So I like Genshin.
That’s it. That’s the bit.
No but fr I wouldn’t really describe myself as a gamer, I played with my dad, brothers and friends A LOT growing up and I do adore and buy new releases of like 5 or 6 franchises every time they come out but I don’t just buy new games anymore really if i dont have that already connection. There was a time in uni id buy story ones to just complete and dissociate to. that time has passed.
But like I ended up playing genshin for a bit during covid and just fell in love.
I thought I’d hate it cos I’d seen how horny and gross the fanbase could be and some of the outfits and jiggle physics 💀💀💀 i mean all the outfits are beautiful and I’d absolutely wear them but like omg who’s fighting gods in heels with no support RAIDEN?!
but like what I think what hooked me was the fact that outside of their aesthetic design, all of the women were written great.
Not like feminist icons to stand out (lmao they absolutely do cos the blatantly male lead staff have a bias towards the female characters) but just how they are written as people.
I can’t quite put it to words in how it’s different from a jrpg but like when I’ve played jrpgs in the past I feel both ashamed of my body and an object as the opposite/foil to all the usually positive traits male protagonists get given.
In genshin I just feel bad about my body!! Yey!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭
I’m not making sense maybe. Genshin women feel like people. In terms of their characterisation they are people with motivations, not women with motivations if that makes sense?
When Jrpgs do it they get close but then BAMN the writers could not make some sexist reference or comment or characterisation. And it reduces us back to “women” vs a person who is a woman.
Actually that said there’s like a few character that fancy the MC. What’s funny is because I’m playing as Lumine, for me Genshin characters (ayaka who you dancing for girl? I fell for childe like an entire chapter ago, im locked up) who have flirted with me now makes my teyvat wholy sapphic and I love that.
So yeah it’s not feminist by any stretch but it’s also not sexist (relative to comparable games) in how it depicts women. It’s genuinely been a pleasure to play the story as it’s just powerful female character after powerful female character AND it feels like I’m just playing a life bite anime sometimes and that’s so fun.
I dunno nobody feels like they are written as an object for men either or as a women to just push the male characters along. Instead women are written as real characters and that’s so refreshing.
And then like furina, the whole ptsd plot hit hard. She’s my favourite and nobody else is allowed to like her now (as well as siegwinne, mualani and citlali. Sorry not sorry)
I dunno, feels like in the west and Japan even when writers try to write strong women or just not be sexist they end up condescending us somehow. Here’s genshin that I seriously doubt set out to do anything for women and did a way better job by accident.
If we ignore the aesthetic design and jiggle physics, WHICH I CANT AAAAAAAAAAAA THEY ARE SO BAD SOMETIMES.
But like yeah I dunno, it’s weird that I’m seeing better written female characters in a gooner gacha mill and outside of a few romantically leaning scenes (childe 😍) when I’m playing everyone’s just a person. Not a man or woman but just a person and imo I think that’s why I personally got so attached to all of the characters and their little stories and motivations.
Also melusines, the melusines are the best bit and they are so cute and precious and I love them and my bf says I like them because I’m similar in my manorisms but that’s stupid because they are so adorable and I’m not so narcissistic (I hope) and they have this big back story about how they were discriminated against and they get they’re rights eventually and become beloved by the fontanian citizens and it is a legal decree to use she/her pronouns for them instead of it and that’s super cute and I feel so happy for them and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa snxkdkfmelcnskwmdmekxjenxnend3mdms
Can we have some melusine emojii gif things please 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Edit: tbh childe is just the meme, it’s all about our sensitive soft boy neuvillette and bad boy wriothsley 😍
I wish I could like Hoyoverse’s work, but they’re worse than CBU3 about knowing how to represent melanated people; or even trying to. After my tenth or twentieth argument with Genshin touchers about lack of proper representation, whitewashing of melanated cultures, and how these crackers think I should just be okay with that because it’s a Chinese game and these poor wittle indie developers can’t be expected to get our skin tone or hair coarseness right, I gave up on anything Hoyoverse put out, as well as its player base. Genshin and Star Rail players are literally a singular rung above League touchers to me at this point lmao
I remember seeing some stuff about natlan and people saying “oh but everyone’s white washed including china->liyue so it’s fine that’s just anime art style” and being like 😐😐😐 not sure that’s it champ.
I saw one that made a comment about China aren’t imperialist, don’t have the same history of imperialism and therefore it’s not got a historical racist element to it like is being suggested or something and again it’s like are we not now weaponising socialist rhetoric to justify our treats instead of just taking the L? Especially given how much some of the community spoke over others.
Lmao poor indie devs? Hoyo own a nuclear reactor don’t they or something silly from all their whale bucks.
I’ve not played star rail, my adhd can’t hack turn based games outside of pokemon and persona lol.
I remember seeing some stuff about natlan and people saying “oh but everyone’s white washed including china->liyue so it’s fine that’s just anime art style” and being like 😐😐😐 not sure that’s it champ.
Yeah that’s exactly where I got off the bus lmao. Like, even having all the 5*s I cared about wasn’t enough to keep me around after that. The whole “well they’re Chinese, they don’t have Black people like that, representation wasn’t on their mind bc Chinese product”-- that doesn’t fuckin matter to me anymore as soon as a property goes international; but these white treathounds will never internalize that because their developers can’t get us right either! I just hit a point of “y’know what, this is gonna be a waste of an argument if I ever have it again no matter how I slice it next; lemme change the password on this account to a twenty-character random noise generation and fuckin forget about these people”.
Lmao white treathounds is funny.
With the community it does feel like a moment where someone starts mouthing off and you try to just shut them up but you can’t. Every day. All the time. Omg.
Like i don’t think splitting hairs between white fetishisation in anime art style and racism in western games or whatever is productive especially when it’s about genshin of all things lmao. At least thats what it felt like some people were doing. Like regardless of how it’s split or framed it’s still supporting the structures of white exceptionalism right? I’m powerfully white and a genshin fan lmao so I could be way off I’m sorry if I am.
What 5*s did you have??? Can we talk about that or is it still raw?
Oh, it was forever and a day ago; it’s not so much that it’s raw, it’s just that the memory informs how I look at most players at this point. I had Xiao off his first banner run, Venti and Diluc off their second banner runs; and did not give the first fuck that they didn’t quite gel together that well, these were some of my favorite designs in general out of that game, so they all went into the team unless I EXPLICITLY needed a dedicated healer.
it’s just that the memory informs how I look at most players at this point.
I’ll take that L on the chin, we don’t deserve respect lmao.
Yeaaah! We play with our favourites! I named Lumine after myself being that little saddo, got dead attached to her as a result and not knowing how the game works, used her as a main dps all the way till Sumeru because I’m an idiot, then got dendro for her and was like oh this is cute and then hyperbloom clicked and I finally learnt how to play lol. I should of just looked for a guide but I was like “wtf this boss takes like 10 minutes every time!!!” and DREADING my world level going up cos my team took so long to kill anything.
Xiao the short king and venti are both precious lads.
I was never a fan of fire batman but I adore kaveh and everyone rips on him so lmao i clearly have melusine taste
Atm I have Furina, Siegwinne (melusinesssss aaaaaaa I love them!!!), lynette and Mualani on my team and I don’t care if it’s not “meta”.
Favourites gang 💪
Honkai Star Rail by the same developer has a small story arc that is essentially a light political drama about an IMF-equivalent loan shark, a new leader of a nation, and a former rebel leader. Not in a million years would this story being told in another, less goonery context feature three young women as the main characters, without them being women being the point of the story. At times the games feel like they are from a future where we are free of sexist tropes in storytelling, at least if you squint your eyes.
At times the games feel like they are from a future where we are free of sexist tropes in storytelling, at least if you squint your eyes.
China giving everybody third eye exams after capitalist-caused mental myopia.
That’s what I mean, ignore the aesthetics and it’s a sexist trope free narrative. Even male characters in genshin for me don’t encompass “male” personality traits but just human ones.
Then you open your eyes lmao.
IMF-equivalent: Interstellar Peace Corporation
Former rebel leader: Seele
New leader of Byelobog: (spoilers)
Now, Idk what type of revolution this is…
tidbit on Seele
(yk what’s funny, I remembered this youtuber named “Hero Mei”, chud , who complained about her critical nature against masculine people in the English dub (that’s literally consistent with her character in the main game’s plot, you idiot)), specifically when you pair her with other characters in your HSR team (there’s a feature where exclusive voicelines play, when a character is matched with another, whether friendly or not to them, like Blade with Kafka)
There’s a lot of moments where Hoyoverse’s writing for its female cast could have been just as obnoxiously gendered as many anime are but it doesn’t. I’m talking about tha whole “I’m a fighter/strong/performing a traditionally masculine-delineated role and this has erased my femininity! Woe is me, who never experienced being a ‘woman!’” garbo genre. There used to be a manga called “A Story About Treating a Female Knight, Who Has Never Been Treated as a Woman, as a Woman” and it had hundreds of chapters and would get posted on the r/manga subr*ddit every week. I would smash the downvote button everytime I saw that long-winded gasbag title show up on the feed.
It is absolutely a shame that Hoyoverse is unable to resist whitewashing characters from non-white inspired cultural backgrounds because it does a lot of the other things right. Hoyo gets the game dev’s dream of building up a truly international playerbase and they can’t even give them representation in the game. Ironically, speaking now as a leftist, Genshin is probably the biggest modern soft power cultural export from China and Hoyo instead built up a global audience only to use that platform to tell everyone how obscenely colorist the company is. Also, now there’s a reverse racism problem where global players are using Genshin to scapegoat the entirety of the Chinese population as racist just because of Hoyo’s colorist design team leads.
Ugh. I stopped following the company after Natlan when it seemed like all three of their games were just spamming streetwear character designs. Obviously playing it safe with modern motorcycles for Natlan is better than racist tribal loincloths that some people were worried about but it would have been even better to see Aztec/Incan character designs, with the skin tone to match.
Also, Melusines are objectively the perfect potential communards and it’s a travesty that there’s somehow 200K Genshin fanfics on AO3 and not a single one is about a Melusine-led Fontaine Commune.
Melusines are the best i love them omg.
I don’t know enough to comment but while the clothing is all streetweary for some, there’s tonnes of Astec/incan inspiration in the naming, areas and other stuff.
I dont know how bad or good that representation or borrowing is though.
I’d love to see more poc characters that aren’t just candace and cyno if you could even call tanned anime characters POC representation. Like they are tanned from living in the desert is my understanding 💀 I hope this is a learning experience for them cos there is such potential for the game.
I’m so disconnected from the genshin community i didn’t even know the natlan controversy was a thing until it had released which I feel bad about.
Edit: also fr but we don’t need a melusine commune because we already have merusea village and they are even trading with fontaine selling ore to the clock Smith npc and the quest where you make sure the melusines aren’t being exploited and its a fair deal aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa BEST THING ABOUT GENSHIN!!
Team Melusine for sure. I wanted to buy some Melusine plush and there are LITERALLY NONE ON ETSY WTFFF. Common capitalism L.
OMFG SAME!!!
I did find these like KFC Japan tie in toys where it was a little melusine statuette thing but I don’t live in Japan 😭😭😭😭😭😭 and I’m not ordering a happy meal toy from Japan either
Yeah the whole bullshit of Chinese people as a whole are racist is ridiculous, when the west is the one that institutionalized it. Honestly I never got into genshin because of a lot of reasons but one of them is that they really can’t just darken the characters just a tiny bit?
For every building made with pride, the architect remains inside
Peeling paint, a marble heart, that’s what makes a work of art
😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
Played Genshin for 2 weeks when it came out, dug out my account about half a year ago then stopped halfway through Sumeru again, after realizing I don’t wanna waste my time on it.
I would’ve loved Genshin so much if it only was a single player game, even if that meant that it was limited in scope.
I’m not making sense maybe. Genshin women feel like people. In terms of their characterisation they are people with motivations, not women with motivations if that makes sense?
Yes it does make sense because it’s in the lore even lol. Everybody whose ambition is strong and resolut receives a vision, and with that powers which represent the ambition or may be used to live up to their destiny or whatever. You probably know what I talk about
Another factor may be that this amount of power levels the playing field, at least among vision-bearers and archons. They are not bound or dependent on anything or anybody anymore after recieving their vision. It is possible, but really hard to fuck up the character writing with such good story and lore premises
See i like hard disagree sorry.
Maybe because you stopped in sumeru but there’s plenty of npc female characters that are just as well written.
Sowwi 🙃
No that’s not what I… fuuuuck just forget about it lmao my English sucks ass
Sorry wanna try again? I feel bad I misunderstood you
Will try.
I do believe that without any visions, Genshin’s world would be or even was in a much more… antiquated state.
Only one example that cmnes to my mind: the Millelith consist predominantly of men – I bet there’s more.
I’m not saying non-vision bearers are badly/stereotypically written in Genshin (the peeps you explore the Chasm with for example I really liked, some shopkeepers are really cool etc etc), all I’m saying is that they still sometimes have a job or a position in the social hierarchy that, from a conservative point of view or whatever, would be seen as appropriate for their gender. While in contrast, vision-bearers just don’t care. I just really like the idea of them being pioneers in that regard, that’s all.
Hope this makes sense. You may still disagree I regularly talk shit haha
Yes I do see what you mean now!!
Hmmm I see what you mean with the millicent and the samurai in inazuma yes.
But in sumeru we see a shift imo, yeah the city guard are mostly men but in terms of combat npc there’s more women and they are just better. Then we get to fontaine and what you are saying kinda doesn’t apply anymore unless they are writing a story where it’s relevant like there’s a one about marriage and stuff so the gendered stuff appears there as you’d expect but apart from that it’s not.
The police and locals in fontaine are not gendered and in natlan all rules are out.
I think they’ve definitely improved in regards to sexism with npcs from pre 2.0 to now 5.2
I did notice that about Sumeru, and I fought some of Natlan’s new foes in the Spiral Abyss.
Damn, maybe it’s not a bad idea to get back into Genshin some time in the future, and just focus on the story and characters. Most combat will be trivial with my Raiden anyway, so… Because I’m kinda interested in Fontaine, really wanna know how Genshin handles a more technologically advanced region, and how that influences the writing. Also intrigued because you wrote that Furina’s arc is really good edit: or like something along those lines I have a real smooth brain sorrryyyy
Fontaine is my favourite region and it’s done so well. It’s like clockwerk mecha steam punk meets European french courts.
Make sure to do neuvilettes story mission, it’s then one about the melusines becoming citizens. Clorinde’s is 100% the most fun story mission in the game hands down no competition.
Omg furina. The archon quest and her back story kinda kick started me into playing it. I’d been reading about the game and her and her story and there was a lot I could relate to especially with her ptsd and how she has to smile through her trauma and smxkwkckelflwldlwx if you play it and then her story quest you’ll see how good it is.
Okay so with the natlan enemies, have you watched closely their combat animations? They are so goofy, like they always injure themselves by accident e.g. throwing their sword and it coming back to bonk them and that’s part of the animation. They’ve got so much character and richness compared to like everything else before it.
Fontaine is my favourite cos of furina and melusines and I’m euro bitch so I’m blates bias but natlan is just the best designed region in the game no competition and it’s taken me a long time to admit that 😭
Edit: oh also sumeru is a sloooggggg omg that was the slowest part for me, irl friends said they dropped out then too cos of how slow it felt but it gets so much better post sumeru!!!
I dunno, feels like in the west and Japan even when writers try to write strong women or just not be sexist they end up condescending us somehow. Here’s genshin that I seriously doubt set out to do anything for women and did a way better job by accident.
I don’t think it was “by accident”. Maybe Mihoyo staff were not principled “feminists” by western standards but GI was always meant to be a much more mainstream and casual game.
At the time HI3rd was already going towards this grand scale melodrama route too, though I never played that, HI3rd’s world building and plot is far from hentai slop or whatever you may think given the game.
Even in 1.0 there is absolutely nothing risque about it. The moral outrage over Klee is just absolutely dumb in reality when you actualy go to all conventions back in the day and you see children and adults cosplaying her. The most controversial part of 1.x is maybe that one Barbara fan guy who gives JP idol otaku stalker vibe. Hoyo definitely didn’t realize people wouldn’t get the “joke” there.
As someone that been playing since mid 1.X wrt to the writing. Enjoyment of the writing is somewhat related with how invested you are in the world building and the lore. I’ve seen people describe Genshin as an “archeology” type game and its quite apt.
A lot of information is not given to you unless you actively seek out e.g all the artifact descriptions, the huge book library, many key world quests etc.
They do a good job on the main quest for casuals, but its gotten to a point now the lore bombs are kind of reliant on that extra information. This matters a lot for characterization sometimes e.g Nahida’s characterization depends a lot on her story quest while the final parts of Fontaine AQ give you most of what Furina’s character is all about.
I hope not to spoil much but Furina’s characterization is far more meaningful given Egeria’s plot, its not just about her, but a “woman” in a position of power effectively made a grand master plan to subvert Heaven.
Likewise Nahida is like more than half about Rukkhadevata’s sacrifice.
If you’re lazy you don’t need to necessarily do all this search yourself though, I really recommend Ashikai’s videos to understand what the writers are going for. Sometimes its not even that easy or obvious even with the context given some of the creative writing and unreliable narrators.
Anyway point being I don’t think it is by coincidence, I’m sure you played the Freminet event? Thelxie’s Fantastic Adventures They don’t go out of their way to write a story like that without being competent and knowing what they’re doing realy. Some events are remarkable yet forgotten e.g Fischl’s summer castle event. Her entire character is a huge magnet for conspiracies and giga brain theories and its great.
I wont talk about literaly everyone but I don’t think there is any character realy done dirty but the writers at all. Maybe Kokomi is the worst failed potential, some of the old cast is forgotten or stereotypes(Kuki, Amber, Barbara etc). I’d almost excuse it given the team needs to keep looking forward to new characters so there is pressure getting it right on the first impression. I think ultimately this is their biggest flaw. The infinitely expanding lore and cast makes it impossible to give everyone equal attention.
Amber.
I’m all up to date with furina , focalors, egeria etc she my favourite after all durrrrrrr and the backstory with egeria and the sea of bygone eras was sooooo good I love it so much!!
What did you think for the lore that got added with Ochkanatlan? I love reading the lore and watching it all together. Especially now we are getting mention of the shining shades of the heavenly principles in the main plot and it’s like aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I watch minslief mostly but ill give them a look!
I replied back to this more fully but it didn’t send and I cannot be typing out all that again lmao.
I’m behind I only done up to 5.1 I’m procrastinating until the end of the patch to touch the new areas due to the other games ZZZ 1.4 soon. Ashikai does a lot of theory stuff and she streams sometimes so I love long form content like that, its crazy to notice how much real world history stuff they reference etc. Its a bit sad the vast majority don’t get it except through the AQ though.
Yeah I was remembering Fontaine’s AQ and its wild one of the best moments was the oceanid “girls” telling Vasher or whatever his name to go fuck himself lol. I think a lot of similar anime/male oriented media would not have gone that way lol probably it would have been “awww so cute the serial killer loves us so much, we have no choice but to become his harem!” nope.
I’m on 100% map completion across natlan so far 💪 easier than redoing areas (I’m sorry liyue your chests are so hard to find 😭😭)
Just means you get to binge the AQ interlude and wrap up!
I’ll have to give them a listen as they seem to so way more stuff to listen to which is what I want vs shorter minsleif stuff.
Aaaaaa miyabi I’m so excited!!! I got my boy Lighter and I just adore him. Such a goofy guy but also just so cool 😍
What’s your team? My main team is Jane (who’s my fav character aaaa i want to be her), Lighter or Qingyi and Burnice with the Baddieboo cos he’s so cute.
Mmmmm!!
Omg one of the all round best moments of the plot, I was kinda disgusted to hear him doing that and then trying to spin a sob story so when he just got ripped to pieces by the oceanids it was like “holy shit fontiane keeping winning” it’s sooo fucking cool. More writing like that in media please. Fr if it had been anywhere in the west it would have been a sympathy call to empathise with a dude who just slaughtered women as objects for his own desires and it’s like erghhhhh.