i miss kaeya bro i'm gonna kill myself i can't wait to see him again.... Mister Alberich..... i love you..... saranghae

Sorry that I slipped back into Genshin brainrot but I finally finished the Fontaine Archon Quest (I know. I just didn't feel like doing it for a while) and Arlecchino's Story Quest and. God

For context, I've been playing Genshin off and on since 1.0, literally the beginning. I have all my areas at 100%, and I even do those world quests that are unvoiced and way too long

And. Let me just say, Fontaine is now my favourite nation. For so long it's been Liyue, and as someone who really hates the French (Canadian, I'm Canadian), man. Fontaine fucking rocks

Long post ahead.

Sumeru's Archon Quest was, tedious. I didn't connect to it at all so it was not exactly a chore, but if given the chance, I wouldn't replay it. The region was torture before the layered map existed. I kept getting lost. The skin tone thing is an entire other issue as well, but. This nation loses a lot of points for the racist genie bottle fuck that quest

Inazuma was almost too much for me, in a way. I wasn't a fan of the locked progression, and the enemies and puzzles were frustrating. This nation brought in needing commissions to get all the quests too, which I STILL HAVENT GOTTEN ITS BEEN TWO YEARS GOURMET SUPREMOS FUCK YOU. I did like the touch that while you were wanted, if a guard saw you in Inazuma City youd get removed that was fun. DONT GET ME STARTED ON ENKANOMIYA.

Liyue felt like the right step after Mondstadt. Getting to beat up Childe is an extra plus. The way it also led into Inazuma was great too, I hope they do something like that for Natlan. The story had a natural build up to me, and it flowed well. The Chasm, while frustrating, felt like a meaningful addition to the nation. And, I am swayed by Lantern Rite. Best event every year, hands down. And, I love Chenyu Vale!

Mondstadt was the perfect starting nation. I go back every now and then to test out builds in progress and team comps, but that's about it. The City is the highlight by far, but the Archon Quest was near perfect. Venti used to be my favourite Archon, too. I got him on his first banner, he's fun to play and I wish he'd finally get his Story Quest chapter 2 IVE BEEN WAITING YEARS FOR MORE VENTI

Anyways. So, let's talk Fontaine

It didn't hit me right away. I loved the first part of the quest. Meeting the twins at the port, Furina showing up and making her grand entrance in such a showy manner, it was perfect. It was hard to see how the second part really fit in, and I will say I am a little tired of Navia crying, but. By the time the Finale happened, I was satisfied. The Fortress part was excellent too, and. The Finale

The twist about Furina was perfectly executed to me. Especially since her erratic behaviour in the trial is used to show how seriously she took her assignment from Focalors. She *had* to make sure they kept believing in her, otherwise,

Didn't like that abrupt cut in the whale fight. That part didn't wrap up right to me, but oh well

And, this nation has had so many wonderful characters. There's not one that I hate, and that's huge. Everyone feels whole and interesting to me, just. Amazing

I love Arlecchino. The Hearth siblings. How dare this game make me care about the Fatui?? I was doing so well, I didn't like any of the other Harbingers or operatives so far and BAM. Hot lady dad and her three French kids. Stole my heart

Neuvillette plays perfectly as the "higher being that's become enamored by humans", and the way Sigewinne contrasts his emotional investment with her more "detached" (used loosely) fascination works so well. There's Wriothesley, and Navia and Clorinde, who both highlight the grey side of Justice, in different ways. Charlotte and Chevreuse are also there

And. Fucking Furina

I actually cried during the Archon Quest, in her little mind bit. I wasn't her biggest fan on launch, but. Now I'm obsessed. To me, this accomplished much more than what Scaramouche did, with a similar premise. I can't stand that twink, but Furina perfectly captured my attention and heart

All in all, Fontaine was so excellent. The water mechanics are some of my favourite in the game now, and all the new creatures and birds and enemies were perfect. The Bygone Sea was a perfect added area, and. I may be biased as a musician, but it really outclassed Chasm and Enkanomiya

There's only about two Fontaine updates left before Natlan. Hopefully I'll enjoy the region that will be the closest from repping my culture (native Canadian. Latin America is, close enough for me I guess), so. Here's hoping

This was all opinion. I felt like writing it all out, since I've had so many feelings about the game lately

I just can’t stop myself, both from pointlessly posting creative things that mean nothing and go nowhere instead of being productive, and I can’t stop myself from making a better setting for Shadowlands as I play it, like, every time I see something I go “this would be much better and more sensical if”

so instead of trying to get someone, anyone to talk about chapter 4 of the Kyrie fic, or trying to get someone, anyone who said they would help on PCSM to help me with that, you get huge-ass paragraphs of exasperated text that’s verging on stream of consciousness

okay so you sit down all the writers and you say: 

Let’s hash out what the deal with the Shadowlands is. It’s the afterlife, something with great symbolic importance. None of our zones are just locations, they are About Something. Also, since this is the afterlife, we can’t have death work the same may, that fucks everything up. When you die in the Shadowlands, you come back minus some anima, or you get sent back in front of the Arbiter and re-assigned. Souls are eternal, but most people’s souls kind of, like, attenuate over the eons, absent a specific role and desire to hold on to identity, and they achieve peace and one-ness with the fabric of the universe blah blah blah.

This means you cannot use the basic threat of death as the motivating factor. Death doesn’t mean the same thing to them, even if now because the Arbiter is knocked out if you go to get reassigned you go straight to the Maw. Storylines need to be interesting for other reasons. When you get an objective to kill an NPC, it needs to be in order to get them out of the way for something you need to do, or quest chains need to involve setting up so that they won’t come back for a while or will go to the Maw. Because of this, you can have the same NPC be the objective of multiple quests to kill them in the same campaign. Do that. Especially, you, guy writing Bastion. We can’t say “oh no you need to care about this because people are going to be killed”, that’s old, that’s boring, that makes no sense. The player needs to have an emotional connection to the characters so that the threat of fucking up fundamental pillars of reality has personal relevance and reality. So the characters need to have emotions.

Okay, so, Bastion guy. Your story fucking sucks. It’s walking around and doing chores while you wait on hold with the Archon, and everything that makes it interesting and not generic as shit is all hidden behind their covenant quest chain after you join them. The single coolest and most interesting thing about Bastion and the Kyrians and the Forsworn is laid out in the Afterlives trailer for Bastion, and you know most people didn’t see the trailer, so put this in the game, well after the player has joined their covenant. No! Fuck you! Seeing this is the end of act 1 of Bastion’s story. You remember all that hassle you went through to get this memory crystal thingy from a Forsworn and read it and then you see, oh no, here’s a generic scene of joining a generic bad guy? No. You see Uther in the first attack of the Forsworn, you go “dude what the hell”, you get a memory fragment, you look at it, and you see that video. Now you know what is going on and who is involved and why you care. Instead of being a nothing sandwich on a nothing bun, your companion Kleia is someone who was friends with and idolized Devos, the turned champion of the Forsworn, and no matter who your PC is you fucking know who Uther the Lightbringer was, and now the story is about the two of you trying to figure out why these people you know to be heroic champions are doing so much fucking crazy shit and trying to tear down the world, and you fight them several times and you try to get through to them and you can’t and they have the same sense of frustration because both of them respect the hell out of you (Uther damn well knows how much cool shit you did for Azeroth) but they don’t know how to say what they want to say to make you believe them instead of freaking out. Bastion is a place for heroes. Even the bad guys are heroes. It is not just a threat, it is a tragedy that this is happening. 

Maldraxxus. Maldraxxus is the eternal skeleton war you are drafted into if your gravestone doesn’t say “rest in peace”. Maldraxxus is a constant war for people who love war. Maldraxxus is there to defend the Shadowlands against incursion, but they also constantly fight and kill each other because it doesn’t harm them and it’s fun and it’s what paradise is for them! Why are there skeletons? Because every time you die you come back right away missing more flesh as you discard everything about yourself that isn’t the pure experience of Skeleton War. Maldraxxus is just the Scourge Aesthetic again, but you can say “no this doesn’t look like the Scourge the Scourge looks like this because this is that higher Platonic ideal of eternal warfare looks like” but for fuck’s sake it can’t be ACTUALLY the Scourge because that makes no fucking sense! You have NECROMANCERS RAISING THE DEAD! OF PEOPLE WHO DIED AND WENT TO THE SHADOWLANDS AND DIED AGAIN! FUCK YOU! The Scourge had plague because that was how they killed you and make you undead, but you show up to Maldraxxus ready to be undead, it makes no sense why they would have plagues as an element! Constructs, those are on thin ice too, but you can make it something about those who are on their last legs but don’t want to fade into an eternal feeling of triumph, subsuming their individuality to become part of a War Machine With Greater Purpose. To drive home this is about more than “abominations”, you give them a leader who we repeatedly see, and it’s not Professor Putricide, it’s Rend Blackhand because his Thing was turning the orcs into an industrialized war machine!

So you have Honorable Warriors, Cunning Warriors, Warriors With Superior Firepower, Warriors As Expression Of The War Machine, and something else that might have plague as an element it isn’t just “all about plagues”. It was about something else and then plague blew it up or something! War as inevitability! War as endlessness! War as that which drives Progress! So then Why did these Houses go bad and start invading? Because of the drought, the leaders are like “okay how about if we stopped with the fun endless skeleton war of valiant combat, and we held down the guys we killed and sucked the juice out of them”. They were allies and friends with all Maldraxxians until push came to shove and now they’re turning on and cannibalizing each other oh no that’s bad!

Ardenweald guy, you’re next, but this post is too long and the self-hate is boiling out of my throat!