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maritamorgado · 10 months

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#jeffrey dean morgan #jdmorgan #negan #lauren cohan #maggie #karina ortiz #amaia #the walking dead dead city #dead city #twd dead city #twddc #the walking dead #amcthewalkingdead #behind the scenes

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sunder-the-gold · 5 months

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What was Amaia's deal? ["Stultifera Navis", Arknights]

Some characters are harder to understand than others, either because they're good at lying to themselves, good at lying to others, or both.

Amaia is one of those characters, and [Stultifera Navis] did the readers no favors in getting to understand her when it waited until later into the event's story to reveal anything about her true motivations, at a time when too many other things are happening, and only in a flashback that we see after she’s dead.

Misanthropy

As a native Liberi rather than a descendant of Cultist Aegirians washed up on the shore, Amaia would not have grown up indoctrinated in the Church of the Deep's philosophies, and would have joined it later in life, as an outsider, with a deliberate purpose.

Amaia hated humanity, to the point of self-loathing. We never learn the reason why, though someone else speculated that her throw-away comment about "artificial borders" suggested she had a bad experience with international war. She definitely has strong and negative opinions about human sacrifice, which suggests to me that someone important to her laid down their life for a country or cause, while she thought they died in vain for people who didn't care about them at all.

However she became acquainted with the Church of the Deep, one can suppose her reasons for trying to become a Sea Monster came from a desire to shed her humanity and become part of something where sacrifice was not altruism, but reflex, and appreciated but not celebrated by the community. Creatures that had no capacity for hatred and no need for love, or that only knew love.

But by the time Amaia became a bishop, she knew all too well how even her fellow cultists were ultimately human, even after becoming Seaborn. No matter how much she transformed herself, Amaia found that the only way she could truly lose her humanity to the swarm was to die and feed herself to it.

She wanted to give the monsters the tools to better understand and destroy humanity while counseling the Endspeaker about what parts of her knowledge and understanding she didn't want the Endspeaker to learn.

Anthropology

For someone committed to destroying human civilization and shedding her own humanity, Amaia was curiously involved in cultural pursuits. One could suppose she had already learned how to dance, to write, and to read foreign languages before she lost her faith in humanity, but that doesn't explain why she continued to work as a translator after she had become a full-time bishop for the Church of the Deep.

Perhaps even that, you could dismiss by supposing the cult needed all the legitimate revenue its members could generate, and those were the only skills she could sell.

But that doesn't explain her interest in Aegirian culture.

After the protagonists defeat the jellyfish-bird, we see a memory of Amaia talking with Quintus about Laurentina, whom they’ve already captured and experimented upon. Amaia tries to dissuade Quintus from making "too many comparisons" (experiments) on Specter, lest Specter come to hate them and refuse to tell Amaia any more about Aegir.

Quintus doesn’t understand why she wants to ask Specter more about her life in Aegir, when she could talk to the First To Speak instead.

Amaia makes it clear that she hates Aegir and the Abyssal Hunters. “Self-destructive soldiers, self-righteous country. Falling into a self-inflicted trap.”

She says she wants to “deconstruct, witness, caress, break” human civilization. And even as Specter, Laurentina loved Aegir more than any Aegirian Amaia had ever spoken to, and thus her best source of knowledge about it. (Not entirely surprising, as none of the Aegir Amaia could have met before Laurentina would have ever seen Aegir.)

But I thought that seemed like a lot of effort that did nothing to advance her goals. It’s not like she was trying to learn more about Aegir to more effectively circumvent their defenses, which is probably what Quintus thought she wanted to learn and why he told her to ask The First To Speak instead.

Perhaps Amaia was desperately looking for anything in humanity she thought would be worth preserving. Anything she could love that would convince her to stop helping the Sea Monsters. And who better to give her that reason than someone who loved a native culture which Amaia had never really learned about?

Pleasant Lies

When Laurentina rues how she was found on the beach by rotten people, Amaia protests that she thought she had made a positive first impression on Laurentina.

The flashback shows Amaia arguing against too many experiments on Laurentina.

When Amaia and Specter met in Grand Faro, Amaia invited her to find her again after she had recovered her memories.

When they met again on the golden dreadnought, Amaia engaged in friendly conversation with Laurentina and invited her to dance.

Amaia's final request to the Endspeaker was for it to do whatever Laurentina asked of it, to “pay back the debt” for the data they got out of her.

Ugly Truth

Amaia's first question to Laurentina was not "How are you?" but "How did Aegir make you?"

Amaia was one of the cultists who found Laurentina, deceived her into trusting them, and then eagerly participated in interrogating her, brainwashing her, and experimenting upon her.

In the promotion record for Specter the Unchained, Laurentina says of Amaia, "She was in charge of recording down my mental state and providing feedback after the experiment. Given how knowledgeable and accomplished she was, it's a pity she was so well-suited for this job. She might've treated me the nicest among the experimenters, but you know what, Gladiia? She never actually liked me. In fact, she had a lot of things to say about the way we refused to follow nature's ordained trajectory."

Amaia personally worked to rob Laurentina of her freedom, her identity, her sanity, and her health, with the ultimate purpose of Amaia abandoning her humanity, and helping the Sea Monsters kill Laurentina, her people, all of humanity… all while trying to convince Laurentina that she was her friend.

Amaia argued against provoking Specter's hatred, not because she cared about Specter's hatred, but because she hadn't yet learned as much as she wanted from her captive.

Explicitly according to narration, Amaia started a cordial conversation and dance with Laurentina on the ship as a stalling tactic, to give the Endspeaker more time to eat, learn, and evolve.

Even asking the Endspeaker to grant Laurentina any request seems like a nasty joke, given that Laurentina had already made it clear that the only payment she wanted from Amaia for her "debt" was to personally murder Amaia.

After that conversation, and based on Amaia's intimate study of Laurentina's mind, Amaia could not imagine that Laurentina would wish for anything other than the Endspeaker's death, which the Endspeaker would not oblige. The only conclusion to the Endspeaker seeking out Laurentina to make such an offer would be a battle to the death that Amaia expected the Endspeaker would win.

#arknights #stultifera navis #amaia #specter #laurentina

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000yul · 1 year

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seaborn seem like the worst possible audience for a philosophy 101 lecture but what do i know

#arknights #my sketches #amaia

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rlyehtaxidermist · 1 year

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where are all the amaia fans at? i thought this was the site that liked evil women who were creepy and wet?

#arknights #amaia #specter's creepy bird ex

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whitefangz · 2 months

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just asked my beautiful wife a question about a topic she likes so i’ll be busy for the next 2-6 hours 🥰

#art #whitefang art #my characters #corrin #amaia #idk. yeag

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prettycottonmouthlamia · 9 months

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i will never make my memes look good you will get my slop and thank me for it

(or help me figure out how to make them look better that also helps)

Link to original tweet

#arknights #amaia #i don't tend to do this with tweets so if this isn't kosher let me know

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gailiag · 1 year

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The Stultifera Navis Post

Well here it is. My scene analysis-turned-character analysis-turned-event analysis of Stultifera Navis. SN story spoilers and descriptions of being eaten alive ahead. This is a long one, so strap in. Ye have been warned.

Of all the things that happened in Stultifera Navis, the one I keep coming back to is the scene in SN-10 before where the Endspeaker, Will of We Many, tells Laurentina of Amaia's sacrifice. This isn't my area of expertise, but there's something about its writing that's just so intimately visceral. The contrast between the imagery of her being devoured, still conscious even as her flesh is stripped from her bones, all the while comforting the Endspeaker as one might comfort a child, makes for an incredibly powerful scene.

[Image ID: A screenshot of dialogue between a Seaborn and Specter. The text is white on a greyed-out background, which depicts the Seaborn, an angelic jellyfish-like creature, floating in the air. The dialogue reads:

Seaborn: Laurentina, that is the name of our scaleless kin, the Liberi, the Iberian.

Seaborn: As I consumed her, she kept stroking my head. She spoke of many things. Time itself was like frozen dust, an eternity seeming to pass as I listened to her.

Seaborn: Until she could no longer speak, until even her bones were digested by our smallest kin, she nurtured me with both nutrition and time. She taught me everything I know.

Specter: Since when were you so sentimental towards your food?

Seaborn: Such was her request, I merely granted it. If there is purpose to such emotions, we are willing to experiment.

End ID]

In SN-ST-11 “Main Mast,” Amaia tells the Endspeaker that there is no grand purpose, no glory, no honor in sacrifice, and that the shred of humanity she gives it is purely for the survival of their kind. But despite her going on and on about how humans are not so different from the Seaborn, I think we also see sentimentality in how she nurtures it and in her request to be remembered. There is still a glimmer of humanity left in Amaia, and she gifts this to the Endspeaker. It's not lost on me that the Endspeaker is referred to as "it" before consuming Amaia, but "he" after.

It is clear throughout this event that Amaia’s view of humanity is reflective of the Seaborn’s view as a whole. The Endspeaker is continually baffled with the Hunters’ refusal to join their “kin.” Amaia explains this belief more fully than any other character. In her eyes, idealizing things like sacrifice and dedication is merely a delusion that lets humans pretend that they are somehow more noble than the animals that they are. The Endspeaker says she taught him that laws are much the same. To the Seaborn, there is no inherent meaning to life or death or duty or pain. Any attempt to create meaning from this is a delusion, a denial of the truth that humans and Seaborn are fundamentally no different from each other. In a world devoid of any inherent meaning, the only rational goal is survival.

When Amaia and Laurentina share a dance in Main Mast, Amaia tells Laurentina that the part of her that keeps her awake and alive, that makes her Laurentina, is the Seaborn part of her. That she is, at heart, no different than them. But Laurentina rejects this. In what I would argue is the most important line of all of Stultifera Navis, Laurentina says, "Because, during the process of carving, chiseling, and shaping, we give meaning to the forms of the dead, liberating them from the void of meaningless." Laurentina does not reject Amaia’s premise that there is no meaning inherent in sacrifice or life. But she concludes instead that sacrifice is meaningful because we remember them, and the meaning of sacrifice or of life is the meaning we give it. Amaia calls this delusion, but Laurentina suggests that our ability to make meaning from a meaningless world is what makes humans unique. Looking at the characters in this light, I think we can see what Stultifera Navis has to say about what makes someone human.

To the contrary of Amaia’s perspective, Laurentina believes that, much like what separates a sculpture from a rock, it is the act of remaking herself as an Abyssal Hunter from the unstable, originium-infused body she has been given that makes her human. Skadi lays her own claim to her identity. "...No. I am the Abyssal Hunter, Skadi." Not Ishar-Mla, not seaborn, but a Hunter. Gladiia's concern at her physical transformation is at some level self-fulfilling. She sees the physical transformation as synonymous with becoming Seaborn, and so it is. Opposite Gladiia there’s Captain Alfonso and First Mate Garcia, who resisted assimilation into We Many for sixty years, remaining human only through continuing to define themselves as human, even as their bodies were twisted beyond recognition.

And in the end, this goes both ways. Amaia asks that the Endspeaker assign no meaning to her sacrifice, no greater purpose beyond the simple instinct of a species to survive. But she asks that the Endspeaker remember her, and the Endspeaker makes its own meaning of her sacrifice in doing so. It recognizes the gifts of knowledge, of feeling, of time, she has given him. Even Amaia understands the implications of this act. In the flashback to her conversation with Bishop Quintus, she says, "[y]ou have to admit, that we're more like them, more like humans, than we are like Seaborn.” The Endspeaker shows signs that he, too, has the capacity to become human.

It's not that we humans aren't so different from the Seaborn. It's that now, the Seaborn aren't so different from us.

#long post #sometimes you have zero thoughts about an event story for two weeks straight and then have every single thought all at once #despite the whole seaborn thing not being my cup of tea #i really liked this event #also apologies if none of this makes sense all of this was written in a fugue state over a 3-hour train ride #arknights #specter (arknights)#amaia #seaborn #stultifera navis #specter #arknights analysis #abyssal hunters

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aprincesadegales · 9 months

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Vencedores da Batalha de Looks Rosa | Winners of the Battle of Pink Outfits

Visita ao Projeto Natureza Urbana no Museu de História Natural | 22.06.2021 Jaqueta: Chloé Top: LAUREN Ralph Lauren Jeans: & Other Stories Sapatos: VERT / VEJA Brincos: Orelia Colar: Spells of Love Colar: Daniella Draper Máscara: Amaia Fonte: Kate’s Closet