#the fae

Some signs in game do actually point in this direction. Flins says that his lantern has been with him a "long time," with an unspoken implication that the lantern is--if not exactly as old as he is--at least ancient too:

In the anecdote where he asks Aino to repair his lantern, he stays very close by throughout the entire time she is working on it, which suggests that it might not be possible for him to be separated from the lantern for a lengthy period or that there may be a limit to how far he can/wants to go away from his lantern. The fact that he gets referred to as "the Lantern Fae" implies that the lantern is a defining part of his existence.

On the contrary, there are also plenty of signs suggesting Flins is an entirely separate existence from his lantern. During his teapot dialogue, he refers to his lantern as his "habitation" and calls the world beyond his lantern "the outside," suggesting that he views the lamp as a type of shelter, presumably protecting his true form, which is just azure flame.

When using his signature weapon, the lantern on his polearm glows with the same colored flame as his main lantern, including lighting up red to indicate enemies, suggesting that he may be able to inhabit any nearby lantern (even several at once), not limited to just one object.

(Though this also begs the question: Why does he turn red when enemies are near? Do aarnivalkea show their emotions by changing color? Is the flaring color a threat display to opponents? "Don't mess me; I'm RED now!" 😂 Why is this making me think of animals who change color when they're stressed lolol?)

All this leads to a chicken and egg conundrum: Did aarnivalkea start taking shelter in lamps or other objects after originally being naked, creating different types of will-of-the-wisps--lantern fae, fireplace fae, candlestick fae??? 😂 Or were they deliberately created from inanimate objects like lanterns by the ancient Hyperboreans, who were intentionally making the fae out of "frail" forms/objects? The text does describe the fae as being "forged" rather than "born," but at some of them also had "flesh and blood"... Getting some conflicting messages here, Genshin, lol.

What happens when a "lantern fae" is forced out of its lantern completely? Will it die if it can't find another vessel to inhabit, or will it be fine as a homeless little ball of fire? I've asked this elsewhere too, but: Do they ever grow out of their lanterns and have to move to bigger ones?

Does the appearance of the lantern signify anything in will-of-the-wisp society? Are fancier lanterns a sign of higher status? Are the ones in golden lanterns considered show-offs? Do they decorate their lanterns to try to attract a mate?? 😂

Okay, back to the history for a second: There's also the question of purpose. Were "lantern fae" (or the fae in general!) created by the Hyperboreans to serve a specific purpose? If so, is it possible that the original aarnivalkea might have been forged with the purpose of "guide people with your light"--that they were created to be a tool and aid for humanity from the very beginning?

Or, in other words: Is it possible that Flins' drive to protect humans is actually will-of-the-wisp instinct? That his habit of literally leading humans out of danger with his light is (knowingly or unknowingly) still acting on the same purpose the Hyperboreans gave to the first "lantern fae" millennia ago?

Pictured above: A lamp, trying very hard to engage in its natural behavior... of being someone's lamp.

Alternatively, another thought I had: We know that Flins can see human ghosts. His character stories suggest that he might have once been a fae responsible for leading human souls of Snezhnayans to the afterlife, just as he's trying to currently do with the ghosts at the Final Night Cemetery.

Is it possible that aarnivalkea were created to be psychopomps right from the very beginning, and that their main role was and always has been to "lead scattered souls back to Irminsul"?

The idea that the artisans of Hyperborea might have crafted different types of fae to serve different "everyday" purposes is particularly interesting to me, in that it may imply fae were expected from the get-go to live in direct daily contact with the primordial humans (either as servants or partners; the Genshin wiki says the fae were created to be servants for the Hyperboreans, but I couldn't actually find the source for that). In such a situation, if the fae were created as servants for the Hyperboreans, what would life have been like for the first "lantern fae"? Were they treated like tools? Like objects? Or like people from the start?

Were will-of-the-wisps widespread or rare in the heyday of the fae? If they were widespread--how much so? Lanterns would have basically been a household item in an ancient culture, so is it possible many households had a "lantern fae" that they just kept around as a guardian against "less benevolent creatures of the night" (according to Flins' character story)? Or perhaps "lantern fae" were partnered with individual Hyperboreans who held more dangerous positions in need of guiding lights, like the way Lightkeepers in present Nod-Krai are never without their lamps? Imagine signing up for the Irminsul excavation team in Hyperborea and they just go "Okay, here's your government-assigned fairy; take good care of him!" 😂 My imagination is running wild thinking about what role talking lanterns would play in a combined human-fae society...

We know from the lore so far that Genshin's fae can have both normal spouses and infant children (because the humans in Snezhnaya are watchful for changelings), but does that even apply to will-of-the-wisps? How does a ball of fire reproduce? Does a tiny flicker of flame just split off from the parent flame? If lantern fae are bound to their lanterns, does the child flame manifest with its own lantern from the get-go, or does the parent flame have to provide the child flame with "baby's first lantern"?

I... wanna see pictures of baby lantern Flins... T^T

Are aarnivalkea even a breed that raises their children, or are baby lantern fae born ready to go out into the world on their own by Day 1? Maybe they don't even have a "child" stage of development anyway--maybe they're just summoned into existence as full-sized flames and only need to learn with time how to take their human forms?

Then this just begs the question of "When do will-of-the-wisps get their human forms in the first place?" Are they born knowing how to transform into a human shape, or is that something they have to practice? How many horrific misshapen pseudo-human shapes did Flins create before he finally figured out how to do an accurate approximation of a person? Do they learn how to transform into humans at a young age, taking the form of human children, or does it take longer for them to perfect the skill, not taking a human form until adolescence or adulthood? Do a majority of them prefer to stay in their human forms, or do they largely stay in flame form and only take human shape when its really needed? Can they change their appearance into other lifeforms too or only into humans? Could Flins take the form of say... a fungus if he was forced to?

What is the social structure of aarnivalkea society? Do they form nuclear or extended families? The fact that Flins has a last name suggests the presence of a blood-related family to pass down that surname (but then again this "last name" could be entirely fabricated). But if not families, are aarnivalkea a more solo breed of fae by nature, preferring to be dispersed to their own territories unless a social appearance is necessary? (Flins seems this way, but then again Flins clearly has "I'm not like the other fae" going on, sooo lol.)

Are lantern fae territorial? At the very least, it seems pretty clear to me that Flins is a "home body"--he has a voiceline about never seeing red sand before, suggesting he's literally never traveled beyond Snezhnaya and Nod-Krai--and it seems that he travels between relatively few locations as part of his daily life, preferring to go back to his lighthouse whenever possible. Between this and the fact that he's completely repurposed entire sections of the Final Night Cemetery just for his own personal hobbies (one room for his skeleton puzzles, one for his collections of gems and coins, one for a library, etc.), it gives the impression that aarnivalkea might be very "home-base"-oriented, more of the "settling down" type than world wanderers by nature. (This, I think, aligns well with the concept of their kind being born to serve as guides: When the fog rolls in, you'd only want to follow someone who knows the paths front to back, a person who has walked that same route a thousand times before.) Flins' character stories make his wandering from Snezhnaya into Nod-Krai sound basically like a existential crisis, rather than anything he was excited about or interested in--he didn't wander because he especially wanted to, but because he just had no place to belong anymore.

This ties into my questions about climate. The Genshin wiki seems to have leaned into the interpretation that the fae are adapted to cold areas like Snezhnaya and that's why they don't travel anywhere outside of Snezhnaya/Nod-Krai, but I actually think this interpretation is incorrect. For one, Netochka's line about fae and the weather is "It can't be the climate, can it?" (implying she thinks that the weather isn't really a good explanation for why there are no fae in Nod-Krai), while Flins' teapot line about the cold weather and the fae suggests that some fae may have adapted to the biting cold--which means that A) fae were not originally a cold-weather species at all and B) there are plenty of other fae not adapted to Snezhnaya's eternal blizzards.

Flins' line about rain suggests that he's not particularly impacted by weather of any kind outside his lantern, but he does still die to sheer cold on Dragonspine, which kind of ticks me off, to be honest... Anyway, all together, this suggests that lantern fae are fairly adaptable to various climates, and while they may prefer a cooler, darker environment by nature, it doesn't seem that they specifically need an especially cool climate.

Changing gears here: What about aarnivalkea gender? Do they even actually have genders in their real flame forms? Is there "boy fire" and "girl fire"? Or is gender just a kind of optional thing for them, something they choose when they decide what their human forms will look like? Can they change their gender just by changing the appearance of their human form at will? Is there social pressure among aarnivalkea to pick one gender over the other or do they pick their gender based on the circumstances they find themselves in? For example, is there an abundance of male lantern fae because there seems to be a correlation between the lanterns and watching over soldier groups (that may have been mostly men)?

What about their senses? According to the anecdote about food, Flins only has the ability to taste things while in his human form (he cannot taste when in flame form), but he also has a voiceline stating that human foods generally do not taste good to him. This suggests that even in his human form, his senses do not fully adjust to human parameters--he's a fae wearing a human costume rather than actually transforming into a fully functional human body.

Anyway, what do things taste like for will-of-the-wisps? When describing his perception of taste, Flins only compares the Lightkeeper rations to inedible objects (newspaper and tree bark) instead of actual food tastes... Has he "eaten" tree bark and newspaper to know what they taste like...? We know Flins likes alcohol, so are lantern fae inclined to foods/drinks that are cleanly flammable? Could he theoretically drink gasoline and enjoy it? We know he can smell things and that he enjoys the smell of tea (from his birthday letter), so is the aarnivalkea sense of smell closer to humans' than their sense of taste is?

What about sight? In Flins' trailer, we get a "first person" shot that suggests that Flins' sight in his flame form is a type of thermal vision, based on heat signatures rather than actual details. This helps to explain why he's able to see through dense fog and darkness without issue, as he isn't "seeing" so much as identifying differences in temperature.

However, Flins also has a comment about how the human world looks so complex and beautiful specifically when viewed through "human eyes"--how literal is this statement? If he takes a human form, is he able to generally see like a human can? (Doesn't this contradict the fact that his sense of taste doesn't change to match humans'? What is the rule here, Genshin?) How good is the eyesight of his human form then--better or worse than a real human? By the way, this may also explain why the first part of his body to ignite with flame when he uses his fae power in his human form is his eyes--he needs to activate thermal-based vision to see through the Wild Hunt's fog.

And while we're on the subject of senses, I also have a ton of questions about how "real" the human projection even is, and to what extent Flins is able to interact with the world as a human, because the game itself seems to go back and forth on this. For one, we know he doesn't actually need to breathe (on Dragonspine, he doesn't make any breath fog). In the anecdote about food, Flins says that he wasn't even able to swallow the food his comrades expected him to eat, suggesting that he may not even have a working human digestive system. Instead, he had to put the food into his lantern to incinerate it.

Maybe it was just that he couldn't swallow the Lightkeepers' rations because they taste nasty--but if that's the case and it was an issue of army rations alone being too gross, couldn't Flins eat good food without an issue? Yet his food voiceline suggests he doesn't want to eat any food the human way (he finds it almost all of it to taste unpleasant, no matter what it might be). But then again, if it's the case that he legitimately can't eat, where is the alcohol that he drinks going??? Does it just evaporate the moment it gets into his body because of an insane internal temperature or something? But then couldn't he just internally incinerate food too? Hrmmm Genshin, your world-building rules are too inconsistent...!!

Flins can see and smell like a human when he takes a human form, but can't taste like a human. Why? 🤔

I'm inclined to think the world-building that makes most sense here is that Flins can approximate a human experience only when he already has a frame of reference for it--aarnivalkea can apparently smell and see even in fire form, but they cannot taste, so even when he creates a mouth for his human form, he cannot create taste buds that appreciate food because he doesn't have any frame of reference for how the human body responds to tastes it likes. In short: If his flame form doesn't have a corresponding experience, Flins won't have enough information to accomplish the human version either.

Make of this what you want in terms of whether or not Flins can enjoy sex; at least considering what "makes sense," I'm inclined to say that because it's clearly not something living flame or lanterns are capable of, Flins might be able to physically engage but probably lacks a frame of reference for the positive sensations. But then again, when have shippers ever been limited by what makes sense? 😂

Back to our regularly scheduled programming, and almost to the end of my questions here (for now... until I think of more...): Are will-of-the-wisps magpie-ish collectors of shiny things by nature, or is Flins just special? Is he drawn to old and fancy things because of his personal nostalgia for the old regime of Snezhnaya, or do all lantern fae (maybe all the fae, regardless of type?) just have a weakness for pretty baubles? The fact that the Belyi Tsar was famous for giving away gems to his fae followers gives me the impression that perhaps they're all just a little treasure obsessed, but Flins' experience with old gems and coins actually seems a bit different--he cares about their stories and histories even more than their appearances, I think. Flins' JP voice actor also agrees with this sentiment:

According to real world folklore, aarnivalkea, the type of fae that "lantern fae" (will-o-wisps who live in lanterns) are supposed to be, are famous for being the guardians of treasure, ghost flames that mark where old fairy gold is buried. In-game, is this another chicken and egg? Do will-of-the-wisps mark where treasure can be found... or do you find treasure where lantern fae are because lantern fae are hoarders by nature? lol

Does Flins actually collect treasure as a way of "guarding" it? Preserving its histories and stories, compared to other collectors who might not realize the value of the pieces they hold? Does Flins have some psychic ability to "read" the history of a gem or coin he finds, or does he just do his research thoroughly before buying any piece?

And just how weak is Flins for shiny things? Is it like the actual fae legends, where you could trade a gem or bauble for a magical favor? If you give Flins something especially nice, will he be obligated by old fae laws to reward your gesture in kind? Do you think the Lightkeepers have cottoned on to this, so they keep bringing him trinkets and that's why he's always drowning in paperwork--he keeps getting bribed into writing everyone else's reports for them in exchange for crumbly old coins? 😂 (Flins knows what they're up to, of course, but this has greatly reduced the time it takes him to find new treasures, so some trade-offs must be suffered, no?)

Even though Nikita is the only one we know of in the Lightkeepers who blatantly knows Flins' secret, you can't tell me a number of them haven't figured out that something is off about their "anti-social" coworker, and that at least a few of them are just keeping it on the down-low. This guy's been part of the Lightkeepers for decades and hasn't aged a day? "You know what? Whatever he is, he's a nice, hard-working lad, so I'm going to mind my own business."

How many of the Lightkeepers have low-key converted into "I stand by my weird coworker" supporters besides Illuga (the designated "#1 Flins caretaker" lol)? How many of them have secretly stepped in to distract Nod-Krai's civilians so that they don't notice anything off about Flins? How many of them are funneling their old family hand-me-down knick-knacks Flins' way to conveniently get rid of them? How many of them are very deliberately avoiding any eye contact with the lantern whenever Flins claims he's eating but is actually stuffing food away into the flame? How many of them are out there pretending they don't see him stuffing monster bones in his pockets on the rare times he comes and rescues them from botched hunts?

I know Flins is loved just the way he is!