#anyway i feel that hsr got off to a good start but it's on thin ice with me rn

[aha-chuu]

(to clarify I wrote my post before the animatic or DHIL's story quest released)

You make reasonable points, I don't think that any of the vidyadhara stuff has been explained well enough so far that I feel particularly differently from how I did back when I wrote that post. I still haven't actually done DHIL's story quest but ik the gist of it.

I've realised that some of the issues I have with DH aren't simply related to him, but to the Luofu arc as a whole. Characters aren't given time to connect with the MC, but DH specifically is the centre of the Luofu arc - and yet, he falls entirely flat thoughout the whole main story imo.

Like, okay. So DHIL's first character story pretty clearly shows the whole cycle of High Elders and how DH/DF has been stuck in this one position etc etc. He's always been burdened with these responsibilities with no opportunity to look at himself and decide who he wants to be. This is all a pretty interesting foundation for the character that I was on board with.

DF actually takes action to break this cycle, as far as I can tell. He recognises the flaws of the Vidyadhara race and sees how the rebirth cycle is limiting them. While in the text of the game this is articulated as DF wanting to solve their dwindling population problem, I think it's fair to interpret that him trying to create a new generation of vidyadhara matches up with his frustration at being burdened with the past. After all, he actively tries to create a new High Elder apart from himself in Bailu.

That is all really interesting.

DF's character & arc are already an extension of the foundation I discussed earlier. But this is all stuff that happens off screen with vague details, involving characters who are mostly either dead or too insane to remember most of it. As players, we can only realistically access this through DH.

Which is why it's frustrating that DH's entire character is circulating around not wanting to confront his past. DF already broke the cycle of being forced to be the High Elder, so I don't understand why DH would be angsty over that? It makes sense that he has issues with DF specifically, but you'd think that'd make him either a) embrace tradition (which DF rejected) or b) actually use his relative freedom to self-express as he'd been longing to do through all these lives. He doesn't do either. Instead, it feels like Hoyo wrote a really great arc, stuck it behind this moody guy who wants nothing to do with it and then also refused to do anything on his own either.

Anyway, 1.3 only made me like what Hoyo are doing with DH even less. There is a lot there and I understand the desire to see him turn over a new leaf, but he's had hundreds of years to do just that. If the issue was that his past was haunting him all this time (via nightmares and Blade), then it'd be nice to see him take an active role rather than remain passive. And if the idea is to start building him up as his own person now, then why does it feel like none of the High Cloud Quintet things have been resolved?

It's like DH's arc is on pause rn. He won't do anything about the past but he also can't move on until the past has been sorted, which seems to be down to Blade and Jingliu? Which just makes DH's screentime frustrating from a player perspective (or at least from my perspective).

Today's controversial post is that Dan Heng isn't interesting on his own. Like his whole thing is avoidance and "amnesia" and he's fun when he's making quips with March and Trailblazer, but the actual meat of his character is Dan Feng stuff. Dan Heng's entire characterisation is framed around somebody else, but since Dan Heng refuses to interact with that concept he just totally falls flat.

And, yes, refusing his past life is ~something~. But that doesn't work in this context, because hsr hasn't aptly set up DH's individualism outside of DF. His past (even in his current life) is entrenched in DF's actions; landing him exiled and pursued by Blade, eventually escaping to the Express. But DH has sunk so far into avoidance that he's literally like "this has nothing to do with me" when during his current life he's been dealing with this! Dealing with DF's bullshit is his main conflict, and so the DH characterisation can't hold up to him ever actually separating from it.

And because of this, as a player we know that DH can't actually let go of DF, because it wouldn't be interesting. It's not that DF is the only interesting thing about him, it's that DF is the only thing about him! So watching him struggle against this and refuse DF is like... "Okay, but get on with it."

And this is also why Blade actually works as a character, because he is tragically aware of the fact that he cannot escape his past - the sins are him and he's him and that's a flesh prison he's not escaping.

DH only works in one of two ways:

Like how we saw him in Belobog, where the whole characterisation is that he has a mysterious past that he's trying to escape. That is interesting by virtue of being vague.

Since we can never go back to that characterisation, DH has to embrace that he was DF and that he's stuck with that.

It does not help that all the info on DF frames his personality as much stronger than DH's, who is reserved purposefully in opposition to the past life that got him in so much trouble. And again, this would be cool and could be cool, but himself is so staunchly against the connection and keeps brushing off any mention of it, to the point that it's like "yes ofc Blade is pissed with you! I am too!"

And ik some people think that DH rejecting DF is interesting and it is a whole dynamic that's a strong enough foundation to build DH's characterisation upon. But then the story has to acknowledge that DH is really nothing without that past, and considering March and the Trailblazer's amnesia having pretty much already well-tread the "person without a past" Thing™, the only intriguing thing to do with DH is have him embrace that he doesn't have the luxury to follow suit.