#lisa isn't lazy she's just efficient

[dandelion-wings]

"Lisa is the most well-adjusted person in Mondstadt," I say, fully aware of how fucking low that bar is

[dandelion-wings]

Writing Lisa in self-sacrifice scenarios is always more difficult than doing it for a lot of my other faves. She's not Jean or Barbara, who peg their value to service, or Kaeya or Rosaria, who think they need to redeem themselves, or Eula or Amber, who have something to prove. She's someone who looked at whatever unnamed horror lurked at the climax of her achievements and decided to fuck right off and live a comfortable, peaceful life free of any further ambitions, thank you very much. I respect her and love her, but she needs her arm twisted to make her take risks. XD Fortunately, I do enjoy making up grand dramatic threats to raise the stakes!

[dandelion-wings]

My headcanon is that Lisa is the biggest fucking powerhouse in Mondstadt except Venti and possibly Albedo and/or Klee, but we are never going to get more than 4-star performance from her in canon because we just aren't worth the effort (and don't need it because we're a powerhouse ourselves). When it's something that is worth her full power--say, Jean, or Razor, or Klee, or the overall safety of Mondstadt, if in any of those cases the other defenses available are outmatched--she can absolutely blow everything short of an archon and out-of-control-Albedo away.

And then needs a month to recoup because she's spent her entire spoon supply and then some, but she's willing to borrow against future spoons for as long as the crisis lasts. Unlike Jean, she knows she can and will take the time to recover them later.

[dandelion-wings]

As the Ordo Librarian, Lisa is responsible for many of the Ordo's secrets. Including the personal secrets of her friends among the Knights. But little as she wants to stir the pot, sometimes true wisdom is knowing when the knowledge one holds should best be deployed. (Or: five times Lisa didn't tell on her friends, and one time that she did.)

@canonical-transformation and @theabysscomeshome bullied me into this one via time travel (me re-reading an old conversation). Everything here is completely on them. :P

[dandelion-wings]

a sort of noodling-around opening to one of the whumptober prompts that didn't end up working once I'd gone to the park and stared at the water for a while, but I do still like it:

Lisa is fully aware that she's one of the most powerful Vision-users in Mondstadt. Albedo has depths that, should they ever rise, she knows will bury her. The day Klee's unrefined raw power blossoms into directed expertise won't come until long after Lisa is dead, but she prefers not to play even with that fledgling fire. Master Diluc *might* give her a run for her money, though he has weaknesses she doesn't think he even knows about, which she's catalogued thoroughly for... reasons that no longer apply, now that he and Kaeya are on steadier ground and he's treating Jean respectfully. (Dragons, gods, and the ghosts of both are on a completely different scale, and it wouldn't be a fair comparison. Though Lisa likes to think that she'd leave marks, if it came down to it.) But even Jean and Eula and Kaeya, however dashing, would never stand a chance. And if they wouldn't, then how could anybody else?

[dandelion-wings]

I jumped into co-op with Eula and Lisa a lot today, specifically searching for low-level players who needed help with specific bosses/farming, because it's fun to go into a lower-level world and let Eula one-hit KO a baby boss! >>;; And it did give me some Lisa/Eula brainworms about them traveling together for some assignment Jean gives them, and Lisa deliberately seeking out people who need a hand with something, even as Eula gets frustrated with the detours (it's a mission for Jean!), because she likes being admired herself and, even more importantly, Eula deserves to be viewed with awe and thanked for her efforts by people who aren't pre-prejudiced by knowing she's a Lawrence.

And then someone starts admiring Eula (and her martial prowess and her dance-like maneuvering and her prominent muscles and...) a little too closely, and Lisa finds herself unreasonably jealous. A reasonable amount of jealousy is fine. She knows she finds Eula attractive, she finds most of her co-workers attractive, she's been dealing with that like a reasonable woman for years. But this is considerably more than reasonable, and when did that happen?

Meanwhile, Eula is more flustered than flattered, both by this person and by Lisa laughingly encouraging people's admiration (though not this person's, which is... meaningful, Eula suspects, and she'll think about it more closely when she is not repeatedly prying their hand off her knee over dinner), but she's... starting to think that maybe Lisa means it when she compliments Eula, and it isn't just the teasing she's been taking it as. And if Lisa is, in fact, scheming to put Eula in a position where she's getting complimented, then obviously Eula owes her some payback....

[dandelion-wings]

deep in my extremely specific and self-indulgent gender headcanons this morning

I keep thinking about. Kaeya knows being trans is a thing. He shows up at the Dawn Winery just as Crepus is starting to arrange fantasy hormone potions and shit for Diluc. And as he starts figuring out Mondstadt gender roles, which are a bit different from Khaenri'ahan ones, he knows he doesn't quite fit into their idea of A Boy any more than Diluc fits as A Girl. But the problem is, he doesn't fit as A Girl either. He's something different, and when he thinks about going through everything Diluc is just to end up playing another role that only sometimes feels good and right to take on... that's a lot for an endgame he isn't even sure he wants. So he'll just. Stuff all of that in a black box in the back of his head and pretend it doesn't exist. He has a lot of such boxes and he's good at ignoring them! And if he leans flamboyant as he gets older, that's fine, no one minds (make assumptions about his sexuality, but don't mind), and beside, he's a knight so some gender deviance is allowed

(because Jean is the first model he's introduced to for knighthood, even more certain of her destiny than Diluc, and the first binary Jean ever internalized was "knight" vs. "lady," later extended out to "knight" vs. "civilian." Eventually she finds out there's another binary and she's assigned one half of it by other people, which is sometimes annoying and inconvenient but mostly fine, but it doesn't matter half as much as her self-identification as a knight. Which is 100% fine with her mother and thus never gets countered by someone she considers an authoritative source)

and Kaeya's feelings only get reinforced when Lisa shows up. She makes her own hormone potions and she seems very happy with her gender and presentation, and he actually steals some of her mannerisms because he's 19 and still trying to figure out the right role to play now that "Diluc's shadow" is out, and she's a cool almost-30-year-old whose confidence in her own identity he envies. So he does have a moment of, maybe he could ask her--but she is extremely feminine in presentation in ways that, again, he only sometimes wants, so. Back in the box that goes! No point in opening that up

(meanwhile Eula got told she was A Girl simultaneously with being told she was A Lawrence--her own character stories imply that "oldest daughter of the clan" has some kind of significance--and therefore learned How To Be A Girl alongside How To Be An Aristocrat and gives them the same weight. Which is to say, from her own voiceline: "I was forced to learn all of the rules by heart, but even I don't take them that seriously." She is not particularly concerned about her own self-identification, because she trusts the people she cares about to take her as she is beneath the show, and that's all thar matters)

and Jean mentally genders both Kaeya and Eula as knights (Diluc was so emphatic about being A Boy that she accepts that comes first for him, he's just a knight too in the same way she's a woman too, and Lisa is unquestionably a lady), and ngl it's probably how she thinks about Amber too, and that's really what matters, isn't it, in the end. Which both of them would find acceptable if she said so aloud, if for different reasons

[dandelion-wings]

good morning! what a great day to remember that (a) Klee has a mom that she loves and who loves her, even if she makes questionable parenting choices, (b) Razor has wolf parents who y'know died to save him and human parents whom we had a whole event about him being invested in learning more about, and (c) Lisa can be a very good teacher and a valuable mentor who cares about her students and is a formative influence in their lives without replacing their actual beloved parents as a parent, because having additional loving, caring adults in your life who are not parents and you do not view in a parental role is a valuable and important part of childhood! Having affection for children in their care still does not automatically make a teacher a mom!

[dandelion-wings]

I was flipping a Lisa/Diluc idea around in my head at the barn and entertained a throwaway line where Lisa comments that she'd be annoyed Diluc hadn't even looked at her breasts in this dress if Kaeya hadn't already told her he was immune (my ace Diluc headcanons are strong XD), and my brain instantly filled in the backstory scene: Lisa and Kaeya together at the Angel's Share. Lisa is wearing her most how-does-she-not-fall-out-of-that dress because Jean was supposed to join them when she finished her work, but, well, she hasn't shown, so they've both gotten very drunk and are playing a little game with each other of seeing how many drunk people they can make stumble or spill their drinks by flashing their respective cleavage. Lisa is in the lead by a long shot, but Diluc is her white whale, because she knows Kaeya will think it's funny but she can't get him to so much as look at her decolletage, no matter how she poses or what maneuvers she pulls when he comes over to refill these drinks. Finally she pouts aloud about it, and Kaeya laughs and tells her that Diluc didn't even notice Jean's breasts when he was sixteen years old and telling everyone who would listen that he was going to marry her, so he doubts there's cleavage out there that's going to attract his attention.

[dandelion-wings]

Honestly that last photo made me remember the story I was outlining to @theabysscomeshome on Discord the other night that was mostly about Lisa and Kaeya living out this post, with Diluc as the awkward and unfortunate landlord. XD But also had a side-element to the effect that the dog was actually Diluc's; it was a stray he'd found all torn up and with its eye recently torn out, which gave him. significant emotions. to find on the road. And he was afraid the shelter would put it down, so he got it patched up and then took it home saying he would find it a home himself and, uh, very much failed to do so. But he did [irresponsibly] let it wander freely around the complex without a tag on the collar, and Kaeya found this one-eyed dog curled up all sad and whining against his door in the rain, and it clearly wanted to wander so even after he adopted it he [irresponsibly] let it out, and....

It would be difficult to write with those interlocking scenarios, but it's fun to think about! XD

(There's also a side-thing wherein Lisa starts dating Jean, who is still Kaeya's boss in this modern AU, and he doesn't know she's Lisa's new girlfriend and she doesn't know he's Lisa's... Jean does not actually know how to classify "Lisa's roommate who is sometimes her dog but whom she does not fuck." Finding out that this is Kaeya actually clarifies it for her. Yes, this is an arrangement she can see Kaeya in.)

[dandelion-wings]

thinking about the Jean/Lisa Beauty and the Beast AU I thought of a while back and while I still really like the concept of it, overall, and I think it would be a very fun shipfic, while exploring Fontaine this afternoon my thoughts wandered in a slightly different direction than I'd had re: the beginning:

---

"And why *were* you stealing from my garden, Miss Barbara?"

Barbara tries to keep an eye on the ball of Electro bouncing around her, zipping from one high place to another in the cramped, book-filled room. But its route takes it behind her, and she thinks if she spun around trying to keep track, she'd just get dizzy. She catches herself clutching the plants in her hands a little too tightly and forces her grip to loosen before she crushes the fragile leaves.

The voice crackles a bit, underlaid with the same Electro that seems to make up the... seelie? She's never seen any seelie like it, but then, who knows what Electro might to do one. Make it speak, for one. Aside from the crackle, it's a pleasant voice, audibly a woman's, with a sweet timbre that Barbara thinks could be lovely in song if adequately trained. She's not certain that it's the seelie, but there's no one else visible here.

"I didn't realize it was your garden," Barbara says, her own voice higher than she'd like. "I mean, I knew it was *someone's* garden, but- I thought it was abandoned! I didn't think anyone actually lived here."

"So you thought the wolves weeded for me? Not that they wouldn't try, the dears, but they can't tell a dandelion from a carrot. And Razor's convinced them that nothing good is green." The voice sighs, but it's affected, and the voice sounds more amused than mocking. Barbara tries to take comfort in that.

"I... didn't think about it," she admits. "When I realized your garden had Sumeru Roses, I had to pick them. They take forever to come in from Sumeru! I have a potion I wanted to try, for- for my big sister, and I...." Had stolen without a second thought, even though the garden was clearly tended to. Barbara can feel tears welling up. "I'm so sorry!"

"Thank you, sweetie," the voice says, gentler now. "I accept your apology. No crying in the library, now, moisture is bad for the books."

The ball of Electro whips around one last time, then comes to a stop in front of her, hovering over the reading pedestal in the middle of the library. With a purple glow, a book rises from one of the nearby shelves and floats over to land on the pedestal, cover flying open and pages fluttering as some invisible force flips through them until it settles on a particular spread.

"Is this the potion you were trying to make?"

Barbara peers at the book, fascination overcoming her fear. "Yes, I think so. The book in the Ordo library was damaged, so the whole recipe wasn't there, but... the parts that are here are the same. Could- could I copy this? Please? I know I've already been rude to you, and I am sorry, but I really need this!"

"Of course you can, sweetie. And I'll let you keep the roses, too. Though... you'll have to brew that here, and we can send it off with Razor to Mondstadt. Fortunately, I do have excellent potion-making facilities."

"Why can't I take these back to Mondstadt?"

"Oh, sweetheart." The voice goes low, now, the crackling undertone almost overpowering the gentle tones. "Didn't anyone tell you? This tower, and I, are under a curse."

[dandelion-wings]

What are your chronic illness headcanons?

I mean, I'll be honest, I'm sort of vague and broad with all of them? And will go with different specifics for different fics or fantasies, though I have a... fraught relationship with medical research (it's the medical anxiety) and also kind of prefer not to be too specific; as someone with chronic conditions of my own I personally dislike reading too-specific fictional accounts of them, and I also don't want to risk misrepresenting something I'm not familiar with.

That said!

Jean: There's lots of things that fainting, weakness, and vertigo, which are the only canon symptoms we have, could originate from, but I like to give her a heart condition! Being very vague on what, but generally at minimum an arrhythmia or something that it's a symptom of, because that's one I'm pretty familiar with, and also can be easily identified in the field (for hurt/comfort purposes) and have some hand-waved treatments. It is badly exacerbated by her stress level, which is also great for hurt/comfort.

Lisa: Either chronic fatigue or something that causes fatigue as a side-effect. I am very broad, and usually also very vague, with this one--the longer we go without that "her lifespan was halved" thing actually getting brought up in canon the more I assume that Hoyo decided not to go with it after all, but it's always lurking as a Possible Cause if it does come up in canon, and I often prefer to leave that open. (It's also I'm not something I'm personally familiar with except as a side effect of other conditions.) I had several continuities in my head where Lisa was chronically ill beforehand, but @canonical-transformation's excellent Girl Underwater solidified it for me as my dominant and permanent headcanon, whether or not it actually comes up in something I'm writing.

Kaeya: You mean my son Kaeya who has every (mental) disease? :P More seriously, leaving aside that you can posit so much going on in his head (though I do lean towards depression), alcoholism is in fact a chronic disease, and another one that I am pretty familiar with. I've also seen the argument that the tendency to write him as a sickly kid, which I often do (on the theory that if he's from underground, another preferred headcanon of mine, he probably never met 99% of Mondstadt's usual diseases beforehand and they would've run roughshod over his immune system), should probably lead to him having physical/immune issues as an adult, which I find plausible but generally don't go too far with just because he already has enough going on.

Anyway, Lisa is 100% honest and upfront about her problems and expects accommodation, as she should; Jean admits she has a condition because it's pretty hard to deny, but minimizes it to a deeply unhealthy extent; Kaeya has nothing wrong with him and wonders why you would imply that he does. Obviously this list is also in order of how difficult it is to help/treat them from the outside. Barbara appreciates Lisa deeply, wishes Jean would cooperate more but is doing her best, and isn't even touching Kaeya because that's waaaaaaay above her paygrade.

[dandelion-wings]

I was trying to do the Autumn's Regret treasure map, accidentally aggroed local legend "Liam," watched Jean, Kaeya, and Eula get KO'd in rapid succession and expected to die... and then managed to get him stuck in the lake, threw up a lightning rose from Lisa, and alternately Electro-Charged and kited him with her until he was dead. A long, grueling fight, but it was very satisfying to see the Witch of the Purple Rose show her superiority for once! :3c

[dandelion-wings]

Hi! For the Unusual Fic-Specific Asks for Authors, I'd like to ask two things about Broken Ground! First, perspective flip: I think you mentioned Lisa being more present at first and then cut out of the scene, so I'd like to know more about that :> How was it from her point of view? And also, time after time: when the group arrived back to Mondstadt after the ordeal, how did Lisa react?

Thank you for the ask! :>

I'm not entirely sure if you wanted Lisa's perspective on the scene that happened, or the one I cut, but I do love the one I cut even if it didn't serve the story, so I'm going to pull it out and POV-flip it up to the point when I realized I had to back up and do something different. >>

Lisa is still standing on the top of the Ordo steps when Barbara and Master Diluc come into view. Barbara she'd expected; Diluc she hadn't, not quite yet. She'd thought she would have to send Huffman, whom Kaeya has assured her is quite reliable when there's information he wants to distribute, to the Angel's Share to ostensibly roust out any off-duty knights who'd taken up drinking there. At which point Diluc would take off on his own initiative, with no idea of his course or what he might intend. This works out much better. "Lisa!" Barbara calls, rushing up the steps. "What happened? That cloud is from where my- where Master Jean went, isn't it?" "It does seem to be," Lisa says, patting Barbara gently on the shoulder. "We don't know for sure what's happened there just yet, but I'm trying to find out." "I take it this wasn't part of the plan." "Not at all," she tells Diluc. "This was only supposed to be a scouting mission. They must have found something very interesting indeed." She keeps her tone confident and unconcerned for Barbara's sake, hiding her own tension. The thought of Jean and Kaeya out there facing something that could have caused such tremendous chaos alone--or worse, having failed to face it, and lying injured somewhere--makes her chest ache with worry. A part of her wishes that she'd been there, though she knows there may not have been anything she could do. The best thing that she can do for them now, Lisa reminds herself, is to stay calm and in control and coordinate the emergency response. It's where her talents most lie. "Have you sent anyone to find out?" "Not yet. If it's something Jean and Kaeya can handle themselves, there's no rush, and if it's something that they can't, then there's no point in sending anything less than another captain to help them out. Noelle's gone up to Dragonspine to collect Captain Albedo, and I'm sure he'll set out as soon as she finds him." She's supposed to keep an eye out for Amber on her way, too; some advance scouting wouldn't go amiss in this situation. But she doesn't want to make Barbara any promises that she can't keep, and collecting Albedo is the higher priority. Amber is impressive for her age, but not nearly as strong, and incapable of dealing with the kind of earthquake or landslide that the evidence implies. "But...." Barbara blinks furiously, clearly fighting back tears, and shakes her head. She knows just as well as Lisa that Lisa is making the right choice for the situation, but Lisa can't blame her for her resistance. Behind her, Diluc is frowning. Lisa can see the wheels turning already, but a little nudge doesn't hurt. She deliberately gives him an arch smile. "You know, Master Diluc, I'm sure a former knight-captain would be just as capable as any of our current captains in an emergency."

...Which isn't the end of that conversation, but is the point where I realized I had to cut it, because I hit that line and realized that I wanted Diluc to have the agency of making that decision himself, but also (as I was writing it from his POV), he was coming to it too slowly to beat Lisa to the punch, because this would have been offering assistance directly to the Knights. So I cut out both problems by having Noelle summarize the situation, and making it a direct and immediate response to Barbara's desire to go herself.

As for Lisa's reaction when she returned, a combination of concern (because of the state they were both in--it didn't make it in, but I actually had it that Kaeya couldn't even take over for her for a couple of days because the Ordo has a policy re: concussions) and relief, because her friends were alive! She had to do the actual work of running the Ordo, and while both of its other top two members were out of commission to boot, so despite what she'd like to do (which was spoil them XD as well as Barbara and Noelle, who were both pretty bad off themselves after all that healing) she had to focus on doing three jobs solo for a while, which was probably even harder once news got about that Jean and Kaeya were both out of commission.

But once Kaeya recovered enough to take over, she unceremoniously took three day's leave and spent it sitting in the Cathedral infirmary drinking tea with Jean and Barbara (and keeping Noelle from working too hard by keeping her busy fetching and making tea for them), reassuring herself that everyone was all right! And sitting on the sisters just a little while she was at it. :3c

[dandelion-wings]

my brain, as I'm making breakfast this morning: You like writing Lisa as a badass. me: yes, because she is. my brain: You know, Rosaria is also badass. me, suspiciously: yyyyyes? my brain: Consider: writing them being badass TOGETHER. me: nice idea, but I don't need more WIPs, and anyway, why? my brain: Something threatened Razor. me: okay, valid, but what was it? You can't give me a WIP with nothing more than two badass ladies as the inspiration. my brain: You know that's a lie. Anyway, maybe Treasure Hoarders trying to get to Rosaria, or rogue Akademiya scholars convinced Lisa taught him arcane secrets. Treasure Hoarders hired by rogue scholars. It doesn't matter yet, you can iron out the details later. me: yeah, okay, it does sound good, but I don't need another WIP. That's not enough to sell me. We're shelving this one. my brain: No no wait LISTEN- Razor's wolf pack ALSO tries to save him. He's caged, Vision taken away, seeing his lupical being injured, certain that he's going to see his worst nightmare play out all over again and lose his wolf family a second time. And then, THIS time, the lightning and the cold and intimidating family-figure arrive soon enough to save them all.... me, grudgingly: okay now you're stealing the plot of the Collei WIP, but regardless, you've got me. We will take this to the barn to contemplate. my brain: :3c

[dandelion-wings]

saw a tasty fake dating AU scenario for another fandom and, as my brain these days tries to refit everything to Genshin, am imagining the Eula/Lisa fake-dating scenario where Eula is desperate to escape an arranged marriage, she either declares herself already committed or Lisa swoops in to rescue her with the same declaration (even as I type this I'm thinking that in the moment, Eula just says she has made vows to another Knight, and as she's trying to sort out the deception later Lisa cheerfully volunteers herself), and the Lawrence family responds by trying to buy off, drive away and, eventually, assassinate Lisa. This does not go for them as planned!