#ali writes.

Miyabi is set up as this mysterious badass who goes up against Nineveh singlehandedly, but we soon learn she's a complete dork who tries and hilariously fails to pass on “sage wisdom” to Phaethon and Zhu Yuan. Officially, she's the head of Section 6, but she's lazy and in their episode we find out it's really Yanagi who's that team's effective leader, and the only one who can keep them even quasi-functional. She's the one who “Virtual Revenge” is about. Miyabi, by contrast, just hangs back and conserves her energy for the really big fights. Her possible parallels and looming conflict with Phaethon, however, are tantalizing.

Lighter is introduced early in the Sons of Calydon story, but we don't actually learn anything much about him until long after Chapter 4 has concluded. He has this epic story of triumph, tragedy, grief, acceptance and moving on to a new life, but it's all told in aside comments, flashbacks and paratext, Even today he's fighting a one-man war against the enemies of the Sons of Calydon that nobody on the team (save probably Burnice, because Burnice is probably some kind of Elder God herself /lh) even knows about, because their story isn't about him. Lighter is almost the definition of “Hero from Another Story”.

Jane straight-up abandoned her identity and sense of self to become this unknowable, mercurial force: She slips so effortlessly into whatever undercover identity and personality any given mission requires of her, because we learn next to nothing about the “real” Jane, and even when we do the shadow of the unreliable narrator is inescapable. The hints we do glean indicate she's been through quite a lot, and is fighting for justice her own way on her own terms. Jane doesn't seem to have much Love for Public Security, if any at all, and isn't an official PubSec officer. She certainly seems commanding, inspiring and experienced, however.

Qingyi is one of the oldest, wisest and most experienced people in New Eridu, but openly serves as the apparently-young Zhu Yuan's subordinate in an interesting inversion of Miyabi's relationship with Yanagi. Zhu Yuan relies on Qingyi's wisdom and guidance to help her make decisions, yet it's Zhu Yuan who gets all the accolades, fame and attention. Not that she doesn't deserve it, she's clearly gifted, incredibly competent and professional, but it's almost like Qingyi doesn't want the spotlight on herself for some reason. To her, it seems more like she views her role as helping Zhu Yuan be the hero New Eridu needs her to be.

Nicole is one of the first characters we meet in the game and somehow seems to be involved in every significant event in New Eridu's recent history...And yet isn't it interesting she tells us nothing about herself and doesn't appear to have a story of her own? She's the leader of Gentle House, but Anby, Billy and Nekomata are much more prominent in the game's events: Chapter 1 is effectively a character study on Nekomata, while Billy's ties to the Sons of Calydon make him central to Chapter 4 and Lighter's side stories. The game also really seems to want us to Love Anby, with her as the tutorial character for numerous in-game mechanics, her combining traits of both Kiana and Mei from Honkai, her movie obsession ("Who better to pair up with Phaethon?") and the fact she's ZZZ's official mascot. Billy, Anby and Nekomata are also prominently involved in Chapter 3. Nicole, by contrast...Pops in every now and again to give Phaethon a plot-important quest and/or MacGuffin (usually in timed events), and quite literally sits Chapter 3 out.

Even in terms of gameplay these characters play curious roles: Lighter and Qingyi are Stunners and I like using them to support Burnice and Zhu Yuan, respectively (though they can certainly also both hold their own). Jane, being a lone wolf, can easily carry a team in battle despite being an Anomaly-class, but is helped by having people who can back her up and compound her status effect skills. Nicole is quite literally a Support character, and while she is always my leader she plays best on my teams when she can fire the opening shot, swap out to a dedicated DPS character and then pop in and out now and again with artillery fire to keep the rally going. Remarkably, and tellingly, Nicole's best teams are with Jane and Qingyi...But only if Zhu Yuan is also with them.

Why is this? I think it's because it's a manifestation of Zenless Zone Zero's core theme: Dealing with the pain and grief of nostalgia for an idealized past we cannot return to (and it's debatable whether or not it even existed to begin with). The Seven Great Void Hunters were the heroes of a previous generation; an entire era ago, as General Falkenhayn tells us in “Where the Miracle Began”. They've all had their stories, and the game we are playing now is not about them. It's the job of those who are left to help build the future by mentoring and guiding the next generation of heroes to come into their own and help build New Eridu once more.

That's a theme and archetype that resonates with me on a deep, personal level, and is part of the reason I wanted to make this blog for Nicole.

So naturally the most significant part of this update for me was the Gravity Cinema dating sim event, which was my favourite thing in 2.0. Nicole isn't one of the characters you can ask out, but one of the films you watch together on your dates is extremely important and dear to my portrayal: For the first time, we have more footage from This Is How I Am.

Now from what I've been able to gather (And I could well be wrong) the narrator for the original ad spot was played by Billy's original voice actor, who left before launch due to MiHoYo switching talent agencies. This means the significance of him being in it and “Where the Miracle Began” is dulled somewhat, but, to my unexpected delight, the team appears to have spun this into a retcon that opened up a wonderful possibility.

This Is How I Am is apparently a docudrama, and the central subject of the movie may not actually be its narrator (indeed, the new narrator sounds quite a bit like Wise's voice actor to me), but some of the cadence and inflections of the words the narrator speaks made me think quite strongly of a very specific character we all know very well by now: Hugo.

The idea of Hugo potentially being “The Documentarian” (or “This Is How I Am Guy” as @faethons and I affectionately refer to him in our offline planning sessions) is possibly the most beautiful, affirming and engaging gift the dev team could have given me, regardless of whether or not it was intentional. It takes a major gap in my personal headcanon, allows me to fill in that part of the tapestry, weave it seamlessly into the canon events, and suddenly all those quite frankly eerie similarities to and parallels with Nicole make perfect sense: Hugo and Nicole had a relationship in the past, and possibly even still do.

Now I well know Hugo's backstory is both very fleshed out and very crowded, but there are some gaps in the timeline where a fling with a younger Nicole could be slotted in with little effort. Specifically, I'm thinking of the time between leaving the Ravenlock estate and moving in with Jack, where it seems he wandered around a lot. There's no reason two street rat orphans (effectively orphan in Hugo's case) couldn't have met up on the streets of a decline-period Eridu and quickly bonded over their shared traumas, Loves, hopes, dreams and desires to build a better world.

Hugo's symbolism is also very heavily associated with birds and the Heavens, which fit all the sky imagery in This Is How I Am to a T. This could also arguably connect him to the Sumerian Sky God Anu, who is Nammu's husband in the tradition of Ur. His light/dark, Solar/Lunar motif also fits the Sunset theme in the movie, and Hugo talks a lot about Sunrises in his battle dialogue.

His ice is also purple, which is the colour of Ether, and he makes a lot of comments about “The Abyss”.

And finally, I can't believe I missed this in 1.6 Part 1, but in the splash art for “Bury Your Tears With The Past (a)” Hugo is literally wearing what looks like a masc version of Cunning Cutie.

Apparently a popular fan theory about The Documentarian in the prelaunch and launch period was that that he's the fake Pegasos delivery driver in that very early set of commissions. That job is a textbook Mockingbird heist, the NPC we meet who I believe is meant to be the delivery driver looks like Hugo in disguise, and Hugo knows exactly where Belle and Wise live when he first appears in the 1.6 story before officially “meeting them”.

So, why are they not together now? For one thing, gacha game, but for another there's no reason they couldn't be, even if they don't live together: Vivian knows Rain and potentially Nicole as well (I headcanon she had her own formative experience with Nicole, after all), Rain is very bound up in the strongbox/USB stick plot of the Prologue (which is, of course, a heist: Hugo even steals a strongbox in his character demo), and Chapter 3 with Victoria Housekeeping.

As is, of course, Nicole. Who uses the getaway trick Hugo shows off in his demo of jumping out a broken window into a Hollow to lose the surviving members of the Red Fang gang (...and the Cunning Hares, for that matter) in the Prologue.

This would also explain why Nicole had to sit Chapter 3 out, leaving the rest of the Hares to pick up the slack: Lycaon at least would probably recognize her immediately, and likely Rina too, given she seems to have some kind of unspecified past with Nicole (I have some ideas about that too, and I wrote about them in the new Deep Database revision).

Furthermore, if Nicole has any ties at all to Mockingbird, she's smart enough to keep that super under wraps. She does seem to visit Lumina Square quite often though, and someone bankrolled Nicole during the Cunning Hares' darkest financial days. There's even one fun event with her at the mall where she says she “know[s] a way to get things cheaper”, which I at first read as referring to her skill in snagging discounts, but could also very well refer to Hugo and Vivian.

Right, let's get “Echoes of Silver” out of the way right off the bat. This one hurt. The story leaves it ambiguous in its denouement - and it has to - but, especially since you start seeing Anby show up alone wearing her old uniform a lot afterwards, I interpret the end of Anby's agent story as depicting the breakup of the Cunning Hares as we've known them: What Anby does is such a flagrant betrayal of trust and disregard for the Love her teammates have for her, I can't see how their relationship could recover from it.

Given that, I'm having “The Price of Hope” explicitly depict Anby quitting Gentle House to become a solo freelancer carrying on the name and legacy of Silver Squadron. I am also having my verse show that this is a catastrophically stupid idea given how jaw-droppingly horrifying a concept Silver Squadron was (Anby's guilt and criticism of her past allegiances feel tokenistic and halfhearted to me), and because Anby's actions go behind the backs of her current team (and found family), hurting them quite badly as a result. Especially Nicole.

I want to stress, this is not a criticism of the game's writing in this case: “Echoes of Silver” is overall a well written story (if too wordy, heavy and emotionally intense for my sensitivities) that accurately depicts the central character making a string of unimaginably hurtful and destructive choices. The only thing I'm changing is following the implications it raises to their logical conclusions.

I especially like how, once they realize what she's done, Nicole and Nekomata give Anby back what she gave them by hiding the spy camera in the doll, which ensures Anby is unable to run away from Soldier 11 forever. An almost literal Trojan Horse, symbolizing how truly despicable and deceitful a relationship built on bad faith really is. This both showcases Nicole's true Cunning, while also conveying the maelstrom of emotions she must be feeling: One who was once a trusted friend and family member - indeed, one who Loved her - is now the enemy. As hurt as she is though, she does what she needs to do, teach her, and this is paralleled nicely with what Anby and Soldier 11 later end up having to do to Twiggy.

I've changed the timeline a bit and combined the destruction of Silver Squadron with that of Dennis', who got ascended by Nineveh in the Old Capital Metro Ruins. It just seemed silly to me to have two different formative incidents involving the Defense Force, the Old Capital Metro Ruins. Soldiers Zero and Nicole and not have them connected.

Anby is absolutely in Love with Soldier 11, though: They're the Doomed Yuri to go along with Lycaon and Hugo's Doomed Yaoi, and there's also the implication that Anby is abandoning her “current partner” (Nicole, despite the fact I see Anby's attraction to her as unrequited) to go back to her “ex”. This can also be paralleled with those who want to return to a Golden Age in Eridu that they've mythologized to the point they're misremembering it (though I may play with this, as I like the idea Eridu was really a utopia at first...But then stopped being so after a certain point) instead of working to keep building New Eridu.

Speaking of Nicole, as I always am, imagine how much worse this must feel for her, someone who, in another life, was so lonely it destroyed her. I see her being pretty shattered by Anby's betrayal and subsequent abandonment of Gentle House: the one thing that can break even the unflappable Nicole Demara is to break up her family. All of which is to say...

In the present setting of my verse, Nicole has rebuilt the Cunning Hares from those Anby left behind, and one new member...

Trigger's story is more a concern for @faethons (my IRL sister who plays Belle and Wise), but I'm so taken with her (and so distressed by “Echoes of Silver”) that Trigger's become the central figure in this moment of my personal verse going quite a bit canon divergent.

In my default verse (and I believe @faethons' too, as we share most of our headcanons) Trigger is not a member of Obol Squadron, and never has been. She retired from the Defense Force after the Fall of the Old Capital and the death of her squadmates (her team being called Eleusinian Squadron this time instead of Lyre Squadron, because the mythology allusions in the canon story are...quite bad, if I'm honest), and has worked as a wandering, nomadic gunslinger and Hollow Raider ever since.

Trigger visits Sixth Street not infrequently and is a big part of the siblings' lives. She has served with Soldier 11 before, but they are not as close as in canon, and much of her character arc involving Obol Squadron becoming her new family plays out with the residents of Sixth Street instead. This includes the Cunning Hares.

Trigger is particularly invested in looking after current and former Defense Force members, so she still gets heavily involved in “Echoes of Silver”, which plays out largely as it does in canon (with the key exceptions I outlined above). In fact, she's even more involved this time, because the culmination of that story is now about found families changing, healing and growing.

After Anby resigns from Gentle House, it is Trigger who takes her place (they even synergize together perfectly in-game, and these “New Cunning Hares” are my current main team), even to the point of settling down and moving into the Hares' apartment. As in canon, she always wanted a beautiful home where she can cheer people up and keep them safe. Trigger even begins a romantic relationship with Nicole, bonding over their shared life experiences, hardships, traumas, and desire to take care of people, especially each other. I quietly introduce this in a series of posts I've made over the past month or so. In this way, Trigger becomes the Light Mirror to Anby's Dark.

This is also all the more lyrical given it was Nineveh who changed Trigger's eyes, effectively blinding her.