I KEEP REMEMBERING / I KEEP REMEMBERING — — #TREVALER: SELECTIVE, HIGHLY PRIVATE [ TRAVELER ] FROM HOYOVERSE'S GENSHIN IMPACT. HEAVILY HEADCANONED. UNDER21 DNI. STANDARD RULES APPLY. BIOGRAPHY AND VERSE INFO UNDER READ-MORE.
— — i’m paranoid about thievery. bad experiences! so, you know, don’t lift my lore / take inspiration ('cause i’ll know) because i’ll turn into the hulk if the hulk was the hulk but worse. but also hi 💖 — — ask responses are left open-ended on purpose, to act as starters, considering i don't post starter calls often. feel free to continue them! * BLOG LINKS: PROMPTS. STUDY. META.
BASICS.
NAME: aether. he doesn’t have a name the way celestial deities do, but aether is what he represents, so it’s what he’s come to know himself as. * note on referring to aether in character! TITLE: he’s accrued several official titles, but most of teyvat’s people call him traveler / outlander. it’s a stark reminder that he wasn’t supposed to be here long. AGE: ancient. he honestly no longer remembers. appearance-wise, he looks to be in his early 20s. BIRTHDATE: he doesn’t technically have one — he and his sister both predate time. he chooses one at random on each new world he visits. GENDER IDENTITY: N / A (he / him pronouns are fine.) SEXUALITY: bisexual. FAMILY: lumine, his sister, is the only family he’s ever known and the only one he’s ever needed. AFFILIATION: verse dependent. OCCUPATION: adventurer? he guesses he’d be an adventurer. LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: he technically doesn’t have a home on teyvat. he’s mostly always on the road, anyways. LANGUAGES: all-speak. celestial languages are easy to understand, but when he speaks, there’s always an accented note to his words that gives the impression he has to make an effort to form the language on his tongue.
* speaking of the basics, here's some extended reading!
APPEARANCE.
HAIR: warm blond, with a reddish undertone that sheens under sun exposure. most of the time, he keeps it long and braided. EYES: color pick the sunrise. HEIGHT: 5ft7, 171cm. BUILD: slender and lean. subtle musculature and no body fat. SCARS: aplenty. his body never held on to scars before teyvat, but since having his abilities sealed, his body’s become vulnerable in ways he’s having trouble acclimatizing to; his recklessness is obvious against his skin. the most prominent are:
a pair of vertical, jagged scars on his back from where his wings were ripped out
on his chest, burn scars spread out in the shape of lichtenberg figures from his run-in with the electro archon
PERSONALITY.
POSITIVE TRAITS: charismatic, perceptive, sincere, magnanimous, thoughtful, dependable. NEUTRAL TRAITS: allocentric, tactile, incorruptible, determined. NEGATIVE TRAITS: indulgent, dependent, vindictive, destructive, vague, reckless. GOALS: find his sister? leave teyvat? it’s getting kind of complicated. FEARS: solitude. isolation. loneliness.
VERSES.
VERSE 1: aether is the protagonist; he travels teyvat in search of his sister. VERSE 2: aether is the antagonist; he is the leader of the abyss organization, waiting for lumine to meet him at the end. my iteration of abyss prince aether sees him reliving the genshin timeline two separate times: ask me about it! VERSE 3: also doubles as pre-game verse; aether and lumine are outlanders traversing different worlds. easily moldable for crossover purposes! VERSE 4: no difference from general verse aside from the fact that the world the twins visit is modern-day earth. aether and lumine are university students. aether is a vocalist in the the band 4NEMO.
— — ask me about verses. or look for them on the blog! i post about crossovers often, and even if there's no available content on my blog, i'm more than happy to brainstorm on the spot! i love making verses for my friends :)
NOTES.
since i do all my genshin quests out of order (ie. finish the time-locked event quests in a more or less timely manner and leave the archon, world, and story quests to just sit there) i like the idea of aether also accepting requests in much the same way, and i model his timeline to my gameplay. for example (and there’s plenty of examples to choose from because i don’t play this game consistently), aether still hasn’t gone to fontaine; he went from sumeru straight to natlan.
aether can’t die. not permanently, at least. if he gets fatally wounded on teyvat, his body disperses and flickers back into existence at the foot of the nearest statue of the seven.
this applies mostly to the abyss verse, but because he’s the representation of the aether / quintessence, he can naturally “manipulate” peoples’ perceptions of him just via existing. so in dialogue options when lumine asks people if they’ve ‘seen someone who looks like her’, chances are that they have, but their recollection of him has shifted because of who he is and what he can make happen. if he’s not in front of you he just sort of drifts out of your memory.
* in main verse, he doesn’t manipulate his surroundings’ memories in the same manner, but if not for paimon’s company, aether has no difficulty melting into the background and avoiding notice.
aether doesn’t really think about the concepts of ‘giving’ and ‘taking’ in the standard manner; he doesn’t do things to receive something in return, nor does he really need gratitude, either, to be frank.
he doesn't lie. he can obfuscate and he can refuse to respond, but he doesn't lie. doesn't take kindly to liars in turn; he'd rather someone directly antagonize him than lie to him.
his memory is very good: he remembers names, faces, and events clearly. once something’s occurred, there’s no chance of him forgetting even a single detail of it, regardless of how much time has passed. however, he has a lot of trouble remembering the timeline; time slips away from him often. the best way to make note of this is in the way he tells stories: he’s likely to mention a lot of details but never go into specifics of exactly when something occurred. tl;dr: he doesn’t perceive time linearly.
he doesn't mention his sister often, but it's rare that he's not thinking about her.
he doesn’t have to sleep. like, ever. on nights, if he’s traveling in a party, he usually volunteers to keep vigil. (he experiences mortal exhaustion because his body's been rendered almost-mortal, but he doesn't actually have to surrender to it.)
