Kaeya's ability to twist his words ironically came from the fact that he always had difficulty verbalizing how he truly feels and had been taught to appease rather than to express.
For a few months of his first arrival, Kaeya refused to speak. It was to the point where Crepus made all of them (his kids, his staff, himself) take sign language class because he figured Kaeya was mute. Until Kaeya randomly speaks one day because he finally felt like he didn't need to walk on eggshells all the time so he's pushing his boundaries.
But even a few years after that, Kaeya tended to use sign language whenever he finds himself a little overwhelmed to form a full conversation.
He improved immensely in his teens. Since he never had any problems with accidentally blurting out words, he was always considered charming and polite since every sentence he speaks is well crafted and thought out.
On a funnier note, Jean and Diluc would often see him subtly sign "GET ME OUT OF HERE" from across the ballroom as he smiles politely at a nobleman that's trying to converse with him.
There are certain days in his adulthood where he genuinely feels incapable of putting up the act and falls back into being non-verbal for a little bit. No one really notices because despite how tired he feels, Kaeya would sooner die than let his mask falter in front of the public. He'll hesitate but he won't fail to wave back a nice hello, though a second too late.
As much as people decry how much of a “liar” Kaeya is after his Story Quest…not only did he apologize for roping them into his plans like that, but looking back at the end of the Mondstadt Archon Quest (which most players likely encountered after playing his Story Quest thanks to the way the AR system is structured, and is still one of the earliest quests available to the player in-game) his transparency with them started way earlier than I’d originally remembered.
You know, he could’ve easily kept silent from the Traveler about how members of the Abyss Order slipped into Mondstadt, and that he stayed behind in the city and mingled with them briefly to get intel. Cause think about it: there’s nothing in it for him telling the Traveler and Paimon, considering he didn’t know their answers were connected to the Abyss Order and they spend a lot of their interactions with him afterwards being sarcastic and distrusting of him (and after his Story Quest, they were pretty upset about his deception). And he was already under scrutiny from his colleagues, particularly Amber, for not being present during cleanup outside the gates (even though he had the right idea that sending everyone out at once could compromise safety within the city). He could’ve tried making his case to the knights to save face/clear his name, but no, he told the two people he had apologized to for being dishonest towards not too long ago, and when Amber showed up, he slipped away without taking credit, and all he got for that was being deemed even more lazy and shady by colleagues who already had that view of him in the first place. And it was on top of the reveal that he’d stayed behind to protect the city because everyone else leaving would mean no one else could do it (on top of making sure Noelle was safe, too), and that all showed so much more integrity and honesty than making big speeches about how you’ll do something but then never having to show up for it.
A lot of focus got placed on the whole “omg he can speak Abyssal language!” or “He mingled with the Abyss! Sus!” and not the fact that he came clean to the Traveler about doing something this dangerous and suspicious-looking, and didn’t even take credit for it with his colleagues despite how bad he knew he’d look for it. And thanks to him, we had a damn good lead on the Abyss Order and their new leader (which turned out to be the Traveler’s sibling).
Kaeya never got “retconned” into a nicer character or was changed out of nowhere as I’ve seen some people say about him. His sense of accountability and unconditional care for the Traveler has been there since the Prologue.
kaeya's like yeah i hail from a nation of sinners and i'm forsaken by the gods and then his regular drinking buddies he hangs out with probably almost daily are a nun, an oracle of god, and God Himself
favourite thing about kaeya is that you can just believe whatever you want about him. and if he says something to contradict you then there's at least a 50% chance he was lying about it anyway so whatever go nuts. for example i refuse to believe he didn't know about his surname and its ties to the abyss order. and i will cling to this belief until i am forced to retract it
all i do in this game is demand them to tell us where the horses are. since i started playing and we met mr cavalry captain with no calvary the one mystery i need solved is “where are the horses” and genshin is mocking me for it and i refuse i refuse to accept
all i do in this game is demand them to tell us where the horses are. since i started playing and we met mr cavalry captain with no calvary the one mystery i need solved is “where are the horses” and genshin is mocking me for it and i refuse i refuse to accept
now i know i mostly post about venti on here but i promise im a scara main (plz take my f2p c4r1 scara are proof of my loyalties) and now that i’ve completed durin’s story quest and the archon quest i can fully say:
i’m so happy with how they’ve been handling him !! that’s my guy!! look at him being helpful! having friends! showing growth!
i love his friendship with durin. they are best friends!!! durin said so!!!
i have so many thoughts but it’s really just all wholesome
i appreciate that in the sumeru event last update they went out of their way to show that he’s been building some friendships (whether he calls him that or not)
and now they really made sure to remind us that scara is durin’s first friend and can understand him in a way no one else does
i’m gonna call scara an honorary mondstadter now too because uh he was there and idk he fits with mond’s brand of freak which then proves my point all the best characters are mondstadters
am i a little thrown off when in the midst of serious conversations they are calling him “hat guy”? yes.
will i forgive it because i found albedo calling him “mr guy” incredibly funny? also yes
time to dump out my thoughts on venti’s homework quest:
him telling barbeloth to not listen in. confirming that venti’s fate is not readable in the stars. the note in the witch’s dictionary afterwards. venti is either deliberately obscuring his fate (with ill intent?!?!) or he doesn’t have one. not sure which option i like more?
abyss is encroaching on mond - we have known about it but crazy that it’s all bad enough that it’s forcing venti to lock in.
i love that he deliberately weakened his power to only what the people of mondstadt might need to solve problems on their own. both because he has so much faith in them but also because harsh winds can be more dangerous than helpful to humanit
anything out of time’s favour will be erased (erosion?), are we assuming venti is IN time’s favour as well and therefore won’t be erased?
still not 100% clear on what power istaroth gave venti…but venti says it was because he brought her stories & melodies. plus every quest this patch is very clear about how important stories are in teyvat. i’m not smart enough to know what it means but i am dYING to learn more about their meeting.
venti said the only other time’s he’s played this particular song were surrounded by only the wind. he also mentions having made his wind gentler after mond was freed. does that mean this is the first time he’s getting this power back? meaning he didn’t retrieve it for the cataclysm?
one day we’ll get answers from venti and istaroth. i want to know what they are up to so badly. proper venti pt 2 quest when
also not connected to venti’s witch’s homework bUT shout out to the archon quests for:
the story saying columbia cut a mountain top off to make hiisi island. whoever wrote that definitely stole from barbatos lore.
nicole enforcing that history should be recorded as fairytales and stories - one could definitely put songs in that category as well. venti being a bard and mostly communicating through song and metaphor is to be resistant to irminsul tampering is a hill i will die on.
in a complete departure from my last post: i hope we see more bren flashbacks
because like i love seeing bren honestly be so competent and being a volstrucker and i think it’s such an interesting part of caleb’s story to have someone that is so good at doing horrible things, and have to learn and grow and find how to use those skills in different ways. like what are you supposed to do when your skill set is only torturing and killing people but you’ve realized that’s probably a bad thing.
also love young bren’s design. look i’m a simple person. assassin spy wizards are cool. the little half up hair. how confident he was. the flirting. love being reminded of his high charisma stat. like that whole scene of them on their mission was so cool and that makes it so fucked up.
i’m assuming they had this ep this early because they are going to be doing a lot more with trent (& astrid and wulf?) looking for caleb esp with owelia sending word back and i’ll look forward to that and hope it makes this feeling too early forgivable.
so i’ve been thinking about the latest mighty nein episode and am still of very mixed opinions.
on one hand, i do think that just looking at it as an episode it was a really good one. probably the best one yet.
but immediately after watching it, both me and my friend both felt like we got into caleb’s backstory too earlier. and after thinking about it for a few days, i understand why they made the choice to put it this early but i do wish they held onto it for a little while longer. or at least not gone so explicit with it (yet).
and it’s kind of for two reasons. one) i don’t think the mighty nein have really been established as a group yet - they haven’t really bonded in a way or all share a common goal yet. it’s definitely forming but the group hasn’t really solidified. which for me makes it a much harder sell that they would still be willing to work with caleb given what he tells them. because apart from nott, he hasn’t really built up any good will with them yet.
even though caleb tells beau and nott pretty early in the campaign, it’s still after the nein have spent a decent amount of time together. and beau has at least gotten a chance to know caleb at least a little bit. when he tells her, sure they’ve only known each other for a little while, but they’ve worked together, been in several fights together, have had a decent number of conversations - like beau has a read on him at that point.
in the series, that really hasn’t happened yet. they are all still basically strangers who have still kind of circumstantially stuck together. but there’s very little reason at this point for them to continue doing so. and caleb’s backstory is a lot to learn and still choose to stick around a person that you really haven’t established any real rapport with.
which kind of leads me to 2) because they showed us in flashbacks, it was very explicit how much bren was a part and believed in ikithon and the volstruckers. he was one of them. one of the best even. he did believe in their cause. and that means there’s not really any place to downplay the severity of who caleb was.
i say this because i think when caleb tells nott and beau in the campaign, it’s a lot easier to look at him and place the blame mostly on trent. caleb himself doesn’t go into detail, and while he admits to executing people and insists he believed in the cause - we don’t have enough detail to know how much coercion was involved, what bren’s life was really like. and because we like caleb: admittedly both the audience and beau¬t are likely to downplay the events, either intentionally or unintentionally. it’s a retelling, of course caleb blames himself but anyone can see that the blame mostly rests on trent. caleb was a kid. he didn’t really have a choice. he was manipulated and tricked. he was lied to.
but the series gives us flashbacks, the series tells us to look and watch as bren, while yes - is manipulated by ikithon to an extent, does as he was trained to. the show doesn’t let us get distance from bren’s actions. it removes any hint of bren’s memories being modified. it shows us that bren was a volstrucker, and that he was really good at it.
and at a base level, i do like that choice. i like there not really being any space to write off what happened. i like seeing it all.
but because it’s so explicitly there in front of us this early, it’s now really shaped an opinion of who caleb is. this is fundamentally a part of him, yes, but we know that now and any action he takes moving forward will be coloured by that.
this is largely personal preference but i think there’s something really interesting about getting to know caleb as this dirty, sad, obviously traumatized wizard who is honestly just kinda weird - but he’s lovable, and still mostly good. he’s our sad boi dirt wizard and we love him.
but then slowly revealing him being a little too brutal, a little too efficient and ruthless, a little too knowledgeable about the wrong things.
and yeah, eventually revealing his backstory as we have. but now we (and the nein) have to compare that to the caleb we’ve been with and try and reconcile those two people together. to decide if we trust caleb as we’ve known him. to accept who he was. and it feels reasonable that they would agree to trust caleb and that that would be a really great moment starting to build into the mighty nein being this found family that we all know and love.
but with how early this has been revealed, it’s going to be a really difficult sell to understand why the nein would choose to stick with caleb at this point. like they don’t know this guy? they don’t know if he’s lying? sure he seems to be against the volstruckers but he’s just admitted that he was one of them and they’ll be looking for him, AND at best he’s recovering from a complete breakdown. like…it’s just a difficult sell because none of the nein other than nott have been given any reason yet to actually like caleb.
and yes i know the nein wouldn’t have seen the flashbacks but like by showing them to the audience and not stating like “ah caleb left out the details in his retelling” the implication is that the nein and the audience are both.
so all this is to say i just wish they had given us like a little bit more time with caleb meaningfully interacting with the rest before diving into his background.
and i’ve got a tangentially attached rant about why i think 8 episode seasons suck but im gonna put that under a cut since it’s not really tied into the above thoughts
but just wanted to get some of my current thoughts on the show out into the void. i’m still enjoying the show and of course will withhold final judgement until i’ve got a better idea of how they’ll deal with the fallout of the reveal but for now…uh hope you enjoyed?
okay okay okay am i the only one who hates these eight episode seasons. especially in shows that just require so much exposition and character introducing and world building it leaves you so little time to actually get to the plot.
like this caleb episode is ep5 which is past the mid point of the season and if the season was idk like 24 eps that would be fine we would’ve had more time with the characters to at least flesh things out a little more? start building relationships?
but instead we spent all of episode 1-3 essentially just introducing all the characters and getting them to a room together and then only had one episode with them kind of functioning as a team before getting into caleb’s background which is insane because that’s the huge major stuff and i wish we had more time to get to know the nein as a group before that
like really i just think so many shows have pacing issues these days honestly not because of bad episodic writing necessarily, just because the seasons aren’t structured to really let stuff build up and develop.
a show like the mighty nein has so much they need to cover and set up before even really getting into the actual mighty nein it’s just a huge uphill battle to really make much progress in the first half of the season and if i had to guess- i feel like the latter half will be trying to cover so much ground that it’ll be hard to resolve much of anything?
it’s just so annoying that writers don’t really have the time to really set things up for rewarding payoffs in these super short seasons. i miss having weeks of episodes and arcs being drawn out across them. time to make theories and collect clues and over analyze each detail.
and this isn’t me saying you can’t make a good show in eight episodes but it’s just like idk with the way streaming services work it’s so important to keep people hooked that like you can’t really have much ramp up time or slow episodes…or if you do have the ramp up time you’ve really got to squish the rest of the action and throw pacing out the window.
bring back time for filler episodes!!!! mini arcs!!! letting characters build up relationships instead of just having to jump into the next plot point!!!
anyway beloved 24episode seasons where hath you gone
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