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They call it a privilege. They call it luck. An honor. The youngest Captain in our history, you must be so proud. Your father must be so proud. Keep up the good work, won��t you? Won’t you? And, well. You do not disagree. It is an honor. It is a privilege. Your father is proud, and his faith is your faith, his pride your pride, your honor his honor, your accomplishments his glory. You are him and he is you, and there is no reason to feel shame when you contain all the ambitions of the greatest man you have ever known. You just…wish you could feel something for yourself, sometimes. It’s greedy, isn’t it? All heirs are born for a purpose. All good children are meant to take after their parents. You are no exception - it’s just that you shine brighter than most, and that’s a good thing. An honorable thing. The perfect father deserves a perfect son. But you feel heavy, sometimes. You do not know how else to describe it. In the moments when there is nothing to do, you feel it - a weight at your limbs and heart, dragging you down, begging you to rest, to go to bed, to sleep and never wake again. Never do anything again. Just drift. It is blasphemous. It makes your heart hurt. It makes your eyes heavy and thoughts slow, and both of those are undesirable, unwelcome, unwanted.  (It scares you, just a little. Like staring into a ravine with no bottom, like you could fall forever, slowly, further and further, until the darkness blocks out your vision and you never see the sun again - and you still don’t reach an end. Once you start to sink, it will be easier to continue. The further you are buried beneath the earth’s surface, the harder it will be to dig yourself out. You know this, instinctively - you feel it with an animal kind of fear. An object at rest stays at rest. An object in motion remains in motion. If you never stop - not even to breathe, not even to rest, because rest is a trap, you see - then you’ll never sink. It’s like treading water. It’s like Elzer teaching you how to swim. You were not given ambition for the purpose of letting it rot. You drive yourself onwards. It hurts. But the alternative will hurt worse.)

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might take a break from tumblr for a week or two so i do something with my free time that isn't scrolling. hoping to do some writing in the meanwhile.

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au where crepus runs into kaeya's dad mid child-dropoff. surprisingly he doesn't really care about the whole 'being khaenri'ahn' thing, but. my guy. leaving your child alone in the rain? seriously? BOTH of you are coming to the manor, and you will be given tea and soup and then we will carefully work on ensuring you become at least a half-way decent father figure. if you have other side hobbies like saving your nation that's fine, crepus will help fund it, just don't kill people anywhere the children can see. if you don't congratulate kaeya on his promotion and look like you mean it though there will be Consequences.

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me when the character has a uniquely fucked mindset. me when the character's fundamental views of how the world works lead to them being hurt and/or hurting others and not seeing the problem with this. me when the character is a little freak who does weird shit because their beliefs, inspired entirely by their environment, are fuckeddddd

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ragbros before 5.6 drops

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You have fought enough. It is time to stand together, shoulder to shoulder: with flame I will pave the way for you.

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it's autumn

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Brighella won!! Wheeee

My motivation has been so so low and I keep waffling on what WIP to focus on. I need to get my ass in gear and choose a project and stick with it until it's done, so I'm making a poll for my nine followers to hopefully break my inner stalemate:

The Choices

Number 1: abyssluc

The Pitch: During the fight with Ursa, Crepus takes one wrong step and falls directly into hell (the abyss). Diluc, convinced that his father isn't dead, tracks him down and joins him. Now they're stuck trying to find their way back - but Diluc's looking a little different, these days. Features abyss-corrupted beastly Diluc, father-son codependence, and angst.

Number 2: brighella

The Pitch: You are nineteen, and you are determined to eliminate every Fatuus in your vengeful path. The Fatui think you could be useful, and recruit you by force instead. Now, you're being sent back to your homeland - as a Fatui agent masquerading as a tormented refugee. You have all the scars needed to gain Mondstadt's sympathy, and serve as one further tendril of Fatui influence. Features unwilling harbinger diluc, ragbros reconciliation, and angst.

(iii will leave it to two choices since I don't know if this will get much reach, but if you could drop a vote it would be super helpful! I am Struggling.)

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I blacked out for five hours and made this. I don't know how to draw. Send help

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diluc with fatui rifle. consider.

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im not putting them thru severe trauma like I wanted to but ok 🙄

Diluc acting like he listens to his own advice😹😹😹😹loser

Ughhh they can be happyish i GUESS….

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how fucked up would it be to have your child as one of your troops. how fucked up would it be to have to send your child off to war. to go into battle with him knowing that he could die and it would be under your command. how do you think varka would feel seeing diluc fatally wounded in battle on an expedition with him

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(note - due to language barriers I can only really engage with the english speaking side of the fandom, and so this is referring to perceptions in that part of the fandom. this also means that I'm not addressing the scope of what the cn version of genshin portrays)

~=~

see, when it comes down to the question of morality, it's kind of overtly stated that kaeya is as much of an anti-hero as diluc, just a different flavor. more sadism and less blood-soaked violence. psychological torture instead of physical. quieter.

so when people say that diluc is the evil one, it comes off as strange to me, because they're designed to be foils in a fucked up 'the ends justify the means' way. but it's all about that, really. being the quieter one.

there's a certain fandom response to traumatized characters in fiction that you see when a character is too Loud about their trauma or distress or despair. if they're quiet, it's easier to pity them. if they're loud and angry, suddenly they're 'dramatic' and 'annoying'. people lose sympathy for someone who suffers loudly.

I see this a lot in the jokes that people make about diluc being 'emo' and while I make those jokes as well, I see myself in him because I also have intense emotional reactions to rejection/betrayal. he's not being emo to be edgy, but because of how keenly he feels those kinds of negative emotions, and his response is to be Loud about it.

so my thesis is that it's not that people dislike diluc for being 'evil'. it's that they dislike him for being 'annoying.'

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anyways in my head tiny diluc has always had a tremendously fragile psyche. his father saw him as a savior and that eroded at him until he saw his self worth only in his ideals and usefulness and ability to please his father. crepus loved him and ruined him at once. he died with his son's heart in his hands and that's why diluc is Like That now.

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honestly franky Terrified of 5.6. I'm waiting until my fandom friend can play it before touching it but I am eyeing that thing nervously. will this make the ragbros worse. please i don't need more fuel for the fandom 'diluc is a one dimensional asshole' fire

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(picking up where this leaves off from my friend socks. ahem)

~=~

Crepus does not have a word for what she is until she joins the Knights.

Somehow, she is able to justify herself enough to be allowed a post on probation. She rather thinks it has more to do with Father, and Alopex, and Father’s desire to make his child useful. She is given the same workload as the others, and told it is light. She finds it the heaviest burden of her existence.

What the Knights take from her in effort and life, they give to her in perspective. For once, she is allowed to leave the manor. For once, she is permitted to exist among other people. For once, she is allowed to interact with someone who isn’t just Father and Alopex. To discover herself.

It takes a long period of denial to finally place the right word to what she is - 

Hm.

No.

To what he is.

~=~

Crepus is not a Knight for very long. It is a work he is not built for. It is a task he cannot fulfill. It is a source of torment, of insecurity, another reason for his father to pick him apart, another reason for him to lose more slivers of faith in the world.

It should have been his greatest regret. It is not, because of Varka.

Varka is everything that Crepus is not. Strong, noble of heart and sound of mind, with a faith in the world and a desire to protect the weak that Crepus will never feel. WIth a kindness fostered by an equally kind family, able to truly find himself. He is nobility manifest, whereas Crepus is nobility stolen. There is no reason for their paths to cross, for him to be more than the dirt under Varka’s feet.

Varka decides to love him, and that changes everything, and nothing.

Everything, because if Crepus cannot have faith in the world, then he can have faith in him. Everything, because if he cannot love himself, he can be loved by another. Nothing, because ideals do not change reality. Nothing, because Varka is young, and can shield him from so, so little.

It is Varka who eases him into the knowledge of what he is. They are alike, in this - except Varka was allowed to accept himself, while Crepus must still remain in hiding, wearing the face of a dutiful daughter.

Crepus does not resent him for this. Crepus loves him with the desperate sort of faith that one has in a faceless god. Faith is a little like dreaming, and Crepus is happy to dream, if only for a little while, that one day he will be Varka’s, and Varka will be his, and everything will be alright. He is willing to dream that he will live.

~=~

Vespera slowly loses patience. It whittles away, sliver by sliver, relentless. Crepus is more and more tired, day by day, and it shows in his work. It shows in his distraction. It shows in the time he spends with Varka - like some common harlot, Vespera insists, the rage boiling under his words. Crepus can tell there is not much time left.

Varka begs him to stay. To leave his home, to leave Vespera, to shield himself under Varka’s strength, behind his family. Varka says they love him. Varka says he would be safe. Varka says it doesn’t need to hurt anymore. Crepus cannot find it in himself to believe this particular dream. It lies too close to a potential reality. It strikes him through with fear, threatening to turn the abstract into the material.

There is a fated day where he knows he will not come back. There is a day where he smiles at Varka, and it contains no joy. There is a day where he speaks a lie. I’ll see you in the morning, hm? Varka can beg. Varka can plead. He cannot force Crepus to stay. He lets Crepus go.

~=~

That evening, Vespera loses the last shreds of self-control. He decides that enough is enough, that this plague upon his home and family name cannot be allowed to remain. That the price of losing an heir is worth the reward of finally being without his child.

The mania - the Ragnvindr mania that he claimed to control so well - consumes him. He destroys Crepus’ paintings, casts them into the fire, one by one. And then throws his child to the ground, head on the hearthstones. Crepus’ skull cracks. There will be a scar there, later, stretched and pale, that he hides behind his hair.

Crepus flees. He does not know how, just that he does, a creature desperate to survive. Mondstadt is no longer safe for him, not with his father determined to see him dead and gone, not with Alopex at the helm. He flees, and his feet lead him somewhere cold and lonely.

They lead him to Snezhnaya.

~=~

The Fatui find him, half-dead in the snow. Lost, frail child of a noble. They know an opportunity when they see it - they know how to use every tool to their advantage. The most useful agents are the ones who owe a debt of gratitude to the cause.

They save his life, and doom him.

Somewhere down the line, he gains the attention of the Tsaritsa. She finds him amusing, in his weakness. In his pathetic nature, scavenging for scraps and approval to stay alive. He has a pleasing face, and a moldable will - resilient enough to bend without breaking. She claims him as hers. Places a mask on his face like a brand. Names him Scapino, her Tenth. Molds him into the shape she prefers (it is a kind of cruelty, to finally catch up to Varka, in this way). 

And then, at the end of it all, she beds him.

Crepus’ heart belongs to Varka. Only ever Varka. But he is weak, the plaything of a god, and he does not have the strength to fight her. Her so-called ‘love’ consumes him. Brands him further. Marks him as hers, hers, hers.

The months pass. They turn to years.

~=~

Varka grows older. Varka grows older, and there is something in his heart that aches, endless, that carries the chill of unfulfilled nobility. That feels keenly the absence at his side, the person who belongs at his side, who is gone now, vanished, disappeared -

(I’ll see you in the morning, hm?)

Vespera will not say where his son is. Vespera will not spare the expense to look for him. He is tired, and aging, and he carries the burden of the work that his son left behind - but he is stubborn to the end, set in his ways, set in his cruelty. Varka holds nothing but disdain for him.

(There is nothing he can do against a noble. Not without proof.)

Alopex remains a target. He is doing all in his power to shield Vespera from scrutiny. Anyone who could speak is threatened into silence. Varka could scream for the injustice of it, long and howling, the grief of a wounded wolf. 

(He does not. He prepares.)

The Grandmaster is meant to be the strongest of the Knights. If there is one stronger than them, then the title switches hands. Alopex is growing older, and although he remains a formidable opponent, Varka has more than just youth on his side - he has rage. Righteous, unfamiliar, burning rage.

The day he is ready, he challenges Alopex to a duel. Alopex, arrogant, seeing a chance to rid himself of competition, accepts. It is the last mistake he will ever live to make. Varka slaughters him, warm blood soaking into the dirt, and takes possession of all the power Alopex has wielded.

He pours all the manpower he can spare into finding Crepus. The trail has gone cold so very long ago. So much time has been wasted, so much evidence eliminated. He has nothing to work with, nothing except the heavy weight of failure.

Vespera takes the loss of Alopex hard, wasting away slowly, day by day. He dies alone in his bed, one spring morning. Exhaustion, the healers say. A broken heart. As much as Varka is tempted to say that he never had a heart to break, if there is anyone that that would be untrue for, it would have been Alopex.

Varka feels guilt. It is not the same as regret.

(He keeps looking. He knows, deep in his soul, that somewhere, Crepus is waiting for him.)

~=~

Far from home, in the light of dawn, Diluc is born.

Half deity, half human. Half his. There is a part of Crepus’ heart that thought it could never know love again, crushed as it was, over and over, by the unyielding hand of the world. And yet, when he lays eyes on his son, the weak sparks turn to flickering flames, chasing away the memory of the chill.

Diluc is born, and Crepus is faced with a choice. To stay here, and leave him in the hands of their tormenter - or to flee. To go home, to warmer lands (maybe, maybe Varka is still waiting for him, maybe, please -)

Diluc is born, and he does not deserve to know the cold as well as Crepus does, perfect child as he is.

Crepus takes him. Crepus runs.

(Varka is, indeed, still waiting for him.)

Crepus and Varka headcanon masterpost

Vespera Ragnvindr and Alopex are like a fucked up prequel to what Crepus and Varka will be. Ragnvindr Lord and Grandmaster, side by side. Two sides of the same coin is perhaps a better way of putting it than calling them foils.

The only bruises Vespera has ever suffered cover his knuckles like purple roses and they are a poor mirror of what they inflict on another frailer body. Vespera holds the bloodline in his hands. Imagine that there’s a heart passed down through the Ragnvindr bloodline, still beating as long as the name continues, that Vespera has in his hands. That is the prize jewel to him, regardless of the gore it spews out over his hands when he squeezes it. Imagine that every member of the family alive shares that heart - but the one holding it doesn’t feel the squeeze. Only the flesh, only the blood. 

Alopex is the enabler. Alopex laps up the scent of this blood like a hound to a freshly felled corpse - like a fox to the blood of a hare, spilled under a viper’s fangs. Who better to allow this predator’s hunt than a greater predator? What better position could there be to protect the most prominent noble, than the most prominent Knight.

Terror falls under Alopex. What more is there to say, other than tyranny. Mondstadt has no kings, but there need not be a crown for this tyrant. They are afraid of their own commander. Some of the younger Knights have gone missing, sometimes, after erring on an expedition. No one asks what happened to them aloud. There are mutters - but anything louder, and someone will come to call.

The bond between the two is not love. It could not be called love. Perhaps it resembles it in crimson-tinted glasses, but it is not. A fox and a viper entwined together, teeth and fangs, venom and gore. Beautiful, in a way, in the way that the twitching of a corpse is, in the way that the glisten of a blade in the sun is, as it presses down again into bone.

A perfect bond to hold a city full of meek subjects in line. (Except for a wolf.) A perfect bond to hold a silent child in line. 

— 

Crepus comes about in the way that many noble children do, albeit a little more unorthodox and a little more hushed. Vespera’s father dies early on. It’s not remembered how, and it’s not relevant - only that the only heir to the line is of age, with the Ragnvindr heart in hand, and in need of an heir. 

Fontaine is a place of nobility, too. There are old noble lines there that clamour and fall over themselves for a chance to have a link to Mondstadt’s most influential family. It does not matter to Vespera, except that the woman who will bear his child is strong enough to bear him a son worthy of inheriting the title. That is all. 

There is a woman who catches his eye, bathed in Fontaine’s humid, eclipsed sunlight, who will do just fine. Healthy eyes. Bright eyes, good skin, a strong body suited for childbearing - and a hatred for him. No matter. There is a reason that the Winery has such wealth amassed over so many years. Enough money offered in a dowry, enough to buy a city thrice over, and she relents. Anyone would relent. The ceremony happens, the rings are exchanged, the… bond consummated, and as soon as they are out of each other’s sight, the rings are quickly pocketed. Neither of them care for them. So long as they remain intact, then the contract holds, and that’s enough. A child comes of it. Crepus. Dusk. It comes after evening - comes after Vespera, himself. It’s fitting for the child. 

—

The child cries. A lot. The child cries so much. The child does not stop crying for days - but it is an awful sound. A pathetic sound. Weak. Wheezing. Gasping, like the lungs in its chest were not made to support life.

…It is not a son. 

It comes to pass that this child - this daughter - will be the worst curse to ever befall the Ragnvindr line. Crepus. Dusk. What a weak name. What is dusk, but the seconds left in evening’s wake? Disgusting.

—

Attempts to contact what most would call his wife do not work. The contract spoke only of the production of one child in exchange for the pension, with no allowance for anything else. She made sure of that. He curses her. It does not change the weakness of the child.

She grows. Children are supposed to, as he has heard, speak within the first few years of their lives. Vespera does not have the time – as occupied as he is with more important things – to foster this, but that is what the staff of the manor are for. It’s what he pays them for, to take care of the unsavoury tasks that he has no business touching. Crepus speaks once, after Vespera returns from a business trip to another nation. She asks him for something. Not something worth remembering - and after he tells her to keep her mouth shut unless she is asked to, she does not speak again. 

There’s only that pathetic expression on her face that she has when she looks at him, like she’s expecting something of him. She is incapable of doing anything required of her. The times that she is not in Vespera’s direct company, she retreats to her room, or the library, or the mews - her and her damned birds - with a pencil in her hand, scribbling nonsense on scraps of paper. 

She often chooses to disobey his orders in favour of continuing to scribble somewhere dark, like a rat. No matter what, he cannot seem to beat it out of her. He does not beat her into speech, he does not beat her into obedience, and the expression she wears never changes. 

Pathetic. 

Not only that, the older she gets, the more sickly she is. She was born with a body that refused to sustain life. Not something that a child of the Ragnvindrs should ever produce - and yet, she cannot even hold a sword without trembling. For the time Vespera so carefully asks good Alopex to spare for her, she does nothing. She accomplishes nothing. 

The sessions end with tears in her eyes, or her body failing completely, collapsing to the ground, ruining her clothes or breaking her bones like she’s made of glass.

This, too, cannot be beaten out of her. All it accomplishes is more blemishes on her body which have to be hidden with more expensive clothes. A fate which she brought upon herself.

Vespera has never found something so loathsome before in his life. 

If there was no name to uphold, if there was not a legacy to retain, then he would rid himself of this burden for good, and begin again with another woman who would give him something worth wasting his time on.

For now, that is not a choice. So he will have to make do. 

—

Several years pass in isolation, in a city that belongs to him, with no one except the staff who serve him as company and the other hateful people who wish to take from his own success for company. 

Crepus does not count. He spends as much time as possible away from her, but ensures that he has her under his watch as much as possible, too. Mornings and evenings. Breakfast and dinner, when she is permitted to eat. When she is not, she must attend all the same, because that is propriety.

She is a dull child, and there is no one else in this city worth lavishing time on.

Except one.

For the comfort the Grandmaster lends him in his troubles, life becomes more pleasant, the longer he spends with him. He understands the difficulty of children that won’t listen, children that won’t take shape the way you show them so carefully to. 

Unlike that woman, there is a light in his eyes – Call me Alopex, he said, the first time that Vespera saw it – that is returned. 

He finds that, of all people, he is the most tolerable. And soon enough, it becomes more than that. When Vespera cannot find him for the work that buries him at the manor, Alopex will visit him, instead. It is a less dull place with a soul that burns in the same way as his own.

—

The Ragnvindr mania. 

I inherited it from my father, and you will inherit it from me. We have always felt emotions keenly. We have always been ambitious. Driven. The mania is a manifestation of that excess. You will use it. If you do not use it, as you seem to be able to do with so little, you will keep it quiet, and you will keep it hidden, or I will make sure that you have no way of disobeying that. 

Of course, the day comes, eventually, when Crepus falls to her first bout of it. Vespera has always kept himself well-controlled. Vespera learned, young, that there is no cost that cannot be paid to maintain a reputation. 

Crepus clearly does not understand this. He comes back to the manor from a visit to the Headquarters, accompanied by his dear partner, to the servants floundering, and to the sound of screaming, somewhere deep within the rooms. A child’s screaming. 

When he finds her, she is curled up in the midst of several maids, hands dug into her scalp, bloodied, tearing her throat for the screaming.

The maids are useless. The girl will not stop screaming.

For once, Vespera does not have to ensure that she does - because, this time, Alopex does, for him.

The lock clicks behind them as they walk out and Alopex pockets the key with a smile to his partner. She won’t interrupt us. Don’t worry.

(All created with my good friend @veeveefic)

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if the tumblr fyp starts recommending me anti-diluc posts again I swear to god