Man its been weeks and I’m still soured by the conclusion to Fontaine’s main story. I'll just rant here

There were a lot of things I didn’t like about it (Arlecchino's altruism being played straight, Traveler being out of character, the lore exposition ass-pull with the prophecy slates, the weird logic about how destroying a Gnosis could potentially wake up the Heavenly Principles but not fucking destroying an Archon Throne when Celestia forced everyone to fight a GODDAMN WAR TO ESTABLISH THEM-) but the biggest offense to me was how Furina was handled. This was marketed as the grand finale of the arc, the climax with Furina at the center of it all. And she got shafted. Big time. Furina had no agency in the plot whatsoever, nothing she did had any effect on how things turned out, and she didn’t even have the dignity of fully understanding why it all had to happen that way.

(Also I will preface this with yes Furina and Focalors are technically the same person with the same origin, but after the split Furina lost all her memories as Focalors. They are two separate consciousnesses with different experiences, and therefore I will treat their individual choices as their own)

I’ve seen people try to argue that no, she chose to take on this role knowing she would suffer, that she didn't HAVE to go along with it. And she was even working by herself to solve the prophecy without relying on Focalors, she wasn’t a puppet/pawn! But the thing is she was essentially in a hostage situation. If she didn’t do things exactly as dictated by Focalors people would DIE. Like there is a reason why criminal punishments are lighter when it’s found the perpetrator was coerced into it! And her researching how to avoid the prophecy changed nothing about the outcome, she could have sat around eating cake and the story would have word for word turned out exactly the same. All that information served to do was highlight her suffering and draw the audience’s sympathy. That's what I mean about her not having agency, it's not about her ability to act as an individual but how her actions had an effect on the overall plot. None of her choices outside of the role designated by Focalors did anything to change the situation for better or worse.

And to top it all off she didn’t even understand WHY this all had to happen. Why do people dissolve in the Primordial water? How does her pretending to be an Archon play into solving the issue? Why can’t she confide in anyone? What the hell is Focalors even doing? She doesn’t learn the answers to any of these until after everything was over, and not even from Focalors’ own mouth, it was relayed to her by Neuvillette.

Speaking of Neuvillette, I’m not gonna lie I’m sorta annoyed at his existence because it felt like Furina was shafted for him. Everything is very tilted in Neuvillette's favor. He gets his powers back, full control over Pneuma/Ousia, final say in trials, the ability to hand out Visions, and just straight up the ability to manipulate life itself. And okay all these things were his to begin with lore-wise, whatever, but he also becomes the "lore important" character after this at Furina's expense. Furina doesn't have her memories as Focalors, she can't tell us anything about how the world works, about Celestia, about what happened 500 years ago. Even though other Archons didn't give us much either for one reason or another, they at least HAVE that knowledge, and are therefore guaranteed to have involvement in future events with the Abyss and Celestia. Furina at the moment, doesn't. Neuvillette has it now. And all that talk about Focalors judging Celestia? Also Neuvillette's job now. And it feels like it was all stolen from Furina from a story-telling perspective because again, she didn't know of the plan to return his powers. She didn't even get to explicitly agree with her other self that he should have them back. The writers really seemed to go out of their way to place him on a pedestal at Furina's expense, which irks the hell out of me.

There are some opportunity for future interludes to turn the current state around, and they probably will since Furina is still being marketed as an Archon, but as it stands I want Fontaine to be over so we can move on to the next disappointment.

Man its been weeks and I’m still soured by the conclusion to Fontaine’s main story. I'll just rant here

There were a lot of things I didn’t like about it (Arlecchino's altruism being played straight, Traveler being out of character, the lore exposition ass-pull with the prophecy slates, the weird logic about how destroying a Gnosis could potentially wake up the Heavenly Principles but not fucking destroying an Archon Throne when Celestia forced everyone to fight a GODDAMN WAR TO ESTABLISH THEM-) but the biggest offense to me was how Furina was handled. This was marketed as the grand finale of the arc, the climax with Furina at the center of it all. And she got shafted. Big time. Furina had no agency in the plot whatsoever, nothing she did had any effect on how things turned out, and she didn’t even have the dignity of fully understanding why it all had to happen that way.

(Also I will preface this with yes Furina and Focalors are technically the same person with the same origin, but after the split Furina lost all her memories as Focalors. They are two separate consciousnesses with different experiences, and therefore I will treat their individual choices as their own)

I’ve seen people try to argue that no, she chose to take on this role knowing she would suffer, that she didn't HAVE to go along with it. And she was even working by herself to solve the prophecy without relying on Focalors, she wasn’t a puppet/pawn! But the thing is she was essentially in a hostage situation. If she didn’t do things exactly as dictated by Focalors people would DIE. Like there is a reason why criminal punishments are lighter when it’s found the perpetrator was coerced into it! And her researching how to avoid the prophecy changed nothing about the outcome, she could have sat around eating cake and the story would have word for word turned out exactly the same. All that information served to do was highlight her suffering and draw the audience’s sympathy. That's what I mean about her not having agency, it's not about her ability to act as an individual but how her actions had an effect on the overall plot. None of her choices outside of the role designated by Focalors did anything to change the situation for better or worse.

And to top it all off she didn’t even understand WHY this all had to happen. Why do people dissolve in the Primordial water? How does her pretending to be an Archon play into solving the issue? Why can’t she confide in anyone? What the hell is Focalors even doing? She doesn’t learn the answers to any of these until after everything was over, and not even from Focalors’ own mouth, it was relayed to her by Neuvillette.

Speaking of Neuvillette, I’m not gonna lie I’m sorta annoyed at his existence because it felt like Furina was shafted for him. Everything is very tilted in Neuvillette's favor. He gets his powers back, full control over Pneuma/Ousia, final say in trials, the ability to hand out Visions, and just straight up the ability to manipulate life itself. And okay all these things were his to begin with lore-wise, whatever, but he also becomes the "lore important" character after this at Furina's expense. Furina doesn't have her memories as Focalors, she can't tell us anything about how the world works, about Celestia, about what happened 500 years ago. Even though other Archons didn't give us much either for one reason or another, they at least HAVE that knowledge, and are therefore guaranteed to have involvement in future events with the Abyss and Celestia. Furina at the moment, doesn't. Neuvillette has it now. And all that talk about Focalors judging Celestia? Also Neuvillette's job now. And it feels like it was all stolen from Furina from a story-telling perspective because again, she didn't know of the plan to return his powers. She didn't even get to explicitly agree with her other self that he should have them back. The writers really seemed to go out of their way to place him on a pedestal at Furina's expense, which irks the hell out of me.

There are some opportunity for future interludes to turn the current state around, and they probably will since Furina is still being marketed as an Archon, but as it stands I want Fontaine to be over so we can move on to the next disappointment.

ur art is so scrumptious 😋

Thank you 🥺🥺🥺

Zhongven then:

Zhongven now:

But tbh I would imagine Venti is very happy about about this change, even if now he's more often a victim to his man's trolling 8'D

The Hydro Sovereign comes to Mondstadt

Hey! I don’t mean to be rude but could you tag your ship art as genshin ship so that people who don’t want to see ship art have to look up and block every ship name? Your art is gorgeous and I don’t know if you do other ships than zhongven but i think it would allow people who feel uncomfortable with shipping but still want to interact with the fandom to be able to block all ship art without having to look up every ship. I hope that made sense.. and thank you so much!

Sure

First Kiss

Also without effects they look better to me tbh o<-< painting is hard...

Major damage taken ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

(No need to post this if you don’t feel like it btw!)

First off, your Zhongven art showed up in my suggested and it is absolutely freaking gorgeous! I especially love how you do Zhongli, and I’m picky about him because he’s one of my favorite characters. XD

Secondly, I backscrolled a bit and ran across the post about Rukkadevata’s demon name and I just have to say: I am 1000% on your side here. Buer is specifically *Nahida’s* demon name. She even named the Traveler specifically ‘the *first* Sage of Buer’. We have yet to get any proper confirmation on Rukkadevata’s demon name. Personally I’m strongly inclined to believe it was different, since they are distinct individuals - the whole Nahida taking Rukkadevata’s place in history thing notwithstanding. It only makes sense that Rukka’s demon name was different too.

Anyway, apologies for the mini-rant. I too have longstanding gripes with some of the fandom assumptions around Nahida and Rukkadevata, so it was nice seeing someone else also pay attention to the actual lore details XD

*grabs your hand with tears in my eyes* thank you for validating me 😭 I even forgot about the “First Sage of Buer” title when I was thinking about the name situation lol. I never even said her name WASN’T Buer but I had people be so CONDESCENDING to me about it and even go so low as name-calling that I was tempted to start picking fights lmao

And thank you for liking how I draw Zhongli 💕—I struggle with drawing him because I want to make him look just right 👌so I pay a lot of attention to his face

Post from March 2021 edited on 1/30/2022

HOW COULD I FORGET THE FIRST ART I MADE FOR THIS SHIP AND GENSHIN IN GENERAL

I remember specifically saying I wasn't going to play the game LIKE A LIAR

saw the weird AI anon and like. i thought i should tell you now that your art specifically did a big part in changing me from indifferent regarding zhongven, to like a casual enjoyer (i have other ships but yknow). your art is just That Good <3

(also i love the og archons arts)

Sorry for the late reply!

Thank you so much *sobs* it really means a lot to me when people tell me I helped them get into this ship-like I feel BEYOND honored it's impossible to put into words

It's so hard to reupload old art because even though I wouldn't say I even improved much since then I can still hardly look at a lot of it anymore lol

1/25/2022

If Zhongli finally snapped after 500 years of pining lol

(yes it's a GG reference)

SUMMER LILIA! I praise our lord and savior Toboso

Can that dude just go back to playing with his toy cars and rockets and leave us normal people alone holy shit

Like it’s sort of the hip thing to point and laugh at the other blue hellsite going up in flames but I am genuinely distraught at all the people I might lose. Twitter is unique in that a large portion of its userbase is international, you don’t see that with other U.S. based social medias. To see this hub of connections go away is really disheartening

MAN.jpeg

Very telling that instead of creating or comissioning others to create art of the ships they like the weirdly agressive anon instead advocates for shitty to mediocre ai art that's has no care for the ship behind it anyways

Honestly if their dream were to come to true I’d just feel bad for the fans of the other ships. Like imagine having your community be filled with people/“art” with so little self-respect