back pains georg

⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☽ ◯ ☾₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆

this blog primarily focuses on honkai star rail, my ramblings and fan fiction and even occasional art. mostly focused on Penacony and Amphoreus

I am OrigamiDove on ao3

first off, what a cool animation. the 3D style reminiscent of hi3 was so great and perfect for the action heavy mech fight they did here. i love mecha so im easy to please in this regard.

more importantly i am still convinced that the himeko we know is the one with the weathering curse, honestly even moreso now. firstly, the video ends on the open question of "what happened to himeko's body if motoko carried it with her?" we heard how pompom remembers their first encounter, and while their memories are described to be somewhat blurry, i do think the logical assumption if we take the events at face value is motoko would have wanted to bury himeko somewhere, perhaps as a space burial, but regardless i imagine she'd have had to discussed the dead body in the room with pompom before doing that.

also, why introduce herself as himeko? we know now the imagenae version had her own name. it can be read as her wanting to carry on himeko's memory and live life in her stead, but is the name she gave her not also part of that memory?

but the thing that made me pretty sure of this is the description of the video. "If you had been the one to survive back then... You'd be far more impressive than I am now. Motoko, I'm home."

The narrator seems to literally be expressing Motoko was the more impressive one who should have survived, and this would track. Motoko did do most of the badass mech fighting in the animation, and for that idealized self with no weathering curse to give up her form for her creator, it would certainly give Himeko a lot of guilt and self-doubt to carry.

If Motoko gave up her life/form in some way for Himeko, it would explain a lot. Why Pompom never saw a dead body and only one woman who introduced herself as Himeko, and why our Himeko has clear recollections of her childhood and teen years, especially pivotal moments like meeting her dad for the first time and knowing Fulwish personally.

Initially I thought they might have fused in some way and initially the animation began to support that since they literally did fuse but nah I think Motoko very much died and gave up her body in some way. the mechanics of that? I don't fucking know lmao. maybe sparkle and sparxie will actually turn out to be foreshadowing for this, since sparxie was an imagenae but now the two coexist as personas, likely in a human body and not the imagenae one.

in conclusion:

aglaea - I see her as bisexual because she’s got the Bob. Also because as a certified bisexual with the Bob I gotta project where I can! has a female leaning preference. I see her as someone who has had multiple lovers in the past but they were never as close as her powerful unfulfilled yearning for her first loves in the first flame chase gang, and she ceased being intimate with anyone after a few hundred years.

tribbies - they/them, both in the gender and literal sense when there’s multiple of them. And they canonically use “we” as a pronoun which is cute. Tribios was stuck in specific gendered religious role most of their lives but the children know nothing of gender roles and can express that more easily.

Anaxa - transfem (she/they), aroace. she’s the kinda person who does not care that much about passing so much as being self assured in their identity, though she has acquired ye old estrogen at the grove. Removed genitalia for alchemy material to kill two birds with one stone.

castorice - also transfem, cares a lot about passing in contrast because she’s got ten thousand things contributing to her self hatred on top of dysphoria. a thousand years to transition and learn to make your own clothes means she’s pretty stable in her identity but having Anaxa for a teacher gave her a lot of confidence and a broader perspective. Polyxia also has the interesting bit of taking on the form of a seemingly male dragon (Pollux) so there’s more gender to be considered. Truly twinning. She’s also bisexual but I think that’s self explanatory.

Mydei - transmasc, did his own top surgery in a war tent because he’s just that metal. His red tattoos cover them with a spiky design coming from the scars. Don’t worry about the realism here he can just do that. he’s also got the strife manifested red crystal penis so 💪🤯 and he’s a gay man to me

Hyacine - transfem. I think her being insecure about coming from a very war/fighting centric culture but not aligning with that, initially feeling insecure about it, before learning to embrace that, lends itself to a transgender reading very well. And her colors like cmon.

cipher - genderqueer, lesbian. Ik illusionist multi gender characters are cliche but consider. My genderqueer ass wishes that was me and cipher gives me the vibes of someone who would embrace non conformity, while still feeling a crushing loneliness to be accepted and understood of course. And she just likes women of course that parts everywhere.

Phainon - gay man. He is cisgender normally but the Khaslana transformation changes that. Taking on so much data of others in the form of the coreflames and other fuckery with his powers means his anatomy becomes much stranger. Intersex is the most accurate term but it’s distinctly nonhuman. The pregnancy imagery of the irontomb fight really stuck with me alright.

Hysilens - lesbian, and while I don’t think she’s not “cis” by our standards, her cultural idea of gender is just not human. Living in the sea you’re just chilling. She wears feminine clothes on land to fit in and because it’s what Aglaea made for her, as long as it’s comfy she doesn’t care much about clothes

cerydra - he/him lesbian, my vision for Cerydra’s design is quite different than canon and involves short hair and more of a Roman emperor at war fit. Cerydra already refers to himself as emperor, king, etc, so this is just the logical endpoint of that. How others refer to cerydra publically varies but if you are showing proper respect, it’s through masculine terms. Cerydra doesn’t really care what others call him, it matters most that he is self assured in his identity.

Cyrene - sapphic, on the aroace spectrum. I just feel like og cyrene and demiurge did not have a lot of time to figure themselves out in regards to feelings for other people. cycle x.337 for demiurge was much longer on the other hand. Cyrene had always figured there were some things “adults” experienced she simply never would, but then realized it was actually just the aroace-ness

bonus: npc lighting round

Cerces and Mnestia are lesbians of course,

Gorgo is bisexual

Krateros is bisexual but thinks you should only have gay sex between your comrades and then get married to reproduce. Hes not married though so what does he know