The "Dan Heng is Dan Feng" dogmatics annoy me a lot. It entirely brushes off one of the most interesting and prevalent questions posed by the game, incarnated by several characters and stories that give the question different hues with different potential answers, and a constant also in HI3, like a thread waving the two games together
Op these are really good tags
#The question about what makes a person themselves is super interesting #Is it the memories? Is it personality? Is it body? Is it resemblance? What about narrative reiteration? #Bronya is not Silver Wolf but they're both HI3 Bronya but also they're not #Is March the same person she once was? What about the Trailblazer? Welt looks at Himeko and Silver Wolf and feels like drowning #but he is looking at nothing other than something eerily recognisable #Vidyadhara are reborn anew as if washed clean but Dan Heng's process was skewed. What does it mean to Dan Heng? #He has the body he has the moves he has the stern haughty air he has muddy memories he can't quite recall but something stays #Is he or is he not the same? Where does one end and the other start? Where do they overlap? #Does how others regard him influence whether he is or isn't Dan Feng? #Does the memories of others weight more than your own memories and will? #What does constitute a person? How is selfhood constructed?
What are the ontological implications of all this? #If vou respond to these questions one way in one context when it comes to one character, can you confidently reply the same thing #in a different context for a different character? If not, why? What does it say? #It's not a straight up answer. The question is what's interesting and it's what makes Dan Heng's story interesting #Seeing it dogmatically negated mainly for the purpose of a ship annoys me a lot #It is a constant in HSR but it's even more clear after playing HI3. This problematic about what constitute identify and selfhood #and whether or not they're the same thing is a constant there too. With Kiana, with Otto, with Kevin, with Fu Hua, with the simulations #of the Flame Chasers most notably with Mobius but in general with the continuation of their goals and feelings, Klein as human and as ELF, #the iteration of consciences of the Herrschers, the puppets of the Herrscher of Domination, the influence of the Herrscher of Corruption, #the many times characters are found in different universes being slightly different yet recognisable, the amount of times characters seem #to reiterate existences in different eras, echoing past selves with past faces yet different,... #And usually it's not easy to respond to all of them with the same answer, which only opens more questions. It's extremely interesting #and it's obviously a topic Honkai as a game cares about a lot. But no. Nothing matters. Dan Heng *is* Dan Feng yes or yes no questions asked #No problematic. No questioning. No doubts. All usually because of a ship.
That the drive. I don't know... I'm all for shipping #but I quite dislike when shipping gets so out of hand it crushes and brushes off good writing or core motifs in a text. It's... shabby #And it saddens me haha. Why do you even care about these characters and their dynamic if you're erasing core traits of them as characters? #Abfkabdkkd anyway... #I talk too much #I should probably delete this later #But I had to vent a little. It annoys me a lot this kind of approach to analysis what can I say
