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starcurtain · 4 months ago

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Teyvat's "Most Down Bad" Award Goes to Alhaitham for a Second Year Running

Seeing everyone making fun of Alhaitham for his "stalkerish" tendencies in this event is funny, because I feel like a lot of people missed that "Be literally everywhere Kaveh is" has been Alhaitham's MO from the day Kaveh appeared in the game.

From only grabbing his house keys after Kaveh returned from the desert (he couldn't have had both sets of keys at the end of the Archon Quest unless he went home and got Kaveh's copy) to ditching conversations to get back to his house only after Kaveh came home, to showing up without any warning or explanation in Kaveh's hangout with some ridiculous excuse about hearing his voice through noise-cancelling headphones... Refusing to offer any help in the Temple of Silence story quest other than staying in the library with Kaveh...

Since when does Alhaitham willingly cover anyone else's duties?

But this trend of "Be everywhere Kaveh is" didn't start when they were adults. It was already in place when they were still Akademiya students--and it's a trend that didn't end even when they had their fight.

Even when they weren't speaking, Alhaitham dogged Kaveh's every step through published responses to Kaveh's research articles in academic journals. He insisted on keeping a line of communication between himself and Kaveh open, even if the only way to do that was through very public ideological clashes. Pulling Kaveh's pigtails to get his attention lolol. It's implied that, for at least the few years between their fight and Kaveh moving in, this was the only communication between them--Alhaitham's refusal to allow their connection to entirely fade away. (And the fact that this is revealed in Kaveh's character stories--through his precious journal that records the moments of his life that had the most impact on him--shows just how deeply he values the fact that Alhaitham didn't give up.)

Another relevant side note: Alhaitham never asked Kaveh to give up his half of their house. Knowing half of it belonged to Kaveh, knowing that Kaveh may one day want to reclaim his part of it, knowing that it was listed as theirs, Alhaitham moved into the house and made zero effort to change its ownership. He was completely fine with living in "his and Kaveh's house." The stories suggest it was only months later (or even longer) that Kaveh even noticed he had the house, and he transferred away ownership of his portion without Alhaitham ever asking him (or even seemingly wanting him) to do so.

Please, let that sink in. Alhaitham actively left his grandmother's (presumably comfortable) house to move into "his and Kaveh's house," with no apparent explanation for why, and after doing so, he made no attempt to change that "his and Kaveh's" label. He moved into the house with no promise that Kaveh wouldn't show up on the doorstep the very next day and move in too. It almost feels like another deliberate provocation--I've moved into our house, are you going to come stop me? LBR, if Alhaitham had had his way, Kaveh would have been living there with him from Day 1...

There's also the fact that Kaveh literally can't write on a single message board anywhere in the entire nation of Sumeru without Alhaitham hunting his messages down and responding to them (which absolutely no one else does, by the way).

"NUH-UH!" "UH-HUH." "NUH-UH!"

Alhaitham's own character stories tell us explicitly that one of Alhaitham's defining character traits is "He is never where you need him to be," yet somehow...

Shot, and chaser:

Any time Kaveh is in the slightest bit of need or danger or just wants Alhaitham near, Alhaitham is "coincidentally" exactly where Kaveh needs him to be, whenever Kaveh needs him to be there.

Alhaitham didn't just "happen" to run into Kaveh in Port Ormos, an entirely different city from where he was supposed to be working. He didn't just "happen" to read the same terrible book as Kaveh when we know he otherwise would not waste a moment of his time on poorly-written literature...

He didn't just "happen" to appear when Kaveh was upset and needed a distraction in the House of Daena during Kaveh's hangout. He didn't just "happen" to be sitting around waiting when Kaveh needed answers after the Archon Quest. He didn't just "happen" to find Kaveh's academic publications and every single message board posting and respond to them at length and in public.

Which is exactly what Kaveh's mother told Kaveh he needed.

What level of down bad is "Abusing your powers as an Akademiya employee to keep tabs on your crush's library loans"? Just asking for a friend.

The only person for whom Alhaitham just "happens" to be available is Kaveh, over and over and over again--because he is very deliberately making himself a constant presence in Kaveh's life.

(Like, out of all things, I think people really underestimate the devs deliberately paralleling the romantic relationship between Kaveh's mother and father with Kaveh and Alhaitham's relationship. If you want to point to one thing that says "These two characters are intentionally queer-coded," it doesn't get any more obvious than this.)

Alhaitham, are you not embarrassed to be this transparent??? 🫣

#genshin impact #haikaveh #kavetham #alhaitham #kaveh #I wasn't even looking for half these screencaps #I was just scrolling through the content and “Oops; there's another one”#imagine thinking it's a “coincidence” to run into someone in a desert that stretches hundreds to thousands of miles #I say this in the most positive way possible #but I think Alhaitham might actually need an intervention #bro is reading PULP FICTION for a man #checking the message boards daily for updates from a dude he already lives with #skipping work to do favors for his favorite #I would say his Kaveh hyper-focus is impacting his quality of life #but Kaveh IS his quality of life so...#do you think the merchants in the market are getting savvy #when they see Alhaitham coming they're just like #“Oh Mister Alhaitham! Mister Kaveh was really admiring this painting the last time he came through--”#how many times do you think Alhaitham's brought home new foods only to never buy them again because Kaveh didn't like them?#we could end world deforestation with Alhaitham's pining alone

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proxycrit · 12 days ago

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Decided to write some oneshots! Less focus on Zelda and Link, and more on FAMILIAR FAMILIAR’s building blocks.

(Mineru and Naborus’s slow dance are interrupted by the horrors of war.)

(Fic under cut)

——— The First Act (Naborus)

Mineru seems to be actively trying to woo Naborus, and to her disgust, it works.

The zonai woman seems to haunt her steps, with a sly smile and cheeky wink. She slips next to Naborus during morning drills with foods meant to entice, and into evening bouts of paperwork with her little machines, fiddling and tinkering and always ready to help. Even her haughty hat she faffs around with is all but seared into the back of Naborus’s eyelids every time she closes them.

“You do understand,” she tried once, and only once, “that I am a gerudo chief and you are the last of the zonai, serving under the hylian empire.” She enunciates these hylian words as clear as she can, careful with this new language she forced herself to learn within four grueling months.

“Of course,” Mineru responded back in a heavily accented Gerudo. “But I still want to try.”

Naborus has always had a soft spot for fools. She doesn’t bring up their allegiances again, but Mineru redoubles her efforts. Naborus doesn’t explicitly accept them, but she doesn’t refute them either. She even finds herself automatically bringing two mugs of heavily steeped tea to her study one night. Mineru was waiting for her, eyes bright and ears perked.

It’s Ganondorf that ultimately cuts through the stalemate.

“You like her,” he accuses.

“I tolerate her,” Naborus grumbles. “She’s at most a desert lizard I water from time to time, so she doesn’t die.”

Ganondorf gives her a truly bombastic side eye. Naborus doesn’t mention his strange dance around Rauru, even though she’s tempted to point out his hypocrisy. Her soft spot for fools is a weakness.

“She’s working for the princess,” he warns. “We need time to ratify the treaty, and she’s a distraction.”

“She’s a guest,” Naborus responds, temper flaring. “And I don’t see you crunching the paper recently, little brother.”

They glare at each other, bristling like desert cats, before ganondorf’s shoulders slump. He’s been sleeping less and less lately. The dark circles under his eyes have been becoming more and more difficult to hide.

“It’s not safe,” he repeats helplessly. “There’s always a cost, with the hylians. You know this.”

“I know this,” Naborus responds wearily. “But Princess Sonia is different from her mother. Not because of any legends,” she adds, before her brother can protest, “but because she’s reaching out first. The zora and rito are perfectly happy. We have to trust the same amnesty will be given to us.”

“It’s different,” Ganondorf spits, “when their legends don’t constantly paint us as thieves and war mongers.” And Sonia, despite her stature, is part of that legend. That damned sword speaks to it.

The hylians want the great gerudo burial site. They want it for the precious minerals crystallizing deep under the sands, that glow green from the dead. They need it, for the war against the rising tide of undead monsters that threaten them all— gerudo, hylian, all the races of hyrule really. It already took most the zonai.

Naborus knows, deep down, she can not let the gerudo be the next.

But it hurts, to see their culture be trodden underfoot for this. And it hurts more, to hear Ganondorf’s urgent whispers that the Hylians will not stop.

Mineru and Rauru are the last of their kind. Surely there must be other zonai, hidden in pockets deep below or up in the sky, but the zonai (the only zonai) Naborus knows are her two guests. They don’t remember their mother tongue. They were raised by the Goron and Zora and eat hylian food and wear hylian clothes and practice hylian alchemy.

For all intents and purposes, they are hylian. They are what will lay in store for the gerudo, either it be through ganondorf’s terror of a slow cultural death, or naborus’s terror of a steady massacre.

And then Ganondorf finds those ruins, and it all goes to shit.

And then he tries to kill Sonia. Tries to infect Rauru with that malice. Becomes unknowable to her, and calls her traitor, as if he didn’t throw everything away for their shared dream.

Five days later, she arranges for a meeting.

Six days later, Sonia and Rauru show up at her doorstep.

“You can have the burial grounds,” Naborus says, and finds the dull ember of delight in Rauru’s flinch. Good. See him remember his own damned past, and let him know of his crime. Mockingly, she inclines her head to Princess Sonia. “At your behest, your highness.”

Sonia looks back. Implacable. Stone. She’s four heads shorter than Naborus, and yet her presence is crushing. Is this who you love, Naborus wanted to ask Mineru. Is this who you serve?

The rest of the negotiations is a blur. Rito will come help gerudo civilians escape the bombed remains of her city. Her people will find shelter along the coast, if they so wish. All Sonia needs is the Zonaite, and willing hands to take up arms and fight.

Fight who, she does not specify. But judging from her gaze flickering to the empty spot next to Naborus, it’s not difficult to infer.

When Mineru hesitates in front of Naborus’s door later that night, Naborus finally snaps. That dull apathy and shock suddenly becomes a monsoon of rage and betrayal, and she grabs the mug and throws it as hard as she can at the wall, an animal scream rising in her chest.

Mineru flinches back, ears pressed against her head. Naborus sinks, gasping for air, and curls into a wretched ball on the floor. Thin hands carefully encircle against her, and she leans into mineru’s chest, and weeps for her stupid baby brother, for her foolish naive self, for hoping for a beautiful future.

Tomorrow, the gerudo will have the war Ganondorf predicted. Tomorrow, Naborus will bow in front of the Hylian regency.

Mineru mumbles something into her hair, that she is unable to catch. But the zonai’s grip is tight, and she hums a song slow and low.

“What is that?” Naborus croaks, head still pillowed in Mineru’s arms.

There’s a shift of muscle under Naborus as Mineru readjusts herself into a more comfortable position, and then— “my mother taught me this.”

“Ah? I thought gorons are all men?”

Mineru laughs. “In hylian, yes they are called men. But no, I’m talking about my birth mother.”

“Oh,” and because Naborus has little filter, “what’s her name?”

Mineru went silent at that. Naborus feels a rush of self hatred. She shouldn’t have asked. She presumes much from somebody who isn’t even her citizen.

“I don’t remember,” Mineru says. She smiles at Naborus, eyes half squinted. “I just called her Mah. Zonai baby teeth give us terrible lisps, and young children don’t really know their parents as people, per say. Just protectors.”

“I’m sorry,” Naborus says. She wants Mineru to hum that song again, but doesn’t know how to ask.

“It’s okay,” Mineru says. “I don’t remember her. Its hard to miss what you don’t really know.”

“No,” Naborus protests. “It’s not okay at all. You shouldn’t have to-“ she back pedals, looks for anything to say at all, and settles on squeezing Mineru’s waist. “You deserve more than just a song.”

Mineru starts to hum again. Seeing Naborus unwilling to continue, the zonai sighs, cutting into the wound if the situation.

“You did the right thing.”

“Did I?”

“You want to save lives. There is no shame in that.”

“And what of the children who won’t remember their mother’s names?” Naborus asks, hurting. What of her people’s history?

“They’ll be alive to wonder, won’t they?”

Mineru’s voice sounded flat and far away.

And Naborus has nothing to say to that.

(Mineru tells herself this is for the best, and that she and Rauru turned out perfectly fine.

It’s a lie she’s grown comfortable with.)

———— The Second Act (Mineru)

When Ganondorf cuts her throat, she can’t bring herself to be surprised.

Scared? Yeah. But surprised? Not really.

She took his sister from him. She represents hylian royalty. She’s collateral to Rauru. A sort of message, if you will.

You took my sister. I will take yours.

Fucking idiot. Naborus will never forgive him now, and neither would Rauru. He has single handedly severed any remaining goodwill, any chance of recollection, with this stunt, and the worst part is he probably did it on purpose.

Ganondorf looks different. His eyes are tired. The infection from his arm has spread to under his jaw. Baby Dragneel’s been practicing magic, she sees. He reaches down and gently plucks the secret stone from Mineru’s neck, and suddenly it’s worse.

She’s never going to be able to tell Naborus her secret. She’s never going to be able to give that stone to her beloved. She-

A scream splits the night air. It can’t be from her, because all her air is being stolen from her throat before it can reach her tongue, which tastes like iron. It can’t be from Ganondorf, who’s mouth is clenched shut, secret stone (alchemist’s stone) shining in his hand.

Ganondorf is blasted back by a wave of light.

The world is greying. Mineru feels the burn of Sonia’s time magic entrap her, freeze her. It hurts. It hurts more then her throat. Everything is tinged yellow and Mineru can’t move, and this must be what death is— caught between a peaceful slumber and agonizing living. She’s suffocating slowly. She’s scared.

Rauru’s face comes in focus. His hands are shaking. She can feel him pressing desperately against her as in the distance, Sonia, still clad in her white dress, chases the shadows away.

Mineru’s eyes slip close.

When she wakes up, she is surprised she’s not dead. She tries to say something, but the searing pain stops her, and her muffled jerk causes the lump at her feet to quiver. Rauru looks up, eyes bloodshot.

“Mimi?” He asks, voice hoarse. Mineru tries to say something, but the pain flares and she settles for a thumbs up. Rauru’s eyes start watering, and he presses his face into her hands.

“Mimi,” he whispers, and mineru pets his ears, like they were children again. She didn’t mean to scare him. She waits for him to collect himself, and takes the chance to look around the room.

It’s a nice room. The architecture is distinctly zoran, with luminous stones embedded into the walls for light and kelp thread curtains for privacy. It smells like fragrant lotus root and medicinal herbs. There’s a small study in the corner, filled with papers and a single potted specimen of a sundelion.

Rauru’s study, she realizes with a rush of fondness. This must be his room, when he was apprenticing under that Zoran healer.

“I…”

Her attention snaps back to her brother. At her attentive look, he quails. It’s not right. Rauru rarely quails, and mostly preens, like a peacock. At her impatient look, he closes his eyes, and Mineru’s stomach sinks.

“Ruta’s afraid there might be complications,” Rauru continues in a rush. “You’ll be on observation for possible lung clots and brain damage and infection.”

Mineru breathes.

“We couldn’t save your throat,” Rauru confesses, looking small. “Ruta cleared up your lungs and I managed to stabilize you, but. We couldn’t, your.”

That’s okay, she wants to say. I’m alive. That’s more than I expected.

But she can’t say that.

With her nonanswer, Rauru bows his head. Mineru grabs on to his hand before he can flee, and squeezes.

After a moment’s hesitation, he squeezes back.

Mineru doesn’t take her new found muteness well. She struggles with hylian sign, and finds a near apoplectic rage in being unable to quickly explain her thoughts.

Writing isn’t the same, she wrote in harsh angry scratches with her chalkboard she’s taken to carrying around.

Naborus, bless her, has fashioned a straw for her with glass when they meet up for tea. Mineru used to haunt Naborus, enraptured by this woman and her no nonsense attitude and her unexplainable kindness. Now Naborus haunts her with bedding and sustenance.

They should be on the battlefield. The malice has overtaken another settlement, Mineru heard. But when she dug, she was sent away.

“More pillows?” Naborus asks, and Mineru holds up two thumbs for an aggressive agreement.

Can you get me construct f12, she writes when Naborus comes back wielding two cream pillows. Twinges, can fix, she slashes quickly at Naborus’s frown.

“You’re working?”

No time, Mineru scribbles. And at Naborus’s hesitant glance, she adds: bored.

“You should be resting.”

Can’t.

She will have nightmares again. Rauru promises the sundelion specimens he’s working on will stop the malice from taking hold, but she still dreams of that red pulsating mass, infecting her, burrowing into her.

She underlines Can’t twice, and hopes Naborus will get it.

Naborus drags a hand down her face, and exhales roughly. “Shit. Okay. I’ll go get your construct, but if you need any help at all you tell me, alright?”

At Mineru’s flat glare, she grimaces. “Sorry. I’ll get you a bell.”

The two sit in companionable silence after that. The construct mineru chose is a small, light weight thing. She is considering adding some sort of projectile weapon when she hears the low rhythmic hum of a song.

Oh, Mineru thinks. This is the song my mother taught me, and I taught you. Oh, Mineru thinks after suddenly overwhelmed with the realization— she will never sing her mother’s song again. She will never be able to join the chorus that was her last, remaining link. She will never-

Mineru wipes her eyes angrily. She can learn how to play a harmonica. Or a flute. The option isn't actually gone, just changed. She should just be glad she’s alive.

Doesn’t stop the tears, though.

When Naborus quietly holds her arms out, Mineru doesn’t fight the pull and slumps into her friend’s arms, and tries not to think of how Ganondorf stole not only her project’s notes, but her history from her too.

He’s Naborus’s brother.

She hates him more, for it.

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