Dreamscape

Patriot: “Outer Heaven… A nation for soldiers. And what then? You build a home where warriors sharpen their blades endlessly. A world where conflict is the lifeblood. That is not salvation, Snake—it is a curse.”

(A detail I really like is that his boss sprite shakes constantly, he can't even really hold his weapons straight)

My idea for interactions: A Knight talking to the Kazimierzian Knights for obvious reasons. The two Jessica's for some reason. The Foundation and Rhine Labs? Throw 37 at the RI engineering section, see what happens, maybe her, 6, and Doc could have a neat conversation about math, until Doc collapses from the lack of sleep.

I can imagine the shenanigans of suitcase crew in Rhodes😏

-Jiu Niangzi talk with one of Sui siblings (thinking they're Xiangrui)

-Zima meet Zima

-Pavia and Chiave eat pineaple pizza almost getting killed by Lappland

-Lucy best buddy with robots of R.I (Eunectes screaming happy when she meet her)

With the release of her skin on global, I really wanted to make an analysis of her. She’s often overshadowed by her strangely niche kit and her underwhelming E2 art, but her lore is worth observing as well. 

This is also a long post, so yeah, there’s that.

E2 art but not really, from here.

You know when i first read this ask I was kinda wondering what sort of metaphor for blood libel I'd be seeing but no, they just straight up have the Leithaniens accuse Hibiscus of stealing their blood huh.

It's crazy how fast Leithaniens go from polite to a mob.

Like we all know from Twilight of Wolumonde that Leithanien likes to go "oh look at us we don't discriminate against the infected we care about the arts and higher education we're so progressive!" only to turn on Mudrock's traveling group as soon as it became convenient and also hide that they had actually displaced and killed the original indigenous peoples there, but Lingering Echoes' take is more personal.

We see Hibiscus arrive in Vyseheim as a doctor for Rhodes Island and everyone's friendly and polite, she gets pulled into a village dance and invited to a concert, and everyone lets her do her job as a doctor, conducting blood tests to measure everyone's originium levels and the like.

Then we see Czerny's old relative say "What's a Sarkaz doing he-" before she realizes that isn't "polite" and tells hibiscus not to take it seriously and that didn't mean anything.

Then we see Hibiscus have a polite debate with a food stall owner over the healthiness of his food vs its taste and he acts really kindly towards her through their differences and even invites her to come back for his food someday, until Hibiscus walks off and he says

But then as soon as Rhodes Island's presence in the city becomes an inconvenience to the Countess Gertrude, she just makes a prophecy (read: spreads a rumor) that doesn't even mention a Sarkaz, and yet an incident goes from one drunk guy angrily accusing Hibiscus of her blood tests for Oripathy really being an excuse to steal their blood for Arts, into a whole angry mob out for her head in almost an instant.

They say using blood for Arts means she's in league with the Witch King, then get angry when she's unafraid of calling out the Witch King's prophecy as rumors and claims it's disrespect, then get doubly angry when she calls them out on the contradiction.

Personally, while I get that they're trying to say that even a society as supposedly progressive as Leithanien hides bigotry like all the other countries, and Hibiscus is one of the protagonists of the story so obviously they'd show the challenges she faces as a Sarkaz doctor, I don't know...

I kind of feel like depicting outright blood libel to show the discrimination the Sarkaz face becomes messy when some of the Sarkaz doctors like Warfarin are actually vampires? The scene even has to clumsily dance around that by having Hibiscus' first reaction be "Sir, you might have heard of vampires but I'm not a vampire Sarkaz".

I just think it's overreaching your bounds you know? Going for something that loaded with terrible history because you want the impact of referencing that history, but without thinking if you also made some of the oppressed group who are now acting as a Jewish analogue actual vampires because you thought vampires are cool.

I'll give it 8.5/10. Probably one of my favorite event in Arknights alongside Maria Nearl.

The new modules haven’t been implemented yet. All we know is that Shining’s is called something like “Withered Scabbard”.

Full disclosure, there’s parts of this module that’s kind of hard to understand, so please keep that in mind. Afterwards, I’m gonna put in my own thoughts about what it could mean.

It’s about a young Shining. Shining herself is considered a child prodigy; she inherited her father’s talents through a direct bloodline, and has received rigorous instruction with the sword and sheath. The story starts with Shining as a young girl at her mother’s bedside. There’s no light inside the house, only moonlight creeping in through the windows.

The mother had just passed away from childbirth. Shining is holding her baby brother in her arms.

The white-haired Sarkaz woman had her eyes closed and laid flat on her back. Her body was still and beautiful, and her figure’s shadow was projected on the wall like a loving mountain.

Beneath her, the baby’s shadow was pulled and magnified by the slanting moonlight, and finally, projected on the wall like a monster. This newborn life is weak and frail at this time, but it does not instinctively scream and cry like ordinary newborns. When the baby silently opened its eyes that could not see anything, the moonlight became obscured by clouds, and the mother’s arm slipped from the edge of the bed.

The shadow of the monster on the wall disappeared with the light.

The daughter watched the inheritance of life in front of her eyes.

This was not the first time that Shining witnessed the passing of life. Her father had passed away not too long ago. 

The dissipation of life, the birth and rebirth of life, every detail is presented right in front of the daughter, but her Originium Arts… the Originium Arts of her people… it can’t do anything. It merely gathered at her fingertips like she expected.

Why?

The daughter is confused.

“Life“ was a concept, taught by her father, a weapon to be held in the hands of Confessors. But her father’s death was a trivial affair, it was a long time coming, an incident that didn’t hold much weight. But her mother’s death was abrupt and unexpected, as if someone ripped away all her vitality in an instant, and in that silence, her brother was born.

What exactly is life? What is she feeling?

Among her family, are there any similarities between her life, her parents’ lives, and her newborn brother who never cried? What is the difference?

“Our lives will eventually become one in a higher form,“ the father told his daughter before he stopped breathing.

The daughter instinctively sensed that this was not just ramblings.

Life circulates in the purest blood, something has come back to her at this moment… or, it never left.

-

Okay, my thoughts:

I’M POSITIVELY CERTAIN THAT THIS GUY, THE CURRENT CONFESSARIUS–

–IS SHINING’S YOUNGER BROTHER. 

Mild spoilers for Chapter 10 but yeah, he specifically talks about a future “family reunion” in an ending conversation, which I assume could only apply to him and Shining. It doesn’t make sense if he’s referring to Theresis and Theresa, and there’s no other family shenanigans going on that he’s involved with.

Anyway, it’s revealed that the Confessors are not just a Sarkaz group working under Theresis, but an actual ancient Sarkaz subrace. One that also possesses inherent Arts: the ability to manipulate life forces. Control over life. This explains how the current Confessarius was able to resurrect Theresa. So the Confessors are apparently, basically, a race of necromancers.

There are certain Sarkaz Arts that are classified as “witchcraft”, which is primarily defined by blood inheritance. The strength of a Sarkaz’s witchcraft lies in the purity of their bloodline. Since the Confessors are a race of Sarkaz, Shining’s Arts (not her healing) is this. Mudrock also happens to fall under this category. 

In Near Light, Monique even says this when faced with Shining: “Excellent swordsmanship. Complex, seemingly incomprehensible Originium Arts–perhaps witchcraft.”

Shining’s father says that life is a tool/weapon for Confessors. Which makes sense if Confessors are supposed to be like necromancers, with their ability to raise the dead. Resurrection could very well be an extension of life manipulation, by calling the life force back from where it went, to return it to the body. 

The manipulation of life forces also calls to mind a connection to the Greek Fates, or even Japanese Shinigami. How you can see someone’s life, how you can “cut” a life force… Shining herself visually resembles the Grim Reaper/the popular personification of Death somewhat, no?

The “merging into a higher form” could refer to a hypostatic union, which is merging the human with the divine. A possible allegory of Jesus, and how he was seen as both completely divine yet human at the same time. So if Shining is seen as a Jesus figure, then her brother may be the Antichrist in comparison, if you consider how his shadow was described in the story above…

The religious aspect about Jesus taking on punishment for humanity’s sins, and how that relates to Shining and her own deal with sin, how she had previously sinned and is concurrently punishing herself. I think… her attitude as well as her relationship with Nightingale makes sense if her sin was desecrating the dead, through revival. In the module, young Shining tried to revive her mother.

To parallel what her brother did with Theresa… what if Nightingale had died, and Shining brought her back? There could be something to be said about how both Theresa and Liz resemble empty shells…