#hsr discourse

[helldevour]

oh one more thing that popped into my head as i collapsed into bed about these claims about inconsistent writing with yingxing/blade.

but yingxing acting hypocritical, when we have blade who is the most hypocritical person ever? blade who refuses to let dan heng be his own person when he's running around trying to separate his own identity from yingxing?

[helldevour]

ahem. well since i've finished the companion quest earlier and it's always been my tradition to post about new content that drops for my muse, this was going to come anyway. but as it's impossible to write stuff in a vacuum without having my thoughts influenced by outside events, some warnings for all the discourse surrounding the companion quest. also warnings for suicidal ideation and death, since this is blade.

spoiler warning for the jl companion quest under the cut and all.

once again, i'm reiterating the fact that as a blade enjoyer, this companion quest was so good. any new information presented and there were some such as:

⸻ blade actively looks on his own for methods to beat his immortality ⸻ blade wanted jingliu to kill him

doesn't feel like a retcon, but an expansion of his character. especially since people aren't black and white, people can have a myriad of complicated feelings about a person. jingliu torturing him and him resenting her and wanting to seek revenge on her for it can also go hand in hand with him begging for her to also give him release. especially since jingliu's blade voice line still reiterates the fact that blade would like nothing to see her dead as well.

everything else that we learn from the companion quest is essentially reaffirmation of all the scattered lore on the HCQ presented in one easily digestible questline rather than through various character stories, books or relic descriptions. baiheng being important to yingxing was always there. yingxing and dan feng working together to revive her was always there and stated repeatedly through multiple sources. but i get it, maybe some people don't have DHIL or expecting people to go out of their way to read some data log is a bit much.

if there is one piece of new information this quest reveals that's questionable then it's that yingxing, who had his home and family destroyed (more than destroyed, what happened to them is horrifying to think about), would willingly use something of the abundance to bring baiheng back.

but it's also not that much of a stretch to me either. if there is one thing i would speculate to be yingxing's greatest fear in this world then it's loss, him not being able to cope and handle loss well after everything he went through is so utterly understandable and human and tragic. grief can force people to act erratic and reckless and the grief of losing someone who'd essentially been part of his new family driving yingxing to do whatever it takes to bring back someone he loved dearly makes so much sense to me.

so once more, i wholly enjoyed this quest and i really, really look forward to a blade companion quest if it ever comes around for further expansion of his character.

[zieroses]

I found this twitter post to be an interesting take on the Trailblazer as a main character, in response to a user saying they wish the TB had more of a personality and that they don’t feel they connect to the TB.

The responder is adamant regarding the TB’s growth over time. I really found it interesting because (not in a hater way) I personally haven’t seen that growth at all. In fact, I agree more with the first user, that the TB feels like more of a blank slate - potentially intended to feel like a stand-in for the player.

Hoyo did similarly with the Traveler, and I honestly do feel like the biggest impact of the “personality” both player characters develop is moreso hoyo being willing to shell out to have more of their lines be voiced, rather than the Trailblazer (as in the linked post) growing more comfortable and confident and talking more.

It’s interesting. For whatever reason, I feel like the first user—I don’t feel particularly connected to the TB. I feel like the characters around them are more interesting and have more depth. I think they also suffered from their role in Amphoreus—It’s possibly an unfair take, but I just kept getting the feeling they were being singled out and put on a pedestal for nothing. Everyone else suffered greatly and for millions of cycles, countless years, but the Trailblazer is heralded as a hero. I’m not saying they’re not, just that it felt strangely unearned (to me).

There was a moment, toward the end… i believe just before the final battle against Irontomb (or what we thought would be). I wish i could remember the specifics, but everyone else had said a bunch of “we” statements, and the TB said something to the effect of “I’ll do this for everyone!” (Definitely a paraphrase, sorry). I remember looking at the speech options, all of them some variation of “i,” and thinking, just you?? Everyone else is throwing everything they have at this but just you are doing the thing? I know that’s not a fair take either given it’s just one line but it still felt so forced. To me personally, the role of the TB at all in Amphoreus felt a little forced, a little shoehorned. It seemed like everything they were doing would have made more sense for, say, Phainon.

I’m imagining if this were a book that got submitted to an editor, the editor would come back with “it feels like the TB and Phainon are trying to fulfill the same narrative role here. Can one of these characters be removed?”

I know it’s a little more nuanced than that, and I know there’s certain things that position the TB as the main hero. But it still just felt a little bit unearned to me, and I still struggle to connect with the TB as a character. I can see how people would be defensive/protective over the characterization of their favorite MC so I don’t blame the above poster for feeling how they feel, but I do feel like it’s a bit of a rose-colored personal interpretation rather than what’s actually on the page, so to speak.

I’d be curious to know how others feel.

[theastralexpresscrew]

Maybe it's just me, but I'm having trouble playing the Wardance quest because of Moze's VA. I'm trying to ignore it but I might wait til the next update when he gets his new voice to play it. I really want to like Moze too but again, it's hard with the VA not being switched yet...

[everlastiingiimmortals]

mentions of 1.4 drama under cut /

i dont want to speak on it too much but i think we can all agree that, well. the whole thing is a mess.

i can see the arguments for inconsistencies but i think the thing we all need to remember, and this is something that the entire angry fanbase as a whole seems to not be acknowledging, is that every single one of the narrators of the past is an unreliable one, except Jing Yuan, because he isn't a narrator. he does not speak on this topic.

there is a lot of nuance and still many unanswered questions and i am just as uncertain as any other with the future direction of the hcq lore given how the fanbase has been set on fire by a plethora of misinfo, miscommunication, and mistranslations, but in my opinion, the story was fine. do i wish there was more? yes, always, because i love them, but it was fine. Dan Heng, Blade, and Jingliu all have fragmented memories, and we know the Preceptors and Ten Lords Commission have directly interfered with and fabricated the narrative.

one of the biggest criticisms i hold towards the fandom (and fanbases in general) is the sheer and utter lack of consideration for unreliable narration.

hyv is typically not one to be lazy and poorly execute stories across their games as a whole (of course there are always... exceptions. not every execution is perfect), so seriously. let them cook. it'll be fine. and if you dont like it in the end, you can change it as much as you'd like, but the story isn't even fully revealed yet. it'll be fine.