reverse isekai but it’s me at 6:45 pm in a car
-> warnings: spoilers for inazuma archon quest, depictions of modern organized religion(none are specified, none are in great detail, but talks of restrictions within those are mentioned. it’s only one paragraph but still), this is unedited and with zero (0) plot to it :))
-> lowercase intended
taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky
your world is loud.
from the moment the favored could see it, this was clear. it was loud, filling with screaming machinery that left trails of dust and buildings so tall it made their neck hurt to view.
it was bright, with lights that shone through the darkest of nights, reflecting off glass and the speeding machines and reflecting reflecting reflecting back into eyes to sting. your sun is so harsh, so unpleasant and overbearing, hot instead of warm and burning instead of soothing.
it’s cluttered, wires suspending from towers and running along your roads. glittering signs point out things they can’t read, the sacred script only giving them a headache. at night, they can find no comfort in the stars, something that sends them into a panic the first time they see it. it’s not clouds, it’s not anything worldly blocking their view, it’s that they’re gone, the ones they can see washed out and faded. they wonder how anybody can live like this, and if you blessed them with a night sky of such beauty because yours was so…
they can recognize some of it, the plants and trees and flowers, wild or not, call to them in recognition, but so much is frighteningly new. the style of the clothing, the kinds of jewelry on the people you pass. try as they might, they can’t locate a single vision anywhere, not even on you. they wonder if people hide them, like during the vision hunt decree, but even at home you don’t reach for it, you start fires with odd devices and plants grow slowly, the air and stone unmoving to your desires. you spill drinks. you freeze water using more strange machinery.
it’s so strange, because they can feel your world brim with elemental energy. their vision beams, shining so brightly with all of the potential suspended in your world. no matter how poor their elemental sight, your world glows, the air itself carrying a blue tinge. they try, in a world without visions, to use theirs, and their power springs in an instant to their fingertips. it dances across their hands, enveloping when they barely intended for a small spark, a small flame jumping across the dry grass of unspent energy in your world. they extinguish it quickly, tightening their hand into a fist to stamp it out before they damage something, and something like awe shines in their eyes. there’s so much, their vision so eagerly lapping it up, and you.. don’t use it?
you have machines for everything, devices to harness the wind and waves, boats to travel across water at impossible speeds, strange flying machines that you can hear from the ground, mere specks in the sky, and yet… you have yet to capture them in their most essential forms. you speak of elements, sometimes, but you use different names and there seems to be many, many more. you say that the air holds ‘nitrogen’, that you seal things with foil of ‘aluminum’, and you even say that water itself is composed of ‘hydrogen’ and ‘oxygen’, something that they struggle to understand. how can water be made of something else? how can hydro users bend more than one thing to their will? how can anemo wielders command such a broad spectrum of things? you speak of other elements in the earth, and though some are familiar, such as iron and gold, others’ names hold no meaning. you say potassium is in fruit, that there’s multicolored rocks called bismuth and poisonous liquids named mercury. you say that there’s 118 elements, when all they’ve known is 7.
it takes them a while to come to terms with that one, and even then they settle on it being inherently outside of their understanding. after all, they are in a world crafted by a god.
speaking of..
there are multiple religions in your world?
and it’s not as if they’re different ways or interpretations of the same god, no, it’s entirely different ones. not in the ways of teyvat, where everybody’s aware of all seven and follows the one of their nation, not even that much. they’re wildly different, with different policies and ways of worship, some with multiple gods and others with just one. some are strict, ways of lifestyle chosen and laid out, whilst others are lax. and even within the same religion, it varies from one place of worship to another? somehow? some religions specify clothing, disallowing certain parts of the body to be exposed- which they can understand to an extent. it’s when they learn of religions that police love, ones that write in harsh lines where and when and who somebody can love, that they need to take a step away.
so many parts of your world are confusing. so bright, flashy, new, rumbling in the walls and barreling down the roads with nothing but a scream to warn. lights are everywhere, every sign and post and building vying for your attention. this they could understand, as who wouldn’t wish to be the object of your interest, but the most dizzying fact that they learn during their stay is that you are no different than anybody else. everybody is subject to these sights, everybody is pulled in by a particular shade or cut of cloth, everybody is startled by the bright lights and loud announcements. everybody. you’re lost in the ocean of people so different and yet endlessly identical, nobody’s eyes lingering on you or calling your name specifically. when you step into a crowd, nobody notices you, save for the select, precious few to whom you are known. you have to carve out a place in your world, go out of your way to make sure your name, your face, your interests are kept in somebody’s mind, and even then people dare to forget.
that’s the worst of all. overwhelming lights, sounds, smells: nothing. it makes sense that they’d be out of their depth in a world built for the divine. but to know that you’re not receiving any of the recognition you deserve, to know that nobody thinks highly of your work in teyvat, to know that you were kind enough descend and build yourself a new life amongst the world, and to share your creation across said world, only for nobody to appreciate it. nobody thinks twice. people dare to complain over something you’ve hand-crafted, over something that, even after completion, you revisited with a traveller, doing your best to save one sibling and fix the problems that had cropped up in your wake. you’ve done so much, you’ve cared after it so lovingly, and you boosted the power of some of those you granted a vision to. as somebody who had experienced this love first hand, the favored could not find the words to express their anger at the situation. your world was wrong, it was cruel, and though they found beauty in the most hidden of places, it didn’t change the fact that it didn’t love you.
it only strengthened their desire to take you back to teyvat, where you would be truly loved.
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So I don't know if it was ever revealed how Duncan felt when we killed Malistaire all three times but I'm wondering if maybe some part of him could hate us for that too. Like you hear that and you go "but why. Malistaire was terrible and even Duncan knew that(?). Why would he hate you for getting rid of him."
But like I think it's so....... interesting in a very, very, very sad way how Duncan so easily latches onto anyone who directly feeds into his delusions of grandeur. And that's no fault of his own that he was manipulated by the nasty Schism but when you think about how desperately clung to the idea that Malistaire, easily one of the greatest necromancers any of us had ever heard of (at that time), somehow actually recognized Duncan's talents (even when canon supports that Duncan wasn't all that talented, at least no more than the next necromancer) and then praised him for it so often that Duncan believed that he would be the next Death Professor is. I mean ☹️
So like with that mindset I unfortunately feel like it would be quite easy to twist even Malistaire's death as something that's horrible and awful and all our fault. ESPECIALLY if the Schism was feeding into Duncan's already broken mind and shattered ego and was constantly telling him that everything bad that ever happened to him ever in his life was Our Fault. That's like a realistic conclusion that someone like Duncan could come to
And like, at this point in time, are Malistaire's crimes even a factor in how he thinks????? Was Duncan ever able to separate Malistaire's talent and skills and prowess from the terrible and awful things he did? If Duncan wasn't able to consciously tell that distinction in the first place I can't imagine it would be any better during the years he was being manipulated and isolated and lied to
Like in Duncan's mind it probably isn't, "maybe I shouldn't idolize a national criminal, or idolize anyone at all for that matter, and aspire to be like someone so harmful when I can recognize my own talent and build from there" it's probably more like, "you (the wizard) permanently got rid of a brilliant mind, an innocent person who just made a few mistakes, and someone who believed in me no matter what just so that you could be the better than me and loved by everyone else" and that's! very sad actually!
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I need to reread the comics again to have specific arguments/evidence for this, but like
I feel a bit like I could've been sympathetic to the way other Cybertronian colonies view Cybertron, if it weren't for the fact that at least several of them (as in, ones that get notable dialogue/screen time) are so low-key self-righteous?
Like, idk... there's a lot of criticism of Cybertronians because they're so "warlike" and how their obsession with violence and vengeance is just dragging the whole galaxy down with them, but uh. The Autobot-Decepticon war was basically a product of societal ills bubbling over for like 6 million years beforehand and then finally boiling over into a 4 million year war that lasted as long as it did because the people involved had immense social/psychological trauma from being "raised" in an oppressive society.
So when the colonists come in being all 'omg you people are so violent and uncivilized why don't you just like, stop fighting' it kind of pissed me off a little bit as a reader/person like. Idk the colonists really came into this society of people full of massive amounts of trauma where even before the war society was super oppressive and no one has any experience of living "normal" lives unaffected by violence and bigotry. And the colonists were like "ummm wow why don't you guys just??? stop fighting???." Like idk it wasn't EVERY SINGLE MOMENT, in fact I think that when it was played for laughs it's quite a funny "fridge horror" type element. It was just annoying because like.... IDK???? It's just really annoying to watch a bunch of people who lived relatively sheltered lives on their own planets come to a different planet full of traumatized people and be like "omg why are you people so fucked up" IDK BRO MAYBE BECAUSE THEIR SOCIETY WAS OPPRESSIVE AND THEY LIVED THROUGH A LIFELONG WAR???
It also doesn't help that the colonies were literally founded based on imperialism and conquest so like, it's fucking rich to hear colonists scolding Cybertronians for their violence ruining the whole galaxy while literally sitting on planets that their Primes colonized from others. The hypocrisy of this is briefly mentioned in Unicron (literally the FINAL STORY OF THE SERIES) but like, that's basically the only time Cybertronian characters are given a reprieve of sympathy from other characters in universe and it's so tiresome.
I've talked to other people who didn't like the colonists and thought they basically (narratively speaking) existed just to shit on the existing characters, and it's actually really easy for me to sympathize with/outright agree with that assessment of the story considering how much of exRID/OP seems to be preoccupied with "Cybertron/the Primes/Optimus sucks" with very few reprieves for anything positive happening and even fewer chances for characters to get to explain themselves and experience a little bit of justice? Like, as the audience, it's just very frustrating to see the characters you spent hundreds of issues keeping up with get shit on by a bunch of "literally-who"s and then not really get a chance to ever defend themselves, either by literally defending themselves in conversation or having some sort of narrative thing happening that vindicates them at least symbolically
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