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starcurtain · 18 days ago

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The new aranara-looking pet from the GenshinxKFC collaboration is making twitter buzz with that "Alhaitham can see aranara and Kaveh can't" bullshit again, so I feel like I should tap the sign...

Stop butchering aranara lore! You're making me so sad that there's so many fake aranara fans who only pretend they finished those quests! 😂

A Very Rambling Rant about Alhaitham and Aranara

Sigh. Everyone on twitter is all excited over this idea that Alhaitham can see aranara, and I don't mean to be downer but like... I kind of hate this. Not the idea of Alhaitham seeing aranara, which is very cute, very nice, yes, but more the way this kind of thing unfolds.

It's a classic example of unconfirmed material, extraneous to the actual game, getting put out on social media like it's canon: Someone tweets "ALHAITHAM CAN SEE ARANARA!!" and suddenly it's running rampant in the fandom and people are completely convinced it's canonically true, without the actual game or any confirmed story-relevant materials genuinely supporting the idea. This is exactly how misinformation gets spread. (I'm looking at you, "Jade enslaved Aventurine" Star Rail fandom brainrot.)

And it's this "bandwagon canon" that leads to constant issues in the fandom when people point out that even some widely accepted stuff is actually fanon. People are literally vicious over defending things that don't actually have any evidence in the game itself.

I really wish this fandom was better at distinguishing "This thing is factually true" and "This is a really cool idea and there might be a few hints for it! I'm going to make this my headcanon!" Watching stuff in fandom go un-fact-checked genuinely makes me terrified for people's ability to fact check real world issues sometimes!

Not to mention the way this conversation is happening is just really unpleasant too?

I saw multiple tweets with thousands of likes going around saying things like "Of course Alhaitham can still see the aranara; he has child-like wonder while Kaveh is traumatized and had to grow up too fast, so it makes sense he can't see them."

Which like... This is so gross to me? Are these people just missing the massive unfortunate implications of their own words--the idea that traumatized people can't experience wonder for the world anymore? That they're somehow broken and can't experience any child-like joy??? It's a deeply unpleasant take to me.

And not only that, it directly contradicts actual canon, because Yoimiya's entire second story quest was about a girl going through a traumatic illness that confined her to a wheelchair and led to her experiencing guilt and depression--and about helping her to see that everything that made life worth living was still there for her, and that she had never lost her wonder or will to live in the first place.

And the whole thing just smacks of a fundamental misunderstanding of why adults can't see the aranara in the first place. It's not because there's some sort of magical "You must be 18 or younger to see aranara" rule. It's because the aranara themselves choose not to be seen by adults. They protect themselves by making themselves invisible. They're not invisible by nature! Everyone can see them--when the aranara want to be seen. Conversely, this means that adults with "childlike wonder" are not just automatically seeing aranara left and right. No matter how happy and childish at heart an adult is, they will only see an aranara if the aranara personally trust them and want to be seen.

The aranara trust children because children are generally good-hearted (and also probably easy to escape from), so there is usually no need to keep themselves invisible to children, but even among children, they are invisible until they choose to be seen. (I think everyone forgot the quest where you find the child who was kidnapped by the Fatui in the forest, saved by an aranara who chose to reveal itself to her, but then she refuses to go back to the village, so you leave her at the aranara nursery--only the aranara there at the nursery choose not to reveal themselves to her because they don't know her yet.) Even with children, aranara don't just go running up on them--they're incredibly cautious creatures who only show themselves after they're sure they'll be safe. They distrust adults because adults deliberately use "growing up" as an excuse to abandon simplicity, kindness, and gentleness in order to embrace concepts that include getting ahead of others and seeking profit--two things which could be particularly dangerous for a vulnerable forest fairy population.

There's also an extremely complicated intersection between the aranara and memory, as they represent and upon "death" return to being the forest's living memory itself. Avin, the girl in Yoimiya's story quest, is a child--but still loses the ability to visit her aranara companion because her illness keeps her away from the forest so long that she simply forgets her aranara buddy ever existed. Even aranara who would love to continue playing with their human companions find themselves forgotten over and over again, because they simply don't linger in human memory well. It's a giant metaphor for how fleeting and temporary human existence is in comparison to the natural world! It's a metaphorrrrrrr.

(There's also the fact that aranara freely move between reality and dreaming--something which Sumeru's adult population only recently regained the ability to even do.)

And like... does no one remember that Yoimiya could only see the aranara because Traveler was there to introduce her to them? She doesn't just automatically see them even though she has all the childish wonder possible in her heart.

I even saw tweets saying that anyone who thinks Alhaitham doesn't have child-like wonder in his heart and wouldn't automatically be able to see aranara fundamentally misunderstands his character and I just... First, see the point above--this is already a misunderstanding of how aranara work.

Second, am I just crazy, or is there absolutely nothing about having wonder and curiosity and passion for the world around you that is confined to children? Are we really going with "Having an imagination is for kids" as our takeaway from all this?

Alhaitham absolutely is passionate! He loves Sumeru as much as Nahida does! The mysteries of the world fascinate him, and he wants to be doing nothing more than ravenously learning and taking in new information at every opportunity!

But finding wonder and joy in life's mysteries is absolutely not restricted to children!

There's nothing inherently "childish" about loving fiction and the fantastical world of books, having a vivid imagination, being passionate about learning new things, and just plain out enjoying life. I'm sorry everyone else has apparently become such miserable adults that the only way they can believe Alhaitham finds joy in the world is by assuming he must have maintained a "child-like" inner nature. Please go read more books and touch more grass and maybe you too will experience adult wonder and joy???

Alhaitham's vivid curiosity about the world isn't remotely "child-like." It's based on the same sort of philosophical obsessions that drove Plato and Aristotle to redefine human thinking. To Alhaitham, Sumeru is likely much more vivid and beautiful and full of intrigue because he is now an adult who has the ability to freely think, formulate deeper questions, and the means to pursue research into his personal passions. His teaser trailer is literally about how he took the job of the Scribe because the Scribe records truth--not child-like faith in the magic of the world, but a constant unfilled yearning to get closer and closer to what is real.

If Alhaitham can see aranara, it's because he's earned the trust of the aranara by his deeds, not because he's secretly still an innocent, sweet baby boy deep down who has chosen not to grow up. (And like, if "traumatized people don't see aranara" is really what we're going with, are we actually arguing Kaveh is the only traumatized, "grew up too soon" one here? Did everyone just forget Alhaitham is an orphan with zero surviving family members left in the world and that he spent his entire childhood friendless, at least as far as we've been shown?)

Winning the trust of the aranara is something anyone could do if they show strong enough positive traits--just basic kindness, gentleness, and patience, which I promise you, adults can have.

At the very least, if we're going to suggest Alhaitham is child-like, can't we at least point to his actual childish behaviors, such as constantly pulling Kaveh's pigtails like a schoolboy with his first crush? Throwing hands with anyone who pisses him off too much? Being a jokester who continually sends Paimon books because she picked on him for his choice of reading materials once? At least y'all could have started there... Come on, now.

Phew, this really was a whole rant, but I just needed to get that off my chest. The Hoyo fandoms on twitter are so, so bad. Like man, don't claim people are mischaracterizing someone while not even knowing the lore yourself... Sorry if that sounds harsh, but...

#genshin impact #alhaitham #aranara #GenshinxKFC #willing to buy a filter that just stops me #from having to see inaccurate lore takes on social media #send help #I'm fighting a war and my enemy is misinformation in Hoyo fandoms

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starcurtain · 18 days ago

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Please do elaborate on Kaeya and Diluc's fanon! Your post on Kaeya and Venti was amazing to read.

First, before any Diluc lovers come out of the woodwork trying to defend their favorite from me, I gotta place my disclaimer: I am also a Diluc lover; he is definitely in my top three favorite Mondstadt characters (after Venti who is my favorite archon and Kaeya who is one of my favorite Genshin characters in general). So as I make this post, please just keep in mind that I also love and respect Diluc and his role in the story; recognizing a character's flaws and mistakes isn't a personal attack, mmmkayy?

All right, so anyway...

When it comes to Diluc and Kaeya's shattered relationship (personally I view them as strictly brothers, but I can also stay in my own lane, so there is no ship hate intended by this post), everyone talks about the damage Diluc supposedly did to Kaeya's eye and focuses on their duel on the night of Crepus's death.

People are quick to forgive Diluc because he had an obvious reason to be completely overwhelmed; having just lost his father, Kaeya's timing of coming clean about his secret was absolutely abysmal. If Kaeya had managed to wait even one day, the situation might have been very different, so I don't think there's any particular surprise that Diluc ended up attacking his brother, and I think this is where fanon takes on Diluc and Kaeya tend to focus--that Diluc had an warranted emotional response on the night of his father's death and lashed out, and Kaeya has mostly his own terrible sense of timing to blame for what occurred.

Therefore, the fanon approach to Diluc and Kaeya seems to be largely that both of them owe each other reconciliation and that, if they want to mend their relationship, both of them need to put in equal amounts of work.

But personally, I think this is neglecting two glaring aspects of the canon material we're given:

Kaeya's physical injury (if there even actually is one) is absolutely minuscule in comparison to the emotional damage Diluc's attack did. Even years later, Kaeya is not okay.

The diametrically opposed ways that Kaeya and Diluc understand and react to the people around them make Diluc's methods of atoning for his behavior virtually incompatible with what Kaeya emotionally needs from his brother.

I am not downplaying the incredible pain that Diluc would have gone through, having to mercy kill his own father after barely surviving a brutal attack thanks only to his father's sacrifice. To then learn, on top of that, that the brother you had loved, who had been an accepted and trusted member of your family for years, was actually a foreign entity planted in your country with the possibility of becoming a sleeper agent for the enemy--this is beyond the pale of what any normal person could accept. Diluc's anger, pain, and desire to lash out are understandable, and turning on his brother in that moment was essentially inevitable.

However, what people neglect is that Kaeya told Diluc the truth in that moment explicitly because of guilt.

Kaeya felt that his own reaction to Crepus's death wasn't appropriate (he felt liberated by Crepus's loss because it resolved Kaeya of the pain of making the choice between his blood father and his adoptive father) and he was trying to immediately atone for his perceived selfishness by being honest. Kaeya believed that telling Diluc the truth in that moment was better than continuing to perpetuate another lie for the person who had just had to confront his father's likely lifelong deception with the Delusion.

By baring himself completely, being honest for the first time in all his years in Mondstadt, Kaeya thought he was doing the right thing--even though he knew it would cost him his relationship with Diluc.

Diluc repaid Kaeya's honesty with rejection, and Kaeya viewed this as a deserved punishment.

Kaeya's confession was effectively a form of self-harm. He was disgusted with himself because he perceived his complicated feelings over Crepus's death as insufficient grief--Diluc had just lost the most meaningful thing in the world to him, and so Kaeya wanted to "make it right" by losing what meant the most to him too. It was self-sabotage of the highest caliber, provoking Diluc into attacking him because that's what Kaeya thought a liar like himself deserved.

But even though Kaeya knew what the outcome would be, it's clear that he did not understand the extent to which he would internalize the messages he learned that day:

No one should put their faith in me, because I will eventually betray everyone who cares.

and

If I tell the truth, I will lose everything I have.

We're told that, as children, Diluc and Kaeya were thick as thieves, but that Diluc was the extroverted and outgoing one, while Kaeya stuck "in his brother's shadow."

Stories from their childhood reveal that Diluc was the troublemaker who dragged Kaeya into his antics. Kaeya's hangout confirms that Kaeya was a quiet, well-behaved child (it's possible he feared that acting out would cost him his place in Mondstadt) and that his people-pleasing tendencies were already firmly in place, if the stories Adeline has to tell are anything to go by.

And yet the Kaeya of the present is described as shifty, deliberately untrustworthy, and even the type to put others in danger to suit his own ends, refusing the trust of even those closest to him:

It's obvious that there's intentionality behind this behavior--a double-edged blade: Kaeya successfully deceives everyone around him about his actual past, blinding people from asking the hard questions with flashiness and diversions on the surface--and yet he also cannot bear to be trusted. He has internalized the impression of himself as a liar and a betrayer so deeply that he actively repels others' attempts to get closer to him, acting shady and unreliable to introduce doubt into every relationship he forms, so that when the inevitable happens and his secret is finally revealed to the world at large (as it was once revealed to Diluc), he won't face the same pain of loss again.

Kaeya cannot betray anyone ever again if no one ever trusts him to begin with.

Thus, Diluc's reaction to Kaeya's reveal didn't just cost Kaeya his relationship with Diluc. It effectively cost Kaeya his relationships with everyone.

Kaeya went from being a quiet, well-loved child to the kind of person who would smirk while putting his own men in danger, the kind of person who every single other character in Mondstadt (and even the Traveler!) calls a "mystery" whose words can't ever be trusted:

The people of Mondstadt, particularly his fellow knights, clearly love Kaeya; they want to be close to him. The archon of Mondstadt clearly loves Kaeya. But Kaeya's self-image is so horrifically warped by the fact that he revealed the truth of himself one time (just one time!) and immediately lost everything he loved because of that truth, that he has become incapable of letting anyone close again, sabotaging all his relationships in advance before the people on the other side can figure out that he's not who he claims to be.

Because of how Diluc reacted, Kaeya has subconsciously drawn a connection between honesty and pain: So long as Kaeya hides who he is, he can be accepted and tolerated in Mondstadt. But if he dares to reveal the truth, he will be met with violence and outrage.

Thus, Kaeya has resigned himself to a literal "lifetime of lies," a "never-ending performance" in which he can never be honest with those around him--even while other characters like Albedo cruise through life with seemingly no care that people know their Khaenri'ahn connections.

This is why "acting" is so prominent a theme in Kaeya's character, both in the past and present, why we constantly see him "playing a role" (as a prince, as a bandit, as a hero, etc. etc.)--he is never the real person, always a performer, and it is often only through his performances that he's able to express some of his own true thoughts and feelings, masking himself behind someone else's script as a way to "safely" express the tiniest hints of his own truth.

What happened with Diluc fucked Kaeya up bad, in the most basic of terms.

Because the problem is: Kaeya doesn't want to be the way he is. He clearly loves the people of Mondstadt with everything he has. He adores Klee, greatly respects Jean, and has an incredible desire to protect the city that took him in. He wants to be close to others. He wants to reconnect with Diluc. He's a desperately lonely character who practically begs the Traveler to spend time with him and reacts surprisingly harshly when the idea of his being lonely is dragged into the light.

I'd even go so far as to argue that his legitimate issues with alcohol stem from the fact that the taverns of Mondstadt are the one place where he is guaranteed to find company, where no matter what time of the night, he is sure to find someone--even if it's just bandits and treasure hunters--to fill the silence.

Because of his past experience, Kaeya can neither be honest with others nor comfortable with lying to them, constantly forced to keep others at arm's length to avoid the painful possibility of further rejection for just being himself. What happened the night of Crepus's death essentially shut Kaeya out of any healthy adult relationships, leaving him entirely alone even in the middle of a city full of people who want to love him.

(This is why it's so important to me that Dainsleif already knows all of Kaeya's background, even the parts Kaeya is still keeping quiet about--but that's just the DainKae shipper in me jumping out, so I'll move on lolol.)

While grappling with the very real fear of his own future, of knowing that his destiny will catch up with him--but wracked with the uncertainty of not knowing where and how--while struggling with his divided allegiances, while just trying to figure out where his own place in the world even is, Kaeya is entirely alone, trapped on the sidelines of his own life in no small part because he took the risk of being himself one time and it cost him everything he loved.

And this is where I think fanon struggles, because it's much easier to just say that Kaeya is dishonest by nature, that he was always going to be a deceptive character, or that the worst outcome of his duel with Diluc was the scar on his face. There's this ridiculous notion that Diluc is already done atoning for that physical wound...

But the scar on Kaeya's face (if there even really is one) is utterly meaningless. The reason Kaeya won't take off his eyepatch has nothing to do with his appearance. He won't take off that eyepatch because it's symbolic of his fear of revealing himself. Kaeya's eyes are synonymous with his identity as a Khaenri'ahn, and thus his refusal to reveal his other eye is nothing more than a visual indication of his discomfort with himself, his divided loyalty, and his internalized belief that the cost of revealing himself fully will be the thing he most cares about: his home in Mondstadt.

Kaeya's entire personality, his sense of self-worth--his life--was reshaped on the night he dueled with Diluc.

And this is the tragedy, of course: Diluc's actions were understandable. Even Kaeya knew Diluc's lashing out was inevitable. It's not like we can really say "This is your fault, Diluc." But the fact of the matter does remain: If Diluc had only managed to control his emotions just a little bit better, if he had only been able to stop himself for a moment to think about his brother as a person who was also hurting and fraught in that moment, he might have realized the emotional significance of Kaeya revealing who he truly was. If Diluc had accepted--or even just tolerated--Kaeya's truth, Kaeya's entire adult life would be different, and that's just a basic fact.

Diluc has his own flaws though! He has his own crosses to bear that made it impossible--that I think, to a certain extent still make it impossible--for him to understand the damage he did and can still do to Kaeya.

So this whole fanon notion of them being on a reasonable path to reconciliation, that they'll be able to resolve their past disagreements by meeting each other in the middle... I just don't think that's really all that accurate to canon. I don't mean that they're not working toward reconciliation or that they won't get there eventually, but that the notion of "reconciliation" in the first place is entirely tangled up with Kaeya's sense of self-identity, and until he is able to resolve the truth of his past and his lingering loyalties to Khaenri'ah, I don't think he'll ever be able to fully repair the relationship that was lost between himself and Diluc.

And to be honest, this is just my personal view of the situation, but... I find it particularly hard to stomach the idea that Kaeya should be the primary driver of repairing the relationship between himself and Diluc, which I've seen in a lot of fanon takes (perhaps because fans in general agree that Diluc is a lot less likely to take action in an emotional situation than he is when fighting monsters lol).

I don't believe Kaeya really thinks it's possible for him to fully reconcile with Diluc. Kaeya cannot apologize for his existence, for being Khaenri'ahn--he cannot change who he is. He cannot "undo" his revealing the truth or make the reality of his double life go away. Thus, in Kaeya's eyes, he effectively has no way to make himself "acceptable" to Diluc again. This is why he continues to shy away from Diluc, even all the way to the recent archon quest, where he tries to excuse himself immediately, claiming that they'd just get in each other's way:

It's why he behaves like a thief sneaking into the Dawn Winery and repeatedly calls himself nothing more than a "guest" in the house, even though Adeline and the other employees pointedly tell him it's still his home and he's still welcome.

It's why, despite continually doing things to show he still cares--keeping Diluc's Vision safe, sending letters while Diluc was away--Kaeya isn't even brave enough to call Diluc his brother to his face anymore.

Kaeya cannot "fix" what happened between himself and Diluc, and his own image and sense of worth have been so shattered by what is now years of internalized self-doubt and self-imposed isolation that he seems afraid to even genuinely expect anything of Diluc at all, let alone consider the possibility that Diluc might owe him an apology instead.

Diluc knows he does, though.

He just can't give it because of who he is.

This is, I think, the most frustrating--but also most realistic and best written!--part of Diluc and Kaeya's relationship: Diluc clearly does want to atone for what happened the night Crepus died. He is doing many things, in his own Diluc-ish way, to signal to Kaeya that he wants to put the past behind them and restore their relationship.

He kept and displays the vase Kaeya hid his Vision in (despite it being garish on purpose); he also keeps the lantern Kaeya brings him from Sumeru in Kaeya's hangout.

He responded to Kaeya's letters during his absence from Mondstadt. He allows Kaeya into the Dawn Winery, with the implication that the doors were always open for him in the first place.

When Kaeya tries to leave during the most recent archon quest, Diluc essentially makes it clear that there's no reason why they shouldn't stay together.

Showing a picture of Diluc's in-game model feels like character assassination at this point...

Although Diluc can be prickly and doesn't always have the nicest of things to say about Kaeya to others, it's pretty clear that he isn't intentionally holding a personal grudge. For the most part, it comes across as if Diluc seems set on quietly putting aside their past--as if it didn't happen.

This is, effectively, an apology without actually speaking one: If Diluc allows Kaeya back into his life, acts as if Kaeya is making a big deal out of nothing (like when he told Kaeya to quit guilting him over the eye injury), and implies that Kaeya still belongs in the Winery family, at the Angel's Share, etc., then isn't he doing the right thing? Isn't he showing Kaeya that he does accept him as he is? That he knows who Kaeya really is and still can tolerate him?

You can almost feel the thought process: Do I really have to spell it out?

But the problem is that Kaeya's sense of self-worth is so crippled by his internal perceptions--I'm a liar, I have and will continue to betray my loved ones, I'm not meant to be here--that Diluc's presumptuous and silent form of reconciliation is essentially incompatible with what Kaeya actually needs to hear and experience. Kaeya does, in fact, need it spelled out. In glaring red letters. And then probably fifteen more times for good measure before he'll actually start to let himself believe it.

Over and over and over again, people reassure Kaeya of his place in Mondstadt and in the Dawn Winery family specifically:

But over and over again, Kaeya dodges and dismisses their reassurances, because until he believes Diluc has forgiven and accepted him, he will never feel confident in his place in the Ragnvindr family (and by extension, Mondstadt) again. Even though Kaeya has visual proof of Diluc's continuing care--the vase in the lobby of the winery--he doesn't dare to make any major assumption. He isn't confident enough to take Diluc's string of small gestures for actual, meaningful acceptance.

Despite how obviously Kaeya wants to be Diluc's brother again--the moment at the end of the recent archon quest is the most joyously animated we've seen Kaeya in a long time--

--their reconciliation is effectively doomed to continue at a glacial pace because of who they are as people.

Diluc's method of handling the emotional issues in his life is critically avoidant, while Kaeya desperately needs direct and unambiguous confirmation that he cannot rationalize away.

Until both of them are able to confront the heart of the matter--which is Kaeya's identity and Diluc's explicit acceptance thereof (Kaeya's explicit acceptance thereof!)--they will continue to make minuscule progress as Diluc lets his gestures, rather than his words, speak on his desire for reconciliation, and Kaeya tentatively toes the line and then retreats, two steps backward for one step forward.

It's my personal belief that we'll likely see a "real" reconciliation between Diluc and Kaeya only when Kaeya is able to finally reconcile with himself.

But Diluc could fix this problem at any time, if he wasn't, you know... Diluc. 😂

Anyway, all this to say that I think fanon really favors Diluc over Kaeya in a lot of cases and that there's a critical lack of reflection on the long-lasting and very serious effects that their falling out had on Kaeya's emotional and mental state.

It's not about the duel, it's not about the eye scar--it's about Kaeya becoming convinced that his entire life must, by necessity, remain a lie forever, crystalizing his belief that he can never feel comfortable in his own skin.

He was already struggling and uncertain about his dual allegiances, but to take the risk of revealing himself to someone he loved only to face immediate and violent rejection... Kaeya knew it was coming and it still messed him up a lot, a lot more than people seem interested in talking about.

Just sayin'.

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starcurtain · 20 days ago

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Yoooooo, fic number four is now a reality! I hope everyone will go give it a read and enjoy~!!

More Phaidei Fics I Want to Read

1. Obligatory "fish out of water" fic (mostly AU because the timeline would probably not match canon, but we do what we want here!), taking place after Mydei and the Kremnoans first make it to Okhema. Okhema is already harsh on outsiders, let alone on a conquering "barbarian" tribe infamous for bringing strife to so many other city states. Mydei doesn't know the local customs at all, and while he doesn't care the slightest about how these pathetic Okhemans see him, the trouble he keeps getting into is affecting the reputations of innocent Kremnoans too. He's got to find a way to blend in, at least enough to stop costing his fellows any chance of finding paid work... Too bad the only person who is willing (and has time) to help is Phainon (who isn't native to Okhema either but done a much better job of learning to get along with the locals). The guy thinks he's the Titans' gift to Amphoreus just because he beat Mydei in a duel once. It was only once! And why does it matter whether we eat standing up or lying down? What are you laughing at, Savior Complex?! Or, tl;dr: The culture clash comedy one where Phainon and Mydei teach each other entirely opposing sets of manners, and come to learn a lot more about one another in the process.

2. Also obligatory omegaverse where Mydei is an omega born with a unique constitution: he's built like an alpha, snarls like an alpha, and dominates his opponents like an alpha. He even smells like an alpha, especially when he's in heat, so the only people who ever figured out his secondary gender were his doctor and his parents, all of whom are dead now. The whole world thinks Mydei is an alpha, and his reputation as an indomitable warrior prince pretty much hinges on people continuing to believe that. The problem is, Mydei wouldn't actually mind getting to live an omega's life, at least the part about finding a mate and starting a family. Only, who in the world would want him for a mate? Any alpha hunting for an actual omega would never think to look in Mydei's direction, betas would just be confused, and even those few alphas who are attracted to other alphas would only end up disappointed after discovering Mydei isn't one. He's nobody's ideal partner, and he'd mostly made peace with that--until Phainon. Until that upstart alpha from the middle of nowhere knocked Mydei down in a brutal spar and then pulled him up with the gentlest hand, and suddenly it mattered that no one would ever want Mydei. It mattered a lot. (Of course, the long and short of it is that Mydei is the man of Phainon's dreams, and after a series of setbacks and miscommunications and lots of silly angst, they'll find their way to a happy ending.)

3. After discovering Mydei's weakness for sweets and cute things like pink pomegranate juice, Phainon decides to engage in a bit of light-hearted teasing: He starts sending Mydei exceedingly adorable gifts and fancy candies under the guise of a "secret admirer." The joke is on Phainon, however, when it turns out Mydei finds the gifts quite charming and is determined to discover the identity of the mysterious gift giver. A reasonable person would quickly give up on the joke to avoid getting caught, but Phainon has always been weak to chasing thrills--and maybe this whole thing about being Mydei's "secret admirer" isn't too far off after all... (The real joke is that Mydei, realizing immediately who the gifts were from, invented an entire "hunting my admirer down" story just for the fun of watching Phainon squirm--and, well, because keeping the whole thing going, being showered with attention by his rival, doesn't feel too bad at all.)

4. The opposite fic: The one where Mydei's completely mismatched online personality accidentally catfishes Phainon and causes some very silly drama. Mydei's (anonymous) teletweet account is full of cutesy chimera kitten memes, aesthetic pictures of food, heart emojis, and overly punctuated (with exclamation points) recaps of shopping trips in Okhema's market... Can anyone blame Phainon for thinking this is the account of a cute girl who is refreshingly earnest about her love for chubby seals and pink milk tea? But as Phainon becomes closer and closer to "Fig Stew" online, things get more and more complicated--because he's also been getting closer and closer to his real world companion Mydeimos lately. Both Fig and Mydei are wonderful, and Phainon can barely bear the thought of losing either of them in his life. Trying to get closer to them both would be way too dishonest, but choosing one over the other... What should he do? Meanwhile, Mydei is in trouble. He wasn't planning to set up some secret identity or anything; it's not his fault Phainon mistook him for a girl online! There's nothing weird about dudes posting sparkling kitten gifs, godsdammit!! But now the charade's gone on way too long to come clean, especially since Phainon seems so invested, and... well, can you blame Mydei for not wanting to give up on the closest thing to a relationship he's ever managed to start? tl;dr: Online mistaken identity hijinks fic.

5. The required-in-every-fandom time travel fic (with bonus fake dating)! Through an outpouring of Oronyx's power, Mydei and Phainon end up in the bodies of their future selves, who, it turns out, have not only managed to end Amphoreus' war and revive Castrum Kremnos, but... appear to have also... gotten married?!! Now Mydei and Phainon have to not only find out exactly how their future selves managed to save the world (so they can accomplish the same task) then look for a way back to their own time--they've got to do all of that while also pretending to be a happily wedded pair of rulers to avoid raising everyone's suspicions. This would be a whole lot easier if either of them knew the first thing about being actual kings... or about relationships. The slightest slip up could create ripple effects that change the entire timeline permanently, but--no matter how nerve-wracking it might be to admit, after seeing the future in store for them together--there's nothing Phainon (and Mydei) won't do to make sure things go exactly as they should.

#phaidei #myphai #honkai star rail #hsr fic recs

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starcurtain · 21 days ago

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I know it's super popular to say that Mydei spent a year fighting the Black Tide in Castrum Kremnos because of these two lines:

But, though it might make me a stick in the mud to point it out, the time and date systems in Amphoreus seem to actually be completely arbitrary, with random skips, chronological overlaps, and insertions (and removals) of time gaps that actually make no sense at all.

For example, in 3.2, Cerces states that Anaxa has only 14 days to live following the attack on the Grove that led to them being fused. At the time Anaxa came to Okhema after the Grove disaster in 3.1, Mydei was still in Okhema.

As of 3.3, we're told explicitly that the Citizen's Assembly, which took place on Anaxa's 14th day, has "just wrapped up."

So somehow Mydei has achieved Schrödinger's War, simultaneously fighting for a couple weeks and a whole change of the calendar year at the same time. 😂

In the very same patch that Hyacine claims it is Year 4932 (3.3), we're also told that Okhema fell to the Black Tide in Year 2147...

Nearly 2800 years off from the other supposed dates.

Originally I thought we had perhaps gotten our hands on a document from a previous cycle, but that doesn't make sense because A) the Trailblazer adds more names to this sheet as you encounter more "ghosts" and B) A new cycle would restart the year numbering.

In short, I wouldn't trust a single time, day, or year given to us inside Amphoreus--nor would I trust a single Amphorean character's experiences with time itself.

Clearly both actual time and the characters' perceptions of time's passage are being extremely warped by the technology at play in Amphoreus, to the point that I think we're supposed to see it as almost eerie: None of the Amphorean cast seems to be able to recognize the inconsistencies of the time and space around them, nor do they ever seem capable of truly reflecting on the inconsistencies of their memories even when they acknowledge that there are inconsistencies.

We're in the Black Mirror, my dudes, and none of the "people" around us even recognize their own unreality.

Amphoreus is a horror story, for real for real.

#honkai star rail #amphoreus #amphoreus meta #3.3 spoilers #hsr spoilers #mydei #hyacine #I guess I don't need to tag for spoilers anymore but #if you haven't finished 3.3 that readable is a big one lol

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starcurtain · 21 days ago

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I know everyone moved on to talking about 3.3, but mentally I'm still here...

Because like, sure, of course, yes, obviously Eurypon is talking about the Kremnoans serving Okhema in the Flame Chase Journey.

But actually? The only person Eurypon specifically talks about through his whole segment of the memory fragment is Mydei, so he might as well be saying "Since when did YOU grow so weak as to become someone else's quiet support?"

And I can't stop laughing about it because why does this feel so much like "I saw you giving that Elysian boy those gay ass emotional peptalks. Out here having a healthy and supportive relationship on main and still wanna call yourself a Kremnoan?? Are you a man or your man's man?!"

Eurypon is not woke enough for Mydei and Phainon's emotional attunement. 😂

#honkai star rail #mydei #phaidei #eurypon #I feel like modern Eurypon would be one of those dads #who's like “I'm not a homophobe; I'm fine if my son is with a man”#but then on the side he's like “You better be the one wearing the pants in the relationship”#because he got that outdated “If you top you're not GAY-gay” delusion going on #okay no I'll be serious now #SERIOUS #I actually just think it's interesting how the fandom let #“Mydei is other people's quiet support” slip by #without making a bigger deal of it #even outside of shipping context #the fact that dead ass Eurypon of all people perceives Mydei #as explicitly “quiet” and “supportive”#even while Eurypon is trying to forcibly project his own madness onto his son #is wild #he clocks who Mydei REALLY is and berates him for it #trying to drive him back into Kremnos's cycle of violence #and Mydei wholesale rejecting him #EXPLICITLY to go back to being “quiet support” for Amphoreus #(he even says a few lines later “A world on the verge of collapse; Gorgo's son will be there at once”)#is so good!!!#the fact that Mydei shouldered the burden of so many people #of their world itself #without a complaint #is highlighted so well by the words “quiet support”#and people just walked right past this line #I'M STILL THERE GUYS

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starcurtain · 25 days ago

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Saw someone on Twitter point out that they fixed the issue in Mydei's character stories so that the library's name is now correct (revised from "Gibranipar" to "Garbaniphoro").

Howeverrrr...

Hilariously, this now makes Mydei's backstory even less consistent because who was in the completely abandoned and lost-to-the-mists Castrum Kremnos grand library managing to archive modern texts about the Flame-Chase Journey???

Either Mydei stole a series of texts specifically about himself (including an encyclopedic collection of the formal resolutions of an advisory body that we never even see functioning in Okhema) and took them with him when he left (despite not taking anything else, not even his dromas to carry them), then casually took a break from fighting the black tide to go archive his stolen goods...

Or Castrum Kremnos got a ghost librarian long-distance robbing Okhema's text repositories for material just on Mydei lol.

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE, HOYO.

#honkai star rail #mydei #when fixing a single typo #creates a plothole #you know you're in a hoyo game when

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starcurtain · 26 days ago

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Hey! Me again (I apologize if sending multiple asks is kind of too much LOL) but have you ever thought about the connections between Aventurine and the literary references linked to him in the game? The most obvious one being The Waste Land of course. I've dug a little bit about the poem and found some parts of it, as well as the historical context, to be very fitting to his character. Namely the feeling of loss and desolation that permeates it, but also how the poem treats the topic of religion (though obviously linked to Christianity while Aventurine's isn't).

The other reference that caught my eye is his Technique named "The Red or the Black" possibly being a reference to The Red and the Black by Stendhal. The wording is a little different, and his Technique is probably just referring to roulette wheel colors, but judging by the plot of the book (the protag's journey to obtain power and riches coming from a humble background while still being shackled by the restrictions of the society around him) I wouldn't be surprised if they intended it in some form. Although, having read a bit of the book myself, there are of course glaring difference between Julien (protagonist) and Aventurine.

Lastly (I profusely apologize for how long this ask has gotten LOL), your post about Aventurine being a Fatalist and his relationship to fate reminded me of Night on The Galactic Railroad, which if I remember correctly, HSR makes direct reference to in a few instances, and I also strongly believe the Astral Express itself is a reference to this work. It is also a story that touches on the topic of religion, self-sacrifice, and fate.

So I just wanted to know your thoughts if you have any! No worries if this isn't really your area of interest.

Sorry this was sitting in the inbox for soooo long. 😭

I think people have discussed Eliot's "The Wasteland" plenty in the context of Aventurine because its connection is very obvious (alongside several lines of the poem directly appearing in the game itself). Lots of people have also discussed the references to Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince" as well...

As for Stendhal and Night on the Galactic Road, I can't verify personally, but there is one literary reference that I thought was particularly apt for Aventurine that I haven't seen anyone discuss.

One of Penacony's chapters, the one in which Aventurine corners the Trailblazer into a deal and shows them Robin's murder, is named The Sound and the Fury.

This is an obvious reference to William Faulkner's novel of the same name. If we only consider the plot of that novel by itself, there aren't really too many direct parallels--the plot is about a dysfunctional Southern family who have fallen on hard times in the early 1900s, with one severely mentally impaired son, one daughter whose habit of sleeping around is unacceptable in their traditional Southern society, and one brother who is so obsessed with reputation that he ultimately kills himself in his despair at their family's collapse (and his sister's ruined reputation, in particular).

However, the most important character of this book, Quentin Compson, has some very interesting parallels to Aventurine in his broader context.

Faulkner's Quentin is an internally and deeply sensitive character who cares significantly more about "keeping up appearances" than he cares about his own actual morals. He is embarrassed by his family's decline from prosperity, fixated on the past, and so deeply intertwined with his sister's reputation that he was even willing to lie and claim he'd committed incest to prevent their town from finding out his sister was effectively a "loose woman," risking any hint of his own reputation in an attempt to protect hers.

To prevent the implosion of his breakdown over his sister's reputation, Quentin is sent away to Harvard University--but he is only able to attend Harvard based on the sacrifices of his family, with them selling off the portion of the land that his disabled brother was supposed to inherit. Attaining success only by profiting off the losses of his brother and sister just contribute further to his mental spiral.

At Harvard, Quentin enters into a close relationship with his roommate Shrevlin McCannon, who effectively becomes his minder as depression causes Quentin's interpersonal relationships and ability to function to crumble. Shreve is an educated foreigner--he does not understand Quentin's Southern culture and their obsessions with immorality, though he is fascinated by them. Their relationship is highly charged and interpreted by many literary critics as implying homosexual attraction; characters in the story also comment that Shreve's anxious protectiveness over Quentin is questionable at best. Ultimately, for all his concerns, Shreve fails to prevent Quentin from committing suicide, drowning himself in the Charles River. (All of this might be ringing some Ratio bells?)

In terms of Quentin's ultimate fate and the major beats of his character--the memory of the untainted sister he cherished, the decline of his family into ruin, his "inappropriate" closeness with another man, and his ultimate suicide--Quentin is emotionally a pretty close ringer for Aventurine. At one point, Quentin is even viewed as a villain, accused of kidnapping someone while trying to do a good deed.

There's some very interesting similarities, and if you have a taste for classic literature, I would recommend checking The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!, the two Faulkner books where Quentin is (effectively) the main character.

But while I'm on the topic of The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner actually took that title from the most famous soliloquy in Shakespeare's Macbeth:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

I'm not sure I really have to explain, since I feel like the parallels to Aventurine are pretty obvious here lol. In this scene of Macbeth, the titular king, who was previously convinced of his own success against his enemies, is told of his wife's suicide; shortly after, he will learn that his enemies have outsmarted him and fulfilled the prophecy that will allow them to successfully kill him. Surrounded by enemies and bereft of the one person who had allied with him, Macbeth recognizes the futility of existence, lamenting the pointlessness and briefness of human existence. He likens life not to a joyous occasion but to a bad actor, pathetically strutting on stage for a short performance and then vanishing forever. Life is "full of sound and fury" but ultimately means nothing at all.

This soliloquy certainly encapsulates Aventurine's approach to life throughout Penacony's story--he is the "poor player" strutting on the stage, he is the "brief candle" that will soon be blown out, and it is his tale--full of useless noise and flashy distractions, fury and grief, that ultimately seems to be entirely meaningless to him.

Anyway! I thought that might be one literary reference people haven't spent much time discussing in the context of Aventurine's story!

#honkai star rail #aventurine #vaguely implied ratiorine here #the sound and the fury #william faulkner #shakespeare #imagining Ratio and Aventurine as Shreve and Quentin #is making me laugh #especially imagining that scene where Shreve squeezes into Quentin's pants lol

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