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@sequence-trotter
hmm, what's that? the next planet in star rail had an interesting and promising start, faffed about with villain of the week stuff for a few patches, and now has to scramble to resolve a shitton of promised plot payoffs in the final patch? weird, that's never happened before. well, luckily they have a strong track record of landing the finales perfectly!
"the amnesiac protagonist has a mysterious past they don't understand that gives them ties to a shadowy, hated terrorist group. in fact, even your very birth involved the death of innocents to distract from their misdeeds. each has their own selfish goal, for which reason they obey the seemingly omniscient commands of their leader. who knows what they could tell of your past, and what other secrets they may keep...?"
"the secret is....they're a family!!! 🥳🥰 they're not different from your current allies at all 🤫😂 just a bunch of space friends doing space adventures! 🤪one of em might even have a crush on you 🤭🥴 and don't worry about the terrorism! they only kill innocent people because their goal is to prevent the end of the universe 🫣🤪 so it's okay, you don't have to feel bad about the dead people! ☺️ and their personal goals are okay and normal! and for those who aren't, hopefully their love for each other can help them get better!! ❤️❤️❤️"
trying to think of a single creative decision that's been more corrosive to fandom ability to talk about characters than hoyoverse refusing to design more than four characters. like just some absolute bottom of the barrel dogshit moron takes that emerge from it. trying to use entirely different works to justify your reading of a character fuck offffff it's fucking fandom wiki brain masquerading as analysis
when you think about it 3.8 is basically vindication for everyone who was going "2.3 sucks so bad and the ending of penacony is so stupid that we must still be in the dream." hoyo said you know what...sure, yeah, it sucked so bad because it was all made-up bullshit.
3.7 is actually the best patch in the game because it got me to just delete instead of sunk-cost-fallacying my way into 4.X
i think a big part of the cyrene dissonance that people feel but cannot really put a name to is that while the idea the trailers are going for certainly makes sense (cyrene as reader who can only appreciate the story of the chrysos heirs/AE from afar), that framing positions the chrysos heirs as fictional/unreal once again. cyrene-the-ghost-haunting-the-narrative exists on the same fictional plane as the chrysos heirs in the amphoreus-as-story conceit. cyrene-the-reader exists above them, and by focusing on the AE over the CH once again positions the trailblazer et al. as existing on that same plane.
it doesn't have to mean that, there are still ways she can firmly embedded in the metaphor, but so far we're going off of only a couple videos and don't know much. but because the CHs' validity as real people and not just story characters or video game NPCs is a major thematic concern of 3.4-3.6, people are attuned to any change in that metaphor (and are really invested in the CHs being considered "real"). i think a decent chunk of the apprehension around her relates to that.
i don't have much stake in the whole phainon-cyrene thing (except inasmuch as i find cyrene's characterization sort of frustrating for the general reasons everyone does) but looking back it is surprising and interesting how close he's allowed to be to women, esp. castorice and aglaea, while cyrene gets siloed off like this.
exciting to think we are only days away from the end of honkai star rail amphoreus arc and its final answer to "if you are depressed and feel hopelessly and endlessly entrapped by oppressive systems, should you Just Fucking Kill Yourself". personally my money is on the game concluding that suicide is such a morally and strategically sound choice that they make us watch khaslana kill himself yet again
unfortunately Cyr*ne/TB will never work for me because....that's my pokemon, man. that's Pikachu. and if I had a real Pikachu I would love and respect that Pikachu and I would probably become emotional if you showed us a slideshow of our time together, absolutely.
but if that same Pikachu suddenly turned into a cute girl and put on a wedding dress? Well, no, I would not be excited by that, on account of that was my pokemon partner, and now everything has a weird energy.
man i'm deeply cynical about hoyoverse and the actual extent of their interest in queer representation (i.e. there isn't any except to the extent it can get them money and provide otaku fanservice) and even i could not have possibly guessed how cynical and moneygrabbing the cyrene stuff would feel. i feel very bad for anyone who actually cares about this character or elysia. woof.
incredible that the new sunday&dhpt support core turns any hypercarry into an angel with golden dragon summons.
"damn your damage isn't good enough one sec" *blasts you with the OCification ray*
huge huge 3.7 spoilers...maybe. reading the tea leaves of some leaked text
Leaked text (that has since been deleted) referencing the very very final ending of evangelion.
"Well but it's probably just a reference to the golden scapegoat puzzles, there's gonna be a new one in 3.7" sure, except that actually has its own different achievement
so if it's an evangelion reference, what exactly is the reference?
Oh! Oh. Uhhhhhh good luck to the fine folks of amphoreus! If you've seen 3.0+1.0...well iykyk, as they say
shhh Cyrene and elysia/HI3 from an outside perspective thoughts below don't tell anyone. HI3 fans probably already know everything I'm going to say so you can happily skip past it.
honestly all the furor around phairene and cyrene in general made a lot more sense to me when I finally realized that despite the representations made about it, hi3 fandom is not quite so united or, uh, universally pro-yuri as its most vocal English-speaking fans often frame it, which is exactly why many of its fans care so much about how the game is perceived and understood in relation to HSR.
I don't play hi3 and so have no desire to make a claim about what is or is not canon there. but it's clear from even a cursory examination that "elysia is a lesbian" is far from a universal position within the fandom. Even threads supporting that reading tend to detour to be like "well you can't count the bridge lines because they're just ML-bait and yes captainverse exists but it being obviously non-canon ML-bait doesn't say anything about the rest of the game" which is...telling, I think. And while HI3 does have wlw pairings that are explicitly-stated and canon (which is great!), Elysia isn't in them, which actually makes it harder to sustain a "well of course they don't explicitly say it, they can't because of xyz reasons" stance.
it also explains what feels to an hsr player like a bizarre focus on expies having to have the same sexuality, especially given that Kevin was explicitly in a relationship with a woman in hi3 (and no one's like he can't date mydei, he's straight!). The fights over hsr characters are pretty directly downstream of fights about HI3, a game that has a fairly divided fan base in some respects, and so "variants have to have the same sexuality" works less as a comment on Cyrene and more like a retroactive confirmation of Elysia's sexuality against fans designating her as bi or pan.
Again, none of this is meant as an investigation of the actual text on these questions, all of this is just light external fandom observation. but understanding the most vocal HI3 fans as pushing back against an ML tendency that already exists and meaningfully impacts game direction in their fandom makes everything else click into place about the Cyrene/Elysia discourse.
cyrene animations spoilers
Dan Heng: Hey, I don't consider it my business, and I get that they broke up or whatever, and I of all people obviously get that sometimes things with your exes can get weird, but I have to ask: Is it cool to be doing like...bridal role-play with Cyrene in front of Phainon?
Trailblazer: What? No, it's, like, symbolic—anyways, it's not like that. And also they're not exes? They're friends. I'm pretty sure Phainon's gay, right? Isn't he gay? Hey Phainon, aren't you gay?
Phainon, Who Killed Each of His Friends Tens of Millions of Times, Who Knows Precisely How Many Blows It Should Take to Kill Them, Who Knows the Feeling of Their Bodies Giving Way Beneath His Blade, Who Cannot Look at Their Faces Without Hearing Their Screams: Huh, What? Oh, If You're Asking Me, A Classic Margherita! Thanks, Guys! Let Me Know How Much I Owe Ya!
the impossible dream
During the events of Penacony, Argenti is plunged into Ena's perfect dream. There, a long-desired reunion makes him want to never wake.
1,599 words. Argenti vignette. Canon compliant, takes place during patch 2.2. Argenti/Argenti's Unnamed Friend.
cw: suicide, blood and gore
3.6 voice line spoilers
lmao sunday has new join voice lines for evernight and new dan heng, and they have reciprocal voice lines with him. he's staying, folks.
pilot phainon never stops being so fucking funny to me. Oh boy, a normal AU! wow, everyone has such fun jobs (we don't talk about cop cipher). I wonder what they'll do for Phainon. Maybe archaeology or antiques, since his interest in those thematically reflects his desire to carry on the legacy of the past. Maybe something rural or outdoors to reflect his love of aedes elysiae. Maybe something entirely new!
Oh, what's that? A pilot? A job where, let me check my notes, you routinely have absolute life-or-death responsibility for other people? A field notorious for its high divorce rates and difficulty in building a social life? An industry where a series of high-profile disasters in the last decade has drawn attention to the fact that the intense focus on the readiness of pilots has paradoxically encouraged pilots to lie about their mental health for fear of losing their license by seeking care for mental illness?
...cool! very fun! big change of pace for him!