#leifythoughts

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despite being an old varka truther i’ve decided that i kind of like young varka

because let’s take a look at what he’s done for a second:

promoted diluc to cavalry captain at 14

made jean, at 17, investigate grievous acts of treason at the highest levels of the knights

left on an expedition without his logistics company, taking the cavalry but not its captain with him

and most recently: picked up a phone call while cornered on the battlefield

all this makes so much more sense if instead of being some grizzled older general with decades of battlefield experience, he’s Literally Just Some Guy in his 30s

like promoting diluc to cavalry captain at 14 makes more sense if varka himself was like 25 at the time. he was likely also promoted at 14 and didn’t see the issue. “let’s make this teenager captain of a company” probably sounds like a great idea if you yourself are barely out of college

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*appears as if summoned* did someone say fic recs?

first off, op: really really great points on diluc and the diluc&kaeya relationship. i'll do some rambling about diluc characterization in the tags but for now, here are four fics i think might fit what you're looking for!

this work, from @chidorinnnnn, is THE diluc&kaeya fic in my mind. like, no fic has ever topped this one as a study of their dynamic (and probably no fic ever will). the strange muted understanding. carefully finding your footing. the way things could have been and maybe should have been but aren't, and maybe that's okay too. bonus points for the parallel between their fathers, which you mentioned too

moving on to a more diluc-centric piece, from @dandelion-wings. it is so so hard to find good diluc fic because he is such a strange and contradictory character, but this diluc makes the most sense in my head. featuring genuinely gut-wrenching interactions between the boys (one line in particular tears me up every time) and a build-up to tragedy that rivals macbeth

bit of a different piece here: a modern au in which diluc and kaeya reconcile at the end of the world (tw major character death). i cry every time i read this one. their dynamic in this fic is similar to the first one but more messy - you know, finding your footing with the person who used to be your everything now that you are different people than you used to be, and also the world is ending

i read this more than a year ago and have not stopped thinking about it since. it's a longer read but so worth it. the worldbuilding is so intricate and every character and relationship in here is so beautifully fleshed out - not just diluc and kaeya but also the people of mondstadt and how they relate to one another. this author also has an amazing (and shorter) crepus&kaeya fic that i think you might enjoy

anyway! hope that was helpful. these are my four favourite diluc&kaeya fics ever so i hope you enjoy them! thank you for sharing your thoughts with us as well!

The Genshin Impact fandom is fascinating to me when it comes to fanfics, because I feel like I struggle to find any fics that really *get* the characterization of certain characters and I'm loathed to write my own because dammit I just want to read the specific itch I crave without resorting to creating it. Give me three more months and I'll cave in.

For example, Diluc is one of my favorites and I find his backstory fascinating in terms of his father Crepus possibly being more morally ambiguous than most fans are willing to admit and how little we know of Diluc's murder spree in Snezhnaya.

For example which Harbinger(s) did he have a run-in with? Will we find out more about the secret intelligence network that took him in, that he apparently had a high position in? Did he ever find the answers he was searching for? The list goes on.

It's hard for me to find the specific characterization of him I crave for in fics because I think his platonic relationship with Kaeya is incredibly nuanced and complex but I feel like his character often gets assassinated for Kaeya angst but like, the man had the worst birthday ever?

Imagine being Diluc, living through a literal worst nightmare. Your dad is dead after you failed to protect him yourself. Not only is your dad dead but he died after wielding a delusion--you dont even know what a delusion is but its clearly bad news. Why the fuck did your father have it and how?

On top of this, the Favonius Knights--the organization you proudly served and the very organization that your father heavily encouraged you to serve--insists on covering up the truth because it makes them look bad. The Favonius Knights, who are supposed to be honorable and uphold integrity, are anything but that.

Then your adoptive brother, who you've known for years and trust with your life, shows up and tells you he's been spying for a foreign nation since you were kids with the intent of harming Mondstadt and everything about your relationship is possibly all one big lie and well--how do you not snap??

Now, I'm also incredibly fond of Kaeya and he was just as traumatized by Crepus's death. He was wracked with guilt for *feeling* relieved that he didn't have to worry about betraying his birth father for his adoptive father since Crepus was dead. He anticipated Diluc's anger and felt like their duel was a punishment for his lies.

To me, it hints that Kaeya probably didn't reveal the truth expecting Diluc's understanding, but rather he knew how he would react and perhaps he wanted Diluc to strike him down in that duel. Or at the very least, he wanted to distance himself from Diluc and cut off ties in order to avoid emotional attachment stopping him from his mission.

I personally head-canon that Diluc withdrew upon seeing Kaeya's vision because well--why would the gods bless Kaeya with a vision if he truly had the intent to harm Mondstadt? So in spite of what Kaeya revealed, he isn't a threat. But there's still a lot of hurt there to navigate through.

I think it's fascinating seeing where they stand in present game because Kaeya obviously has the ideology of working the system from within. He stayed in the knights (even taking over his brother's position) and with Jean rooted out the Inspector and his cronies.

Meanwhile Diluc just isn't that type of person. He doesn't settle, he refuses to work in a system he views corrupt, he rather accomplish what he can outside of it. Curiously, he doesn't challenge the status quo beyond being vocal of his distaste of the Knights.

This is head-canon fantasyland, but I like to envision Kaeya and Diluc do use a lot of the same informants and collaborate on intel relating to the safety of Mondstadt (especially since Diluc can move in ways against the Fatui that the Knights can't due to political reasons) but they struggle to have the same connection as before.

For example, Diluc's story quest--Kaeya was essentially giving Diluc an alibi with the Knights. Even if Jean damn well knows who it is, they still have to have official documentation stating otherwise.

Kaeya is good at reading people, he has to be given how he was raised to be a child spy. But I like to think he struggles to read Diluc like before. Diluc is much more jaded, pessimistic, quieter than before. He prefers to work on his own as much as possible. From Kaeya's pov, the only person he's seen Diluc willing to fully trust enough to work alongside with is the Traveler, and he states as much.

The opposite is true of Diluc. Kaeya was his shadow, a quiet but inquisitive, witty observer. Cavalry Captain Kaeya is much more outgoing and friendly, his charm on full display. Did he ever really truly know Kaeya or did he only show Diluc what he wanted him to see? Is Kaeya happier this way?

Fanon often depicts Kaeya as essentially being barred from the dawn winery from the duel by Diluc himself, but I don't think that's quite the case. Much rather, given the reason he told Diluc that night, I think he views himself as undeserving due to unresolved guilt.

Canon seems to hint at all of this through his hangout and Hidden Strife, the latter of which is unfortunately a time-limited event that occurred before I even played (hoyo please stop having heavy lore drops occur in time limited events).

I think the two want to trust each other again, but both are afraid of destroying the tentative truce they have so they leave all of it unaddressed. Kaeya refuses to be completely truthful ever again and Diluc acknowledges the past but refuses to discuss it. The tragedy in their relationship that neither is at fault for what happened--it's a twisted emotional mess of grief and heartbreak.

The last point I'd like to touch on is the parallels between Kaeya and Diluc both being essentially child soldiers for their fathers' causes.

For Kaeya, being abandoned in Mondstadt to be a child spy is the most overt. For Diluc? Despite Crepus's strong ambition to be a Favonius Knight and to have a vision--neither happened for him. In Diluc's vision story, it states that he views his vision being a result of their "shared" ambition, hinting that his vision was granted after Diluc's strong resolve to achieve his father's dreams for him.

We know Crepus heavily encouraged Diluc down this path at very young age, given Diluc received his vision at age 10 and became the youngest Captain at age 14. In some ways, I'm sure Kaeya was a bit jealous of Diluc for having a loving father present in his life that was overtly proud of him.

I am not saying Crepus wasn't a good father, I think he cared immensely for Kaeya and Diluc both, but I do think he did some morally grey shit.

Diluc abandoning his vision is fascinating and it's almost never explored in fics. He is the only vision holder we know of (aside from the Inazumauns whose visions were taken by force) that had their ambition for their vision shaken in such a way that they voluntarily discarded their vision for a time and only took it back after reigniting a new ambition to have it (and as far we know the only allogene that faced no negative setbacks from using a delusion long-term without their vision present).

I don't know where to end all of this, except if you have ragbros fic recommendations that you believe cover it in a more nuanced way, let me know!

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i’m so sorry to always be running over here to yap when my tweets breach containment but i feel like y’all might enjoy this one

so i made this thread:

and someone responded:

AND AT FIRST I WAS LIKE. ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THE SAME WOMAN? LIKE:

jean? jean gunnhildr? average at best??

BUT THEN i was like… hold on. hold on. i kind of see the vision

cause hear me out right.

imagine you’re jean. you’re sort of plain and you’ve never really had time to figure out how to be pretty because that would require more time and effort than you can reasonably devote to it because your duties to mondstadt take up all your time. you’ve never dated anyone and that’s kind of a sore spot for you because you desperately want to experience the kind of love you’ve read about in your novels - but again, no one’s really interested in you because you’re not physically attractive and you certainly don’t have the kind of personality that draws people to you

and so you decide that if you can’t be pretty and carefree like the girls you admire, you can at least be GOOD. you throw yourself into training and you work your butt off to do more work and help more people and that’s… enough, more or less. people like you because you’re earnest and hardworking, even though in your more bitter moments you think you’d rather they like you because you’re cute

AND HERE’S THE KICKER. you have a little sister who royally sucks at everything you’re good at. she’s not good with swords, she’s not good at leading, she doesn’t do well on the front lines. but by gods she’s pretty. she has those cute little ringlets and those big blue eyes and that petite figure, and when alice comes to town she takes one look at your sister and says she could be an idol. she could have her pretty little face plastered on billboards across the continent if she wanted. and so she picks up this idol gig and people start lining up to see her. they form a fanclub, they send her gifts, they ask her out, they scream her signature chant at concerts

and you’re not self-centred enough to think that you’ve earned everything you’ve ever gotten. you know your family and your noble blood have opened doors for you that wouldn’t be open for anyone else

but it hurts a little bit, you know? your sweet little sister has the only thing you’ve ever been unable to achieve - and what’s more, she got it through no effort of her own. and you can’t even resent her for it because it’s not her fault you’re plain, but it still rankles, because she’s an idol and she’s beautiful and people love her, and no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work and how many people you help, you’ll always just be plain old jean. and nothing will ever change that

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reading through jean’s character stories today for jarch and this is SENDING me. who is asking jean “repress your feelings until you die” gunnhildr for relationship advice??

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i’m currently going mildly viral on twitter for this tweet:

and it’s really making it clear to me that some of y’all are not playing the same game as i am because like:

my buddy kaeya? my close personal friend kaeya alberich?

like this was a half-baked thought i tweeted out in 30 seconds so you don’t have to agree with the characterization (i’m not even sure i agree with the characterization)

but if y’all are looking me in the eye and telling me that kaeya is unironically a ladies’ man and a player then i’m gonna need you to go back to every single event he’s been in and look at how his shell of facile charm has been ruthlessly and systematically dismantled by the game itself

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i keep seeing people say that kaeya should choose mondstadt over khaenri’ah and obviously everyone has the right to their opinion but i honestly think that would be a disappointing end to his arc

because like. kaeya’s whole arc is marked by two things: 1) his split allegiances, and 2) the question of fate

on the first point: he’s torn between two homelands, two fathers, two loyalties. he walks that line very carefully. the worst moment of his life was when the scales tipped in one direction, supposedly freeing him but instead ensnaring him in a different trap:

on the second point: genshin makes a big deal out of the question of fate. in kaeya’s hangout he pretty explicitly says he intends to change his. if he’s forced to make a decision in the future, as mona’s voice line indicates, is he fated to choose one over the other? or are we operating within a false dichotomy?

from a thematic standpoint, why would hoyoverse set up these carefully balanced loyalties only to force kaeya to pick a side? why would they introduce the idea of defying fate only to force him to cave to his?

i was reading this post earlier and it got me thinking about how kaeya’s eyepatch represents his unwillingness to be forthcoming about his khaenri’ahn loyalties - and because he refuses to acknowledge that aspect of his identity, half of his field of view is obscured. to take that one step further, i’d suggest that to make him choose mondstadt over khaenri’ah (or vice versa) would be to make him keep the eyepatch on for the rest of his life. how can he see himself and his surroundings clearly when one eye is forever covered?

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i like to think about mond trio playing tcg together because:

jean's deck is her, barbara, and kaeya. so cute. so colour-coordinated. so not-meta. it would make some sense to have two healers if she was playing a fontaine hp change meta but she's not. she just picked her favourite people and said "we ball" and tbh i respect it

3/10 for meta

10/10 for vibes

kaeya's deck is significantly more meta. he has benny for heals and mona for quickswap so he can leverage his burst. he and bennett share normal attack patterns and mona has a voice line about him so you could argue he knows both of them at least reasonably well

8/10 for meta

7/10 for vibes

??? diluc? ?????

he and razor canonically know each other but xiangling?????? diluc why is there a random chef in your deck. this lineup doesn't even make sense with the meta either - overload is fine but having two main dpses and one summons dps with no healer is wild

4/10 for meta

3/10 for vibes

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it’s 1am and i’m supposed to be asleep but instead i am here on tumblr to tell you that this:

IS A CRIME

this is a CRIME i say!!

what do you MEAN there is no established “kaeya is protective of jean” tag?? that’s their whole dynamic!

who was it who took over her duties when she was sick? who was it who stepped up as acting acting grand master when she was on vacation? who was it who told the traveler to give her their full support? he looks out for her in every way he can!

like i understand kaeya is a little baby boy. i get it. he is my baby boy as well and i love to make people protective of him. but c’mon team at some point we need to let jean get woobified as well

thank you for coming to my ted talk now i’m off to write kaeya being protective of jean

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if i said the teenage jean-diluc-kaeya-lisa quartet parallels the teenage frederica-varka-crepus-eroch quartet would y'all hear me out

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diluc being made captain at 14 means that he was already a very high rank when he went through puberty, which means that he probably had his voice break at the most awkward times when ordering his knights around, which means that kaeya probably made fun of him for it

i like to think that diluc consoled himself by saying that he would bully kaeya twice as hard when his voice broke - only for kaeya's voice to deepen gracefully and never break. diluc is still mad about that

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since kaeya and diluc have kaevember and aprilluc fanwork events for their birthday months i propose we do one for jean. we can call it jarch. thank you for coming to my ted talk

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hey do y'all wanna hear smth embarrassing

while i was on a social media break i would occasionally miss yapping on here so much that i would. text myself fandom-related thoughts. just to have somewhere to put them. like screaming into the void except the void is whatsapp

anyway here's one

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“i will be better than my mother” not as a declaration of spite but as an act of tribute. you know?

not simply “i will be better than my mother because she messed me up and i refuse to be like her”

but instead “i will be better than my mother because she taught me to be, because she instilled these values into me even though she sometimes failed to live up to them”

“i will be better than my mother because she laid the foundation for me, because she shed the wrongs of the past as best as she could even if she could not lose all of them”

“i will be better than my mother because she would want me to be”

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New Jarch celebration ask! If you were to write a modern (<-optional) AU inspired by your own life/hobby/passion/whatever activity you practice yourself, what would it be like? (This is meant to be Jean centered, but information about other characters are more than welcome too!)

fun fact about me is that i’m a marketer by trade but a journalist by training. so…

KoF newsroom au okay hear me out

jean is the managing editor of a failing newsroom. public trust in journalism is down. half her staff has left for more stable jobs in PR and marketing. her editor-in-chief is off on a sabbatical to barbatos-knows-where and keeps posting gorgeous beach pictures on his instagram story

she looks at the accounts and comes to the realization that they’re bleeding money. they’re running on a skeleton crew with no room for layoffs and she’s already slashed her print issues from 6/year to 4/year. if they don’t get subscriptions up by the end of the year they’re going to have to shutter operations

to save the newsroom she loves, jean and her motley crew of reporters are going to have to put on the biggest talent show break the biggest story this town has ever seen

meet the cast:

jean, the managing editor, is a rising star in the journalism world. she honed her reporting and investigative skills at international gigs in liyue and sumeru before returning home to pick up an editor position at the mondstadt times. she isn’t technically supposed to be in charge of the finances… or of the editorial direction… but with her editor-in-chief on sabbatical and her director of operations off to greener pastures, she kind of just does everything that needs doing. you can often find her and her red pen at the newsroom long after everyone else has gone home

amber is the newspaper’s one and only reporter on the breaking news beat. the times moved away from breaking news a few years ago to focus on more longform stories but amber has stubbornly stuck around. this beat is particularly gruelling because of how quickly news moves - you have to be on your toes all the time, filing sometimes 3-4 stories a day - but amber works tirelessly and with so much enthusiasm that jean sometimes wonders if she’s found something stronger than coffee to get her through the day

lisa is technically the features editor, but since they’re so shorthanded, she’s taken up the responsibility of working with the freelance fact-checkers as well, which jean is desperately grateful for. she doesn’t pull the long hours that jean and amber do, but she gets an incredible amount of work done in her 7-hour workdays. noelle is one of their longtime fact-checkers who’s incredibly meticulous and good at her job - she’s been gunning for a full-time position forever but jean just doesn’t have space in the budget to bring her on

albedo, the lightly mysterious science-prodigy-turned-reporter, heads up the investigative journalists. journos in general tend to be driven by curiosity (read: they love drama) but this bunch in particular loves to stick their noses in things. half their sources only offer information “not for attribution” (their quotes must remain anonymous) or “on background” (they cannot be quoted directly at all). sucrose is a relatively new addition to the team who’s been killing it (somewhat to jean’s surprise) because her inoffensive demeanour makes nervous sources more likely to want to speak with her

eula works the politics beat, which was itself a big headline when she joined the times. no one trusted a lawrence, scion of one of mondstadt’s oldest and most corrupt political dynasties, to report accurately on national politics. but eula has proved herself an invaluable addition to the newsroom - she’s earned a reputation for tough questions and hard-nosed reporting, and has gotten herself thrown out of city hall more than once for refusing to back down from a line of questioning. mika is a younger reporter on the international news beat - he doesn’t have eula’s doggedness, but his head for geopolitics is unparalleled

kaeya is in charge of the lifestyle section - he writes (or assigns) all the fun fluff pieces on celebrities, culture, fashion, food and wine, etc. despite leading the lowest-stakes section, he’s been known to bring jean massive political stories before eula or albedo even catch wind of them. jean suspects he maintains contacts from his time on the crime beat - but when she asks he always just blinks innocently at her and doesn’t respond. he’s also unofficially in charge of babysitting klee, who at the tender age of 8 is the times’s only unpaid intern (mostly because, when alice dropped her into jean’s care, it was easier to give her a title and let her hang around the newsroom than find an after-school program capable of keeping her from causing chaos)