Sanquisorbae - Sanquisorba

Reverse 1999 and child soldiers (just rambling) (global friendly)

It doesn't take long for anyone to realise most of the cast (excluding awakened, entities like Voyager and AlienT, and people like Eternity) are young: ranging from most being 17-16 with adults around their 20s and Shamane currently being the oldest (excluding the above) at around 40. (Edit hes 45 thanks for clarifying)

Alright you say, this is a gacha game ofc the characters would be around these ranges and we hope every patch to get character that is above 40 (wdym someone like Tooth Fairy isn't 30? Same for Kakania and Isolde, how are they 19 and 18 respectively?For example). Hey I would like more older characters too, but I think the ages are partially intentional if we look into lore on a thematic level.

Ok. We already know the Foundation, Laplace and now Zeno (though it was ofc from Lilya) they produce child soldiers, workers and scientists:

Vertin is the Timekeeper at 12

Sonetto probably became a field investigator around 14-16 at best (correct me if we have a better frame of reference)

Ms Moission in her character profile apparently was a field investigator at 14. (I spelt her name wrong I think)

Mesmer Jr started working at the age of 12

As of the release of the Zeno anecdote we know Lilya around 14 was already in field missions and has seen the state of war.

(Probably could include X, Horrorpedia here but I don't have much info)

What am I getting at? Characters being young in their fields of work is completely intentional, one due to the Storm in the case of the Foundation as the first had taken nearly the entire workforce (plus Child Labour Laws) so in desperation to maintain numbers and order the age to become investigators, soldiers and scientists became much lower. I don't know if the SPDM existed before the Storm but the way it functions primarily serves to replenish those lost workforce.

And two: the perception of arcanists and the importance placed on the manifestation of their arcane skill as young as possible.

We see this in the case of Mesmer and Isolde/Trista.

Mesmer Jr once she was tested to see if she had her arcane skill immediately was set to manage mentally unstable patients at the age of 12. (She alongside Vertin probably needs the most therapy)

For Trista this was the seance her mother brought to at the age of 3, dying as a result and leading to her mother with Isolde to delay by 3 years. (Acting as if that was a mercy which it really is not)

There is an emphasis on an arcane families and arcanists maintaining their societal status/ relevance through children developing their arcane skills as soon as possible plus the idea of childhood and working is flipped on its head with the presence of arcanum.

Ok idk if worded that bit correctly but in short: our idea of when a child should be working (which is never) or the time someone should be in teaching before they get into a profession (TF, Kakania and Madam Z) is warped and absent in R1999. For Kakania, shes 19 but I would argue this is because of how she had dropped out and decided to be an unlicensed doctor. Most characters being younger is the result of arcanum being present in the world.

Moreover there is a general theme of lost childhoods/ forced to grow up fast in the younger cast. Exclude characters like Ezra, Matilda (so far) and Spathodea since they are relatively fine/ not deeply traumatised. Everyone else, Vertin, Sonetto, Mesmer Jr and characters like Eagle, Monlicht, Oliver Fog were forced to grow up fast despite their young age.

Summary: characters being in younger age ranges either being literal child soldiers or certain adults being relatively young is the result of the devastation of the Storm alongside the different perception of age in the arcanum world, there the manifestation of your arcane skill seems to be used as a sign of maturity and readiness to be thrown into work (Mesmer and Isolde being put om their respective career paths at a very early age) (or your Constantine celebrating the erasure of Child Labour Laws)

Juno Steel: Losing my eye was a worst case scenario for me, I mean, what am I if not a sharpshooter?

Arthur Lester: [stares deadpan into the camera. Well, like. not quite directly at it. He overshot it a bit]

update i finished MSQ. I get you Jiaoqiu, spicy food is life 😔

Honkai: Star Rail Aeons as TMA Entities

Hello! Welcome to a peculiar intersection of two current interests of mine. If you're unfamiliar with either of these pieces of media, allow me to offer a brief explanation.

Honkai: Star Rail (referred to as hsr from here on out) is a scifi gacha game in which the universe is presided over by godlike beings known as Aeons. That's about all you really need to know for this post- I'll reference specific characters in a few of my explanations, but that's not Crucial for understanding.

The Magnus Archives (tma) is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a- wait, sorry, those aren't my notes. Let's try again. The Magnus Archives is a horror fiction podcast wherein a group of archive workers catalogue, and increasingly come into contact with themselves, the inexplicable and horrifying events caused by a group of otherworldly fear entities.

Both the hsr aeons and the tma entities share the obvious similarities of being extradimensional beings who don't often manifest directly in the world, but who hold exceptional power and often inspire mortals to their cause/develop powers in relation to them (avatars in tma, emanators in hsr). I suppose with the knowledge of both groups of beings rattling around in my head it was inevitable that I would start thinking of comparisons between them. Some things don't Completely match up- both the aeons and entities are cosmic beings that don't subscribe to human conceptions of morality, But there are several Aeons that don't really fit neatly into the system of fears. For those, I have either left them without tags or gone into. Things that Could potentially be seen as horrifying/fearful about them, even if not a part of their seeming purposes.

The following list is based solely on my own readings and a few hours of thought yesterday. If you feel I've misunderstood or mistagged your favorite entity or aeon, do please tell me so! I'm under no illusion of this being a perfect list and I would LOVE to hear others' taggings and arguments in favor of such. There are also a few aeons I struggled to come up with a tagging for, so if you have any thoughts on those, please say so. I'd love to chat about it.

Let's begin!

Aha/The Elation - The Stranger

The Stranger was my obvious first thought for this one, because. masks/circus aesthetic, duh. Aha and Nikola Orsinov (for non-tma folks: Nikola is a murderous sentient ringmaster mannequin who is far too delighted about everything) would vibe so hard. But there are ALSO very strong Spiral vibes here. Madness and absurdity and laughing at things you shouldn't and deception of the senses? Aha and Nikola would vibe, but Aha and Michael Distortion would ALSO vibe pretty hard. I think I'm still in team Stranger for this one, in part because there's another Aeon I think fits the Spiral better, BUT I could be convinced either way, really. Let's talk about it.

Ena/The Order - The Web

Gestures vaguely at the puppet strings in my poorly-cropped image above. Ena is not the only Aeon I feel could potentially fit as the Mother of Puppets, as you will see, but. Especially in the direction that we see Sunday take things in hsr- regardless of his noble intentions, there's still a whooole lot of hidden machinations and stripping away of free will going on. Super webbish behavior, that.

Fuli/The Remembrance - The Eye

Fuli isn't quite as... for lack of a term, voyeuristic as we see the Eye to be in tma, but I think out of the entities it's still the best match. Fuli records information- all information, all memories- for the sake of preserving and crystallizing it. Fuli will not let anything be forgotten. THEIR followers form an organization known as the Garden of Recollection, busying themselves with collecting the memories of others- and more radical ones among this number do so by stripping memories from their subjects without asking permission. Doesn't that sound familiar?

HooH/The Equilibrium - The Web (x2)

Another Aeon that, like Fuli, isn't necessary malicious or hoping to inspire fear in the same way that the tma entities do, but. HooH and their followers do not take center stage, and prefer to influence the universe from behind the scenes. The goal of achieving a balanced universe isn't super Web-aligned, but HooH definitely could fit in with the fear of being controlled or influenced unknowingly.

IX/The Nihility - The Vast

IX was a tricky one to pin down, for me. There are a number of entities you could make a case for for THEM- the End, the Lonely, and the Dark were all options I considered. But I ended up landing on the Vast in the end, because in tma this fear covers not just the literal fear of large spaces and falling, but also the existential fear of one's on smallness/the insignificance of humanity. Which fits the Nihility pretty darn well.

Lan/The Hunt - The Hunt (duh)

This is admittedly kind of an obvious one. I am not immune to low-hanging fruit. I do think there could be some aspects of the Slaughter in there as well, if we think about the tma statements of ordinary people being almost casually inspired to brutal violence, and the hell that the Abundance Wars put the Xianzhou Alliance through. But the need to hunt, the commitment to chasing down monsters of the Abundance- still pretty darn Hunt-aligned.

Mythus/The Enigmata - The Spiral

This section is kind of the continuation of my confusion about how to properly tag Aha. INITIALLY I was thinking Spiral for Aha and Stranger for Mythus, swayed in part by the fact that the Stranger's ritual in tma is literally called the Unknowing. The Stranger deals with everything that is uncanny and inhuman, which at first seemed to match pretty well- but further reading has made me switch. Aha is just so Stranger vibes, and Mythus' whole deal is not just the uncanny, but actively obscuring and confusing mortals about what is true.

Nanook/The Destruction - The Desolation

I feel like this one is another somewhat obvious tag? A case could be made for elements of the Slaughter in here as well, but I ultimately feel that the Desolation is more fully aligned with destruction moreso than the (still destructive!) focus on violence that the Slaughter has.

Nous/The Erudition - The Extinction

Nous definitely has some Eye vibes as well and I will not pretend otherwise. But I remain firm in my tag of THEM as the Extinction nonetheless. The Extinction is all about the end of/superseding humanity, especially caused by their own hands. Nous is a giant supercomputer that ascended to Aeonhood and rendered THEIR creator irrelevant/unnecessary. We see Dr. Ratio, a character in hsr, go unrecognized by Nous, despite his brilliant mind, because he is too invested in the betterment of humanity, while Nous is all about looking beyond humanity and solving the universe's questions. This is another count against tagging Nous as the Eye, for me- the Eye does not have any such goals for its watching so much as it kind of just wants to Watch. Everything.

Oroboros/The Voracity - The Hunt (x2)

While the Hunt in hsr more resembles the stuff that happens to avatars of the hunt in tma- like, the need to hunt monsters we see in characters like Trevor Herbert- I feel that Oroboros corresponds to the more animalistic side of the fear- it is a voracious predator, and everything in the universe is its prey.

Qlipoth/The Preservation - The Lonely

HEAR ME OUT. HEAR ME OUT ON THIS ONE. I initially really struggled to tag Qlipoth, and wondered if I might actually have to leave THEM without a tag- until I did some further reading! There's one readable that theorizes that Qlipoth wants to "preserve" planets by isolating them from each other, behind barriers. I think of Belobog, holding out for 700 years behind their walls- blessed by the Preservation, but cut off from the rest of the universe. It's not a perfect tag by any means, but. food for thought.

Tayzzyronth/The Propagation - The Corruption

I feel like this is another fairly self-evident tag! In tma, the Corruption deals with bugs, infestations, and general filth/unhealthiness... extending, on a metaphorical level, to unhealthy companionship. We see multiple statements in tma about people's minds being twisted to the point where they find a sense of home/belonging in a swarm of worms or beetles. Compare this to Tayzzyronth, the last surviving member of THEIR species who birthed a horrific self-replicating swarm of insects so they wouldn't have to be alone. Yeah.

[we have no images of Terminus. no poorly cropped header here!]

Terminus/The Finality - The End

End of existence, death, finality. This one is a relatively easy tag.

Yaoshi/The Abundance - The Flesh

Yaoshi is so fascinating to me (Lan don't come for me) and I really really think. That THEY correspond most strongly to the Flesh. Benevolently granting immortality but at What Cost... ties a little bit into the physical fear of bodies/meat but also the existential/body image aspects of the Flesh fear: wanting to become something better than what you are and escape the confines of a short-lived body… which Yaoshi can do, happily, but which will leave you Changed to the point of being unrecognizable.

Things I couldn't tag! And some concluding thoughts <3

For the Aeons: Akivili/The Trailblaze, Long/The Permanence, Idrila/The Beauty, and Xipe/The Harmony all kind of stumped me. For the fears: I couldn't find any Aeons that I felt corresponded well to the Dark! There were also a number that have elements of the Slaughter in them but none that I feel totally match up with it.

I'd love to hear thoughts on those/on a potential reshuffling of my taggings here. If you stuck this far through my rambling- thank you! Please feel free to subject me to so many rambles in return, I would love to hear them/talk about star rail lore in general. If you haven't listened to tma and have the stomach for horror, I would greatly recommend it. I'm speaking here as someone who does Not generally enjoy either horror or podcasts, but got extreeeeemely sucked into this particular horror podcast.

That's all my thoughts for now. Cheers!

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