Would You Hold My Face Softly And Tell Me It Will Be Alright?

.

If furina accepted the duel with Clorinde

An illustration of a scene in Purple Touch (MiraclesInJuly)'s

Ao3 Story: "A Human's Resolve"

every time i see those posts like ‘what food from a show did YOU always wanna try’ i go lol none? but i just remembered im a liar

i always wanted the fucking soup brock made in the pokemon anime

Why the hell does Marcille always look her best when she has the most haunted look on her face, dark circles, and troubled eyes, absolutely gone with grief and desire

(genshin impact spoilers incoming)

one aspect of furina's characterization that's pretty understated but that i really really really love is her intelligence and curiosity. usually in genshin, when a character's intelligence is an important trait of theirs, there are aspects of their design, writing, voice acting, etc, that very clearly tell you "hey this character is smart." albedo, for example, wears a labcoat, is always saying big sciency words in a calm, rational tone of voice, and other characters are always talking about how smart he is

but furina? nothing about her on the surface suggests that she's a "smart" character - quite the opposite, in fact. superficially, she's introduced as a bratty, conceited, overconfident person who actually has no idea what she's doing. we eventually learn in the archon quest that that was all an act, but even after she regains her freedom, nothing about her really seems archetypically intelligent, at least at face value

instead, furina's intelligence is always shown rather than told (the only exception being nahida's voiceline about her). she had an intelligence network across teyvat feeding her information, and we saw in the flashback how she directed researchers to study the prophecy and potential ways of stopping it. before things like lyney's trial or directing the two musketeers, she'd stay up all night planning and piecing things together all on her own. she loves learning new things, she has lines in the teapot about how, when she's interested in something, she wants to become the most knowledgeable person in the topic, and also how she'd like to disassemble the teapot itself to learn how it works, and she's quick to learn new skills (like surfing). and, of course, she's well read, and quite possibly teyvat's foremost expert on the performing arts

i like how furina sort of defies the concept of character archetypes. she's initially presented as an archetypical bratty, dramatic, spoiled popular girl, but that was a role she forced herself into because it's what people expected of her. but the real furina, while still retaining some of the flamboyance from her archon persona, doesn't really fit into a clear mold. she's smart without being a super-genius, and she's kind without being a soft-spoken doormat. it makes her feel multifaceted and real, and i really love that!

anyway, this is why it makes me mad whenever i see people calling furina stupid, cuz she's not!

Archon of Drama 🎭

Pink Prison, a comic I did for my color theory class this semester! we had to pick a color, research it, and do a piece related to it somehow. i chose pink :)

My most favorite NeuviFuri works are the ones where Furina is not treated like she's so fragile — where she has agency and the author properly protrays her as Neuvillette's equal as a ruler. Lbr if Furina was so incompetent, she wouldn't have stayed in power for so long, nor would Neuvillette have put up with it. We even see her qualities as a leader in her story quest and the latest event. That must've come from *somewhere* and it's definitely not only from her passion for the performing arts, but also from being an Archon for so long.

My theory is that while Neuvillette handles the day-to-day governing and making sure everything runs like a well-oiled machine, Furina handles diplomatic relations, negotiations in public-private partnerships, and *politics*. Neuvillette himself admitted that interacting with people outside court is not his forte, so Furina most definitely navigated delicate political scenarios for the both of them. That's also probably why Neuvillette got suspicious when Furina wanted his company when dealing with the Knave, because she would normally handle it on her own.

i like how this turned out tbh