People thought she was maniac or weird person who sing at somebody's funeral.

I always thought Columbina kneeling by the coffin and singing was her mourning. She seemed to be the harbinger who expressed the most sorrow over her death. Arlecchino snapped at Pantalone and Monopoly man coz she was pissed at them not really caring at all. Sandrone left a note about it in her notebook which in on itself is very significant

Everything else about Columbina I did not expect, but she ended up being a pleasant surprise

Is it really that inappropriate for a singer to sing at a funeral?

Turns out it was all just Sandrone's side of story

As colombina once sang “I’m the kind of girl who sings at a funeral, can’t understand what I mean, you soon will.”…..

“Mika from monsdtadt shot timmies pidgeons, you get a leg of fowl and your honey roasts tickin”

I did. Now what

This is why I think she is rewrite character, wanderer and Childe claimed that she supposed to be much scary or warned us to not even step close to her.

Even Arlechino is also rewritten character, she do some so worst in inazuma quest (that you need to do for 3 days)

Well, she is waifu to begin with. Ain't no way the dev gonna waste that

You be lying if it didnt strike you as off first impression…

Singing at funerals isn't that weird honestly but they wanted to frame her in an off-putting way at least.

Right before this lazzo trailer, we had the reveal that the top 3 Harbingers have powers equal to gods. And we figured out Columbina is #3. And she was the most mysterious of them all. And she looked like a biblically accurate Angel.

Like, there is NOTHING that made her not scary. We fear the unknown and she was the unknownest

Singing at someone’s funeral is a normal thing and I don’t know why people thought it was creepy/weird. Those people need to get off the internet and experience reality more and they will see something like singing as a sign of mourning is a common thing.

You mean people thought she was interesting?

My dearest daughter would never do such thing.

Don't tell me y'all didn't know people sing over loved ones' coffins

this but reverse the images

Fanon Columbina is cool and all but I really love how Canon Columbina turned out

Of course she'd be sorta like that if you were only valued for your powers and not who you are as a person

She basically sung a dirge for Rosalyn. It's not weird.

Though by her own admission her mind is a bit up there prior to her resurrection (what weak connection to your moon does to a moon goddess).

can we drop this annoying agendaposting? people complaining about how people are complaining about Columbina's characterisation are just adding more fuel to a dumpster fire that doesn't even need to be burning in the first place.

Yeah, this is exactly my reaction. I thought she was nuts.

I remember there was a fanmade video of Columbina depicting her as some kind of eldritch horror. I know it was fanmade and not Canon but that impression of her really stuck with me lol.

Oh what could have been....... Instead, we got harem member 52.

I seriously wanted a psychopath angel who distorted reality to destroy people, not some lovey dovey girl who became a waifu for the story.

The other way around lowk
Dropped her fully after she turned out to just be another one of those characters

Fanon Columbina did irreparable damage to her image tbh. Like this is one of the few characters we guessed completely wrong lol

Yeah, *that* version of Columbina was better

Wish she was the Nihilistic angel that we thought she was

I think most people were expecting her to be at least a LITTLE intimidating due to the Tartaglia/Wanderer voicelines. I don’t mind her being pure good but I wish we at least knew why they were so afraid of her (unless it’s just because she’s above them in the harbinger rankings, I can accept that too)

Tbh though, the atmosphere of the trailer and the actual notes she was singing were verry dissonant. The fatui theme music (which Columbina was singing) has a very eerie tone to it in general.

While it is not wrong at all to sing at a funeral in some cultures, the connotation that was made in the trailer made it seem creepy. I also initially thought she’d be a creepy or at least unsettling character, based off of what we knew of the Harbingers at the time (which was basically nothing; Dottore from the manga, Signora, Childe, and Scaramouche were the only ones we knew about, and Childe was the only actually friendly one).

It’s very easy to say “harbingers are not like that!” in restrospect, but you gotta understand what exactly we were working with **at the time**. Winter Night’s Lazzo was released at the end of 2.X. We just got done with Inazuma. We fought Signora who was arrogant and rude, and Scaramouche was taunting us the whole way.

Nowadays ofc we know that Hoyo always do a bait and switch with trailers and they are always misleading to create suspense. But Winter Night’s Lazzo was very early in terms of cinematic teaser trailers. Genshin didn’t really do stuff like that other than regular version trailers. Heck, Sumeru’s “here are all the characters” sneak peek trailer wasn’t even an actual trailer but more of just a montage of in game footage. We didn’t get those until Fontaine.

So did I expect her to be like this at the start? No. But is that a bad thing? Also no. Do I like how Columbina ended up? Definitely; I think she is well written and her personality plays well off of other characters.

Whenever someone brings up the expectations we had for Columbina before we knew much, I always see people use the power of hindsight to make fun of the people who have believed in the previous interpretation.
And I just think it's quite unfair.
It's easy to connect the dots and justify everything now, and nobody can really contradict you because that's just the current canon.
But let's not pretend Genshin didn't WANT us to think of her as eerie.

A lot of you will say how people are stupid for thinking that her singing at a funeral is weird. But consider the framing and the environment. I sure as hell didn't see anyone say that it's just a grieving serenade *before* we learnt that she's actually a sweet girl. Because creepy singing from the third strongest of the villain organization doesn't SEEM innocent. People, justifiably, thought it was unsettling.

Just like the voicelines, people can come in after the fact and tell us how none of it meant anything nefarious and how it still fits her and how we just had unreliable narrators. Not false, per se, but why do we blame people for "mis"interpreting it? People were completely justified in believing Columbina to be something else, because that's the image the game was pushing.

Another thing I see is how people get riled up by the mere idea that a character might've been rewritten. Once again, it becomes an unfair argument, because John Hoyo himself won't come down from heavens to set things straight. Most of us was not there in the writing room, so every speculation of what the progress of the character's writing was is equally valid. You don't know, I don't know, nobody does.

And I really don't get why the notion that a rewrite might've happened is this big attack that fans have to protect the character from. It's just observation.
There are a few, fairly good reasons why Columbina's rewrite might've happened.
The contrast between her vibes from before and after Nod-Krai started being promoted is stark. There was not a lot of easing into this new image they were painting, almost like the first, scarier vibes were unintentional. It's no wonder a lot of people still thought she was gonna betray us or something, because for years Genshin only gave us crumbs which showed Columbina as distant and dangerous. She didn't even have any artifact set lore or something to show us there might be some depth here. Even the Doctor has that.
But in game, it's clear we are immediately supposed to care and like her. Her demeanor, her appearance, Traveler's gentle approach. The writers didn't want us to feel wary of her anymore.

I am personally of the camp that there might've been a rewrite.
But it is not her attitude why I think that, but her design. There is a short from Wolfisor on youtube, analyzing her appearance. That video puts this more eloquently than I could, so I recommend anyone who's actually interested in this topic watches it.

But besides those, the whole Moon Goddess design of hers is off, in a way. First, I think Columbina doesn't really match the other three. I don't think I could tell she's supposed to be one of them, if not for the moon theming of her clothes. And yes, I get why she's different and doesn't have to be like the sisters, but they don't even look related in my opinion.

One interesting thing I noticed is that the three goddesses have multiple times been depicted with little horns, rather than bird like wings, even as recently as one of the Nod-Krai trailers. But obviously the six wings were one of the few things we had for sure in Columbina's design, so they just took away the horns and gave them feathers in the hair instead, so they'd have SOME resemblance.
Not to mention the hair, which, while I understand is kind of like pink kuuvakhi, they're completely different shades. But Columbina was already hot pink, so they had to roll with that.

I personally didn't have many expectations for Columbina before the fact. My only theory was that she might be one of the angels, considering the fact that six wings are sure to remind a lot of people of seraphims. It's a pretty common symbol of those. In general, even now, she has a lot of angel symbolism. Which is a bit strange when we know angels ARE a thing here and are completely different, even made by opposing ruler deities. It doesn't make much sense to me why Columbina is so "angelic", aside from the fact that they locked themselves into the theme with the wings long ago.

Honestly, I'm not even sure if *rewrite* is the word I agree with, per se. I just think Lazzo Columbina wasn't a character at all. She was a pretty blank slate. And when they wanted to use her, that's when they actually started to write, with only a few, set in stone details to watch out for.
That's why people can connect the dots easily, after the fact (like why the singing was just grief), but none of that comes naturally from what we saw and knew (like how the singing was creepy regardless).

But, of course, I wasn't there in the writing room. But neither were you. So let's just discuss this and share our opinions in a civil way.

Nobody was dumb, just because they had certain expectations.

Can we all ask a more interesting question? Yes, they maybe changed something to make her fit the new role they made for archon. Let’s all move and engage in less boring questions.

Scara and childe both have dialogue describing her as terrifying. It is objectively a retcon

at least she turned out right, i would hate her if she was some crazy bitch

Get ready to feel this with the cryo archon

My only question is why would they draw her smiling while singing? Isn't that out of character for her to be all smiles near a coffin of her friend?

They did nail the creepy cute aura farm back then

i still love her either way

People need to stop pretending the entirety of Fatui introductions wasn't made misleading on purpose by Hoyo just to add to the hype and mystery.

So long and goodnight!

Fanon Columbina being cool as fuck, meanwhile canon bina being just another soft innocent waifu who loves the traveler and y'all somehow prefer this. Hoyos obsession with making every female character be actually soft and innocent and and not letting any of them be actually mean and not besties with the traveler is creepy. We had perfect actual mean characters like arle and sandrone and then hoyo made sandrone into a tsundere and arle just straight up did a 180° and became our dear friend and everything bad she did she was actually forced to do. Why can't a female character just simply be a bitch and not want to be our friend, like sandrone at the beginning, and then suddenly it turns out she was just pretending.

The way Hoyo retcons makes Kishimoto jealous.

Tbh, I knew Columbina would be a innocent (former) harbinger because Genshin present most medium females as innocent

So true lol. I thought she was some overpowered psycho harbinger that time.

I mean it's certainly unusual to lay over the coffin and sing an eerie lullaby with a smile on your face. Esp for someone who was supposedly your friend

I feel like it’s dishonest to jump through hoops to act like her personality being like this was the plan all along. If they wanted to convey her mourning in the way today’s Columbina would, they simply wouldn’t draw it like this.