When most people “roll their eyes”, they flick their eyes directly upward, usually as far as they comfortably go, then resume looking normally.
When someone who learned the phrase before the behavior does it, they usually go in a circular (ish) motion. Since most eye movements are lines, it’s usually pretty triangular: the key points are usually a diagonal up one way, then to the far other side, then to a diagonal low the first way. Thus, the eyes basically make a loop, so they “rolled”.
I’ve found that when people who learned the up-down way first try the circular motion, they might risk motion sickness, so experiment carefully.
We didn’t read that in the stream but I did read that after the stream by myself and I Liked The Event quite a bit!
It goes without saying that I went into it with a lot of enthusiasm because I’ve loved Reed as a character since her release, and I really wanted to know What Was Her Deal. We get some of it in the main story, since she’s tied to the Victoria arc, but her getting an event specifically as a new character in another class is fascinating because it would, logically speaking, serve as a character piece more so than a big stakes event. This is what was delivered, so I couldn’t be happier.
It’s not that I dislike big stakes or grander scale stories in Arknights – the Abyssal Hunters arc and the Sui arc are my favorites! – it’s just, sometimes, I really want to know more about the characters more so than everything that surrounds them. Character pieces help understand the grander scale with a lot more emotional weight, because if done right, I’m now emotionally invested in the character and their overarching goal, not just the goal as the framework for the story. For example, ‘Maria Nearl’ was first and foremost a character piece, which then informs the overarching Kazimierz arc, so by the time Near Light rolls in, not only do I know what we’re fighting for, I know who we’re fighting for and why we are doing so, I know Maria’s motivations, efforts, struggles, and trials, and so, I am invested in wanting to see her succeed. 'Maria Nearl’ being a character piece doesn’t mean it ONLY centered on Maria and nothing else, it sets up the scene and the cast, but through the lens of someonein the story as opposed to through the effects of events in the story.
What The Firelight Casts does a little inversion in the overall structure compared to 'Maria Nearl’: It’s a character piece after the bigger scale narrative. We know what the bigger picture is… But what about this key character in the whole story? And will knowing about this character recontextualize or add even more meat to what we already know? With this in mind, let’s talk about it:
Reed detests her circumstances, because Reed had very simple, domestic desires: She wanted a simple, quiet life reading and writing poetry, immersing herself in words and stories. She didn’t have any grander aspirations, experiences, or desires beyond “loving poetry” because she was a simple child when she got her head pushed under an ocean of conspiracies and was drowned in them. Since she didn’t have the strength of character to really do anything in such a horrifying world, her sister, Eblana, endowed with far stronger character, made her her body double. Reed never questioned it, because she had nothing else going on for her, but the more atrocities she was forced to commit as “The Leader”, the more she hated it, and herself for not having it in her to stand up to Dublinn.
Hence why she attempted suicide via standing in an open field that was currently being bombarded. In a turn of events she couldn’t have predicted, she was saved by Outcast, and was sent to Rhodes for recovery. She then spent some time in Rhodes Island, recovering, but also, learning. It’s noted in her Files that she’d spend a significant amount of time pestering the medical teams in RI for knowledge in the clinical fields. She also requested a new weapon to her specifications, because she hates her spear. This may seem a matter of preference, until you realize that the spear is just Eblana’s old weapon, just furthering exactly how much of an un-person she was. She’d use her sister’s name, her sister’s title, her sister’s reputation, her sister’s authority, even her sister’s damn weapon.
Her chosen codename, “Reed”, comes as no surprise: She explicitly says it’s because that’s how she is: Bland, an accessory, unremarkable, insignificant, like reeds by the river. In this event, we also learn another reason why “Reed” is apt for Loughshinny: Uncontrollably flammable if set ablaze.
Reed was terrified of her own powers. She is a direct descendant of the Red Dragon of Tara, and has insane innate power, namely, power over life itself: The way her flames work is explicitly not fire-aspected Arts: Her Arts allow her to inject pure life into objects and creatures, and the consequence of overcharging skin, muscle tissue, etc with so much life energy so fast and strongly is that it becomes unstable and explodes into raw energy, generating fire as a consequence. It’s also why parts of her body, like her tail and her chest, seem to be constantly “ablaze”: She is literally overflowing with the essence of life at all times, to the point it hurts her, and coming into contact with her means exploding. She is an almost perfect weapon. She hates it. Even her Rhodes Island evaluation files basically describe her as a stupidly powerful individual.
There’s only one thing she doesn’t regret about her time in Eblana’s Dublinn: She really does care for Tarans, and wants to do anything in her power to help them. The reason she put up with being used and abused in Dublinn (about the only person that showed Reed any kindness in Dublinn was Harmonie, and even then she claims it’s because she’s interested in Reed and that she may have use for her) was because, Reed told herself, “at least it’s for the Tarans”. But Reed is not stupid, and over the time, realized that Eblana doesn’t mind sacrificing countless Tarans that trust her if it means securing an advantage. That’s when Reed decided she’d rather get blown to pieces by artillery rather than continue doing horrible things for someone that doesn’t even care about the people that she claims to fight for.
Reed in the event is trying to help this very “little guy”, this very scorned Taran, find a foothold. Her story here is, by all means, low stakes for the most part, but it’s important in understanding who Reed has finally resolved to become: Her time in Rhodes Island and her new Arts unit allows her to far, far more precisely control her Arts, and now she can use VERY controlled bursts of her Arts to inject life into others without sending their living tissue into disarray, effectively becoming a potent healer. The wounded Tarans even remark that while she didn’t give them the most involved treatment for their wounds, they still felt as good as new: It’s because Reed isn’t doing more than basic first aid, and using this as a disguise to her carefully injecting their wounds with life energy. For Reed, this is massive: She’s finally able to like her innate Arts, an intrinsic part of herself, for the first time, because she’s finally not using it to turn people to ashes or make them violently explode. She can finally do things differently, and without Eblana pulling her strings, she’s finally able to do as she wishes. She ends up creating her very own “Dublinn”, with a few Tarans, and looks to the future to do what she never thought she could do, and that’s what I really loved: It’s a small scale event, but it makes it very clear that from here on, Reed not only has a purpose, she has agency over herself, and finally, finally, she is her own person.
The final “map” of the event was fantastic, narratively speaking: It’s a fight with Eblana entirely within her mind, with Eblana wearing a mask in the first phase. Eblana’s mechanics involve killing her own units to empower herself, representative of how she’s completely willing to kill Tarans for the purposes of Dublinn without any regret, then, in the second phase, she discards her mask and sets every reed in the map ablaze: No matter how much Eblana speaks of loving her and saying she’s important to her, Reed has finally come to terms that Eblana WILL simply sacrifice even her when the moment comes, just as she has no issue setting the world on flames if it furthers her desires. The entirety of the map is just Reed finally coming to terms that if she wants to help the Tarans, in her way, she inevitably will come to blows with Eblana at some point, and that there’s no space for hesitation, because Eblana sure as hell won’t hesitate.
What The Firelight Casts is ultimately a high-impact bildungsroman in which our protagonist finally finds herself, perhaps for the first time ever since she was a toddler, and finally has agency over what she does and why she does it.
There’s other parts to the event that I’m not covering that I think were great as well, such as Bagpipe’s characterization being pretty damn good and once more winning me over (I started not really caring for her in any way, but her writing is something I like a lot) with how she’s clearly not book smart, but is sharp as all hell, and most would call her “naive”, when in reality, it’s that she has a rock-hard moral compass and will NEVER stop going where it tells her to go, as well as the Taran survivors having plenty of nice scenes, including the incredibly chilling scene where the older lady that can’t see in the dark is holding onto Selmon’s hand and suddenly she can feel Selmon’s blood all over her arm… We just never know what actually it is that killed her in that night skirmish. Fionn’s characterization as this cowardly but good chum that will take responsibility no matter what is… Honestly, man, if you hang around sectors with low education and wealth, you know a Fionn or two. Especially when it comes to oppressed and displaced peoples… And the way the narrative portrays the opportunistic and almost callous nature of a bunch of the Taran runaways at times without vilifying it? It’s great, the narrative immediately points out, through Reed and Fionn, that yeah, it’s just natural because of how awful they’ve been treated their entire life, there’s always people like that in such groups, doing it not out of cruelty, but simply because, damn, they have to survive, and nothing guarantees to them that this stranger with good intentions actually had good intentions. Trying to survive does things to people. This all becomes water under the bridge after Reed properly bonds with them.
I focused on Reed with this post because she’s a favorite of mine and I’m happy to see her growth and where she’s aiming for, and how she’s grown narratively through her experiences and how that reflects on her Arts: True, Arts are a cool power in the narrative, but for Reed, it’s more about how her Arts are intrinsically to her self-loathing in the past, and how they reflect her growth as a person: She went from a reluctant walking nuke who could only destroy and justified this by simply saying “it’s because my sister knows better and she’s doing it for the end goal of the well-being of Tarans… The end justifies the means” to someone who uses her almost unique powers to soothe others after learning some control over them, control that causes physical pain to her, as controlling her immense power feels as if she’s searing from the inside, as if her organs were on fire, and comes to believe that, no, the means do in fact matter a whole damn lot, and that she’ll one way or another achieve the end while being mindful of the means, even if it means suffering, if it’s for her people. Eblana, who also can control life, uses her powers to 'resurrect’ and control the dead like puppets, whereas Reed now sears herself from within in order to precisely control this power in order to help those she wants to protect, and drive away those who would hurt her or her friends. In what’s a bit of a segregation of narrative and gameplay, whereas she’s known for Explosions in gameplay, in the event, Reed exclusively fights with martial arts. In fact, the only time when she actually uses her Arts, she has to suppress them instantly or she was going to just completely incinerate everyone around her. She turns her surroundings to ashes so quickly that Ch'en can only just stare, wide-eyed, at how she completely incinerated a complete installation of military tents in less than a second, with just a small release of her power.
It’s great! I love Reed! I wanted to see her growth, a piece focused on her, and it’s what I got. I want to know more about the most loving and caring walking nuclear missile in the world with the most hypnotic tail swishes.
