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catgirlcrisis · 1 year

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OKAY so I love giving people the opportunity to talk about their interests and I know NOTHING about Arknights (apart from it being probably post apocalyptic. But I could be wrong!)

So! Tell me about what Arknights is about! What do you like about it? What turned it into one of your interests (if you know why)?

YIPPEEE!!! this might be a long one so ill throw in a readmore if it gets too lengthy. (FUTURE warning: it did become extremely lengthy, so i am putting it under a readmore. its a gigantic wall of several paragraphs of text, so proceed with caution, or don't proceed at all. its very spooky down there.)

the basic gist of arknights is that it is a mobile tower defense gacha. the story is about a post-apocalyptic, dystopian world full of several different races which all boil down to "Human, But With [animal trait]" and it gets a tad more complex than that, because in-universe gods and youkai and such exist (as do angels! and...whatever sarkaz classify as, but include demon-like characters and vampires??). also, there is rock cancer! it's called oripathy, named after some Real Mineral Rock known as originium (in-universe, its not real in Real Life!) that people use all the time. its a 1:1 to energy sources we use in the real world, like coal or oil: efficient, dependable, but not very "clean" and can make people very sick.

also, it grows. the rock cancer is a sentient, living thing. it's a blood infection, so it works sort of like HIV/AIDS does; as the disease progresses, the patient's life quality generally worsens (without treatment), there's no cure, the only treatments slow it or consist of supportive care, and it's terminal. oripathy is also an intended 1:1 metaphor - or rather, the patients who have oripathy are intended as a metaphor for...well, it's not very clear what, specifically. generally, individuals with oripathy (referred to as "Infected") substitute in marginalized groups of all kinds. and the disease itself isn't an exact 1:1 with HIV/AIDS, since it spreads through inhalation of contaminated airspace, and anyone who dies with it kinda...explodes? not really, somewhat, their corpses disperse oripathy "spores" into the air. it's implied that just being in a space where originium is present already poses a risk for air contamination and oripathy spread (since Franka, after having broken air filtration gear, managed to catch oripathy. it comes up in the BSW manga as a flashback for why she's infected in the first place).

while arknights is a fun tower defense game that's also just a biiiit predatory on the side (gotta make money somehow, i guess, and also its Technically The Most Generous Predator But A Wolf Is Still A Wolf, Right?), it's also a geopolitical commentary on several happenings in real life, sort of. arknights makes a lot of takes about colonialism and imperialism, and their lasting effects on generations of families; e.g., Blue Poision talks to Indigo about how her family suffered from being caught and enslaved for their inherent trait of having poisonous saliva, there was an entire new event about the Aegir (a race of lovecraftian-ish seafolk that live underwater, or are supposed to, but some live on land) being continuously hunted by the Spanish Inquisition (since that's Lumen's backstory, sorta, i didnt finish the event OTL), there's the entire country of Kazdel, populated by the Sarkaz - a species who is most susceptible to oripathy - which has a tumultuous history and the Angel country of Laterano is at least partially responsible for constantly undermining its ability to grow or move forward, etc. there was a pretty blatant line about colonialism in the event Under Tides, actually. arknights does not fuck around when it comes to making critical commentary!

it also criticizes capitalism. like, a lot. pretty blatantly. there's three entire events that take place in Kazimierz (equivalent of Poland - put a pin in this, i'll get back to it in a second), which is a country seemingly ruled by its chamber of commerce. besides a lot of the characters in the Kazimierz events (Maria Nearl, Pinus Sylvestris, and Near Light) going "it's really weird that the chamber of commerce appears to be in charge of making a lot of federal decisions around here!", there's constant undertones of how capitalistic greed survives off of punishing working class folk and how deeply it can permeate society. in those events, we learn about Kazimierz's biggest Tradition known as the Major. it's a competition where a bunch of people get together and fight each other for knighthood; the sole winner gets an actual title ("The ____ Knight" - canon examples include the Blood Knight, the Candle Knight, etc, and titles typically reference the champion's abilities and such), its all the craze, etc. except that the chamber of commerce oversees the event and is fucking hellbent on following a very specific method: introduce a new winner, let them win maybe 1-2 more times, then cycle them out. keep the hype fresh, encourage your populace to continuously produce ridiculous merch or gamble on their favorites winning, score! everybody wins! usually the champions will give up on re-entering the major for Brand Deals, but if they don't, then the chamber of commerce intervenes. By Force. like, Lethal Force. like, "Alright, buddy, we've had enough. Now we're employing our mega assassins to go after you. Fuck you."

the chamber even does this to discourage certain people from winning, it seems, and that's not even touching on how hard they've tried to gatekeep infected people from entering; maria nearl, in her event, and her sister margaret nearl, are both hunted down and nearly killed in the arena for their respective competitions. it's Fucked Up. Isn't that fucked up? Doesn't capitalism make us do crazy fucked up things, like kill people? Yeah it does. anyway, wanna buy some stuff for our game? :D

oh yeah. people also have magic in this universe. its called Arts! a lot of people can have Arts, but not everyone has Arts. there's no specific terminology for who does/doesn't have arts; either you do or you don't. not everyone can wield it without some sort of aid, though, so some people (typically non-infected people) use what are called arts casting devices or arts units to use ~Their Magic~. these can really be anything; they don't necessarily have to be staffs or wands. infected people have an increased aptitude for arts, though, in that they can practice their Magick without any sort of need for a casting unit and their magic is usually stronger, enhanced by their infection. the downside is that the more they use arts, the worse the progression of the disease gets, so using it too much or too frequently can wear out a user and worsen the severity of their oripathy. the magick is also susceptible to being influenced by emotion (Ifrit is a notable example of this - she's an infected kid who has anger issues, and has fire-based arts, and you can imagine where this is going. also, her oripathy is extremely advanced since she was like, a human test subject, so her arts unit is a Fucking Flamethrower!).

digressing here to make a note about weaponry: do guns exist in arknights? yes, sort of. they don't use gunpowder and instead contain a mini arts unit that can fire bullets, so using guns = using magic, and not everyone can do that either. the most skilled at using guns are, ironically, the angel race Sankta, and they are absolute gun fanatics. nobody really knows why (yet), but their religion says its okay. what is NOT okay is for them to shoot, injure, or kill each other with their state-sanctioned guns, and doing so will cause you to become a fallen angel, and blah blah blah. guns are also weaker than the preferred ranged weapon: crossbows! its implied that those who typically use guns and are also the best at it are sankta, so everyone just kinda leaves them be, but the best gun is inferior to the best crossbow. its weird to think about...

oh yeah, about the Kazimierz-Poland thing: arknights has earth-equivalent countries in its own universe, sort of. heres a map! the uncolored space is not water; only the dark blue is.

rapid fire: -Bolivar is...latin-america. like, all together. (sigh) -Iberia is spain! -Sargon is a mishmash of SWANA countries, and just a general "Africa." (sigh) -Rim Billiton is australia -Victoria is England, with no separation of North Ireland. sorry irish people -Kjerag is... um... Scandinavia? i think. -Leithanien is supposed to be a austria-hungary counterpart specifically, with switzerland mixed in, or like, some german states or something. -ursus is GREAT MOTHERLAND RUSSIA -yen is China! its notable setting is the city-state of Lungmen, where a lot of the story takes place, and Lungmen itself is thought to be a Hong Kong equivalent. -higashi, likewise, is japan! -columbia is supposed to be a US standin -Siracusa is ITALIA -Kazdel.... according to gamepress, is modelled off of the War of the Austrian Succession. some people say its the balkan countries equivalent of terra. -Laterano is the vatican city! the pope lives there. -Minos is Greece, that's easy. -Sami....is something we know almost nothing about. seemingly based off the Scandivanian Sami population, its really cold, and thats it. -Honestly i have no fucking idea what siesta is. i think it's just a siracusan island and gets its own designation because one of the first arknights events took place there. there's a nifty video that delves more into specifics here! anyway, we would be here all week if i talked any more about arknights, so i'll cut myself off there for now. i'll be happy to field any further questions (if you're interested). do i recommend playing it? no; i don't feel it's in good faith to recommend anyone a gacha game, no matter how F2P friendly it is. but is it good? yeah. without flaws, no, but nothing is. it's more diverse than genshin impact, so... anyway, thanks for indulging me :3

#long post #holy fuck this got so long #arknights is just. Too much to talk about on a singular post #without condensing a LOT of material #sorry this became a giant text wall </3 #but thanks anyway #for the ask #nyasputina #ask

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