Okay, I pestered Alina ( @nomoraamongfivearchons ) into helping me co-write this, so, here we are.
We hashed out some things and I think we need to really talk about this and give it the seriousness it deserves.
So. "Mom-hida." That is, people seeing Nahida as Wanderer's new mom, now that he has Sumeru citizenship.
Let’s talk about that. And why that evokes such a negative emotion in me whenever I think about it.
!! SPOILERS ABOUND !! Read at your own risk. If you haven't done everything up to the Sumeru Archon Quest or past the Inversion of Genesis, this is gonna be... a lot.
“Model ≠ Maturity.”
The main argument made in favor of Nahida's maternal role is the model one. At least, that's the one I see most often.
Nahida's character model had some clashing responses upon release due to... allegations of whitewashing and Orientalism. Fair enough.
But in this case, people are using Nahida's role as Archon and God of Wisdom and commonly known shrinking powers as an argument that just because she looks like a little girl does not mean she has to be. As a god, she has more than warranted the respect of her people and should be treated as a figure of authority.
The highest seat of authority most people can give her is Mother. Put a pin on that.
Her characterization demands that you acknowledge her immaturity
The biggest problem with the character model ≠ character maturity argument is that her immaturity is ingrained in her character, coming in from the Archon Quest and right up and past her second Story Quest.
It's not an emotional maturity, per se, but more of a warranted ignorance.
For the past 500 years, the only people whose dreams she can visit and the only people she can communicate with at length are children. The only knowledge she could accumulate are through snippets of conversations and interactions whenever she decided to possess Katheryne, practically stealing knowledge.
Her vast amount of accumulated knowledge is not backed up with practical use, meaning that she has never acted upon what she knows. This is exemplified by the delight she takes with trying to trick the Traveler into pranking scholars with a poem in the middle of an academic conference.
There are multiple instances of this in her first Story Quest, where her lack of emotional maturity and experience leads her to fumbling with people's insecurities and problems about their dreams.
In her second Story Quest, the actions she tries to take is exemplified by her lack of prior experience. She tries to do what her long-forgotten predecessor once did-- sacrifice herself in service of Sumeru. She doesn't know how to ask for help, and she doesn't know that her power and presence in Sumeru is vital to Sumeru's current political climate.
These are just instances of her fumbling actions signaling towards not necessarily pubescent immaturity but a lack of experience that the expectation of a highest seat of authority in all the land should have.
But that doesn't necessarily warrant not calling her a Mother, would it? What about Wanderer's actual mother? In comparison to her, she seems much more emotionally mature!
“Ei and Nahida are both Archons, Wanderer is just a creation.”
The second most popular argument is this: Ei and Nahida hold similar seats of authority. Ei and Nahida are both Archons who have been isolated for the past 500 years.
Wanderer, by all means, is their junior.
Wrong, go replay the Archon Quest
Wanderer has the depth of knowledge neither Ei nor Nahida have-- extensive human interaction.
Wanderer has gone through heartbreaks, tragedies, losses, and ugly bouts of grief and self-destruction. Though both Nahida and Ei themselves have experienced loss and grief, they do not have the experience to internalize those experiences and move past them.
This is especially evident with Ei's response-- self-isolation.
Nahida, on the other hand, handles grief well not because she is much more mature than both Raidens. No, it's because she doesn't remember what caused her grief, and she doesn't see the 500 years she lost in her cage as a loss to begin with. You cannot miss what you do not have.
Despite Ei creating Wanderer in order to use him as a proxy god, that does not mean she should be interpreted as a mother. A mother nurtures, a mother intends to have her child grow, a mother actively participates in her creation's life.
She not only "set him free" and eventually forgot about him through Wanderer's own actions, she also does not see herself as a mother. She barely sees herself as a person-- if you were playing all throughout 5.X, you will know this. Ei saw herself primarily as a weapon and now only a God with a dominion. She is not a creator, she is not a mother, she is Inazuma’s Raiden Shogun.
Point being: the mother aspect is something Wanderer read into her, not something she claimed herself. Interpreting her that way would rob Ei of her power and agency because she never chose to be seen that way, she just created this puppet as a prototype.
If you want to get bogged down in the semantics, compare Ei and Nahida to actual adoptive parents in the game– Professor Cyrus, Cloud Retainer/Xianyun, Neuvillette. Adoptive and parental roles are chosen and claimed, never assigned.
In acknowledging Wanderer incorrect interpretation in Ei’s alleged motherhood, remember that he clearly does not read the role into Nahida. Because Nahida did not create him and, even if she is an active part of his life, she is not nurturing him. Nor is she choosing to be the one to guide him to his fullest potential.
So, if not mother, what is she?
“Wanderer as the older brother is Not Feminist.”
Here's the real discourse. Mom-hida truthers do not like Sister-hida as an interpretation because, primarily, of the previous two reasons. The issue gets much worse when we brush up on this next one.
People seem to think that denying Nahida the role of Mother robs her of agency and power. As already discussed, it does not work that way.
But here’s the argument: if in the LoDish dynamic, Wanderer was the older brother, then Nahida would be seen as the immature girl that needs his guidance or relies on him (none of these people have siblings IRL, methinks). If, on the inverse, Nahida was the older sister and Wanderer the younger brother, then, well, that's a thematic dissonance because- because-
I genuinely can't see a downside to this specific interpretation but that could just be me. But, let me give you the actual details here.
He is not Nahida's brother, she is Wanderer's God
You can see this in any language you play the game in. No localization ever, and I mean ever, makes Wanderer call Nahida ‘Buer,’ or ‘Nahida.’ It is always “Lesser Lord Kusanali.”
Even further, if you play in either CN, JP, or KR, Wanderer is never frank or speaking casually whenever they interact with each other. Almost always he uses polite speech when speaking to her.
They talk about this at length literally before the epilogue of Inversion of Genesis, Nahida is neither his warden nor his debtor, he has become-- from then on-- her confidant, her vanguard. He interprets this as her employing the cream of the crop, the best of the best, in order to further her own agendas. Because he wants to be instrumental to her goals, he wants to be of use to her, because he owes her a debt of gratitude for letting him remember his past lives and he wants a purpose.
Nahida is not a little girl or little sister or mother or anything of the sort to him, not explicitly. Lesser Lord Kusanali is his God and he is her little follower. She demands respect just by existing, she should be afforded nothing less than his best as thanks.
Hell, she literally initiates a moment between him and the Traveler to give him a name, life's first gift. She did not create this puppet, she did not shape this man from the ashes of his own self-immolation. He chose to reform himself after she extended him the choice, and he was so grateful he is actively trying to please her.
The Twins and Archon Quests
This is more or less my last point in this entire bit. You can interpret this as me walking back my previous points however you want but.
All Archon Quests have a central dynamic that is a direct parallel to the Traveler and their Twin. This has been a fact since the very beginning. Dvalin, Venti, and Mondstadt; Zhongli, the Adepti, and Liyue; Ei, Miko, and Inazuma; Nahida, Wanderer, and the Akademiya; Neuvillette, Furina, and Fontaine; Mavuika, Capitano, and Natlan.
These are all symbolic to Lumine, Aether, and Khaenri'ah. It has been this way since the start of the story, it will remain that way all throughout Nod-Krai as well, and I suspect Snezhnaya won't even be the end of it.
Point being: Wanderer and Nahida are primed to be sibling-adjacent because they're the central characters of Sumeru's Archon Quest. Wanderer is a misguided, bitter thing wanting nothing but destruction for the world, but Nahida is hopeful for both Sumeru and him, knowing that he will eventually realize that catastrophizing will only make life moving forward worse for him and everyone around him.
Whoever your Traveler is, it doesn't matter. It's always been about them since the start. And if you still believe that Nahida is his adoptive mother after everything I just said, after you've read through every single one of these, then that's your prerogative.
Frankenstein (2025) has taken up permanent residence in my head and naturally it's giving me Nahida and lodish/hat radish thoughts.
I've talked before how Wanderer would definitely react strongly to the Creature getting to live a life of his own at the end of the movie, but I feel like Nahida, in contrast, would get hit SO hard by the depiction of the Creature's intelligence and how he's treated for it.
The movie diverges drastically from the novel by having Victor actually spend time with his Creature and growing frustrated by his seeming lack of intelligence, to the point where Victor both verbally and physically abuses the Creature for it. However, Victor is expecting the intelligence of a fully grown and educated man from what's essentially a four-day-old infant who happens to also be 196cm tall.
Similarly, Nahida gets imprisoned, neglected, and exploited for not demonstrating godlike intelligence when she is just a few HOURS old. At that time, she has no way of accessing any of Rukkhadevata's accumulated wisdom because her predecessor had used up all of it to protect Sumeru AND create Nahida.
Both the Creature and Nahida are deemed lacking by people who should have been caring for them, and despite the abuse they suffered, they still maintain a childlike wonder and curiosity for the world, which leads me to a second major similarity: their learning experiences.
More Nahida and Wanderer and the Creature thoughts below:
The Creature first learns about language by quite literally living in the walls of a human family. By watching the old blind man teaching his granddaughter, he slowly cobbles together enough words to use and clumsily mimics their gestures of affection, which he had never received from his creator. Meanwhile, Nahida is only able to access information through the Akasha and children's dreams, accumulating her understanding of the human world through theories and fantastical dreams that she couldn't put to action in her goldfish bowl.
I'm picturing Wanderer and Nahida watching the movie together (maybe the Akademiya has included it in the curriculum to discuss research ethics): while Wanderer is getting the catharsis of watching the Creature walk into his new life in the rising sun (paralleling Wanderer watching the sun set as the previous chapter of his old life closes), Nahida has to grapple with how she would never get an apology for what was done to her or receive words of affirmation from her creator like the Creature does (she did, her creator held her so gently and told her that she would be an even better archon for her people and that she's so proud of her, and she would never remember it).
That being said, I think Nahida and Wanderer might also come to realize that they both found what the Creature hasn’t: a companion. Nahida and Wanderer both share the loneliness of being created and left without anyone to guide them, the desperation to belong in a community while feeling alienated and lesser, and the tentative first step of building a new life for themselves. They’ve seen each other at their lowest and seen themselves reflected in the other’s misery. Whereas the Creature ventures out into the world on his own, our local Radish God and her Hat Guy will have each other for the foreseeable future.
