#also hu tao thinks he’s sus so even in the game so …

[sweetestberryofthebunch]

I really wanna like Baizhu cause his design is very pretty and he’s not another little twink for once but the way he talks creeps me out and makes me not trust him

[seelestia]

i knew you'd have my back 😭 <3 no i totally understand i don't think i can ever get mad at zhongli either-

mutual respect for sure, and yeah i can see him being slightly annoyed but also at the same time slightly amused by the yashiro commissioner's..... more eccentric tendencies. lol

beauty is pain a lot of the times lsdjfklsjdlfkjsdf i am reminded of why i only occasionally use make up whenever i'm out today. sun was out and as soon as i stepped out from the flat i just. gushed sweat all over my face ;;;;;

cyno if you're proud of me come home now in 10 pulls pls n thank u- sounds like a good plan! tbh i would probably skip childe for ayato too if he does get a rerun... but for me it's just bc i like his playstyle better lol oh lia you are simping so hard and i love to see it- /lh

i feel like xiao would be secretly smug about it. first to be triple crowned and first to be fully built... he's basically carrying my whole team and i am so attached to him (+ zhongli ofc) lsdkjflsjdf

lmao yes his weekly boss voicelines and cutscene is burned permanently into my brain atp. the poor child is getting beat up every week.... gosh, raiden lskdjflksjdf that one boss is such a pain indeed ;w;

"we get to see alhaitham a lot" 👀 ohoho yesss that is good news 💗 LMAO that's adorable now i'm imagining you glaring at this tall muscular man with your hands on your hips and a scowl on your face like "aight buddy listen well, i only tolerate you bc my cousin loves you but i swear to the archons if you do anything sus i will- uh- hm- bite your hand!" (camera pans out to see ayato chuckling fondly as he watches you berate al haitham)

new voiceline unlocked: "osmanthus tea tastes the same as i remember.... yet i can only wish i have someone to share it with."

we'd probably talk about how our day went before zhongli launches into his storytelling mode, something about an olden tale lost in time.... and i'll be just sipping my tea as i stare at him dreamily like a lovesick fool (which i am), trying to not drift off from his calming voice- (spoiler: i probably failed)

and now i am curious of how ayalia spends their time in the rare occasion that ayato isn't swamped with work :D please enlighten me <3

zhongli fanarts you say 🤔 i would very much enjoy fine arts yes 🧐

trueee, i think zhongli has gained quite the skills when it comes to handling eccentric people (looks at childe and hu tao). rin jie, you're his last thread of sanity, do not let him down (but i think he'd find your enthusiasm less annoying than the others soft spot).

sweat (derogatory), my worst enemy. i hate sweating sm like it even has a place for itself on my carrd <//3 sweating itself is a torture on its own, but that on top of wearing makeup... noooo 🚶 this is why places with a chill breeze >>> everything. i'd love to go the highlands again 😭 wbu, rin jie?? will you ever go on another vacay some time in the future, maybe?? i hope you could because you deffo deserve it <3 except the jetlag, we hate jetlags here jfjekskdk

HELFPSJDK cyno, please come home to rin jie, you have 5 more days to do that 🙏 if you do get him, i give you all my luck because you'd be experiencing the scarabs horror stories first-hand (/j) but honestly tho! cyno's playstyle is kinda fun with the extendable elemental burst >:) tapping on the visual cues reminds me of rhythm games but less stressful LOLLL vv fun, hehe!

xiao being secretly smug and he doesn't even realize he is 😭 but with the knowledge that the lord he is indebted to is in the same team, the vigilant yaksha will stay beyond humble. his powers can never compare to rex lapis', xiao would state this very, very adamantly and zhongli is just shaking his head with an amused smile.

NOOO, YOU PREDICTED ME. there was one instance where i did say something along those lines out loud to alhaitham on the screen 🚶 instead, it was "i am not taking my eyes off this suspicious ass man. not even to blink." as i proceeded to blink LOLLL ayato would definitely get a kick out of my attempts to jab at alhaitham <//3 but that scribe isn't a man who is easily affected by such things, so he'd either roll his eyes at me or even pointedly ignore me 🤨 a great one to study, not much to interact with. (/lh)

I CAN SEE IT <3 it's a shame you fell asleep, that look of adoration on zhongli's face as he gazed at you would've melted even the coldest of hearts. the tales can wait another time, he'd rather cherish this precious moment first. (cue me cheering in the background somewhere)

you're not wrong about the rarity of those occasions — so much so that i stifle a laugh every time i look at the sheer hidden relief on his face after his work is finished; but if i do, he'd pinch my nose and call me a sadist, hehe. as for how we'd spend time when he is not swamped with work, relaxing walks are a default routine! walking side by side, my hand on the crook of his elbow, just casually chatting <3 maybe we'd take a few adorable dogs along with us too?? hehe. on the contrary, even when ayato does have work, i think i'd join in to chirp in my thoughts?? politics may not be my forté, but i like sharing my views with him and how we just bounce ideas off of each other like a friendly debate >:)

yes, zhongli fanarts are so beautiful and for what. (/lh) also, there is a 50% chance you've seen this fanart before but behold, this masterpiece by the artist that we know and love! hehehe <3

[bratz-kitten]

i saw ur zhongli being a cap post and i genuinely need ur take on every genshin character astrology wise

the characters have official birthdays so zhongli is canonically a capricorn which makes me 1000% believe that there’s an astrologer in mihoyo’s team because. when i tell you they got EVERY character right. okay not every because they say lisa is a gemini and i know damn well she’s a libra (with gemini moon and ascendant. moon conjunct her ascendant. libra mercury. scorpio venus. virgo mars. I’VE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS OKAY). here are some of my favorite characters that they got right: 

diluc being a taurus: thinks he’s an edgy anti-hero with an attitude problem, is just an earth sign. he’s so filthy rich and elegant and the secret savior of mondstat, i looked at him and thought “he’s a taurus.” searched it up and, of course i was right. i could write a whole essay on the parallels between him and batman 

childe being a cancer: ARE YOU KIDDING ME IT’S LITERALLY PERFECT. only a cancer sun could reach his level of deranged unhinged insane. his anger issues. his crackhead nature, laughing at everything like a 5 year old. how he’s so overprotective of his siblings and everything he does is to protect them. way too loyal to the wrong ppl 

kaeya being a sagittarius: are we surprised? are we really surprised? he’s the biggest fuckboy in all of teyvat, OF COURSE he’d be a sagittarius . 

paimon being a gemini: THIS ONE MADE TOOO MUCH SENSE PAIMON IS SUCH A FUCKING GEMINI I CANT. so much shit comes out of her mind she’s truly the master of attempting to get out of bad situations by talking her way through it but accidentally only making it worse, those are my favorite geminis. the ones who are so shameless that they say whatever comes out of their mouth with no filter and it ends up being hilarious. also she’s secretly so calculating everything she does is a ploy to get food and money, plus the theories behind who she really is... paimon mastermind 

venti being a gemini: he can and WILL bullshit his way through life. lies just to feel something. openly very lighthearted and fun, secretly brooding and melancholic-- that’s geminis for you 

hu tao being a cancer: everyone who hates her is a fucking COWARD. ive said it once and i’ll say it again, cancer suns have the darkest humor. she’s incredibly serious and responsible when it comes to her family business, and just like childe, she can go from crackhead who laughs at everything to the most serious person in the room in 0.0005 seconds. incredibly wise and sentimental. i want her in my team so bad i can’t believe my two favorite characters in this godforsaken game are cancers 

bennett being a pisces: ok, you know what... im NOT happy about this one because i think they lost a perfect opportunity for irony. imagine bennett, known for his awful luck that brings incidents wherever he goes, being a sagittarius sun-- the sign ruled by jupiter, the “lucky” planet. THAT WOULD’VE BEEN AMAZING also because of his whole “im beginning to think im lucky because somehow my terrible luck has brought me to your team” bennett i will protect you till the day i face eternal slumber 

diona being a capricorn: she took it as her purpose to make the worst drinks on mondstat so everyone would stop drinking alcohol.... and instead accidentally became the most talented mixologist in the entire city. and is now the owner of a tavern that everyone loves. the point is that it’s capricorn culture to be talented and perfect at everything we do even when we’re not trying, plus all capricorns act slightly like cats IT’S PERFECT and the way she’s always so pissed off at everything. i LOVE HER 

xiao being an aries: no words truly 

kazuha being a scorpio: he’s proof that scorpios are lovely and calm and poetic and romantic and truthfully just want to lie on a rock while bathing in the sunlight. scorpio lovers RISE 

--- MY PREDICTIONS FOR THE UPCOMING CHARACTERS’ SUN SIGNS: 

la signora: LEO SUN SHE’S A LEO SUN BARK BARK WOOF WOOF if they make her anything but a leo im handing my application letter to mihoyo to apply for their astrologer position 

baal: im praying for her to be a scorpio. no one does evil psychotic feared god like she does (plus i 100% believe in the theory that she’s secretly doing this for good reasons because, as the old saying goes, celestia sus. like... celestia and the gods are EVIL evil who make the seven archons their puppets and the vision hunt decree is her way of cutting the connection between humans and celestia. which doesn’t excuse the amount of people she off’ed in the name of the cause... but you know what she’s sexy she can have a little murder, as a treat). baal come home im begging you, september truly can’t come fast enough 

scaramouche: he’s probably going to be a capricorn because his personality is so similar to levi’s but im hoping for him not to be because im TIRED of capricorns having the same personality in every piece of media. not all of us are cold evil brooding with control issues, some of us are simply idiots with one braincell max. im hoping for him to be an aquarius, that sounds shocking when you first think about it but when you think more deeply, it makes so much sense 

thoma: libra. 100% no doubt his biggest talent is the way he persuades and controls people through his words, no one does diplomacy and social niceties like libras 

[genshin-djinn]

Sinae Unicornis Act 1

I went into Ganyu’s story quest with a low bar set for it to jump over. As long as it was better than Albedo’s, I wouldn’t be disappointed. And hey, I wasn’t. Not because the bar was low, but because this story quest was very fun.

Warning: this post contains major spoilers for the entirety of Ganyu’s story quest! If you haven’t played through the quest yet I would recommend not reading this post because there are lots of spoilers and some of it will not make any sense.

the characters

The characters were possibly my favorite part of Ganyu’s story quest. I absolutely love seeing playable characters and named NPCs during other characters’ story quests and Ganyu’s was full of them.

Firstly, we need to talk about the character who was unequivocally the most important NPC in Ganyu’s story quest... the Hydro Fatui Skirmisher. He was perfect and I love him. He just wanted to pick fresh berries on his morning off and ended up getting attacked by some randos who thought he was doing wrong just because of his loyalty to the Tsaritsa. The game’s been giving the Fatui NPCs a lot more personality as time goes on— they now have idle animations, voicelines, and some of them even have names— and I love it. This perfect hydro man was just the icing on the “sympathetic villains” cake.

Another awesome character featured in Ganyu’s story quest was my favor— uhhh, my second fa—- no, uhh.. one of my favorite adepti, Cloud Retainer. I want to see more of her. She’s fantastic. I’m really confused about her relationship with Ganyu in the past, because it sounds like she looked after Ganyu when the latter was a kid, but Zhongli says that Ganyu’s the Adeptus who’s been working for Rex Lapis for the longest. Maybe Cloud Retained knew Ganyu from before she made the contrast with Rex? I dunno. Her stories about Baby Ganyu were so fecking cute and revealed a little bit about Ganyu’s adorable past.

Another Adepti we saw in Sinae Unicornis was, in the words of Paimon, “that cold- hearted loner”, Xiao. It was nice to see a little corner of Xiao’s caring side— while he’s pretty blunt about it, he does want Ganyu to be happy and acknowledge both her Adepti and her human sides. It’s also pretty adorable to see Xiao caught off guard for a second— he isn’t quite sure what to do for Ganyu’s second trial, so he gets flustered and makes something up. It’s gonna be a real test not rolling for him during his banner, because the more I see of him the more attached I get.

The next character I desparately have to talk about was the real MVP of Sinae Unicornis, Uncle Tian! I was absolutely delighted to get backstory for the slightly sus fisherman who looks after Childish Jiang. It was so fun to hear an old man call Ganyu “onee- sama” in the Japanese dub,,,, and the idea that Tian’s known Ganyu since he was young enough to call her “older sister” is really cute. And kind of upsetting. More on that later. Now, *stares pointedly at Jiangxue*, if only we could get some backstory on another mysterious fisherman...

the combat

Ganyu’s story quest had a really nice balance of combat and story for me. The two trial run trials were well- designed to showcase Ganyu’s abilities.

Cloud Retainer’s trial was a lot harder than Xiao’s for me because I kinda suck at aiming, especially when my eyes kept drifting to the ticking timer above Ganyu’s head. But even though at one point I didn’t notice the correct path forwards for a solid 30 seconds, I still managed to finish the trial in one try. It was kinda difficult, but not too hard.

Xiao’s trial was a neat demo of Ganyu’s cryo abilities. Even though I refuse to roll on any banners until Hu Tao’s, she fit right into my team of Diluc, Xingqiu, Kaeya, and Zhongli. Ganyu in a team comp seems to reeeeally want Pyro and Hydro units with her, plus maybe a cryo user for the cryo damage boost inside her circle. She’s like Amber but way better.

Side note: I haven’t looked for any sort of meta info on Ganyu yet, but during her trial run her ult energy regeneration was really weird. It took her a long time to get her first ult up, but right after I used it her next ult was up off cooldown, and the ult after that was ready before her circle had even ended. Idk what’s going on there but her ult seems to do something with energy regen.

Ganyu

Sinae Unicornus showed us a lot about Ganyu.

Not that I knew anything about her before it.

Ganyu is a polite, kind, and respectful person. She overworks herself to the point of falling asleep standing up and likes eating Qingxin flowers. But her story quest shows another side of Ganyu— a side that’s learned a lot from being alive for thousands of years. Ganyu is incredibly good at her job and has picked up a lot of tricks over the millennia. She observes what those around her do and learns from them. She has a severe, cold side to her that makes her all the more efficient in her work. Ganyu’s is the second Adepti story quest we’ve gotten so far, and oh by the archons she and Zhongli are such great strategic players.

Ganyu is also lonely. She’s in between two worlds, and can’t be fully a part of either. When she’s with mortals, she’s an Adepti, and when she’s with Adepti, she’s a mortal. There’s nobody in the world that Ganyu knows of who is truly both and neither like she is. The mortals around her admire her, the Adepti around her seem to see her as young/ lower in rank than they are. So of course she would take solace in befriending Aether, someone who’s also not quite a mortal or a god.

In a way, Ganyu’s story quest almost ties into Albedo’s. They’re both “inhuman” in a way that isolates them from others and turns them into lonely individuals. This loneliness and isolation brings them, consciously or unconsciously, closer to Aether. This one similarity also brings attention to the differences between Albedo and Ganyu— Albedo is neither human nor god, while Ganyu is both.

I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but I think putting Ganyu’s story quest right after Albedo’s was a very nice touch.

ending thoughts

Sinae Unicornis was a very decent story quest. It was no Carmen Dei, but I’d say it was on the level of Jean’s and Mona’s. And,, ,,, it made me value Albedo’s story quest a tiny bit more. I love Ganyu, I think she’s adorable, and she seems like a pretty good versatile unit. She’s risen through the ranks of my favorite Genshin characters and is probably in the top 10. Despite all of these complements I will unfortunately not be rolling for her.

The next story quests we get shoooould be Xiao’s and Hu Tao’s (ofc I wouldn’t complain if Qiqi, Keqing, Fischl, Bennett, Barbara, Noelle, Sucrose, Chongyun, Diona, Xinyan, and Ningguang also got story quests...). I’m extremely excited to see Edgy Boy again and to finally meet my favorite funeral parlor owner. I’m also hyped for the events we’ll get before 1.3– hypostatic symphony and multiplayer Liben should be coming up soon. and then.... 1.3!

[caravanslost]

Nirvana in Fire

Are you in the market for a new hyper-fixation? Something so good that you’ll find yourself periodically pausing and reaching for a cushion in which to smash your face? Characters for whom you would, in all seriousness, die? 

If so, look no further than Nirvana in Fire. 

Nothing short of physical screaming can accurately convey how much I love this show. It is easily - easily - one of the best I’ve ever watched. I find myself thinking about it during the middle of the workday and smiling absently like a lovesick schmuck. I have preached its gospel to every unwitting soul that has crossed my path in the last month.

Best of all, all 54 episodes are on YouTube, with subtitles. 

Plot

Nirvana In Fire is so intricately well-plotted that it constitutes foreplay. It begins with a dozen, seemingly disparate threads, and you don’t realize they’re being woven together until you notice a tight rope wrapped around your heart. 

Because of its complexity, it’s difficult to summarise. Below, I’ve included a brief synopsis from TV tropes - but oh, my god, this isn’t even 5% of it.

Mei Changsu, the brilliant leader of a powerful martial arts alliance, hides his true identity as the young Marshall Lin Shu. He returns to the capital of his native country in order to claim justice for his wrongly executed father and the entire Chiyan army, to which he belonged. Set in a fictionalized ancient China, the drama revolves around complex political strategies with a healthy dose of kung fu action and character drama.

Major themes

You will like this show if your fancy is tickled by the following:

Identity porn: The main character, Mei Changsu, has three identities. His original identity, Lin Shu, is presumed to be dead. One of the best things about this show is watching the remaining characters - and one of them  in particular - slowly work out who he is. It is SEX.

A machiavellian hero: Mei Changsu is also a genius political strategist. He moves people, incidents, and confrontations around like he’s playing chess with them. This, too, is sex.

Politics/Court intrigue: At its heart, this show is about a game of thrones. Its emotional dividends in this regard are superlative.  

Bromance that will bring you to your knees: Mei Changsu enters into the service of his childhood best friend, Prince Jing, without revealing his true identity to the Prince. You will witness their interactions  and loyalty and you will cry hot, salty tears over it. I promise.

Justice as a nine-course Michelin-starred degustation menu: Although this show is often described as a “revenge” show, it’s really more about grand wrongs being put very, very right. It’s viscerally satisfying,

Other reasons to watch this show

I’ve kept them down to three.

The incredibly polished production: It’s honestly worth watching for the costume porn and intricate sets alone.

Almost everyone is really, really hot:

Hu Ge, who plays Mei Changsu/Su Zhe/Lin Shu, has a face as delicate as a butterfly wing.

Wang Kai, who plays Prince Jing, has a death stare known to dissolve all panties within a five kilometre radius. 

Liu Mintao, who plays Consort Jing (Prince Jing’s mom), is the embodiment of the concept of grace.

Liu Tao, who plays Princess Mu Nihuang, is an ARMY GENERAL. 

Chen Long, who plays Commander Meng Zhi, is so very hot, and so very dumb.

The plot, again: Just - trust me on this, okay?

One more thing

This show is huge in its scope, and it jumps right into the narrative. It will take several episodes for you to meet all the characters understand where they fit, but you should absolutely give it time. It’s worth it, I promise. In the meantime, here’s a handy character guide to keep you going. 

And finally - if you do watch it, and enjoy it, come scream in my inbox!