#noir!fischl

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“Amy’s gone.”

“Sure she is, Fi,” said Oz. “Sure she is.”

If he was about to feed me some malarkey about Amy always being here with me in my heart, we were done here. I was a hard-boiled detective. I didn’t have time for this fairy tale fantasy shit.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Lady Justice drinks Wolfhook juice

Length: 18K words

Genre: crack treated seriously, noir, character study

Is this an AU?: Arguing over "canon" is for the clergy, and I'm an atheist. Unless Windblume counts. And Weinlesefest. Point is, when the rose-tinted glasses come tumbling down, the city of winds reveals a dark underbelly of sin, but it was always there even if you weren't looking, like a period headache hiding behind a curtain with the murder weapon while the Knights come through. It's as true as any other story, is the point. Maybe truer.

Fi means it's basically canon Teyvat but with Fischl genre-swapped from dark fantasy to noir thrillers.

Cigarettes smoked by Fischl: like, idk, a dozen. a hundred.

None, actually.

Cigarettes dramatically stamped out under shoes: one.

It's violet licorice.

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To be clear, this is Mona and Fischl's first kiss in this AU; Fischl is just easily sidetracked like that.

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It is occasionally frustrating that my noir!Fischl AU — a very silly little shitpost of an idea — has consisted entirely of very carefully Constructed fics, because now I feel like I have to maintain that standard in future entries in the series — which, again, is conceived almost entirely as a silly haha nonsense AU.

However this situation is also very funny to me, so it balances out.

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Acrostic: A WIP Game

Rules: You will be given a word. Share a sentence/excerpt from your wip(s) that starts with each letter of the word.

Tagged by @ossidae-passeridae and my word was QUITE. Here are bits from five different WIPs! (My excerpts are all VERY long. I got carried away >_>)

Quick-witted as always, Alhaitham immediately remarked that the admissions committee would be delighted to have Azar present. A good riposte! More than enough reason for Innamorata to make Azar abruptly scrape his chair back, stand, and slam the door on his way out of Alhaitham's office. (It was a pity. Whenever the Sages stayed out of Alhaitham's way for too long he started to get suspicious. Hence making time for this chore once or twice a week.)

"Understood." The woman stepped out from behind the counter, offering her wrists. "May I trouble you to confiscate my cash box and ledger as evidence?"

> If, in one minute forty-one seconds, the cat—the one perched on a tree two blocks away—crosses the road:

• The cat dies prematurely, becomes a Pathstrider, or worse: 30%. • ...specifically, SPARKLE kills the cat: 15%.

> If, in one minute forty-one seconds, the cat does not cross the road:

The first thing I realised about the regina was that she was canny: real canny, like, Amy levels of canny, and that's not a comparison I use lightly. The sort of person who can feel out a story as it's being woven, yank at the threads, and bang, your scarlet pinstripe is nothing but red herringbone.

"Explain yourself." Lisa's voice came out more acid than she intended, but she couldn't find it in herself to care.

Kokomi's eyes darkened. "Lisa, I don't know what game you're playing at, and I won't stoop to guessing."

"Delusions kill people."

No pressure tagging: @awake-my-oceans, @chaoticgenderfae, @emmebearpaw, @hydrachea , @narcoticwriter, @ossidae-passeridae *parries u*, and anyone who wants to try!

Your word, should you choose to accept it, is JUDGE.

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“Do the Knights keep tabs on the local fences?” I asked him.

A fence was someone who traded in stolen goods, like a merchant but decidedly on the wrong side of the law. A fence was also a kind of barrier that went around buildings. It all depended on context. Some folks called this kind of gritty ambiguity a ‘homonym’. Me, I called it a regular Tuesday.

—Lady Justice Drinks Wolfhook Juice

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[...]I'm a private eye, which is slang for private investigator. I solve the kinds of cases others can't, won't, or shouldn't, and I'm damned good at it. I take my whiskey neat to help me stay sharp but just one glass: anything past that makes me drowsy. I figure I'll build up a tolerance to alcohol by the time I'm twenty, maybe even an addiction. For now, everything in moderation, as the saying goes... everything, that is, except regrets. Drink at the bar of regrets and nobody will cut you off. It's self-serve, I suppose.

from a WIP extract, starring Fi v.L. Narfidort, Mondstadt's #1 private investigator

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Happy second birthday, Golden Apple Archipelago! ☀️🌅🏝️🏝️

Have some noir!Fischl to celebrate.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

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was rereading the last bits of No Bird An Island; are u ever gonna do smt like it again? it was rly cool, esp while it was updating since comment interactions

alsoalso there will be more in the noir!Fischl series rite? no rush no rush jus wondering ehh

In order: (1) probably not (but it's possible); (2) probably (but that could mean months or years).

1) I went waaaay outside my comfort zone for No Bird an Island. Normally I don't push myself to write towards deadlines (writing is a very chill hobby for me!), and I needed a huge backlog to make the 3–6 microchapters per day work. I also needed lots of free time, which I don't usually have!

It was a really fun experience but also pretty tiring+stressful: I'm glad I did it, but I'm not in a rush to do it again 😅 I really enjoyed all the interactions in the comments, and getting to build up to the big reveals and action scenes!

I was inspired by hyperdimensional hopscotch, which Exstarsis (@chrysoula) did last November, as a kind of topsy-turvy Nanowrimo alternative. I really liked the experience of it as a reader, and I wanted to recreate that 🙂 If you find someone else doing something like it, please let me know! (It also counts if you talk a writer you know into doing it :P)

2) All of my fics and series are on indefinite hiatus all the time. This is for my own sanity 🙃

(I, uh, burned out of fanfic a decade ago because I wrote something that got really popular in its niche and felt obligated to continue it even as life got busy and inspiration ran dry. So when I started again last year, I decided, if I have to choose between stalled WIPs ("deadfic") vs turning my hobby into a "duty", I'll pick the former. Other fanfic authors may make different choices!; this is mine.)

Having said that, noir!Fischl is up there with the Tao!Retainer AU in terms of (i) it's fun to play around with, (ii) when I reread I always want more. So I think it's not a question of if, but when!

I'm not sure whether the next noir!Fischl stories will follow up on her friendship with Nahida. As usual, it depends what's noir enough for Fi :P