#lore rants

Looking through the rest of it, the only place the blank spots appear is in the section on Cyrene, March, Lygus, Irontomb and Dan Heng

Lygus claims to be an Emanator of the Erudition, Irontomb is an Emanator of Destruction, and if Cyrene isn't an Emanator of Remembrance then idk what she is, and considering Evernight is said to be the 'child of Remembrance born from shadow' and literally everything else she has some connection to Fuli, which just leaves Dan Heng

There are three paths on Amphoreus and 4 Aeons that its caught the attention of:

Fuli, Nanook, Nous and Long.

Unless a titan is strong enough to interfere outside of Amphoreus (because he was gone long enough for the sceptre to register it before the negative) then I doubt one of them did so I'm assuming an Aeon is responsible for this.

Which also doesn't make too much sense because, Fuli and Nous have no reason to pay attention to Dan Heng (he's my favourite but be fr), same to Nanook unless the whole Phainon/Khaslana attempting to attack him and destroying galaxies in the process thing was what caused it?

Long is dead.

(Or gone, idk anymore though he did look down when the cycle was restarted so there's that?)

Aeri (@enchantedmirage) innocently sent me a funny nui video ft izumi and makoto. And I ended up writing a textwall ranting about izumi (Number 1 most misinterpreted knights member to me) and makoto (Number 1 most misinterpreted Trickstar member to me). And I thought, well, why not document this on my blog too.

YEAHHHH ANON WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT THE MOONS!!!!

Okay so I'm going to keep this as tl;dr as possible because it would be VERY easy to go off on a tangent so I am sticking JUST to stuff where the moon or Moon Sisters are explicitly mentioned.

So according to Heart's Desire, vol. 3, there used to be three moons over Teyvat instead of one:

Aria - name is Italian for a single-performer vocal piece in an opera, but derives from the Latin for "air"

Sonnet - like the poem, but derives from an old proto-Romance word for "sound'

Canon - musical composition based around multi-voiced imitation; derives from Greek and Latin word for "law" or "rule."

(Make of these etymologies what you will.)

According to Moonlit Bamboo Forest(MBF), vol. 3 :

the Moon Sisters are older than Morax (more than 6,000 years old)

they're referred to as "daughters of prose and song"

they "ruled over the night sky," trading shifts in moving across the heavens in a silver carriage (think Helios in Greek myth with his chariot)

they were in love with "the stars of daybreak"/the "morning stars."

It should be noted that "morning star" is a term often associated with "dawn bringer," it may be associated with Phanes, the Primordial One (who is also known as Eosphorus/Phosphorus or Lucifer depending on which versions of Greek/Orphic/Latinized mythology you're looking at). Since MBF refers specifically to "the chambers of the morning stars," this may imply that the anthropomorphic "stars" are the Shades that Phanes made of itself.

Something caused the Moon Sisters to turn against one another, and the single remaining moon in Teyvat right now is the one remaining corpse out of three. (yikes.)

According to Records of Jueyun, vol. 4:

the three sisters were witness to a union between one of the Seelie and "a traveler from afar."

a great "calamity" fell 30 days later. (Whether the union is directly related to the calamity is EXTREMELY unclear, although some people [pooossibly myself included] theorize that the outlander who fell in love with the Seelie was the Second Who Came from beyond the firmament, who eventually challenged the Primordial One to the throne and lost. For more on this, see the Byakuyakoku Collection.)

For some miscellaneous flavor, here are some things associated with the moon/s that have caught my eye as I've played Genshin

Mondstadt literally translates to "Moon City" in German.

Liyue (璃月) makes use of the characters for "glass/colored glaze" and "moon."

Speaking of Liyue, the osmanthus flower is associated with the full moon and the Mid-Autumn festival. In Chinese legend, the first osmanthus plant is on the moon.

Glaze Lilies only grow at night.

There are WAY too many mentions of serpents consuming the moon and/or sun in various mythologies across the world. I'm probably going to have to make a mega-post about snakes and serpents in Genshin at some point.

Nahida calls herself "just the Moon" when we first meet her. In context, she means that she is only a reflection of Rukkhadevata's former glory, but I still find it relevant that she calls herself the moon when her appearance is so similar to what the Moon Sisters are supposed to look like.

The description for the Nilotpala Lotus refers to a moon goddess (singular) and the chariot. Nilotpalas only bloom at night. (It's interesting that the "fake" lotus, Kalpalata, is Nahida's ascension material and not the Nilotpala.)

The lore for the Xiphos' Moonlight sword suggests that the Moon Sisters were capable of "determining heroes' fates." This is most likely a reference to the three Fates of Greek mythology, who controlled the birth, life and death of all humans.

Aaand most recently, in Lyney's character teaser, we get to see him holding the full moon in his hands! In the Rider-Waite tarot, the Moon is a symbol for lies, deception and illusion. This doesn't just have to apply to Lyney - it's something I've been thinking about for as long as I've known about the Moon Sisters.

She started from absolutely nothing. Not the slightest clue about idols or celebs or the entertainment industry or anything. She wanted to grow stronger so that she could protect the people she loves and cares for. And she works soooooo hard for it. All in the background, all in the shadows, she puts in whatever effort she can so that everything runs smoothly and so that everyone can be happy.

And she succeeds! Time and time again, every live she plans and budgets for is very successful. The idols she nurtured all this time are getting happier. Most of the time she doesn't even understand why she gets praised so much (because low self-esteem) and still thinks it's not enough, it's never enough. But never did her doubts even stop her from showing up everytime for her idols.

And she ends up building a strong reputation as a very capable producer. This should be a good thing but it isn't. Now she has a name in the industry, she can no longer just work in the shadows like before. If she puts in too much effort, she (and the idols she's producing for) might get punished for favoritism. So now she has to distance herself from the beloved idols she spent all this time making memories with and getting closer to and it's just aakdhfhsjajdhfhej

Like i think this is most obvious in her switch of "please call me by my name" to "please never call me by my name". In yumenosaki, she was a transfer student at first and most people called her tenkousei-chan. After a while this starts offending her because c'mon, she's been here a while, she has been through a lot with many of these people together and it's kinda distancing of the others to still call her by tenkousei instead of anzu. But in ES? She literally has to beg them to stop calling her by her name and start calling her "Producer" instead. She has to build this artificial distance between her and all the idols she loves so that ES doesn't hurt them. So that she can protect them.

There's obviously the whole kidnapping makoto thing, which, don't get me wrong, is extremely messed up. But that causes almost everyone to think of him as only a psycho yandere and?? I disagree?

The izumi we see in the main storyline in !-era is an izumi that has already lost makoto, his innocent beloved childhoid friend once. And he blames himself for not having been able to protect makoto in the past from the modeling industry.

And then after he gets separated from makoto, the whole yumenosaki war thing happens where he meets leo. And he fails to protect leo as well. And leo was like, A WHOLE KING in yumenosaki, a natural born genius. But even leo got destroyed by eichi. And he blames himself for that as well.

So what happens when not only does he see makoto (whom he sees as very vulnerable) again, but he sees makoto trying to go against The Eichi Tenshouin, the one who started the whole yumenosaki war thing? The eichi who already destroyed the extremely powerful leo? He's ridiculously terrified of losing a loved one a second time and what eichi could do to makoto.

Only later when yumenosaki academy and knights as a unit stabilize a bit does he realize that what he did was not protecting, but further hurting makoto.

But i just don't agree with the entire fanbase being like "Look at how this character behaves after losing his childhood friend, seeing his fellow highschool students kill themselves in masses, seeing another loved one disappearing, and seeing his precious childhood friend go against the insane guy that caused the mass suicide in the first place. Not to mention he's a temporary unit leader of a unit that is immensely struggling even though that was never supposed to be his job in the first place. Clearly this is who he inherently is as a person and not a result of all the pressure on him"