Its kinda funny how in 4.3 we see blade felt very guilty and tormented with what he did to baiheng and how it has been haunting him. He clearly thinks it was a mistake and feels guilty to everyone involved and his master
Meanwhile in 3.6 dan feng/dan heng was like “yeah i regret nothing 10/10 would do it again”
This is definitely one of the places their characters differ fundamentally, Dan Heng does guilt but he does not do regret. Understanding that it was wrong does not, for him, automatically mean that he wouldn't do it again. The fact that it went so badly is probably his more major deterrent but even then I wouldn't put it past him to try and 'fix' his past mistakes by trying again and succeeding if he got truly desperate. Especially since without the Unpardonable Sins he would never have been able to join the Express Crew. He feels that he failed the quintet less in the attempt to revive Baiheng, but more in the fact that it didn't work.
brought to you by all the closeups of those hands in Mortenax Blade's trailer
I do have to preface this by saying that a lot of the similarities are likely to be correlation rather than causation. Dan Heng wears Chinese-style armour and has nature imagery. Mara struck Cloud Knights also wear Chinese-style armour and has nature imagery. It's very obvious around the waist and shoulders especially. But I think the similarities are still enough that at least some of them are intended because I started digging and found things I'd never even noticed before.
Starting with Dan Heng's gauntlet:
Dan Heng's claws are darker in colour and more segmented, and the mara-struck also don't have clawed thumbs, but a resemblance does exist. In addition to this, both have a blade attached to the forearm, similar in shape and placement, though the mara-struck's is a lot bigger. Regular Cloud Knights don't have the forearm blade, only the mara-struck ones do.
I think the above image is also a good demonstration of how similar their colour schemes are. Mara-struck use black, brown, gold and turquoise. Dan Heng uses black, white, gold and turquoise. Most of the brown on mara-struck is their wooden armour, where Dan Heng as the Titan of Earth has metal armour. The more generic armour pieces are also similar, but that can be attributed to the fact that both reference the same culture.
When DHPT came out I literally thought I recognised the Cloudpiercer redesign from somewhere and today I finally figured it out!!!
this is perhaps not the best angle but the blade attached to back arm of mara-struck cloud knights it nearly identical in shape and colour to the reforged Cloudpiercer. Only the carvings and lighting are different.
And the Cloudpiercer similarities don't even end there. The mara-struck elite enemy also wields a spear, one with a strange cavity where the pole meets the blade.
I did a bit of research but was unable to find any real-life spears with this feature. It does seem ill-advised; real-life physics would probably cause the mara-struck's spear to snap if it applied pressure the wrong way. But between both the shape the blade, the pointed back and, and the cavity, it very heavily resembles Cloudpiercer.
There's also the preview of the Demigod of Earth from the original golden epic trailer, which people assumed to be a person wearing a helmet. However, on second glance, while the handing holding the flame is definitely Dan Heng's, the shadow behind it appears to be Terravox. If we do assume it's a helmet, though, it's again similar in outline to the ones mara-struck soldiers have.
compared to the regular Cloud Knight helmet, the mara-struck has jagged spikes around the sides. The taller spikes are also placed similarly to horns, while the shorter ones resemble pointed ears (though admittedly the latter is a trait of several of Star Rail's more fantasy-aligned humanoids).
There are also gold 'veins' in several places on the mara-struck's body:
Which with this particular colour scheme are very reminiscent of DHPT.
It also doesn't help Dan Heng's case that a lot of his visual elements seem intended to resemble roots and branches. Heck, his idle animation and E6 art are more Abundance-coded than anything the actual Abundance users do:
In Amphoreus, there is no equivalent to the Abundance. None of the Primum mobiles ever resulted in a demigod following that Path, maybe due to how sacrifice came to be seen as an ideal for the Chrysos Heirs. Abundance originates from fear of pain leading into outright denial of it. It that sense, Hysilens suits the Abundance better than Dan Heng does, but even she only sees indulgence as a reprieve, not something that will last forever.
Either way, it seems like any Abundance-like traits in Amphoreus are mostly contained within the Permanence. The Earth has an association with nature that we haven't really seen with Permanence outside Amphoreus, only the Abundance. The other missing Paths are Propagation, Voracity and Enigmata. Trailblaze and Finality are technically not included but they're heavily implied to be Phainon and Cyrene's Paths.
So in terms of the missing Paths:
Propagation is known to overlap with the Permanence
Voracity is also connected to the Permanence somehow
Enigmata is born from either the Remembrance or the Erudition
So it would make sense that the Abundance is also derived from another Paths, that being the Permanence, since they share both concepts and cultural inspirations.
However, I do also wonder if the mara-struck similarities point to Dan Heng's personal storyline as well as the overarching lore? DHPT is all about embracing his more inhuman side, giving in to emotion and animal instinct. It's a character development that both overcomes some of his existing flaws and creates new ones. The new ones- selfishness, hubris, ignorance of long-term consequences- those are very much aligned with the Abundance. For me, the clear to direction of Dan Heng's character is to have him stray further and further towards these flaws and then face their consequences, and if the mara-struck elements in his design are, in fact, intentional, then perhaps they're supposed to foreshadow his future actions.
Im actually so astounded by Trailblazer’s idea for the wish. Its so fucking insane, and its SUCH a good idea.
Its the genius of a madman, and would make Anaxagoras proud as hell.
It was such a fucking cool curveball too! Making Aha the leader of the Anti-Destruction Alliance? Something that crazy didnt occur to me at all. I doubt it did to anyone really!
Its an idea only someone like the Trailblazer could come up with- a crazy enough idea it would work. And beyond that?
Its a wish I think only the Trailblazer could make. Not think of, but make and be fulfilled.
Because like. Not only do they have blackmail an IOU, but it’s the Astral Express. Akivili’s children followers. And its the Trailblazer specifically.. who Aha views as the second coming of Akivili.
Aha also fucking hates Nanook, so likeeee.
Its such a fun fucking idea, and narratively makes alot of fucking sense. I love it so much, and hope it ends up happening.
(In all honesty, the way i see the game ending is one of three ways: Silver Wolf wins and uses the wish for the Hunters or Express, Trailblazer wins and goes with this, or the ‘become the permanent aeon of elation’ thing stands, and they pull a Cyrene 2.0 with Evanescia and she wins. Evanescia is the only character i can see the permanent aeonhood thing standing for, and yeah its cause shes pink, sue me. But basically… no matter what with these three outcomes.. i’d say that the Express wins. I mean, an Aha-Evanescia is just.. an Aha thats even more attached to the Trailblazer.. as the Trailblazer themself over as Akivili..)
I think my genuine reaction to hearing said wish was basically to reboot and then laugh as much as Himeko, because oh my fucking god, you mad genius.
"Wait, we're not on the Xianzhou, we can actually have a nuanced discussion about the Abundance without fear of being arrested!" Was not something I'd ever expect to make it into main story dialogue and it honestly makes me pretty concerned (excited) for where their story is going. The fact that the writers are not only acknowledging but highlighting just how biased and extremist the Xianzhou's views are lends credence to the idea that they will destroy themselves by the end of the main story. Or at the least, be forced to seriously rethink how they do things. We are of course going to have to get Abundance TB eventually which has to mean a friendly Abundance faction, and that might even start with Evanescia.
Minor Homeward, He Who Caught the Wind Act II and Minigame Spoilers
BENNETT CRUMBS WOOOOOOOO
First off they actually mentioned Sunspray Summer Resort again, having this as a nice little follow up.
And Venti was even the first one to in the group to ask how Bennett has been doing. Oh, I'm weak. (Reminder to myself to write about their relationship sometime, it is incredibly sweet)
A whole 7 months afterwards, we finally got confirmation on the status of Bennett's luck. I guess everyone's guesses were right. Regardless of the result, I'm really glad they just went ahead and said it. I was a little worried they would have left it ambiguous and thus never show him for more than a few lines for the rest of time.
Him missing the Asha though, awww. Which actually has me questioning, have the Asha ever tried to leave the resort? We know Saurians actually can leave Natlan, since we had that Iktomisaur around. So I hope it's possible for the Asha as well. I think it's also notable that he misses the Asha in general, not just his bio parents (especially considering they aren't around anymore)
Cyrus being called dad was not on my bingo card. Besides being really sweet, it's also really interesting to me. We actually know Cyrus can't be any of the 7 dads Bennett mentioned before as they are all "childless, old adventurers", and Cyrus has Marjorie as a daughter.
Plus, previously Bennett has never referred to Cyrus on screen as dad.
I wonder what brought this change.
For the first time since 1.0, Bennett and Fischl finally appeared on screen at the same time and had a conversation. WOOOOOOOO (And more fuel for my belief Bennett can understand her without Oz translating) (I will say I have no idea why everyone spawned in like that)
Now onto some more minor stuff with the Echoes of Memory minigame.
Bennett told Diona about Natlan, my heart. With this, Sunspray Summer Resort having him mention giving a gift to her, and their short interaction in Paralogism, I'm guessing these two actually do interact with each other to some regular degree.
And guess who finally appeared hanging out with Bennett for the first time since Windblume's Breath teased it three years ago. Implications that they've been interacting since then too, just off-screen.
slowly going insane because why have I had multiple people on the internet tell me that Dan Heng wouldn’t go to the lengths Dan Feng went to in order to protect the express crew. Like was that not literally the crux of his arc in 3.6.
this could not be less ambiguous if it tried! And it does try because the camera very intentionally does successive shots of Dan Feng and Dan Heng with the exact same framing!!
I truly do not understand. Do people just. Feel better believing that he’s a morally sound person? Because he is so clearly not. He was willing to kill Terravox for the coreflame that would let him bring the Trailblazer back, and even when it didn’t come to that, he used the clearly very volatile power that once turned his friend into a monster to uphold his side of the bargain.
dan heng has a lot of funny little habits, like the way he sits and how all of his chosen outfits must feature a bunch of useless zippers, but one of the most trifling is the way he holds softcover books:
i like the interpretation that it’s because xz literature is primarily inscribed onto scrolls, which are naturally rolled up at one end. but i still think it’s funny that a guy who so dearly loves reading and record-keeping would treat a book like this, because i know so many avid readers who would be horrified by it LMAO
somehow it's been over a year and no one's brought this up but
Dan Heng likes retro games! To the point where he brought some to Amphoreus- explicitly for his own entertainment, too, since he doesn't think they're the kind the Trailblazer likes.
And I think to a point the joke is that he's old and like old things. But at the same time, there's no way Welt didn't have a hand in this. Like imagine him telling Dan Heng "it's dangerous to go alone" and then he gets Dan Heng to play the game and he likes it!
Also Dan Heng developing his own hobbies and interests is neat and cool and I think he needs to do it even more.
under-appreciated character trait: dan heng’s insane competitive streak.
i’ll give march credit where it’s due; she’s SO emotionally intuitive— because i, for one, did not expect dan heng to react so unhesitatingly when presented with a card game modeled after what was an extremely traumatic place for him. not only that, he literally scared people with how into it he was, so much so that he felt guilty afterward:
then, he takes a similarly ambitious stance during the chimera event:
and seal slammers was just. something else entirely. first he chased a guy from twilight courtyard back to the baths, and when confronted with a seal that was more or less actively triggering traumatic memories, he still kept playing. then he literally refused to take the sunglasses off; he wouldn’t even let tb borrow them!!!! and look at his expression akdhsjh
there’s also the fate event, which was funny for a lot of reasons. his whole reason for participating was basically chalked up to “local nerd studies strange thing”, but god he’s so cocky when he wants to be, nobody can convince me he isn’t actually enjoying himself. throwback to when he tried to pretend he watched mr. reca’s movies because they were “educational”
also, i think this is more of a nod to the ambiguity of his full power, seeing as still it’s a game based in physical combat, although it could also be talking about him being competitive? either way, this line from tb is so real. he’s not even asking if he SHOULD hold back, he’s just asking how much…. i know this event isn’t meant to be taken seriously, but i don’t think that negates the interactions to come of it. so. here
uhh more to come probably, this is just off the top of my head. i just think it’s silly that people view him as indifferent towards literally everything except for life-or-death situations!!! he’s got so much depth and i would like to see this side of him more often. cause it’s really funny
excellent we're adding this to the list of Traits Dan Heng Has That A Political Leader Should Not Have:
really competitive
very stubborn
emotionally driven
will not put his people before his friends
will not put the greater good before his friends
stabs first and thinks later when pressured
convinces himself he is a pacifist (he is not)
ignores difficult decisions until he has no choice but to acknowledge them
rarely gives value to his personal wellbeing when making said decisions
literally prophesied to 'dig his own grave' (granted the Vidyadhara could not have known this)
immortal + stupidly powerful therefore unlikely to be able to relate to the everyday person
Genuinely. How did he end up in a position of leadership. I don't know I just really have trouble believing that Long created the high elders to lead the Vidyadhara when THEY made one of them like this.
Thinkin about how utterly terrifying the "execution" of Dan Feng must have been to the other high elders and those loyal to them.
From the perspective of the other high elders (not counting Glaciator Marum since she seems to have absolute power over the Fanghu) regardless of Dan Feng's guilt, they just witnessed their equal, who arguably had more power due to his fame as a war hero, get absolutely obliterated by his political rivals with no recourse from the surrounding judicial system. He was tortured, his death and rebirth were heavily tampered with, and then his "reincarnation" was stripped of his legal rights.
For all intents and purposes, this was the Xianzhou natives telling the Vidyadhara that their special protections meant nothing if their enemies played the game right. The legal protections that they had been given to self-govern after the evacuation of their home world meant nothing. The alliance bound them to their plaguemarks as tools, and tools are disposable.
To their people, or specifically the more traditional vidyadhara, it must have been even worse. It's established that the high elders were worshiped, so to go from the grief of their aeon seeming to have abandoned them to the horror of one of their gods being desecrated so badly. It's no wonder that all of the records concerning Imbibator Lunae's imprisonment are so heavily redacted; they could spark civil war if they were ever leaked to the public.
Through that line of thinking, it makes perfect sense why there are so many people targeting poor Bailu. She is, for all intents and purposes a false god, and not even a very convincing one. We know that every iteration of the high elders look like their predecessors, so honestly one has to wonder what the preceptors were even thinking, trying to sell her as Imbibator Lunae even if she does have a chunk of Dan Feng's power (press x to doubt).
I just can't wrap my head around the kind of mass panic his fall must have caused. Their divine, very immortal, guardian was just gone one day. No more ceremonies, no more spells, no more dragon. Suddenly, there was just thin air between their entire race and a now obviously uncaring system of government and law. They are still actively staring down the barrel of extinction.
It also makes me think about how the vidyadhara elders tried to keep up with Imbibitor Lunae's wards around the ambrosial arbor and just flat out failed. Like how many other less important things fell to the wayside because there was no one to tend to them? How many chunks of the Loufu Vidyadhara's culture are lost now because their leader is just gone.
iirc didn't Jing Yuan literally have to ban free speech about the Sedition because it almost did cause civil war? I think enough people, even non-Vidyadhara, saw Dan Feng as a hero that they simply didn't believe he'd betray the Xianzhou, and were willing to riot on his behalf.
Ah, yes, 3.8... because Penacony hadn't been confusing enough the first time around.
Look. I'm not the dude to read all the texts, so I'm definitely behind when it comes to lore and I found Penacony not the easiest to understand the first time around, and by now it's been so long I've forgotten most of it, so that surely didn't help, but damn, they certainly didn't make it easier with this new update.
I think they tried, they spend a lot of time telling the player what was going on but the mechanics behind all the paths are so vague that as a player I'm just like "uh, okay" when a character goes like "it can't be this path because XY" or "we can only do this much because the ability to AB can only do that and this".
First of all: I don't trust the Dahlia as far as I can throw her. During all of this I'm still not convinced she didn't manipulate the Traiblazer's recollection or at least his understanding of the situation or implant something weird. So really, I had difficulties believing anything I was seeing during all of this because my brain always went back to: what does she want him to think? How is she profiting from this? What lies do her words hide?
So I'm still taking the things we learnt with a grain of salt but let's assume, they're correct for now and there weren't any grave misunderstanding planted on purpose:
The Stellarons were made by Xipe? (I mean, I did think it weird that destruction fulfills wishes...) But the Antimatter Legion appears wherever a Stellaron appears? What beef does Destruction have with Harmony?
The Trailblazer just kind of changed time... he didn't even turn it back, he just changed it fundamentally... okay... Terminus... okay... I did read some theories but, damn.
I liked Firefly better this time around. I didn't dislike her the first time we met her in Penacony but I remember feeling nothing when she was speared by the monster. She really didn't grow on me as much as she did on others and I didn't believe she was dead in the first place.
Now I genuinely think Firefly is sweet. I liked the part where she said that she is a normal girl. Because at the end of a day what separates a normal person from somebody "special"?
They really do play with the idea of her liking the Trailblazer a lot. I'm really curious to see more of their relationship. The Trailblazer has just accepted the Stellaron Hunters are going to fuck around with his memories and move him like a pawn, lol, dude didn't even flinch. Like, oh, yes, just another Sunday. Pun intended.
The situation is so weird though, because I'm sure the Trailblazer agreed to this, but WHY does he need to not remember for this story to work out? Does it have something to do with "the other Trailblazer"? I'm really curious.
I'm still trying to work out the logistics behind Trailblazer, Terminus and Elio because they all seem interconnected.
VERY interesting to figure out that Sunday who wasn't happy with Order or Harmony was about to do his own thing but that that path would have been Trailblaze adjacent!
The designs of the characters in HSR tend to be quite weird, especially the female designs but despite wishing a few things were a bit different, I quite like the Dahlia's design.
(Also lol @ blackswan for always attracting dangerous women. First Archeron, then Evernight and now we have the Dahlia? That's quite the type she attracts...)
And what on earth would have changed if the Traiblazer had remembered this on Amphoreus? Why would Destruction gaze at him? I don't see it! Somebody needs to sit down with me and explain what's going on like they're talking to a three year old.
Hyacine: Kawaii Culture, Lisa Frank, and Non-Performative Femininity
In celebration of me finally becoming a Hyacine haver on her re-run, I wanted to write something about my Amphoreus best girl, the cutest pink cupcake of the Chrysos Heirs!
Namely, I wanted to discuss the things I greatly appreciate about Hyacine's target audience, the philosophy behind her design, and the ways in which her design reinforces both her role in the story and the themes of her character arc.
So, without further ado, a look at what makes Hyacine so unique and special (to me):
The long and short of it is: Hyacine is a female character designed for a female audience.
It's rare, but it happens!
As part of Hoyo's standard design philosophy, there is a largely unspoken but very obvious general rule: You should design your female characters to appeal to a male audience, and you should design your male characters to appeal to a female audience.
The assumption on Hoyo's design and marketing teams' parts is that male players pull for female characters more than women do, while female players pull for male characters more than men do. Whether or not this is true doesn't even matter (meta usefulness is actually the strongest predictor of who will sell in a gacha game, but that's another story); the assumption that this statement is true is the driving principle behind a majority of Hoyo's design choices when it comes to their characters--particularly their female characters.
Hoyo has a very consistent set of limitations for female characters, which typically boils down to some combination of the following: (Just a few examples here, by the way, this is not exhaustive.)
Bare shoulders, back, or legs--designed to highlight female character model proportions and expose skin to tantalize.
Short dress, mini skirt, or micro shorts--pants are not allowed because Reasons™.
Purple is fine for women to wear, but pink is not; pink and most pastel colors are limited to hair (about 80% of pink on HSR's and Genshin's female designs is pink hair), eyes, and the rare accessory or trim because apparently Hoyo thinks their modern male playerbase will combust if forced to play a female character who actually wears a primarily pink outfit.
Every woman must wear high heels or bare feet (for that foot fetish appeal). They literally warped their entire tall female models in multiple games around the idea that "woman = high heels." The exceptions to this are so rare as to be negligible.
Large breasts and (often) visible cleavage, or conversely, very small breasts with an "immature"/"young" personality because (some very gross) players can associate flat chests with prepubescence and youth in girls.
Design elements and accessories that deliberately draw the player's eye to erogenous zones. Female characters' designs will often include arrow/V-shapes, dangling elements, or have angled patterns added to their clothing to intentionally draw the eye visually across the design to their chests or hips, for example:
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Yelan's design, by the way, just that it's a perfect example of a common Hoyo design trend where the lines and angles of the outfit are very deliberately placed to draw the eye to specific zones the designers want to emphasize. Hell, they even added a convenient moving target with the tassel placed directly in Yelan's cleavage here, to specifically draw your eyes there when the tassel moves. This is Male Gaze Design 101 and I ain't judging because I like everything about Yelan other than that fuckass bob.
Women will always be shorter than men. There is no exception; every female model will be shorter than the corresponding male model of the same height group, at all times.
Aventurine is taller than Jade, dawg, make it make sense.
Animations will deliberately highlight specific elements of female anatomy in ways that male character animations rarely (although not never; Mydei you will always be famous!) do:
Because I can already hear the clamoring "what about"s, some disclaimers:
"Wearing a revealing outfit isn't automatically fanservice aimed at men! Women showing skin are just existing!" Real women can show as much skin as they want without intentionally attempting to appeal to men because real women have agency and control over their bodies and their clothing choices. Female characters in gacha games do not have agency and their design choices are always, always at the whims of their designers, who are often male. A woman wearing a revealing outfit in real life is probably freely expressing herself as she chooses--a female character in a gacha game wearing a revealing outfit is always performing fanservice, largely for an assumed-male audience, because 1) all gacha characters are intentionally designed to be fanservice for someone, and 2) that outfit was obviously meant to make her appealing enough that players attracted to women would spend real money to buy her.
"Having big breasts doesn't automatically mean being sexualized; real women have big breasts all the time!" I absolutely agree that real women's bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and it isn't fair that people sexualize the very existence of breasts. But if you genuinely believe that a female character in a gacha game has big boobs or a skintight fit over her well-shaped backside because Hoyoverse's game developers had a heartfelt and entirely pure desire to create "authentic depictions of women's varied body types" in their games (which have publicly courted an incel audience), and not, because, you know, they have a "big booba = sexy" design mindset, you should probably log off the internet and go outside, because you may actually be so naive you're not safe in online spaces.
"It's misogynistic to call female character designs fanservice!" This statement only holds true if you actually believe there's something morally wrong with fanservice, but uhhhh we're not in the 1600s anymore; the original 13 colonies called and want their Puritans back. Acknowledging that literally all of Hoyo's character designs are based on some form of fanservice will not kill you, I promise. There isn't anything inherently wrong with fanservice (except when fanservicey designs undermine the character's themes--see Genshin's Lauma for a recent example, where Nod-Krai's story tells us one of Lauma's main struggles is having to constantly appeal to others and how harmful this objectification has been to her... and then the game invites us to goon over her so that she's objectified by us players too). Fanservice is how Hoyo makes their money; it is literally what keeps the games running. It would be very silly of me to complain about the female characters being designed for a male audience while praising the male characters for being designed with a female audience in mind; and it is equally silly when people try to gaslight others into believing that the obviously fanservice-focused designs of most of Hoyo's female characters aren't, you know, obviously fanservice.
Anyway, all of that was just to establish a general truth:
A vast majority of Hoyo's female characters are designed to have widespread appeal to men.
And... then there's Hyacine, whose design is 100% intended to appeal to women first.
This one's for the girlies.
Hyacine's design is focused on a brand of "hyper-femininity" (/positive) that privileges aesthetics almost exclusively culturally associated with girlhood: glittery rainbows, ribbons, unicorns, puffy fluffy hair ties, cutesy pink drill curls, and so on. It's a design that insists on capturing pure and condensed (socially determined) "girlishness" and throwing it at you all at once. It's the Barbie aisle. It's My Little Pony. It's schoolgirls clutching their stuffed animals. It's "Let's play imaginary princess angels!" It's Chibiusa and Helios. It's Pretty Cure and Cardcaptor Sakura.
It is--I'll elaborate in a minute--very literally Lisa Frank.
Hyacine's design rejects the limitations imposed by the stereotypical male gaze by exceeding the boundaries of the femininity that heterosexual men are normally (socially conditioned to be) comfortable engaging with on their own.
Again, before the "what about"s start: Yes, of course there are plenty of real men also into hyper-feminine "cutesy" girls. I'm sure that there are whole groups of guys out there (not to even mention the sapphic women) who would kill for a bubblegum princess girlfriend, who would be willing to move into a house painted all pink simply because that house had a woman in it. If a character is female, she will appeal to some men in some way; this is just a statement of fact.
But in terms of Hoyo's overall marketing strategies, "rainbows and unicorns" are NOT what Hoyo normally considers appealing to men.
In the developers' internal "things that our male players will shell out money for" list, pink drill curls and ponies, bells and ribbons, sunshine and flowers are almost certainly not high up.
But why? If heterosexual men supposedly like women so much, shouldn't hallmarks of femininity--the things societies deem most stereotypically feminine in modern times--be most appealing to men?
This where design meets the strange social phenomenon in which femininity is generally appealing to heterosexual men only so long as it is performed to men's expectations and tastes.
Yes, also, I know: Not all men. Please understand that everything I'm saying in this post is broad, generalized statements based on how society (generally my own U.S. society) views men and women, as a single tumblr post could never hope to encompass the dizzying spectrum of gender identities, perceptions of masculinity/femininity, and personal attractions across every single person on the internet.
By its most common current definition, the term "performative femininity" refers to a type of femininity that is not self-driven but an act that a woman feels forced to put on in order to fit society's often rigid gender expectations. (Also to clarify: All gender is essentially performance, as "gender" itself is a combination of social expectations and traditions, but in this case I'm speaking only about feeling compelled to perform in a specific manner, rather than living by one's own desires.) This may mean a woman feeling like she has to wear make-up for others to consider her good-looking (as opposed to wearing it just because she personally likes it) or that she has to wear a dress to work or special events even if she normally dislikes wearing dresses. It can mean a woman feeling like she needs to be quiet when a man is talking because that's the "polite" (read: womanly) thing to do, even if she really wants to speak up instead. It can even be the tendency of women to pit themselves against their compatriots ("Oh, I'm prettier than her") instead of uplifting fellow women, and so on.
When it comes to character designs, it is essential to remember again that fictional characters are not people, and therefore they have no agency and no ability to choose what degree of femininity (or not) to perform for themselves--their designers are always and totally in charge of that decision. This means that, in the case of a vast majority of female characters in Hoyo's gacha games, feminine traits are present in their design largely to perform the exact level (and only the exact level) of femininity that Hoyo assumes will actually appeal to their general male audience.
Femininity in Hoyo's female character designs is often limited to the scope of what Hoyo's marketing research tells them men like to see when they look at women, rather than what women might choose for their own designs. Feminine elements are allowed in these character designs only so long as the assumed heterosexual male audience can interpret those elements as for men, deliberately designed to appeal to them. If something is socially perceived as "for girls only," it's almost uniformly banned from the female character designs: There's no glittery princess tiaras. There's no purses. There's no plushie keychains. There's no childhood-rekindling ribbon-coated cupcake dresses (Navia almost made it there though, she almost made it).
There's nothing in the vast majority of Hoyo's female character designs that would challenge the (often delicate) sensibilities of the general male playerbase.
But when it came to Hyacine, Hoyo really said "You're going to have that rainbow unicorn plastered on your screen 24/7 in Amphoreus's meta and you're going to like it."
As a fictional character, of course Hyacine is never in charge of her own appearance, but to the extent that her design exceeds the levels of femininity that heterosexual men typically want to engage with, Hyacine's design evokes a very familiar--and very historical--brand of non-performative femininity (or, rather, femininity performing only for itself): Kawaii Culture.
Pictured above: Little Ica's ancestral lineage.
While "Kawaii Culture" got its start in Japan and is, in many ways, shaped specifically by Japanese social circumstances of the 1970s to the 1990s, the core concepts and styles--and the underlying philosophy--of Kawaii Culture have since been exported globally, with corresponding movements and fashion trends in basically every other society in the world, including in China with things like 萌 (meng) culture and "girly pop" movements in the U.S.
Although the history of Kawaii Culture is too long and complicated for me to fully summarize, its first solid spark was a form of minor protest when teenagers in Japan in the 1970s began using personalized "cutesy" writing styles for schoolwork, defying the expectations and demands for sterile professionalism placed on them by rigid education and career systems. "Cute" handwriting became a form of rebellious self-expression that privileged women's styles over conforming to rules dictating "proper" behavior. The movement in particular began to pick up steam with the late-1970s launch of Sanrio's Hello Kitty characters, whose innocent charm--designed specifically to appeal to both children and adults--evoked a very specific feeling: Things that are "soft," "weak," and "dependent" have a unique brand of cuteness. The etymological roots of the Japanese words "kawaii" (cute) and "kawaisou" (pitiful) are the same. That is: helpless things are cute because they are helpless.
Contrary to expectations that these "helpless," adorable things (read as: anything feminine) might be disenfranchised or at the mercy of those more powerful, this cuteness-from-helplessness combination actually became a political tool for young women in Japan in the 1970s: By embracing icons of childishness, things associated with "girlhood," and the "helplessness of a little child" instead of adopting symbols of adult life (professional appearance, calm and respectful behavior, etc.), Japanese young women protested the intense and highly gendered expectations placed on them by their staunchly patriarchal society.
"Kawaii" in women could be perceived as pushing back against the demand that all women "grow up" in a timely manner so they can become either working women or wives and mothers, beholden to the whims of the men in their lives and expected to behave in very structured ways to support their families--instead, young women promoting this sub-culture sometimes sought to delay and reject their country's "adult" social pressures by embracing childhood and girlishness instead. By refusing to perform to the expectations of "the system" (read as: men), Japanese young women of the 1970s and 80s sometimes used "cuteness" to rebel against attempts to force women to conform to social expectations and repress self-expression.
Although not quite to the same extent and lacking the specific social context of Japan, rises in "girly" fashion trends and the popularity of feminine aesthetics and merchandise have often corresponded with women's power movements across the globe. The revival of Hello Kitty and its mass popularity in the U.S. in the 1990s corresponded well with the heyday of third-wave feminism, which prioritized solidarity among women, emphasized intersectionality, and advocated for celebrating "Girl Power," making things that were "girly"--like Hello Kitty, Barbie, girl pop groups like the Spice Girls and Destiny's Child--trendy and centered in the lives of young girls. It was the age of the glittery gel pen, the sparkly butterfly hairclips, and the platform sneaker.
And it was also the age of Lisa Frank.
First, while there's certainly much to be said about the controversies that occurred within the Lisa Frank company in the late 1990s, I won't get into that here; I'm really interested only in the message the company sold and promoted publicly for young girls--namely that "All things girly are gorgeous," and that not only should one celebrate girlhood but that one should celebrate it to the extreme, embracing not demure or quietly feminine designs but loud, aggressively feminine designs.
If color is good, then using the rainbow with every color at once is even better. If bright tones are awesome, then we will aim for eye-searing neon. If stars and clouds and bubbles and rainbows are what the girlies are buying right now, then fill the whole sky with them. If cute baby animals and unicorns and pegasi are what girls like, then slap that shit on every item a young girl could possibly need, from her hair bows to her color-changing sneakers, from her school notebooks to her stuffed toys.
Lisa Frank's style has been described as "the purest, uncut concentrations of girliness known to girlkind."
While I won't make any claims suggesting Lisa Frank was an active feminist warrior determined to spread a pro-feminine message (perhaps to combat the 1990s movements that privileged grunge and violent moody boys, old-school jocks and Tony Hawk), that is part of the ultimate effect the brand achieved: Lisa Frank artwork gave young U.S. girls in the 1990s a hyper-feminine "culture" to rally around, in the same way that boys were (still are) encouraged to rally around loving sports teams. For all the behind-the-scenes failures of the company, the social effect was that Lisa Frank's merchandise made publicly announcing one's love of "all things girly" the go-to choice for many young U.S. girls in the 90s.
Like the Kawaii trend across the sea, in Lisa Frank's aesthetic, the helpless--cute baby seals, leopard cubs, puppies and kitties--becomes the privileged, proud and unrepentantly "feminine," refusing to apologize for its own boldness. (Do I actually like this aesthetic, looking back at it as a grown adult? Frankly, it's garish. But to little girls who often experienced being laughed at by little boys for liking anything perceived as "girly"? This shit was gold.)
And here's where it gets interesting: While the Kawaii Culture that would go on to inspire Hyacine's design got its start in the East and migrated to the West through cultural transmission, Lisa Frank's aesthetics have also traveled backwards since the 1990s, creating the chain of inspiration (often through internet memes) that would later obviously influence the development of Hyacine in China as well, in a sort of "globalization of cuteness" loop.
Although I certainly won't go so far as to say any particular artwork was the direct inspiration for Hyacine's design or animations, it's clear that the original 1990s' trend of combining rainbows-stars-bubbles-unicorns-glitter (which regained popularity the 2020s on the global internet after artists nostalgically began imitating elements of Lisa Frank's style, such as in some works of Frutiger Aero art)--
--formed a maximalist "hopecore" aesthetic that had obvious influence on Hyacine's design:
If this girl had been born in the 90s her color palette would have been neon, I know it.
While the influence of "kawaii" on Hyacine's external design is clear, the most important thing in all of this is that "uncut concentrations of girlishness" aren't just inspirations for Hyacine's appearance--the philosophies behind Kawaii Culture directly inform Hyacine's role in the story and the themes of her character arc.
"With Just a Glimmer of Light"
Although we are introduced to Hyacine in 3.2, her character quest and the bulk of her screentime is in 3.3, where our establishing scene already paints Hyacine as different not only from others in general but even from her fellow Chrysos Heirs.
When Anaxa asks his class "What is your dream?", he's displeased by the answers that Phainon and Castorice give--Phainon's wish is vague and therefore meaningless (he wants to protect the people he cares for, but doesn't even list a single actual person who means anything to him), while Castorice's wish is unfortunately short-sighted (she wants to rid the world of the sorrow of "death," but has no real concept of what a world without death would even be like).
Meanwhile, Hyacine's answer establishes her as an emblem of kindness, modesty, and sympathy:
On the surface, this first scene could be seen as establishing Hyacine as a reductive stereotype of femininity played perfectly straight: She's not a warrior, she's the healer, a supporter, a caretaker--all roles to which women (especially women in fantasy media!) have been constantly and continually pigeonholed. It's tempting to start viewing her already as the "heart of the party" healer archetype whose overflowing gentleness and warmth is met with equally overflowing misplaced optimism and naivete, sweet as sugar but vapid as an empty platitude.
Yet Hyacine's answer for the future is the only one that Anaxa accepts. The only one that he calls interesting, because it possesses what both Phainon's and Castorice's wishes lack: A view of their fairy-tale-hero's-journey world that has its feet on the ground, instead of a head in the clouds.
Hyacine's dream speaks to the reality of their world: 99% of the people in Amphoreus will never be heroes. They will live, and die, in obscurity.
With her answer, Hyacine's very first establishing scene challenges the viewer to consider what "true" heroism is: Does Phainon's desire to protect those he personally cares about carry the same weight as Hyacine's aspiration to protect the lives and preserve the stories of the countless unsung people who lived and died in the course of Amphoreus's fairy tale epic?
Much later in Amphoreus's plot, this exact idea will be echoed to form the basis of Cryene's ultimate story of sacrifice and love, where the conclusion of Amphoreus's arc will insist on the power of all people, not just on Chrysos Heirs, and where preserving the memory of Amphoreus itself will require not just immortalizing its heroes but all its life--every being worth remembering, down to the tiniest chimera.
The grand story of selfless love for humanity that Cyrene will unravel in 3.7?
Hyacine already had that answer in 3.3.
It's true this first major scene may lure some viewers into over-simplification: "Look at Hyacine, she's the pretty princess whose biggest character trait is kindness and empathy, because oh wow, sooo ground-breaking, she's a girly girl and those are the traits of every girly girl!"
But Hyacine's candy-coated optimism, even from this first scene, is tinged with a very particular brand of realism that her fellow young Chrysos Heirs Phainon and Castorice are lacking. Phainon is still envisioning that "flawless" hero who can protect everyone without ever making mistakes, while Castorice dreams of a neverending world so removed from their human reality that Anaxa ironically says he "weeps" for it.
Hyacine's view of Amphoreus's "fairy tale world" recognizes (but does not tolerate) the sad reality of their turbulent times: Not all stories are created equal and not everyone will get to survive to the end of the legend. Her dream tells us that Hyacine understands a core truth about existence: No matter how rare they are, the world will always privilege heroes over everyday "mortals," and some lives will always been seen as more worthy. The real world isn't a fair or gentle place...
Yet Hyacine says: Let me make it one.
Amphoreus's male heroes, namely Phainon and Mydei, both represent a very stereotypical social alignment of masculinity with destruction, conflict, and bloodlust, and in embracing violence as the medium for their heroism, they both reinforce a specific worldview that suffering is essential to the human experience. Mydei repeats multiple times "Strife is the agony this world needs," aligned to his belief that the only way to end conflict is through conflict--that peace can only be obtained through war.
Yet through Hyacine's story (and later Cyrene's), the game asks us to directly confront that worldview, to question for ourselves whether conflict, violence, and the slaughter ever-present in heroic epics really can create a peaceful world in the end. Can actions born of suffering really bring about a happy ending?
Phainon's collapse into Flame Reaver and his ultimate passing of the "Deliverer" title to the Trailblazer reinforces this question even further: Can you bring pain to the world and still call yourself a hero?
At the core of this question is a philosophical debate that has been raging in the real world since the Classical Era or even before, the concept that things can only be defined by the existence of their opposites: We know what hot is because we've felt cold, we understand what light is because we have experienced darkness, we know wet because we have felt dry. Ergo, the conclusion many people draw is: In order to understand happiness, you must first experience hardship.
In embracing this mindset, people often take on a perspective that makes suffering into something noble. Pain builds character, isn't that what they say? If strife and hardship are inevitable in this life, then let's accept them as learning experiences that help us grow, that make the high points of our lives that much sweeter.
But this philosophy is ultimately one that risks breeding apathy, because if suffering is inevitable in life, then what is the point of trying to eradicate it? If we need conflict in order to keep feeling joy, then some hardships in the world will just have to be over-looked, won't they? Some losses are "acceptable." If pain is a core part of human existence, then isn't evil also a core part of human existence? And doesn't history show that it's our human default to reduce ourselves to war and thieving and backstabbing over and over and over?
This philosophy inevitably descends into a deeply pessimistic view of both the world and humanity, one that assumes that suffering, greed, and all things awful in the world are inherent parts of life, perhaps even more inherent to humanity than goodness and peace. This view, despite (or perhaps because of) its pessimism, is perceived by many people as a "pragmatic" or "realistic" view of the world.
Certainly, this is the conclusion that Seliose reached at the end of her long journey:
We're told, as we slowly unravel Seliose's mysterious past throughout 3.3, that she originally had an overwhelming love for humanity, that she was naive because she genuinely believed that defeating Aquila would magically solve the conflicts between the Skyfolk's warring clans.
But soon enough, this naivete turns into disillusionment and bitterness--Seliose, seeing the depths to which the Skyfolk were willing to sink, seeing humanity's cowardice and selfishness, turns her back on humanity, losing all hope for the future of her people.
Ultimately, Seliose, fused with Aquila, becomes a vengeful god who enacts divine retribution on the Skyfolk because she has come to believe that all humanity is irredeemable--that is, that evil is the essence of humanity and that human life itself has no meaning because nothing good will ever come of mortals.
Before I go any further, I want to clarify that I absolutely do not believe that there's an inherent link between being biologically male and committing more violence than others, or that you can empirically map the concepts of "kindness" versus "aggression" to the social spectrum of "femininity" and "masculinity" at all, but... there is a cultural bias that draws these associations implicitly.
Outdated and rigid gender norms in many societies paint men and boys as "aggressive" while expecting gentleness of women. "Boys will be boys" people say, when their sons get into fist fights on the playground or turn out to be bullies. Parents sign their boy children up for martial arts to "get their anger out" while signing their girl children up for the same classes to "learn how to defend themselves." Our heroes in video games are strapping men wielding giant battle axes and robed in the skins of their animal kills, while our healers are delicate elvish waif women in robes. War and violence are seen as the arenas of men, while it is assumed that women are somehow universally prone to being mediators who will shy from conflict. Even in feminist circles, there's a strongly held belief that a globe run by women would be far more peaceful than our current world still primarily run by men.
And accompanying this notion that aggression and bloodshed are the domains of men is the equal notion that darkness and despair are the domains of stoic, long-suffering men too, men who just have a so-much-more realistic view of the world than sweet, inexperienced women who haven't "seen the horrors" the way men can. (I hope you can feel my eye roll.) In this way, even concepts as dissociated from gender as plain old "optimism" and "hope" become the hallmarks of femininity, of childishness (and we all know, anything perceived as childish or "innocent" is basically treated as synonymous with "feminine" in many misogynist minds).
"Everyone cheer up!" - Go-to dialogue for the token female teammate in every series ever written by a man.
In an example of true misogyny, worldviews that prioritize kindness, generosity, hope, and belief in the inherent goodness of humanity are socially associated with women--and then immediately dismissed as naive, immature, or unrealistic in comparison to stereotypically masculine grim-dark "edgelord" perceptions of the future of humanity as a moral wasteland.
Despite featuring two women, Hyacine's story quest actually centers around this exact conflict and perception.
Throughout the wind-up of the quest, Seliose is repeatedly associated with conventional symbols of masculinity. She's described as a "knight" and a "god" whom the ordinary Skyfolk have no chance of physically standing up against. She is revered as a "hero of the epics," like any other Chosen One cliche male hero whose strengths lie entirely in martial prowess. While the quest initially describes Seliose as loving and beneficent toward humanity (traits Hoyo consistently assigns to their female characters, see Cyrene/Elysia), this is quickly lost behind the cold anger and violence of stereotypically masculine tyrant kings.
The story even doubles down on this alliance between Seliose's way of thinking and the vengeful, pessimistic worldview of many modern male hero figures, when, after revealing that she straight up murdered her entire civilization, Phainon goes:
Bruh please??? She just killed thousands of people by boiling them alive in molten metal!! From one fratricidal serial killer to another...
Even for Hyacine, Seliose is a larger-than-life heroic figure symbolic of the Flame-Chase Journey itself, to whom Hyacine obviously feels she cannot measure up. Over and over again, the game drives the dichotomy between Seliose and Hyacine home, with numerous NPCs and even Cipher comparing the two of them not just mentally but also physically:
Yet even while recognizing the gulf in power and authority between herself and Seliose, Hyacine never falters. She states that even if she may not have the individual strength to contend with a titan, she nevertheless is determined to redefine her people's story on her own terms.
Even as Hyacine discovers that everything she ever believed is a lie, that her own ancestor fed the future with falsehoods to cowardly save her own life, that her people were barbarous and prejudice enough to turn on each other in internal slaughter, and the heroine she was told her whole life she should aim to imitate had abandoned mortals entirely out of a fatalistic view that assumed nothing in humanity was worth saving, Hyacine still refused to give in to despair the way Seliose did, refused to waver in her love for the world and her faith that humanity can heal, grow, and improve.
She turns pinker and pinker the more and more powerful her weaponized positivity becomes.
When Seliose's towering violence (conforming to some extent with the masculine definition of "legendary warrior") clashes with Hyacine's empathy (opposing the masculine), Star Rail's writers had the opportunity to take a dark and edgy route--to crush Hyacine's eternal optimism with the idea that "saving the day isn't always possible" in the name of "realism." They had the chance to dismiss Hyacine's idealism as naive and childish, to tell us kindness has no place in the war-torn playgrounds of manly Greek war epics, or to tell us that "positivity lacks substance" in comparison to things like Mydei's grim determination to fight to the death against the Black Tide.
But that's not what the writers did. From the very start, they tell us Hyacine is unique and strong not in spite of her kindness but because of it:
Despite its name and relevance to the entire Flame-Chase Journey, "Proi Proi" is not Phainon's theme; it's not even really "all the Flame Chasers'" theme, given that it's never played again anywhere else in the game. It's placed at the climax of Hyacine's portion of the story because its message of defiance against a destiny that separates people into "strong" and "weak" is the pinnacle of Hyacine's theme:
The rebellion at the heart of "Kawaii Culture" doesn't just pervade Hyacine's external design--it is written into the very core of her character.
She isn't Phainon who can pull a god from the sky or Mydei who can tear a man's throat out with his bare hands. She is weak, Hoyo tells us. She is sweet, she is generous, she picks kindness when no one else will. She is the pitiful creature whose endearing, child-like vulnerability shouts in your face: "Isn't she cute?"
But in the context of Amphoreus's story, where the lives of everyone in their world dance in the palm of a single man, that exact cuteness is also an incredibly powerful refusal to conform to the masculine forces that dominate her world. Hyacine's rainbow skies push back against the all-devouring darkness of the Black Tide. Her active choice to see the goodness in everyone (even Flame Reaver) stands in direct opposition to Lygus's worship of destruction and Irontomb's wrath. Her intensely affirming views of the value of human lives absolutely rejects Zandar's casual cruelty.
As her world collapses around her and the Chrysos Heirs waver in their fears of whether Amphoreus can even be saved, Hyacine's refusal to accept that meaningless death is all that awaits their world, her intentional decision to choose selflessness over ambivalence and compassion over hatred, perfectly encapsulates the exact conflict that will mark Amphoreus's later climax in 3.7, when Cyrene defines the prime mover of life as "love."
In both appearance and theme, Hyacine intensely rebels against the symbolically masculine worldviews of darkness, pragmatism, and necessary violence, privileging a tenderness that society has stereotypically come to associate with femininity.
This is the message of every magical girl anime ever: Heroism is not and has never been limited to bulky caped crusaders with broody vigilantism. Pink cupcakes and chubby unicorns are perfectly suited to the saving the world too.
Thank you for this perfect contribution, random Youtube user.
Because, at the end of the day, Hoyo also tells us: Hyacine's right. She's right about everything--about her own strength, about the way only generosity and beneficence can enact real change in the world, about the value of human life, and about the absolutely essential nature of continually and purposefully choosing optimism in a world that insists over and over again on exacting despair.
Hoyo does not present Hyacine's idealism as frivolous, vapid, or stupid. That "child-like" belief in goodness isn't a weakness that causes her downfall but the literal strength that allows her to bring down the very god of the heavens. Through both her hyper-feminine design and her role in the story, Hoyo insists that we players engage with Hyacine's cheerful worldview unironically--that we embrace hope with complete earnestness. "Don't dismiss this as naive or meaningless," they tell us--and in doing so, also say: "Don't dismiss ideas associated with femininity as naive or meaningless either."
With Hyacine's character quest, Hoyo very clearly says:
The worldview that centers so many concepts that are stereotypically viewed as "feminine"--empathy, kindness, optimism, love for others?
There's nothing stronger than that.
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