r/CyreneMains

I was really proud of this run. I hope you enjoy it as well!
Cyrene and Evernight are both so fun.

This was positively a shitshow on the CN side, particularly between the Phainon and Aventurine fanbases and accusations of botting levelled against each other, controversy about devs' alleged favoritism for other characters (including Cyrene), along with subsequent intense competition and fan infighting after devs activated cloudflare (which led to a lot of vote gathering, strategic voting and just a lot of unnecessary drama imo). I think it's safe to say that, starting from the preliminaries, there was a lot of botting involved for a lot of the top characters here (particularly the top 4), but it is what it is and the devs released the official results.

Reminder that this is a famous yearly CN poll (in which one could vote outside of CN though) but that it is unofficial and they're not affiliated with miHoYo.

P.S. Someone on X did the calculations: after the Cloudflare was activated (note that this was done quite late during the finals though), which meant after the moment people were completely rendered from botting the votes, the one who was receiving most votes organically (i.e. non-botted - assuming Cloudflare was able to completely work) was Phainon by an enormous margin, followed by Aventurine and then Cyrene.

Source: https://x.com/joneko\_06/status/2050576046584684914

Hi~♪ I can happily announce that I'll be back to moderating, since my health has improved and I've got a better work-life balance now! As Cyrene herself says...

"The next page is blank, so let's write something down together."

Source

TLDR:

It is not being too similar to Elysia that "ruined" her in the second half, as she was basically the same as Elysia before 3.5, but it is focusing only on specific aspect of this character (her bond with the TB) at the expense of the other traits (her bond with the other heroes, or at least her feelings) which didn't suit her story, and consequently led to this unfortunate vision that the writers probably didn't want us to have, but they failed to deliver it.

Summarizing Cyrene to 90% of TB is like summarizing Elysia's presence in Hi3 as only Glazing at Mei. TB and Mei both represents a salvation they wanted for (even if Cyrene didn't know first), but it is not the whole identity of these characters. Just a very important part. Like Humanity and the heroes.

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I've been seeing this for a long while that the thing that ruined Cyrene during the second half of Amphoreus was because she was too much like Elysia, and that the first half didn't make her that similar to her.

While we could argue that the dress and Elysia vibe of her demiurge form is a very Fanservice visual for Hi3 fans or people wanting to ship her, I am not here for this discussion, and I will not agree or disagree with it.

My point is that what Cyrene was shown doing after 3.4 made her more Elysia. I'd actually argue that the presentation made her feel more like Elysia in the first half than the second.

I'll first have to explain my view of Elysia, then what was shown of Cyrene in the first and second half, and the potential parallels we should draw.

First: Who is Elysia? As a character, as briefly as possible, what kind of personality does she have? What does she show in the story of Hi3? We will mostly talk about her version of the Elysian realm, but we will also talk about her main story too.

Elysia is a young and seemingly carefree girl. She likes to enjoy things very simply, to spend time with her friends and tease them. She has a very deep understanding of them, and knows the most absurd facts about them with how much time she spent with them.

On the other hand, she also probably is first a person that is deeply in love with Humanity. Its potential and their struggles. She loves them so much she is capable of sacrificing herself without any guarantees of success if it can help them, as she's profoundly human, also trying her best to guide people when she has to. Finally, she also is ready to embrace both the good and the bad. One of her famous quotes is:

*"Tragedy is not the end, but the beginning of Hope."*

In the Elysian Realm, she's shown especially carefree and happy. Which is normal: Mei is the result of her sacrifice. She is certain that since Humanity managed to take the reigns of their fate there's nothing to worry about. Added to the fact that Mei is a beautiful young lady, she's also representing a lot to her.

So Elysia is often seen teasing others, loving to get reactions out of them. For example, she first named herself the leader of the flame chasers to see everyone's reactions, and decided on the spot to make Kevin Kaslana the leader when she saw that no one reacted, and still seeing no reactions frustrated her. She is also often seen teasing Kevin who is seemingly the coldest and shows the least his emotions.

Now that we have this image, what did we see of Cyrene before 3.5? I'll say first that since Cyrene = Demiurge = Mem, even if I call them different names, i am talking about the same person.

3.0: The last scene with Phainon showed Cyrene doing fortune telling with the young boy, and did her best to look concerned to make him worry, just to see his reactions. Then, she told him he's destined to become the Deliverer, a role that he first refuses to take. Cyrene then encouraged him to take this role, before playing it as a joke, not trying to bring the mood down too much, and enjoying seeing him so happy.

3.1-3.2: Mem is shown first a bit lost since she had no memories, and then she acts very girly, often asking TB to be gentle with a pretty girl, or also having fun when she finally can speak normally. She is also very open with her feelings, wishing to see more stories of Amphoreus.

3.3: Phainon first mentioned that Mem was extremely similar to his childhood friend who also embraced the bad omens, because it gave meaning and weight to the good ones. In the end, she also appears when Phainon is supposedly at his lowest, and appears literally with the TRuE Leitmotif in New Page, acting like this Salvation (That Elysia represented).

3.4: Again. She's shown as someone guiding Phainon. A bit more serious but also still seemingly carefree. The actual moment she can feel different from Elysia is that unlike Elysia who saw the answer of her problems appear in front of her eyes, Cyrene isn't aware of what TB represents. Unlike Hi3, she still didn't know how good things were going. So I accept that this is different, but nothing that Elysia wouldn't do.

We can add to this that 3.4 revealed that Cyrene is (to no one's surprise) the Author of As I've Written. So if the TB wrote the stories in the Reccurence we play in, Cyrene wrote their stories in all the others, showing her dedication to keep this world living through her sacrifice and her desire to keep this story alive as well through remembrance (like how Elysia asks for Mei to remember their stories).

Concretely, the first half mostly made her very short appearance as Elysia-esque as possible. We could even argue that Cyrene's loss for Phainon was just as important as Kevin's, who lost many of his friends:

Elysia didn't tell him her plan or her nature when she learnt it because she knew he would be ready to risk the world for a friend. And we see the importance Cyrene has for Phainon as well, as she's important like the other heroes that inspired him.

I'd also add that the Trailblazer's presence for Cyrene is obviously the beacon of Hope for her the same way Mei was Elysia's proof that she succeeded, that they both didn't do all that for nothing. The difference is that one doesn't know it yet.

So as you can see, the first half made Cyrene very, AWFULLY similar to Elysia, ignoring her look more similar to her child version where we have little to no visuals. Dare I say, it's Elysia if she was in Amphoreus, at least in the heart.

But now, does it mean she became even more Elysia in the second half, and that's what ruined it?

I still don't think so. I'd say they wanted to push further something that already existed (Cyrene's bond with the TB) at the expense of her other traits.

Basically, it's like giving Elysia 90% of her time only flirting with Mei and merely 10% dedicated to talk or to show her importance for the flame chasers, or what the Flame chasers or humanity represented for her.

As I said, TB is important to her. But in the second half, if we kept pushing the image we had from before, we should have more moments dedicated solely for her. Either to, indeed, be close to TB, but also to show her support to the chrysos heirs, how much she knows about them...

She canonically interacted with them for centuries in 3.5, which is way more than the time she spent with TB, and yet most of her time on screen is spent with them, barely mentioning other chrysos heirs.

Mei asked things about the flame chasers and Elysia answered with the most random things about them as well, and TB could have done more the same.

In 3.6 we indeed had a moment with her summarizing everyone's journey, but it is nothing that we didn't know yet, so we still don't feel it.

And finally in 3.7, even if the story is about her, it deserved more room for the chrysos heirs, or at least this part of her (her Love for them) should have been more visible before that, so we could focus on her being the Demiurge as well.

And one of the biggest fumbles is her Reunion with Phainon, arguably the most anticipated part of their characters since they were "separated" from 3.0 up until now. And her bond with Phainon was non-existent. It's like Elysia having no bonds with Kevin which is obviously wrong.

And no, her being the demiurge doesn't mean she doesn't have any ties to Phainon. And even if she, herself, doesn't view herself as Cyrene, Phainon should view her as Cyrene, and disagree with her statement.

To conclude on this part, her bond with others, especially Phainon, was very limited on screen, when it was not simply betrayed, In order to show her fondness for TB that, even if it's not a problem, shouldn't be taking this much space alone in her story.

But this decision from the writers indeed gave the audience very mixed signals: the Cyrene before 3.4 feels quite different in her very limited appearance from the Cyrene after 3.4.

Which is the reason that led many people to believe, despite how adamant the game is about this, and how much the recaps are pushing it too, that Cyrene was always the same.

She isn't only just fond of TB, they simply refused to show her having more interactions with the chrysos heirs. You can have a small glimpse of it in her myriad Celestia too.

So there's a potential dissonance between what the story tells us with what they show on screen, and what actually happened. Ofc, we take a pov, it's normal. But we should have explored more of her insights about the chrysos heirs, either by showing how she convinced everyone to believe in the TB, or how much she knows them after witnessing them for billions of years.

THIS is the WHOLE Cyrene. And she is, if you follow all the media and implied information in the story that is both on screen and off screen, extremely similar to Elysia. A loving girl, very playful, gentle, teasing, seemingly carefree but trying to guide others, the only difference being Elysia's knowledge about what Mei represented whereas Cyrene didn't know what TB represented.

Unfortunately... There's a lot of things that wasn't said or shown that should have been done. And it is why the general imagery of Cyrene is so annoying for the community.

It was an extremely bold decision in HSR to show her. She has a very strong image, and her mostly being represented for what she is for everyone before having a bit of insight on who she is doesn't help. But HSR wanted us to get to see more of her human side, her struggles, how she tries to remain excessively positive even in the darkest moments, how every hero left a mark on her, and just how much they represent to her...

Saying that it's being too much like Elysia that ruined her character in the second half is like saying Elysia's character is limited to only Glaze at Mei, which is false. It's not being too close to Elysia. But focusing on specific aspects later on that made us replace in our imagery the person she was with something else that didn't align with what was previously supported and shown (and that the writers seemingly wanted us to go for, if you look at the medias around).

This is a very long text. But I wanted to make this clear. I deeply love them both. They made me love both the flame chasers and the Chrysos heirs. And whether you like her or not, I want to make sure you like or dislike her for all that she is. So whenever I see this topic coming up, I'll bring this post.

Don't hesitate to share your thoughts though, and I hope my vision managed to help you understand more things.

(no wonder why Mr. Nine's voice sounds familiar)

https://x.com/i/status/2054020783375303019

I’m planning on pulling for her E2, and so I’m wondering: would I have to farm an entirely new set for her once I get her E2, or can I keep this current build? (4-piece Eagle and Vonwacq planar)

I did not pull for the HP Remembrance team. I only pulled for ATK-scaling Chrysos Heirs and Tribbie. Would appreciate any advice given :)))