#the rest of the natlan cast SHOULD have been there

[allegorism]

not to beat a dead horse, but what did the natlan cast even do. they're the 'chosen ones', the heroes of natlan. and what did they even do? offer a support skill that can be activated once in a battle? be for real.

[himasgod]

Kinich x Reader II

Where you have regained your confidence and are healing, and you dare to ask Kinich for physical contact.

(Warning! This is the second part of something I wrote previously, a kinich x r4ped!reader. You should read the previous part to give it some more emotional charge! I repeat the same thing, if you have been a victim of this type of ab4se, you are very brave. You are not alone, and there are many things watching your back, supporting you, many laws, entities, people, users, etcetera… soon you will get your life back and it will only be a distant scar that you will live with, I promise <3)

Natlan’s dim moonlight filtered through the dense jungle canopy, casting faint silver glints over the hut. It had been weeks since that night, since Kinich had learned the truth. Since then, he had kept his distance, his usual gestures of affection replaced by careful words and a respectful space that pained you as much as it made you feel grateful.

He had remained by your side. Despite your fears that he wouldn’t want to deal with the weight of your grief, Kinich stayed. His stubbornness, that same quality that used to tease you before, now felt like a lifeline.

That night, as the fire in the campfire crackled softly, you found him sitting outside, carving something on a piece of wood. The scene was so familiar and reassuring that for a moment you forgot the knot in you chest.

“What are you doing?” he asked, breaking the silence.

He looked up, his expression softening at the sight of you.

“A necklace,” he replied, turning the piece of wood in his hand to show you. It was small and still shapeless, but it looked like a flower.

“It’s nice. Who is it for?”

Kinich smirked, a smile filled with that quiet confidence that was so characteristic of him.

“Who do you think it is for?”

Your felt your heart race. There were moments like this, fleeting but significant, where she wondered if she deserved the patience and devotion he gave you without reservation. Still, you decided to sit beside him, leaving a small space between them.

“Thank you, Kinich,” you murmured after a while.

He set the necklace aside and turned to you, resting an arm on his knee as he looked at you seriously.

“You don’t have to thank me for anything. I…” Kinich paused, searching for the right words. “I just want you to be okay.”

The honesty in his voice made your throat tighten. You nodded, but couldn’t look at him directly. Instead, you let your fingers brush over the half-made necklace.

“I want to try,” you whispered suddenly.

“Try what?”

You looked up, meeting those intense eyes that seemed to see right through you, but never judging.

“Trust again. With you.”

Kinich didn’t say anything at first. His hand, calloused but firm, moved slowly toward yours, stopping just short of touching.

“Can I?” he asked, and you nodded with a slight tremor.

The touch was gentle, barely a brush, but it was enough to send a wave of emotions through you. Anxiety, fear… but also warmth.

Because it was Kinich.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he said, his voice low and calm.

You leaned a little closer to him, letting your head rest against his shoulder. Your breathing intertwined with his as silence filled the space between them. Kinich didn't move, he didn't rush you.

After a while, his fingers began to explore, tracing soft lines on the fabric of your arm. It was an innocent gesture, but one charged with intimacy. Heat rose to your cheeks, and you closed your eyes, allowing yourself to enjoy the moment after all.

"I don't want to scare you," he said in a whisper.

"You don't, my love"

For the first time in a long time, fear didn't dominate your senses.

Kinich was a constant, an anchor in the midst of the storm. As his fingers slowly traced the outline of your wrist, you felt something inside you begin to heal.

It was Kinich. And you had begun to slowly heal your wounds from that afternoon. You needed to normalize your life again, to do the activities you liked again, to spend quality time…

And there was nothing you both wanted more at that moment, when you arrived home, than to get back in touch.

You didn't remember Kinich like that. It seemed like after he heard what happened, he didn't dare touch you again, as if you were a ghost. However, every time he was with you, it seemed like there was an invisible band-aid on your heart, a thread that sutured your wounded heart.

You felt clean again. You felt good.

Kinich gently grabbed his flower-shaped necklace that you had hanging around your neck, and gently pulled, his eyes searching yours with some anxiety, as if he wanted to confirm that everything was really okay. When you realized that you would need to take the initiative this time because Kinich didn't dare touch you again out of respect, you brought your hand to his cheek and joined your lips with his.

You missed that feeling, and Kinich had an invisible lump form in his chest, while yours was disappearing in his company.

After a few minutes of tongues dancing with each other and your hand on his cheek slowly caressing, Kinich separated from your lips. His lips were reddish, and he placed his nose in the hollow between your shoulder and your neck.

Patience was not one of Kinich's virtues, as his hands began to make their way to the edges of the fabrics that covered you.

"Are you okay? Tell me, please, if you need me to stop at any time, whatever, tell me."

However, your cheeks were already red when Kinich caressed the skin of your bare back under your shirt with his calloused palm, and your eyes looked firmly into his.

With him, you felt safe.

"I wish… that you continue. Please, Kinich…"

No more words were necessary for silence to invade you, accompanied by the sound of your tongues fighting against each other again, somewhat louder, as Kinich made you sit on his lap and you shyly ran your hands over his torso. Meanwhile, his hands softly touched your back, going up to the clasp of your bra as he whispered lost in your lips,

"Are you okay, love?"

But you probably couldn't be better.

Here is my masterlist, in case you are interested in any more of my work or want to send me a request <3

[kyogre-blue]

So, on my main, I rushed through Lantern Rite to get primos and didn't pay attention to a single thing (except Noelle, my girl came back at least for a few minutes <3).

But on my alt, I decided to actually try and pay attention to the event story, since I've seen some praise for it. So far, I've managed to complete the first part.

It was...... fine. I would even say competently done.

If this was about characters I care about, I would even enjoy it quite a bit.

Here, you can kind of see the main gripe I would raise. It's fine, it's competent, it's even fun if you're already a fan. BUT if you don't already care about these characters, this event isn't really doing much to get you on board.

That said, it does a lot well.

First of all, I have to say that you can really feel the effort put into the visuals of the scenes. I've been checked out of the story for a good long while, so I don't know if all of Fontaine or Natlan had been like this or what, but it feels quite different from most of (old?) Genshin. The models move much more and better than usual, there's a lot of small flourishes, like the flashback panel of Hu Tao not responding to Xiangling's invitations, or flashback Ying'er and Timaeus models fading into their present day models, or Yun Jin actually moving on stage when she should, or yes, the joke I saw posted how "they've learned to make characters hold things and now they're determined to show us this trick at least five times." These things are pretty small overall, but they make the story feel better to watch -- and this is pretty interesting in light of the criticisms I've seen floating around toward HSR 3.0 being too stiff, visually lacking, and just "characters stand around in a circle, yapping."

Second, the pacing and dialogue feel pretty good. The story progressed pretty smoothly, and while there's a lot of... let's call it cultural setting lore, you can very easily guess that the paragraphs of Proper Nouns about funerals that Hu Tao spouts aren't necessary to understand or remember. It's just to show her competency. The rest of the dialogue is fairly concise, especially by Genshin standards. At the very least, it didn't feel too draggy, and the details were quite easy to follow. I understood that they were talking about Xingqiu's great-grandfather even before this was directly confirmed, for example. It sounds small, but Genshin has often made even details very hard to keep track of (like Dragonspine 2, that shitshow).

Third, they really put in effort to include lots of wink wink, nudge nudge for players. There's obviously lots of cameos for the Liyue cast, which are done fairly smoothly. But there's also lots of mention of things that actually exist on the map, like the Eight Adepts having name connections to Liyue domains, the nod toward Chi of Yore, the mention of that one lore book, etc. Again, if this was Mondstadt lore, I would be screenshotting every dialogue box to post and yap about.

They even actually talked about the big lantern this time. Low bar, but previous years have repeatedly failed to do this.

One... not negative but interesting point is that the story so far has felt more, hm, steeped in CN cultural tropes than I've ever previously noticed. Stuff like Lan Yan casually saying that someone supposedly uses a specific location for "cultivation" (a term that iirc EN Genshin uses very sparingly if at all), or her almost getting accused of cursing Xingqiu's grandpa and Timaeus. I've seen that kind of thing a lot in c-novels, it's a really common plot for someone to get framed for using (to use a simple term) witchcraft.

There was also Timaeus getting phrases wrong, which I've also seen a few times regarding a non-native character failing to use Chinese expressions right, which unfortunately comes across quite weird in EN. One of the expressions he fails on was, in EN, "fit as a fiddle," and Ying-er explains this as him having trouble with the local dialect. But fiddle is a western instrument and far more suited to Mond than Liyue, so it doesn't sound natural here at all. Another case where the translation falls a bit short is when Baizhu is explaining the situation. He says that the victims experienced accelerated aging and then adds that it's like years were cut off their life, which make Paimon react strongly and say that it sound bad "when you put it like that." But like... accelerated aging also sounds bad, especially given what we experienced with Teppei. To me, cutting years off their life doesn't really sound worse. Presumably there's some CN wording that was lost here.

Anyway, these are pretty minor things. Overall, it's a perfectly fine, rather high-effort for a seasonal event. It's just designed for fans first and foremost, rather than a standalone story, so it's not exactly going to do much for you if you're not a fan of Liyue already.

[baeshijima]

Sophieee happy lantern rite!!

Done with the first quest of the event just as the second one is out, but I'll be doing that later cause— story time!

I was close to 5* pity on the chronicled wish, and me being me, thought that "oh Baizhu's really pretty— ahem, I mean he works great with Furina!" which is good because my best teams are dendro related (my bias is showing again—) and I was like "dope, I'll pull, and hope I get either Baizhu, or perhaps Shenhe for my Ganyu and future Wriothesley!"

...I was still in the process of leveling up Mavuika, and slowly Sethos too, but Baizhu snatched up first priority— HE CAME HOMEE!!!!

Yes, so now I'm indecisive between spending resin on the exp books for Mavuika or Baizhu, and leveling up Baizhu's weapon talents plus his ascension too haha...

Well, at least he's home and he really goes heal a lot, I get the fanfare stacks so quickly stacked I'm actually quite impressed!!

And I also played the Natlan AQ and... and... omg... (I suppose I'll be vague in case you haven't played it yet, so no worries for spoilers!)

I've seen a lot of people complaining about it— and the rest going on about "capitano please be playable!" (the latter being so relatable—), so I was actually kinda confused with the mixed reactions, and so stayed away from spoilers as much as I could (although little tid-bits here and there were unavoidable), but I'd say I was pretty much on the edge of my seat for the cutscenes because— they're great?! I mean, I kinda understand some people's points that we didn't really connect with the Natlan playable characters, for example the way we did in Fontaine— but imo I think I do quite like the Natlan cast and the nation too, so I'm kinda confused with the whole thing, but anyways— I had fun! I hope you do/did too!!

Speaking of which, the 5.4 livestream!! Wriothesley's back after being locked away in hoyo's cryo jail!!! Which means I'm not pulling for Arlecchino anymore... so that means Xiangling can continue enjoying the fancy polearm... (And speaking of fancy polearm, side eyes alt account where the vortex vanquisher is being passed around as the underleveled polearm characters as they decide what to do with it...)

Oh this ask got kinda long oopies hehe— anyways, January is coming to a close already... wow time really does fly (I won't say when you're having fun because I was studying for my bio exam which actually went really well but that does nothing to soothe my worries because— gets bonked for overthinking.)

Hope January has been pleasant and that the other coming months will be loads more enjoyable!!

(ps: lantern rite first quest teensy spoiler/references— (I was giggling through the quest almost entirely because in the first half I was thinking of the spiderman pointing at each other meme when I took baizhu into bubu pharmacy, and then the whole conversation with zhongli was ironic because tea master liu su not knowing that rex lapis was right. there. beside him— and zhongli with the coin is a sight to behold lmao— and paimon's dialogue she'd be easier convinced that rex lapis was a slime when zhongli was right there— I love paimon omg))

🍀

HAPPY LANTERN RITE CLOVER NONNIE !! YAHOO FELLOW BAIZHU HAVERS ARISE 😩😩 hehe im glad u managed to get him !! stacking all the hp on him so he never dies <33

and i still havent done any of the new genshin quests 😭 since its lantern rite i will definitely at least do that but maybe its bc so much is happening (cough uni crushing me with the assignments and research cough) that i barely have the energy to sit through them ;w; once i actually start the quest i should be fine tho <//3 but i can see ur point abt natlan !! i think the main issue ppl really have is that natlan as a whole didnt live up to their expectations of what the region would represent, and on top of that the harbinger everyone liked having... that happen to him... but it really is just each to their own bc we all have our own preferences

AND I SAW LIKE ??? HELLO ??????? WRIOTHESLEY REAL??????? first shenhe (kinda) rerun and now wrio rerun right after.... welcome back king u were mia for so long i was starting to think u were a fever dream..... (NOT THE ACC WITH VORTEX 😭)

stop... zhongli being the Normal Guy™ that he totally is a must in lantern rite and im so excited to see him fool absolutely no one that he isnt some divine being yet again 😭

[umbrabilis-orchis]

Head in my hands rn. Head in my hands.

There are a lot of issues here that I'm sure have been talked to death but I'm going to lay out my two cents anyway.

1. People are right, why tf is Sumeru a conglomeration of cultures rather than taking inspiration from one country or group specifically, like the rest of the regions we have so far? Grouping the entire Middle East with the entirety of Southeast Asia for some... mishmash aesthetic looks dumb and is just really doing a disservice to every culture you're trying to take inspiration from. It would've been much better to pick a specific area and stick with that.

2. I'd ask why Genshin designers are afraid of making characters with dark skin, but I know the answer is because dark skinned characters don't make money in their view. Genshin Impact is first and foremost a waifu/husbando simulator and unfortunately, colorism is rampant not only across the main CN and JP markets, but the rest of the world too. Pale skin is seen as a very desirable trait while anything darker than a light tan is not. Hence, it is safer for Hoyoverse to make light skinned characters because they know that's what the beauty standard is. Obviously this sucks major ass and is not right at all, but since when have companies really cared about anything other than profit? Especially gacha games, who are designed to suck the most money out of you as possible?

3. Everyone doing redesigns of the current Sumeru characters are doing the Lord's work. It is clear to me and hopefully anyone else with eyes that a lot of these characters would look much better if they had darker skin and outfits that weren't just... vague amalgamations of... some kind of culture. Looking at the leaked designs, it is really hard to tell what real world cultural designs and motifs most of them are supposed to be referencing. (Again, see point 1). And for some, like Dori, they're just straight up stereotypes, which is arguably worse.

4. AFAIK, there are more dark skinned characters in the works, and hopefully that balances the Sumeru cast out more, but that still doesn't excuse all of this nonsense. I'm really worried about the trend this is setting... Natlan is supposed to be based off of Mesoamerica, but with the way things are going with Sumeru, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with even more light skinned people instead of dark skinned ones. I also don't really trust Hoyo to handle Natlan with any kind of tact; having a region based on Central America be themed after violence and war is already playing pretty dangerously into stereotype territory. My expectations are already 6 feet under and I'm sure I'll still be disappointed.

5. I'll be honest, I have no idea what to do about any of this. Obviously the players are right to be mad and should voice their concerns to the rest of the playerbase and Hoyoverse themselves, but I think we're all aware at this point that Hoyo doesn't give a damn about the surveys and replies to emails with just bot answers. It seems highly unlikely to me that they will do anything about this, unless they feel like they're going to lose a significant amount of money because of it. I mean, they caved when everyone got on them about the anniversary rewards, and arguably this is much more important than that! But really, who knows. I guess just make your opinion known to Hoyoverse and if push comes to shove be ready to pack up and leave unless the criticism is acknowledged. You have to be serious about not giving them any money, or else they won't listen. They have to know it is more profitable to listen and respond to criticism than it is to ignore it and be ignorant.

I think that about covers my opinion on all of this. Remember to think critically about what you see and hear, and to do your own research before coming up with answers to your questions. I, and no one else in the tag, or on Twitter or Reddit or anywhere else, is a 100% expert on any of these issues, and it behooves you as a consumer to gather information from all sides of an issue before coming to a conclusion.