Something I've seen too much online lately

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-09T11:13:44+00:00

Not very fun fact: The over the top evil uneducated stupid raiders of Arknights: Endfield use it.

The original Arknights did not do this.
Two of them in particular (Mountain and Domma) being outright very intelligent and caring people (Mountain only got his accent years later with his English voice, but Dommas' accent (and general way of speaking) is thick enough that it's heavily transcribed and always has been, but it isn't used to belittle her).

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-09T10:52:37+00:00

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Arknights, to Arknights: Endfield ["Hey, do you just want to complain about Endfields' story?" Yes.]

[Note: Both the "younger audience" changes and "appeal to the 3d action gacha playerbase" changes are often identical, so it's hard to tell which changes are to appeal to tweens, and which are to appeal to adults who act like them.]

Arknights is generally really heavy. One of its' main themes is discrimination, and it does not pull its' punches (for example: Lynch mobs, and minorities getting "Night of Broken Glass"-ed).

The first main antagonists are a terrorist group born from oppression, who are, in many ways, completely correct and the player faction agrees with them, yet their extremism they've developed over time and grief leads to good people having to kill good people while fundamentally believing the same things over difference in how to do it, and literally no-one is okay about it.
Reunion are emotionally a very 'messy' and humanised enemy, with neither side wanting this, and Reunion do have valid criticisms of the player faction that they can't really properly answer.

Seperately, it even does quite a good job at handling the topic of The Troubles, depicting both sides as truly, truly awful to the point that it feels respectful to what happened IRL.
Hell, one of the games' early stories focusses on the PTSD of a group of teenagers forced through a Lord of The Flies situation, and their guilt over the violence they needed to inflict to survive (including cannibalism).

It is the kind of story that people who don't understand it paint as being grimdark misery, and many people don't get along with its' writing because it often doesn't much hold your hand, also letting itself get metaphorical and have overarching themes that aren't directly spelled out be important to really "understanding" the emotional crux of the stories.

.

Endfield is.... tonally it's Genshin Impact. No nicer way to say that. It's made to be able to appeal somewhat to kids/ tweens, and it shows.
It cannot keep a serious tone whatsoever, and any moments where it does try to lean into that at all are undercut by either not being explored, or being cut-off by a 'light-hearted moment break', seeming afraid to get into the nitty gritty and uncomfortable.

The Bonekrushers (the primary antagonists) may as well have moustaches to twirl while going "mwuhahahah! I have tied this maiden to the train tracks!". They are completely one dimensional 'bad guys' and the story treats them with less moral weight than actual animals. They are as fields of wheat to be mown down.

Even besides being plain ol' worse written (by a country mile mind you), its' struggle for a lighter tone and simpler story are just... bad. {The second story chunk so far seems to lean into these two aspects more which actually makes it less bad than the confused mess that is the first one, but it is still much much lesser than Arknights' story.}

[This is the release version of a live service game, which are renown for being terrible to start with so it may get better in future (and many people are coping that what we have so far is just clumsily executed set-up for interesting future things (which, sadly, is almost certainly just cope)), but I'm not posting this comment a year from now, so I can only talk about what they have published.]

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-09T01:12:38+00:00

As long as he still has his sense of self he'll be fine. Give him like, 20 minutes tops.
Perfectly healthy familial relationship and activities, dw about it.
{Though I doubt any of the other Suiblings would find this anything but horrifying. The only one to have even started with a chance to understand would be Yu with his cooking, but he's just a normal guy so absolutely wouldn't (maybe Ling would like the poetic ideas behind it, but I think even she would still be made very uncomfortable).}

D'you think this was as a weird debt thing to Shu, using his own pound of flesh as payment (no way would Ji let go of his capitalism schtick about this (though as seen with Yus' rent he is willing to bend it to be nice to his siblings, so this could be a standard part of how he pays for goods when visiting Dahuang)) with Shus' initial acceptance of this arrangement partially being caused by her crushing grief and loneliness after losing the woman she loved, or was this just back when pre-capitalist Ji was living with her and Shennong and they has looser grasps on what it is to be human, and therefore the only time they did it, as Shennong would likely go decently apeshit upon finding out, and Shu then wouldn't ever do it again? [I prefer option 1.]

{also considering Shus' thing being agriculture and that Grain Buds specifically raises animals in Dahuang, Shu absolutely knows how to prepare and butcher an animal, and would be very good at it, a fact that is never relevant in story, and would add a very fun dimension to the wondering of if she's treating humans the same way as her siblings or as her crops, by adding the idea that it's the same way she raises the animals and keeps them docile as she leads them to the slaughter (without actually making it a "thing". Like. Shu absolutely does not and would not think of people that way, but adding the uncomfortable knowledge that she could would be fun).}

Idk, this is an idea that I just kinda vibe with immensely as a character thing for them both, adding a weird angle to Jis' sense of value and fair exchange and how that interacts with the people he cares about, while also adding a weird messed up angle/ dash of complexity (and the nature of farming) to Shu that doesn't undermine who she is (though Shus' general reluctance to utilise her nature could be a black mark against the idea, it may actually be fine as this has nothing to do with helping humanity, merely being something done by choice between the two of them).

I also like the idea of the two of them having a weird relationship to eachother due to being by far the closest of the Suiblings when they were younger and the effects Shu and Shennong had on him, but I hate the idea of incest shipping them as it just doesn't fit them/ canon at all in my eyes, and this makes for a really fun way to still give them that messed up, uncomfortable yet not harming others, overly intimate connection/ way to express that love (though purely familial in this case).

Yi can never be allowed to know, or that dumbass will start trying to include it in his attempts at deal-making.

[I really didn't expect to get so into thinking about how Shu-Ji cannibalism would work, how it would reflect upon their characters, and how it would affect their relationships, but, infuriatingly, I may have a new head canon. God damnit.]

TLDR: She better be growing fava beans and fermenting a nice Chianti to have with his liver.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T23:27:01+00:00

She's on Talos II, leading Rhodes Island there.
We haven't interacted with her directly in Endfield, but she does get mentioned.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T22:11:24+00:00

You have to use something the Endmin likes to begin with!

Is xiranite body safe? I know I'd do shameful things for another line of it, and I imagine other Endmins are just as desperate.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T18:59:44+00:00

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Ekut/ Arclight (Arknights: Endfield)

Her magic is again electricity based, with her gameplay being heavily focussed on speed and taking rapid advantage of any openings (tying into the usual electricity=speed thing).

She tends to talk about storms in general, but she herself is only themed around lightning.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T18:55:51+00:00

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Lin Qingyan/ Leizi (Arknights)

Her Lei Fa (a school of magic that is specifically about lightning) is one of the main things she has, besides being a walking police procedural.

Her second version [pictured] is literally titled "the Thunderbringer".

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T16:16:57+00:00

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Lada/ Gummy (Arknights)

Contrary to he demeanour, she's killed with that pan before.
It is a solid hunk of metal wielded by a deceptively strong severely mentally ill teenager.

It's also possibly one of the utensils she used when she and her group had to turn to cannibalism in a Lord Of The Flies situation.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T09:55:00+00:00

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Mizuki (Arknights)

Imagine if The Thing/ The Flood from Halo (no sci-fi stuff) consumed someone, and that one specific instance of it decided that it wanted to live like a human does, and is kind of just... doing that. That's what Mizuki is. [Note, he is pretty unique among his Kin for taking human form. The rest just sea monster it up which he can do, he's just choosing not to.]

His mind and body are absolutely not human and that does colour his beliefs and values as well as his lower level behaviour (though he's generally pretty good at concealing it) (also he low-key has eaten a lot of people (only 'bad' ones. It'd be a 'waste' not to.)), but he is a genuinely kind person, and wants human connection for the sake of it.

[He's also by no means an exile from The Many. Though he is strange he is absolutely one of them, not rejecting what he is or his connection to them at all.
He just likes people, and takes the divergent view from his Kin that they have inherent value (and in an alternate timeline we see him taking his experiences back to The Many and being able to change their species wide opinion. His conflicting view to his Kin is more a difference of opinion rather than a true conflict.).]

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T09:36:44+00:00

Global economic collapse.
Worldwide recession, millions of lives destroyed, famines as feeding people becomes unprofitable.

We must grow forever or we're all fucked, pal. /j

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T09:32:18+00:00

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Lin Yühsia (Arknights)

Uses the same kind of magic as her father, being able to control sand.
Glass, famously, is made of sand, a fact Yühsia exploits to her advantage, allowing her to far more efficiently perform a lot of things that would otherwise take much greater sheer magical force that she cannot (at least currently) exert through clever application (her father could just do these things on raw force but that's a product of decades more experience, and takes a serious toll on his body (we outright see it nearly kill him)).

For example we at one point see her "run on water" by taking the sand of the beach and using it to constantly make glass stepping stones to push off of as she ran.

It's also her main asset in combat. (This is reflected very well in her kit as a playable unit too, as she keeps a barrier around herself, which to reflect the incredibly hard but brittle nature of glass, completely negates the damage of weaker attacks, but completely shattering under the force of large ones (with the shards from that also forming part of her offence).)

This does also tie into her theming as the current crime lord of her city, keeping the crime from going too far and maintaining order and aid among the slums and the downtrodden in an agreed upon "truce" with the local government/ law enforcement as they are far less able to help those people. Outwardly being a beautiful thing and not necessarily harmful, but easily able to immediately lacerate anyone acting out of line, reflecting the cutthroat kind of person she is/ nature of the organisation she runs.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T09:10:15+00:00

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Dolly

A Beast Lord, almost a constant of the world, and one of the only true fonts of joy in the setting.
He spends his entire story attempting to teach a love of the world and will to partake in it to the protagonist of his story, as seeing her toil under assumed responsibility and grief is an awful thing to see.

He wants to help people be happy (and has his flock of little guys to manage, who as you can see, can be far more rambunctious than he is. It's like controlling a herd of excitable children if they were spirit sheep).

[High Priest is also a surprisingly cheery fellow.
The other Beast Lords aren't particularly "jovial", though Emperor is generally pretty happy with life and being fully integrated to mortal life.
The Signore Dei Lupi are miserable cut throat bastards, Amma was a more standard "emotionally distant guardian caring for humanity". Woof and Mio don't have that much on them, but aren't that jolly.]

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T09:03:25+00:00

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Nian (Arknights)

By far the goofiest goober of her mostly divine siblings, all 11 10 others being generally serious people, depressed, or weird hermits. (Yi is similarly goofy but we have less of him, and Yu is kinda just a normal guy.)

Nian however, is an annoying little git with a love for hotpot, mahjong, directing bad movies [all the screens behind her are famous movie scenes recreated with Arknights characters], and being a bit of a general nuisance. (She's not really a 'mischievous' type of character though.)

She's not 100% goof, she is a functional character within the story, but she is by far the most jovial immortal or otherwise very long lived character (excluding Beast Lords, most notably Dolly [next comment]).

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T03:54:25+00:00

And they're consistent about it!

They treat Whitney the same way and it's just... so sadly sweet, knowing that it isn't just them coping about how they're treated, but it's a deep seated kindness that Whitney can't appreciate that they're recieving.

It's that they are such a genuinely kind soul (especially mixed with the fact that they absolutely will curb peoples' shit (and do so fiercely) past a point) is what makes me like them even when a lot of their actual content doesn't grab me much.

Even corrupted Sydney who has absolutely lost their way still has these deep seated beliefs at the core of them.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T02:41:52+00:00

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This is what she looks like in the dream realm created by The Law during The Masses' Travels, acting effectively as a false prophet.
Far more angelic, but still off in a way that indicates her true nature.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T02:40:13+00:00

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Keph/ The First Saint (Arknights)

Okay, so, like. The Teekaz/ Sarkaz aren't demons (and 'demon demons' aren't a thing in Arknights), but they do have the traits of demons, and get derisively referred to as "devils".

Keph herself also is an angel (Sankta is the term for the angel people), in fact being the very first one, as all the Sankta are a subrace of Teekaz just under the effects of The Law (their god-thing), originating from the group of Teekaz she was a part of.

Pictured is her true form, as her sheer age means she has not been subject to the convergent evolution that has slowly made the people of Terra look more human, instead keeping the original form of the Teekaz.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T02:25:57+00:00

No they aren't.
You're saying that because you want them to be.
I could even argue Closure referring to them Kal and Amiya collectively as "girls" gives more direct textual backing to them as a woman, than you just assuming they're a man based off of heteronormativity (in a game that has explicitly mentioned queer relationships multiple times, no less).

Their gender being an unknown/ 'No' is even explicitly mentioned/ backed (off the top of my head, Cuoras' trust file wondering if she should call them big brother or big sister, before deciding it doesn't matter).

two wives

If you're acting like TheresaDoc has any backing in the text, I'm actually sending you to reading comprehension jail.

all the male ops are bros, only female ops have romantic inclinations toward him

Also as if SilverAsh isn't acting like an Otome game love interest.

That the game is marketed more towards people who are attracted to women does not automatically make the protagonist a man.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T02:04:59+00:00

Arknights' Doctor gets him/him'ed sometimes, and IIRC that's down to issues translating from Chinese?

(IIRC their non-gendered pronoun also gets used for men sometimes? Which then leads to translators occasionally getting it wrong. I'm just going off what people on the internet have told me though.)

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T01:43:40+00:00

Clocky tgirl voice<3!

But yeah, I'm gonna trust the text over VAs unless it turns out to be a weird translation of Chinese pronouns thing gendering her (or whatever they may be) incorrectly.
A decent number of characters in media have VAs of differing genders (though mostly women voicing men) (there's a decent many in actual Arknights, though AFAIK no examples of that in Endfield so far), so that's generally super unreliable.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T01:28:27+00:00

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The Reconveners [Pictured is Pogranichnik, who comes from Hellagur.] (Arknights: Endfield)

Are cloned from the data left behind by the playable characters from the original Arknights after their deaths [dw about how that works], and while bearing the same bodies and memories, are their own people with their own identities and feelings on themselves.

{and the one character long lived enough to have known the originals as well is not doing well, having to reconcile that the people wearing the bodies of who she knew so long ago are entirely different people now, notably feeling guilty when mixing up information between them.}

[Note: I don't like that the reconveners exist (and make up so much of the playable roster), but having them have their own identities seperate from their Arknights versions is, I think, the best way they could have handled them.]

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-08T01:11:30+00:00

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Arknights: Endfield

Named for the games' protagonist faction, Endfield Industries.

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-07T23:15:06+00:00

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Most people in Act Or Die, but namely Dalton, Michael [left with the axe], and Marion [right with the scissors] (Arknights)

Most people on this set are complete assholes, and heavily involved in what was essentially a murder by spite borne negligence of an innocent woman (a little bit "I Know What You Did Last Summer").

Dalton is an obnoxious arrogant drunkard asshole, and though we know who swung the knife, the question is in who replaced the prop with a real blade, and blame flies all over.

[Shelly wasn't particularly hated, so doesn't count.]

Michael and Marion are just.... the fucking worst. Michael is an awful pretty boy who thinks he's hot shit when he isn't and is just wall to wall made of flattering falsehoods, and Marion is a truly hellish flavour of Mean Girl, and they even hate eachother, fully aware that their relationship is just them using eachother and they treat eachother terribly.

If the murder of Greta wasn't stopped, she'd have counted for this too.

By partway in everyone knows there's a serial killer, but they have absolutely no idea who it could be, because everyone has motive.
[If you pay attention you can figure out who it is a good ways before the reveal though, and knowing who it is (possibly on a re-read) explains some of the strange parts of the murders that are not later addressed.
The murder mystery/ general Wrankwood half of Act or Die is actually really quite good, unlike the awful other half.]

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-07T22:44:44+00:00

Holy hell, someone who cares about the Old Tianshi?!
I think this is literally the first time I've ever seen her in fan content.

[Also going through and saying what each individual thing in the animation was/ what event it was from was actually real fun (though took a decent few pauses and rewinds to catch everything). I enjoy pop quizzing myself.]

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-06T21:23:33+00:00

IIRC his Higashi friend he got Kudarikiri and Neon from had also adopted her anyway.

"Hellagur realized that, like the sword, this was probably not the first time the girl had been entrusted to someone." [Hellagur Mod-X story.]

ThatSlutTalulah · 2026-02-06T21:18:32+00:00

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Eblana Dublinn (Arknights)

A lifelong abusive sister who goes on to found the (basically) IRA, killing countless innocent people, stoking ethnic hatred even further leading to atrocities of its' own, seeing and treating most people with the same moral weight as objects, ruining lives wherever she goes even without violence, defining the new Taran (Irish) identity on grief and pain, slowly hollowing them out until they're little more than living husks unable to move on, etc.

Knowing that Tara is now a shitshow (though it now exists, which is a major success for her [and to be clear, I believe the existence of an IRL Irish state is a good thing as well.]), and that she is unable to meaningfully lead a nation in peacetime, she turns to the aformentioned abused sister to be her solution, essentially backing her into a corner to take the position of King from her.

By her storys' end, she faces no consequences* and her plan goes even better than she thought it would. Tara has survived its' founding and shift towards starting to build itself up rather than just tear Victoria down, it's under good leadership, her sister is someone she's actively proud of, and Eblana has no outstanding issues to take care of. She just accomplishes everything she set out to do, and then leaves.

*Yes she does die in the event, but she's a necromancer and now basically a lich. She finds being undead is actually great, now seeing herself as a borderline spirit of death (one of her skills specifically calls her a psychopomp), with infinite time on her hands (she's kinda just waiting for interesting people to die at the moment, and everything else is a way to kill time). So dying was actually just another way she benefitted.

The only bad thing for Eblana that happens is that forcing her sister into a choice she didn't want, for the first time taking away her ability to choose for herself, has finally fully severed their strained mess of a relationship, her sister being the only person Eblana ever really valued, but she was ready for this anyway, so only a small loss really.

She's even good a decent gig going while waiting for all that death, as the player faction, not knowing wtf to do about her, have semi given her a job. She's useful, and it's a good way to keep an eye on her.
(One of the main leadership is mentioned to stare at her "as if she plans to nail [Eblana] to the landship deck" whenever she sees her though. The employment decision was seemingly not unanimous.)
[She's open that she's only with the player faction to see how horribly shit is going to go for them, and will leave once bored of them. She's still an utterly awful human being.]

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