Criticism of Elysia's Writing, or: To Be Without Flaws Is The Most Fatal Flaw Of All
TL;DR: I feel like Elysia invalidates the themes of hi3 and some things regarding her were definitely retconned/rewritten someway, and that makes her earlier appearances seem unresolved and weird.
But to elaborate:
Theming
The central conflict of hi3 is obviously humanity vs the honkai, and the most important theme is about the 'beauty' of humanity, hence Kiana's famous quote "to fight for all that is beautiful in the world". It's about the love that we feel for each other ("I love them, and I love what they love" -Kiana, again), how it connects us and helps us "light up the darkness". But an important aspect of all this is that humanity is not inherently perfect. Humanity is flawed, and we shouldn't ignore those flaws but rather embrace who we are, "[The world] sure isn't all sunshine and rainbows", it has ugliness and beauty and we should seek to protect it all the same etc. etc. Pretty basic.
Elysia's problem is that she completely invalidates all of this by being touted as THE ideal of humanity, a perfect, "pristine" girl who is called "flawless". Hell the arc is named "To the Flawless" aka "To Elysia". All this coupled with her (imo) subpar Jesus symbolism makes her seem really out of place because…the whole POINT was that humanity and the world are flawed but that doesn't mean they're not worth fighting for. So the game continously praising Elysia as the embodiment of perfection and humanity is literally at odds with each other thematically. And also in general, a character just being completely perfect and the bestest and the nicest for no real reason is just not appealing to me. It'd be different if Elysia also had flaws (and I would argue that she does, the game just refuses to acknowledge them for the sake of the 'flawless' narrative) or if she also questioned if humanity was worth all of it, or if there was a reason for her being so nice and perfect besides "Omg I just love everyone so much because I was born that way!" but that is not the case.
The second way she 'invalidates' things is more personal, so it might not be the case for others but I really don't like how her Herrscher reveal essentially makes everything the PE (and other previous civilizations) does pointless. A huge reason I was interested in the PE and its characters is because they all face struggles regarding their morals and what they're doing. They do a lot of morally dubious shit, and most aren't sure whether it's the right thing. It is to fight the honkai, but what if it isn't? What if their efforts fail? Even if it's for the greater good, is it still right? Etc.
So, the fact that the Current Era characters were able to 'win' against the Honkai ONLY because of Elysia giving Herrschers sentience is so annoying. It shows that the PE didn't lose because they weren't strong enough or moral enough or didn't cooperate enough, they just lost because they were unlucky. There wasn't an Elysia in the civilization before them that could give their Herrschers cheat code. So all their moral dilemmas and actions are completely meaningless, because there was NO scenario in which they won. Maybe the "it was always going to fail" is appealing to some pople, but it's not to me. It also, in turn, invalidates the actual cast's actions and achievements a ton because if Herrschers weren't sentient because of Elysia, they would have totally lost. Yay! Elysia being a walking talking Deus Ex Machina further worsens things because it's not as if Elysia gave Herrschers 'ego' by her own efforts (like maybe willingly becoming a herrscher to try to manipulate the cocoon or whatever) or anything, it was literally just LUCK. She just happened to be born like that!
Retcons/Rewrites
Moving away from point 1, there is point 2 which is the retcons/rewrites. Technically, afaik it was never officially confirmed things got rewritten so it is up to interpretation, but I think it's quite obvious.
First of all, the traitor thing. This makes zero sense in retrospect. Mobius initially telling Mei that Elysia is a 'traitor' and that she shouldn't trust her is illogical because:
a) Elysia didn't willingly betray them, she was just born a Herrscher (which Mobius and the rest of the FCs know)
b) we KNOW that Mobius didn't hold a grudge against Elysia for her secret through Elysium Everlasting.
Iirc, she literally refuses to acknowledge Elysia as a herrscher and calls her human. Mobius was also there during her death (according to earlier dialogues, but I believe this may have gotten rewritten later? It's been a while lol) so like…why does this whole traitor nonsense happen?
Second, when Mei asks Kevin about this, he CONFIRMS Elysia was a traitor. Also, in some character recollections, there is this background plot that people's memories of Elysia are being messed with or are incorrect in some way:
[Elysia] claimed to have taken the Meta-Morph surgery after Kevin and before me. I have memories to support this, but no relevant details can be found in the records. Suspicion remains…
(Elysia's Recollection, Miss Pink Spy) Mobius' report
I wish to hear only the truth today.
Everyone, please recall…
How did you meet Elysia?
(Kevin's Recollection, The Blind Spot) Dr. MEI is speaking
And uh. This has no resolution. Nothing happens with this and is never explained.
The description of the item "Thorny Roses" in the beta also supports the idea that Elysia underwent some rewrites:
-Elysia, you could have stopped all this.
-True, but why would I? Regards of the end result, these are the fruit of humankind's own choices, are they not?
This definitely paints Elysia as a more morally dubious character than she ended up being. There are some other dialogues don't make sense in retrospect, or are unresolved, etc. I won't explain the rest of them in detail because they're pretty obvious on their own:
Mei: You made me realize if Herrscher could fight for humanity, humanity could also destroy themselves
Kevin: No, Herrschers never fight for humanity.
Kevin: Be it you or her.
(Hero's Memory 5)
Mei: In your age, did you have any Herrschers fighting for humanity?
Kevin: No.
(About Herrschers 2)
Now, you can say this one is Kevin deliberately lying, and I might agree, but the first quote makes it seem genuine
Elysia: Kevin, if you didn't master the Judgemnt of Shamash, what would have happened to us?
Elysia: Would our era have ended even faster?
Kevin: No. (…) The ending of our era wasn't decided by whether I had Judgement of Shamash or not.
Kevin: But if I had known your real intentions earlier, we might have had a different ending indeed.
Elysia: We? You mean you and me? Or you and MEI? Or MEI and me?
Kevin: I trusted you. That was a mistake.
Elysia: Really Kevin? Don't say anything you don't mean.
(About Elysia 1)
Elysia: You said you'd never trust me again and that upset me for a long time. How are you gonna make it up to me?
(About Betrayal 2) Elysia to Kevin
"I want you to become a K.O. threat, a chess move that will one day keep the game in check. And that day… will arrive soon."
"…At what cost?"
"I will give you an endless war."
(Kalpas' Recollection, Exorcism) Elysia & Kalpas speaking. This interaction was neer touched upon again.
Conclusion
To summarize, the reason Elysia -to me- fails as a character is due to the game's insistence on the narrative that she is a perfect human being without flaws, which not only goes against the game's overall themes, but also cripples Elysia herself! It robs her of some much needed complexity, and ends up making her feel flat despite her immense potential: How did it feel being a Herrscher in her circumstances? Did she feel guilty for lying? Did she wonder if she was also evil? Did she try to delude herself into thinking she wasn't a Herrscher after all because she didn't want to bear it?
We don't know. Because the game isn't interested in letting Elysia be a deep character, she's just there to be an ideal for Mei to aspire to, a Deus Ex Machina, 'Pink Jesus' paving the way for humanity and future Herrschers. The game's very insistence on this ends up making its own claims seem unsubstantiated, like the author is shouting in your ear "Like Elysia! Love Elysia!" throughout the entirety of the arc.
And of course, the second reason: the rewrites. We can argue all day about how exactly she was rewritten, or what they were initially planning for her, but in the end this is what we got. We can never know the writers' original intentions in regards to Elysia's deal with Kalpas, or the idea that she was manipulating people's memories, because all they ended up being in the final version are just unresolved threads, or worse -mostly with Mobius and Kevin- outright contradictions.
In conclusion, oh Elysia, what you could have been. Unfortunately, what you ended up being is a letdown.
I think elysium everlasting was the thirteen flamechasers ultimate power fantasy, getting to fight together in order to eliminate a powerful threat. Sacrifice is unavoidable but it's cushioned by the fact that they're not alone, not this time. None of them had to die in vain and they all succeeded in passing on a seed of hope into the future (Mei), it's perfect and wonderful and the ending they deserved but never got
Elysia - Jesus parallels in Honkai are absolutely killing me and breaking my heart. But it also funny because like "what if Jesus was a horny pinkcore lesbian" idea gives so much whiplash on its own
Is it just me, or have a lot of honkai story chapters recently just been chock full of filler?
Like in Elysium Everlasting, we had this huge reveal about Elysia and Kevin's 'death' and Sakura being shady, followed by a cliffhanger version break.
And then the next story update was... fucking around with Vill-V and her 'Kevin Killers', fucking around with Elf Elysia in the park, fucking around with Phyllis... idk it's just annoying, and I'm very behind on the story because I just got so bored grinding it.
@slowlyfriedicecream and I was talking about cooking with valkyries and how cool it would be if the 3rd season is all about the flame chasers (there isn't any new season announcement that i know of, it's just a thought) but it spiralled down to this little middle of the night angst <3
Imagine Mei going to elf Elysia to ask her what's Elysia's fav food. Mei made her type the recipe (or like the name & description) from the typewriter and she (mysteriously?? I still haven't wrapped my mind around the elysium everlasting yet) cooked it for her/ask her how it's made (if there aren't any kitchen there (??) Again I still need to read more about the flame chasers.) And then Elysia flirted with Mei and complimented her cooking or the thought of her cooking it (for that angst) Mei kinda thought of Kiana's compliments when Elysia compliments her cooking and accidentally slip up letting Elysia know that Mei was thinking of Kiana. The scene turns to a flashback from the prev era when Mei made/asked about the dish. Then it cuts to how she died at the very end (be it vague), no song for the credits only the picture of the typewriter next to the recipe.
