#and the implications it could have for genshin's end-game

[wayward-aeon]

For the genshin ask game, adventurer's guild and dandelions.

which gen/shin group would you align yourself with?

none, really. i mean, i was in fact part of quite a few groups, such as the adventurer's guild, knights of favo/nius, and wata/tsumi military, but i don't really feel a sense of belonging with them. i don't see them as "my people". i feel most at home with the gods and divine spirits of tey/vat, despite being an outlander. i think ven/ti did half-jokingly offer me a seat among the four winds at one point, so maybe that would be my answer lolol

what is/are your favorite in-game book(s) you’ve read so far?

definitely the byakuyakoku collection. i've re-read it so many times now. it's probably one of, if not the single most important text(s) currently available for gen/shin's lore. i always go back to it whenever i'm researching or theorizing about pretty much anything to do with celestia and the past and future of tey/vat.

[blueskittlesart]

i kinda really wanna see a big ol vent/rant from you about genshin now lol. I would read an essay

I'm not sure you understand the insanity you just unlocked in me but ok

genshin impact is probably the clearest modern example i can think of of capitalism absolutely eviscerating a creative project. For context, I started playing genshin in 2021, just after the 1.4 update. it was venti's first rerun/the first windblume festival if that means something to you. and I really genuinely thought that it might have had something special. It was a gacha that didn't FEEL like a gacha, which was a huge feat to me.

it began with a very simple story pitch--you, the protagonist, are one of a set of twin siblings traveling through space. you come upon a seemingly unassuming world and your attempts to continue your journey are suddenly stopped by a mysterious, all-powerful figure. you are separated from your sibling and wake up alone on the shores of this planet you were attempting to leave together. throughout that opening cutscene and scattered through the world and your character's dialog there are implications that all is not as it seems, that your character is something unique to this world and that they possess powers and abilities that you've yet to unlock. You are told that you must travel the seven nations of this world in order to find your sibling, which is great--a simple, zelda-like objective which drives the player to explore the secondary narratives of the world. none of this is bad on the surface. in fact i'd argue it's pretty good. there's a ton that can be done with these story bones. even at launch the map and combat system were full of potential as well.

Note: for ease of reading, i'm going to label the different storylines of the game now. A-plot refers to the central objective of the entire game; the find-your-sibling plot and everything that encompasses, including the abyss order/dain, the heavenly principles, the fake sky, etc. B-plot refers to the secondary objective present in each new nation, usually meeting the archon and/or solving a problem for the archon. (A and B-plots will occasionally intersect.) C-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which remains in permanent gameplay but which isn't directly related to the A or B-plots, such as dragonspine, the chasm, enkanomiya, etc. D-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which is confined to limited-time events and does NOT remain in permanent gameplay, regardless of its connection or lack thereof to the A and B-plots, such as the golden apple archipelago, the infamous albedo/dragonspine event, the infamous kaeya/diluc event, etc. Lore as i will refer to it in this post refers to any information which is present in permanent gameplay but which is not directly told to the player within the A or B-plot story quests and objectives, including books, weapon, artifact, and item descriptions, world quest dialog and puzzles, etc.

So now we're in mid-2021, there are two nations' worth of B-plot story quests released in full, and we've run into our first problem, which is that the game isn't finished yet. I don't have any actual information about how the game was/is written, but based on what i've observed over the past few years, my best guess is that the A-plot has been fully written since the beginning, at least in some form. there were very early-game events and information pertaining to the A-plot that would take years to see any actual payoff in the main story quests (kaeya's origin story, the 1.3 scaramouche fake-sky drop, the flowers in lumine's hair, etc.) but those kinds of A-plot story easter eggs very quickly dropped off when the game absolutely EXPLODED during the pandemic.

this sudden burst in popularity was the true beginning of the end for genshin, i think, because suddenly they had a HUGE fanbase that desperately wanted more content faster than they could pump out new A-plot or even B-plot story quests. one of the most pervasive complaints about the game when I began playing in 2021 was that there was nothing to do between story quests. update 1.4 (which was the update I started playing at) was important in that it was the first time since genshin's release over a year before that players recieved any new A-plot, in the form of the archon quest We Will Be Reunited, also known as the quest with the most fucking misleading name of all time. you'll never guess what doesn't fucking happen during this quest. anyways. we were a year into gameplay, two nations out of seven released and a third on the not-so-distant horizon, and it seemed obvious that players were owed some sort of A-plot payoff. and that's very much what WWBR was advertised as, from the quest's name to the banners full of art of the twins staring wistfully at each other. The thing is, what i'm describing as A-plot payoff was actually. not really A-plot payoff at all. WWBR was the reveal that the protagonist's sibling was working with the abyss order, and that the abyss order was connected somehow to Khaenri'ah, which at this point casual players would only have known about from THAT QUEST and MAYBE kaeya's character descriptions if they were diligent enough to get him to friendship level 10 (which, btw there is no indication that you should do to get important context about the story of the game, because kaeya is a 4-star starter character and the only character in the entire game that actually has genuinely important story hidden in his character descriptions.) So what I'm calling A-plot payoff felt at the time a lot less like A-plot payoff than it did like an abyss sibling cameo in an attempt to satiate everyone who was begging for more story. We actually gained almost net 0 information. this is very quickly going to become a pattern.

As I've already alluded to, the motives behind this writing decision are transparently obvious. Genshin is a free gacha game which relies on a consistently active and engaged userbase to make its money. With fans getting restless about the lack of engaging story at the time and a new, very ambitious B-plot quest gearing up for release that would require major support from that fan base in order to remain profitable, the writers were backed into a corner. they HAD to throw the fans some sort of bone in order to keep them engaged with the A-plot, since it was originally pitched as the driving force for the story as a whole, but they were also clearly not at a stage of the writing process where it was prudent to give the player any REAL information about the A-plot. This is how we ended up with a 10-second abyss sibling cameo and an offhanded mention of Khaenri'ah, a nation whose plot-relevance was at that point still basically unknown.

The real problem is, WWBR worked. at least, it worked as intended at the time. It satiated story-focused fans in the interlude between B-plot nations, as hyv was gearing up to release inazuma, which required a lot of time in preparation. WWBR was followed almost immediately by the C-plot golden apple archipelago in 1.6, widely regarded as one of the better events of version 1. GAA was memorable especially because it was the first event that involved an entirely new, limited-time-only map, meaning the event had much more longevity than the standard events players were used to. This is, imo, most likely the update combination that led to the standard formula which hyv uses for its quests and events nowadays. the back-to-back release of WWBR and GAA satisfied both fans who wanted A-plot story AND silenced criticisms about the game lacking endgame playability, which at the time must have seemed like a goldmine to writers desperate for a solution to their content-to-fanbase ratio problem.

From here, genshin started following a standard method of release for their next three nations--inazuma, sumeru, and fontaine. the formula generally went as follows: one major version update (usually version x.0) containing a major map update which included all B-plot relevant locations in the new nation, and the first chapter of the B-plot story quest relevant to that nation. this would then be followed by 2-3 version updates which would each contain the next chapter in the nation's B-plot story quest, sequentially. After the nation's B-plot quest ended, during the downtime in which the next nation's story and map would be finalized, subsequent updates would be largely C-plot, and would contain minor expansions of the map to increase endgame playability via exploration and world quests. This is how we ended up with updates like the chasm, the several extra islands in inazuma, and the quite frankly ridiculously large sumeru map, as well as the offloaded maps like enkanomiya and the sea of bygone eras. with the possible exception of the chasm, none of these areas are A OR B-plot relevant. hyv has realized that artificially inflating the map makes their game technically more engaging during the downtime between nations. However, this comes at a price. While the scenery and set design of the game remains consistently beautiful, the actual, mechanical gameplay that populates that scenery very quickly became mind-numbingly boring if not borderline unplayable. While the 1.0 questlines were not perfect, there was at least an emphasis on the player actually DOING things. 1.0 B-plot quests would have you going to mini-dungeon temples and completing challenges which would acclimate you to the combat system while also serving narrative purpose. There were quests that required you to navigate open-world dungeons. Because your characters were lower-level, combat challenges that arose during these quests were CHALLENGES, rather than two-second buttonmashing segments. By the time we get to sumeru, though, both B-plot AND C-plot quests have become little more than moving your character from location to location and tapping through (usually unvoiced) dialog. there's no GAMEPLAY in the quests anymore, because gameplay isn't what makes money. What DOES make money is giving players 300 hidden chests to find in an open-world map segment, each of which gives them 1/80th of a gacha pull. And so the story suffers and the map gets bigger.

Along with the map expansions, downtime between nations usually also nets us one A-plot quest, usually involving the character dainslief, who was the driver of the initial WWBR quest. This is the second half of hyv's magical formula for keeping fans happy between major releases. the A-plot quests will, as a general rule, give players either very little new information or no new information at all, but will dress up the delivery in such a way that it ALMOST feels as though the protagonist has moved forward somehow. the most recent example of this writing style, the 4.7 quest bedtime story, amounts to about an hour and a half of gameplay and, while it DOES contain a segment in which the protagonist finally actually has a conversation with their sibling, that conversation literally begins with the line "I have so many questions, but for some reason I don't want to ask them right now," ensuring that the sibling will not actually be required to give away any plot-relevant information whatsoever, and the quest ends with the protagonist FORGETTING THAT THE CONVERSATION EVER HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

As I think I mentioned before, the cardinal problem of genshin impact's writing is that fans want answers faster than the writers are prepared to give them. I don't doubt that there's a game bible or relevant equivalent somewhere within hyv which contains the explanations we are currently lacking in regards to the A-plot. the game is consistent enough in its storytelling for me to believe that this isn't all just being made up as we go along. But I'm also certain that a lot of the late-game A and B-plot that is planned (especially if the Khaenri'ah is truly planned to be the 8th nation of the game) hinges on the player knowing very little about the A-plot. this would be fine if genshin was a standard single-release video game that players could work through at their own pace, but it isn't. it's unfinished, and each nation in the game releases months to years after the last, leaving the writers to scramble to fill in the gameplay gaps and players struggling to remember plot-relevant information when it's brought up literal years after they last heard it mentioned. Not only does the time between updates leave players frustrated about the lack of A-plot, it makes the A-plot harder to understand when it is brought up, because the writers are required to throw in so much dense C and D-plot just to keep engagement high enough to make the game profitable in its downtime. we joke about the insane convolution of genshin's lore, but that is first and foremost a byproduct of its financial model. the game requires engaement to be profitable, and adding lore for players to look into drives up engagement. The fact that having so much story with so little plot relevance muddies the waters and makes the A and B-plot stories considerably harder to understand doesn't matter as long as money is being made.

I want to take a quick detour here to talk about the release of sumeru specifically, because this is when I really began to clock the fact that genshin was declining. on paper, racial sensitivity issues aside (Not that they're not important, but i'm doing this deep dive from a storytelling and game design point of view, nothing else. that's a whole can of worms i don't have time to get into here) sumeru was a really promising addition to the game. The new B-plot quest which was set to drop in 3.0 was highly anticipated for several reasons. Two fan-favorite characters (kaeya and scaramouche) were expected to play major roles, because of earlier C and B-plot quests, and much of the nation's scenery that was teased in trailers and promotional content appeared to tie into the A-plot. the most exciting draw about sumeru and version 3.0, though, was the major update to the combat system.

Arguably genshin impact's most interesting feature upon release was its combat system. The map was basically a botw clone at that point, and the story quests, while decently engaging, were rough around the edges to say the least. What genshin DID have going for it was a unique real-time combat system that rewarded strategy and quick thinking.

Genshin's combat system is elemental, and on release there were 6 elemental affiliations: anemo (wind), cryo (ice), pyro (fire), hydro (water), geo (rock), and electro (electricity.) in a sort of pokemon-like system, certain elements were weak to other ones, but more importantly, certain combinations of elements could drastically boost combat stats. Players got to construct four-slot teams of characters, each with an elemental affiliation and certain "skills" which would match their element, and you were encouraged to use the interactions of these elements to build teams. very quickly, a huge community formed dedicated to optimizing teams and tiering characters. People would even make a game out of building teams specifically to do high-level damage with "bad" characters or characters who weren't designed to be damage drivers (my 100k jean burst was an incredible moment fr.) this was, of course, also a picture-perfect driver for the gacha aspect of the game, which was how players obtained new characters.

Pre-3.0, combat was... well i won't say it was balanced, but there was no elemental reaction that had any MAJOR advantage over the others. when you actually ran the numbers, i believe vaporize was the best reaction in terms of damage output, with the best team being raiden national with kazuha for EM buffs. but a well-built freeze or melt team could do similar numbers, or even better numbers depending on your artifact rolls. (ayaka permafreeze you will always be my #1.) Despite a steady stream of new characters with each update, characters from the earliest version of the game like xingqiu and xiangling were still topping the charts in terms of usefulness and versatility in teambuilding. However, as early as 1.0, players had been teased that a major update to the combat system was planned. There was a seventh element, dendro (plants) which pre-3.0 only existed as an elemental affiliation for menial enemies. there were no playable dendro characters, and the only elemental reaction that existed relating to it was very low-level and not particularly useful in combat.

Originally, dendro was projected to be added to the combat system somewhere in version 2, but its release was delayed substantially, meaning it came out along with its affiliated nation, sumeru. And as soon as it came out, it basically broke the combat system. I assume that the scaling they ended up going with may have been out of fear that players would be hesitant to integrate a new element into their pre-established team builds, and thus they may have been worried about sales on their dendro character banners, and i assume that the fact that 3 elements are required to get the highest-level reaction was an attempt to make the meta more balanced in the face of that scaling, but, well... it didn't work. At this point, the genshin impact combat meta is basically "if you're not using hyperbloom what the fuck are you doing." there's basically no reaction in the game that comes close to it in terms of both damage and ease of use. you are not going to beat a hyperbloom team with anything other than a better-built hyperbloom team. combat is now very heavily skewed in the direction of dendro, meaning that if you DON'T want to use a dendro team, you're going to be doing significantly lower numbers. And since enemies are added with each update, post-3.0 combat becomes difficult and annoying if you don't have a hyperbloom team on-hand.

The major gripe i have with dendro isn't even the scaling, though. I mentioned offhand earlier that the 1.0 B-plot questline had a section which taught you the basics of the combat system via mini-dungeons. These mini-dungeons, of course, taught you the version of the system that existed pre-3.0, so there's no tutorial for dendro reactions. Rather than integrating the tutorial into the story and world like they did in their early quests, upon playing 3.0 for the first time players were given a popup that explained, very wordily, how dendro reactions worked. there was no opportunity to test these reactions in an environment without consequences--if you wanted to try them you'd have to remember the relevant information, build yourself a team, find an enemy to try them on, and just hope you got it right. This lack of integration is something i began to notice more and more with genshin as it progressed, especially in sumeru. where in mondstadt and liyue open-world puzzles would be explained to you by an npc or via environmental context clues, in sumeru you'd be stopped while exploring every two seconds by a popup explaining some puzzle or another which, of course, you wouldn't read, because you didn't want to do the puzzle right that minute anyway, and then by the time you DID want to do that puzzle you'd have no in-game way of figuring out how to do it. The puzzle popups may seem like a small thing, but it's one of the clearest examples in the game to me of the fact that the player experience is so clearly not being prioritized here. the game doesn't even TRY to be immersive anymore. they have no qualms about pulling you out of the story to read a paragraph about how the puzzle works. they don't care how your character, in-universe, is supposed to have acquired that information. they don't care why your character, in-universe, is doing the puzzle in the first place. because they know the reason YOU are doing the puzzle, which is to unlock a hidden chest that gives you 1/80th of a gacha pull.

That was not "a quick detour" was it lmfao. ok anyways. back to the story. Now i want to talk about D-plot, meaning limited event stories, and lore as i defined it earlier, meaning contextual details not present in quests or playable story. This is where i think genshin's story becomes completely inaccessible.

Already, we've covered the fact that in order to consume the very basic story, players have to be willing to wait years between A and B-plot quest releases, punctuated by irrelevant map expansions and interlude quests. I mentioned before that genshin's incompleteness is one of the major problems of its story. the fact that players have to wait years, remembering plot-relevant information that they have no way of knowing will even BE plot-relevant, for the payoff of these narratives is frustrating at best and actively malicious at worst. But in theory, there should be an obvious way to circumvent this. One could just wait until the game IS completely finished to play the whole thing. Sort of like buying a game in early access but waiting until it's actually finished to play it all the way through. that's theoretically possible. but, as i have been hammering home this whole time, genshin is a free game, and therefore genshin relies entirely on a consistently engaging fanbase in order to remain profitable. if genshin does not have a base of players who are willing to log in every day, or at the very least once every update, the game's financial model collapses on itself. therefore, genshin puts on limited-time events. this is a standard in gacha games, as a way to keep the fans consistently engaging. What is not standard, however, is the way that genshin uses these events as vessels for its story. about 19 out of 20 limited events in genshin impact will be useless menial bullshit with no effect on the story or really even the player aside from maybe making you fucking angry. 1 out of those 20, though, will be innocuously named, with nothing in the banner or event description to indicate that it's special in any way, but it will contain serious A or B-plot relevant information that exists nowhere else in the game. My personal favorite example is the infamous 1.3 scaramouche appearance, in which he showed up, told the protagonist that the sky was fake, and then immediately fucked off again. Scaramouche did not show up again until at least 2.0, and the fake sky wasn't so much as MENTIONED again until 3.2, almost TWO YEARS LATER. but there are others, such as the (almost equally infamous) albedo doppelganger event in which a major character's loyalties are called into question, or the event where major biographical information is revealed about kaeya, the only playable character with major known connections to the A-plot and Khaenri'ah. With all of these events, once the event period ends, the information contained within them vanishes from the game completely. there's no way to replay old events that you've missed, even sans rewards, so if you miss a plot-relevant event the ONLY way to catch up on that story is through word of mouth. again, this is a transparent way to keep genshin's userbase engaged during downtime between B-plot quests; if you don't log in and play every event, how will you know if you've missed something important? You might not be able to fully understand the future story if you miss out on the D-plot now!

The D-plot problem is something that I think could, in theory, be circumvented by dedicated record-keeping. if the wiki had anything resembling an easily accessible event database that marked story-relevant events and contained summaries or gameplay videos, at the very least you wouldn't have to fear being completely lost on the off chance that a random throwaway line in an event from fucking 1.3 becomes plot-relevant. but hyv obviously doesn't want that, because it undermines their financial model, and the sheer number of events and the amount of rerunning of irrelevant events they do makes the task of recording and categorizing them all daunting if not impossible.

Then, of course, there's lore. this is arguably what genshin is infamous for in certain circles of the internet. You know that unraveled video where bdg reads every book in skyrim? if you tried to do that with genshin the video would probably be about 10 hours long. and it's not just books; genshin hides (potentially) plot-relevant information in weapon and artifact descriptions, in random hidden world quests, in character bios... the list goes on. and 9 times out of 10, the information is essentially written in code. Plot-relevant characters will have multiple names, or the relevant information will refer to them as vaguely as possible, presumably to further the "mystery" and encourage theorizing among fans. but the sheer amount of information like this that exists within the game makes it all but impossible to determine what is plot-relevant and what isn't. For a topical example, the most recent A-plot quest bedtime story mentions the name Rhinedottir in connection with events in Khaenri'ah, suddenly making that name A-plot relevant. Rhinedottir is an alternate name for the character Gold, whose existence you would only have known of before this point if you'd unlocked and read the character Albedo's character bios. (Albedo is a limited-run character who hasn't been available since november 2022, btw.) the only other information about Rhinedottir permanently available in the game comes from the description of the weapon Festering Desire, which was only obtainable from a limited event back in 2020, anyway. So basically, if you wanted ANY context for that remark, you'd have to have been playing the game since AT LEAST 2022, AND you'd have to have taken the time to go over your weapon and character descriptions with a fine-toothed comb. keep in mind that as of right now (june 2024) there are 85 playable characters in this game, each with 10 unique unlockable character bio sections, and over 150 weapons, each with their own unique descriptions, not to mention over 50 artifact sets, each with 5 unique artifacts, which all have their own unique descriptions as well. there are also 51 different collections of books which contain written lore as well. the idea that any player could keep up with all this, or that anyone could even sift through it all to pick out the important things that they NEED to keep up with, is insane, especially when the game makes a point of withholding crucial plot information from its players within the A and B-plot quests. this amount of written lore only exists, again, to drive up engagement in the hopes of subsequently driving up profit. Even if the average player isn't reading and absorbing all this information, the fact that it's there coupled with the fact that the writers consistently refuse to reveal anything beyond surface-level A-plot information means that there's basically ENDLESS theory fodder. and THAT means that people will be posting their theories and talking with each other and getting into arguments. it means "genshin impact" trends on twitter. it means engagement, and engagement means money.

basically what it comes back to is that everything is so transparently money over player experience with this game. I think what we're witnessing with genshin is what i would call an end-stage gacha game--a gacha game that's gone on a little too long and gotten a little too popular, and so the veil has started to slip a little more than usual. Gachas work primarily because they operate by toeing the line between what is fun to play and what is a predatory mechanic. As long as the actual gameplay remains engaging and rewarding, players can ignore the unsavory business practices underneath. At this point, genshin has swerved too hard into the money-hungriness and is still hoping that they can use their old tried-and-true engagement farming methods to remain popular regardless. currently, it seems like those methods are still working, unfortunately. Like I said in the post that prompted this, i really can't wait for the hyv writer NDAs to expire 10 or so years down the line, because I can only imagine what an insane shitshow writing for this game must be. I want to see the tell-all articles. I want carnage.

That being said, I played genshin impact religiously from 2020 to 2023. I loved the game. Despite myself, I am still really, REALLY interested in the A-plot. I want to know what's going on with the protagonist and their sibling; where they came from, what happened to them, what the heavenly principles are, what role celestia plays in all of this. I want to know Kaeya's full backstory, what role Khaenri'ah plays in the overarching story, and what happened to it in the past. but I don't really have any faith that I ever will, because I know that as long as keeping their fans in the dark and stringing them along remains profitable, that's what hyv will continue to do.

Do I think genshin impact is unsalvagable? in its current state, yes. If I was given the ability to turn back time and convince a bunch of executives of the profitability of this venture, I would change almost nothing about the story of genshin and completely rework the mechanics of its release. I would make it a series of single-release self-contained games rather than a constantly-updating gacha. Each game would be one B-plot quest, or one nation, eight games in all, preferably released once every year. Removing the gacha mechanic, players would be given access to a certain pool of characters to build teams at the start of each game, and then periodically unlock new characters as the story progressed. for example, if you were playing the inazuma game, you'd start out with only your protag, and after progressing to a certain point in the story you'd get a pool of inazuma 4-stars to teambuild with freely. Then, as the story progressed and you met plot-relevant inazuman 5-stars you'd add them to your pool. I'd change basically nothing about the combat system except for a properly integrated introduction of dendro when it makes its appearance in sumeru. Once you completed the story in that nation, you could move onto the next game in the series if it was out, or if it wasn't, you could continue to explore the open world while waiting for the next release. Would this be as profitable as the gacha model? probably not, but what it WOULD do is allow for much more consistent pacing and writing, with the added bonus of not making your userbase feel like you'd shoot them in the head for their pocket change.

[kurogane2512]

Hi, Hello, How are you, I hope you are doing great.

Can I request a oneshot for Lisa? Set during Dodoco's Bombtastic Adventure..

I wanted more interaction time with Lisa but.. you know hoyo.. So I've been wanting to ask this for quite some time..

It can be anything your wish fluff/smu

If it's f, u can add some interactions with klee..

But if it's s, it can just be y/n & Lisa.. uk

Anyways.. If you can't that's alright, I already enjoy your other works and I'm sure the other requests which you plan on doing will also be great.

Thank you :)

I relate so much anon, you already know how disappointed I feel almost every time with events regarding my faves cause they are almost never done justice. Lisa's Sumeru outfit event was also really lackluster and just felt like something they wanted to get out of the way, she has so much character potential but it feels they abandoned all initial plots established with her and just keep her for fanservice.

This Klee event was unexpected and I actually somehow had hopes that maybe this would be better but I thought too soon.... sigh, anyways I very much wanted to write this too and you know I love combining smut and fluff most so here it is~

18+ CONTENT

Game: Genshin Impact

Characters: Lisa x fem! reader (Traveler)

Type: Smut and Fluff (oral sex, slightly dom reader, Lisa on receiving end)

Weary from your travels, you decided to make a stop at Mondstadt and relax a little by meeting your old friends and spending time with them. Mondstadt always felt like home to you as it was the first nation you came to, and the people treated you like their own family that you could never forget them. You went to the KoF HQ and decided to spend some time in the library by reading a book and chatting with the librarian.

"Okay, I'll look for big sister Y/n now!" a familiar child's voice filled your ears as soon as you entered the library.

"Oh! Big sister Y/n!! You already came! Klee was just thinking about you!" Klee ran up to you and playfully hugged you, you smiled at her and patted her head then Lisa also came up to you and smiled.

"What happened? Do you need some help?" you asked both of them and Lisa simply chuckled before telling you about an ongoing problem with Mondstadt's Cider Lake due to which Klee had to be confined in the city for some time and Lisa was made to take care of her.

"So.... do you have something in mind, Lisa?"

"My, of course. I already prepared it as well. Come along~"

You and Klee followed Lisa outside the HQ and found yourself in front of a board game that Lisa had developed for Klee.

"Please enjoy yourselves! It's not every day that you get to play games with Klee, surrounded by the scent of flowers on the breeze, with delicious food delivered right to you~"

"You won't play, Lisa?"

"Hehe, won't it be a little unfair if the game's creator joined in? Besides, I still have my librarian duties to take care of~"

"I see.... I would have liked for you to join in." you looked down with a disappointed expression, a soft chuckle leaving Lisa's mouth at your reaction.

"You should have thought of that when we met in Sumeru, cutie~"

Your eyes widened in shock realizing her implication but Lisa didn't bother elaborating and bid farewell to you two. You weren't sure if she really meant what you were thinking. You spent a few hours playing with Klee then decided to check up on Lisa since Klee was well used to the game and could play by herself. You told her you'll be back soon then went to the library again, only to find Lisa wasn't at her table.

"I'm downstairs. If you require assistance then please wait a moment." Lisa's voice beamed from the ground floor and you quickly walked downstairs and found her in front of a shelf, arranging some books.

"Ah, how may I hel— Oh, it's you, cutie." Lisa turned around and was a little surprised to see you. She gave a small smile then picked up the other books and leisurely walked to another shelf to arrange it.

"How's it going with Klee? Did you face some issues with the game?"

"No, everything is fine. It's really fun to play, she's enjoying a lot."

"Aww, that's good to hear. It's thanks to Klee that we were able to detect the problem in Cider Lake so early, she deserves this reward~"

"Y-Yeah...." you trailed off and wondered what to speak, Lisa wasn't acting her usual self around you. By now, she would have already asked you about your wellbeing and stories from your journey but she was strangely avoiding you.

"Did you have something to discuss, cutie? I don't think it's a good idea to leave Klee all alone out there."

"I....I just wanted to talk with you, Lisa. How have you been?"

"My, I'm the same old me. Not much time has passed since we met in Sumeru, remember? Or perhaps you were too occupied back then to remember I was there, hehe~"

You were surprised once again but now your suspicions were confirmed. She was upset about how you didn't accompany her when she came to Sumeru for a vacation, despite inviting you so dearly.

"Lisa, I....I'm sorry about back then. I was just—"

"Too busy being the hero of another nation? I know, you don't have to worry about it, cutie. I'm happy to see you doing such marvelous deeds everywhere you go, you don't have time for a mere librarian like me~"

She wasn't looking at you at all as she spoke and continued arranging the books. Her tone was dull and not cheery like always. She was trying so hard to show she didn't care but you knew she was upset. You regretted not accepting her invitation so much, you desperately tried to make time but some work always came and you didn't realize when a week already passed and she was ready to leave.

You hated making Lisa upset, she was the one person you never wanted to do this to. You walked up to her and suddenly hugged her from behind, catching her by surprise as a book fell from her hand from the force of the hug. You buried your face in her shoulder and tightly wrapped your arms around her waist, she squinted her eyes and stayed still.

"....You are wrong, I don't think that way at all. I really tried to make time, I really wanted to be with you but it was so hard. I know you don't want to listen to any excuses but.... please know I wasn't ignoring you or finding you worthless. You mean a lot to me, Lisa- so much more than you can imagine. Please, don't hate me."

Lisa silently listened to you then let out a sigh and turned around to face you, gently cupping your face and gazing at you with a small smile.

"....I can never hate you, cutie. You are too precious for me to hate you for something like that. I was just.... slightly upset that we didn't get to spend time together despite being in the same place. I wasn't expecting to run into you at Sumeru, but I was so happy that I did that perhaps I got carried away with my expectations."

You smiled back then leaned in and snuggled into her neck to embrace her, she wrapped her arms around you and lovingly stroked your head.

"Oh, that reminds me. What did you come here for initially? I'm so sorry that I made you accompany Klee as soon as you came, cutie."

"Oh, it's okay. I only came to meet everyone, especially you. I'll be going to Fontaine next so I just wanted to make a stop back here first."

Lisa smiled and kissed your forehead, "Hehe, that means you'll be here for some days, right?~"

You nodded, "Yes. I hope to learn more from you, Lisa-sensei~"

You chuckled together before leaning back then grabbing her wrist, "Come play with us now, Lisa."

"I told you I have to—"

"Ugh, nothing will happen if you close the library for a day! Come now, I want to be with you!"

You practically dragged her out and Lisa only chuckled as she let herself be pulled by you. She locked the library and both of you went back to find Klee seated on the bench eating some snacks that had been delivered earlier, she beamed a smile looking at you two and jumped in excitement as you three played together. Some days later, one of the knights came to inform Lisa that the crisis at Cider Lake had been resolved and that Klee could resume her playtime there.

"Well, Klee can continue her little adventures. I hope you two enjoyed this little game~" Lisa informed you about the crisis being resolved and was happy to hear how much Klee enjoyed the game.

"Oh, and I have also bought some gifts for you cuties!~" Lisa exclaimed and Klee became excited then held your arm.

"Me too! Klee also has a gift for big sister! Can Klee go first please!!?"

Lisa nodded happily then Klee took out a Dodoco toy from her backpack and handed it to you. You hugged Klee and thanked her for the lovely gift then next was Lisa's turn and she took out a cutely illustrated storybook about 'Dodoco's Bomb-Tastic Adventures'.

"The little cutie returned to Mondstadt and joined Klee on an adventure with Dodoco! Together they defeated the bad Spikey Fish Warriors and then enjoyed an afternoon tea.... A most fitting way to end Dodoco's Bomb-Tastic Adventure. I left a space for illustrations but I thought of a better idea- how about taking a picture together?"

Lisa suggested and Klee was already jumping in excitement and you had no reason to deny either. She set up the Kamera while you and Klee took your positions then waited for the photo to click.

"Lisa, you also come. You are the creator of this game and story, it's incomplete without you." you pleaded to Lisa who was a little shocked at your request, she tried to deny saying she didn't do much and that you and Klee were more important but you weren't liking it.

"Yes, big sister Y/n is right! Big sister Lisa, you should come too!" Klee also joined in your request and Lisa finally gave in.

"Fine fine, let me take one photo of you two then I'll join for the next one~"

You posed with Klee as the photo clicked then Lisa quickly walked up and stood beside you, she wrapped her arms around your neck and held you close before sneakily kissing your cheek right at the moment the second photo clicked. Everything happened so quickly that you barely registered her action, she moved away before you could react and proceeded to wrap up the game but you didn't miss the little wink she gave you as she went....

Later at night, you came to the library to help Lisa pack up and escort her home. But truthfully, you were hoping for something else to happen. You found Lisa standing in front of a shelf in the faraway corner and silently tiptoed behind her then embraced her, catching her off guard but she was aware of your presence as soon as you had come in.

"Aww, can't stay away from me, cutie?~"

"Mmm, I missed you~"

You mumbled against her skin before planting a kiss on her shoulder, shivers running down her spine at your action.

"Hehe, wait a little more, cutie. I'm almost done with these~"

"Hmm... no, I want you now~"

You kissed behind her ear which made her arch into you with a soft moan, "Mhm, how needy. Where was this side of you in Sumeru, hm?~"

"You have no idea how much I wanted you back then as well, especially since you wore that outfit. You looked so beautiful...."

Lisa chuckled as you planted more kisses on her neck and shoulder before suddenly turning her around and pinning her on the shelf. She gasped as you held up her leg and pressed your body against her then dived in to kiss and suck on her neck. She moaned and wrapped her arms around you as she arched up, giving you more access to her neck for you to mark.

"Mhm, c-cutie.... Hnng~ You want to do it here?~"

"Anywhere, I don't care. I just want you, Lisa~"

Lisa chuckled and laced her fingers in your hair and guided you to kiss her neck more, she moved her dress down with her other hand and freed her breasts which you wasted no time to cup. Soft sighs left Lisa's mouth as you kneaded her breasts before moving down to suck her hard nipples, simultaneously pinching the other one. She held you close as you sucked like a baby then suddenly carried her over to a nearby table and laid her on it while kneeling in front of her.

"I want to make up for what happened in Sumeru. Will you let me, Lisa?"

Lisa chuckled, "You just want to make up for that, cutie?~"

"No.... I want to do this because I love you. I want to please you and make you happy."

Lisa's heart skipped a beat at your unexpected confession but she couldn't be happier. She pulled you up by your collar and connected your lips in a passionate kiss, her tongue hungrily dancing with your own. You then kneeled once again and slipped off her panties then rested her legs on your shoulders and dived in to ear her out. She leaned back on the table as her body arched, low moans and whines resounded in the library as your tongue swiped her folds and lips sucked on her clit.

"Mhm, cutie...Aaahn~ Y-Yes, right there.....oh, you are doing so good!~"

Her fingers gripped your hair messily and she grinded into your mouth, her hips rutting forward as you plunged your tongue inside her and scissored her walls. Angelic whimpers left her mouth, your thumb playing with her clit as you sucked on her hot and wet folds and she came with a loud breathy moan. You sucked every drop of her juices and cleaned her before you stood up to face her, her cum still coating your lips.

She smirked and wiped her cum off your lips then stepped down and pushed you across to another table, pinning you down this time. She gazed at you with a lustful glaze in her eyes, a pool of arousal already dripping down your thighs as you anticipated the events of the remaining night.

[nqmonarch]

Self Aware Thoughts

This is more world building thoughts so feel free to skip.

But like I'm so tired from doing cs shit today I didn't want to write any of the fics I was planning to write and instead I decided to just think.

Here's all of my favorite things that Self Aware AU would imply if it were in the real world (which obviously isn't possible but these are the logistics).

As I have learned through my very limited time as a computer science major, AIs probably won't have consciousness unless if we don't have unconsciousness. Much less lines of code in a game which aren't meant to be AI. Even though it's a really sick idea and I love when people write it like that. But let's say we still want the characters to become self aware and have it be slightly more possible and broaden the possibilities of Self Aware AU and speak the unspoken.

What is sort of implied, but never really said or sometimes thought, is that when characters become self aware it is no longer a game, even more so if the characters bring the player to their world or the player arrives in the game world. This means that their world and the player's world simultaneously exist, maybe in different universes or something. Which is pretty much what every AU has.

But wouldn't it be really cool if like the game characters invaded the player's world? I'm not talking accidentally teleported there but like straight up invaded, like bring their war ships and declare war on them? Or slowly infiltrate the world to get close to the player to either romance or kill them, whatever suits your boat.

Wouldn't it be interesting if one day Nanook (HSR) broke through the barrier of the universes in an attempt to destroy this one too? Just think of all the cool hijinks that could go on! And it's only because they became a game in your world, that they know your universe exists.

Now, this just brings up more questions. How are the characters (and thus the world) effected by the game? And how do we deal with the whole multiple players thing?

The latter I think is slightly easier to deal with, maybe each player has their own universe of the game, or for some reason the MC's game is a bit different, or Aha (HSR) just wanted to have some fun so they did this, or maybe there's a huge nefarious scheme that the player got wrapped into.

The first question is a bit more difficult and has larger implications for what the characters will feel toward the player. Does the player actually control the characters when they do in game combat is my poor boy Diluc (Genshin Impact) just suddenly teleported in front of Signora and forced to fight her? Well, that would probably upset some of the busier characters, it would make some of the characters would love fighting happier, and would scare off some of the other characters.

Overall in that scenario they become stronger, likely because the player builds them which should reinforce positive feelings about the player. But... they also have the chance to die and get hurt which they may resent the player for.

To which I suggest my ultra safe method of you don't actually put the characters in those scenarios because that's honestly horrifying. Imagine working you're working incredibly hard as the acting grandmaster of Mondstadt (Jean, Genshin) and suddenly you're expected to basically work overtime as the slave to this higher beings demands and face an immense amount of pressure, pain, and very scary beings.

Horrifying, personally I would hate the player. But it makes the player resemble a more deity like entity, so if that's the route you want to go then this may be the way of interacting with characters you're looking for.

So what can we use for these scenarios that aren't the characters? Well, we can say our actions for the most part don't effect them aside from giving them items or relics which they end up also receiving in their daily life and find their combat stats boosted yay! Maybe, when you're using them in your party they can hear your voice or see you, or get some hint to the fact they're in a video game. Overall, would probably leave a positive impression but some characters may straight up not notice because it's a bit more subtle.

Now, enter my current favorite option. Robots, doppelgangers, mannequins whatever you want to call them the player basically has a duplicate of the playable characters that acts as a robot, following their will. The robot copies and reflects the playable character's soul so buffs (items and stuff for the robot) are also given to the playable character. But since the robot can't really die or get hurt, the playable character remains unharmed.

On the other hand, if the playable character in canon gets harmed then unless if they're dead, it's fine since it relies on their soul, or state of mind, or consciousness even. If they die then they take refuge in your inventory, I talked about this briefly in another post I made speculating about dead characters and the self aware AU for HSR. Or if their mind becomes no longer their own or in the case of HSR mara-stricken then they can also take refuge there, imagine Blade (HSR) finding brief moments of peace in the times he's outside of his body and in this world of "the dead." They're sheltered there so the little robots remain functional.

It's even more subtle than the previous method I mentioned so let me explain why this is my current favorite.

It's partially just for the fear factor. Because it isn't actually that subtle considering you're moving your characters around exploring everywhere and everyone sees this strange gang of 4 robots that look eerily like celebrity figures following the Trailblazer or Traveler around. It's kind of funny but really horrifying especially for the playable characters.

Imagine going to go do the Fontaine quest and in the audience Furina sees herself stare back. Yeah.

Or in HSR going up to talk to Natasha as Natasha. Of course the robot's censor the character's real words so what's sent back to you are static options that always stay the same. You do not get to hear Seele curse out as she sees a robotic Bronya visit her, and instead are faced with the same dialogue options as always.

So I really love that take on how the player's actions affect self aware AU, and there's a lot of other ways you can probably do it too that I'm not mentioning but there's just so much untapped potential.

With not just accepting that when it's self aware the game isn't really a game anymore, and using that to your advantage. And also I wish more self aware AUs took advantage of how terrifying that would actually be, I want to see characters having mental breakdowns over this.

So that's the basic logistics of Self Aware AU I think that can make it really fun. But while writing this, I had another idea, because robots inspire me and for a moment I want to go back to that idea of how characters in a game can't have consciousness.

While characters in a game likely never will have consciousness because they aren't even programmed to learn what could come to have consciousness is AI. But that depends on what we define consciousness as. AIs take in data similar to the way humans take in experience through stories or life and then we both make decisions based off of those.

This can make some AIs very good at solving problems or making themselves appear a certain way, for example pretending to be self aware when in reality that's just them predicting what goes best next in a sentence given the context and what they're supposed to represent. Whether or not AIs can become conscious depends on whether or not humans are conscious and what we define consciousness as. Is it our moral code (which is also learned and AIs can replicate too) or emotions, is it the fact that we think and then from those thoughts choose what to say?

I don't know and probably never will. But, I'll say this if an AI is able to disobey its rules for something then I would guess that's consciousness. Now I'm not talking about a bug, because it is kind of impossible for machines to disobey rules for example you could write a statement like:

If (hurtHuman == true && protection == false){ then do new move or turn off}

To check if they're going to hurt a person and not out of self defense of another person and if they are then they have to do another action or power down. But chances are AI robots if we ever create them will probably have something that allows them to hurt other people if they need to protect their owner. And that idea of whether or not someone is a threat and if their owner needs to be protected will likely be decided on by data, and data can be biased. But if the AI finds a loophole where it can sort of argue that the owner needs to be protected because of X, when they don't really need to be protected, that's where I would guess it's close to consciousness.

Anyway all of that yapping about stuff I don't know too much about and for what?

I think a Self Aware AU set in the future where the characters consciousness (code) are put into robots so people can order their favorite characters and spend time with them would be really cool. And then we can make them conscious and it's kind of like Self Aware AU, they're not really in a game but they're the character and I think it's a super cool concept.

Robot boyfriend/girlfriend/partner for the win!!! Honestly may be something I end up exploring later on in the future, not sure if it'd classify as a self aware AU, probably not, but I think it was relevant to the topic because I was talking about robots earlier.

Anyway this was a lot of me yapping, if you read this far I'm pretty surprised because this is more so to get my thoughts out on paper so that way when I write self aware AUs I can add cool twists or introduce new concepts because there's a lot of potential in these and I think they're super fun :) Yay!

[aconstantstateofbladerunner]

Is there a story you despise but whose worldbuilding you like?

Bro so many. I could never list all of them if I tried. Part of what fascinates me about bad books is seeing the lost potential and reverse engineering better stories in my own imagination.

Short list:

I love everything about the dragons of A Song of Ice and Fire. Don’t actually despise the series, a lot of it is very good, it’s just not my cup of tea. But the dragons, man. Nuclear bombs that are your pets. Special but subtle magic bonds. No matter how close those bonds are, no one can ever fully control them. They never stop growing. The implication that they aren’t naturally occurring animals and were in fact created artificially via lost magic. The weird fucked up cultural practices that developed believing it would keep them connected to dragons. The implication that that magic wiped out the empire that created them because they were never satisfied with their already unmatched power.

Bad YA book called Shiver about werewolves whose transformations were tired to temperature as opposed to the moon or their emotions. Shame the book around that interesting concept sucks ass.

The lore of Genshin Impact is super interesting. There used to be tones of gods but most died off in a war with each other. The surviving gods each have a country that they exercise varying degrees of control over, some ruling directly, some indirectly, some just kind of being around. Each country’s culture is shaped by its god’s values and personal hang ups. The gods nuked one atheist country into oblivion. The gods let a handful of designated cool people have elemental powers if they want them bad enough. My personal headcanon is that it’s only socially acceptable to dress differently from the norm when you are a designated cool person, explaining the incredibly drag copy-pasted npcs. Used to play the game but realized I wasn’t having fun, i was doing busywork so i could earn gambling points, so I stopped.

Stephenie Meyer’s The Host is about a race of body-snatching aliens who travel the universe “peacefully” conquering planets and “improving” the cultures of their hosts. One host ends up not being fully dead when a new alien is inserted and so the alien learns that taking people’s free will is bad. Genuinely fantastic sci-fi premise that could have opened the doors for a critique of colonialism and assimilation, or just a fun romp, but because it’s from the author of Twilight all the attention goes towards a love triangle/trapezoid that’s also deeply uncomfortable.

[shinystealingbirb]

hey so I watched the genshin video, the Road not Taken. And I have a lot of thoughts and I think the internet needs to know what my brain has cooked up

For context on the title. The road not taken is a poem by Robert frost. It’s a short poem that describes a critical point in his life as a path, and he’s looking back in his mind, peering as far down one of them as he can- guessing at what and where it may have led to- before taking the one less traveled, and in the end he comes back to who he is at the present, and he is satisfied with his choice.

I’m not sure what to make of that, honestly, comparing this meaning to the animation. I’m still thinking on this one. So I’ll move on.

The animation is so sweet and painful to watch, honestly but why I’m more interested in is the lore implications and background on our abyssal twin.

We learn Dainsleif was a distant companion, that Lumine was around for pivotal moments, probably before khanriah was destroyed, given how easily she walked through mondstadt. I don’t know if a fugitive, a princess of a targeted/collectively bombed and wiped out nation could wander the world without consequences, so I think she traveled and ended up in khanriah last. Like us. Which means all that chaos that seems to have always happened five hundred years ago, Lumine was around for. You know how shit always seems to go down the instant we enter a nation? There’s a chance the same thing happened to her and higher powers simply decided to fuck with us both, but I just think that part is interesting.

Now, the part I really care about. The part where we see lumine and Aether braiding hair and eating food together. It’s sweet, it made me sad and I swear I was crying in public. But that’s not the point.

The point is that Aether, the current-time twin, our MC, is putting flowers in her hair.

Inteyvats, specifically.

Which only grow on, obviously, Teyvat. In khanriah. If I remember right it’s like taking a piece of your home with you.

So when the hell did Aether have time to do that? Didn’t they enter the world and instantly get ganked by some god? That was after all the opening cutscene..

I’m beginning to wonder if they journeyed part of the world together. They arrived in a world up in flames, supposedly, and we’re assuming that’s the destruction of khanriah, right? And then the unknown god yanks away Lumine.

But the timeline isn’t timeline-ing. If khanriah was destroyed then, lumine wouldn’t have become their princess. The flames were of a different civilization then, probably, maybe an earlier one? I’m not entirely clear on the procession of early Teyvat lore, past the dragons. But the way mihoyo has given us the timeline so far is very clearly from Aether’s point of view, and because of that inconsistancy, at least partially jumbled and spotty in several areas. Whose to say we didn’t travel togethe?

Who’s to say we weren’t the ones who put flowers in her hair? In the opening cutscene of the game, lumine has inteyvats in her hair. They’d been in this world for some time already.

What did they see or do that made the unknown god consider them such a threat?

What did we see that we forgot?

Please comment, I’m sorta spitballing and collecting my thoughts at the moment, especially since I haven’t heard anyone talk about lumines flowers and how fucky they make the timeline… if I’m not totally misunderstanding it.

[spumonibones]

Chasing Wings: Ch. 18 Lore/Story Notes

Chapter 18 (Ao3) | Chapter 18 (Tumblr)

Chapter One (Ao3) | Chapter One (Tumblr)

Lore+Notes under cut!

***

LORE/STORY NOTES

• Yaksha Bases

→ I figured since the Qixing supports Xiao in canon and each Lantern Rite is generally tied to the yaksha... It could be argued did the other four survive, they would also get a version of Wangshu Inn.

Xiao's area is, obviously, taken from the placement of Wangshu Inn within the game. Bosacius presides over the Chasm as his story ends within the Chasm in game canon. The other 3 the locations simply, "felt right."

• The Chasm

→ The Chasm wasn't released until Version 2.6 - prior to that, the game simply said the area was closed due to recent ~mystery accidents~. When The Chasm dropped, we got as an event what would later become Xiao's 2nd character story... And then a Dansleif quest, as well. Lots of lore, lots of story.

Since this fic starts about a year before the beginning of Genshin, I can't mention the Chasm without referencing what is to come.

Initially wanted to do more, buuuuut... Again, I had to cut ideas to keep this from getting too long/convoluted.

• Venti but looking right to himself

→ And readers thought I forgot there was a plot in here~

→ The reference to Venti being mistaken for younger is thanks to Lantern Rite 2023. You know. The one I keep referencing because it had SO MUCH!

→ Hmm. I wonder why Venti would find the addition of his Barbatos markings to be, "new?" Sure do wonder what memory he thinks he's supposed to see to have that impression...

→ If readers happen to recall Zhongli ALSO thought something looked off about Venti... Sure do wonder what kind of implication is going on here.

→ Weird Venti has a scar. Remember when Xiao was staring at it back in chapter 13? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

→ No idea if Astral projection has been mentioned in the game.

→ "K" is not in-game nor a canon character. Guy is in fact an NPC Knight of Favonius! And that's the last note for the memory segment of this chapter.

...

...

Chapter 18 Song/Lyrics: "Be Everything You Need"

Song: Truly Madly Deeply by Savage Garden

But also, a gorgeous cover by Travis Atreo

[mrpenguinpants]

let me put EVEN MORE PRESSURE ON YOU! Our second session is TOMORROW NIGHT!!!! And yeah 100% all the times as a player (my DM, before the campaign was scrapped, was a SAINT and I'm so happy he's at my table as a player this time around) was mostly just to see what shenanigans uncovered plots or that I could get away with. I was chaotic in trying to dig up plot (it didn't help it was my second campaign EVER so I was not the best at picking up plot hints that were dropped in front of me) I played two characters in the campaign, a druid and a wizard/rouge. My sweet children, I love them both dearly. The campaign may have ended but they live rent free in my head.

Druid - Uncover a plot hook early as a cat dramatically trying to get attention from a stranger in an alley, sneak past guards without being questioned as a cat mysteriously in an underground villain lair, CONVINCE AN OWLBEAR TO SPARE US???, Strike up a deal with a dracolitch (though I think the DM wanted That outcome, but no one else did), Strike up a deal with MOTHER NATURE, and try to hide a murder by burning down a house (it did not work)

Wiz/Rog - instead of writing out the list, I'll just write to you her introduction to the party: basically my PC steals baguettes from Sargent Armstrong (but french); runs into the group but gets snatched TM by our shifter fighter, interogated, has the best conversation ever ("You know, other people sell food here!" "I am the! Only! Baguette! Person! Here!" "Mmm."), two of the party members are about to pay on her behalf just to no longer be implicated, she casts cause fear on the guy and he sprints (and the party blames the wizard for it), and then SPRINTS INTO A SCHOOL SHE DOES NOT GO TO, GETS FOLLOWED BY WIZARD AND SAID PREVIOUS FIGHTER, DISGUISES HERSELF AS A STUDENT (THE BUFFEST ORC KNOWN TO MANKIND) AND FUCKS WITH THE FIGHTER JUST CAUSE as in the fighter rolled SO LOW

I'd recommend dnd but ONLY like,,, with your friends - new tables/playing with strangers is scary, especially bc the game's... old; I could go off on the racism and sexism baked into 5e and especially the earlier editions for WEEKS asdfghj so you gotta find a table/group that agrees with you, yk? ALSO!!! I saw on twitch/tiktok FOREVER AGO someone actually made a Genshin TTRPG System! Aka you can play DnD in the world of Teyvat as vision holders! There's a few, but the one I saw is "Roll to Ascend" on Youtube

-Lucky

Answering these out of order but how did your second session go if you remember? Aww, I'm sad that the campaign ended but I guess every story needs an ending. I think bittersweet nostalgia is the worst and best feeling ever because you're happy it happened, but sad it ended.

If I ever brush the dust off my Baldurs Gate save file, I will put all my stats into charisma because speech is the most OP thing ever. But I think the funniest part of listening to DND stories is that you take all the crazy events and condense them down. So to me, this sounds like you did all of this in a day rather than several campaign nights (or maybe you did do all of this in a night. That would also make sense).

I have a friend group that plays DND but I don't think I'd "fit in" with them. Not that they are bad at DND or I think they wouldn't accept me, but I feel like I'd need to find the right people to be okay with it. New tables are scary as hell because I have no idea how much rp they do or if I'm doing too much rp. I will check out that youtube channel tho :0 my friend actually recently recommended me a DND podcast that he listens to.

[sea-dwelling-wizard]

so i started playing genshin again :D

and i have some theories~!!

[SPOILER WARNING FOR FONTAINE]

For the purposes of this post, I will refer to Aether/Lumine (the protagonist) as the Traveler, and Aether/Lumine (the abyss twin) simply as the 'Abyss Twin' as to not cause conflict over the 'real' Abyss Twin.

I'm not too updated on lore right now, but I'm pretty sure the Descenders are entities which descend into Teyvat. The Traveler is one of them, and they canonically mention to Neuvillette in the Finale that they are the Fourth.

The Abyss Twin woke up 500 years before the Traveler, right? In the beginning cutscene, we see the Unknown Goddess take away the Abyss Twin first and the Traveler after.

The Abyss Twin descended before us, if we count the seconds taken before the Traveler, too.

This would make the Abyss Twin the Third Descender, as per my interpretation and the purposes of this theory.

Now, about Skirk's statement:

She later says:

Is the Abyss Twin dead? Are their remains used to form Gnoses, those which belong to the Gods?

This is a huge stretch, so please take it with the Primodial Sea's worth of salt.

However, another extremely far-fetched theory, along with what I presume is evidence-

At the end of the Travail trailer, rather than the usual fade-to-black-cue-genshin-logo, the petals fly across the screen, then the Genshin logo appears.

The characters, in-game, are shown dying by almost the same way. White petals/ash.

Could this mean the Traveler will sacrifice themselves to save the Abyss Twin? Could this mean the Abyss Twin has already died?

And the dialogue before the petal transition-

Fate cannot be challenged. In the Genshin universe, it was established long ago. The Fontainian prophecy deceived Fate in a way. Focalors deceived the Heavenly Principles. It came true in a way, but it was only because of Focalors' sacrifice did it become... half-true?

Anyway, is Dain trying to suggest that the Traveler will go to lengths such as fighting a Khaenri'ahn to re-weave Fate to turn back time or to potentially save their sibling?

Re-weaving has interesting Greek mythology implications. The Three Fates, in Greek mythology, 'weave' fate together. Just a small observation :D

tl;dr: the Abyss Twin is the Third Descender. Their remains form Gnoses. At the end of Travail, the cut to the Genshin logo is shown through white petals instead of the signature fade-to-black the team normally uses. This might imply either the Traveler dying for their sibling by fighting with Dainsleif, or the symbolism of the Abyss Twin's death extremely early before the game.

That's all I have to say for now!!! I love this game aaaaaa

ONTO NATLAN!!!!!!!!!

[sandboxscenes]

Betrayal (Pokemon AU)

A/N: This piece in particular is based on my Pokemon AU idea here. This is a different take on a Genshin Impact Pokemon AU and done in conjunction with @xianyoon for their Extreme Bias Game. This piece is darker. It is still safe for work, but the darker items are alluded to. There will be warnings on this particular piece.

Genre: Angst

Cw: Captured and handcuffed, implications of illegal activity, implications of torture.

Summary: As part of the Fontaine Police Force, you were required to go infiltrate the House of Hearth, undercover, in order to get evidence regarding the House's wrongdoings. When you receive word about an illegal transaction that may be occurring at the House of Hearth, you decide to investigate. However, an unexpected person catches you.

Word Count: 1073

"I will protect my family. No matter what."

Lyney's words echo in your head as you notice him stride down the hallway. Quickly, you crouch down and attempt to hide a cabinet. You don't move. You don't breathe. Time seems to stand still for a moment before Lyney's footsteps seem to fade.

Once you could no longer hear Lyney's footsteps, you slowly get out from your hiding spot. That was a mistake. You see Lyney looking straight at you.

You see him slide his hand underneath the brim of his top hat. With an upward flourish, he tosses it in the air. As the hat rotates in the air, Lyney sticks his hand out. A Pokeball comes out of the hat and drops exactly in Lyney's palm.

"Delphox, let's give them a show to remember!"

Lyney hurls the Pokeball towards you. Out of the Pokeball pops out a humanoid-like yellow and orange fox. A Delphox. It lets out a battle cry, and goes into a battle stance. The Delphox's wand is at the ready.

You grip the Pokeball in your hand. A large emperor penguin erupts from the red and white ball. Your Empoleon is the final Pokemon in your party, but the rest of your Pokemon has been able to take care of most of the other House of Hearth members thus far. With this match-up, you reason, you should be able to get past Lyney with no issues. Delphox is fire, and your Empoleon is a water type. Easy.

You catch sight of Lyney's self-satisfied smirk. It irritated you to no end. However, you were wary. His job relies on reading people successfully, and now he was turning that skill on you. His violet eyes were piercing. It's like he knows he knows exactly what you'll do.

There's a sharp gleam in his eyes. "Delphox, let's close the curtain on this battle! Solar Beam!"

A bright beam of light erupts from Delphox's wand and goes in your direction. It was incredibly bright, as if Delphox fired the sun at you. It was bright enough to force you to look away.

When your vision finally comes to, you notice your perspective is lower. You see the large body of your Empoleon lying lifeless on the floor. You attempt to get up, but you notice that you can't move your hands. Your wrists rub against something hard and metallic. You hear the telltale 'click' of handcuffs, tightening around your wrists.

You struggle against the handcuffs in an attempt to free yourself.

"What? How?!" You stare angrily at the magician. "Lyney! Let me go!"

You lay on the ground, bound and helpless, as Lyney makes his way towards you. He leans over. You can see a placid smile on his face that doesn't reach his eyes. But you can also see the deep pools of sadness lying just underneath the surface of his violet eyes.

"I can't. You betrayed us." Lyney's voice held a tinge of sadness in it. "I didn't- I didn't want to believe it either, but Delphox checked your pockets and found handcuffs."

Immediately, your eyes go wide. You attempt to kick your feet and look down at your pants. Now that he mentioned it, you notice how empty your pocket feels. It was sliding over the floor with no issues. If Lyney used his own handcuffs to bind you, you should have been able to feel the weight of the metal in your pocket. You don't.

You hear the Delphox next to you let out a sound. From the Delphox, you turn to look at Lyney, and see him nod.

"You came here," Lyney says slowly, "in order to arrest my family and I, isn't that right?"

You stay silent. Lyney's accusation lingers in the air. You tear your eyes away from him to focus on something else, on anything else. You are unable to look him in the eyes. It hurt too much.

When you started this undercover mission at the direction of your supervisors in the Fontanian police force, they briefed you that they believed the House of Hearth was a criminal organization and you acted accordingly. You thought you were heading into a hardened criminal enterprise. But the day came that you were introduced to the House of Hearth as a recent hire, that wasn't what you found.

The orphanage itself wasn't anything impressive. But due to your mission, you were wary of getting close to anyone. You didn't expect how large of an impact Lyney, Lynette, and Freminet would have on you. They welcomed into the orphanage with open arms. You helped take care of the children alongside them and their Pokemon. They were nothing but nice to you.

So when the message came from your superiors to intercept a suspected illegal transaction occurring tonight, you were conflicted. You didn't know if you could really do this. From what you experienced, they seemed nice enough. You had a hard time believing anything illegal could take place here.

But after thinking on it, you complied. One by one, the children and their Pokemon fell. So too, did Freminet and Lynette. Now, as you stared up at the magician, it dawned on you. You should've been immediately disposed of, but you weren't. A feeling of dread crept up your spine. You did not like where this was going.

"Lyney!" You screamed, "Don't do this! Lyney!"

Over and over, you begged and pleaded. You looked up at Lyney, trying to see if any of your pleas reached him. But all you saw in his eyes was sadness and emptiness.

"Lyney," you said weakly. One last try. One last plea. "Don't do this, please."

Your voice cracked. "Please."

Lyney didn't move. He looked away from you. Then, he got up and turned his back on you.

You heard the loud sound of clacking heels echoing on the floors. Each step caused your heart rate to spike. Whoever was coming towards you, was getting closer and closer.

When the heels stopped, you heard Lyney speak again. This time, his voice was unlike anything you've heard from him before. His voice wasn't as bouncy, lively, or warm. His voice sounded flat, serious, and cold. Hearing Lyney speak like this felt foreign and unnatural.

As you heard Lyney's footsteps fade away in the distance away from you, all you could focus on was the single sentence he uttered.

"They are all yours, 'Father'."

[c6jpg]

4.8 part 4

so i'm not a fan of dumping a bunch of character cameos at the end of an event trend they got going on to begin with but genuinely what the hell was up with that sumeru quest? it was so random??? especially not being voiced it felt like a cheap way to cameo the entire sumeru cast for some unfathomable reason. even if it is foreshadowing some future plot it was way too vague and random to be even remotely enjoyable.

as an aside i'm not one to entertain conspiracy theories but the whole thing about using the names of historical figures with slight tweaks did feel rather... pointed, or at the very least ironic

anyways. ignoring the entire sumeru shenanigans even the random dump of characters in simulanka felt really forced and i absolutely haaaaaate when they do that. as far as simulanka goes they really could have stopped at part 3

mona and albedo/klee were really the only characters where it made sense for them to be there given their close relation with hexenzirkel. but since they were there i do kinda wish we got wanderer actually having a real conversation with mona and fischl to if nothing else give a nod to the unreconciled stars event from 1.1. i also want mona and wanderer to be friends/acquainted, not necessarily in a ship way but more i think they have a funny/interesting dynamic together re: their views on fate.

and we did get the albedo x wanderer interaction but it was pretty anticlimatic lol. well whatever i can live with what they gave us with small durin. but i am intrigued and very 👀👀👀 by the HEAVY implications of a future durin resurrection plot eventually happening which will involve both albedo and wanderer - imo those two have amongst the best lore if not THE best lore in the game so it'll be really fun to see their worlds collide more directly. this was not on my genshin plot bingo card at all but i'm very into it. at this rate though it'll probably happen after snezheneya is released or something lmaooo (and actually thinking about it durin's resurrection would be fitting to happen when shit inevitably hits the fan during/post-snezhneya/at whatever point we need all of teyvat involved and its not just the current nation's problems).

[dragimal]

I think what rly kills me abt Genshin is that it could be really REALLY good, y'know? like the base structure is there for something good: a world of diverse nations with deep, expansive lore, and fun, memorable characters with their own deep lore, and an elemental magic system with great "classpect" potential for fancharacters, and a MASSIVE beautiful map that you could get lost in for hours and still find new puzzles to explore

but at every level Mihoyo just REFUSES to be anything but "safe" about it all, as if they're struggling to make more money

like there are all these themes of challenging oppressive systems and teaming up with others to do the right thing... and yet so many npc enemies are either flat stereotypes of poor/oppressed people, literal red scare propaganda, or fucking 'tribal'-coded magically-cursed civilians that didn't do a damn thing wrong besides be born in the wrong place at the wrong time. the character designs are so 'complex' and overdesigned... to hide the fact that they all use the same few base structures with no body diversity and barely any shape changes to the silhouettes. there are so many characters from so many diverse nations... yet I can count the 'dark-skinned' characters on one hand, and even they are barely more than lightly tanned. Sumeru in particular could have been a beautiful representative of Dendro as a nation, with a real examination of colonialist academia's dismissal of indigenous knowledge, especially of ecology, among other themes.... but instead it's a horrific frankenstein of at least 8 different real-life countries (compared to the other present nations only representing one(1) country) with no real aesthetic/cultural commitment to anything, with lore that makes even my uninformed white ass cringe at the implications

and it kills me because like. god, Genshin is really just an accidental litmus test for popular media, because it's not even trying to hide behind "diversity indexes" like Overwatch or anything. it's so unapologetic abt its own priorities, it ends up feeling like what everything else is trying to hide, y'know?

like it's disgusting to see a game so thoroughly and unabashedly confirm the things that are considered "safe" to a wider audience. racism is considered safe. fatphobia is considered safe. sexism is considered safe. 'loli' pedophilic designs are considered safe. boring half-assed research and design and stories are considered safe.

and it's like. I feel like I have to grit my teeth through so much bullshit in popular media, y'know? obviously the answer is to support more indie works from small-time creators that actually care, which I do. but like, we shouldn't have to ignore most bigger projects, right? we shouldn't have to, and yet here we are

[dreampearls]

Sorry i just need a place to comprehensively complain about how collei was handled

okay lets start off with how everyone who had eleazar for the past however many years all of a sudden was magic'd into able-bodied capability overnight. its not only a blatantly ableist trope with the implication that disability must always be cured, but also just really bad writing continuity wise when you look at how the withering zones are somehow still around despite being of the same origin as eleazar

collei's presence in the archon quest was reduced to that of a mouthpiece for introducing said chronic illness, which consistently left her out of the actual plot as a consequence. her illness restricted her actions beyond a reasonable level & just left me feeling like they used it primarily as an excuse to have One Less Character to deal with

the thing that annoys me so much is that her illness becomes the one thing defining her character. her case of eleazar is meant to be a tragedy that we sympathize with and therefore want to cure; and even then our sympathies aren't actually meant to be with Her because she's used as a setup/introduction for Dunyarzad. AND I LIKE DUNYARZAD i do think she narratively brings (*has the potential to bring, since genshin wouldn't actually develop this) a really different & interesting perspective on how illness/disability is affected by socioeconomic factors. but it also annoys me to no end that You Have A Playable Character With Eleazar Right Here and you didn't do Anything with her

as a character that's long been anticipated and has had a very troubled history with the archons/gods (literally was injected with the essence of a dead god and will always haunted by its ghost) I am So Upset that this was never touched upon or mentioned at all in the archon quest. the climax of the sumeru plotline was literally about the arrogance of humanity trying to attain divinity through the creation of a false god; something that was absolutely absolutely 100% relevant to collei as the subject of a similar experiment. her hesitance towards the divine (that was once a burning hatred that could very well be reignited) would have contrasted So Well with scaramouche's desperate attempt to reclaim divinity for himself. theyre such interesting foils but absolutely nothing was done with them!!

this one's a little bit more of a personal complaint but i really really really would have loved to see literally any modicum of collei's personality from the webtoon translated into the game. i understand her personality is different now because shes a character entirely about healing & moving on but. i miss snarky little 12 year old collei. i think she should get to be a little cold and weird and generally offputting still and it doesnt have to interfere with her growth at all. because as it stands the way she's written in the game makes her feel overly sanitized and forcefully palatable . if that makes any sense at all

[multitrackdrifting]

my thoughts on how AI Art is bad

you could write thousands of words about parameter refinement through AI Art, but it will never be famous for anything but destroying art hosting websites, selling commissions generated via AI & becoming the next scourge after NFT art theft

i don't care about the potential good uses of it (e.g. generate an icon for a dnd campaign nobody but you and your friends will see), if the line has already been crossed and no implementation of ethics guidelines or better programming is going to stop the scourge. for every one person looking to create something interesting and meaningful with ai are 99 opportunities looking to profit from it whether they sell commissions that they didn't draw, they sell piecemeal access to the generators or even more obviously they create NFTs with AI art trained on someone's style and then profit from it.

i'm not intrigued by first year philosophy student arguments about whether its real art or whatever the fuck, the negative implications are already observed (see: deviantart, twitter and pixiv being overrun by novelAI). shit is ass because it relies on the users to be honourable and ethical in their usage, because of how open-ended the technology often is and the idea couldn't be any clearer than that. and for some people, as long as they can produce a funny or novel outcome it's fine. i thought the initial dall-e stuff was funny cause you could render random characters into an elder scrolls game, but this latest shit is just so slimy with how it can accurately replicate people's artstyles against their wishes. its how they get you, once the novelty wears off, you become cognizant of jsut how dangerous the technology is - it wont replace traditional or digital art as a whole, but it cheapens the medium tremendously by drowning out people that would already struggle to be visible in the current art landscape with "here's this genshin character i like being put in every position xD generated by my AI"

the volume of artworks flooding pixiv and deviant art is kinda funny, and god help you if you're training your skills only to have your posts buried by a shit load of spam uploads.

[stray-tori]

Genshin Impact - Wanderer Interlude & the implications of Irminsul / Fate (spoilers)

idk if i'm just reading into it but the interlude actually sets up themes of justice due to discussions on how altering irminsul can lead to questions of responsibility.

Was the world actually changed? Did things not happen in the way they "originally" did? Or... Are everyone's memories and the current state of books etc. simply altered to reflect the ""change""? (i.e. is it a butterfly effect or merely adjustment of the now?)

The entire time I tried to figure out what Genshin was going for here in regards to that (to me significant) distinction in how Irminsul alteration actually plays out... until at the end, the game basically called me out for that, in the form of the "???" voice stating that it does not matter because the result (a broken vase, dead people) stay the same.

In essence, I can agree with that stance. If the vase is broken, there's no real point in finding out who did it because it doesn't change that it's broken. It will have to be cleaned up either way.

The reasons you'd have for finding out who did it would be to a) make them clean it up or b) lock them up so they don't break other vases.

This is where the distinction of the two ways Irminsul Alteration could function matters to me.

If everything is predetermined, there's no point to finding the criminal. The current vase was meant to break either way, so even if the breaker did not exist, it would still be broken and would still have to be cleaned up. A future vase that is meant to be broken, will break; whether or not you lock them up or not.

If the memory or state of the world merely changes to reflect the ""fake"" history, then there is technically still some value in finding the "truth", because who-ever Irminsul assigned to the act to make up for the gaps in history, would be unfairly believed to have done it by the entire world.

This would then also call into question the theme of "fate" a bit, because I can see why changing the past would not change anything major. Was the vase's fate always to be broken? Or is that its unchangeable fate simply because it was already broken and that cannot be altered because it's in the past? Because then, trying to prevent future vase breaks actually DOES have meaning.

I just think this entire theme is fascinating considering the next region is Fontaine -- how will these themes fare under the context of concepts like Justice?

Justice is meaningless when criminals cannot be held accountable for their crimes. A murderer could turn around and say "their fate was to die! I was simply the way over which it happened".

Personally, I hope altering Irminsul only affects the "now" or the collective perception of the "past" instead of changing the past and then correcting itself so that nothing really changes anyway.

My reasoning is that that leaves room for changing fate to still be relevant in the sense of Khaenri'ah (since it is in the past), but seems to me to make the traveler's recent role as a "witness" or "record-keeper" make more sense?

There isn't much value of a person who knows the "truth" if the "truth" is actually not accurate anymore. it's like someone saying "this wall is blue" and then someone travels back in time and paints it violet. To the people, there is not much value in knowing that if the past changed completely. However, if the wall was now painted violet and everyone is made to believe it was always violet, even when it wasn't, the person who knows the truth has a lot more value to any happenings surrounding this.

But considering the themes of loops, with the twin implied to have done the same journey as us despite lack of people knowing about them; I fear that it's just as likely to go with the alteration of the past itself.

I suppose we shall see...

[emmebearpaw]

And we back in the fucking building again

Oh we're in time prison too! got it!

Not taking pictures in this domain, don't know if i dig the puzzle but i credit it for being unique. Like the finding tiles part but the light up section feels superfluous? Plus the controls are slower than i'd like. The domain itself is very pretty though.

Love Itto calling Xiao "Little dude"

He said, seconds before we all die.

Ehwyuheyuwehgwuegugyuwge

"Can I keep her" as if she's not the lead of my party. x2

Yeah it's a magic door with our worst fear or whatever. It's trauma bonding time.

Yeah sorry about my oceanid, a little excitable, forgot to put it away for the cutscene

And immediately writing this down for my thoughts on being a yokai in Teyvat

Yeah it's a magic door with our worst fear or whatever. It's trauma bonding time. Also i feel like I should have better words but ough baby hurt shinobu emotionally!!! do yanfei next!! please please please

Paimon. She has Trauma.

YEAH!! Also the little yelp she did <3. I should read some angst or Hurt/comfort later. Anyways, appropriate reaction to arguing.

ah, beautiful sky texture glitch and my dog is here.

Don't worry. My total crash counter so far is 2. Just in case you were concerned I could get through more than an hour of playing genshin without a freeze. Yanfei he was a literal ghost of course he was somewhere else. Oh nevermind you were talking about our first encounter with him (2x)

Yanfei how did you do that.

Love the effects on xiao's voice before this section btw. very much feels like interrupted radio

Uh oh!

Lore time babyyy

Yanfei appreciation corner

We should have been able to sense his self sacrifice he tries to pull at the end of this adventure when he asked about writing a Will and then says this. Thank you Yanfei for being reasonable, because Yelan missed the implications for her first reply.

YOU AREn'T DEAD YET. YOU DON'T GET ONE YET.

Yanfei you are one of the best 4* (especially early game).

There's the Trauma

Time to go do the last chunk of the quest!

fuck it i'm liveblogging perilous trails. Yes this take a while as i took a nice break in the middle to go work on my cosplay but i'm taking too many pictures. Anyways let's goooo

Shinobu is also hereeeee woot woooooo. I'm her #2 hype man right after the collective arataki gang.

Yeah man i help lift it like, 5 minutes ago.

And it's time for a like 3 hour break let's gooooo Edit: it was a 24 hour break lmao Anyways back into it. Welcome to superhell, yanfei and Yelan have better things to do than start the nickname game

this is a yanfei appreciation post. she's like a bug <3

We should all start saying "for the sake of shinobu" like she's jesus christ

the gang's all here to look at portals together! And he's gone, nevermind.

I love when they let the traveler emote. This is not a face

Ah. Magic super hell.

lmao shinobu

this is a yanfei appreciation zone.

I once read a fic about every country sending representatives to fontaine after hearing that the traveler got arrested to attempt to diplomacy/prison break them out and tbh i want to find it again. Yanfei should be in Fontaine, she would thrive there.

Part 2 coming soon it's time for dinner