#oH as a quick elaboration on the silly little vision hc: when someone becomes an archon their vision goes dark.

[averlym]

hello omg this reply is so late i'm so sorry but

beiguang??????? beloveds?????? omg omg omg your fic is like. god-tier i love it omg omg the feels. the imagery. the metaphors fhdfhdfdhfdf

“i dislike losing what is mine,” she repeats, voice softer, “but i do not mind, once in a while, losing to you.”

aaaaaa????????? it's literally. i. screaming crying they are SO sweet i just. aAA ‘i am yours but also my own person’ BEST SHIP DYNAMICS HONESTLY

crying screaming the feels it's so tooth-rottingly fluffy omg

bro i would love to play liyue millenial. i want to play liyue millenial so badly you have no idea it's like. i need to play it. mihoyo drop the board game omg i would give them all my money for liyue millenial

it's like. it's my dream chess game. because i absolutely suck at chess and monopoly (omg ningguang basically invented monopoly didn't she) but games that mirror society?? are so beloved??

like. oh you checkmated my king but while you weren't looking the pawns overthrew the monarchy and live under a republic now. nice try. 5d chess vibes.

modern ning dominates 5 dimensional chess you can't change my mind

adgshjdsfhj but also. chess where halfway through the rules swap and suddenly the pawns are the most important part because viva la revolution. you have a set timer and when before half the time runs out, you have to grab the king. otherwise, when the halfway mark is reached the rules flip, the monarchy falls, and if someone has no more pawns, they lose. if both players have pawns the most important objective now is to remove all pawns before their revolution breaches country borders.

(my sister refuses to play chess with me because a) she's better than me and b) i keep instigating a prison break and she gets mad)

-🍵

beiguang is dignified fluff idk how else to put it they exude knowledgeable 大姐energy even though beidou is the more approachable one. big sister/ cool aunt vibes.

also yes!!! liyue millennial!!! i imagine like the pieces ninguang owns are like handcrafted wooded works of art in their own right and it's terrifying but also so cool and pretty :OOO

modern ningguang would be so good at any kind of strategy game i think. the real question here would probably be zhongli because is he going to do scary good because of mr god of war and contracts rex lapis??? or is he going to fail spectacularly because of mr funeral consultant with as much common sense as he has mora (none. the answer is none.)

i am so so terrible at chess but also that sounds hilariously fun. bestie! the chaos of that is so genius. also also, how do country borders work in chess?? i'm just imagining all the black squares are black territory and all the white squares are white territory. after the pawns take control, do all the other pieces except the king attempt to work against them? do the pawns turn against the nobles on their side attempting to get rid of them? do the nobles regardless of black or white work together as a whole to reinstate a king? (a pawn makes its way across the board, confused, and turns into a queen. it's queen, equally confused, just accepts the new queen as a spouse. alternatively, enemies to friends to lovers arc as they vie for queenship, with the new queen as leader of the revolution. no one else knows which queen is which because they look exactly the same, leading to some identity theft shenanigans. i'm overly invested in this subplot.)

speaking of games that mirror society i have never played it but dnd sounds quite fun

... jean related ficling under the cut? hurt/comfort vibes?? lowkey a character study?? here u go anyways? (i have written three fics in the past year and here is the last one)

a/n: au where signora is a bit more violent and venti protects mondstadt from her and saves his gnosis-but gets badly injured during the fight and dissipates into wind (he's recovering! elsewhere! it's just... thousand year naps where you come back mean that your mortal human friends have lost you for the remaining less than a century of their lives and you're essentially, well, dead.)

basically, the gnosis falls into jean's hands. temporary anemo archon/ acting grandmaster jean gunhildr adapts.

dandelions

jean, in the aftermath of becoming an archon.

vision holders, allogenes- they possess the power to ascend to celestia and become gods, like venessa's legend. but archons have no need for visions. as anemo archon, venti's vision was a fake glass ball, gifted to him by the anemo archon. himself.

when jean became an archon, as the gnosis became part of her, her eyes and hair glowed. her vision did not.

there is a funeral for venti the bard, held under the windrise tree, after all has been said and done. customary as it is to pass visions to family for safekeeping, the wind has no blood relatives, and a gray vision lies dull in the ground as they cover it with dirt, the body having dissipated into wind. the traveller lays some cecilias nearby, while jean places dandelions beside the grave. at her waist, a glass ball glows the same colour as the flowers.

buried that day is the anemo archon, and the gift he once gave her. what do you lose when you attain godhood? a vision. a gift from a god, now gone. a friend.

craving some semblance of normalcy, jean resumes her position as acting grandmaster, and just sort of lets the worship of the anemo archon continue as if it wasn't her.

perhaps this denial is unhealthy. jean buries herself in too much work to care. venti lost himself in songs and wine. she loses herself in helping the people of mondstadt. her people now.

in the disaster that strikes mondstadt, the statue is broken. jean remains the one that the citizens look to for advice, and following said advice, they rebuild the statue as it was before. resting under the hood with the traveller, perched on the reconstructed shoulders of barbatos, jean learns of the nameless bard. of how the shape venti took was to honour his friend.

maybe, in the quiet of her room, jean stands in front of a mirror with twin braids. the traveller showed her how to do them, murmuring something about getting to braid blond hair again. jean looks in the mirror, makes herself shorter, considers dying her hair dark until teal ends are the only bright parts left. then, she leaves for her office in her usual form, orders for rebuilding the statue of barbatos on the tip of her tongue.

she cannot, will not take the shape of venti and his long-dead friend, so she will just have to make sure their legacy carries on in a different way. in the water that surrounds the statue, jean glimpses her reflection, and she feels both guilty and relieved.

she chooses to leave the statues of the seven in the shape of venti. when she visits windrise, she sits by the statue and his grave and thinks about simpler times.

by the time the statue is built, mondstadt has settled down, and people are once again attempting to climb up the statue to blow dandelion seeds. jean doesn't mind, actually kind of likes the hopes and dreams of her people floating through her winds. it's a direct feedback loop to better take care of the citizens of mondstadt, probably better than the sheafs of paperwork reviews she sometimes has to go through.

the thing about being an archon is human needs are a bit less necessary now, so jean often finds herself fulfilling these dandelion wishes instead of sleeping.

this doesn't go unnoticed by the knights- one morning the wind floats fluffy seeds by her desk, and the dandelion knight stops writing to listen. amber's voice earnestly wishes that "jean remembers to take care of herself", and this becomes a daily occurrence, with kaeya's teasing, lisa's flirtatious threats, and klee's childish lisp flying on dandelion seeds. a smile in barbara's voice, and even an occasional reminder from a certain darknight hero. every morning, the winds whisper this into her ears, and jean loves her friends so so much, loves this city so much, that she sometimes forgets the anxiety that came when venti pushed his gnosis into her hands.

at night, when the city is asleep, jean sits in the palms of the statue, feeling held and feeling small and pondering immortality. how mortal venti was, how immortal he was. the absentee god who led their city to freedom, a wind spirit who took the shape of his lost friend, and- the bard who sung in front of his statue, who mimicked paimon, who tried to scam diluc of wine and would accept payment in apples. so very human.

jean feels a quiet sort of sadness, reconciling the image of the anemo archon who gave her her vision and the happy-go-lucky bard who was her friend. sitting in the palms of this statue is the closest thing she'll ever have to being near venti again. she looks up at the giant face, and then looks down below to where a young bard would have been strumming his lyre.

if the traveller notices the anemo archon using the winds to carry her high enough to hug the statue of the seven at windrise, it's never mentioned to jean.