#theres like. so much more in honkai

[flutteringfable]

was sitting at a single digit amount of jades after pulling robin yesterday, and now i'm already almost back to 3k. genshin could NEVER

[j1913]

me when aventurine☹️☹️

lyrics from this song

[shoezuki]

Okay I'm still on the cocolia lie bullshit but what gets me SO BAD bout it is that gepard. Of all fucking people. IS ALSO LIED TO????

like during the flashbacks before the preservation notices us we see him fucking nearly breaking down to cocolia because he's watched the soldiers under his command not just die to the fragmemtum but become corrupted by it. Like. Gepard's character is so sure and steadfast and unwavering but in that flashback he was nearly falling apart when saying that the men they lost didn't actually die. Like he really saw first hand as people he knew and trained with become corrupted and twisted by the fragmentum. And cocolia DIDNT CARE. She just told him she knew the 'risks' and told him to leave.

But like everyone else Gepard is led to believe that cocolia WASNT cold and heartless. He's just supposed to believe that the countless people sent to their deaths was FOR SOMETHING? that they weren't literally used to feed the stellaron???? Like it's sooooooo fucked up. Of all people gepard should know the truth like motherfucker was used and abused by cocolia and yet he continues to ascertain that the countless orders he took and deaths he saw were Right.

[elegyofthemoon]

also to anyone who plays honkai, does anyone have other translations of the game? aside from the official?

i feel like i talked about this with a friend, but the translations just. don't line up with what's being said a lot of the time and it's slightly driving me insane x - x

[tea-cat-arts]

Your rant about honkai's characters looking generic when compared to WfM's character designs (which i fucking love too) reminded me how a while back genshintwt accused honkai's male characters of all looking the same and honkaitwt lost their fucking mind, and as much as I love our honkai bois I'm not going to sit here and pretend their designs are revolutionary (especially since they made Carole's mom look more masculine than 80% of the male designs they've created, and I still haven't forgotten Kiana describing Himeko as a "valkyrie with beefy arms", what a joke)

Genshintwt accused honkai men of all looking the same???? Genshin???? The fandom that lusts after the 20 dudes with almost the exact same body type/shape and absolutely looses their minds over the slightest bit of muscle/booba???? Oh that's hilarious.

Like, the honkai men also look pretty similar for the most part (minus Siegfried and sometimes Welt depending on who drew him). I just think that's a bit of the pot calling the kettle black there.

But ya, hoyo has a running problem with describing characters bodies as one way and just... not modeling it. Aside from the Himeko example you brought up, there's also a bunch of characters going up to Kevin and going "woah! You look so athletic," Baizhu being described as looking sickly, Beidou being described as tall and buff, Ganyu gaining weight easily... I'm pretty sure there's more instances, these are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. Idk man, I just feel like if your fandom is surprised that one of your main characters is canonically scrawny, there's a bit of a design problem

The whole thing just makes me find Witch from Mercury's character designs incredibly refreshing. It's just nice to see a series that takes a pretty typical anime art style and use it to depict so many of the different ways people can look.

[ominous-horse-noises]

as someone who fell off of genshin for similar reasons (gameplay loop became meaningless busywork way too quickly, the story became too self-referential and unfocused, etc.), i also want to add that i feel like the writers wrote themselves into a corner from the start with the traveler.

the traveler's motivations are kind of counterintuitive to the interests of players. from lumine's (the twin i played) perspective, she wants as little interaction with this world as possible, and thus any story conflict she's drawn into has to be kind of against her will. sure, lumine can make connections with the characters, but genshin isnt really written well enough to express a lot of those relationships as organic and a meaningful obstacle to her objective of grabbing her twin and leaving teyvat. there are exceptions (xiao, for instance, has actually been built up to have a close bond with the traveler specifically), but overall, the writing strongly implies that if it wasnt useful for her to be helping others, she would have stopped by now.

full admission, i stopped playing soon after sumeru dropped- partly because i had gotten bored with the gameplay, and partly because a lot of the new mechanics and puzzles introduced were too dense to parse easily. however, from streamers i watch who've played up to fontaine, there seems to have been an overarching arc of the traveler's good nature being taken advantage of so often and for so long that they're starting to become embittered over having to lend a hand at all in all threads of the plot- because the writers keep having characters (usually the archons or similarly high ranking members in each nation's society) promise them progress and then go 'teehee guess i can't help you after all' in a cycle that feels a little like the writers taunting the players themselves.

now, i say this is counterintuitive to the players because the players WANT to linger in the world. they want to get to know all the characters, they want to explore every inch of the map for puzzles and chests, they want to do all the quests, they want to understand the lore. so now the story is caught between inventing more and more grating reasons why the traveler has to get involved with the narrative of the world against their will, the characters seem more and more like assholes for being able to provide nothing useful in return (bc as op accurately pinpointed, the writers keep holding their story cards tight to their chests), and the traveler becomes more exhausted and cynical about doing the things that the player is playing the game to do. its basically a running joke in the fandom at this point.

the difference between botw having a similar 'racing to save someone dear to the protagonist but getting involved in the minutiae of an open world' and genshin is that botw is VERY clear why link can't just grab a few overpowered allies and run straight for the castle. in genshin, because the story is so bloated and yet underdeveloped, the player doesn't get a real sense of the scope of the danger beyond cryptic allusion and other characters just saying so.

and the tragic thing is hoyo knows this is, objectively, a bad set up to tell a story like this from, because the first thing they did with the protagonist of honkai: star rail (i have complaints about the storytelling from the second world, but overall, the writing is head and shoulders above genshin by every metric) is give them no past and stick them on a crew of people who are literal do-gooders. amnesia is a cheap writing trick for player avatars, but it ends up working because the avatar is put with a group of people whose whole motivation is to travel and help others, which gives them an easy and plausible reason to get involved in conflicts of both A plot and C/D plot importance.

so. uh. in short, writing a protagonist whose express purpose is to get out of the world the entire game takes place in as soon as possible punishes players who want to try and be immersed in the story and their avatar's goals with endless frustration.

i kinda really wanna see a big ol vent/rant from you about genshin now lol. I would read an essay

I'm not sure you understand the insanity you just unlocked in me but ok

genshin impact is probably the clearest modern example i can think of of capitalism absolutely eviscerating a creative project. For context, I started playing genshin in 2021, just after the 1.4 update. it was venti's first rerun/the first windblume festival if that means something to you. and I really genuinely thought that it might have had something special. It was a gacha that didn't FEEL like a gacha, which was a huge feat to me.

it began with a very simple story pitch--you, the protagonist, are one of a set of twin siblings traveling through space. you come upon a seemingly unassuming world and your attempts to continue your journey are suddenly stopped by a mysterious, all-powerful figure. you are separated from your sibling and wake up alone on the shores of this planet you were attempting to leave together. throughout that opening cutscene and scattered through the world and your character's dialog there are implications that all is not as it seems, that your character is something unique to this world and that they possess powers and abilities that you've yet to unlock. You are told that you must travel the seven nations of this world in order to find your sibling, which is great--a simple, zelda-like objective which drives the player to explore the secondary narratives of the world. none of this is bad on the surface. in fact i'd argue it's pretty good. there's a ton that can be done with these story bones. even at launch the map and combat system were full of potential as well.

Note: for ease of reading, i'm going to label the different storylines of the game now. A-plot refers to the central objective of the entire game; the find-your-sibling plot and everything that encompasses, including the abyss order/dain, the heavenly principles, the fake sky, etc. B-plot refers to the secondary objective present in each new nation, usually meeting the archon and/or solving a problem for the archon. (A and B-plots will occasionally intersect.) C-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which remains in permanent gameplay but which isn't directly related to the A or B-plots, such as dragonspine, the chasm, enkanomiya, etc. D-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which is confined to limited-time events and does NOT remain in permanent gameplay, regardless of its connection or lack thereof to the A and B-plots, such as the golden apple archipelago, the infamous albedo/dragonspine event, the infamous kaeya/diluc event, etc. Lore as i will refer to it in this post refers to any information which is present in permanent gameplay but which is not directly told to the player within the A or B-plot story quests and objectives, including books, weapon, artifact, and item descriptions, world quest dialog and puzzles, etc.

So now we're in mid-2021, there are two nations' worth of B-plot story quests released in full, and we've run into our first problem, which is that the game isn't finished yet. I don't have any actual information about how the game was/is written, but based on what i've observed over the past few years, my best guess is that the A-plot has been fully written since the beginning, at least in some form. there were very early-game events and information pertaining to the A-plot that would take years to see any actual payoff in the main story quests (kaeya's origin story, the 1.3 scaramouche fake-sky drop, the flowers in lumine's hair, etc.) but those kinds of A-plot story easter eggs very quickly dropped off when the game absolutely EXPLODED during the pandemic.

this sudden burst in popularity was the true beginning of the end for genshin, i think, because suddenly they had a HUGE fanbase that desperately wanted more content faster than they could pump out new A-plot or even B-plot story quests. one of the most pervasive complaints about the game when I began playing in 2021 was that there was nothing to do between story quests. update 1.4 (which was the update I started playing at) was important in that it was the first time since genshin's release over a year before that players recieved any new A-plot, in the form of the archon quest We Will Be Reunited, also known as the quest with the most fucking misleading name of all time. you'll never guess what doesn't fucking happen during this quest. anyways. we were a year into gameplay, two nations out of seven released and a third on the not-so-distant horizon, and it seemed obvious that players were owed some sort of A-plot payoff. and that's very much what WWBR was advertised as, from the quest's name to the banners full of art of the twins staring wistfully at each other. The thing is, what i'm describing as A-plot payoff was actually. not really A-plot payoff at all. WWBR was the reveal that the protagonist's sibling was working with the abyss order, and that the abyss order was connected somehow to Khaenri'ah, which at this point casual players would only have known about from THAT QUEST and MAYBE kaeya's character descriptions if they were diligent enough to get him to friendship level 10 (which, btw there is no indication that you should do to get important context about the story of the game, because kaeya is a 4-star starter character and the only character in the entire game that actually has genuinely important story hidden in his character descriptions.) So what I'm calling A-plot payoff felt at the time a lot less like A-plot payoff than it did like an abyss sibling cameo in an attempt to satiate everyone who was begging for more story. We actually gained almost net 0 information. this is very quickly going to become a pattern.

As I've already alluded to, the motives behind this writing decision are transparently obvious. Genshin is a free gacha game which relies on a consistently active and engaged userbase to make its money. With fans getting restless about the lack of engaging story at the time and a new, very ambitious B-plot quest gearing up for release that would require major support from that fan base in order to remain profitable, the writers were backed into a corner. they HAD to throw the fans some sort of bone in order to keep them engaged with the A-plot, since it was originally pitched as the driving force for the story as a whole, but they were also clearly not at a stage of the writing process where it was prudent to give the player any REAL information about the A-plot. This is how we ended up with a 10-second abyss sibling cameo and an offhanded mention of Khaenri'ah, a nation whose plot-relevance was at that point still basically unknown.

The real problem is, WWBR worked. at least, it worked as intended at the time. It satiated story-focused fans in the interlude between B-plot nations, as hyv was gearing up to release inazuma, which required a lot of time in preparation. WWBR was followed almost immediately by the C-plot golden apple archipelago in 1.6, widely regarded as one of the better events of version 1. GAA was memorable especially because it was the first event that involved an entirely new, limited-time-only map, meaning the event had much more longevity than the standard events players were used to. This is, imo, most likely the update combination that led to the standard formula which hyv uses for its quests and events nowadays. the back-to-back release of WWBR and GAA satisfied both fans who wanted A-plot story AND silenced criticisms about the game lacking endgame playability, which at the time must have seemed like a goldmine to writers desperate for a solution to their content-to-fanbase ratio problem.

From here, genshin started following a standard method of release for their next three nations--inazuma, sumeru, and fontaine. the formula generally went as follows: one major version update (usually version x.0) containing a major map update which included all B-plot relevant locations in the new nation, and the first chapter of the B-plot story quest relevant to that nation. this would then be followed by 2-3 version updates which would each contain the next chapter in the nation's B-plot story quest, sequentially. After the nation's B-plot quest ended, during the downtime in which the next nation's story and map would be finalized, subsequent updates would be largely C-plot, and would contain minor expansions of the map to increase endgame playability via exploration and world quests. This is how we ended up with updates like the chasm, the several extra islands in inazuma, and the quite frankly ridiculously large sumeru map, as well as the offloaded maps like enkanomiya and the sea of bygone eras. with the possible exception of the chasm, none of these areas are A OR B-plot relevant. hyv has realized that artificially inflating the map makes their game technically more engaging during the downtime between nations. However, this comes at a price. While the scenery and set design of the game remains consistently beautiful, the actual, mechanical gameplay that populates that scenery very quickly became mind-numbingly boring if not borderline unplayable. While the 1.0 questlines were not perfect, there was at least an emphasis on the player actually DOING things. 1.0 B-plot quests would have you going to mini-dungeon temples and completing challenges which would acclimate you to the combat system while also serving narrative purpose. There were quests that required you to navigate open-world dungeons. Because your characters were lower-level, combat challenges that arose during these quests were CHALLENGES, rather than two-second buttonmashing segments. By the time we get to sumeru, though, both B-plot AND C-plot quests have become little more than moving your character from location to location and tapping through (usually unvoiced) dialog. there's no GAMEPLAY in the quests anymore, because gameplay isn't what makes money. What DOES make money is giving players 300 hidden chests to find in an open-world map segment, each of which gives them 1/80th of a gacha pull. And so the story suffers and the map gets bigger.

Along with the map expansions, downtime between nations usually also nets us one A-plot quest, usually involving the character dainslief, who was the driver of the initial WWBR quest. This is the second half of hyv's magical formula for keeping fans happy between major releases. the A-plot quests will, as a general rule, give players either very little new information or no new information at all, but will dress up the delivery in such a way that it ALMOST feels as though the protagonist has moved forward somehow. the most recent example of this writing style, the 4.7 quest bedtime story, amounts to about an hour and a half of gameplay and, while it DOES contain a segment in which the protagonist finally actually has a conversation with their sibling, that conversation literally begins with the line "I have so many questions, but for some reason I don't want to ask them right now," ensuring that the sibling will not actually be required to give away any plot-relevant information whatsoever, and the quest ends with the protagonist FORGETTING THAT THE CONVERSATION EVER HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

As I think I mentioned before, the cardinal problem of genshin impact's writing is that fans want answers faster than the writers are prepared to give them. I don't doubt that there's a game bible or relevant equivalent somewhere within hyv which contains the explanations we are currently lacking in regards to the A-plot. the game is consistent enough in its storytelling for me to believe that this isn't all just being made up as we go along. But I'm also certain that a lot of the late-game A and B-plot that is planned (especially if the Khaenri'ah is truly planned to be the 8th nation of the game) hinges on the player knowing very little about the A-plot. this would be fine if genshin was a standard single-release video game that players could work through at their own pace, but it isn't. it's unfinished, and each nation in the game releases months to years after the last, leaving the writers to scramble to fill in the gameplay gaps and players struggling to remember plot-relevant information when it's brought up literal years after they last heard it mentioned. Not only does the time between updates leave players frustrated about the lack of A-plot, it makes the A-plot harder to understand when it is brought up, because the writers are required to throw in so much dense C and D-plot just to keep engagement high enough to make the game profitable in its downtime. we joke about the insane convolution of genshin's lore, but that is first and foremost a byproduct of its financial model. the game requires engaement to be profitable, and adding lore for players to look into drives up engagement. The fact that having so much story with so little plot relevance muddies the waters and makes the A and B-plot stories considerably harder to understand doesn't matter as long as money is being made.

I want to take a quick detour here to talk about the release of sumeru specifically, because this is when I really began to clock the fact that genshin was declining. on paper, racial sensitivity issues aside (Not that they're not important, but i'm doing this deep dive from a storytelling and game design point of view, nothing else. that's a whole can of worms i don't have time to get into here) sumeru was a really promising addition to the game. The new B-plot quest which was set to drop in 3.0 was highly anticipated for several reasons. Two fan-favorite characters (kaeya and scaramouche) were expected to play major roles, because of earlier C and B-plot quests, and much of the nation's scenery that was teased in trailers and promotional content appeared to tie into the A-plot. the most exciting draw about sumeru and version 3.0, though, was the major update to the combat system.

Arguably genshin impact's most interesting feature upon release was its combat system. The map was basically a botw clone at that point, and the story quests, while decently engaging, were rough around the edges to say the least. What genshin DID have going for it was a unique real-time combat system that rewarded strategy and quick thinking.

Genshin's combat system is elemental, and on release there were 6 elemental affiliations: anemo (wind), cryo (ice), pyro (fire), hydro (water), geo (rock), and electro (electricity.) in a sort of pokemon-like system, certain elements were weak to other ones, but more importantly, certain combinations of elements could drastically boost combat stats. Players got to construct four-slot teams of characters, each with an elemental affiliation and certain "skills" which would match their element, and you were encouraged to use the interactions of these elements to build teams. very quickly, a huge community formed dedicated to optimizing teams and tiering characters. People would even make a game out of building teams specifically to do high-level damage with "bad" characters or characters who weren't designed to be damage drivers (my 100k jean burst was an incredible moment fr.) this was, of course, also a picture-perfect driver for the gacha aspect of the game, which was how players obtained new characters.

Pre-3.0, combat was... well i won't say it was balanced, but there was no elemental reaction that had any MAJOR advantage over the others. when you actually ran the numbers, i believe vaporize was the best reaction in terms of damage output, with the best team being raiden national with kazuha for EM buffs. but a well-built freeze or melt team could do similar numbers, or even better numbers depending on your artifact rolls. (ayaka permafreeze you will always be my #1.) Despite a steady stream of new characters with each update, characters from the earliest version of the game like xingqiu and xiangling were still topping the charts in terms of usefulness and versatility in teambuilding. However, as early as 1.0, players had been teased that a major update to the combat system was planned. There was a seventh element, dendro (plants) which pre-3.0 only existed as an elemental affiliation for menial enemies. there were no playable dendro characters, and the only elemental reaction that existed relating to it was very low-level and not particularly useful in combat.

Originally, dendro was projected to be added to the combat system somewhere in version 2, but its release was delayed substantially, meaning it came out along with its affiliated nation, sumeru. And as soon as it came out, it basically broke the combat system. I assume that the scaling they ended up going with may have been out of fear that players would be hesitant to integrate a new element into their pre-established team builds, and thus they may have been worried about sales on their dendro character banners, and i assume that the fact that 3 elements are required to get the highest-level reaction was an attempt to make the meta more balanced in the face of that scaling, but, well... it didn't work. At this point, the genshin impact combat meta is basically "if you're not using hyperbloom what the fuck are you doing." there's basically no reaction in the game that comes close to it in terms of both damage and ease of use. you are not going to beat a hyperbloom team with anything other than a better-built hyperbloom team. combat is now very heavily skewed in the direction of dendro, meaning that if you DON'T want to use a dendro team, you're going to be doing significantly lower numbers. And since enemies are added with each update, post-3.0 combat becomes difficult and annoying if you don't have a hyperbloom team on-hand.

The major gripe i have with dendro isn't even the scaling, though. I mentioned offhand earlier that the 1.0 B-plot questline had a section which taught you the basics of the combat system via mini-dungeons. These mini-dungeons, of course, taught you the version of the system that existed pre-3.0, so there's no tutorial for dendro reactions. Rather than integrating the tutorial into the story and world like they did in their early quests, upon playing 3.0 for the first time players were given a popup that explained, very wordily, how dendro reactions worked. there was no opportunity to test these reactions in an environment without consequences--if you wanted to try them you'd have to remember the relevant information, build yourself a team, find an enemy to try them on, and just hope you got it right. This lack of integration is something i began to notice more and more with genshin as it progressed, especially in sumeru. where in mondstadt and liyue open-world puzzles would be explained to you by an npc or via environmental context clues, in sumeru you'd be stopped while exploring every two seconds by a popup explaining some puzzle or another which, of course, you wouldn't read, because you didn't want to do the puzzle right that minute anyway, and then by the time you DID want to do that puzzle you'd have no in-game way of figuring out how to do it. The puzzle popups may seem like a small thing, but it's one of the clearest examples in the game to me of the fact that the player experience is so clearly not being prioritized here. the game doesn't even TRY to be immersive anymore. they have no qualms about pulling you out of the story to read a paragraph about how the puzzle works. they don't care how your character, in-universe, is supposed to have acquired that information. they don't care why your character, in-universe, is doing the puzzle in the first place. because they know the reason YOU are doing the puzzle, which is to unlock a hidden chest that gives you 1/80th of a gacha pull.

That was not "a quick detour" was it lmfao. ok anyways. back to the story. Now i want to talk about D-plot, meaning limited event stories, and lore as i defined it earlier, meaning contextual details not present in quests or playable story. This is where i think genshin's story becomes completely inaccessible.

Already, we've covered the fact that in order to consume the very basic story, players have to be willing to wait years between A and B-plot quest releases, punctuated by irrelevant map expansions and interlude quests. I mentioned before that genshin's incompleteness is one of the major problems of its story. the fact that players have to wait years, remembering plot-relevant information that they have no way of knowing will even BE plot-relevant, for the payoff of these narratives is frustrating at best and actively malicious at worst. But in theory, there should be an obvious way to circumvent this. One could just wait until the game IS completely finished to play the whole thing. Sort of like buying a game in early access but waiting until it's actually finished to play it all the way through. that's theoretically possible. but, as i have been hammering home this whole time, genshin is a free game, and therefore genshin relies entirely on a consistently engaging fanbase in order to remain profitable. if genshin does not have a base of players who are willing to log in every day, or at the very least once every update, the game's financial model collapses on itself. therefore, genshin puts on limited-time events. this is a standard in gacha games, as a way to keep the fans consistently engaging. What is not standard, however, is the way that genshin uses these events as vessels for its story. about 19 out of 20 limited events in genshin impact will be useless menial bullshit with no effect on the story or really even the player aside from maybe making you fucking angry. 1 out of those 20, though, will be innocuously named, with nothing in the banner or event description to indicate that it's special in any way, but it will contain serious A or B-plot relevant information that exists nowhere else in the game. My personal favorite example is the infamous 1.3 scaramouche appearance, in which he showed up, told the protagonist that the sky was fake, and then immediately fucked off again. Scaramouche did not show up again until at least 2.0, and the fake sky wasn't so much as MENTIONED again until 3.2, almost TWO YEARS LATER. but there are others, such as the (almost equally infamous) albedo doppelganger event in which a major character's loyalties are called into question, or the event where major biographical information is revealed about kaeya, the only playable character with major known connections to the A-plot and Khaenri'ah. With all of these events, once the event period ends, the information contained within them vanishes from the game completely. there's no way to replay old events that you've missed, even sans rewards, so if you miss a plot-relevant event the ONLY way to catch up on that story is through word of mouth. again, this is a transparent way to keep genshin's userbase engaged during downtime between B-plot quests; if you don't log in and play every event, how will you know if you've missed something important? You might not be able to fully understand the future story if you miss out on the D-plot now!

The D-plot problem is something that I think could, in theory, be circumvented by dedicated record-keeping. if the wiki had anything resembling an easily accessible event database that marked story-relevant events and contained summaries or gameplay videos, at the very least you wouldn't have to fear being completely lost on the off chance that a random throwaway line in an event from fucking 1.3 becomes plot-relevant. but hyv obviously doesn't want that, because it undermines their financial model, and the sheer number of events and the amount of rerunning of irrelevant events they do makes the task of recording and categorizing them all daunting if not impossible.

Then, of course, there's lore. this is arguably what genshin is infamous for in certain circles of the internet. You know that unraveled video where bdg reads every book in skyrim? if you tried to do that with genshin the video would probably be about 10 hours long. and it's not just books; genshin hides (potentially) plot-relevant information in weapon and artifact descriptions, in random hidden world quests, in character bios... the list goes on. and 9 times out of 10, the information is essentially written in code. Plot-relevant characters will have multiple names, or the relevant information will refer to them as vaguely as possible, presumably to further the "mystery" and encourage theorizing among fans. but the sheer amount of information like this that exists within the game makes it all but impossible to determine what is plot-relevant and what isn't. For a topical example, the most recent A-plot quest bedtime story mentions the name Rhinedottir in connection with events in Khaenri'ah, suddenly making that name A-plot relevant. Rhinedottir is an alternate name for the character Gold, whose existence you would only have known of before this point if you'd unlocked and read the character Albedo's character bios. (Albedo is a limited-run character who hasn't been available since november 2022, btw.) the only other information about Rhinedottir permanently available in the game comes from the description of the weapon Festering Desire, which was only obtainable from a limited event back in 2020, anyway. So basically, if you wanted ANY context for that remark, you'd have to have been playing the game since AT LEAST 2022, AND you'd have to have taken the time to go over your weapon and character descriptions with a fine-toothed comb. keep in mind that as of right now (june 2024) there are 85 playable characters in this game, each with 10 unique unlockable character bio sections, and over 150 weapons, each with their own unique descriptions, not to mention over 50 artifact sets, each with 5 unique artifacts, which all have their own unique descriptions as well. there are also 51 different collections of books which contain written lore as well. the idea that any player could keep up with all this, or that anyone could even sift through it all to pick out the important things that they NEED to keep up with, is insane, especially when the game makes a point of withholding crucial plot information from its players within the A and B-plot quests. this amount of written lore only exists, again, to drive up engagement in the hopes of subsequently driving up profit. Even if the average player isn't reading and absorbing all this information, the fact that it's there coupled with the fact that the writers consistently refuse to reveal anything beyond surface-level A-plot information means that there's basically ENDLESS theory fodder. and THAT means that people will be posting their theories and talking with each other and getting into arguments. it means "genshin impact" trends on twitter. it means engagement, and engagement means money.

basically what it comes back to is that everything is so transparently money over player experience with this game. I think what we're witnessing with genshin is what i would call an end-stage gacha game--a gacha game that's gone on a little too long and gotten a little too popular, and so the veil has started to slip a little more than usual. Gachas work primarily because they operate by toeing the line between what is fun to play and what is a predatory mechanic. As long as the actual gameplay remains engaging and rewarding, players can ignore the unsavory business practices underneath. At this point, genshin has swerved too hard into the money-hungriness and is still hoping that they can use their old tried-and-true engagement farming methods to remain popular regardless. currently, it seems like those methods are still working, unfortunately. Like I said in the post that prompted this, i really can't wait for the hyv writer NDAs to expire 10 or so years down the line, because I can only imagine what an insane shitshow writing for this game must be. I want to see the tell-all articles. I want carnage.

That being said, I played genshin impact religiously from 2020 to 2023. I loved the game. Despite myself, I am still really, REALLY interested in the A-plot. I want to know what's going on with the protagonist and their sibling; where they came from, what happened to them, what the heavenly principles are, what role celestia plays in all of this. I want to know Kaeya's full backstory, what role Khaenri'ah plays in the overarching story, and what happened to it in the past. but I don't really have any faith that I ever will, because I know that as long as keeping their fans in the dark and stringing them along remains profitable, that's what hyv will continue to do.

Do I think genshin impact is unsalvagable? in its current state, yes. If I was given the ability to turn back time and convince a bunch of executives of the profitability of this venture, I would change almost nothing about the story of genshin and completely rework the mechanics of its release. I would make it a series of single-release self-contained games rather than a constantly-updating gacha. Each game would be one B-plot quest, or one nation, eight games in all, preferably released once every year. Removing the gacha mechanic, players would be given access to a certain pool of characters to build teams at the start of each game, and then periodically unlock new characters as the story progressed. for example, if you were playing the inazuma game, you'd start out with only your protag, and after progressing to a certain point in the story you'd get a pool of inazuma 4-stars to teambuild with freely. Then, as the story progressed and you met plot-relevant inazuman 5-stars you'd add them to your pool. I'd change basically nothing about the combat system except for a properly integrated introduction of dendro when it makes its appearance in sumeru. Once you completed the story in that nation, you could move onto the next game in the series if it was out, or if it wasn't, you could continue to explore the open world while waiting for the next release. Would this be as profitable as the gacha model? probably not, but what it WOULD do is allow for much more consistent pacing and writing, with the added bonus of not making your userbase feel like you'd shoot them in the head for their pocket change.

[lostiolite]

Two request ideas (sorry if that’s too much)! One for my boy Hyuk (I’m down bad ofc I’m gonna ask for him) and one for Hyun because I have a cute angst/comfort idea.

One - Some basic Hyuk romance headcanons. How does he deal with and express his feelings, how does he confess, what is he like in the relationship, etc.

Two - Can be a fic or headcanon. Hyun obviously has gone through a lot, so how would he open up to his S/O about everything? What topic does he lean towards first and how does it come up? Can work both in universe or even no-apocalypse AU.

LEE EUN HYUK romantic headcannons

(dw ill do the hyun one, just in a separate post :P)

when it comes to most things, Hyuk best shows his affection through silly actions and jokes. “If you really loved me, you’d binge watch the entirety of maria with me ^_^". In return he'd probably play/watch/read that one piece of media you’re obsessed with.

If he goes out and sees anything related to the media you really like, he'd buy it and say something like "i thought of you". It would be an unconscious thing, before he'd realize he likes you. Obviously the buying of little trinkets catches the attention of his little sister. They aren't too well off & buying treats is usually reserved for special occasions.

I feel like when he realizes his feelings he'd be conflicted on wether to go for it or not. Esp eun, she really likes you and really wants hyuk to pull bitches. 💯💯💯

She'd probably not-so subtly try and interogate your opinion on him. To which he lowkey panics because he doesn't want things to get awkward.

He would make flirty jokes then immediately retract them because he feels like its out of place.

He can be serious, just he perfers not to.

But he has to.

He'd probably ask you out outside so if things go south he could just leave and lock himself in his room.

Hes very thoughtful, he already knows who you are, what you are and the type of things you like / dislike.

Generally hes very protective, i dont feel like he'd be jealous all that often. Theres definitely anxiety in him that makes him think that you would leave him for somone "better" but hes also very rational and will ignore it because he knows its not true.

I feel like in the very rare occasions where those thoughts do get to him, he'd become a bit more attention seeking. "Would you love me if i became a worm? :P" he'd ask you stupid silly questions because he doesn't wanna go "do you love me???" .

Arcade dates. Gaming dates. Plays sims with you and your sims are married btw, Your bed's are together in Minecraft, he visits your island all the time in animal crossing, he does your commissions in genshin / Honkai impact/star rail.

Love's doing the stupid crane games with you.

You've memorized the maria lore, because hyuk always plays it as background noise. You somtimes just lay down in each others presence not doing anything, its nice, its calm.

HALLOWEEN!!!! You cosplayed as maria in the sky characters btw!!!!

Matching pfp's on your socials, he doesn't really post

If you post alot, your friends are so confused cus whos the guy that you tag in your photos with a matching pfp.

--------

Lowkey wanna do a smau (social media au) with hyuk but i fear id mischaracterize him💔

[iodrawsandtalks]

rhetorical.

why are nb people so casual about accepting media with racist remarks or historical erasure and then stigmatizing our reactions if we show them.

im mainly miffed rn about how we got Jade in Honkai: Star Rail rn who uses a whole ass whip and has said “slaves should be obedient to their masters”. And like where is the rage. Why is nobody mad there is a whole ass slave mistress in their big game.

Or why both honkai and genshin games continually market cultural appropriation that conveniently is no longer a problem when its black culture

i kept getting hit with the media literacy excuse like brother you need HISTORICAL literacy

Man i just want to play my games without having to put up with a monkey getting whipped, with a euphemism for a character crazy about watermelons and chickens, or even black characters having lightning/chains.

Like its not my fault im in anime circles and like that kind of content. Its not my fault that I’m born black either.

And like if we apply this to like a 10 year period there are much more examples like the little mermaid incident. I get people hate disney, their cashgrabs, and bad CGI but people were making fun of little black girls they never met because they couldnt understand why a black girl would want to see a black ariel. Why must the problem boil down to racism and why are people who have never experienced it there to dismiss it.

Or that time that final fantasy director said putting black people in the fantasy with ELVES and multi headed birds would affect historical accuracy.

Like are selfless people just rare? Can NOBODY understand societal issues they’ve never suffered? Why do people not fight racism for the sake of those who will come after us??

I’m not selfish if i get mad that some game is insensitive, i get mad on behalf of younger black people entering media spaces like me and feeling like killing themselves like i did. It never stops. And people will put their own issues above everybody else’s. I couldn’t stand using twt as a black guy bc when they find out you’re black they move you to the end of the cutting board and wait till you slip up so they have an excuse not to listen to black people. The n word isnt censored. Nazis can tell you that you should be out on the streets committing crimes like the rest of your people instead of being on twitter. Ive seen so many people look the other way when the right company inserts racism(hyv, inversely disney).

I always get told “its normal” in regards to complaints of international media perpetuating stereotypes and racism and like IT SHOULDNT BE. YOU SHOULD BE ANGRY. oh with hoyoverse honkeys its like “their game is from china and china hates black people🥺” racism is not enforced there. Racism is not enforced in any nation with a stable government. Some places enable it, but as far as I know theres no place where residents have to hit their daily slur quota. The developers are just incels. Racism makes me sick to my stomach and has my veins running hot. Ill feel ready to cut somebody or myself and you’re telling me people will downplay it and dare to say “its not a big deal”?

[nashoye]

my about me !!( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ ) i already did one here but ill be going more in depth here. (not really...)

▪ i go by nas or naho, whichever is fine! '06 (17) she/her and im west african. my time zone is EST btw!!

▪ i like drawing(sometimes). the stuff i draw are mostly fanart of animes i like and my ocs! but im trying to get into drawing foods.^^ im still learning how to draw.

▪ there are many animes i like but i cant list them all.. however this website(not up to date..) basically has all the animes i watched and what anime i am watching, planning to watch and completed!! the current anime im watching is one piece and im episode 984!!(my goal is to catch up before the end of the school year, so im binging.) my favorite anime is FMBA!! JJK, CSM, BLEACH, HXH, one piece and more.. i live for action animes. >_<. a manga im currently reading is sakamoto days(i love it sm) dungen meshi, frieren, sign of affection, loving yamada, and the apothecary diaries.(theres more but im not listing them all :p).

▪ i dont really play that much games but i do play sims 4, animal crossing, roblox, minecraft, botw, homicipher and stardew valley.. and some otome games ^_^. i used to play genshin but stopped, same with honkai star rail and wuthering waves.

▪ the type of music i listen to varies, but my favorite artist are lamp, melanie martinez, lana del rey, the weeknd, tv girl, men i trust, newjeans, mitski, faye webster, cigarettes after sex and the neighbourhood!

▪ some youtubers i watch are coryxkenshin, ldshadowlady, smallishbeans, rebel D, penguinz0, lilsimsie, dish, Jarvis Johnson, antonychenn, itsfunneh, RubberRoss, and Tuonto! (i need new youtubers recommendation..)

and thats all for now, ill add stuff on if i remember anything ^^ feel free to ask to be friends, i need some lol..( • ᴖ • ｡)

[oathofkaslana]

when people said the honkai story was better than genshins i did not think itd be this much better.

honkai good.

[slightlyunconventional]

Hi, if you do female characters headcanons too, how about Himeko or Feixiao from Honkai Star Rail?

yes absolutely!! i love girls i lovr women h/imeko and f/eixiao are my girlboss wives lets go

h/imeko

hayfever 100% ! i know this

↳ also since she’s canonically a coffee lover i hc floral teas make her snz aksjsjd

↳ dust probably gets to her a bit too

very distinctive buildups i feel.. i think theyre vocal but also breathy at the same time, and theres always a short pause between the last hitch and the snz itself

↳ snz is also pretty pitchy id say, all in all sounds a bit like: “hah-ahh..! hhah— ashHiiew! haashh-hHIew!” like that

↳ 1-3 times in a row usually, it ranges but never really more than that

she’s very dainty about it i think, and polite as well - always says “oh! excuse me” or something along those lines afterwards

fans here face with her hand when shes building up. that is so HER

↳ also if the snz gets stuck/takes a second to come, she’ll hover her hand in front of her face until it does come

if she has a cold her snz is much harsher, still has the pitchiness and it mostly sounds the same as usual, just a bit louder and more forceful

f/eix/iao

ohhh this lady has one forceful snz … loud but not overly, not eardrum shattering lmao but you can definitely hear it

↳ kind of. “haH’EIISSCHh!” like that. pretty harsh

↳ covers w her elbow, and probably doesnt see much point in stifling unless she has to be quiet

↳ also probably bends her at the waist

shes a bit sensitive to alcohol i think… like getting tipsy will make her sneezy & much more sensitive to strong scents and the like

stole this straight from my own t/ighnari hcs but her ears will twitch a little when she’s irritated

very accustomed to fighting and memorising enemies moves i think, so she has no worries about ducking down to snz in battle

good constitution, she isnt one to get sick very often, but when she does you know she will be pretending shes fine ,, she’ll fight and work and run errands (i forgot what she actually does in canon lmfao) and just ignore the fact shes sneezing every thirty seconds and her head is pounding, then the second she gets home she’ll probably just pass out in bed and do the exact same thing the next day

!!! i love love loveeeee these two! thank u for the request anon :) hope you enjoyed!

[kroosluvr]

First of all, I love your art. It can be both cute and fluffy or extremelly angsty and sad. I know its mostly Persona focused but do you have any other games/movied or even stories of your own that you'd like to make art of in the future?

Also, I love how recently there's at least 2 VioletFox anons and then some more people quietly percieving from the shadows the headcanons/fanfics you and they write. It feels like an underground/rebel radio broadcast from the VioletFox front that must remain hidden from the authorities.

OMG WAAH thank you sooo so much!!!!! im so glad u enjoy my stuff ehehe.... ive found it easy to express myself thru persona charas (royal trio...+a side of ham/urio) so thank u so much eheheh

UHHH OTHER STUFF I LIKE!!! death note (light is my son), ffxiv, honkai star rail/arknights/fate(fgo)/project sekai (sort of.. i havent had the time to play gacha games SDJFSHJAS) namely i want to draw stuff for death note bc. well. altho it may seem persona is my main gig, actually death note makes me so crazy but i havent been able to draw a lot of fanart since i got into it in middle school bc my art SUCKED!!! but i think i can do it now.. just need inspo to strike me dead.... (im sure theres other things i like and want to draw stuff for that im forgetting rn)

i also have ocs!!! that i want to draw for !!!!! but i threw them aside to draw persona.

meet kei akita (brown hair girl) and calix maverick (black hair guy) tldr calix is stupidly suicidal but can't die (he simply goes unconscious and immediately heals no matter what) and kei is a normal highschool girl who attracts danger and often gets into near-death situations. shes a hitman kinda basically. calix is her meat shield READ: best friend... theyd do aynthing for each other. strictly platonic tho bc calix is gay and kei is lesbian :3 mlm wlw solidarity

all of the art above by bitsbyt3s on twt :3 u can see more ocs in my tag... ANYWAYS yeah if i ran out of persona ideas... id want to draw more original things....

LASTLY LMAOO UR SO RIGHT IMCRYING i thoguht there was just 1 but THERE ARE SEVERAL!!! I DONT EVEN KNOW WHOS WHO!!!! it feels fun to be the violetfox ship hub city tho. yessss come here i will feed u violetfox <- SHE NEEDS TO DRAW THEM!!!! PLEASE!!! HURRY!!!!!!! this goes out to u violetfox anons . where wld i be w/o u

[lunadademon14]

I wonder how people feel about eiji

Like, the guy did essentially use 2 teenagers (i don't think we're ever told how old sara is, but she might be around takumi's age. Maybe??? "Air of maturity" does not do much except make eiji's case slightly worse imo) as lapdogs getting parts of his plan to essentially almost end the world just to get information on his mother is concerning

He's a grad student, which kinda puts him around late 20s, but definitely not 20 like keito

It feels like theres this parallel between him and chihiro in the way they treat the tamers as adults older than them, at least to me

Eiji, when we first met him, had this same air of maturity as chihiro, although, not as much as chihiro at the same time, due to him a waiter or something like that. He works under her, but not along side her (at least, from what i can remember before i actively try to reread arc 2 again)

But then after takumi spills the beans, he suddenly appeares more insane about his goals. Way less mature. I mean, you would be mature to not take advantage of young adults (although, both times he managed to get them to work for him, it was accidental. He didn't plan for those incidents to happen, but he took free labor ig. The children yearn for the keeping of their digimon partners). One would be more mature than to take advantage of people in general

Maybe the whole thing with his mom disappearing in front of him after all those years truely affected him so deeply he couldn't adjust to people normal.

Hes just interesting to me in the same way takano(higurashi), sunday(honkai star rail), and almalthus(xenoblade 2) are

[tea-cat-arts]

In case any of y'all are wondering why I haven't done (insert thing I said I was gonna do) yet, it's because I've collected such a big backlog of brain rot in the 2-3 months I was working on my 3rd year illustration finals I have paralysis and am doing nothing (well, I'm also working on introducing my cat to my families pets while I'm home for the summer and that's taking a lot of time)

[whumpbug]

It's late at night but I love your ocs so it's time to ask the randomest most nonsensical question ever. If you choose to answer it I hope you have lots of fun. Ahem

How would your ocs each react to either learning that they've actually been a robot their whole life or waking up one day and finding that their consciousness has been placed into a robot's body? I imagine Gene would have the worst mental breakdown known to man

OHNMY GOD THIS IS SO GOOD THIS IS SO SO SO FUN

i think i'm going to go with they wake up and are suddenly just. in a robot's body. (morri style. android humanoid robot) because that sounds the most traumatic to me (-｡-;)

OK ONTO THE POST:

✮⋆˙

simon:

oh simon. he's too unbothered for his own good.

i think he'd wake up and just notice something is off and then realize. yknow. theres like screens in his eyes and he can literally feel metal inside of him. he would be like "...okay. i guess."

i feel like he'd be half convinced he's dreaming or hallucinating, and tell archie about it (who would be ecstatic. we'll get to that in a second.) and ultimately, once he realizes its real, he'd just kinda. be okay with it.

he'd be a little concerned about maintenance-- he knows the human body, not this new robot one, but i'm sure he'd figure something out. as long as he is still able to do his job (both in the literal sense-- his med classes and residency, and in the sense of taking care of archie) he doesn't care all that much.

archie:

oh boy. he would be SO excited.

archie is a huge nerd. he LOVESS techy sci-fi stuff, so if he woke up and he was a whole ass ROBOT???? that's a dream come true for him. he'd be in utter bliss.

of course he'd tell simon right away. simon would probably panic more than he would for his own scenario because HOW is he supposed to prevent archie from dying now. like i said, he knows human bodies, not whatever the hell is going on now.

archie would still be THRILLED. he would test out all sorts of things and play with his mechanics and just. nerd out. i hope he gets to experience being a robot one day, for his sake

gene:

i think gene would die. i think he'd actually just experience so much discomfort that he would die. yknow how sims can die from too much of a certain emotion? gene would die from shock and HORROR.

gene very much dislikes machines. the whole idea of something Big and Moving and being made of metal DEEPLY unsettles him. if HE became the big moving metal thing? oh god. someone get this man OUT of here

gene would never leave his house he'd basically just become a hermit for the rest of his life. he'd be so DISGUSTED. UGH he would hate it so much anon how could you do this to him /j /lh

cassidy:

cassidy is an even mix between archie and simon. he would be excited by it and think its cool, but he wouldn't dwell on it too long. he has work to do after all! as long as he can still follow montana's orders, he's fine. if hes more durable now? awesome!

i do think that gene would be a little scared of him. gene would get over it quicker because its cassidy and they are "Friends" and gene can't fathom just shutting cassidy out

OH and cassidy would immediately try to figure out how he can put a gun in his finger. he would think that is SO cool. i genuinely believe he would become boothill from honkai starrail (i say as i have hardly even played the game) but if you don't know who that is look him up and you'll understand.

✮⋆˙

thank you SO much for the silly question anon! this was so fun to think about i love putting my guys in the Situation Blender

[lostacelonnie]

Pls give me part 2 propaganda, I can't convince myself to keep playing the story 😭

(spoilers are totally fine btw)

HI APOLOGIES THAT THIS TOOK SO LONG. im gonna be honest im not very good at convincing people to check stuff out But. whatever. also i know you said youre ok with spoilers but im probably not gonna say too much because, as with any honkai storyline in my experience, the Mystery is a large part of the charm.

what you gotta know going into part 2 is that it isnt original honkai, but its also not Not original honkai. sure, the cast is new [for the most part, at least, several part 1 characters make their way through the narrative from time to time], but at the end of the day it follows the same... vibe? format? i dont know how to name it. as in, for me personally i played it and was like Yeah, this is still honkai. so if youre worried its gonna be completely different from part 1 and 1.5, then dont, because its Not. the weird intrigue and overly complicated yet still fun lore and sudden comedic [and Genuinely Funny, i should say] moments thrown in the middle of serious action are all still here.

second of all. THE CAST IS VERY FUN!!! genuinely i love love love allllll of them [although, songque has definitely taken my heart I FUCKING LOVE SONGQUE!!!!!]. actually all of the seven shus are very good characters!! its very clear that this is mainly Their story, that this is their doing and their world, and none of them are dispensable, so to say. BUT THE ENTIRE CAST IS JUST AMAZING I PROMMY. theyre genuinely fun to experience!!! i love them so much!!! arrghgh. i also deeply love how the main group meets some random girl and decides Not only are we gonna undoom your entire world but were gonna undoom YOU too. none of that self sacrifice shit if they can help it [spoiler: they couldnt help it but sa knows they tried.]

WHICH LEADS ME INTO THE NEXT POINT. if you Really Really need something to convince you, and you liked part 1.5 [which i hope you did, salt snow arc ON TOP!], then. sa is literally there. im DESPERATELY trying to avoid spoilers Myself but i can tell you that She definitely has something to do with this i mean. omniscient power trying to destroy a bubble universe with a group of semi-random people of multiple world fighting against it? doesnt that sound familiar. also perception can change the defeat screen text just like sa could. also the perception fight uses a background from vita's. also after lantern's fight, theres a section of the ost from vita's. also VITA IS LITERALLY THERE. as i said idk what Exactly is going on but IM SO EXCITEDDD ARHRRRHGHGH

I COULD GO ON FOREVER BUT ILL JUST SAY THIS. PLEAAAASE PLEASE PLAY IT. if you play the current chapter [a crime foretold] and decide its not your thing then i completely understand but for me personally it was the exact thing that Really got me into p2 so pleaase please give it a chance. we need more p2 warriors. we need more songque warriors