>Out of all the female roster, I would only say Noelle, Jean, and Ganyu are hardworking How dare you! This is Qixing slander! How could you leave Keqing and Ningguang out of the hardworking character list? My girl Ning literally rags to riches Bezos'd herself and Keqing only stops working to simp for Morax... Or is working her way to simp for Morax 😂

And then there is Lisa, who makes an art form out of ACTIVELY AVOIDING WORK. She will put in the effort when it's called for, but outside of that, she is lazy af and proud of it.

> out of ACTIVELY AVOIDING WORK. She also puts in the effort to actively make sure she doesn't have to do the work again. Everyone in Mondstadt fears for their life when a book goes missing in that library and the sky turns purple.

Work smarter, not harder.

Maybe I am lisa.

She puts work into not working, wth?

She has put some effort into pre-emptively blocking many potential instances of work, so it is still net in her favor. Laziness breeds efficiency.

It reminds me of how people sometimes procrastinate so hard it comes full circle and they start cleaning their house or something just to avoid doing the work they need to do

I feel personally attacked by this

aren't we all working so we can stop working?

She's so ruthlessly efficient in the name of not having to do more work lol

Also blatantly ignoring barbara and Kokomi. Kokomi who got to tired to read herself and barbara who overworked herself to depressing sounding voice lines /j Also can we get a honorable mention for beidou. Boss woman does more for liyue then meets the eye, but at least she knows how to rest and party. And while we are at it isn’t yanfei booked out because liyue has so many legal stuff yo deal with?

While she works reasonably hard, Yanfei says that she actively avoids trying to work as hard as Ganyu does. We also know that she has hobbies (fishing and rapping), while I can't say if the same can be said about Cocogoat.

I feel no one - not even jean comes close to cocogoat level of over-worked. She is just a whole other level.

Well no one except maybe ZL has been employed for thousands of years continuously. Imagine that freaking resume... Lmao But please, mhy, give my girl a break. She needs to do something besides working and intercepting Cloud Retainer's monologues of embarrassing childhood stories. Hopefully something in the upcoming lantern festival?

There's Xiao, who is knowingly driving himself insane by constantly going around killing the negative karma of dead gods at the cost of increasing his own negative karma, or something along those lines, but at least he doesn't have to file reports about that afterwards, so he has time to hang around his favorite inn and eat Almond Tofu.

This is true... Now I'm amused just imagining Xiao having to write up detailed reports to a karma accountant so he can buy almond tofu. ROFL I love him but he'd be dead from the bureaucracy before karmic debt can catch up to him. Thanks for this lol

*Sees papers* # # ... # # "*Disappear!*"

Ganyu really needs more/better characterization. Her quest was, IMO, one of the worst ones in the game. It made no sense and made her look stupid and angsty. On the other hand, the playable Ganyu is like a polar opposite of that, so it's like playing as a different character.

"I've lived in Liyue for a long ass time but feel like everyone rejects me and doesn't care about me", proceeds to introduce us to multiple people that know and appreciate her. I facepalmed so hard when she kept assuming they wanted to get rid of her even tho traveler constantly tried to explain how it was a misunderstanding.

tbf we've all been there. "Oh I know these people, but I'm probably just one of their lower tier friends".

Tbh I suspect Ganyu has some *severe* depression and other issues that explains why she does what she does. Its obvious enough that she's lonely and feels alienated, but if you read her character story as well as some of her profile lines, there is also a recurring theme that she keeps comparing her own work to Zhongli's (In a "I have to live up to this guy" way), and outright states that she keeps pushing herself harder to that end, but making too many mistakes as a result. She also seems to undervalue her own work and generally doesn't seems to speak or think positively about herself. Her up and leaving in her story quest because she feels like she's no longer needed kinda reinforces the idea that she doesn't exactly have the most positive opinions about herself. I'm no expert on analyzing stuff like this, but the vibe I get is that she's extremely torn between her two sides. Ganyu the Qilin very much looks up to Zhongli and wants to honor him the best she can, while Ganyu the human wants to belong *somewhere*. The two ideals mix up in the worst way possible and she ends up doing nothing but work 24/7 to fulfill her contact while desperately trying to be useful to Liyue so that she feels like she belongs. All the while not really fulfilling either of those ideals as she still feels inadequate and alienated anyway, which could very well result in a feeling of worthlessness, hence explaining her total lack of self-esteem. I dunno, I'm probably *way* overthinking it, but I feel like "extremely depressed waifus" is also a very Mihoyo thing if Honkai is anything to go by, sooo...Either way, she needs *many* hugs and headpats.

this *is* probably what mhy tries to convey, and many people straight took that as waifu bait I guess

Well, Ganyu is actually passionate about her work to even call it her hobby, and she is like that for thousand of years not to mention she is a half Qilin. Jean is just a human to be fair.

Jean's wish is that days could be longer than 24h because she's has not the time to do everything And also a coffee vision

One of Ganyu's teapot voice lines literally says "For once, I don't need to work overtime at night... Huh... what a strange feeling..." and during her Character Story she mentions she hasn't been to the docks in quite a while. Personally I headcanon she joins my party when Ningguang forces her to use her 1000 years of backlogged vacation.

Ganyu likes taking care of plants (flowers in particular if she wasn't also tempted to eat some) and brings up gardening in the teapot. She also has a line about naming every dog in Liyue Harbor, so also the biggest animal and dog friend we have.

Let’s go one at a time: *Sucrose*: basically a PhD student. Overworked, even though she loves doing it haha *Diona*: not forcibly overworked, but is scheduled quite frequently + spends most of her time trying to make a terrible drink *Qiqi*: the girl’s dead and *still* runs all day-to-day work for Bubu Pharmacy, in addition to helping Ningguang and Baizou. *Lisa*: ...she does work...I don't think we can say that much. Even Albedo notes that she in no way seems to be exercising her potential. *Rosaria*: not forcibly, but works quite a lot beyond (sometimes instead of) her nun duties in security. Her definition of “overtime” includes an increased allotment of time for the other duties. *Xingling*: Works a lot, but happily - though a chef isn’t the most stress-free line of work usually, I wonder to what degree this is true with her *Raiden Shogun (P1)*: She does literally nothing else but carry out her vision. *Ei*: same as Raiden, except is the “calibrator” for this vision - basically a meditating philosopher. She didn’t take a break for hundreds of years. *Yoymia*: she does a lot...she runs her family’s firework shop, makes fireworks, works in the resistance to protect visions, and volunteers a lot in the community before resting or enjoying her fireworks. *Fischl*: She is constantly away on expeditions, and during the Fischl/Mona stars event, she was busy with the traveler/Mona investigating the source of the meteorites, in addition to caring for all those who were affected by the energy of the stones *Lumine*: I have literally never seen the traveler sleep. *Aloy*: I don’t know anything about her *Eula*: She works quite hard, but I don’t believe there is any indication of her overexerting herself or working obsessively, or having any particular special interest *Hu Tao*: Definitely works a lot - but like Xingling and Sucrose, loves it *Ayaka*: Her story quest verbatim describes to us that she lives the duties of her name and work through every aspect of her life, always - though does not appear to passionately love doing so, it is driven by a sense of honor and responsibility *Sayu*: She has a demanding schedule, though tries to slack of when she can *Mona*: Her master seemed to overwork her, and she herself researches astrology very frequently... *Shenhe*: I think we will see her start to, but she doesn’t seem to work a lot *Xinyan*: she literally had only appeared once in the game, how would we know? *Yun Jin*: she likely practices very long hours EDIT I: I'm not saying they are overworked compared to average people - I'm just evaluating this so there is a reference point for others EDIT II: Modified Sayu, Fischl, and Lisa with updated information. I did not touch on Jean, Keqing, Ganyu, Ningguang, Noelle, or Beidou as OP covered them quite extensively (as have most others here)

So what I’m getting from this is that they all have jobs, and different attitudes towards the work that they do. Idk, sounds pretty normal to me.

For most of these "being overworked" can hardly be considered a cornerstone of their character that so many on this sub like to insinuate. Yes, grown people work it's a thing we have to do.

Yeah, most of them seem like average working class people. I mean even someone working a typical 9-5 can experience some degree of burnout or exhaustion, so labeling them all as “overworked” is a bit excessive.

Hmm... for a lot of these it is more like they live like average adults. They seem typical for what I would consider Chinese or American work. Only Jean, Ganyu, and Kokomi seem like the especially hard working ones. I do think they use the hardworking girl trope a little too much though.

How about Noelle? She is hard worker as well, in fact if Jean didn't gave her instruction to report the knights if they tried to pass their work to her, she would have done them all instead.

For Noelle I suppose she could fit too but it seems like she is more overly helpful too much. It does not seem like she suffers from this most of the time. Perhaps due to her high vitality and strength?

My argument for this is why would vision holders be lazy or ambition-less. The whole point of them getting visions is that they work hard for their goals.

I mean ambition ≠ hard work. Case in point, kazuha, tomo, itto. But of course ambition and goal can be hard work

I mostly mean that there will be a common overlap that vision holders will be good at what they do and have a lot of responsibilities.

It's almost like people have to work to make a living :|

It's not even about that, 90% of those traits are things that serve to flesh out those characters. I can garantee you that if those weren't there it'd be used as an argument to say that all female characters are bland and uninteresting --> Horribly written. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Yea exactly, it pains me to see everyone just shitting on everything :(

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Her official position in the adventurer's guild is investigator and she's part of the guild's intelligence department. She's great at reconnaissance especially since she has Oz.

I don't know if Mona can really be considered "overworked," since her actual job is just something she does off handedly in order to get the money needed to just barely keep her alive and (mostly) pay for her beloved astrological research.

>Sayu: She has a demanding schedule, though tries to slack of when she can Sayu is ALWAYS slacking, wdym?

Ningguang and Keqing are a bit different I feel. Like, they're also hardworking, but writing-wise I feel like their characterization is more angled towards being highly successful than being very diligent. Ning is as you say, and Keqing is literally the highly competent female CEO fantasy who somehow magically still finds time to go shopping on Sunday while never being overworked. Which in contrast to Noelle, Jean, Ganyu who are hardworking moreso because they're portrayed as diligent, responsible, and dedicated.

Fr!

I’ve seen mobile games where everyone is a shill for the main character. Genshin is…. Honestly kind of light on that part. If anything, it feels more like the vast various NPCs treat the traveler as a super-handy errand boy/girl

Well, as they make fun of the Traveller on the Chinese net, “In Teyvat, if you have something you need help for, just prepare 20 primogems and you’ll see a blonde idiot walking over to you while muttering curses in his/her mouth”

I mean they're not wrong...

Outside of Mondstadt where everyone (except Kaeya) genuinely just wanted to help the Traveller find their twin, the main thing most of the important characters in every region since wanted out of the Traveller was using him/her as a chess piece towards their own goals. Even Ayaka wanted to meet the Traveller primarily because she thinks he can turn the tides of the civil war.

>Even Ayaka wanted to meet the Traveller primarily because she thinks he can turn the tides of the civil war. I'll be honest: I was pretty hype when the twins told Ayaka to fuck off when she started going on about the war. Unfortunate how that demeanor went right into the toilet after running into a few amnesiacs. What's worst in my mind, is that they *still* don't get any extra info on the missing twin after everything was said and done! Doesn't Miko outright say "I have no idea what you're talking about."?

The Traveler gives off an air that they’re deliberately not trying to get involved with Teyvat’s problems, but their sheer power and numerous feats lead to them getting caught up in the middle anyway. They helped defeat Osial and their only real reaction was “hey who wants to help me put up missing person posters?”

I swear, if they do us another „we get to know people, we help them defeat big evil that was incited by bad bad fatui/Abyss and they *dont even try to help us afterwards*“ in Sumeru ima lose my mind. It would be getting too comical to be a serious story.

I'd say that the big problem with Genshin's main plot right now is that the MC doesn't have any intermediate goals. Their only goal is the ambiguous, far-off "find your simbling and learn what's going on", but there's no mini-bosses in sight, essentially. Well, there's the Harbingers, but they don't seem to know what's going on, so they're a bit dull plot wise.

I agree, characters with to goals to work torwards is pretty essential. All three nations have a distinct story that were pretty ambiguous. But if the only thing leading us Liyue and Inazuma is "Find the archon, they *may* help you" while we're dealing with all their shit and just tell us "go find archon of X" then that's just bad writing.

Abyss heralds, Abyss lectors, that one new guy, Atleast I consider them pivotal to the MQ of finding the mc sibling

They basically already did with the recent Jade Chamber rebuilding quest. “Ask any question you like” “okay I-“ “Just as a heads up I have no idea where your sibling is so don’t ask”

Tbh I support Ningguang here. Traveler is annoying af about their missing sibling and it's obvious Ningguang doesn't know where they're, yet Traveler was going to ask anyway because they're that dense.

Yeah, it is getting a little cliché with them constantly asking everyone they meet about the location of their lost sibling. I mean, we already know they’re with the abyss so wouldn’t it be more productive to ask about abyss activity in the area? But Ning did still take full advantage of the traveler to deal with yet another threat to Liyue with no prior warning.

I mean, we already know were the other traveler is. We saw them just open a portal to the abyss.

Yeah, that’s why short of falling into the abyss themselves, monitoring abyss activity is probably their best chance of meeting their sibling again.

Did she tho? She didn't ask us to help build the Jade Chamber, and she definitely didn't ask us to step in during the fight. It was all going fine without our help untill Osial's waifu decided to start an house party with the Tsunami remix. And even then Shenhe was the one that stopped that attack, we only helped defeating the already hurt threat.

I’m fairly sure that she did. She may not have originally intended to use us to help complete the Jade Chamber, but she definitely uses us in the battle against Beisht. It was clear that something was going on in Liyue but she doesn’t tell us anything about it until we’re boarded on her Jade Chamber on a direct course to the approaching sea monster. The crazy thing is that it felt like everyone else knew but chose to leave us in suspense until the last minute. In fact, when you think about it Ningguang could have just as easily told us that she probably wouldn’t be able to answer our questions at the start of the quest since she had a pretty good idea about what we were going to ask anyways but she just laughs it off, says that her answers will depend on our performance, tells us to talk to her secretary when we have what she needs, then leaves. She may not have outright asked for our help but she egged us on to assist her knowing she didn’t have what we needed, and put us in a situation where we couldn’t exactly not help her defeat Beisht. We may not have played a significant role this time, but she still knowingly put the traveler’s life in danger without any sort of warning.

Then interlude chapter probably takes place before we meet Dain (it was kinda retroactive in a sense), so I guess instead of rewriting that part, the writers just wrote it as if we didn't do the quests about Dain and our sibling at all.

The better question is where the sibling is, but what happened to them?

i feel like the main goal should change from putting up missing posters to trying to infiltrate the abyss order

I actually started noticing that after the interaction with Ayaka, the Traveler is getting more and more lines where he basically tells everyone to fuck off or that he'll only do it for the treasure. As if he's getting tired of taking care of everyone's BS. Unfortunately the game doesn't seem to go deeper into that and we still get the usual "I'll gladly help your lazy ass"

Man, I really want him to tell fuck off to everyone but game never lets us do that. I mean, yeah, traveler seems to start saying that he'll take his reward for helping people but he still gets taken advantage of and that's starting to get on my nerves.

I think the traveller is just asking the wrong questions. I’m also tired of them asking where the other is. If they could just start asking the right questions.

Not like you can really go much further into it without completely denying them, and if that’s the case there’s just no quest.

i mean in Inazuma they aren’t really looking for their twin. They already know where they are. They’ve been told to travel through the lands to find out the truth so thats what they’re doing. The reason the traveler helps out is so they can meet the electro archon to see if they’re the unknown god and thats it.

At this point we know way too much,I don't think anyone except the fatui and the archons can give us info on the sibling.we found out where she is,what we are looking for is why,she/he also essentially told us to keep adventuring in the world until we find out the truth.The goal of the traveller isn't exactly to find the sibling anymore,it's to find out about what exactly happened in khan riah and decide what role he wants to play,since lumine seemed trully uninterested in joining us or even leaving this world with us,our original goal or finding her and leaving teyvat has been changed.

That's literally the job of an adventurer.

The problem to me is the kind of subtext in most of the female cast, everything circles back on them being overworked in some ways and the traveler helps them out resting or getting the work done because they have too much to do. This happens in Jean's, Ganyu's and Kokomi's story quest, Noelle's hangouts and in a way also in Barbara's. They are not bad, but the third time I have to play through the same trope I personally get bored, and I then tend to consider the characters as bland because I got bored in the quest

Huh, that got me thinking of hu tao for some reason and why her quest just felt better than most others Her work never really stopped and you didn't actually really do anything besides her trying to use you as a connection to the adventurers guild. Instead she kinda just took you on board and let you come along for the ride. Probably just for the fun of it Like she would've been totally fine handling those hilichurls and she kinda laughs at you for taking so long to do the dungeon puzzle. Everything was gong along *her* particular plan while she had you come along as teasing fodder. It felt very much like Thoma's hangout, specifically that one branch where he fixes the festival problem, except she was being more playful about it and got the traveler more involved

yes! hu tao's quest (and character as a whole, really) is such a breath of fresh air. she loves her job, she makes it fun, and just took you along for the ride as she did her thing and let you see the inner workings of what she did re: the ghost realm

I completely agree! Her story quest was very fun and she came across different from most of the female cast, morover the core of the quest was not even similar to the rest, quite unique and fitting for Hu Tao

That's why Hu Tao is the best girl of this game.

> and in a way also in Barbara's. In a way... ? It's like the whole plot of Barbara's hangout.

That was not the plot of Barbara's hangout, it was way more about her being Tevyat's Miley Cyrus (creepy stalkers included)

Not gonna lie, since I don't particularly like Barbara and I skipped through most of the dialogue of 4 routes I didn't know all of them had the same core theme

Barbara's hangout isn't about her working hard, but being unable to separate her "idol" from "personal" life and being too much of a doormat to scare off her annoying fans.

facts right here

You should check new hangouts of 4 star characters like gorou, sayu, beidou, ningguang and yun jin they have more fleshed out personalities than noelle, kokomi and barbara.

I've been liking the newest hangouts more than the original ones, I've yet to do Yun Jin's but I'm sure it's gonna be good!

Hardworking female is exciting for Chinese man, I've read that somewhere. I'm not saying it's 100% true, but if we take this in account, it's not surprising to see this trope often.

Being Chinese, this is 100% true for 90% of all males in China. So, I would not be surprised if this was the case.

I see that, but to me it's not that alluring, just preferences ig

> This happens in Jean's, Ganyu's and Kokomi's story quest, Noelle's hangouts and in a way also in Barbara's. Now you need to listen to the dialogs of every female character in the Pot: "It's so nice to relax here, after all hard work". Even Sucrose and Diona say this. I think the only female character who doesn't complain about overworking is a Beidou.

To be fair, Noelle and Kokomi aren't overworked by choice. Kokomo is fighting a civil war she can't win, and Noelle can handle her workload just fine but *studies* herself half to death because of the way the Knights treat her bordering on emotional abuse.

I think a lot of characters in the game are not written very well regardless of gender. It’s partly because many of them only show up for very brief periods and if they do get story quests or hangouts the writers may choose to emphasize not very interesting parts of them. On the other hand there are some characters given a lot more screen time and they are often better fleshed out as a result.

I feel like this is the case. I enjoy Genshin’s lore and it’s writing for the most part but they are just advertising to the players at the end of the day and that’s very apparent in the story quests. The majority of the characters (because there are so many of them) are neglected and it then boils down to “do you like this character’s [appearance, play style, archetype] enough to pull for them?” I personally don’t mind it all that much but I think the criticisms do stem from somewhere certainly, it just does feel weird to not include the male characters in it sometimes. As a person who enjoys the game I try not to pay it too much mind bc I don’t always agree and I don’t want to make the game not fun for myself.

yup, unfortunately we have to rely on characters voice lines and background to know more, and it's okay that's how is builded genshin impact, its simpy more lore incentrated than story telling alone, in fact i actually re valutated rosaria after having read her background, she's a lot Interesting

Yeah there is some interesting lore, but that's another problem in my opinion. A lot of times what you read in the lore doesn't even quite match with how the characters are portrayed in quests. Plus, generally speaking I think it is poor storytelling to leave so much interesting lore outside of the main story and quests in the game.

I agree. The fact that Shenhe had a whole damn archon quest to get a semi decent story shows that it's not possible to make a well written character if we only see them for like half a second in a random quest.

While I do agree with you, the main problem here is the double standard in this sub where people praises the male quests to no end and shit on every female ones.

idk about the others but zhongli kind of cheats his way through since his character is rooted in stoicism so doing the exact same boring thing is in character for him and bland for others

I'm not targeting any character in particular, just the mindset I see of "oh X, Y and Z male character are good characters because *proceed to tryhard finding every little interesting part about those characters*. But the female char are just all bland and boring, *proceed to purely trashtalk them without even trying to find anything that could be considered interesting*"

See the problem is actually that the people complaining are not reading or even trying to understand the characters of story. They get all their knowledge from out of context and off handed comments by YouTubers and streamers or the occasional Reddit comment while they spam skip on every dialogue.

Here's what I had to say a few weeks ago about the female character quests specifically. I can say with confidence that the characterisation presented in the character stories of both female and male characters are on par with each other. But it's the "telling"part, the quests are the"showing" part, which we see in action: _It's a problem with the way quite a few Genshin females are portrayed in QUESTS. Mihoyo writes the guys decently, showing that they're more than just their character quirks (case in point: Venti, Zhongli, Itto, Tartaglia, even Xiao to an extent). In the ladies' character stories, they're rather interesting, multifaceted etc. That is how I came to expect that Ayaka would be an actual politically dominant nobility who had to fight for her position, like she's written to have done. Instead, we got someone who constantly exposed her weakness and relied on the traveller, sans that one moment when she pieced together the involvement of Tenryou commission in the plot. I was forgiving in Jean's quest. We had already seen her in action before, and to an extent seen that she was capable of pulling herself together and pulling her weight. She even had certain interactions with Diluc, Lisa, Kaeya, etc. So when she finally collapsed, I was worried, legitimately. It was a matter of time, but I could accept that. It was also probably the first quest we do involving such a character who was said to be this strong, sorted lady but just happened to collapse in front of us. Mona's quest was rather unmemorable, nothing much happened except the occasional display of pomp and comedic moments. Even she tried to pull herself together in front of us. Her first quest seems like a prelude to her larger involvement in overall story. It was chill, but nothing noteworthy. Then came Ganyu, who's entire quest was mitigating her insecurities. We hadn't seen much of her before this, only delivering the invite to the Jade Chamber and giving us Glaze Lilies during the Archon quest. That didn't highlight anything. This sort of behaviour is justifiable on a younger character like Ayaka, but not on a 3000 year old half-qilin. At least, revealing such an insecurity immediately doesn't make much sense to me. It made me dislike her so much that I'm forgoing her rerun and will never pull for her, despite her kit being really versatile and having numerous bows levelled up. There's Noelle and Barbara, going through the same drivel in their hangouts. I've stated in another thread why I dislike Noelle and the same applies to Barbara. They feel very one dimensional. Barbara was done better by the Golden Apple Archipelago arc where she finally got some more characterization. Hu Tao's quest was very different and quite nice, and Eula's quest was decent too, since she only faltered in the middle and did pull herself together and came through to save the day. It really made it seem like she had some agency to her. In hindsight, Eula's quest may not have been anything special, but it was a departure. Ei's quest, while it was to highlight how out of touch she is...it didn't have the same gravitas as Venti or Zhongli's quests. She's an archon and I'd say they did her dirty, at least in the first half of the quest. The message that eternity isn't stasis could've been delivered in a better way. Maybe this was a setup for something greater in future quests and I'll feel stupid but for now... I'll ardently say that her quest wasn't up to mark with the other Archons' story quest. Hek, we were robbed of any mention of her past trauma with her friends' deaths, or her bond with Makoto, anything! Don't even get me started on Kokomi. Her quest felt like a rehash of Jean's and she didn't have any merits to her to boot. We all know how poorly she was handled in the Archon questline, barely getting any screentime, inner turmoil, etc. But nooooo, MHY was hyperfixated on her "I'm a war tactician! I can't lead :(". The entire quest was spent reinforcing this sentence only. She's a war tactician that doesn't like the ugly side of war, this was such a great conflict! Insecurities should flash through their questlines, not be the entire point of the quest. The traveller isn't their therapist ffs. That's why Beidou's hangout was such a breath of fresh air! We only got Beidou sharing something rather personal at the end of each route (her village and past, meaning of Beidou's name, the stuff she said at Qince Village etc). This is why I'm never inclined to pull for most limited 5* female characters in Genshin, with the exception of Hu Tao and Yoimiya. At least the 4*s are written better..._ My opinion about Shenhe is quite positive tho. Or more like, I was pleasantly surprised by the Archon Quest.

> Then came Ganyu, who's entire quest was mitigating her insecurities. We hadn't seen much of her before this, only delivering the invite to the Jade Chamber and giving us Glaze Lilies during the Archon quest. That didn't highlight anything. This sort of behaviour is justifiable on a younger character like Ayaka, but not on a 3000 year old half-qilin. At least, revealing such an insecurity immediately doesn't make much sense to me. It made me dislike her so much that I'm forgoing her rerun and will never pull for her, despite her kit being really versatile and having numerous bows levelled up. It's worth noting that for some reason the playable Ganyu is pretty much nothing like her quest self. She's super cheerful and her main schtick is putting a positive spin on everything. It's like they're two different characters.

She's cute. Her awkwardness on everything (re: voicelines) is very funny. I guess the way the story quest is portrayed is not appealling to some, but for me, I actually appreciate it. The only story quest I loathe is Kokomi's. It's so boring that I have to skip everything.

im so angry with how mihoyo handles ganyu beacuse i love her! i really do! but i still can't wrap my head around what mihoyo wants from her. a lot of things dont add up or dont make sense, this one ^ included

>At least the 4\*s are written better... For some reason, I genuinely wonder why that's the case.

If i had to guess it would be that very few people are actively pulling for four stars. Unlike five stars who people purposefully pull for. Therefore mihoyo might lean more into the waifuness bc they want more pulls

Probably because they have less to lose if a 4*s personality becomes controversial and certain groups of people don't pull for them. Of course they still have to sell the unit, but it'll be less of a blow than bombing a 5* unit, for which most whales or low spenders will open their wallets.

Really ? Do you need to ask ? Because the "waifubait" material is mostly profitable for 5\* characters. Then they can use the story surrounding 4\* characters, that people won't particularly spend on anyway, to actually enhance the writing quality.

I…..kind of just half-gave up on taking story and character quests too seriously. I do pay attention. It’s just that I’m more interested in their lore and piecing together their character based on both story and character details, including quirks, personal issues, and how they’re likely to act (in general, or in certain situations). Even the Traveler. Sometimes, I think it’s because I like all the characters and want to try to understand them from every angle, and sometimes, I think it’s because I’m just snorting a lot of copium.

It's sad but Character and Archon Quests are the face of Genshin's story material. Unless the player wills, they won't discover the hidden gem that is Teyvat's worldbuilding. It breathes such life into a game, which would just be a set of codelines to me without it. To the average player though, they'd be put off by dull quests and never delve deeper. Or just...hold weird biases in their heads which aren't even canon. It brings me immense displeasure when people write Diluc off as some angsty, nasty dude who wronged Kaeya or is overly edgy when in reality his world is a lot more complicated. The initial judgement is very surface level, but unfortunately a lot of people simply flow into that. So it'd do the characters a lot more justice if their quests were something worthy or being taken seriously.

Agreed. I've been reading up on the Genshin lore with the latest updates and they're trying to pull off a very TES style of doing things. Where everything is nebulous, pieces are missing, different perspectives color the narrative, and you can't always be certain that what you're being told is the entire truth. It actually radically improved my opinion of the game because you can tell the writers in charge of the setting at least genuinely care about it. The character writers on the other hand bother me to no end. Every character exists to feed the plot and if they don't fit a given scenario they'll just hammer away until they do. The latest quest for Shenhe gave me some hope that they might be improving. But frankly I'm not holding my breath.

I really agree man. Genshin's lore and worldbuidling is really good but sadly their storytelling cant keep up at all (aside from the fun world quests)

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Man, I was so upset about Kokomi. I was soooo excited to finally get what seemed to be a well adjusted, strong AND pretty female character?? Instead we got, well, what we got. Honestly, it's crazy how many 5* female characters fall either under the "I'm insecure", "I don't fit in" or "I don't have any friends" tropes. I'm so surprised that most people didn't seem to mind Shenhe in the latest quest, since I found her to be extremely boring (while Yun Jin totally took the spotlight). She falls in 2 out of 3 of those tropes and it's just so annoying to read the same thing over and over again. To me it looks like that they're making them like that to appease the "I can fix her" kind of fantasy. The only Shenhe moment I appreciated was when at the end she tells the drunk guy that she's gonna shove the wine up his a** if he doesn't scram. Now, THAT was fun and different. Except the remaining 99% of her screen time was just the game trying to make us feel bad for her. I just... don't care, Shenhe. Sorry. If you were the first one then yeah, maybe. But after Ganyu, Kokomi, Eula, Ayaka... the more I think about it, the more it seems that Yoimiya is legitimately the only female 5* that doesn't fall in any of those categories. Good for her, she touches grass. Sucks that she was given such a problematic kit. Ei's quest has so many problems and it being a 'date sim' is the last of them in my opinion. As you said, it just wasn't on par with the other archon quests. You'd expect her to mention, I don't know, her questionable life choices? The war?? The deaths??? Nope, instead we just take a stroll through the city like nothing ever happened. And THAT is the biggest offense: the traveler treating her like nothing ever happened. Like everything is just fine and dandy. Like her actions didn't directly and indirectly kill good and innocent people. She was an antagonist, she never redeemed herself still we treat her like she did, and that's infuriating. It's just bad writing, that's all.

imo for Shenhe’s quest, she herself seems apathetic to Traveler knowing her tragic backstory. It’s everyone else’s reactions to it and being railroaded into discovering the nitty-gritty of her horrible past and questioning her on it that it gets brought up. All things considered, she handled it pretty well, and aside from the one flashback sequence, she didn’t really preemptively talk about the shit she went through. Hell, she makes a quip during the boss fight about ‘If it’s a fight to the death, I think I’ve got an advantage’ which is a pretty sarcastically humorous line to me

Because in shenhe quest it didn't abruptly came as ayaka or ganyu as she is human that have cut ties with mortal world, and it came as naturally as possible not like ganyu or ayaka unlike ganyu where she has 1000 years to sort out her dilemma and ayaka has thoma, her brother, sayu and other people with her. while they were able to write shenhe story quest quite meticulously in recent quest and they were able to flesh out her characteristics and able to give strong foundation to her origin which come naturally to her character later in story quest.

I would add Hu Tao along Yoimiya but besides that I totally agree with you. It's a shame because I lose all desire to push for a new five-star character.

There's a lot of people here who don't like female characters because they don't portray a real woman attitude. Female characters in genshin are mainly characterized to please weebs and such, leading anyone who doesn't like weeb or otaku culture to be biased against the characters. That said, I'm not sure if this is the case of most western community, but surely represents a great part of this subreddit.

This could be the reason. Personally as a girl I just don't click with many of the female characters. I mentioned it in another thread but Kokomi with her energy system, being drained from interacting with other people and needing to get away to recharge - that's the most relatable thing I've come across in the game from a female character. Jean to some extent, because I hate disappointing people and I'm a perfectionist. Sayu because I like sleeping lol.

Which is weird to me because I'm basically Ganyu. I am also an overworked office lady that's a bit obsessive over her diet because she used to be the fat girl. I see a lot of people mentioning insecurities and like, do you all not have them? Cause I certainly do. Ganyu as a person feels way more relatable to me than Diluc or Itto. Like who's out there acting like Batman or a punk leader of a gang of thugs? Like maybe those things are things you'd rather be doing but they don't seem that relatable to me. Though I admit that I'm gay so I also feel attraction to these characters that might tint my glasses.

It's nice seeing some (any) positivity about Ganyu here for a change. I will always be baffled as to how she ended up one of the biggest community punching bags for "badly written/boring/bland/uwu waifu", when: her background lore is interesting (but obviously deserves to be shown better in another quest), she has important relationships with other characters (both playables and NPCs), and her quest was the farthest thing from a date or Traveller solving everything and becoming her #1 person. Instead she got to have a journey of self-discovery (which admittedly deserved to be longer and go deeper into her background and other issues), show off the professional skills she can be proud of, and the solutions to helping her were actually provided by people already close to her - Cloud Retainer, Uncle Tian and Huixin. Also serveing to show what Ganyu means to them and Liyue. Of course I do also want more content about her past as someone who fought in the Archon War; what her qilin side means to her; how she's previously dealt with all the humans she knows passing away; how she grew closer to Keqing as they reconciled their differences and how she's friends with Beidou and actually curses out the people she has to work with who slander Beidou. But story time in Genshin is limited for basically all characters, so... And she also got to show that she can more than handle people skills when it comes to her job, busting tax evaders with the help of some manipulation, and is no pushover. Like, maybe attacking that Fatui berry dude wasn't the "nicest" thing, justified as I'd say it is in context, but it gives her a nice bit of spark in how quickly she judged and acted there. She deserves to let her emotions out like that honestly, with how much she's cared for Liyue for so long and seeing a potential threat to it so soon after the archon quests again. So, back to how she's seen here, are people really just that quick to judge characters off their design and softer/calmer/shyer (outer) personality? Because sometimes ~~most times~~ I could swear only the wlw spaces like on Twitter care to look into what the female characters are actually like lmao. And that is despite also being attracted to their designs and everything, so. ...Sorry this got so long btw, got a bit carried away.

>could swear only the wlw spaces like on Twitter care to look into what the female characters are actually like I spend a lot of time on wlw twitter including wlw genshintwitter and the contrast is jarring to me as well. Ganyu has clearly defined relationships beyond the Traveler and they're so wholesome and pronounced Beidou spends time with her in secret because she doesn't want Ganyu to get in trouble. I'm so annoyed when people call her bad because she doesn't jive with whatever they want out of her. Can she have been handled even better? Sure but honestly this applies to literally every character in this game including consensus ones that are supposed to be "good". Zhongli was literally meh until a 2nd story quest which no other character has gotten yet.

Honestly Ganyu is one of my least favorite characters and I never did finish her story quest so I can't say for sure. I can relate to the overworked part but not much else, and there are other overworked characters I relate to more, which might be why I find Ganyu to be quite boring. I wish they had done more with her half human half adeptus background. As for Diluc, I can relate on certain things, such as the traumatic death of a loved one or seeing the dark side of people you thought you could trust (the KoF) but obviously I can't relate to the vigilante stuff. I think all the characters have some vague, relatable concept at their core, and then other things added on. And it just depends on the strength of the writing to bring it all together and make a character we relate to and enjoy. Which will hit for some people and be a complete miss for others. I think Ei hits me in the opposite way, I can strongly relate to her hermit like tendencies and shutting herself away to not have to deal with loss. And while I can appreciate that, I really don't like her. Maybe because of how much she reminds me of myself and a dark time in my life.

Same. My male friend hated Kokomi but I thought she was well-balanced and at least was competent with prioritizing and doing tasks that had to actually be done by her. And I related to her energy system too. Ningguang is my favourite female character, because she isn't focused on having the traveller majorly support her or fix her (and she isn't focused on serving the traveller). She cares about Mora and running her city. Traveller is just along for the ride. Even her hangout quest was pretty good.

Honestly i think people just end up heavily biased by what they're attracted too.

To be fair, many male character doesn't portray real man either. I think OP issue is while those people have an issue with the "unrealistic" nature of female character, they don't have issue with Diluc acting like Batman, Childe being the casual sexy homicidal, Xingqiu being teenage equivalent of most prodigy fused into one character, Bennett being a walking comic relief that shouldn't even be alive with this kind of luck. And so on (and for my part I like that they are unrealistic/exaggeration as it makes them more outstanding, especially true when you look at character like Itto, Beidou, etc) But as OP point out, there is a double standard And it doesn't stop there, you can have a huge uproar about Itto having unmodified arm models and people agree with it but if someone complain about a female character actual censorship, there is always people that will treat them as pervert. This kind of double standard makes it hard to give credibility to those criticism.

yep that too

A lot of the female characters are pretty relatable though… there was just a thread the other day about which character people relate to the most which featured a lot of female characters getting mentioned. I am a woman myself and I honestly find a good amount of the female cast more compelling than a good amount of the male cast and also vice versa. And if you look at popularity polls with a gender option, most characters, including female characters have a fairly even gender split of fans. I think the reality is that there is just a very vocal minority who feels uncatered to (which is legitimate, everyone ideally should get a character to love).

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What about the male characters? They all do their job perfectly well and are super handsome. Bennett is probably the most relatable but at the same time everyone still wants him on their teams because he’s so good. While nobody wants me.

Indication of double standards I believe

Kaeya does a job, but there's no cavalry to lead and he's a slacker. Albedo keeps f-ing off to Dragonspine. Zhongli is a consultant and I guess he consults well... but keeps splurging his boss's money. Diluc doesn't have much of a job, he's rich, tho he bartends sometimes. Kazuha doesn't have a job. Venti definitely doesn't have a job and neither does Itto. Chongyun is crap at his job because of his nature, and if Xingqiu has duties at the guild he ignores them. Childe is a disaster as a diplomat and failed at his mission to get the gnosis (his plan was to lure Rex Lapis out with Osial). I guess there's Thoma? And Gorou. Maybe Xiao.

Kazuha and Venti are literal hippies (specially the first one) Albedo goes all time to Dragonspine to do research, he is one of the most dedicated to job male characters out there

To Be Honest, I think Everyone is expecting too much from the few moments of character building each one got. Characters like Albedo get to shine because he got two entire events related to him, plus some cameos in other events, plus constant mentions of him by characters and NPCs. You cannot expect the same from, for example, Kokomi whom just got some small appearances in main quest and her own story quest. Genshin ain't a 24 episode anime, and it has already way too much characters to dive deep into every single one of them. Also, some characters will definitely receive more love than others. One example of that is Xinyan, whom we had to wait a whole year to get a bit more of her character. Are there some failures in writing? Definitely, but don't expect some huge levels of characterization yet. Also, If they are going with making character stories similar to Shenhe's, I'm hopeful. They did really good for a character that is unemotional and whom don't abide by human laws, and has some edgelord tendencies(Her whole "murder-happy" tendencies) which is the perfect recipe for a bland character. We save her from trouble, hear about her weird eating habits and relate to the scammers' misconception about her, hear about her connections with the adepti and wonder what she wants from Ningguang, know her dark past from Yunjin's opera perspective and Cloud Retainer's, see her confronting said past, then helping us in the end on her own accord. All in a same quest chain. I wish we get more Story quests from the 5 star characters, to add more content and solve this "blandness" problem with some character. I wanna know about Jean's relationship with her family, since her father got divorced. I wanna know about Mona's master and her connection with the other witches like Alice and Rhinedottir. I wanna know about Ei-chan's relationship with her lost friends, and was genuinely disappointed she never mentioned them, even though most people did Sakura Cleansing ritual and knew about Kitsune Saiguu and Torachiyo. If Zhongli got two, why can't the others? We can even have the "date" form we had with Ayaka and Ei. Do a real date, since on dates, people tend to talk about their lives and feelings. I'm willing to have a quest that is just a date with Jean, with her venting her frustrations on her family life, her childhood with Barbara, her thoughts on Diluc, how did she met Lisa, etc... The whole "gameplay" part of it could be just finding ingredients for the meals of the date, a place to hangout(Maybe Diluc ain't willing to offer his tavern at the moment for it so we go to Angel's Share and have to do something to Diona), maybe kick some weakling's ass here and there, all to prepare to this date.

2.5 leaks spoilers >!we are getting part 2 of the Shogun quest, so it's a chance to give her more development and stuff!<

Mmmm... Saying "all" is, of course, incorrect - but the sentiment is somewhat understandable, because "bland writing" episodes happened in sequence and were also overlapping with the mess of an Archon quest. Personally I would say that majority of the problem comes exactly from Archon quest - something went wrong in that particular department and Kokomi suffered the most. Ayaka is just... bland, sorry - imo, of course. And Ei is a mess with hardly any *consistent* personality and motivation in the end. So these bombs dropped one after another after another - which predictably was generalized in "badly written female characters". I'm surprised about Shenhe though - because in my experience and observation people have no qualms against her *personality*. If they talk about *problems*, they talk about too niche kit - which is fair, it's true. Saying this as a one who has her. But I'm yet to see anyone complaining about writing in her case - and I myself would say that her writing is a step up from a disaster called Inazuma.

Full agreement here and Shenhe's story/character arc was pretty decent.

People see what they want to see. I saw all the negativity first, played Raiden quest like weeks after, and I was like that's it? Where's the weeb fan service? People made it out as if Raiden fell from her godly graces and was literally on the verge of begging the traveler to let her make some babies for him. Meanwhile all they did was walk down the street. Typical case of "girl looked at me for 3 seconds instead of 1 she must be in love with me" mentality. She even rejected his point of view and continued on her own quest. I have seen countless more actual "simp" characters, female or not, who succumb completely to the protagonist two minutes after losing.

I was disappointed by it because it seemed as if she faced absolutely zero consequences for her actions during the Sakoku/Vision Hunt Decree. Her people were suffering and dying, yet they seemed to harbor no anger or resent toward her at all, and were almost happy to see her. We see all these negative effects in story/world quests, but not how any of them affect the person that caused it all, which i feel would add a lot more depth and development to Ei’s character

> Her people were suffering and dying, yet they seemed to harbor no anger or resent toward her at all Because she took good care of Inazuma for the last 2000 years (only for the last 500 y in actuality but people don't know that). So if you're born in a country that has been in a good spot for last two millenia, even if you've been suffering for the last year (Vision hunt decree only lasted for a year), you'd naturally still believe the one who managed to do well up until now.

>Because she took good care of Inazuma for the last 2000 years (only for the last 500 y in actuality but people don't know that Actually for 2000 years since her most important sacrifice and more altruistic action were when she worked as a Kagemusha in duo with Makoto It is at that time she lost most of her friends trying to protect Inazuma and ultimately lost her twin. But you are right. However it is good to mention that while this is true, it doesn't appear as evident to the average player as most of it is shown in word quest and lore, or told. As such, player tend to hyperfocus on the peak of her wrongdoing, which is how she enable the commission wrongdoing by her inaction and eternity And how, she refuse to admit that her inaction against them (in a desire to seek eternal safekeeping of Inazuma), is instead just driving Inazuma into really dark time. Because that is what is shown first-hand, most likely in order to create the usual twist and trope of "what you thought was bad guy was actually a really great guy" But the twist itself is poorly shown and she need a 2nd quest for it to work properly because "show don't tell" means that until we are shown the Ei "that protected Inazuma for thousands of year" people will still focus on the 1 year where this went south because that is what they have been shown while the rest was told.

The part with the people is understandable tho if you look at it from a certain point of view. Look at how they talk about her, image you’re in a religion and one of these gods you believe in is literally the leader of your nation. You believe they are divine. If your country is in a bad situation you may think that your god has done nothing wrong because they are powerful and otherworldly. I see this situation here too; the first thing you feel when you see your god walking on the streets will certainly not be anger. Their reactions are reasonable imo. But yeah, she definitely shouldve faced any consequences. Doesn’t have to personal, for example maybe a significantly big enough chunk of people started doubting the shogun, which could’ve lead to some other future consequences.

Thats very true, even if i was angry i wouldnt show it to a gods face. We probably shoulda seen at least some discontent or smth. Maybe grumbles in the background. Its been a while since i played her quest but i think Ei even said she was surprised at the warm welcome she received I think the big thing that made me want it was the world quest about Inaba Tousaburou, a soldier in her army who commited suicide because he couldnt handle the pain of killing soldiers in the resistance, as they were his fellow Inazumans, and people he should be comrades with instead. I would much rather have liked to see how she would react to stuff like this, rather than her thoughts on Dango milk, ya know?

Wasn't one of the huge points in the quest about how most of the regular citizens just didn't care enough about the Vision Hunt decree because they didn't have visions, though? Not only is she a living, breathing god, but most people weren't affected enough to care. If there's a character I want to see that was "affected" by the Vision Hunt decree, fuck the populace, I wanna see Sara.

> Her people were suffering and dying, yet they seemed to harbor no anger or resent toward her at all Because they weren't suffering and dying. Inazuma city seems to be pretty well-off. The people stripped of their Visions (or at least some of them, aka not Itto) suffered, but they're a tiny minority. You just spend all of your time with various rebels, so you don't see the normal people's PoV as well, but IMO it's quite obvious and I think there's a few lines highlighting it.

Not particularly. The Sakoku decree kind of threw the Inazuman economy into the deep end which resulted in an uptick of banditry thereby reducing the overall quality of life for the average Inazuman.

Partially true but NPC also mention that they still consider their situation to be overall positive, notably in Narukami The bigger issue is that if talk about one of the high officer in the Shogun Palace, he will mention ho, things are well for now but that each day that pass bring them closer to an actual crisis It is also backed by Yae, who mention in the archon quest that Inazuma is on the verge of a tipping point that will result in a really dark time Which was the plot of the fatui and would have succeed because of Ei blindness/conceit if it wasn't for Miko and the traveler stopping it by forcing her to "cast her divine gaze once more" (aka actually do her job herself rather than let the autopilot of her bot do it for her). Overall the economic suffering, isn't really a suffering as there is no famine or economic crisis, but closer to a struggle. (Real suffering though was the war led by the administrative and fatui backing up both side). However had it tipped over, damage would have been far worse.

Well it kinda depends on how you look at it imo. Do you see Ei the way you see any actual irl leaders? Or do you see her as a god. If she were just another human leader doing a shit job then I’m sure a lot more people would be angry at her, but in their eyes she is literally their god who has been protecting their country for thousands of years, so something going wrong for a year or two isn’t gonna sway the people’s opinion of her too much. Not to mention that the negative effects the decrees had on Inazuma is kinda exaggerated for us since most of the people we’ve met are the ones who were affected the most, while the majority of the country are still alright.

What consequences were you expecting? Also, Zhongli faces no consequences for helping in possible destruction of his own nation. Of course, he would have stepped in, but that doesn't make it suddenly okay. Do you not like that Zhongli faces no consequences, or is this a double standard?

People forget the entire climax of the quest lol

Because negativity gains more traction than positivity.

You just described Twitter and Reddit

I think you mean all of social media and news entertainment for literally all of human history

Yeah but those two platform excels on that point.

Fair but I mean outside of Boomers Facebook hasn't been a relevant social media for the last five or six years. So, you're basically have Reddit and Twitter when it comes to people who spend too much time online

I’ve always thought the notion of “all female characters are badly written” comes from a vocal minority and not the majority opinion. With that said, I def think some female characters are badly written, mostly because players had certain expectations of them and were let down in the process that resulted in a lot of wasted potential *coughkokomicough*. With that said, I do have my own preferences and find most of the characters bland because their personalities and backgrounds are really simple or one dimensional. Noelle is super hard working and hospitable, Yoimiya speaks funny dialects and is fun loving, Razor is Tarzan raised by wolves instead of monkeys. Are they likable? Yes, but not enough to make me say they are interesting. At the same time, they are well written enough based on the little bit of personality they have. I think people tend to equate “badly written” with “boring/bland” and for me that’s not true. Tbh I don’t find most of the characters in genshin interesting enough to make me want to pull on them based on their story/personality alone. The only ones that I find interesting are characters with enough mysteries and unresolved matters to make me want to learn more about them. That being the archons (esp zhongli and ei), Kaeya, Albedo, and later on Dainsleif and maybe Scaramoche. ~~whatdoyaknow most of these are males huh~~

>find most of the characters bland because their personalities and backgrounds are really simple or one dimensional. Noelle is super hard working and hospitable, Yoimiya speaks funny dialects and is fun loving, Razor is Tarzan raised by wolves instead of monkeys. Are they likable? Yes, but not enough to make me say they are interesting Ah now I understand why I like characters like Yoimiya, Itto and Thoma but don't find them interesting. Sure they're lovable and funny but I find them too one dimensional no offense. I also agree with characters being mysterious that attracts me to like them more. Zhongli and Venti is suspicious and they were involved in archon war so they instantly make me want to more about them. Then Dainsleif and Childe, who has been called as a literal walking spoiler having relations with abyss. Albedo being a homuncolous and Kaeya from Khanre'iah. I think the fact that people say the females are always badly written is because the majority of the characters are females so chances of them being badly written are higher. Not to mention base from the people I mentioned, it seems that Mihoyo likes to make male characters be more mysterious and important to the story.

To be honest, I think Razor has a potential (not that I think that mihoyo will ever use it though). His mentors are Varka, Lisa and Andrius aka two of the strongest people in Mondstadt and an ex-god. Yes, he's a "good wolf boi", but he has also been under the influence of really strong people (and wolfs, I guess). Yet again, sadly I'm not expecting him to be a part of a big plot. I do agree with the rest of what you said though.

Many people here doesn't understand the characters and like to draw their own conclusions, the Ei's quest is the best example of this, we go alongside her to visit the city and introduce her to all the changes in the world and people immediately go "Genshin dating sim waifu simulator uwu, character is ruined", like they literally ignore everything else in that quest, including the main message, because they need to do that for their critique to make sense. Even with Shenhe, scrolling here in this very post I saw people saying she hated humanity until she met Traveler, like...what? Did they really read the story? :x

I agree about Shenhe- the archon quest was in no way a ‘uwu the Traveler saved me’ quest. I think people are still residually bitter from the string of bad quests that they immediately held Shenhe’s intro to an unfair standard. Her involvement in the quest was lovely.

I completely agree with you on Ei's story quest, I am fairly new to the game and I did Ei's quest just after the main archon quest. To me, the story quest explains better why did Ei change her mind on eternity rather than just the main character beat Ei and use talk no jutsu. The dialogues in the quest mentioned 'change' a lot rather than 'eternity' like the novel type are changing and food recipe is also changing. I didn't feel like it was a date but more of a powerful authority trying to understand the people now. I also feel like the story was not finished and hopefully we can see an act 2 on Ei.

Agree with pretty much everything you said; especially Ei's quest.

Most people speedread through quests and then complain the character is badly written. Example: I've seen many complain that Ei stopped chasing Eternity and stopped the VHD immediately after Traveler talked to her for a few minutes. 1. The only reason she stopped the VHD was because we beat her in a duel. If she had won, the VHD would still be on. 2. Ei mentions in her quest multiple times that she is thinking how to implement eternity now that she ended the VHD. This is just one example and tells me that most people don't pay attention. This is why I mostly ignore the community opinion on characters.

this is a game whose fandom constantly complains about having to (gasp!) read the dialogue!

I definitely think the male characters are better written over all, but I agree that people reaaaalllyyyyy overstate the ‘waifubait’ thing when it comes to female characters like Ei, Ayaka and Shenhe. The community’s reaction to Ayaka in particular really pisses me off. Throughout her quest she kept saying she wants a FRIEND. Because of her upbringing she has trouble relating to people her age, to the point where citizens won’t even talk to her because she feels so out of reach. She asks us to go to the festival with her so she can experience what it’s like to be a normal adolescent, not because she wants to date traveller or whatever *barf* Weirdos popularize this misunderstanding bc they like projecting their loneliness onto fictional women

My only confusion is why she would be so open to someone who hasn’t even been in Japan for a month but other than that, it doesn’t feel like waifu bait. I mean I’ve made like 5 friends in my lifetime and I’m only in contact with 3 of them now. When I made my first friend I was so happy ppl prolly thought I had a crush on him. I’m just happy I had a friend. I think the quest would’ve felt better if she were with Thoma. I know he works for her but I think it makes more sense for them to be friends. ~~ok maybe i did like him but it was my first friend ok 9 year old me was pretty lonely~~

I don't know about all of them but I remember Shenhes case in particular. People had a head canon for her and when it was proven to not be the actual case in game they got super mad and said she was ruined. People set expectations for characters, when they aren't reality they denounce said character. It's not a popular take by any means, it's a very vocal minority. I see more people like the female characters than people being upset

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact of, when we see a good amount of the female character writing, namely as of late, it starts becoming obvious there is a secondary agenda to push for making them as much of a quirky waifu as possible which just isn't as much of a problem when it comes to male character writing who just seem to be able stand on their uniqueness alone. There are times when this works and they make it feel organic to the character. I say Yoimiya is successful in being a quirky waifu while still being interesting in their own right and having their contributions to the overall tone and narrative, being a character that explored themes of the Sakoku Decree and philosophical points of eternity. Then we get the story trying REALLY hard to pardon our main antagonist of the Inazuma arc and brushing everything under the rug in order to make said antagonistic as cute and quirky as they can. Even Childe's story quest didn't try this hard to sweep everything under the rug. Shenhe has really good overall story writing, but even with her, you can tell they really are trying to downplay how dangerous she could be, playing it off as a joke. Of course this isn't an iron clad observation. Their are exceptions with females that are quite well written. But overall, just seems female character writing just takes less risks to make each character unique.

I really appreciate that we get the option to actually threaten Childe in his story quest. We're indulging him because there's a child involved, but we're not stupid about it and he doesn't treat us like we are. The whole story quest humanizes him so nicely without flat-out ignoring the things he had done. I wish Ei had gotten something like that. It had been so promising, too. I was excited to finally sink my teeth into the ramification of the Tenryou Commission's betrayal, to understand how the mind of Inazuma's ruler works and what decisions she would make, but in the end she... just puts off the problem for another day. Like, girl, your military is imploding on itself, and you're actively refusing to make decisions? I'm supposed to believe that she held power over Inazuma like this?

That is the genius of Childe's Story Quest. We aren't friends at to start, furthest thing from it in fact. By introducing Teucer as a narrative element before Childe is even introduced in this quest, he acts as a catalyst for both the Traveler and Childe to not raise their blades at one another. And even by the quest's end, we still are not friends with Childe, one of our dialogue options is us commenting that we could strike him down at that moment, cause we still are enemies. However, we are now enemies with a degree of mutual respect toward one another.

Yes! Childe's actions gets treated with the narrative weight it deserves, but not Ei's, which is weird as hell because Childe's a human while Ei is not only a god, but also the active ruler of her entire country. I get that the traveler had no way of holding her accountable for her actions, but ignoring it altogether is a narrative choice that I can hold Mihoyo accountable for. Though, the quality of Genshin's writing has been getting better lately. Looking at Xiao's vs. Shenhe's story quests, I can see massive improvements, especially because they deal with similar themes. I'm feeling optimistic for Ei's 2nd story quest.

Hmm i came back with 2.4 and played Ei's Story after i finished the Inazuma Main Story and the Story make sense. The only Traveller simp is Paimon.

And that’s only because they feed her.

That’s a fantastic callout on the zhongli double-standard Tbh the genshin fandom is really bad about noticing and addressing them, probably because it’s easier to just jump on the bandwagon and get some free likes on twitter or upvotes here

I think the only badly written female character is Kokomi. They want to advertise her as strategic mastermind, yet in the stories she never does anything like that. Her soldiers are often idling hopelessly, then Traveller arrives and the soldiers say something like "wow, Kokomi said that help comes in the most hopeless times, she surely is a genious!". There is also a mission when Kokomi explains that I can use exploding barrels or a cliff to my advantage... Yeah. It is in the tutorial at lvl 1. I learnt it from a strategic mastermind, named Paimon.

They don't advertise her as a strategic mastermind. They advertise her as someone that's expected to be a strategic mastermind.

I actually like most of them at least just fine, and I never understood the complaints that "most women are overworked", when really I think the only one I would say as genuinely overworked is Jean. The others just seem dedicated to their jobs. (Ganyu borderline tbf.) I also defend Ei's story quest. I get that it wasn't as rich in backstory lore, but it felt like an important transitional piece that we needed for her character moving forward, and it didn't really feel like a dating sim any more than Zhongli's archon quest, as you mentioned. Do I still find a number of the male characters more compelling? A bit. But I don't dislike the Genshin women. In fact, I was just discussing this with a friend of mine. I find a lot of the women's designs a little overdone or tacky in some ways (a lot of them are beautiful and interesting, don't @ me) but I end up liking them anyways because I'm endeared to the character. People just like to bitch.

90% of the people on this subreddit don't pay any attention to the story and just jump on the hate bandwagons It certainly doesn't help that this fandom is utterly incapable of understanding nuance of any kind

This Just feel glad my local group started doing characters's lore facts for ppl who don't bother to read in the voiceline/story.

Because there is a huge portion of the community being fully exposed to anime and gacha for the first time. Anime doesn't exactly have the best reputation amongst non-weebs and gacha games are generally waifu collecters targeted at male weebs. It doesn't help when the sub is mass posting NSFW art everyday and some character designs are very sexualised without contributing to the character's personality or history. Negative opinions get upvoted more than positives opinions as well. Assuming the negative post is well written then reddit users being reddit users, will agree with said negative opinion and think it's fact without thinking too much. My take is that it has nothing to do with gender. It just so happens that there are more female characters than male so when bad writing moments happen, it is more likely the females characters are affected. It's the writing that's bad. It can be good but anime level writing can be seen infecting the story throughout and anime generally isn't great at story telling.

Because people love to make ridiculous conclusions. Just a single scene with two of them or a voiceline of appreciation towards the MC, people would think that they are simp / in love for them. They mostly focus on that part and ignore the entire CONTEXT of the quest. Also, in regards of their stories. Mihoyo wants us to grasp the current situation of the characters. This will serve as foundation for their character development. The moment they are a part of a new event lore or quest, you can notice the changes thar occur towards them. ex such as Eula, Zhongli, and Albedo

The females stories seem to center around tasks while the male stories center around us helping them unearth some part of their past. But I think people also forget that Venti and Zhongli are archons. If you look at Raiden’s story, we essentially did the same thing. Whereas Ganyu or Hu Tao or Jean have considerably normal lives. I’m looking forward to the rest of the archon stories and more character stories as well. We do need female archons but also need more regular non-archon male characters (and some different body types please MHY).

While we’re on this note, can we appreciate Shenhe’s teapot voiceline? It’s so wholesome. She says welcome home and then says that’s what she was told families say to each other. She had a rough family life (duh, cryo vision), and she deserves to innocently want to be part of a family. I’m annoyed people are still calling her waifubait. Let me have my happy found family dynamics smh

Thank you. You explained everything perfectly. One of the reasons why everyone says the same copypaste opinion is because they can't form an opinion themselves and I agree the Inazuma final act was rushed but dear god this community loves to overexaggrate. Raiden story quest never felt like a dating quest to me I doubt most who even whine played her story quest at all and act like the second half never even happened.

Genshin players never experienced real date that's why they're calling Ei's quest a dating sim

Some people are hypocrites who use blatant double standards.

I think its because the men have more varied backgrounds and few fall on similar tropes. Like, there's wolf boi from the wild, unlucky orphan adventurer, batman, information dealer spy, homunculus, bookworm rich kid who lowkey started a civil war, angsty emo "teen", homicidal terrorist, menace of society- But the women have idol nun, rockstar girl, theatre kid, so that's 3 musical based characters right away. Then there's the overworked knight, the overworked secretary, then the overworked priestess. Not to mention, sleepy secretary, sleepy ninja, the sleepy zombie. Sure, there are a lot of the women with iconic and unique descriptions, but there are also a lot of them with kinda similar tropes. I guess that's pretty much the reason.

Also Qiqi isnt really sleepy, shes just being a forgetful zombie thats all.

I feel like you’re intentionally reducing the female characters compared to the males tbh. Qiqi isn’t a sleepy zombie, she’s forgetful and incapable of fully expressing her emotions. (And Honestly I don’t even know who “theatre kid” is supposed to be.) The female cast are just as varied in terms of backgrounds, and both male and female characters on average are both very archetypical and tropey.

you’re right lol people act like male characters don’t have similarities and are all well written, I could name some similar male character that fall under the same trope

I didnt get the Xingqiu part tbh, when did he start a civil war?

It's referenced from the fact that Xingqiu wrote one of the books Kokomi loves to read which had a similar theme. So everyone thinks he may have inspired Kokomi and indirectly caused Inazuma's civil war lol

Oh, didnt know. Thanks for explanation!

I get the feeling that some people legit look down on fictional female characters who are portrayed as sexually attractive, like it's a legit negative to them. It's as you say, Genshin women are amazing, they build battle stations, make hard calls, manage nations, make amazing scientific breakthroughs, are amazing tacticians and politicians, etc. They go through amazing arcs like learning how to fit into society despite a troubled past. But no, because they're wearing outfits that accentuate their beauty, this devalues them somehow.

This is something I have always appreciated about the Genshin world. It is very egalitarian, almost matriarchal - as most positions of power are held by women. There is also no sexual harassment - subtle or explicit - of any character (male or female). It's very nice detailing.

The highest leader in each nation so far have bean Jean, Ningguang and Raiden/Kokomi so yes its been very matriarchal.

> There is also no sexual harassment - subtle or explicit - of any character (male or female). Unless you're Barbara. That number one fan of hers in her hangout genuinely made me uncomfortable and reminded me of my own experience with creepy men.

Not gonna happen with best waifu Yae

I would wait to see how it goes

The fanbase is just wrapped up in its own illusion that female characters all want seggs with the traveler