More Genshin spoilers for Act 3 & 4 of the Nod-Krai AQ ahead - you've been warned!

Today I finally finished Act 4. It really took ages. I enjoyed it a lot, I still find it much better than Natlan, but boy did it drag on. What's just really bad is that you basically went from cutscene to cutscene to cutscene to special instance you couldn't leave to cutscene without a break for most of Act 4. Everything of it was good, I especially loved the interactions where all the important characters were together, but it's just horrible if you want or need to take a break. Hoyo really should have done the usual thing of making you talk to whatever character to start the next cutscene.

But yeah, I'm caught up with the AQ now. The only thing I didn't particularly care for was the second half of the Rerir fight where you play as Nefer and Hydro Traveller. That was just horrible. I'm glad we got healed at intervals, otherwise Nefer would have died. Cool resolution to the conflict though, and I'm curious when we'll see Rerir again, because it's clear that we will.

Speaking of Rerir, the controversy around him is just ridiculous and renewed my resolution of not engaging with fandom ever again. Even the posters on that female forum completely lost it and started arguing because of him. There are the yumes/fujos throwing fits because he had (has?) this fiancée that he loved/loves and for some reason that means they can no longer ship him. This logic is so very dumb and, in the case of the yumes, once again a sign of escapism taken too far. Seriously, stop shipping yourself with fictional characters (and kinning them too), it's pathetic.

Then there's apparently a war between the "Rerir is an evil genocider, if you like him you think his actions are okay" faction and the "Rerir is a pure, innocent lamb who didn't know better" faction. Both are, obviously, idiots. Why can't people in the EN fandom no longer understand the concept of morally grey characters? Like, why does it have to be black and white? And why are you only allowed to like characters who have done nothing wrong? I seriously don't get it, and it makes me dislike fandom so much.

The Japanese fandom doesn't have that problem at all. They happily ship Rerir with Flins, and they do so without shitting on Tholandis (who is really cute, btw.). I'm not even the biggest Rerir fan, I'm kind of meh about him after finishing Act 4, but the whole drama about his is just ridiculous.

All this insanity has convinced me that fandom needs more straight ships. My vote goes to Dainsleif/Columbina, though I'm probably the only one. :P (Flins/Lauma is nice too.)

Durin was also super precious in the AQ. I can't wait for his release. 39 more days!

Varka - I still don't like. Dori, on the other hand, grew on me and it pleases me to see more people are warming up to her. Maybe even the Kaveh stans will wake up one day and accept that Dori did nothing wrong and it was just Kaveh's fault. I'm not holding my breath though. ;)

With the AQ done, I can go back to Shuten Order tomorrow. Let's hope I'll get through the Ministry of Health route quickly.

One other thing is new: I started watching Hazbin Hotel. Yeah, I can't believe it myself why I'd ever watch an American show, but I just got curious. Since it's something the insane people on tumblr like, I'll stay faaaaaaaaar away from the fandom though. I won't even go looking for fanart, not even by Japanese artists, because I want to avoid Westerners ruining this show for me.

We're going out for a walk now, so I better stop, but just one more thing: Miliastra Wonderland sucks and I wish it didn't exist... Like seriously, what's the point?!

The incoming 6.2 leaks have me more excited for Genshin than I have been in a very long time. Not only does Durin look so, so good - his design, his animations, everything, he's just so cute! - but those character buffs are amazing. Sure, they're not game breaking and won't suddenly catapult the old Mondstadt units to the top of the meta rankings, but I'm taking anything I can get for Venti and Albedo. It's a bit weird that Hoyo decided to buff Venti by making him a main dps with a new signature weapon (and I just got Elegy in spring...), but hey, sounds fun! And Albedo potentially rivalling Furina's buff is really cool, if it's true and they don't still nerf him over the course of the beta.

I was briefly thinking of getting Escoffier after Durin in 6.2, but now my wish list looks like this:
Durin - Durin's weapon - Venti's new weapon - Venti's C1.
It's entirely unrealistic as atm I have a whooping 10k primogems, but will see how far I'll get how much I'm willing to spend. I feel like because Venti is my absolute favourite, I should show my support for him. But we'll see. 6.2 hit on December 3rd, I'll save up every single primogem until then (and budget my Christmas money, lol).

But yay, exciting! :D

I still don't think the game is going in the right direction with no new map in 6.2 either and Hoyo shilling the new UGC mode so hard, but I'm not going to be ungrateful either. I love the old characters and I love Durin, so I'm definitely looking forward to December.

The only thing I'm sad about is that Durin isn't using his wings for flying. Really? That's lazy. For people who want to use a glider on him, sure, give them the option, but the default should be that he uses his wings when he's using them in battle?!

<3<3<3 Venti buffs! <3<3<3

I do think that the longer a franchise has been dormant and the longer it's been since a character got any new (canon) content, the more their depiction in fanish content tends to suffer. Especially if this character wasn't in the spotlight to begin with and thus only had very little to go on.

The problem you have when no new energy (in the form of canon depictions) is being infused into a fandom, that most scenarios and ideas will already have been explored down the line. Most people will then move on to greener pasture, especially nowadays when too many move from popular fandom to popular fandom for online clout, but those who remain not only stick together and form a fandom-defining clique, but they also need to come up with new stuff if they don't want to just rehash the same few scenarios (or go completely AU, which simply isn't everyone's cup of tea).

And that where imo characterisation starts to suffer. You've moved so far from canon by a certain point that the character simply becomes OOC. Basically "owning" this character with together with your clique made up of like-minded people means there won't be anyone around to point out canon to rein you in when an idea takes you too far from their established character.

I guess it's clear that I'm talking about Hux. Since his last appearance in TROS, the only content with him we've got since 2019 is the (imo bad) Legacy of Vader comic, where he's playing an insignificant role. What doesn't help him is that his characterisation across the ST wasn't always consistent.

However, I do think that from all the canon content he's been in, we can deduct a few things about his character, about how he is, what he'd do and what he absolutely wouldn't do.

I'm not the fandom police, so everyone can do whatever they want, but I do look at some of the depictions that have become more popular and have to raise an eyebrow.

To me, Hux is self-confident and prideful, some might call him a nepo baby, but given that his father hated him, I don't think he'd get where he was without having some merits that Snoke acknowledge. Stars, even Kylo Ren, who makes no secret about how much he loathes Hux, admits that he needs him around. So he's definitely competent too. Is he infallible, is he always action rationally - no. He's not. He's also not the most courageous, but a little bit of fear has never stopped him from pursuing his goal.

He's also spiteful and his horrible childhood won't have left him unscathed, but I would argue he's holding himself together surprisingly well for what he's been through.

What I think canon does show us it that he ISN'T a psychopath. He ISN'T a narcissist. Though it's from the shitty LoV comic, we see a Hux who's rallying his subordinates, telling they are all important cogs in the machine, they're all heroes, not just him. Sure he could be manipulating him, one could argue, but why would he? He knows these men are trained to be loyal and adhere to orders. They also have nowhere else to go, so why would he need to praise them? I'd say the Order is more stick than carrot. He also doesn't strike me as a sadist at all, that's more Kylo Ren. And please, can we stop having every evil character commit sexual violence? It's not deep, it's especially not sexy, and a character really doesn't have to be a rapist for the audience to understand that he's not a good guy.

But those who think they "own" Hux now can't see that. They're so deep in their cosy little bubble with all their friends, just reading each others' fics (while intentionally ignoring those by people not part of their clique) and increasingly escalating the kink and OOC-ness. Thing is, they might think they own Hux and that they're oh-so-deep for coming up with all these twisted scenarios, but fact is, they've made him unrecognisable.

Anyway, I needed to get this off my chest.

Now I'll go and consider my own depiction of him.

I really should write here more often, I miss this site, but ever since my fandom "crash out" nothing has been the same. It's entirely a "me problem", but I still can't look at anything to do with Western fan communities without feeling extremely uncomfortable.

Anyway, today I finished the Ministry of Justice route in Shuten Order and wow, let me just say I didn't expect that. Inugami!!! ;-; I'm seriously intrigued where the story is heading, I just need to know what's actually going on.

Unfortunately, I managed to spoil an important aspect of the game for myself, so all my theorising is now tainted by that knowledge. Not that it really matters, I usually don't mind spoilers at all, but for once my plan was to play through a game totally blind.

I now started the Ministry of Security route. There are five different routes, each a different genre of game. I wasn't sure if I should play the ones that would appeal to me most (like the MoJ route with its Ace Attorney mechanics) and keep the ones I'm scared of for last, but then I decided to simply alternate. So now I'm doing the "stealth horror game" and play that it's not too difficult. I found a walkthrough video on Youtube that's not quite six hours long, so my hope is that I'll get through it fairly fast. Next I want to do the Ministry of Health route, that one sounds fun too.

The translation continues to be bad though. Not only can I tell it's often inaccurate, the localisers also have a very bad grasp of English. They're getting their tenses wrong all the time, which is frankly embarrassing. The past perfect tense exists for a reason... And the wrong pronoun use (not talking about Rei or anything to do with gender here) is super annoying too. Yes, Japanese can be ambiguous, but in most cases where the translators are messing up, it's abundantly clear from the context who is being talked about.

I'm ignoring that stuff as best as I can and it's not affecting my enjoyment of the game, but I do think it's just more proof that American localisers for Japanese games are often not very good.

I wish I could play more though. I'm so intrigued by the story, I just need to know more! Too bad work is a thing...

Unrelated to gaming, but today we took Millicent to the vet dentist. Seems like she really needs dental surgery. I feel so sorry for her, she'll be so scared and there's no way for me to explain to her what's going to happen and why to try and calm her down. :( I'm still waiting to hear back from the vet for the date of the surgery, but it's probably going to be at the end of November. Poor Millicent!

Well, here's to hoping I'll post here again more regularly!