Character Introduction - Factorial: Silken White Innocence
“A most unusual, yet lovable creature. He is as gentle and delicate as snow, a perfect curative for a wounded soul indeed. Even the plight of lowly insects upsets him. It is truly a wonder of nature that one who endured as much as he retained kindness in his heart. “ - Yae Miko
When strolling through the fields of Inazuma, one can observe an unusual figure playing with the local youth. The white fox dashes and hops freely, contradicting the elegant and mysterious assumptions about his race. Such a rare sight he is that Factorial quickly became the mascot of Narukami. While popular, few people dare pester or even approach this care-free kitsune. Even the temptation of six fluffy, foxian tails does not overpower the respect held towards him... And his eternal guardian.
The people of Inazuma know that his arrival always comes with an imposing escort - the Guuji of the Grand Narukami Shrine always lurks in the background, keeping her ever-watchful eye on her treasured husband. If anything startles the fearful Youkai, Yae Miko is always his refuge and shelter, heralding grievous consequences to those that dare bother him.
No matter how sweltering the sun is, Factorial never removes his kimono, although scars around his neck and arms fuel the onlooker’s imagination. What stories lie behind them? What darkness lives behind his bright, friendly eyes? Only the keeper of his heart knows the full truth, and perhaps it is better that way.
One thing will remain certain - whoever raises a hand on that cloud made flesh risks the ire of the Guuji and the entire island.
Notes
Factorial is the main character of my budding series Equals. Although it has initially been made as an ordinary reader insert, now that it is a series I decided that I want to make it a bit more. When the next installment of Equals will be released, the previous chapters will be changed according to this decision.
In the future, you can expect some more non-Equals content for Factorial, such as voiceover lines.
It's been three years, so it's high time to tell you guys something about myself.
Here I go by contentloadingandstuff - just 'content' for short. I'm male, straight, born on the same day as the world famous aquarelist - the 20th of April. I have a younger sister and a cat, named Kota (she-cat in Polish, sort of). I'm studying law, but I'm unhappy with it and waiting to jump over to psychology.
I'm from Poland, the land over the Vistula, of the blooming onion, the eternal occupation/invasion joke. While Poland isn't in the top echelons of the world, I'm still proud of our history and happy to see my nation develop. I'm fluent in English, but I can also understand German on a basic level, read the cyrilic alphabet and speak a tiny bit of Japanese.
I've been playing Genshin Impact since Shinobu's release in 2.2. AR 50, did most things you could do in the game. My favorite character is and was always Ganyu. I've started writing for the game for two reasons - first, my dusty old Necro AU and the lack of male reader content in terms of fics. I'm quite happy to have this blog. You can find me under Polski_Cynamon on the Europe server.
Although my interests are very broad, my hobbies focus primarily on gaming, cultural analysis and writing. I'm a big World War II buff, but the history of warfare in general also catches my fancy. Truth be told, I could get into and talk about any topic really. Except politics - at least not on the blog. I'm not afraid to argue my points, just not here. Thanks for understanding.
Now for some quick trivia. Here are some...
Games I like: Genshin Impact (obviously), Company of Heroes 2, FnaF 1 - 6, Dungeon Keeper, Payday 2, The Forest, Witcher 3, Vermintide 2, Hotline Miami 1 & 2, Battlefield V, Helldivers 2, Warlords Battlecry 3, Dark Omen, Shadow of the Horned Rat, the Myth series, Papers Please.
Youtubers I watch: The Little Platoon, Horses, Despot of Antrim, Saveafox, TheBones5, Chickeninja42, Junkzero, ZERO, Fingees, AstralSpiff, big boss, Shrouded Hand.
Books, stories and Authors I like: "Ferdydurke", "Hauptstellung Moskau", H.P. Lovecraft, V. Suvorov, "The Red Hunger", The "Fazbear Frights" series, Tadeusz Borowski, The "Abandoned by Disney" series, "1999", "Dziady III", SCP-5000, SCP-1730, The Spiral Path.
Movies and Shows that I like: Downfall, Stalingrad (1993), Warsaw 44, Burnt by the Sun 2, The Pacific, Letters from Iwo Jima, El Alamein: La Linea Del Fuoco, Barefoot Gen, Hacksaw Ridge, The 800, Das Boot, Black Adder, Monthy Python - Holy Grail and Life of Brian, The Pianist, Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopathra (if you know why, you know), American Psycho, Halloween (2018 and only this part of the new thrillogy), Hellraiser I and II.
Music that I like: All over the place. Includes the remix of Perfect Girl, Freaks, Cheri Cheri Lady, Gimme Gimme Gimme, Everybody Wants to Rule the World (both og and remix), Brainiac Mainiac, Operation Blacklight, Confirmed Thrills, Another Round for Everyone, Miami Disco, The Forest: Main Theme, Friday Night Fire Night, I Really Wanna Stay At Your House, Addict, Do Prostego Człowieka - Akurat, Czerwona Zaraza, Encounter Z Mixed, Maradona - smkkpm.
DEDICATED FELINE SECTION
Behold, Kota. I got her four years ago from my uncle; her mother was a very wounded stray named Anka (Annie, yes a human name) that had four kittens - two of them died thanks to my uncle's horde of basset hounds (to quote my grandmother, they are big and heavy like swine). From there on she leads a happy life being what most cats are - spoiled, antitled and loving in her own way.
She might look cute (she is), but don't be mistaken - she's a little devil. She relentlessly hunts the feet of my sister, chewing and kicking them for fun; she generally likes to wrestle with lots of teeth, but she also fetches when she wants. My mother is the unfortunate favorite person of my cat, and as a result she is followed at all times, woken up at dawn to feed the feline and constantly pestered for raw meat or treats. Kota is quite talkative and often holds conversations with me.
Oh, and vet visits are a nightmare. She's always given gabapentine to be less of a threat to doctors when trimming her nails. She once swiped the facemask of a vet tech clean off their face, but luckily the woman was okay. So yeah - an imp, adorable, but hellish.
Now, enjoy picures of my bejbe.
I'll be adding on to this page as time goes on. But for now, it's gonna be all.
Straight to the point. Equals part 3 is cooking on a small flame. Why? I'll explain further down. Have a teaser.
Respected Yumemizuki Mizuki,
It has been a while since our last outing, and I cannot help but wonder if you hold a grudge for that jovial bit of teasing regarding the recent customer crisis of your bathhouse. I can only assure you I meant no harm, and pray most piously to the Sacred Sakura for your forgiveness. It was my intention all along to motivate you out of your, do not take offence, rather pathetic state of defeatism. Judging by how the issue was resolved, it seems that my ploy found significant success. Wouldn’t you agree?
Regardless, there is a matter of great importance that happens to require our attention. I am sure the situation regarding a certain destructive white fox has reached your adorable, pointy ears - it is indeed the topic of this letter. You may remember that he was rescued quite recently from the open ocean, but until yesterday, he was rather docile in terms of behavior. His sudden outburst worries me greatly; dark bags under his eyes, seemingly relentless night terrors and his words all lead me to the conclusion that his unprecedented episode of mania is related to his dreams. I will share more details at my home - feel free to visit me at your earliest convenience. Haste would be appreciated as the sedatives will wear off in about a day or so; I believe the opportunity to examine him without resistance will significantly speed up our work.
If you indeed hold a grudge towards me, I ask you to do it for him, not for me.
Awaiting your visit,
The Beloved, Beautiful and Powerful Kitsune Guuji of the Narukami Shrine
Yae Miko
Now, updates. My brain has been in a washing machine of stuff recently - changing majors, my family's disapproval, my translating job, getting my documents ready and relentlessly worrying about every little thing in the world. In creative terms, I've been having a period of puppy-like attention span recently. I've written something for Bittersweet Endings (a collection of short aftermaths of the breakup series), a more hardcore fic including Signiora being a vile charactered but hot woman as well as something unrelated to Genshin - an attempt at making a scientific entry regarding Drowners, creatures from Slavic folklore. Recently I got an idea for doing something akin to the SCP Foundation, but taking an ordinary zoology approach to fictional beasts - speculative evolution, taxonomy, ecology and occultism all included. But you guys probably aren't interested in that. Oh, and I've been writing out a plan for a potential fic; monster hunter reader does a contract for Cloud Retainer, taking along his love Shenhe and young Chongyun to show him some exorcisms in practice.
So yeah, lots of stuff. Too bad fantasies of potential fics can't turn them into posts...
So my 19th birthday was some time ago, the 20th of April to be exact.
I'm going to get myself a nice gift - I'm going to make a voiceover for some of my Necro AU characters and use ElevenLabs to make voices for them to read it out. I got myself a pro subscription for some of the money I got from family. All the text will be - obviously - original and the voice will be generated based on some retro games like Dark Omen, Myth and Warlords Battlecry.
Of course, I will write and publish them, alongside the audio, for anybody that still thinks NAU is interesting. But I'll just have some fun and honor the characters I made this blog for in the first place.
Yeah, it's sad that Mortuarius is so short and that I'm unhappy with the quality, meaning I'll likely either remake it and start from scratch or just put it to rest. I'm far too much of a perfectionist to actually feel what I've done up to now is enough to warrant any sort of even light interest, leading to a hopeless spiral of self critique and an overwhelming feeling of pointlessness. The crushing majority of ideas will be forever left to gather dust in my mind.
I can't draw, so I will likely never get to show you guys how I wanted them to appear. I can't animate, I can't render either - no videos will ever be made of them in action. All I have to introduce them into the world is my writing which is incredibly flawed, further proven by the narrative and worldbuilding mistakes made in Mortuarius, botched to a point where I cannot get myself to write anymore because as soon as I realised how limited the story of Denki is, when chosen to be approached from his initial training rather than much later on when he can actually do stuff and interact with Teyvat rather than just Umbra, I lost all momentum I had going.
Don't think I have it all planned either. Each new content drop for Genshin takes a hammer to my ideas and creates massive plotholes that I have to somehow explain. Or, at least, I feel I need the answers to. I am notoriously too demanding of myself, but I just can't help it. Unless NAU and its characters are Genshin-level in terms of content, there's no hope for them both. You may think that - hey, Genshin's lore is actually very mid and is also flawed while their characters of ten fall extremely short of their potential, come out as two-dimensional or like slightly different version of identical tropes. Like just look at Yoimiya and Mualani as an example. Or Kokomi and Jean. Or Zhongli and Neuvilette. Or Beidou and Dehya. They have different looks and lore, but their personalities are very close to each other - for me adding a band-aid in the form of limited time events is not a valid solution.
But Genshin remedies it with character design. Some fanservice, some bait, a lot of rule-of-cool type stuff and gameplay options. I cannot do any of this. NAU characters are not hot anime girls/guys that you can build and watch in-game. They won't ever measure up.
And so it goes, this train of thought, from one excuse and self-hating line to the other, wasting time, wasting effort, wasting opportunity. Even though I didn't post anything for NAU in months, I am fairly burnt out with it due to all this self-influcted pressure and the constant desire to "fix it" or "make it appealing". It was supposed to be fun, but it didn't end up this way.
So I'm doing these voicelines because I know I will have fun with them, and I will feel really happy and just a little bit proud of hearing them come to life in this homeopathical and fake way. "The people" won't care, but its okay. I'm doing this one for myself.
Thank you for everybody that reached this point of my stream of conciousness. Have a nice day.
Hello people who still follow this blog!
There's not been much posted, however that doesn't mean I wasn't busy. Some effort was required, but I managed to get in contact with three different people and work on various things - game design, translation and writing. I've been doing my best there. It's important to me, as I am planning to change my studies major from law to cognitive sciences. Recently, I also had to deal with all sorts of compulsory military commission stuff, which will be finalised with me being examined by a medical committe. Well, at least there's no forced military service in Poland.
As for what I'm writing for the blog, I've been planning another part of Equals. In it, Miko will take a shortcut and get some help to learn more about the white-furred fox that fell into her hands.
I wish all of you, dear people reading my things, health and peace. Don't worry about money or luck - the most important are the state of your body and mind, as well as the guarantee that a rocket won't turn your house into a pile of rubble. Work on yourself, trust in your abilities, be ambitious. Make the most of what you have, and don't beat yourself up over mistakes - something can be learned from each of them. Happy New Year, ludziska.
Chat what am I looking at right now? A giant floating gun?
(Obviously my opinion)
And according to leaked images, Mauvika is supposed to have a literal motorcycle. Sure, Hoyo. So how about we just give Citlali a Kalashnikov and do away with this whole "fantasy" nonsense? This makes for so many inconsistencies in the technological levels of the seven nations that the whole worldbuilding starts to look like a poor man's game of Civilisation.
I really don't dig this new update, and neither do I like the direction the worldbuilding is heading. So what, are we going to have flying cars and traffic lights in Snezhnaya? Meanwhile in Mondstadt, Liyue and Inazuma people are still using carts, horses, swords and bows.
I swear. If this continues, in time, I might just stop liking the game. It starts to get on my nerves, the approach Hoyo has taken.
Since Equals isn't really meant to be a proper narrative like Mortuarius (if anybody still remembers it - by the way, a remake from ground up is in the works), I'm very open to requests when it comes to topics and interactions. I think it would have more potential as a sort of AU for me to write in. So, comment down below or throw your ideas into the asks - as always, I will look into each one.
