Ratio x Aventurine

[tanithryudo]

So I've been doing some reading on this pairing (理砂 in CN). Both because it's much more prolific than JYxDH... and because surprisingly the stories I've read so far are surprisingly of a more healthy relationship (though it may be me being lucky so far). And this is despite Aventurine having the more in-your-face sob story background.

I guess it's because to write JY pairings well, you have to go into CN societial mores and even feudal culture. That's a tall order for most writers who are in it for the fluff & kinks, apparently. So more than half the time, you end up with AU or semi-AU/OOC works which might as well have nothing to do with Star Rail, and they just slap the familiar names in to have give the OCs a face.

Ratio & Aventurine, on the other hand, their relationship resides in a very much modern day academic/work context, which is easier to write, I guess, and thus not as much reason to go all whacky AU/OOC.

I am considering pulling for Aventurine when his rerun comes around... I already have Ratio, though not built (because I have a great Imaginary attacker already in DHIL so it's not high up on priorities).

BTW, found this "translation" of their in game dialogue. No matter how you look at it, Aventurine and Ratio must've had a long time partnership from before the Penacony mission. They read each other quite well, and actually trust each other a lot for all they can put on a convincing act of mutual distrust.

“几块石头罢了”（基石不止一个）
“所以你的办法是什么”（计划）
“没必要说的太清楚”（将计就计）
“合作的重点是互相信任”（谁来干）
“所以你信任我吗？”（你主导）
“这取决于你的态度”（我怎么做）
“所以你也不信任我，这不就行了”（背刺我）

On the Circumvention of Ethics - Found this to be funny. Ratio is questioned by the Guild board about the very expensive bribes gifts he received from Aventurine.

三日追忆 - Ratio is affected by a bout of temporary amnesia which requires familiar reminders to recover. Aventurine has fun helping his husband relieve memories of their relationship.

以毒攻毒 - Not quite canon compliant since it skips the scene from the Final Victor LC, but personality wise, I think this is the closest any writer has gotten to how I envision Ratio and Aventurine. Their philosophy in life, and the way they actually mesh together instead of conflict, thus resulting in the sparks of their productive partnership, is *chef's kiss*. The confession at the end came a little fast, maybe, but I guess it's fine since the story was intended as a one parter and not a serial (alas).

今日无事可做 - Slice of life fluff. Aventurine catches Ratio after class for a "date", and also trolls the University forums.

背道而驰 - Ratio centric story where he dreams about how he got to the present day. I like the part where it tries to mesh in his gameplay Path of the Hunt. Because Ratio is a good match for the Erudition/Hunt equation from Divergent Universe.

醒花 - Finally! A fic that features a proper robot housekeeping and dining purposes! Ahem. Aventurine is forced to spend some time laying low, and chooses to "hide" at a certain professor's place, and falls into Ratio's carefully prepped trap called love.

thunder in a blue sky - Absolutely fluffy get together fic. Bonus in that it features the adorwibble catcakes.

二十面骰与一枚筹码 - This is only slash if you squint, I guess pre-slash? Anyway, extremely plot heavy spy games stuff, and showcasing the rare trust amid betrayal that our duo showed in Penacony. Ratio shows off his martial ability, for once in a fic, though not quite as fantastical/sci-fi-ish as I envision him.

宇宙救鸭行动 - Rubber ducky sappy crack.

两次多云与一场日落 - Cute pre-slash story. One of those 'Just kiss already' type fics.

漂亮冤家 - Cute pre-slash/get-together fic. Our boys team up again to scam the living daylights out of their foe. All goes as expected, except for the small detail that everyone thinks they're together before they actually are, lol.

爱与爱等价 - Old married couple kinda fic. False alarm at the beginning, otherwise fluffy.

你不是天才 - Short fan comic. *melts into puddle of goo*

Hook gets adopted - Image chatfic. Non-slash. IPC team centric. Hilarious and cute.

The Imaginary Perks of Higher Education - Aventurine is given the mission to "acquire" Dr. Ratio for the IPC's Intelligentsia Guild. (Not quite lore compliant since canonically Ratio went to Veritas Prime for university at the rec of his high school teacher, but eh.)

the appeal of domesticity (series) - All fluff. Some of it is meh. But I like the bits where Aventurine pokes around Ratio's university forums.

荒沙 - Pining/get-together fic, somewhat longwinded, but I find it kina romantic. (And it's so great to have good quality non-PWP fics, unlike in JYxDH fandom.)



Gameplay cutscene from Sept update of AP featuring Phantylia matchmaking for our boys (lol)

Comments

[cashew]

a) What's the context for the quote? Was this a dialogue bit with the implied text in parentheses?

b) Have not yet dipped into 理砂, but not surprised it's significantly healthier since there's no need to do a bunch of research and stuff because it's already the usual office coworker relationship that everyone's familiar with. Like, so much of 景丹 AU stuff is basically modern setting because no one wants to actually write period pieces. (At least that's the case in CN fic. Have not attempted to brave the EN fics yet.)

c) I hear Adventurine is extremely meta and probably will remain extremely meta for a while, as support units tend to get power crept much slower.

[tanithryudo]

a) Yeah, the quoted part is their cutscene dialogue when we see them discussing their mission upon first showing up on Penacony. The one in parenthesis is the "translation" given the resulting plot they act out against Sunday.

b) I mean, Aventurine canonically has a slave background, so fics do have lots of potential for going into dark/angsty/edgy places. It's just that, at least the writing will be more likely to be supported (and limited) by lore than the weird AUs that force dark/edginess on the JYxDH pairing. And yes, even the ENG fics for JYxDH has a ton of weird and whacky AU. Like, non-CN writers trying to write Imperial CN...or smush them into Western Feudal setting is just...ugh.

c) Aventurine is a great sustain in at least 3 playstyles: follow-up teams (where attackers/teammates get a lot of extra auto turns in between manually triggered turns), shield teams (for SimU preservation path), debuff teams (where the damager is buffed when the enemy has more debuffs). So there's a lot of flexibility in team building and he's a straight up improvement over Geppard (the standard banner 5 star preservation tank).

The only other 5 star limited Preservation we have right now is Fu Xuan, and she doesn't conflict with him in the area where they excel. Fu Xuan excels at defending against single target one-shot bosses, while Aventurine excels at defending against AoE bosses.

Last time he came up, I skipped him because I already had two limited 5 star sustains: Fu Xuan and Luocha and didn't need another one for gameplay. Now, I just want to pull him purely for shipping purposes. Because unlike JY and DHIL who don't function in the same team together, Ratio and Aventurine synergize perfectly in the same team. <3<3<3

[cashew]

Because unlike JY and DHIL who don't function in the same team together, Ratio and Aventurine synergize perfectly in the same team.

I genuinely think this is the main reason this pairing is shipped so hard, even more so than plot based reasons. It's kind of amazing how much mechanics drives game fic/ship.

---

a) Ok, I will be able to find the convo in my very slow watching of long plays of HSR.

b) So what I'm getting out of this is you have in fact browsed through the EN language fic and it sounds awful. Seems like the right call to ignore the English language fic for 景丹. The other advantage of 理砂 is the fact that they're already Westernized characters, so very easy for the anglosphere to grok.

c) From what I understand Adventurine can replace Luocha. Is that the idea? Or does Luocha's auto heal still make room for certain team builds?

[tanithryudo]

Yes, in most content you only need 1 sustain, either Abundance or Preservation. The times where I've *needed* more than 1 are pretty much only in the beginning rooms of the higher levels of Simulated/Divergent Universe, where all enemies are buffed to their gills, and you haven't gotten any of the broken blessings that will help your team either kill quickly or defend against them.

Luocha is very easy to use and great for casuals, in that you put him in a team and basically don't need to manually trigger him for anything aside from the occasional ult to help break Img weak enemies. His healing can be left to trigger automatically. However, for hardcore play, he's been powercrept a lot by later 5 star sustains, who offer better active abilities (Fu Xuan & Huohuo do team buffs, Aventurine additionally does enemy debuffs, even 4 star healer Gallagher does break damage which jives with the current break meta).

[cashew]

From what I'm hearing, Fu Xuan sounds like she'll be relevant for a long while. And obviously Adventurine....

I still haven't quite wrapped my head around the Divergent Universe lore stuff. I thought it's just meant to be a challenge dungeon, not plot/lore relevant. Is it actually necessary to do it to get the whole picture of the story? (Although to be fair, I'm kind of meh about the cosmology of HSR because...it sounds a bit batshit, ngl.)

[tanithryudo]

Mechanically speaking, Divergent Universe was an attempt at revamping the baseline Simulated Universe and make the weekly farming for ornament EQ easier.

In terms of Lore, each of the Simulated Universe updates contain big lore dumps on the general cosmology of the Star Rail universe. The Swarm Disaster patch told the story of the Swarm Disaster. The Gold and Gears told the story of the Anti Organic Wars. Both of these are major events in the ancient history of the HSR universe.

This lore isn't too relevant to the present day storyline. They're more to fill in the background setting.

[cashew]

How does the Simulated Universe dump lore？Like what's happening? Is there actually story involved? Can this be found as cutscenes? Or are there items that give chunks of lore? Or is the story pieced together from the blessings or something? I'm very confused how this dungeon provides chunks of lore.

[tanithryudo]

No cutscenes. Just infodumps consisting of walls of text. You can read everything from the Eng version on the wiki. Not sure if the CN version is documented anywhere.

Infodump from Swarm Disaster and Gold & Gears.

Text on Occurrences, Curios, and other stuff also contribute to the lore.

[cashew]

So I'm reading the English wiki and it seems to be some kind of transcript? Do you need to talk to an NPC to trigger this? (Have not found CN equivalent yet...I know some of the transcripts are buried somewhere on the wiki, I just haven't figured out the correct navigational path.)

[tanithryudo]

You get the texts during transitions between "levels" during a SimU run, and at the end, after meeting whatever criteria for unlocking a particular scenario.

[cashew]

Sudden extra thought on: Because unlike JY and DHIL who don't function in the same team together, Ratio and Aventurine synergize perfectly in the same team.

The Quintet all went their separate ways. This is story/mechanic integration. The game mechanics reflect the fact that these guys will leave each other. ヽ(*。>Д<)o゜

JYxDH is doomed.

[tanithryudo]

Hahaha... well, Jingliu and Blade can function in the same team together as main DPS and sub DPS. But that's about it.

Oh and I guess if you count Bailu as Baiheng's successor, she can fit with any of the others as a healer. :p

[cashew]

I count Bailu as the daughter of Dan Feng and Baiheng, which is...uh... Like I said, this ship, it is sank.

So why can Jingliu and Blade function as DPS/subDPS but this doesn't work with either Dan Feng or Jing Yuan? Would Jingliu/Jing Yuan function? Or any other permutation of the 4 DPS units in the Quintet?

[tanithryudo]

Jingliu and Blade can synergize because Blade has a big AoE attack that triggers when his health gets lowered, and Jingliu's enhanced attack leeches HP from the entire team, which can trigger this attack.

DHIL uses up 3 skill points every turn for full power hits. He preferably wants all 3 of his teammates to stick to basic attacks and generate SP for him to use, ie. avoid using their skills as much as possible. This means he doesn't play well with any other DPS, because most DPS damage lies in their skills/ults and not in their basic attacks.

Jing Yuan and either Jingliu or Blade could function on the same team, in that their mechanics don't conflict with each other. But they don't mesh or buff each other either, so it's not really optimal. Honestly you'd end up getting better results with two buffers instead.

[cashew]

OK, thanks for the explanation. Sounds like they made the still living Quintet incompatible by default. Jingliu/Blade's combo sounds like it's a pretty risky strategy. Am amused Jingliu drains Blade's HP to trigger AoE, very appropriate of the narrative. LOL