#actually don't play destiny I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy

[mdhwrites]

Your opinion on Kafka's relationship with the MC?

'Relationship Status: It's complicated' has never been more accurate. I'll expand on it but the best way I could describe it quickly is "We are in an enemies to friends/lovers arc and right on the brink of Kafka's grand mistake before she either loses us entirely or comes to our side."

So my fans who have no idea what this is about, let me just, without judgement, detail the core interactions these two characters have with each other that we have seen:

She takes a sleeping us and wipes our memories while implanting a literal natural disaster in us. Seriously, I wish it was easier to describe what the fuck a Stellaron is but the best way to put it is that where it is, things go WRONG and planets DIE. And yet the one in us is stable. The only memory we have of the time before waking up is that we know Kafka. Then we are left to be found by people who can take care of us and take us on glorious journeys while Kafka leaves.

We don't see her again until the lead in for the third planet. She appears on the express as a hologram and tell us where another Stellaron is going to destroy a planet ship unless we intervene. Of course, she knows that since we're heroes, we won't be able to ignore so many lives being in danger.

Then... We get the worst parts of the third planet where Kafka acts cryptic, is supposedly working off of some grand plan and then does nothing. It just wastes time, though by doing so supposedly makes things worse. It also has no real interactions between us.

Then you get her companion quest where she is using her hypnotic powers to help her companion she came to the third planet with before they leave entirely. She needs our help to keep enemies away. In return, she plays a game where you each tell the other one lie and one truth. Inbetween rounds and us doing things for her, she talks of fate and destiny and believes all is preordained. It doesn't add much besides her continuing to use us...

Put a pin in the end of the quest because Kafka leaves but her companion stays to say something to us. For now, I just want to talk about as presented what our relationship with Kafka is in the story. This is pretty simple: We are a puppet to her. Simply a tool to be used for the grand plan that is her organization's desires. Her kindness seems to mostly be just performative. Something to make us believe her and wish to be close to her so that she can better manipulate us. It is toxic as it is purely for her own goals.

Except.

Small bits of the writing imply a slightly different story that can be interpreted a few ways. It's one of the ONLY times where playing up Kafka being mysterious actually feels substantial and with a point rather than her just going "Wouldn't you like to know?" rolls his eyes

The easiest of them and the most overt is the ending of her companion quest. With it, Blade tells us that of all the people who have worked with Kafka, you are the one who has survived the longest. This coming from the literal immortal means that bare minimum, we have been by Kafka's side longer than any of the current Stellaron Hunters, the organization she's a part of. Add this to how she genuinely gets kind of sad anytime you say you don't like her or don't care about her and it starts opening up a few new interpretations.

The first is that it's actually all still part of the grand manipulation. She's smart enough to pretend she's hurt by hurtful words because that makes us not want to hurt her. To want to understand her. Worse yet is that Blade was quite literally just under hypnosis by Kafka and so she could have implanted the line with him to say, making it just another lie.

The next two are branching paths for why we are the ones holding the Stellaron (besides just making the MC special). The first is that Kafka didn't have a choice for who was the receptacle. So here she was, knowing that for the grand plan she was working towards, she had to give up on her longest term companion. At the last minute, she realizes that her boss' orders could be twisted a bit, she takes an indulgence in trying to give us a larger impression of her than we might have had otherwise. A reason for us to pursue her and reunite with her someday.

The other option is that when talks of who to make the receptacle were brought up, Kafka thought it over. Anyone granted the powers of a Stellaron would be incredibly hard to kill, potentially impossible by anything but the bomb in their chest. The plan also outlined that they would be SAFE as they traveled the galaxy and furthered their plans. Kafka looked at the options with her boss and specifically chose us so that we got away from her. People don't live long working with Kafka but against? Against maybe we'll last just a bit longer. She still has to use us as the pawn we were made though, relishing in the chances to see us but keeping a large gulf between us for our sake.

All three of these though are conjecture. As I said before, most of what is written with Kafka is to be infuriatingly obtuse because their opinion of how to make someone Kafka-esque is to give quite literally ZERO ANSWERS. Honestly, for the longest time my opinion of Kafka was low enough that I assumed it was the first scenario. I just kind of dismissed the line because Kafka felt like too little a person and didn't seem to actually care about us.

But... I like DoT characters and mechanically, you do not run DoTs without Kafka right now. She literally doubles the effectiveness of your team, full stop. So with her rerun right now, I grabbed her, even though I didn't really like her character. Maybe she'd give me a little more though.

Joking aside from my good luck, she actually did. See, whenever you get a character in Star Rail, you also get a few texts from them. They're usually cute interactions that help expand your understanding of them and the like. I hadn't considered what Kafka's would be or even the fact that they would happen at all.

They are all done under an anonymous number. They are all pretty much just checking up on you, seeing if you remember her and telling you a little about what she's up to. They also all give the vibe that she knows she shouldn't be doing this. That despite the fact that she tried making sure she could never leave our brain, we've left a similar impact on her. This exchange though essentially slammed me firmly into one camp.

Again, it could just be machinations. Ways to make us like her more. But... I would like to believe it's the third option. That she genuinely wants us to be safe and happy and away from her is where she sees that as mostly likely. That this option let her stop worrying, even though she still is. The fact that she often goes on multi message, rapid fire texts like she's looking for more to say and a touch nervous helps with the impression.

It all kind of makes me hope that Elio, her boss's, script will say something akin to "An old hunter must die," and that her and us will be somewhere together. She points her uzis at us, knowing that in just a handful of seconds, the moment the event is supposed to happen will come up. She fires. We die. She is still in the script after all past that. We are not. This is the end.

And finally, the slave to Destiny's Slave breaks her bonds and steps in. She knows better than to believe Elio's plan won't come true somehow and a different enemy attacks, killing Kafka instead of us in that critical moment.

I am admittedly against character death so I'd rather she not die but that's definitely the vibe I'm getting with her storytelling. She will find escape from the plans and scripts only for it to cost her life because of all the cruelty she has inflicted. Kafka is not a good person after all, not in the slightest, and I don't think the writers would want to have to ground her enough to put her on the express or the like, hence why she has had such limited interactions with you. They'd rather keep the mystery going and well...

Dead men tell no tales. I hope that isn't the case for her, even though I still mostly dislike the character, because I do see potential for her to improve. To be better than what fate says she must be. To find some happiness outside of chaos and sadism.

But maybe I've just fallen into her spiderweb and am believing too many of her lies. Thus is the intersection we find ourselves with the name stuck in our heads.

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#kafka #hsr kafka #hsr #honkai star rail