29 May 2024

I was dead tired and needed to write SOMETHING after work. And recently, I’ve been playing a lot of Genshin again, even picked up Arlecchino. She’s been a blast to play, and kind of locked in my second team. So I have an overload team centered around Arlecchino and Raiden, and a freeze team centered around Ayaka, that feel so very different from each other but still play very similarly. It’s strange and fun, and something I thought a lot about randomly, and put the thoughts roughly in a poem.

Arlecchino and Ayaka

The one, imperial, regal, demanding

The other, serene, elegant, demure

Flame and explosions and flurries of motion

Versus the silent stillness of frozen ice

Both naught more than a dream

Shared, not even my own

But fortune favored me greatly

To let ice and fire guide that dreamlike journey

26 January 2024

What would Malenia do in the world of Genshin Impact? Other than wreck everything, I mean.

Malenia said nothing for several minutes. “This world is too cheerful.”

“Eh. Sure, Teyvat certainly has a different feel to it than the Lands Between, but… its got its own shadows. Come, follow me.”

I led the goddess incumbent up Starsnatch cliff toward Dragonspine. I’m pretty sure I kept our arrival secret from the bastards on Celestia; from what I’ve seen, they wouldn’t take too kindly to our arrival.

The monsters die swiftly. The only surprise comes when the ruin guard near the Temple of a Thousand Winds caught sight of Malenia during a waterfowl, and even that wasn’t too much trouble. I don’t think anyone knows what to make of her; she is colored like a pyro character, but if there’s one element she’s not connected to, it’s fire. …Isn’t she basically a dendro character?

“Why is the lightning on this gods-forsaken world purple, of all things?” Malenia grumbled.

I blink. “I…actually don’t know. Let me check.” A quick, out-of-universe google study later, and… “Huh. In real life, natural lightning tends to look more purple. Maybe in the Lands Between, it looked yellow because of its association with grace and the Golden Order?”

Malenia nodded, musing on that as she impaled the hilichurl archer who’d prompted the question. SHe looked across the river, at the snowy foothills of Dragonspine. She took a deep breath in and commented, “Smells like home.”

“What, snow and the ever-present sense of danger?”

Malenia gave me a noncommittal grunt and jumped across the river. I sighed, then whistled for Torrent so I could follow behind. No sense in freezing to death before I even make it to the Nail.