As we leave Amphoreus, slowly but surely and GOD have I been waiting for this, I find myself so tired of the state of the fandom that we got with this region
This particular exhaustion triggered bc I guess god forbid anyone actually explore the depth of Phainon and Anaxa's dynamic and the references in their characters 🫠
It's depressing the borderline "jealous girlfriend" kind of behavior this fandom has when you dare imply any other character carries very significant importance to Phainon. Like yeah. Sure. The man that Phainon hallucinates 2 different times (on screen at least, who knows how else more) and goes to for guidance and who is a big factor in instilling hope into his heart means nothing to him and has "nothing burger interactions" for their "nothing burger relationship"
It just makes me sad 😞 Phainon has a lot of beautifully executed relationships and while I would gladly eat up more screentime for any of them, his dynamic in game with Anaxa especially is one of my favorites and one of the best to just dig into in my opinion.
I really hope the kind of people making this fandom a hostile place either don't come with us into 4.X or reflect on their bitterness and change. I hope that looking back on Amphoreus to appreciate and explore what it did right in the future is an experience where people don't feel like they have to walk on shells with their analysis
In the Gnostic creation myth, Heaven – which the Gnostics called the “Pleroma”/“Fullness” – was all that existed until a divine entity named Sophia tried to conceive on her own, without the involvement of her heavenly partner or the consent of God. Sophia gave birth to a son that was the product of the rebellious and profane desire that had arisen within her.
This son of hers was the Demiurge (Greek: dêmiourgos, “craftsman”). When Sophia saw the horrifying, twisted being that had come from her, she was deeply ashamed and afraid. She disowned him and cast him out of Heaven.
The Demiurge gave birth to the archons, beings who were like him and could help him administer the material world. He then created the material world, which, like all creations, was a reflection of the personality of its creator.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
In the allegory, Plato describes people who have spent their entire lives chained by their necks and ankles in front of an inner wall with a view of the empty outer wall of the cave. They observe the shadows projected onto the outer wall by objects carried behind the inner wall by people who are invisible to the chained “prisoners” and who walk along the inner wall with a fire behind them, creating the shadows on the inner wall in front of the prisoners. The "sign bearers" pronounce the names of the objects, the sounds of which are reflected near the shadows and are understood by the prisoners as if they were coming from the shadows themselves.
Only the shadows and sounds are the prisoners' reality, which are not accurate representations of the real world. The shadows represent distorted and blurred copies of reality we can perceive through our senses, while the objects under the Sun represent the true forms of objects that we can only perceive through Reason.
The Cave parallels the material world of Demiurge, in which Adam (Humanity) is the prisoner seeing the shadows and hearing the sounds.
Eve and Adam
The Demiurge and his Archons desired to create a being in the image of themselves and in the image of the original Adam (Jesus) within the Pleroma, but unknowingly breathed the power he had stolen from his mother Sophia into the lifeless shell that they called “Adam”. This caused the Demiurge and his Archons to become jealous, and imprisoned Adam in the Garden of Eden.
Sophia sent her daughter Eve to Adam, to reveal to him his true Divine nature and how to ascend back into the Pleroma. Eve is hidden inside Adam so the Demiurge may not find her. While the orthodox Christian version has Eve physically emerge from Adam’s body (being created from his rib as he slept), the Gnostic rendering has Eve emerging from the unconscious depths of the somnolent Adam. This parallels the myth of Cerces being born from a strand of Kephale’s hair as he slept.
The role of Eve was to awaken Adam, who was in a deep sleep. Eve represents the Divine Feminine and is the archetype Mother of all Life. Eve committed the Original Sin in the Bible (which leads to free will for humanity) by eating from the tree of Gnosis (knowledge) in order to bring enlightenment to Adam. Eve was Adam’s Teacher, raising Adam up from the darkness of ignorance into the Light of Knowledge. Aside from the clear parallel of being Phainon’s teacher, Anaxa 那刻夏 bears the same 夏 as in Eve 夏娃.
Anaxa’s role is to provide Phainon with the Fruit of Knowledge, preventing Lygus to draw Phainon over to his side.
Sophia and Logos (see also: Bug Trio Theory)
Sophia and Logos are related ideas; both have to do in some respect with “Reason.” Sophia is Reason that is internal to a person; Logos is Reason that gets expressed verbally. For the Gnostics, the drama of the redemption of the Sophia through Christ or the Logos is the central drama of the universe. The Sophia resides in all humans as the divine spark. Reason/Logos brings Wisdom/Sophia out of the darkness and into the light.
Gnosticism Theories Masterlist
Scene from Phainon’s trailer represents Adam and Eve meeting in the Garden of Eden by _WhiteTower
Comment by Phantom-21_4 on Anaxa plays the role of Phainon’s “Reason” r/PhainonMainsHSR by ShiroLovesKeith
The Gnostic Interpretation of Phainon’s Trailer ft. Anaxa by honglulesbianisms
alright. i know i said previously that i was working on their general relationship analysis, AND I AM! but all of this has been eating at me the entire time i've been composing it and i've been in a dilemma on whether or not to include it in the analysis or make it a whole separate thing because it's really its own other topic. and!!!! here we are. it's a whole separate thing. phainaxa is kind of crazy #tbh
this post can also be titled 'Anaxa Haunts Phainon & The Entire Narrative', and you'll see why very soon.
this post will be tagged with the proper content warning labels, of course, but please be wary that i briefly talk about anaxa and his suicidal/self-harm tendencies in one part of this.
i'm pumping all of this out BEFORE 3.5, so all information here will be things we already know.
—
Simulation name meanings
first things first, i want to go over their simulation names: neikos496 and skemma720.
starting with phainon's:
what does neikos mean? does 496 represent anything?
neikos is of greek origin, meaning discord or strife. along with that, tying in with empedocles' famous cosmogonic theory of the four elements, he was also the one who proposed the concept of that in which love and destruction would mix together and separate the elements.
and because i mention empedocles' philosophy and his concept of love and strife dividing and bringing tigether the four elements to maintain balance, i should also mention cyrene's simulation name, PhiLia093; philia, also of greek origin, meaning friendship, and is one of the four types of love in greek language—the others being éros (sexual desire), agapè, (altruism), and storgê (familial).
and we know all the eternal recurrences started with cyrene & phainon—cyrene sacrificing herself so that khaslana would be able to continuously experience the same cycle and collect the coreflames. khaslana kills cyrene during the destruction of aedes elysiae from the black tide so that she'll be able to do what she needs to to keep the cycle going, which is why she says "may this woeld never have need for a deliverer", because she's been aware this entire time, doing this since her and the original phainon put this plan into motion.
until the four millionth eternal recurrence, it is the original phainon/khaslana experiencing the loops—he had killed each loop phainon until that point. the hero within eventually begins to fail within his body, and in order to keep his plan going, he instead has the loop phainons kill him at the end of every cycle now, so that that phainon will inherit the previous coreflames he's consumed and his memories. and because he knows himself, he knows that each phainon will choose the same path as him and become "khaslana."
the number 496 is a perfect number.
phainon has been constantly praised by aglaea and some of the others as being the "perfect" chrysos heir, one without flaw.
(and he's really, truly not, if that wasn't obvious. this, too, actually ties into anaxa, his ideologies, and how he sees phainon, but that will be in my relationship analysis instead because wow. hey!!! they are kind of insane!!! what the fuck!!!)
moving onto anaxa's:
what does skemma mean? does 720 represent anything?
skhema, of greek origin, means something along the lines of form or figure, which could possibly tie into anaxa being the representation of reason and embodying erudition within the simulation.
however, skemma, of old-icelandic origin, means to (usually permanently) damage, to spoil, or to ruin. i mention this particular origin meaning because of anaxa and destruction's relationship, which i'll discuss soon.
as for if 720 represents anything, i'm not too sure.
i do, however, have one idea in mind, but it's not exactly the most obvious or sound.
in geometry, polyhedra/polyhedrons are 3D figures with all straight edges from all vertices connecting to each other. which goes along with the meaning of skhema, being form/shape/figure. 720° is the sum of all defects of any polyhedron.
and what does defect mean? a fault or flaw.
in geometry, an angular defect is the failure of some/certain angles not being able to add up to 360° or 180°.
fault, flaw, and failure, unlike 496, which is a perfect number.
anaxa who is reason and is the simulation embodiment for erudition, being a failure. whereas phainon, who is worldbearing and is the simulation embodiment for destruction, is perfect. irontomb, being a lord ravager of destruction, meant to eliminate erudition.
—
Anaxa & Destruction
now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's get into the relationship between anaxa and destruction.
starting off with anaxa's past and character stories—all of his character stories are presented to us in a way that tells us that the form of media it was previously was already destroyed, forgotten, or never found.
in character story 1, cerces is flipping through his past memories before being promptly shut out by anaxa. and post 3.2, cerces is dead, having died alongside anaxa when he took the coreflame out of his chest at the very end.
in character story 2, we read the contents of a parapsychology experiment log anaxa had conducted. however, the original copy had already been destroyed.
in character story 3, we are shown a speech anaxa had improvised during a meeting between the sages of the grove. with the grove now destroyed and it being from just a simple meeting out of many, it's already been forgotten.
and finally, in character story 4, an echo in anaxa's memories had been made by him after the grove fell, but no one discovered it, so it vanished.
along with all of that, we really know nothing about anaxa aside from his ideals and personality—his backstory is never explored within the trailblaze quests, his sister is only mentioned in passing, his parents only ONCE, and his mentor, who we did see in a flashback, but has been dead pre-canon timeline. his mentor's name was also empedocles.
his parents, his sister, his mentor, and cerces, who had inhabited his body for that short time—they are all dead.
his previous home before he was able to leave to the grove was never named and was destroyed pre-canon timeline, and we witnessed the aftermath of the grove after it had fallen—both of his homes destroyed.
aside from that, anaxa had a grave that he would regularly clean and take care of, as if he was already anticipating his death.
i do not think i've ever talked about this in other posts, but i think that anaxa was definitely suicidal but not ready to actually take action to kill himself properly, instead resorting to harming himself repeatedly during his experiments, to the point where empedocles had told him to stop and never again harm himself once he had found out. anaxa had promised him he wouldn't anymore, but after empedocles had passed, that promise was soon broken.
anaxa is self-destructive and self-sacrificial—his body is littered with spells and markings from experiments. not only that, but when he had conducted his experiment to be able to see his sister one last time, we know that he carved his own left eye out as a sacrifice for the process. he also carved out his own heart as a sacrifice to make the stone tablet that would be able to guide castorice on her journey to find thanatos.
cerces themself even asks him at one point in 3.2, "why are you always trying to find ways to die? isn't it good to be alive?"
anaxa dies in Every Single eternal recurrence. not once does he survive, unlike the others who have all survived various times across multiple eternal recurrences.
not only that, but his body is eerily similar to flame reaver/khaslana's—both are void-like, cracked, and on the brink of destruction.
and he haunts the narrative without fail. he is brought up continuously in 3.4 by khaslana AND lygus. he seems to always be the last one shown when we're peering into khaslana's memories of past recurrences. his teachings still hold dear to hyacine and phainon both, even though he's been gone.
he is the only one we really know nothing about, and yet he hangs over everything like a looming shadow.
and the way anaxa not only haunts the entire narrative, but literally khaslana himself as well—looming over him, inside his thoughts and actions, consuming him. not to mention, every time worldbearing is somewhere, of course, reason is not too far behind, even in the game mechanics. same with destruction and erudition when it comes to amphoreus.
anaxa's golden boons within the divergent universe primarily have to do with Destructible Curios. which really makes me crazy, because again, he who is reason & erudition, seems to always be destroyed in one way or another, except by the one who is meant to be molded into something that destroys, and that is khaslana.
anaxa's as i've written/divergent universe art is of him depicted upside down and hanging, referencing odin in norse mythology and the hanged man tarot card (since tarot cards are cyrene's thing, especially with her connections to oronyx and time.) he is the hanged man tarot card in cyrene's deck.
what's important about that?
the story of odin in norse mythology is that he hung himself upside down from yggdrasil for nine days and nights to obtain knowledge of other worlds and to understand the runes.
before doing that, odin had sacrificed his eye into mimir's well and then pierced himself with gungnir, his spear. all of this was considered something of a ritualistic suicide.
as for what the tarot card symbolizes; the hanged man in tarot readings means ultimate sacrifice and surrender. shifting your perspective to give in to time so that things may unfold naturally—a pause in action.
and all of this fits quite well with anaxa.
his as i've written log also explains that his survival priority approaches zero. (which. what the hell. cmon anaxa stay alive for once)
because he is the first individual to uncover the truth of amphoreus, his evolution rate is stated to be extremely unreplicable. along with that, his behavior demonstrated the possible self-destructive inclinations of erudition.
—
Phainon & Erudition
moving on, with phainon & erudition, it's not as blatantly laid out like anaxa & destruction—much of phainon's connections with erudition are sourced through anaxa himself, because anaxa is Reason.
phainon's dream, before being roped into a hero because of the prophecy and destruction of aedes elysiae, was to be a scholar.
when aglaea had sent him to the grove to study, originally, he applied for a different school but admittedly got reassigned to anaxa's nousporism.
anaxa and phainon's relationship is important for a multitude of reasons, but for now, let's focus on one particular aspect of their dynamic while phainon was in the grove—anaxa and peace to phainon.
like i had just stated, phainon's dream was to be a scholar. when studying in the grove, he was able to do just that. but it's VERY important to know this while also remembering the fact that anaxa is the only one who sees him for Phainon and not the prophesied Deliverer.
anaxa is constantly addressing him as only Phainon or Phainon Of Aedes Elysiae, never hero, or worldbearer, or deliverer, etc... phainon struggles with seeing himself past the role he was forced to be and continuously thinks everyone around him really only sees him as such as well, so he doesn't try to think otherwise because he assumes this is all he is meant to be.
him being able to live his dream of being a scholar, paired with the fact that anaxa views him for Him, instilling his sense of self once more, is what gave phainon peace.
the average student takes about 4 years to complete their studies and graduate the grove, but phainon took much longer than that—up to 5 to 10 years instead.
and phainon isn't stupid by any means—he is one of, if not the most, exceptional student anaxa has ever had, stated by anaxa himself. he is extremely good at debating, has earned consecutive wreaths for it, and is a fast learner.
him taking 5 to 10 years instead of the normal 4 could very well likely be due to the fact that he did not want to leave the peace he felt while in the grove and with anaxa—he was free of weights there, able to be himself, rather than the Worldbearer.
and anaxa never did anything about it either; it's never stated that he tried to get phainon to leave back to okhema after the 4 year mark, and that is something anaxa would never do anyway.
phainon is just as important to anaxa as anaxa is to phainon. phainon is one of the few people anaxa allowed himself to be close to, and i won't dive into this too much since i think it would be a better fit for their general relationship analysis, but phainon was constantly trying to break down the barrier between them of teacher/student, whilst also trying to respect anaxa as a person he admires.
in the original cn text, phainon uses informal terms towards anaxa, and anaxa doesn't make any effort to correct him—this is because despite phainon trying so hard, he never really had to in the first place.
compared to others, when phainon addresses anaxa as Anaxa and not anaxagoras, rarely, if not ever, are there instances where anaxa corrects him, instead, letting it slide.
phainon has never had to try as hard as he thinks because anaxa was already letting him in.
he keeps anaxa's teachings dear to him, remembering them even if he graduated so long ago.
khaslana, while experiencing the loops before having to change his methods of obtaining the coreflames, never had to worry about anaxa being one he would fight with or have to kill. anaxa was willing to help him regardless, despite not being able to fully believe his words and what he would tell him.
and what's more is that, before the four millionth eternal recurrence, khaslana always killed the loop version of himself when he had to kill cyrene—anaxa, of all those loops, had never meant the phainon in any of the other loops.
but khaslana had told him that he was once his pupil, and anaxa let him in regardless. he helped him despite it all.
and we know, in the 134th loop, anaxa confronted him on his methods as well, being Reason and trying to get khaslana to turn back, because not only was he hurting the humanity he swore to protect and love, he was hurting himself too.
again, anaxa had never met phainon. but he still did all of this. and not once had khaslana try to destroy him—not even during 3.1 when they were all fighting against him. he attempted to go for the coreflame in anaxa's chest, had tried to, for once, harm anaxa because it was the only way, and yet, when anaxa instead took the coreflame of time from him, he only tried to yank back the ceremonial blade instead of killing him then and there.
and khaslana has never truly lost himself because of Reason—anaxa has always haunted him.
one who is destruction finds peace within the thing he is born to destroy.
along with all of this, phainon's BP lightcone, A Dream Scented in Wheat, is an erudition lightcone.
wheat being the symbol of aedes elysiae, his home, and it being an erudition lightcone amongst all else—yet again, the peace phainon desires.
—
Conclusion
dude i'm gonna be honest. i actually have no idea how to finish this off, but do you see it all now. how fucking crazy they are. how utterly intertwined they are.
they're quite literally programmed to go together in one way or another—within amphoreus, destruction & erudition are always hand in hand some way, somehow, like worldbearing & reason.
and them also having SO MANY references and callbacks to kevin & su. a bit crazy!
considering phainon, cyrene, & anaxa are the only ones amongst the heirs that have multiple callbacks to kevin, elysia, and su, respectively, it was bound to be this complex.
i'd really like to talk about phainon being the sun, cyrene the moon, and anaxa being the stars, along with the anaxa-march connections but. again, i feel like that's a whole new topic for a separate post (<- guy who says this and she's going to take 6000 years to finish it), and i still haven't even finished my phainaxa relationship analysis.
OKAY..... ANYWAYS. THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR.... IF YOU DID..... #PHAINAXA4EVER
Really hope 3.3 doesn't disappoint me because as of now, any lingering interest I had in Amphoreus' story kinda died in 3.2 with Anaxa
Excited for Dan Heng! I love Dan Heng! But Im on the fence about his parts because his writing has certainly been interesting this time around. And as for the rest of the Heirs, I like all of them to varying degrees but genuinely I'm not emotionally invested in any of their stories or outcomes. The extra time just,, wasn't enough to get me to really connect
And I hope 3.3 starts leaving some answers for us instead of purely more questions, bc I have a fuck ton of questions left about a lot of stuff but especially Anaxa and now Im just living with the question of if anything is even gonna end up being answered?
Like why tf does Flame Reaver act so strangely around Anaxa specifically? We see him in the trailer going HAM on the rest of the chrysos heirs easily taking them out, but he only gave two tiny tugs when Anaxa was snatching Oronyx's coreflame? On top of the fact that when he stabbed Anaxa, the HSR animations distinctly added the detail that Flame Reaver wasn't looking at Anaxa when he did it??
During the rest of that fight scene in 3.2, he was all for attacking without mercy the rest of them, but wouldn't even send a clone Anaxa's way on the sidelines despite him holding onto two coreflames? On top of his weirdly hesitant behavior at the Grove where hes just staring at him, and the info we get from the lil world quest about when he even arrived at the Grove but I doubt we'll get answers to that yknow since Anaxa's dead and it seems theyre speed running getting us to the next cycle with how many heirs are going bye bye this patch
I just feel plain confused honestly, unpredictability isn't awful but I have no idea where Amphoreus is going and instead of being fun to anticipate, it feels like I'm on a rollercoaster blindfolded and about to puke my guts out
I dunno, I dunno how I feel about this place and about this story overall, I like certain aspects even love some but it drains me as well, it really does
Forever thinking about how Phainon (in terms of his connection to Anaxa at the very least, idk about beyond that) is probably meant to reference/be a mirror to Pericles hm
Extremely obsessed with the sayings that the Chinese fandom has been associating with Anaxa.
吾爱吾师，但吾更爱真理 is a translation of the Aristotle quote Truth, "Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth", although the Chinese quote is more "My teacher is dear to me, but dearer still is truth".
谋士以身入局，举棋胜天半子
The strategist places himself on the board, and wins over heaven/fate by half a stone (referring to Go aka weiqi scoring).
朝闻道，夕死可矣
[If] at dawn [I] understand the way (the Truth of the world), then at dusk I can die (with no regrets).
a collection of potential symbols and references that could be used for anaxa
what hours of research does to a person...this list is mainly laying out some of the potential symbols and references ive both noticed and would like to see connected to anaxa. a lot of these are based in either alchemy or his design. a lot of these are also kind of based on vibes but hey! what works works
Kabbalah, the Tree of Life
okay this is an Intense one to start with but it's the one taking space in my brain the most because. okay kabbalah is heavily associated with alchemy and the likes and anaxa has So Many references to how Kabbalah is visualized on his design
like. you look at this and yeah sure maybe it's just a general reference to alchemy but some of the circles have. text ? on them? and the fact kabbalah is called the tree of life and i guarantee you trees will be important to anaxa trust me on this
the grove also seems to be architecturally use the same shapes im just gonna note that
1b. this specific planetary style arrangement
okay yes it does bear resemblance to how kabbalah is arranged but it's different enough for me so thats why im separating the two but i want to point out how this is a graphic not seen often within the game and the only other times we see anything similar are with fu xuan's kit OR in the vortex of genesis (and fu xuan has ties to erudition)
the planetary array style of the hsr map resembles the pattern on the cracked glass behind anaxa. it also bears resemblance to some other hoyo games
in this video ashikai shows the symbols for a skill badge from hg2 and the alchemy table in genshin. alchemy table. specifically look at the vortex of genesis map actually. the similarities are so close it's driving me insane
even without the similarities to other games the fact fu xuan's kit is one of the only other places i can think of where this kind of symbolism is seen within the game is very interesting to me
3. philosopher's stone (magnum opus)
the philosopher's stone is described as red so the red crystals and accents in anaxa's design could very well be a reference to that (also the symbol on his left sleeve reminds me of the symbol that represents the philosopher's stone. the symbol that represents him in his as ive written. or it could be a reference to the relic screen bg but. not going down that rabbit hole just yet)
4. tarot cards
his card in the as i've written book is very obviously a reference to the hanged man tarot card but he potentially could have references to at least two other tarot cards (i'll further elaborate odin and the hanged man next just wait)
he is referred to both as the fool (mostly in promotional content) and as a magician (by mem) and those corresponding cards (esp the magician) fit him very well
5. odin and yggdrasil
one interpretation of the hanged man tarot card is that it depicts odin hanging from the world tree irminsul. odin, very famously, is missing an eye (and a hand but anaxa currently still holds all four limbs for now) because he sacrificed it for knowledge of the runes
anaxa, very notably, is missing an eye. and anaxa seems to have a history of constant willingness to sacrifice his own soul
honorable mention to the real life anaxagoras (because if i added everything from all that i would be here all day) and his ideas of nous (oh how i sincerely believe anaxa knows of the aeon nous) because i want to wait just a little bit longer before i start breaking down the fragments in relation to anaxa
Someone on twitter (twinzie07, the whole lil thread is 🙏) pointed out how Aglaea and Garmentmaker's relationship is a parallel to Mnestia and Cerces' relationship, particularly in the fact that it is a creation that ends up in a companion role (Mnestia originally made for it, Garmentmaker at first for Servitude but also fulfilling such a role) falling into a sense of unrequited love with its creator, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since
Esp with other factors like Mnestia dying in Cerces' arms and Garmentmaker in Aglaea's, Mnestia embodying a field Cerces couldn't quite get and Garmentmaker embodying an image of Aglaea's ideal self
Like that's so insane, Aglaea truly was serious with that RGU reference in her ult with Garmentmaker
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