Hyacine: Kawaii Culture, Lisa Frank, and Non-Performative Femininity
In celebration of me finally becoming a Hyacine haver on her re-run, I wanted to write something about my Amphoreus best girl, the cutest pink cupcake of the Chrysos Heirs!
Namely, I wanted to discuss the things I greatly appreciate about Hyacine's target audience, the philosophy behind her design, and the ways in which her design reinforces both her role in the story and the themes of her character arc.
So, without further ado, a look at what makes Hyacine so unique and special (to me):
The long and short of it is: Hyacine is a female character designed for a female audience.
It's rare, but it happens!
As part of Hoyo's standard design philosophy, there is a largely unspoken but very obvious general rule: You should design your female characters to appeal to a male audience, and you should design your male characters to appeal to a female audience.
The assumption on Hoyo's design and marketing teams' parts is that male players pull for female characters more than women do, while female players pull for male characters more than men do. Whether or not this is true doesn't even matter (meta usefulness is actually the strongest predictor of who will sell in a gacha game, but that's another story); the assumption that this statement is true is the driving principle behind a majority of Hoyo's design choices when it comes to their characters--particularly their female characters.
Hoyo has a very consistent set of limitations for female characters, which typically boils down to some combination of the following: (Just a few examples here, by the way, this is not exhaustive.)
Bare shoulders, back, or legs--designed to highlight female character model proportions and expose skin to tantalize.
Short dress, mini skirt, or micro shorts--pants are not allowed because Reasons™.
Purple is fine for women to wear, but pink is not; pink and most pastel colors are limited to hair (about 80% of pink on HSR's and Genshin's female designs is pink hair), eyes, and the rare accessory or trim because apparently Hoyo thinks their modern male playerbase will combust if forced to play a female character who actually wears a primarily pink outfit.
Every woman must wear high heels or bare feet (for that foot fetish appeal). They literally warped their entire tall female models in multiple games around the idea that "woman = high heels." The exceptions to this are so rare as to be negligible.
Large breasts and (often) visible cleavage, or conversely, very small breasts with an "immature"/"young" personality because (some very gross) players can associate flat chests with prepubescence and youth in girls.
Design elements and accessories that deliberately draw the player's eye to erogenous zones. Female characters' designs will often include arrow/V-shapes, dangling elements, or have angled patterns added to their clothing to intentionally draw the eye visually across the design to their chests or hips, for example:
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Yelan's design, by the way, just that it's a perfect example of a common Hoyo design trend where the lines and angles of the outfit are very deliberately placed to draw the eye to specific zones the designers want to emphasize. Hell, they even added a convenient moving target with the tassel placed directly in Yelan's cleavage here, to specifically draw your eyes there when the tassel moves. This is Male Gaze Design 101 and I ain't judging because I like everything about Yelan other than that fuckass bob.
Women will always be shorter than men. There is no exception; every female model will be shorter than the corresponding male model of the same height group, at all times.
Aventurine is taller than Jade, dawg, make it make sense.
Animations will deliberately highlight specific elements of female anatomy in ways that male character animations rarely (although not never; Mydei you will always be famous!) do:
Because I can already hear the clamoring "what about"s, some disclaimers:
"Wearing a revealing outfit isn't automatically fanservice aimed at men! Women showing skin are just existing!" Real women can show as much skin as they want without intentionally attempting to appeal to men because real women have agency and control over their bodies and their clothing choices. Female characters in gacha games do not have agency and their design choices are always, always at the whims of their designers, who are often male. A woman wearing a revealing outfit in real life is probably freely expressing herself as she chooses--a female character in a gacha game wearing a revealing outfit is always performing fanservice, largely for an assumed-male audience, because 1) all gacha characters are intentionally designed to be fanservice for someone, and 2) that outfit was obviously meant to make her appealing enough that players attracted to women would spend real money to buy her.
"Having big breasts doesn't automatically mean being sexualized; real women have big breasts all the time!" I absolutely agree that real women's bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and it isn't fair that people sexualize the very existence of breasts. But if you genuinely believe that a female character in a gacha game has big boobs or a skintight fit over her well-shaped backside because Hoyoverse's game developers had a heartfelt and entirely pure desire to create "authentic depictions of women's varied body types" in their games (which have publicly courted an incel audience), and not, because, you know, they have a "big booba = sexy" design mindset, you should probably log off the internet and go outside, because you may actually be so naive you're not safe in online spaces.
"It's misogynistic to call female character designs fanservice!" This statement only holds true if you actually believe there's something morally wrong with fanservice, but uhhhh we're not in the 1600s anymore; the original 13 colonies called and want their Puritans back. Acknowledging that literally all of Hoyo's character designs are based on some form of fanservice will not kill you, I promise. There isn't anything inherently wrong with fanservice (except when fanservicey designs undermine the character's themes--see Genshin's Lauma for a recent example, where Nod-Krai's story tells us one of Lauma's main struggles is having to constantly appeal to others and how harmful this objectification has been to her... and then the game invites us to goon over her so that she's objectified by us players too). Fanservice is how Hoyo makes their money; it is literally what keeps the games running. It would be very silly of me to complain about the female characters being designed for a male audience while praising the male characters for being designed with a female audience in mind; and it is equally silly when people try to gaslight others into believing that the obviously fanservice-focused designs of most of Hoyo's female characters aren't, you know, obviously fanservice.
Anyway, all of that was just to establish a general truth:
A vast majority of Hoyo's female characters are designed to have widespread appeal to men.
And... then there's Hyacine, whose design is 100% intended to appeal to women first.
This one's for the girlies.
Hyacine's design is focused on a brand of "hyper-femininity" (/positive) that privileges aesthetics almost exclusively culturally associated with girlhood: glittery rainbows, ribbons, unicorns, puffy fluffy hair ties, cutesy pink drill curls, and so on. It's a design that insists on capturing pure and condensed (socially determined) "girlishness" and throwing it at you all at once. It's the Barbie aisle. It's My Little Pony. It's schoolgirls clutching their stuffed animals. It's "Let's play imaginary princess angels!" It's Chibiusa and Helios. It's Pretty Cure and Cardcaptor Sakura.
It is--I'll elaborate in a minute--very literally Lisa Frank.
Hyacine's design rejects the limitations imposed by the stereotypical male gaze by exceeding the boundaries of the femininity that heterosexual men are normally (socially conditioned to be) comfortable engaging with on their own.
Again, before the "what about"s start: Yes, of course there are plenty of real men also into hyper-feminine "cutesy" girls. I'm sure that there are whole groups of guys out there (not to even mention the sapphic women) who would kill for a bubblegum princess girlfriend, who would be willing to move into a house painted all pink simply because that house had a woman in it. If a character is female, she will appeal to some men in some way; this is just a statement of fact.
But in terms of Hoyo's overall marketing strategies, "rainbows and unicorns" are NOT what Hoyo normally considers appealing to men.
In the developers' internal "things that our male players will shell out money for" list, pink drill curls and ponies, bells and ribbons, sunshine and flowers are almost certainly not high up.
But why? If heterosexual men supposedly like women so much, shouldn't hallmarks of femininity--the things societies deem most stereotypically feminine in modern times--be most appealing to men?
This where design meets the strange social phenomenon in which femininity is generally appealing to heterosexual men only so long as it is performed to men's expectations and tastes.
Yes, also, I know: Not all men. Please understand that everything I'm saying in this post is broad, generalized statements based on how society (generally my own U.S. society) views men and women, as a single tumblr post could never hope to encompass the dizzying spectrum of gender identities, perceptions of masculinity/femininity, and personal attractions across every single person on the internet.
By its most common current definition, the term "performative femininity" refers to a type of femininity that is not self-driven but an act that a woman feels forced to put on in order to fit society's often rigid gender expectations. (Also to clarify: All gender is essentially performance, as "gender" itself is a combination of social expectations and traditions, but in this case I'm speaking only about feeling compelled to perform in a specific manner, rather than living by one's own desires.) This may mean a woman feeling like she has to wear make-up for others to consider her good-looking (as opposed to wearing it just because she personally likes it) or that she has to wear a dress to work or special events even if she normally dislikes wearing dresses. It can mean a woman feeling like she needs to be quiet when a man is talking because that's the "polite" (read: womanly) thing to do, even if she really wants to speak up instead. It can even be the tendency of women to pit themselves against their compatriots ("Oh, I'm prettier than her") instead of uplifting fellow women, and so on.
When it comes to character designs, it is essential to remember again that fictional characters are not people, and therefore they have no agency and no ability to choose what degree of femininity (or not) to perform for themselves--their designers are always and totally in charge of that decision. This means that, in the case of a vast majority of female characters in Hoyo's gacha games, feminine traits are present in their design largely to perform the exact level (and only the exact level) of femininity that Hoyo assumes will actually appeal to their general male audience.
Femininity in Hoyo's female character designs is often limited to the scope of what Hoyo's marketing research tells them men like to see when they look at women, rather than what women might choose for their own designs. Feminine elements are allowed in these character designs only so long as the assumed heterosexual male audience can interpret those elements as for men, deliberately designed to appeal to them. If something is socially perceived as "for girls only," it's almost uniformly banned from the female character designs: There's no glittery princess tiaras. There's no purses. There's no plushie keychains. There's no childhood-rekindling ribbon-coated cupcake dresses (Navia almost made it there though, she almost made it).
There's nothing in the vast majority of Hoyo's female character designs that would challenge the (often delicate) sensibilities of the general male playerbase.
But when it came to Hyacine, Hoyo really said "You're going to have that rainbow unicorn plastered on your screen 24/7 in Amphoreus's meta and you're going to like it."
As a fictional character, of course Hyacine is never in charge of her own appearance, but to the extent that her design exceeds the levels of femininity that heterosexual men typically want to engage with, Hyacine's design evokes a very familiar--and very historical--brand of non-performative femininity (or, rather, femininity performing only for itself): Kawaii Culture.
Pictured above: Little Ica's ancestral lineage.
While "Kawaii Culture" got its start in Japan and is, in many ways, shaped specifically by Japanese social circumstances of the 1970s to the 1990s, the core concepts and styles--and the underlying philosophy--of Kawaii Culture have since been exported globally, with corresponding movements and fashion trends in basically every other society in the world, including in China with things like 萌 (meng) culture and "girly pop" movements in the U.S.
Although the history of Kawaii Culture is too long and complicated for me to fully summarize, its first solid spark was a form of minor protest when teenagers in Japan in the 1970s began using personalized "cutesy" writing styles for schoolwork, defying the expectations and demands for sterile professionalism placed on them by rigid education and career systems. "Cute" handwriting became a form of rebellious self-expression that privileged women's styles over conforming to rules dictating "proper" behavior. The movement in particular began to pick up steam with the late-1970s launch of Sanrio's Hello Kitty characters, whose innocent charm--designed specifically to appeal to both children and adults--evoked a very specific feeling: Things that are "soft," "weak," and "dependent" have a unique brand of cuteness. The etymological roots of the Japanese words "kawaii" (cute) and "kawaisou" (pitiful) are the same. That is: helpless things are cute because they are helpless.
Contrary to expectations that these "helpless," adorable things (read as: anything feminine) might be disenfranchised or at the mercy of those more powerful, this cuteness-from-helplessness combination actually became a political tool for young women in Japan in the 1970s: By embracing icons of childishness, things associated with "girlhood," and the "helplessness of a little child" instead of adopting symbols of adult life (professional appearance, calm and respectful behavior, etc.), Japanese young women protested the intense and highly gendered expectations placed on them by their staunchly patriarchal society.
"Kawaii" in women could be perceived as pushing back against the demand that all women "grow up" in a timely manner so they can become either working women or wives and mothers, beholden to the whims of the men in their lives and expected to behave in very structured ways to support their families--instead, young women promoting this sub-culture sometimes sought to delay and reject their country's "adult" social pressures by embracing childhood and girlishness instead. By refusing to perform to the expectations of "the system" (read as: men), Japanese young women of the 1970s and 80s sometimes used "cuteness" to rebel against attempts to force women to conform to social expectations and repress self-expression.
Although not quite to the same extent and lacking the specific social context of Japan, rises in "girly" fashion trends and the popularity of feminine aesthetics and merchandise have often corresponded with women's power movements across the globe. The revival of Hello Kitty and its mass popularity in the U.S. in the 1990s corresponded well with the heyday of third-wave feminism, which prioritized solidarity among women, emphasized intersectionality, and advocated for celebrating "Girl Power," making things that were "girly"--like Hello Kitty, Barbie, girl pop groups like the Spice Girls and Destiny's Child--trendy and centered in the lives of young girls. It was the age of the glittery gel pen, the sparkly butterfly hairclips, and the platform sneaker.
And it was also the age of Lisa Frank.
First, while there's certainly much to be said about the controversies that occurred within the Lisa Frank company in the late 1990s, I won't get into that here; I'm really interested only in the message the company sold and promoted publicly for young girls--namely that "All things girly are gorgeous," and that not only should one celebrate girlhood but that one should celebrate it to the extreme, embracing not demure or quietly feminine designs but loud, aggressively feminine designs.
If color is good, then using the rainbow with every color at once is even better. If bright tones are awesome, then we will aim for eye-searing neon. If stars and clouds and bubbles and rainbows are what the girlies are buying right now, then fill the whole sky with them. If cute baby animals and unicorns and pegasi are what girls like, then slap that shit on every item a young girl could possibly need, from her hair bows to her color-changing sneakers, from her school notebooks to her stuffed toys.
Lisa Frank's style has been described as "the purest, uncut concentrations of girliness known to girlkind."
While I won't make any claims suggesting Lisa Frank was an active feminist warrior determined to spread a pro-feminine message (perhaps to combat the 1990s movements that privileged grunge and violent moody boys, old-school jocks and Tony Hawk), that is part of the ultimate effect the brand achieved: Lisa Frank artwork gave young U.S. girls in the 1990s a hyper-feminine "culture" to rally around, in the same way that boys were (still are) encouraged to rally around loving sports teams. For all the behind-the-scenes failures of the company, the social effect was that Lisa Frank's merchandise made publicly announcing one's love of "all things girly" the go-to choice for many young U.S. girls in the 90s.
Like the Kawaii trend across the sea, in Lisa Frank's aesthetic, the helpless--cute baby seals, leopard cubs, puppies and kitties--becomes the privileged, proud and unrepentantly "feminine," refusing to apologize for its own boldness. (Do I actually like this aesthetic, looking back at it as a grown adult? Frankly, it's garish. But to little girls who often experienced being laughed at by little boys for liking anything perceived as "girly"? This shit was gold.)
And here's where it gets interesting: While the Kawaii Culture that would go on to inspire Hyacine's design got its start in the East and migrated to the West through cultural transmission, Lisa Frank's aesthetics have also traveled backwards since the 1990s, creating the chain of inspiration (often through internet memes) that would later obviously influence the development of Hyacine in China as well, in a sort of "globalization of cuteness" loop.
Although I certainly won't go so far as to say any particular artwork was the direct inspiration for Hyacine's design or animations, it's clear that the original 1990s' trend of combining rainbows-stars-bubbles-unicorns-glitter (which regained popularity the 2020s on the global internet after artists nostalgically began imitating elements of Lisa Frank's style, such as in some works of Frutiger Aero art)--
--formed a maximalist "hopecore" aesthetic that had obvious influence on Hyacine's design:
If this girl had been born in the 90s her color palette would have been neon, I know it.
While the influence of "kawaii" on Hyacine's external design is clear, the most important thing in all of this is that "uncut concentrations of girlishness" aren't just inspirations for Hyacine's appearance--the philosophies behind Kawaii Culture directly inform Hyacine's role in the story and the themes of her character arc.
"With Just a Glimmer of Light"
Although we are introduced to Hyacine in 3.2, her character quest and the bulk of her screentime is in 3.3, where our establishing scene already paints Hyacine as different not only from others in general but even from her fellow Chrysos Heirs.
When Anaxa asks his class "What is your dream?", he's displeased by the answers that Phainon and Castorice give--Phainon's wish is vague and therefore meaningless (he wants to protect the people he cares for, but doesn't even list a single actual person who means anything to him), while Castorice's wish is unfortunately short-sighted (she wants to rid the world of the sorrow of "death," but has no real concept of what a world without death would even be like).
Meanwhile, Hyacine's answer establishes her as an emblem of kindness, modesty, and sympathy:
On the surface, this first scene could be seen as establishing Hyacine as a reductive stereotype of femininity played perfectly straight: She's not a warrior, she's the healer, a supporter, a caretaker--all roles to which women (especially women in fantasy media!) have been constantly and continually pigeonholed. It's tempting to start viewing her already as the "heart of the party" healer archetype whose overflowing gentleness and warmth is met with equally overflowing misplaced optimism and naivete, sweet as sugar but vapid as an empty platitude.
Yet Hyacine's answer for the future is the only one that Anaxa accepts. The only one that he calls interesting, because it possesses what both Phainon's and Castorice's wishes lack: A view of their fairy-tale-hero's-journey world that has its feet on the ground, instead of a head in the clouds.
Hyacine's dream speaks to the reality of their world: 99% of the people in Amphoreus will never be heroes. They will live, and die, in obscurity.
With her answer, Hyacine's very first establishing scene challenges the viewer to consider what "true" heroism is: Does Phainon's desire to protect those he personally cares about carry the same weight as Hyacine's aspiration to protect the lives and preserve the stories of the countless unsung people who lived and died in the course of Amphoreus's fairy tale epic?
Much later in Amphoreus's plot, this exact idea will be echoed to form the basis of Cryene's ultimate story of sacrifice and love, where the conclusion of Amphoreus's arc will insist on the power of all people, not just on Chrysos Heirs, and where preserving the memory of Amphoreus itself will require not just immortalizing its heroes but all its life--every being worth remembering, down to the tiniest chimera.
The grand story of selfless love for humanity that Cyrene will unravel in 3.7?
Hyacine already had that answer in 3.3.
It's true this first major scene may lure some viewers into over-simplification: "Look at Hyacine, she's the pretty princess whose biggest character trait is kindness and empathy, because oh wow, sooo ground-breaking, she's a girly girl and those are the traits of every girly girl!"
But Hyacine's candy-coated optimism, even from this first scene, is tinged with a very particular brand of realism that her fellow young Chrysos Heirs Phainon and Castorice are lacking. Phainon is still envisioning that "flawless" hero who can protect everyone without ever making mistakes, while Castorice dreams of a neverending world so removed from their human reality that Anaxa ironically says he "weeps" for it.
Hyacine's view of Amphoreus's "fairy tale world" recognizes (but does not tolerate) the sad reality of their turbulent times: Not all stories are created equal and not everyone will get to survive to the end of the legend. Her dream tells us that Hyacine understands a core truth about existence: No matter how rare they are, the world will always privilege heroes over everyday "mortals," and some lives will always been seen as more worthy. The real world isn't a fair or gentle place...
Yet Hyacine says: Let me make it one.
Amphoreus's male heroes, namely Phainon and Mydei, both represent a very stereotypical social alignment of masculinity with destruction, conflict, and bloodlust, and in embracing violence as the medium for their heroism, they both reinforce a specific worldview that suffering is essential to the human experience. Mydei repeats multiple times "Strife is the agony this world needs," aligned to his belief that the only way to end conflict is through conflict--that peace can only be obtained through war.
Yet through Hyacine's story (and later Cyrene's), the game asks us to directly confront that worldview, to question for ourselves whether conflict, violence, and the slaughter ever-present in heroic epics really can create a peaceful world in the end. Can actions born of suffering really bring about a happy ending?
Phainon's collapse into Flame Reaver and his ultimate passing of the "Deliverer" title to the Trailblazer reinforces this question even further: Can you bring pain to the world and still call yourself a hero?
At the core of this question is a philosophical debate that has been raging in the real world since the Classical Era or even before, the concept that things can only be defined by the existence of their opposites: We know what hot is because we've felt cold, we understand what light is because we have experienced darkness, we know wet because we have felt dry. Ergo, the conclusion many people draw is: In order to understand happiness, you must first experience hardship.
In embracing this mindset, people often take on a perspective that makes suffering into something noble. Pain builds character, isn't that what they say? If strife and hardship are inevitable in this life, then let's accept them as learning experiences that help us grow, that make the high points of our lives that much sweeter.
But this philosophy is ultimately one that risks breeding apathy, because if suffering is inevitable in life, then what is the point of trying to eradicate it? If we need conflict in order to keep feeling joy, then some hardships in the world will just have to be over-looked, won't they? Some losses are "acceptable." If pain is a core part of human existence, then isn't evil also a core part of human existence? And doesn't history show that it's our human default to reduce ourselves to war and thieving and backstabbing over and over and over?
This philosophy inevitably descends into a deeply pessimistic view of both the world and humanity, one that assumes that suffering, greed, and all things awful in the world are inherent parts of life, perhaps even more inherent to humanity than goodness and peace. This view, despite (or perhaps because of) its pessimism, is perceived by many people as a "pragmatic" or "realistic" view of the world.
Certainly, this is the conclusion that Seliose reached at the end of her long journey:
We're told, as we slowly unravel Seliose's mysterious past throughout 3.3, that she originally had an overwhelming love for humanity, that she was naive because she genuinely believed that defeating Aquila would magically solve the conflicts between the Skyfolk's warring clans.
But soon enough, this naivete turns into disillusionment and bitterness--Seliose, seeing the depths to which the Skyfolk were willing to sink, seeing humanity's cowardice and selfishness, turns her back on humanity, losing all hope for the future of her people.
Ultimately, Seliose, fused with Aquila, becomes a vengeful god who enacts divine retribution on the Skyfolk because she has come to believe that all humanity is irredeemable--that is, that evil is the essence of humanity and that human life itself has no meaning because nothing good will ever come of mortals.
Before I go any further, I want to clarify that I absolutely do not believe that there's an inherent link between being biologically male and committing more violence than others, or that you can empirically map the concepts of "kindness" versus "aggression" to the social spectrum of "femininity" and "masculinity" at all, but... there is a cultural bias that draws these associations implicitly.
Outdated and rigid gender norms in many societies paint men and boys as "aggressive" while expecting gentleness of women. "Boys will be boys" people say, when their sons get into fist fights on the playground or turn out to be bullies. Parents sign their boy children up for martial arts to "get their anger out" while signing their girl children up for the same classes to "learn how to defend themselves." Our heroes in video games are strapping men wielding giant battle axes and robed in the skins of their animal kills, while our healers are delicate elvish waif women in robes. War and violence are seen as the arenas of men, while it is assumed that women are somehow universally prone to being mediators who will shy from conflict. Even in feminist circles, there's a strongly held belief that a globe run by women would be far more peaceful than our current world still primarily run by men.
And accompanying this notion that aggression and bloodshed are the domains of men is the equal notion that darkness and despair are the domains of stoic, long-suffering men too, men who just have a so-much-more realistic view of the world than sweet, inexperienced women who haven't "seen the horrors" the way men can. (I hope you can feel my eye roll.) In this way, even concepts as dissociated from gender as plain old "optimism" and "hope" become the hallmarks of femininity, of childishness (and we all know, anything perceived as childish or "innocent" is basically treated as synonymous with "feminine" in many misogynist minds).
"Everyone cheer up!" - Go-to dialogue for the token female teammate in every series ever written by a man.
In an example of true misogyny, worldviews that prioritize kindness, generosity, hope, and belief in the inherent goodness of humanity are socially associated with women--and then immediately dismissed as naive, immature, or unrealistic in comparison to stereotypically masculine grim-dark "edgelord" perceptions of the future of humanity as a moral wasteland.
Despite featuring two women, Hyacine's story quest actually centers around this exact conflict and perception.
Throughout the wind-up of the quest, Seliose is repeatedly associated with conventional symbols of masculinity. She's described as a "knight" and a "god" whom the ordinary Skyfolk have no chance of physically standing up against. She is revered as a "hero of the epics," like any other Chosen One cliche male hero whose strengths lie entirely in martial prowess. While the quest initially describes Seliose as loving and beneficent toward humanity (traits Hoyo consistently assigns to their female characters, see Cyrene/Elysia), this is quickly lost behind the cold anger and violence of stereotypically masculine tyrant kings.
The story even doubles down on this alliance between Seliose's way of thinking and the vengeful, pessimistic worldview of many modern male hero figures, when, after revealing that she straight up murdered her entire civilization, Phainon goes:
Bruh please??? She just killed thousands of people by boiling them alive in molten metal!! From one fratricidal serial killer to another...
Even for Hyacine, Seliose is a larger-than-life heroic figure symbolic of the Flame-Chase Journey itself, to whom Hyacine obviously feels she cannot measure up. Over and over again, the game drives the dichotomy between Seliose and Hyacine home, with numerous NPCs and even Cipher comparing the two of them not just mentally but also physically:
Yet even while recognizing the gulf in power and authority between herself and Seliose, Hyacine never falters. She states that even if she may not have the individual strength to contend with a titan, she nevertheless is determined to redefine her people's story on her own terms.
Even as Hyacine discovers that everything she ever believed is a lie, that her own ancestor fed the future with falsehoods to cowardly save her own life, that her people were barbarous and prejudice enough to turn on each other in internal slaughter, and the heroine she was told her whole life she should aim to imitate had abandoned mortals entirely out of a fatalistic view that assumed nothing in humanity was worth saving, Hyacine still refused to give in to despair the way Seliose did, refused to waver in her love for the world and her faith that humanity can heal, grow, and improve.
She turns pinker and pinker the more and more powerful her weaponized positivity becomes.
When Seliose's towering violence (conforming to some extent with the masculine definition of "legendary warrior") clashes with Hyacine's empathy (opposing the masculine), Star Rail's writers had the opportunity to take a dark and edgy route--to crush Hyacine's eternal optimism with the idea that "saving the day isn't always possible" in the name of "realism." They had the chance to dismiss Hyacine's idealism as naive and childish, to tell us kindness has no place in the war-torn playgrounds of manly Greek war epics, or to tell us that "positivity lacks substance" in comparison to things like Mydei's grim determination to fight to the death against the Black Tide.
But that's not what the writers did. From the very start, they tell us Hyacine is unique and strong not in spite of her kindness but because of it:
Despite its name and relevance to the entire Flame-Chase Journey, "Proi Proi" is not Phainon's theme; it's not even really "all the Flame Chasers'" theme, given that it's never played again anywhere else in the game. It's placed at the climax of Hyacine's portion of the story because its message of defiance against a destiny that separates people into "strong" and "weak" is the pinnacle of Hyacine's theme:
The rebellion at the heart of "Kawaii Culture" doesn't just pervade Hyacine's external design--it is written into the very core of her character.
She isn't Phainon who can pull a god from the sky or Mydei who can tear a man's throat out with his bare hands. She is weak, Hoyo tells us. She is sweet, she is generous, she picks kindness when no one else will. She is the pitiful creature whose endearing, child-like vulnerability shouts in your face: "Isn't she cute?"
But in the context of Amphoreus's story, where the lives of everyone in their world dance in the palm of a single man, that exact cuteness is also an incredibly powerful refusal to conform to the masculine forces that dominate her world. Hyacine's rainbow skies push back against the all-devouring darkness of the Black Tide. Her active choice to see the goodness in everyone (even Flame Reaver) stands in direct opposition to Lygus's worship of destruction and Irontomb's wrath. Her intensely affirming views of the value of human lives absolutely rejects Zandar's casual cruelty.
As her world collapses around her and the Chrysos Heirs waver in their fears of whether Amphoreus can even be saved, Hyacine's refusal to accept that meaningless death is all that awaits their world, her intentional decision to choose selflessness over ambivalence and compassion over hatred, perfectly encapsulates the exact conflict that will mark Amphoreus's later climax in 3.7, when Cyrene defines the prime mover of life as "love."
In both appearance and theme, Hyacine intensely rebels against the symbolically masculine worldviews of darkness, pragmatism, and necessary violence, privileging a tenderness that society has stereotypically come to associate with femininity.
This is the message of every magical girl anime ever: Heroism is not and has never been limited to bulky caped crusaders with broody vigilantism. Pink cupcakes and chubby unicorns are perfectly suited to the saving the world too.
Thank you for this perfect contribution, random Youtube user.
Because, at the end of the day, Hoyo also tells us: Hyacine's right. She's right about everything--about her own strength, about the way only generosity and beneficence can enact real change in the world, about the value of human life, and about the absolutely essential nature of continually and purposefully choosing optimism in a world that insists over and over again on exacting despair.
Hoyo does not present Hyacine's idealism as frivolous, vapid, or stupid. That "child-like" belief in goodness isn't a weakness that causes her downfall but the literal strength that allows her to bring down the very god of the heavens. Through both her hyper-feminine design and her role in the story, Hoyo insists that we players engage with Hyacine's cheerful worldview unironically--that we embrace hope with complete earnestness. "Don't dismiss this as naive or meaningless," they tell us--and in doing so, also say: "Don't dismiss ideas associated with femininity as naive or meaningless either."
With Hyacine's character quest, Hoyo very clearly says:
The worldview that centers so many concepts that are stereotypically viewed as "feminine"--empathy, kindness, optimism, love for others?
i'm really annoyed at how the fandom, even the game is responding to anaxagoras asking for people to call him anaxagoras and not "anaxa". everyone's treating it like it's a big joke. and like. can we take him more seriously and respect him more??
edit because this deserves to be in the og post:
YES EXACTLY. THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO ME. can we genuinely please refrain from calling him "anaxa" despite the game feeding that to us over and over. he is asking to be called anaxagoras. i don't think it's very funny to see someone asking to be called anaxagoras and go "ok i'll call you something else then!"
Birds of a feather is so phaidei coded I cannot believe how there aren't more edits of them to it.
Birds of a feather, we should stick together, I know ('til the day that I die)
I said I'd never think I wasn't better alone ('til the light leaves my eyes)
Can't change the weather, might not be forever ('til the day I die)
But if it's forever, it's even better
The part on how it can't be forever is already alluding to their doomed yaoi & then when the last chorus keeps repeating the theme of death really brings it out so clearly.
I knew you in another life
You had that same look in your eyes
It's their promise for their date! For Phainon to see Mydei's library!
This song fits them so well!!! The whole song is so full of yearning and my favourite part of phaidei has got to be the yearning <3 And of course, there's
Might not be long, but baby, I
Don't wanna say goodbye
which might sound plain, but the way Billie Eilish sang it, * chef's kiss *
It's been rotating in my brain for a while, so I decided to compile my thoughts about the parallels between anaxa and sunday in terms of the way their writing, personality and themes align with one another. At this point, I don't believe this is coincidental.
Anaxa sees reason and emotion as coexisting concepts instead of opposing ends. he rejects himself but he doesn't reject his humanity. he rejects his life but doesn't reject his personhood. he debatably has more faith in his students than he does in himself, because he puts so much trust in them to continue his work. to question everything. to forsake everything. to prove everything he can because he has nothing to lose. he guards his theories with his life because its literally all he has left. and i just like how antideterministic it is. they're doomed but he proves its not humanity being doomed by the gods, its humanity's ability to both doom and save itself.
the parallels between sunday and anaxa are best summed up by these two quotes from their respective trailers:
sunday: knowing there were no gods who could save people unconditionally. to change anything, you can only rely on yourself.
anaxa: gods, decry it as blasphemy - if that is all you can do [...] we alone are the true gods of this world.
How can they believe there's such a thing as a god after all they've lost? A line that particularly stuck out to me in anaxa's stories was cerces's goading of anaxa, asking him if he prayed to the titans upon seeing his hometown ruined and his sister dead. It disclosed a deeper, more personal sentiment anaxa has towards the titans than a mere desire to erase their existence. For anaxa, forsaking the gods means to wrestle control back to humanity's hands, to his hands, in the face of an uncontrollably tragic fate.
In this sense, both anaxa and sunday must deal with a desire for control, doing so by getting their respective gods out of the equation. I think Sunday's words at the grand theatre are incredibly important to this point, and indicate just how similar (if, of course, different circumstantially) their characters and arcs are:
Sunday: My desire is not to resurrect a fallen Aeon, or become one myself... my sole objective is to create a paradise free from Aeons, where the Order ensures the dignity and happiness of all humanity. A paradise exclusive to us human beings".
Sunday, for all his religious theming and imagery, wishes to forsake the gods in favour of an order of safety, to be the sole person remaining awake to guard the dreaming. I think it's very interesting that thematically, anaxa is framed as chaotic, wishing to disrupt the status quo, a perceived opposite to sunday, who in fact shares many more similarities with his mindset than you'd imagine. They both want to liberate mankind from the gods, so their fates won't be inextricably tied to the gods' whims, having grown disillusioned with them. Here however, the stark difference in their methods comes into play: while sunday's desire for humanity's happiness is regrettably robbing it of agency, anaxa's desire for humanity to gain its agency back is knowingly robbing them of their faiths.
Sunday doesn't have faith in humanity's ability to overcome hardships, and in order to be their protector, he decided to usurp the role of a god - he saw horrors so severe, that he felt he had to shoulder their protection for himself. Sunday operates by his sense of anxiety which inadvertently disclosed his lack of faith, taking things into his own hands to ensure they will go as well as possible - he can ensure the success and happiness of humanity only if he takes the burden upon himself and sees it through with his own hands. He feels only he can, or really must, be the responsible person who can shoulder the burden of protecting humanity, which inadvertently strips them of agency. Meanwhile, anaxa's entire thesis is based on his own disillusionment with the gods and faith in humanity, that his plan and eventual usurping of the titan position was in service of proving humanity's agency over the titans by their being identical beings. Anaxa has so much faith in humanity, to the point of disregarding his life and physical existence and completely trusting his students to continue what he can't finish. The blasphemer is driven by faith in humanity, while the believer is driven by distrusting the gods.
To their respective ends, they both decide to pose themselves as antagonists in the eyes of the public in order to ascend to a higher position at the expense of their own lives and well being. They're both themed and viewed as performers of sorts (depicted in stage settings, the performer and the conductor), which on the surface level, epitomise sunday as an organizer, a puppeteering figure, a follower of Order, and anaxa as the wild stage performer, a soliloquy giver, disrupting the audience's understandings of the world into chaos. I contend, however, that the complete opposite is true, making these parallels all the more compelling. Sunday's performance is entirely puppeteered and driven by his sense of anxiety, desperation, and an urge to escape reality, not being able to withstand its horrors - the order hides personal chaos. On the other side of the coin, anaxa's performance is the epitome of calculated, an argument and theory decades in the making, meant to be his final proof so he can leave the world that pained him behind to his students to nourish and give a final sacrifice for his equivalent exchange - the chaos hides personal order.
These two opposing ideas disclose the paralleling approaches anaxa and sunday take in regards to their ideals, and their differences in mental fortitude and personality. Anaxa is very self assured that his method will lead to his desired outcomes, marches entirely to the beat of his own drum, passing his thoughts to his cherished students and trusting them to continue what he doesn't believe he can survive to accomplish. Sunday, on the other hand, is defined by his insecurity, being surrounded by the hostile environment of the family, the younger figure thrust into a position of power through manipulation, and being forced to conform to it. Anaxa's figure is that of a teacher, an authority, while Sunday was inherently stuck in the position of a novice political figure, forced to sway according to the authorities around him.
Probably one of the most dominant aspects paralleling anaxa to sunday is both of their incredibly meaningful and impactful bonds they share with their sisters. While in sunday's case his bond takes central stage and in anaxa's stage we can only infer based on the little that is mentioned about it, I think it is no less significant to a thorough understanding of his character and motivations.
In both cases, two young siblings are left to fend off for themselves as their parents either die at the hands of war (sunday and robin) or decide to abandon their children (anaxa and his sister). And as such, they're each other's most meaningful connections in the world. Sunday owes robin his dream of a utopia, her ever supporter because her happiness is his, cementing his dedicating his life for the sake of others. In a similar vein, anaxa owes his sister his education, his access to knowledge, to experiments, to what is going to shape his life ambitions. However, I think what ties these characters further together is this sense of debt towards their sisters, in a way that feeds their selflessness and becomes their central means to achieve their goals.
Anaxa, in what I can infer from his character stories, genuinely views his life as disposable after his sister's death. His philosophical emphasis on equivalent exchange is, in large part, a reflection of his guilt towards his sister and her sacrifice - allowing him to study at the grove, at the expense of her own life the moment he left. In order for him to be worthy of her sacrifice - or the exchange to be equivalent - he must give away everything in order to achieve his goal. He must continuously chip away at his body, and his spirit, while insisting on retaining his heart and person, in order to make her death have meaning, for the rules of the world to make sense.
They're both so riddled with guilt, to the point it becomes their driving force. Both of their most significant human connections were to their sisters, feeling such an intense amount of debt towards both of them, that this sense of owing encourages them to keep chipping away at themselves in a subconscious effort to live up to both of their sister's "sacrifices" (robin's is more metaphorical). The kindness they received makes them eager to sacrifice more and more of themselves, creating a core of guilt that serves as their motivation to keep losing themselves for their grander goal.
The following portion of anaxa's 'chrysos' volume drew more parallels between the two in a way I can only interpret as being intentional, at the foremost through the use of the songbird motif. While sunday's charmony dove allegory bears no need to repeat, and I could write about it for hours, the following quote by anaxa is meaningful:
anaxa: I once carved a songbird that miraculously flapped its wings and took to the sky, though it circled five times at low altitude before falling...
As it is explicitly told, sunday's turning point in his life and ideology was finding charmony dove and having to confront the moral dilemma, a choice he viewed to be between freedom and security. His anxiety began to take root, as he had to watch the bird he nursed back to health attempt to fly again, and watch it plummet to its death, cementing in his minds that the weak, those he cherishes, are better kept secure than free. Ironically, he doesn't realise that he himself is stuck in such a cage, terrified of flying, and how his thought process ends up straining his relationship with the same person he so wishes to protect.
I don't think it's coincidental that anaxa chooses to emphasize the fact that the bird he manifested into life, also met its death a short amount of time after it was created by his hands. They're both left unsatisfied - they both must strive to do better, to either preserve life (sunday) or to create life (anaxa), so long as they can make sense of death. Both of these incidents end up solidifying and crystallizing their worldviews: they must sacrifice more of themselves in order to achieve their dreams. Be it a boundless utopia in sunday's case - posing himself as the sole guarding figure who shelters humanity from the terrors of existence regardless of the gods; or achieving transcendence and reaching an absolute truth in anaxa's case - by, similarly, posing himself as the one who must chip away at himself in order to prove, and give meaning, to humanity's existence regardless of the gods.
And perhaps most tragically, eventually, both sunday and anaxa were forced to sacrifice a part of themslves and lose the things they were most scared of losing. Anaxa, who was willing to sacrifice his physical well being, is forced to sacrifice his imprints on history and theory, sacrificing others memories of him, his legacy, his achievements. Sunday, whose drive for the betterment of others arose first and foremost from how much he cherished his only family, had to sacrifice his connection to her, the person closest to him, so he could protect her - they are torn apart, while ever present in each others' minds.
Something about these two, and their relationship to faith, the gods, their families, and worldviews, is deeply compelling in its similarity. They should meet up.
I'd like to remind everybody that this isn't just about A03 or civil rights organizations. This could be applied to any 501 organization. That includes churches, schools, museums and library support organizations. All sorts of support organizations like soup kitchens or places like goodwill. Those are all non-profit organizations and they all have a 501 status. This is a threat to every civil organization we have that is meant to help the public.
So please contact your representatives. Please look this up on Twitter and click the link so you can call your representatives and voice against this. Because there's a hell of a lot more at stake with a bill like this than just ao3. People's lives could be at risk.
The House will vote THIS WEEK to determine whether the incoming Trump administration will have the power to shut down non-profit organizations with no due process.
Congress has already tried to fast-track this legislation once and failed because of the onslaught of calls to their offices. We can’t let them do this quietly. Congress giving Trump the power to crush dissent and target organizations fighting for justice is a betrayal. Tell your representatives to vote NO on this dangerous bill!
thinking about how, as a child, kaz’s favorite trick seemed to be watching something disappear, and then he grew up and fell in love with a girl who could vanish into thin air, and how we’re told that when he looks at inej, he feels like a boy again and believes that there’s still magic in the world. imagine loving magic all your life, and then discovering that magic loved you too.
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