#duriya

[mystiqueandmischief]

Rustam and Duriya flirting with each other in Arabic because she's not fluent in djinnistani in his private orange grove unveiling his face ONLY to her because he felt safe with her and he was able to laugh again🥺. Gosh I hate Manizeh but I hate Ghassan more.

[autistic-authorowo]

Daevabad trilogy

I don't know if the daevabad fandom is still alive, but I just finished the trilogy and I am not ok

I CANNOT believe people are sleeping on the absolute BADDIE that is Duriya, so I made her some fan art (and her guy Rustam)

If these doodles get like 15 likes i promise I'll color them 🤞🏽

But SERIOUSLY Duriya be badass. A gold eyed shafit woman who tamed a river god, maintained her sense of dignity and pride despite a society that demeaned her existence, bagged a pure blood prince, and rekt a crazy woman's mad scheme???

AND single handedly raised a child??

DURIYA THE QUEEN YOU ARE

i have had way too much time to create head canons of these characters so if anyone is interested in hearing them PLEASE ASK MY ASK BOX IS OPEN

In the meantime, here are a few:

-Sobek deeply cared about/ loved Duriya- as much as one like him is able. When she reappeared with a child in tow, he was happy to see her- but deeply jealous.

-Rustam was terrified to find out Duriya was pregnant. He wanted their child, a child made from love, but was afraid of what would happen to Duriya and their baby once people found out. That being said, he never once considered terminating the pregnancy. He was a Nahid- a doctor. He knew ways to abort an early pregnancy. But as scared as he was, the baby was wanted.

-While in the human world, Duriya would often sit by the Nile and talk to Sobek. They were both lonely creatures and took comfort in each other's company. She considered him a dear friend; but didn't miss the way his eyes tracked her as she grew into adulthood. She made a point to discover as much about Sobek as she could and was well aware of the sacrifices he asked from humans in the past.

-While pregnant, Rustam would often hold Duriya and touch her stomach for hours without saying a word.

[gil-estel]

absoutely loved river of silver

[canonical-transformation]

Hi, I'm Ningguang, and welcome back to Monster Mansions of Teyvat.

Today we'll be looking at the Palace of Alcazarzaray, a lovely jungle hideaway that is all splendour... if you have no taste.

Now, the Palace of Alcazarzaray is the private residence of Lord Sangemah Bay, an magnate and fellow billionaire with strong credentials in the mercantile and shipping industries.

Lord Sangemah Bay and I are business partners, and an NDA prevents me from disclosing any details about their identity. But what I can tell you is that Sangemah Bay suffers from a congenital condition: they were born without a shred of aesthetic sense.

We start with the location. Nestled deep in the Lokapala Jungle in Sumeru's northeast, this estate is... no, let's start there. Nestled. Nestled.

Here we observe the first symptom of having money and no taste: the location of this monster mansion is hidden from view, so that nobody else can find it.

You think I'm joking? I spoke with the estate's butler, who confirmed the location was chosen for seclusion, peace, and quiet.

Now, we've discussed this before on Monster Mansions. When you design and commission an opulent residence, you flaunt it. That's the whole point! Why would you even bother having a four bedroom five bathroom estate like this if you're not going to rub it in the faces of everyone who ever said you would never make it? If you're not going to drop your shredded paper on the heads of all those old money geezers who looked down on you while you were working your ass off to make your fortune?

It baffles me.

Then again, this is the same Sangemah Bay who insisted the Sumeru edition of Liyue Millennial use jewel-encrusted playing pieces. Like some tacky Snezhnayan auntie. Maybe the Lord knows how ugly any house they commission would turn out and is just trying to hide the evidence?

Credit where credit's due, this pavilion is pretty nice. Good use of ornament on those load bearing columns. I guess if you don't know how to engineer your own house there's nothing wrong with getting a renowned Kshahrewar architect to design it for you.

These flowers are so uninspired though.

I did see a nice padisarah:

But the upkeep on this garden... It's like the thing exists to justify having half a dozen gardeners on payroll.

I've said it on previous episodes, and I'll say it again: if you want to see some greenery, go to a damn park. A house is a built environment. It's your special place to line with beautiful fountains and booby-trapped windows and secret Geo-Vision-unlocked torture chambers. None of this manicured lawn nonsense. Some bare minimum to contrast your cleverly engineered water features, but otherwise, that's it.

Also what's with all these side houses? If you have your pirate wife over, are you really going to make her sleep in a different building? Pah.

But this is the design 'logic' of the kind of business genius who thinks running a shipping line direct from Ormos to Dornman without stopping through Liyue is a sane "cost saving measure". Routing through Liyue Harbour is a value-add, you buffoon.

Now, the main house is perfectly nice... or so you'd think.

What this picture doesn't show is how all this intricate glasswork faces southeast. You know what that means? That's right. No sunlight through the stained glass.

I took a few test photos over the course of the day. The top of this ornate window gets the most light right at sunrise... and it still doesn't reach the full thing.

Dear Lord Sangemah Bay, maybe if you focused less on trying to hack my export tax code you might have noticed your estate was facing the wrong way?

And what even is this? How did that get there?

Fun fact: Lord Sangemah Bay once cheated me at cards. I don't mind because I was cheating too, but still. Tasteless.

(continued)

[itsmunazza]

FINALLY finished all of my Nahli kids sketches!!! this is what i’m thinking:

- Duriya has nahid and marid abilities

- Armah has nahid and djinn abilities

- Armah HATES water and is terrified of it, he inherited Nahri’s fear and won’t get in the water unless he’s with Ali

- Duriya is super talented with her marid abilities

- the kids meet Sobek in crocodile form, and their reactions are......very different

- Sobek is secretly so excited to meet both of the kids, but then ARMAH TURNS OUT TO BE ‼️ EXACTLY ‼️ LIKE HIS NAMESAKE ‼️ the betrayal hurts more than Sobek expected lmao

- i’m thinking Armah is super talented with his nahid abilities from a very young age, and starts out by healing little birds and bunnies and creatures in the gardens (IDK IF THE NAHIDS EVER HEALED ANIMALS BUT WE OUT HERE 💖)

[mystiqueandmischief]

Okay the memories of Rustam and Duriya was interesting. What do you mean a servant and a sad eye prince fell in love😩 when she was just a servant that a presence he doesn't acknowledge, and when she hit him on the face and his veil fell showing his astonished face! Gosh, Nahri's parent's romance is just as interesting as her's with Ali. When I catch you Manizeh, Manizeh when I catch you👊

[canonical-transformation]

So, Dori: hybrid Arabian Nights and anti-Semitic stereotype. "Yay".

The "amoral Mora-grubbing fiend" characterisation is so... how do I put this nicely?... uncritically Merchant of Venice-esque. The silver tongue, the love of Mora rivalling Ningguang's combined with the amoral black market implications... and yes the fact that she's short[1] and wears gaudy glasses and her attack animations have everyone else doing the work for her. It's not hard to see which body of tropes HYV drew upon here.

And where her characterisation differs from our other Mora-happy characters like NG and HT, it's mostly that the love for Mora is the core of her characterisation and there's not much else to see. It's not exactly a sympathetic depiction.

(And ofc, Dori isn't a particularly common Arabic name; Duriya is the more common form [2]. AFAICT, Dori is more commonly a Greek or... Hebrew name. Hahaha funny coincidence I'm sure)

And her Vision story completely contradicts her characterisation! The girl in the Vision story sees Mora as a means to an end: security, safety, being a provider, never having to worry. The Dori we see today seems to have an intrinsic Mora-lust. And even with a bit of having lost sight of her goal along the way (why hello there Electro Vision weirdness) that just seems... inconsistent. Like HYV realised they were writing a pure stereotype but decided to make an exception for her Vision story.

(I guess maybe you could say it's an act / a mask she wears? Not entirely convinced.)

Meanwhile, the rest of her design is shallow '1001 Nights' theming (actually, let's be real, it's basically Aladdin theming and that was added to the 1001 Nights during translation [3]). The unironic magic lamp trope, the puffy pants plus open navel, the bangles and hair accessories...

...at least she's not wearing a fez I guess? :S

There's not really an end point to this post. I'm just echoing the disappointment others have expressed in HYV's choosing to have this character design be a thing.

(Writing her into fic is stressing me out a lot right now etcetc. The various redesigns/art the fandom has made are cool at least, kudos to everyone doing that!)

[1] subjective headcanon, sure, but yes short adults exist and the way she's written and voice directed supports this.

The funding, construction and obvious non-newness of the Palace of Alcazarzaray puts a strict lower bound on how long she's had her Vision, and her existence as a business institution (the way that Ningguang is) doesn't happen overnight. Even with anime logic it's weird if Dori's been at this for a lot less time than Ningguang has; they're both supposedly business geniuses.

[2] see excellent discussion in the below link

Anamaka Pralekha

i guess im a g3nshin redesigner now *continues to aggressively not play g%nshin*. Once again my inspirations are historical, though this tim

[3]

Les mille et une nuits - Wikipedia

[canonical-transformation]

Dori's VA performance and the way she's presented in the AQ leaves me relatively confident in the [plausibility of the] headcanon that she's at least Jean's / Keqing's age. (Not discussing specifics yet bc spoilers.)

Now, are HYV going to lazily give her the same running animation as Klee and Qiqi?, i.e. the toddler-with-no-motor control windmilling their arms? Probably. After all, they did the same for Sayu, an escape artist ninja, for whom that kind of imbalance makes no sense at all.

And is her outfit still a #@$#ing Orientalist mess? Oh my gods yes. Is that silhouette way noisier and harder to read than HYV's usual fare, and/or is the design just bad? Oh my gods yes. Did they seriously give her a constellation called Magic Lamp, and refer to treasure trove, aka drawing on the most blatantly added-for-Western-audiences parts of Galland 1717? *siiiiiiiiigh* yes

But—even accounting for the prodigal child merchant NPCs around Sumeru City—this is the closest we've gotten to "yes sometimes adults are short" rep...

...and of course they put the shortness representation on the "amoral money-loving merchant" stereotype character with little glasses, ugh.