Arknights

Got Carnelian in 3 pulls. I always seem to pull better on banners I'm just dropping yellow tickets in for fun.

BRB have basically a dozen SAN potions to sink into this event before they go stale.

After a long day of Christmas shopping, I had to go out again to get an SD card for my phone, then completely uninstall then reinstall the game, but I'm now fully updated. For now I'll just do some base maintenance and do event-related stuff before bed tonight.

Edited by Lightblade on Dec 9th 2021 at 8:25:18 AM

Questions on Popukar:

• What's the deal with her eye?
• Was she enslaved by people at RIM Biliton before RI found her (and presumably emancipated her)?

I haven't read her short in Preluding Light, but her short in Story of Afternoon says that she was left by her parents in a logging company and they never came back, her slaver was abusive, and Kal'tsit bought her out after finding that out.

Reminder that slavery is legal in Rim Billiton.

Whatever it was, Popukar's treatment by her owners was apparently bad enough that Ansel saw Kal'tsit actually angry.

Also putting two and two together, I surmise that Catapault's stubborn nature is the cause of the majority of Popukar's trigger incidents, since she's the most argumentative and easy to get into shouting matches with out of all of Reserve Squad A6. Spot's too easygoing and lazy to waste effort on arguing, and Orchid and Midnight actively try be to sociable.

Edited by AceOfScarabs on Dec 10th 2021 at 3:07:32 AM

And yet, Kal'tsit's decision afterwards to have the child start chainsawing people raises serious questions about her parental abilities. Plus Red.

I mean, it's called RESERVE TEAM for a reason, they're not supposed to be frontline operators.

And Popukar's situation isn't as messed up as ELITE OPERATOR ROSMONTIS.

Yes, but Rosmontis's position is Rosmontis's deliberate choice, and she's a walking disaster area anyway.

Plonking Popukar into a reserve team is still considerably different.

Basically she had Orchid take over parenting Popukar :V

Arknights is such a crapsack world that being a child soldier at Rhodes Island was an improvement for a lot of people.

(It's this same crap sackiness that requires a pharmaceutical organization like Rhodes Island to be heavily militarized, too)

Edited by TiamatRoar on Dec 10th 2021 at 1:10:17 AM

It kinda makes me wonder if other brand-level corps are similarity militarized?

Moutain Dash Logistics has snipers, Penguin Logistics is enough said, Silverash's company has even its courier a capable warrior, Rhine Labs is its own Legion of Doom (IIRC, it's stated somewhere in the story or a profile that Rhodes Islands is a very small fish militarily compared to Rhine Labs. I forget where though), Mountain's company Simon Co. was basically in a covert war with its rival (and these are CONSTRUCTION companies!), Laterano Notorial Hall employs agents like Executor (who's code name is actually based on the legal act of executing contracts, not the violent term of execution, which again goes to show how NORMAL violence is that the guy who's profession is supposed to be legal executing does actual physical executing), etc...

Heck, I guess the world of Arknights is so violent that things like the Knights of Kazimierz is their equivalent of "sports".

(of course, thanks to Arts, almost any profession has some capability for violence, including singers. ...especially singers)

I assumed this inherently violent world means children having to fight at a young age is normal (and thus why no one bats an eye at Rhodes Island's use of child soldiers.)

Edited by TiamatRoar on Dec 10th 2021 at 3:24:29 AM

Every indication is that Rhine Labs is basically a weapons development specialist, so its level of apparent militarisation is by far the least surprising.

I did my 10-rolls on the two active banners last night, and got new 5-stars on both of them. My 5-star on the standard banner was Mr. Nothing, and I got Franka from the Carnelian banner. These are both characters I've seen a lot of in Who is Real and the main story, respectively, so it's nice that I have them now.

So far, I've watched the first two scenes of the event, the first one and Heavyrain's. I never knew the significance of Heavrain's codename until now.

Question, is Surtr a Jerkass or a Jerk with a Heart of Gold? I'm wondering because if her defeat line is any indication she seems to be some type of jerk (or at the least very arrogant and/or blunt).

She seems pretty bluntly self-interested and is well aware of how strong she is, but she does seem to care about her fellow Operators in a pretty tsun way.

So JWHG then.

BTW I noticed there was a streak that will be broken with Vigilo, namely that two vignette events had release operators with a faitytale motif in Iris and Bena, incidentally, those were also released Mystic Casters.

Vigilo broke that trend due to a lack of banners (for some reason) and Pinus further broke it with Fartooth's banner not having anyone related to Iris or any Mystic Casters.

Eh. If you want to be on Surtr's good side, feed her a pint of Häagen-Dazs. Or whatever ice cream on hand.

Edited by terumokou on Dec 11th 2021 at 5:44:23 AM

Surtr's side story did give me the impression that even without the memory issue, she'd still be pretty rude and standoffish.

I personally thinks she's rude and standoffish because of her amnesia. She's like Luke from Tales of the Abyss, mostly because their amnesia don't make them conflictedly shy like the quintessential amnesiac FF6's Terra. Their similarity is that they're amnesiac and actually don't know what's going on, but because they're so powerful, they can throw their weight around until their powers fail them and they see the truth of their lost memory.

In this case, Surtr's Break the Haughty starts when she finally realizes that the glimpses of memory she saw is actually the Sarkaz's hive mind. Her love for ice cream is also a way where she starts to defrost; she came across two siblings bonding over ice cream and compare them to her and her "sibling" she saw in her "memory".

Blue Poison has no chill, she knocked out Indigo with one of her poison darts when they first met

The impression I got from her story is that Surtr is just a jerk. She's not actively cruel, but she seriously does not care about other people very much and will not take their feelings into account, ever. I would not say she has a "heart of gold" except in the loosest possible sense that she isn't sadistic or anything.

Edited by Clarste on Dec 11th 2021 at 11:35:37 AM

I liked the Crushed Earth story but the final scene kinda destroyed my suspension of belief with all that "Talking is a free action" energy in it. How do you find the time to go off on a 12-paragraph-long idealogue tirade in the middle of battle, anyways? Do people in Arknights just have these monologues pre-made in advance or something? "Oh! She mentioned battle! Time to bust out my 12-paragraph-long monologue that I saved just for this occasion!"

Edited by TiamatRoar on Dec 12th 2021 at 8:40:20 AM

Talking Is a Free Action is the first thing everyone learns in Originium Arts school