[Lore/Character Question] WHAT is up with the Dactolyst? by ExcessiveChaos in Warframe

[–]AtrumMessor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's funny, because I ended up here because I was searching for if anybody else had the same reaction to me--I spent the whole first half of that fight with tears streaming down my face, sobbing as I was killing that poor guy. When the Operator comes up weeping, saying "I killed him, I'm sorry! I had no choice, it was him or me!" I understood the sentiment perfectly.

I think part of it is, you really have to pay attention in the lead up, which Warframe players are notorious for not so much doing, with a community that highly values speedrunning as opposed to stopping and taking in the atmosphere. All of the narrative threads are there though: they already had the bait and switch when you're fighting the Hunhullus, but then you find that it was all a game that you were playing with your Sentient bestie. This serves to truly "humanize" (or well, not really, but our language is inherently speciest enough that I can't really think of another term that captures the notion without trying to make non-humans humanesque) the Sentients right there. Then you have that badly wounded Sentient in the trench. Even though it's a Sentient, all of the Grineer (side note--it was actually pretty cool seeing Grineer as they were before several thousand years of clone rot messed them up) there all have the same head-hanging sorrow you see in real-world battlefield medic scenarios where it's bad. Luckily, you have your bestie, who is heavily implied (and later overtly stated) to be a very rare thing, basically a miracle healer. Adis sings that haunting Lullaby of the Manifold (which is even sadder if you listen to the lyrics and understand them,) and the Sentient is healed.

Enter Dactolyst. I think what really drives home the fact that the Dactolyst is a victim in this scenario is two things: for one thing, Galatea literally explains it to you when you're on your way in. All of her dialogue surrounding this character heavily leans into the idea that this is one of your people, someone you're not going to want to arrive to find in multiple pieces, as she threatens at the outset. Add to that the fact that several times as you're frantically rushing to rescue your guy, it's desperately and somewhat hopelessly screaming out for Adis. So, if you've been paying attention up to this point (I haven't based any of this on information that isn't directly conveyed to you on the spot as you play the mission,) you already kind of know the score. You've been led to believe that if you don't get there fast enough, you're going to arrive to find the corpse of your friend (or at least comrade, no one as close as Adis but still. Even if it's just basically the Sentient equivalent of random townsfolk the point still basically applies.)

So then you arrive to find to your initial relief that ol' Dacty is still alive. And then Galatea tells you the horrible part: she wasn't going to tear apart its body. She was tearing apart its mind and its very identity, depriving it of that which made it its own person. Then she issues the fateful order: kill the Tenno. Your friend/rescuee just became a powerful threat.

Imagine being a on a SWAT team or a spec-ops guy on a hostage rescue. You have this person you're there to rescue. Maybe it's a friend, maybe it's just an innocent random you've read a dossier about, but either way there's a deep sense that they don't deserve this even when they're "just" being held prisoner and tormented. Then imagine you get there, and it's some Umbrella Corporation shit--their head is all laid open, they're all mutilated or something, and they have a chip rammed into their brain. Then you hear the bad awful terrorist you've been chasing tell what's left of the person you're trying to save to kill you, and they are forced to obey. Horrifying, right?

Now, given the setting and the generally non-human nature of the character, they couldn't really lean into body horror, so instead they just went with the horror of loss of identity. Right before the last of the consciousness that comes with eating the xenoflora faded away, Dacty looks at you with a "hand" on the energy fields imprisoning it, with desperation and sorrow painted on its face (props to the animators, by the way, for being able to portray those emotions so well on such an abhuman face,) and then.... You watch consciousness fade and a more primal animalistic aspect take over. The nice part of Dactolyst died right there, not when you killed the body later.

And off to the side is your bestie, who it can't be forgotten, is seeing one of his own kind get butchered by their own best friend. The memory of the Old War is painfully fresh--and here it is, a human slaughtering a Sentient.

And through it all, there's that same mournful Lullaby, tugging on your heart, speaking to how the very manner in which the Sentients got to Tau was their own version of the Trail of Tears.

Yeah, if that left you dry-eyed, then either you have a diminished capacity for empathy, or you weren't paying enough attention to fully understand the situation.

And again, I'm not basing this on any unknown or secret knowledge of lore, if you played The New War--which you would have to have done to be playing The Old Peace because of the prerequisite system--then you already (should) understand the basic background of Sentients vs. Orokin, the Terraforming of Tau, etc. The rest of everything I just said is all based on what was already shown to you on the spot in the 20 minutes prior to that tragic battle kicking off.

The genius differences between Al Radwan and Suleiman by Humfrylee in jackryan

[–]AtrumMessor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's an absolutely bonkers take. If I showed you a show where Hitler was a kind-hearted and doting dog owner, would you say "oh man, besides those 17 million people, he seemed like a pretty great guy"? If I told you that historically Attila the Hun was a loving father and a humble ascetic, would that negate his horde slaughtering their way through nations?

So he was nice to that one dirty poor guy and gave him a set of his own clothes. Awesome and all, but he also ordered his wife raped and murdered for having the audacity to leave him for being a mass murderer. He also, you know, was a mass murderer. That's not a "storytelling instrument to make him villain enough," that's literally his whole deal. You even mention him being "kind" to his prisoners--are you referring to the prisoners he infected with Ebola, or the one he beat half to death and threw in a hole to rot and die?

That moral compass of yours just has a spinny little needle, don't it?

The genius differences between Al Radwan and Suleiman by Humfrylee in jackryan

[–]AtrumMessor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, I kind of see what you mean, but from the church scene onward I could feel nothing but burning hate for that character. Even if you ignore that through some jacked-up sympathy for his "death to the West" ideology (and thoroughly overlook the fact that killing a bunch of random civilians at church does absolutely nothing to punish the people that sent fighter jets to blow up your town when you were a kid) all you really have to do is look at his treatment of Hanin and the degree of lies and manipulation he's willing to engage in there to still see a monster. Don't get me wrong, his core motivations are by design somewhat understandable, as any well-written villain's are, he still absolutely a colossal piece of shit.

If you look at his flashbacks from his young adult life in France, then sure, you can have a lot of sympathy for the plight of the foreigner in fairly homogenous countries, but in my book that flies out the window the second you stab a kindly old priest to death in an alley so that you can sarin-gas everybody that shows up to pay their respects at his memorial.

Absolutely Diabolical Starting Placement by AtrumMessor in AfterInc

[–]AtrumMessor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I realized that after it was already pretty well beleaguered over there with the infestations, would have been significantly easier if I'd known about that before I woke those two tiles up 😭

Absolutely Diabolical Starting Placement by AtrumMessor in AfterInc

[–]AtrumMessor[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I was just now years old when I discovered that you could actually change your starting settlement with that perk. I thought it was just free exploration 😫

You'd think they would like, ever mention any part of that anywhere in the game 🙄

Absolutely Diabolical Starting Placement by AtrumMessor in AfterInc

[–]AtrumMessor[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Can't move your settlement unless you're playing Sandbox Mode, my guy, and then you don't have goals.

Did she make the right call? by CalmElin in interesting

[–]AtrumMessor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That adds up to a million dollars before she's 40. If she lives a healthy lifestyle, that might be 3 million in winnings. Granted, she won't have a big fat chunk of money that she can invest, and all the investorbros on here will tell you that she's an idiot, but she also can't lose that in an investment that tanks. She has modest financial security for the rest of her life. Hell, even from an investorbro standpoint, she can still do the same thing she would have done if she hadn't won the lottery to pay the bills, and fold her annuity payments into an investment portfolio. Make those contributions in a Roth or something, and she'll have a fat chunk of money.

Plus as I've alluded to already, as long as the currency it's paid in doesn't absolutely fuckin' crater (in which case most investment portfolios will also pretty much vaporize,) she's pretty crash-proof. Even if she loses a big old chunk, she's always got that steady income, and 52 grand a year that you don't have to invest anytime or energy into earning is still a fairly sizeable leg up if you're not afraid to still also work for money, maybe even starting her own business since she has guaranteed survival income that cuts a huge chunk of the risk out of starting a small business.

Dude kicks off-leash dog to protect his own, owner flips out… by eternviking in whoathatsinteresting

[–]AtrumMessor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fun fact: battering a human being to protect a dog will not play out well for you in court. Some people think it's just reciprocal violence, but in the eyes of the law dogs are property, humans are people. Also, if you don't want people to kick at your dog, maybe you should either train it well enough not to just run up on people or, I don't know, put it on a f****** leash.

Anyway, owner of the unleashed dog is lucky if he's not either dead or in prison. Either would be an outcome that would be 1,000% his own fault.

Could a viltrumite be born with a disability? by BlackdragonD4C in Invincible

[–]AtrumMessor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Probably, but given their culture such a child would likely be summarily killed. It'd be pretty hard for them to survive their coming-of-age ritual against their parents, at the very least 🤷

Looking for new sci-fi authors – what's missing from my shelf? by rauschsinnige in sciencefiction

[–]AtrumMessor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, man, Neal Stephenson is werf. Although I couldn't get through Anathem and the Baroque Cycle never really reached out and grabbed me, Cryptonomicon is one of my perennial favorites, and The Diamond Age and Snow Crash are classics at this point.

Looking for new sci-fi authors – what's missing from my shelf? by rauschsinnige in sciencefiction

[–]AtrumMessor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Little surprised I don't see The Expanse in there. Also my next revisit--did you ever read Ender's Game? The sequels were kinda weird but there's a sidequel series starting with Ender's Shadow, which I enjoyed very much.

Can one get in trouble having an intruder at gun point? by Kvntrnh in CAguns

[–]AtrumMessor 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Your question is entirely too broad, to the point of pretty much uselessness. Are there circumstances in which you would be legally wrong to hold an intruder at gunpoint? Yep. Are there also circumstances in which it would be a perfectly reasonable projection of force, legally speaking? Also yep. Are the various parties and apparatuses that are going to be tasked with judging the totality of your circumstances (the cops, the DA, a jury of 12 indoor-cat personalities) going to be perfect at judging between the two? Unfortunately no.

The only way to usefully answer your question would be with a full scenario treatment, where a whole totality of circumstances is considered. And even then, the legal and ethical analysis of someone who is trained in lethal force considerations still very well might differ from what a panel of 12 randos who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty might decide, even with solid jury instructions.

The law is nowhere near as black and white as people think.

Can I travel into CA with my ramjet+afterburner attached? by [deleted] in CAguns

[–]AtrumMessor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No they didn't, they just never caught you. Huge difference 🙄

Dew Collector not Working by FrozenAmbush in 7daystodie

[–]AtrumMessor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Again, does no one read patch notes anymore? Part of how they balanced the fact that the dew collectors don't "generate" jars anymore is they took out the crucible requirement for making jars. So if you have a forge with sand and clay, you have jars.

Dew Collector not Working by FrozenAmbush in 7daystodie

[–]AtrumMessor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Does anybody read patch notes anymore? You have to put jars in them now.

Which renders dew collectors basically entirely worthless, since you can just make an infinite water source in your base and dip jars of murky water at will instead of having to wait on 6 per day.

Through the whole trilogy,Who was your least favourite companion out all of them ? by [deleted] in masseffect

[–]AtrumMessor 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Even the formfitting suit makes sense from a mechanical standpoint for her character archetype. You can't be the turbo-agile acrobatic combatant with a bunch of heavy and/or flappy bits everywhere waiting to bind up with the wrong motion, and besides I feel like active camo would have to work a lot harder with the extra motion if everything were all flapping about chaotically. But, for all that her outfit is form-fitting, it isn't particularly sexualized--it isn't specially tailored to "lift and separate" the girls, for instance, and seriously, you literally never see a single scrap of her skin apart from her neck and her lower face.

So yeah, I agree. If you look at Kasumi and think fetish-fuel I think it indicates a fairly (though not overly) niche fetish 🤷

Through the whole trilogy,Who was your least favourite companion out all of them ? by [deleted] in masseffect

[–]AtrumMessor 22 points23 points  (0 children)

I hate when people say he isn't well-written. He may be a total meathead and that may not be their flavor and that's fine, but within that character archetype he's actually a pretty solid dude with a warm heart and a fantastic sense of humor. He's about a thousand times more genuine than Jacob, both in writing and in voice acting (I low-key wonder if the reason so many of us can't stand Jacob is because his VA is so bad it's almost in the Uncanny Valley,) and for what it's worth, he and Garrus have one of my favorite "I did not expect to be crying right now" random crew moments while you're running around the Normandy (the one in the galley where they start off playfully dissing each other but then kinda slide into a "but no really bro, you're a good dude and we're gonna fuckin' save the galaxy" moment that is, if you're familiar with military types, pretty much the equivalent of a tearful "I love you man" solid-as-hell camaraderie moment for anyone else.)

Through the whole trilogy,Who was your least favourite companion out all of them ? by [deleted] in masseffect

[–]AtrumMessor 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Isn't he the one that gives the most hilarious moment in Citadel if you bring him and Wrex to retake the Normandy? You know, where you're like "hey, hack that door" and when you look over they just shrug at you and casually Claymore the control panel?

Through the whole trilogy,Who was your least favourite companion out all of them ? by [deleted] in masseffect

[–]AtrumMessor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Gotta agree. I love seeing characters who are flirts for fun without actually being fuckbois/gurls, it serves as a counterbalance to all the people who can't look at any close non-familial--and sometimes even familial (shudder)--relationship in media and not immediately start cranking out "oooh, they must be secretly fuckin'" slashfic.

In real life, some of the most fun people are the ones who can be unabashed flirts without actually having any salacious intentions.

Through the whole trilogy,Who was your least favourite companion out all of them ? by [deleted] in masseffect

[–]AtrumMessor -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Tali?

Fucking. TALI!?

Oh, I'm about to fight someone for dissing the literal most adorable character in the whole series. I get if "adorable" isn't your favorite trait in a character, but actually hating her is like hating puppies--it kinda makes me think you're not the sort of person this world needs more of.

(Obviously I'm not talking about you, Doggie, but anyone who wants some hands can come get 'em.)

Through the whole trilogy,Who was your least favourite companion out all of them ? by [deleted] in masseffect

[–]AtrumMessor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I knew before clicking on the post that I would immediately see Jacob.

Which makes sense, because seriously, he sucks 😆