I've started playing Honkai Star Rail and I love how dramatically silly it lets me be. So far I have stolen mail, searched garbage cans, entered a closet to become one with the darkness, waxed on about how life is just a road to death to a terrified guy (somehow that seemed to make him less terrified), bowed in respect to a dumpster, investigated an inconspicuous lamp so many times it got mad at me, investigated a trash can so many times it insulted me, and felt bad for two different trash cans and several sandbags (I believe my Trailblazer is going insane from putting up with me). All this not counting with the countless dialogue options with NPCs around the world that allowed me to be incredibly dramatic (think almost Fischl style) for no reason (you can bet I took them). However, I cannot jump or climb, and fights are turn-based... we respect our opponents in Star Rail (and die. A lot).
What I conclude from this is that while the Traveler has a moral code (and some standards) when dealing with interpersonal interactions but isn't bound by physical restrictions or conventions (stairs? The Traveler does not understand that concept. Fair fights? Please, they don't have time for that), the Trailblazer is the exact opposite. The physical rules may hold them but their only ties to social rules or convention so far have been March and Dan Heng saying "hey, maybe don't fight the guards" and "hey, you can't just accept random jobs".
It also might be because the Traveler is a thousand year old entity that has been through A Lot (has learnt the power of friendship, but is too tired to take the long route) and is on a serious mission while the Trailblazer was quite literally Born Yesterday with the sole purpose of housing a massive problem inside their body (walks and fights like a Normal Person bc they're mimicking everyone else, but is absolutely unhinged) and is just having fun with tjeir newfound existence.
Either way I love both of them and they're basically cryptids but in different ways.
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me: i finished the latest trailblaze mission in hsr so i can look at what other people are posting now! oh boy i hope it's discussions and theories about the story. i can't wait to see what everyone thought about firefly (what was going on with you sweetie...) and A Child's Dream - that segment in particular really left a profound impact on me. like who is mikhail? the voice we hear throughout is obviously misha's - did he have a twin? does mikhail have something to do with clockie? and from what we heard and saw, misha or... mikhail. encountered the embodiment of Death that lurks beneath the dreamscape. what's... the full story there...? i can't wait to see other people's perspectives it'll help me piece a more coherent theory together-
other hsr fans: *thirstposting about aventurine and/or dr. ratio, trying to cancel sparkle even though the entire point of her character is that yes she's a horrible person because it's high time we see how DANGEROUS and CRUEL the masked fools can be - no more reducing them to the silly wacky hijinks sampo pulled on jarilo; you should be scared of these guys; the game's story never wanted you to make sparkle your next skrunkly blorbo babygirl lol, heated discussions about whether dr. ratio displayed the same racism towards aventurine that sparkle did and if that makes aventurine/ratio a bad thing to ship (??????????), more thirstposts about aventurine, 500 billion generic yaois of aventurine and ratio that don't even maintain either of their characters*
me:
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thinking about the fionna and cake finale and. i've been seeing people upset or annoyed that betty & simon's story focused on how simon had to learn to recognize that what they had was unbalanced and not necessarily fair, because they wanted betty to also realize that she placed too much of her self worth in simon, and they wanted her to learn to live for herself.
i think these people forgot about the episode in adventure time that does this. mainly because, at the end of the episode, it seems like she didn't learn anything at all.
In s10e11, "Temple of Mars," Finn, Jermaine, and Betty have to go through a mind maze to find Jake--and many parts of the maze are relevant to Betty's obsession with Simon/Ice King.
The second room of the "maze" has a chalkboard with a long and complicated equation on it. Betty tries to solve it, thinking it will help, while an Ice Thing messes up the equation as she tries to solve it, preventing her from doing so. It's meant to represent how trying to "solve" the crown's curse is leading nowhere, and that Betty is trying for a hopeless cause.
The last room is the most important to Betty's story, though--it's a window into her past, where she realizes that she needed to take more time for herself. She needed to focus on her, instead of dropping everything for Simon. She makes this realization and changes things for the hypothetical, maze room version of Betty--but naturally, this can't change the past. She's made her choices, and she has to live with that.
I think at the end of the episode, when she takes the "wrong" message away from all of this--she dedicates herself to trying even harder to "fix" Simon--it's mostly because she's scared to accept that she... not wasted, but lost so much of her life because she was so focused on what Simon wanted, or what she thought that Simon needed. She's also still under the effect of the Magic Man hat, so she's still affected by the sadness/madness of that, which likely twisted her view of the situation as well.
But then in the AT finale, she makes her choice to leave Simon. She does it through wishing for his safety, sure, but she still makes the choice to leave him. And in Fionna and Cake, what we see of her--or what's left of her, because we don't know how she's changed, really--is something bigger than what she was before. GOLBetty seems to have realized her own part in the unbalancing of the relationship between them. But that's not what Fionna and Cake is about--it's about Simon, and how he has to move on. Betty has already moved on by the time we see her again. She's showing Simon that, and she's showing him that he has to move on, too. But it's her choice. She could have stayed with him, but...
She takes the bus to the airport. And she takes it without him.
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