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An important page from the "Arknights: OPERATORS!" manga

#arknights

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I really love official art with Doctor in it because they are invariably, consistently a Creature in it

This one, for example, is a nice day out with a squad and a half. Amiya is there because of course they are going to bring the daughter along, plus it’s on company dime and she’s the CEO, you have Rhodes Island’s Handsomest, Elysium, making sure to ‘accidentally’ pose and take off the sunglasses all model like for the photo, you got Ceobe with the bright cord Reeboks, Specter right out of Dorohedoro with the Athletics ‘94 and a summer rich girl kinda fit to contrast, sipping on orange juice, Exusiai in the Toycore fit that she somehow manages to rock prim proper, and then,

Doctor with the cute pins, a special white, elongated summer visor under the hoodie that makes you wonder how many helmets and in how many colors do they own, brown ears to match with Amiya, of course, pondering the absolute SHIT out of that pamphlet for a 3-star deployment in the amusement park,

And the Schrödinger’s Adidas tracksuit. Where do the stripes begin? Do they just… Fade? Orange socks? No wonder W and Ines are terrified of this maniac. Who is this creature?

#arknights

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#i hate this image because i'm in it

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my poor tortured little skadi </3

#arknights

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#furry

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#arknights

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I once heard someone say that because Arknights' disability representation is mostly tied to their fantasy turbo-cancer, then it doesn't feel like real disabled representation, and I've been unable to get it out of my head, like a piece of popcorn stuck in my teeth. So, rather than doing my homework like I'm supposed to be, I want to talk about why I disagree and why I love Arknights' approach to disability.

So, for those who are unaware, Arknights has a shockingly high amount of disabled characters, and characters who are disabled in a lot of different ways, both caused by being Infected and just being disabled in the way that normal people are. Nightingale has chronic pain, Lemuen is the best sniper in Laterano while being in a wheelchair, Akafuyu is mostly blind, Eyja has severe hearing loss, Rosmontis has severe memory loss, Amiya has very severe PTSD, I could go on and on.

And of course there'd be a lot of operators with disabilities! Rhodes Island is a medical organization dedicated towards long-term care of terminally ill patients. Of course many of them would develop disabilities, and of course Rhodes would have the resources and facilities to help them. They even make notes of how to treat them in their medical files, like how Ejyafjalla's has a little guide on how to best have a conversation with her. It makes perfect sense, but I can't say a lot of games would think about it on that level.

And that why I like this game's approach to disability so much. A lot of video games just treat disability as "someone missing an arm" or "someone in a wheelchair because of Their Injuries From Combat. It's usually treated as an individual thing, just someone who got hurt, or who maybe has a frail constitution or whatever. But in Arknights, disability isn't simply treated as a character trait for individuals, but as part of the worldbuilding itself. The world is largely defined by Oripathy, this fatal degenerative disease with no cure. And the Infected are treated as second-class citizens, considered free labor that they don't have to treat ethically because they're dying anyway. The writers realized that this would cause severe disability, both real and fantastical, and worked it into the story and world.

This runs the other way, too! Arknights' worldbuilding follows a sort of social model of disability, in a way. There's a lot of fantasy stories that treat the inability to use magic as a sort of disability, but to Arknights, it's... not. Because Arts require specialized training, and so a lot of people just don't know how to use them, and might not even know they can't use Arts. So it's not treated as such, even though it is still a physical inability to perform things other people can.

But on the other end, Laterano's culture is based around the Sankta having empathic communication between each other. Mostima, as a fallen angel, can't use this telepathy anymore, and she speaks about how othering it feels sometimes, to be physically unable to engage with an important part of her culture. While it's not explicitly stated as a disability to the Lateran culture, I certainly feel like it's treated as one to some degree. Namely that it's explicitly contrasted with Fiametta's PTSD rendering her unwilling to empathize with the people around her, as opposed to Mostima's physical inability. It's the fantasy disability treated with the same weight as real world disability, because within the world of Terra, they're the same thing.

And of course there's just some of the more fucked up fantasy stuff like "On top of her existing narcolepsy, Ptilopsis was forced to become plural after she had to have part of her brain replaced with a computer that forces her to speak and think like a computer or else it causes her severe mental stress to the point of physical pain." Which uh. I don't know where that fits in the conversation but jesus christ someone hug that owl

Of course, its representation isn't always perfect. Just off the top of my head, Nightmare is a pretty rough stereotype, with the whole "Oripathy gave her multiple personality disorder with a violent personality trying to take control of her body!!" trope. And, of course, I'm sure other people have complaints with the representation of their disability in ways that I'm not aware of because I only have the perspective I have.

But... what I remember about this game's treatment of disability isn't when it fails. What I remember is reading Glaucus' module for the first time, the story of the first time she ever put on the mechanical exo-suit legs that allowed her to walk for the first time in her life. And I started bawling my fucking eyes out. I cried because, even though I don't know the specific feeling of walking for the first time in years, I know well what she felt. That feeling of liberation from something you secretly feared was just who you are now. Even though you know it won't be a perfect solution, the physically choking emotion that you're able to get a little closer to a normalcy you've always wanted. The feeling that right now, the only thing you can do is run like the wind.

#arknights

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Love that Waai Fu's sole purpose as a kung fu master is to find and beat the shit out of her dad. She's trained so hard that people are coming to her and going "Woah your kung fu is amazing! Want to come work for our mercenary group?" and Fu is just like "What? Hell no I have an engineering degree, these fists are for personal use only."

It also means Lee didn't just raise her, he paid for a full college course on a shady conman's income...

#arknights

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Irene...

I am not the artist.

Source is here.

#arknights

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where's the birb?

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I keep trying to come up with a metroidvania upgrade gimmick that's even dumber than stuff like Hollow Knight requiring you to spend a charm slot to see your location on the map, or Rebel: Trasmute making it possible to unequip your own HUD (i.e., thereby removing your health bar from the screen), but always come back to the fact that in the original PC version of Bunny Must Die! Chelsea and the 7 Devils, the opening room has to be completed while exclusively walking to the left because you need a specific upgrade to be able to walk to the right. This is a game from 2006, and the bit had already reached its ultimate form – I genuinely can't think of anywhere to go from there.

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Lots to love in Absinthe's new skin but I think my favorite part is the

M4 stock and extended barrel on her wand

Not completely surprising given its an arts unit she took from the police but its still really funny that most other arts units preserve some look of being a fantasy staff even if Arknights' world is largely industrialized and Absinthe is running around attaching tactical gear to hers like she's a Resident Evil protagonist

#arknights

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Hey yall bc I've been keeping an eye on this the Itch.Io bundle for the PCRF is now live

they had an issue last week with itch.io so they had to postpone opening for a few days but for those who wanted to d/ona/te it's here!

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good morning tumblr Today? Silence doodles Tomorrow? who knows

#arknights

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Which character/operator's dynamics with the doctor you enjoyed the most??

Kal'tsit and Doctor. No one else comes close to how incredibly funny Kal'tsit's antagonistic relationship with the Doctor is once you get a good idea of who these two actually are.

Once you read through a Walk in the Dust and Vigilo you realize these two have such a strong antagonistic relationship their attitudes actually change when in the presence of each other.

Kal'tsit everywhere is the immortal, wandering doctor. She is in the background of every major event in the history of the continent, unparalleled in her experience and unshakeable in her composure. You could flip the truck she's riding in with a bomb in order to hijack her convoy and she doesn't look surprised. She goes to dinner parties dressed in a tuxedo and then engages a demonic supersoldier in mortal combat and rips a chunk out of their throat before going back inside and telling the guests some wild animals had entered the gardens. You could tell her you wish to commit suicide by murdering the two politicians who killed your lover and when she sees she can't dissuade you she helps you assassinate one of them with poison. She's seen the rise and fall of entire civilizations, there's nothing that isn't just another Tuesday for her.

But then you put her near Doctor and the petty bitchiness hidden for millennia comes right the fuck out. She will criticize their actions. She will criticize their clothes. She will criticize their eating habits. When there's bad news to tell Amiya she makes Doctor tell her instead of doing it herself, and god help them if Doctor's newest shenanigans costs astounding company property damage.

Meanwhile Doctor's normally this unhinged, tactical genius that slightly unnerves everyone but everyone relies on to save the day. They eat originium slugs, they pour boiling water into their mouth to cook noodles with, every god or monster of incredible power is entrusted to Doctor to handle because their unhinged, almost alien ways allow them to foster good relationships with the stranger beings aboard their landship.

But also when they have to do anything that eventually will be reviewed by Kal'tsit, the perfect walking disaster in them comes out. They go to Achuahalla and the plane gets shot down by a rocket, then they bring the domestic terrorist with them back as a new employee. They go to Columbia to ink a business deal with Papa John's, then get thrown into jail for allegations of running an illegal drug ring that Papa John's is the distributor for (Doctor's excuse is that "they learned it from you", the perfect reply to piss off Kal'tsit). They return to the ancient sacrophagus that Kal'tsit originally sealed Doctor in, only for Doctor to have a flashback of a completely different woman doing it instead. They go to Siesta for a beach vacation and then leave it having interfered in the sovereignty of a city-state and also got into concert brawls. They go to Kjerag for a ski vacation and leave it having sparked a civil war that resulted in all power being coalesced into the Saintess, because the scion of the Silverash family really, really likes them and wanted to force them into helping him seize power.

Kal'tsit and Doctor are supposed to be these two impossibly ancient beings that operate beyond the boundaries of humanity. They're alien almost, in both their strange bodies (does anyone remember that Doctor's blood can be used to heal wounds) and their ways.

But when they actually interact they're the most ridiculously human pair: a long-winded nag and a disastrous buffoon, attempting to raise a teenage girl that's had to be mature enough for all three of them.

#arknights