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@starshifter
The Still Waters of Change
Dan Heng accidentally turns himself into a dragon. He then has a no good, very bad day
Dan Heng/Blade, pre-slash
Word count: 18,371
Warnings: abduction with intent to traffic, NPC deaths, blood
Ao3 link
The very first thing I must do in the notes here is point all of my curious readers towards the piece that inspired some of this: A Promethean Sin by Markition. I’m sure most of you have read it, but if you haven’t, please go read it and tell the author you loved it. For me. Because I love it so much.
Alright, cool. Now that you’ve done that, on to the notes.
I don’t typically use tumblr but I had to get over and just. Gush about face the blackened sky for a second. I read it for the first time like 3 months ago and I have not stopped thinking about it in the time since. I just reread it and am continued to be amazing by how well you write blade,,, he’s so amazing and in character and that fic goes over so many things about his character that I’m always wishing people would talk about!! just… you get it. You understand his character so well.
There are so many lines I could point out specifically that i am obsessed with but at that point I’d just be typing like half of the fic, but I do want to specifically shout out the line from chapter 2 when blade says “he was so tired. He didn’t want to stay a monster forever” and a bit after that with “Blade had followed Imbibitor Lunae into damnation once. He didn ’t think he’d learned anything in the centuries since” I just… I think about those lines constantly. It hit me like a truck the first time around and every time I’ve thought about it since makes me just as sad (positive).
The way you write about Baiheng in general is amazing. I love how you portrayed the guilt that blade has over everything and how much he just… feels like he has disgraced her memory. It’s so sad they mean the absolute most to me.
anyway sorry for ranting but I really needed to just compliment you on this fic!! Amazing work and thank you for posting it
aaaaaaaa you're so sweet i just
please, dont apologize for coming into my inbox to rant. it makes me so happy to hear from my readers, you have no idea. youve spent months thinking about the fic, i will spend months thinking about your kind words. equivalent exchange lol
but yeah, blade is very near and dear to my heart. he's just. so fucking painfully human in the face of all the terrible and wonderful things he's experienced. the depth of depression he's sunk into... god. but even more than that, it's about all the love he feels. about the way it transforms in the face of loss, but never disappears. he couldnt hate dan heng without loving him first. i cant not dig into that. it's like fucking catnip to me.
i've honestly spent an ungodly amount of time pouring over ever single scrap of information they've given us about him, and that's the whole reason i know all those details to write about them. rip me
but he's so complex, and so few people take the time to understand the depth of detail that hoyo put into creating him! like, the jokes about him are funny and all, but they just....completely miss the core of his character. i think a lot of casual players take him at face value. which is completely understandable, but it's just so sad to me.
so, as a writer, it is my duty to highlight all of that for people to appreciate. i'm doing my part🫡
....also maybe i just like babbling about things i like. maybe this isnt even a fic. maybe it's just me starting a blade encyclopedia lmao
tbh, im also p obsessed with baiheng. i have such a weakness for tragedy, and they fucking cooked up a heart wrenching one with her story. the sheer devastation left in her wake due to the depths of the love her friends held for her. i just 😭😭😭 how can i not love her too?
i wish we had the actual details though. there's so many questions i still have about the sedition, which I'm sure will come to light eventually, but god. i just want to knoooow. i'm sure it's even more painful and complex than we currently realize.
hello my lovely readers! i am here with a little announcement. three-ish weeks ago, i went and gave myself a concussion!
this was terribly timed of me, because i'd just finished the first draft of a silly little trope fic (read: kind of angsty, 15k). i am now healed enough to look at screens for short periods of time and read small amounts of words, so i thought i'd put out an update here. i cannot do edits on the fic yet, but hopefully in the next two weeks, i'll be able to get that posted. hopefully. we'll see how i feel in a week or so
@cosmic-v0id comfortable tables
wow. i cant believe you would slander me like this on my very own blog. is this how caeser felt? is this what it feels like to be stabbed with multiple knives? betrayal, oh betrayal cuts deeps!
yeah, fuck it. who wants a random excerpt from super hero au prologue? just cause i feel bad taking so long to post anything 😅
(unedited; subject to changes)
redoing everything because i fucked up something major in the second scene 👍i love writing 🙃
i realized i never put any sort of update here after posting. yes, im already 20k into another piece. no, there will be nothing posted any time soon. its a prologue to a main piece that needs to be posted first to avoid spoiling the main fic. its also shaping up to be another monster. worse than ftbs. so rip me
why am i writing it in this order then? because i have been craving the chance to write yingxing and proper hcq and im finally fulfilling my dream lol
so uhhh sorry? anyone willing to stick around for however long it takes me to next post anything, you're the real mvps
(feel free to come bug me anyways. i like answering questions, and i can probably be persuaded to share things with a little encouragement lol)
Warmth at my Fingertips
Stelle and Firefly go on their glacier diving adventure.
Firefly/Stelle, pre-femslash
Word count: 21,259
Rating: T
No real warnings for this one, unless bad jokes need to be warned for
Ao3 link here
Y’all probably are here for my notes on Stelle and the writing, but ha! I have fooled you! This contains notes on giant glacier worms!!! (the normal notes are after that lol. I just wanna nerd for a bit. Lemme dh kinnie or whatever the kids are now calling it lol)
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Welcome to the notes on my giant, fucked up, scientifically impossible, super worm 💖💖💖
First up, I have based it on these four real life worms:
Alitta virens (sand worm) Mesenchytraeus solifugus (ice worm) Eulagisca gigantea (my favorite fucked up antarctic worm. It’s so ugly <3) Eunice aphroditois (bobbit worm)
Follow the links to see images if you wish to. Esp the fucked up antarctic worm💖
I did attempt some science though, because this is who I am.
The worms have two life stages: larva and adult.
The larva are born in the water column below the ice. They float around feeding on whatever they can find (including each other) until they grow additional body segments to assist with their next life stage. Then they will swim up to the ice. Not a lot of them make it to this stage. The ones that do are able to safely burrow up into the ice and escape most potential predators.
The worms that successfully burrow into the ice have reached the adult phase. The larva don’t have the jaws for burrowing or the antifreeze secretions to help keep them from freezing in place and provide additional help with tunneling. By this point, they will also have started growing their bristles. Their bristles help them propel themselves through the slick ice or water and also contain various sensory nodes so they get a degree of sensation across their body.
They do not possess eyes and instead rely on vibrations (as a sort of mixed sound and touch sensation) and chemoreceptors (smell, basically) to help them sense their surroundings.
The adult worms will continue growing throughout their life, which is quite long if nothing else eats them. Sizes of over 200 feet (61 meters) have been recorded.
Once in the ice, their diet expands. While the larva are omnivourous and feed on plankton, the adults gain an additional source of food through their burrowing. The ice itself. …Okay, not quite. What they’re actually feeding on is the plentiful number of ice worms burrowed into the glacier. It’s kinda like filter feeding with baleen whales. Except it’s a giant bristle worm through ice.
But that’s not all! These worms are also fantastic ambush predators because of how fast they move and their ability to hide in the ice! (Don’t talk to me about how glaciers are on land, not water. Everyone in this fic is using the wrong term because they are unaware there’s more ocean underneath them than land during this stretch of their journey.)
“But Des!” I hear you yelling. “It doesn’t make sense to have these worms use two separate hunting methods that both employ different strategies! Surely it should specialize in whatever strategy got it the most food?” And you’re right. It should. But this is my made up space worm, so I’m saying it gets to do both. Mostly because I needed a reason for it to attack Firefly and Stelle and opportunistic predator that will eat literally anything worked best for that. Filter feeders tend to be gentle giants. (To be honest, predators tend to be pretty chill too, but this one is hungry, so chill mode is turned firmly off.) And anyways, it’s more of an opportunistic ambush predation thing. They have to dip down to the water to breathe, so if there’s something nearby, they can grab it. They mainly feed by tunneling through the ice. They just are not picky worms and won’t pass up anything that might be edible. So they’ve kept some adaptations that help them snatch the occasional additional meal up.
To be quite honest, I originally wanted to find a way to work chemosynthesis into the giant ice worm (did you know there are bristle worms in the deep sea that live off of methane clathrate deposits? so fucking cool), but I just couldn’t reconcile it with the ambush predation. Those both need different methods of digestion and different bacteria living in symbiosis in the worm’s gut. So I scraped it even though it made me sad. Then I had the filter feeding idea (which tracks with the giant size as all the largest organisms in the ocean are filter feeders!) and decided to combine that instead with opportunistic ambush predation when they go back down into the ocean in order to breath.
Oh yeah, did I mention that they don’t breathe air? Nope, they get their oxygen needs met in the water, where they can directly absorb the oxygen better. They do get some oxygen in their burrowing, as they melt and crunch the ice, but it’s not enough to sustain them. Think of them a bit like reverse seabirds, diving into the ice to hunt while living and breathing in the water. Or uh. Reverse whales. That would make more sense, huh?
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Congrats, you survived worm notes!! Now you can have the normal ones lmao
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I feel like my writing style for Stelle POV is so different from Blade… The curse of trying to convey personality through prose… Hopefully, it isn’t too off putting to have all those sentence fragments in there…
The way I see it, the TB is pretty stiff and nonvocal while around strangers. Once they start feeling more comfortable though, they get really weird really fast. They have a lot of personality locked up under that blank face.
I think it’s accurate to compare the Trailblazer to a pet that’s always getting into things that it shouldn’t and then chewing on them.
Also they strike me as the type to be really stupid, right up until they pull something genius out of their hat. They’ll eat a bolt of fabric, completely fail to read a room before making a joke, and then turn around and win a logic debate. They’re a fascinating paradox to me. How does a brain like this even work? I doubt I’ve come close to accurately capturing it, but it was kinda fun to try. I don’t think I’ll do extended TB POV again tho. Once was enough of a struggle…
Also they’re like…weirdly detached in some ways? Like they don’t quite seem to realize that reality is reality. They can take things seriously, for sure, but they often don’t at the same time. Think of the time they fell into Penacony and were smiling as they fell until they realized they were going to crash land. It took them until just before the impact to even consider an impact was coming. Maybe it was just cause they were dreaming…but I dunno. Penacony seemed very similar to reality in a lot of ways. It’s odd, and I imagine it has to do with the Stellaron and its own reality bending ways. But it does make writing them a bit challenging…
Minor tweaks to Stelle’s characterization done after Amphoreus came out. I am still saying this is set before Amphoreus though. Mostly cause I don’t know what all is going to happen there lol. Good thing the Amphoreus mission happened and got me to go digging back through Stelle’s origins a bit. I was utterly blindsided about the complete memory loss over Blade straight up telling her that she used to run with the Stellaron Hunters. Turned out, I had completely forgotten that Kafka Spirit Whispered her to not think about her past. Whoops. Good thing I fixed that, huh? (damn you shitty memory…)
My friend’s comment on Stelle’s attempt at a pickup line was just “girl failure” and I laughed so hard y’all, so I’m sharing it lmao
Everyone realizes that Shingen Crash is just Genshin Impact, yeah? It’s always been a silly little headcanon of mine that that’s the gacha the TB plays on their phone. ….also it’s the only other gacha I know anything about lol Edit: so I have Silver Wolf now (I finally have all the Stellaron Hunters!!! Finally!!! Now I gotta e6 em somehow lmao rip), and they seem?? To be playing?? Star rail????? I can’t deal with the reality bending consequences of this, so I’m sticking with it being genshin. Fuck this
So I found myself faced with the question of what the fuck Firefly’s cape even was. I came to the conclusion that it was the burn off of a stable fusion reaction used to power her suit. I have no idea if that would work, but this is space opera, so maybe they have a way to do such things, idk.
Can everyone tell that I didn’t have Firefly when I wrote the first fic? I would have put her super special awesome battle mode into the Stellaron fight complete with her sick ass swords. All I had to go on was her boss fight and occasionally borrowing her from other people… Thank you Firefly for coming home this time around. Now I just have to get Silver Wolf and my collection will be complete… At least until they add Elio to the game (unless he’s actually that cat lol)
I’ve corrected Stelle’s texting habits. You’re welcome. Now she actually types like a person her age (I’m assuming young college age?) should ….would I get in legal trouble if I actually put the stickers into the fic? Like, I’m describing them and all, but what about just adding them? I can put their description into their display name for the screen readers
Is Stelle a robot fucker? Why are you even asking me this when the answer is obvious? Next question
More fantastic commentary from my friend: “she doesn’t even know the effervescence of snails” when Stelle was trying to think of something slow moving lmaoooo
Stelle strikes me as the “I take all of my emotions and bury them down deep and then deploy humor to cope” kind of person. As such, she has come to lean on her identity as the “funny one” to interact with the world and has crises if people don’t seem to find her funny, which in turn makes her try even harder to be funny. Also, it means she avoids dealing with the rougher emotions that she should be dealing with, like grief. She’s not ignoring Culseva’s death on purpose, this is just how she’s learned to function. I did touch on her form of grief a little bit, but as you saw, most of this fic she just avoids thinking about it, and when she does think about it, she shies away pretty quickly.
Honestly, I have so many hang ups about Stelle’s characterization. Writing this fic was somewhat of a nightmare. The first thing that really made me think that I’d gotten her character right was when she ate the wrapper. That’s a sign of a great character right there lmaooo. Like, look, I just assumed the non-food items, like toys, were something Stelle would just play with, not eat. Until we got the new area of the Express. And they let me dead ass eat that fabric experiment DH put in the fridge. Now I fully believe that the TB eats all the consumables. I don’t know how they aren’t dead. Clearly, being a Stellaron comes with some perks. Also! Stelle! You’re not allowed to judge people for what they eat when you are LITERALLY eating a WRAPPER!! WTF!!! (I also want it known that this was written before we had the option to make the TB literally eat soil. That just further supported my choices here)
Stelle is both the comedy device and full of so much untapped angst. Luckily, I—your local angst and humor connoisseur—am here to tap that ass. I mean it. Tap it. (is my ace ass even allowed to make this joke…?)
Someone asked me about bathroom usage on the main fic, so I have explicitly addressed this issue in this fic. You’re welcome, random commenter
Oh, I also want to call Stelle the fuck out for saying Firefly was cool for having “calculations” when I KNOW she would call DH a lame nerd for saying the exact same thing lmao
Okay, so I know I didn’t get into who the OCs in this fic were at all, but Sethre and Velthur were the other two OCs I came up with who were accompanying Himeko and March over to Suthi (the other planet) to negotiate for Huth’s sovereignty and also emergency aid in the face of their Stellaron Crisis. Sethre is the Rasna (mountain goat person) and Velthur is the Ziva (vampire bat person. Yes, you should just be picturing a katakan from witcher 3 or something similar. Once again, this planet system was originally designed for a witcher fic I never wrote lol). I did not give them personalities because I never actually did anything with them other than go, huh there’s probably people alongside March and Himeko. Wonder who they are?
DH blatantly lying about Blade because he’s making excuses for the murder attempts lol. Also getting called out for his crush on an old man lmao. Go Stelle go! Bully those idiots!
So there are two ways they let you interact with Kafka in game, either you hate her and want her to leave you alone, or you seem to miss her in some capacity and care about her. I tried to show that the Trailblazer was experiencing some degree of both of these emotions, but ultimately leaned in the direction of missing her. I just have a lot of thoughts and feeling and, most importantly, questions about these two and their relationship. I personally like to think that the SH operative who recruited Kafka was actually the Trailblazer and that’s who Elio was giving those orders to in Kafka’s final lore story. And from there they got really close as they went through a lot of life and death situations together before they recruited Firefly. The Trailblazer came to be a bit of a light to Kafka, who came to be a bit of guardian to them in turn. Which is why Kafka is willing to joke around with Stelle in a way she wouldn’t with anyone else :sob: And then something happened and the Trailblazer either died or chose to give up their life in pursuit of their wish. I could be completely wrong of course, but I like to think I’m not lol. But I’m not wrong that they have some sort of special bond! Kafka clearly cares about the Trailblazer!!!
Silver Wolf is only checking in on Firefly and Stelle rather than Blade because she does NOT want to know what going on with the boys. She just knows it’s either murder or sex and she wants no part in either. No, she’d rather chill with her old bestie, Stelle. Even if she’s third wheeling two people who aren’t dating again. She hadn’t missed that. She’s too ace for this (am I projecting on sw? Yes, and no one can stop me).
I like to believe that Stelle’s ‘reality is a game’ jokes are actually leftover from her friendship with Silver Wolf. SW was the one making those jokes and Stelle just absorbed them silently and started regurgitating them once she was reborn As such, firefly’s face that she couldn’t see was actually more along the lines of ‘god there’s two of them now,’ than anything else lol
Be honest with me, how obvious is it that I only had a plan for the first section of their glacier adventure and the worm fight and the rest was just me going ‘oh fuck I have so much empty space and nothing to fill it with because I’m hampered by the timeline I put out in the main fic for their relationship uhhh fuck ok time skip’
I feel like I sort of made Stelle a helpless princess for most of this fic…. It’s not what I was going for; Firefly is just OP. So I made sure to correct that in the worm fight. She’s a BAMF I swear
I was thinking of having them bring the ceiling down on the worm to defeat it, but honestly, predators aren’t likely to stay and fight if they get injured. That worm decided they were NOT worth the effort to eat and skedaddled. Good for it. I didn’t want to kill it anyways.
I like to think that Stelle finally figuring out what was going on with her emotions went a little something like this: Oh gee, I miss Firefly so much. She’s been gone for one hour and I think I’m moping about not seeing her pretty eyes anymore. I should talk to March. “Hey, March, scale of 1-10, how weird is it that I want to stare at Firefly’s eyes for forever?” “You have a crush on Firefly!?” “What? No, crushes are when you want to spend forever with a person and touch them lots and they give you butterflies and…. Fuck, I have a crush on Firefly. FUCK. What do I do now???” “Uhh, ask her out, duh. She’s totally into you.” And then Stelle asks her out over text after a few days of deliberation because Stelle remains a social disaster 🤦 Luckily, Firefly is also not great with normal, so she is perfectly fine with this lol
Also, since this didn’t really get covered in the main fic and Blade didn’t have all the facts, Firefly wasn’t always around in the Express because she needed to take the time to just sit in her armor to manage her condition. She didn’t want to wander around the Express as Sam though, so she stayed in her room for those times. Stelle and March would come hang out with her though, so she wasn’t completely alone there. I personally imagine that Sam holds Firefly in a sort of stasis condition, so her ELS doesn’t advance when she’s in it. But she can’t live in it constantly, and those bursts of being a normal person cut down on her lifespan. Of course, once ELS starts affecting you, being in the armor becomes extremely painful. So staying in there to prolong your life really sucks. It’s a shitty situation overall. Please cure Firefly faster Elio 😭😭 (Honestly, I did a lot of guesswork on how Firefly and her armor work… We really don’t have that many details. So I get to take creative liberties. Wahoo! My town now.)
I’m using the term AstralNet for their version of internet (I feel like maybe I heard this used before? But I can’t find evidence of it so??). It just sounds more appropriate for their universe. I’m sure it’s an IPC invention and just as shitty as our current version of the internet.
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Bonus content: have some cut scenes from the first draft I was really sad to lose
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In memoriam: one of my favorite scenes of the fic that did not survive edits after I looked up proper references of how Firefly flies (I thought it was the leg jets honestly rip me) 😭😭
“Piggyback ride!” Stelle immediately demanded, sticking her arms out like a child asking to be picked up.
“That is a good solution, yes[[ ….except her jets are actually on her back. She can’t fly if stelle is there. Damn it. My gay moment :singletear:]].” Firefly turned and crouched down in front of her.
Stelle gleefully hopped on her back and wrapped her legs around her middle. The section right above her waist was perfect for her bare legs—there were barely any of the more poky plates there. It was all smooth, black metal that burned pleasantly against her skin.
She hooked her chin over the top of Firefly’s helmet. She had to crunch up a little bit to fit, but it wasn’t too bad—she just draped herself forward a bit more. Firefly’s giant shoulder things made excellent hand grips too. It was like Firefly was made to give piggyback rides.
“Onward!” she called, raising one fist towards the sky. She considered summoning her lance for a second, just to really complete the picture. Maybe if March had been there to get a photo. Could she convince Firefly to do this again after they took care of the Stellaron? Maybe she could get Mr. Yang and Dan Heng to do the same and they could try jousting. That would be awesome.
Firefly stood up smoothly, giving no sign that she noticed Stelle’s weight on her back. That was hot. Not in a weird way. Just—strong people were hot. Yeah. March agreed with her. Dan Heng probably did too, he just was too cowardly to admit it.
Stelle drummed her fingers along Firefly’s shoulder things as they started down the crack in the ice, enjoying the little bursts of heat through her gloves She hoped Firefly was right about finding a way out. There weren’t any signs of an opening in the ceiling— annoyingly, since the split ran so far up—but maybe they would get lucky further in.
Another RIP to an immature joke that got cut once I realized that her leg was more of a vent with maybe some stabilizing secondary capabilities than her main source of flight
Firefly settled more comfortably on the ground. “The ice seems stable again. Perhaps this would be a good time to do a bit more work on my thruster.”
“Heh, thruster,” Stelle muttered under her breath.
“I didn’t catch that.”
“No, nothing! Let’s do some puzzles!”
alrighty. i got a rough first draft together for worm fic. it's not great and will need lots of edits (some scenes aren't....quite finished yet). but thats about the same state ftbs' first draft was in lol. its currently 18k. lets see how long edits take 👍
every single time i come across a typo that escaped edits on ftbs another piece of my soul dies
further writing updates: worm fic is kicking my ass👍 why the fuck did I try to write a whole thing from Stelle's pov.... Her characterization is so inconsistent cause they give you choices and shit.... Now *I* have to make choices and shit and come to terms with the fact that I'll only match some people's play styles for the Trailblazer. Ugh
(It doesn't help that I keep coming up with ideas for the super hero au instead of focusing on writing this mini-project. oops)
Hi, it's me, the not-anymore-anon who asked about Amphoreus trailers. I, too, have been full of far too much glee about Blade's two second appearance lol, but what I wanted to ask about is actually poor Cloud-Piercer! Because you wrote about how it's so important to Dan Heng as something that enabled him to live his life in freedom (which, yeah), so when I saw Cloud-Piercer snapped in half I really cringed and instantly remembered that scene where Dan Heng thanks Blade.
So, my question, or I should say questions: Any particular opinions about it? Is the Dan Heng in your head low-key screaming about it lol? And what do you think that might mean in canon? Like, is Dan Heng going to use more cloudhymn for the rest of Amphoreus by necessity? Which I admittedly would like to see. The Home Decor event has proven that he's been getting more comfortable with coudhymn (which was my headcanon, so it was nice to have that confirmed). Also, Cloud-Piercer is pretty definitely getting fixed up sooner or later, I should think, but who'll do it? Is that how we're finally getting our renheng reunion, because Dan Heng aks Blade for help? And what will Blade think of that? (Side-note: Is it just me, or does the probably-red ribbon Dan Heng used to temporarily fix up Cloud-Piercer look like Blade's lol?)
As you can see, I have been extremely overthinking this lmao, but Hoyo probably didn't snap Dan Heng's emotional support weapon for no reason, so I can't help but wonder. And then I wondered if you had any thoughts about it you might want to share!
hello, hello! nice to see you again! and if you have been overthinking things, i do not even want to know what the word for whatever crack cocaine state my brain went on at the two seconds of my fixation being on screen...
i.....may have uhhh.... yelled some not so nice things at not!kevin when i saw cloud piercer. ahahah? (wait fuck whats his name again? uhhh... phainon! right! i knew that. ive definitely not been calling him kevin this whole time even though i dont know who kevin is)
I am REALLY hoping they do a little time rollback and fix Cloud Piercer right up again because if it is broken I might actually start crying. That's one of the few pieces of Yingxing left and he can't make anymore because he's fucked up his hands as Blade 😭😭😭 Time reversal does seem like the most likely outcome of them breaking it though. They'd have to redo his animations if they actually destroyed Cloud Piercer, and I can't see them doing that.
....also i'm not actually sure what red ribbon you're talking about? i have mostly been looping the stellaron hunters, to be perfectly honest (if that part of the video ends up with the most played thing, know that it's my fault lol). are you talking about this by any chance?
Cause cloud piercer has always had that wrap. (i have not looked up reference images of cloud piercer multiple times. why would i do that ahahaha....ha... i also hold zero head canons about yingxing putting that red wrap there to remind df of him. seeing as most of the other instances of red on df's design are also yingxing related. earings... bracer's rope...)
you can sort of see it here? it's in the texture on the haft he's still holding. (mostly you can see the sound of me sobbing hysterically about cloud piercer, actually)
I would imagine that Dan Heng is not happy about this, honestly. Cloud Piercer is one of the few things he's had since he left jail, and he built his life in freedom around his ability to use it so effectively. Like, we think of him like an archivist (or at least I do? does the rest of the fandom also do that?), but he's technically a guard. He was a guard on all the IPC ships he boarded too. That's basically his career path. Even if he has no memory of Yingxing tied to the spear, it's definitely something precious to him. We know that he spends a lot of time keeping it polished up and such, so having it broken like this... I'm sure he's internally screaming, yes. Even if he's too emotionally dead outside to externally scream lol (i should stop bullying him, he's grieving his emotional support weapon rip)
To be honest, I think they snapped Cloud Piercer for one very simple reason: they needed to establish that not!kevin is OP. So they fucked up both the boys. That's it. And that's also why I think they'll give us a simple (lol) solution like turning back time to fix it. I don't expect it to be broken for very long in the course of the story.
Dan Heng cleaning with cloudhymn honestly reduced me to tears I was laughing so hard. He tries SO hard to be the one with the brain cell, and then he goes and does shit like that. God, i love him. But no, I don't really think we'll be seeing much Cloudhymn from him. Not unless we can get him back to his full Vidyadhara state. He does seem to be working to improve his ability to use it while playing at human, but I doubt he'll be relying on it in combat. You don't want to use a weapon you can't trust. His control and power seems to be greatly enhanced when he has his horns out, but otherwise, nah. Cloud Piercer or bust.
God, I want Blade in the story again so so so so much, but I don't think we'll see him on Amphoreus. (They're likely saving the Renheng reunion for a future Xianzhou update as that's where their story is centered.) We MIGHT see the Stellaron Hunters outside of Amphoreus helping the others, but I highly doubt we'll see them on the planet itself. Largely, because I'm not sure they could even get to Amphoreus without the help of a memokeeper. Maybe Elio could get around that with his future knowledge, but I doubt.
I do hold some hope that we might get some flashbacks from the Trailblazer remembering their time with the Stellaron Hunters though. It's probably not gonna happen, but they were in the trailer in conjunction with the Trailblazer, and I live in hope, okay? I desperately want to know what Kafka and the Trailblazer were to each other. Is she actually the deadbeat mom? I must know.
hold up, wait, stop the presses! I missed something! thank you .25 playback speed
that's dan heng with a cloudhymn construct of cloud piercer, yeah?
now, he clearly gets the full thing back at some point because we see him with cloud piercer in the boss fight, but it does seem like he's going to be using his cloudhymn to fight for a bit! good call!
i'm both devastated and proud lmao. good job getting better at your cool magic powers, boy! but clooooooud pierceeeeer 😭😭😭what did you do with in the meantime dan heng i need to know. please tell me youre still taking care of its pieces. this matters so much to me
Hi, it's me, the not-anymore-anon who asked about Amphoreus trailers. I, too, have been full of far too much glee about Blade's two second appearance lol, but what I wanted to ask about is actually poor Cloud-Piercer! Because you wrote about how it's so important to Dan Heng as something that enabled him to live his life in freedom (which, yeah), so when I saw Cloud-Piercer snapped in half I really cringed and instantly remembered that scene where Dan Heng thanks Blade.
So, my question, or I should say questions: Any particular opinions about it? Is the Dan Heng in your head low-key screaming about it lol? And what do you think that might mean in canon? Like, is Dan Heng going to use more cloudhymn for the rest of Amphoreus by necessity? Which I admittedly would like to see. The Home Decor event has proven that he's been getting more comfortable with coudhymn (which was my headcanon, so it was nice to have that confirmed). Also, Cloud-Piercer is pretty definitely getting fixed up sooner or later, I should think, but who'll do it? Is that how we're finally getting our renheng reunion, because Dan Heng aks Blade for help? And what will Blade think of that? (Side-note: Is it just me, or does the probably-red ribbon Dan Heng used to temporarily fix up Cloud-Piercer look like Blade's lol?)
As you can see, I have been extremely overthinking this lmao, but Hoyo probably didn't snap Dan Heng's emotional support weapon for no reason, so I can't help but wonder. And then I wondered if you had any thoughts about it you might want to share!
hello, hello! nice to see you again! and if you have been overthinking things, i do not even want to know what the word for whatever crack cocaine state my brain went on at the two seconds of my fixation being on screen...
i.....may have uhhh.... yelled some not so nice things at not!kevin when i saw cloud piercer. ahahah? (wait fuck whats his name again? uhhh... phainon! right! i knew that. ive definitely not been calling him kevin this whole time even though i dont know who kevin is)
I am REALLY hoping they do a little time rollback and fix Cloud Piercer right up again because if it is broken I might actually start crying. That's one of the few pieces of Yingxing left and he can't make anymore because he's fucked up his hands as Blade 😭😭😭 Time reversal does seem like the most likely outcome of them breaking it though. They'd have to redo his animations if they actually destroyed Cloud Piercer, and I can't see them doing that.
....also i'm not actually sure what red ribbon you're talking about? i have mostly been looping the stellaron hunters, to be perfectly honest (if that part of the video ends up with the most played thing, know that it's my fault lol). are you talking about this by any chance?
Cause cloud piercer has always had that wrap. (i have not looked up reference images of cloud piercer multiple times. why would i do that ahahaha....ha... i also hold zero head canons about yingxing putting that red wrap there to remind df of him. seeing as most of the other instances of red on df's design are also yingxing related. earings... bracer's rope...)
you can sort of see it here? it's in the texture on the haft he's still holding. (mostly you can see the sound of me sobbing hysterically about cloud piercer, actually)
I would imagine that Dan Heng is not happy about this, honestly. Cloud Piercer is one of the few things he's had since he left jail, and he built his life in freedom around his ability to use it so effectively. Like, we think of him like an archivist (or at least I do? does the rest of the fandom also do that?), but he's technically a guard. He was a guard on all the IPC ships he boarded too. That's basically his career path. Even if he has no memory of Yingxing tied to the spear, it's definitely something precious to him. We know that he spends a lot of time keeping it polished up and such, so having it broken like this... I'm sure he's internally screaming, yes. Even if he's too emotionally dead outside to externally scream lol (i should stop bullying him, he's grieving his emotional support weapon rip)
To be honest, I think they snapped Cloud Piercer for one very simple reason: they needed to establish that not!kevin is OP. So they fucked up both the boys. That's it. And that's also why I think they'll give us a simple (lol) solution like turning back time to fix it. I don't expect it to be broken for very long in the course of the story.
Dan Heng cleaning with cloudhymn honestly reduced me to tears I was laughing so hard. He tries SO hard to be the one with the brain cell, and then he goes and does shit like that. God, i love him. But no, I don't really think we'll be seeing much Cloudhymn from him. Not unless we can get him back to his full Vidyadhara state. He does seem to be working to improve his ability to use it while playing at human, but I doubt he'll be relying on it in combat. You don't want to use a weapon you can't trust. His control and power seems to be greatly enhanced when he has his horns out, but otherwise, nah. Cloud Piercer or bust.
God, I want Blade in the story again so so so so much, but I don't think we'll see him on Amphoreus. (They're likely saving the Renheng reunion for a future Xianzhou update as that's where their story is centered.) We MIGHT see the Stellaron Hunters outside of Amphoreus helping the others, but I highly doubt we'll see them on the planet itself. Largely, because I'm not sure they could even get to Amphoreus without the help of a memokeeper. Maybe Elio could get around that with his future knowledge, but I doubt.
I do hold some hope that we might get some flashbacks from the Trailblazer remembering their time with the Stellaron Hunters though. It's probably not gonna happen, but they were in the trailer in conjunction with the Trailblazer, and I live in hope, okay? I desperately want to know what Kafka and the Trailblazer were to each other. Is she actually the deadbeat mom? I must know.
wow i forgot that asks exist buuuuut do you perhaps have a fav renheng fic?? or, to make it easier, a top 5? or just any recommendations please im starving
also, what is it that i spy with my little eye?? a super hero au??? 👁️🫦👁️
Ah, I haven't read a ton in the fandom actually (the curse of wanting specific characterization and half the fics coming from before we had all the lore we now do *shakes fist at sky*), but I do really love markition's A Promethean Sin, though I don't know if it's ever updating again 😭I don't care if not all the lore is accurate anymore... please come back I love you you're so sexy .....maybe if I can convince enough additional people to send love to the fic it'll update again?
You could also look through my bookmarks, though I'll admit I haven't gone back over those in a while, and I know at least some of them were added before I even got to Blade in game lmao
.........now, ok, look, see, I AM working on worm fic, BUT I was also thinking about Firefly's whole Sam identity thing and how it could lead to some great identity porn and that, of course, made me immediately think of super hero AUs and then suddenly I had all these ideas for what a super villain Stellaron Hunters vs super heroes Astral Express world could look like and-- Look, it's on the list of things I want to work on. It's haunting my thoughts. I don't know what's going on there yet, but something is gonna get written, even if it's just a short thing.
Quick question, are you up to date on the Amphoreus trailers? Because something happened in the latest one that reminded me of something in FtBS (which is amazing!!) and I wanted to ask you about it, but didn't just want to drop a spoiler into your asks.
oh, i am! i am following along very eagerly and have maybe watched the most recent one a few too many times just for those two seconds of stellaron hunters lol
actually, i think i understated this. let me try again
