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Xiao goes to the zoo (and Hu Tao and Zhongli comment on the social climate of equines)

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Thank you @mielwriting !!

FREDERICA GUNNHILDR LORE ACCORDING TO ME!!

Gonna get the big one out of the way she’s amicably divorced from Seamus

Related to the above, aromantic but didn’t realize/come to terms with it until later in life. Was uncomfortable with remaining married (or rather the dissonance had always been there, but she hadn’t understood it for a long time) and, after a few weeks of conference to figure out how to tell their daughters and custody, ended things with Seamus. Divorce is very easy in Mondstadt on account of it is the nation of freedom.

After the divorce, they didn’t see much of each other outside of work because Seamus asked for time to let go of his feelings for her. This, along with the fact that it occurred around the time of Jean’s knighting, is why Barbara is more distant from her mother and sister.

Speaking of Jean’s knighting I was going through her and Barbara’s character stories to refresh myself on their and their family’s lore and apparently Jean was given the title of Dandelion Knight when she was fifteen. Are you kidding me. Okay new headcanon Jean became a knight at fifteen and then rose through the ranks even more meteorically than Diluc did, and you can bet that Frederica lorded that over Crepus.

Frederica does consider Seamus a good friend even after what’s happened between them and they became close again while on expedition with Varka (they were talking shit about him (jokingly) the whole time and also nagging him for leaving everything on Jean’s shoulders. Varka jokes that he sent Frederica back because she was being too mean to him and he was separating her and Seamus like troublemaking kids)

Is incredibly proud of her kids and told them so when they each took up their callings (Jean being knighted and taking up the mantle of Dandelion Knight, Barbara becoming a priest like their ancestor)

HOWEVER she was very strict with them when they were younger (this is canon), and it’s something she regrets but does not seek to be absolved from (doesn’t think she deserves it and intends to feel the guilt for the rest of her days while making it up to them as best she can now). She also has difficulty expressing affection; this wasn’t to be stern with her daughters but rather because of her own personality and how she grew up.

Somehow friends with Kaeya. No one knows how it happened and this fact haunts Jean daily. (It’s because I also headcanon Kaeya as aromantic and that he once almost admitted to being a Khaenri’ahn scion when he was 14 but at the last minute came out instead, and Seamus was like “this poor child seems to be suffering so much from his unfounded guilt :( he needs a positive aro role model in his life and I Know Just Who To Call”) This also ties into my headcanon that Kaeya gets along very well with older ladies and The Gossip-y Auntie Circles are part of his information network.

Frederica doesn’t quite qualify as a gossip-y auntie because she doesn’t have the pizzazz but though she tends towards brusqueness and is an otherwise forthright person, she DOES have a very understated way of making her gossip opinions known. The other older ladies think she’s hilarious.

Auntie #1: did you hear such-and-such proposed to so-and-so?

Auntie #2: why, but they’ve only been dating for two weeks!

Frederica: such-and-such? Hm. (Subtle micro-expression)

The aunties and Kaeya: goodness gracious. That’s a Frederica insult. It’s devastating. Such-and-such should be devastated right now.

When Frederica and Seamus got divorced there were several ladies who were hoping for late-in-life lesbian realization (sadly for them, that wasn’t it)

Frederica is a brunette

Frederica and Crepus were childhood friends as scions of the last non-disgraced noble houses of Mond. They were both very excited when they heard Diluc and Jean started dating, but less so when they found out that it was a couple years before they found out and extremely short-lived.

Didn’t have many friends outside of Crepus and his circle when she was younger because of how she threw herself into training and work. Most of her friends she made after she got married (slowed down on the work stuff to handle wedding stuff and later baby stuff, and a bunch of her now-friends pounced on their chance)

Frederica doesn’t know about Venti

Although Jean is the one who followed in her footsteps as a knight, Barbara is actually the one who resembles her more.

Holds her liquor well enough to have been one of Mond’s champion drinkers in her heyday. Varka frequently accused her of having some sort of blessing that kept her from getting drunk.

If she hadn’t become a knight, she would have become a historian.

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By the way is anyone interested in my Frederica headcanons

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I FUCKED UP

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Okay okay so like my headcanon is. Jean is a year older than Diluc and Kaeya but she joined the knights later which is why she calls Diluc her senior. Diluc joined at like thirteen or something and became a captain and Frederica was side-eyeing Crepus because she was like “he hasn’t even completed proper training, the flaws in his swordsmanship will be cemented into his fieldwork and that’s to say nothing of his schooling and chivalry, what are you thinking” and side-eyeing Varka even harder because “what the hell, man” and Jean had to wait until she was like 16 or 17 before her mom said she was ready to take the knight exam (passed with flying colors, obviously)

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Say what you will about Wanderer because he probably deserves it (sorry dude) but he also has mother issues and as a fellow mother-issues-haver that’s my kind of character

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Chongyun sketch page!!!!!! (Full page under the cut) Featuring my modern AU where Xiao ends up chaperoning three teenagers by accident (it was not an accident, the teenagers adopted him like a feral stray cat)

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if u talk to xamaran after doing varesa's quest it tells u its dad is a fucking idiot and that it's glad he's doing badly LMFAOOOOO

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The new story and new areas are very cool, but do you know what's even cooler?

MORE XAMARAN LORE. XAMARAN LORE AFTER 93748482883 YEARS THAT WE'VE MET THIS FUCKING FUNGI AND NOW MORE LORE ABOUT IT COMES OUT. THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY FUCKIGN. LIFE

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LORE DROP?????????

THE MUSHROOM GUY?? I was not expecting surprise Tighnari guest appearance, but it’s fitting. The fungi lord is lucky that Tighnari only appeared now instead of during the shenanigans because it wouldve gotten verbally ripped apart.

I KNEW YOUD KNOW, MUSHROOM GUY………..

SURPRISE CLOSURE AFTER *checks Chasm release date* THREE YEARS????????????

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With the imminent arrival of Snezhnaya (probably sometime in the next couple patches), Venti’s second story quest inches ever nearer…

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"She was the moment. She was every moment. She was the measure of a thousand winds and the sun and the moon. She was every second of joy, every moment of rage, every instant of longing, every minute of obsession. She was every flash of delirium." - "The Third Year of Darkness", Before Sun and Moon

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In which Ei is a better grandparent than parent (kinda)

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The stars fade to black...

"Sin infests the firmament, calamity unfurls across the universe. You are free, and none now may proscribe you — yet your destiny remains bound to that of this world. Indeed, you shall send your disciple here in the near future."

"What? Me, a student? Such misfortune — for them, I mean... whenever they show up."

— Vedrfolnir "The Visionary" & Surtalogi "The Foul"

◆ Name: Skirk

◆ Title: Void Star

◆ Sinner's Pupil, Fool's Master

◆ The Seven-Shifting Serpent: Cryo

◆ Constellation: Crystallina

The stars hang above in their night-veiled skies.

The Abyss lies beneath in chthonic depths.

None can know what lies beyond the bespangled heights, just as none can perceive that which dwells in lightless depths.

As the ancient Khaenri'ahn augur once said:

"Venturing out into the universe and down into the abyss are the same—"

"In that both are braving the dark unknown."

In the days after the underground civilization collapsed, upon a patch of unremembered, scorched earth—

The one who despised destiny plucked a young girl from the hand of fate.

Once she had grown up, she too saved a child ensnared by providence.

How good it would be, if warmth could be the measure of all things, if all tales could end in joy...

Yet the road ahead is uncertain, the sights beyond unknown.

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5.6 paralogism mistranslations

(or, at least the ones i paid attention to, which is mainly just kaeya and diluc. yes i'm biased. leave me alone) (yes. some medium spoilers ahead)

honeyhunter and the bilibili wiki haven't updated with chinese transcripts of the new 5.6 archon quest so pretty much all of this is going to be reliant on my listening skills, which are pretty bad because i have a hard time discerning auditory things for some reason.

this isn't a mistranslation i just got really excited when i was going back through the travel log and saw this. i can't believe they remembered diluc was the former cavalry captain *bangs ground and cries*

if i had to say anything about this quest. i guess it would be that i wish more people would play with chinese voiceover. i feel like the tone of almost every character is conveyed better through it, and the lipsyncing actually matches up because, yknow, the game is originally in chinese.

no real hate towards the japanese voiceover, i know because of anime and other stuff that there's more interest for jp voices and hearing famous seiyuu is cool, but i wish it didn't come at the cost of me literally never being able to find chinese voiceover content or even the chinese voice actors half of the time. yeah Sometimes i can find it on bilibili but it's not easy.

anyways, translations are below the cut

so from what i've discerned for the general quest, it's all pretty well translated or slightly adapted for the region because of cultural differences. for example, dahlia and sucrose's exchange here

the second part is better translated (from memory, because i can't find this bit in the travel log to listen to the dialogue again) as "a girl by herself could be too dangerous, so let me help". this is generally because feminism and chivalry are viewed differently in china. china is usually more respectful of women than countries like the US, so chivalrous actions like this are considered polite rather than subconsciously(?) demeaning sucrose's ability. idk, i figure some people might see it that way.

alright lets get to the main thing that annoyed me

in chinese, the dialogue reads roughly as thus (...and i'll add emojis for tone):

kaeya: :O holy--* just by a hair!**. for this one i'll really have to thank master diluc for lending a hand! :D diluc: no need to be polite. even if you weren't here, i'd still lend a hand. instead, your presence actually blocked my way. :/ kaeya: well... why don't i just leave then? if i stayed, i would only be able provide some elemental reactions creating a lot of steam***. feels like it wouldn't be very helpful! :P diluc: really?

[*kaeya's onomatopoeia is going to be translated the way i hear it through sun ye's tone]

[**kaeya says 千钧一发, idk how to translate this idiom very well]

[***i checked if this was the chinese term for vaporize, it's not]

LIKE. IT'S DIFFERENT RIGHT? I'M NOT CRAZY RIGHT? why is the english translation so determined to make them seem like they hate each other more?? i know kaeya's following dialogue makes it less antagonistic--

but does that mean the first part has to make kaeya sound so lowkey pitiful through text dialogue? (disclaimer: as of may 7th, 2025, there are no english voiceovers for this dialogue)

i don't have much other opinion on this it just annoyed me because in chinese they sound a lot more amicable towards each other, with kaeya directly teasing. but those ellipses in english don't leave much to be desired.

additionally, here:

in chinese, the dialogue reads roughly as thus (...and i'll add emojis for tone):

kaeya: haha, alright, when did you realize something was off? ^-^ diluc: the first trial. :| kaeya: lemme guess, because of the imposter hertha? :o diluc: compared to them, your problem was more obvious. :/ kaeya: me?! >:O what was wrong with me? :( you mean to say, my role as the defense wasn't played with enough passion? >:) diluc: nobody said that.* it's just that it seemed like you lacked some nervousness. :/ kaeya: then... when does master diluc think i actually get nervous? >:)

*(i don't have a rolling eyes emoji but imagine it here)

like there's a clear difference here!! if it were a matter of timing for spoken dialogue, (which, let's be honest, hoyoverse has not cared about that almost ever (see: signora death cutscene)), the hardest to fit in the same timing would be my translation of kaeya's third line. and even then, the official translation's tone sounds much more muted because it lacks verbal direction of cn kaeya's vocal mannerisms (which, summed up, is basically just "teasing").

like, cn kaeya is an endearing little shithead hiding something, en kaeya has the air of someone on edge but trying to sound friendly (this feels more obvious in many interactions between him and diluc).

in chinese, the dialogue reads roughly as thus (...and i'll add emojis for tone) [brackets include implied information]:

kaeya: mm! don't worry, just leave this area to me and this enthusiastic volunteer (doing-the-knights-work)* civilian, master diluc! ^_^ albedo: why not say "the former cavalry captain and the current cavalry captain" [working together]? :| diluc: i don't feel like that's necessary =_=

*personally, i'd remove this part because it sounds weirder in english

need i say more. *slams head into brick wall* when will kaeya and diluc stop having their dialogue slandered in english

in chinese, the dialogue reads roughly as thus:

diluc: if i have to say something, i'd rather believe that someone who once helped me in the past couldn't suddenly become a cold-blooded killer.

this isn't really that big of a mistranslation i'm just very particular about diluc's words.

also i'm so offended at this group gathering photo because like what about everyone else who defended mondstadt? you're gonna ignore them?? fischl? mona?? noelle??? DILUC????

"oh ash it's a knights' meeting" YEAH BUT I WANNA SEE DILUC?? i'm calm. i'm so calm. this is fine everything's fine.

also the cutscene at the end was super cool, because GUESS WHAT HAPPENED

i love them so much

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Just realized this update must be momentous for magicpixel enjoyers

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Who at Hoyo EN keeps translating Klee as calling Albedo “Mr. Albedo”