OH LMAO THANKS <333 reading your response was a relief bcs i genuinely thought i might've been an ass 😭🤦♀️
ALSO LMAO look what i found yesterday, i thought i should share it with you since it immediately reminded me of your grove of epiphany gang post XD
and actually i had this one question- i hope you won't mind answering, why did you put phainon, mydei and anaxa under the bi category? phainon, esp? bcs when i saw his dialogue with mydei where they talked about going to mydei's library, and phainon's dialogue after trailblazer clarifies mydei's words for phainon, he goes, 'That's amazing!!!'
i was laughing so hard bcs 😭🙏 hyv RARELY ever does that with their dialogues, no matter how excited or elated a character sounds. so it felt as if they REALLY wanted to convey phainon's excitement about the entire matter. in fact, at no point is the guy shown to be dumb, so i doubt he didn't understand the metaphor mydei was using. but he was so desperate to hear those words from him that he doesn't let the matter rest until the trailblaze explicitly goes, 'yes. he's saying yes.'
like 😭 phainon, you're not being subtle lmao.
so anyway, i was just wondering if it gets any gayer than that 😂
YES it gets gayer because unfortunately for everyone else blade still exists and his level of yearning remains genuinely insane. this is the man with the jade pendant integrated into his literal character design AND echoed again in his SP skill design.
so phaidei are absolutely crazy in terms of tension and emotional framing, but blade is still sitting there in the corner like the final boss of homoerotic suffering.
and mind you, that’s BEFORE you even touch the actual narrative implications!! because then you remember blade canonically visits the imbibitor lunae statue and that dan heng’s mere presence canonically calms him down! like, these are just the tips of the iceberg.
ALSO THANK YOU FOR THE VIDEO 😭😭 NOUSPORISTS MY LOVEEEESS!!!
but anyway on a more serious note: phainon and mydei absolutely have insane sexual tension, yes, but i still categorize them under bisexual inspirations primarily because of the figures they’re drawing from.
mydei is very clearly pulling from achilles in part, and achilles historically/mythologically exists in a space tied to love for both women and men (specifically one man, two if you count antilochus). meanwhile phainon pulls from multiple figures, but the inspirations whose sexuality i take into account are apollo and alcibiades, both figures associated with relationships with women and men.
and the alcibiades inspiration becomes REALLY interesting once you pair it with anaxa’s blatant socrates inspirations. because socrates was both the teacher and lover of alcibiades (while ALSO having a wife, which is part of why i put him under bi), while mnestia and cerces, who are canon lovers, are also framed through teacher/student dynamics. hyv keeps repeating these parallels over and over.
anaxa himself also has apollo inspirations layered in there, which further reinforces the bisexual reading because apollo’s mythology is famously full of both male and female lovers.
in fact what really gets me is that basically ALL of anaxa’s dynamics with his students map onto mythological or historical lover pairings:
anaxa/hyacine -> apollo/hyacinth.
anaxa/castorice → apollo/the muses.
phainon/anaxa → alcibiades/socrates.
for more about the nousporists, please watch my tiktok video where i discuss details about them in length!
plus phainon openly expresses attraction toward the trailblazer regardless of gender! so the game itself already establishes him in a way that comfortably exceeds strict monosexual framing anyway. he refers to the trailblazer as the hero of his heart and cyrene teases the trailblazer about stealing someone’s heart (since phainon often mentions the trailblazer being after his heart, the general consensus is that cyrene is referring to phainon).
