after playing neuvillette's story quest, i couldn't help but think about ganyu, although i won't really talk about neuvillette's story quest or why i thought of ganyu as to not spoil anything
i wanna make a video about this at some point but there's no way i'd be able to get to it soon, so i decided i could just write a tumblr textpost for the time being (gonna keep it brief tho in case i DO get around to making a video, somehow)
i rewatched her story quest as a refresher and read her character stories, i feel like her struggles are made to look incredibly shallow... none of her sentiments about her lineage are truly validated in a meaningful way; the adepti all respect her and understand her situation quite well; the only human who questioned ganyu's status as an adeptus was some dude who wanted to beg the adepti for an easy life, had it been her or anyone else he may as well have said the same thing, there was no way she was going to get through to him
her character stories don't really go into her heritage either, the only notable thing that's regarded as distinctly inhuman behaviour is... her ability to take afternoon naps? of course, it's pushed to an extreme where she goes to sleep and wakes up at an incredibly specific time, and can fall asleep anywhere, but there's only one incident where that seemed to be problematic, and the character story makes it look like a very lighthearted thing— any other struggles are vagued under "not totally understanding social constructs (due to being half adeptus)" but man, who does
i feel like so much could've been done to truly give her identity crisis some real depth! she's been around for 3000 years, she's been to war, you mean to tell me neither of those have affected her character? yanfei is also half-adeptus/half-human, but she isn't troubled at all by her lineage— which makes ganyu seem kinda silly when she points her identity as half-human/half-adeptus as the sole source of her alienation, rather than the very lived experience of having outlived several generations of the people she overlooked and the archon war
i would consider trying to rewrite her story quest to fit those themes, but it's not the sort of thing that makes sense for the format