Been thinking about the stories in Arknights and figuring out which ones I like and and which ones I don't and why particularly. Almost all of Arknights's stories are good, mind. Better than 90% of all linear written stories, visual novels and books and movies included, but I like some more than others.
Sometimes it's just my expectations that don't match the writer's. I was a bit excited for A Death in Chunfen because it features Qiubai; she had pretty minimal appearance in the previous story, Where Vernal Winds Never Blow, so I was hoping this is where we'll get the meat of her story. Instead, well, even here she's just a passerby.
But now that I think about it, it is about Qiubai, in a way. Chunfen is about this village at the margin of Great Yan, trodden down by both nature and progress, which prompted its people to do bad things. Qiubai's creed is that even when bad things happen to you, even when you mean it for the greater good, you don't get to do evil. Bad things happened to her and she almost did evil for revenge, and didn't. Bad things happened in this story and people were about to do evil so she took up arms to fight it, even if the ones she's going against were a bunch of poor selfish villagers.
But the way they tie back what happened in the village and what had happened to Qiubai was tenous, and since what the villagers did might not feel evil exactly, the point gets undermined a bit. It also doesn't feel like Qiubai grew or developed at all thorough it, even though there's opportunity to show it. Qiubai started out escorting a runaway boy back to the village because she thought it's important to bring him back to his family, and ended up leaving with the boy again because his family and hometown doesn't deserve him. It's such a good point, that being with your family isn't always good, that I wish they spend more time with it.
So yeah, A Death in Chunfen is a pretty good story even as it fumbles; I'm just disappointed since the part it fumbles at is Qiubai's characterization.
Another story that I'm similarly disappointed with is Pinus Sylvestris, which chronicles how the namesake ragtag group of downtrodden kids got together. It's a bunch of separate vignettes focusing on a different character each, but spend too long on their internal life and ends up being a bit incoherent, in my opinion. Disappointing since I was genuinely curious about his ragtag gang.
A fun contrast to the above is Heart of Surging Flames, which I expected absolutely nothing from and got pretty much next to nothing. It's short, it's fun, it's straightforward. I don't think it's very good but it never attempted to be good anyway. It's very obvious in its attempt at mediocrity and I can respect that.
Sometimes I like a story less simply because I don't care about the premise and then the story fails to make me care about any of the characters. This is the case for Twilight of Wolumonde.
It's interesting contrast with Lingering Echoes, another story taking place in Leithanien. Echoes have the advantage of me caring before I started the story: I listened to Ebenholz's theme song prior to his release and I felt such a strong kinship to it, I was looking forward to getting to know him. The story didn't disappoint; Ebenholz is a little shit and I love him. Twilight though... I understand what Suzuran and Folinic are up to but, no shade to those who like them, I can't find it in me to care.
Twilight is about bad shit happening to this tiny village, and then more bad shit happened, and it kept on happening and the people did bad shit to handle it and they gotta deal with the consequences on top of that. Greek tragedy (i.e. caused by forces beyond your control) piled with an ounce of Shakespearean tragedy (i.e. caused by your actions). It's pretty bleak, but the characters learned to accept and live with, well, the bleakness of it all.
Echoes is about bad shit happening to different people and the different ways that they actively resisted it: Ebenholz by being a prickly little shit, Kreide by being a soft-spoken doormat, Czerny by being stubborn in his pursue for good (both moral and skill-wise). These three were presented the option to do evil to save them from their tragedies; all three of them rejected it. They rejected it hard enough that they were willing to sacrifice themself instead of each other.
In contrast to the three protagonists, the main antagonist, Gertrude, was someone to whom bad things had happened, but she responded it with evil. Her life prior to the story's climax was comfortable, if marred by her desire to be loved the way Czerny was.
Lingering Echoes, like Twilight of Wolumonde, is a tragedy. Ebenholz is likely worse off than he was when he started. There was a hole in me at the end, realising that, yeah, that was it. This is what he had to live with now. But I care a whole lot about him, and a whole lot for Kreide and Czerny and even Gertrude. What made me care more about them than I do Suzuran, Folinic, and Tatjana?
In a way, I think, it's because Lingering Echoes is about its characters. Their actions shape where the story goes, even as it ends in tragedy either way. In Twilight, bad things just keep on happening and the characters feel like they're crawling about in the dark, helpless. That's not by itself bad storytelling: sometimes you do want to tell stories about crawling about in the dark, but it's definitely one I appreciate less.
So, my preference for stories is influenced by expectation, characterization, and lemme add one more point before I stop: the way it can stand on its own. To this I'd like to point to What the Firelight Casts and uhh Lone Trail.
If you like Reed I expect Firelight is probably still pretty good. It shows you what becomes of her after the event of Stormwatch (Main Story Chapter 9) and sets up for more confrontations to come. But like, it spends too long setting things up. To me it feels messy, all over the place; it's not solid enough to be a whole story on its own. It's just setups for another story, or at best a bridge between the previous story and the next.
I feel similarly about Lone Trail; it feels like a culmination of multiple story threads that I didn't particularly care about. I was never a huge fan of the Rhine Lab characters and didn't closely follow their previous stories, so when they had their dramatic confrontation here it felt off, like I was supposed to already care.
Lone Trail is big enough to fit them though, so I didn't mind. My issue with Lone Trail is bigger than just that, and too big to fit in this post right now.
This is a great time to introduce my counterpoint: I absolutely adore Where Vernal Winds Will Never Blow. Its story is pretty straightforward, but what makes it shine is the way it highlights the journeys of multiple characters, some of which you've seen before. As someone who cares about the characters, Vernal Winds was a delight. To see how these characters grew and changed and grappled with their legacies, I expect there's enjoyment there that won't be coherent to those who hadn't already gotten attached to these characters.
So I might have really liked Lone Trail if I'm fan of the characters, but since I don't, alas, they just feel like extra slog to go through. I still maintain that Vernal Winds is still a good story though, albeit a bit blander, without already knowing the characters.
In conclusion!
Generally I like stories that focus more on the characters and what they do, how they grow, how what happened to them before affects who they are, but not at the expense of what's happening to them now. I'm not a fan of mood pieces.
I haven't mentioned it here but Arknights is actually plagued with overwriting, and the Main Story got the worst of it. It speaks to the strength of these stories that they're still really good even with the occasional overwriting.
If you've somehow read through this whole blog post without actually having played (or read) Arknights, yo! Play Arknights! Read Arknights! It's excellent. It's only half a tower defence game, the other half is a visual novel! Both of which are very heavy so sometimes it feels like you're fighting one half just to get to the other, but it's still good! Play Arknights!
