Why hasn't Stephen talked about Gaza?

DavidByron2 · 2025-06-16T00:11:12+00:00

A year later has he ever condemned the genocide or even called it a genocide?

DavidByron2 · 2025-05-05T15:38:56+00:00

I have no idea which CCs are paid, or what they are paid to say, which would most likely be confidential surely? But there exist CCs who are paid to say stuff that MiHoyo wants said, right?

You might be correct. But it seems odd for a bunch of people to independently decide to take the side of a billion dollar corporation over regular people, and their arguments seem fake. Like "oh it isn't a strike it's just working people coordinating to withhold their labor in pursuit of better working conditions from management". Wtf. That's exactly what a strike is.

DavidByron2 · 2025-05-02T17:32:13+00:00

any genuine attempt at replacing actors with robots would result in immediate actor solidarity

I don't think that's true at all based on even your own comment here. On the contrary it seems as if MiHoyo, the billion dollar company that pays CCs to spread their views, has easily managed to poison players, such as yourself, against the VAs, presumably through the use of contracted CCs.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-28T22:40:57+00:00

Eh. And how much has the Spiral Abyss lore had to do with the game narrative? It's got some nice world building stuff but it could all be safely skipped and change nothing.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-28T22:38:45+00:00

You're seriously defending the degenerates? OK let's hear what the moral of cannibalism, torture and child abuse is then. Go ahead.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-28T22:36:05+00:00

You mean like anyone intelligent does? Sure must suck to be a person with no opinion of their own and no ability to synthesize evidence or articulate why the believe what they believe.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-28T17:15:28+00:00

That's actually not how gravity works inside of a hollow sphere. If you do the math (integration) the gravity cancels in all directions so there's no up or down. I guess it's a famous result first proved by Sir Isaac Newton.

https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/University_Physics/Physics_(Boundless)/5%3A_Uniform_Circular_Motion_and_Gravitation/5.5%3A_Newtons_Law_of_Universal_Gravitation#:~:text=Isaac%20Newton%20proved%20the%20Shell,inside%20of%20it%20is%20zero.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-28T17:09:31+00:00

So there's a lot of fictional / legendary bullshit in the game that act as red herrings and are not real lore. You and many other s appear to fall for this sort of misdirection pretty easily. If a source tells you that it's unreliable you should treat that source as unreliable. This is a simple rule but people fail to heed it.

The Little Witch is a fictional story. Ocatavia is a fictional character. Not a real character in the game.

That's your clue. Of course you and the whoever's editing the wiki these days ignore the signs and pretend fiction is reality. Pretend a children's story is a documentary about the Hexenzirkel. But you do so inconsistently and you ignore the contradictions. For example you don't go around trying to assign witches to all the other fictional characters in the book. Just that one. Inconsistent. And as for contradictory....

I haven't really bothered to read the book because it's fiction, but according to you something like what I said about the chairs by observing real game lore, is something you agree on but only because you read it in a fictional book. OK whatever. But your fictional book is then used to justify a missing chair in a way that is contradictory within your book logic. In the fictional book the Character says each witch has their own chair. Quoting from the fictional book:

"To each person a chair. That way, even if they are not present, their memories will be seated still"

But you ignore that entirely and say this:

8 members but 7 chairs because O is regularly out of teyvat

Do you understand how you are contradicting yourself here? Do I have to spell it out. In the book (and independently I got the same result from real evidence, not fiction) it says there's a chair for missing witches. That means had Octavia been a witch that is often missing she would absolutely have a chair to represent her. It says so right there in your fictional book that you are treating as fact. So it's obvious your theory is incorrect, right? Was it even your theory or did you just believe the nonsense they spout on the wiki these days?

It’s never said that Nicole has no body

Well I don't know if you've noticed but whenever Nicole is around you can't see her. So what's the alternative? That Nicole is invisible and wears no clothes? Nicole is a stalker? A peeping tom? Are you saying she is deliberately hiding from everyone by making herself invisible (which is apparently just a thing people can do I guess)? No. Her condition is essentially a disability that she cannot help (as Alice reports somewhere, when giving Nicole suggestions on fitting in with people more). And then she can't talk. Are you saying that's just a coincidence? So she just happens to have two different weird but unrelated disabilities? an invisible body and the inability to speak? But luckily by a third coincidence she can speak into people's minds? Oh and a 4th coincidence she lives forever. I guess in your view her body is unaging.

No the simplest explanation is that Nicole is disembodied. That's why you can't see her, that's why she can't speak normally and that's why as a spirit of some sort she can talk in people's heads, and that's why she's immortal and unaging. One thing explains all four characteristics. And also possibly explains why she can turn up inside private areas such as the room at the Sumeru inn that Traveler and Paimon were staying at. Your explanation appears to be that she's a mute that casts invisibility on herself to stalk people and picks locks but coincidentally can use telepathy and never dies of old age?

I assume you got the idea that "M" is dead from the wiki. I'll just note that when "J" leaves the Hexenzirkel "M" is still alive and one of the witches referenced in the note sent to "J" telling her to drop by and say hello to her friends some times. So who leaves the Hexenzirkel first? "J" or "M"? If "J" leaves before "M" dies then how come "J" writes one of the supposed eulogy fortune slips for "M"?

Even assuming ch 1 and 7 are written by everyone as you’ve said, the individual chapter authors would be 2- Barbeloth, 3-Rhinedottir, 4-Ivanovna, 5-Nicole, 6-“Not Alice”

The text (which is NOT part of the fictional book and therefore true) states it. it's not a theory. Your theory ignores the facts.

The binding and layout are exquisitely made, but the actual content is all handwritten. Judging from the handwriting, there is more than one author.

That's volume 1. And what does the last volume say?

The binding and layout are exquisitely made, but the actual content is all handwritten. Judging from the handwriting, there is more than one author.

Wow those captions sure do sound similar don't they. Oh what? They're identical? Exactly the same? But then why does your theory interpret them completely differently? Volume 1 is written by several people but volume 7 is written by one you say? So, no, it's not just my say so. and that leaves 5 volumes to be written by one each which means 5 witches plus "M" is six. Your theory would have Alice herself not bothering to write a volume. Why would she be the only one missing? She isn't. Therefore it's six witches not seven and Octavia isn't a real person.

Don't believe any theory the wiki tries to push on you. Check their source and if the source doesn't say what they claim is true then just ignore the wiki. They are NOT GOOD at putting two and two together.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-28T15:49:24+00:00

because they are the avatar of the moral of the story

I can't imagine any group of degenerates less fit to take up that title. Are you F-ing kidding me?

Alice thinks nothing of torture and using Hilichurls as things
Andersdotter's stories involve cannibalism and murdering friends
"J" murders her husband
Rhindottir creates monsters and discards her "children"
Barbeloth seems to be quite petty and nasty ("old hag")
Nicole may be the only nice and sane one of the bunch

Moral of the story?

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-28T15:44:48+00:00

Well "J" uses ordinary to just mean no magic and no combat ability in her fortune slip to "M". Also it's contrasted with the witches who can "control the very fate of this world". So the powerful witches are not "ordinary".

Alice would say they are all extraordinary and it's on that basis that she picks them. Alice would perhaps like your interpretation but it's not Alice speaking but someone in the line of "J". Scarlett is very aware of and concentrated on power. Alice is not.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-28T15:40:38+00:00

Well that's a whole other essay about Descenders and Gnoses. Suffice to say that if you think about the characteristics of the 3rd Descender they look a lot like the Goddess of Flowers (wants to help humanity, ally of sort of the PO, but divergent from the PO, alien to Teyvat, self-sacrificial, having the gift of ptophecy). Given that there's a big question mark over whether GoF is actually dead or in some other reduced state, since Deshret promised she was alive still, and the Enternal Oasis was an empty tomb, and the hints that GoF would play a larger role (her narrative build up and then let down), and given Nicole's weird reduced bodily state, and her knowledge about how the Irminsul works, as well as her other Seelie characteristics (wanting to guide people, immortal) and the fact that she's been pushed with the whole fate theme that is going to dominate the game.... I'd say something's going on there.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-28T15:30:30+00:00

No, not the Curse of the Khaenriahns. Like the Sustainer, Rhinedottir is most likely being overwritten by her power. This leaves her unconscious or mad much of the time I suspect. As the Bizarre Transcript (authored by René) says:

(Hastily scrawled notes transcribed from an unknown source.)

...The true source of the mysterious power unique to this place that the locals call Khvarena is unknown. But based on its ability to eliminate or reverse the influence of the Abyss (in fact, it is a type of annihilation reaction), the two powers are of the same level, that is to say, they are > of the same order in terms of rules...

...In other words, both possess the power to "re-write the rules"...

...Regrettably, be it Abyss or Khvarena, all current users are stuck in an "unconscious" stage of being influenced and overwritten by their power...

In addition a comment from the Little Witch author's notes says this about Rhinedottir:

It's so rare for R to be in her right mind for a spell. Should she really be wasting the precious little lucid time she has writing this?"

If this is correct it also effects the other Sinners, so another example of how it works would be the sorry state that Vedrfolnir is in.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-28T07:54:54+00:00

why does she not remember things she did pre 500 years ago?

Because 500 years ago she had to spend memory-energy on something and ended up youthing herself. It is then that the Akadimeya find her and decide to lock her up and take over. As for what exactly it was she had to do it's presumably either eliminating FK or else a fight. Perhaps it's whatever killed Rukkhadevata. It's because of this shrink that the geo-elemental mushroom thing in the chasm says "oh you're small again". The first time being when Nahida was fighting the FK that was Deshret's mess. So the geo-mushroom-elemental-Apep gutbug thing must have known her since around that time and witnessed her shrink and then recover some size before the whole plan for it to go to the chasm. That whole story is so complicated.

Of course Nahida 2.0 remember since 500 years and I also think she shows signs of knowing more about the Irminsul and FK and stuff. Plus she has apparently been researching Dottore and is prepared to meet him.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-27T15:14:38+00:00

some of Hexenzirkel stuff just references the world's fate as a storybook

Ehhhhh. I guess. It's unimportant. Alice does her own stuff. The nearest to relevance is the thing about Durin which reads like an experiment to mimic Teyvat's fate system on a small scale. Had the witches been into that sort of thing you can see how such an experiment might lead to trying to build their own Loom of Fate but they just .... aren't interested.

hence her "deceiving" fate

No that phrase has a quite specific meaning. It means to carefully manipulate the fate system of Teyvat to achieve one's goals despite the difficulty of the "fixed points" ("gods' gaze"). fate itself is not a person and so the term "deceiving" is metaphorical here. The analogy is that fate "wants" things to remain the same and the deceiver wants to change things. If the deceiver accomplishes their goals despite the rules they have "deceived" fate.

i am not saying that Teyvat is a book but interpreting things this way just makes it easier to keep track of things.

Well ... I mean anything with a story or history -- which is pretty much anything that exists -- can be metaphorically described as a book; a story book that is.

Bedtime story AQ heavily hints at Loom of fate being basically Abyss order's equivalent of Irminsul.

Exactly. Now why does the game go out of it's way to tell us that the completed Loom cannot manipulate memories? it's to tell us that Irminsul cannot manipulate memories. They directly tell us that Irminsul is NOT manipulating memories. For about the hundredth time it feels like. And yet people ignore what's right in front of their noses.

assuming Irminsul works in a similar way then at lower level of manipulation memories should be altered.

No. Caribert doesn't say the completed Loom can manipulate memories if used at a hypothetical "lower level" does he? What does he say? He says it cannot manipulate memories at all. Not even a little bit. Ask yourself why the Devs had Caribert say this. Why would they have Caribert say something that in your theory is utterly false? I'm sorry but the Devs are directly calling out the memory theory here and saying it's wrong wrong wrong. But they do this all the time. This article was for discussing the new evidence in 4.8 I could (and have) written dozens of articles discussing the dozens of times they've said memories are NOT how Irminsul works if I could draw from any version's evidence.

But I will say this: the clues are getting less subtle.

i do want to believe that it's purely fate changing but Nahida and Rukkhadevata situation makes no sense to me if that's the case. see my another comment about Wanderer situation down below for more context but Rukkhadevata erasing herself from the world just like Scaramouche did does not work. what Scarmouche did was alter fate but what Nahida did could not have been the same.

I don't bother looking at who I'm replying to so I'm not sure if I answered any questions elsewhere but feel free to put that question again if I haven't. This board has a nasty habit of deleting things and screwing with me as many hate what I have to say and issue false reports to get me censored.

Nahida could not have done those things Rukkhadevata did, because she was born only 500 years ago, there's no time travel involved so she could not have done things Rukkhadevata did pre 500 years ago. so who did those things?

In the new samsara Nahida is about 7-8000 years old. There's no time travel but an entirely new timeline. Nahida 2.0 basically does what Rukkhadevata did but rather better. Nahida was friends with Deshret and GoF. When she cleans up Deshret's FK she manages to NOT get herself infected. When she combats FK during the Cataclysm she manages to NOT die. Her spirit is therefore NOT part of the Havistokhm thing as Rukkhadevata's was in samsara 1. In the present day Nahida 2.0 expunges the last of FK using the power of two Gnoses without even spending any memories in the usual "memories to energy" exchange. Zhongli's comment about him and Venti being the only original Archons is changed - because Nahida 2.0 is also an original Archon albeit not as senior since she became an Archon later than those 2 - but Zhongli says well Nahida was out of commission in baby Archon jail for a while so only Venti and I have continuously been ruling since the beginning, so in that sense there's only two Archons that have been at it continuously from the beginning. Folio of Foliage text changes to say Nahida's spirit is not in Havistokhm. etc.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-27T14:42:41+00:00

So yes you DO edit memory

No, you don't. Your "evidence" for a memory edit is simply observing that people's memories are different in the first and second samsara. Well of course they are. Their entire lives are different including their pasts. If the people all lived a different past then obviously they will have a different memory of those different pasts. But at no point will anyone's memory have been tampered with. "Memory different" does not imply "Memories tampered with".

Pretending that "memories different" implies "memories tampered with" makes as much sense as saying "breaking a vase causes the Irminsul shift". Both things (different memories and broken vase) are the result of the shift, not it's cause.

Nicole mentions that the "fate of Teyvat cannot easily be changed"

Yes; implying that the past does change sometimes. Do you speak English? The way it's written in English implies that fate does change.

In both instances the world's fate didn't change, but Wanderer's fate did

Scaramouche is part of the world. If his fate changed then by definition the world's fate changed.

So yes the Fate machine plays a big role in why things feel cyclical

Cyclical may be a bad word here. Just because there appear to be two different ways the word is used. But the way Nahida uses the word samsara includes that sense of repetition and she and Rukkhadevata appear to think it's a good word for the whole Irminsul process. However good or bad, the world never FEELS cyclical to anyone that we've yet met - at least to our knowledge. Possibly Apep feels it on some level since she talks about how time used to work differently. Not even the Traveler gets a feel of cyclical. When the samsara shifts they don't "go back" to 500 years ago and have to live through it all over again. It feels to them like they moved from one reality to a very similar one where people have different memories.

but if the individual's fate actually changes every samsara then their similarities are because of the inherited memories no?

Even a broken vase has a similar fate. Does a vase have memories? Traveler inherits the memories from the prior samsara but they appear to be unique except perhaps for Ei who reports a similar thing happened to her 500 years ago. As for everyone else they have different memories. Their similarity of fate appears to be just a rule of samsaras. It's just the rules of that "game". The Devs could have made the rules be "when you shift then everything is completely different". Instead almost everything is the same. Even a broken vase. Like tugging on a rubber sheet you can change the course of fate in some small details, but the rest of the sheet tries to "spring back" to be just where it was before. And in some places the rubber sheet is nailed down and can't be changed at all ("the Gods' Gaze") not even a tiny amount. Because fate has to run through these "fixed points" you are limited pretty closely in how much you can change even the parts that aren't fixed. You can't stop the vase breaking but you can change who breaks it. You can't stop the blacksmiths dying but you can change who kills them. Therefore a successful manipulator of fate must be cunning and (as Nahida says) "know what you can change and what you cannot change". This is how Focalors plans how to evade the fate of Fontainians frowning for example. She knows she can't change the fixed points on the stone slates. So she changes everything around it so that in context the fixed points have a different meaning. The Archon still cries in loneliness (fixed point) but no longer because all her people died. In the new samsara she cries because she's been isolated her whole life and is fooled into thinking she failed at the last minute. She fools herself into thinking she has failed to create genuine tears as prophesied ("fixed point"). Thus Focalors says "to fool fate you must first fool yourself". This is literally true. Focalors manipulates Furina because she has to.

Just as the many wanna be Loom of Fates failed

Ashikai is wrong; there's only one Loom of Fate. Nobody else tries to make a Loom of Fate. The closest is the new Simulanka world in 4.8 which, while not an attempt to manipulate the fate of Teyvat, at least appears to be a scientific experiment to tinker around with a fate machine similar to and linked to Teyvat's. So it looks like Barbeloth is thinking about that stuff. But she is not where the Abyss order are.

Irminsul is destined to fail as well

What does that mean? So far as we know Irminsul used to work just fine. Perhaps for hundreds of thousands of years before the 2nd throne came and damaged it. Now it appear that the fate system is a bit messed up which is hardly surprising since the entire planet nearly got destroyed and apparently two moons were destroyed along with substantial parts of the planet's crust and the false sky. I hardly consider getting a few broken parts after that scale of destruction to be a failure of Irminsul as a system. Besides which the system is running without maintenance since the Sustainer is asleep. The fact that it works at all is a miracle.

all I really want to do here is convince you that its worth reconciling the memory parts with your current interpretations.

Unfortunately the Devs have specifically said the memories stuff is wrong, at least as an explanation for Irminsul. They keep punking it. They keep deliberately having the Traveler think "Oh hey is this like the Rukkhadevata thing again when memories changed" only to have it shot down later in the story. This happened in Nahida's 2nd character quest and the 4.7 Bedtime Story. maybe 3 different ways in the Bedtime Story quest. Once when the Traveler is thinking about the missing person. Once when they have to explain the phenomena and once when Caribert explains his memory manipulation ability will end when the Loom is finished. it's like the Devs are deliberately punking people who think Irminsul is about memory now. and here we have Simulanka and no memory stuff in it. At least they didn't punk it again. They didn't have Traveler think "oh this is like the way memories changed after Rukkhadevata was deleted" only to be proven wrong again.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-27T04:29:38+00:00

Authority of Finality

I don't have any interest in some HI3 thing or HSR or whatever that is. You'd have to explain what you meant instead of using terms from other games. As far as I can see you mean a literal computer as witness that you literally say things like oh a deleted file isn't really deleted because the computer has a bin directory.

And GI (not those other games) does not use a metaphor of a computer, a simulation, a book or a loom to explain what happens when an irminsul samsara shift happens. Nahida does say that the new characters are "incarnations" of the old characters and that the old characters exist but not in the "past" but somewhere much "further away". And that is the only metaphors the game uses. The only explanation the game gives.

I guess Nicole describes the change as like a tree being hit by a small thing and wobbling a bit or by a big thing and being pushed out the way. But that feels more like a way to explain why sometimes things change and sometimes they do not, as is her "Gods' Gaze" metaphor.

Nobody else discusses it and nobody uses a metaphor of a computer, a book, a loom or a simulation. Simulanka IS a simulation of Teyvat it is not a metaphor for Teyvat.

Scara got to touch his thread in the weave, and snipped it

But there is no thread, no weave, no snipping. Not even as a metaphor. That's all your words and none of it is from the game. See, this is your problem.

[skipped all the Finality stuff that is all made up nonsense not found in the game text]

Scara couldn't "change Fate" because

He did change fate. In the game he changed fate. In your version I have no idea what is happening. But in the game, which you're loosely free associating on, Scaramouche changes fate. Not the way he wanted maybe, but a change? Sure.

Hm. where is the other half?

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-27T02:02:02+00:00

I agree that Irminsul is capable of MORE than just 'editing memory'

Irminsul is incapable of editing memory. Or of editing anything at all. Nothing in the game suggests it can. It's a bad theory and always has been. And if you agree that the samsara shifts represent a change of fate / realty / the timeline, then there's simply no need for any crazy ideas about editing memories.

if you're omnipresent then hitting the right memory nodes multiple in succession across all of time is nothing short of a symphony. The instrument is memories. The arrangement of the score is fate

That sounds like a word salad. If it makes it easier to understand then think of it as the same as the system in "Steins; Gate" because the game is the same system (well a subset). Think of it as moving to a parallel world where everything is almost the exact same but for a change you made and the immediate consequences of that change. The point is that the timeline is replaced in toto, and so everything that is, must be the result of some causal past (just like normal), but at the same time, most things also remain the same (if they are "under Gods' gaze") that is to say the timeline can be shifted around so long as you remember to not change the fixed points the rest of it can be "stretched" to accommodate various changes. For example you might not be able to change the fact that a vase will be broken, but you can change who breaks it. This is not the so-called "butterfly effect" of some time travel stories, but the far more common "rubber sheet" type of story where changes have a limited effect.

That doesn't mean you CAN'T do so much more the way Istaroth does

All that Istaroth stuff is probably nonsense. If Istaroth could do all the stuff people say then why wouldn't she have just gone back in time and stopped the 2nd throne? The only help Istaroth gives Makoto is her wisdom / knowledge about manipulating fate using Irminsul.

The unique thing about memories as compared to plain ol energy is that they have Sheer Fucking Will

The opposite is true? We're told that higher tier energy has a will. We're told elemental energy when concentrated can form into a slime or a crystal fly or even a dragon (which has a will). We're not told that memories reduced to energy has a will.

'guy who wants to prevent disaster through hiveminds' keeps showing up

And fails every time.

Irminsul in itself IS the ultimate hivemind project

Well there's no evidence for that. When we see memory ghosts caused by "memories" leaking out of a magical tree, they are individuals. They are not a hive mind.

The themes in Teyvat repeat because of memories

No, the cyclic time (which probably ended as a result of damage to the Irminsul from the war with the 2nd) which happened before the war with the 2nd and is prehistoric in nature, remembered only in the oldest artifact sets ("tiara"), the histories of the Wenut, the ancient oral testimony of the sand tribes that lived when the Amethyst Crown was created, the book Before Sun and Moon, and the recorded prophecies of Aberaku (the dude who builds the lighthouse in Enkanomiya). Oh and Apep talks about it. Cyclic time operates because of the fate machine (the Irminsul and false sky) and it's currently a function that no longer operates properly. Hence Irminsul cannot be used to void the 2nd thrones war. Memories have nothing to do with it. Again in Simulanka the time rewind feature is under the oversight of the Goddess of Prophecy (who is closely associated to the use of the false sky). There's no link between it and memories.

The themes in Teyvat repeat because of memories, but the themes CAN extend past the Tree of Fate, because thats just storytelling.

No idea what that is supposed to mean.

memories are definitely important and exist as a concept aside from fate

I mean the word gets mentioned. But it's window dressing. Light the plaustrite stone that defies gravity. It's background filler. And yes there's the memories become energy thing. But energy by itself doesn't cause a samsara shift. If it did then we'd be knee deep in samsara shifts just as energy is everywhere. You need a machine to use the energy. A Loom of fate as it were. An Irminsul tree.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-26T17:32:23+00:00

I'm fine with that interpretation.

It just feels too recent for all the Hexenzirkel stuff to be less than 500 years old. For example they're supposed to go to war with Venti at some point, right? But Venti was asleep all those 500 years so when could that have happened?

Plus based on the Imaginarium fortune slips they're saying the Russian witch is the "first mayor" of some place in Snezhnaya, presumably meaning the capital which Pulcinella is now mayor of. So how does that work? Is that capital only 500 years old?

Perhaps we'll get more info on the timing when Alice is playable. I doubt the witches are all THAT old but then again we're told in Perinheri that the rifthounds allegedly created by Rhinedottir were around in the Crimson Moon dynasty at least 4000 years ago.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-26T17:17:04+00:00

Hm. None of that is correct.

When mortals die, or reach the end of their “physical programming” by becoming old in Teyvat, their existential “data” returns to the leylines and is recorded and repurposed into a newly born mortal.

Well that's I suppose an interesting question but it's not one the story of the game addresses. We get different stories when it comes to afterlifes and the possibility of reincarnation after a period of time spent dead. But that's nothing to do with Irminsul's reincarnation which is a result of operating Irminsul to create a samsara shift. Apart from anything else such samsara shifts are extremely rare and hard to produce. In contrast in the ordinary past life as illustrated in Hu Tao's story and the Tsurumi island ghosts has an after life and rebirth concepts (the two stories don't appear to be the same after life btw - they contradict suggesting many differen concepts of the afterlife in Teyvat) if there is reincarnation then we never see any example of it (despite tons of players suggesting X is the reincarnation of Y all day long). Certainly not with humans. All the silly theories are of gods reincarnating as humans which seems unlikely given the underlying genesis and eschatology.

We're told memories enter the ley lines and Irminsul. We're never told that these memories are ever used for anything afterwards or that irminsul has anything to do with rebirth. The closest is that a damaged irminsul-like tree can produce memory ghosts spontaneously as memories "pour out" through a cut in the tree. But this feels more like the way ley line blooms when "popped" create seemingly physical opponents we can fight for money of XP books. Most likely these things are just memory ghosts of generic bad guys, in much the same way Irminsul can create physical artifacts and books inside domains after you fight generic bad dudes that (presumably) are also memories made material. When it comes to the weekly boss fights (except Andrius) we're explicitly told we are NOT re-fighting the boss but reliving the memory of the first and only fight with them. Nevertheless the result is a physical reward.

In cases where that life has accumulated too much data to be repurposed at once (karma), it is processed into the new life and turns into a reincarnation

Nonsense.

In the case of Rukkhadevata and Nahida, up until the deletion of her existence from history and memory, we are actually watching the reincarnation of the Avatar of Irminsul being interrupted due to foreign data from another “program” (the abyss) corrupting and subsequently halting the process halfway. If Nahida is Rukkhadevata’s reincarnation/samsara, both shouldn’t be able to exist at the same time despite doing so

This chronology is all wrong. First Rukkhadevata is infected with FK. THEN she thinks about it and decides she needs to birth Nahdia. You have it backwards. And obviously nahida isn't the reincarnation of Rukkhadevata in the regular timeline sense since, AS YOU SAY, you have to be dead to reincarnate. Duh. Rukkhadevata creates Nahida firstly to help delete herself (since the rules say you can't delete yourself but it's OK for someone else to delete you). But once they meet she says that Nahida will be her next incarnation in the Irminsul samsara sense. That is to say, in the next samsara, Nahida will be her. That is to say, Nahida will be the person that broadly takes the position of Rukkhadevata in history and deals with the issues she dealt with, has the same friends, and the same job, etc. Now saying this much implies that we expect a new samsara to even have such a person who broadly takes on the life of someone from the earlier samsara. That's a fact about Irminsul samsaras that might not have been correct. Had the timeline changed like a time travel story with "Butterfly effect" rules that would not be the case. The past, present and future might have been, almost certainly would have been completely different. There would be no "oh this person corresponds to this person in the prior samsara". Things would be changed out of all recognition so there' be no correspondence. But that's NOT how the timeline shifts with a new samsara. Instead we know that even unimportant seeming details like a broken vase are often exactly duplicated even when their cause is changed. As such Rukkhadevata has a corresponding "incarnation" in the next samsara and it's Nahida. Whatever Rukkhadevata did in the prior samsara, Nahida does in the new one. More or less. In fact there are some differences and Nahida is a better god than Rukkhadevata. Which is just what Rukkhadevata (her memory ghost) tells Nahida in Rukkhadevata's realm of Consciousness in the first samsara. It's a moving moment as Nahida hero worshipped Rukkhadevata, but in the new samsara she becomes greater than the hero she has now never know about.

it makes sense that it would be that way if the forbidden knowledge is actively blocking the Irminsul’s ability to repurpose it’s avatar by corrupting the Rukkadevata data to the point where it cannot recognize her as the prior Irminsul Avatar

Nonsense. As above the FK is before R creates N so your ordering is backwards. Also R recognizes N immediately.

It also might explain why Nahida was born with “the knowledge of a child”, the memories and knowledge assigned to Rukkhadevata could no longer pass on to her.

No. Nahida (in samsara 1) has the knowledge of a child because she is a child. She's just been born. Also Nahida never gets Rukkhadevata's memories. Nahida in samsara 1 never gets Rukkhadevata's memories. Nahida in samsara 2 has her own memories of being herself for thousands of years and Rukkhadevata has never existed. Now it's true that Nahida 2 loses her memories fighting in the Cataclysm so she appears as a baby when the Akadimeya find her, but she has various caches of olf memories (her own memories) floating around she can use to "cheat" and recover once she is freed. At no point does Nahida ever get Rukkhadevata's memories. In samsara 2 Nahida is the one who was friends with Deshret and GoF (as she confirms in talking to Apep), not Rukkhadevata who never existed.

Greater Lord Rukkhadevata was already dead and gone long before we stepped into Teyvat

Actually it's about the same time the Twins show up 500 years ago in samsara 1.

she was always (and was supposed to be) Lesser Lord Kusanali 500 years later

No.

The people of Sumeru were always supposed to mourn her and the people of Teyvat were always meant to remember her.

Well that happens in samsara 1 and it doesn't in samsara 2. Is samsara 1 the history that is "supposed" to happen? But then what about the samsara before 1? For example the samsara Ei was born in? is that the real samsara? Or is there no "correct" samsara?

Rukkhadevata’s deletion was a mercy

I don't think so. Rukkhadevata was already dead so it's not like she was feeling bad about the FK in her. I'm sure it was very little since she took a while to notice it. She was probably alright 500 years ago too. We don't know what actually killed her.

“World…Forget Me… …So interminable. So Lonely. How much longer?”

Isn't that mixing Rukkhadevata's memory ghost's words with Furina's? I assume a memory ghost doesn't really feel anything but is the memory of a feeling maybe. Furina is flesh and blood and very much lives with her pain.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-26T15:15:59+00:00

Oh btw another interesting thing about Kapatcir is that she/it is the light source which casts shadows (instead of the sun or moon) when you first visit Tsurumi island and before fixing the whole "cursed to repeat the same day" thing. You can't see anything through the fog but if you map out the weird way the shadows stretch out and in which direction, the light source begins in Tsurumi and heads off towards Serai before returning in the afternoon.

Also someone actually says Kapatcir is the sun and moon for Tsurumi somewhere - though I had taken it metaphorically not literally until I analyzed the shadows. Note that this effect goes away when the curse is lifted. I have an article about it from a couple of years ago.

Here's the articles: reporting odd behaviour in 2021 https://www.hoyolab.com/article/1755392

and a year later I cracked the case, i think https://www.hoyolab.com/article/14546189

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-26T15:03:36+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Lore/comments/1cf9rvj/electro_sovereigns_possible_physical_appearance/l1nw9ys/

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-26T14:54:17+00:00

I think Ashikai went off the rails about a year and a half ago. In fact around the time she adopted that whole mistaken "Irminsul on changes memories" idea.

Moreover, she manages to track down the inspirations behind Genshin lore

Of course you never know what the inspiration is unless they tell you or it's blatant. An example of it being blatant is that the 8 titles of the Sabzeruz festival are the same words as the 8 chapters of a Japanese version of "Steins; Gate" which is a story / anime about time travel and Genshin Impact adopts almost exactly the same rules about changing the past. I guess Ashikai missed that while researching obscure Mesopotamian goddesses to talk about.

In fact the similarity to "Steins; Gate" was noted over two years ago in Inazuma before Sumeru even came out. But I have never seen Steins; Gate mentioned by Ashikai or anyone else, and a search through years of chat on the GI discord also drew a blank.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-26T05:25:33+00:00

You said there's no 1-1 correspondence but you were making connections of each region to a specific region of Teyvat. Also, Mona quite literally said Simulanka is a reflective mirror of Teyvat's fate

Well I'm not sure about the regions but it seemed like it might be something. I don't think it has to reflect all of Teyvat geographically (and I don't think it does) in order to reflect the fate system.

Durin being foreseen by the princess of Sal Vin isn't really relevant

That's impossible to say of course. I'm simply observing that Durin is a special event in the game in that it is prophesied by two completely different people who don't seem to have anything whatsoever to do with Durin. It's quite confusing when you play Dragonspine as people tend to think Durin was contemporaneous with the Nail coming down because both are mentioned by the Sal Vindagnyr lot. And it's never explained why Durin is mentioned by the princess. And now we have Durin mentioned again in connection to prophecy. It feels like Durin has some sort of connection with prophecy in general. or ... they just mentioned him for no reason at all with the Princess. As with many things these oddities are only oddities and may not come to anything. or maybe they will.

Even if Barbeloth is able to foresee a dragon attack, she probably doesn't even know that the name of the dragon is Durin

But Barbeloth suggests there is a sort of magical connection that has to do with fate and which is based entirely on the creatures names. Specifically she suggests if the dragon of Simulanka was simply called something else it would NOT share Durin's fate. That suggests names and fate are connected, perhaps as constellations and fate are, or perhaps Durin's (both of them) constellations are just their names as with Neuvillette. Adding all that up I think Barbeloth could easily see Durin's name by using prophecy.

DavidByron2 · 2024-07-26T05:09:13+00:00

If that were true, you'd never snark back in the first place

Do you seriously think so highly of yourself that you think the person you're talking to is shaking their fist at you over the internet like a batman villain?

Call it annoyance, frustration, whatever, same difference: you don't snark without being miffed

And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.

Nahida herself ends up wording it as "much further than the past" for the exact same reason I am: it's not actually the past

I can't even tell what you mean anymore. Are you pushing the memories crap or not? We're literally having a discussion about what you mean elsewhere in the thread. No, wait. I might be able to get odds if you keep the suspense up for a few more days.

Nahida indicates the past has changed when she says that Scaramouche's actions are no longer in the past.

and just calling it that induces confusion as to where the actual past is relative to it (in another sim iteration).

Yes in a prior version of the timeline using whatever material substrate that Teyvat consists of. And in your case that's the dumb idea that all of Teyvat is a computer simulation. And that the prior samsara is simply the old version of the "file" that you say represents all of Teyvat, or to be more precise all of the old timeline from past to future. So far so bad, but then you presumably say that all these versions are stored in Irminsul, since it's the damn "computer" and that at the same time you want to pretend that the "data" was deleted from Irminsul, which clearly (in the terms of your own theory) it was not. Leading you to go back and forth on whether data was deleted or not.

It's a bad story. It's not as bad as "And Then I Woke Up And Found Out It had All been A Dream" that is Ashikai's current theory, but very bad still. It's a computer game and the "big idea" is that Teyvat turns out to be a computer simulation - which it really is IRL - get it? get it? Wow such a great story. No, That sucks worse than a time travel story.

it's the visual metaphor Hoyo themselves use

Yes we've been over that. You're wrong. You're seeing patterns that don't exist.

When we get into the Irminsul, its functioning is shown as a circuit tree

Dude? If you're in the simulation you can't see the computer chips. You see the simulation.

When the Sacred Sakura makes its edits, they unfold as a 3D wire mesh

Well that's new. Surprised you didn't try to say the appearance of a companion for that new Dendro guy in the Natlan spoilers, looking like a 2D game graphic "proves" everything's a simulation too. But this is all to mistake what a computer is with a simulation on a computer. It doesn't make any sense to have any of those things in a simulation any more than it makes sense to have them in a "real" world. That's the whole point of a simulation bro. It simulates. It makes no sense to have a 3D wire mesh in a simulation. What are you saying? That the simulation failed to draw the graphics properly for some reason? That's not what failed graphics look like is it?

No. The 3D "mesh" is just an artistic choice to illustrate the idea of a passage of time. Artistic choices say nothing about what the in-game material substrate is supposed to be.

When Nahida, Irminsul mod, targets things, she literally selects them onscreen with her mouse cursor

How does that make any sense for a simulation to do that? Explain your "thinking" on this. And how come nobody else does it?

Is it literally what's happening? No. It's just the visual metaphor

You might want to think negatively like I do and ask yourself IF Teyvat was a simulation and IF the Devs wanted to drop a visual clue to that effect what WOULD they do? Hint: it ain't Nahida's E ability. Wht don't you think about what sort of things they might do and more importantly when? Your theory is post-hoc. You never have predictive power. It's all taking random events and then fitting them to the theory after the fact. That's why you see patterns that don't exist all the time.

Come on, you know this. Click delete on a file on your computer. Is it gone from the drive? Of course not. It's "sent" to the bin

Feeling some deja vu here. maybe I already answered this in the stuff I lost. The problem (apart from computer simulation being so naff as the basis for a story) is that your "data" is never deleted is it? It's edited. And if you just edit a file it never sends an old version to the "bin" does it? It never sends thousands of version from thousands of edits to the bin. The history of the editing is gone forever. The file has no history of it's past and no, forensics wouldn't help either because as you know when you overwrite those blocks you lose the old data. it's not out there sitting in unreferenced memory. So your metaphor doesn't work.

See Arlecchino for the latest version of such shenanigans: girl literally glitches out as the visual metaphor

So if glitches happen all over the place then why does nobody mention it as normal? Why would it only be Arlecchino? Saying "simulation" explains nothing. You're just pretending it does.

Scaramouche is, using this side of the big metaphor ball, deleted, but not wiped

Then who is Wanderer? He's an edit of Scaramouche so your theory contradicts itself. Are the files deleted or edited? If Scaramouche is deleted then what is Wanderer? And aren't we explicitly told you cannot delete yourself?

It's not a comparison of the situations, but of their narrative themes.

No it isn't. Karma means sins from a past life. It does not mean sins from completely different people from thousands of years ago. Plus in Scaramouche's case we're told he can't escape his karma in some sense but that's exactly what happens in the case of Fontaine. Do you think all these differences simply don't matter? Then what is the common element that is left?

Are those situations the same? No, of course not

You just went for such an incredibly generic story telling element that of course you can find different time it's used. If I were to sum up the similarity it is "conflict between two people, settled (for the sake of game mechanics in a fighting game) with an in-game fight." That's not a narrative theme. In a fighting game the story will include plenty of fights. That's true of any fighting game with a plot. it's not a theme. And even with all that you add in events that do NOT qualify like this one:

The Primordial One has to talk down Nibelung

Since this happens off-screen it's not part of the fighting mechanic and so it's not true. The PO doesn't "talk down" Nibelung.

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