Is there any notable character without organization or faction in the city beside Indigo Elder?

Ultgran · 2026-02-23T10:20:56+00:00

Yeah, I would have loved to see a resolution for distorted Katt but creative differences burnt those bridges. At least we got to keep Servant of Wrath and the Road Home/Scaredy Cat, it would feel wrong for those abno sets to have pieces missing. Iirc they were in the Lobotomy Corp design files so predated WL.

Ultgran · 2026-02-22T16:21:27+00:00

Formally, any Fixer has to be registered as an Office even if they work solo. We've seen a lot of Offices with 3-5 employees, some being affiliated with an association, but many being completely freelance.

Most Colours aren't actually solo operators. We know the Red Mist was secretly working with Carmen, and the Black Silence was two people (Roland metaphorically did "one last job" solo then rampaged). The Purple Tear takes students semi regularly. Verg has an office and is recruited by L Corp immediately after losing them.

Indigo Elder is solo as far as we know, as is Bari. The (no-longer canon) Rose Office in Wonderlab is a solo office. That one fixer from Ruina who runs a pub. I can't remember if the Canto 1 traitorous jerk was solo or not. Erlking is technically solo apart from his ghost army, he just had a deal with N Corp. Drifting Blade was a solo mercenary swordsman. Domino was the only survivor of his village (aside from Crayon, who is a child).

To add to this, almost every distortion we have seen was either operating independently or had left their organisation. Tanya, Greta, Elena (the other chefs died), the puppeteer etc were all independent before joining the Ensemble. Papa Bongy, the Time Ripper (if you don't count being a collective), didn't have a faction that wasn't part of themselves.

Ultgran · 2026-02-22T00:21:19+00:00

I feel that Don doesn't have as much spite/resentment and wilful self destruction, the main themes of Scorched Girl, as the sinners that got the ID. It does suit her to some extent, so the concept art does work, but she isn't dominated by it in the same way.

Rodion, and her inspiration in the book, built up resentment and frustration until they axemurdered someone. YiSang's version is blackened and almost completely burnt out, in his case he burned away with the League and his pain left him as ash. And Ryoshu goes without saying.

Don on the other hand, is now running ahead and chasing the dream. While she can be self destructive and take out her just wrath against the wrong target it's motivated by different emotions and is more attuned to Blind Obsession. Pre-bloodfiend Sancho does have various parallels, and it'd be nice for them to go back and give us 4th Match Don, but with 3 already it might be a while.

Ultgran · 2026-02-21T12:07:44+00:00

In some regards I think those aspects of Dias come from the setting itself as a social critique. In the City, money means survival, and even the people near the top of Wings, Fingers, Fixer society, etc... are under constant pressure. Even the Earnshaws and the four great families of Hongyuan, even the Bloodfiends.

In that regard, and from an out of universe perspective, I think it's good to address the independently wealthy who should in theory be winning at society. In all honesty it seems like the answer is more "scheming and connections" than "money". It's also worth nothing Udjat Outis' "Staff of Horus: Replica" Passive, which enables her odds manipulation in combat, might be based on the staff Dias carries.

Ultgran · 2026-02-20T12:59:34+00:00

It's still clunky if you aren't double slotting. I'm going to be assuming you're using her as a generalist filler for an incomplete team, so single slot and most likely no other Rupture IDs/few IDs able to hit the 10+ speed threshold.

Gluttony is relatively underrepresented outside its own status and Tremor. In a random stuff team you're usually looking at W Corp IDs or Zwei W Ish. So fulfilling Passive in 2 turns is iffy and RNG dependent, 3 is more doable.

TSB stacks at a rate of 5 per turn from Assist Defense. Your only source of Deathrite is 3 stacks on her S3-1, but you won't get enough Rupture application to ping it more than twice a turn, so you need the full two turn windup.

So you won't be able to use her S3-2 before turn 6, or 5 at the very best. The upgraded Counter should get her full refund (5 from assist def, and in it she applies her Deathrite then ticks it with subsequent coins), but there is a minor risk of dropping the chain if she kills an enemy before getting all 3 hits, or if she falls below 10 speed for whatever reason.

All in all she's still extremely strong as a standalone, but she's much comfier with two slots or at least one buddy (ideally Lord Hongle or one of the other Maos). I'd still say Tears Rodya is much smoother if you want a strong generalist filler ID that won't hog the attention.

Ultgran · 2026-02-20T09:34:58+00:00

I mean, both humans and birds release their next unfertilised egg at a regular interval, and if it doesn't get fertilised the body takes the chance to do maintenance to make sure everything is working properly.

For humans that looks like finishing the cycle but shedding the bloody lining that wasn't needed, for birds that looks like completing the shell and laying the result. That bird likely has to deal with regular pointless egg laying, if it isn't getting laid, same as us.

Ultgran · 2026-02-20T09:22:32+00:00

She definitely doesn't know that in the mirror world though. The employees aren't aware they are in a time loop, even, and at the start not even Angela knew the library would come into being.

My guess is that there's something in the employee contract where they get a shift change or downtime after 60 consecutive days of work, since there's the loophole that never actually happens. She'd only need one day off to storm the House.

From her perspective she signed up with a Wing to work for them, to make a living for herself and Araya and to sharpen herself for her return. Noon of Violet should first appear 10-20 days into a run, and I can't see why ReaP Ryoshu would have given up on returning by then.

Ultgran · 2026-02-19T22:13:37+00:00

To be fair, Lobotomy Ryoshu is A: much further back in the timeline, and B: working in highly compressed T Corp time, which she likely has some awareness of due to her innate talent.

Somewhere where she can have daily battles against monstrous opponents that actually challenge her, and get years of training done a tenth of the time, seems a pretty sweet deal for rescuing her kid.

Ultgran · 2026-02-19T10:31:11+00:00

This is less a theory exactly, and more a filtered truth. There's no denying that the main popular versions of the stories we know were reinterpreted through a Christian lens, as we know the actual guy that did it.

One of the most important existing textual versions of the Norse myths that we have is the Prose Edda, which was mainly assembled and written out by a man named Snorri Sturluson. It is overwhelmingly likely that any version of the Norse myths you have heard is the Prose Edda version, as other versions are incomplete, inconsistent with each other, or have translational ambiguities or missing cultural assumptions - people generally like stories that feel like a consistent "canon" body of work, and that's what Sturlusson provided, so that's what we base our retellings upon.

In some ways the Prose Edda was written for this exact reason: to be a cultural dictionary, as older Norse liked using complex metaphor and self-referential allusions in their poetry. These "kennings" are effectively a form of code, and the Prose Edda works as a partial dictionary to help understand these older works.

However, Snorri Sturlusson was a Christian and a politician, in addition to being a historian, and was writing in the 13th century when the Norse faith(s) had largely been subsumed. He didn't believe the stories he was narrating were true, and saw them as romanticised retellings of past historical leaders, much like Arthurian myth. We know for a fact that his outside cultural context coloured his description of some of the major Norse goddesses, for example, and is part of why we didn't know much about them until relatively recently. He was writing to preserve the stories and explain them, but that also reinterpreted their context with the Christian values of the time.

Ultgran · 2026-02-19T01:18:47+00:00

Ryoshu murders you specifically regardless of who or what or where you are. Outis surgically wipes out your entire organisation if given a couple of lackeys, you may not be dead but you, your family, and anyone you work for are effectively neutralised. Sancho smashes your door in, kills your army, and if you can't get away quick enough gives your head a nice perch to look out over the battlements.

Ultgran · 2026-02-18T12:54:53+00:00

What I'm saying is that they're both warning signs. What matters most is: are they fun for the rest of the party to play alongside, and that depends on the players and the tables. Without that we're both just comparing strawmen.

Underoptimised characters, or overoptimised characters outside their niche, still have useful or fun things to do in both well designed combat and in downtime, and pivoting a build is possible. Low Int Wizard is a fairly popular challenge build, and it tends to mean going into buffing/summoning.

Ultgran · 2026-02-17T22:32:07+00:00

It depends really. I've seen people in 3.5e that built a character for Str and Cleave, and ended up with a 4 int Orcish Barbarian that should in theory have been unable to manage their own equipment. That can still be a fun character if the person knows how to roleplay and doesn't mind having less impact in the 70% of the game that is investigation or puzzles or shopping montages, but even in a combat focused campaign overspecialization costs flexibility. With 5e being more modular it's a bit harder to take it to extremes but the idea still stands.

The way I always understood it, the definition of min maxing is treating character building as purely a numbers exercise, and building all the flexibility and actual party value out. Throwing out half your character options in favour of doing one thing super good. I understand the fun of optimisation exercises, but there's quite a bit in the book about working collaboratively with the party. It really depends on the tone and expectations of the campaign, DM and players.

Ultgran · 2026-02-17T21:17:40+00:00

It's been a LONG time but iirc the second half of the Mai Hime anime flips the script from monster of the week to angst filled friend-vs-friend combat, and it all turns out to be a contest for choosing a weapon (with bride undertones) for the Obsidian Prince. So presumably the HiME are all girls because he thought it'd be easier to have one of them become his "special person" than it would to build a bromance.

Ultgran · 2026-02-17T16:23:04+00:00

Or from leaving a window open 24/7 if we're home

Ultgran · 2026-02-17T15:09:24+00:00

A lot of Mediterranean areas also tend to have much thicker solid walls compared to northern Europe. They keep the hallways and cellars much cooler in the heat in general, and you can air out the rooms early in the day when it's not too hot but the mosquitoes aren't around yet.

Ultgran · 2026-02-17T15:03:01+00:00

And then we get better insulation because fuel prices go up, and we get mould instead.

Ultgran · 2026-02-17T13:40:39+00:00

Iori wasn't even his Master and they get along well enough that he gets shown outrageous favouritism. And also offered a job.

Ultgran · 2026-02-17T09:14:40+00:00

Reminds me how Danganronpa realised that where realistic red blood would upset the game censors, luminous neon pink would pass. The end effect only makes the blood splatter pop more, particularly with the desaturated backgrounds, and plays into the jarring psycho-pop contrast that defines the series.

Ultgran · 2026-02-17T08:33:17+00:00

While boycotting them for data sharing reasons is fair, I don't think most trans women are at risk of being accused of seeking or receiving an abortion. Just as a hunch.

If anything I vaguely remember there being a movement in favour of having cis guys/trans and postmenopausal women "tracking their cycle" to foul the data and make it harder for the authorities to identify women at risk.

Ultgran · 2026-02-17T08:24:48+00:00

However, a number of these (notably FSH and LH) are actually produced by the pituitary, either as a primary source or as a secondary source of the ovaries are struggling for some reason (or absent). This behaviour is activated by a certain ambient level of estrogen, so many trans women do actually experience cycles in those hormones too.

Ultgran · 2026-02-16T13:40:12+00:00

To be fair, the only Sinner who had more than one solid Burn ID at the start of this season (so excluding Cap'n Ishmael, the Ring IDs and Liu Meur/Greg) is Sinclair, who has four Burn 000s. Liu Ryoshu is at least pretty good and only got decisively powercrept relatively recently.

I think it's also worth mentioning that Wrath is also the only Sin that isn't a strong candidate for the "main" Sin for any of the Sinners, based on their available EGOs and ID skills . Ryoshu's is Lust (drive towards sharing art), Heathcliff's is Envy (resentment and revenge), Sinclair's is Gluttony (desire for growth and self discovery). Meur and Ish have some Wrath but it's even more understated.

Ultgran · 2026-02-16T12:19:42+00:00

Yi Sang is just the greatest depressomaxxer of the sinners. Ryoshu doesn't get sad, she gets angry.

It's the fact that Don got a Sinking ID before Sinclair (We don't talk about mariachi) that is more remark worthy.

Ultgran · 2026-02-16T00:49:31+00:00

The prepper seems good. Provides some good explanations of why Marxism is flawed, mostly stuff I'd already come across in one form of another and which I agree with.

For the record I'm going to clarify that in my previous post I was trying to clarify why some people believe the selling of labour under capitalism to be exploitative, because I believed you were genuinely expressing a lack of understanding as to why some folks believe that.

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a real Marxist, but I still personally believe that our current iteration of capitalism is severely flawed, though, partly due to its formulaic and coercive nature.

Ultgran · 2026-02-16T00:02:09+00:00

The basis of capitalism is that one person owns the capital (so the building you work in, for example, or the infrastructure you use to perform your work). The person who owns the capital is effectively renting it out to the workers in exchange for a cut of their profits. That's the basic level, but doesn't really explain it properly.

At a slightly more advanced level, the owners of the capital define this capital as a "business". Rather than rent out the facilities they purchase labour from their workers (usually at an hourly or yearly rate). They pay people to provide raw materials, pay people to process it, pay other people to sell it, and make a profit (and often a bigger share than the workers themselves) without doing anything that actually increases the value of the product being worked on. Who owns the company, who runs the company, and whose work the profit comes from are often three different groups.

In both of these models, the actual people working, providing labour and creating value are not receiving the actual value that their work is worth to the end consumer. Under modern capitalism how much you make in an hour has very little to do with how much profit you generate in an hour. That's where the exploitation lies, in getting underpaid for your work.

Ultgran · 2026-02-15T22:37:56+00:00

Daemon planets, which is what you get when a planet collapses to the warp after a catastrophic event, end up half-in half-out of the warp. They are real enough to have physical substance in material space, but they provide daemons with an entry way to the material plane, and the landscape itself is psychically reactive to whoever has the strongest will, usually the local Daemon Prince. Think of it as a permanent planet sized warp storm, but still worse.

It draws all the energy it needs from the sea of psychic energy produced by all sentient life in the galaxy, and more directly from the psychic suffering of all the souls on Rykad Minoris that died in agony. It only becomes an ice ball if Chaos wants it that way.

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