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luvminasafter nearly 4 years off from publishing fic, caitvi brought me back in one fell swoop with an au that i never intended to be anything other than goofy. circle click! was never meant to be a serious endeavor, let alone the 16k words it became, but here we are. the arcane-driven fandom culture revival got to me and spat out this monstrosity (and some more ideas fermenting in various parts of my google docs), and the process was honestly the most fun i've had in months. it started with hours of conversation post-s2 release, carrying my laptop back and forth from my bedroom to my kitchen so i could keep typing away at my bullet point outlines like a madman, and it ended in a 3am fever that had me rushing towards that last stream chat section as fast as i possibly could. i wrote so much of this in airports and on airplanes, fighting with the google docs ios interface, and it turned into such a weirdly unique Experience™ for me that i have a feeling it'll shape my next pieces of writing in its own strange way. leaning your phone away from the person in the middle seat and hoping the in-flight wifi doesn't crap out on all your progress is incredibly formative. king princess would be proud.
i was heavily inspired by this mihyo fic when i came up with the idea; the caitlyn/mina brainworms were really getting to me. the writing style of this fic was something i wanted to strive for: dry and simple but still hilarious and strangely tender underneath a harder exterior. in retrospect i think my caitvi relationship development was also inspired here by the idea of becoming so familiar with someone unknowingly, hence roommates and favorite energy drink flavors and memorized stream schedules. i've never written anything close to enemies to lovers and i don't think i can hold onto the Hate of real enemies to lovers, so instead you get people who vaguely annoy each other until they realize they're actually annoyed by how much they care for the other person. something something to be loved is to be known, something something domestic caitvi deserves a space in an au where they are not running for their lives every other second.
my favorite character to write here actually ended up being vi. i said something to lynn like halfway through the process along the lines of "vi is a creature of love and not hate" and that ended up just propelling me through the rest of the fic. vi in this au is someone full of love and care; she can't stay angry at caitlyn if she sees anything else beneath it (re: first kiramman mention) because her instinct jumps to protecting instead. caitlyn, on the other hand, has a head full of sheer ambition and willpower and stubbornness. writing her as a degenerate gamer between her outward put-togetherness was really fun and speaks a lot to how i see her character in general, fronting poise and elegance when really she's just a massive loser but will absolutely commit to the grind to get the things she wants (losing sleep over video games, still going to class and being a model student to appease her parents/maintain their impression of her). she definitely started playing osu! in middle school because someone told her it was an "aim trainer" and then got hooked, which is why she consistently plays with mouse and not on tablet. she also was a vocaloid listener and has at least one hatsune miku figurine hidden in a drawer somewhere. meanwhile vi has a shitty gaming laptop so she can play fps games with jinx when they have time and it lags like crazy.
some other notes about the au that i fleshed out but didn't really make it into the fic: caitlyn's majoring in polisci for her mother's approval with vague pre-law intentions. vi's majoring in business because she just wants to run her own gym/bar/some small establishment in the future. their econ class they're in together is a gen-ed. vi gets grades that are just as good as caitlyn's, her method is just much more based on cramming (+ she's smart as fuck so she genuinely coasts through her classes). caitlyn wears fingerless gloves during her streams that vi finds hot (lol). there's a scrapped scene floating somewhere in my brain of caitlyn trying valorant on vi's shitty laptop for the first time and absolutely demolishing. if i ever write it as a warm-up i'll tack it onto this post.
this fic just ended up being so Fun to write, in a way that i had forgotten fic writing could be fun. my heart was actually pounding out of my chest when i wrote their kiss (literally kicking my feet over two fictional women that i made kiss... LOSER) and i don't think i've raced towards the ending of a fic and completion of a project like this since almost / always, which was written in a similarly frantic, scrambling manner. maybe this is just how i was built to write fic, if the project appeals to me enough. actually completing and publishing it in a reasonable time frame has also kickstarted my brainstorming for other aus, other fics, and a desire to write more often. which. yippee! congratulations to me on my new year's resolution, i guess. here's to more caitvi and more writing about loser gamers on planes, trains, and buses in 2025.
i was heavily inspired by this mihyo fic when i came up with the idea; the caitlyn/mina brainworms were really getting to me. the writing style of this fic was something i wanted to strive for: dry and simple but still hilarious and strangely tender underneath a harder exterior. in retrospect i think my caitvi relationship development was also inspired here by the idea of becoming so familiar with someone unknowingly, hence roommates and favorite energy drink flavors and memorized stream schedules. i've never written anything close to enemies to lovers and i don't think i can hold onto the Hate of real enemies to lovers, so instead you get people who vaguely annoy each other until they realize they're actually annoyed by how much they care for the other person. something something to be loved is to be known, something something domestic caitvi deserves a space in an au where they are not running for their lives every other second.
my favorite character to write here actually ended up being vi. i said something to lynn like halfway through the process along the lines of "vi is a creature of love and not hate" and that ended up just propelling me through the rest of the fic. vi in this au is someone full of love and care; she can't stay angry at caitlyn if she sees anything else beneath it (re: first kiramman mention) because her instinct jumps to protecting instead. caitlyn, on the other hand, has a head full of sheer ambition and willpower and stubbornness. writing her as a degenerate gamer between her outward put-togetherness was really fun and speaks a lot to how i see her character in general, fronting poise and elegance when really she's just a massive loser but will absolutely commit to the grind to get the things she wants (losing sleep over video games, still going to class and being a model student to appease her parents/maintain their impression of her). she definitely started playing osu! in middle school because someone told her it was an "aim trainer" and then got hooked, which is why she consistently plays with mouse and not on tablet. she also was a vocaloid listener and has at least one hatsune miku figurine hidden in a drawer somewhere. meanwhile vi has a shitty gaming laptop so she can play fps games with jinx when they have time and it lags like crazy.
some other notes about the au that i fleshed out but didn't really make it into the fic: caitlyn's majoring in polisci for her mother's approval with vague pre-law intentions. vi's majoring in business because she just wants to run her own gym/bar/some small establishment in the future. their econ class they're in together is a gen-ed. vi gets grades that are just as good as caitlyn's, her method is just much more based on cramming (+ she's smart as fuck so she genuinely coasts through her classes). caitlyn wears fingerless gloves during her streams that vi finds hot (lol). there's a scrapped scene floating somewhere in my brain of caitlyn trying valorant on vi's shitty laptop for the first time and absolutely demolishing. if i ever write it as a warm-up i'll tack it onto this post.
this fic just ended up being so Fun to write, in a way that i had forgotten fic writing could be fun. my heart was actually pounding out of my chest when i wrote their kiss (literally kicking my feet over two fictional women that i made kiss... LOSER) and i don't think i've raced towards the ending of a fic and completion of a project like this since almost / always, which was written in a similarly frantic, scrambling manner. maybe this is just how i was built to write fic, if the project appeals to me enough. actually completing and publishing it in a reasonable time frame has also kickstarted my brainstorming for other aus, other fics, and a desire to write more often. which. yippee! congratulations to me on my new year's resolution, i guess. here's to more caitvi and more writing about loser gamers on planes, trains, and buses in 2025.
