3.3 hsr spoilers abt ciphlaea u have been warned
placing my ciphlaea thoughts here in longform because twitter sucks and also i dont want to get doxxed or whatever cause that place is full of crazies and i dont want to deal with that. anyway. people reducing ciphlaea to a proship sucks cause there's layers to all their interactions and their relationship can't really be fit into a neat box because of the setting. i finished the entire 3.3 story quest and a lot of the content is pointing to cipher being important to aglaea and vice versa so here are my 2, maybe 3 cents about the entire situation:
aglaea was already a demigod by the time cipher had met her, whether or not she was an adult and whether or not cipher was not that young, it stands as a Fact that she was older at the time. everyone saying that aglaea is not an adult at the time is hinging on the fact that we don't know for sure. later on, aglaea gives cipher a home to stay in due to her being hunted for her golden blood. does this mean she was adopted? i don't know. "taking someone in" has a huge range of meanings, ranging from adoption to simply giving someone a place to stay while they get back on their feet. speaking as someone who has taken in a friend because of a bad home situation, does this mean she was adopted into my family? no. additionally, aglaea did say in her line specifically to "stay with my side, and you can start putting yourself back together".
while there's no explicit saying that cipher was adopted and is now part of the goldweaver's name, it is implied that cipher stayed with her for some time, even going so far to say that it was "their" shop and no longer just aglaea's. whether or not cipher was just teasing about this is not explored, meaning that she probably really thinks that aglaea's home was her home as well.
from what i gathered from their dialogue, cipher does not quite see aglaea as an "authority figure" but also she does kind of see her as someone to look up to. they joke around (cipher asking aglaea to watch "their" shop while she goes off to steal things, the audacity of this cat) and they do mock each other (cipher going off about rich people, aglaea calling her a little thief in rags) but cipher has also been told by aglaea many times that she had the potential to be a good person. describing their relationship as a mother-daughter relationship is so strange because that is SO obviously not the case. the normalization of the nuclear family structure for the found family dynamic kills me because aglaea does not fill the role of a parent!!!!
plus, regardless of their past, it's also a fact that it has been one thousand years since their first meeting. they have grown drastically, both together and apart, and are now completely different people. we don't know the complete timeline of their "falling out", only that it was AFTER cipher got her coreflame and by this time, the two are already clearly good friends. cipher VERY CLEARLY sees aglaea as an equal and vice versa. aglaea never forces cipher into anything simply because she cannot as she does not have that kind of power over her. she literally has to beg cipher to come back to okhema and even then she has no guarantee that cipher would follow through!
all the material and hints points to them being equals. cipher calls tribbie and hysilens using honorifics (big sis and miss respectively, reflected in all translations) while cipher calls aglaea "seamstress" or simply "aglaea" (also reflected in all languages) from the start. hyacine never even dares to call aglaea "agy" despite her penchant for nicknames for everyone, and only tribbie calls aglaea agy aside from cipher. tribbie, who sees aglaea as a student. so why doesn't aglaea get called big sis (or god forbid mom) as well if they have this so called "mother-daughter" dynamic since clearly cipher has no hesitation in calling others with that kind of honorific? both tribbie and aglaea were friends with cipher (from character stories to cutscenes) yet only tribbie gets the title of "big sis". not only that but the way they describe each other, the way they talk to each other... it's not translated nor written with a mother-daughter relationship in mind. "i've spend centuries trying to figure out what went wrong, replaying every moment over and over"? "you have a beautiful face that deserves better than scars and grime"? "i want to be worthy of you"?? like what the Hell man
the two also obviously have many things left unsaid, with cipher leaving the flame chase out of the blue and especially their last scene. detailed spoilers below:
after cipher gets [redacted] by flame reaver, she hallucinates (perhaps uses the power of trickery on herself?) aglaea because she wanted to apologize to her despite it being too late. cipher apologizes, saying that the real reason she stayed away from her was because she was so good at reading hearts that her lie to keep okhema safe would have definitely been seen through. GOD the weight of those words are so insane because what do you mean u missed aglaea ("your weave shop, i wish i could chance upon it once more") but couldn't see her even if u wanted to because if u stayed too long, you'd slip up and jeopardize the entire city's safety?? platonic or romantic, it's so heartwrenching... and the last line as well... "agy, say something. anything. please..." then "you are the unsung hero of amphoreus, cifera". makes me choked up.... they meant so much to each other.....
BOTTOMLINE: it's hard to reduce something like that to a proship. their entire relationship can't just be condensed to "oh cipher was a kid, mother-daughter!! everyone who ships them is a weirdo!!!" when the reality is things aren't that cut and dry. you can't really apply real world standards to the likes of them, having supposedly lived through a thousand years and more. they have known each other so much longer than that short part of their life, with no lingering power dynamics at all since cipher has lived longer away from the chrysos heirs than with them. when laid out simply: the ship ciphlaea involves two 1k year old demigods that have a complicated past. like. screaming ciphlaea proship is just Crazy when people are out here shipping actual siblings with eachother.....
also taking a step back from all the lore shit and putting on my real world glasses. cipher in the CG looks so incredibly young but doesn't sound the part at all (for EN/JP atleast). not only that, but she also sounds older than her childlike voice in her character stories (i only checked for EN and JP so i cant say the same for the rest). the way she talks and the way she interacts with aglaea feels so out of touch with what she looks like in the CG and honestly it makes me wonder if she was portrayed more clearly to be an adolescent then, would the outrage be the same? hmm
edit: i wrote this in a sleep deprived haze but i forgot to add: if you don't feel comfortable shipping / seeing them as romantic then that's fine. if you see them as more of a "family" then that's also fine... cause they (the chrysos heirs as a whole) are written perfectly to fit the "found family" trope. it's just so strange seeing people adamantly saying they're "mother-daughter" lol
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