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starcurtain · 8 months ago

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I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

#honkai star rail #aventurine #aventurine meta #hsr meta #character analysis #listen I see you angsty fic writers who bully our favorite for maximum emotional gain #I am a ratiorine fan with the best of them #so I fully understand the appeal of the “I can fix him” fic #but like #there is so much else just waiting in the text of the game #that makes Aventurine such a rich complex and nuanced character #admitting that the IPC is the least of his issues makes him MORE interesting #not less #I promise #also like #getting so tired of reductive reads of my posts #just because I don't think Aventurine is a slave of the IPC #doesn't mean I think the IPC are good people #I'm not sure how many times I can say #'They're evil and are actively exploiting him for profit'#before people will stop saying I'm an IPC apologist lollll #I promise it is possible for Aventurine to have agency AND for the IPC to still be evil #those two statements can co-exist

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achenetype · 6 months ago

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i’m in the business of losing your interest — kevin day // explicit

pairing: kevin day x reader

MDNI; explicit content, oral (m receiving), gender neutral reader, ex-raven!reader, past riko x reader, violence in flashbacks, riko is his own warning, reader has a warped view of consent and autonomy, slight allusions to stockholm (thanks ravens!)

you’re trailing behind kevin day as he pushes open the locker room door after a midnight practice. it’s pitch black outside, and the air seems to hang in place, hot and humid.

you catch the heavy door with your free hand and feel the impact travel from your fingertips to your shoulder. your muscles protest with the strain of the day; tiny ribbons of pain slither up your arm and settle in, making you all too aware of the dull ache that stretches through your whole body.

everyone is being ran ragged in preparation for the match against edgar allan. you know that. but there’s something off about it. the entire team seems on edge, like this match has much higher stakes than the normal collegiate sports amount.

you understand wanting to win, but you’d never trained so hard in your life—practices in the mornings were one thing, but practices at eleven and midnight were something else entirely. you’d barely had time to do anything besides work precision drills with kevin and practice passing and tackles with the rest of the team.

you’d set aside three hours to catch up on your homework yesterday, but you’d slept through them instead, too exhausted after trying to score on andrew for an entire practice to do anything but collapse into bed.

you spare a glance towards your backpack, leaned up against your locker, and sigh. that biology paper will have to wait.

kevin turns to you and tugs off his helmet. his hair is damp and he shakes his head, sending droplets of sweat flying. your own sweat sticks your jersey to your back, soaking through the fabric.

training with kevin was always ruthless, had always left you drenched in sweat and sore for days afterward. but it had never punched the breath out of your lungs like his eyes moving up and down your form did. normal practices, even night practices, had never made the room seem so warm as it felt to you now.

with no one else around, the world narrowed to a singular point; it mimicked the arc of the ball between kevin's racket and yours, a shimmering, invisible string connecting the two of you. tension threaded the space between you like a whip, snaking into every muscle and movement. it was electric and demanded feeding; you pushed and drove yourself until you couldn't give it anything more.

when you look at kevin, flushed and disheveled, with sweat dripping down his neck, you know that he's giving it just as much.

"good work out there," you say hoarsely. your throat feels raw, your breath coming in ragged gasps.

kevin flashes you a quick smile. "we're making progress."

that was another thing about kevin: nothing was ever good enough for him.

“my, uh, my blocking—” you start, and cut yourself off in the same breath. “you said it was sloppy, earlier.”

kevin nods. “you’re getting better,” he says, slowly.

this is so desperate, but you don’t even care.

you let yourself slide from one side of the lockers to the other, brushing your shoulder against kevin’s as you lean against the cold metal. “how?”

this is how it had worked back in the nest—you'd improve, slowly but surely. your learning curve wasn't as sharp as most of the other Ravens, but you could keep up and you were good at taking beatings when they came.

you'd smile up at riko, dizzy from his palm connecting with your cheek, tonguing at the cut on your lip where one of his rings had torn flesh. you'd taste the blood; it sat in your mouth like dirty coins.

you'd suck in a breath and rasp, "tell me again," and riko would stroke his thumb over your jaw before slapping you.

the crack of his hand against your face mixed with his words—your catches were better today. you would grin and spit a piece of a broken tooth at his feet. he would tangle his hands in your hair and yank you forward. with your face inches from his own, you could see every scar and dimple and imperfection. every time something had made a mark on him.

because riko let you see. because even when he hated you, even when you fucked up over and over, forcing him to punish you, he still trusted you.

you weren't sure if the same thing would work with kevin, but you missed the feeling so much that you had to try.

kevin runs a hand through his hair. "you're learning when to duck out of a grapple," he says. "when you got here, you wouldn't give up for anything. even if you knew you were outmatched."

"that's the Raven way," you say, light, joking. kevin raises an eyebrow and looks down at your chest, at the white 13 emblazoned on your orange jersey.

not a Raven anymore, his gaze seems to whisper.

he looks over at you and laughs softly. "you remember when dan paired you and matt together?"

"yep," you say, your face breaking into a smile—a genuine smile—at the memory. "i think i spent hours trying to get through him."

kevin nods. "you did. two hours, in fact."

you're a bit shocked that he remembered the exact time. kevin hadn't given you a second glance back at the nest until he walked in on you in riko's lap. you didn't think you were the kind of person people like him noticed.

"today, you turned out of my way like it was as easy as breathing," kevin continues. "and the ball didn't move an inch."

"did it," you murmur, stretching ever so purposefully so that your jersey rides up around your stomach.

he nods again. "you're improving faster than I thought. bad habits are hard to break." his shoulder brushes yours, gentle but firm with muscle, and he leans against you. "reckon you'll be better here than you ever were as a Raven."

your mind stops and starts for a few moments. it clicks like the sound that a car's turn signal makes: on-off-on-off in quick succession. before you can think better of it, you turn and lace your fingers with his, crashing your mouths together.

kevin pulls away, looking at you with something dark and unnameable. his face is flushed again, muddy red sitting high on his cheekbones. he licks his lips. they're the color of a fresh bruise and you hate yourself for it, hate yourself for what you've just done.

what you've just ruined.

"i'm sorry—" you say, your voice raw.

kevin's fingers are still laced with yours. it was a stupid move, to hold the two of you together like that. it meant that you could pull him around, but he could do the same to you.

you turn, your mind screaming get out get out go go go, but kevin's grip is tight. you can feel the ropes of his scar tissue against your palm, feel the twitch of his fingers as he runs his thumb over your knuckles.

"what are you doing," he murmurs. you can feel your breath coming in gasps, high and choked. "[Y/N]," kevin says again. "[Y/N], look at me."

you do, biting the inside of your cheek as you meet kevin's eyes.

"i should go," you breathe. "i need—i need to go."

your lungs feel the same way they did four months ago, when riko slammed his racket into your chest hard enough to crack your ribs. each breath feels like it could be your last. each drag of air through your throat is barbed wire, cutting you into tiny bloody ribbons.

kevin cups your face in his free hand and connects your mouths again, gentle but hungry. his teeth barely graze your bottom lip as you kiss him; you step backward until you feel the metal of the lockers.

"don't," kevin murmurs. "stay."

you kiss him again. he tastes like the second worst decision you've ever made.

"okay," you whisper. you slip your free hand under kevin's jersey and feel the scars there, ripples of tissue that break the uniformity of his stomach. some of these scars you remember, but some of them are new. you run your thumb over a puckered button of flesh on kevin's hip, feeling the shape of it.

you duck your head lower, mouthing at kevin's neck and his chest. sweat pools in the divots of his collarbones and you lick it up, flattening your tongue against his skin. he groans low in his throat and releases your hand to tangle his fingers in your hair.

“[Y/N],” he says. “is this—do you want this? really?”

you pause and laugh. “shouldn’t i be asking you that? i’m the one tryin’ to fuck you, aren’t i?”

he looks at you with something dark in his eyes as you separate your mouth from his hip with a wet pop. you lick your lips from your position on the floor, half-knelt in front of kevin like you’re praying.

for what? forgiveness? absolution?

what do you think doing this is going to accomplish?

“i know what it’s like,” kevin says, slowly, haltingly. “sex in the nest is simple because you don’t really have a choice. i’m telling you that you do have a choice with me.” he sighs and scratches lightly at your scalp. “so, do you want this?”

“i do,” you murmur, and it’s almost the first truth you’ve told all night. quieter, you say, “i don’t want us to be like we were before. i just—”

here’s what you think this is going to do:

“—i miss you,” you whisper, and let your forehead drop to rest against the sharp plane of kevin’s hipbone. you smell sweat, the faint chemical tinge of deodorant. “i miss us.”

you know there was no us. riko never let there be anything but no-strings-attached hookups between the two of you. you were their third, the moon that orbited a figure-eight between the gravity of their planets.

but you had always orbited a little closer to kevin. you think that was why riko hated you, when he left. a part of you left with him. a part that he couldn't get back.

(not only did he lose kevin, but he lost the part of you that was kevin, too. that somehow stung worse than anything. or you imagined it did—you're not sure anything could hurt riko. not anything you could do, anyway.)

but now kevin is here, standing above you in orange and white, with one hand in your hair and the other cupping your face. he does it tentatively, like he’s not sure whether such softness is allowed.

you wonder if he’s picturing you in red and black when he thumbs at your lips and presses down on your tongue.

you open your mouth wider easily, like you were born to do it. kevin smiles above you. “old habits, hm?”

a laugh bubbles in your throat, but it’s choked out when kevin pulls your face to rest against his clothed cock. he’s hard, even through the compression fabric of his shorts and boxers. you lap at him as much as you can around the fingers in your mouth before the hand disappears from your hair and reaches below his waistband.

to kevin’s credit, he’s more cleaned-up than he was in the nest. his happy trail runs in a thick line up his stomach, ending in a thatch of short-trimmed black curls just above the root of his cock. his thighs are thicker, though—stronger, more muscular despite the thick white stripes of scarring across them.

you press a kiss to his thigh, then his hip. he shudders above you and his hips twitch forward, the tip of his cock catching against your cheek and smearing precum there. he lets out a breathy groan when you press your lips to his tip and slowly sink down, hollowing your cheeks.

his hand moves back to your head and tangles into your hair, pulling tight as you bob your head up and down. you tongue at the vein on the underside of his cock; kevin lets out a whine in response, a tiny choked-off thing that curls up from his stomach and looses itself like an arrow from his lips.

kevin's hips rock into your mouth, staccato-needy-desperate. he's gasping something above you, something like god, something like you're so good, how did you get so good.

you pull back and whisper, "you. you."

when he finishes on your face and claps one hand over his mouth, when he cups your cheek and pulls you back to stand, your face still turned upward toward him like he's the sun, you know it:

you can never go back to being a Raven.

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