An awesome person named Jena Kocsis offers affordable (10 dollars a class, I believe) online Ballet classes if you're looking for a place to start ballet with active feedback! (Or continue it at one of the higher levels like I do :) )
I have a theory on why cyno x alhaitham and to a lesser degree tighnari x cyno (as in top tighnari) never really took hold in the greater genshin fandom, despite the initial popularity it enjoyed when sumeru was released, as compared to other alhaitham ships and cynari.
surprise, surprise it all boils down to racism. the fandom doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to the treatment and attitudes towards non-white characters. white washing, racist jokes, colorism, general apathy towards them.... if you can name it, it's probably there. while hoyo also has a hand in this, given their treatment of darker characters, the fandom also upholds and reinforces these biases on a large scale.
it is no secret that some fans ascribe dominance and aggression to darker skin tones, whether the character's personality warrants this or not. warrior characters such as cyno or candace are depicted as brutish people whose first course of action is a fight, nevermind the fact that they are both level-headed and mature and definitely try to resolve conflict peacefully. meanwhile characters that are not primarily fighters, such as xinyan, get labeled as loud and overbearing.
in addition to this, any aspect of femininity or "female traits" are divorced from these characters by the sole reason of skin color. female characters like dehya get called masculine and stripped of their femininity, and male characters such as cyno are pushed into a domineering and unfriendly archetype. and while cyno is not a push-over, he is not this "reacher" type person that people make him out to be. he is a playful person who is also emotionally intelligent and generally speaking firm yet gentle. however, in fanon these characters are not allowed express vulnerability, save for love confessions or in sexual scenarios. they are the "tough" ones that save the white character and love them unconditionally. they are the pursuers, who are rarely afforded the same interiority as their white counterparts.
both these racist tendencies culminate in the general distaste of seeing a dark skinned person being submissive in a relationship. this manifests in top/bottom preferences that track across the board, which cannot solely be chalked up to coincidence. it can be seen in ifa/ororon, cyno/tighnari, kaeya/albedo just to name a few.
even when comparing the tagged fics on ao3 for cynari, there are about 300ish where cyno is the tagged top, and around 100ish where tighnari is - and that's just the tagged ones.
this may be conjecture on my part, but i think that a lot of shippers tend to identify with or "project" more on the submissive partner in a ship; which could be due to their own preference or gender. i believe that a lot of people cannot or do not want to empathize with (or relate to) darker skinned characters. and while i am of the opinion that this is mostly subconscious, the aforementioned biases play into their perception of these characters which in turn makes them unfit for projection. its a doom loop which reinforces itself.
this forces the dark-skinned characters into the dominant role while reserving the submissive role for a light-skinned character. In turn this limits the possible romantic constellations characters can be in without disturbing this cookie-cutter model.
something else we need to consider for this conversation is also the general aversion to shipping characters with different models. ever since the beginnings of the genshin fandom this was frowned upon for several reasons (none of which were particularly valid). namely that the shorter model character is a child/minor, that it resembles pedophilic dynamics, or just flat out weird/problematic. people have always gravitated to ships where the character models were the same (if we're pulling out ancient artifacts) e.g. zhongchi, xiaoven or jeanlisa. while there were always other ships like zhongven or zhongxiao, the general consensus was that they were something akin to "problematic".
now this trend has obviously gotten a foothold in the olden days and has not let up ever since. (although a case could be made that its slowly easing up, when considering the popularity of illuga x flins or lohen x varka). in any case, even when shipping a tall and a short character the unspoken rule was that the taller character needs to be the top.
this puts our titular heroes alhaitham and cyno in quite the tough spot. on one hand you have cytham, which is frowned upon because the tall character is bottoming (although it is in line with the racialized perceptions). on the other hand you have haino, which fits the "tall top short bottom" trope, but goes against the racialized perceptions of the characters.
both these cases are sub-optimal to the average genshin shipper. as a result the characters got paired up with other characters that are in line with both these fandom "preferences". alhaitham with kaveh (tallxtall, white bottom (whichever way you spin it)) and cyno with tighnari (shortxshort, white bottom).
this is tragic to the core. their personalities compliment each other well, their development is a classic "rivals to reluctant allies to friends" and their dynamic is entertaining. i truly believe that if cyno and kaveh's models were swapped the popularity of the respective ships would also switch, because its not *just* about the characters, its always deeper than that.
and not just that, these racialized notions people hold are actively limiting their enjoyment in fandom and perpetuate harmful stereotypes, even if they're are unconscious. there are many interesting dynamics that never get explored just because of these "fandom consensuses", and not just through a shipping lens!
and dont even get me started on how it shapes peoples perceptions of characters. it's how dehya is so often called masculine, despite her canonical love for makeup and dresses! how people disregard non-white characters and only care for them in terms of shipping, especially sethos! (they don't even feature him in merch lineups :( )
and im not saying anyone is wrong to ship what they ship, and I'm definitely not calling you racist over it. i just wanted to express my thoughts on this particular matter.
Hey! I only really started genshin recently, like within the last year or two, so I was wondering when/where Alice insulted (I don't know if this is the right word sorry) Kaeya when he told her no. I only know this happened because I like reading your analysis of things.
Was it one of the limited events or a story quest I haven't done yet?
Anyways, I love your analysis of things and how well you word them! Even if it feels like some of the things your talking about goes over my head.
I will acknowledge I have a hard time picking up on implicit racism and sexism, despite being a person of color. It is something I'm trying to figure out how to get better at.
Oh it’s actually in the Teyvat Travel Guide, where Alice talks about wanting to set explosives all over Starsnatch Cliff…only for Kaeya to tell her she can’t and to stay away from the cliff entirely, and she calls him “that unctuous Cavalry Captain.” (Unctuous = greasy, unpleasant personality). The guides are also where the stories about the hilichurls and Kujou Sara are from (the latter’s in Vol. 3).
It especially stands out next to Alice’s track record in other situations - she’s still quite positive towards Jean for grounding her and her daughter multiple times, she doesn’t talk negatively about Lisa when the latter is disturbed by her experiments and wasn’t okay with her proposals, and she instantly considers Diluc an honorary son because he was nice to her kid ONCE (whereas Kaeya’s more of a parent to her than she is at this point and gets no credit for it), etc.
Thanks for reading my stuff and not taking it the wrong way - I’m mostly deconstructing the biases from a Chinese pov and double standards I’ve noticed, and even then there’s some I might’ve missed too. I’d recommend reading analyses by multiple other BIPOC fans, listening and really thinking about why they consider stuff like this a big deal.
I explain that often times women and girls are excluded from stories in favor of a predominantly male cast because the author doesn’t value female narrative contributions nor considers them worthy of character development in their own rights independent of the men, so the result isn’t uplifting male relationships with romantic intentions, but simply sexist writing in its most basic form.
I will say this. Yall (fandom and media critics) will literally watch shows about terrible white people like Hannibal, Succession, White Lotus etc., and find it in your heart of hearts to empathise and psychoanalyse them. But god forbid yall do the same the moment a Black or Brown character is messy, rude, unlikeable, indecisive, or dare I say, problematic, becos yall will calling for their heads.
Yall can't handle Solomon Baek (or any of the characters really) from Pachinko, yall can't handle Louis De Pointe Du Lac from IWTV, yall can't handle Trinity Santos from The Pitt, yall can't handle Criston Cole from House of the Dragon, yall can't handle Nate Shelley from Ted Lasso, etc
Seeing people I know and like using AI is making me understand the protagonists of those old time sci fi dystopia's.
"Oh I don't normally use AI, I just wanted it to plan my trip"
You lived on this planet for decades, you know what you like, there are hundreds of websites where you can type into any search engine " things to do in [area]" and have at least a hundred different options.
"Oh I only use it so I can figure out what to make during the week with what I have"
The most popular website as you type in "recipes" into google have sections where you click dinner- quick and easy and those usually rely on staples + 1 or 2 items. I found 30 recipes on chicken alone.
"I had a writing idea, so I typed a few sentences into Chat GPT and I was able to write 20 pages with it."
Come to think of it, it really is insane that my entire country is burning alive and literally no one in the rest of the world cares. Thousands of Indians are dying every day from the heat, it's 45+ degrees in multiple areas, the government couldn't give two fucks, we're getting severe warnings and red alerts, and not a soul outside of South Asia is speaking about it because why would you ever care about brown people
USA folks, that is a consistent temperature range hitting 113°. Death Valley temperatures. In Banda, it hovered between 116°-118° (47°-48° C) for a week straight.
This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:
Good evening friends and enemies, it's time to learn how to source unsourced videos instead of perpetuating the chain of missing attributions that progressively obscure the original source with each repost. 😃
STEP 1: Take a screencap of the video, preferably while it's playing so that the PLAY button isn't blocking the image.
STEP 2: Reverse image search of choice. To my chagrin, I tend to end up resorting to Google's Search by image because Tineye keeps failing me and I haven't gotten around to doing a deep dive into currently available reverse image search services.
If you use the Firefox desktop web browser (untested: other desktop web browsers, Firefox mobile web browser) you can combine STEP 1 & STEP 2: Feel free to repost the video to Tumblr first, preferably as a draft or private post to prevent people from reblogging the uncredited vid, because this method doesn't work as well on Reddit videos.
Right-Click on the video. In the right-click menu, look for "Image Search Options" and hover over it to bring up a list of search options. I'll have to try out some of the other options later, but for this demonstration I used Google.
The search engine should open in another tab.
STEP 3: The Search. This part will be a mix of luck, tenaciousness, and deductive skills.
For Google, I recommend going to the "Exact matches" tab because it presents matches and their information in a much more condensed format than the other tabs. "Exact matches" is a misnomer, as is apparent in the screencap below. This search actually pulled up images from at least two separate videos by the same woman hanging from the same tree: one where she's wearing a slate grey pencil skirt and blazer (as in the video reposted by OP) and one where she's wearing a pale grey long-sleeved dress.
Ideally, a functional search engine would let you sort results by useful variables such as "date posted". Google is not such a search engine, and with its progressive enshittification you may or may not be able to bully Search by image into limiting results to certain date ranges. Luckily, these videos have been less flagrantly reposted than some, so I didn't have to scroll through too many.
When searching for a source, one of the primary things to pay attention to is date. Obviously, the original source has to be older than any of the reports. Unfortunately, not all the Google results have dates, so the earliest dated video isn't guaranteed to be the original.
In this case, the earliest result was of the grey dress video variant posted on Instagram on Jan 17, 2026. However, upon checking the link it became apparently that the Instagram account was not the originator of the video and their repost was unsourced.
If the date check fails you, keep an eye out for any undated results that clearly stand out from the rest. In this case, I picked up on the following:
Which has the following unique traits:
A new outfit! This is the only result that features the woman in a pale brown blazer and pencil skirt.
Dimensions. This result is 1080 x 1920, while the majority of results were smaller in size. Reposts are more likely to be downscaled from the original than upscaled, so if the initial date-check fails you, you're better off checking the largest undated results first.
Specific username (Liang Li (@liangli521)). A lot of the other results just have captions or titles in various languages. Depending on the website, these are usually either captioned reposts or random search terms that don't even link to the actual video. Results with specific usernames are rarer and thus worth checking out, though some of them may turn out to be reposters.
In this case, I hit the jackpot! There they all were: OP's video, the grey dress video, the brown blazer & skirt video, and many, many more!
Legitimately, Liang Li's whole thing seems to be going ham in skirts, dresses, and frequently heels. Possibly for advertising purposes? Very beautiful. Very powerful.
Somehow, I am starting to hate the witches in Genshin Impact and how the game tries to wipe them clean, justify, or lessen their actions. The fandom especially does this with Alice and Rhinedottir (at least for her she gets her share of criticism since she is a sinner but not so much for Alice).
This is especially present in the introduction of Prune, a character rightfully critical of a dangerous and chaotic witch (Alice). But of course, the game would never showcase valid criticism of Alice. This means that they just make Prune a cute gag which makes her not be taken seriously by the audience when with.
This is even with her having potentially good criticism, complaints, and call-outs for Alice's destructive tendencies. This also involves how Alice often encourages or enables them in Klee herself, but no, since she is a girl child character—she is just presented as cute gag.
I feel like the witches are like those complacent adult who try to justify/normalize whatever messed thing is going on, most especially with their don't interfere with fate rules and verbatim, which in Genshin, seems to be code for just be a passive observer to messed up things which will be sweeped up under the rug.
Tbh I think the Prune thing also has to do with how little the game in general takes kids seriously (since it’s been a pattern even when the Hexenzirkel aren’t involved). And when you consider that a lot of the playable kids/minors are girls…there’s a certain kind of misogyny that comes out of that but barely ever comes up in most fandom discussions of the matter, mostly because the fandom tends to focus on like three or four “palatable” poster ladies when speaking about the misogyny but completely neglect the multiply marginalized women and girls. But that doesn’t mean the Hexenzirkel are off Scot-free either, which I’ll also get into.
I’ve talked plenty about Sayu when it comes to the franchise’s treatment of young girls and tendency to gloss over their issues, but where it came up a lot too was with Diona. I’ve talked before about how Diona’s issues and legitimate anger often get an insensitive “Aww, how cute!” reaction from the Traveler, and already, that sucks because having a drunk, often irresponsible father at her age would really mess with how she navigates the world. Another weird thing I’ve noticed though, especially with her recent Stellar-Conduct quest, is just how much responsibility gets placed on her for her bad situation rather than calling out the adults involved who should be making the world a safer place for her to begin with. Like in the potions event where it’s suggested that she should be the one making a drink where the alcohol in it doesn’t affect her patrons. Or in the aforementioned Stellar-conduct quest…where she gets a “why don’t you just talk to him?” when it comes to her grievances with her father. Not only is it really weird to put how a bunch of alcoholic adults behave on a little girl’s shoulders…it’s like the Draff situation is treated like they both have equal responsibility in the scenario when it wasn’t that way to begin with. Diona has absolutely nothing to do with Draff’s alcoholism - that’s how he copes after the death of Timmie’s father and keeping it a secret from almost everyone, including Timmie. She has nothing to do with it but she’s still one of the most affected, and all the responsibility for healing and mending the relationship should be placed on any adults in the scenario, not on her. All she knows is that the booze is making him not act like himself, and with everyone else either laughing at her or not taking her seriously, of course all she would know is destroying the wine industry and trying to repel as many people from drinking it as she can. And making her be the one who just needs to “talk to Draff little by little…” that could’ve been handled so much better. (And wouldn’t you know it…it was a member of the Hexenzirkel who gave her that advice, as well-meaning as it was).
Actually, that leads me into another tangent that I…admittedly only started thinking about after writing the last paragraph lol. That despite being powerful beings that sustain the borders and even look into people’s fates, a lot of the Hexenzirkel have this out-of-touch attitude going on with them. Like Alice and her lack of regard for the consequences of her actions, Rhinedottir’s lack of regard for her “failed” experiments and inability to recognize her role in their demise (and no, saying “They suffered because they were flawed and beyond saving” is NOT taking accountability as she’s still treating it like it was the creations’ fault for being flawed in the first place while being the one person who could’ve done something about it), and to a lesser extent Nicole and Barbeloth being surprised that someone would turn down a chance to be a famous hero. This out-of-touchness could actually shape up to be a good flaw for the group in general to have, because it would give them a good reason to not be overpowered even with their abilities that extend to reading people’s fates and guiding them towards it, and be a good explanation for why they can’t just tell us everything about this world or the game. Because as we’ve seen before, humans aren’t uniform or neatly predictable - they’re flawed, sometimes they’re driven by things that even the most divine being can’t understand, and oftentimes, saying you know how someone will react or what their fate will be involves relying on prior biases - which, as I’ve gone into before, is risky at best and actively harmful at worst. We’ve even seen this in action as early as Mona’s Story Quest, where we learn that as skilled of an astrologer as Mona is, her inability to fathom the basics of how humans will act - such as Klee being a child, and thus will act like one - will cause her to get things completely wrong no matter how much in-depth knowledge she already has about them. With the rest of the Hexenzirkel though…other than Nicole actively trying to make up for her past complicity and losing her voice in the process, I’m not quite sure if this flaw is supposed to be intentional or even a flaw in the first place. When Barbeloth gave advice to Diona to “just talk to Draff”…it gave off the same out of touch attitude I mentioned, but we were supposed to agree with her. Alice does often get in trouble with multiple other people (especially non-Mondstadters) from her experiments, but we’re supposed to act like it’s all good because she says nice things about everyone in Mond (except for Kaeya because of Hoyo’s bullshit) and includes them in her vacations for Klee. Rhinedottir’s neglect even extended to causing disasters for all of Teyvat, but we’re supposed to instantly take her most privileged creation’s word that she’s not that bad…okay? And despite the discrepancy I pointed out with Mona, it's often glossed over that fate predictions don't necessarily reveal one's true motives or what they'll end up doing in the end, it still overwhelmingly treats fate like something you can't run from or that the stars tell the truth (or at least the fandom believes so considering I'm still seeing Mona's quote about him being circulated as "proof" that he can't be trusted). And with the skies in Teyvat being fake...I've always personally interpreted that as events or people's fates not being as set in stone as even astrologers say, but that's just my own wild speculations. I’ll chalk these discrepancies up to Hoyo falling back into the same trap of trying to soften up the Traveler’s possible (especially female) allies and giving the audience a reason to want to root for them, but…like I’ve said before, refusing to address a character’s flaws or thinking it can be balanced out by how nice they are to the Everyman or Chosen ones (TM) who the narrative is stacked in favor of doesn’t make them kind or likeable, especially when the way they treat marginalized characters in that universe is consistently a problem. And well…a lot of the Hexenzirkel have that problem.
How does it manifest? The way the hilichurls got treated by Alice, who would absolutely know their origins as someone with access to Irminsul. The way they frequently contact pretty much all of Mondstadt and lend them their support…except for Kaeya, who’s from the unchosen nation (TM) and even got called the equivalent of a slimeball by Alice. The way Kujou Sara’s (who mind you already goes through enough from being a tengu in human society) hurt barely registered to Alice despite the latter injuring her wing - because it’s not something she can get over with meds and easily move on from. And of course, the way an ordinary little girl, Prune, who also got her fair share of dismissive and invalidating moments from adults in Mondstadt (*cough* Lisa *cough*) isn’t taken seriously when she has legitimate grievances towards Alice’s destruction and her friends doing nothing to stop her.
Overall, it looks like they’re trying to make the Hexenzirkel’s redeeming qualities revolve solely around how nice they are to the Chosen Ones (that being the white Mond cast, their own family members and the Traveler)…and having that be their balancing quality in the face of world-ending stakes that they have direct effect over can make them come off as elitist rather than the misguided but kind people they truly are, and I think that’s why it feels like their story can’t pick a clear direction to go in. I know I sound a bit disjointed in this, but I’ll go deeper into it when my thoughts clear up, cause the tangent about the Hexenzirkel’s flaws really did come out of left field from my mind and I’ll try and re-organize it. My mind can be a bit of a stray roomba, so this might happen a lot.
Now I really saw/felt firsthand what you mean by the game’s casual erasure of Kaeya in Lohen's quest, Knight's Legacy. Really though. I did not like the erasure of Kaeya in that quest. And you know what else, in his voice line, though Lohen does claim that Kaeya has great moral fiber (sounds really back/underhanded to be honest), he still shows more compassion/sympathy to Diluc in his voice lines…
Like, why is it that Diluc always gets such a downpour of sympathy, support, second chances, and tolerance of his sometimes downright rude/hurtful words/behavior towards those he deems as "incompetent", "lazy", “slacker”? (Unsurprisingly, words Kaeya is always accused of being unprompted by traveller, Paimon, and Mondstaters, words that reinforce Mondstat's toxic overwork culture).
For example, Lohen—even goes as far as empathising with Diluc, claiming they were both victims of the same person. Even showing regret or dismay that he is not coming back to becoming a knight. Also, shows Diluc senior-appropriate respect unprompted even when he is an enemy/thorn in his plan.
When it comes to Crepus’s death, Diluc is always treated as the only one grieving and person deserving of amends, apologies, accommodation, and that he is always welcome to join the knights of Favonius, and change.
With Kaeya always excluded (when he deserves them just as much, if not more for the bullshit Mondstat always puts him through—passive aggressive exclusion/mockery/suspicion and always only acknowledged for what he can or should do for others …like, what the hell?) It's like Diluc is seen as Crepus's only child, that his death affected him the most.
Kaeya's grief is always completely ignored. Even when he too was a victim of it in many ways. Also a bigger victim of the fallout of that fight, though often not acknowledged. On top of losing his second family, gaining an unstable reputation, and having to rebuild his life—nobody was/is there for him, like ever.
Paimon (especially her) and Traveler too, just really always add salt to injury. Never misses a beat to tell the audience how anybody who has Diluc's respect is automatically good and how those who do not are bad, lazy, or suspicious—and Crepus's other morally warped actions are still left unaddressed, ignored (so much Diluc and Crepus glazing/glorification in this quest).
And it's just, I was so excited when I first saw him appearing in the quest, thinking he was going to play bigger roles but in the end, he just ended up sidelined.
Yep. There’s a reason I have extremely limited tolerance for excuses or justifications for any of Mondstadt’s, the Traveler + Paimon or the narrative’s treatment of Kaeya. And why I tend to focus on humanizing aspects of Kaeya from within the game rather than how much Khaenri’ah lore he can carry or how much more miserable he could be made for angst potential (TM). In the past five years I’ve noticed a pattern in how Kaeya’s treated compared to others, both by the fanbase and the game, and though I’ve called it out several times before I don’t think I went that deep into why Kaeya’s treatment in most fan content bothers me. Especially because there’s an assumption going around that there’s a new writing team trying to appeal to the most vocal part of the fanbase…and I’ll be blunt, if I was on that team and saw what fans were saying and portraying in regards to Kaeya, I’d also assume that they weren’t interested in empathizing with or humanizing him.
I’ll be honest, the reason I started posting more about Kaeya was because despite being a character who received a lot of attention from the fanbase regardless of reason…I almost never saw anything truly humanizing or empathetic towards him in the past five years. Even with all the endless depth to his character and connection to the story, it was never used in that way and here’s what I mean.
I talked about this recently too, but Kaeya’s connections to Khaenri’ah are almost never used to empathize with or explore his character or feelings. The fanbase, even those who are positive towards him, mainly care about what kind of Michael Bay plot he can bring them, their precious lore and theory chasing, or how some white character feels about finding out about it to boost their own feelings and character. Or just want him to be made royalty because it sounds amazing, with very little thought for how he would feel or be affected by such a thing. I shouldn’t have to say this, but glorifying someone like that is not the same as empathizing or caring about them. And if he says he doesn’t know something or can’t further whatever big Khaenri’ah plot the game throws at us? “He must be lying and keeping things from us!” The audience spends so much time trying to pry precious answers out of him and looking for clues that he must be lying…while completely missing that this guy is surviving an event that not only wiped out his country with him being the sole escapee of a lingering curse, but tarnished his family’s life to the point where the world keeps sending him messages that he’s a bad person, how fucked up that is for one person to deal with with little support, and how calling his behavior “anti-heroic” at all comes off as refusing to understand that Kaeya was already dealt a bad hand with inherited trauma and subtle discrimination from even “nice” people since he was born - it’s unfair to expect him to be like his privileged and supported castmates, and yet he still ends up trying his damndest to do the kind thing without seeking approval. It’s almost like Mondstadt’s recognition of Kaeya mainly for what he can do for them manifested into the fanbase too, except with Khaenri’ah answers this time.
Even in content where he has a lot to agonize over, he’s often portrayed as having something wrong with him, is “nothing but a liar and traitor” (the amount of times I’ve seen that exact line repeated ad nauseam in Kaeya fan content without ever being deviated from…), and has to be “taught the error of his ways” or snapped out of it by one of his white castmates whose feelings are prioritized, and are treated like they automatically know better. It’s like he’s only there to make the other cast members look morally superior or to spotlight their feelings about him. Never do they (or the audience) have to step back and think about just how much is going on that would make Kaeya act off-putting in the first place, including their own complicity in it, because that would make them and the audience uncomfortable and even have to question their worldview and people are allergic to criticizing the uwu innocent (TM) Mondstadters. Even when they do have to touch on it or when they were explicitly involved in Kaeya’s downward spiral in-story, they never truly get held accountable for it, and Kaeya is almost always forced to apologize to them for making them sad. Even in content where Kaeya’s agony is the focus, he’s still not the one getting empathized with while everyone else involved is. You see the problem there? Even in the emotional department, Kaeya is the one who has to do all the work while his castmates get instantly trusted as the most moral people ever (TM) because Hoyo said so, but put very little effort into showing it when it comes to how they treat him.
Then there’s that long history of how the fandom, including Kaeya’s own fans, have this edgy knee-jerk reaction to put him down under the guise of jokes for simply existing on screen at times. I’ve lost count of so many instances where I’ve seen fan art of other characters (particularly the Traveler+Paimon, Diluc, Amber and Rosaria) antagonizing him and disrespecting his boundaries, and it being treated as hilarious and he’s deserving of it because “he LIED to us! 😭” If Kaeya lying once then actually apologizing and becoming more transparent in later content is supposed to warrant him being put down as a joke for the next five years…then pray tell, where was that energy for Godwin, who lied for a much more selfish and superficial reason and immediately got understanding and help from the Traveler for the next five years and still got off relatively scot-free? Where’s the energy for the rest of Mondstadt and their habit of sweeping problems under the rug, also for superficial reasons of not wanting to ruin their overachieving image or legacy since the start of the game and unlike Kaeya, never had to learn and improve on it? Where’s that for Crepus, whose insecurity drove him to keep secrets, keep a dangerous artifact around his sons and is still heavily revered as this man who did nothing wrong? And where is that energy now for the Traveler not even saying shit to him about the truth of his family and Caribert’s story, Dainsleif for being so quick to judge him for his family name while conveniently leaving out that his brother was the Sinner who furthered Chlothar’s downward spiral into the Abyss, and Varka and Diluc for not telling him about Crepus? The same lack of transparency that they got to react badly to him for when he did it? When Kaeya lies but gets held accountable for it, it’s a sign that he’s a traitor and untrustworthy. But when it’s one of the white characters the fandom puts on a pedestal who doesn’t even lose anything from lying, they must’ve had a good reason, they’re complex and excuses are constantly made on their behalf.
Aside from that, whenever one of Kaeya’s positive traits get spotlighted in the game…the edginess doesn’t disappear whatsoever. He gets stereotyped as some kind of idiot despite his intellect and wit being shown through his actions and intricate planning (and tbh, he comes off as much smarter than Albedo, Sucrose or Lisa to me because the writers kept shoving “they read books and say big words!” in your face to prove how smart they are, which is far less convincing than Kaeya’s consistent application of his knowledge and skills to even new situations quickly). He’s immediately flagged for being irresponsible and lazy even in situations where their only proof is some privileged white character (like Diluc and Amber) saying so and instantly being believed. He’s excluded from “best big brother/mentor figure” debates despite having such a positive track record with kids, and even proving that he’d put himself between Klee and danger without a second thought. Even in a teaser where we get a glimpse of him being some kind of lawyer…cue the fandom making jabs at how much he’d suck as one and that they’ll be going straight to jail as his defendant. And even if they’re lighthearted jokes, that stopped mattering a long time ago. Because the fandom never stops to humanize him in between all the joking. It’s either the derogatory jokes or putting him through hellish situations or headcanons for angst fulfillment (TM) rather than any actual empathy towards him like the other Mondstadters or even Khaenri’ahns get. They just repeat it without thinking, and eventually that’s how we end up with this horrendous game of Telephone that drove Kaeya’s infamous mischaracterization.
But honestly? Even then, I don’t think that’s the worst of it.
The worst would have to be how no matter how much Kaeya’s actions consistently back up his character, capacity for growth, and complexity…it’s still not enough for the fandom to stop doing all that. And it’s alongside how much they’ll instantly believe in the goodness or integrity of the white Mondstadters, or their love for him without them putting in a fraction of the effort that he does. And alongside how allergic the fandom is to criticizing Mondstadt. Like, people go on and on about how Kaeya was afraid to open up to Mondstadt and how much of a negative connotation being connected to the Abyss/Cataclysm would have in that nation, and they’ll immediately think of how Kaeya would be nothing but a traitor and a liar…but never about how it means that Mondstadt might have some unchecked biases that can cause them to be unsafe to open up to no matter how nice they present themselves on the surface, and how many red flags they’ve displayed just in the game’s content that never get addressed. I don’t know, maybe we should start retiring this “Kaeya is an idiot and a liar for not trusting his friends!” rhetoric right about now? Even the way he’s known for “wronging” the rest of the Mond cast by the fandom is heavily exaggerated, and completely falls flat when you notice just how little he truly antagonizes any of them outside of being petty - and the thing is, not only is this also based off the assumptions of some very unreliable narrators (like manga Amber being unable to take no for an answer and assuming he thinks she’s a rookie), but they do a lot more talking behind his back while he never does that towards them, and yet that discrepancy is never addressed.
I emphasize Kaeya’s humanity, how he might feel about things and how his lore drives his personality and motives first and foremost because of all the stuff above, and I do hope it’s made people stop and really think about all that over how useful he could be to the big lore plot or someone who should be made more miserable just for poetry (TM). He has so many overlooked moments, even back in the early game when he proved what kind of character he truly was, and even six years later he still comes across as one of the most genuine and undeniably heroic in the entire cast even back when he was known as an “anti-hero with attitude problems”. Honestly, as much as I’ve complained about the over-focus on lore and Michael Bay plots, they could still work in Kaeya’s content if his feelings and humanity get some kind of acknowledgement. At this point, he’s been so disrespected by the cast that unless he gets an actual apology from them, it’ll dampen any future plots Hoyo might write him into. Such as making him rule Khaenri’ah - the reason I wouldn’t like this one unless Kaeya got an apology for all the years of lack of support is because if, say, the Hexenzirkel or something suddenly showed up and asked him to be king or to save the world or fulfill some prophecy…it wouldn’t look like they want the best for him. After all the years of radio silence and lack of response when someone out there could’ve been a supportive presence in his life…it would look like they only remembered him when they needed something from him as if he’s not even human, like that’s some audacity and entitlement right there. No matter what comes out of Kaeya or Teyvat’s lore, if he’s involved it’ll need to acknowledge how he feels about things as a bare minimum, no exceptions.
Maybe we should spend less time debating over whether Kaeya will be a “liar and traitor” by choosing Khaenri’ah over Mondstadt…and more on why both the narrative and the fandom automatically default to choosing Mondstadt as the “moral” and “good” choice, and why Kaeya automatically gets depicted as a traitor for having the slightest bit of love and sympathy for his home nation that was ultimately destroyed by Celestia’s power trip, no matter how much he’s proven to love Mondstadt as well.
(And while we’re at it…why is Mondstadt considered the “good” choice when it’s been the nation where people are the least split in their positivity over both Celestia and its Archon, the former of which had been shown to create revisionist history? To the point where Kaeya grew up in a household that essentially worshipped the system who both obscured the truth of the world and destroyed his home country (gee, I wonder how he turned out as distrustful as he did of nice people)? Just some stuff to sit and really think about)
"shipping and blorbofication are not inherently at odds with understanding a story's deep themes" and "some people can't grasp the themes of a story because they never learned how to engage with stories outside of the lens of shipping and blorbofication" are two statements that can coexist
blorbofication to me is when you love a character in such a laser focus way that you somewhat detach them from the narrative from which they are inserted and treat them in a way roughly similar to how you'd treat an oc for which you still have no story and just like to put them in situations just for fun. which there's nothing wrong with btw, it's just that it can easily lead to people forgetting the character engine in a narrative and not just a barbie doll
I think we often laugh about how post-resurrection WWX tried to play gay lunatic to get ppl off his case (bc it isn’t that far from his regular shameless behaviour around lwj in his first life like yeah yeah), that we miss the real funny part that his gay lunatic strategy ACTUALLY WORKED. On multiple occasions too.
Like people were really going “This guy…he is kinda sus. He plays the flute, it’s possible he was the one who called for the Ghost General. But brother… wasn’t Yiling Laozu a HETEROSEXUAL? So maybe it ISN’T him”
I have stopped playing Genshin but looking at all the recent posts I’m beginning to think (or rather am cementing my belief) Kaeya would have played a major role and have had better visibility (and no, adding him into an event to make fun of him or making it all about Diluc is not Visibility) if he was not POC.
Hell he’d even have better fandom representation if that were the case.
Jokes on me hoping I could go back to Genshin as soon as kaeya comes back in a meaningful way. I was really hoping that the writers were going to get better. But down the drain they go.
Racism against Indians is actually a little insane when you consider how widespread it is even among liberals and leftists . Even people who consider themselves to be progressive will laugh at call center or tech support jokes. All scammers are inherently indian. It’s okay to laugh at jokes making fun of Indians for their feelings towards animals or how they drive. India is inherently backwards and dirty so it’s okay to make jokes about getting food poisoning from even looking at indian food
Box of Forgotten Things @bakibakideemon - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
