Aight, so I’ve seen an influx of comments about how “it’s ridiculous to think that Pantalone will be playable because he’s dying now,” and the heatwave has melted my tolerance, so mini rant time.
Central to Pantalone’s character is the fact that he is a human afflicted with a human lifespan, who never acquired the favour of the gods. His partnership with Dottore fundamentally began as a way to transcend this temporal limitation in order to achieve his ambition of placing humanity on equal footing with the divine.
From the Anomalous Tree Marrow I, we know that early drug trials for the Elixir of Immortality significantly slowed the tissue aging process. According to the experiment log written when Pantalone is 38:
Tissue aging has been significantly slowed compared to the first experiment, with the most significant results seen in the preservation of organ vitality. Neural function remains normal, with no increase in anti-aging effects.
After Zandik’s death, Dottore perfected the formula, fully preserving Pantalone’s physical and mental conditions. In the log from when Pantalone is 72, Dottore writes:
Tissue aging has paused and cerebral neural imaging has stabilized while brain age has ceased to increase. Physical age of subject is estimated to be 45 years
My man has barely just crossed the threshold into middle age.
At the end of 6.6 Dottore reminds Pantalone that the Elixir’s supply is finite (which begs the question of whether Dottore is literally crafting the Elixir from his own body, but that’s a whole different rabbit hole). What it means, though, is that Pantalone already has a few more years at 45. If we take “a few” supremely literally, we’re talking 3 or 4 more. Though, given that this is a conversation between two men who have lived through centuries, a few might be relative.
Still, even if we are only talking 3 or 4 years, Pantalone should then still have the rest of his natural lifespan like every other human character in the game’s roster. The description of the Elixir specifically says it pauses aging, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that, when the stock runs out, aging will simply resume. As far as I can understand from the drug’s notes, it isn’t as if Pantalone will instantly experience 330+ years of delayed tissue aging like an ancient papyrus scroll newly exposed to oxygen that immediately crumbles to dust.
Pantalone is roughly Varka’s age. Zandik lived to 85. Teyvat’s lifespans don’t appear to be super short, so Pantalone should have another few decades ahead of him as any other human character would.
If anything, it isn’t the lack of Elixir that will kill Pantalone; it’s his self-destructive smoking habit, especially now that Dottore isn’t here to repeatedly replace his lungs. Yet this still doesn’t strike me as a death knell to his playability—not when we have several playable characters who partake in vices with equally detrimental long-term effects.
In other words, I don’t see Pantalone’s tendency to use cigarettes to cope with the anxieties of his position as being all that different from, say, Kaveh’s penchant to drown his depression at the bottom of a bottle. Lung failure and liver cirrhosis are the eventual outcomes of these respective vices, and we have a couple of heavy drinkers in the roster (hi again, Varka).
There are more esoteric examples of doomed humans as well. In Nod-Krai, we saw Arlecchino’s curse claim even more of her body when she called upon her power to save the party from the Abyss. Not to mention characters like Childe and Lohen who endanger themselves for the love of the game, testing their limits with such recklessness that, from the outside, they appear to have a death wish (and I say this without scorn; they’re some of my favourite characters).
Pantalone’s medical records in Anomalous Tree Marrow I actually show us a human who is startlingly robust. His health condition is repeatedly described as good. Of the 8 medical records that make up his entire dossier for over 400 years, 3 are linked to injuries he sustained at work (or whatever shady extracurriculars allowed him to ascend the ranks), and 1 was a procedure to fix a complication arising from 18’s treatment for one of said injuries. Another was a bloody nose that happened when he stumbled into his bed while not wearing his glasses.
Pantalone’s only true medical conditions are deteriorating vision (from working too much), acid reflux (from stressing out about work too much), and lung failure (from smoking too much to stop stressing out about work so much). We have reason to believe the first and last are recurring afflictions because of the notes in their respective entries:
In light of the subject's failure to adhere to the recommended occupational safety adjustments, any subsequent instances of similar restorative or graft procedures will no longer be added to the record.
The chances of the patient actually quitting are low. As such, any subsequent complaints of a similar nature will no longer be added to the record.
But that’s still only three conditions in nearly four centuries. That’s one doctor’s visit every 125 years. I see my doctor that often annually, and that’s in a good year.
So, yes, there are a handful of reasons why Pantalone might not be released. But the fact that he’s a human who will begin to age in a few years doesn’t seem like one of them. The idea that this is why he can’t be playable just comes across as a bad faith argument in my opinion.
The fact that Pantalone and Dottore reflect a priest and a plague doctor makes so much sense...
At fiiiiirst the alliance between these two seems like a simple pact where one provides the money and the other runs the experiments (everyone and their mamas know that not really) however mihoyo do several details behind their visual designs that go far beyond mere sthetics their attire reveals a very interesting past.. why does the banker dress like a cleric, and the scientist like a plague doctor? 🤔
The Dance of Death
During the worst epidemics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, cities became total quarantine zones. Whenever the plague rolled in, rulers and wealthy citizens packed up and fled to the countryside. In the middle of all that abandonment and chaos, plague doctors and priests were pretty much the only authorities who actually stayed behind to face the horror on the streets, since the science of the time blended religion with medicine, both professions needed each other to manage the chaos of the infected cities, Doctors treated human bodies while clergymen treated the soul (since the plague was considered a divine punishment) so doctors rarely treated a patient if he had not confessed to a cleric beforehand bcs a cursed soul could not be cured
The Lazarillos and Pure Faith (14th Century)
In the original Black Death outbreak, their teamwork came from sheer desperation. Back then, doctors just wore regular cloth clothes (no bird masks yet ☹️ ....) and they worked side by side with priests in lazarillos (make-shift plague hospitals administered by religious orders, but the technical staff were plague doctors) and it was a total team effort:
While the doctor tried to stabilize the patient's body, the priest kept people from completely panicking, which was a huge deal because hysteria caused massive riots in the wards.
If they visited an infected house, they went in together. The doctor figured out if the patient had a fighting chance, and the priest stepped in right behind him to prepare the dying for the afterlife bcs they breathed the same infected air and handled the same fluid exposures, both professions caught the plague and died at insane rates, literally they were literally wiping out together......
Bureaucracy and the Bird Mask (17th Century)
Flash forward to 1619, and a French doctor named Charles de Lorme invents the famous leather suit with the beak-shaped bird mask 🙂↕️ and by this time the doctor and priest dynamic wasn't just about faith anymore... it was a highly regulated government control system
The doctor called the shots, Protected by his leather suit and beak mask, the doctor was the only one allowed to go in first. The priest had to wait outside at a safe distance until the doctor tapped the door with his wooden cane to give him the green light for last rites.
Shared paperwork, Since people were dropping dead in days, wills had to be written on the fly, the doctor (from a distance) certified that the dying person was still lucid, and the priest blessed the document, both had to sign together as official legal witnesses.
Counting the bodies, at the end of every day, the bird-masked doctor and the parish priest had to sit down and cross-reference their lists of the dead to make sure the government's body count was completely accurate.
I find it curious that Pantalone and Dottore are inspired by the two professions that irl helped each other in such a catastrophe
aaaaa but it's not just that 👁️
Pantalone's design evokes a high ranking Orthodox cleric with liturgical vestments and the Globus Cruciger constellation and its strong inspirations based on a real priest named Feofan Prokopovich, Dottore for his part, reinterprets the 17th century beaked mask and all his characterization linked to crows
The Clergy banks and economy
Although the Church declared greed a sin.... in the age of the plague, the clergy controlled the world's economy, Monasteries functioned as the first modern banks, lending to kings and insuring fortunes. When the plague struck, the fear of hell became a multimillion dollar financial business.... wealthy people paid fortunes in gold for "indulgences" (papers that bought their entry into heaven) furthermore, if a wealthy family died without heirs from the disease, the Church automatically inherited all their lands and palaces while the people lay dying in the streets (lol rests in piss granny), the clergy accumulated capital and controlled the flow of money.
The Doctor alchemy and science
In those centuries, medicine was not separate from magic or alchemy, Plague doctors didn't know what caused the disease, so they experimented with the occult, searching for the "Elixir of Life" to become immune, their prescriptions were a bit...well hum.... they made the sick drink ground gold and used arsenic or mercury to try to "neutralize" the plague's poison, but the most disturbing thing was that, although the Church forbade opening corpses, considering it a horrific sin, these doctors secretly performed illegal autopsies in dark basements to study the anatomy of the dead.
In the end.... these two professions were two sides of the same coin........ Clergy controlled the economy while the Doctor controlled the bodies, ppl who perform religious functions suffered massive mortality during the Black Death (estimated at between 42% and 45%), this high death rate led to a severe shortage of priests and a crisis of faith that called into question the moral authority of the Church, and forbidden science churches and wealthy cities needed to pay these doctors fortunes so that the financial system wouldn't completely collapse due to a lack of workers and the Doctors were critical figures during the epidemics, most were junior physicians or young mens hired by cities to care for all citizens rich or poor, needed the clerical capital to finance their clandestine laboratories and potions, It was like a perfect and twisted alliance 🙂↕️ the economy provided the funds and science did the dirty work in the shadows.
(It's kinda funny that two minds abandoned by the world have inspirations based on two professions that helped humanity from a deadly disease lmaooooo I never fell for the Panttore/Dottolone retcon anyways)
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
pixelskylines
baratheonpilled
izzy806
origamiaround
