're more tolerant of non-citizen foreigners than most. Because they'll eat them too.

3. Yan. The passport is common and the team bonus is generic, so anyone can join up and benefit. Blaze is hanging around as a dual-national already. Mind you, the full Alliance bonus wants as many Yanese on the field as possible, so non-citizens might get the side-eye.

4. Sargon. Another generic team bonus and a widely useful passport item. To make things easier, Pepe can print a passport each round—though she shows up late in the run, and it's not a guaranteed drop either.

5. Kjerag. Very welcoming. Kjeragandr herself will hand you the passport, and it'll help you contribute towards the very powerful Alliance bonus. Even if you can't stack Cold well, you can still benefit from the work of the core operators that do. They're even happy to have Harold along, despite that one time.

6. Victoria. You get a passport! Your dog gets a passport! Everyone gets a passport! They even come in different styles, so you can pick whichever one works best for you—and now that you're holding an item, you fully qualify for the entire Alliance bonus. Blaze and Harold are already happily dual-wielding passports, so you could have Victoria-Yan-Kjerag active even without Damazti. If that wasn't enough, they generate stacks by fielding operators in different tiers, so they've got a spot for people of all levels of ability. Truly, this is the future that liberals want.

[incandescent-irrigation]

i remember how before babel there was still the deniability with kal'tsit putting the blame for theresa's death on doctor. kal'tsit saying "you killed theresa" and you, the player, getting to go "this could have been said as a metaphor"

(in a way it was but the other way around)

you keep hearing about this infinitely kind figure whom amiya loved as much as she loves you, and it's hard not to love amiya as much. surely you couldn't have taken that from her and keep her love.

and then babel happens. and you did it. you did kill theresa, in artificial light but plain as day. you had a reason, a plan, an execution. you begged for her forgiveness as she bled out, and she killed you back. in an act of mercy to those who need you and cruelty to those you chose over her, she stole a god from distant past and gifted it back to the person who unearthed them for her.

you killed theresa (she was destined to die before your plan was ever hatched. it was inevitable) (*you* did not kill theresa) (you know that /you/ killed theresa.) (she was not gone) (she will never be gone)

theresa killed the oracle (they will never fulfill their purpose) (they were replaced) (the moniker they chose took on a new life) (they cannot fix anything anymore) (a lot of people died that day) and left the doctor to atone for them (to Want to Atone on their own) (they will not love the spectrum of theresa the way oracle did)

and the two people left alone afterwards were an immortal whose trust was betrayed, thus her resentment for you, and a child all three of you loved, whose short life was saved and ruined by your pity and theresa's hope, and love and love and love and love, and she knows what happened that day, and she loves you too.

the narrative keeps going. is5 tells you this would have happened anyway, whether or not you were there. in the end you are less significant to the world you created than the little girl you took in. in the worlds where you don't get to wake up she suffers more, so perhaps this is better after all. perhaps this is for the best. perhaps a prophet had to fly too close to the sun for a healer to attempt to undo the damage.

[cerastes]

God, l, Retracing Our Steps is so great. A good 30% of the script is various people telling SilverAsh they don’t like him very much. You’d think it’s just Gnosis that gets treated like this because of the whole Edelweiss family thing, but no, Enciodes also gets fucking blasted at every turn Joe Dirt style, it’s so good.

It’s not good because haha this dude is getting insulted, it’s good because Enciodes is more or less proto-Eblana, not quite the same sauce but similar flavor profile, his voice lines are all soooo dreamy and suave, ooooh Doctor… I need to see you do a kickflip… And pit it against mine… Yes, the sun to my moon… The Tragedy to my Comedy… Oh, Doctor… How queer, the way our fates entwine, don’t you think?

And then everyone else is like hey Enciodes get your shit ass bike out of my parking lot before I hit you with my rolled up newspaper, and now he has anxiety. He enters the gas station market and everyone inside audibly clicks their tongue. People respect his position but no one respects Enciodes, it’s fucking insane.

And it’s funnier still because from all you can glean from Pramanix’ lines and all… She hangs out with Doctor. They eat snacks. They faff around. They’re buddies. You KNOW at least one time Doc, with a fistful of Takis en route to their mouth, said “Enya, no offense, but your brother’s weird as hell” to which the saintess responded “yeahhhhhh lmao”

[raisengen]

Flirting with the Doctor aside, I feel like SilverAsh is an interesting take on a "politician" character. He's not some knee-jerk caricature, he's not some habitual liar who's only in it for the money—but you can also see how his politicking skeeves people out all the same.

He has a vision of the future, and he's won... well, some people around to it. But to achieve that vision, he needs power, and from the outside that looks an awful lot like someone who's just making a powergrab to line his pockets.

He's dedicated to his vision, which for him means reaching it by any means necessary. That includes pulling tricks on political rivals, keeping people in the dark, even using his own friends and family as pawns—nothing's off the table in this "game". But of course that's going to irritate the people he's playing. Some might argue his methods are indecent and pay off only in the short term, while those that acknowledge his results still find that seeing his face invariably means Some Bullshit is on the way.

And of course, once you figure out that he'll say whatever he needs to, then why trust him when he says the "right" thing? Of course he praises piety, we'd drum him out of town if he didn't. But if people thought he was impious before, now they just think he's impious and also a liar.

It's interesting to compare with Rhodes Island, who are also striving for their own vision of the future. There's an explicit moral angle to RI's mission, and they're working on a much larger stage, so it's more important for them to win hearts and minds through honest and principled action. They can't do everything themselves, and the changes wouldn't "stick" even if they could. Meanwhile, SilverAsh's goals of industrialisation and defence are much likelier to stick once he's got the factories set up, trade deals signed and artillery in place. He can piss everyone off and bow out; the next set of players will inherit a board state he designed and make decisions accordingly. The goodwill people hold towards him is just one more pawn to be sacrificed at the right time.

Even then, Rhodes Island has to make pragmatic compromises—they can't be everything to everyone, and by the nature of their mission to change the world's moral stance on the Infected they will inevitably have to engage with people who fall short of that moral standard. (To some extent the story softballs them on these matters, but it's not like we haven't seen enough complaints from players that bounced off the story.)

In that regard, it's useful that the Doctor, RI's tactician and SilverAsh's crush, isn't the leader (or even a public face) of Rhodes Island. The Doctor can pull off their Ghost of Babel tactics and deliberately get thrown into jail to counterplay a backstabbing business partner, and it doesn't reflect on Rhodes Island as a whole—or at least, not as much as it would if Amiya was the one running rings around people.

[criticaldiplomacyfail]

come play arknights! we have excellent yuri ships such as

shark x undersea cable engineer

ancient farming manual x first emperor of china

dalai lama x mount everest

mothman x baphomet

jesus x texas

king arthur x chavette polycule

poison dart frog x the sea slug that eats poison

sauron x aragorn

and the entire cast of BanG! Dream: Ave Mujica: The Die Is Cast,

[sublimated-mother]

A bunch of old sketches

[tainbocuailnge]

i'm only on OS-2 but so far nearly every conversation silverash has had with someone who knows him this event has involved them telling him in detail why nobody likes him. truly this is what kjerag events are all about

[apolunatic]

191 cm tall. 70 years of combat experience.

[abyssalhuntersnerd]

Okay, this is sick as fuck. He looks so freaking cool but wow the Laterano vibes are very much there and it's pretty interesting. Only Gladiia and Guard Skadi left to be part of Ambience Synesthesia, hehe.

[endfieldrefs]

collection of some ardashir screenshots i have

[makikodesu]

My fav type : white hair and red eyes