Petter's Blog

"If you ever heard her speak, you will understand"

because the thing about arknights is that there isn't a HARD RULE about who can become an operator. there is necessarily a constant economic and social push and pull between the company and the players. "alter" in arknights didn't really have a predetermined definition even with assumptions from other gacha games. lava showed her after character development in a flashforward and was well recieved, ch'en was shown in a new outfit with a new weapon without development and was lambasted, skadi was depicted in an alternate timeline to mixed responses. looking back on it from the y7 perspective, it SEEMS like the consensus became that alternate timelines and swimsuits alike would be relegated to skins, while alters would be purely for showing a character either after a timeskip or representing a new role they were taking on. whatever. weird tangent. regardless, the point was that CANONICITY and STORY RELEVANCE were established as necessities for an alter to be released.

but that's just for people who were already established as operators. what does it MEAN to be a rhodes island operator? it's never been about being a direct employee OF rhodes island; only the operators with the actual faction of Rhodes Island seem to be employees rather than contractors. it's not about just working WITH rhodes island either; we don't have a playable Wei Yenwu or Clovisia. so like to some degree it's pretty arbitrary.

eblana being announced as an operator came as a shock to a lot of people i knew, because... well, to put it bluntly, she is a literal monster (dragon). she's an abuser, a necromancer, and utterly unconcerned with civilian casualties. she wasn't necessarily UNIQUELY evil, but her relationship with Reed ended up being fairly distinct given the amount of focus it got. and the thing is, people had been complaining about how Virtuosa had gotten toned down from her appearances as an NPC to become more palatable. so there was kind of this question - are we getting the woobified Eblana? are her crimes going to be brushed off so she can become another playable unit? even after recruiting her, seeing a version of her that has fixated on the Doctor... she joins Platinum, Passenger, Ho'olheyak, and Virtuosa in a nebulous middle ground of characters who seem to have run out of STEAM for those actions that defined them as NPCs and/or antagonists. saluzzo pulls her Joker bullshit in Portatori but ultimately concedes rather than pushing it, Virtuosa breaks out of jail in MT but is nonetheless constantly working as an ally for the heroes. Eblana's future remains uncertain through this. there is a lingering undercurrent of tension as we wait to see who the banner unit for the upcoming ursus event on CN is; a sigh of relief is breathed when it's Zima and we don't have to worry about Koshelna flopping over the Doctor's desk with come hither eyes.

and then Tin Man does 9/11.

suddenly, being an operator doesn't mean you stay allied with Rhodes Island, doesn't mean your antagonism is limited to playful banter and empty threats. despite the brief tension at the end of lone trail over what to do with Friston's core, tin man never became a full antagonist; he was an ally through Lone Trail and portrayed as an outright vigilante HERO in Records of Originium: Rhine Lab. and yet, here he is having performed a false flag attack to reignite american militarism, directly in opposition to the desires of Babel and Rhodes Island.

a playable unit in arknights can now become a full-blown antagonist. not only is being playable no longer a guarantee of moral conduct, it no longer even guarantees ALLEGIANCE. it opens up huge possibilities; Arturia's playable status no longer guarantees that she'll return to RI, that she's been convinced of the error of her ways. Puzzle's employment by Caster is now considerably more threatening, knowing he COULD launch a black-ops mission to assassinate Reed in the night. Ulpianus could once again stand against the Abyssal Hunters, siding with Horatia in her desire for Aegirian domination. Skybox could commit some more police brutality.

so what is a rhodes island operator?

quite a bit horny: can we pretend i’m an elven prince and the necromancer’s curse turns me into a demon on the full moon and the only way to cure me is to have my Womb filled by a chivalrous knight . and can you make sure you say soem shit like ‘forsooth’ and ‘by my honor’ and stuff. mngh

remember me as i was before

i couldn't get this image out of my mind until i drew it out :}

New challenger appear.

e.g., one dungeon might allow characters to advance by progressively enbodying mythic archetypes to produce something resembling a conventional class-and-level system, save that the "character classes" are specific to that dungeon, and a different dungeon which nominally has the same advancement schema would have a totally different set of playbooks; another might have fully randomised advancement in which player characters acquire weird body-horror mutations that grant mildly game-breaking super powers with no ability to influence which ones they get; and a third might have wholly extrinsic advancement based on acquiring golf-bags full of magic items with oddly specific functions. In each case, progression through the relevant advancement schema would be extremely rapid, such that exploring its full gamut in the span of a single adventure module is feasible, and player characters would "reset to level 1" once that module is complete.