#lone trail spoilers

[burstfoot]

Your name is Kristen Wright. You’re barely 10. You’re at the outdoor funeral for your parents, a pair of genius scientists that Terra will never see again. You’ve spent the last two weeks giving false smiles to women and men who pretend to grieve them while spending every moment they think you’re not looking lauding them for their ‘foolishness’ and ‘hubris’. Sitting amongst a crowd of these intellectuals, your feel nothing looking at their crocodile tears, knowing they’re just happy there’s less competition for next year’s grants. Your new guardian grabs onto your hand in an attempt to grant you a modicum of comfort. You stare blankly at the sky above.

You’ve never felt so alone. You don’t think this feeling will ever go away.

Your name is Joyce Moore. You can hardly communicate anymore. Your best friend killed herself trying to replicate the experiment that gave you permanent brain damage. Every scientist at Rhine Lab now treats you like a child at best, and an animal at worst. Your parents have not come to see you. None of your colleagues seem to understand that you are still you, with a sense of humour, good taste in TV shows, and fucking feelings, god damn it.

You’ve never felt so alone. You don’t think this feeling will ever go away.

Your name is Ferdinand Clooney. You’ve lost everything you’ve ever worked for in a futile grab for power. The department of defense has you by the dick after saving you from a group of Pioneers who (justifiably) nearly beat you half to death. It’s playing fiddle to their whims or the rest of your life in prison - or, most realistically, a tragic accident report. Your aspirations aren’t within your reach anymore, and you know that it’s your fault. You will never be Kristen Wright, and it’s eating you alive.

You’ve never felt so alone. You don’t think this feeling will ever go away.

Your name is Parvis Ahrens. You’re not that old. You’re only 58. But you’re losing your mind. Every day, a little more slips away. You rely more and more on encyclopedic entries for information you took immense pride in knowing from your heart. You’ve spent the last few years focused on the pursuit of progress of all else. As part of this, you manipulated your star pupil in an attempt to permanently get her under your wing, outside of the influence of the Defense Director, a weak-hearted woman everyone else seems to think is cold as ice. She has years of life to change Columbian science. You don’t.

You’ve never felt so alone. You don’t think this feeling will ever go away.

Your name is Jara B. Wilson. You feel like you don’t see the girl who lived for you with so long in Kristen anymore. You’re a washed-up movie star, working for her cause above all else. Do you have anything that you’re working for for yourself anymore? She’ll be gone soon. You know that.

She hasn’t even left yet, and you’ve never felt so alone. You don’t think this feeling will ever go away once she leaves.

Your name is Nasti Londrey. Your people have never had a home. They might never have a home.

You’ve always felt alone. You will always be alone. That’s fine.

Your name is Justin Fitzroy Jr. Your dad died a week ago, and the cure has just been found for the hereditary illness that threatens to cut your lifespan in half. It was found by accident.

The sword of Damacles no longer hangs above your neck. Why then, do you still feel so alone?

Your name is Loken Williams. You reach out to a girl you tortured, who you know can’t remember what you did to her, because you’re going to die soon, and you need someone to remember what you did with your life.

Even if she kills you, at least you won’t die alone.

Your name is Trevor Friston. It’s been thousands of years down here. You just want to see your daughter again, and it will be another thousand until you do.

You’re very familiar with the loneliness that wraps around every single nanometer of your circuit board.

Your name is Dorothy Franks. Your whole family was killed in a Catastrophe. Your name is Elena Urbica. Your whole family, besides your twin sister, has disowned you. Your drive yourself head-first into the sciences to distract yourself from the loneliness.

Your name is Ho’olheyak. Centuries of ancestral memories swarm around your mind. Because of this, your lifespan was cut to a fraction of the life you should be living. You are obsessed with the history of your people, and you resent them from tearing your life away from you. You tear over books and tomes of history to find all means of unspeakable knowledge, hoping that somewhere in there you’ll find something that you can connect to.

You don’t even know you’re lonely.

Your name is Muelsyse.

You saw the writing on the wall. Saria and Kristen just had a massive fight. You’ve been drifting apart since college, but the only two people who you’ve felt a real connection to on all of Terra will hardly speak to each other anymore. Do you try and mend what happened between them? Can you? You don’t know what to do besides take all means to protect yourself in the fallout. You wish you weren’t so paranoid, so self-centered, that all you know how to do is ensure your own safety.

Is there anything on Terra for you besides loneliness?

Your name is Ifrit. It’s cold, and quiet, and you’re pretty sure you’ve killed everyone around you. Your eyes are blurred, you hands are shaky, and shards of black crystal stick out all over your body. Before you pass out, you think one thing:

Hell, you might be alone, but at least those bastard whitecoats got what was coming to them.

Your name is Olivia Silence. You pull yourself out of the rubble in a destroyed laboratory, where you see Saria looming over Ifrit, beaten half-to-death. You beat yourself up for thinking you could trust her - that she was there to protect Ifrit, and you. You can’t trust anyone in Columbia. You run to embrace Ifrit with your entire body, to protect her from the cold eyes of Saria standing above her. You look back at her with nothing but fear in your eyes.

You’ve never felt so alone. You have to get Ifrit out of Rhine.

Your name is Saria. You’re barely 8 years old. You went your father in tears, as a group of bullies came after you and destroyed your toy car. He tells you to stop crying. You’re not accomplishing anything by throwing a fit in front of him. He tells you to fight back - take responsibility for your weakness.

You’ve never felt so alone.

You won’t ever be this weak again.

Staring up at the sky, looking up as Kristen’s ark sends her out through the hole she tore in the false sky, you know that you were foolish to believe you could bypass your own weakness through sheer will.

And you’ll be lonely for the rest of your life without her.

[shitz-suji]

As much as I'm enjoying the Doctor parent moments with Ifrit and Rosmontis, I am so glad that Hypergraph had Doctor show the kind of visceral anger one would feel if they found out that they were standing in front of a monster who inflicted horrific cruelty on a child and absolutely had no problem with retraumatizing that same child by trying to get them to recall the abuse they suffered/gaslighting them to justify the abuse. Like Hypergraph could've had Doctor ratio Loken Williams with some 5-D chess Talk No Justu, say some comforting words to Rosmontis, and move on with the plot.

But in that moment, Rosmontis wasn't an elite operator on standby awaiting orders. She was a scared child standing in front of her abuser and Doctor was an adult suddenly confronted with the reality of what this asshole represented to her.

Hypergraph letting Doctor process all that information and deciding that Loken Williams deserved to be left righted on the spot was very much appreciated. But I will always applaud the fact that they made it into a player interaction and let the player decide how Doctor should go to bat for Rosmontis. ❤️

[girlishfrenzy]

the Dearly Adopted ADHD Daughter of all time

[galacticsuperstitions]

the minds of a lab at three different points (LONG rambling under the cut)

I am constantly in awe of the analyses people put out about Arknights on this website. I feel like my own interpretations are somewhat lacking as a result, but I was confident enough to post this, at least. I've had this idea for a long time now, I think since Lone Trail released, but I've only been able to make the time for it now.

Rhine Lab has so many fucked up elements and people involved in it that it's actually impressive. They were really gunning for "most unethical scientific consortium" reward. Really, though, it's just the result of Kristen gunning for her parents' wishes. All of the directors want something and all of those somethings are different.

Things I want to mention or just feel proud of (allowing myself this because of how long this took):

-I was originally planning on crossing out Saria's surname to reflect that we still don't know what it is in canon, but I don't know why whoever has this poster would do that, so I just kept it in. Hermon refers to Mount Hermon, which Saria's name apparently derives from. Technically, her name here is the same thing twice. Oh well.

-I don't know who this poster belongs to. It's just in some Rhine Lab tech's personal desk, I guess? Doesn't explain the doodles, though. Maybe they were bored and feeling spiteful about the potential job insecurity of your boss being comatose in space.

-I realized only while making this post that I made Saria's, Muelsyse's, and Jara's doodles reference Kristen, yet Kristen's only references herself and her parents. Completely unintentional, but appropriate nonetheless.

-I am so happy with how the poster came out. It makes up for how hard I had to fight Canva for it to come out like that. Here it is in full if you want to look at it closely for whatever reason. (writing an actual description for this thing was fun!)

-Andenate doesn't actually have a face under the sticky note. That's why he's still Mike Wazowski'd in the poster png. I didn't feel like drawing one since it wouldn't be shown in the finished pieces anyway. His jacket is just the same as Magallan's.

-Ifrit's picture board was a literal last-minute addition. It's why the images are sketches rather than being in the lineless style of the poster. It feels fitting, though, so I'm keeping it that way. Seeing Ifrit all grown up and doing so well in Lone Trail was wonderful. There's something in her being happy and healthy and also surrounded by not just her loved ones and friends from Rhine Lab, but also people outside of it. She's cultivated her life to be as fulfilling as she wants it to be, and while there is still room to grow, she has plenty of support and insight from others for it to do so. I may be misrepresenting her a bit (the sleepiness doesn't help), but man. I love Ifrit. She's so cool.

[therwriter]

The reveal in Lone Trail that Dorothy's Vision takes place about five minutes beforehand is hysterical. Like Rhodes Island and Rhine Labs are squaring up for a literal heaven-shaking conflict that will reveal ancient history both geopolitical and personal, mark the culmination of many characters' years- or even millennia-long personal struggles and change the course of Terra's future and many of the characters' lives forever... and then Dorothy kicks off the Human Instrumentality Project

[vivalicious]

being magallan post-lone trail must be a trip you've just come back from your expedition in the frozen wastes that lasted 3 months with your Awful Lizard and you find out you're not getting a paycheck this month because most of the higher ups at your place of work all either died or were arrested after they put a big fucking hole in space

[beta-elekid-art]

[qedmirage]

Thinking about the part of Lone Trail where Ho'olheyak finally meets "God". [some lines are clipped out]. Obviously, heavy spoilers!

But, "God" is dying. It can't even understand her request, much less grant it. Unable to understand, it just tries showing her a happy memory instead.

It's such an unusually...complete kind of failure. It's referenced in some of the investigation materials afterwards.

A lady with the ancestral memory of her entire people's quest for a return to the status of K'uk'ulkan legend, and it just crumbles.

[arkiwii]

now can we talk about how ho'olheyak sequestred some immortal all knowing god's consciousness in her staff, that then got transferred in a robot as a one star operator in Rhodes Island, and Closure then drew on his face?

yeah we have god in our company and that's how we treat Him.

[yakourinka]

ifrit grew up...she has a plant friend now

[mastema04]

here @arkiwii

[burstfoot]

[paladinguy]

I have been emotionally wrecked by Arknights, again.

[mokadevs]

thinking so much about this scene and its descriptors. saria reaching out. Throwing Up.

[kc5rings]

Man with the information we got about elves in Lone Trail and about Mumu in particular, that moment in Dorothy’s Vision where she gets locked inside power armor is put into a much more terrifying light than it already was

Dark, isolated, hot stale air, which all would have been bad enough. But the really horrible part, and why it now makes sense why that took such an intense toll on her

Those suits are originium powered.

No wonder she hates Ho’olheyak so much.

[adorablegorilla]

Loken Williams is genuinely a fascinating character in that he's genuinely pitiable yet it doesn't at all counter out how horrible he is. Like every almost every other character in Lone Trail, he feels isolated and alienated from the rest of the world, but for him most of it is because of his own ego and stubborness.

He feels genuine remorse for what he did to Rosmontis, but instead of genuinely trying to help her he seeks a sort self-centered atonement through death. He tries to have Rosmontis confront her past, not because he wants her to grow and heal from it, but because he wants her to judge him for it as part of his "atonement". He regrets his actions, but he only ever refers to it in terms of his own failures and wasted efforts instead of the atrocities he committed to those children. Even when he recounts his own crimes and failings, it's full of half-hearted excuses and self-pitying. He seeks atonement through death, yet his death solves nothing and only gives closure to himself.

I'd call him a fascinating villain, but he's not really a villain; he's a villain who has already gone through his BSOD and come out a pathetic old man who refuses to change. If he really genuinely wanted to, he could try to make amends, to help ease the pain he's caused and to use his scientific prowess to help others. Perhaps then he could die with others beside him, with friends by his side. But because he stubbornly clings to his idea of "atonement" as his only path, he meets the only end he could on said path: Dying lonely and alienated, remembered only as a pathetic old criminal.