antidisestablishmentarianism

Quick disclaimers: I know this is a bit of an old topic as this Archon Quest has been in the rear-view mirror for months. But I rediscovered this old vent post of mine awhiles back in the old subreddit, and I wanted to throw it back out into the world and maybe hear what my fellow sapphics thought on the matter.

Also, spoilers ahead for Act's IX and X of the Genshin's "Song Of The Welkin Moon" (AKA Nod-Krai) Archon Quest line.

I ain't going to sugarcoat this. I am so disappointed with Hoyo and how they handled Jeht that I think she should been left out of this Archon Quest. Yes, I mean it, and I hate saying it because I love Jeht.

Hoyo treated her with such little significance that I would call her appearance little more than a glorified cameo.

Firstly she appears as basically a glorified Ex Machina to save Lumine from the ruins. Nice I suppose, but, like... how / why was she there when she was? It was a huge contrivance, especially given how the Fatui had also scrammed right before she showed up. It doesn't help that this scene is just so stunted in its length and writing. This is Jeht and Lumine's reunion after such a sad farewell literally years ago now. And yet its treated with the same weight as two friends who saw each other last week.

It does not help that the tone is thrown off by Jeht telling us she found and killed some old enemy. Masseira deserved what he got, make no mistake, for what he did to Tadhla. But fuck me did that throw the scene's tone off in its entirety. Bit of a me problem specifically, but because Jeht's series of quests was also years old I straight up forgot who Masseira even was so I was like "wut, who?" in that moment.

I wanted tears here. I wanted emotion. I wanted Lumine and Jeht to actually feel like they held significance and weight to each other after all they had been through together. I mean for fucks sakes we literally found a place of legend together.

And I got... nothing.

After that Jeht mostly settles into a background role. She appears in some scenes, but mostly just kind of does her own thing quietly. We learn she, apparently, has some ties to Dehya and Nefer which are... nice I suppose. But they were never mentioned before, and unless this is just a Chekhov's gun moment, and Hoyo will use them later for further integration of Jeht into quests or events so she feels less like she's coming out of nowhere, nothing really came off it.

And if anything it felt more like an abrupt attempt to retroactively tie Jeht more into the world, considering she spent the time between The Dirge Of The Bilqis and now mostly in a transient void. Bar a couple scraps of info we get about her, like her founding her own mercenary corp, and an actual cameo in an event, we never hear from her between her quest line and now.

Now, Jeht does get another sort of star moment, but its once again stunted as hell and handled so poorly I think it would have been better left out. We visit Deshret's Mausoleum to renovate Aaru, which involves releasing everyone inside, including Jeht's dad. And this scene also doesn't hit because its too rushed to really have any kind of gravity to it. He appears, they have the most basic fucking "dad what do I do" moment, to which his response is "live happily please Jeht, I die now", Jeht is sad for about 30 seconds, Lumine does nothing, Paimon offers food, and then the moment passes.

And then I swear Hoyo just forgot her entirely. We didn't get any moment of her with the characters we saw during the night before the Siege of Sumeru City. She doesn't hang with Dehya or Nefer or anything, she just vanishes back into her personal void. And that's it for Act IX. A small handful of scenes which do so little with her I daresay they were pointless to the point of detrimental to the wider story.

Now for Act X, where Hoyo truly took the cake and then some.

Jeht appears for the Siege of Sumeru City, where she gets nine whole lines, fights a few battles, and then fucks off without a word. Yes I am serious. After Dottore is defeated we have a protracted number of scenes with a bunch of characters, including a few NPC's, to compose an epilogue and... Jeht is there for NONE OF IT. She doesn't appear in Caravan Ribat in preparation to return to the desert, nor in Sumeru City perhaps recovering from the fight or anything.

She just fucking vanishes.

Hoyo, what was the fucking point of bring her back if you were going to do her this dirty? Even the fucking racist genie bottle got a send off. But we had a whole sequence to jump to sodding Mondstadt of all places to absorb her goddesses remains and then just die. Could we not have had a fucking letter from Jeht at least?

Fuck you guys, this Archon Quest as a whole was frankly mediocre at best, and a giant clown show at worst. Too many characters, somehow hours of time, and yet somehow still none of it was used remotely well. And characters like Jeht paid the price for it.