#oh. Nvl or Wrsly

[dkniade]

It’s hard to articulate. Every time I think too hard about (playable) Liyue character designs (and to a lesser degree, environment design) I feel a strange sense of… alienation? It’s mostly because I just know too little about traditional Chinese culture despite being a Chinese person, and maybe plus the fact that Liyue’s got a… kind of modernized (?) 仙侠 (xianxia) setting (with xianxia itself being a genre I’m not very familiar with), along with my own internalized racism? In terms of fashion sense I don’t dress like the Liyue characters so they hardly look like me other than the dark hair. (Maybe someone in China or someone who’s into cosplaying 耽美 (danmei) or 古装 (guzhuang) characters would feel more familiarity. I dunno.)

The thing I connect with the most is probably the character naming conventions and some of the food items, but that’s about it. This is supposed to represent my culture, but I don’t even know that much about it myself (so it’s something I need to learn more about. Or should I say “reconnect with”? Was there even a connection in the first place?) Although I admit the alienation is also due to how I’m also not familiar with many of the storylines in general.

Still, I can’t articulate it, but something is missing and Genshin Impact is the wrong place to look… Liyue’s visual design has a… strange veil of nostalgia for traditional Chinese culture, like we’re stuck in that aesthetically-pleasing xianxia story of the past, never moving forward. I guess this is simply not the Chinese representation I was looking for.

—

Surprisingly, Kaeya has a few lines somewhat related to this, and he articulates it well:

“These days, my surname, Alberich, is probably the only link to Khaenri'ah that I have left.” (Caribert, “Destined Encounter”)

“Though we could not restore Khaenri'ah to life, we of the Alberich Clan should lead lives as those who blaze like fire, rather than those who wallow in the embers.”

“Now that I look at it, his handwriting was as grieving as a smoking ash pile. There is no way that I can write something like that, living in Mondstadt as I am.”

(Hidden Strife, Mysterious Box in a Secret Compartment)

Well, it’s not like my life is as tragic as his or anything, haha…