#and for an archon it's an okay thing

[originalgenshinscenarios]

Doing Natlan quest right now and honestly I really hoped these characters would be better

and the fact that nobody requests them makes me feel like I'm not the only one who thinks that xD (for example, the second fontaine was out I had requests with Fontaine characters- okay maybe not exactly but it's been a LOOONG while and I'm yet to see someone from natlan in my inbox)

rant in tags, not fully spoiler free

[lovesickeros]

☆ de fontaine

{☆} characters furina {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings angst, suicidal thoughts, hurt / no comfort {☆} word count 1.4k

This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair!

She thought, for one moment, she could put the mask down and breathe – for one moment of daydreaming, she thought she could just be Furina. She thought she would finally get to live the live she should've had in the first place, the life she threw away to play God to an audience who saw her as nothing but a circus animal, dancing to their whims. Furina just wanted to be selfish for one brief and fleeting moment..and it was gone before she could even grasp it in her hand. A comet soaring past far out of her reach.

She can barely keep her hands from violently shaking as she looks down at them – broken and bloody and more a corpse then a person – and she feels so numb she can't even feel the rain pelting against her back. None of this is fair, she wants to scream, why is it always me? But her voice is silent beneath the torrent of rain. She wonders if the ocean would take her if she sank into it's depths – just for a moment, she wonders how it would feel to finally be able to sleep at ease.

Furina is tired.

But Furina is nothing if not useful, isn't she?

So she forces her feet to move, dragging against the stone beneath her heels, and drags their bloodied body into the nearest empty building, letting the rain do the work of washing away the smeared blood following her path. The smell makes her feel sick, the feeling of it sticking to her hands and gloves makes her lightheaded, but she persists. Because Furina is useful, because Furina won't let them die out in the rain, because Furina won't stand by and just let them rot on the streets like some..pest.

Furina wants to go home. She wants to sleep and she isn't she if she wants to wake up, this time. But she keeps going anyway.

Because it's all she's ever done, and the habit sticks.

An Archon she may not be, not anymore, but the expectations of five hundred years still linger like eyes on the inside of her skull. They watch her, pry and prod at her thoughts, mocking laughter and judging eyes following her as she forces herself to dance to the song they weave with glee. Furina never stepped off that stage – she's still there, she thinks, watching the crowd stare at her in disdain as the curtain call looms above her like a guillotine. She still hears Neuvillette deliver her damnation and salvation with a trembling voice, still feels her hair stand on end when electro crackled like the crack of the whip, Clorinde's blade aimed at her like a loaded gun.

She's trapped on that stage and she never left, not really.

She hates it. She thinks she hates them, but it's not their fault. They didn't ask for this, didn't ask for everyone to turn against them, didn't ask for her to save them. Neither did she..yet here they are, she thinks.

She tries to tell herself she's in control this time, though. She can stop performing her part in this horrible, bloody play any time she wants. It makes her feel better, just for a little while, if she convinces herself she's still Furina, painfully human.

And Furina has always been good at lying.

It's the believing that's the hard part.

There isn't time for her to wallow in her own self pity, though. They're still bleeding out onto the dusty, creaky floorboards of some random, broken down house and she's just standing there as the blood stains the wood. She can fix it – she's good at fixing things. She's done nothing but fix things – try to, anyway – for five hundred years. She can fix a little wound, how hard could it be? Her hands are clenched so tight they ache as she kneels down, wincing at the creak of the floorboards beneath her heels– she hesitates just long enough to wonder if she's making a mistake before she peels away just enough of the outer layer of their clothes to see the deep, bloody gash across their chest. She tries not to think about it – it's deep, too deep, and she feels dizzy just looking at it, but she's handled worse, right?

Furina can fix it. That's what she's good at.

She doesn't feel so confident when she tries to wrack her brain for..something. Five hundred years, and a little wound stumps her? No, she had to have learned something, right? She's decidedly not trying to buy time because she's panicking, parsing through hundreds of years of memories like flipping through a book. Furina isn't made for this, not really – she's running on nothing but adrenaline and she's really not sure what she's doing, but she's trying. And just like before, it won't be enough, will it?

She'll fall short again – she'll be too late to fix it before she's alone again.

Furina was an Archon..used to be. What use would she have for that sort of knowledge? Which makes her predicament all the more harrowing and bleak. What was she supposed to do?

Furina had heard it first hand, that vitriol in Neuvillette's voice. She isn't sure she's ever heard him that..angry before. She's not sure he would listen to her if she tried, either. And that scares her more then anything. All of Fontaine was up in arms about this..imposter, yet here she was, staring down at them bleeding out in front of her, and she was trying to save them.

Why? Why is she throwing away her only chance at normalcy for a fraud? Why didn't she just turn them in?

They were dying – that should've been a good thing, shouldn't it? So why didn't it feel like it?

"Why you?" Her voice breaks as she speaks in harsh tones, grabbing the front of their shirt in trembling, bloodied hands. "Why now?" She wants to scream, to demand answers they can't give, to claw back the reprieve she was promised after five hundred years of agony..and all she can do is sob into their chest, pleading for an answer that will not come. "Why me?"

Silence is their answer, and it hangs heavy on her trembling shoulders as she cries.

Of course they don't, she thinks bitterly, no one has ever answered her pleas spoken in hushed sobs. Not her other self and certainly not them.

Furina has always been alone. Furina will always be alone.

Because Furina never left that stage, never left that moment when she looked at herself in the mirror and took up a mantle too heavy for her to bear. She always finds her way back eventually. There's no one on the other side anymore – she stands alone on a stage, waiting for an inevitable end she isn't sure will come.

"Please," She pleads through tears and choked sobs, clinging to them like they are all that keeps her from sinking. "Please don't leave me, too." The words burn on her tongue – how pathetic is she that she craves companionship from the bloodied body of the imposter? Perhaps she's truly lost her mind after all these years..perhaps she's finally gone mad. She must have.

But their presence is like the first feeling of gentle warmth upon her skin as the sun crests the horizon, like the gentle lap of tides along her heels, the sway of branches and leaves as the wind blows through them like an instrument all it's own. They are the soothing sound of rain against the window as she watches the dreary skies in fond longing, the first bloom of spring as color blooms upon the landscape like paint had been spilled across the hills and valleys.

They are like the faint spark she carefully nurtures and stokes, so fragile even the smallest wind could blow it out like a candle. She cradles it within her palms, pleads with whoever will listen – prays that someone finally listens, because if not for her, then for them.

She's failed to protect too much already, let too many people with so much trust in her fall between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand. She won't let them go – she can't.

If nothing else, if she couldn't be saved when she begged for salvation from that five hundred year long agony, even if she never got that chance..

Furina will make sure they do.

[invinciblerodent]

me studying history (reading everything in World of Thedas about the Tevinter Imperium) the night before the exam (two months before the release of Veilguard)

[baeshijima]

since maintenance has (i think) officially started . . .

MAY ALL MUALANI WANTERS BE MUALANI HAVERS !!!

MAY ALL KAZUHA WANTERS BE KAZUHA HAVERS !!!

MAY ALL KACHINA WANTERS BE KACHINA HAVERS !!!

MAY ALL KINICH WANTERS BE KINICH HAVERS !!!

MAY ALL RAIDEN WANTERS BE RAIDEN HAVERS !!!

GOOD LUCK ON UR PULLS AND HAPPY 5.0 + HAPPY NATLAN + HAPPY 4TH ANNIVERSARY EVERYONE 🫶🫶

[eternalflashh]

i give up. i've been thinking about the fontaine lore too much to not put my thoughts somewhere.

no, this is not at all going to be organized, because i hardly have it all together yet. but i've been trying to get a gist of fontaine's prophecy, and i'm just trying to put the pieces together after what we've learned of fontaine's history (albeit not much, and neither is the theory the best. i'm just thinking on paper here.) this is going to be *very long* by the way. very, very, very long.

naturally, beware of spoilers, particularly: fontaine AQs and world quests (narzissenkreuz, elynas (the melusines) — including the canotila side quest, institute of natural philosophy, khvarena), artifacts (nymph's dream, marechaussee hunter), weapon (fleuvre cendre ferryman)

also, disclaimer: i may be wrong. i am not a genius—kind of an idiot, really. i'm just thinking. thinking. read this as someone's journal, not the wiki entry.

here's a brief recap of the three fontaine world quests, because we're going to need them:

in the narzissenkreuz adventure team quest, we accompanied the tiny oceanid ann in order to save a "princess lyris", only to find out that she never existed and this was all a fictional tale—one, though, that has its roots in the real narzissenkreuz institute.

in the elynas quest, we saved mamere from getting her paintings stolen, and found out that she was painting with elynas's blood. a man named jakob ingold has been trying to collect this blood, and now, apparently tries to revive the dragon itself—for a cause that is beyond even the abyss's plans.

the quest with the institute of natural philosophy wasn't quite as plotful, aside from the fact that we simply were led to the institute thinking it was the narzissenkreuz institute, and found plenty of old records. it's also where the narzissenkreuz ordo's quarters was buried inside, and where we managed to unite ann and seymour to continue their story.

now, from the many ancient texts and artifact/weapon descriptions i've managed to piece a rough idea of what happened 500 years ago, which i will try my best to summarize coherently according to my understanding:

the narzissenkreuz institute, which had an oceanid as its director and basil elton as its vice, was a special unit founded with the purpose of protecting fontaine against the evils (of khaenri'ah, presumably). that being said, they housed orphaned childen. these included the mary-ann we see in "the real annapausis" (whose consciousness was transferred to our oceanid ann), alain, rene, and jakob.

it was said that "the director and her sisters went off to fight the evil at its source" (nymph's dream), which i'm assuming is khaenri'ah, while the vice director set off for the seas in the Sponsian ship where she eventually passed. shortly after, the institute was disbanded. before the vice director (basil elton) set off, though, she had entrusted the children of the institute to her close friends: emanuel gullotin and karl ingold (marechaussee hunter).

alain guillotin and mary-ann guillotin, taken up by emanuel, became marechaussee hunters; rene de petrichor and jakob ingold, in the meantime, headed for sumeru's girdle of the sands with karl ingold to research the remmants of the lord of amrita. (if you did the quest, you would've had "rene's investigation notes" in your inventory—which essentially describes what they've been researching; rene appears to have recently turned into a young adult, while jakob is still "a child", but they both sound... young.) it also seems that before this, they infiltrated elynas—in the investigation notes, they seem to be hiding their condition from karl; later we find that jakob seems to be surviving on elynas's blood.

sometime after this, alain guillotin is enrolled into the institute of natural philosophy where he researches (i assume) the mechanics of arkhe and pneuma-ousia annihilation; rene and jakob are also enrolled in there some time later. at first, they were working on the same research (alain's), until rene and alain eventually broke off their working relationship (noting that they, including mary-ann, still hung out together as friends), apparently having disagreed on something.

now we saw jakob ingold— which clearly means him having absorbed elynas's blood (and all those research) has somehow given him the powers of immortality, which rene and him had been researching in the desert; although it appears that rene has found a different way of implementing immortality. rene, in his "memories" as told in the book of revealing, discovered a way humans could surpass death by dissolving in the waters, their consciousness preserved even as doomsday comes (i assume this is how the water from the primordial sea came to be rediscovered after ages), and chose himself as the first test subject to be dissolved. alain, meanwhile, went off to establish the fontaine research institute that studied clockwork and created the meka we see roaming around fontaine now—i personally think the specific use of clockwork was intended to allude to the underlying goal to surpass their time. but yk, that might be overkill.

mary-ann's end, though, was never quite explicitly told. and in fact, the "mary-ann" we see in annapausis described the place in the book as her tomb, even though the story (whether the one we were going through, or the literal story you find in the fountain with the "statue of princess lyris") was unfinished. she might not have been a particularly "important" character in the history, but she was significant to each of the other childen— the various notes always expressed joy whenever they see mary-ann, may it be alain who was said to care for his sister (so much that he made her seymour), rene, jakob, even carter (alain's assistant).

this is important because, coincidentally, it resembles ann's role in the narzissenkreuz adventure team fairytale. ann was described to be their leader, a sort of mascot, among the team fighting against the fell dragon. and in fact, each of the characters we met resemble someone in reality: 'al' is from alain, 'ney' is from rene, 'jak' is from jakob, and 'mori' from seymour. (the others are... a bit complicated and i cannot yet discuss them because I'm Still Thinking, and that'll go besides my current point.) basically, the fairytale was literally told with the children as real life inspiration. (even though, of course, it was cut off quite annoyingly.)

then, it's worth understanding the tale to understand their true motives as well. the tale talks of the adventure team's existence essentially to help princess lyris to protect her realm and fight against the big bad evil, the fell dragon narcissus. narcissus was fighting her for "a treasure of hers that he did not have", and in order to help fight against this evil, princess lyris shared her time with her friends, time that allowed them to be ahead of the dragon's attacks. but in the end, the dragon still had the upper hand; eventually she trapped herself in the high tower, entrusting a treasure to the adventure team: a bright pearl of water.

common sense tells that this princess lyris alludes to the archon of their nation, egeria; the adventure team being the narzissenkreuz institute, while the fell dragon narcissus is the khaenri'ahn invasion. judging from this, then, it appears that the archon left behind this "bright pearl of water" as the last thing before she trapped herself in the high tower. and that's it— that's the end of the story, so we don't know how the rest of history went. well, except for the fact that the former hydro archon is, in fact, dead, and now we are left with a most ominous prophecy: of the original sin, of why it's exclusive to fontaine, of why the oceanids do not recognize their current archon, of why furina is exempt from this prophecy—and what she is waiting for.

i have so many questions, and no idea of how to approach them in a methodical manner—so i will first point out all the things that bother me.

i wondered why this problem is exclusive to fontaine. regarding there is a problem of exception mentioned in rene's notes, where the children's constitution are different from karl's; i still have no idea the nature of this distinction, only that rene and jakob's bodies are like the power of the sacred lotus (i.e., the former archon's power). at first i thought that this distinction may be the reason for them being susceptible to the primordial seawater's effects, but without understanding the distinction, it doesn't help in answering the question.

then, again, i wondered what their real motives was. neuvillette says that the former archon left furina with the prophecy—but it doesn't sound like a problem so much as a statement of what's to come. we don't know what egeria actually believed. but i went back to the final feast teaser, and found that egeria actually had some narration:

the original sin is the fairest: everyone sinks. make the most of the final feast, because for the sinners, the curtain call has come.

which certainly does make it sound like she sees them all as sinners, and that they have always been bound to sink.

the interesting thing is— this might not necessarily be a bad thing, no matter how we see it as a crisis. even the victims of the disappearances case regard dissolving into the waters as "relief" (vigniere from the AQ); even the people say this is just like returning to whence they came from, and mary-ann of the sunflower annapausis says that together, as one body of water, they can become strong. in line with this, perhaps rene's act of dissolving into the seawater doesn't seem so much as a radical act anymore.

i always come back to this line at the storybook:

"So, in Narcissus's story, I'm the evil villain?

it may sound like an innocent question, but a fairly odd one for a child to be asking. and i believe it says more than it seems. for one, i'd like to point out that narcissus is another term for the flower daffodil, which symbolizes rebirth—the narzissenkreuz also means "narcissus cross", aka, death of rebirth. which makes sense when you think that they're enemies of "the fell dragon". but why would they be fighting rebirth? perhaps because the narzissenkreuz institute were fighting the prophecy, which they, including egeria, perhaps, believed at the time to be a good thing.

i say "at the time" because, look at what became of the children. in essence, they became "villains". rene, for one, founded a source of the primordial sea, which was certainly what led to the current problems—and, hence, what would lead to the realizing of the prophecy. jakob is out here trying to revive elynas in order to use his blood to strengthen human lifespans, so that they can overcome the surmised cataclysm that would come? to turn everyone immortal? meanwhile, alain's deviced a way to subvert the usage of celestia's elements by making work of pneuma-ousia power. essentially, they are each fighting for rebirth, instead of fighting against rebirth. perhaps not precisely rebirth, but a way to preserve humanity, to subvert the crisis. even mary-ann, in a sense, had managed to attain this goal, by preserving all her memories—despite it being unfinished—in that storybook.

and in fact, perhaps that's also why the story ended there—because it was that point, when the cataclysm occurred, where the story's moral had shifted, and they had each lost their original intention to fight. because they then realized that they needed better ways of handling this crisis, only to have one of them revert to that crisis itself. tl;dr: the prophecy ceased from being a crisis, instead becoming rene's perceived solution. which is.... interesting, to say the least.

again, it sounds radical, but it may very well hold water. one interesting thing i noted from the canotila quest was that where we saw the dark power of the abyss in "the end of things" as predicted by the world-formula, canotila instead saw a nice place with flowers, etc. and when we were talking to elynas, he noted that "the things they (the primordial dragons) enjoyed were not things that humans valued". it's similar to this situation—two different viewpoints may see the same thing to be two very different things; either salvation or destruction. which then brings a lot of suspense toward the resolution of the AQ—what, truly, will become the best solution for them? would being dissolved save the people of fontaine? or would they find a way to subvert both the dissolution and the destruction? (obviously, it's probably the latter—the question, as always, would be how? to answer that, we need to know more on why they are subject to this sin, and that is not a question i can answer, despite this Very Long Rambling. i am most stressed)

but if nothing else, at least i've figured that the foretelling of this disaster is something that's originated far before the cataclysm, from egeria's time. perhaps it'd be something like rukkhadevata & nahida, where rukkhadevata had her own way of solving the issue with combating forbidden knowledge, but it led to a whole other issue, and nahida had to find her own solution.

one thing still perplexes me, though— furina's perspective in all this.

at first i thought she may be the "pearl of water" referred to in the storytale, since it would make sense that that's where the next archon comes in—but since furina is supposed to be older than nahida (as said by neuvillette in nahida's introduction), it seems unlikely. though it's always possible that this happened several years before the cataclysm, it wouldn't align very nicely; one would assume the princess trapping in her tower to be an event that took place during the peak of the cataclysm, so the life born out of the pearl must be sometime after that. but the possibility remains.

or perhaps one shouldn't take the story too literally, and assume she was simply handed the gnosis after egeria's passing—but why? who is she to begin with? and what then is the pearl of water that the princess left to the narzissenkreuz? it must bear significance, if it was left in the story at all (and something the storyteller felt important enough to be named after the child she was telling the story to, lyris). perhaps the pearl thing was only an expression, and it was meant to allude to the passing of her gnosis to the next archon. but of course, this is only conjecture.

furina's behavior... is perhaps simply a consequence of her original personality, under her circumstances. her personality aside, though, what would her woes we hear in the fountain mean? what does she mean when she say "interminable"—what, exactly, is she waiting for in unbearable loneliness? it doesn't make much sense for her to be waiting for the prophecy to come; otherwise, she'd have no reason to research it for so long, gathering intelligence, when she hardly cares for the nation's affairs. surely she wouldn't be waiting for divine intervention to come save her from her business? lyney and lynette note that she always appears to be "acting"—so what is she acting for? why does she aim to judge other gods? if she wants to prove that other nations are also at fault for "sinning", then wouldn't she need more time, instead of being impatient? nothing seems to add up with her. perhaps she wants to save everyone, but perhaps she is tired as well. perhaps she doesn't feel like she's capable of it, and wishes for release to come instead. is that what it is? who knows. who knows. it's impossible to tell, with someone with so many faces.... it's very interesting. furina is certainly a very interesting archon.

anyways. that was long and this doesn't hold much water to it (get it) but. i had to dump my thoughts somewhere. i'll get back to it when i find more information, when more thoughts come to hound me,,,,,, yeah. anyway.

[vv-ispy]

XiaoVen and ZhongVen content is really funny to me sometimes because it's often "this guy who is the archon of Mondstadt and loves his nation and his people? Let's put him in Liyue"

[vellixor]

Will add more to this as I get more ideas but,

Reasons why Venti and Zhongli are sus:

They're the only remaining ones out of the original seven. Out of all of the archons, they're probably the ones that knows Celestia the most

For Venti: all his numerous connection with Istaroth, yknow, the shade of Primordial, goddess of time

For Zhongli: he's a dragon? Half a dragon? Some sort of connection with a dragon which, with all the talks about Sovereigns™, is adding so much fuel to his sus factor

For Zhongli: his lore said he "descended" to Liyue from somewhere. Not sure if this is just in english or if the implication that he's a descender also exist in other languages. Either way, the word choice connected with the fact that he's old AF (isn't he like the oldest character that we have an approximate age of) is still hella sus

KORY DRUMS! Why are there only 5 types of Kory drums? There isn't any Geo and Anemo. There's also that image near the Kory drums that shows a tree with 5 elemental symbol beneath it. Again, without geo and anemo. Like, yes maybe the Kory drums are just referencing the new archons, but until we get confirmation of that, its still very sus

Edit: Venti, a bard, who stores history as stories/songs. Is that a conscious decision in order to get pass the whole Irminsul-memory-shenanigans? Who knows, but its also interesting to note that in Zhongli's first story quest, he mentioned that as travelers, we can carry the memory of teyvat. It's implied that out memory is protected from erosion/time, but I cant help but wonder if he knows about Irminsul.

[electric-plants]

me playing act 1: i am HERE for all the new fontaine characters i love ALL of them

me playing act 2: if yall don’t let childe go right now it’s on SIGHT i s2g i’m here for him and him alone

[maxgicalgirl]

Not me going into Genshin to test some mods I’m making and seeing I have 65 wishes so I do like three pulls and end up getting Kinich 🧍

[lovesickeros]

putting my thoughts under the cut in case people dont want to spoil themself on arle voicelines

currently obsessed with the view our current harbingers have of the Tsaritsa. both childe and arlecchino greatly respect her even if arlecchino is dubiously loyal to the Tsaritsa at best. they both talk about her as a figure who is gentle and compassionate, completely at odds with both the organization she allows to commit horrible acts (dottore. its a lot of dottore. he canonically took children from the hoth under the old knave if they were no longer considered "useful" and used as test subjects). shes described as someone with no love left for her people yet the harbingers we've heard talk about her never seem to describe her in such a manner. of course, childe mentions she had to harden herself to complete her goal, but he still notes that shes too gentle. the more we learn about her the more i want to meet her purely because she is contradictions all the way down and its great!!! taking whatever scraps i can get and its perfectly in line with my characterization too so i stay winning

[makethiscanon]

Genshin AU where the archons can strip you of your Vision if you lose motivation for your goal, turning you into a husk of a person as punishment.

Now imagine Cyno falling in love and deciding to give up his life as a matra to pursue happiness with them, only to be stripped of his power because he chose love over an eternity of passing judgement.

[waterfall-ambience]

furina is such a 15 year old girl to me its unreal

[aromanticasterisms]

so no furina story quest 2 :((

[andersdotters]

I've been trying to reason this out for a while, but I haven't reached a conclusion yet whether or not Zhongli is a super messy or super neat person. Like I can see it going either way.

[dreampearls]

MY VISHION

[gosminhas]

finally decided I won't download genshin again just bc of furina after almost 1 year of not playing but be aware i'm around the corner. i'm obsessed with her but i'll keep my distance.