Kinda Not Vibing with Some People's Pantalone Takes...
I am all for everyone having their own headcanons and I've never been one to tell people how they should draw or write a character in their own fan projects, but I have said before that I think Hoyo fandoms have a massive problem with mixing up headcanon and actual canon, to the point that people start insisting their personal interpretations of characters are accurate even when they--not just slightly but actively-- contradict canon. "Kaveh can't see aranara because he's traumatized" nonsense, I am looking at you.
And it kind of feels like the fandom's Pantalone takes might end up going that way too, because it seems half the fans are already convinced Feofan is a wasting-away waif of a man who is going to die of diphtheria at a moment's notice... Despite the game telling us that Pantalone is, at the very best, a completely unreliable narrator when it comes to himself, his health, and his abilities.
A lot of people seem convinced already that Pantalone must be in terrible health, just generally a very sickly and/or physically weak person. But...
That's not actually what Dottore's medical records on Pantalone even say?
Up until at least the point in time in which Pantalone became immortal, Dottore was rating his health condition as literally "good."
I would assume someone like Dottore would be able to tell the difference between a person in poor health and a person in good health, right?
Pantalone (initially) had no allergies, had no stated history of medical illnesses, and was in good enough shape for Dottore to make no comment on any physical ailments or bodily issues, unlike what he did for others he was reporting on (such as mentioning one of the people he experimented on was obese and had a history of drug use, etc.).
And, most importantly, none of Pantalone's medical records are even about natural health issues directly--they're all about injuries.
In the first report, Pantalone's vital signs are unstable because before Dottore got hold of him, he was somehow attacked/beaten/in a bad fight, to the point he had both superficial (skin surface) injuries and internal hemorrhaging. Yet despite bleeding in one of the worst possible areas to bleed, he was still awake and clear-headed enough to converse with Dottore and use his wits to convince the doctor to spare him.
The second medical report was the result of another fight, this time ending in a gunshot wound, and all Pantalone got for it was some stitches and an oral painkiller and went on his way, while refusing to even tell Dottore who shot him or why.
The third complaint is deteriorating vision, but once again... It's not because of an underlying, innate, or natural health issue. This isn't macular degeneration, cataracts, or glaucoma... The diagnosis is "corneal damage." 25's note is that Pantalone "failed to adhere to occupational safety adjustments." Effectively, while working, Pantalone did something that caused physical damage to the outer lenses of his own eyes.
This could be working so long and in such conditions that he caused himself dry eye, or exposing himself to damaging chemicals, or utilizing radiation or high-powered UV lights, etc. The most common form of corneal damage is abrasions--scratches on the eye lenses brought about from rubbing at your eyes too much. Pantalone's not just randomly blind as a bat--he actively did (is probably still doing) things that hurt himself, resulting in permanent bodily damage to his eyesight.
The fourth complaint was... once again... caused by Pantalone being incapable of toning it the fuck down. He literally gave himself ulcers from overwork and failing to feed himself.
By this point, the pattern emerging should be pretty clear: It's not that Pantalone's unhealthy by nature or genetics--it's that Pantalone is so invested in his mission (and likely his own personal ambitions) that he utterly neglects himself in pursuit of his goals. Nobody seems to matter to Pantalone less than Pantalone himself. It's to the point where Dottore is so fed up with it, the segments start ending the medical reports with notes saying: "Patient is so unwilling to take care of himself, I'm not even going to write reports on his various self-inflicted injuries anymore."
The fifth complaint is pneumonia, but it's the same story--it's not just a random illness because Pantalone somehow has a nonexistent immune system. It's pneumonia from "extensively necrotic lung tissue" because he literally chain-smoked his own lungs into rotten lumps. Once again, every single problem Pantalone is facing is a self-inflicted injury due to completely refusing to make his own body a priority.
I would also like to point out that it took him 145 years of smoking* 20 cigarettes a day (that's 1,058,500 cigarettes total!!) to burn up his first set of lungs. Those were extremely healthy lungs if you ask me???
(* - There's actually a funny conflict in the numbers here. At 56, Segment 25 reported that Pantalone was a "smoker of 30 years," which would mean he started smoking at 26. However, at 175, Segment 65 reports that Pantalone is a "smoker of 145 years," which would mean he started at 30. Pantalone has been giving his doctor bullshit numbers for 145 sexy sexy years. Anddddd whether you go with 26 or 30 for his starting year, Pantalone only started smoking after he met Dottore, so who is really to blame here???)
The sixth complaint was the acid attack--after which Pantalone waited four hours before seeking treatment, apparently.
The seventh complaint was the sudden development of a wool allergy after 220 years of not having a single known allergy--but once again, this isn't a natural health problem. This occurred because the acid attack broke the skin barrier and sensitized his system after the broken skin was exposed to wool. This is noted at the end of the acid attack report, which confirms that Pantalone is experiencing new sensitivities due to the broken skin barrier:
After which, Dottore fixes the problem and Pantalone never has a single allergy again. Bro is built of tougher stuff than me, at least. (Unfortunately, he was also built without an ounce of self-preservation.)
The eighth complaint was tripping over a bedpost in the night because he wasn't wearing the glasses that he only needs because he fucked up his own eyes.
Not a legitimate health problem, dude is just clumsy.
The final complaint is another assassination attempt, and even though he was going through acute liver failure that literally caused him to DIE and have to have emergency resuscitation, he still woke up twice and later had enough gall to ask to replicate the poison so he could use it on other people.
Yes, the game does drop lines like this:
But at this point, seeing how "field work" for Pantalone seems to involve being uhhhh *checks notes* beaten, shot, acid attacked, and poisoned to death... I'm inclined to say the "toll" is a lot less "I'm too physically sickly for this" and a lot more "I'm literally cursed and every time I step foot out of the palace, the world tries to KILL ME."
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I think the chain-smoking dude who forgets to eat if someone's not there telling him to is the healthiest person ever. He's clearly got Issues™. At the very least he is neglectful of his own health. But even though the game is quite clear that Pantalone is an accident-prone overworker who apparently has enemies lurking around every single corner, there's really not anything in the writing suggesting he's as sickly as, say, Baizhu.
(Just because he looks like Baizhu doesn't mean he coughs like Baizhu, okkayyyyy? lol)
The way some people are out there describing Pantalone as this fragile twig of a man, racked with illnesses, bed-ridden half the year, can't handle the Snezhnayan cold, sweet prince who will hack out a lung if he moves wrong, absolutely normal human with no powers, delicate flower in a world of super-powered god-tier fighters is just kind of 🤔🤔🤔 to me because... did we... play the same patch...?
The model is right there. You can tell the devs don't want you to think he's a complete twig since they put in the effort to call deliberate attention to his pecs in his design:
I'm not suggesting he's intended to be jacked like Varka or Wriothesley, not at all, but he's at least built like Alhaitham--the character designers put in effort to give him a defined chest even if the rest of his model is slender. The devs wouldn't have bothered adding in this level of shadowing and calling attention to the chest area by leaving it visible if players weren't supposed to notice it, or if we were supposed to think of him as a muscleless skeleton. Clearly, Pantalone's supposed to look like he has some shape and definition to him, at least like he'll hold up to a stiff breeze. The dude has survived EVERYTHING at this point, give him a little more credit??? V_V
His model actually has about the same amount of definition as Ifa's/the later Natlan models. I hope no one is out there calling Ifa a fragile waif.
And even Pantalone's overall character design (coat with large collar ruff propped on his shoulders to square his shoulder line, plus extra dangling volume in both the front and back) is deliberately designed to broaden him and make him appear like he takes up a larger amount of space. Again, not saying he's built huge, but the overall silhouette of Pantalone's model is intentionally designed give the impression of a person with an elegant but substantial physical presence.
They actually had to put his model a significant ways down the hill just to keep him aligned with Dottore during their final scene:
So yeah, he's not small at all? I don't care about people's ship headcanons or dynamics in the slightest because I like Dottolone just as much as the reverse (and I don't think body type has to have any kind of effect on preferences anyway), but I am genuinely not sure what game people are playing to be going around claiming Pantalone's a twink of all things??? T_T
And yes, okay, I get it, some of the lines of this patch seem to suggest that Pantalone is avoiding fights because he's weak/not fit for battle, but...
Why are we taking a notoriously unreliable narrator who was deliberately hiding his identity and abilities from the good guys for the entire patch at face value when he says these kinds of things about himself?
Do we really think the guy who wanted a copy of the poison that killed him for his own personal use is telling us the truth when he says "violence is not my area of expertise"? The guy who is besties with Dottore isn't capable of killing people? The harbinger with the underlings who are so terrified of the consequences of staining his reputation that they'd rather suicide bomb than go back to him after failing their mission? Are we sure we want to go with "not capable of violence" for that guy???
It's giving such massive "I'm just a feeble scholar" vibes that I'm truly confused on how people aren't at least second-guessing even a tiny bit whether he's actually telling us the truth.
Again, don't get me wrong. I don't think Pantalone is going to turn out to be some fist-fighting brawler using brute strength to battle. Clearly, they're going for something a lot more like a Loki archetype, the sneaky trickster who uses clever ploys and tools like poisons rather than charging in head first, sword swinging, but the way some people are actually out there describing Pantalone as if he's entirely incapable of battle when we all know he's going to become either a major antagonist weekly boss or a playable character who will get harbinger-privilege in the meta is just sooo strange to me.
Trust me, we're going to see him fight at some point, guys. (And hell, given the HP inflation and power creep in Genshin nowadays, by the time we do see him in battle in Snezhnaya, he'll probably end up being stronger than Bosstorre lmao).
Even the whole thing about "he's a completely normal human with no powers because he never received a Vision" is also making me question if I'm playing the same game as other people because literally--
We've already been told he can cast illusions. He clearly has some kind of magical power already, most likely through use of his Delusion, and if he was willing to let this power be seen by the enemy at a stage where he was still completely hiding his identity, I'm willing to bet he actually has a whole bundle of other tricks up his sleeve that he hasn't even showcased yet. I'm not saying he's ever going to be some god-tier combat veteran by canon's reckoning, but I am saying that he's clearly got a lot more going on than we know so far, so jumping to the conclusion that he's just a completely "average person" in terms of Teyvat's powerscaling seems very premature.
Anywayyyy, I don't know man. Seeing all these "He's so fragile, he won't survive without Dottore" takes is just getting to the point that it's making me wrinkle my nose.
Stop selling my man short! He's a scrappy bastard who gets shot and goes "Eh, not worth explaining." He's the crazy guy who waits around with agonizing acid burns melting through his flesh for four hours just so he can go get treated by his preferred doctor! He's the overachiever who starts bleeding from the stomach and goes "Nah, just give me the over-the-counter painkillers, my dude." We have no indication at all from what the game has showed us so far that he's not going to fit right into the rest of the playable roster, or that the devs want us to believe this guy is actually going keel over at any minute.
Even regarding his own death due to running out of the elixir of immortality, what Pantalone actually says is:
"I am optimistic," in short. Ignore the part where he dehumanizes himself, that's just par for the course.
Does he actually think he's going to die and is optimistic about that?
Or does he simply know something we don't that's making him confident about his future? Guess we'll find out!
Those who are headcanoning Pantalone with serious health conditions, chronic pain, etc. because they want more representation for those conditions in media are totally valid to me. People headcanoning Pantalone with major health conditions because they have experienced those pains and want to explore that through a new favorite character are also 110% valid to me. Anyone can headcanon a character as having health conditions for any reason they want; far be it from any fan to police another fan's headcanons, so long as people can remember to keep headcanon and actual canon separate... (Please, I'm begging...)
But to me, there's also this very obvious bent of a lot of people projecting fragility on to Pantalone almost entirely as shipping fuel, making him dependent on Dottore as the plot device to drive the romance. Most of the takes I've seen about Pantalone's poor health haven't been personal headcanons interested in exploring chronic health conditions or illness representation; instead, it's just been soooo many people who need Pantalone to be a delicate sickbed patient because the idea of him being completely reliant on his darling doctor really gets people excited I guess, and to me that's just... 😬
I've been a low-key Dottolone truther since I started playing because I have a background in world literature and theater and knew about Commedia dell'arte before playing the game. I also absolutely understand the appeal of humanizing Dottore by making him doting and attentive to a partner's health! But I genuinely fear how fandom takes can completely reshape a character over time. Especially because the Hoyo devs are prone to watching social media feedback and then harping on the exact points that they think fans want to see, so much so that characters sometimes end up as flanderized versions of themselves over time (like Cyno barely being able to go a single scene without a card game reference nowadays).
Rather than just turning Pantalone into a dead-man-walking who is going to start coughing blood into his handkerchief if the Traveler looks at him funny, I really hope the devs will lean more into the story the readables seem to be hinting at:
Pantalone is his own worst enemy.
It's not that his body is betraying him. It's not that he's not strong enough. It's that Teyvat's rules are rejecting him because he has rejected them. His single-minded pursuit of his own heavens-high ambitions is eating away at him, causing him to overwork, to put himself into increasingly dangerous situations as a harbinger, and then to ignore and neglect his own injuries even to the point they actually nearly kill him, because he has no desire to change himself if that won't help him get what he truly wants out of this life.
In multiple places, Pantalone describes himself as "needing more time" or "fighting time" itself.
So let's see it then. Square up, Istaroth.
I don't know what direction Hoyo is taking this character--hell, he could end up being completely incapable, I guess, in which case I suppose he'll just be background political intrigue or something for all of Snezhnaya's plot? But I genuinely hope that's not the case. I genuinely hope he's destined for something wilder, that we get the chance to truly see the unshakeable ambition that was strong enough to impress Dottore of all people.
I want to see someone whom the gods have never favored reach out and scratch the sky.
(Too long, didn't read: Please... just make sure to separate headcanon and canon when you're writing Pantalone as a withering Victorian widow fainting from the slightest fever... Please...)
