Chapter Text
One thing Lysithea wasn't too proud to admit was that she hate-followed someone on her fandom Twitter.
Yes, fandoms were supposed to be fun, you should curate your own timeline, block if you see something you don't like, et cetera cetera, but here was the issue:
CvR724's stuff was everywhere.
It didn't matter how hard she muted, it didn't matter how hard she tried to simply ignore it; something relating to this BNF (big name fan), their ships, and their content of said ships always made it to her timeline. Whether it be fanart of their fic, a meme spawned from one of their shitposts, a zine they were involved in, or simply her mutuals talking to them (because of course they had to share a good number of mutuals), they just wouldn't. Go. Away.
Of course she could just block the person.
But that felt like losing, like she was admitting defeat to the greater fandom trends and shrinking back into her rarepair corner all by herself while nobody joined her, and Lysithea was not going to lose to this juggernaut fan and their juggernaut ships, dammit!
No, she was going to stand strong, and she was going to win. She was going to outlast CvR724 in the Infernal Insignia: Genealogy of Jugdral fandom, and she was going to be updating her fics for Lewyn/Tailtiu long after everyone in Lewyn/Erinys and Azelle/Tailtiu tag left for the next hot new fandom.
"..."
Was what she thought, when she was a senior in high school.
Lysithea was now a sophomore in college.
CvR724 hadn't moved onto that Harakami Collision game, Lewynys and Azeltiu had close to a thousand fics (and lots of high quality art on Pixiv).
Meanwhile, her pairing.
"...Goddess dammit."
Still hadn't broken 100 works for otp:true on AO3.
It was finals week, so Lysithea hadn't checked her Twitter timeline in a few days. Doing so would be a bad idea, anyway; she was cranky, sleep deprived, and would get irrationally, unnecessarily mad when she inevitably saw some stupid take from some stupid moron.
"..."
Lysithea took out her phone and opened the bird app. A little downward drag, and the timeline refreshed to the top—
"Ack!!!"
—then bombarded her with fanart of her NOTP.
She'd turned off retweets of anyone who was likely to retweet such things, of course; she'd also muted every single pairing keyword a long time ago, including the ones in Hoshidan, and she thought she'd blocked or muted every last artist who had ever drawn for those ships.
But either the Twitter mute function was being awful as usual, or— wait, this artist didn't tag the ship. Time to mute or block the whole account, Lysithea thought...
...but not before checking who liked the damn tweet and put it on her timeline.
CvR724. Of fucking course.
Lysithea clicked on the profile, knowing it was childish loser behavior to scroll through the tweets of someone she disliked. But it was finals week, and perhaps a little extra spite could help her do better— and write some Lewytiu afterwards, because hell if she was going to lose to CvR724!
The latest tweets, sent only a few minutes ago, said:
lrt) ohhhh new azeltiu art!!
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i miss seeing the tl filled with jugdral and azeltiu and lewynys tbh. can't believe that was already like two years ago, i'm so starved for content nowadays (says the fic writer who can make their own food but you know what i mean,)
"Oh, shut up," Lysithea muttered to herself.
Azeltiu and Lewynys shipper complaining about lack of content? Seriously?
Sure, a lot of people had moved onto other fandoms, but the Jugdral fandom wasn't dead, by any means. And amongst those still here, CvR724's ships were still the fandom juggernauts, just below maybe... Sigdre, Sigdigan, and Areseliph. (Maybe Sigvis, which probably would have been far more popular if there wasn't so much Discourse™ around Arvis in early days of the fandom.)
And that was just the "main" ship, the one they cared enough to write longfics for. According to the shipping chart that was still in his Carrd, CvR724 liked almost every pairing that were the most popular options for the characters involved— what she called, "character-specific local juggernauts."
Lysithea didn't like any of them.
What was the fun in shipping the ships the devs were obviously biased towards, anyway? How much of a basic bitch did someone have to be, to ship two characters just because they were introduced together and were said to have been around each other for a long time and had scenes even outside of support conversations implying romantic feelings between the two and—
—point was, this CvR724 didn't know the first thing about being starved for content. Try shipping a pair that only got fanart if you saved money to put into somebody's Ko-fi for a commission or a request! (She added CedLene and Nannares to the list of ships to spite-write for once exams were over.)
Ding.
While Lysithea coped and seethed, her BEC (bitch-eating cracker) of BECs had written a few more tweets.
like everyone's playing harakami or watching that curse spinner anime or the championship legends netflix show & i'm glad moots are having fun but. i can't move on yet i love my otps too much!!
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yes i'm overinvested in this video game and these fictional characters and pairings. yes i'm gonna obsess over them for years to come even if nobody else does. what are you gonna do about it
"..."
Lysithea backed out of the profile and quickly blocked the untagged art. She refreshed the timeline again, and down came a stream of tweets about fandoms she wasn't in. (Maybe she needed to do a Twitter purge soon. She could feel herself taking psychic damage whenever she so much as skimmed over a post about drama in the Harakami fandom.)
On the top, a few seconds ago, were two new tweets by CvR724.
gods i need to log tf off i'm a senior and it's finals week lmao i gotta fucking graduate man!!
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see you guys in a few days, i'll update the fic soon!
Another refresh, and both tweets had multiple likes. There were replies of, good luck on the finals, see you, ooh i'm excited, and eyes emojis. (Both the actual emojis, and the typed out words, "eye emojis.")
Lysithea doubled down on her internal vow to write one hell of a Lewytiu fic, thinking nothing of the tweet about finals.
Until one week later, when she was busy typing away on her laptop in her dorm. The spite method worked— she had, as the expression went, killed it at the finals.
Now it was time to kill the rival ship with her masterpiece.
Okay, probably not kill. An established fandom juggernaut wasn't going to die, no matter what— no matter how much Lysithea had sort of wished they would, once the fandom began to drain. But she could kill CvR724's vibe by posting a fic much better than theirs around the same time they updated, and that was what really mattered here, right?
"..."
Lysithea hit save and threw herself back into the chair, hand covering her face.
"...Ugh."
This was embarassing.
Here she was, an adult in college, living away, independently, like she'd always wished.
Getting worked up and competitive against some stranger online who didn't even know she existed.
Over fictional characters kissing.
Fandoms are meant to be enjoyable, repeated a kind-yet-vaguely-condescending voice in her head; ship and let ship, two cakes, blah blah blah.
It wasn't that she didn't know these things, logically; she'd seen the point repeated in different words over and over again whenever idiots online got too heated over fiction. Over things that weren't real. And she agreed.
Emotionally, though.
Not treating everything as a scarcity or a competition like she did everywhere else just wasn't possible.
Besides, didn't everyone like recognition, of being acknowledged for their hard work? Not "even if" it was something they did purely for fun— was doing things one liked not all the more reason to want recognition? Sure, self-satisfaction was a factor in these activities; but so was external validation, because humans were social creatures. And if designating some stranger online a rival and trying to beat them at some arbitrary one-sided competition she made up in her head was how she got both, what was so wrong with that?
Aside from the fact it was stupid and petty and childish.
"...Hmph."
Lysithea took out her phone and opened the stupid bird app again. She'd been blasted out of her writing mood, but the fic was almost complete, anyway— surely a small break would help her feel refreshed.
Scroll. Scroll. Her timeline was covered with Harakami Collision, as usual. There was a new character or something, a guy, and as usual the fanart drew him far more muscular than he was in-game. (Why did she even know about this game's same body syndrome?!)
Deciding to not put off the purge any longer, Lysithea went into her following section. But instead of starting the softblock spree, her finger clicked on CvR724's profile. She almost didn't recognize it, because the avatar had changed. (Header was still Lewynys, though.)
And scrolling down, she saw...
...Harakami fanart retweets?
Yes, those sure were Harakami characters. That one purple twintail girl, the other purple twintail girl, the zombie girl, the boob sword woman, and so on.
In between the flurry of fanart, there was a tweet thread by CvR724:
hey so. i fuckin lied about writing,
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there are so many purple girls in harakami. so many
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mona and keqing PLEASE dm me
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i'm on ar30 rn anyone wanna come help me grind for materials
"Huh."
So much for not being able to move on yet, Lysithea thought.
This was exactly what she'd hoped for, of course; her BEC jumping to another fandom, never to update their juggernaut fic(s) of a juggernaut ship and put it on the front page of the Jugdral tag ever again. She'd outlasted and won, take that, so on.
And yet.
The victory did feel rather empty, as these petty online (one-sided) feuds always were, but more than that—
—no, surely she wasn't going to miss having CvR724 in the same fandom. Why would she? This was a hate-follow, anyway. Time to remove this fucker from her timeline for good, now that they didn't even share fandoms.
Lysithea went back up, and swiped to their media section for no particular reason. The top tweet there was from a day ago:
cafe: arrived
pine tea: ordered
word doc: open
let's get this bread gamers
Attached was a photo, angled and filtered to look more like it was for Instagram rather than Twitter. A cup and a laptop on a table of some cozy-looking café, and in the background...
...Lysithea recognized the scene in the background.
"No way," she muttered, clicking and zooming in on the photo— except that yes, that was definitely the view from Hilal, her favorite Almyran café on the University of Derdriu campus; exact same signs, and upon a closer look, the cup and cupholder design was familiar, too, even though the logo was turned away and hidden in the photo.
gods i need to log tf off i'm a senior and it's finals week lmao i gotta fucking graduate man!!
"...No."
Was CvR724.
"No fucking way."
A student at University of Derdriu?
"How?!?!"
Yes, University of Derdriu was a big university, and Jugdral was a popular game, so the first year after it came out, that Ignatz guy from art school drew Seliph fanart for a student exhibit, and Hilda (Valentine Goneril) from design major cosplayed as Hilda (of Friege) at a local con. But that was last year, and looking at their social media accounts, they didn't seem to be deep enough in the fandom to, say, have done fills for the kink meme, or to have participated in that cursed Julius/Veld/Possessed!Julia thread on jugdral_anon. (And if they did, they kept it separate from their main. Good for them.)
But CvR724.
Deep in Jugdral hell almost three years after its release. Writing multiple novel-level fanfiction, for free, just because they liked imagining certain fictional characters kissing other fictional characters. Her hate-follow BEC for about that same length of time.
Was a student at the same university as her, and visited the same café she did?
Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe he was a student at some other university in the city. Even if they were a student here, it didn't matter. Lysithea was a busy person, and she didn't have time to waste on juvenile endeavors, such as seeking out someone she disliked online in real life.
What was she, a teenager?
Lysithea hit send on the messages saying,
Sorry that I'm not Mona or Keqing, but are you a student at University of Derdriu by any chance
Because I am, and I recognized the location you took that photo in yesterday. That was at Hilal, wasn't it?
Briefly, Lysithea thought of backing out of the DMs and immediately deactivating her account to rectify the stupidity. She didn't get the time, however, as the response was immediate:
hm. i thought i did a good job hiding anything that can give that sorta personal info away but maybe not
thanks for letting me know, i think i'll delete that post
Perhaps that message came across as creepy or threatening. Lysithea typed out and sent,
I only recognized because I'm a semi-frequent customer there. I doubt anybody else would be able to tell
still
you never know what kinda crazies are out here on twitter dot com lmao
So they thought they were e-famous enough on this side of the fandom to have stalkers, Lysithea thought, scowling at the screen. Not that it was an entirely invalid concern, considering how deranged people could get online over the dumbest things, but also, they flattered themselves too much.
That's true. Glad it helped, in that case
yeah lol
thanks again!
For a moment, there was hope that the conversation was over, that she could get the hell out and unfollow and remove CvR724 and their basic bitch ships from her timeline for good.
Unfortunately, three blue dots appeared on the bottom of the screen.
so anyway
how did the finals go?
And now they were trying to act friendly, after just a few lines of DMs.
It went great, Lysithea thought, typing. I murdered the curve, just like I'll murder your ego soon.
It went well. I'm mostly glad I have time to work on my fics now
saaaame lol
says the person who's been procrastinating on writing to play vidya haha
wish somebody would force me to finish this damn chapter
actually
wait
"Oh, what now," Lysithea grumbled out loud.
you said you also visit hilal right? you're familiar with this place?
Yes
I haven't had time to go recently, though
e x c e l l e n t
(What was with the extra spaces, she wondered.)
say, how about we both go there tomorrow and write together?
i think it would help a lot, having someone else's presence in person to encourage us on
or at least, to stop any distractions lol
As if she'd help them write anything, much less fics for her NOTPs. And she didn't need help from anyone else to stay focused and productive; never had, never will.
(That extra bit of spite from finals didn't count. She could have done just as well without it, surely.)
and i swear i'm not a weird person or anything,
like i genuinely do not have ulterior motives here, i swear
just wanna
write fics and gush about jugdral irl yknow?
been a while since i did that
Lysithea pinched the bridge of her nose.
After almost three years of (hate-)following CvR724, she thought she had at least some grasp of what their personality was like— that being, pseudo-intellectual, performatively friendly, and more lenient towards idiots than they ought be, not out of good faith but for the sake of maintaining some useless online clout. Petty and judgemental of her, she knew, but that was her impression.
The person asking to meet her now, however... they just seemed overly excited, at worst.
(And maybe a bit lonely. But that was probably just her projecting.)
(Except no, why would she project onto someone she didn't even like?)
(Also, she wasn't lonely. She had actual, real-life friends in her study groups.)
(And apparently they weren't going to jump to Harakami. Was that good? Bad? She didn't know.)
I didn't assume you had any ulterior motives. I'm the one who DMed first.
right
but like i said earlier: lotsa crazies out there!
better to be safe than sorry
Yes, I'm aware, I did pass the stranger danger exam in kindergarten with flying colors.
lmfaoooo
A laughing crying emoji react. Was that really so funny?
so
that a yes?
Lysithea paused.
This was the point where she could tell them off— that no, she was actually on her way to unfollow, mute, and maybe block them for good, because she was, as everyone put it, curating her own fandom experience. Or she could be more polite and say she was busy, the oldest trick of "maybe next time" that was really just code for "nah, never." She could simply say she wasn't interested.
Whatever way it went, what good would come out of meeting them in real life? It seemed like they wanted a friend, yet her thoughts about them this whole time— not just the few minutes of DMing, but over the past three years— had been less than friendly.
Spiteful she could be, sometimes for the stupidest reasons, but Lysithea always kept those feelings to herself; it never hurt anyone else. But meeting them in person and pretending to be friendly was— that was being deceptive and manipulative, wasn't it?
She wasn't that kind of person. Her parents taught her better than that.
Alright. What time?
yay! i'm free whenever
cuz exams are over woooo
Same for me. You do realize that we go to the same university, right
lolol okok
how about noon, then?
hilal's got a decent lunch menu so we can eat that and yeah
Okay. Tomorrow, 12PM.
Whoever gets there first grabs a table and sends a photo
I know I'll get there first, but still, she thought.
sounds good!
food and drinks are on me :3
The cat mouth emoji temporarily threw her off, but she soon replied with a:
Got it. See you then.
see you!
When Lysithea exited out of the DM, there was a "1" on the notification tab.
Tap, refresh.
CvR724 Writes @ purple waifu hell followed you.
"..."
Lysithea felt a lot of things, but she certainly did not feel glad about becoming mutuals with someone she'd hate-followed years ago. Nor was she looking forward to meeting her BEC in real life tomorrow.
And she most certainly hadn't pushed the fic and the timeline purge all the way to the bottom of her to-do list for it.
"...Argh."
After all, why would she?
Lysithea, as always, didn't even like this person.