I started playing Genshin in 2020, a month or two after it released. I kept playing it almost every day until around Summer 2022.
I think that Genshin was the first fandom I started posting art for; on HoyoLab, Scratch, and Instagram. I had a lot of trouble with the amount of detail on the character designs, especially when I first got started. near the end I'd started experimenting with resesigning the characters in small ways when I drew them.
I remember having a crush on Albedo, which was the first time I'd recognized having a fictional crush, and then I realized I'd had the same feelings for fictional women as well. And that was my Bi Awakening!! (Although I don't really think of my sexuality the same way anymore, these days it's unlabeled). My other most notable crush was on Yelan.
Genshin was really helpful for exploring my sexuality, there were a lot of characters who could be shipped with each other, and several who I found really attractive! It's also the place I started coming up with queer headcanons for the first time.
Hu Tao was my favorite character, I loved her personality and design and found her very fun to draw. Lumine & Ayaka were my favorite ship, and at one point I wanted to make a whole canon-divergent story about them that would rewrite a large part of the Inazuma Arc, though it was always an overambitious project and I didn't get far at all.
Eventually I started getting pretty overwhelmed by the amount of content and the fear of missing out, and I started to drift away from the game. I stopped playing regularly but would come back to it for a couple weeks at a time every now and then. The last time I played Genshin Impact was when Fontaine was released, and I'm not currently planning on revisiting it again anytime soon.
(last updated: 8/12/2024)