cyborg-squid

[cyborg-squid]

let's go masked freaks

[cyborg-squid]

And some more light-hearted cluster&golding doodles

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i hope theyre friends forever. ....

[cyborg-squid]

Detect evil but it becomes increasingly clear that whoever calibrated it had some really weird moral stances.

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The Takumi Show

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literally what do i have to drink to get better at Deltarune. i swear i was better at this

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SEX WITH A BISEXUAL LOSER!!!!!!!!!!!

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fnaf is such, a fascinating cultural object.

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it's also so great to me how much Anastasio parallels Thorns, from their battle conversation about desires that leads to Thorns finding his own, to the fact that they were both raised by Church of the Deep (or Deep adjacent) groups, which then informs the entire rest of their lives

which then metastasizes in Thorns taking the Corazonix into his body, in order to find desire, reach the sea, break out from Iberia's stagnation, and live...

while Anastasio had been unwillingly made to take in Seaborn as a kid, and then after his death is then made a vessel by the Seaborn, but in that possession he is being allowed the one desire that he had always suppressed within himself, a desire the Seaborn know all too well: the desire to live.

[cyborg-squid]

Anastasio and Juana

As I was reading through the event with a friend I was noticing quite a few distinct similarities and contrasts between Juana and Anastasio; one of the protagonists and the antagonists.

The similarities; both of these people appear to be metahuman in their strength and sustain. Juana survives a fight with a large finbeast with only a few cracked ribs, and later in the story walks that off and fights off a dozen of her own crew, swinging the depicted wheel hard enough to sever limbs. Anastasio survives being impaled, and walks for several miles with a wound large enough to see through being torn through his abdomen. He also survives an explosion that Silver was absolutely sure would kill any mortal man, as well as being stranded in the skeletal reef with his throat slit.

It's however revealed that Anastasio is partially seaborn, which could explain how Juana's done as well as she has (The only other theoretical explanation is being Aegir and thusly subjected to scientific improvements) especially given her proclivities to the seaborn.

Lastly; they both are subjected to obsessions. Juana must make it to sea, and is willing to take a 1000/1 gamble if the 1 is the best chance that it works out. It will likely work out, and she's hardly anxious about the matter, but she's certainly determined. Anastasio must get the compass, his compass. He followed Pascuala for leagues, to an insane length, just to get it. He's gone out into the skeleton reef, sacrificed who knows how many soldiers, and risked his and everyone's lives just to get an artifact. Not only that, he demands Pascuala as well. We're so far passed practicality.

As for the differences?

Juana doesn't give a single finshit about the morality or sin of a situation or her actions, at most she considers it unfortunate that Javier turns his weapon on her. But that's about as equally as unfortunate in her eyes as his lack of skill, so far as I can tell. After that, she has a smile in nearly every scene, and even in the fights of her life, seems to enjoy them.

Anastasio is obsessed with sin; of his, of the people around him. He uses it as an excuse to justify all of his cruel, violent actions, thinks about his own sin and worth constantly. He seems to be suffering constantly, and the smiles he does give are all manic and likely performative.

Juana is openly shifty. From the perspective of the crew she's been loco for a long time, and despite always delivering them to better places, has always seemed somewhat unreliable. As the readers, recognizing this as a story in Iberia, we're immediately considering whether or not she's a cultist of the deep. If this so called plan to get them all to the sea where they don't have to worry about anything, is in fact a ploy to create more seaborn.

Anastasio is hailed as a hero when he first arrives in Aaron, asked for blessings, teachings, and to give sermons. Here is the inquisition in its righteousness and strength, here to save the town from the bandits that would steal and sabotage the town.

Despite these initial impressions, Juana has everyone's best interests in mind; she cares for her crew, she wants them to flourish and succeed. Anastasio doesn't have a single care for the people of Aaron, zealously trying to burn the boats that could help save Aaron as 'devices of sin.' To kill the pirates that could sail them, or at least provide manpower to the town. Juana is willing to sacrifice everything for a chance to make it to the sea, and Anastasio kills Silver without sparing a thought to the consequences that will have on the town.

On top of all that: despite Anastasio being an inquisitor, what he preaches is embodiment of the seaborn. Suppression and relinquishment of individuality and character.

Being truly subsumed by the seaborn requires but two things: consuming seaborn flesh, and abandoning every sense of self, every indulgence, every trait. 'Living life as an empty canvas.'

[cyborg-squid]

I love how despite the Seaborn having a very minor role during Exodus from the Pale Sea their presence is still embedded so deeply in every facet of the story. I don't just mean how they're the reason the Pale Sea exists or how one of them appears in the event, but also the way they affect the themes of the story, which applies the Human Individuality vs Seaborn Collective conflict we've already explored in the Abyssal Hunter events to a tale where every part is played by humans.

There's something in the way Anastasio stands against any and all desires, almost word for word quoting Arturia as something that should be fought against at all costs. The way Arturia in turn thought of the Seaborn as boring because they lacked that desire. The way the citizens in this story are so scared of desire, how they fell so deeply on the Inquisition's teachings to survive and try to forget the horror they lived through that even now that much of the danger has passed and the conditions are better they still dare not fill their bellies even if there's food, they dare not buy something that might look fun from the caravans, they dare not wish for anything for themselves, almost every ounce of individuality they once had completely destroyed to the point that when Silver tried lifting the bans and letting them live a better life they couldn't accept it and wanted the prohibitions to come back, readily switching side to Anastasio to get back that familiar sense of comfort and stability the rules gave them even if they had long exhausted their material purpose. The very Inquisition that's so hellbent on eradicating the Seaborn from the land while making speeches about the superiority of human civilization ended up turning the people they swore to protect in something that's not so different from them, or even fully ready to join We Many as seen in other events with the way the Church of the Deep is able to pray on the discontent of the Iberians.

But as Deepcolor once noted in her operator record, it's impossible to completely eradicate your humanity, just like the Priest she talks to couldn't fully become Seaborn due to his curiosity or she couldn't become one because of her artistic passion, and in fact if you look at the conditions of both the citizens and Anastasio, they're all just guided by fear. After all the Seaborn have no concept of guilt or sinning, they're just driven by the instinct to keep the collective going and any of them would readily sacrifice itself for the others and they're shown wanting to free their kin even as they're actively being killed by them - meanwhile Silver trying to help the city by reforming the pirates and making some compromises so that everyone could live better is met by Anastasio with disdain, because his teachings don't allow for real forgiveness except for the one given by death, no matter if "the collective" has to live a life of misery because of it. He values peace of mind above the physical well being of the people in a way that's the farthest you could ever get from We Many, but the way he gets it is by violently eradicating the core difference between us and them. He seeks the embrace of death, deeply mythologizing it like a human would, while being driven by an incredibly powerful directive to live on like a Seaborn would, straight up coming back from the death three times. He's a walking contradiction, and when the event ends with him literally being shown as a mix of both, everything falls into pieces. It's a tale about how self-destructive repressing your wishes and individuality and trying to force everyone to adhere to a single doctrine - trying to live as a seaborn while being human - is.

And of course the final touch is how well all this works as a premise for Arknights to make a story about pirates, because of course even if they're not actual good guys and in fact very violent and did plenty of bad things on screen, they'll forever be a great stand-in for the concept of seeking freedom and following what your heart desires (and in fact the whole plot revolved around the Corazonix, one side wishing for what it promised, the other believing it only brings corruption). Juana and her crew are the other extreme to the Inquisition in the city, people solely guided by their desires to the point they become destructive, and while we had to fight both sides during the event, the final resolution is about accepting them as shown with Thorns's very simple wish that guides him to victory against Anastasio - he just wants to see the ocean. The story ends with the beginning of a straightforward pirate story with Isidro and his fun band of misfits going on an adventure, re-contextualized in a setting where the Profound Silence had long since suffocated any notion of dreaming about the future, any notion of the sea as something you want to admire and explore rather than a place of horror and death as it's always been presented in Arknights up until now.

It's neat.

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Gray day!! 💕💕

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Y'all had better start clapping when Turamtammi enters the room or I'll explode this whole joint

[cyborg-squid]

So they just like this style, huh.

[cyborg-squid]

the thumb sincle speaks like an apprentice in warrior cats who's like two moons older than the kits that just got their -paw names and hasn't yet had his overzealous clan pride blunted by age and wisdom

[cyborg-squid]

With many of the Gquuuuuux suits being so different from the original its hilarious that the dom is just the dom with a back cone, works done lads send it out.

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it turns out that actually you never needed to be understood! what you really needed was to make the rest of the world just as incomprehensible as you are!

[YOU HAVE UNLOCKED BAD ENDING #4]