do you ever wonder how old the twins are? how long have they been with the one who waits? do you ever think about how much of that time in the veil narinder spent totally alone, about how much of a stabilizing presence it might have been to have literally else around, after all that time? i think about it a completely normal amount, personally,
This is NOT what happiness looks like at a microscopic level, but the video is still cool as hell.
It IS an animation of a protein particle walking along a microtubule, just not a myosin protein. It's a kinesin protein dragging a vesicle. This is any large part of a cell that's too big to move around on its own as needed.
As a marine biology hobbyist I ADORE the fact that all the spire denizens are planktons. Please enjoy some funky fellows:
crab zoea
young medusa-stage jellyfish (same life stage as the familiar jellies in Inkopolis and Splatsville, presumably fresh off the ephyra stage of growth)
amphipod or lobster larva
ostracod
a young pteropod, most likely (sea angels are part of this group!)
I think this weird-horse-looking one is supposed to be an oceanic water flea? I'm the most stumped on this dude
And of course our lucifer shrimp Cipher!
Now I can't find any photos online, but throughout various levels of Side Order I also noticed jellyfish ephyra and polyps, and nematodes or perhaps larval flatworms? Even baby cephalopods are considered plankton! (iykyk)
Plankton are often the most basic trophic level in marine environments, providing stability and order to the ecosystem; if there's an imbalance in their population, that causes a butterfly effect among many other types of sealife. They're the perfect choice for Marina's Memverse.
The Sumeru glider lore description just makes me think about how it emphasized the divine as an important aspect of Teyvat's natural law. According to all known laws of aviation, the gliders cannot possibly have the ability to glide, and yet they function through the blessing of the Anemo Archon
In Firnas' dream, the Dendro Archon tells a story where the wind tells a story within a story within a story wi- all of them follow a similar structure of (y) telling (x) a story to encourage them. Now, the story in the Sumeru glider is about Firnas wanting to make a glider without the Anemo Archon's blessing, but in the end asks for it anyway because of the looping story driving him up a wall
I find it kind of neat how in Amber's story quest where we get a gliding license, she accidentally gives us the "Wind, Courage, and Wings" storybook. In the Sumeru glider lore, the stories had someone encouraging another. In the storybook, the lesson is that "What you lacked was not wind, but courage."
I'm just throwing this at a wall to see if it sticks, but what if there's a connection between these stories regarding the wind, courage, and wings and Genshin's overarching themes. The endless stories within a story in Firnas' dream only ends when he realizes how the divine is connected to the natural law, and the birds in the storybook relied too heavily on good wind conditions to fly before risking it all and leaping off a stormy cliff
What if these two stories are a sort of foreshadowing to how Teyvat is stuck repeating its history and the only way to truly end it is through both mortals and the divine working together. Mortal engineering cannot overcome its limitations without divine intervention, the birds cannot fly on strong winds alone without taking a leap of courage first, so perhaps one day the "courage" in these stories would be enough to take the people of Teyvat into new heights and weave their own fate