I can't decide what's my favorite part of this anecdote, because confirming that Flins can't even get tipsy because his flame just instantly combusts alcohol means:
First, all those times we see Flins drinking or talking about drinking were actually just for love of the game. He confirms here that he's not drinking because he enjoys savoring the sensations or tastes; he doesn't even get a pleasant buzz out of it... He's almost certainly doing it because it's the fastest vehicle in Nod-Krai for social interaction. Humans like drinking, so Flins drinks to have an excuse to be near them.
Just like Durin, who realizes that drinking would be one of the fastest ways to endear himself to Mondstadters:
Flins has clearly figured out that the way into humans' hearts is to make sure they're happily tipsy 90% of the time.
From all the way back in his character teaser, we see Flins using a chat over drinks to get what he wants out of Ulman (he wants an excuse to lead Ulman to safety because he knows the Wild Hunt are active that night):
Illuga points out that Flins uses drinking just as a means to further social interactions:
We get to see Flins using alcohol as the basis for his friendship with Demyan at the Flagship:
(By the way, he's good enough friends with Demyan that Demyan asks Flins to take over bartending duties at the Flagship when Demyan has to go out of town--Flins was tending a whole ass bar as a side gig for his NPC bro just for the hell of it. Flins really loves people.)
Even his "Favorite Food" line focuses entirely on how Fire-Water can make other people feel; while his "Least Favorite Food" line emphasizes that eating/drinking for him is essentially an entirely social endeavor:
And of course, spending copious amounts of time drinking with Varka, not for the drinks but for the company:
There's just something so endearing about the picture this whole thing paints--despite claiming to not be a very social creature, Flins has put in the effort to become a whole connoisseur of fine wines and spirits because doing so makes it easier to gain acceptance from humans, makes it easier for him to form friendships with people.
Flins isn't Varka's drinking buddy because he likes drinking; he's Varka's drinking buddy simply because he likes having a buddy.
It even gets more charming when coupled with Varka's teapot dialogue, which reveals that until the alcohol starts flowing, Varka is actually a bit socially awkward too and doesn't know how to carry on conversations that don't fit his normal patterns of interaction:
(They're both depending on the beer to help them make friends lol.)
For Flins, just like with Durin, the idea of a magical creature working hard to understand human customs, wanting to learn how to fit in, and finding joy in just being welcomed to spend time with others... So, so, so cute.
Second though! Even though that whole aspect is adorable, the other part of the anecdote's reveal just has me in stitches...
This anecdote confirmed that alcohol's only effect on Flins is as fuel... which makes all his drinking with Varka soooo much funnier in hindsight.
Like no wonder Flins is so smiley and giggly every time we end up seeing him out drinking with the Grand Master. Pouring that much alcohol on a fire would basically be the human equivalent of knocking back a six-pack of Monster energy drinks and then trying to interact like you're perfectly-fine-totally-not-vibrating from the adrenaline rush. Dumping a whole bottle of alcohol on a fire makes it go VHOOSH, you know???
Flins is probably getting wired as hell every time he hangs out with Varka. 😂😂😂 He's shotgunning a whole line of Five Hour Energies and then going "Oh my god Grand Master, you're sooo funny."
A cocktail or a beer flagon or two with other Lightkeepers or Nasha Town residents to fuel a pleasant conversation is Flins's regular modus operandi, and then Varka comes around with his 30-gallon barrels and it's like
Thanks for this random stock photo, Food Republic.
Maybe Flins can't "let loose" and get drunk like humans can, but the idea of a fire struggling to contain itself while blazing from the all fuel he gets every time he sees his newest "drinking buddy"... Trying to still act gentlemanly, aloof, and cool-headed while his flame is flickering all over the place from all that extra energy... Ahhh, this is really adorable too.
B-But then there's even a third aspect I love, because what you do you mean Flins and Varka have never had a single drink together that qualifies as "juice":
Yet Flins just... happened to have Wolfhook berries on hand? You never drink juice together... but you're ready to make juice... at a moment's notice...?
The fact that Flins would have had to go out of his way to get Wolfhooks for Varka is already obvious and sweet in its own right, but when you think about it even harder, it just gets even more adorable: Flins went out of his way to get the Wolfhooks without even knowing whether he'd have a guaranteed chance to use them. The fact that he just had them on hand the moment this topic came up means he had already been ready for that situation. He bought the Wolfhooks in advance and was just waiting for the chance to share them.
Flins picked something up that he knew Varka would like and then literally had to manuever the whole situation just to work them into the conversation. What if Demyan had never asked him to tend the bar? What if the topic of talk just hadn't turned that way? What if Varka hadn't asked for something different than usual?
Would Flins just have had to figure out some completely different way to get the Wolfhooks to Varka?
Despite it being unusual and outside their normal pattern, Flins knew that Varka would like the Wolfhooks, so he bought them just like that, plan or no plan. Even putting aside shipping, this goes to show how generous and kind Flins really is. He cares about the people he spends time with and wants to make humans feel better when they're down. Flins genuinely appears happiest when experiencing joy vicariously--other people being happy seems to be what makes him glow.
Back when Illuga was little more than a mention in Flins' character stories and tucked-away references, and Varka was the main obvious target for ~ shipping ~, I ended up poking a bit into Flins' perception of Varka, the world in general, and his affinity for storytelling. Yipyaps about this and how Illuga fits into this under the cut.
Long-ass post warning
At the time 6.0 dropped, I observed that Flins has a strong tendency to process reality through the lens of storytelling. He plays with fact and fiction, with narratives and archetypes and roles, and he seems to approach and talk about his own history as a story.
He'll weave true events in with embellishments and dramatic flourishes, keeping people (and himself) from having to stare the bare-naked senseless truth in the eyes too starkly. It's not like he doesn't know what it is, but it's not by accident that he dances around the touchiest, sharpest edges of his stories, and takes people on a detour when their attention could linger on topics he'd rather they leave alone (for his own sake and/or for theirs).
Reading between the lines of his personal history, the fae court comes cultural connotations and guesses we can make about what it may have been like, to exist and mature in such a context.
-
Flins and his 'heroes':
Something that sets Flins apart from what we might expect most of 'the court' to be, is his interest in the wider world and his genuine investment in what happens to the people in it. The fact that he left home, to go to these uncomfortable and hostile outlands, to basically become a protector of the people entirely of his own accord, is very telling. A young noble, dissatisfied with the most obvious routes for him to take, with no taste for the type of passionate ventures that lead to some fae's legacies being rather grandiose and a danger to others - young Flins strikes me as a dreamer desperate to do more than dream, someone with an idealism that burns for valour and making a difference in a way that matters.
Flins isn't a glory-hound, but someone who seems to genuinely *care*, and who can't be satisfied staying by the sidelines to have a bunch of opinions without ever lifting a finger to make his ideals real.
As for what his ideals *are*, one pattern we see in him is that he has a clear admiration for 'heroes', for people that are willing to be courageous and strong for the sake of others in need, and stand against 'evil' and threats. People that are noble in spirit and more than just talk. It's something he aspires, himself, without claiming the title of 'hero' despite having already spent more than a human lifetime living up to it.
The way he describes Varka strikes me as filled with this almost childlike admiration, adoration, of someone seeing a knight in shining armour fully in the flesh. I can only expect that at least some of the literature he devoured 'back in the day' consisted of valiant Arthurian tales, stories of brave hearts and devotion to a righteous cause and using one's power to create a better world for everyone willing to do their part to respect it.
Flins sees Varka as such a person, someone whose deeds and character clearly qualify him for it, even if he won't explicitly measure himself by the same yardstick. He seems to genuinely rate his own performance as falling short of such a lofty standard, without holding that against himself in a detrimental way. He's humble enough to accept that he's just a person doing what he can, and the reward of renown or the satisfaction of achievement and status simply isn't the point for him. (Not to mention, self-flattery to fuel one's ego is probably pretty distasteful to him.)
Following the pattern of him blending truth and fiction, Flins walks the line here between seeing and understanding people the way they are in reality, and thinking of them like characters in a story, that play their simplified roles and have their virtues and sins highlighted to fit the 'theme'. He's capable of seamlessly switching between these frameworks and he's a very grounded person in general, but that won't stop him from translating reality into narratives, playing around with it and deriving meaning and guidance from it, and wrangling the messy complex truth of things into a story he can continue to live with.
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The Nightingale:
I get the feeling Illuga parallels Varka's example a bit here, with one major critical difference: Varka's story is at a stable status quo as the weathered wizened veteran, who knows his limits and learned how to rely on people. Illuga is still in his opening chapters, in the middle of his messy heroes' journey where he's at his most vulnerable to losing his way and being overcome by the double-edged sword of his own valour.
In more real terms, Illuga's a young, burdened young man facing mortal threats no one person can handle on their own, and there is very little time for the amount of growing and refining he has to do to stand a chance of surviving all this long-term.
Illuga is someone with the *potential* to become someone like Varka, like Nikita, like Solovei, and by gawd he's coming through on it already.
I think Flins recognises a very familiar restlessness in him, that inability to stand by hoping other people will do the work and take the risks to change the world. (This is where it gets a little tricky to explain my thoughts.)
*This* exact point, I think, is where some awkward dissonance creeps in for Flins. He doesn't seem willing to fully draw a parallel between himself and Illuga, and he tries to cast himself into the role of the old mentor supporting true young hero. Once again he lets the 'story' inform his behaviour, be the guideline for what he's supposed to do...
But Illuga *isn't like that*. With everything he's been through since he was young, and how fast it all happened, there was no room to 'live in a dream' and pattern his thinking off off stories and abstract ideals. He might *know* stories, and he might enjoy them, but he doesn't *live* them the way Flins' life is reality is constantly overlaid with the filter of a fae's tale, of a fairytale.
The young Nightingale isn't interested in casting himself or Flins into such 'roles'. What Illuga wants is for the tangible, frightening reality around him to stop tearing things from his hands - and knowing that there is nothing out there to pray for 'mercy' to, all he can do to make that happen is to put up a better fight. To become stronger, more capable, more experienced. To be ready for anything.
In the meantime, he's learned to 'take what he can get'. He's already paid the price for getting attached and not being able to protect the things you don't want to lose, and so far this has only made him more determined to hold on.
Illuga isn't going to be soothed by distancing himself from reality by burying it in embellishments and anonymising the people in it by turning himself and them into actors in a grander tale. To do so would be to deprive him of what drives him forward. For Illuga, it's *personal*, and it has to be - even if it hurts, no-one is replaceable. Even if it hurts, he has to cope with a reality that left its marks on him already, and clouding his mind won't help him survive. This clearly leads to...
-
The disconnect:
Flins and Illuga inhabit the same reality, and yet they don't. Flins' existence is chronically half-shifted a step into fiction, the realm he retreats to in the same way he can retreat into his lantern to process his thoughts and emotions and gain both clarity and a safer distance. It's a habit he's had for hundreds of years, and it's served him well enough to still be around even after all he's been through.
Illuga can tell something isn't clicking, that there's something he's failing to grasp about Flins that makes him so difficult to read and connect to.
Our fae has to be at least vaguely aware as well that Illuga isn't satisfied with him, as well, and I do wonder...
I do wonder if Flins knows that he's holding back, for the same reasons as always: he's loathe to stray too far from his secure bunker and get too entangled with reality the way Illuga experiences it, because *that shit sucks*. It's painful, it's messy, it's *scary*. He's like an introvert refusing to commit to a two-week festival surrounded by people and noise, deprived from the solitude and detachment that lets him function.
I get the feeling Illuga sees Flins as someone more real than the man himself does. To Illuga, the motifs of mentor and mentee, of senior and junior, of mysterious wiseman and searching youngster -
*they don't matter at all*, not when they stand in the way of being able to form a connection with someone as real and messy and vulnerable and human as himself.
While he would have every reason to 'be afraid of fear', to want to avoid making bonds that will hurt should they be cut, to Illuga it seems like this fear is a vital piece of his life. Pain is proof you're not dead yet. Having people you're afraid to lose is proof you're not alone and you haven't failed yet. Fear and hope are entwined for him as a result of everything he's already experienced.
Compared to that, our nigh untouchable fae seems to be quite the coward. He isn't afraid of physical distress much, because it's something he knows he can deal with and is especially resilient to, but he seems pretty unwilling to risk getting completely overwhelmed by something he's not nearly as confident with.
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To Know and To Be Known:
I think it's likely that Flins simply doesn't *know* what it actually means to be seen and be wanted and be cared about as the human being he is, fae or not. He might grasp the concept perfectly well, but he doesn't know how *he* would handle such a scenario.
Flins' way of caring about people is very selfless, and bordering on unconditional - as long as someone isn't 'a villain' causing harm to others, he has no reason to judge them as undeserving of the same respect and protection he affords people per default. Even when it comes to Rerir, the reason he opposes him and the Wild Hunt is because of the threat they pose. He will stand against such a threat regardless of the ideology or cause that drives it, and he doesn't show any interest in condemning Rerir on a personal level (and he does oh-so-nicely fit into a Role as well).
Other than holding people to the standard of showing him basic respect, Flins doesn't expect or demand anything in return for his own goodwill. He does what he thinks is right *because* it is right.
It's not that he's ignorant of the fact that other people care about him, in the sense that he knows that any decent person is capable of showing a degree of loyalty or concern for others. At a bare minimum, he understands human connections well enough to make use of them when it suits him, and that requires more than a vague idea of how it all works.
These dynamics don't require a deep personal connection between himself and others, just an earnest motivation to participate in a prosocial way.
But then, there's Illuga.
Our young but wise Nightingale, who isn't satisfied with what's otherwise done the trick just fine for hundreds of years.
Illuga, who is agitatedly pacing around outside of Flins' secure shelter, waiting for him to come out and drop the 'act' and ditch the script.
Illuga, who wants to know Flins in a way he might not even know himself.
...
Uh oh.
This kind of insistent invitation is asking something of the fae that might seem simple enough, but to Flins entails stepping into uncharted territory that he knows damn well is a minefield of unknowns and risks. He doesn't need to have personally lived every human experience to have a pretty broad view of all the ways people can mess up and suffer and cause others harm even with the best intentions - the reason stories *exist* is because of the underlying reality that makes people create them in the first place.
In an ironic way, Illuga's yearning for a more real connection, as a way to stand more strongly in a world he can't control, is asking Flins to give up some of the control he does have.
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'Will you PLEASE come be afraid with me.'
To Illuga, this how people can strengthen each other even if it comes at the risk of being bloodily torn apart. It's how he fuels his light, his conviction, his sanity, his heart.
To Flins, it's just about the scariest, riskiest thing, scarier even than pseudo-death, anyone could ask of him.
Please Genshin, you cannot just introduce the concept of a sentient ball of flame that lives in a little lamp and (somewhat poorly) masquerades as a human for the fun of it and expect me not to be entirely consumed with thoughts of how in the hell this works. There are just so, so, so many things I need to know, like:
We know that the original fae were created in Hyperborea by the primordial humans who lived there (specifically by "artisans"), and that the Hyperboreans deliberately tied the spirits they created to "forms that were once frail and weak." Does this imply that Lantern Fae are, in fact, born of lanterns, the way that inanimate objects often gain a spirit and become sentient ghosts/demons in other Eastern folklore (such as chochin-obake from Japan)? Did the Hyperboreans just cook up some moonlight and dragon bone and use it to make their household lamps into animate objects?
Some signs in game do actually point in this direction. Flins says that his lantern has been with him a "long time," with an unspoken implication that the lantern is--if not exactly as old as he is--at least ancient too:
In the anecdote where he asks Aino to repair his lantern, he stays very close by throughout the entire time she is working on it, which suggests that it might not be possible for him to be separated from the lantern for a lengthy period or that there may be a limit to how far he can go away from his lantern. The fact that his breed of fae is referred to as "Lantern Fae" implies that the "lantern" is a defining part of their existence.
On the contrary, there are also plenty of signs suggesting Flins is an entirely separate existence from his lantern. During his teapot dialogue, he refers to his lantern as his "habitation" and calls the world beyond his lantern "the outside," suggesting that he views the lamp as a type of shelter, presumably protecting his "true" form, which is just azure flame.
When using his signature weapon, the lantern on his polearm glows with the same colored flame as his main lantern, including lighting up red to indicate enemies, suggesting that he may be able to inhabit any nearby lantern (even several at once), not limited to just one object. (Though this also begs the question: Why does he turn red when enemies are near? Do Lantern Fae show their emotions by changing color? Is the red a threat display to opponents? "Don't mess me; I'm RED now!" 😂 Why is this making me think of turkeys whose faces turn bright red when they're stressed lolol?)
All this leads to a chicken and egg conundrum: Were Lantern Fae just fire spirits first and came to be called "Lantern Fae" later after taking shelter in lamps so many times? Or were they deliberately created from lanterns by the ancient Hyperboreans, who were intentionally making the fae out of "frail" forms/objects? The text does describe the fae as being "forged" rather than "born," but at some of them also had "flesh and blood"... Getting some conflicting messages here, Genshin, lol.
What happens when a Lantern Fae is forced out of its lantern completely? Will it die if it can't find another vessel to inhabit, or will it be fine as a homeless little ball of fire? (I.e., Are they will-o-wisps who just happen to like living in lanterns, or are they are bound to their lanterns like Deshret's jinn to their vessels?) I've asked this before, but: Do they ever grow out of their lanterns and have to move to bigger ones?
Does the appearance of the lantern signify anything in Lantern Fae society? Are fancier lanterns a sign of higher status? Are the ones in golden lanterns considered show-offs? Do they decorate their lanterns to try to attract a mate?? 😂
Okay, back to the history for a second: There's also the question of purpose. Were Lantern Fae (or the fae in general!) created by the Hyperboreans to serve a specific purpose? If so, is it possible that the original Lantern Fae might have been forged with the purpose of "guide people with your light"--that they were created to be a tool and aid for humanity from the very beginning?
Or, in other words: Is it possible that Flins' drive to protect humans is actually Lantern Fae instinct? That his habit of literally leading humans out of danger with his light is (knowingly or unknowingly) still acting on the same purpose the Hyperboreans gave to the first Lantern Fae, millennia ago?
Pictured above: A lamp, trying very hard to engage in its natural behavior... of being someone's lamp.
Alternatively, another thought I had: We know that Flins can see human ghosts. His character stories suggest that he might have once been a fae responsible for leading human souls of Snezhnayans to the afterlife, just as he's trying to currently do with the ghosts at the Final Night Cemetery.
Is it possible that Lantern Fae were created to be psychopomps right from the very beginning, and that their main role was and always has been to "lead scattered souls back to Irminsul"?
The idea that the artisans of Hyperborea might have crafted different types of fae to serve different "everyday" purposes is particularly interesting to me, in that it may imply fae were expected from the get-go to live in direct daily contact with the primordial humans (either as servants or partners; the Genshin wiki says the fae were created to be servants for the Hyperboreans, but I couldn't actually find the source for that). In such a situation, if the fae were created as servants for the Hyperboreans, what would life have been like for the first Lantern Fae? Were they treated like tools? Like objects? Or like people from the start?
Were Lantern Fae widespread or rare in the heyday of the fae? If they were widespread--how much so? Lanterns would have basically been a household item in an ancient culture, so is it possible many households had a Lantern Fae that they just kept around as a guardian against "less benevolent creatures of the night" (according to Flins' character story)? Or perhaps Lantern Fae were partnered with individual Hyperboreans who held more dangerous positions, like the way Lightkeepers in present Nod-Krai are never without their lamps? Imagine signing up for the Irminsul excavation team in Hyperborea and they just go "Okay, here's your government-assigned fairy; take good care of him!" 😂 My imagination is running wild thinking about what role talking lanterns would play in a combined human-fae society... (I'm mostly joking here, because it doesn't actually seem like Flins can speak when he's in the lamp/in his fire form; in-game, the lamp makes rather inhuman burny/howling noises instead of words.)
We know from the lore so far that Genshin's fae can have both normal spouses and infant children (because the humans in Snezhnaya are watchful for changelings), but does that even apply to Lantern Fae? How does a ball of fire reproduce? Does a tiny flicker of flame just split off from the parent flame? If Lantern Fae are bound to their lanterns, does the child flame manifest with its own lantern from the get-go, or does the parent flame have to provide the child flame with "baby's first lantern"?
I... wanna see pictures of baby lantern Flins... T^T
Are Lantern Fae even a breed that raises their children, or are baby Lantern Fae born ready to go out into the world on their own by Day 1? Maybe they don't even have a "child" stage of development anyway--maybe they're just summoned into existence as full-sized flames and only need to learn with time how to take their human forms?
Then this just begs the question of "When do Lantern Fae get their human forms in the first place?" Are they born knowing how to transform into a human shape, or is that something they have to practice? How many horrific misshapen pseudo-human shapes did Flins create before he finally figured out how to do an accurate approximation of a person? Do they learn how to transform into humans at a young age, taking the form of human children, or does it take longer for them to perfect the skill, not taking a human form until adolescence or adulthood? Do a majority of them prefer to stay in their human forms, or do they largely stay in flame form and only take human shape when its really needed? Can they change their appearance into other lifeforms too or only into humans? Could Flins take the form of say... a fungus if he was forced to?
What is the social structure of Lantern Fae society? Do they form nuclear or extended families? The fact that Flins has a last name suggests the presence of a blood-related family to pass down that surname (but then again this "last name" could be entirely fabricated). But if not families, are Lantern Fae a more solo breed of fae by nature, preferring to be dispersed to their own territories unless a social appearance is necessary? (Flins seems this way, but then again Flins clearly has "I'm not like the other fae" going on, sooo lol.)
Are Lantern Fae territorial? At the very least, it seems pretty clear to me that Flins is a "home body"--he has a voiceline about never seeing red sand before, suggesting he's literally never traveled beyond Snezhnaya and Nod-Krai--and it seems that he travels between relatively few locations as part of his daily life, preferring to go back to his lighthouse whenever possible. Between this and the fact that he's completely repurposed entire sections of the Final Night Cemetery just for his own personal hobbies (one room for his skeleton puzzles, one for his collections of gems and coins, one for a library, etc.), it gives the impression that Lantern Fae might be very "home-base"-oriented, more of the "settling down" type than world wanderers by nature. (This, I think, aligns well with the concept of their kind being born to serve as guides: When the fog rolls in, you'd only want to follow someone who knows the paths front to back, a person who has walked that same route a thousand times before.) Flins' character stories make his wandering from Snezhnaya into Nod-Krai sound basically like a existential crisis, rather than anything he was excited about or interested in--he didn't wander because he especially wanted to, but because he just had no place to belong anymore.
This ties into my questions about climate. The Genshin wiki seems to have leaned into the interpretation that the fae are adapted to cold areas like Snezhnaya and that's why they don't travel anywhere outside of Snezhnaya/Nod-Krai, but I actually think this interpretation is incorrect. For one, Netochka's line about fae and the weather is "It can't be the climate, can it?" (implying she thinks that the weather isn't really a good explanation for why there are no fae in Nod-Krai), while Flins' teapot line about the cold weather and the fae suggests that some fae may have adapted to the biting cold--which means that A) fae were not originally a cold-weather species at all and B) there are plenty of other fae not adapted to Snezhnaya's eternal blizzards.
Flins' line about rain suggests that he's not particularly impacted by weather of any kind outside his lantern, but he does still die to sheer cold on Dragonspine, which kind of ticks me off, to be honest... Anyway, all together, this suggests that Lantern Fae are fairly adaptable to various climates, and while they may prefer a cooler, darker environment by nature, it doesn't seem that they specifically need an especially cool climate.
Changing gears here: What about Lantern Fae gender? Do they even actually have genders in their real flame forms? Is there "boy fire" and "girl fire"? Or is gender just a kind of optional thing for them, something they choose when they decide what their human forms will look like? Can they change their gender just by changing the appearance of their human form at will? Is there social pressure among Lantern Fae to pick one gender over the other or do they pick their gender based on the circumstances they find themselves in? For example, is there an abundance of male Lantern Fae because there seems to be a correlation between the lanterns and watching over soldier groups (that may have been mostly men)?
What about their senses? According to the anecdote about food, Flins only has the ability to taste things while in his human form (he cannot taste when in flame form), but he also has a voiceline stating that human foods generally do not taste good to him. This suggests that even in his human form, his senses do not fully adjust to human parameters--he's a fae wearing a human costume rather than actually transforming into a fully functional human body. (But then this contradicts other facts, like the fact that Flins speaks when he's in human form but howls when he's in the lamp, so clearly he has a voice box... Hmm...)
Anyway, what do things taste like for Lantern Fae? When describing his perception of taste, Flins only compares the Lightkeeper rations to inedible objects (newspaper and tree bark) instead of actual food tastes... Has he "eaten" tree bark and newspaper to know what they taste like...? We know Flins likes alcohol, so are Lantern Fae inclined to foods/drinks that are cleanly flammable? Could he theoretically drink gasoline and enjoy it? We know he can smell things and that he enjoys the smell of tea (from his birthday letter), so is the Lantern Fae sense of smell closer to humans' than their sense of taste is?
What about sight? In Flins' trailer, we get a "first person" shot that suggests that Flins' sight in his flame form is a type of thermal vision, based on heat signatures rather than actual details. This helps to explain why he's able to see through dense fog and darkness without issue, as he isn't "seeing" so much as identifying differences in temperature.
However, Flins also has a comment about how the human world looks so complex and beautiful specifically when viewed through "human eyes"--how literal is this statement? If he takes a human form, is he able to generally see like a human can? (Doesn't this contradict the fact that his sense of taste doesn't change to match humans'? What is the rule here, Genshin?) How good is the eyesight of his human form then--better or worse than a real human? By the way, this may also explain why the first part of his body to ignite with flame when he uses his fae power in his human form is his eyes--he needs to activate thermal-based vision to see through the Wild Hunt's fog.
And while we're on the subject of senses, I also have a ton of questions about how "real" the human projection even is, and to what extent Flins is able to interact with the world as a human, because the game itself seems to go back and forth on this. For one, we know he doesn't actually need to breathe (on Dragonspine, he doesn't make any breath fog). In the anecdote about food, Flins says that he wasn't even able to swallow the food his comrades expected him to eat, suggesting that he may not even have a working human digestive system. Instead, he had to put the food into his lantern to incinerate it.
Maybe it was just that he couldn't swallow the Lightkeepers' rations because they taste nasty--but if that's the case and it was an issue of army rations alone being too gross, couldn't Flins eat good food without an issue? Yet his food voiceline suggests he doesn't want to eat any food the human way (he finds it almost all of it to taste unpleasant, no matter what it might be). But then again, if it's the case that he legitimately can't eat, where is the alcohol that he drinks going??? Does it just evaporate the moment it gets into his body because of an insane internal temperature or something? But then couldn't he just internally incinerate food too? Hrmmm Genshin, your world-building rules are too inconsistent...!!
Flins can see and smell like a human when he takes a human form, but can't taste like a human. Why? 🤔
I'm inclined to think the world-building that makes most sense here is that Flins can approximate a human experience only when he already has a frame of reference for it--Lantern Fae can apparently smell and see even in fire form, but they cannot taste, so even when he creates a mouth for his human form, he cannot create taste buds that appreciate food because he doesn't have any frame of reference for how the human body responds to tastes it likes. In short: If his flame form doesn't have a corresponding experience, Flins won't have enough information to accomplish the human version either.
Make of this what you want in terms of whether or not Flins can enjoy sex; at least considering what "makes sense," I'm inclined to say that because it's clearly not something living flame or lanterns are capable of, Flins might be able to physically engage but probably lacks a frame of reference for the positive sensations. But then again, when have shippers ever been limited by what makes sense? 😂
Back to our regularly scheduled programming, and almost to the end of my questions here (for now... until I think of more...): Are Lantern Fae magpie-ish collectors of shiny things by nature, or is Flins just special? Is he drawn to old and fancy things because of his personal nostalgia for the old regime of Snezhnaya, or do all Lantern Fae (maybe all the fae, regardless of type?) just have a weakness for pretty baubles? The fact that the Belyi Tsar was famous for giving away gems to his fae followers gives me the impression that perhaps they're all just a little treasure obsessed, but Flins' experience with old gems and coins actually seems a bit different--he cares about their stories and histories even more than their appearances, I think. Flins' JP voice actor also agrees with this sentiment:
According to real world folklore, aarnivalkea, the type of fae that Lantern Fae are supposed to be, are famous for being the guardians of treasure, ghost flames that mark where old fairy gold is buried. In-game, is this another chicken and egg? Do Lantern Fae mark where treasure can be found... or do you find treasure where Lantern Fae are because Lantern Fae are hoarders by nature? lol
Does Flins actually collect treasure as a way of "guarding" it? Preserving its histories and stories, compared to other collectors who might not realize the value of the pieces they hold? Does Flins have some psychic ability to "read" the history of a gem or coin he finds, or does he just do his research thoroughly before buying any piece?
And just how weak is Flins for shiny things? Is it like the actual fae legends, where you could trade a gem or bauble for a magical favor? If you give Flins something especially nice, will he be obligated by old fae laws to reward your gesture in kind? Do you think the Lightkeepers have cottoned on to this, so they keep bringing him trinkets and that's why he's always drowning in paperwork--he keeps getting bribed into writing everyone else's reports for them in exchange for crumbly old coins? 😂 (Flins knows what they're up to, of course, but this has greatly reduced the time it takes him to find new treasures, so some trade-offs must be suffered, no?)
Even though Nikita is the only one we know of in the Lightkeepers who blatantly knows Flins' secret, you can't tell me a number of them haven't figured out that something is off about their "anti-social" coworker, and that at least a few of them are just keeping it on the down-low. This guy's been part of the Lightkeepers for decades and hasn't aged a day? "You know what? Whatever he is, he's a nice, hard-working lad, so I'm going to mind my own business." How many of the Lightkeepers have low-key converted into "I stand by my weird coworker" supporters besides Illuga (the designated "#1 Flins caretaker" lol)? How many of them have secretly stepped in to distract Nod-Krai's civilians so that they don't notice anything off about Flins? How many of them are funneling their old family hand-me-down knick-knacks Flins' way to conveniently get rid of them? How many of them are very deliberately avoiding any eye contact with the lantern whenever Flins claims he's eating but is actually stuffing food away into the flame? How many of them are out there pretending they don't see him stuffing monster bones in his pockets on the rare times he comes and rescues them from botched hunts?
I know Flins is loved just the way he is!
I think there might be a lot of people in Nod-Krai who love their legends about Lantern Fae as much as me by now~!
As I've been exploring Nod-Krai further and unlocking more content related to Flins, a few things stood out to me that might be useful for others planning to write or make content for this character. This is just a collection of some stuff I think is worth thinking more about:
The Superfluous Man
One of the most important things to recognize when characterizing Flins is that Genshin is actually working with a set of very well-known, historically-rooted literary sources here. Genshin's writing team has long taken inspiration for their casts and quests from famous literature, and for Flins, they went back to the most high-brow of sources--the canon of classical Russian literature, which is probably the single greatest collection of novels ever written in human history (I'm not partial or anything, promise).
It is basically essential, when characterizing Flins, to read him as Genshin's twist on one of the most ubiquitous and well-known Romantic archetypes in Russian history: the Superfluous Man (лишний человек).
In our real world, nineteenth century Russian literature was shaped largely by the political, social, and economic climate of late imperial Russia, when steep social stratification and growing disillusion with the Tsars' governance, combined with the philosophical spread of individualism through the Romantic and Realist Movements, gave rise to a generation of writers whose primary goal was to critique the growing soullessness of their own society. Many of the world's greatest novels--War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Fathers and Sons, Dead Souls--come from this time period, and one of the key figures in a large number of these famous Russian novels and poems is the "Superfluous Man."
The Superfluous Man is the exact image that might come to mind if someone asked you to describe a "flawless Russian nobleman." He is the man who seemingly has it all. He is young, beautiful, and comes from old money, with a powerful family lineage making him one of the most important people in any given room. He's a central figure in the highest rungs of imperial society, but also witty and above materialism, at least enough not to fall for the scheming or the unrefined greed of his fellow noblemen.
Yet, for all the outward appearance of grace, class, and power, something has gone terribly wrong in this man's mind: Some awakening has occurred that has caused him to see through the pomp and circumstance of his own society and recognize the glamorized imperial world for what it is: sound and fury, signifying nothing, meaningless, soulless opulence with absolutely no substance behind it. From the outer edges of glittering balls and aristocratic dinners, this disillusioned young man watches his fellows engage in endless empty performances, living their lives exactly as demanded of them by entirely pointless social pressures, without a hint of authenticity or freedom of the heart in their actions.
Yet even as he watches his country sink into iniquity, watches injustices be perpetrated by the powerful onto the weak, this character is paralyzed--his money and status have no true value, and he finds himself a powerless bystander in his own world, unable to change the massive machinations of the political and economic systems churning around him. In time, he responds to this helplessness by withdrawing, becoming cynical and jaded. Often, his story ends with a message of deep and abiding existential despair: There is no meaning to anything in life, no purpose for this man's existence, and no hope of improvement.
Historically, the "Superfluous Man" as an archetype came about from a confluence of two central elements in nineteenth century Russian society:
1) The presence of the serf class effectively created an entire upper class in their society who did not need to do any meaningful labor in order to profit; while others worked their land and produced for their estates, these aristocratic land owners basically just had to exist--they did not need to work for a living and thus really had nothing to do other than seek constant and mindless entertainment in the courts of the Tsars.
2) However, people became increasingly disloyal and disillusioned with the Tsars in the mid-1800s due to failing and inconsistent policies towards the nobility, collapsing economic structures, uprisings and unpopular wars, and the over-abundance of ineffective, in-name-only bureaucratic offices. This meant that the traditional "job" expected of young noblemen in Russian society--going into government/political service--no longer had any prestige or meaning.
An entire generation of upper-class young men became, essentially, "superfluous"--existing, still living disgustingly privileged lives, but entirely lacking any sense of direction or path to self-actualization.
The Superfluous Man has been described by scholars as "a person who has lost a point, a place, a presence in life."
Okay, enough of the history lesson--what's this all got to do with Flins?
Flins is Genshin's unique twist on Russia's classic failed Byronic Hero (filtered through the lens of gacha games' need to produce endearing and morally unassailable characters, of course).
We know that at the court of the Belyi Tsar, Flins was always on the "outside." He was one of the lords who "never danced" and had "little interest" in the parties. He describes the "friends" one might make at these court balls as "second-hand" and speaks of his fellow fae nobles' love for cocktail parties and romanticized gossip with some sense of disdain:
By all accounts, although we're given multiple reasons to believe that Flins also laments the loss of his old world, we're not given any impression that what he actually loved was the lifestyle of the nobility--and, in fact, it appears that he (like all Superfluous Men) found the social expectations and performative nature of court life to be vacuous and shallow, even as he went along with it and "performed" just like everyone else.
Like other examples of this archetype, we're given hints that Flins possibly had core philosophical or moral reservations about those in power in his society:
And most importantly, Flins reflects the classic Russian archetype in how he responded to losing his original sense of purpose. We know that, in the past, Flins was perhaps a more social or at least more idealistic person--he tells Traveler than once upon time, he had "turned his heart to humanity" and "labored much" for his cause:
The "loss" that he mentions here cost him his "point, place, and presence in life." Without his original sense of purpose to anchor him, he apparently grew so dissatisfied with the aristocratic world around him that he responded--as Superfluous Men do--by withdrawing, removing himself entirely from the court life to become a nameless wanderer (by the way, this may cross-over with another famous Russian literary archetype, the strannik [странник]), separated from society by an insurmountable wall of emotional and physical alienation.
He became "superfluous" because he lost any sense of purpose.
An outsider looking in on a world to which he felt he could never again belong, unable to conform to the vapid social expectations--to just go along like "everyone else"--Flins followed the common "end" for Superfluous Men in Russian literature to a "T": He found himself overcome by existential ennui, determining that life itself was "monotonous" and "meaningless," and deciding that it would be better to not be part of the world at all.
Framed as seeking "peace," Flins built himself a grave with the intention of "sleeping for eternity," a state he describes as "absolute emptiness" that spared him pain but also meant he was "without joy"--without any form of consciousness at all.
This complete withdrawal and refusal to engage with the world, sparing oneself suffering at the cost of being unable to achieve any meaning in life directly mirrors a long-line of doomed Russian protagonists like Lermontov's Pechorin (whose boredom and "emptiness" are so intense they eventually lead him into a downward spiral of self-annihilation) and Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (whose failure to achieve any meaning in his youth eventually leaves him spiritually, if not physically, dead).
Flins is a quintessential failed Russian Romantic hero--marked not by his ability to perform all the trappings of nobility and courtly life, but by his despair at the world that endlessly goes through the motions while true beauty and worth lie forgotten.
In short, if you really want to write a "realistic" Flins, you should probably be reading some of those great Russian classics.
As a last note on this, though, it would be a bit remiss of me not to note that Genshin doesn't play the Superfluous Man trope perfectly straight; Flins is certainly a twist on the archetype in many ways, chief among them being that the Superfluous Men of Russian classics are normally kind of asshole-ish at best. While we as readers can sympathize with their suffering, we are also aware that most of their suffering is self-inflicted, with their own self-centered approaches to the world and callousness toward their fellow human beings often being the ultimate cause of their existential crises.
Flins, by virtue of being a male gacha character--a group of characters that sells primarily by how marketable they are to heterosexual female players--does sand off the roughest edges of the classic Superfluous Man archetype, with his boredom and despair about the world coming from a place of personal grief and (possibly, based on the hints) moral righteousness, rather than any immorality or selfishness. He's a good bean, unlike many of his classic Russian counterparts.
However, I do find it interesting that there was such a natural bent among fans--even now!--to believe that Flins is definitely some sort of two-faced person whose seeming admiration and respect for humanity must simply be a facade, hiding a self-serving and colder nature deep down. These fans are anticipating the second half of the Superfluous Man trope, even though Flins doesn't actually match it. That's quite interesting, I think.
There's also the fact that, unlike many other Superfluous Men in classic Russian literature who eventually die tragic, empty deaths, unable to escape their own despair, Flins has been able to pull himself back from the existential "brink" by finding a new purpose in life:
By deciding to commit himself to the Ratniki and protect Nod-Krai's humans from the Wild Hunt, Flins has found a new reason to remain in the world, a new goal to commit himself to, to make the endless days and nights of his life less "monotonous." He notes in his teapot dialogue that there's no actual contradiction between yearning for peace and yet choosing to live an "unpeaceful" life for the sake of a righteous cause--that is, his service with the Lightkeepers is just a different (and more meaningful) way of pursuing peace, even if doesn't have the same promise of "success" that effectively killing his own consciousness did.
Okay, that's enough literature and history for now, promise. The rest of the things I've observed are a little simpler and more straightforward in terms of characterization:
Flins is the kind of person who needs (and makes) time to process his thoughts and experiences.
Repeatedly over the course of his character stories and his role in the Luna I quest, we are told that Flins is a deeply introspective person who both needs--and takes--time to process the events and emotions he experiences. He is the type who needs to think things through before he can feel comfortable about them.
Spoiler alert: He's going to pointedly ignore all Nefer's advice. But he will at least think about it!
Flins makes art to "organize" his thoughts about the violence and danger he experiences in his daily life; the implication is essentially that, for all his own spookiness, Flins is actually discomforted by the bloodiness of the battles and death he undergoes and needs to work through these events afterward in a safe environment, where he is able to transform chaotic memories into orderly "simulations," effectively distancing himself from those experiences in order to rationalize and beautify them.
Another example of this is Flins' anecdote with Ineffa; if Traveler chooses to scold Flins for trying to distract Aino during her engineering classes, Flins' primary (if obviously light-hearted) complaint seems to be that there's just way too much to learn being thrown at him at once.
Hyperbole, thy name is Flins.
Overall, I think you'd be on the right track to characterize Flins as usually "slow to warm up to new things." He wants to do things on his own and think things through by himself before engaging, and he prefers to take plenty of time to reflect on the emotions and events he goes through--on his own, without wanting to share those feelings or thoughts with others.
This is the kind of guy who gets confessed to and goes "Let me think about it," then ghosts you for a week.
When Sousi died, Flins' first course of action was to ask to be taken to the scene so that he could see it and process it for himself, trusting his own perceptions over what the Traveler or anyone else could report. Even when dealing with an imminent threat like Rerir, Flins' idea for how to proceed is to go look through the past notes he maintains in an orderly fashion, spending a whole night reading through records rather than attempting to take a direct route to the conflict. If he and Traveler hadn't been aided (presumably by either Alice or Nicole), they probably wouldn't have gotten very far very fast using Flins' methods.
Although Flins is obviously capable of taking decisive, immediate action, particularly in combat scenarios (the few who survived the battle of the Final Night Cemetery wouldn't be alive without him doing so, and neither would Nod-Krai after Rerir's attack), it seems likely that his preferred approach to life--new knowledge and new experiences both--is just at a slower pace, with a lot more time to dwell on and go back over his own thoughts and actions to determine whether he's on the right track. I think this kind of introspective and (perhaps) more thoughtful approach to the world is an interesting and somewhat rarer personality trait for male characters in video games, who often get "brash" or "decisive" personalities instead, making this habit of self-reflection well worth noting.
A Walking Contradiction
Another of the key elements of Flins' characterization--and maybe the hardest to deal with, it seems to me--is that when it comes to himself, Flins is massively contradictory, and it can be extremely difficult to discern what is true from what is distraction. This fact is even acknowledged by his character stories, where the game tells us that Flins knows there are significant discrepancies between his words/thoughts and his actions, but that he doesn't let that bother him:
Flins' character description and first character story even directly contradict each other--Flins is a storyteller, but also no, he isn't. He tells stories to shield himself from people's curiosity, but also doesn't want to tell stories because stories "spark" curiosity. His stories are both true and completely made-up, falsehood and fact intertwined.
We are told that Flins uses his stories to distract people, to avoid them finding out about the details of his existence and particularly about his past, yet the game shows us that he also lights up with interest the moment someone mentions legends of his past life:
He also regards himself as a non-social person, stating that he doesn't want visitors, he prefers gloomy isolation and silence, and that he likes being alone. He avoids going into Nasha Town as much as possible, seems to keep his distance from most people he meets, and his fellow Lightkeepers supposedly rarely know anything about him other than his current location.
Yet in practice, the game shows and tells us that Flins interacts with quite a large number of people, many of whom have come to care about him deeply. While Lauma, Nefer, Aino, Ineffa, and Jahoda all interact with each other, Flins interacts with all of them and with an entire extra cast of Lightkeepers like Sousi, Illuga, and Nikita. We also see him reaching out to a whole host of NPCs that other playable characters never interact with, like the character anecdote that shows Flins trying hard to make contact with a fellow coin collector in Nasha Town, as well as hidden interactions where the bartender in the Flagship does his damn best to flirt with Flins invites Flins to personally drink with him in a private location because they apparently know each other that well(?!), or the teasing and playful interaction Flins has with the representative of the Voynich Guild who sells him a fancy pocket watch:
Bruh has half of Nasha Town charmed at this point.
It's entirely improbable that his out of the way island should regularly have visitors, but Flins is somehow even friends with Varka.
For being the self-proclaimed least social person in Nod-Krai's cast, Flins sure has a remarkably bustling social life!
And, more importantly, for someone who repeatedly claims he prefers solitude... Flins' character stories go out of their way to make it clear that he actively enjoys his social interactions with others.
(By the way, before he managed to make his way into the card game, the story tells us Flins stood next to the human Lightkeepers for over an hour, just kind of awkwardly lurking there--quite odd for someone who claims he prefers to not spend any time around noisy humans, right?)
There's plenty of other contradictions between what Flins says and what he does as well. In one character story, he flat out says he absolutely doesn't need a cat or a dog for a pet. Then a later character anecdote shows us...
Flins has accidentally gotten himself a dog.
Oh of course, he claims it's not his dog (with the confidence of every adult man who "never wanted a cat" and yet is found snuggling said cat a day later), but he is clearly happy to feed it, takes the time to try to understand its behaviors ("I think that means its still hungry"), and even refers to it as his "assistant"... Sir, be for real, that's your dog now.
Okay, more seriously: The clearest examples of contradiction appear in Flins' behavior toward his own well-being.
This man is absolutely the KING of understating and underselling his personal issues.
His health falls dangerously low in combat and he just goes "I'm a bit out of sorts." We can see that! He dies in combat? "See you at the graveyard." Sir, please. Bro nearly dies trying to fight one of the five sinners of Khaenri'ah all by himself and his only explanation after that is "Well, I think this situation speaks for itself?" He was jumped by a talking rock he got from the depths of the Wild Hunt corruption multiple times and he never once thought "Maybe I should tell someone about this."
He knew for a fact that Abyssal contamination was growing inside his lantern--that's his home, where his real body is?!--and he never once stopped and went "Hmm, perhaps I should look for someone who can help with that."
You could have died, sir??
Then of course there's the whole "going in to the grave" thing. I've written about it plenty elsewhere, so I won't go over it all again, but there's an obvious, obvious discrepancy between Flins' thoughts: "I never intended to take my own life" and the practical implications of his actions--he never intended to wake up from his eternal sleep, and knew that he'd eventually die there, underneath the tombstone he built for himself. He flat out tells Traveler later on in the Luna I quest that the only thing that stopped him from drifting so deeply into unconsciousness that he would actually die was being awoken by the Ratniki.
Flins tells us with his thoughts that he wasn't trying to kill himself, while telling us with his actions that he was fully ready to quit the world of the living forever.
Later on, in Flins' last teapot dialogue, he tells the Traveler that he's still longing for the time he spent unconscious in his grave, that he still wishes sometimes to be back to that state of emptiness, where he experienced absolute nothingness--neither pain nor joy.
Flins wishes to return to this state because he still associates living with pain--you cannot suffer if you're not awake to remember what made you feel suffering in the first place. Even after waking up, he still associates oblivion with peace, seemingly without awareness of what this says for his own mental state.
I'm reminded of an old comic:
(The artist is pocketss on twitter. Here's the original.)
The Traveler, who can tell this isn't a normal thing to say, replies to Flins' teapot dialogue by immediately asking him if he's planning to try to "kill" himself again--in fact, Traveler can't even finish the thought, likely because the concept of suicide is such a sensitive issue (particularly in closely monitored Chinese media, by the way):
Flins just laughs it off, denying that he has any intention, functionally, to harm himself again. But this still isn't a healthy mindset.
People are not supposed to long for the oblivion of total, dreamless unconsciousness.
In fact, it's a massively important, recurring and cross-game theme of Hoyoverse's storytelling that people must do everything in their power to combat "aimlessness" and "pain" about the future:
(Excerpts from a July interview about Hoyo game writing.)
The message of Hoyo games has always been and continues to be that life, no matter how painful, is still worth living, and that you should never give up--it's a theme that insists on positivity and directly defies Flins' idea that oblivion is peace. "Nothingness" is not peace, Hoyo games continually tell us--nihility is actually the deepest and most dangerous form that despair can take.
Flins can laugh his situation off all he wants. He might even believe in his own mind that he's perfectly fine now, that he never meant to kill himself, and that he's not depressed about his current place in the world--but given Hoyoverse's intensely life-affirming themes, his behaviors tell an entirely different story.
Overall, the impact of all these contradictory writing elements is to create the impression that we need to always, always look at what Flins does first, long before we consider what he says. He is absolutely a character whose behaviors speak louder than his words, whose physical responses to the world are more honest than the responses he's willing to speak.
Flins' actions are often in direct conflict with his thoughts.
When writing or creating content for this character, I think people should note that not only does Flins fabricate and stretch the truth quite frequently--when it comes to himself and his own health/well-being, absolutely nothing he says can be trusted. He's not fine, no matter how many times he says he is. Hell, he's not even an anti-social person when you start looking at how much time he's spending with others.
As the game itself lets the Traveler point out, Flins is incredibly perceptive and has keen intuition regarding other people's hardships, but when it comes to his own struggles, it appears he has a massive blind spot. He should probably go back to reflecting a little more lol.
Clearly, all of this is leading up to a narrative arc in which Flins will eventually learn to show himself at least a little of the same gentleness that he shows to others, where he will eventually recognize and articulate what he really needs to be happy in life (instead of feeling it would be better to withdraw from the living world entirely). Of course, I suspect this will coincide with finally forming those genuine connections to others that he's been so pointedly avoiding--connections that will help him find true purpose and joy in life again.
Story writes itself at this point, guys.
"My... Unique Situation"
Another thing I find particularly interesting is the strange reluctance that Flins seems to have when it comes to talking about his "true form" or his habits as a lantern fae. Whenever the topic comes up, he constantly resorts to euphemisms--"my unique situation," "my... special constitution," "my particular habitation arrangements"--and even though it is clear that his actual being is a ball of blue flame, it's the Traveler who brings this up more often than Flins himself does; in several voicelines, the Traveler worries about Flins getting doused by the rain or jokes that he could be the flame they blow out for their birthday candle, while Flins himself is like "There's no need to worry about those kinds of things..."
Flins only seems comfortable revealing his particularly non-human traits and behaviors after engaging at length with the Traveler. Most of his voicelines about being fae are locked behind higher friendship levels, and some of those voicelines imply having spent a significant amount of time with the Traveler ("Given that we are close acquaintances at this point") before he apparently felt they were close enough to talk about his identity.
Coupling this with the fact that Flins clearly goes out of his way to hide his lantern fae nature from others like Nefer and Lauma, and that he seems convinced that revealing himself as a fae would create "more trouble" in Nasha Town, the overall impression is that Flins believes the people of Nod-Krai will not accept him as he is.
The game tells us explicitly that he believes the humans around him will be frightened and uncomfortable if he reveals his differences:
And in several places he states that he's making active efforts to pretend to be as human as possible--something which he claims is entertaining for him, but still begs the question: Why should he have to pretend at all?
In fact, I think this is a good question in general, because for the most part, we're not given the impression that the people of Nod-Krai are sooo easily spooked that they couldn't learn to live with a lantern fae. For one, most people in Nod-Krai already know of the fae, even if they've never personally met any, while those migrating from Snezhnaya (like Netochka) have lived alongside fae and actually expect to see them coexisting with humans--only to be confused about their missing presence in Nod-Krai. Despite not regularly living with fae, most people in Nod-Krai make the automatic assumption that Paimon is fae and simply roll with that without issue. Humans like Nikita have already demonstrated that they can learn Flins' "secret" and be just fine with it.
Furthermore, even if they may not be 100% certain, there are also hints that many of the playable characters have (at least partially) figured Flins out: Ineffa seems like she might already know Flins' true nature (she's the first one that tells Traveler about the lantern fae in Nod-Krai and she deliberately attempts to get Flins to spell his meanings out because she's aware of his trickiness with wording); Lauma knows through her connections with animals that there's something very "off" about Flins; and when describing Nefer, Flins says he just hopes she isn't the type to pry into people's backgrounds... But I think we can all agree there's probably no secret in Nod-Krai Nefer hasn't pried into already. We have no particular reason to believe that any of the playable characters would have an issue with Flins' true form.
So when Flins claims that he's pretending to be human for the benefit of the humans around him, because surely it would just be so impolite to make anyone uncomfortable... It seems to me that the one who is actually most worried about his fae nature is Flins himself.
At the very least, Flins seems to be somewhat self-conscious (in the sense of "overly aware") of his differences and convinced that it's better to hide them, no matter the cost to himself (such as when he had to force himself to try to eat like a human).
It clearly takes a lot of trust before he's willing to show his "true self" to others.
Perhaps we'll find out in the future that Flins had some bad experiences with humans being frightened of his blue flame form before, and that's driven him to be more cautious about revealing himself, but as it stands right now, this strange hesitance to talk about or share any of his unique traits as a lantern fae just comes across like an unnecessary anxiety in Nod-Krai's "anything goes" environment--Flins appears to be making a negative assumption about how others will view him if they learn about his "true" self or if he lets himself act in ways that are natural to lantern fae, in turn contributing to his sense of isolation from the world around him.
The "Outside" Environment
Speaking of Flins' true form, a small thing I thought might be fun for fic writers/artists to note is that Flins likely spends more time "in the lantern" than we players get to see on screen. For one, his teapot line implies that he does, in fact, sleep in the lantern, rather than in his human form most of the time:
While we can find him in a human form when stumbling across him at the cemetery, typically when we do, it's when he's engaged in tasks that require hands and fingers--writing reports, fishing, and arranging his coins/gems. It seems likely, from the hints here and there, that while he is not in engaged in these kinds of tasks, Flins may spend more time in his "true form" than we get to see in the story quests.
In fact, Flins' description of the world beyond his lantern as "the outside" implies that there may be something more to the "inside" of his lantern, an idea that might be backed up by the fact that he was apparently able to store a large shard of Rerir's heart in that lantern without it being visible at all from the outside. Hell, we may find out there's a whole little pocket dimension in Flins' lantern where his fire form lives safely, protected from external stimuli and weather. It's interesting to think about!
And it also raises questions about what his "human self" is even made of. For one, we know that Flins' human body is actually not capable of swallowing food (or that, even if he can, he at the very least finds it physically unpleasant to do so). Alongside being able to dissolve into flame whenever Flins needs or wants to rest in his lantern, part of Flins' attack combo also involves his human self entirely disappearing to reveal that the lamp is what is actually controlling his polearm:
Imagine getting your ass beat by an angry lamp stabbing you with a spear. I think I'd die of embarrassment first, before the stab wound.
I'm inclined to suspect that Flins' human shape is something similar to Ajaw's physical form: a projection made of elemental energy and light, rather than an actual, physical type of shapeshifting. I feel like I'm bearing some sort of bad news to the Flins shippers when I say this, but while he seems solid enough to interact with objects in the real world, I think there's also plenty of hints at this point suggesting Flins' human form probably doesn't operate like a human body should. At one point, he and Paimon accuse Rerir's shapeshifting of being just "black liquid" under the surface, instead of a fully formed body or mechanical arm--to what extent might this be speaking from a sort of experience, using a form that looks whole on the outside while actually lacking the internal systems possessed by real human beings?
What Dreams May Come
Another small but interesting takeaway from Flins' teapot dialogue is that those eyebags on his model are not just for show--he really does suffer from insomnia!
Flins claims that the reason he can't sleep is because sleeping like normal beings do causes him to have dreams that are "too noisy." What he means by this isn't spelled out--it may mean that he literally finds any form of dream at all, good dreams or bad, to be too lively and mentally taxing for him. But I'm inclined to think this is just one more example of Flins downplaying his personal struggles to avoid making the Traveler feel like they need to step up and do something for him. (It wouldn't be proper to make other people put themselves out to solve your problems, now would it?)
"Noisy" almost certainly includes "nightmares."
Flins has plenty of reasons to be experiencing nightmares. For one, there's all the unaddressed baggage of whatever happened in his past (which we still know nothing about other than the fact that it was some form of "loss" and deeply affected his emotional state). Then there's the fact that he's clearly still suffering from guilt over the fact that he couldn't save all the Lightkeepers in the battle that woke him up from his eternal sleep, to the point that he feels it is his personal duty to continually keep watch over their ghosts, doing everything he can to try to help them rest and to eulogize their memories. His colleagues, like Sousi, also keep dying on him, leaving him with more and more people to mourn.
We also know that Flins possessed shards of Rerir's heart for quite a while, and that he was, over time, being slowly infected with Abyssal contamination leaking out from those shards. Storing Rerir's heart in his own lantern also seems to have even triggered some form of auditory hallucinations: When battling Rerir, Flins hears the voices of numerous other fae yelling (presumably at him, although to be fair, we can't 100% confirm that)--all saying rather painful and unpleasant things about someone being lonely, someone being to blame for a disaster...
All of this is to say that if Flins finds normal sleep "noisy," the "noise" that he's experiencing may be a lot of really terrible past experiences getting the better of him in sleep.
But there's also one other possible reason for Flins to experience nightmares. One of Flins' voicelines implies that he is acutely attuned of the state of Nod-Krai's ley lines:
This may help to explain why lantern fae are capable of seeing and interacting with human ghosts in general, by the way: In Genshin, ghosts are slivers of soul and memory that have yet had a chance to return to the ley lines and dissipate to be reborn in a new life; lantern fae (or perhaps all fae) may be closely attuned to the flow of ley lines and therefore more easily able to read both memory and emotion pouring out into the land.
It may not be Flins' own experiences alone that make his dreams "noisy"--but also the chaotic tangle of every human struggling in Nod-Krai's lawless society, filling the ley lines themselves with tension that Flins seems to naturally be able to pick up on.
I have a feeling this concept of memory in the ley lines will continue to be very relevant throughout Nod-Krai's story, so I hope we'll get to see more of this possibility in the future.
Okay, just one more note for now:
Flins' Jokes are Bad (and He Should Probably Feel Bad)
I don't need to provide too much background here because it's been noted by quite a few other people, but Flins has a very dark sense of humor. Many of his voicelines are dry or sarcastic plays on words related to death, while in other places he uses understatement for its full comedic effect (as I mentioned earlier, one of his combat death lines is just "See you at the graveyard"). He frequently laughs off references to his life-threatening sleep ("Hee hee, no, I won't 'extinguish' myself again"), and in other places makes off-color jokes about death and/or violence that make both the Traveler and Paimon gawk at him in shock. At one point, he jests that he'll replace Sousi as the new Lightkeeper commander in Nasha Town, which Paimon takes seriously until Traveler reveals that no, Flins is just making a really, really morbid joke.
But beyond Flins' sense of humor being just as gloomy as he is, I think there's something else worth thinking about here: While Flins' puns aren't quite on the level of bad that Cyno's can reach, the long and short of it is:
Flins' sense of humor is actually really... undignified?
In all other ways and in all other circumstances, Flins is the picture of prim and proper poise. He conducts himself with full decorum, speaks exceedingly politely, and attempts to always show as much courtesy as he can to everyone he meets. In one of Flins' character stories, Illuga remarks that Flins is an eloquent person--so much so that he can use his words to get exactly what he wants.
Flins' character description calls him "cultured and courtly," and most of his dialogue sounds like varieties on niceties like "It is an honor to have the company of your distinguished self."
By all accounts, his manners in virtually every case are what upper-class society would call "unassailable."
...Until he finds something entertaining. Then, suddenly, Flins is out here making lame "grave" puns, putting out vaguely inappropriate jokes at completely insensitive times, and even shocking people (particularly poor Paimon) with how indecent his comments can actually become.
In other cases, he also demonstrates a rather "low-brow" sense of entertainment: Between teasing and deliberately misleading Illuga just for the laughs, intentionally tricking Ineffa into doing work for him, and clearly having way too much fun blackmailing Aino with snacks, there's also the character story where Flins "learns to play" cards.
It's the gentlemanly thing to do to handle losses with dignity, but Flins is clearly not keen on losing in any competition he takes part in (even ones he's losing on purpose!). He makes Olav work extremely long and hard for his "defeat" of Flins in the first card game, and then turns around and mercilessly and repeatedly trounces Nikita in retribution, with the story going out of its way to emphasize how happy getting this kind of "comeuppance" makes Flins:
This brat lmaooo
While I'm on the side that thinks Flins was not intentionally frightening the Seelie merchant during his character teaser, it's undeniable that he was amused by the man's fear--not exactly a noble way to behave.
Put together, the picture is of someone who works very hard to exude a sense of propriety, to make himself appear courtly, put together, and polite--but who sometimes can't help himself.
Flins appears to be someone whose sense of humor is (deep-down) quite off-color and even a bit childish, not really suited for the aristocratic air he tries to maintain on the daily. He's the kind of guy who clears his throat politely and then drops the most jaw-droppingly inappropriate comment into the chat, I feel it in my bones.
While I actually think that Genshin's take on the fae might lean a little more toward the Tolkien-ish elf-like, with "mystical" and "pure-hearted" being core concepts of the race at least slightly more than "naughty" or "untrustworthy," it is clear there's at least a little vein of mischief hiding under Flins' calm, well-behaved exterior.
Not to resurrect the ancient terminology, but there's a nice bit of gap moe to these few little flashes we get: The flawlessly well-mannered facade cracks every once in a while to reveal a much more down-to-earth person, one who can be far more smug, self-pleased, and even (kind of) tasteless than he normally tries to let on. Not so above it all, are you?
But he'll apologize for the offense later--promise.
Anyway, there are a few other things about Flins that I've noted and wanted to talk about, but I'll be busy for the next few days, so I'll let this post stand on its own for now.
Let's see if it can hold up past 6.2 or if I need to revise all of this tomorrow lolllll.
Gonna bring something more positive to the table tomorrow, but just a passing late-night annoyance thought for now (brought on, as always, by seeing unsolicited takes on Hoyotwt):
The length that some people in the fandom are going to try to talk around Flins's emotional struggles and past leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth; or at least I should say it's definitely causing me to give some side eyes.
You can tell that there's a certain group of people who really want to be fans of this character but are also really uncomfortable with the idea of their shiny new favorite having any form of mental health challenge or emotional vulnerability (that isn't presented in the context of a ship).
If I have to read one more "We can't compare Flins's emotional state when he went into the grave to our perceptions of reality because he's an arcane being who exists entirely outside of the human experience!" I might actually gag.
We have not gone through five years of the game hammering home the fact that immortal/long-life species in Genshin are thinking, feeling beings who are just as capable of making mistakes, experiencing suffering, and struggling to process grief as any of the mortal characters--in some cases even more so than the mortal characters (Raiden Ei says hello!!)--for people to still be like "When Flins said he tried 'to extinguish himself,' it was just figurative! It wasn't depression, it was just boredom! We simply don't understand his way of viewing the world because it's too foreign to our puny human minds!"
It's surprising the way this particular character is revealing to me how stigmatized struggles with depression and self-harm still are in this day and age, and how people will perform any length of mental gymnastics to avoid associating a character they like with "negative" concepts.
I actually have to wonder if part of fans' reluctance to address the obvious with Flins is because he's a male character who has been yume-baited a bit; the idea that a gentlemanly dream fairy man might have unaddressed issues that he genuinely needs to work on seems to really be making some fans squirm...
I'm barely dipping my toes into reading fics and twitter posts about Flins, but it seems to me there's already a fairly common impression that as a fae, Flins does not understand human emotions or motivations, or possibly that he finds the human world/human behaviors somewhat incomprehensible--essentially, the view seems to be that because he is such an alien, supernatural creature, then his experiences and thoughts must be wholly different from humans'.
But... I actually think the tragedy of this character is that the opposite is true: Flins has an incredibly good grasp on human emotion. He easily understands the human world and what drives it.
It's just that "understanding" is not the same thing as "belonging," and no matter how well he can read humans' hearts, there's a divide between humanity and himself that Flins isn't capable of bridging--at least not as he is right now.
First, I think it's important to note that while we players might be thinking of the fae as these very non-human, very eerie supernatural beings, that isn't actually how Flins thinks of the fae. Flins thinks of the fae as significantly closer to humans than humans seem to believe. For example, although it was a mistaken impression, Flins' voiceline "About Us: Humans and Fae" indicates that he once believed humans and fae actually had common ancestors:
This is a pretty silly take for a sentient ball of fire that lives in a lantern to have, but it does appear to be that case that--at least early on in his life--Flins thought of fae and humans as two branches of the same lineage, not completely alien to each other. In his impression, there isn't that big of a divide between fae and humans, and in fact, he even believes that fae and humans share a "common spirit." (There's also the fact that fae seem to live side-by-side with humans in several cities in Snezhnaya, seemingly without any major issues--at least that we've been told about so far.)
In fact, the act of connecting himself to humanity happens several more times across Flins's in-game lines and stories. In another example, he recalls that the first thing he saw upon waking from his supposed-to-be-eternal sleep was "the light in the Ratniki's eyes," and Flins remarks that those humans reminded him of his own past self.
The game tells us directly: Humans remind Flins of himself. He doesn't see himself as some sort of eerie, alien being entirely disconnected from the human experience (even if he knows humans sometimes see him that way).
Later on, Flins draws comparisons and points out similarities between fae and humans several more times, such as by comparing his fae companions' longing for immortality to humanity's own longing for immortality, and by noting that his time with the other fae in the Snezhnayan court was exactly as transactional as the relationships Illuga is familiar with between human businessmen.
Though he does recognize that humans and fae are completely separate creatures, Flins' ultimate belief seems to be that he is not that different from humans. Or, at the very least:
Flins believes that he is capable of seeing the world "through human eyes."
And the part I think that many people are missing in their characterization of Flins is that he's right.
Flins understands humanity incredibly well.
He has deep and excellent insight into people's emotions, he can grasp what the humans around him are feeling even when those feelings aren't spoken out loud, and he can immediately pinpoint what motivates the humans around him. Whether or not you believe he's only doing it so he can take advantage of people, he presents himself as incredibly empathetic and is capable of easily putting himself into human beings' "shoes," articulating their pains and struggles out loud so that others, like the Traveler, can understand as well.
We see this numerous times, from the sympathy and obvious guilt he feels over the spirits of the Ratniki he could not save, who became ghosts that he treats with gentleness, camaraderie, and deep respect for their courage and honor:
We see it in the way he immediately recognized Columbina's hesitance to talk to strangers, enough so that Paimon even calls out the fact that Flins is an incredible judge of character:
He's able to quickly recognize the Traveler's trustworthiness and forges a strong connection with them, even being willing to reveal some of his true past--which he's extremely reluctant to do in general.
In his character story, Flins is capable of quickly identifying that his fellow Ratnik Olav is in need of a confidence boost and moral support, which Flins is happy to give him--just to help him grow as a person.
Later, Nikita commends Flins for achieving something that Nikita himself couldn't, demonstrating for us readers that Flins has a strong grasp on the ins-and-outs of human interpersonal relationships (as much as he attempts to avoid socializing on the whole).
Even though Flins claims he struggles with "pretending to be a normal person," it's clear that he is actually perfectly capable of understanding the personal cues and emotional signals necessary to operate smoothly within human social systems--that is, he's capable of "being normal" when he chooses to.
But nowhere is it clearer how deeply Flins understands human emotion than in his eulogies for Sousi. It is obvious from the way Flins speaks about Sousi that Flins not only keenly understood Sousi's struggles but also directly empathized with his hardships. Flins' doesn't just say "Sousi had a difficult job; seems like it must have been hard for him"--Flins articulates the exact pains that Sousi suffered, to the point that he can even describe the very thoughts that must have been going through Sousi's head:
It's clear, furthermore, that Flins not only understands Sousi's pain but also feels that pain--Flins was not only moved by Sousi's daily sacrifices for the Lightkeepers but also by the human's tenacity and selflessness. We can see that Flins is deeply saddened by Sousi's loss.
And more than just appearing sad, the game actually goes out of its way to make Traveler point out that Flins and Sousi's stories--and their emotional struggles--parallel each other.
Sousi is described as far from home and unable to see his family:
He's described as having done everything he could for others (having "labored much"!), not realizing that his hard work would only cause him more isolation and pain, and Sousi is repeatedly linked to the image of a lone lantern "that no one else could see":
What other lantern waited and waited where no one else could see?
Flins recognizes that Sousi was even a perfectionist who was hard on himself because he fixated more on outcomes than his own condition, which, ironically, causes Traveler to point out that Flins is exactly like Sousi, and needs to be more gentle with himself:
It's obvious (to the Traveler, at least) that Flins is just as capable of experiencing emotions as any of the human characters in Nod-Krai.
I'd even argue that, out of the entire Nod-Krai cast, Flins is most sentimental person we've met so far--he's the most emotionally affected by the lives lost to the Wild Hunt, one of the most prone to introspection and self-blame (although Lauma does give him a good run for his money), and the most concerned with the safety of the human world in general. Lauma might care about her people specifically, Nefer might care about Jahoda and might want to protect Nod-Krai from a business standpoint, Ineffa might want to protect Aino, Aino might want to protect her bots--but Flins wants to protect humanity as a whole simply because he loves them.
Say it with me y'all: Flins has no stake in Nod-Krai's safety. He has no responsibility to the humans there. He's not a native and he could leave at any time. But instead, he stays and risks his life every night fighting the Wild Hunt to protect Nod-Krai's humans. He stepped up to face Rerir's threat without even the slightest hint of hesitation, though Paimon and the Traveler explicitly note that he could have just thrown Rerir's heart shard away at any time and completely washed his hands of the issue.
This is not the behavior of someone who doesn't understand humanity. These aren't the words or actions of someone who struggles to grasp emotions like love, hate, courage, and fear--Flins does understand humanity, is a deeply emotional being himself, and is extremely aware of what the humans around him are feeling and why, at all times.
The problem is that understanding doesn't automatically lead to "being part of the group." Knowing how people feel, even feeling the same ways they do, doesn't ensure you will "fit in" where you find yourself.
It doesn't matter how well Flins can understand the human world around him--it will still never be his world, because his world is gone and can never be brought back.
Although much of Flins' past is still murky, from the hints we're given, we know that Flins must have had a very close relationship to either a human or a group of humans in the past. Flins tells us that he used to "labor much" and that he had "turned his heart to humanity" in that past life:
At some point, something bad happened and Flins lost whatever was connecting him to the human world. (What this connection was is still unknown--Flins never particularly seemed interested in the life at court, was never described as social even back then, and I don't think the Belyi Tsar himself was ever supposed to be human, so who--or what--was it that Flins was so connected to? I guess we'll see one day!) In any case, Flins' story describes this loss as "losing his anchor," after which he was effectively set adrift in life, no longer having any sense of purpose. He left the court, left his name and status behind, and became a goalless wanderer, existing rather than living:
Though we haven't been told yet what Flins' loss entailed, there are some strong hints in the game already that Flins might blame himself for the loss or that others blamed him. While being attacked by Rerir, Flins hears the voices of several other fae yelling at him, mocking him as "lonely," "superfluous," and a liar, as well as noting that complacency was the cause of some impending disaster that it was "too late" to make up for:
(One thought I have, viewing this, is that it's possible Rerir is able to imitate other people so well because he is utilizing memories stored in the leylines--in which case, we may be able to learn more about Flins' past in future patches through Rerir.)
Anyway!
When Flins lost his "anchor" and connection to the human world, he found himself increasingly outside of that world. He describes the passage of time as he departed from Snezhnaya and wandered to Nod-Krai as something going on without him, and by the time he reached Nod-Krai, it was already clear that he no longer felt like he belonged in the world that was moving on at mortals' frantic pace.
By the time he reached Nod-Krai centuries ago, the courtly world Flins knew was already long gone, as ephemeral as melting snowflakes. The home he once had, the noble lifestyle he carried on, the treasures, the transactions, all the humans (and fellow fae) he knew... every single thing that he would have been familiar and comfortable with had already vanished.
Whoever or whatever it was that gave Kyryll his sense of purpose had long disappeared, but his life just kept going on, regardless.
Just like the other fae that lamented there was no eternal fountain of youth for their Snezhnayan paradise, it is clear that Flins's thoughts also revolve around the past--or that his time has effectively stopped, and while the rest of the world continues evolving around him, he is no longer able--or willing--to keep up and connect with that evolving world.
Times change. They don't change back.
We see small hints of this throughout his story, but one example that stands out is the anecdote about the lamp, where Flins effectively tricks Ineffa into fixing the lamps for him because he doesn't want to learn how to repair the "new" technology installed in them. Although this anecdote is of course humorous, there's a small aside where Flins talks about how the lamps used to be lit and maintained with oil, and how "back then" any Lightkeeper was capable of bringing light to the world.
Just in his own lifetime, Flins has watched even the most basic technology of streetlights evolve around him, becoming more and more foreign (more and more human) by the day. Flins effectively is that old flame in the oil lamp--a guiding light no longer needed, replaced by the inexorable march of time.
I don't think it's any accident that Flins is fixated on collecting old gems and ancient coins, and that he makes sure to keep them in their "original casings," even when he notes that some of those casings are crumbling away and too fragile to even be touched. It's because the housing--the originality of the objects--means something to him. The history the items possess, their original forms exactly as he remembers them from centuries ago is what actually matters.
Like those dead currencies still in their faltering, ancient casings, Flins is also a relic of a past to which he can never return. He is, in essence, no different from the ancient gems he collects: Having survived and circulated long past their origin and the context in which they had true worth, both he and the gems he collects have become secondhand detritus, "worthless" baubles whose long histories no longer matter to the new world they have found themselves in.
(It's not a mistake that he's functionally an object himself--the lantern that Flins truly "lives in" is as much an ancient treasure as any of the ones he's collecting and keeping in a safe little box.)
When Flins talks about ending his own tale, when the game draws the division between "Kyryll" and "Flins," the division isn't there because Flins' happily chose one day to move on. The division between "the noble's" story and Flins's story actually happened long before Flins's decision to "go to sleep" forever--"Kyryll" was already disappearing by the time the old world he once knew collapsed, with the image of his "flame going out" being linked directly with that of the old regime.
Flins is alive but he might as well be a ghost.
He's effectively a lingering spirit, unable to pass on--an artifact out of its proper time and context. He's a tarnished relic of a bygone age that found itself accidentally surviving into a future it has no connection with.
He's an outsider looking in.
He exists in the human world, but he isn't living in it. (This is how he describes the fae race as a whole by the way--according to Flins they are "unimportant" but they still just "exist.")
By the way, this is a common issue among Genshin's long-life species. Just as Rex Lapis had to die so that "Zhongli" could join the mortal world, and Cloud Retainer had to be coaxed down from Mount Aocang to experience human life in Liyue Harbor--just as Neuvillette was too trapped in the past to recognize how much Fontaine's feelings about the Melusines had changed, the common refrain is that Teyvat has become a world of mortals, moving at the mortals' pace, often leaving its immortal beings, who are much slower to change, behind.
The long and short of it is that Flins understands humanity and human emotions perfectly well, but he still isn't part of their world.
And I would argue that's because he doesn't want to be.
Over and over again, Flins's stories describe his actions as "self-imposed exile":
Flins is intelligent, empathetic, emotionally aware, and perfectly capable of becoming attached to humans. Yet he goes through life in Nod-Krai as if he's barely even there, holding himself entirely aloof, trying to avoid visitors, staying on the most remote island, not working with any Lightkeeper partners unless he has to...
This exile is a voluntary one. It is, quite literally, "self-imposed."
In fact, it's this exact thing Nefer scolds him for at the end of Luna I, pointing out that Flins's troubles throughout the patch are essentially his own fault because he chooses to remain isolated from others:
Flins's exile from Nod-Krai's mortal world isn't because humans can't tolerate him or because he's incapable of living among humans. In fact, most of the humans who meet him clearly come to like and appreciate him, with many, including the Traveler, finding him to be gracious and amusing company.
But Flins claims that he prefers isolation. Flins claims that he would rather have ghosts for company than living beings. Flins refuses to learn how to do new things, like work the modern kuuvahki powered lights. Flins rejects the idea of spending more time in Nasha Town. Flins avoids telling others the truth about himself and his past.
He claims he's happier this way.
The Voices™ haunting him don't really seem to agree though:
The distance between Flins and the human world isn't just because he's fae--in fact, it may have little to do with being fae at all. It seems likely (though time will tell), that Flins's separation from humanity has much more to do with the fact that he is holding himself remote from the human world on purpose--in part because he feels he doesn't belong in this world anymore, that he's a superfluous, "long lost" leftover from a forgotten golden age--and in part because the idea of connecting with the human world again is clearly painful.
Loving humanity, laboring for humanity, and then watching it all fall apart obviously taught him loss, a loss so consuming that it left him entirely without an "anchor," adrift in an existence with no sense of purpose--Flins himself describes his life after what happened in Snezhnaya as both "meaningless" and "monotonous."
The loss of that "anchor" and purpose in his life was so intense that Flins ultimately attempted to escape from it entirely by "going to sleep" forever--an attempt at finding "eternal serenity" (in oblivion) that obviously failed.
Now, risen from that failed attempt at finding peace, Flins is stuck between two painful choices: If he ties his heart to the human world again, he'll only be burned once more--the loss of one Lightkeeper comrade after another just grinds the salt into the open wound afresh. But can he really turn away from the humans that he clearly loves so dearly? Can he ignore their cries for aid, their hopes and prayers for a ray of light to guide them out of the darkness of despair? Is there any point to his continuing existence in the world if he has no purpose for being there? If he's just some pretty stone (some old polished lantern) that no longer ever shines?
Thus, Flins is trapped on a precarious tightrope, unable to separate himself entirely from the mortal realm, unable to turn a blind eye to human suffering, but unwilling to commit to reconnecting fully, obviously hesitant to open his heart to such fragile creatures ever again.
Although I'm sure more will be revealed with time and we still have a very limited amount of information on his background, I think for those looking for ways to characterize Flins, this is the aspect I find most compelling about his character:
Flins is the architect of his own isolation, and his lack of connection to humans is not from a lack of emotion or an inability to understand how humans think or feel. He could blend in with mortals without an issue if he chose to. He can understand and feel human emotion just as easily as humans can.
But it's because he is a feeling, loving creature who understands the human heart that he can't bear to fully join the human world again.
It's because he once loved the mortal world so dearly--loved it and felt the pain of losing something in it--that he can't bear to "turn his heart to humanity" once more.
Flins's tale isn't the story of a monster cleverly hiding among humans he doesn't truly understand.
It's the story of what happens when the "monster" is as human as the humans are--without the freedom of a fleeting existence to spare him from the grief.
Hoyo twitter is always a trip. Tell me why I'm seeing people today all up in arms, very confidently debating over whether Flins was even dying or meant to die when he built himself a grave, with plenty of people--even a daily lore account(??)--claiming that he was absolutely never suicidal and was just using sleep to reinvent himself, because they've taken one sentence in a character story to be gospel truth over everything else the character says and does?
Flin's character story does say: "He had never intended to end his own life." Yes, if you stop there, that statement would mean he was never suicidal. But there's a whole second half to the sentence! The thought doesn't end there, on purpose!
"To casually toast this monotonous world once, then go to sleep."
Sleep and death are intimately intertwined. The game tells us this!
The whole of real human experience tells us this!
Flins' act of sleep was "trying death."
His act of sleep was a deliberate withdrawal from life.
So much had changed in Snezhnaya that his entire prior way of life was lost:
And, to the best that we can tell, the part of the legend that is true is that he engaged in self-imposed exile specifically because he felt "powerless" to stop the regime change--and the end of the era it brought to his own life.
His life lost meaning, and he wandered without purpose, in a "monotonous world" that he no longer felt he even belonged in.
While the other fae longed to go back to their idyllic empire before the fall of the Belyi Tsar, wishing those times could have lasted into "eternity:"
Flins instead approaches the concept of eternity with irony:
Only by erasing consciousness and rejecting the very act of living in the world can "finite" beings (which includes fae, according to Flins) approach eternity. He's laughing in this story for a reason--because you can't call what he was doing, sleeping unconsciously, entirely withdrawn from the world, as anything approaching "living"--what is the point of an eternal life that can only be achieved by not living at all?
(This is the same way the theme of eternity was approached in Inazuma by the way--Traveler and Co. proved Raiden's total stasis was contradictory to true eternity because stopping one's self in time and refusing to allow life to happen will inevitably result in collapse, not true perpetuity. In order to go on forever, you first have to be able to go on.)
Flins explicitly went to sleep because he felt that he was drowning in the meaninglessness of life and could not see any direction forward that would make life worth living. He directly, word-for-word, equates his choice to sleep as someone being lost out at sea and choosing to sink.
He explicitly "put an end to his tale with his own hands." (And I genuinely hope you're not watching an animation showing his model deliberately becoming trapped in darkness, sinking down to the point where nothing at all can be seen on the screen, and saying to yourself "He definitely just meant he wanted to stop being a nobleman and not, you know, that he was trying to escape his entire painful existence." Something something comprehension of visual symbolism and all that?)
In fact, he flat out tells the Traveler that the only thing that kept him from sinking into "truly lightless depths" (aka actually dying) back then was being awoken by the Ratniki.
Yes, Flins's stories are extremely contradictory, and we need to be careful to put too much trust into any one story. You cannot take any given line at face value.
But the sum total of what we have been told so far is clear: Once upon a time in old Snezhnaya, Flins was loyal to someone or to a specific cause that was linked deeply to humanity. He tells us, in his own words, that he had turned his heart to them and "experienced loss." From this loss, he was left adrift, "without his anchor," mired in the pointlessness of his own existence.
And his conclusion at that time was "Would it not be better, then, to simply sink?"
I don't know how you could look at that statement and think "This person was totally mentally healthy and not at all suicidal at the time."
On the one hand, his story states (he effectively claims): "I wasn't trying to kill myself." But on the other hand, his decision to go to sleep permanently was absolutely death-seeking.
Flins withdrew so intensely from the living world that he was--in his own words--about to sink into depths so dark there could be no return.
In this case, Flins's contradictory stories are almost identical verbatim to the common statement: "I'm not suicidal; I just wish I could go to sleep and never wake up."
It might be hard to hear, but this is, in fact, suicidal ideation.
Nobody doubts that Hamlet was contemplating suicide when he delivers his famous "To die, to sleep--No more--" soliloquy. You're not supposed to think Flins's hundreds-of-years-long slumber was just a casual nap... You're really, really not.
And we can tell that Flins's actions were, effectively, a method of suicide because Flins explicitly tells us that he intended for his slumber to be eternal.
He did not intend to ever be woken up. The character stories tell us he specifically chose a place he thought would never be disturbed and went to sleep so deeply that it took a literal sea of screaming bloodshed to wake him.
I would argue that even if--on one level--Flins claims he never meant to kill himself, he did, on some other level, believe that his act of "going to sleep forever" would constitute death. If he had just wanted to be hyperbolic about enshrining his old life for the ~aesthetic~, he could have built himself a monument or statue to the old "Kyryll." Instead, he built himself a grave; this is not the Genshin writers being subtle.
I think there's some mistaken belief among the fandom, a headcanon that's already taken hold, painting Flins as this long-standing duplicitous creature with a dozen aliases under his belt, routinely abandoning old names to take on new lives and maintain his "human" facade, and that his decision to build a grave was nothing but a symbolic gesture so he could kill off his "noble self" and make a new life for himself free of social pressure, but...
This is basically entirely fanon.
According to his own character stories, he's always gone by the name Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins, from the time of the Belyi Tsar:
"Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins" is the name that is in the Snezhnayan court register.
Flins literally woke up and gave people the exact same name he was always using. He gave them the same name, and then also went back to engaging in the exact same behaviors (guiding people with his light) he was doing before he went to sleep, the same behaviors that led Nod-Krai to be full of legends about a blue flame lantern fae even though Flins isn't native to Nod-Krai at all. Really massive attempt to "make a new identity for himself" going on here. 😂
The game also states explicitly that he's only ever had "two lives"--his time at the Snezhnayan court and his time now, 500-ish years later... still going by Kyryll, just sort of squeaking by hoping that people won't make the connection to the nobleman of Snezhnaya's past.
Flins is clearly not symbolically "reinventing himself" or attempting to rid himself of his past, especially given how avidly he collects his own prior treasures!
In fact, there wasn't even any need to "kill" the noble of old to make a new life for himself because his character stories tell us he was already "free" by the time he first left the Snezhnayan court. He could have gone anywhere ("he had no destination") and done anything ("nor anything he needed to do"). He could have given the humans around him any name he wanted and had his "rebirth" right then. But that's not what he did, because this idea that he wanted to "symbolically" escape his own past life by actively becoming someone new is essentially a made-up fanon take.
Like, how can we claim going into the grave was a symbolic attempt at starting a new life for himself when he explicitly had no intention of coming back out? There was never any "rebirth" planned!
The only degree to which his reawakening counts as some form of "making a new life for himself" is that he doesn't go around flat out confirming his connection to the legends--but when even random people meeting him for the very first time can tell he's not human, like the merchant in his teaser animation, then I think we can safely say Flins' identity as at least some manner of "not normal" being is one of the worst-kept secrets in Nod-Krai, particularly among the playable cast, even if Flins is making some (sort of pathetic) attempts to try to keep it under wraps.
Honestly, you can barely even say he's making attempts to pass himself off as human to the average mortals he meets either. Many of the mentioned characters in the story at this point know exactly who--and what--he is:
Nikita doesn't just know that Flins is fae; Nikita knows that Flins was even a noble. Flins is barely managing to keep his own past a secret from Nod-Krai's main players, let alone actively trying to reinvent himself under some whole new and different name or identity.
Flins did not go under the grave to happily take a little rest so he could pop out a couple hundred years later and pretend to be someone new for funsies.
The idea of "stretching himself infinitely" isn't meant to be seen as a positive. When he talks about attaining "eternity" through this method, he's directly mocking the other fae who spoke of eternity with envy, who thought of immortality as "precious beyond price," by suggesting that he, of all people--the one who abandoned Snezhnaya--had found the truth: that the living can only reach eternity through death [of consciousness].
The irony is that the other fae wished for their kingdom to last into eternity, which Flins himself said at the time was impossible--but then he, by exiling himself from that same kingdom (and from life), thought he found the eternity the other fae were so coveting--he says "found by one who had cast himself out" because it's ironic that the fae's hoped-for etenity would supposedly be found only by the one furthest from the very life they had hoped to immortalize.
Perhaps we can argue that if the Ratniki had never woken Flins up, he might have been able to exist perpetually in an unconscious state beneath the earth, that he could have gone on burning in the dark ground for thousands upon thousands of years‐-maybe, if you take Genshin's approach to immortals at the most surface level, we could possibly say "Flins isn't capable of dying of old age, so if he just went to sleep forever, that would count as never dying."
But for one, Flins himself doesn't agree with that. His own character story states that he knows his time is limited. His life--and the lives of the other fae who explicitly "spoke of immortality with envy"--was, in his own words "finite."
But even so! If we ignore Flins' own words on this and work under the assumption that the fae truly live forever, never subject to erosion, then even so! There is still--still--no way to mistake Flins' eternal sleep for being alive.
There's nothing of life in "death-like slumber." The stories state that beneath the earth his flames didn't even flicker. He saw and experienced nothing. He describes this as trying to reach "tranquility," but Hoyo games have constantly reiterated the message for us players that nothingness--nihility--is not peace.
There's nothing of beauty, or mischief, of joy or valor or loyalty in eternal sleep--all the things that Flins finds irrevocably radiant about the world, about humanity, about life itself... none of that can be found beneath the earth.
Like come on now, bro was not out there being tormented by The Voices(™) calling him a superfluous, lonely existence whose complacency was the cause of his own suffering for y'all to be like "He was fine!"
Flins's attempt to "go to sleep forever" obviously came from a place of despair.
He was adrift in what he perceived as a meaningless world and couldn't think of any direction to go but down.
If we know that fae lives are actually finite, and Flins in particular felt that his own time on the earth would be finite, then there's only one way to read his statement:
If Flins's life is the finite one, then his act of sleep can, and must, be seen as an attempt to seek "serenity." That is--
"And by a sleep to say we end the heartache"
It was an attempt to protect himself from having to fear (losing) anything ever again.
This is why we see this exact line echoed upon his awakening:
Because he realized he was wrong.
Because he realized that eternity he thought he found by fleeing into sleep was false.
When he went into the grave, Flins was seeking serenity; that is, he was (word-for-word) seeking a place or a state of being where he would never have to fear or grieve again. He thought he could reach that eternal serenity in the oblivion of unconsciousness, only to discover that it can't be found there either. True death is the only rest, and the Flins that Traveler meets is one who has already learned that a finite creature such as himself can never escape from fear (of loss)--cannot find such "foolproof tranquility"--even in endless slumber.
To say Flins wasn't suicidal because one line of his story says that he didn't think of what he was doing as actively trying to kill himself is a criminally short-sighted reading of his experience and completely undersells the depth of loss that drove him to build a grave to sleep under in the first place.
Flins chose to face the collapse of the world he knew (the "loss of his anchor") by checking out, by removing himself so entirely from existence that he wouldn't even be conscious enough to feel the passage of time.
That degree of withdrawal from the act of living is absolutely a form of suicide, even if Flins didn't recognize it as such at the moment he was doing it.
You don't have to literally turn a blade on yourself to die--giving up on life is a form of death too.
(And like, be for real? If we're going to agree that Flins's stories are contradictory and contain obscured/double meanings, possible red herrings, and that we can't take their wording for granted, then why in the world would we take one line--out of everything the stories say--to for some reason be gospel truth? We're going to claim "He never meant to end his life" is a 110% accurate statement while simultaneously claiming that everything else could be nothing more than a made up legend or a half truth? Just say you have a different headcanon for this character and go please lmaooo.)
Yes, the game tells us that Flins is a sneaky character, full of half-truths and maybes and misdirections. He's not a social being and he never was, even in the court of the Belyi Tsar.
But if playing the game and reading his stories has left anyone with the impression that Flins is anything other than a deeply emotional and deeply kind-hearted being with an abiding love for humanity, so much so that he exposed his own heart to the risk of loss not once but twice--who, having felt the wrenching pain of intertwining his long life with human civilization once and losing that home, nearly losing himself in the process, still chose to forsake the serenity of oblivion to save people simply because he was moved by their courage--
If you saw and read through all of that and still came out thinking Flins's sleep was some casual thing, that he's some detached, unbothered fae who just built a grave and passed out for centuries so he could reinvent himself later for shits and giggles, then I'm sorry, but you're badly, badly misreading this character.
Flins's story is about love: for nobility, for one's home, for humanity--for life.
And like life, it is also, ultimately, a story about loss.
It's not by accident that the precious gems and old coins Flins keeps collecting in his animation and stories are the treasures he once owned.
You're supposed to understand this as nostalgia.
You're supposed to understand this as treasuring the meanings that objects have, their true stories, which are worth far beyond their material price.
You're supposed to understand that Flins--while mocking the other fae for futilely dreaming of a kingdom that would last into eternity--also cannot escape that same longing for what once was.
And you're supposed to recognize that all of Flins' deceptions, all of the made-up stories he spins, all the deliberately strange things he does to drive humans away--are ultimately designed to distract from the truths he does not want to share, the history he does not want to talk about at all.
I'm begging people to remember that words on the page can have multiple--even entirely deceptive--meanings, and that you have to look at more than just one sentence at a time to get the full picture of a character's personality and experiences.
That people say Mydei is better at "hiding" how down bad he is or that he's better at pretending to be an idgafker in comparison to Phainon or (even more ridiculous) that he isn't as invested in Phainon as Phainon is in him...
Like are we playing the same game?
Are we talking about the same Mydei who:
1. Despite the city being swarmed by titankin, chose to wait at the gate of Okhema just for Phainon to return from his mission, burst into one of the most excited grins we ever see from him the second he saw Phainon, and then promptly ignored that they had a whole audience just so that he could show off specifically for Phainon?
2. The same Mydei who tells almost total strangers--in front of the biggest rumormonger in Okhema(!!!)--that he thinks it's his personal job to protect Phainon's "fragile heart"? "They're spreading rumors that we're together!" "Yeah I know, I started it."
3. The same Mydei who gives Phainon access to his private living space, lets Phainon bodily drag him out of his own bed while he is sleeping, and bathes with Phainon apparently daily, in the baths that are directly exposed to entire crowds of Okhemans?
4. The Mydei who, despite recovering from injuries, comes running to the scene of Phainon's Strife trial and then announces without pause in front of all the other heirs that he was "right to worry" for Phainon's safety? (Who Aglaea, demigod of Romance, knew she could manipulate into taking the Strife coreflame specifically using Phainon's safety as the bargaining chip?)
5. Who never turns down a single one of Phainon's stupid challenges--even in public--and, in fact, jumps on board without hesitation 99% of the time? Who invents his own challenges just as an excuse to keep competing with Phainon?
The face of a man who just thought up ten different ways to get Phainon to spend more time with him.
6. The same Mydei who, when Phainon says "Where are we going to hang out later?" (not "Can we hang out later?" but just WHERE), doesn't go "I'm not hanging out with you later" but instead says "Let's just finish this first" [and figure out our date when we're done].
The third-wheeling Trailblazer scarecrow gets me every time.
7. Who pours his heart out about the companions he lost, even though Phainon hadn't actually returned the favor and told Mydei the truth of Aedes Elysiae?
8. The same Mydei who, without a single hint of hesitance, asks Chartonus to "Look after Phainon for me"?
9. Who unironically goes around calling Phainon his "Deliverer" in public? Remember that this is an Okheman public who, up until 3.2, literally only knew Phainon as "the penniless lad who follows Aglaea around."
Apparently, for the people of Okhema, Phainon spent years being "that dirt poor antique freak whom the Crown Prince of Kremnos calls 'Savior' on main."
10. Whatever the hell this was...
Bonus: The same Mydei who yearns in a life where they never even met???
Like where is the "hiding"? Where is the idgafery? Can someone point me to it please, because I just don't see it. 😂
I would argue that Mydei's down-bad-ness is actually even more apparent to the people of Okhema than Phainon's because it makes perfect sense that a random Chrysos Heir who fancies himself a warrior would admire a whole crown prince from a warrior kingdom, but what's the crown prince's excuse for being glued to the side of this basically no-name guy who's not even Kremnoan???
Y'all gotta stop pretending Mydei is this kind of cat toward Phainon:
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