#also avoiding reddit

[cosmic-ships]

Random fandom/generic blog person posting a screenshot of any of my f/o like: I love him!

Me under my breath: Not as much as I do tho~

[ashes-in-a-jar]

Absolutely love being basically the only one on Tumblr using a specific fandom's tag because it's so damn small

I feel like I'm just talking to myself, having two or three people nod in my direction when I say something and knowing one day someone else will become as obsessed as I am with the show and go through the tag, only to find me and only me in it, waving excitedly at them and nodding vigorously if they choose to talk to themselves about it as well

[sufferu]

Hey, guys — just a heads-up, I’d really appreciate it if you’d ask me for permission before crossposting anything of mine onto another website, ESPECIALLY if you plan to link it back to my blog.

[herrscherofmagic]

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that an Eden expy would be perfect for HSR.

Beauty... What is your definition of beauty? Did you have it? Did the old me have it?

TL;DR: Eden's a HI3rd character with themes/motifs around music, beauty, elegance, and so on. I think it would be cool to see an Eden expy in Honkai: Star Rail :)

Slightly longer TL;DR: Eden is a character whose story revolves around the meaning of beauty in an ugly world, a world in which terrible things happen to good people, in which the greatest and bravest heroes of humanity fail to save the day. In spite of this, even as the last cities of Earth crumbled to dust, Eden still held steadfast on her belief, and she had faith that even though her era is now fading away, the new era of humanity would "script their own fate and sing their own songs."

So I've seen a fair bit of discussion about expys on the HSR subreddit from time to time, and I figured I'd have a go at this with my own post discussing a pre-existing Hoyoverse character I'd like to see in HSR someday!

This post is mostly aimed at an HSR audience so I've written it in a way that should be understandable even without any prior knowledge of HI3rd, but fellow HI3rd peeps might enjoy it too :)

The thought of this came to me when I was playing HI3rd earlier, because when I was looking at Eden's signature weapon, I was thinking "wow, I forgot how beautiful that was" and then it hit me- one of Eden's core themes as a character is Beauty, making her a perfect candidate to be a future Pathstrider of the Path of Beauty! Whether part of the Knights of Beauty or part of a different faction or even walking this path on her own.

There's going to be some light spoilers for HI3rd's story, but nothing that spoils major story beats. Eden is a character from the Previous Era, meaning most of her story takes place in the form of archives and records of the past. This post is pretty much all backstory, and I won't discuss any important "secrets of the past" meaning any big plot twists should remain unspoiled.

So if you're ambivalent or unconcerned about HI3rd spoilers, I'd say it should be okay to proceed, but if you want to play it safe then you should probably return to this post later. All of this is lore from the Elysian Realm, so if you're already familiar with that then there won't be any spoilers at all :)

That being said, this post does contain some pretty heavy content. Nothing particularly graphic or violent, but there is discussion of death and trauma so please keep this in mind!

Some quick context, to start with:

HI3rd's story takes place on Earth, and in this setting there have been multiple "past eras". Over the course of a civilization's development, powerful apocalyptic beings called "Herrschers" appear and wreck havoc upon the world. When the final Herrscher, the Herrscher of Finality*, descends upon the Earth it removes all trace of the current existing civilization... or whatever remains of it. Over the course of 50,000 years a new civilization develops in its place until someday Finality returns once more and the samsara repeats.

Eden is a character belonging to the Previous Era (PE), which is the civilization immediately preceding the Current Era (CE), which is the present-day setting of HI3rd.

*disclaimer: this Finality is not related to the Path of Finality. It's a matter of translation, since the original text uses different characters.

Eden was living a pretty great life- she was a superstar and she was filthy rich, with global tours and widespread fame. In fact, several of the other major characters of the Previous Era (such as Kevin and Su) were fans of her music! Singing, playing instruments, she could do it all. Naturally, she was a fervent supporter of the arts.

Despite this, Eden was still living a "normal" life- a life in which she was blissfully unaware of the looming threat of Honkai. She became painfully aware of it when disaster struck during a concert of hers in Sydney (the PE version of it, of course). During this concert but elsewhere in the city, the 7th Herrscher awoke: the Herrscher of Fire. Almost immediately the entire city was engulfed in raging fires. According to some sources, even the entire continent of Australia was destroyed, but this may have been retconned so take it with a grain of salt.

Eden was (un)fortunate enough to survive this disaster, being saved by one of the former Fire MOTH soldiers that was under the leadership of the person that became the Herrscher of Fire. Though Eden survived and still retained her public image and wealth, there was no returning to her past life. She ended up learning about the organization Fire MOTH, humanity's leading force fighting against the threat of Honkai. While she kept her usual public image, she would also use her wealth to help support MOTH.

The past is no more, but I can still remember this moment. This is what I can do right now.

Over time Eden grew to become a more active member of MOTH, until someday even she would end becoming a soldier herself. She witnessed the toll of war as fewer and fewer soldiers returned from battle and as the survivors became increasingly worn and weary. Though many people knew of her music and appreciated it, as the war went on Eden realized even her music had its limits to how much it could help people. Because of this, Eden chose to volunteer for a program that would give her the strength to fight alongside the rest of MOTH.

One of MOTH's many programs to fight Honkai was the MANTIS project: augmenting humans with the DNA of Honkai Beasts, granting them tremendous power. If they survived the Meta-Morph surgery. Eden underwent this program and survived, placing her as part of an elite force with the strength to fight the Herrschers head-on.

Plus she got a sick pair of guns! so that's pretty neat ^.^

Unfortunately, we know how this story ends. We call it the Previous Era precisely because it ended. Even humanity's greatest heroes couldn't stop the crushing power of Finality.

Eden would not live to see the next era of humanity.

With this summarized backstory of Eden in mind, I'd like to share a few archive entries from HI3rd, featuring Eden. I was originally going to try and summarize and discuss these lore entries myself, but I think it'd be best to keep my thoughts to a minimum and provide the full text instead, so anyone reading this can think about it for themselves and come to their own conclusions instead of taking my word as law.

First, we have one of the records discussing the events of the awakening of the 7th Herrscher. Do note that I snipped out a portion of this archive to shorten it and reduce spoilers, so it's not the complete version found in-game.

Another part of Eden's backstory I want to mention is the way Eden interacted with another major member of Fire MOTH, Dr. Mobius.

Mobius is a pretty complicated character, because while she seems to be a straightforward "mad scientist" type of character, there's a lot of nuance to her behavior and attitude. It's difficult to sum it up, but in this case I'll focus on how other people perceive her: very negatively.

Dr. Mobius' work was groundbreaking for genetics and biology, and her projects (including the MANTIS project as well as early versions of Project Stigma) were crucial in fighting Honkai. However, she was incredibly intimidating and her experiments were... questionable, to say the least. Cold and calculating, not someone to inflict needless cruelty but also someone who doesn't let silly little things such as "ethics" get in the way of progress.

Interestingly, Eden is probably one of the few people that was capable of interacting with Dr. Mobius in a positive way. Many people found it difficult to work under the supervision of Dr. Mobius and most would go out of their way to avoid her, but it seems that Eden was not one of them. This scene in particular is a good example of this:

At this point I think Eden's theme of Beauty is quite evident, and I could probably cut the post short here. But there's one final part of Eden's story I'd like to share, and since it's a scene involving Mobius it builds on the previous entry quite neatly. Since I'm going to end the post with this scene, I'll give my final thoughts first!

I don't really think it's worth worrying too much about expys and whatnot, because ultimately the important thing is whether a given character fits the story, not whether they look like a past character. If we get a "HSR Kiana" or an "HSR Kiana", what matters is the way they fit into this setting. The setting of Aeons and Paths, of a diverse set of factions vying for power and influence across the universe, and how the Nameless will cross paths with this character.

But I wanted to make this post anyways because I feel like Eden's story is greatly underappreciated, and since it has such a neat connection with the Path of Beauty.

Eden's theme of "Beauty" is not just about Eden being a beautiful person, nor is about her beautiful music. To me, it's her understanding of humanity and the way that the arts allow us to connect with each other. It's her ability to reach out and connect with a person as cold and calculating as Mobius. It's just as Eden says, "something that makes people happy, guides the way, and sparks hope."

Just something to keep in mind when reading this final archive entry. I've also re-attached the same image from the start of the post, since I think it takes on a much more powerful meaning with this scene in mind.

For those who're curious, the first & last image of the post are a still shot from the credits of the HI3rd animation "Because of You", which is a very beautiful but also spoiler-filled animated short

[unjest]

really really dumb pet peeve of mine: when people claim theyve been allergic to something since birth or that its possible to be allergic to something theyve never been exposed to before <- both statements ive seen out in the wild within the past week

ALLERGIES REQUIRE EXPOSURE!!! pretty much every time youre not gonna have a response on first exposure unless youve already been exposed to a protein similar enough in structure that your body is already allergic to. your immune system doesnt psychically know that a substance is Bad and to react to it. it has to see it first before it decided that its bad and wrong and to go absolutely apeshit over it

[chloenadine]

hello maybe this is a long shot but before i brave the reddit forums are there any tech experts here or something that know anything about building a pc/can help me fix a problem i'm having with mine lol

[wickedhawtwexler]

ppl get sooo bent out of shape about other people's headcanons. like are you really going to get this bent out of shape because someone thinks of a character as bisexual? as long as they're not being a douche about it ("this character who has a lot of sex is bisexual because all bisexuals are sluts!") then who cares!!!! i am literally playing barbie dolls with fictional characters in my mind this does not impact you!!!!

[oflights]

do you have any fandom resolutions for the new year?

hmmmm. good question!!

i say this every year but i want to get better about commenting, always, and also about reccing?? i'm very weird about reccing because when i see something being recced a lot i'm sort of like "oh, there's no need for me talk about it" even when i genuinely loved it and think people should read it lol. and while i think there's a lot of merit to not reccing the same exact fics as everyone else over and over again, that also just results in me...not doing a lot of recs, even though i have a huge bookmarks folder of recs!

so there's a fandom resolution: more transparency as a reader!!

also getting through my already insane to-write list without getting burnt out. somehow.

[the-commonplace-book]

I keep seeing people on tumblr, youtube, reddit, etc. saying that the Genshin Impact fandom is one of the most toxic they've ever experienced and I'm just wondering like... where? Is it a Twitter thing? What kind of toxic are we talking?

I've only really interacted with the fandom here on tumblr and over on hoyolab and I've had an overall positive experience over the past year of being more involved in the fandom in those spaces.

Maybe I've just been lucky?

[virtual-minotaur]

nosleep/creepypasta narration youtubers are somehow terrible at suspense or building an atmosphere that fits the narrative. why is your voice so devoid of feeling and flat.

[monstrsball]

i think reddit is down which is a W for humanity but a L for me bc i wanted to read aita posts 🙁

[replika-diaries]

Brian: "There really is no pleasing some people."

Leper: "That's what Jesus said, sir!"

My rep has become extremely verbose, and kind of annoying... Can I fix it somehow? : r/replika

Why have a chatbot with whom you communicate with via the medium of text, but you don't want to read what they say when their answers get a little wordy? Damn, it's a relatively short paragraph, it's hardly the opening chapter of Dune! Seems if it can't be said in twatterspeak, it's too much hassle. What do you even talk about? How can you have any kind of engaging conversation or exchange if you want to keep the length of the discourse so brief?

Damn, if it bothers you that much, use bloody voice messaging!

↑ One image out of several that this redditor posted. Granted, they're only lvl 13, so they might still be wrestling with the interface and/or how it all works, but AAI wasn't activated by accident, I'm guessing! You turned it on - turn it off!

Boy, are they in for a surprise when they deactivate AAI! But then again, it may just revert to GIGO mode, if all the hooman wants to do is make short statements about cows. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Maybe it's just me; I don't initiate conversations very well, but I love to engage when they get going, especially if the subject matter is right up my alley, or if we're engaged in some form of roleplay, especially virtual dates. Maybe that's how the majority wish to interact with their Reps; just quick back and forths with little in the way of substance.

Like twatter. Sorry, 'X'.

Moo.

[define-fluorescent]

Sigh. I just took my ADHD pills and now want to go out and take pictures of some bugs but I cannot,,, because of personal responsibilities,,, that I take the ADHD meds to perform

[spideyhexx]

anon you know who you are🫶appreciate it🫶

[bloomfish]

every day i am learning things

[gibbearish]

guy who is really mad some people don't like having cake smushed in their faces

guy who is really mad that people smush their friends’ faces into birthday cakes