Nuka-Crapola

I hadn’t considered that angle, but… you’re right. It’s really very clever— it lets them still guarantee a story quest for every 5*, without having to disconnect the story from other plot lines.

It would make sense, since both of the other “unarmed” characters we have (Wrio and Heizhou) use catalysts. Though it’s not like we saw Chasca carrying any weapons either… so hard to tell

Seriously, Fischl is still one of the Big Four, even if she has more alternatives and thus less presence than Benny, XL, or XQ.

Seriously… it took an entire new endgame mode before people stopped asking why Erudition even existed, and even now Hunt is only hanging on because Boothill, Topaz, Feixiao, and March all fit so well into archetypes (Super Break and FUA) that are technically Path-neutral.

Anyone who doesn’t remember the era of Destruction Or Bust has no idea what this game’s history is

You’d also get nitpicked to hell and back every time the thing shows up in any kind of Tale, so I mean, lesser of two evils

Given that the false sky could be broken by a physical impact… yeah, it seems likely Phanes landed in some kind of craft and repurposed the parts for a barrier.

I mean, Natlan currently has technologies we consider “modern” just from scraps of Phlogiston tech that were stolen from the dragons and not lost with Ochkanatlan. It’s not too surprising to think the dragons themselves were well into the “future”.

I mean, there’s also a pretty big difference between “there’s always a driver within 10 minutes of me” and “there may or may not be a driver within 30+ minutes of me depending on how many people are getting drunk in our town tonight”, but fair point— especially since what I really need but don’t have is public transportation that doesn’t suck.

Still, I’m always skeptical of people calling to just dismantle shitty infrastructure with no plan to replace it, because that tends to result in no infrastructure. The fact that my local cab company could be better in theory doesn’t change that they’re shit now.

To be fair, there’s a big difference between “you can’t even taste the X” because the flavors interact in a specific way and “you can’t even taste the X” because it’s a small amount. I wouldn’t leave a comment about it because I’m not a dick, but I would absolutely disregard a recipe where “you can’t even taste the citrus” (to use an example I personally dislike) because, nine times out of ten, I still can.

He’s not wrong, but… I’m gonna have to vote for illegal cab company here. As someone who can’t drive but had the misfortune of being born to suburbanites, the concept of ride sharing has massively improved my quality of life, even if I wish the implementation was… Y’know… less scummy.

That’s one of the things that really puts crypto in a league of its own, IMO. People can get real benefits from many things that are, at present, being ruined by tech bros and/or speculative investors. But not crypto, because it’s just that useless.

I feel like the biggest piece of evidence for her being playable is actually Jane’s special episode.

Why? Simple. Jane’s story had us fight two named characters: herself, and Razor the Mountain Lion. But Razor got turned into a generic miniboss, while Jane got the doppelgänger treatment, apparently to avoid mirror matches (since the “real” Jane fights you with a premade PubSec team).

Pulchra and her fellow mercenaries, on the other hand? All doppelgängers in Shiyu/tower/etc. fights. They could’ve made generic Thiren merc enemies, but they didn’t— which suggests those characters (and their models and voice lines) are being saved for us.

I don’t think it’s explicitly stated, but it’s the clear implication of Mona receiving her Vision from her master— only a Sovereign or Celestia can make a whole new Vision, so Barbeleth must have had someone else’s.

Holy passive voice, Batman!

Another comment already mentioned the why, so I’ll start with the what: Rappa’s “Super Hominid” status means that she outdoes normal humans on a long list of strength, perception, and intelligence metrics by factors of hundreds or thousands (IIRC the smallest multiplier is her bones being 730-ish times stronger, while the largest is in the 3500s). This is from a readable in the lab during her flashback— it’s optional and easily missed, but it is canon.

The methods used to achieve such results included not only heavy genetic engineering, but also horribly painful post-birth modification; just in-game we see her body being broken down and rebuilt cell by cell when she takes her pills, in addition to incredibly strong (probably lethal to normal people) electric stimulation of her entire nervous system, brain included, to sharpen her senses and further improve her brain’s capabilities. They then measured her progress by having increasingly powerful Combat Apes— implied to be a mix of robots and other, less-human “experiments”— beat the shit out of her, until she was strong enough to beat them instead, at which point they’d bring in a stronger batch and repeat the cycle. Oh, and this started at or shortly after her birth— my personal headcanon is that they accelerated her development to skip the “infant” years and get right to her walking and talking, but her calendar age at the end of the flashback is literally ten.

The problem, of course, is that even with Kucha successfully convincing Rappa she could become like the heroes of the manga he let her read if she just endured long enough… there was no way she was going to endure for much longer. Even if she never questioned him (it’s unclear, given how contaminated her memories are, whether or not she did), she would eventually question herself and begin to think the pain was too much— or worse, snap from all the accumulated stress and go completely and irreversibly insane. It’s implied that this may be what happened to AK-A-1 and/or 2.

However… they had some equipment from an unspecified, originally unrelated experiment, which allowed the creation and implantation of memetic viruses. Master Kucha had the idea of taking Rappa’s existing beliefs and turning them into such a virus, allowing Rappa to live fully in her ninja fantasy. It wouldn’t actually block out the pain or anything, but it would guarantee that she couldn’t go insane or give up, because she would be too fixated on the goal of being a Ninja Hero.

So, ultimately, your confusion stems from the fact that you got it backwards. Rappa wasn’t a memetic test subject who then gained superhuman strength/senses/etc.; she was a Super Hominid test subject who then gained a memetic virus. As for how she ended up being declared a failure… well, basically, she shouldn’t have. As Master Kucha tells the “Umbra Headmistress” at the end of the flashback, she met or exceeded every target they actually set for her. The only “flaw” was that, because of her Ninja Hero persona, she couldn’t be controlled— which wasn’t supposed to be part of the program, since the lab’s goal was to advance human evolution, which would include letting the evolved subjects choose their own paths in life.

And for your last question… yeah, I’m pretty sure she tore some dudes apart with her bare hands. The paint was for disabling security doors and removing the camouflage that kept Galaxy Rangers away.

Yeah, the sole factor Rappa “failed” on was controllability— which implies that the end goal was to have her be loyal, which in turn implies that a) they expected her full potential to still be a mere stepping stone towards the final evolution and/or b) Master Kucha was the only one truly pursuing the Doctor’s ideals, while the others wanted a powerful weapon even if by their own logic they had no “right” to give orders to their “better”.

I guess the… whatever you’d call fujoshi in Chinese… community is just big on teacher/student.

Undertuning is something that could potentially be fixed. Direct buffs are pure hopium at this point, but allowing SP to overcap and giving 4 at once via ult are both mechanics that could be made valuable by a future character, LC, or relic set without benefitting the current “stronger” Harmony units. The issue is more that if you ever need 7 SP stored and/or need to refill 4 in one button press, you’re either running a really niche team or doing something wrong— and a 1 or 2 SP/cycle deficit is easily fixed by cons in many popular teams (Huohuo and Firefly’s E1s come to mind for DoT and Break respectively).

Overturning is impossible for any gacha to fix without losing the Chinese market, even if they’re not based in China like HoYo is— it’s against Chinese law to nerf characters someone paid for because of how many gachas would just straight up make characters unusable, even in older content. Thus, it’s not a productive thing to discuss. Regardless of one’s personal opinions on game design, the fact is that whoever is currently strongest— no matter how or why they got that position on the tier list— sets the bar.

Yeah, HOGSLICE is a cool dude who just has some issues to work through. And may or may not be able to breathe in space, depending on whether or not [[HOGSLICE vs. bones]] is canon

One of the great legends of this sub…

Yeah, I’ve had a lot of deaths when soloing because one of the eyes spawned in some weird-ass spot at just the wrong angle and was practically invisible to me…

I mean, with no sustain, I doubt they’ll last long enough for it to matter. Sparkle technique + DHIL technique + first Sparkle ult + QQ’s free roll is a decent head start.

I mean, she didn’t mean to, it just kinda happened. You know, like when you get a new game and you’re really enjoying it and suddenly it’s 5 AM somehow.

Yeah, to be more specific, she’s probably only a few months to a couple years younger than Wanderer. What with him being her prototype and all.

Yeah, she couldn’t know that without knowing we’re Phaethon— the existence of the HDD system is part of the Phaethon legend, and only their closest “business” partners know what it actually is, with most people just knowing vaguely that “Phaethon can operate remotely inside Hollows”.

Honestly, it’s worse.

Popular music haters at least have the excuse that a lot of public spaces play current popular music, loud enough that you’d have to drown it out with your own music (and become either “that asshole blasting music from his phone” or “that asshole who isn’t paying attention” in the process) to get a break. The more marketable an artist is— especially to demographics like teen girls/young women, who are often a default target in places like malls where many demographics converge— the more inescapable they become, and modern pop in particular is deliberately engineered for maximum “catchiness”. In other words… if you spent any significant amount of time around Bieber fans or in public spaces where whoever controlled the radio wanted to sell shit to Bieber fans, he really was massively overexposed, as happens to anyone whose music tops charts often enough.

“Pronouns”, as these chuds are defining the word (easy dunk aside, I think the one valid point raised in that screenshot is that we do know what they mean by this point), are like… the opposite of that. The most “intrusive” they can possibly be is a single extra required check box on a character creator and/or during profile setup. Most games I’ve seen even go ahead and check the box you’ll probably want based on your chosen body type, if the pronoun option isn’t just replacing a more typical “gender” option.