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I absolutely forgot to post chapter 21 here, so just assume I did and let's go (in my defense, I posted chapter 21 in a migraine day).
Of masks and dances
Chapter 22: Farewells and reunions
In which Lumine has an unexpected reunion and things get worse before they can get better.
This is probably the most misleading of all my titles, but I got attached to it, so I kept it even after reworking the chapter for the third time.
When I say a chapter gave me grief, I don't mean it in any bad way. I love writing, this fic is what I write for fun, it's interesting and I get to try different things. The Genshin Impact setting is full of interesting takes to be picked up and carried to conclusion, there is just too many possibilities.
So don't get me wrong when I say this chapter was painful to write.
I wrote around 20k words for this chapter. The finished chapter has 8.895k words.
Many of the extra words will be showing up in chapter 23 or 24, because I'm not a wasteful person (and there are at least 2 scenes there which I have to put into the fic, because they're cool), but the fact remains that it took me four tries to get to what I wanted and let me tell you that those other paths were quite different from each other.
The fact is that things are lining up for the ending, though I know I've been saying this for a while (my original expectations meant chapter 24 would be the last. Ha.), so I have to make a couple of choices about the story I'm telling. One of them you already noticed, by which I mean Childe's presence (and what does it mean for Lumine/Diluc?).
I'm not gonna lie, Childe was originally going to be a mirror character, someone to help Diluc get a grip on himself, to model a functioning version of what Diluc wants so he could, you know, get better. I was going to get him with Zhongli, even, because that's how things usually go with Childe and there needed to be a model relationship.
That approach failed the moment I realized my Zhongli is too ascetic for that and my Childe too self-aware to keep trying.
(oh, he's hurting, of course, but he's not gonna keep trying. That scene on chapter 21, in which he gives Diluc a "this is important" look and tells him how Zhongli did not take his challenge seriously enough, how he did the bare minimum? That was how I knew I fucked up. That was a man saying he felt rejected, and Childe is proud.)
I tried to have Diluc walk away. It just did not rang true, so I scrapped it. Thankfully, things worked out interestingly and Childe will be doing his narrative job anyway, just in a different manner.
Lumine's side of the chapter was part of the original outline (as much as it exists). I still wrote three versions of the conversation with Aether, plus two versions of what happened after. I considered milking her spiral into despair, but then I remembered that I prefer to write about healing.
The only bright side in writing over twice the amount of story that went in is that I at least know exactly how the next chapter plays out. Childe stays for the while, his side of the story will play itself before we get the ending. I promise I won't do him dirty, I love that man.
Of masks and dances
Chapter 22: Farewells and reunions
In which Lumine has an unexpected reunion and things get worse before they can get better.
This is probably the most misleading of all my titles, but I got attached to it, so I kept it even after reworking the chapter for the third time.
When I say a chapter gave me grief, I don't mean it in any bad way. I love writing, this fic is what I write for fun, it's interesting and I get to try different things. The Genshin Impact setting is full of interesting takes to be picked up and carried to conclusion, there is just too many possibilities.
So don't get me wrong when I say this chapter was painful to write.
I wrote around 20k words for this chapter. The finished chapter has 8.895k words.
Many of the extra words will be showing up in chapter 23 or 24, because I'm not a wasteful person (and there are at least 2 scenes there which I have to put into the fic, because they're cool), but the fact remains that it took me four tries to get to what I wanted and let me tell you that those other paths were quite different from each other.
The fact is that things are lining up for the ending, though I know I've been saying this for a while (my original expectations meant chapter 24 would be the last. Ha.), so I have to make a couple of choices about the story I'm telling. One of them you already noticed, by which I mean Childe's presence (and what does it mean for Lumine/Diluc?).
I'm not gonna lie, Childe was originally going to be a mirror character, someone to help Diluc get a grip on himself, to model a functioning version of what Diluc wants so he could, you know, get better. I was going to get him with Zhongli, even, because that's how things usually go with Childe and there needed to be a model relationship.
That approach failed the moment I realized my Zhongli is too ascetic for that and my Childe too self-aware to keep trying.
(oh, he's hurting, of course, but he's not gonna keep trying. That scene on chapter 21, in which he gives Diluc a "this is important" look and tells him how Zhongli did not take his challenge seriously enough, how he did the bare minimum? That was how I knew I fucked up. That was a man saying he felt rejected, and Childe is proud.)
I tried to have Diluc walk away. It just did not rang true, so I scrapped it. Thankfully, things worked out interestingly and Childe will be doing his narrative job anyway, just in a different manner.
Lumine's side of the chapter was part of the original outline (as much as it exists). I still wrote three versions of the conversation with Aether, plus two versions of what happened after. I considered milking her spiral into despair, but then I remembered that I prefer to write about healing.
The only bright side in writing over twice the amount of story that went in is that I at least know exactly how the next chapter plays out. Childe stays for the while, his side of the story will play itself before we get the ending. I promise I won't do him dirty, I love that man.
