#I love Hoyoverse's fanservice

[looneyunu]

At this state, he is just flexing his abs for us.

[erabu-san]

Make me sick

[rosary-loading]

i expected nothing good from hoyostans when zzz dropped and i still got dissappointed like— i can’t even say i expected nothing because i fucking hate hoyoverse fandoms they’re all irritating, but like y’all just be talking 😭 y’all just talk to talk and hate to hate, no prizes or nothing y’all just do it for the love of the sport and i wish y’all would apply that to literally anything else in your life.

“genshin could never” WHO???? Asked.

“its fanservice” GOD YES THIS IS HOYOVERSE AND ITS A GACHAGAME EVERYTHING IS FANSERVICE ALL THE TIME COPE OH MY GOOODDDD

“[blank] mc better” THEYRE SIBLINGS YOU SEE THEM A SIMILAR AMOUNT WHO CARES

and god forbid when the ships start becoming more popular…i might have to start drinking.

[avenger-concerto]

Major Rune Factory ramble and rant to get it off my system before 2024 ends.

This is just me airing out some dirty Rune Factory laundry before the year ends so I can get it off my chest and start a new, as Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma comes up. It'll be one big tl;dr so if you don't wanna read then you are far from obliged to do so but if you want, then sure thing.

I wanted to write something sincere and honest that isn't just a jab meme with a predictable punchline.

Really, this is just me speaking aloud not just about Rune Factory but about the nature of writing in farm sims. I dunno. It's the last day of 2024. I've done my New Years cleaning and I'm bored.

So, RF fans and by extension, Bokujo fans keeping saying "We need Rromanceable MILFs" but I think they just mean more bachelorettes in Rune Factory that visibly not just look but also behave like adults.

I'm aware short / young looking / petite adults exist too (Xiao Pai in 4 looks visibly young but she constantly makes it a point to Lest that she's their senior while they're dating) and that younger players may also get into the series for the first time but let's not forget the series' history so we can learn and observe how it can evolve and progress in the future. It's easy to forget that Rune Factory used to pander to otaku in Japan long before they realized it had a huge market with female players and an international audience.

Granted, RF1-RF2 were very tame and the latter game I remember attracting a lot of fanart of the male characters and it sowed the seeds for an interest in potential bachelors. Which is a sharp contrast to Rune Factory Frontier, which up its tropes like a trashy 2000s harem romcom anime with features that wouldn't fly well today e.g. choosing to "accidentally" walk in or peep on the bachelorettes' changing room by the beachside or the discourse surrounding Eunice's story arc but that's another can of worms unrelated to this post. The Rune Factory 4 manga that was published in Dengeki Maoh back in 2012 had a lot of skeevy fanservice that would not align well with the series image nowadays.

"But it's in anime style, so female characters will look young by default" It's true. Especially with Minako Iwasaki as the artist, as much as I love her art. But that's not always the case. Fire Emblem mainlines or Hoyoverse gacha games (Genshin, Honkai Impact 3rd, Honkai Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero) can and have designed adult female characters who visibly look and act like adults. (just posting Ruan Mei from HSR and Shamir from FE:3H as examples) And not just their designs or mannerisms either, I mean like... more heavier, hard hitting and mature storylines. I feel like 5 lacked it in that department compared to the feels coasters that were the marriage candidate sub events in RF4. But then again, it's probably weird to be asking for a revenge story or a tale of redemption and loss in a fantasy farm life sim but this is just me rambling on.

I don't want to say I've "outgrown" Rune Factory or anything. Cozy life sim games are such a comfort to me and I'm well aware a meme I posted then deleted yesterday resonated a misleading message but knowing 5 gave men likers Murakumo but kept Misasagi or Elsje off limits was weird.

I know 5 was just one entry in the series. I know bachelor and bachelorette rosters are variable depending on the game. Tides had a wide variety of designs while its bachelors fell flat because they were last minute. I personally felt like 5 had far more better designed bachelors than 4 did and 4's bachelorettes felt more balanced compared to 5.RF GoA and RF6 could turn out differently with their own sets of marriage candidates but the problem with RF5 was that they designed and wrote bachelorettes as if it was a game released in the late 2000s and early 2010s in 2021-2022.

RF Guardians of Azuma releases next year and RF6 will presumably align with the series' 20th anniversary window in 2026 so we'll see how the series. I know romance and marriage aren't the only things that define Rune Factory games but I feel people should be more open to discussing what makes them uncomfortable with the series instead of handwaving it because of X or Y.

I go on benders like this because I grew up with Rune Factory as the title that introduced me to cozy life sims. It has a special place in my heart. I was in high school when I first got into the series but even then I could tell that the candidates looking young may have had nothing to do with my age, probably due to a combination of artstyle and who Marvelous/Neverland were pandering to at the time.

Granted, my experience getting into the series won't be 1:1 with others so I can't speak for them and hell, maybe I'm wrong too but I do feel like "hey, maybe put more effort into the series' female characters" shouldn't be a hot take that can be dismissed with it being a cozy life sim or that kids play these games too.

That being said, I still haven't and will never forgive the garbage writing they gave Xiao Pai in her main marriage proposal event. RF4 treats her pretty horribly and it's always kinda weird when I read people going on about how "we should have married Lin Fa and adopted Xiao Pai instead" when in her romantic dialogue, she's brought up how she's older than Lest (in the JP script, she specifies by two years) which brings me to my next point....

I think ultimately it also has to do with the fact that the characters we play as in Rune Factory are pretty young themselves. In games like Potion Permit, the My Time At games, Fields of Mistria, Sun Haven, and Stardew Valley, we are blank slates we can easily customize to our liking with our headcanons and whatnot.

Rune Factory... the self inserting begins and ends once we choose a name for our protagonists. RF protagonists are usually their own characters and any dialogue choice prompt we are given with them aligns with their base personality.

Raguna was pretty "vanilla" in RF1 but had shades of 2000s harem romcom protag vibes in Frontier. Kyle in RF2 was more or less similar to RF1 Raguna imho. Aaron and Aria played the role of precarious and rowdy kids seeking to go save their father. Micah in RF3 comes off as a mild-mannered but somewhat deadpan snarker in the face of Sharance and the Univir Settlement's antics. RF4's Lest and Frey are defined by their devotion, trust, and loyalty to their friends. RF5's Alice and Ares have this air of skepticism and caution that I haven't really seen with Lest or Frey. Aden is the reckless, hotheaded shonen hero with his childhood friend, Sonja, as the fussy but well-intentional voice of reason in Tides/Oceans. A lot of male protags in RF are written to be "boyish" and "inexperienced" hence why older adults in these towns don't seem like immediate options but Ares can also marry Murakumo and Lucas so really, at this point I probably shouldn't think too hard about it.

I don't really have anything else to say aside that I like cozy life sims a bit too much and Fields of Mistria is a blast so far. I think Celine, Reina, and Valen are my favorite bachelorettes so far but I like all the bachelors and bachelorettes really. I really do think Olric will be added as a post-release bachelor in an update or patch after the full thing comes out.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Here's to 2025 and more Rune Factory games to come.

[mymarifae]

i talked about this on twitter but i really... don't understand the way people have been so - for lack of a better word - "bristly" about firefly being the trailblazer's romantic interest. i strongly suspect that this would not be a source of so much complaint if she had feelings for any other character in the cast, and that tells me that the fandom is seriously misunderstanding the nature of the trailblazer's character. they're not a player insert. they have feelings, thoughts, and a relationship to the world and other characters around them completely independent of the player. just because you have the option to name them at the beginning doesn't mean they aren't their own character, and that giving them a love interest is anything more than standard relationship development

obviously there are those who will never accept this and will thus make the whole thing weird but we can just let them be weird in their own little corners. and i knowww about the leaks for that... mmd thing hyv commissioned that's like, a gag video of firefly fighting other girls to win the trailblazer's affections or whatever it was, so that audience is being catered to a little bit, but did you really expect hoyoverse to pass up an opportunity to squeeze money out of every possible avenue...? (they do this fanservice shit all the time come on guys) Scratches Head. maybe it's just me, but i kind of don't caare about occasional promotional gag materials - so long as it doesn't bleed into the actual game and story and characters. which like, it hasn't. for the record.

i think it's fine for the writers to focus on firefly's relationship with the trailblazer even though it seems silly and mundane and trivial in light of all the things like... glamoth's cavalry, the genetic engineering and experimentation, the swarm, the mystery of the stellaron hunters, etc... in fact, i think it's fine ESPECIALLY because it seems silly and mundane and trivial. a major aspect of firefly's character is that she just wants to be a normal person. with normal, average, pointless-in-the-grand-scheme of things concerns. like having a crush on her new (?) friend. she is more than a weapon. she exists beyond the SAM suit. she wants a life that she chose for herself.

i seriously don't know what you guys are talking about because i actually think they've done a fine job of balancing the juxtapositions of her character. her past has its time and place, her budding philosophies and questions about herself have their time and place, and her (probable) feelings for the trailblazer have their time and place. again maybe if the concept of the trailblazer being a player insert held any water there would be more of a point to be had here. but they're not, sooooo there isn't

and y'know. i don't think we have the right to say that the progression of their relationship has been "rushed" given the trailblazer has an entire past life with the stellaron hunters that we don't know about yet. "rushed" - or maybe they're just picking things up from where they left off? and sometimes people just click together like that, so either way it felt fine for me. maybe I would have liked more time with firefly before the sleepie incident occurred so I get more emotional impact out of it, but my feelings =/= the trailblazer's. because they are not a player insert. they do not reflect my will 1:1. their attachment to firefly is solely their own. THEIR attachment to her is what ultimately invoked an emotional reaction out of me and sparked my own attachment to her, actually. it was their shock, horror, and GRIEF that got me

idk. maybe we need to spend less time thinking about ourselves and more time thinking about the trailblazer as an independent character. it might help this whole mess

[aevitium]

is elysia a lesbian: discuss

This is actually (genuinely, sincerely) something I really really really love to talk about. For those of you who aren't familiar, allow me to show you some Real and Canon words out of Miss Pink Elf's mouth:

And that is... not at all it LOL.

I would like to start this conversation, however, with an acknowledgment. Whether the intention on Hoyoverse's end is representation or fanservice, Hi3 has undoubtedly secured itself as a yuriful piece of media. Elysia aside, it boasts a number of very canon wlw ships, and holds a lot of importance to many of its community members that identify as such. It meant a lot to me in my youth for similar reasons, and for all casual purposes: yes, Elysia likes girls. I think I would have to turn in my writing license if I disagreed.

However this is an RP group, and so "casual purposes" don't entirely cut it. Love is something so deeply ingrained into this character that the discussion of romance/sexuality just isn't enough. I think one of the biggest pieces to understanding Elysia is to understand, first, what love means to her.

It's quite well known that Elysia is not human. Her entire existence, despite being wholly dedicated to humanity, is not comparable to theirs. She has played human, has come as close as she possibly could to being one, but fundamentally she never has been. To comprehend what love means to her, first you have to separate it from the typical, human understanding of the term. Elysia does not love any one thing, she does not fall in love, she is love. An affection for a single person is not solely theirs, it is humanity's. You, a single person, are just as loved by her as any other.

Sorry. Feels like I'm back in bible school LMFAO.

Anyway. There is something so delightful to me about picking apart why Elysia takes up such a flirtatious nature. I boil it down to, rather simply, an imitation of what she has seen other humans equate to love. It's something she takes to so joyously, and so liberally, yet never reads as overbearing or weird or with too much intention.

It is genuinely hard for me to imagine Elysia in a Titled Relationship the way human society functions. She just... doesn't love like that. It's too small a thing to encompass the sheer gravity of all her affections. Desires for human affections and the like are just not something she could ever have a natural inclination for, because she isn't human. Anything Elysia pursues is intentional, stemming not from a natural interest but an artificial one spurred by her desire to be human.

Does that make sense? Maybe.

All of this is to say that the answer is Yes*(?). Elysia likes girls, she flirts with them, she certainly finds them pleasing to look at (think in the way that a person would enjoy looking at art, do you feel me) but she isn't. A Lesbian. Because she's not... anything. She's just too swag for human labels. Tho she is undeniably way less interested in men (if at all)

So I guess the jury's still kinda out LOL

[raazberry]

people on twitter have been pissing me off so bad lately like holy shit how are these people so. i don't even have the words for it like why is everyone arguing all the time about Nothing!!!! i know that that's like 90% of the internet and is also Very present on tumblr but genshintwt specifically is so ANNOYING

like other than the obvious trolling it's so. frustrating watching people wholly misinterpret the things that hyv DID get right about sumeru, whether it's culturally or just generally.

for example, nilou. there are a lot of things wrong with her design, but there's also things that are good, things that honour persian tradition & culture. here's a nice thread about the same.

anyway - i keep seeing nilou as a character being trashed on for 'fanservice' which is just straight up untrue because she... never fucking does anything of the sort? if your definition of fanservice is having romantically suggestive dialogue with the traveler, she literally doesn't have that. she's also often reduced to a 'belly dancer' which... yes, that interpretation has a lot to do with the orientalist parts of her outfit - but she's canonically not a fucking belly dancer she's just a girl who loves theatre and art!!!

her character is so important, especially considering the circumstances and way of living in sumeru. in a country where logic and research are given superior value and prioritised above all else & the arts are straight up neglected/banned, she showcases a different form of wisdom - her character is LITERALLY the embodiment of cultural/artistic expression. how do you play the archon quest, watch nilou & zubayr theatre struggle to put together the sabzeruz festival over and over again, and say mindless shit like that!!!!! like seriously are you playing the game with your ears and eyes and brain closed?

even in her story quest - i played it quite late (like, two patches after its release) because i was kinda burnt out from the game, but i kept seeing people on twitter call it fanservice. and then i played it for myself and ?????? like what the fuck are these people calling fanservice im starting to think that you guys don't know what that word means. like it's just a lovely story about a girl's love for her theatre and misinterpret it so BADLY

in the archon quest, she literally joins the plan to overthrow the akademiya officials without a second thought, despite the fact that she might get jailed for it -- because she wants to fight for her god and for her theatre to be respected for once!!!! i keep fucking repeating myself but how are you getting "this is a fanservice character" from ALL of this. i would even go as far as to say that after nahida, she is one of the most well-written characters in the sumeru cast.

this pisses me off especially because it's always the people who claim to "call out hyv on their racism" saying shit like this. it's like... if you're gonna be (rightfully) angry about the orientalism in the game while still playing it, at least don't put down the bits that hoyoverse DID get right?

[gwendolynalbrecht]

Just a stupid rant about a stupid conflict that I cant believe is even a thing

I just need to vent my frustration somewhere so I dont boil over, I will probably delete this later. But right now Im feeling like Im going insane. So Hoyoverse... Hoyoverse games like Honkai Star Rail... I like these games. ZZZ is my favorite so far. High energy, fun and charming characters. I happily ingore the fanservice because its that much fun. But HSR has the best gameplay. Just... I like these games. Super unfortunately I have a very stupid way of engaging with media I adore/am passionate about: I love to rip it apart. I vent and seethe and nitpick and nag and disect it without any mercy. I have strong opinions and I like to vent them out and unfortunately Im not a ladylike princess Im a loud mouthed Enby. So Im rather harsh sometimes. But if I dont like or feel passion about something I wont be nearly as expressive. Shit I genuinly hate? Cant give you more than two sentences about it. And everyone who knows this SHOULD know that. Lately Hoyoverse made a bunch of decisions and writing choices I dont like. So duh I will complain about it. My (maybe former) best friend is also huge into Hoyoverse games but apperently he is more of the bootlicker variety because good lord is he sensitive to any negativity towards these chinese gambling games. To the point I have to fake positivity and lie through my teeth whenever we talk about it or having to slap down harsh boundaries to keep it all comfey for him. He feels comfortable trash talking my favorites but his are saints, untouchable holy people Istg. Contex - its HSR related: So with the knowledge that I am absolutely tamer than I would be with someone less... fragile... we talked about the next patch and because I cant be arsed: I fucking HATE Sunday. So naturally no news about him are worth shit to me personally. My opinion. I dont shame his fans or anything. And Tingyun? Yeah I dont have an opinion about her beyond: Great more recycled stuff. So no fucks given. I realized that I was being pretty passive and unresponsive in our conversation because of this and I just wanted to take the time to explain why. I just explained my more negative attitude atm (narrative issues also played into it etc. just a bit of patch dissatisfaction no big deal I swear to god) And he sends me this paragraph about how I should stop playing? Why because my expectations are in the basement? Duh its characters I dont like? He wouldnt be hyped about an Adventurine rerun either. How its "for my own good" and "its helping no one if I keep playing" like bro who the fuck shat in your brain? I was really unresponsive after that crap, all my effort of asskissing this game and his precious bird freak and its still not nice enough huh? Im sick of playing pretent for his ass and get told to fuck off basically at just the mildest of pushback. He got mad when I only gave short replies after and fucked off and now his bitch ass is ignoring me over what? Stupid fucking chinese slotmachines!? I tried to reconsile and explained that no I wont stop playing and that Im just weird about how I enjoy things but I have been ghosted for several days now. Im sure he will claim he was busy but I cant bring myself to buy that shit.

[depressedcatgirl]

ok so its not purely due to how the fandom portrays them as i kinda hate what hoyoverse is doing with her. Hoyoverse you've already done the whole "100+ year old human in the body of a cute tsundere-ish anime girl" trope already, it's getting kind of old (no pun intended). I really hate how they're marketing her and giving her fanservice and how they're trying so so hard to ship her with the male mc...it's sort of like the hsr firefly situation again but at least i liked her as a character so it was almost bearable. The thing is that i wouldn't really be complaining about it if they gave the same treatment to the male characters and if the fandom would just shut up about her and her "haters". It's very obvious that hoyoverse has given up on trying to appeal to its female/gay audience and is now solely trying to appeal to the waifu gacha crowd.

But man...i fucking hate how the fandom is talking about this character and 70% of my hate for this characters comes down to unfunny memes posted about her and memes complaining about the people that dont like this character. I really hate the whole "i love old hags" thing when it comes to memes related to her...no you dont like old hags you just like cute anime girls who say they are 100+. Then there are the "memes" complaining about people who dont like her...pretending as if hoyoverse aren't trying to push her to be shipped with male mc. And then there are the people who are making fun of people who say she is "goonerbait"...i really do hate that word but for once i do have to agree with them...she is ""goonerbait"" in the sense that she ticks off all the boxes to be the next gacha waifu of the week and hoyoverse knows this. And then there are the people that claim that people are saying that she is "lolibait"...who tf is saying shes "lolibait"??? was it like one unhinged person on twitter or tiktok saying this so now you think that half of the fandom is saying it? its dumb but also you are not controversial for liking an adult anime girl who is clearly meant to be simped for. I know ppl have really dumb takes in this fandom but youve got to realize they are in the minority right?

so anyway tldr: i dont hate many characters but she is an exception apparently, mostly due to how the straight male fandom portrays her. Honestly she's taken the spot away from other characters i've disliked in the past for similar reasons like raiden, firefly, and lingsha. I think natlan is kinda bad or mid at best (at least its better than inazuma lol). It sucks going from sumeru and fontaine to whatever this is. I don't know if or when i will return to genshin because if i wanna play the new story in 6.0 i'll be forced to play through natlan...

also i really should've unsubscibed from r/genshinmemepact because holy fuck the memes there are so unfunny its insane. 50% of the memes i see is just complaining about twitter ppl disguised as a meme...the other 50% is just reposted videos and comics, horny art posted as a meme, and old memes from years ago that someone reposted. Honestly should probably not use reddit in general if im being honest. I literally dont know why i made an account years ago but its just one of those things i impulsively check on every hour like tumblr...I'm just lucky i never liked twitter enough to do it with that...at least not anymore.

new hoyoverse character i hate almost exclusively due to how the fandom portrays them just dropped