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#they gripe about mischaracterizations but that happens with every ship and I don’t get ppl being hostile Abt either pairings
stardustdiiving · 7 months
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From the ship ask! What's a pairing most people seem to like in Genshin that you don't?
(ship asks prompt)
MAN OKAY I honestly could answer this with a good third of popular Genshin ships…but none of these are really solid dislikes, it’s just me feeling specific about how I like to see it executed & finding the way the fandom handles it is either unsatisfying, or generates an environment that kinda stresses me out NJDNCNC
To narrow it down to one I feel matches the question best I think I’m gonna go with Kokomi/Sara. It’s not really an active dislike or anything I promise I’m genuinely chilling. *insane person voice* but see I am just very stressed out with the in universe geo-politics happening in the background of this Genshin impact ship
I MEAN THAT IN A VERY SILLY WAY. but also I do have a genuine elaboration on what i mean which is like…how do I say this.
I really like Watasumi Island and find their existence + circumstances as a nation really interesting, especially regarding their dynamic with the Shogunate—it’s like the one part of inazuman politics that really catches my interest. But see the way I took the way the Shogunate + Watasumi dynamic was being written was specifically that Watasumi is/was suffering from colonization/imperialism at the hands of the Shogunate. I don’t see them as equal enemies on opposing sides of a conflict I’m just kind of like. Oh my god the Shogunate tries to control their primary food sources + military and after the war u see like, Gorou helping smuggle medicine and food supplies to treat their wounded war veterans bc the Shogunate is imposing high taxes on them they can’t afford to pay. The Raiden Shogun slaughtered their deity who was kind of backed into a corner on trying to secure vital resources for his people and to this day his corpse is just sitting on her territory getting ravaged and mined for weapons !! That’s crazy! I like thinking Abt that!
While I think Inazuma suffered from the writers dropping the ball with a lot of things I am generally happy this dynamic is explored/acknowledged repeatedly and Watasumi at least to me doesn’t feel like it’s constantly written in a really meanspirited and shitty way you know. Like, in the medicine supply smuggling thing i mentioned — that’s a route in Heizhou’s hangout that ends in a conclusion that something may have severely hurt the vitality of Watasumi’s land and it’s ability to provide, but that doesn’t mean they won’t survive or all hope is lost, because theres people within Watasumi who care and embody that hope and vitality within themselves and are working hard to build stability and provide for everyone. Like idk that’s really cool and I genuinely found it a really nice narrative that really makes me root for Watasumi
But then we get to Sara & Kokomi and ppl just do not talk about this dynamic between both nations at all from what I see, despite it being really relevant to the characters and in theory the appeal of the ship? And I jusurjfucn I guess it confuses me a lot bc I remember, most recently for example on the TCG event, I was so confused seeing everyone post about their interactions for days about how it was cute they were engaging in card matches together and Sara wanted to be friends…and then I played the event myself and we get this scene where Kokomi is standing off starring out at sea alone, and she talks about how she doesn’t like how she can’t see Watasumi from here, and how that was especially agonizing to experience during the war, and then gets caught up in her memories of the war and talks about how a lot of her people are still recovering from the trauma of it, and how she’s participating in this event bc she’s anxious about wanting to build good relations between the Shogunate and Watasumi so her nation doesn’t suffer more in the future AND IM JUST…MAN
Like I do think I can see Sara & Kokomi being friends, Sara’s character feels like it’s the concept of “individual with genuinely good morals working in an oppressive system doesnt stop the damage the system causes” kind of deal BUT IDK…I get fandom experiences can very anecdotal and I’m sure there are shippers who handle this aspect of the ship but when at large it just feels like it’s filed down to a vague enemies to lovers + contrasting aesthetic girlfriends ship I guess it def leans more towards being one I’m not really into. I think it doesn’t help it strikes the specific fandom pet peeve I have where I sometimes feel ppl water down a lot of wlw ships down to just being surface level cute and I am a lesbian who likes very nuanced and complicated character dynamic exploration so I’m personally just like. Yeah idk I guess this seems rlly widely accepted fanon wise but I don’t rlly click with it at all djjcnfj while I could be interested in this dynamic being explored, just if I were doing my own take on it ik adding romantic tones wouldnt feel super necessary to make it feel more interesting to me personally yk x__x
I just feel very excitable about a lot of genshin things and Watasumi vs Shogunate related things hits that mark of interest for me…definitely not implying the shippers r doing something wrong by making silly lighthearted posts and being less interested in types of analysis I enjoy but I guess that’s the most popular ship I feel the least interested in I can think of?
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