(no subject)

Starting to read A Practical Guide to Evil, and I already miss Last Scenario so damn much. There’s a place for the rat bastard villain, the “power is how much you’re willing to debase yourself” villain, and so far it looks like PGE is gonna celebrate the type. But I can’t help but long for the rat bastard hero.

(no subject)

I feel more positive towards the early Arknights chapters than most fans, and there’s one question I think shines through, one that keeps being asked even in the Londinium chapters: who are you, to claim you understand? Who are you, to call for non-violence from those who only survived by hiding under dead bodies? Who are you, to ask surrender from those who watched the slaughter of those who tried to surrender? Who are you, who the authorities allow to be alive and somewhat free, to fight against those who never had a chance to live?

It’s an argument of pure emotion, and it’s one that’s answered through demonstration, some of it in the initial chapters and some of it across later ones. In the beginning, Amiya is the one who feels all pain, and understands that there isn’t a difference in type or quality between the persecuted and those they hurt in turn. Later, Kal’tsit is the one who knows the past and has seen the pointlessness of these cycles, and Doctor is the one who knows the present and can map out another path. Leaders repeatedly die in ways that are essentially pointless, and could have been avoided if they’d given up on sunk costs or reevaluated what they actually wanted. One of the big ideas of Arknights that I think gets missed a lot is that emotion isn’t enough. I think that matters in real life when people argue from emotion that, for instance, something something Holocaust means Israel should wipe Palestine off the map.