#Arknights Stultifera Navis

[sleepyminty]

From genshin to whatever the fuck limbus and arknights are doing right now, how fun is your water stage of your game?

[nyantodamax145]

I JUST FINISHED THE STULTIFERA NAVIS STORY AND I HAVE THOUGHTS.

Let me preface this by saying that I am also part of the demographic of “EN Sucks at Reading”. Well, I can *read*, but I kind of suck at interpreting characters sometimes so bear with me and share your thoughts because I’m very bad at literary analysis and can only understand surface level themes without anyone to guide me but I’m trying my best

I

LOVED IT

And not JUST because my husband played a pivotal role in the event okay

Spoilers under the cut!

I haven’t played through Under Tides yet so I’m missing a teeny bit of context, but oh my god

Laurentina “waking up” and recovering her memories? Alphonso and Garcia doomed to sixty years alone aboard the Stultifera Navis and sailing her towards her slow decay? High Inquisitor Dario’s sacrifice and the light of his lantern refusing the burn out, JORDI being WAY MORE TALENTED THAN HE GIVES HIMSELF CREDIT FOR, STRAIGHT UP REPAIRING A LIGHTHOUSE AND A BOAT BASED ON OLD BLUEPRINTS AND FINDING THE STULTIFERA NAVIS AND SAVING ALL THREE HUNTERS AND IRENE AAAAA

Wait ok let me try to gather my thoughts cause there’s specific things I want to talk about.

Thiago being unwilling to let the Inquisition into his town because he still held a grudge against them ultimately led to his death. He wanted to puppet the Church of the Deep who had infiltrated Gran Faro into pushing the Inquisition out of the town, but was selfish; he wanted to have his cake and eat it too; he wanted to preserve Gran Faro and its legacy, but in the process he let the Seaborn fester and take over the whole place silently, while the Inquisition couldn’t do anything to help because he was simply a stubborn old man. It’s doubly ironic because as Carmen reveals, his Aegir wife was also a part of the Church of the Deep. I would like the theorize that his wife was the one who perpetrated the spread of the Nethersea Brand in Gran Faro, but that’s just headcanon.

Laurentina and Amaia. They’re connected to each other through the Seaborn Cells in their body, and the experiments Specter was put through, and in many ways you could consider Amaia “Specter’s” creator in a sense. Laurentina and Specter really are two different people, and we can see the moment Specter disappears and Laurentina wakes up. But even after Amaia “becomes one” with the Seaborn, Laurentina still calls the abomination by the name of “Amaia”, and I wonder if it’s due to a lingering sense of connection, if only in the sense that they are mortal enemies. It’s kind of like Laurentina knows that Amaia is still in there. Which, well she is, she became part of We Many.

I seem to have missed a critical piece of information regarding Skadi that was covered in Under Tides, so I’ll be skipping over that. Once the Under Tides record restoration comes around I know what I’ll be up to.

JORDI! MY GOD YOU DID SO WELL! Can you imagine piecing together incredibly complex technology only through luck, instinct, and some tattered, centuries old blueprints?! He says he’s an ordinary person but what kind of ordinary person can do all that?! He’s at the very least got incredible skill to interpret old blueprints, and make something as old as that lighthouse to work! Like AAAAAAA I’M PROUD OF YOU ALSO YOU NEED MANY BLANKETS AND SNUGGLES YOU HAVE SO MUCH TRAUMA.

Irene reporting to Dario’s lantern at the very end made me cry ok. She wanted her Maestro to know that she gave it her all, and although the conclusion wasn’t satisfactory she still accomplished a lot. It hurts to know that she had to find out through the very things she was fighting, the things she saw as abominations of sin. It’s like the refused to believe it until she saw Saint Carmen’s face and accepted it.

And the fact that the Stultifera was circling above an Aegir City the whole time… so close, yet so far. The Abyssal Hunters both succeeded and failed, and while they found “home”, they couldn’t return.

There’s… a lot. And I’m no good at literary analysis. I just point out things that I like…

It’s 11 pm, I’m tired, and I’m trying to process everything I just read.

[twylaisdonewitheverything]

I am going feral over Alfonso and Garcia

[inthecarpets]

Maybe the true Stultifera Navis been belief of doing 3star clear of sn-10 all along

[fransen-art]

In honor of Dario - Stultifera Navis

[ailusaur]

figured since I posted these on xwitter I may as well post them here too. Apologies for the two-year-late Stultifera memes lmao I literally made these during the original event run

[endspeaker]

goo goo baby

[n-i-v-a-d-a]

Since we just got Ulpianus revealed as the newest Abyssal Hunter to join the playable roster, it brings to mind how great SN was. First, every single character got to have just the coolest moment, whether it was Specter being happy with who she is, or Jordi being the most remarkable ordinary person and the hope of Iberia. Irene using her gun, Gladiaa doing anything, the list goes on. The Golden Age song is also a bop. If we’re talking about an event being an EVENT, this is the one to talk about.

[dankashuartist]

based on

[actual-haise]

hey. don't cry. THE GOLDEN AGE WILL RETURN AGAIN. ok?

[hawberries]

if you’re wondering how it feels to have Corroserum and Hoshiguma at E2 during Stultifera Navis, it feels good

[000yul]

i appreciate that arknights went beyond what you would expect out of a eldritch horror cult story and into the detail of why people would join such a cult (or at least be sympathetic), why it continues to persist, why iberia has been so unsuccessful at eradicating it.. it's a really refreshing perspective. the seaborn are completely alien amoral monsters, sure, but the people who align with them do so for very human reasons. revenge, spite, a longing for something more, a rejection of iberian society - these apply to both the native iberians who no longer feel any community with or allegiance to from a cruel, overbearing ruling power, and the aegir refugees exploited and thrown away like trash…

this skill in fleshing out the many facets of human response to uncontrollable misfortune is a strength in arknights writing - the catastrophes and how society responds to them, as well as oripathy etc. being the prime example of course. i just think it's particularly notable here because of how much eldritch abominations are traditionally an external, Other threat, but here, the writing conveys a strong message: humans divided themselves along clumsy lines and failed their own, and that's not something you can blame the seaborn for

(saint carmen said something like 50% of the aegir taken from gran faro back then had cult links. the flip side of that: 50% did not. nonetheless - no one returned from their time with the inquisition. and how many liberi did they miss in their mad rush back then? amaia was a liberi, after all…)

fitting that their enemy is the seaborn - a species that is the purest, ultimate representation of the us-vs-them mentality (kin or not kin)—to the complete exclusion of all culture, the ability to relate to those not their own, and everything that defines humanity

[astralshadow]

Ulpianus (烏爾比安)

[cherrygrudge]

Thinking about Lumen, he really is just an ordinary guy caught up in extraordinary situations. It's super easy to focus on that part of his character and leave the rest of it out, but...

(Putting this all under a read more so that it doesn't take up a lot of scroll space. Lumen Analysis below.)

Jordi Fontanarossa is technically a diaspora, but it almost seems like he feels like he doesn’t belong. He has almost no links to the rest of the Ægir beyond his species, what he has left of his parents (their notes, I'll get back to this later), and what little his uncle would tell him. Which is implied to be not a lot for his own safety, but... it doesn’t change the fact that while this feeling of separation definitely applies to all Ægir Islanders, of all the Iberian Ægirs we know, only Jordi seems to have a lot of obvious feelings about this.

"I mean, I know nothing about the Ægir" is one of his lines that stick to me a lot. Because... he's right, he admits it himself even; but somehow he's supposed to do something about the rift between Iberians and Ægir Islanders as the first Ægir Inquisitor-In-Training since forever, essentially? He isn't even suited to be an Inquisitor in the sense of fighting the Seaborn! His hands are made for tools and not for weapons, but he essentially got press-ganged into the Inquisition at the end of Stultifera Navis because... he knew too much. About the Seaborn, about what's really going on...

And this ordinary guy is now responsible for doing something about the rift between races? Like. I understand that you have to start from somewhere and that it works because Jordi is the mosy harmless guppy ever unless you get a Hand of Purification, but the man just lost his uncle and is grappling with the fact that the ocean is even more dangerous than he thought. Give the fishie a break.

Unfortunately, he isn't getting one, because that's not the kind of world Arknights is; and Jordi is a kind of person who can inspire change. In a small way, but even the smallest speck of light can shine bright enough to dispell the darkness.

In any case, let me continue with this scuffed Lumen analysis. Namely, his disconnect with Ægir as a civilization and culture. Because that line I highlighted about how he knows nothing about the Ægir? It means so much added with certain other things about Jordi.

Now, I can't claim to know every single detail, but when it's all said and done, it's pretty clear that Jordi is disconnected from his culture. Not only is he the only Ægir in Gran Faro, but... he was young enough that it seems like he barely recalls his parents. So he wouldn't necessarily remember too much about whatever culture the Ægir Islanders would have, beyond a few things:

One - the Ægir Civilization is one of the more advanced civilizations technology-wise on Terra.

Related to this, it's mentioned that Jordi's parents left him notes and things relared to engineering. It's said that he holds his tools awkwardly like he taught himself how to use them. It's also implied that he just genuinely taught himself how to do engineering since... well, who would teach him? Maybe his uncle, but for things related to the Golden Age of Iberia? It just doesn't seem likely with the general trauma the older generation of Iberia has due to the Great Silence.

Two - Have you noticed that the Operators related to Ægir the Civilization have a specific kind of fancy? Sure we only see the Abyssal Hunters and that's a small sample size, but I feel like it's enough to at least vaguely pin down a national "style" so to speak.

Relating this to Lumen, look at his normal outfit. It's not quite the same fancy aesthetics as the Abyssal Hunters, but... it's similar enough. Sure it also fits pretty well with the Inquisition, but that's not the point. The point is that it feels like Jordi is trying to keep the memory of something alive by wearing what he wears - it might just be the typical gacha design philosophy, but... if he has only faint memories of his parents, he might recall a particular outfit one of them wore and he's trying to stick to it - to feel that connection with them that he just barely has. Regarding his skin though? That's a pirate shirt. Well, it's probably actually a poet's shirt, but it's that one shirt either vampires, lesbians or pirate's wear; and while Jordi isn't a pirate, out of those three he's more likely to fit in that category. Admittedly this one is my biggest stretch and more headcanon than canon, but I connected some dots at least.

Third: His lines.

Just his lines in general okay. He wonders how the Ægir live under the ocean. He has a line talking about how he knows nothing about the Ægir. There's probably more but as much as I love him, I am not willing to go through the whole of Stultifera Navis just to find every single line. In any case, Jordi's has multiple lines mentioning his lack of information on the Ægir and his own disconnect from the culture he supposedly belongs to as one.

Fourth: His Interlude - Till The Light Shines Bright.

Jordi: Do people out there know the sea better? Jordi: Do they talk about the great lighthouse, about the legend of the Eye of Iberia? Local Messenger: Don't be silly, Jordi. The people don't really talk about the sea. As for the great lighthouse, that's a nursery tale that the people of Gran Faro tell their children. Jordi: ...I see. Jordi: Thank you for the offer, Rald. Jordi: But I can't go, not until I've seen the sea and the lighthouse. Local Messenger: Gran Faro has failed. The dream of Iberia's Golden Age ended decades ago. Jordi: Don't say that. Jordi: It's not just a dream for Iberia. It's also a dream for the Ægir... Jordi: ...For one Ægir.

These lines in his Interlude mean a lot. Actually, his whole Interlude reveals so much. For one thing, he is teaching himself how to do Ægir engineering. We have a very smart guppy on our hands here people. It... also reveals Jordi's fascination with the ocean and the fact that unlike say, Amaia, he isn't interested in pursuing that fascination of his over caring for others. It's just... poignant in a way I don't have words for, really.

All of those just... combine to say that Jordi Fontanarossa is someone who wants to know about the Ægir. He has the opportunity now, but... growing up? All he had was his parents' journals and what little stories his uncle would share.

Why I say "what little stories" in reference to his uncle? Well. I have some thoughts on Thiago and how his death affected Jordi. Especially taking into account a module that Jordi was referenced in: Indigo's module.

However, once they had both left, Lumen raised an alternative, 'small-minded' conjecture, more or less that before an old man sends his granddaughter off to the city, he stuffs the only valuable they own into her suitcase and hopes she'll never come back, or that he'll have passed by the time she does... or thereabouts.

'The elderly are like that. They like to decide everything for you while you're still clueless,' Lumen added.

His lines there are... well, they definitely reveal a lot about what he feels about Thiago now. Not quite bitter, but not quite positive? Thiago has definitely made decisions for Jordi before out of worry for his former wife's last remaining family.

I don't have a lot to say here, but like. I wish we got to explore this more. Jordi is a quiet and well-meaning person who has more negative feelings than he seems to have due to the focus on his ordinary guy-ness and self-depreciation.

TL;DR: So with all this said about his place as an Ægir disconnected from his history and culture, but still trying, and now forced to be a cultural bridge with no culture of his own... I think Jordi should get to go off a little. As a treat and so that we can explore his character more because I think the guppy should be around more.

And that's all.

If you have any thoughts on this, please feel free to reblog or comment. I need to talk about the fishie.

[hanteeyo]

captain alfonso and his chiefmate

arknights gave me sad old men love in the bg of this event

[cerastes]

'stultifera navis' is a reference? I mean, when I saw people going "oh it means stupid boat" figured that that wasn't *quite* the whole story but no one's explained what else it means.

You know how we are intimately familiar with Plato's Allegory of the Cave?

This thing? Alright, so Plato didn't make just one allegory. Plato's Allegory of the Cave comes from Plato's "Republic", specifically Book VII. In Book VI, one can find the Allegory of the Ship of Fools. Long story short, the allegory's intent is to represent the problems of leadership and governance in a political system where the key figures aren't chosen based on expert knowledge, but rather, other things altogether ('divine right' is a good example).

Now, with this in mind, we talk about Stultifera Navis, a satirical allegory from 1494 by one Sebastian Brant, a German humanist. It's other title is Daß Narrenschyff ad Narragoniam, in medieval German, all meaning the same: "Ship of Fools". It's worth noting that the Ship of Fools was a popular concept in this era, much like the internet really likes the Allegory of the Cave! Humanity has always been the same in some regards.

Brant's Stultifera Navis was about a fleet, the Fleet of Fools, bound for the Paradise of Fools and, without getting too into it, because it's a decently long read consisting of over one hundred brief satires, it serves as a criticism towards the Christian Church and how it was, largely, a mangle of underqualified fools not only having WAY too much agency in the lives of WAY too many people, but also, it was driving itself in such a hilariously self-destructive manner that it eventually sinking was practically inevitable. Brant creates a character, the Saint Grobian, whom Brant made into the patron saint of vulgar and crass people, so not only was he making a whole book with over 100 little stories about how much a dumbass collective the Church was, he also got spicy and threw in his own OC, Grobian the Hedgehog, the worst and shittiest of them all, and the one that codified the Church most closely.

Now, you may be thinking, "Hey, did Brant get fucking burned at the cross for this or something? Wasn't criticism of the Church the leading cause of death back in those days right after being invaded by Church for no reason?". Well, there was a SPECIAL JUTSU you could use back in the day, one that rendered you naught but a little birthday guy that couldn't be killed for criticism: Employing the voice of the fool. Y'see, Court Fools were allowed to say whatever they wanted, because they were court fools, and this little loophole allowed certain figures of the time, like Desiderius Erasmus, to criticize the Church openly, as he did in "The Praise of Folly", and when the Churchboyz came to his house with pikes and broadswords, demanding he step right out to they could eviscerate him for the SIN of speaking ill against Our Most Righteous, Loving, And Considerate Of Institutions, The Holy Church Itself, Erasmus threw his arms up in mock surrender and yelled "I'm just a little fool! The work was written from the voice and perspective of but a fool! I'm just a birthday fool! Come on, man, don't get so mad!" and then the Churchboyz, smoldering in white blistering ire, sheathed their arsenal and walked away FUMING because he was now impervious to Christblasts.

Well, Brant used the same jutsu, as the book is Entirely about Fools, he claimed it was just the fools talking, ergo, it's not what he REALLY thought, ok? Just some food for thought, a little what if, no need to get so spicy over a WORK OF FICTION. So the Church harrumphed and hmppphroomed their way home, stomping their feet all the way through because AGAIN they couldn't execute someone for their (alleged) opinion.

Now, moving to the Arknights' Stultifera Navis, given how much the event shows the longing for the Iberian Golden Age, and very much states how impossible it is to go back to those days, simply because, one, the world has changed to something that would never again sustain this Iberian Golden Age, and two, the 'Golden Age' in itself was built upon the systematic oppression and suffering of others, ranging from the Aegir persecuted within the Iberian lands to the Victorians and Bolivars raided and pillaged outside the Iberian borders, and it was the selfsame greed, close-mindedness and ignorance of Iberia that led to its natural end. The Inquisition is very much a Ship of Fools: Guided by old relics, fueled by archaic and obsolete beliefs, it's bound to collapse under its own weight. Saint Carmen himself is the perfect representation of the Inquisition: Tired, old, full of regrets, putting a strong front, yet completely ravaged and exhausted, his life artificially prolonged well past the natural lifespan of a Liberi, guided by ostensibly good intentions and yet adhering to principles that necessarily involve the oppression of certain people in order to exist. I wouldn't say Saint Carmen and Saint Grobian are one and the same, but you can't help but see some similarity. Patron saint of the vulgar and crass indeed.

The allegory also extends to Aegir to some degree as well, but we don't have the full picture just yet. Stultifera Navis does suggest that Aegir Beefed It to some degree as well, and not a minor beef, either.

Notably, Laurentina defies the trope: Her recovery stems in part to having let go of her "Golden Age": The times when she could have pursued her passions as a sculptor, the times when she happily hunted away with her fellow Hunters in the 2nd Company, the times when she didn't have a country's worth of Super Death Rock Cancer Juice in her spine, the entire swath of time she lost due to having been replaced by 'Specter', the time when she was blissfully unaware of her Seaborn blood, she makes it clear to Amaia: She's fully aware that all of these things are irrevocably lost, and that that's fine, she's got the present and the future still. She misses that Golden Age of her life, but doesn't agonize over it, she simply has to make a new Golden Age, comprised of other, unknown, exciting things, in the future.

Sometimes, you don't need to think too hard about it. Just tear apart what's in front of you, and move forward. She is not a crewmember of the Ship of Fools.

There's a few more comparisons and connections you can draw between the Allegory of the Ship of Fools and Arknights' Stultifera Navis, but I think the point has been made!