#postscripts

[trench-knife]

aah i'm almost done writing my chapter <3

[trench-knife]

oh hey the issue i was having with my export finally fixed itself!!!

[streetlights-was-taken]

[postscript] life could be a dream, sweetheart

← read on AO3

for litwinsweek2025: "no powers" au, domesticity, eyes closed.

i. concept, points of view, genres

this fic started with one thought: wouldn’t it be absurdly funny if li tianchen changed the past only for liu lan to end up with qian jin? like, in retrospect, it’s funny to think of how soooo much of the creation of this fic revolved around this one scene: qian jin sitting at the dinner table with liu lan and li tianxi, all while li tianchen is internally having a mental breakdown.

everything else spiraled from that one seed of an idea. as I was developing the concept for this fic, I decided to take it in the direction where li tianxi is extremely happy and li tianchen is just utterly misreable in the background. and then, developing from there, I think it’d be interesting to explore how much the twins would have changed for them to arrive in this kind of situation.

there's three genres happening here. li tianxi is living the slice of life dream with a splash of family drama, li tianchen is living in a psychological horror, and I personally wrote this thinking it’s a comedy. specifically, I think it’s fun to write this timeline’s li tianxi as someone who has both incredible insight in li tianchen’s character, but also misses the mark on why he does the things he does because she’s severely lacking in context. she has insightful reads on most people even when she doesn’t have her ability, but she still has a lot of blind spots too.

whether or not the genre writing was effective remains to be seen, but I think writing from li tianxi’s pov and showing how much the universe loves her contrasts and elevates the horror that li tianchen is experiencing in the background. li tianchen's horror is more effective when it's not at the forefront, imo, but rather when it's contrasted by the casual narration and how li tianxi just does not see the problem because she has no context for what he’s actually experiencing, and her life is just really fun and great. so it really was important to have li tianxi be the pov character.

which made me realize: why haven't I posted a fic in li tianchen's pov, when he’s my favorite character? I do have at least 3 (unposted) wips that are in his pov, so it's not like I can't do it. but then again, there’s a reason they’re still unposted lol. I think there's a certain charm in seeing his story from an outsider's perspective. it heightens the tragedy for me. in the wips I'm writing where we're in his pov, they're usually scenarios where I can play with li tianchen's cognitive dissonance more. here, he's a bit too aware of his situation for me to do that. cognitive dissonance is an essential trait of li tianchen’s character to me, so an outsider’s pov of him really highlights that aspect of his, imo. he’s a pretty good actor, don’t you think?

ii. timeline and ability logistics

okay, this one is just for those who are just wondering about the nitty gritty details.

there's this line in one of the yingdu pvs that implies that abilities can manifest as a result of emotional trauma, or something like that. this was never actually said in the show itself iirc, so I don't count it as canon yet. but it's an interesting bit of plausible world building.

following this train of thought: if someone successfully changes the past to the point where the trigger event for your trauma is gone or changed fundamentally, would you still have your ability?

the logic I'm going with here is that li tianxi's ability is gone because she didn't go through the trauma of witnessing her mother’s abuse that led to her indirectly killing her parents with li tianchen. li tianchen's ability only comes back to him when his old timeline self finally merged with his new timeline self (after returning from the the dive). same thing with cheng xiaoshi.

the memories also work in the same way in that new timeline tianchen only gains all the memories of old timeline tianchen when he hits the age/date when old timeline tianchen dived in the first place. but, from time to time, memories can filter into new timeline tianchen’s dreams over the years, just because I think that makes things fun :)

idk how much that tracks with canon lore but that's the state of things in this fic.

iii. role reversal (what makes a fix-it AU?)

I wrote each scene with two questions in mind: would this make li tianxi happy? and would this make li tianchen miserable?

it’s hard for me to say how li tianxi would act like in a non-stressful, no powers setting where everything is going well for her. but I think a combination of removing li fan + meeting qiao ling early + having a more stable home life and support system = a happier, more confident li tianxi. recently, I was also musing about how, when they were younger, li tianchen wanted li tianxi to learn to defend herself. and that, in a world where his mother survived the abuse, maybe he would have doubled down on that belief instead of what happened in canon.

so, I do think li tianxi in this fic behaves in ways we would never expect from canon li tianxi. I hope it’s still written believably though.

I also think we never really see a lot of the twins’ dynamic from before their parents died? so I think, if they grew up in a more stable household, they’d actually be more comfortable with disagreeing and fighting each other in the way siblings tend to do.

if I had more time, I wish I could've written this fic with a more elaborated setting. I think it'd be fun to explore the new relationships and new character dynamics more. like, I could maybe draw out the awkwardness/mortification/seething hatred that the twins individually feel when they see qian jin and liu lan together. I also think it's hilarious how many things li tianxi just wrongly assumes about li tianchen’s friendships.

I must note here that I don’t think li tianxi would be a cheng xiaoshi hater in canon lol, it’s just that this fic has specific circumstances that led her to that conclusion. cheng xiaoshi kinda serves as the replacement for liu xiao in li tianchen’s younger years, but he’s also a confidante because he’s the only one who “gets it” y’know?

anyway. I took some canon moments and tried to make callbacks to them in the fic itself. for each one, I would ask, do the roles between li tianchen and li tianxi switch? does the original scene change fundamentally because of li tianchen’s attempt to fix everything? or do some things stay the same no matter what?

for example, some of the role reversal moments that come to mind: li tianxi thinking of herself as the protector, or li tianxi putting food in li tianchen’s soup bowl (like how young!ltc would give his pieces of meat to young!ltx during dinner).

things that changed: li tianxi doesn’t need li tianchen to do her hair anymore (a reference to when he does her hair in a backstage scene for neo aurora).

and things that stayed the same: li tianchen still calls her xiaoxi… though, it’s a bit nuanced. this timeline is a little different, so I wanted to make the distinction that li tianchen only calls her xiaoxi when he’s referencing the past timeline — the past li tianxi. this kinda echoes some of my thoughts on how li tianchen probably won’t be able to handle well seeing alternate versions of himself or his sister being happy, because that means he also could’ve had that kind of life in the original timeline. but he didn’t. (here’s the cognitive dissonance in effect again)

li tianchen’s situation is kinda complicated. I think new timeline tianchen had difficulty dealing with his “episodes” growing up. while the old timeline tianchen (who has only been in the new timeline for a week) is still kind of mourning the past timeline he lived in. even if that timeline was hell for him, that was the timeline that had the li tianxi he knew, the liu xiao he was close with, etc. this new timeline li tianxi is still li tianxi, and he’ll always love her. but it’s not the same. it’s not something I think he can easily get over with in just a few days.

iv. an alternative ending

so, liu xiao wasn’t originally supposed to be in this fic.

the original ending that I outlined was that the twins would have their fight and it's a toss up on whether li tianchen stays for li tianxi's recital or leaves for bridon. he stays, of course. in my mind, he didn’t really know if he’d even find liu xiao in bridon at all. he was just riding on flimsy hope, which he throws away in the end for li tianxi.

recently, I saw a post of someone describing different kinds of writers, and I strongly identified with the writer who learned how to write, and was thus described as:

This could be anywhere from taking school classes seriously because they enjoyed writing stories as a kid to literal certifications and jobs in the field. Grammer is flawless. Punctuation is triple checked. Foreign words are in italics. Characters have distinct voices. But their self indulgence is tempered by perfectionism. They know precisely what they want from a fic. Authors notes often feature mutterings about their happiness with the chapter.

and I was like, oh shit. am I not being self-indulgent enough in my fics?

now, to be clear, I think all fics are, to varying degrees, self-indulgent. it’s just that, yeah, I do think I temper my stories in the pursuit of a greater vision. or, put in another way, I think I need to remind myself and put actual effort in being more self-indulgent with my writing.

so, even though I originally envisioned this fic to not have liu xiao in it, I put him in anyway. and I think I actually like the new ending better now?

li tianchen rejecting liu xiao achieves the same effect as the original ending, but with nuance. rejecting bridon meant giving up hope, but because he never finds out where liu xiao actually was, that hope could theoretically still be worth chasing. rejecting liu xiao, however, meant giving up a particular future (and past!) altogether. the rejection is more definitive. and as I said before, one of the guiding questions I followed when writing this fic was, “would this make li tianchen miserable?” and so I think him having to reject liu xiao, even though he doesn’t really want to, answers that question with a resounding yes.

so, I think I learned a lesson here, which is that I should make an effort to be more self-indulgent in my fics lol. li tianchen is my favorite character and I love xiaochen to death, and yet I avoid writing in li tianchen’s pov or writing liu xiao in fics. I promise I’ll write more actual xiaochen-focused fics in the future now. ^^

[streetlights-was-taken]

[postscript] cicadas in winter

← read on AO3

for litwinsweek2025. day 4: trust, liminal spaces, home.

I used to write postscripts more often, but I haven’t gotten around to writing them lately because most of the time, I already wrote my character thoughts in my main blog, and the fic is just an exploration of those thoughts. this is the opposite of my genshin fics, for example, where I don't talk about characterization much I just go straight into fic writing. so the postscripts felt necessary for those.

but then I remembered that the reason I created this sideblog in the first place was to document my writing process. moreover, cicadas in winter was written much more like my genshin fics, where I worked out my thoughts directly through the fic instead of making a post about it first.

I'm going to make an effort to write postscripts more often for my fics again. eventually, I want to post about the writing process for some of my already-published fics as well. I should really do so before the year ends, while my memories of writing them are still relatively fresh in my mind.

for now though, I'll start with the postscript for cicadas in winter.

i. li tianxi & wang qing

okay, I lied. I actually did make tumblr posts about these two before (1, 2) which are the main basis for the fic. however, they're quite short, so I feel like I didn't really get to articulate my thoughts too much in these posts.

the thing that actually sparked my inspiration for writing these two together was when I was watching this therapist (euro brady) who plays video games on youtube and analyzes their stories through a psychological lens. I was watching his let's play of the stanley parable which tackles, among other things, themes of agency and control, or lack thereof. typically, main characters tend to want more agency and control. the main protagonist, stanley, is the type of person who doesn't necessarily yearn for it, or doesn't have such high ambitions that demand more agency from him. this is directly challenged by the narrator.

I wanted to explore li tianxi and wang qing in a similar manner. because it's near impossible for them to meet in a canon timeline, a hypothetical scenario such as this would have to dabble in some meta aspects of the narrative, much like with stanley. that is, the scenario I came up with is:

one where wang qing and li tianxi meet in a therapeutic setting

wang qing has established knowledge of li tianxi's ideal place in the timeline to find this meeting extremely odd

how this all came to be… doesn't really matter in the end. this happens in a to-be-erased timeline

with that in mind, I wanted to develop their relationship through the following ideas:

the central question I wanted to explore with li tianxi is: if you were given freedom, what would you do with it? specifically, I wanted to approach this through the lens of li tianxi (as I understand it in canon, though other people's interpretations may differ) yearning for a romantic version of the past (regardless of how terrible it actually was) rather than dreaming about an ideal future. and a younger li tianxi indirectly canceling her parents' divorce because she didn't want things to change. I think we usually want the best for the characters, for good things to happen to them. and certainly, there are other factors that prevent li tianxi from exercising agency (e.g. living in abusive and tightly-controlled environments). but even so, the way I see it, li tianxi yearns stability more than freedom (like stanley, in the stanley parable). attaining freedom won't do much good if you don't know what to do with it, and are not used to wielding it yourself. this, however, is something that can be practiced

and then, I thought, this would also be an interesting question to ask wang qing as well. she, too, (possibly) mourns a past she could never go back to (bahati), that served as her home even when it was terrible to her (the bullies). she, too, like li tianxi, allows herself to be possessed by a person she trusts (shao yuanyuan)

the extent to which wang qing knows or agrees with shao yuanyuan's time travel abilities remains to be seen. I don't want to make big assumptions in canon. in fic, however, I think we can explore the possibility of wang qing being a peripheral accomplice in changing the past. what does she actually feel about that? li tianchen used li tianxi('s likeness and disappearance) to lure out cheng xiaoshi so he can change the past. what does she feel about that?

finally, it's hard to find someone who will make the effort to communicate with li tianxi, which adds to her loneliness. so I think it would be interesting to see her interact with someone who is a therapist and body language reader

the concept of transference, and possession by the people they trust (shao yuanyuan, li tianchen) being a kind of transference.

a lot of my thoughts on their relationship are things I couldn't really define myself until I started writing (pantser problem, lol). it took me writing around 3.5k words of the draft to finally realize what I was really trying to get at with wang qing, which is that if shao yuanyuan wants to change the past, and if wang qing is aware of it (these are big IFs because they are not confirmed in canon), how does she feel about it?

how does wang qing feel about living in a timeline knowing that it may end at any time, a timeline that is only temporary? it's a contrast to li tianxi, who in this timeline, gets to live beyond when she is allowed, and is thus encouraged to make the most out of it. to imagine a future worth living towards. (the ability to imagine a good future is also something that can be practiced).

their meeting being set in a to-be-erased timeline kind of adds layers to the freedom question. if this timeline will eventually be erased, were they actually free at all? the knowledge of timelines can become a curse for wang qing. but in li tianxi's case, bridon is nothing but full of hope and possibilities, should she be brave enough to embrace them.

ii. fic structure

structure and form are one of those things I need to establish at the beginning of the fic before I actually write. I am not the kind of writer who can write without a solid idea of how the fic will look like, because I write around the form of it. it's why for my more stylistic fics (like time is a vinyl record, or the many, many experimental WIPs I have that remain unpublished), I actually work on the work skin first before finishing the draft.

the evolution of my ideas for this fic is as follows:

I already knew I wanted this to be in wang qing's pov

I could write the whole fic as if it's wang qing's SOAP therapy notes. but that makes the pov restricted to just wang qing, and removes the chance to show her actual interactions with li tianxi

I could mix the two, interspersing notes with dialogue. but wang qing's observations would kill the pacing, and I wanted to show how the notes are made simultaneously as the session progresses

I thought about taking some inspiration from the treat I received during the sgdlrexchange2025 event. it's a fic about liu xiao & wang qing reading each other during an intake session. the two-column approach allows the two characters to share the same time and space, so we can read two things happening simultaneously. I thought about doing a similar approach

I didn't want the columns to be of equal widths though, because I wanted the main story to still be about the therapy session, and for wang qing's notes to be more like her sotto voce commentary, footnotes to the main text. so I thought about doing cornell-style notes instead where the main story lives in the larger column, while the shorter column (usually reserved for "key points") is where I'll put wang qing's notes

this… looks absolutely terrible on mobile lol. so, scratch that

I was close to just doing this like a normal fic, but then I remembered: collapsibles! and so came another idea. I wanted to simulate an experience similar to when a reader annotates a book and writes corresponding notes in the margins. wang qing is “annotating” the session (specifically, marking the client’s body language) and making therapy notes based on her observations. I could do that with collapsibles! plus, it works even if the user turns off work skins on AO3, though it wouldn't look as pretty

as an added bonus, I think the annotation style also adds an extra layer to the fic being in wang qing's pov. clicking on paragraphs with the body language highlighted kind of simulates "being" wang qing in the sense that we as the readers also zero in on the body language or words she finds interesting, and then do the extra interaction (clicking) to gain insight from it, all without necessarily interrupting the pacing and flow of the therapy session (since these are all optional side commentary).

at least, that's the idea anyway. you'll have to tell me if the execution worked or not.

iii. cicadas and therapy

when I was drafting the therapy session, I immediately knew I wanted wang qing to do an art therapy session.

a lot of the therapy talk comes from a mix of research, my own experience with therapy (yes, my therapist also gave me the emotions wheel lmao. there was a time when I, too, was terrible at describing my own emotions beyond just calling them "bad"), and like I said before, watching a lot of therapist let's play videos lol.

when I got to the part about what exactly li tianxi's anxiety would be drawn like, I was actually stumped. at first, I thought she might draw a fox (representing her past self) or a rabbit (representing the culprit she chose from the personality test).

instead, I settled on cicadas purely for the extended metaphors. the primary reason is because I stumbled upon the expression 静若寒蝉 (jìng ruò hán chán) which translates to "as quiet as a cicada in winter." this describes someone who who cannot speak or express their thoughts due to fear or concern. I think this fits li tianxi's arc in S2.

I then researched anything else I could find about cicadas in chinese culture.

there is a story about how lao zi saw a bird eat a mantis who eats a cicada, which I thought ties quite neatly with the hunter-beast metaphor li tianchen was enamored with. cicadas being the most prey-like creature in this chain of "hunters who are also prey"

cicadas are used in a lot of chinese art! they represent rebirth, immortality, purity, transformation

they are considered pure, subsisting on dew and the purest of pure things: tree sap

so, yes. lots of cicada metaphors. it might have been too much tbh, but I thought it was pretty neat lol.

this isn't referenced in the fic because it's not relevant, but as a bonus: liu min often refers to his victims as insects (at least in the english translations/subtitles)

as always, while I did do some research, please feel free to correct me here or in the fic comments if I got anything wrong!

iv. references and inspirations

art therapy ideas to manage your anxiety

静若寒蝉 (jìng ruò hán chán) — as quiet as a cicada in winter

cicadas as symbols of rebirth in chinese art

but cicadas have been in chinese art for millenia

the mantis hunts the cicada

euro brady's let's play of the stanley parable

[trench-knife]

Didn't get around to editing Grub Out but I did write a bit of late-night poetry. It's been a while. Feeling rusty.

[streetlights-was-taken]

[postscript] the gardener who only collects seeds

← read on AO3

for venlumiweek2023.

day 6: time loop au / "say you'll remember me"

i. conceptualizing the fic

oh god. I'll be honest, I wasn't planning to do this fic at all. but I think time loop and memory are very cool concepts and I would be remiss not to write anything for the day 6 prompts when I have a series dedicated to exploring these very concepts (caesura).

I shuffled through a bunch of ideas. I already had a "time loop"-ish idea back in february, but it was too ambitious to finish before this year’s venlumi week starts. it's like a choose your own adventure fic. if you're interested, I have a demo of how it works here (archive-locked, so you need an AO3 account to access).

unfortunately, writing that fic is the equivalent to writing 9+ fics and becoming an indie game designer. I know my limits. (I might still try writing it one day. but it will definitely take some time.)

the second idea I had for a time loop fic was to write about a storyteller (venti) rewriting their story over and over because it’s never perfect. and each rewrite of the story manifests as a time loop for the characters within it. he does this until he can create a beautiful story, but also because he deeply cares for the characters in it (lumine) and wants the best for them.

but I decided I couldn’t write it exactly that way because I don’t think venti is that much of a perfectionist. he observes and he records, but he's pretty chill about how events unfold. I think that would be more believable for lumine to be the perfectionist, given the hints of her having a martyr/hero complex. however, I do think venti is a great spectator-type of character, and I don’t want his affinity for memories/wind/time to go to waste.

I ended up with the semi-final idea for this fic after taking inspiration from this tumblr post about self-inflicted time loops:

a self-inflicted time loop where lumine keeps rewinding time until she can save everyone in teyvat. venti, who records everything through the winds, is aware of each time loop. lumine, who loses her own humanity as she becomes obsessed with doing a perfect run, rewinding at the slightest inconvenience and failing to connect with the people she wants to save with every loop. and finally venti, who takes pity on her and erases her memory, because he knows lumine will always save teyvat, just as she has 167 times. but she cannot save herself.

it's a little tragic and bittersweet… but I guess I really like writing this kind of fic. I developed the lore around this a bit more as I wrote (more in the next section).

other ideas I considered were:

looping just one event (but genshin doesn't have one that compels me)

doing something similar to link click and life is strange where the character visits the past through photographs (but genshin also didn't compel me here; I like the idea, but I'll probably just write a link click fic if that's the case).

finally, I actually planned for this to only be a 4000-word oneshot because I wanted to finish the fic in one weekend. for some reason, I ended up with 8000 words in three days. uh. yeah.

due to the deadline I set for myself, I did not have the time to polish this fic. I did give this a rough SPAG-edit, but the fic you're reading now is pretty much the first draft with hardly any revisions. there are some concepts that I probably could have executed more elegantly (such as when istaroth breaks the fourth wall). but I didn't really have the time develop this story more, unfortunately.

(there's something quite meta about this too, now that I think about it. we have a fic about a storyteller learning to be satisfied with their story, and what do I — the author of the fic — do? I post the first draft as it is, without revisions 😆)

ii. lore™ and other inspirations

this fic is actually a cool case of plantsing for me. I had a rough outline of the fic for lumine's chapter through the idea I explored above (plotting). but as I was writing venti's chapter, I ended up creating all this lore in the background purely through discovery writing (pantsing).

I was actually going to scrap the idea of venti being a storyteller and teyvat being his story. but then I was thinking of another fic idea (separate from venlumi week) and one of my inspirations for it was the parable of the tree in the in-game book before sun and moon. there is a line there that says:

for it is the god of moments who is able to take "seeds" from this "moment" into the past and the future.

this is where I got the idea of turning each time loop into a seed! this also ties neatly into the phrase, "seeds of stories, brought by the wind, cultivated by time."

the idea of storyteller venti soon evolved into him not just writing a story to be told, but composing a world/story to be "planted" into the fabric of reality. in a way, all the time loops are simulations of a reality that is yet to be created. (this is also an idea I played with in the cyoa demo too, though I wasn't really sure if I was going to use that idea in this fic until I started writing venti's chapter).

the title is also a play on this concept. the gardener is, of course, venti, who collected 256 seeds over the course of composing the world of teyvat.

composing is a neat word because it refers to the act of creating through artistic labor, and it is specifically tied to the idea of producing works of music and literature. which is exactly what a bard does! so I used composer as the title of... whatever it is venti and istaroth does.

with all of these elements in place, I can't help but take inspiration from other works as well. specifically:

svsss: my favorite thing about this novel is shen yuan and shang qinghua’s relationship with the narrative, so I was also inspired by that as well. particularly, how shen yuan’s kindness literally changed the narrative. and the overall readership/authorship commentary we have from shang qinghua. (cumplane also happens to be my favorite ship from this novel, which is fun to think about some meta subtext fuckery going on there where all the other characters falling for sqq just further legitimizes cumplane because those characters are all figments of sqh's imagination and— okay I'll stop here now because this is not the point of this post. but yeah basically the idea of the author falling for someone in the story and the world reflecting those intentions.)

twewy: I wrote a lot of twewy fics back in the day so you can't expect me to write about composers and not think about twewy. twewy doesn't really tie into the fic too much besides the whole composer thing, but when you're really into twewy it just makes the fic extra fun I think. like I said in the end notes, I was this 🤏 close to write seed:168 where venti knowingly calls lumine by name before asking for it, just like how joshua does it with neku in week two.

finally, I decided on 168 loops for lumine as a reference to the number of materials you need to ascend a character (this is also the same number of loops in the dream-battle samsara with scaramouche).

I decided on 88 loops for venti because 256 was the number of dots I can use for the hourglass art lol. it was just a happy coincidence that 256-168=88, and that 88 is a neat number to end a time loop with.

iii. a time loop is a puzzle

it really is! often, the character is already stuck in some way before the time loop starts, and the time loop breaks when they either achieve character development or break the puzzle that is trapping them.

I think lumine and venti approach the time loop puzzle from opposite ends. lumine regresses through her time loop. she becomes less connected to the world through it, and she aims for perfection that she can't achieve. she starts seeing her friends as more like characters in an unskippable cutscene than as people.

meanwhile, venti actually grows through his time loop. he began as a composer, but only through going through several lifetimes does he start to understand what it actually means to live and to love. he connects more with the world around him as he goes through the loops. he sees his characters more as people, as friends, and he is delighted that lumine can bring out the complexities that they offer instead of letting them stay as tropey stereotypes.

for both characters, the time loops are self-inflicted. they can stop at any time. venti lets go of his control over the time loops to lumine because that was his ultimate expression of love at that time. this was proof that he grew through the loops.

lumine was actually already in her best form in venti's 87th loop. she was in a world that was designed to love her, and she in turn was a loving person. however, venti advised her to focus on the destination instead of the journey. then he gave her the hourglass. this changes lumine's character and enables her regression in the time loops.

only by breaking the time loop and resetting her back to how she was in the beginning does she go back to her loving self. she was already happy before. venti didn't need to change her.

it is with both time loops that venti learns all his lessons in life and creates the most optimally designed world for lumine to love.

iv. narrative arrangement and the emotional journey

although the story started with lumine's chapter, this is very much a venti-centric story. lumine's chapter, for me, served more as a prologue to what was really going on in the background.

I quite like how I arranged the narrative. it is not chronological, but I think it most effectively delivers the emotional journey I want the reader to experience. lumine's chapter serves as an introduction to the time loop, the kind of world she lives in, and the kind of effects a self-inflicted loop can bring about. lumine knows less about the mechanics of this world, and she is the protagonist of venti's story, so she serves her role well as the one to introduce us this world. it also makes her into an unreliable narrator sometimes.

then she tips the hourglass at the end of her chapter. the reader is then transported to venti's chapter and his time loop. it's a bit of twist later on that his time loop actually happens before lumine's, so we actually get two time loops in one chapter. one is venti's loop, and the other is his pov during lumine's loop.

inserting venti's loop in between two povs of lumine's loop (first chapter, lumine pov; second half of second chapter, venti pov) also shows the contrast of the two loops more. where lumine regresses, venti grows. where venti becomes hopeful, lumine becomes hopeless. and so on, and so forth.

his pov in lumine's time loop is also important to show how much impact lumine leaves in his world. when she loves, the world loves her back. when she is detached, the story breaks apart in different ways. tighnari doesn't trust her, albedo becomes obsessive, festivals become gloomy (and come on. genshin is festival impact. when there are no archon quests, festivals are the bread and butter of this game).

the second chapter has two loops to follow, like an hourglass. the structure of the second chapter is very reminiscent of one imo. though I didn't really plan that out as I was writing; it's just something I noticed during my own read through of the draft. pretty neat how things can end up like that. I think this is what people call serendipity.

v. planting seeds and breaking walls

this part is, admittedly, probably something I could have executed better. I debated over just not doing it, but I wanted to try anyway and see if it works. I love meta bullshit in my stories.

yes, the seed istaroth plants is not really about teyvat: venti's world, but about venti and lumine themselves. about their story through the loops. in other words, the fic you read, the story you witnessed, is exactly the story istaroth planted into reality.

there's some funky implications about this. are we, the readers/author, also observers and composers? hm, yeah, we are. venti even mentions that his composition are just words on a screen.

without its protagonist and without its creator, it is nothing more than words on a screen. a story to be read, but not one that can come to life.

and when istaroth addresses the reader, she also looks beyond the screen.

she looks up, beyond the screen, and smiles. "and that will be a story worth observing."

there are other hints too. the higher dimension is also called the "fourth plane" (aka, the fourth wall). it's even a little cheeky that istaroth says, "we will bear witness to whatever story you choose." because that's exactly what is already happening. every time someone opens this fic and reads it, it is already being observed. we are already bearing witness to the story venti and lumine composed.

well, that was my intention with all of those lines anyway. I'm not sure if it was too subtle or too obvious, or if it fell flat and didn't quite land like I wanted to.

either way, I tried. I'll let the reader decide on that.

vi. ascii art?

honestly, I've thought about looking up if I can do ASCII art on AO3. but I only gave myself three days to finish this whole thing, so I decided against it.

I still ended up coding hourglasses in HTML while procrastinating on this fic lol.

fun fact: the lower half of the hourglass in the first chapter (the triangle, excluding the falling dots) add up to 256 dots. the hourglass in venti's chapter (including the neck) add up to 88 dots.

[streetlights-was-taken]

[postscript] cottonmouth lovers

← read on AO3

postscript was originally posted on 230317; re-posted (and edited) today to fix some tagging issues on the blog.

for venlumiweek2023.

day 4: modern au, “I’ll love you more than you’ll ever know”

i. conceptualizing the fic

this fic turned into something completely different from my initial plan. cottonmouth lovers was supposed to be about the fourth idea in this fic ideas list: an exes to lovers wedding fic. to quote:

[venti and lumine] meet again and get together at a wedding for a mutual friend. I want to play around with the idea of how they could feasibly break up if they didn’t have the maturity to handle a relationship yet. I think they would basically have a cycle of venti being an ultra-romantic and idealizing lumine and failing to see the imperfections that make her unique, bolstered by lumine’s attitude of trying to solve everything on her own and not wanting to be vulnerable around others (a twist on the hero complex). but mostly, I want to play with the idea of them seeing each other in a new light after they’ve been apart and had time to mature. for example, venti seeing lumine in a more realistic lens and realizing all the new ways she changed, comparing the present to the past, etc.

none of that happens in the fic lol. so what changed?

when I was drafting cottonmouth lovers, I already finished my draft for re:flect. re/fract. it had the running theme of venti seeing different sides of lumine and trying to figure her out, over and over. I felt that this was a bit too similar to the emotional core of what I wanted to write for the exes to lovers wedding fic, so I discarded that idea.

second, I was also planning to write life in the rearview, whose plot revolves around venti and lumine helping out with someone else’s wedding plans. as of the writing of this postscript, I have not started on the draft for it yet, but I wanted to write a scene where they pretend to be engaged so they can participate in a wedding cake taste test. I didn’t want to reuse the wedding setting for cottonmouth lovers, so that idea was scrapped as well.

thankfully, the fic was saved because I was watching next in fashion (season two, which is a lot worse than season one unfortunately) and there was a challenge where two designers created a pair of outfits whose story is about this couple who are on their way to a new year’s party. I was inspired to work with this setting, especially since new year is associated with new beginnings, of putting the past behind and working on a better future.

then I remembered the song new year’s day by taylor swift. there is a line in the song, I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on new year’s day, which became the basis for venti and lumine’s previous relationship.

and so, cottonmouth lovers was born.

ii. turning venti’s brain OFF

it’s a party! I love house party fics, so I was delighted to write the characters drunk and high and having fun.

I always lean heavily on venti’s barbatos persona whenever I write him in fics (which is why he is a meteorologist here, instead of an artist). I think barbatos is integral to venti and influences why he chooses lumine every time in my venlumi fics. for re:flect. re/fract. this shows up as their shared penchant for thinking of themselves as clever. in cottonmouth lovers, this shows up as their shared identity in being the responsible “mom” friends of their friend groups.

this is obvious in canon!lumine, who is either a heroine of teyvat or a self-proclaimed savior (abyss princess) depending on who you play. for canon!venti, he is a very nurturing archon who would take care of his mondstadt children (a lot of whom aren’t even from mondstadt, but were just adopted into their found families). despite being called an absentee archon and being outwardly carefree with drinking (and in this fic, drugs), he is quite responsible and shows it quietly from behind the scenes.

this is why I had him (and later, lumine) always refilling everyone’s drinks and just generally watching over them during the party. it also ties in with his inability to get drunk. he loves alcohol, loves how it lets people’s inhibitions free. but because he himself is always sober before the party ends, he always has the awareness to be the mom friend, to take care of everyone, to have the time to pick up red cups in the morning and clean up the party.

at the extreme end of this, he ends up having a hard time being “foolish” and risking their lives and dreams for a potentially doomed relationship. he does overthink a bit too much in this fic. give him a break though, he’s in his mid-twenties. he doesn’t have the wisdom and life experience of a couple-thousand-year old archon.

which is why albedo and scaramouche are there to help him chill out. I had a lot of fun writing high!venti. instead of ruminating in the past, he tends to think in metaphors and gets lost in physical sensations. lumine isn’t just pretty; she is the sun. he is a comet following the sun. he is obsessed with how she smells like apples.

one thing I wanted to do with this fic was to write in media res, especially with respect to venlumi’s relationship. I wanted venti to be very present in the moment, and I also didn’t want to spend too much time explaining what happened to venlumi in the past. information about their past is something I wanted to see unfold in the story naturally as callbacks, further driving home how their reunion is just them circling back to the beginning.

the new year is a good time for new beginnings.

iii. writing smut, defining the relationship

this is the first time I ever committed to writing smut. I usually just imply it without going into detail. but seeing how the fic was unfolding, I decided to just try it and challenge myself into writing an explicit sex scene.

this was not how I thought I would write the fic when it was still an “exes to lovers meet at a wedding” idea. but given the setting and state of inebriation and (frankly) desperate mutual pining, it just seemed like a natural thing to happen in the fic.

I worried about how venti thinking in metaphors would ruin the whole thing. I decided to let it be anyway, since I still wanted to show that he’s high, which bolstered how he can act recklessly and foolishly.

however, in the end, they don't officially start a serious relationship. I think they can loosely be friends with benefits. but I don't think venlumi in this fic will start a serious relationship while they're inebriated. they would certainly need to take some time aside, sober, to talk about it.

they can be foolish for one night, and they'll make the most of it. but they are very careful with each other's hearts.

iv. the irodori book club

I thought about writing a whole section about them here and exploring the world I created for them. I have a lot of ideas about their characters that I didn’t get to mention in the fic.

but if I end up writing more fics for this universe and making it into a series, I’ll probably just write a separate post about the book club-verse. when that happens, I’ll link it here!

I do love this fic-verse though, and I’m happy I was able to write them. they make a cool friend group.

[streetlights-was-taken]

[postscript] re:flect. re/fract.

← read on AO3

for venlumiweek2023.

day 2: corruption au.

i. conceptualizing the fic

I first conceived the idea of venti impersonating lumine back in 2021. I was struck with the image of aether, who just woke up, seeing lumine soothe dvalin in the woods. except that’s not actually lumine — that’s venti in disguise. I loved this scene so much that I wanted to write it, but at that time I felt that I didn't have enough material to make a fic out of.

I’m glad I postponed writing it until now. the fic has a stronger voice to it now, since venti’s reason for impersonating lumine is tied to irminsul’s ability to wipe memories. my initial idea was for him to just miss lumine a lot and to impersonate her to soothe aether’s loneliness. while this can hold on its own, the irminsul twist makes the story more interesting and gives it depth.

this fic has turned into more than just venti impersonating lumine. we also see lumine copying aether, and venti seeing lumine in aether. there is a running theme of becoming the one you love, and seeing the one you love in someone else. how different sides of you can be perceived by different people.

the title, of course, is a play on those themes. venti, wanting to preserve the memory of lumine, aims to be her reflection, a perfect mimicry of who she was. but as he learns about lumine outside of herself, he is confronted with how differently other people see her.

how aether is similar, but is not quite the same; a refraction of her image.

ii. unreliable narration, and the folly of being clever

while I was writing this fic, I was also reading emma by jane austen. emma is the story of a girl who’s very clever and smart, but her confidence in her cleverness blinds her from seeing situations clearly sometimes. I highly recommend watching the 2020 adaptation starring anya taylor-joy. it is such a delight to watch.

while reading the book, I thought to myself, “wow, I’d love to write a character like that one day.”

I was maybe half a scene away from finishing this fic when I realized I was already writing this kind of character subconsciously through venti and lumine. I was very surprised, but pleasantly so, since I wasn’t consciously thinking to “write emma” while writing this fic.

much of the fic is centered on this line: we like to think of ourselves as clever, but all our clever tricks have been nothing but folly.

one thing I wanted to explore with abyss lumine and venti is how they both have the tendency to keep secrets and think they have all the answers. this trait gives abyss lumine the confidence to save teyvat. this trait makes barbatos mysterious, and he doesn’t really reveal much to the player despite hinting that he knows way too much than we give him credit for.

this shared trait is also what makes lumine and venti intrigued by one another. in this way, they are the same. they are clever people with long-term plans for the future. I wanted to explore how that cleverness could work against them.

(I mentioned in the end notes that I’ll leave the fic up to reader interpretation. so if you want to keep your interpretations, please ignore the rest of this section and skip to the next.)

venti practices becoming lumine to prepare for the day irminsul wipes her from collective memory. since irminsul can’t change the physical realm, venti turns this practice into habit so that just seeing his reflection as lumine will trigger his true memories and keep irminsul’s fake memories out of the way.

and he’s not wrong! he really does remember the version of lumine that irminsul tried to erase. it’s a very clever trick of overcoming irminsul. but venti did not have the foresight to realize how much this will hurt himself. how much it will cause him to ache for her more, how he allows lumine to curse him to be there for aether in a way he wasn’t planning to. the cruelty of becoming, instead of being with, the one you love.

this is why venti commends dainsleif, because he saw this side of her much more clearly than venti did.

similarly, lumine had her own clever tricks as well. seeing venti try to become her, she trains venti to become the big sister that aether needs when lumine is not there. she was not doing this out of malice to venti, but we cannot deny that this is manipulation on her part. yet, even so, lumine was kind. she asked venti to wear cecilias, so that a part of venti will stay in that form. she didn’t want venti to completely lose himself in his impersonation.

and she’s not wrong! venti did become the perfect companion to aether, the big sister that knew all the ways to soothe and take care of aether’s loneliness. what lumine (and venti) did not account for was the cecilia. lumine asked venti to wear cecilias out of kindness to him. and yet, after the irminsul wipe, after she becomes the abyss princess, she is filled with turmoil. whenever she wears cecilias and looks at her own reflection, the flower triggers feelings of confusion and anger that she doesn’t understand. she doesn’t have her memories, but her body knows that this reflection is not her.

the cecilia is a clever trick. it makes her seek out venti to figure out why she’s confused, why her reflection is lying to her. it is also a source of turmoil for the abyss princess, a source of shame for making her seek out the gods of teyvat.

we don’t see this side of lumine since this is a very venti-centric fic, and I think that’s fine. some of it is implied. but at the end of the day, venti himself is an unreliable narrator, so there are many things that the fic doesn’t confirm.

he doesn’t call out lumine for manipulating him to be her replacement when he’s with aether. he states that dainsleif and aether knew the real lumine, that they figured her out and venti hasn’t. protecting aether is a duty blurred between lumine’s wish for her brother to be safe, and venti’s desire to carry out lumine’s wishes.

it’s up in the air if venti was deceiving himself about not figuring lumine out, and if he knew he was being manipulated by her. maybe he allowed it to happen, or maybe he didn’t.

a clever person wouldn’t have been fooled. and venti and lumine, in this fic, like to think of themselves as clever people.

again, it’s up to the reader to decide how unreliable venti is as a narrator.

iii. canon compliance

I wrote this before caribert came out, so there are inconsistencies with the timeline. caribert asserts that lumine traveled with dainsleif after the catclysm and created the abyss order afterwards.

of course, that is not what happens in the fic.

to insert venti into the timeline, I made lumine and dainsleif travel before the cataclysm. I quite like this decision. this gives lumine depth because her decision to leave aether stems from her love for him, for him to wake up to a better world. this ties into her desire to save teyvat, which is a desire that is easy to twist and gives irminsul some material to base off of when rewriting memories. this desire might also be something exploitable by The Voice in the caribert quest.

this also contrasts with how aether saw her. the lumine he knew wouldn’t have wanted to stay for good. but lumine did. lumine, changed by this world and moved by venti and dainsleif, wanted to make teyvat their home.

I also enjoyed writing dainsleif here. I think he and venti would have an interesting dynamic. since they traveled before the cataclysm, dainsleif is more flexible in his beliefs and is able to befriend venti despite being an archon, since he knows venti is not exactly a fan of celestia. they don’t begrudge each other, and they are both aware of how much they both love lumine. perhaps this is why dainsleif looks out for venti. it’s a shame he wasn’t able to turn venti into a proper atheist (from his perspective) and free him from his chains to celestia.