I swear to god, Varka is twenty years younger than he should be. This is why I don't like engaging with Genshin's new content - it's always some level of disappointment, only the reasons change
I envisioned him like most people, I feel: an older, bearded, truly majestic embodiment of the Knight of Favonious. A man whose sole appearance commands respect and obedience amongst his troops. A man that can settle a routing unit with a mere stern glance, his eyes hiding decades of experience and instilling trust and bravery in his soldiers.
Take a look at this movie scene; it's the battle of Gruenwald from the movie Teutons (1960, English subtitles in the video).
The Teutonic knights in command look exactly like you would expect. They are older than their soldiers, clad in heavy armour with richly decorated helmets and majestic, flowing capes. And beards of course! If you look at them you can tell they've been through more than just this battle, a notion further confirmed by them personally leading their regiments to battle. This is how I imagined Varka. Like this guy, for example (not sure if it's Lichtenstein or simply one of the knights):
But the outfit is equally important. Instead of whatever Varka is wearing right now - that to me looks like random mercenary get-up, he should be wearing something that clearly announces his rank and position.
He should be wearing an improved version of the standard Favonious armour (lighter for universal purposes). Something like Ulrich Von Jungingen is wearing in this still:
It's crystal clear who he is just from his equipment. A double sided cape with red on the inside, a different richer set of feathers in his army's colours, golden armour (not accurate to history but it is based on a historical fictionalisation of the events, not strictly real life) and a more complex, also golden version of the Teutonic cross. You can tell he is the big cheese!
But we won't get any of it. Because I suppose the lion's share of the playerbase of Genshin consists of tasteless masses who don't care for who the characters are and what they represent, but about their physical attractiveness. And since to them only Korean boy band types of characters are attractive, we won't get any variety. Don't hold your breath for a playable character looking like Cyrus or Wagner.
Also, have you wondered why beards are not considered attractive in China? Guess what - communism strikes again. Facial hair was prominent in traditional Chinese outfits, but since the red leaders of China took power after the second world war, they began fighting with traditional culture, aiming to replace it with the new Communist Ideal®. They failed to succeed in their Cultural Revolution and since then began going back on their approach. An example of this is the movie The Eight Hundred (2020) showing Kuomintang soldiers defending against the Japanese barbarians being not only allowed, but also approved by the government. It's an amazing movie by the way. Alas, the damage has been done and beards are out of fashion in China. I suppose guys already shaved and decided "okay this is my look now" and went with it. It's like the Anglo-Saxon world and circumcisions. In the XXth century they believed masturbation was a plague and also believed that snipping would help prevent STDs in soldiers; guys enlisted, got cut, went home and decided "okay, I suppose that's my style now". And instead of admitting that they believed the very vague and sometimes religiously-motivated claims for the procedure's apparent health benefits (all of which can be done by just... I don't know, pulling the skin back and washing there instead of mutilating yourself, or are you this lazy?), they decided to make it a thing and continue their attempts at retroactively justifying their decision with very loose attempts at science. Guys, it's okay, you can just say you like the look, you don't have to invent a medical reason.
But about the movie itself. Teutons is based on a historical novel of the same name by Henryk Sienkiewicz. It was filmed in 1960 - fifteen years after the end of world war two under then-strict communist rule - and is simply better in terms of battle scenes than even the Hollywood productions of today. In that scene I linked, there are a total of around 400 actors, 350 actual horses (that were tranquilized for 2-3 to look dead when they needed to) and, coupled with the rest of the movie, take up the majority of the total of the 18 000 costumes used in the film. These stunts are real, including falling off a galloping horse, but to make sure no accidents happened, the crew enlisted the help of the local community, the military and inmates from a nearby prison to clear the land of any protruding branches or rocks the horses could trip over. It's truly an amazing feat of cinematography. Polish directors of that time were truly a different breed, especially that they did something similar with Pharaoh (1966) and, from a different bag, the duel scene from Deluge (1974) where actors received fencing training and dueled with actual weapons for the scene.
Anyway, the more time I spend writing for Genshin's characters, the more annoyed I get at how neglected they are. You could spend months on end filling thousands of pages of text for just one character, exploring their personality and putting them in various scenarios to showcase their traits, play around with different motifs. For example:
- Use Ganyu to showcase toxic work culture, workaholism and self neglect
- Write about Gorou to examine how the war changed him, from personality traits throughout habits to body language
- Get Ei on board to explain the differences between divine thinking and mortal thinking
- Spend time with Zhongli to show an ancient being that experienced everything and remembers just as much
- Use Eula to tell a story about collective responsibility, social stigma and a classic and very relevant statement on atonement for your group's sins
- Make Child an example of a misleading person - he's nice to his family but he's a sadist in the outside world
- Wriothesley is a great motif study on morality vs law, do something with that
- Aether is a great character to explore, showing a dismissive attitude towards the world around him; he is generally a nice person, but he thinks of everything and everyone as fleeting and doesn't truly feel personal responsibility for relationships and mistakes
- Citlali may be an opportunity to shine the light on a woman doomed for eternal loneliness due to her lifespan and show how it affected and continues to affect her worldview
Genshin barely dips their toes in these ideas, because the word "explore" is twice too big to describe what they're doing. I find it frustrating, increasingly so because adding more and more characters ensures that the majority will remain simply the cardboard cut-outs they are now. It's such a shame. I began writing not only to fill the male reader void, but also to give these characters some more screen time, even if it was in the silly form of reader inserts and smut.
Familial history is not sensed merely as a series of events following one on the heels of another; nay, the living are filled by their ancestors. All history lay unfolded in its breadth, so that all that had once happened was happening again and again. Every kinsman felt himself as living all that one of his kin had once lived into the world, and he did not merely feel himself as possessing the deeds of old: he actually renewed them in his own doings. Any interference with what had been acquired and handed down, even if acquired from raiding or robbery, had to be met with vengeance, because a field of the picture of honour was crushed by the blow. But an openly expressed doubt as to whether that old grandfather really had done what he was said to have done is just as fatal to life, because it tears something out of his living kin; the taunt touches not only the dead man of old, but still more him who now lives through the former's achievements. The insult is a cut into the man himself; it tears a piece out of his brain, making a hole which is gradually filled with ideas of madness.
I'm crying, this video has no right to be this funny😂
Gediminas welcomes guests in Vilnius, 1323
Dominicans -> Franciscans -> Jotvingians -> (Baltic) Prussians -> Messengers of the Pope -> Samogitians -> People of Riga -> Artisans, merchants, farmers -> Knights -> Lizdeika -> Teutonic Order
Cordelia, die Dame mit den Zöpfen (Cordelia, the Lady With the Plaits), 1996 by J.G.Wind - Detailed study for the monumental painting "The Madness of the Teutons"
“Holiness is the very core of life in men, the life that is engrafted in a child on the day when it is truly and spiritually born; and when the father recognises an illegitimate child and admits it fully into the clan, he is said to hallow it.”
