#it's like an offshoot of when people are like why is this minor npc not the center of the story and it's like. well.

[utilitycaster]

the thing about people who tend to be really into villains is like. I have no moral issue with this. My problem is that you get people who are like yeah I love VILLAINS I'm VILLAINOUS and EDGY. And then when you're like ok cool anyway I think this villain does bad things, in the narrative, which to be clear, is their purpose, and I have again no moral issue because this is pretend and a story, they're like "no? my shmoopy? would NEVER. my sweet villain baby who has never done wrong? I love them because they're evil but if you say they're evil i'm going to scream and scream and scream." and also if you make any jokes about the villain they're like "actually this is deeply insulting to them because they had trauma in their life? You're so mean to my murder puppy" and like. The true secret is most villain stans just want to fuck the villain. And again. I have no moral issue with this. I support it, even. But I wish they would thoroughly lean into that desire for the villains instead of scouring the fandom and throwing a tantrum whenever people are like "wow I think the bad person character is sorta bad and here's a meme about it"

[kyogre-blue]

OK, I've done Jiyan's character quest, the Sea of Flames exploration quest, and some minor side quests as well.

As a side note, I can confirm Wuwa doesn't have Genshin's problem about quests being blocked because a character dared to be "busy" somewhere else. I had Chixia in multiple quests at one point, and they all still advanced fine.

Speaking of which, the playable characters make appearances fairly often, especially Chixia, but I've also seen Mortefi several times. (Which is actually almost weird. We consult him about a thing during Jiyan's quest, and then at the end he's like "I'm not an expert, I'll pass all this on." The expert? Baizhi. Why did we not just talk to Baizhi to begin with... Were they afraid to let her, a waifu, talk to Jiyan, a man)

Overall, I think the quests are all similarly passable but unexciting. None of them do much in the way of character writing, and mostly just give a general vibe of the setting, which is roughly... "shit sucks, but we're doing our best."

In themselves, the quests are fine individually, but I have to say that they start to feel repetitive in regard to each other. Maybe I was just unlucky with this specific, basically random choice of quests, but they generally have rather similar concepts and aspects in play, especially Jiyan's quest and Sea of Flames. It's all fighting TDs is awful, those bad feelings become more monsters, everything just becomes more monsters, it's rough - but we press on, I guess.

Which is fine, it's consistent worldbuilding in a way, but man. It's just not involved enough to be particularly interesting when repeated. The main story already conveyed this sufficiently, being quite hamfisted about it.

Similar to this, I feel like there's this really weird... slant to the way the soldiers are presented in particular.

It's present in the main story, Jiyan's quest, and also Sea of Flames, and it's this really common repetition of, basically, "honor the troops." It feels like every second scene, someone will talk about how civilians are so grateful to the troops, it's only because of the soldiers' heroic sacrifice that the people can live peaceful lives, the soldiers die so often, so tragically, their suffering and struggles become fuel for more distortions, but they fight on bravely, etc, etc.

I can't really convey it words, but by the third time or so I heard something toward this angle, I really started thinking "is this military propaganda or what."

Because like... the MC is not in the armed forces and likely won't be. The story isn't even about the Midnight Rangers for the most part. Why is there so much about how brave and tragic they are?

And it's not like this is part of a broader angle about humans trying to fight against the Lament. You can really feel the difference if you consider how the story treats basically any other group. For example, researchers. They are also making extremely important contributions by studying Remnant energy. But they are not endlessly valorized for it. No one stops to wax poetic about them dedicating their lives to the pursuit of knowledge to better understand and counter TDs. In fact, they are even portrayed in a subtly negative way. The Court of Savantae not only have a villainous offshoot in the main story, they're also just generally described as mad scientist types by Mortefi and mocked by NPCs for adding dumb puzzles everywhere. And it's not just them. The Academy researchers get dragged in another quest. When they put their lives on the live, it's not heroic, they're just stupid and blinded by curiosity, you see.

These aren't one to one situations, but the disparity is huge. There's really an obvious bias toward our brave servicemen and women, and I really just don't... understand why. Is it just the writers' personal inclination? Is it bootlicking for the government? Is it part of the story direction for reason??

I don't really vibe with it, so I hope we don't see too much more of it in other quests.