masochist-marmot - Tumblr blog

masochist-marmot · 3 months ago

Text

The Great Work of the Magnus Institute

Disclaimer/spoiler warning: Written after TMAGP ep. 35. Spoilers for all of the Magnus Protocol until this point. Also spoilers for the Magnus Archives.

I base all of these ideas on the tria prima theory I explained in an earlier post, so go read that for context.

Lesser Disclaimer: If any of these theories seem half-baked, the reasons are three-fold: 1. Alchemy has a lax scientific framework and the writings are obscure by design (for secret-guarding reasons), so the ideas are somewhat muddled and difficult to parse. 2. I know that Alex's system is highly specific, so he must have found/created a way to reconcile the inconsistencies into a coherent system that also lends itself to the needs of the podcast. Since I'm working backwards from the podcast towards the system, I know I'm bound to miss something. 3. I simply don't think I have all the pieces of the puzzle yet, but I'll make do with what we have.

Briefly on quintessence or aether

Aether or quintessence is the elusive fifth element. It's said to be the perfect and pure essence that fills the universe beyond the highest elemental sphere (fire). This is kind of where things become muddled, because people have had various interpretations of its nature. Some say it only exists outside the Earth, while others think that it's everywhere, though not directly interacting with the elements. Some see it as the world soul or anima mundi, the life force and source of all human thought and imagination. Aether is perfect and unchangeable, but some think it can be created by taking the source of all elements, prima materia, and perfecting it by cleansing it from its imperfections through transmutation. The physical manifestation of the quintessence is known as the Philosopher's Stone, and the transmutation process is known as the Great Work, or Magnum Opus. The Philosopher's Stone can be used to transmute anything into its ultimate, perfect form (most famously lesser metals into gold).

The symbols for the Magnum Opus (including the Philosopher's Stone) and aether are embedded into the logo:

Prima materia is another confusing can of worms, but some seemed to think the most fitting material is a form of mercury (the metal) that consists of the purest form of Sulphur, Salt and Mercury: "Hence the philosophers have said that this same Mercury is composed of body, spirit, and soul, and that it has assumed the nature and property of all elements." (Paracelsus, The Aurora of the Philosophers)

Now onto the actual theories.

The Institute and their Magnum Opus

We know that the Institute was concerned with completing their Great Work at the turn of the millenium. To this end, they planned to hold an exhibit at the newly constructed Millenium Dome, so that they could harness its power for their project. We also know that one Mr. Kennings expressed concerns about the timing, location and concept of the project. The location was already turning into a locus (ie. it was metaphysically poisoned and out of balance). The turn of the millenium was considered appropriately transformative, but he was worried that the Gregorian calendar was too culturally specific to be universally applicable, and also that people's attitudes leaned towards the fearful and the ideas of stagnation. Therefore, the output of the Dome would also be unbalanced.

Based on this, it's apparent to me that their Magnum Opus was supposed to be a universal transmutation of the entire world. They wanted to tap into the mercurial ideas of the future and the sulphuric feelings about it and use them to guide the entire planet through the transmutative process into ascension. So that we might all become the pure, perfect, unchanging, celestial matter: quintessence. If Jonah Magnus of TMA wanted to make a new world, I can't see why the Magnus Institute of TMAGP wouldn't want the same.

What's particularly worrisome about this is that I don't think everyone's intentions were pure. Kennings seemed to think that Dr Welling tried to account for balance in his calculations, but do we know that they weren't skewed on purpose? What if, inspired by Magnus himself, Welling decided that fearful feelings would aid the transformation better than hopeful ideals? And wouldn't those properties then manifest in the end result? Although I don't see how the stagnation would help anyone, since it would hinder any sort of transformation. The locus itself was (according to my tria prima model) low on sulphur, which would further harm any efforts at transmutation. You cannot transmute without fire. Either way, I'm keeping a close eye on Dr Welling. I think he was and crucially continues to be bad news.

Other alchemical experiments

We know that the Institute ran a program for "gifted children", though we don't currently know the real purpose of it. We also know that they have been collecting supernatural statements and cursed objects, which they evaluate in terms of their viability as a subject, agent or catalyst. They have also been known to incarcerate people, and Sam witnessed one failed human experiment (interrupted in the middle of what appeared to be the citrinitas stage of a transmutation, where the solar light is manifested from within).

I believe all of the above were done in preparation for their own Magnum Opus. They needed subjects, predominantly Salt, to undergo these experiments and transmutations. They needed agents, ideally Mercury, to impress upon these subject, to make them malleable, and perhaps even use as the material for their Great Work. And they needed catalysts, mostly Sulphur, to fuel and guide the transmutation. The dimension hopping guy from episode 17 ranks low on all, since in the end he's just a guy. The lucky/unlucky dice rank "none" on subject, "low" on agent and "medium" on catalyst. That also makes sense, because their ability to cause change is the most promising part. The pier (or whatever's in the fog) from episode 33 once again ranks low on all, and they state that its acquisition would be too risky. I also think it might be quite difficult to manage, hence the low potential.

I can't really speculate what they needed the children for, though they would probably also fit in one of the three categories. Maybe they wanted to test the idea of tapping into people's thoughts and feelings for a source of power, sort of as a prototype for their Work. It could explain why Gerry doesn't remember much from those times. But this is the purest of speculation.

The Archivist is a catalyst

I currently have two competing theories for the origin of the Archivist.

It somehow made it through a rift from another dimension where the Fears have manifested. The Institute and their Outreach Centre caught it and locked it up.

Inspired by Magnus's "research" on what happens when you feed your colleague to a Victorian taxi, the people at the Institute went on to alchemically make a creature that transmutes fear. And then they locked it up.

Be it as it may, in the metaphysical reality of TMAGP, the Archivist is the perfect catalyst for the perfect material. Think about it: fear is as close as you can get to that "pure mercury", the intersection between body, spirit and soul. It is the physical sensations, the shivers, the quickening pulse, the tangible reactions of the body. It's also the ideas or concepts, it's "the Vast" or "the Web" or "the Desolation" or any number of things you can think of. And finally, it's the soul, the feeling, the need to react, the conscious experience of being afraid.

And what does the Archivist do? It drinks it all up, and it separates it into parts, and it manifests it into reality as water, starvation, broken lenses or knives. It transmutes the incorporeal idea and experience into the very corporeal thing that kills you. It is pure Sulphur, a hungry fire constantly looking to be satiated, and while feeding it catalyses a transmutation in the victim.

I think they (or at least, Dr Welling) were thinking of using the Archivist as a catalyst for their Great Work. Maybe that's why he wanted there to be more fear in the output. Honestly, Dr Welling has become quite the boogeyman in my mind, and I wouldn't be surprised if he were to play an integral part in the future.

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #tmagp spoilers #tmagp theory #tmagp tria prima theory #the magnus archives #magnus institute #the archivist #magnussing #dr welling #i have come to hate paracelsus

38 notes · View notes

masochist-marmot · 3 months ago

Text

What's up with the OIAR?

Disclaimer/spoiler warning: Written after TMAGP ep. 34. Spoilers for all of the Magnus Protocol until this point. Minor spoilers for the Magnus Archives.

These are some theories I've cooked up in the alchemy lab of my mind. They are wild, incomplete and probably contradictory, so take them for what they are. I base all of this on the tria prima theory I explained in an earlier post, so go read that for context.

I decided to only focus on the OIAR in this post. I'll make another post on my Magnus Institute theories later and link to them eventually.

What's the purpose of the OIAR?

Here's what we know:

The OIAR monitors and assesses incidents and (at least in the past) responds to them if necessary

Based on the ARG and Colin's ramblings, it used to be under DDR, probably run by their secret police. Fr3-d1's source code is in German, so that makes sense. The operation was probably moved to the UK after the DDR disbanded.

It employs and (according to Lena) manages "externals". Lena considers this work vital, and Colin blames the OIAR for only caring about the "balance", specifically mentioning mercury and sulphur.

I will start by quoting the German physician and alchemist Paracelsus who first proposed the tria prima as the integral principles and used them in his practice of medicine.

If you have a bone and can say whether it is mostly Sulphur, Mercury, or Salt, you know why it is diseased or what is the matter with it. The peasant can see the externals, but the physician's task is to see the inner and secret matter. (Paracelsus, Opus Paramirum)

(Translation by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. I compared it against another translation and the original German, and it's more or less accurate but much easier to understand.)

This may sound far-fetched, but I think the OIAR are practicing Paracelsian medicine on a macrocosmic level. That is, they are monitoring the universal levels of Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt, the imbalance of which is causing these weird supernatural occurrences. Except they can't address every incident individually, so they can only concern themselves with the overall effect (surely a mercury poisoning somewhere balances a salt poisoning somewhere else) and only step in if there is a universal excess of one principle over others. At that point they arrange for their carefully curated externals to go out and do whatever they do to spread their diseased influence. (As an interesting side note, Paracelsus also likes to use the word external (das Eussere), although he mostly uses it to denote the macrocosmos (the nature/universe) which is reflected in the microcosmos (ie. the human body). Occasionally, like in the quote above, he uses it in the sense of "the human body as viewed from the outside".)

If this is the case, then the OIAR employees would function kind of like diagnosticians who assess the nature and severity of the incidents. I also imagine the responses used to be a bit more aggressive until the response unit mysteriously ceased to be. Could have something to do with their associates at Starkwell burning down the Magnus Institute right before they were about to undertake their Magnum Opus (more on that in a later post). A good call, but probably bad for optics. I also think it's a very bad sign that there is currently no one in charge who knows what their actual purpose is.

What's up with Fr3-d1?

I have tried and tried to figure out Fredi's classification system (or as I now see it, the diagnosis), to no avail. I'm fairly certain that the category CAT simply denotes whether the case concerns 1. an individual/living creature, 2. a location or 3. an object or non-living creature. I imagine the rank has to do with the severity or urgency of addressing it. But the DPHW eludes me. I somehow want to link it to the elemental properties (dry, cold, hot, wet) that (according to Paracelsus) are the usual cause for changes in the principles, but the acronym doesn't mesh. I can't help but feel that the answer is somewhere in Paracelsus's writings, as he appropriately wrote in German and could easily provide direct equivalents in TSHU. Or I could be wasting my time and it's something entirely unrelated. I definitely shouldn't go any deeper into that particular rabbit hole. And yet...

I do think that Fredi was originally just a soulless machine created for a purpose, but it's recently been possessed by a consciousness (anima). Unfortunately, I'm not quite ready to buy the John/Martin/Jonah theory, because it feels too much like a red herring. They gave it to us very early on, so clearly that's a conclusion they wanted us to jump to. No mystery writer does that unless it's for misdirection. Though I could potentially buy a version where they ended up in there in mind (mercury) alone. If you read my previous post (and this probably didn't make much sense unless you did), I explained that the mercurial qualities and associations are reminiscent of the Eye, especially the associations to thought, knowledge, universal essence of existence, the fluctuating boundary between corprorality and non-corporality, and the idea of connecting heaven and earth (and possibly other worlds?). What I'm saying is, the three of them, in the eye of the panopticon, were already in a pretty mercurial state. So while I'm not banking on it, I'm also not saying it's impossible.

Whatever the case, I think we can all agree that Fredi (or whoever's in there) is manipulating everyone to their own goals.

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #tmagp spoilers #tmagp theory #tmagp tria prima theory #oiar #magnussing #guys i'm going insane #i'm in full research mode that I SHOULD direct at my master's thesis #hyperfixation go brrr

33 notes · View notes

masochist-marmot · 3 months ago

Text

TMAGP Theory: Tria Prima

Spoiler alert/disclaimer: Written after The Magnus Protocol episode 34; also spoilers for The Magnus Archives

I don't know if this idea has been properly explored yet, but I have had a weeklong hyperfixation where I've delved into alchemy and tried to figure out the inner workings of TMAGP universe. This theory is half-boiled at best, and I apologise if I've misunderstood any of the basic concepts. It seems like even alchemists never fully agreed on them, so they're contradicting each other a lot. That being said, let's get into it.

Perspective Reset

First of all, I think we are collectively still too hung up on the Fears as entities or powers. It's very tempting to classify things with the same framework we're familiar with (and conditioned to), but I think it's preventing us from seeing the bigger picture. Prior to the end of TMA, it's possible that no entities ever even existed in this universe, but the incidents have been taking place for a long time. The creators have also explicitly said that they wanted to create a new rule set, and I doubt that they'd build it with the same blocks. Because of this, I set out to find a set of rules that has nothing to do with the fears.

Classical Elements (Very Briefly)

I will oversimplify this for my sanity and yours. We have the four classical elements: fire, air, water and earth. In the classical worldview, these make up everything on Earth. Each element has two corresponding properties, as you can see in the figure below (fire is hot and dry etc). The elements are in a constant process of circulating and flowing, breaking apart and coming together (sand into water, water into stone, stone into wood...), but fire and air are considered more active and volatile while water and earth are more passive and stable. The rest of the universe is filled with the fifth element, quintessence or aether. It is considered heavenly and perfect and completely unchangeable.

The Three Principles (Tria Prima)

Later alchemists made the addition of (first two and then) three principles that work on the elements and in conjunction with them. These principles were used to describe the alchemical process and its parts, but they also had more metaphysical implications. These are the foundation of my theory.

Salt 🜔: Aka. Corpus or The Body. Things that are solid and stable but also corruptible. The dust that's left behind after something is burned. Associated with earth, water and the property of coldness. In humans, associated with the physical body and therefore physical health. Salt is also associated with preservation and sometimes even rebirth. It's what's left behind after the alchemical stage of putrefication, and therefore what undergoes purification.

Mercury ☿: Aka. Spiritus or The Mind. Things that are volatile and soluble. The alchemical solvent or the smoke that rises from a fire. Considered the perfect agent because it demonstrates properties of both a liquid and a solid. The principle of flowing freely between elements and perhaps even heaven and earth. Associated with air, water and the property of wetness. In humans, it's the mind, or the intellect, knowledge and rationality of a person. Some seem to consider it the universal, platonic idea of thought, as mercury wouldn't be restricted by an individual body.

Sulphur 🜍: Aka. Anima or The Soul. Things that combust, but also the principle of combustibility. The flame that manifests when something is burned. Associated with fire, air and the property of hotness. With fire and air being the most active elements, sulphur is also the catalyst for change. In humans, associated with the soul, or the consciousness that links the body to the mind. It's the emotions, ambitions and desires that animate the body.

Why have I given you the symbols? Because they're all there on the OIAR logo:

(I also circled aether because I thought I'd talk about it later but decided not to, so you're free to make your own conclusions)

I currently believe that these three principles are omnipresent in the Magnus Protocol universe. They're just part of the makeup of the universe, causing no one harm. At least, when they're in balance.

The Theory - It's All About Balance

There's been a lot of talk about balance by now.

"The institute, alchemy, all of it. "It’s all about balance. Dua prima, four elements, seven planets, it’s all the same. You’ve got to keep things balanced. And if something is missing, if someone is misplaced, the equation doesn’t balance… and that’s when things get bad…" (Celia, episode 30)

Here Celia mentions dua prima, which (as I alluded to before) is an earlier theory surrounding Sulphur and Mercury. Salt was proposed as the third principle in a later theory, but by now the tria prima seem to be more widely accepted.

"Not that anyone cares as long as it all balances, right? Not too much mercury or the world ends, not too much sulfur or we all go mad…" (Colin, episode 19)

Huh.

So, let me lay out the actual theory.

The principles usually strive for balance, because it's their natural state. However, sometimes the balance is skewed by human action or some other unexpected force. This imbalance can happen on an individual level or it can affect objects (which then become "cursed") or locations (which then become "poisoned"). In fact, the Magnus Institute calls such poisoned locations loci (singular "locus"). I also hypothesise that this is how the OIAR categorises their incidents (1. individuals - 2. locations - 3. objects).

When there is an imbalance, the affected person/area/object starts to display an unnatural amount or lack of one principle. For example, if there's an abundance of salt, we may see people or things slow down, become passive, even crystallise. Bodies preserved despite obvious corrosion, infections that putrefy and then purify flesh into a "perfect" form. The clearest example I can think of would be episode 3, where the character quite literally transmutes into a tree. Or episode 23 where a character inserts a piece of coral under her skin and begins to paralyse as it grows out of her. If you absolutely have to compare to TMA, I'd say a lot of Flesh, Corruption or Buried statements would fit under salt. It is associated with earth, water and literal bodies, after all.

Abundance in mercury would manifest as things getting a little weird, unstable and volatile, but in a subtle, flowy way. Changing architecture, people seeming odd, things dissolving into others, time or dimensions being unstable, perhaps the limits of a human psyche being broken. I'm thinking of the liminal spaces from episode 8 or the pier from episode 33. The fog is an especially fitting link, what with fog being a manifestation of air and water. I also think the entire Hill Top Centre has been affected. And now that I started, you could easily make connections to the Stranger, the Lonely, the Spiral and the Eye. Which brings an ironic twist to Colin's statement. Too much "mercury" already ended the world once.

Abundance of sulphur would bring out more abrupt changes, it would twist people's passions into unhealthy obsessions, drive people to anger and senseless bloodlust, give consciousness to the unconscious and animate the inanimate. In fact, in episode 19, the character says of Newton's dog: "such a creature must by all natural law lack that essential and ephemeral anima." Another case of an unexpectedly conscious thing would be Liverpool (episode 32), who is coincidentally also incredibly angry. I also think Ink5oul's tattoos have an element of sulphur, not only because their first stolen design (sun with a dot in the middle) evokes the alchemical symbol for sun. In TMA sulphur would probably be attributed to the Slaughter, the Hunt, the Desolation or the like.

I have noticed that a lot of TMAGP incidents involve an unhealthy desire, passion, obsession or (literal and metaphorical) hunger. It's also noticeable that the symbol for sulphur appears on the OIAR logo four times (once in each corner of the square representing the elements). I don't know if this is a stylistic choice or if it has deeper implications. But it's there. And as Colin implies, it could be bad.

The beautiful part about this framework is that it doesn't set any clear limits between the categories, because the balance can be disrupted in many ways. Lack of salt means abundance of sulphur and mercury, and their distribution may also vary greatly. I also don't know if the OIAR ranks their incidents in these terms. They probably have some needlessly complicated system that's practically undecipherable. (I took a long time trying to figure out the DPHW and I'm no closer to solving it.)

End note

I have some thoughts about what the goals of the OIAR and the Magnus Institute are based on this theory, but this post is too long now. May make a follow-up eventually. Or procrastinate until they just tell us.

Edit: I have now written my theory posts on the OIAR and the Magnus Institute. Go read if you're so inclined.

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #tmagp podcast #tmagp spoilers #tmagp theory #tmagp tria prima theory #the magnus archives #tma spoilers #tma #tma podcast #fear entities #red string theory #magnussing #help this hyperfixation has consumed me #i need sleep #before my computer eats me

77 notes · View notes

masochist-marmot · 3 months ago

Text

The fact that Mydei's only weak spot is in his back is such a beautiful nod to the fatal flaws of ancient Greek heroes. It's also really poetic. There is no Kremnoan word for "flee", so exposing your back to the enemy means that you've already given up on your values and honor and therefore deserve to die (according to Mydei, probably). So the only time he would be vulnerable is when he trusts someone enough to turn his back on them and oh, I don't know, straight up tell them what his weakness is.

#mydei #mydeimos #honkai star rail #hsr #hsr 3.1 #hsr spoilers

88 notes · View notes

masochist-marmot · 4 months ago

Text

Comparing Phaidei and Other Hoyo MLM Ships (Part 1)

I barely know how to begin, honestly, because I'm still so taken aback by the absolute Phaidei feast that was 3.1. But perhaps because we were so overfed by the patch, I was actually jarred a little out of the story itself--too busy turning over the broader ramifications of such blatant queer-coding of two male characters in a modern Hoyoverse game.

Of course, Hoyo isn't remotely new to queer-coding their characters (or to queer-baiting, either, gacha games gotta hustle at all times). They absolutely have a history of hinting at both WLW and MLM ships and of including fanservice between the player's MC and other playable characters regardless of gender. Strangely enough, due to the unique confluence of their target audiences' tastes, the Hoyoverse team has an active profit motive to create gay characters:

WLW ships are appealing to heterosexual male players.

MLM ships are appealing to heterosexual female players.

Simultaneously, WLW and MLM ships are appealing to queer players.

Heterosexual ships with characters other than the MC are unappealing to a large percentage of the game's playerbase, particularly to heterosexual male players who want to keep their waifus to themselves but also to female yumeshippers.

Hoyo's market is literally telling them that 1) male characters sell better when they're ship-baited with other male characters, and 2) players don't actually want heterosexual ships between playable characters if the MC isn't involved. (Hell, look at Firefly--players hate romances with the MC too lol!)

But at the same time as the market is telling the devs to keep making queer characters, Hoyoverse also faces immense social pressure to avoid including actual queer content.

Let me hold off on the political and legal consequences of including gay characters in Chinese media for just a second, and look at the situation from the perspective of Hoyo's target audiences first:

Take this data with a grain of salt though; I'm not sure where they got their numbers.

First, Hoyoverse games are increasingly global and surprisingly popular in conservative/religious countries such as Russia, Malaysia, and the UAE. The western world as a whole is shifting increasingly right on LGBT+ issues. For the games to be marketed well across the globe, they've got to avoid challenging the morals of these highly varied audiences. (Perhaps this is why past Hoyoverse titles seemed more open to LGBT+ content than present Hoyoverse games do; a broader audience actually means more restrictions on content.)

Second, even though conservative heterosexual male players are actually surprisingly fine with MLM ship tease, that only applies so long as it stays at the level of "I can pretend I don't see it." As long as anti-LGBT+ players can write off any MLM content as "just close friends," the dev team can get away with frankly shocking amounts of queer interaction between male characters. (I'm sorry to any straight male fans reading this [could there possibly be any?], but half of y'all could win gold medals if mental gymnastics were a sport. The lengths I have seen some male Genshin players go to try to explain away Haikaveh are honestly awe-inspiring. 😂) However, the boundary must be respected. The moment a male character's queerness exceeds subtext and becomes text, when even mental gymnastics cannot come up with a heterosexual explanation, and the plausible deniability goes out the window, it is no longer acceptable to anti-LGBT+ players, and they will be "turned off" from pulling that male character en masse. In essence, the market is telling the devs: 1) Huge amounts of queer-coding = a-okay, but 2) Actual canon queer content = that's gayyyy, no wayyyy.

And third, the obvious: China's stance on LGBT+ people is weirdly stricter in media than it is in "real" life. It is not illegal to be gay in China but it is illegal to be gay in a video game in China. Restrictions on media portrayals of gayness are significantly more strict than restrictions on actually being gay (which is interesting cognitive dissonance for those from outside the country, but that's an essay for another day). Hoyoverse legally cannot show characters engaged in any explicitly queer behaviors--at least that can't be explained away.

Furthermore, the rules apply very differently for male and female characters. WLW content gets way more of a pass from the censors. Bronya and Seele can blush at each other, but Alhaitham and Kaveh cannot. You would never see "Rondo Across Countless Kalpas" happening with male Hoyoverse characters. The censors literally would not allow it, strictly because Chinese standards for portrayals of men are different--and more strict!--than standards for portraying women. Legally, there are strong and serious limitations on what Hoyo can do with their male characters.

Summing all of this up, in trying to create their male characters and content, Hoyoverse is actually fighting a battle of conflicting pressures: Male characters sell better when they are queer-coded, but their interactions can never rise to the level of being canonically gay.

Everything must exist in the realm of implication.

(Yes, I can hear you: "Can you please get to Phaidei already?" 😂)

All of this foreword was to lay a foundation for the actual point I want to make about Phaidei: Because Hoyoverse can only queer-code and not actually queer their male characters, they have (in their modern games), fallen into a sort of pattern with their MLM ship bait. Certain plots and personalities keeps reappearing again and again. They've developed a sort of short-hand set of traits to give to their male characters--the Hoyoverse "queer-coded MLM starter pack" if you will lol.

While not every popular MLM ship in Hoyo's games has the same traits (obviously not), certain elements seem central to creating the delicate necessary gray area between "They're just baiting fangirls" and "The devs intended these two characters to be canonically gay but just couldn't state that textually."

And yet... And yet...

You're not imagining things: Phaidei is actually different.

To demonstrate just how different though, I wanted to take the time to compare Phaidei with other popular Hoyoverse MLM ships, looking at both the similarities (the patterns that Hoyo relies on to reliably queer-code their characters) and the noticeable differences (where Hoyo pushed their own boundaries in surprising ways).

Unfortunately, in the interest of full transparency, my own Hoyoverse experience is limited, so I can only use examples from Star Rail and Genshin Impact. I just haven't played HI3 or ZZZ, so I don't feel comfortable trying to use examples from those games, although I think there may be many ships that fall into similar patterns in those games as well. (Maybe some people can share in the comments?)

Anyway, let's start with similarities:

1. A Pair of Equals

The number one "rule" for popular Hoyoverse queer-coded MLM ships is that the two characters must be evenly matched. This isn't to say they have to have identical levels of physical strength (although that is also often the case); instead, the audience needs to perceive them as being on equal footing in some way. They must either be intellectual equals (Alhaitham and Kaveh), political equals (Ratio and Aventurine; Neuvillette and Wriothesley), equal in social standing (Tighnari and Cyno), or, yes, actually physically equal their capability for going toe-to-toe against each other (Blade and Dan Heng; possibly Zhongli and Childe; for those who ship it, Diluc and Kaeya).

For modern Hoyo games, queer-coded MLM ships with noticeable discrepancies in power dynamics are particularly rare; possibly the only one that comes to mind is Ayato/Thoma (though this is mitigated by the game deliberately telling us that Ayato treats Thoma like family, rather than like a servant). And I think this actually says a lot about the devs' thought process: They are deliberately avoiding scenarios in which one male character seems capable of "preying" on another, where the queer-coding could accidentally be perceived as sexual perversion due to a discrepancy in power dynamics.

They're intentionally averting the "depraved homosexual" trope by--sometimes literally--spelling out for the players that both male characters in their queer-coded MLM ships perceive each other as, and are interested in each other as, equals.

We see this explicitly with Ratio and Aventurine in Star Rail:

And Alhaitham and Kaveh in Genshin:

Even Blade and Dan Heng are likened to "a pair" of identical objects:

So of course, Phainon and Mydei push this to an extreme. Phainon describes himself and Mydei as "friends and foes," and the game goes out of it way to reiterate over and over that they are perfect equals. Although they compete in everything they do, there is never a clear victor; their score card is constantly balancing out because they match each other's skill and power perfectly.

But there are even hints in the game that this isn't just happening naturally, but also by choice: Even when one of them triumphs over the other, they both backtrack and insist on getting on equal standing again. Whether you win or lose the "competition" in Kremnos in 3.0, the outcome is the same:

Phainon and Mydei perceive each other as perfectly matched (in strength, right, right...) and are actively working to keep it that way.

The game also goes out of its way to insist that Mydei and Phainon aren't just equals in terms of strength but also in social standing. It theoretically should be impossible to match Mydei's place on the social ladder--he's the literal crown prince of an entire nation of world-renowned conquerors. Even Aglaea is not a queen; we see her on screen being forced to contend with Okhema's Council who are fighting her for power. There technically isn't anyone in Amphoreus (at least that we've met so far) who should be able to stand on equal political or administrative footing to Mydei.

Except, of course, for Phainon, who supersedes all others by virtue of being the literal prodigal son, the "Chosen One."

The game insists on putting this in our faces over and over again: Mydei may be a king in the making, but Phainon is the "Deliverer." They are equally matched in terms of authority.

The game even goes out of its way to tell us they're perfect mirrors in personality too:

Hoyo, in the kitchen cooking up another gay ship: LISTEN GUYS, they're equals, do you understand me? A MATCHING SET.

But also...

2. Diametrically Opposed

It isn't enough for the queer-coded men to be each other's perfect equals. They also have to be opposites, typically in terms of their personalities. This is the pattern that repeats itself most consistently across Hoyoverse MLM ships with strong textual support: the two men may be equal, but they're also nothing alike. (At least on the surface.)

Alhaitham and Kaveh's entire plot hinges on their directly opposing personalities and morals, representing the clash between rationality and sensibility. Dan Feng was reserved and cool-tempered, while Yingxing was "arrogant" and brash. Hell, Xingqiu and Chongyun are "refined and clever" versus "forthright and trusting." I actually think Zhongli and Childe, despite being the most popular Hoyoverse ship in the western fandom, have very little canonical support, yet they still fit this pattern, with Zhongli as the refined gentleman to Tartaglia's blood knight tendencies.

We know how Ratio sees himself and Aventurine:

Hoyo really said "Opposites attract" and ran with it for every single MLM ship they ever teased.

And there's a logical reason for this. Making the two male characters dead opposites actually slightly decreases people's ability to argue that they're "just friends"--if they have next to nothing in common, they're not usually bonding over mutual hobbies or basing their connection on shared similarities. It becomes harder to portray two male characters as "bros who just get along great" when they're deliberately written with opposing tastes and personalities. (Real friends can sometimes be dead opposites, obviously, but most friendships are built on mutual interests rather than opposing ones, while romantic relationships hilariously have the "opposites attract" stereotype.)

There's no reason to shove polar opposites together again and again except to watch the sparks fly.

Even Hoyo's male characters' color schemes are often perfectly opposite. Plenty of people have figured out if you palette swap Alhaitham and Kaveh, Dan Heng and Blade, and Ratio and Aventurine, you end up with the same colors. Ayato and Thoma match the pattern here too ("red and blue gays" is a well-known trope).

But once again, the devs pulled out ALL the stops for Phaidei:

They're red versus blue. They're sun and moon. They're outgoing versus introverted. They're a king and a peasant (if we believe what Phainon's telling us about Aedes Elysiae). They're the "outsider" and the "golden boy." One fights with strength and the other with technique, brains versus brawn (actually they're both kind of idiots though, so take this one lightly lol).

However, what I think is most interesting about Hoyo's pairs of MLM opposites that is that the devs deliberately subvert expectations by assigning the opposing traits to the "unexpected" character. In both Haikaveh and Ratiorine, it's the rational scholar who is more overtly caring and attuned to their partner's feelings. In Renheng, it's the kind-hearted Yingxing who is consumed by anger, while the aloof, expressionless Dan Heng's voice trembles in wonder at the mere mention of Yingxing's name.

For Phainon and Mydei, this inversion of opposite traits occurs with their personalities specifically. People expected Mydei to be a gruff, hot-headed, battle-hungry berserker with a sarcastic or arrogant personality at best.

Instead, Mydei is an extremely thoughtful person, who struggles with his fate not because of what will happen to himself but because of a desire to bring the greatest good to the greatest number of his people. He's a respectful, gentle (when he needs to be), and even sentimental young man who continues to hold on to love for those who have long passed away. He's reserved around strangers but generous and warm to his companions, and struggles to express himself but has a clear desire to be considerate of others.

We also know he's deeply aware of and emotionally affected by the racism his people are experiencing in Okhema; one NPC in Okhema reports how Mydei, despite being new to Okhema himself, stood up to the very council still plaguing Aglaea in order to protect his people:

Despite having difficulties expressing his own thoughts, he even scolds Phainon for approaching their farewell with a nonchalant expression--Mydei doesn't reject emotions or shy away from becoming close with people he cares for.

Instead, it's Phainon who actually struggles to be honest. While he might connect easily with others on the surface, seeming outgoing and kind-hearted, he is actually a much more private person, one who is reluctant to show his true feelings and dismissive of questions about his past and identity. As opposed to Mydei's desire to avoid Nikador's power, Phainon is (despite his doubts) eager to prove himself, spurned on by the pressure of the prophecy telling him he needs to achieve greatness. We're told that he craved the power of strife specifically, while Mydei summarily wishes to reject it.

It's Phainon who frequently has to be reined in by others--he was ready to kill Oronyx for delaying his rescue of Mydei--and Phainon who fails to let go of his hatred and desire for revenge, causing him to fail Nikador's trial, which Mydei easily clears.

By inverting the traits of the characters, creating designs which visually oppose each other while assigning the actual opposing personality traits to the "mismatched" character, the devs hammer home an implicit message: These two characters complete each other. They fill in each other's gaps. What you expected to find in one of these men, you will instead find in the other. What they wish to be, they will be drawn to in each other.

(Frequently bought together, do not separate!)

3. The Distance is Artificial

Okay, so if they're so obviously written as a "pair," being perfect equals and perfect opposites, how are they just "queer-coded" and not explicitly queer? How is Hoyo keeping up the illusion of the characters not being an obvious couple when they're literally written to complete each other?

Hoyo has one major tool in their arsenal to do this: Prickly personalities.

With the exception of Renheng, which I'll get to in a second, Hoyo has a favorite method for enforcing the rule of plausible deniability, the idea that "Nooo, we promise, they're not in love; they don't even like each other, see??"--and that's giving one of the characters an intractable personality.

This can manifest, like Alhaitham and Kaveh, as constant bickering, where the pair's main method of communication is to devolve into petty arguments or sarcastic quips.

Fans who support the ship can view this as an "old married couple" dynamic; but for those who do not support the ship and choose to insist that Hoyo isn't actually queer-coding their male characters, they can lean on these arguments as "proof" that the characters don't actually love each other.

A similar pattern was recently repeated with Sethos/Wanderer, with Wanderer's prickly personality being used to keep Sethos at bay.

By placing the characters at odds with each other through bickering, Hoyo introduces just enough doubt to make the "They're only friends/roommates, we promise" argument hold some water. This allows them to get--quite honestly--a lot of queer content past the censors and past homophobic audiences too.

We see them repeat this trope with Aventurine and Ratio in Star Rail, introducing the two characters as initially "at odds" with each other and trying to pass it off as Ratio despising Aventurine.

Even after revealing that they were plotting together, the game insists on introducing some lingering doubts, suggesting that Aventurine fears Ratio would actually betray him.

This creates the necessary "gray area," the gap that Hoyo can use to hide in--no, Aventurine doesn't trust Ratio at all, see? Maybe they don't even like each other? Who knows! The doubt doesn't exist because the story particularly needs it, but simply so that Hoyo has a shield to hide behind if people begin to question how close the two male characters are.

Even in comedic material, Hoyo intentionally keeps this "necessary distance" in order to allow themselves wiggle room. Is Ratio an enamored tsundere who can't spit his real feelings out, or does he actually think Aventurine is illogical, mediocre, and ridiculous? Was the "Keeping Up With Star Rail" video an example of Hoyo deliberately baiting by making Ratio flustered over Aventurine "on air," or is he being Aventurine's biggest hater in this clip?

It's just questionable enough that those players who hate MLM to interpret it as the latter, and provides just enough doubt to help Hoyo slip queer-coding under the radar. Those who want to see it will see, while it's written just vaguely enough that those who don't want to see it will not see it.

(That's the point Owlbert, that's the point.)

When in doubt, and when stuck with a pair of characters who aren't likely to bicker with words, Hoyo sometimes has to progress to the next level: making them actual enemies.

What's better for creating plausible deniability than one of them trying to kill the other? (They definitely were not fooling around in a past life. We promise.) In an ironic twist with Renheng in particular, the fandom seems to have somehow come to the (mistaken) consensus that Dan Feng and Yingxing were "confirmed canon" (truly, I see this stated everywhere; we love when reading comprehension fails in the right direction for once lol), leaving only Dan Heng/Blade as being of questionable "canonicity." However, this still works as far as Hoyo is concerned, because only Dan Heng and Blade are left on screen.

By insisting on their present inability to reconcile, Blade and Dan Heng are able to introduce just enough doubt into the equation to offset even significant ship tease for Dan Feng/Yingxing.

Enemies to lovers 150k+ slow burn, please look forward to it.

Okay, but back to Phaidei. At first, it seems like Phaidei is going to follow this pattern to a T: When Phainon first introduces Trailblazer to Mydei, the two seem to be at odds, bickering over how Mydei is choosing to confront the enemy. Mydei even calls Phainon out for an unintentionally insensitive statement (when Phainon demands to know why Mydei isn't "protecting the citizens," Mydei asks "Who are you implying is not a citizen here?" i.e., "Are you saying because I'm Kremnoan I don't count as a citizen?" You can see Phainon practically bite his tongue to take back his words.)

Also known as: Mydei experiences a microaggression.

Mydei's very first line directly to the Trailblazer is to insult Phainon's hospitality, and we know they definitely have plenty of silly insults to lob at each other while competing.

But this is actually where we see the first deviation from the pattern for Phaidei. Although there's a few cursory lines throughout their early dialogue, that's all there ever is--just cursory attempts at suggesting the two bicker and don't get along.

Within one scene, the "tension" present in their first meeting entirely devolves into purely playful banter, and it is clear by the time we finish 3.0 that Phainon and Mydei are actually very close and get along well, with virtually none of Haikaveh's biting comments, Blade and Dan Heng's violence, or Aventurine and Ratio's questions of loyalty. Phainon and Mydei took one look at the rest of Hoyoverse's MLM ships and said "How about we skip that will they-won't they?" lol.

But I'm not quite ready to talk about the places where Phaidei departs from the normal pattern yet, so I'll leave this point by just saying that Hoyo did start Phaidei on the same path as a majority of their other MLM ships, making a vague attempt at using their rivalry to suggest they wouldn't get along--thereby allowing for the alternative interpretation to quiet the haters (and the censors).

4. The (Physical) Distance is Non-Existent

Okay, but if Hoyo uses personalities to inject just enough distance into their queer-coded pairings to avoid crossing any boundaries, then what do they do to tantalize the audience, to make it seem like the characters might actually like each other?

They use body language!

First, just to reiterate a basic video game design principle: All animations and character placements have to be programmed by someone, and that means that all animations and the physical locations of characters in scenes are intentional. Nothing happens in cutscenes by accident.

Designers are constantly making a series of choices any time they have to put together a cutscene, and one of the key choices they have to make is how to express each character through their movements and their positions relative to other characters. (I've talked before, for example, about how Aventurine frequently turns his back on people, forcing their eyes to follow him throughout his cutscenes, taking physical control of the reactions of people around him.)

Hoyoverse games have somewhat standardized scene layouts for conversation cutscenes, with characters typically being placed at different distances from each other depending on their relationships. A majority of conversations happen from a generally cordial conversational distance, which means that any time characters cross this gap and close the distance, the dev team is intentionally sending the players a message.

Like, no one mistook what this was about, right?

Heterosexual jumpscare in my queer post; I'm sorry, I was just too tired to find a video with Lumine lol.

Repeating for good measure: Unless it is with a male playable main character (where the presence of the female main character is what lends the deniability), Hoyo legally cannot show their male characters engaging in physical contact that could be construed as romantic. Male characters can't hold hands; they can't even really hug unless it's "caught you as you fell after battle" (props to Dan Heng for being the only male character in Star Rail to get a "hug" with Jing Yuan lol.) There's a boundary that Hoyo male characters do not cross, and that's almost universally the realm of physical touch.

But Hoyo can place their queer-coded male characters into scenarios of physical closeness that they don't typically show among other characters.

Alhaitham and Kaveh's table says hello.

So does Tighnari and Cyno's single tent from this same quest; Cyno's Story 2, truly the quest that kept on giving.

Aventurine, a character who traditionally keeps half a room's distance between himself and the people he's talking to, suddenly doesn't seem to mind closing the distance with Ratio:

And even Renheng, the eternal enemies, are depicted as crossing physical boundaries, explicitly "getting in each other's faces." Yes it's a battle, but also, I've seen yaoi with less domineering poses lol.

You might think these lightcone examples are a stretch, but seriously: Go look at all the lightcones in the game. Does a single heterosexual couple have a lightcone where they are in each other's space in this manner? No, because physical closeness is actually a tool Hoyo is consistently using to queer-code. (Well, there would probably be more heterosexual closeness too if the incels weren't so weird...)

Anyway, when I saw the devs might be heading the direction of baiting Phaidei, I fully expected that we would see them side-by-side more consistently and with less of a gap between them than between other characters. But I wasn't remotely ready for the degree to which Hoyo would take that.

Here is an example of Phaidei exhibiting the "normal" Star Rail conversational distance:

Andddd... here's where they spend the other 90% of their scenes together:

The unnecessarily large distance between them and the Trailblazer gets me every time. Like they are not leaving room for Jesus Kephale.

Even when they aren't standing practically on top of each other, the devs deliberately choose camera angles that frame them both in the cutscene at the same time, which is relatively rare for Star Rail (not unheard of, but usually the camera will just go for the "first person POV" when two people are speaking, allowing for a close up of the speaking character). Instead of back-and-forth close ups, many of Mydei and Phainon's conversations are framed from a "behind-the-shoulder" angle, to catch them both in the frame. This creates the illusion that they're standing closer together than they are, and also reinforces a sense of intimacy in their conversations--the camera (and thus the player) becomes an "outsider" while their bodies turn toward each other.

Again, Hoyoverse is under pressure to avoid showing physical contact between male characters that could be construed romantically. They can't show Mydei and Phainon tangoing like Black Swan and Acheron. When it comes to queer-coding male characters, they have to use the tools available to them, and their primary tool for visually signifying the possibility of romantic closeness is physical closeness.

The camera is telling you that Mydei and Phainon are close.

Anyway, just one more point I wanted to make before moving on to discussing how Phaidei completely crushed the mold for Hoyoverse queer-coding, but...

5. Oh God, We're Turning Into Your Parents

Listen, I'm a reasonable person. I can fully accept that I play games with LGBT+ goggles on at all times. Despite being fantastically aroace myself, I love yaoi. I love yuri. I even like plenty of straight ships. I'm a fangirl first, academic second, so believe me when I say that I understand how skeptics might view some of the points above. "You're just fangirling. Being equals and opposites doesn't automatically imply romance. The devs might have intended close friendship, not a relationship." This counter-argument is valid!

So I want to end with one more point which I think is actually the lynch pin to proving that Hoyoverse isn't "accidentally" making their male characters come across as queer. Hoyo's queer-coding for certain ships is very intentional and even sometimes very overt. In a few cases prior to Phaidei, they were already skirting the upper limits of plausible deniability, and I think the modern ship that previously pushed the boundary the most is Haikaveh.

You can say what you want about other Hoyo MLM ships and their lack of canon textual support (I love you ZhongChi, even if the devs actually hate you lol), but I believe people who unironically say "The devs are not baiting Alhaitham and Kaveh as a ship" are so media illiterate that it's actually embarrassing to share air with them. Whether you think the devs are just doing it to cash in on yaoi fangirls or because they actually want to depict gay characters, it is indisputable at this point that Alhaitham and Kaveh have in-game ship tease. They just do, and one of the most obvious and unmistakable instances of this is when Kaveh's hangout paralleled Kaveh's relationship with Alhaitham to the heterosexual marriage between Kaveh's mother and father.

To draw a direct connection between Kaveh's father and Alhaitham, who is repeatedly described as not being able to understand Kaveh's artistic sensibilities and idealistic world view but nevertheless chooses to stay by Kaveh's side through his many troubles, while simultaneously reinforcing the idea that Kaveh is his mother's spitting image, both physically and emotionally, can really not be interpreted in any other way.

Hoyoverse took a queer relationship and made a one-for-one analogy to a heterosexual relationship--Alhaitham and Kaveh are a direct reflection of Kaveh's very married parents.

This isn't something that can happen on accident. This is deliberate and unmistakable queer-coding.

Which makes it absolutely wild that it happened twice.

I've posted already about the obvious parallels between Mydei's parents and Phaidei, and I'm actually almost out of room for new images here, so I can't post the images again, but I hardly need to at this point: Mydei's parents met when Gorgo challenged Eurypon at the Kremnos Festival. They fought for ten rounds, determined that they were (what do you know) perfect equals, and Eurypon proposed on the spot. Eurypon is explicitly described as a swordmaster, while Gorgo used a spear.

Later, the game repeatedly (and in various separate instances), emphasizes that Mydei and Phainon's first meeting consisted of a duel lasting ten days and ten nights, where neither of them could secure the victory, proving them to also be each other's perfect equals. Phainon's role as Okhema's swordmaster is emphasized, while Mydei wields a spear just like his mother when killing his father and after taking on Nikador's divinity.

Then there's... everything that came after. Eurypon betrayed Gorgo, effectively stabbing her in the back, and took her life. The foreshadowing that Phainon will do this exact same thing to Mydei is unmissable.

Phainon has even expressed an explicit desire to take part in the same competition where Mydei's father crowned the winner his wife:

In the (very limited) Kremnoan dictionary, I'm pretty sure this is how you say "I'm down to fuck."

Just as in the case with Haikaveh, there is no way that this parallel could have occurred by accident. The devs did not go out of their way to give us entire flashbacks of Gorgo and Eurypon's meeting and downfall for no reason. You're supposed to see the one-for-one connection between Mydei's very heterosexual, married parents and Phainon and Mydei's relationship.

Simultaneously, the devs also parallel their MLM ships to heterosexual relations by incorporating shades of domesticity normally reserved for "traditional" male-female relationships into their MLM ships--including levels of domesticity that heterosexual ships in Genshin and Star Rail usually don't rise to. One of Genshin's most popular MLM ships shares a single-family home and has a chore chart. Thoma is Ayato's housekeeper. Tighnari and Cyno are just flat-out joint raising a child. Jiaoqiu cooks and Moze cleans. Yingxing and Dan Feng accidentally(?) made a baby.

And Phainon and Mydei aren't any exception. They live an apocalyptic world that is constantly calling them away to battle, but the devs went out of their way to tell us Mydei is an extremely good cook who prepares everyone's food and deliberately ruins Phainon's when he's annoying, which is definitely old married couple behavior lol. Mydei is framed repeatedly as being good with children, not just in the distant fatherly way but in the "plays house" and follows-along-after-unaccompanied-kids-like-a-mother-hen way. Yet when Mydei has to leave, taking the classic "I'm going off to war" ancient Greek exit, he doesn't depart without leaving Phainon his people--with the camera panning specifically to the little Kremnoans. Phainon got the kids in the divorce. D; The tragic domesticity is already off the charts, and then they hit you the second punch when Mydei's last question (just one or two lines later) confirms that it was Phainon who got the ring for him. Hoyo couldn't actually have given us a more heavy-handed "parting husband and wife" parallel if someone held them at gunpoint. That whole thing was some Odyssey level bullshit. I see you devs, I see you.

You might be tempted to say that is just heteronormativity, which it could be, but I actually think it serves a very specific place in Hoyo's queer-coding repertoire. In comparing gay relationships to heterosexual marriages, the devs effectively "legitimize" their queer characters, suggesting that the relationships between gay male characters are no less real or valid than those between men and women. In demonstrating that male characters can achieve stable and healthy domestic lives with each other, the devs reiterate that players are not supposed to notice a difference between gay and heterosexual relationships.

There isn't any clearer way for Hoyoverse to legally say "We want you to think of these two men as romantic partners" than to say "Wow, isn't it interesting that their relationship is identical to a married couple's." It's on purpose; at this point, you really can't say the queer-coding isn't deliberate without looking like you can't read, and if it was intentional when Haikaveh paralleled Kaveh's parents, then it was doubly so the second time Hoyoverse pulled this trick to parallel Phaidei to Mydei's parents.

PHEW! Okay, I finally made it through the foundational traits for Hoyoverse MLM ship-bait and where Phaidei fits in with those. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk! 😂

But... the whole reason I started this post was actually because I wanted to talk about differences between Phaidei and other Hoyoverse MLM ships, and particularly how bold Hoyo actually was in 3.1, pushing the envelop to an extreme degree to ship-tease Phainon and Mydei.

So, since the post was way, way too long, I've spit the rest of my point off into a second post.

Check out Part 2 over here. ->

#honkai star rail #hsr #phainon #mydei #phaidei #op cooked #mihoyo is playing us all like a fiddle

895 notes · View notes