fic: tangential acceleration, heirloom, reversible figures

[ittnse]

preface
not crossposting any of the jarch fics; just casual commentary. not much to say on each of them, so i'll compile them in a threefold post here. the only exception is reversible figures, but in the end, i don't have that much to say on that one, either, or at least more than i don't think has already been expressed, so it'll be short.

tangential acceleration
tags: jean & kaeya, eula & jean, jean & frederica, jean/kaeya, jean, eula, frederica, kaeya, knights of favonius ensemble, character study, one shot, coworkers, canon universe, not beta read, jarch 2025, alternate universe - canon divergence
status: 1879w, completed, ao3 link
summary:

"And your friend — that Lawrence girl?" her mother said, her voice pausing when she'd watched Jean's face — do something, certainly, though she wasn't sure what. It was harder to tell what her body did when it came to the minutiae of feeling, not action; she certainly never had this problem when she was standing on the training field, her sword in hand.

"My colleague," she said after a moment: a correction, though she did her best to make it sound unlike one. "Eula, Captain of the Reconnaissance Company?"

A Gunnhildr invites a Lawrence to dinner.

author's notes

an immediate exercise back into writing fic after some time spent not writing fic for jarch, prompt taken from day1: friends/family. title from the mathematical concept of tangential acceleration for metaphor, i.e. "a measure of how fast an object is speeding up or slowing down while moving in a circle". it's intended to tie back into the story as a representation of jean's relationships with others: there's progress being made, and actions taken, but the distance between individuals remains the same regardless.

i like eula very much. i don't think it shows up in this fic, because mostly she's getting shafted as a narrative parallel to kaeya, but i do; i pulled for her on her first banner, and i would still run her in genshin if i ... actually still played genshin instead of just participating from afar. i've always found jean's relationship with eula very compelling, or rather eula's relationship with mondstadt's infamous trio (diluc, jean, kaeya): jean being personally responsible for eula's admittance into the knights, and also the opposite of eula: the perfect heir to a legacy untainted. and eulajean both define themselves by their knighthood, although in diametrically different ways.

is it easy to write eula? absolutely not. every time i think about writing eula i'm like, "oh, i can't believe i don't write more eula", and then i look at the document, and i'm like, Now I Understand Why I Don't Write Eula

miscellaneous trivia: although the universes in which the fics take place have absolutely no connection, this fic fits next to "answer; return" in my mind.

heirloom
tags: jean & frederica, diluc & jean, barbara & jean, diluc/jean, jean, frederica, diluc, barbara, character study, one shot, canon compliant, past, past relationships, flashbacks, not beta read, pre-canon, alternate universe - pre-canon, jarch 2025, canon compliant, when you are a child of divorce, canon-typical diluc glazing
status: 2313w, completed, ao3 link
summary:

After all, Jean knows that keeping is not equivalent to loving, and so, too, having is not equivalent to being — which was why her mother had kept her, and chosen her, even in the face of Barbara, her younger daughter; who was easier to love, Jean understands, in the simple way that she understands her own aptitudes and talents.

What one has is not necessarily what one is suited to. What one wants to be, too, is not the same as what they are.

The days following Jean's conferment ceremony.

author's notes

it was not actually canon-typical levels of diluc glazing. i'm afraid no one can match the canon-typical levels of diluc glazing.

the title's origins and connections are fairly straightforward, so i'll gloss over that. written for jarch day2 prompts, which were lionfang/dandelion. i am also serious about the prize if someone figures out the inspiration, though i'm doubtful that other people (beyond my 3 mutuals on here) are reading these; i'll write you a fic, or something. in terms of difficulty to write this one was fine; no particular strong opinions except that writing young diluc is very difficult.

on the other hand, writing about diluc is genuinely very fun. as a character (and canonically, in the narrative), he's such a catalyst of a character, while i categorize jean more as passive and kaeya as reactionary; it's always very easy to use him, whether that be actual diluc or the absence of diluc, to drive a story forward, while my jean and kaeya pieces (them separated from him) tend to be more static and stationary, which isn't inherently a bad thing or good thing. it just is.

i think the second scene with frederica falls rather flat. might go back and workshop that at some point, but who knows if i ever will...

reversible figures
tags: jean & knights of favonius, diluc & jean, jean & diluc & kaeya, amber & jean, jean & kaeya, eula & jean, jean & lisa, barbara & jean, jean, diluc, kaeya, eula, lisa, amber, canon compliant, canon universe, non-chronological, dreams, memories, one shot, not beta read, character study, pre-canon, alternate universe - pre-canon, past relationships, flashbacks, jarch 2025
status: 3743w, completed, ao3 link
summary:

Summer in Mondstadt:

The wind trickled through the open window, brushing strands of hair against the side of Jean's neck. She touched it with the back of her gloved hand absently, her focus pinned to the papers in front of her. Kaeya was lounging in the seat adjacent, his legs crossed, one arm slung over the back of the chair; half-faced towards her, still enough to be deferent, too close to hide a vague sense of familiarity.

"Master Jean?"

It begins, of course, with Diluc.

author's notes

guy who hates not having structure in their fic: so what if i wrote an idea so structureless

struggled with this prompt, as expected. in the end i'm satisfied with the end product; this is the story most like eunomia, dike, and eirene, i think, which i always talk about but never work on. um. here's to finishing it in 2025 instead of vaguing about it here. please see previous notes above about my love of writing diluc in fanfiction: now that's a guy that makes things happen.

i've wanted to write a story about jean's feelings about diluc's absence (or jean's [lack of?] feelings towards diluc's absence) for a while now. most of the stories i see related to the topic revolve around jean taking a side in the brotherly conflict (ex. holding a grudge against diluc for hurting kaeya, or kaeya-centric whump where jean turns her back on kaeya, etc.), which i won't say that this fic doesn't touch on at all, but i wanted to explore a jean perspective of this centered on her, for the most part, at least on the surface.

for once, the lack of consistency in the tenses is purposeful. i think this fic is where i really started to fall into the cadence of the specific jean voice that i wanted to portray; there are some sections, like: [...] she didn't give Lisa a look, although she was tempted to, and knew that Lisa knew that she was tempted to; that was the problem with working with people who knew Jean well, she thought: that they felt the impact even where Jean restrained herself, and therefore rendered her attempts useless, that i thought captured it pretty well.

trivia: the line leading to jean/diluc's conversation about eula originally used "retribution"; jean then commentates that it's more diluc's style instead; i wanted, instead, to use eula to draw towards a softer, more reflective tone of conversation, which enables jean to lead with her next question.

unspoken are the parallels that kaeya draws between jean and diluc unthinkingly throughout the fic: when kaeya commentates that she's really not like an older sibling, implicitly the suggestion is that he's comparing her to the older siblings he knows, most titularly Diluc, and when he says "i thought you'd know", it's a similar vein, isn't it, where he suggests that jean/diluc share an understanding that he himself does not. i often think that people emphasize the jean/kaeya relationship grows in diluc's absence, which is undoubtedly true; i personally like to think of it in the context of them both being closer to diluc than each other before he leaves, and then, upon his return, the inverse.

the bird in diluc's idle is identified as an umbertail falcon; you'll notice that the dawn winery is also (south)west of the knights of favonius headquarters.

collected miscellany

who knew that aprilluc and kaevember were things. not me. does anyone know if they're going to be held in 2025

made a tumblr (link) to crosspost zine/event/etc. fic in the future. will i actually update it? well