#nine sols yanlao

[roorkich]

Jaw of the Machine

[masterisabelle]

Grandpa! Nooooo!

[shentheauthor]

Fuck it, I’m bored. Nine sols gender/sexuality headcanons.

Kuafu: Gay cis man. I adore him. Look at him. He’s not subtle. He says jiequan, who literally walks around half naked, is “stylish.” I know what you are.

Goumang: She gives trans lesbian vibes. I also adore her. Free my girl, I could fix her

Yanlao: Homophobic /j. Nah fr tho, I think he’s a cis het man, but like, he isn’t gonna be homophobic or transphobic. I don’t think Penglai has that kind of thing. Grandpa is an ally, yay

Jiequan: That is a GAY MAN. Trans maybe? I haven’t decided, but what I do know is he is GAY. Look at how he talks to Yi. He’s gay and down horrendous and needs some therapy PRONTO. “Gay people who cannot be in a healthy relationship because they suck so bad” representation

Lady Ethereal: Bisexual demigirl, she/they! Also I hate that they didn’t let her keep her original name in the EN version. Fu Die is pretty!!! Dammit!!! But yea Lady E gives me strong bisexual vibes. She also had a thing for Yi

Fuxi: Listen. Listen. He and Nuwa are identical twins. ONE of them bitches is trans. To me, it’s Fuxi. Trans man Fuxi is real to me. No clue what’s going on with his sexuality, and frankly, I don’t wanna know

Nuwa: I think she’d fw neopronouns. Her gender is a mess, and she wouldn’t really care to define it. Rotating her around in my brain. As for sexuality, same as Fuxi

Ji: Agender, he/they, and bisexual. The devs wanted him to be agender/nonbinary and I am CLINGING to that. They’re real to me. Also I think they and Jietong had a thing. I won’t elaborate.

Eigong: cis lesbian with every mental illness, banned from all public spaces. She gives old, wise queer energy until you dig deeper into her personality and see oh, she needs to be on some kind of list. Kind of iconic, ngl.

Yi: arospec/aspec, probably agender, but he has a job so he doesn’t care about that shit rn. He/him because that’s generally what people default to. Would not touch jiequan with a ten foot pole. Could have potentially had a thing with Lady Ethereal had everything not gone to absolute shit.

Heng: same as Yi lmao. Genuinely. They’re the AAA siblings

Shennong: Pansexual. Considers himself cis, but there’s definitely something else going on there. He doesn’t want to unpack that. Frankly, he is valid.

Bonus:

Chien: Trans girl

Shanhai 9000: gender is a solarian concept it doesn’t give a flying fuck about (it/its pronouns). Same with sexuality.

Abacus: also doesn’t care about gender or sexuality, but he will accept whatever pronouns. It’s whatever to him.

Shuanshuan: Intersex! Might grow up to be queer, but honestly, he’s just a baby rn. I’m not about to go in depth there

Chiyou: finds the concept of gender fascinating, chose he/him pronouns because he liked how they sounded. So what I’m getting at is: trans Chiyou

[alex-frostwalker]

No one:

Absolutely no one:

My Brain: Lookkkkk buddyyyyy hear me out.. imagine... IMAGINEEEE.. Asgore Boss Fight Neutral Route but the mechanics are like Nine Sols.. His fight would be similar to Eigongggg and Asriel Fight would be like Ji's... Omega Flowey? Wellllll like Yanlaoooo

[many-faced]

these cats pretty gay ngl

[possessable]

Sols Council Meeting

[saturns-rings-robins-wings]

Sols.. nine of them

[kitsuroid]

I Believed That Dream Would Light Our Path

[scalproie]

Eigong: Who broke it.

Lady Ethereal: ... I did. I broke it.

Eigong: No. No, you didn't. Lord Jiequan?

Jiequan: Well, don't look at me, look at the young master.

Yi: What? I didn't break it?

Jiequan: That's weird, how do you even know it's broken?

Yi: Because it's sitting right in front of us, and it's broken.

Jiequan: Suspicious~

Yi: No it's not???

Kuafu: If- if it matters... probably not but- Lady Nuwa was the last one to use it.

Nuwa: What? I don't even drink that crap!

Kuafu: Oh really? Then what were you doing by the tea cart earlier?

Nuwa: I use the wooden stirrers to push back my cuticles, everyone knows that, Kuafu.

Lady Ethereal: Let's not fight! Let's not fight, I broke it, let me pay for it, Eigong.

Eigong: No. Who broke it.

All: ...

Yi: ... Eigong, Goumang's been awfully quiet-

Goumang: REALLY???

Yi: Yes, really-

Goumang: BY. THE. HEAVENS-

---

Eigong: I broke it. It messed up my order so I sliced it.

Eigong: I predict that 10 minutes from now they'll be at each other's throats, collecting great tao fruits from one another.

Eigong: Good.

Eigong: It was getting a little too chummy in the council.

[identityarchitect]

This isn't specifically about boss fight or backstory: this is just who your favourite is. Yi not included for obvious reasons.

[doodledrawsthings]

Opinions on the Sols from Nine Sols immediately. Please. Your au is delish.

Keep in mind these are my very off-the-top-of-my-head, surface level impressions of them after having recently beaten the game on story mode once, while streaming. I won’t be giving any deep analysis or anything lol so the tone will be pretty jokey and unserious.

MAJOR major Nine Sols spoilers under the cut. Please do not read if you haven’t finished the game.

Kuafu: second favorite character. I love him so much. He’s such a pal, everybody likes him. Hou Yi left him as the final sun standing after shooting down the other nine cuz he’s just a stand up guy. The fact that he’s the one who pled keep Abacus around and set his settings to High Sympathy and kept coming in to talk to him out of guilt over what happened to Yi kills me. Smart, silly, handsome, the last remaining Solarian in existence and he can never go home for the remainder of his life. He’s my ride or die bestie, he’s one of my several husbands who babysit my little brother while I go off on a revenge murder spree and I’m kissing him on the mouth.

Goumang: I like her design and concepts and think she’s a fun character. She was the first boss I fought and i thought she was pretty fun, though I didn’t find the fight as memorable as others. I wish she had more presence throughout the game, I heard from a friend she had some more stuff that was cut apparently? Curious about her rivalry with Yi and relationship with Eigong. And since Yi technically never killled her I’ve considered including her in the Dont Worry About It AU.

Yanlao: Grampa!! I think he and Yi’s back and forth throughout the warehouse area was pretty funny. I was so ready to kick his ass the entire time, especially after the segment where he’s shooting at you as you navigate a maze. Loved his bossfight, first fight of the first three i started with where I really felt the parry/dodge/attack rhythm for the first time. Rip gramps.

Jiequan: BASTARD!! (Half-affectionate but only half) he’s giving Fruity Disney Villain Who Flirts With You As He Stabs You In The Chest. He sucks <3 but he’s such a FUN character, what a great antagonist. His fake out fight is so intense, the prison scene is so intense, his boss fight kicked my ass and his theme goes hard. He’s a war criminal, he’s a freak, he looks like All Might MHA and he regularly irradiates himself as part of his body building routine. “Heroes are forged in agony!” 10/10 Disney villain, very stylish. Defeating him was so satisfying especially after the Kanghui fight in the prison and learning what happened with THAT horror show.

Lady Ethereal: I LOVE HER!! SO MUCH!!! UGH!!! she makes me so sad! But everything about her is SO cool! Her fate! Her backstory!! Her design! Her boss fight! Her entire platforming area!!! Just!!! Aah! I won’t say too much but it’s just so good she had my favorite fight in the game, the dance for that one is so much fun. I was streaming the game on discord for my partner and another friend and when we first went into the cortex, she was like “oh you should keep going left and see what’s over there ;)” and then I did and just!!! So cool that Red Candle started off making horror games, it’s really great. Love it. Awesome character, awesome boss, awesome theme.

Fuxi and Nuwa: Rich asshole twins!! These two suck lol but I do think they’re fun characters. The entire empyrean district is experiencing a resident evil style zombie infection and Nuwa is throwing a rager at the club for the rich cryosleepers only. It’s really eerie over there though, I love the vibe of the east side and the discovery of the mutants and destruction of the west half is spooky as hell. And then I got to the area where you get Fuxi’s sol seal and didn’t even notice he was sitting there until my partner pointed him out. I thought he was furniture lol. She’s really puppeting around her brother’s pustule-riddled zombie corpse Weekend at Bernie’s style cuz she’s that much in denial. Also absolutely horrifying that the district supposedly once held 100,000 sleeping solarians that is whittled down to 300 after the mutated virus wreaks havoc through the area. Personally, I’m mixed on their bossfight, the first half with just Fuxi was fun once I got the rhythm but the 2nd half when Nuwa comes in with her attacks gets a bit too chaotic for me. Their boss theme, however, is probably my favorite in the game. I love the opera samples, it’s so cool.

Ji: I think about them a lot. Like, wow what a guy. I think a lot about his immortality, and that if he had not left Penglai with the council he would have been stuck there, alone for eternity. I think about the fact that because they will never get Tianhuo, there would be no need for them to be in cryosleep, which probably means that in the 502 years that Yi was recovering, he was probably up and about the entire time, probably wandering around new Kunlun mostly alone. I wonder if they ever hung out with the dusk guardians, or if they just stayed in the grotto for the most part. Their boss fight felt the most like a dance to me, or like friends sparring. Do you think they thought of Lear as you attacked them with the moves he taught you in the spiritual realm? He makes me sad, but he is very stylish!

Eigong: FUCK HER! SHES SO COOL, BUT FUCK HER!!! EVIL GRANDMA! this games story is like peeling back an onion of horrors where each layer you peel back brings new, mortifying understanding of the situation at large until it ALL. COMES BACK. TO HER! AND HER FRUITLESS PURSUIT OF IMMORTALITY! Her boss fight KICKED MY ASS. I was streaming my first playthrough, so I was already prone to doing worse than I probably would without an audience (emphasis on probably) but in my first attempt I was fighting her for like 6 HOURS STRAIGHT. And for the true ending too, which meant three boss phases. I just could not get her pattern down and my hands were cramping but i really wanted to finish the game that weekend so I could finally talk about it so I ended up turning up the accessibility options to one punch man her. I did eventually go back and do her fight by myself with the story mode settings and MAN what a fun boss battle once you get the dance down (I’m still so bad at unbound counter), and it is SO satisfying to beat. Incredible character, we love fictional old women who commit atrocities in the name of science.

Yi: and finally we have the man, the myth, the legend. I could probably write a whole separate post about him and Heng and his relationships with the other characters but to keep it short- I LOVE HIM SO MUCH! BUT IM ALSO BITING HIM AND PUTTING HIM IN A BLENDER AND RUNNING HIM THROUGH THE DISHWASHER AND HANGING HIM UP TO DRY. Just UGH! It’s not common for the main character of a thing to be my favorite character but Yi is my favorite character. It’s the fact that he is his own character, and we, the player, must gradually find out things that HE already knows. And his budding and flowering relationships with the other characters, especially those who set up shop in the pavillion which leads into his character development is just AUGH. AND THE ENDINGS. YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT GHE ENDINGS. THEYRE GOOD BUT AUGH. I love him, I’m rotating him in my mind on a skewer, he’s my little manlet, my poor little “I’m not a good person” shadow the hedgehog energy meow meow cat boy. I love him so much, I’m so distraught over his terrible life choices. Incredible character.

Ok hope that was entertaining to read, bye.

[lumpy-veev]

A loose thought in my head about our dear, sweet Lady Ethereal. Spoilers for Nine Sols ahead!

Okay. So. Eigong was definitely the one who did this, right?

If any of the Dusk Guardians could tell that Lady Ethereal had life support unhooked from her Vital Sanctum, at the very least they'd hook it back in, right? Bar that, they'd find a way to wake her up, right?? They'd have no reason to stick her in a jar, they're just here to work until they're discharged. So it wasn't them.

None of the other sols had reason to do it.

Goumang had complicated plans to make her greenhouse adhere to, and while she knew that solarian brains could be used for the neural network, she didn't seem interested doing so.

I'd wager Yanlao has exactly zero knowledge about anatomy and biology, he was too busy kissing up to the rich.

Jiequan wouldn't have done it unless there was transmutational value in it, and though he probably would've found Lady E's suffering interesting, he probably wouldn't have gone with the jarred brain method.

Fuxi was dealing with Tianhuo, and Nuwa's a rich, traumatized brat who's more worried about her brother than anyone else.

Kuafu just straight up wouldn't do something like that.

Yi was dead!

In the final boss battle, Eigong has this to say to Yi.

And...

She tried to trap Yi in her Soulscape. She was expecting it to last longer. She knew how to make her Soulscape something other than pleasant dreams and a gallery of memories.

I'm not saying this is concrete evidence. But it's something.

But why would she do that? Why would Eigong subject Lady Ethereal to an utter loss of autonomy and 500 years of horrifying nightmares? The whole thing's excessively cruel, even for her.

Maybe Lady Ethereal discovered something.

My thought is that Lady Ethereal caught a glimpse of the truth, and it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Not only were her colleagues and her beloved daughter dead, the system they died for was going to be used by the person that created the Tianhuo, that doomed solarian-kind.

So right before she put herself in her Vital Sanctum minus the life support, she sabotaged the Soulscape system, planning to die with its secrets.

But Eigong found her. Pried open her mind to find out how to fix it, and then made her a part of her life's work.

Made sure she didn't die, for good measure.

[a-goumang-ripoff]

My Thoughts on the Character Writing of Nine Sols

Alright, it's finally time to autistically rant on this account to my heart's content because HOLY FUCK I LOVE NINE SOLS!!! It has such amazing gameplay, and I don't think I could ever forget the Lady Ethereal fight in my life, easily one of my favorite bosses ever (and I love how she's written but that's a rant for another day).

I think my favorite thing about Nine Sols is the fact that it's such a densely packed game where literally everywhere you look you can find some kind of underlying message, even in small areas. And every Sol has its own underlying message and you bet your ass you'll be seeing rants from me on probably every one of them eventually.

For now though I'm sticking with rambling about the general writing of the game because I love it but also hate it sometimes and I love this game so much that I need to rant about how much the parts I despise piss me off. Before I start ranting off though, I should preface with this: if you aren't aware, RedCandleGames is a Taiwanese game company whose previous game, Detention, contained an easter egg which mocked a member of the CCP, I think it is safe to say that Nine Sols can easily be interpreted as a massive hate letter to China wrapped up in a beautifully gruesome story with amazing gameplay.

This isn't something that screamed out to me when I first played, but I had a suspicion something like this might pop up because of the storyline with the humans, they're shown to be livestock to these Solarians with only Lady Ethereal objecting to them being harvested for their brains (and eventually Yi but it was also his idea). They're treated as lesser beings, subhuman if you will, that are feared, hated, and stereotyped, but shown by the game to not warrant any of that treatment and be entirely capable people. Something was going on but I was quite unsure what it was.

It wasn't until the Fengs, who I fought after Ji, that it really set in what a lot of these messages I've been noticing could be about. I am very well viewing all of this through a specific lens and I don't think I'm right about everything but I am certain to say that the Fengs are absolutely a hate letter to Chinese nobility, between the Fengs' lack of care about anything besides profit/entertainment and the fact that Nuwa has clearly endured the horrors of foot binding (mishappen feet + entirely unable to walk) while still being a spoiled brat, not to mention the incest.

Everything after that kind of fell into place, it's not all about Chinese culture and government, but things definitely started falling into place when I started thinking back on everything. It started to make sense why they made Goumang a fascist who quite literally owns slaves before giving her easily the most disturbing fate in the entire game.

I do really love Nine Sols for all these little messages, but I also feel like sometimes they entirely give up on writing a unique character in order to send a message with them. Yanlao, Goumang, Jiequan, Nuwa, and Eigong are all very basic tropes that either lack deeper character, or their deeper character motivations don't seem to line up with their character.

And what do I think these characters all have in common? They're all being used to send a message about culture and/or government. Yanlao's demand for respect and power just because he's old, Goumang's fascist ideologies, Jiequan's dynastic bloodline, Nuwa's wealthy apathy, and Eigong's drive for immortality and tendency to lie or bend the truth. It feels like their characters were made secondary to the message they were attempting to send. I can say this about Yi as well, he's a very typical edgy protagonist trope I see a lot in East Asian media, though his character development is really well written so I can overlook that.

Another thing I've noticed is that the characters I think aren't sending as strong of messages, or at least not messages geared towards criticisms of government and aspects of East Asian culture, seem to be a lot more well written, and a lot of the stuff I've seen in the Nine Sols community confirms that. People tend to love Ji and Lady Ethereal and enjoy Kuafu. Ji and Lady Ethereal are so amazingly written in my opinion, maybe it is just that I relate to them a bit too much, I just feel like their stories are really enjoyable and make you feel something other than "what the fuck just happened." Kuafu I feel is just inoffensively written, he's not super tropey, but he's not amazingly written either, so he's kind of just this inbetween spot that makes him enjoyable.

Also note that I haven't talked about any of the non-sol characters, most of them I have not thought about nearly as hard (except Heng but I will break down and sob if I ever try to talk about her in length lmao) and thus don't feel like I can safely comment on them with the same confidence as I've had for the sols.

I am not saying that RedCandleGames should've forgone writing the messages into their characters that they did write, I just feel like there could be more effort put into the actual characters themselves and going about these messages in different ways to majorly improve the experience of this game, not that it isn't already amazing. Well now that that's out of my system, I'm probably gonna be making more rants about different parts of Nine Sols because I love this game and I also enjoy ranting about the parts I dislike lmao, easily one of my favorite games ever.

[faery-the-diamond]

Gotta say, I like your art style for Nine Sols. One crossover idea has been knocking in my head for some time. Have you heard of the game "Warframe"? Because I had idea: How would the Tiandao Council (Yi, Lady Ethereal, Kuafu, Goumang, Yanlao, Jiequan, Fuxi and Nuwa, Ji, and Eigong) react to how the 'Apemen' (IE Humanity) developed into an interstellar civilization, even discovering a form of immortality! Only for it to come crashing down?

Ooo, sounds like a fun scenario. Unfortunately, I don't really know anything about Warframe for me to suggest anything •́⁠ ⁠ ⁠‿⁠ ⁠,⁠•̀

I did have a somewhat similar crossover scenario in mind, only with Mass effect instead. Which I think could be pretty interesting.

Commander Shepard already did some unbelievable things, might as well accidentally stumble upon a floating island in space and uncover the truth behind humanity in the process.

Meanwhile whatever is left of the Tiandao council at that point will have to not only deal with the virus, but also the Reapers apparently.

Also I find funny the thought of everyone constantly confusing solarians and salarians

[many-faced]

we need a “i want every gun we have to fire on jiequan” squad 🤝🤝🤝

also yeah yanlao was pretty easy for me as well FHSKFS i think i first try’d him despite absolutely sucking ass at video games

Yanlao took me like, 2 tries once I figured out you can parry his charge

beating up old men is my fav passtime/VSILLYJ

also exploding Jiequan with my mind, he was cool until he put me in jail and made me fight the fucked up lookin dog