The Weight of All the World

AO3: ClockworkTiger Bluesky: clockwork-tiger In this house we love and protect Welt Yang

[just-a-clockwork-tiger]

So, for my own edification and to help me keep shit straight, it's the 'fics in planning' list

- his eyes were full of starlight (chapter 10 published, chapter 11 in the works)

- the 'Sunday gentle doms Welt into accepting care' smutfic (started)

- 5+1 of the Astral Express crew giving Sunday the shovel talk (and the one talk Welt got)

- 5+1 of all the times Welt asked someone to stay the night (and the one time someone did)

- the epistolary of letters Welt writes to his family back on Earth

- more sunwelt/weltday smut

- sunwelt first date (in which the formal dress code literally means wearing a formal dress)

- the obligatory sickfic

- the A/B/O in which HI3 has omegaverse but HSR does NOT, and the fuckery Welt goes through being an omega in a world where alphas don't exist (or better, he alternates between alpha and omega because fucking Herrscher core shenanigans)

- the several post-longfic sequels

- Welt Joyce and baby Joachim bonding

- and whatever other nonsense pops into my head lol

[just-a-clockwork-tiger]

Not guaranteeing anything, buuut I'm hoping to have chapter 11 of his eyes were full of starlight up on Sunday!

[bauyrsaq]

[worst-roommates-ever]

[wlw-whump]

I'm a BIG fan of low ranking characters suddenly thrust into a position of authority they're unprepared for. a young princess, too far down the line of succession to merit any training, forced onto the throne when her whole family dies in one attack. a lowly technician on a team who finds themself the defacto leader when a mission goes wrong and every single person above them is captured or killed. a group of strangers comes together for survival, and the only person with any assertiveness gets assigned a leadership role, even though they have no special skills. do these characters rise to the challenge and lead their respective groups to victory? do they crash and burn under the pressure so hard no one ever trusts them again? do they massively restructure their whole society because any system that puts them in charge can't be doing things right?

[espritradieux]

I'm a bit concerned about how much they're pushing the astral express as family thing because on the one hand it makes sense but on the other. Welt has a family. A family he's known for decades, with familial figures in Ein and Tesla, unlike Himeko whose dad was absent and turned out to be Asat Pramad, places filled with memories of his dead loved ones whom he does know and remember, unlike Dan Heng, March and the Trailblazer who have severe memory issues and little to no connections with the people they left behind, a family he can return to unlike Sunday who is a wanted fugitive. Welt has a son, who was around ten the last time we saw him presumably around three to four years ago if we're generous. A son who he mentioned before. A son who we saw in the train flashback on the Luofu. And right now he's not raising Joey because he's stranded in space and can't go back, and when he went with Void Archives in the first place it was because his planet was in very imminent danger that had to be stopped for the sake of his son's safety on top of that of the world, and he couldn't get anyone more powerful or with less to lose because of short time and very limited honkai energy supplies making herrschers less powerful anyway with Kiana being supposedly still asleep or otherwise unavailable. But once we do get to Earth, and let's face it we will, and once whatever problem there ends, what are they going to do? Are they going to do the logical, good writing thing but that would upset the HSR only people and let him stay on Earth with his family? Or are they going to put him back on the train to trailblaze on, making him voluntarily leave his young son behind to go play house with a different "family" when they could send other people out, even some with some space traveling experience like the part 2 cast (we know Vita is out there already anyway) ? Because the way hsr writes its arc endings to always have a good ending for extra TB glazing doesn't make me believe they would write a bad ending that would justify making him being forced to leave against his will again.

[just-a-clockwork-tiger]

I don't have any problem with Welt building a family with the Nameless because, well, he's a very long way away from home, is clearly homesick despite acting like he's unbothered, and has *no one* else from Earth who understands the horrors of the Honkai. (Void Archives doesn't count since he left him too.) There's no *sense* in him keeping everyone at arm's length when doing so would just isolate him further and just exacerbate his loneliness. He deserves to have people around him who love him, and honestly, I feel like HSR has been kinder to him in this regard. It's not a traditional family, but neither is what he has on Earth. And I don't think his Earth family would want him to be lonely and miserable either.

It's also likely been at *least* five years or more since he was stranded in HSR. It's been three years already- pretty sure they confirmed that in the anniversary event- and he's also been there longer than anybody save Himeko. It's been long enough that Himeko says he hardly talks about going home anymore, which says to me it's been long enough that he's giving up hope of returning. He even qualifies this in his last character story: he writes in his Express cartoon notes, IF I ever get back home, consider making a cartoon out of this. If, not when.

He's never been separated from his family for longer than a year, either, and that was because he was dead, not yeeted to outer space by a mildly insane AI. This kind of thing is completely out of his wheelhouse.

If we ever get to Earth- because I'm not entirely convinced we'll go back to HSR Earth for another few years, if we ever do- I expect it to be a huge conflict. But once the Express connects Earth to everything else by the silver rails, who says Welt can't have both worlds? Who says he'd be forced to choose one or another when he could have both? They'd have to timeshare him like divorced parents, lol, but given all the trauma and baggage he carries from Earth- and the trauma he's gaining in HSR- wouldn't it be kind for him to have access to all the people who love him?

I do have an idea of how it could be satisfying if made to choose, though. Joey would be a late teen by then, at the very least, and capable of his own decisions. How wonderful would it be to see Joey join the Express to travel with his dad? He'd gain a whole new family by association, and a whole new perspective.

[great-disappointment101]

Use one kiss to draw the make out 😈😈😈

Seriously tho, I wanna draw my own full design for hsr Void and post it with a comic page or something, but I just wanna draw this rn-

[vaguelydreaming]

sorry to powerlevel in your inbox about welt but honestly i cant really see welt as doing anything BUT leaving on purpose. like void archives coercion was stuff welt already cared about (playing hero, himeko) and in the honkaixhonkai collab, sparkle uses the tavern to travel between universes, and welt is IN the tavern, he really couldve gone back. i think the reason welt stays is not only bc of himeko but bc hes still insecure about not being able to play the part of a proper hero yet. welt in hi3 originally is antagonistic, hes only really fixed up by the fact otto and kevin are so much worse than him imho

hmm that's true!! as much as i love welt, i admittedly haven't played hi3rd (though i've watched through apho 1 and 2, read all the mangas, and watched several of the herrscher of reason/truth arcs that he plays a big role in) so i can't comment on him originally being antagonistic.. BUT while i agree welt is probably still insecure about being a "proper hero", i personally don't think that would be his prime motivator in staying aboard the express. time and time again, welt has shown that one of his biggest flaws is his martyr complex. if it was up to him, he would risk and/or give his life a thousand times over to ensure that everyone else was safe. which is why, when void archives essentially threatens his son's life, welt is immediately willing to take joey's place. however, imo, actively leaving to save hsr himeko would be not only abandoning his freshly traumatized son whose safety is currently uncertain, but doing it for a person he really doesn't even know.

welt plays the hero when and because he believes he's the best option or the only one who can; when he stops believing that, he will step down and let another take his place. if he truly cared about heroism more than he did people, he wouldn't have given bronya the herrscher core!! ANYONE from hi3 could've gone to save hsr himeko, many of which may be stronger than him in his current state, but no one can replace welt as joey's father. no one can replace the damage done to a child by losing their father at such a young age, for such a cruel reason, something that welt himself knows well!! YES he wants to save hsr himeko, and yes that's probably part of his reason for staying with the express instead of exploring the cosmos on his own, but if given the choice, i highly doubt he would've chose to abandon his family for it.

also, i could ABSOLUTELY be misremembering (i fear i am a chronic lore forgetter) but when was welt shown to be inside the tavern?? if memory serves, i don't believe he showed up in person during the collab (just a digital replica of him), and i don't remember him doing so in hsr either? either way, i assume it probably isn't common knowledge that masked fools can travel the imaginary tree- plus, even if it was, i imagine it's a pretty chaotic system without neatly labeled doors. even if he tried using the tavern, i have a feeling he'd be just as likely to end up in genshin impact or something instead of hi3 😭

[just-a-clockwork-tiger]

So, Anon seems a little confused about events, which is fair as Hoyo is weird and inconsistent about their own canon.

Case in point: we still don't know exactly how Welt wound up in HSR.

APHO has Welt surrendering to Void Archives in order to protect his son- which is entirely in line with his self-sacrificial martyr complex- but since APHO isn't complete, we don't know what's happened to him outside of the 'anonymous notes' in APHO2 that state he's trapped in a very dark, potentially extra-dimensional space. Alien Space (which was written a year or two before APHO and is set three years after APHO) doesn't address how Welt and VA came to travel together, just that they do. There's no mention of Joey because, most likely, they hadn't decided to give him a son yet.

We don't even know, at this point, if Alien Space is still canon or not. There's evidence that could go either way (Welt reminiscing over her statue vs his virtual lack of reaction to Ryusuke, for example).

Regardless, there's one thing that I cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, believe: that he would ditch Joey to gallivant across the universe.

Welt knows, intimately, the pain of losing a father at a young age. There's nothing in the world that could make me think he'd fuck off and leave his son to play hero. Anti-Entropy, certainly. Schicksal, sure. But not his ten-year-old child, and especially after he starts manifesting Herrscher powers. The only way I could see him leaving isn't for Himeko, but if his leaving is what's needed to guarantee Joey's safety.

Also, he's not antagonistic except to Otto and Schicksal/World Serpent! Anti-Entropy is under Cocolia's reign after Welt was lost in the Sea of Quanta, and she's the one trying to kidnap Wendy and mess with St. Freya. Welt was undercover as a teacher there, and that was what first allowed Cocolia's faction to take control. Sure, AE under his reign is in opposition to Schicksal, but that's because Otto is objectively committing crimes against humanity. I'd like to think his stance against turning little girls into weapons and trying to end the Honkai keeps him out of antagonist status, esp. after the events of Chapters 10/11. Calling him an antagonist when he's morally gray at worst is a wild take LMAO.

Also also Welt also never enters the Tavern, at least not in Planarcadia, and likely has no idea Sparkle's been to Earth!

(I could touch on his desire to be a hero and how it stems from complex trauma, but this is long enough haha)

[allhisrunes]

[erinravenseeker]

Important information of the day: Welt can cook. Apparently very well. And for a whole AE base.

[just-a-clockwork-tiger]

Welt name-dropping Anti-Entropy on an internet shitpost was not on my 4.4 bingo card, but here we are--

When I tell you I choked on my water when I read this-

[venmotif]

Pretty pretty please draw Welt Yang from star rail I will be indebted to you forever <3

Thanks for opening requests again! I'm excited to see how this challenge plays out, I found you through a different one you did a while ago, can't wait to follow along again!

welt yang!! thank you :D

[just-a-clockwork-tiger]

oh my god sorry to bother you I accidentally came up with a crack ship

aha x welt yang

They both break the fourth wall of what I seen(I unfortunately never played honkai star rail and impact 3 because I don’t want my phone to explode basically)

the angst potential of aha attempting to cope with akivili‘s death via crushing on a astral express member

It’s all I got unfortunately:(

I could see this working in a total one-sided crackship way lmao. Hot DILF that's a trailblazer and also holds so much childish joy in his heart? Holding some of the purest forms of happiness despite the absolute tragedy of his life? And he's got reality-warping abilities? Yeah, I could see that being attractive to someone as chaotic as Aha.

Would Welt reciprocate? Probably not, but the chase would be hilarious (and thus enticing to an Aeon of chaos).

[prettymachine]

it is absolutely essential to have friends you can have extremely insane pervert conversations with. this is kind of what makes life worth living

[lunarlilyart]

Grandpa BETTER fucking lock in. You have herrscher powers and a divine key on your person old man, there’s no reason you shouldn’t at least take a crack at Asat Pramad’s goofy ass

[ohrekii]

young king x royal advisor AU. 🦉👑

[b1adie]

— ⟢ My Idol Debut Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected ⟣ —