The Pedantic Fan

Order of Operations

Second thing: I'm not going to speculate in full on the Lizardtorre theory because it's been talked about enough. I don't know if the lizard will actually turn out to be involved in Dottore's situation or if they'll just pull an "Actually, a brand new character who can spy through animals has been following you all along, Traveler!" out of nowhere, but anyone saying that lizard isn't going to be relevant in some way, shape, or form to the upcoming plot is probably huffing their own copium at this point, because even if you're not into literary analysis you should be able to spot obvious an obvious Chekhov's gun when the devs literally pick it up and wave it in your face lol.

Buttt anyway, one thing I did want to talk about is that I've seen people debunking the lizard theory by saying that Anomalous Tree Marrow III proves the lizard was just another experiment from Dottore and its only role in the plot was giving him the information on how to transfer souls.

Except... the idea that Dottore only started his experiments in soul transfer after going to Nod-Krai makes no sense, because he had already drawn up the entire plan with Pantalone, split his soul, turned it into a data back-up, and left that data back-up in the Northland Bank with Pantalone all before going to Nod-Krai.

Pantalone explicitly tells us this in-game:

The only reason Pantalone even went to Sumeru at all was because he had already signed a literal will directing him to take Dottore's data and inject it into Irminsul. If Dottore came up with that idea after starting his showdown with Traveler and Co. in Nod-Krai (upon which he promptly died), how would Pantalone even know that plan, let alone have a signed document from Dottore telling him to do it? 🤔

Did Dottore zip back to Snezhnaya in the middle of Nod-Krai's plot to go like "Hey man, I know we signed an agreement already for you to bring my soul piece to Sumeru but I'm gonna need to borrow your computer real fast--"

To be honest, this could just be another plot hole due to Genshin's notorious "don't think too hard about this" stance towards all of their timelines (Flins being simultaneously in Snezhnaya and in Nod-Krai for the Cataclysm comes to mind lol), but if that's the case, this seems like a really obvious and dumb mistake for the writers to have made, because this is all information from the same patch--they didn't bother to do a single check of their own timeline even just for 6.6's events?

tl;dr: It makes no sense for Dottore to only have learned how to transfer souls during Nod-Krai's plot, because Nod-Krai's plot happened after Dottore had already signed off and finished preparing his soul-splitting and injection-into-Irminsul plan.

Well That's Not Ominous At All

I know the common takeaway from the patch seems to be that Zandik died of (relatively) natural causes, that he fell and just no one helped him up, possibly had heart failure, etc.; the prevailing take seems to be that the segments' involvement was mostly just standing by and watching him die.

But personally, I'm more inclined to say that he was pretty much murdered by Omega.

Sure, we get this particularly threatening flash during the cutscene, suggesting Omega was about to errrr... hurry things along:

But I think the more ominous statement is actually from Anomalous Moon Marrow III, where Omega writes:

The second half of the note being specifically about "fantasies of immortality" all but confirms that the drug he is talking about is the elixir of immortality. They've had a "deficit" of effective live specimens for trials of the elixir, so Omega decides to persuade himself [Zandik] to "comply."

The second half of the note being such a disdainful take on mortality and human life suggests that we're supposed to read this as Omega's thinly veiled hatred for Zandik in particular: Human Zandik is "fleeting," "too fragile," and, like other mortals, "pathetically trapped by their own limitations." Omega is the superior unit; he's stronger, younger, more powerful, immortal. Why should he be held back from achieving his goal any longer by this pathetic crumbling version of himself?

The fact that they added this note into the tree marrow suggests to me that we were supposed to see Omega's role in Zandik's death as significantly more calculated than originally thought. He wasn't just casually taking advantage of Zandik's natural death; he had been actively plotting and planning for that death to make human!Zandik into the last "specimen data" he needed to complete the elixir.

Far be it from me to ever suggest that any of Freud's theories were actually right but... this is all pretty Oedipus Complex-y. Omega hated his creator, the original Zandik, viewing him as a symbol of the pathetic human traits the segments had long since moved beyond--therefore a symbol of Omega's own, deep-down weaknesses. Zandik was a walking, talking manifestation of Omega's inferiorities, his limitations... How could Omega not hate him, seeing him parading around their failings for all the world to see?

And yet Omega clearly also envied Zandik, the only one by virtue of his humanity who could truly claim to be "the original." Omega burned to seize that status, thinking of all the other segments as just "me, myself, and I," putting himself in the position of being the actual harbinger, THE Il Dottore, while everyone else in their collective was just "help," and even all the way to the end, Omega was coveting the name "Zandik"... Even while embarrassed, mortified of his human limitations, Omega desired everything Zandik had that Omega lacked.

He didn't just want Zandik gone for the elixir--he wanted Zandik gone so he could entirely supplant him, finally becoming the "real" Self.

I'm not saying this theory remotely works in real life (as it was never based on any actual science in the first place), but in media and storytelling there's certainly been a lot of leaning on the idea, and I don't think it's accidental that Omega very much plays Freud's entire Oedipus Complex out line-by-line: Hate and envy the "father," view him as a rival, covet his place in the world, kill him to assert yourself as the superior version, seize the wife, profit.

On Sight

Okay, anyway, ending with something much cuter and significantly less low-key horror:

For me, the most under-rated aspect of 6.6 was finding out that canonically Dottore is the "fell first" in the "who fell first vs. who fell harder." The fandom is just notttt talking enough about the fact that absolutely none of Zandik's behavior towards Feofan makes any sense unless you assume that he was so impressed by their very first meeting that he was completely sold on Pantalone instantly. Ride or die from ONE CONVERSATION. Feofan had him hooked within the first five minutes; Dottore is weakkk omg. If you think too hard about this it loops back into really sad, so uhhhh just don't think too hard about this.

Because really, the crazy thing is the dates on the reports.

We jump from 20 to 26, and Feofan is still not a harbinger yet Dottore is somehow his attending physician? A civilian is getting treated by a harbinger for routine altercation wounds?? Where did he get this kind of privilege???

The fact that Dottore was already providing Feofan's medical care even before he rose to the position of harbinger suggests that, by any outsider's perspective, Il Dottore himself spent at least six years maintaining a friendship with a no-name member of the Fatui who wasn't even a combatant. Feofan was just a bank employee???

Imagine if one day Slenderman started showing up at your bank but all he wanted to do was chat up your coworker.

Like, think of how absolutely gone on Feofan Dottore must have seemed to any outsider looking in:

Feofan walks into the Northland Bank. He's not even a Fatui member yet. He no longer has a penny to his name, a home to go back to, or a resume he can even show to prove himself because his last business literally failed. He was a test subject two weeks ago and now he's handing over a letter of recommendation from Il Dottore, second of all the Fatui harbingers.

Imagining being the guy running that bank. I M A G I N E.

Also, Pantalone insists that he rose to the position of harbinger on his own merits; however, he also says "Your recommendation alone wouldn't have been enough," which means that Dottore did talk his bestie up to the Tsaritsa. We don't (yet) have any record of Dottore encouraging the Tsaritsa to elevate anyone else he knew to the status of harbinger, which implies that this was completely out of the blue behavior for him, and at some point he absolutely walked into a harbinger meeting and just went "Pierro, I'm going to tell you about Feofan now. Let me list out all his admirable qualities--" such that an entire room of people was forced to listen to at least an hour's worth of simping disguised as a totally-objective-not-at-all-biased "harbinger recommendation," after which they almost certainly wanted to kill both Dottore and themselves.

In took Pantalone 10 years in the Fatui to become a harbinger, and Dottore knew him and maintained a "friendship" with him that entire time, despite the massive gulf in their ranks. You KNOW Feofan was getting hit with those "sleeping his way to top" allegations and you KNOW Dottore constantly made them worse by being completely uninterested in bothering to correct the driveling gossip.

"I've already stated many times that Feofan is my partner--"

"Zandik... Please..."

It's just so cute.

The speed at which Dottore latched onto Feofan... The complete disregard for social hierarchy or rank... Number 2 and the random bank clerk simply "being friends" for years without Dottore ever bothering to be concerned how others would perceive that... Absolutely shamelessly using nepotism to try to help his "friend" get promoted so they could work together on the daily...