Main Interaction Blog (MDNI) - Please look at my pinned for the link to my art side-blog and for the blog guidelines!
~Any Pronouns Ok! | 20 | Maehwa | Demiaroace
~ Certified Kaeya kinnie and constantly sleep deprived
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"Khaenri'ah, huh? You sure know a lot! The legacy of Khaenri'ah is long gone. The sinners are all that's left, and they're not worth mentioning."
"All of your choices are yours to use, Traveller what do you choose?"
- 'Oh Traveller Come', Reinaery
IMPORTANT: This is my main interaction blog where I do literally everything - post art, ramble, reblog, do dash or ask games, shitpost and everything else. If you want to just browse through my art, please go to my art side blog - Archive of Starlit Memories (yes, this is the link).
Also, please be aware this blog will have 18+ content!!
-> The stories of my characters I am planning to release and talk about will contain elements that are more suitable for mature audiences. This will include imagery of violence that may be graphic to younger people and suggestive content. Please continue at your own risk!
Topics of the Guide:
✦ Starlit Encounters - Guide to my OCs
✦ Menu of My OC Ships (Romantic)
✦ Rules - 'Teyvat has its Own Laws' (Blog guidelines and DNI list - In Pinned)
✦ More about Me! (Mae) - Artist Introduction Sheet
Rules - 'Teyvat has its own Laws":
If Teyvat has its own laws, so does this blog! While you start your journey of meeting my ocs and encountering my unhinged rambles willingly or unwillingly, please do listen to some of my rules!
DNF (DO NOT FOLLOW) if you are a minor. More accurately, I don't mind if you interact with a post, but I will very much mind if you decide to start following me, or interact with my nsfw posts. If this rule gets ignored the first time, I will soft block, but if it occurs again, I will be immediately hard blocking.
This is a blog that ships Raiya - an Rai (oc) x Kaeya ship made by me! I also have Noelluna (Noelle x Miuna/Yu Lan [oc]) , and Opalfire (Citlali x Xihuitl | QPR) ship as well! If this is uncomfortable to you by any means, please block me!
I am non-sharing with Kaeya, not as a yumeshipper but in terms of Raiya (my oc x canon ship); please respect this boundary and do not expect me to follow back doubles. However, I am more than okay with interacting as long as we are not mutuals! If you want a better explanation on my personal feelings on this, please check out this post.
Please be nice in any interactions within this blog, especially if I do not know you. This is a safe place for all people, which means I will not condone any harassment in my asks, comments and reblogs that are deliberately made against me or any mutuals/followers! My asks currently have the anonymous option open - please do not abuse that especially.
For my fellow non-sharers, I have created a tag system in case I reblog any doubles or etc! Please read this post about it!
If you have any questions - please head over to the askbox or my dms! I won't bite/gen /lh :D
Please use tone indicators for any words that are ambiguous in tone! Sometimes I receive stuff that are a bit tone ambiguous and get anxious over figuring out the tone, which is not fun -v-""
I have tags that will specify posts as certain types -> ( #scarletcrescent for posts with major blood+gore, #maemoon for suggestive posts, #birdrants for vent posts!). The tags may sound a little silly, but please block them if you do not wanna see such content! I'll also put specific warnings as well, such as '#/tw:oranges' and etc!
HAVE FUN - So far, these little beans that run free in my brain have been both an immense honour and extreme fun to tweak and plan out. I can only hope you will feel a similar feeling of intrigue when you read about them! <3
Can I talk about how both Raiya face the struggle of having to suppress their cultural identities so they could survive and that there is a lot of struggle of not needing to do that as much anymore or no
OK I WAS SUPPOSED TO YAP YESTERDAY,,,but assignments RAHHH
OK THE THING about Raiya to me is that they are both characters who have been separated from their home countries against their will and are unable to return due to certain reasons that are out of their control. But at the same time, this is a similarity that has its own nuances and differences.
For instance, Kaeya's predicament (which I was talking abt a little during that whole post about Kaeya in relation to fae and etc), is from a nation that is actively suppressed and destroyed by literally the god of this world. His people were cursed with immortality and ostracised, while the more unluckier ones were transformed into monsters.
Kaeya, himself would be considered 'lucky' that he had been sent to live in a nation that wasn't being targeted by the gods. Still, in order to maintain this safety, Kaeya has to blend in with Mondstadt society, and to do so, he has to assimilate into the overall culture by hiding his identity as a Khaenri'ah individual.
But at the same time, it is hinted multiple times through the whole game that Kaeya doesn't know at least a whole lot about Khaenri'ah (or even his Sumeru side of his identity even), which leads to this struggle of deciding if he wants to embrace this part of him or not in fear of what will happen. He wears these motifs related to Khaenri'ah in his attire as a form of acknowledging/celebrating his background and there was a point in his childhood that he tried to sneak off on a boat to Sumeru since Khaenri'ah is thought to be hidden under that nation.
Yet, he displays these conflicting views on Khaenri'ah, and I'd actually argue that his voiceline: 'Khaenri'ah, huh? You sure know a lot! The legacy of Khaenri'ah is long gone. The sinners are all that's left, and they're not worth mentioning,' is A REALLY GOOD EXAMPLE TO PUT IN HERE.
Since Kaeya wasn't able to grow up with his biological father nor does he know much about Khaenri'ah, it would be most likely right to assume that Kaeya relied on texts and sources about Khaenri'ah that were most likely biased or possibly fairly inaccurate. He also grew up in Mondstadt - which is a nation that has its religion based a lot from Catholicism. And if we were to go into the previous voiceline a bit further, the use of the word 'sinner' would be purposeful here, since there is a general idea that sinners are to be punished.
From this, you could hypothesise that the acts of Khaenri'ah were seen as 'sinful' by the Heavenly Principles which could lead to a general idea amongst a few groups in the current day Teyvat that Khaenri'ah's downfall was fair or 'just' - that the act of being a godless nation is some form of blasphemy. It is also not helpful that outside of Venti and the KoF, Mondstadt is a heavily religious nation.
When you put all these factors into the equation, of course Kaeya is going to struggle with coming to terms of being comfortable with his cultural background, especially when he was labelled as the 'last hope' for Khaenri'ah before he got dropped off at Crepus' house.
Does he want to hide that part of himself so he can continue to survive and not be ostracised from Mondstadt? Or does he want to reveal it all, because there is some part of him that knows that this isn't fair at all. Does he love or despise that part of himself? Is he even allowed to love it actually? Or will that come at a cost of people leaving him
We also need to go into the fact that Kaeya was not raised by a Khaenri'ah or Sumerian family for the majority of his life. He was raised in a predominantly white household. This also leads into the fairly common struggle of poc kids feeling as though they don't belong fully to one place.
I think the one real-life parallel that comes to mind is how in South Korea, there is this word/idea of 'Gyopo'. It's used to describe S.Korean people who did not grow up in S.Korea or lived abroad for a long time (this is what I would be called). You are basically not considered 'Korean' by those who aren't Gyopo because you did not grow up in the homeland (E.G I'm often told that I'm Australian rather than S.Korean etc). But there comes the issue where for example, an Australian-Korean, does not feel fully 'Australian' or is treated as 'S.Korean' by other Australians.
I think this Kaeya would go through something similar where due to being raised in Mondstadt and having to actively assimilate, he would struggle on whether he belongs to Mondstadt or Khaenri'ah. That's one of the core reasons that he struggles with these emotions of loneliness in the game and why he tries to keep people at a distance, and why everything about him is so contradicting.
On the other hand, Rai spent most of his life in his homeland Inazuma, he wasn't forced to ever hide his identity to a significant extent. Even if he was treated at times as an outsider due to his Líyuè heritage, he wasn't actively hiding it. Well, at least until he stranded outside from Inazuma when he was 15, with both his parents dead. Shortly at some point point, due to also other lore circumstances, Rai is left to be the primary income earner for Miuna and his friends, and to earn that money, he has to leave for a job in Fontaine.
However, this job pretty much had a boss (crime organisation boss if that helps with the context) who is essentially very racist. Rai is essentially groomed and forced against his will to assimilate into Fontaine culture. He is actively physically and psychologically punished for using his mother's tongue so he could learn to speak the Fontaine language fluently in his place. He is disparaged and treated horribly for essentially not being white while at the same time having his physical appearance + parts of his culture objectified/fetishised by the exact same person. During this period of time, Rai was not allowed to celebrate his identity on his own terms due to this toxic power dynamic. He was treated as a weapon that had no autonomy and something that was meant to be honed into 'perfection' by this boss's eyes.
It is also important to note that the job (HE DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS BTW, HE WAS LIED TO AT FIRST) was essentially cleaning up/disposing corpses from this organisation's human trafficking business and also killing people for the boss. This is indeed an allegory for how a lot of immigrant families are pushed into doing jobs like cleaning and etc, even if it's not what they had in plans for their career and are looked down for it. My family also had to do this, and I know that it's so fucking poorly regulated to a point that it does so much damage to your health and the pay is not enough for shit it causes. I personally also know the shame that comes from this and how these kind of jobs will always be systemically targeted. THERE'S SO MUCH MORE, but I digress, back to this.
Ultimately, Rai does escape from this job, but it still leaves significant damage on him. He loses his ability to speak the Líyuè language since it was quite limited in the first place and he is not comfortable in fully displaying his cultural heritage in places outside family. He also experiences a lot of guilt/shame/grief for being forced into that sort of job. Also even if he left that previous job, he's still in work environments that are predominantly white, and he has to suppress his cultural identity in those places even if it's not a completely conscious decision.
Even though both Rai and Kaeya go through struggles that aren't exactly the same, they both still understand each other in the way they had to conceal some part of themselves to survive. They both know they won't ever completely fit in anywhere else and Mondstadt especially, but they at least won't be alone.
Can I talk about how both Raiya face the struggle of having to suppress their cultural identities so they could survive and that there is a lot of struggle of not needing to do that as much anymore or no
ok another headcanon of mine, but if you did the prelude for Nod Krai, the 13 dragon lords are like a form of artificial intelligence right?? and the 11th lord was shown to inhabit one of the natlan robots yeah?? but their statues are very dragon ANYWAYS
I personally like to think that back in their prime, that these robot-like forms were a smaller part of a bigger dragon form like some sort of core to hide the smaller actual core that contains them and once their power was diminished, the dragon appearance disappears and shows the true skeleton or frame, which is the robot form and is also most likely the more vulnerable part of the dragon lord.
I originally submitted this to the vgen monthly challenge so i can get a code and sell my art in there but they removed it bcuz of a reason that i still don't get (it has a relation to the link i put. Maybe i used the wrong link?)
