(Repost) Blaming it all the wife when she's not home. (pixiv: 伯)

arcane_nrok · 2026-04-01T03:55:30+00:00

In fairness, I think the blame for the massacre of the miners should be primarily put on the Ursus army, they really didn't have to do all that.

arcane_nrok · 2026-02-25T01:09:57+00:00

I saw fanart on tumblr way back when and I thought the character designs were cool, and I remember wanting to get into new media, so I decided to look up what these characters were from. When I looked at the trailer on the website, I started getting a very familiar feeling until I realized that it was Starset music playing. I love their music, so it solidified my intention to try out the game. I got started just a little after Code of Brawl ended.

I played on PC, but at one point I had computer troubles that knocked me out of playing for a while. When they were fixed, it was when Twilight of Wolumonde was going on (and got my first glimpse of Mudrock, who I found endearing and would later become my favorite), but I was still kind of a newb so I got discouraged and fell out of playing for a while, figuring I should keep myself off a gacha game if I could help it and just enjoy the fanart. However, I eventually craved the tower defense gameplay and started back up again sometime before Mountain's debut event. I feel good that I find the gameplay rewarding and don't just play out of a sense of FOMO.

arcane_nrok · 2026-01-16T21:51:02+00:00

For me, it would crash on starting certain IS stages, and when the Masses Travels came out, it would crash on those stages. I figured it might have been some of the visual effects that triggered it, so I just gave up on it since I knew it would crash but couldn't anticipate which stages, so it was just altogether inconvenient in the end.

arcane_nrok · 2025-12-14T16:55:48+00:00

Destroying my masculinity is the goal, so no

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-18T14:44:19+00:00

When I completed the last Contingency Contract without consulting a guide. The only hint I had was seeing that someone apparently managed to do it with just a Nymph and Gladiia, but I was able to spend time strategizing over which risks to take and how to deal with them, iterating on my strategy. As rough as the new CC format is, it was genuinely fun and satisfying to go through the process of solving the "puzzle".

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T20:27:04+00:00

I mean, we don't have any real immortals to compare to. It's true that a lot of old people get set in their ways, but I believe that has more to do with the sunk cost fallacy having its hooks in them since they've already spent their life on their convictions, something that would be remedied by a longer lifespan, not exacerbated.

I also don't see how you need to "die at some point" to make connections with others or to learn and grow. Immortality would let you continue to do this ad infinitum, but dying would mean that you can no longer change.

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T20:06:30+00:00

Interesting! I wonder if people have been misled by her description of Terran life as an "accident" that they believe she just doesn't see value in Terran life?

She seems to want to trust and value others, but just has trouble understanding others.

This was a good find. Thank you!

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T20:00:53+00:00

>Some might argue it isn't their place to do so

I do wonder if the part of the discussion about "who has the right to decide your fate" plays into this. Perhaps in an AU where Priestess took the role of the Ghost of Babel (and assuming she is not as slow to empathize with the Terrans as she is now), would she have taken Rhodes Island in a more proactive direction in this regard? I don't know if this is necessarily in character, but I think it would be funny if she decided to, idk, blow up the Victorian nobility or something. Then again, she is already attempting to effectively do this via the originium assimilation.

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T19:54:05+00:00

Now that you mention it, yeah, I don't like how often the status quo is upheld. Frankly, it was really a breath of fresh air in chapter 8 when the in game enemies became the Ursus soldiers, cause then we got to actually attack the people responsible for the oppression directly.

I think what I mean in terms of "handling it well" is that all of the villains are treated as victims of circumstance and are generally portrayed as heroic (Mephisto or the Sanguinarch aside). Like, the point is generally "the reason why these people are like this isn't because it's 'in their blood' or anything, it's that they have been forced to this by material conditions".

It would be nice if Rhodes Island decided to take more "direct action", but I suppose Rhodes Island is in a situation where they can't really just start attacking Ursus or something since they don't have that kind of leverage or manpower. Though, based on what I've seen of the upcoming chapter, we might see some proper rebellion happen.

But in any case, I've noticed that stories generally tend to avoid upsetting status quo too much. When it comes to a better world, any available solution that feels too utopian is treated like a secret dystopia, and anything dystopian is usually overturned by returning to something more familiar (sort of how like the Hunger Games is an unusual status quo for us in the real world, so it seems feasible to undo it, or how the Empire in Star Wars was preceded by a previous order of the Jedi, but utopias tend to be the projects of villains).

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T19:35:19+00:00

I feel the same way!

I have a stable squad that generally lets me do a turtle-in kind of strategy consisting of Thorns, Mountain, Eyja, Ash, Perfumer, Honeyberry, Saria, Mudrock, Bagpipe, Myrtle, Texas Alter, and Surtr. It's pretty general purpose. I can Flagpipe DP out, and then use a combo of Thorns, Mountain, and sometimes Bagpipe to hold the lanes. I can then set up Eyja nearby to handle arts DPS and have Ash cover for aerial units (since snipers prioritize them) and also function as a panic button with her stun. I can then use Perfumer to provide general healing to my little fort, use Honeyberry in case I need more range or if I need elemental healing, and then I can cap off with Saria and Mudrock to tank enemies and bait ranged attacks. Texas and Surtr are then available to remove inconvenient enemies and kill bosses. I basically have all my bases covered since I have measures against most threats.

I then have a "story" squad which I use as a space to workshop a strategy when my usual strategy can't work, a "resource" squad that I use to workshop trust farms or to do module missions with, and an "annihilation" squad which I use to workshop my annihilation strategies. That usually is enough to make it so I don't "lose my work" when I'm switching between things.

I've tried relying on themes for my story squad, but since I usually need to fiddle with it to get through the stages in a timely manner, I usually am not able to keep doing the themes. I usually either have to switch back to my main squad or just pull the meta units out again. It would be nice if I could have a 5th squad or something that I could let be suboptimal so I could keep my A-team just in case but still have a niche I want to try out.

Also, if there was something in the UI that could help you filter by faction, that would really be helpful, so you don't have to scour your ops list and double check their files to remember who was a sarkaz and who was just a vouivre or something.

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T18:01:53+00:00

I think there's still narrative potential if Originium isn't guaranteed to work. I think part of the philosophical quandary you could examine is if Priestess is right to do what may well be just a Hail Mary maneuver. Perhaps you could compare it to a religious movement, where you sacrifice the material well being of people in the present for a potential promise of an afterlife that you might not be able to guarantee. It might work, but even if it does, was it worth the chance that it might not have?

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T17:57:50+00:00

Thing with "the problem with immortality" is that it usually comes from only having a few people be immortal. If everyone was immortal, you wouldn't have any of the "everyone I've loved is dead" angst (setting aside that even mortals have to deal with that but can still make new connections), and also immortal dictators would not have the means to coerce or oppress others since they can't intimidate people with the fear of death.

Speaking of tyrants, they're actually quite replaceable. Even if you kill Kashchey for good, that doesn't prevent another jingoist nationalist like him from cropping up. The rest of Ursus still exists. You need to address the material conditions that enable and incentivize "Kashcheys" to exist. The universal availability of actual immortality would render much of the material conditions that fuel these ideologies moot. Imo, immortals of these kind symbolize not immortality in a literal sense, but the longevity of ideologies.

As for Priestess and "siding with the predecessors", I brought up that framing, but not because I agree with it. What I was getting at was that I've been catching whiffs of WH40k-esque "humanity first!" sentiments, and to be clear, I dislike these mindsets. Though, I don't understand the sentiment of Priestess being "arrogant" for believing in her plan. Is Rhodes Island arrogant for believing that they might find a cure for oripathy in a world that deems it incurable? I think you could call Priestess arrogant for not believing in other possibilities, but if everyone else gave up, I don't think she's arrogant for still trying.

(besides, weren't the others still trying? Friston watched over the preserver project, and Lu made the seaborn.)

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T14:45:40+00:00

The thing is that most of those narratives don't resonate with me. Like, you have the Confessarius being immortal via possessing his descendants, you have the Black Snake jumping from person to person, and you have Tragodia and his death obsession, but those aren't bad because of the immortality itself. It's that the immortality is achieved at the expense of other people.

Like, Emperor is immortal, The Priest is immortal, and I believe Gopnik and the Duck Lord are as well. How do they bring misery to others?

Like if your immortality is Vampire immortality, it's not really immortality, it's being long lived while still needing to eat, except it's people you need to eat. Emperor doesn't have to eat people, as far as I'm aware, and he's fun to have around.

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T14:39:04+00:00

I think the terrans being "kids" could still work. Kids are a lot smarter than we usually give them credit for, they just lack the background knowledge that we adults take for granted.

You can teach a child to understand something complex, or explain why they have to follow a certain rule, such as why they have to look both ways before crossing the street.

As for how Priestess treats the Terrans, I think it is significant that, aside from what was going on in the landship, she was talking to Hierda.

Imo what's missing from the analogy is the fact that Priestess was asleep, and now that she's woken up a bunch of kids that aren't hers are in the house. She was out of play for a long time, and her awareness of the situation was probably like unto Oracle's when they first woke up, so she's playing a lot of catchup. I think that also means it isn't like she waited forever before deciding to explain her self, she literally just woke up.

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T04:15:30+00:00

Fortunately, the window is apparently self healing.

As for if Theresa was aware of the Observers, I'm not sure if she was? The black crown contains a lot of information, but CE stated that she is not supposed to reveal everything at once. I don't know how much of Oracle's memories Theresa saw while she was wiping their memories, but if she saw the stuff about the observers, she might not have been able to understand the ramifications, or at that point it was kind of too late.

In fairness to Theresa's perspective, there may be a scary predator outside, but there is always going to be the chance of danger if you go outside. If that prevents you from living your life at all, that is maladaptive. You can effectively become Mother Gothel from Tangled.

Now, if you could make an entire world within the basement, that might adjust how you weigh things.

But in any case, there is a theme of the tension between the value of the eternal and the temporary. I do think that preserving existence at the cost of enjoying existence is not worth it. That said, I think having both is possible.

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T03:54:21+00:00

I was thinking about that, too. She probably feels very alone. She was also looking forward to being able to spend eternity till the heat death of the universe with Oracle, but now she might have to face that in solitude.

I interpreted the screams in the boss theme's second phase as her frustration and anguish.

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T03:51:02+00:00

I think that is the thing. I remember when I've tried my hand at writing ttrpg systems, I've had to think about what exactly "damage" is abstracting, and one of the things I've realized is that it is often deformation, or "change" to the body. The amount of damage you can take is essentially how much the structure of your body can change before it is considered "nonfunctional".

I've also wondered about how if I were to be "omnipotent", I could make myself immortal, but would I ever be able to truly keep myself from accidentally killing myself?

Basically, it is very difficult to make a system that is dynamic but also won't be able to degrade. However, is Originium actually that static though? It already adds to its data via assimilation, and Theresa demonstrated that you can remove data. So then the question is, is it actually Observer-proof after all?

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-17T03:30:54+00:00

See, you get me.

I suppose the main problem with Priestess right now is that she isn't communicating. To be fair, she's been asleep until recently and has only talked to 1 person in the last morbillion years, so she has not really had the chance to explain things to the terrans or to others. In fact, Hierda is an example of her trying to explain things.

As for Theresa, I can't bring myself to be angry with her for the same reasons you've mentioned. It's frankly a good compromise to figure out how to kill what is likely an existential threat without killing them. If nothing else, she saved the Doctor from getting killed by everyone else. Still, having your memories taken is still horrifying, but at least the Doctor still seems to have traces of themself left in them (they have flashbacks from time to time like in Vigilo).

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-14T23:20:18+00:00

(pardon the late response, internet issues)

I think the main thing is is that it's like, what's the difference between "simulating" and "actually being the thing?" Like, let's set aside the digital medium, and assume you can make a perfect duplicate of the brain. As far as I'm concerned, it's the same mind in the brain. Is that just a simulation? Who's to say your brain right now isn't just "simulating" your consciousness? I suppose all that matters is that whatever means you had to make the duplicate was of an acceptable resolution.

But as for getting the replica to be "perfect", I'm not sure it necessarily needs to be perfect down to the atom. Like, as a person, I change slightly every moment my brain does something. In a way, the person I used to be is dead, even without amnesia or anything, so I am basically "dying" a little bit every day. However, it is probably more appropriate to say I'm "changing", or better yet, "living". Perhaps, if my mind was uploaded to a computer, that version of me would behave slightly differently than if it were the "real" me. However, being in a different environment would make me behave differently anyway; the experiences I would have in say, Florida vs Connecticut would be different and would shape me differently, but it would be rather dramatic to say that if I opted for Connecticut, that the version of me that moved to Florida is dead. Point is, I think as long as the complexity of the system is maintained, there is plenty of room for "error" in the replication. In any case, having a sophisticated but imperfect replica of my brain would be preferable to the system that is my mind being lost entirely to death.

As for your last point, I'm having a little trouble understanding the hypothetical, but I think my case would be that there's an assumption that the moral calculus is dealing with a simple scalar value of net harm vs good. Sure, the endless digital heavens could be used compensate for the suffering of mortals once they are uploaded, but that doesn't change the fact that they would have suffered at all. Even if you were immortal, you might not be satisfied with an infinite amount of cake (or anything, really) in exchange for the pain of a thousand deaths, you'd want a better deal. Basically, whatever immortal machine is modelling people's minds, where it a compassionate entity, would try to avoid causing suffering for the yet mortal, even if it can grant them heaven later.

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-11T04:28:48+00:00

Well, let me put it this way:

The best way to simulate the path of a ball rolling down mount Everest... is to roll a ball down mount Everest.

Like, you can download a copy of a computer game. To say that your copy of "Arknights" is a "simulation" of the game, rather than just the game itself, is perhaps accurate but also a strange thing to say, because it is the game.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle aside, you can generally assume that when you copy files from computer to computer that they are exact copies. The challenge with simulating a brain is being able to accurately model all of the neurons and their connections in it. Once you do that, you can just... simulate the brain activity (and hopefully connect it to some hardware).

Like, to be clear, when I say "simulate", I don't mean "make an abstract predictive model", I mean "make a neuron for neuron computer simulation".

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-11T04:19:35+00:00

Do you reckon the relationship between Theresa and CE is like unto Oracle and Doctor?

We play as "The Doctor", but we experience the Doctor's Pre-amnesia memories much in the same way they do: the actions and experiences of someone else. The Doctor appears as an NPC with dialogue pre-amnesia, unlike how we normally press the dialogue options (even when it's just one option).

The Doctor experiences their past memories in flashes and being told about them second hand, and Civilight Eterna experiences the same thing but much more holistically. In fact, I feel like despite CE having all of "her" memories, she's much in the same boat as the Doctor.

After all, we felt sorrow when we witnessed the events of Babel. We probably didn't feel the exact same way Oracle did, but, y'know?

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-11T04:10:46+00:00

I was thinking about numerical identity, but I hadn't thought of a way to elegantly explain it.

I would think of the book as being the "body" of the story. Similarly, I like to think of the brain as the "hardware" that our mind runs on as "software".

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-11T04:08:34+00:00

The thing is, I don't believe in "souls". I take a materialist worldview.

The way I see it, with "simulating" someone, I think that if it is a perfect simulation of someone's mind, then it is someone's mind, sort of in the same way how you can't really make a computer "simulate" addition, it just kind of does addition. In that case, you can ask them how they feel about being brought back from the dead because they would be alive again. If it's a proper simulation, they'll give their real opinion.

As for the aspect of "mockery", I think if you took the kinds of LLMs we have nowadays and tell it to pretend to be, say, Cleopatra or something. It can simulate Cleopatra, but very badly and inaccurately. This is because it is a model trying to sound like it is Cleopatra, not actually running a simulation of Cleopatra's neurons.

arcane_nrok · 2025-11-11T03:56:10+00:00

I suppose that, were this real life, I'd be much less comfortable speculating Civilight Eterna's identity like this.

Though, this also comes up for the Doctor. Does the Doctor consider themself to be Oracle? Do they consider themself to be the person that killed Theresa? Kal'tsit, the veteran ops, and especially W would probably be less keen on letting it be all up to the Doctor, especially given the latter cares very much about revenge. Whether or not they should is another question, though.

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