fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5796 ]

[ SECRET POST #5796 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5796 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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07. [SPOILERS for Genshin]

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08. [SPOILERS for Rings of Power]

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09. [SPOILERS for Clown Corps]

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10. [SPOILERS for The Handmaid’s Tale]

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11. [WARNING for discussion of self-harm]
https://i.imgur.com/cJiBCtp.png
(linked for nudity)

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #829.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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The more we get about Celestia and The Heavenly Principles, the less the archons seem like benevolent figures. Non-Abyss traveler fell in with these guys first, and is just ... going along like they're probably the good guys (or pretending to?) until s/he can locate her/his sister.

I will say that I find the recent narrative slant on forbidden knowledge extremely unconvincing. "The Red King brought truth that was not meant for this world and everyone started going crazy until he and this god sealed it up, in a grand gesture of self-sacrifice" just ... I know of truths that are unfortunate for some interested party or elite or ideology, but the idea that truth itself can be the enemy of life or sanity is total gibberish to me.

what.... is Genshin

I mean, I have osmosed that it is some kind of anime gacha Diablo clone, but where does the Lovecraftian gnosticism come in

AYRT

Uh ... sometime after the Easter eggs about Buddhism, ancient Latin, Chinese cooking, and whichever other weird they felt like including. Not even going to get into the two times we were trying to figure out what the hell in the wake of child sacrifice.

But a lot of the day-to-day is tamer than the main questline, and the quality of writing varies a lot. I keep the voices muted because the voice acting in English is obnoxious, mostly thanks to the main character's mascot being squeaky and pretty much never having anything interesting to say. I also get aggravated with their copaganda and rah-rah government crappy bits, and wind up relying on game guides online to speedrun those parts without having to read the text. (But I would be happier if there was the option of just being like "no, main character is not going to help you with your stupid undercover sting.")

I can't straightforwardly recommend on story grounds, or characterization grounds, but it's a lot more interesting and textured when you mix canon with fanon. And it has other stuff - there are gacha mechanics, but you can do every challenge the game has to offer as a free player. It will take longer to get "five star" characters, but the characters you're just given as you play are solidly good.

My one piece of advice would be to not waste energy or in-game resources on the artifact domains: they are notoriously bad about giving trash artifacts. Whereas, in Genshin, you will wind up fighting the bosses a lot, and aside from dropping character level up materials, they drop artifacts from two simple sets that are useful to one group of weapon types or the other.

Basically all of the game's deeper lore is based off gnosticism.

Other than the obvious aforementioned bits of gnosticism (really that's all there is to it and I say as a lore enthusiast... whose psychotic breakdowns are triggered by gnosticism so maybe that's not the best combination of personality traits.) to me Genshin is more like honorary SMT than anything else. In my mind they're gonna pull alignments on us eventually.

But it's true that - as anon said - the quality of writing varies A Lot. And the worst thing is, sometimes they put lore-relevant bits in optional quests or even worse, time-limited events as if it wasn't easy enough to get lost and confused in the main story. And so. It's almost impossible to follow. Not to mention the translation errors, as the only thing harder than translating art is translating ongoing art. And so on.

As every Genshin lore enthusiast KNOWS, Genshin is like that one TV show that could have been amazing and an artistic masterpiece if it was just the good parts condensed in an epic movie but instead it chose to be a mediocre TV show with brilliant parts.

Yeah, it's kind of an open question in my mind how much more sense Genshin actually makes in Chinese. It would almost be nice if the problem was that the English translation was butchered, and there's something in clear language with (fairly) unambiguous meaning underneath the tangle of "character says four different contradictory things in quick succession and expects us to make heads or tails of it." But somehow, I suspect we are not so lucky.

Although, what I'd really like is if it were the sort of game that was hackable in that way that makes it possible for players to release deeply reworked mods, like Genshin minus all of Paimon's unhelpful filler lines. Or playable character models where the women DON'T have deformed legs (they're all obligatorily pigeon-toed).

AYRT - A lot I feel. If only because the English translation is so, SO badly butchered. But some things are deliberately confusing even in the original script, notably Dragonspine aka Sal Vindagnyr which the scriptwriters admitted to being ambiguous and confusing on purpose. But really, the more you look at least at the main story/quests, you will realize the contradictory things make sense more often than not. But the "point of view" of each character and what they see as truth or not really matters, hence honorable SMT. Not everything that is said is actually true. Items descriptions are the best lore sources, and they are so poetic and beautiful when they tell stories. But yeah, sometimes characters will say things that make little sense at first glance. At least that's my belief and nothing really contradicts it so far, hopefully someday I will write down my extensive thoughts on it.

The thing is... hmm... it's like sometimes they throw in stuff that wasn't in the initial plans, but "works" as filler-ish, but actually might work better in the world of Honkai because it's like B-grade isekai at best. But the deeper lore? The lost civilizations, Heavenly Principles and all that? That's some beautiful shit. And whatever glimpses we have (Enkanomiya, Mona's domain, quite a few Sumeru instances) only proves it.

Well. That at least gives me the hope that in the future, we could have a version of Genshin that is well translated. I've seen fandom make a huge difference with keeping translations honest or at least making sure everyone who's interested in the subject knows about it when the main translation is misleading or censored or whatever. And I appreciate your observation about reading item descriptions. I've looked at them some, but without a clear sense for, you know ... who the heck was supposedly telling me all these things? ... I wasn't assuming the information was especially close to the truth.

If you do write down your thoughts, maybe you should link in F!S. Or at least, I'd be interested.

AYRT - Same here. And there are plenty of theories on how Genshin may become just an offline game at some point in the distant future. Maybe we will get the whole condensed story in some type of media (at this point we can dream of an anime even!) in the future. That would be amazing ♥ But for the time being, yeah, fandom is super useful for that. Sadly I am not THAT much of a lore nerd so I can't pinpoint every inexact translation, but at this point we know some very important words and concepts, like Heavenly Principles, Primordial One and cataclysm have been butchered in translation, not to mention the "object that fell from the sky" / meteorite and so on. So it's really a mess so far.

The idea that item descriptions are the closest we have to the truths of Teyvat isn't something I made up, it was told by the developers at some point IIRC (gotta check my sources but pretty sure). As for the "who the heck", sometimes there is an answer (like the hypostasis descriptions are meant to be the Archons supposedly), often... not yet.

Aww, that's super nice, thank you for the interest. Sadly I am a bit behind in the story right now, kinda stuck in Sumeru AQ part 3 (thanks desert, lagging my computer was great!) but if I manage to catch up I will get to it and share here for sure.

AYRT *nods*

It sounds like something fandom at large might already know, but I'm glad you mentioned it because I didn't know that. The ... things where they talk to the audience about the game so far seemed like mostly time-suck to me, so I get the promo codes from places that just post the codes and get on with the game. And sometimes I miss things that way.

Gah, I was going a little cross-eyed trying to wrap loose ends up in the desert. Won't say more if you're still working on it, just wanted to commiserate.

AYRT - Yeah, I feel you. The dev talks aren't even a "version special program" thing, so it's even harder to find them + translations. As I started playing just before the 1st anniversary I had a lot to catch up on and by now I can't remember where I learned some things either. Whoops.

Gosh thanks a lot. Really I just wish I could turn on the "sandstorm" / dust effect 'cause that crap lags my computer a lot. See, I LOVE the desert, it's beautiful and fun and full of interesting stories. But I normally run Genshin very slowly on "very low" specs, so the desert is impossible for me :( sigh

When you consider that Irminsul is basically a giant computer and forbidden knowledge/abyssal corruption acts something like malware in a computer it's less about truth being the enemy and more that it's data in a format that can't be read by the computer.

But well, aren't there instances where it's literally said that one shouldn't know too much? Like didn't Lisa get sick and left the Akademia because she saw too much basically? And let's not even go into Gold and all that. And the nails - oh, nails ...

So it can be both ways probably.

There's different things happening.

There's the stuff Celestia doesn't want you to know (hence the nails) and then there's the "Forbidden Knowledge"/corruption that is even beyond Celestia since it's from somewhere outside the world.

AYRT - Yes, sure but I meant to say that the topic of "you shall not know too much" is recurrent in a broad sense, not just a material sense related to Irminsul corruption etc.

Irminsul being a computer doesn't make much sense to me. The Akashic terminals are pretty obviously technology and Nahida seems to be able* to upload and download herself into that system - and as the secret-maker observed, into anyone connected to it. But the tree? Behaves like a tree. It's self-regenerating, organic, presumably interacting with the rest of the forest. Yes, they can get information out of it, but presumably not information written in binary.

*leaving aside that the Akademiya managed to trap her somehow, temporarily.

I just don't tend to accept the premise, when a story wants to separate knowledge into Good Knowledge and Bad Knowledge. Approved Conclusions versus Naughty, Naughty, We Warned You Not To Read That Or Ask Too Many Questions.

UNLESS... Unless there is a reason for that. In other words "bad knowledge" is just knowledge that the current ruler of the world doesn't want people to know, not inherently bad.

As for the Irminsul, eh. It's a tree that stores memories so isn't it just the middle ground? It behaves like a tree, but stores like a computer. Except the way it's destroyed so far seems to be more like a tree (physical damage, withering ... stuff falling from the sky?) than a computer.

AYRT

That's exactly how I tend to interpret the concept of bad knowledge - bad for someone that it be known, perhaps, but probably advantageous to the people doing the knowing. Hence my skepticism that this "knowledge" was crime and punishment all rolled into one. I've heard that before, but reject the premise.

If the Aranara know what they're talking about, all trees store memories. This one is just being foregrounded as a sort of especially central World Tree thing.

But trees have volition in a way that computers (at least officially) don't. When I think of malware, I conceptualize it as a set of instructions that damage an entity that is incapable of disobeying. Sort of like the difference between telling a person "SUDO burn all your books and then throw yourself on the fire!" and telling a C: drive essentially the same thing is that the person can tell you to go jump in a lake and not do it.

AYRT - Hmm, got it. The thing is, what if knowledge itself wasn't the punishment, but this "someone" was really mad at humans KNOWING and personally punished them for it?? Which seems to be the likely answer but everything I have to say on the matter is gonna be *SPOILER WARNING* .

They absolutely do. And it's safe to say they store memories because they're Irminsul branches, no? There's the Central World Tree aka Irminsul buried somewhere, and then every plant and tree (... ~~and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name~~ no, not creature, but like, ley line blossoms?) is connected to it, thus stores memories as well. Even twigs have powers but not memories it seems.

So you mean they're sentient. Right, that's my biggest question too. Even if real life trees are sentient, they can't walk to the sun because they have no legs. Maybe something like that is going on in Teyvat, because clearly the trees aren't (/isn't) too happy about the corruption, but maybe they can't do much about it?

Well, someone interfered right at the beginning of the story and separated the Traveler from his/her twin. And there are probably different levels of entities trying to keep secrets, but this business with the last god of wisdom and Nahida would be at least an Archon-level secret, if not a bigger deal still. And there's what Enjou had to say about Orobashi ...

I have no idea what should count as a spoiler in Genshin right now, but whether I know about something yet or not, you don't have to worry about what you tell me.

And - right. They're all outgrowths of the same life. Although I'll admit that I don't get why the traveler isn't in the record (at all or yet?), if what's going in is memories, after how extensively he interacted with Aranara. And with whatever explanation exists for that, there's still the latest weirdness with his twin.

Sentient doesn't necessarily imply "moving" or "moving at any pace that a short lived human would notice," when you're talking about trees.

AYRT - Exactly: there ARE different levels of entities trying to keep secrets, (Celestia, Primordial One, Second who came, but also the Archons and elemental vishaps themselves, but also the humans from lost civilizations but also... etc.) and this is why at this point it's hard to say anything for sure.
At this point I am convinced that, if the Chinese people who have direct access to the original text haven't figured it out, it's just not meant to be figured out yet lol.

As for the Sumeru lore I am still fairly behind so I only have secondhand knowledge of it but King Deshret is of particular interest to me and I really want to know what is about to be revealed about him and the Goddess of Flowers' story (personally I have a wild theory about Havria aka Sal Terrae's goddess and I would love to have some hints in that direction). Orobashi's story is particularly interesting - actually, how worship works in Teyvat itself is, when you think about the fact that people worship/ped Archons whom mostly destroyed the land by fighting each other, leaving humans unprotected (which is why Havria's story interests me so much as well). But then some powerful creatures like Orobashi and Havria seem to have done good deeds to humans too... to a more or less successful degree (often less haha GO FIGURE).

There are a few anons around I feel, so it's good to know! IDK if anyone is worried about spoilers ...

The whole Aranara story is so interesting too, too bad I still haven't been able to get to it (for material reasons lol I may need to either get used to playing Genshin on a joypad or accept that I have to purchase stuff for my PC). But then there's the whole time travel theory which is another can of worms (it doesn't seem believable to me, but then again, ... who knows.)

(SA - Something was bugging me .... and then I remembered I totally forgot to mention the *SPOILER* ish point.
Which was: there's a theory going around on how the broken trees like Dragonspine's and Chasm's seem to have been broken by nails because they're always in the same locations. Presumably advanced civilizations thrived beneath them trees. So there's a relationship between knowledge and tree aka-Irminsul-branch growth/height. And maybe Celestia was like "oh look, there's another tall one! BAM" . The links between these factors are still unclear and up for debate, but I personally have some ideas and this is one of the things I really want to write about ASAP ... As I see it there's also a connection to vishaps and elemental effects, but the theory floating around doesn't mention these, and some other things I would love to, uhh, organize my thoughts on eventually. Not now. Sleepy lol.)

Point, but we still have three more countries to cross, and possibly Khaenriah after that, so I'm definitely going with "they're not aiming to have people solve that yet."

*nods* There are aspects of the lore that I still only sort of get, but (modern!) worship in Genshin seems like a pretty chill thing overall, both from the perspective of the people doing it and from the archons'. No one seems to be feeling pressured here? The gods don't feel threatened or diminished if their lands prosper without them, and a number of them retired to do something else. But that might have to do with their age and the high regard they used to enjoy, because it seems to work ... differently for Nahida.

I was assuming that if we were all in a "spoilers"-warned genshin secret, people who would not be bothered by more of them, but I guess that's not necessarily so.

I thought the quest(s) with the Aranaras were long but well written. Wishing you luck with that. There was one that I had lots of feelings about, but anyway. You'll see.

It hadn't occurred to me that the nails might have fallen where they did in part because of the trees, but now that you pointed it out that sounds plausible. You're probably looking very apprehensively at Sumeru City, if that's right, though. Looking forward to finding out what the vishaps have to do with it, when you write that out!

Now I'm going to have to go AFK for a while. Will try to check back and read anything new sometime before the next secret posts, but I may not get around to replying.

AYRT - Exactly, this is what I meant too.

Hmm... true, but also, they don't seem to be particularly interested in this game, whatever it is. Venti doesn't want to visit Celestia, Zhongli is like "*shrug* fired? guess my job here is done", Raiden literally said "fuck it all", etc. As I said, haven't finished Sumeru AQ part 3 yet but Nahida seems to be concerned about getting stronger and becoming a proper Archon for reasons we are yet to see? They call her a lesser deity for a reason I feel.

Honestly I kinda dropped the Aranara quest for the time being only because I had trouble with the timed mission and was too lazy to check videos on how to do that. But it is pretty interesting so far!

If you think about Tsurumi it makes even more sense. No credits for this theory, though, it's floating around, or has been for a couple of months. ... but yeah, you're right, unless they're not aiming nails at big trees anymore because it's getting corrupted from below since the war-that-started-500-years-ago / cataclysm rather than above (is my belief). For me Sumeru expanded on an idea I personally had, that sometimes "mountains" are really just "big trees" which I believe is the case for Sal Vindagnyr's as a civilization that thrived under a big tree but also had a very tall mountain which people supposedly climbed for enlightenment.
On the below / above thing again, before, food supposedly came from the sky, but maybe at some point crops started feeding the people. Crops come from below. So .. personally I feel like we still have a lot to find out on the below/above and dimensions/levels and firmament stuff. Thanks! If I have free time today I will try to do that, lol.

Don't worry, and sorry I had to leave too.

da

(Anonymous) - 2022-11-20 03:21 (UTC) - Expand

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[ SECRET POST #5796 ]

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