#(like as much as I like to imagine jiang ziya as wanting to do the compassionate thing when he can I do

[lanliingwang]

(am just going to link back to this post for anyone who wants to read. the rest of my thoughts on this au asjdkgh)

anyway I love that this au has lowkey became my new setting to just. explore jiang ziya/arjuna dynamics with each other (and with oberon but that's irrelevant to this post) completely separate from what fgo's doing. bc right now I can't stop thinking about arjuna and jiang ziya taking Months to even begin to trust each other enough to talk about their respective relationship insecurities bc a) slow to trust and open up on both ends and b) not wanting to expose the other to their more 'flawed' aspects yet

[more thoughts in the tags as always bc for some reason I keep rambling there lol]

[dislyteshack]

Reasons why I realised su Daji fits li xiao as a patron

context : "daji" or well rather the huli jing wjho possesses daji is a chinese fox spirit whos a thousand years old and goes on to become the favoured concubine of the emperor in the shang dynasty. she would go on to cause the down fall of the shang dynasty as per orders from nüwa while killing and torturing those she could

now first, in mythology fox spirits like her have been known to seduce people to suck their souls out , which i imagine requires a form of charisma , li xiao is also shown to posses that way with words which def contributed to his social climbing

speaking of social climbing daji managed to use the body she possessed to climb from the daughter of a doomed servant to queen of the crumbling shang dynasty , that remind you of anyone?

Dajis personality is pretty much the mask xiao tries to put on, the aloof yet calm and calculating antagonist who just has everything under control, even in her last moments. Daji is able to stay relatively calm All she was simply doing was following orders from nüwa she was told to bring down an entire Chinese dynasty and it's exactly what she did. )

Also, with how opportunistic li xiao seems to be with how far he's willing to take things it might attract the curiosity of Daji . Always willing to be entertained by the common humans below

Even if it's unintentional he might have actually brought the down fall of the fucking nether gaol in tangton

Bro unintentionally started a PR disaster

This is clearly the beginning of a hit to the li familys reputation

Even if it doesn't cause their downfall this is at least going to mess up people's trust in them

-dajis appearance actually reminds me of xiao

They said her eyes were described as autumn ripples

Which reminds me of those red orange eyes xiao has

-will say she has a temper but that seems well controlled.

Considering it only came out once or twice in the book

Another thing to add about a difference between Daji and xiao it's that , li xiao has crippling guilt for his actions whereas Daji was a woman who's curious to an extreme degree, to the point of psychopathy (like Anesidora). Which then can be nuanced as the fox spirit theory comes in

Is she only doing it because shes a fox and she's trying to verify human behaviors?

And as such, does she not understand the limitations and conventions of human morality?

Enjoying torture and execution, because as a spirit, death is nothing but a slap to her?

Daji just simply has no compassion due to her nature as a fox spirit, but there is something inherently human about li xiao this humanity is what prevents him from truly cutting it off it's what makes him want to serve the community of tangton in the belief that it would somehow relieve him of this guilt that he feels he's a genuinely compassionate person on the inside if he wasn't Yun chuan would be very dead

(I will say however that daji does seem to have some kind of compassion or at least care for her fellow spirits who were also sent down to do the same thing as her since she had revived one of her companions who had been killed by Jiang ziya. And she did also have a zoo commissioned which suggests some kind of sympathy or liking for animals )

this irony in the difference between them strangely only strengthens the themeing of them together

That irony of someone crushed by remorse paired with a being who feels truly none.

[kukuandkookie]

Sometimes I forget people aren’t used to consuming Chinese media like I am so they expect any bl to be explicit.

Like today someone referred to Childe and Zhongli as potential “queerbaiting” to me and I had to pause for a moment and consider this. I always take things in stride when it comes to what is called “queerbaiting” in Chinese media because we don’t know how strict censors are (sometimes bl seems mostly okay, sometimes it seems a little less okay, sometimes it seems okay as long as it’s not “anti-gov”... Oh, and the topic of censorship is a whole ‘nother complex discussion due to it happening because China rebuilt itself with all-new policies and was also westernized after suffering under colonization...).

Like I can’t objectively tell you if some of these series with bl are queerbaiting because it arguably challenges censors and in many ways, is entirely meant to be taken as canon—so is it really queerbaiting then?

Take Childe and Zhongli and their fenghuang chopsticks. That seems entirely intentional. A Chinese game using a traditional Chinese theme for an object exchanged between two men that represents unity, harmony, and marriage? That’s pretty much intentionally gay if you ask me, but maybe that is just me. 😆

But we all remember The Untamed and how Wangxian exchanged loving glances, touched each other constantly, basically got married (through symbolism of the forehead ribbon and the exchanging of chickens), calling each other a term that could mean either “life-long confidant” or “soulmate” and so on.

We never got a canonical scene where they kissed or said “I love you,” but we can see the intent there. We know what they’re saying. The same applies for the Mo Dao Zu Shi donghua. The manhua is more obvious about it, but they still cut a kiss scene... But since it appears it was still drawn, we can take that as it having still happened. And Mo Dao Zu Shi Q takes this further than the regular donghua too because the censors are more lax on them.

And yes. They are based on a bl novel, so it’s a little different from Genshin Impact, but if you consume as much Chinese media as me, you can usually tell when a team/author is intentionally using symbolism to suggest a canon couple, often with a traditional Chinese theme. Like why use the fenghuang theme? They really didn’t have to do that, but they did it. 👀

The animated movie Jiang Ziya used language that suggested Shen Gongbao and Jiang Ziya could be a couple, but it was never explicit. But hell, they basically adopt a daughter! I interpreted them as a couple but didn’t see it as fully intentional or canon until talking to a good friend of mine whose Chinese is better than mine. There were more hints and reasons to believe they cared about each other in that way, so we concluded it was way more obvious than we would’ve thought at first glance. And that’s kind of how China does it when the main focus of a story isn’t bl but there’s a potentially bl couple.

And even when there are censors, there have been a variety of ways Chinese media has skirted censors in the past. Like in Beryl and Sapphire, we get the “survivor’s cut” where things are censored and the “director’s cut” where things aren’t censored (so characters can hug, kiss, confess, cuddle, and so on). And Beryl and Sapphire, while originally designed by the author as two males, are designed so they can be in any story (bl or not) and were originally drawn in the comic as stick figures so you could imagine their gender as whatever you want (so they could even be girls’ love if you so desire!).

Or how in Spirit Pact the male leads kiss to give each other power or exchange vows but the manhua’s creator said it’s “not necessarily because they’re in love.” There was debate this is queerbaiting, but could the creator just be avoiding trouble with censors? The very fact the male leads kiss so much and care so much about one another suggests intent.

Now contrast that to Hualian from the Tian Guan Ci Fu donghua, where things are so obvious and it’s even gayer than the novel in some areas. People keep questioning how they got it past censors, and that makes me rethink how I view Chinese censors. However strict they truly are, Chinese media is very purposeful in how they depict bl couples.

So I don’t really think about whether something is queerbaiting or explicitly canon in Chinese media. I basically see something that can be read as bl through symbolism/language/metaphor and I see that as intentional. The creators are letting you choose how you want to read it, and you may never get the kiss you want, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t “canon.” There’s often intent behind it, and because of varying levels of censorship, I take the idea of “queerbaiting” in Chinese media with a grain of salt.

For example, Kaeya and Diluc use a term in Chinese very similar to sworn brothers, which can be romantic in Chinese. With modern day China, creators often use “sworn brotherhood” as a way to depict romance and skirt censors. And yes, I know the English translation labels them as two adopted brothers, which is also okay! But as I’ve confirmed with multiple native Chinese speakers, the original Chinese language used is not exactly family-oriented, and that can be viewed as intentional (that’s why you see some Chinese fans ship Diluc and Kaeya while the western fandom views it as incest). Language is complex! There’s no clean, clear-cut answer.

Bl is popular in China, but it’s not always the main focus of every series (you know, sometimes bl is the side couple). We could say You Shou Yan features an intentional bl couple with Sibuxiang x Tony/Tuye or Fei Ren Zai and All Saints Street feature the intent of potential bl with Yangjian x Guanyin and Nick x Lynn respectively; or Are You OK is bl even if the story doesn’t focus entirely on that but it does feature more than one bl couple; or Wo Jia Dashixiong Naozi You Keng is bl because it features guys crushing on other guys and sharing moments, even though the manhua isn’t about that bl romance explicitly; or see Nezha as having bl potential because of how it interprets the Nezha and Ao Bing relationship (to the point of even changing the depiction of the relationship between Ao Bing and Nezha from the 1979 animated movie to be more domestic rather than as enemies); or even say mihoyo’s other game, Honkai Impact, arguably intentionally features some girls’ love too.

https://youtu.be/vw-nx26xUQI

Maybe it’s just because I identify as ace and I don’t mind if there’s no signs of sex scenes and I’ve even grown accustomed to not seeing kisses. I love seeing other signs of love—like protecting your partner, being their sugar daddy, hanging out with them a lot, and all that jazz. If there’s a kiss, great! If not, that’s fine too because there are other things to suggest they’re canon.

So is Zhongli and Childe queerbaiting? I don’t personally think so. Those fenghuang chopsticks suggest marriage or at least harmony in unity, and marriage or “being together” can be seen as quite canon. Will they say it out loud? I guess not, but we have to acknowledge the context that it’s still from China and there are censors for them to deal with.

But if you don’t want Childe and Zhongli to be canon, that’s totally okay too! I mean...it is also a game, and games even more than media can be interpreted differently since every user’s experience differs.

Love is love—and that includes whether there’s a kiss or not, when the author/team intends it and lets you interpret it any which way, you can interpret their symbols as signs of how canon your two favourite characters are!

Oh, and as a finishing thought, here’s a list of donghua recommendations for anyone who wants to check some of these out! I include a lot of good donghua with pictures, descriptions, and links to where to watch. 🥰

[murasaki-murasame]

I might not have gotten my pipe dream wishes granted, but the Dragalia Digest was still a very pleasant surprise overall, and I have a lot of thoughts on it now, lol

TL;DR: *Joe and Xania voice* mom said it’s our time to be meta flame units :)

I still want a Switch port for this game eventually, but I can’t complain about not getting one when basically everything else about the Digest was good, lol.

It ended up feeling a bit more . . . conservative with some of the announcements they made, but that might be for the best since the game’s in a bit of a precarious state. So playing it safe is probably a good idea.

I was a bit worried that they might announce more aggressive monetization schemes, but the New Years packs and stuff seem pretty much in line with how these things have been done up till now, and basically nothing else about the shop has been changed aside from the UI stuff.

The Agito fights and the 6-star weapons were my biggest concern going into this since it could make or break people’s patience with the game, but it seems on paper like it hits a good middle ground. The requirements to access the Agito fights seem relatively low, and the 6-star weapons seem to be be around the level of a HDT1, so I think that hits a good balance of being strong but not powercreep-y in a way that puts off people who’ve been grinding for HDT2 weapons. The fact that they announced in advance that higher difficulties for the Agito fights and higher tiers of the 6-star weapons will be added later makes me think that they’re trying to roll out this stuff much more slowly than the HDT stuff in order to control the powercreep more and not overwhelm people, which is a good idea. I imagine that Expert or Master Agito fights will probably expect you to have something like a HDT2 weapon, but by the time those fights get released it probably won’t be a big deal.

The Mana Spiral upgrades also seem way more potent than I was expecting, across the board. I can’t access the main website at the moment so I don’t have a full picture of what the buffs are like, but from what I’ve been reading they all sound like pretty huge buffs that will go a long way toward making more units more meta, or at least more accepted, in end-game content.

For one thing, the Mana Spirals are gonna let us level up a unit to level 100, which is a nice surprise. It seems like that alone gives units a pretty big upgrade to their HP and strength, which should make it way easier to meet certain thresholds.

It also looks like basically every single skill and ability of each unit is getting a new upgrade level, which is way more than I was expecting. I figured that only the second skill and one of the abilities of each unit would get an upgrade, but this is a way bigger buff than I thought. They even buffed stuff like skill prep/status resistance 100% abilities by adding new effects to them, which is great.

It looks like Ezelith and Naveed are going to be way stronger in general across the board, which I appreciate, but I’m more hyped for the 3-star Mana Spiral upgrades, since those seem like a really big deal. It sounds like basically every flame unit that got a Mana Spiral upgrade here can now inflict burn with basically any attacking skills they have, which seems like a really big deal. If Mikoto in particular can get an upgrade like that later, I have a feeling that Rena might fall out of favour in HMS due to there being way more options for burn enablers who don’t have to worry as much about stuff like getting stunned. In general the idea of Xania being able to inflict burn with both of her skills is kinda crazy, lol. It makes me relieved that I went ahead and got her to 50MC a while ago. I think she might actually be better than S-Maribelle with these upgrades [until she gets buffed too], but I really want to get more info on how her kit changes with these buffs. Sadly Marty doesn’t seem to be getting buffed yet since he wasn’t a launch unit, but hopefully everyone will get Mana Spirals in the long run.

It’s also exciting that they’re giving these upgrades to random 4-star units as well. It gives me hope that Thaniel will get buffed later on so that he’s closer to if not better than Jiang Ziya.

They also decided to give Botan and Cassandra buffs in this initial batch which is kinda funny to me. Botan at least makes sense since the event with her is getting rerun really soon so it’s a good time to buff her, but Cassandra getting buffed right out the door is so obviously them going ‘we’re sorry about the whole Gleo thing’, lol. They also apparently nerfed HJP in a way that makes bleed and poison way better against him, and I think they added poison to Cassandra’s kit, so it really feels like they’re trying to address the issues with HJP. Which I appreciate. And I think that this is probably the best way to handle it, since this makes it way more viable to have different types of team comps there than just four Gleos.

It’ll be interesting to see if we start getting characters soon who have their Mana Spiral upgrades built into their kits right away, while older units get theirs slowly patched in. I guess we’ll see what happens with the new zodiac units.

And on that note we’ve got at least some info about the new zodiac event/banner, and it all looks pretty neat. I was wondering how they’re gonna handle it, but it looks like they’re gonna do a really short rerun of the Ieyasu event to bridge Christmas and New Years before getting into a new raid event for the new zodiac units. Which seems like a pretty great way to handle it. I wouldn’t be too surprised if they do this every year from now on, especially if each new zodiac event story builds upon the stuff from the Ieyasu event story.

On top of it just being a relief that this isn’t JUST gonna be rerun central yet again, I’m really happy that the new units are gonna be [mostly] light-element, lol. That was my main wish for them, honestly. My light roster just feels really weak so I want more good ones, but I don’t want to bother chasing after DY-Malora. It’s kinda surprising that it looks like the main 5-star banner unit is gonna be a 5-star light dagger, while the 4-stars are a blade and a wand. I guess this makes it a bit less likely that Gala Luca will be a light dagger, so maybe he’ll be a light blade or something instead. With how . . . iffy daggers are as a weapon type, the new main 5-star unit doesn’t really seem like they interest me much, and Nobunaga being a 5-star flame blade is kinda annoying and unoriginal in general, but I’ll probably still summon on the banner. Hanabusa and Chitose at least look neat. One of them will probably be the welfare unit, but I hope that the introduction of Mana Spiral upgrades means that event welfare units won’t be held back by bad kits anymore. Botan’s getting some pretty big upgrades, so I hope the new welfare unit follows suit.

I was gonna complain a bit about this banner mostly being female characters, but the more I think about it the more I could see either Chitose or Mitsuhide being a boy, so I’m gonna just wait and see how it goes, lol.

It looks like the banner during the Ieyasu rerun is gonna just be a rate-up banner for the units getting Mana Spiral upgrades, and the new zodiac banner seems to have two 5-star adventurers on it [plus the dragon], so it’s looking like they might not be bringing Ieyasu back. Or if they do he might just not be on rate-up like what happens with gala units. Which would suck since I still want to get him, but it’s not a huge deal if I miss out on them. I’m still hoping that they might eventually add zodiac units into the permanent pool so that we don’t miss out on them permanently, but that’s a bit of a pipe dream.

The ‘prize showcase’ stuff seems . . . interesting, but I probably still won’t do more than just the free daily tenfolds for the next banner. I don’t want to be tempted right before the NY banner, especially since I already have all of the units getting Mana Spiral upgrades, so it’s a pretty useless banner for me.

I also just wanna point out that Ebisu is an EXTREMELY good cat dragon and I love him :)

It’s not a big surprise to me that we’re getting a platinum summon for the NY banner, but it’s interesting to me that you’ll be able to do the adventurer and dragon platinum banners three times each. I guess it’s their way of getting a bit more profit out of people, but it’s something I can deal with. It’s still a relatively low limit on how much diamantum you can spend on it, and it looks like there’s only gonna be three 5-star units to worry about, if you include the dragon, so you might not even need to summon three times on each one to get what you want.

To be completely honest I’m not a F2P player, but I doubt I’d do more than like one of the adventurer platinum summons. Mostly because the new 5-stars just don’t interest me a whole lot, from what we’ve seen of them. I’ll at least use my regular summoning resources first and see what I get. With the resources I’ll have stocked up by the time the event starts, I should be able to do over 200 summons on it right away, so hopefully that’ll get me what I want. Then I’ll start saving for the next gala.

Oh yeah and they also officially announced the Monster Hunter collab, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, lmao. I’m not into that series so I don’t really have anything to say about it, but I’m glad that lots of people seem excited about it. It seems a bit boring that we might only be getting a free dragon out of it, but oh well.

Anyway I’m pretty happy with everything they showed. All of the stuff with the new bosses, weapons, adventurer buffs, etc etc, really seem like they’re going to go a long way toward making the endgame less punishing, and team comps more varied. It looks like they’re addressing a lot of the main issues people have had, so I’m glad they seem to be handling it well.