(back to aus)

okay, so, to preface this one, i must first say that this all happened because i basically got LITERALLY HIGH off of YAOI, and i am NOT KIDDING.

"how do you get high off of YAOI???" GREAT QUESTION i read a free zine that crossed my dash on tumblr, and it is going to be mandatory reading for this pitch.

yaoi zine volume 1

(please refer to page 11 for the essay i consider to be most pertinent to this pitch, but the entire zine is very banger imo, so i highly recommend you read the whole thing)

i'm going to assume you have at least read the ffvii article, which is the one i mentioned on page 11. that reading was mostly for understanding the Vibes™ of yaoi, which are very important. to my understanding, True Yaoi™^™ is kinda like this:

what i'm learning is, like.

yaoi is very miserable.

which probably helps differentiate it from how we define the vibes of things like BL, but it's that misery and the toxic relationships that compel people, because through the misery, there's this endless hope and longing within for stuff like beauty and connections.

but it's beautifully delicious dramatic irony to the reader, who Knows that there will be no happy ending, really, because their fate is simply to be miserable. yet, the characters continue to endlessly hope that maybe things will get better, maybe they can fix this if they just tried harder — and that's what makes it cathartic.

(this is why xiaoven itself is not very yaoi to me, but kaeluc definitely is.)

anyway, i feel like i was never really able to suss out the different vibes between stuff like ~yaoi~ (in the pure, classical early 2000s fujoshi sense), BL (as in the genre of romances about gay men, which tend to run fluffier), and just straight up queer mlm relationships in fic/fandom until now:

yaoi is miserable, and it has the appeal of dramatic irony about hope.

you guys get it now, right? okay perfect moving on—

so, thematically, this fic would be about internalized homophobia and accepting one's own queerness as not a death sentence, but something to celebrate. structurally, it is designed to force ao3 readers to realize that by nature of consuming art, they themselves become participatory in the art itself, because part of what makes art art are the things we get out of having known it at all.

but how does this all tie back into yaoi? what's the plot? the crux of the pitch itself?

genre-aware venti realizes he's in a mid-2000s yaoi fic, and he has to use the power of love to save their lives instead of dooming them.

well. i guess to be fair, it's not really the power of love that saves him.

like, technically, this is a xiaoven fic, but it's honestly not really about that. like, xiao doesn't really do anything other than be the other half of the ship; he doesn't even get to become genre-aware or anything.

he doesn't even get to become genre-aware.

instead, what ends up saving the two of them from their repeated yaoiful dooms are the series of dialogues venti has with the "author" inside the author's notes— "author" here in scare quotes here bc said "author" is a character herself: istaroth

that's right, kids!! venti is istaroth's yaoi blorbo in this fic!!!!

(take a shot every time i force you guys to read the word "yaoi" lol)

"why istaroth?" you might be asking. well, mostly i just think it would make for a good parallel to canon and how she's kind of his mom there (in that he split off from her as a thread of the thousand winds), so having him be her blorbo in this metafic, onto whom she projects her own fears of fate, feels fitting.

the structure of the fic itself takes advantage of ao3 as the publishing platform, using reader expectations of what part of the fic is the narrative (a performance of the characters) and what part of the fic are just author's notes (outside of the world of said performance).

what does this mean? well, normally the "art" part of a fic only really refers to the text we read, maybe some illustrations if the author is so lucky. if we download the fic as an epub, or pdf, or html, or print it out, the Essence of the art is still contained in the format/platform/media/whatever you're using, because the point is that you are reading and parsing the meaning of the words on the page. maybe the way they're formatted plays a role, but ideally, that format will be preserved by the art's container anyway.

however, the "art" part of this fic would include its container: its place on ao3. this means that normally meta elements of the fic, such as the title, tags, summary, and author's notes, become part of the art itself.

when first braindumping about this pitch, i had to think a lot about which metadata would be part of the true (meta) narrative, and which parts would be, like, actual metadata for the sake of indexing. for the sake of the Art, i wanted to be consistent with the work's artifice; yet for the sake of the readers, i want (deliberately present tense) to be honest about what the art is.

the solution? to act as if every part of the ao3 work itself is part of the narrative— the title, tags, summary, author's notes, even comment replies (or lack thereof)— an element of the Art, and have a second ao3 account bookmark the work with a true summary and set of tags.

how people would find this bookmark to, like, read this true summary becomes clear when you see the false summary:

a series/collection of loosely connected xv oneshots.

chapter navigation:
[[Read More…]]

clicking on the [[Read More…]] would lead to the aforementioned bookmark listing (which, fun fact, is a thing i checked and confirmed to be possible :D), and would have the following bookmark comment to serve as its true summary:

this is a fic about genre-aware venti stuck as istaroth's yaoi blorbo in the mid-to-late 2000s.

by reading this fic, you acknowledge that YOU are participatory in the art!!!!

any inquiries about the meta nature of this fic ( NOT directed to the character-author!) should be sent to the legitimate author outside of the fourth wall!!!!!

the true-summary bookmark would also be linked in the author's note at the start of the work, labelled with a giant READ ME in the hopes that people will click on it so that i don't have to break kafaybe.

this would very much be a author chose not to archive warnings type fic, so that i can get away with not tagging a lot of things. however, they would likely be the best tip-off towards Something Being Up™.

since the metadata is a part of the Art, it is something that venti can interact with and therefore technically edit, so while they probably wouldn't get too crazy, they would at least be honest about some things. idk how Exactly i'd want this to be tagged, but this is an approximation:

Rating: Explicit

Category: M/M

Warnings: Author Chose Not To Archive Warnings

Warnings: Author Chose Not To Archive Warnings

Relationships: venti/xiao | alatus (genshin impact)

Characters: venti (genshin impact), xiao | alatus (genshin impact), istaroth (genshin impact)

Freeform: oneshot collection, metanarrative, exploration of queerness

honestly, it's gonna be a lot of hoping that people will actually notice any incongruities, get curious, and then actually click on the readme links and whatnot. that is honestly a lot to hope for!!! but, just as a play can be ruined by one of the actors breaking character, the Art i wish to portray would be ruined by telling the audience outright that they are about to participate in the art.

as i mentioned earlier, even stuff like the comment replies (or lack thereof) would be considered to be an element of the Art, a little snippet of the narrative. how, then, would comment replies be integrated into the story?

well, the answer to this, i think, is obvious: since it's modelled after a mid-2000s fic, then we should do as the mid-2000s fanfiction writers did on fanfiction.net: simply reply to comments in the author's notes at the start of the chapter.

and honestly, i might as well start talking a bit more about how the venti-istaroth author's note dialogues are meant to be revealed as, well, dialogues, since a key part of the experience of reading the fic should be the shock of realizing that the a/n are also part of the narrative.

basically, at the start, istaroth doesn't leave any author's notes of her own, aside from replying to any comments in the top notes. all notes at the bottom would be from venti, commenting on the events of the chapter in such a way that he could be mistaken for a young author having fun with their publishing. however, where istaroth just uses the default display font when talking in the notes, venti's comments would be within a <code> html tag (stylized to look like this on this website, but is by default just a mono­space font)

eventually, once istaroth catches venti in her author's notes boxes (possibly after noticing metadata changes she doesn't remember making to "her fic"), the notes switch to that talking-to-the-characters script format that was so common on ffn back in the day, and the readers will finally realize why some of the a/n were in a completely different font than the others.

granted, i have major concerns regarding the character limit in the author's notes boxes on ao3, as i have hit that before . i know there exists a workskin that allows you to mimic author's notes / end navbar buttons in a work , but since i want to account for people who have workskins turned off by default (and who might not check the READ ME, which would obvs be edited to include "turn on workskins"), i'd honestly rather only use that as a last resort. plus, it would alter the word count of the fic, which, while not a huge deal, would make me sad.

well. i guess it wouldn't matter that much if it only happens after the venti-istaroth dialogues start, but anyway.

so, at the start of the fic, venti was not aware of the fact that is a yaoi blorbo who exists inside a story until very recently, and as such, has no idea who the author is, what their goals are, or how to change anything. all he can do is try to change how the story goes as it's being written.

take, for example, the hypothetical opening oneshot. what's ""supposed"" to happen is that xiao, obviously very depressed or whatever, tells venti, "i would die for you" as his love confession, and venti is ""supposed"" to find this incredibly romantic in his bleeding-heart way. and then they'd fuck because this is yaoi. what else are they going to do? venti wants to make xiao happy, give him hope that he's still loved "in the only way he knows how" (physically.), and then xiao is ""supposed"" to die anyway.

what would end up ""actually happening"" as venti takes control of the narrative for the first time would instead be venti saying, "i don't want this for you. i don't want you to die." (because in my actual opinion, easily the most romantic thing you can say in response to "i would die for you" is "let's make it out of this together") however, before he can kiss xiao and confess his love to save them both, the oneshot abruptly cuts off, ending before they can be saved. the author's note at the bottom would simply read:

so close, yet so far…!!

the a/n in the first chapter, where again, the readers are unaware of the meta nature of this fic, is meant to give the impression that the author is teasing the readers abt xiaoven not kissing because lol cliffhanger on the first reading, but on later readers, it should become obvious that this note is venti lamenting the fact that he couldn't happy-ending his way out of this oneshot because the author refused to complete it.

the bottom author's notes would be strictly written by venti for the first few chapters, but eventually, he comes in contact with istaroth and demands to know why she insists on having them suffer like this every single time. likewise, istaroth would demand to know why he continually refuses to behave as he is ""supposed to"", giving her writer's block all the time these days.

they don't get very far at first, because istaroth doesn't yet understand that she's using venti as a vehicle to explore her own queerness out of sight of broader society (aka celestia! :D) via the yaoification of xiaoven, and because venti doesn't yet understand that the point of the tragedy of yaoi is the catharsis of watching someone else continue to hope through their own doom.

(or, well, maybe he does, but there still remains the frustration at being the one forced to live out those tragedies for the sake of someone else's feelings.)

but, eventually, they get tired of the endless frustration with one another and start actually talking to one another. i mean, might as well when they're not getting anything done otherwise. with venti always keeping istaroth from receiving her catharsis and istaroth always keeping venti from getting his happy ending, they have reached an impasse.

the conversations that ensue would involve istaroth coming to terms w/her own relationship to queerness (thus carrying on the time-honored tradition of exploring one's own sexuality through gay fanfiction (fuck yeah!!)), covering topics like comphet, gender (and its many subtopics), personal agency, guilt— the list goes on! so let's now discuss some of these topics in more detail!

comphet

here is basically what i first wrote when ruminating on this pitch, as a proof-of-concept for the dialogues:

istaroth: you know i dont really tell people irl that i like yaoi
istaroth: but there are a few who have found out, whether i wanted them to or not
istaroth: and you wanna know what they always seem to ask me?
venti: *nervous* what?
istaroth: *mockingly* So wHy ArE yOU sO iNteReStEd iN GAY SEX bEtWEeN mEN?
venti: …
istaroth: …
venti: …
istaroth: *le sigh* i know usually this is where i'd tell you it's bc i think it's hot that xiao seems to want to make you the new center of his otherwise meaningless life; you, who have such an empty and shattered sense of identity, and yet would hate for others to make you the center of their lives, because in doing so, you feel like you are forced to take on some aspect of that as an identity for yourself in turn
istaroth: but like… idk
istaroth: they keep picking at the men part specifically
istaroth: *unsure* like im a girl
venti: i must confess, i don't understand what you mean.
istaroth: *le sigh x2* i don't really get it either. they just kinda think it's weird that i like yaoi but i guess there's just something abt it that pulls me in. i cant really explain it.
venti: …
istaroth: …
venti: so—
istaroth: there's this guy at school i think i like but im not sure if i really like him so im thinking of setting up a situation where i need a fake boyfriend and hes the only one who can fill in that role for me so that way i can play pretend with him for a while and see if i really do like him and if i do then ill confess in a storm of sakura petals come spring and if i dont well then it was all just pretend the whole time anyway so no ones really hurt by it.
venti:
istaroth? venti: you're insane.

i mentioned earlier that celestia comes into play in this fic as representative of the broader homophobic society of le 2000s. we never actually see celestia in this fic, just as (at this point), we do not see the inhabitants of celestia in canon, but you can Sense their control over istaroth (and by extension, venti) anyway.

it's in how she self-censors (shown through the '?' at the end of 'istaroth?', stricken out) and forces venti ooc to call her insane, because that's how she's been made to feel she should think and talk about herself. and venti is helpless to her forcing him ooc, because at the end of the day, she is the author, and he is merely the blorbo.

giving istaroth a fake boyfriend subplot happening outside the fic in her "real life" would be interesting to integrate, i think. like, clearly it's kind of unhinged as an idea, and it shows how desperately she needs to play pretend to test out ideas about herself that she's not fully certain of.

and you're supposed to see how being allowed to explore her identity through the safe, fictional space of yaoi is a good thing, as weird as other people may think it is! because the alternative would be to use real people, who are complicated and unpredictable and uncontrollable.

gender and sexuality

as is an obvious theme in this pitch, istaroth, like many fans before her, is using fandom and fanfiction to explore her own repressed sexuality. like many fujoshi and BL fans, there is meant to be a gendered aspect to her compulsion towards yaoi in particular.

like, for whatever reason, in fanfiction it's much more common to find m/m smut that is just so incredibly carnal compared to f/f smut, which tends to focus a lot more on feelings of love and intimacy. (m/f smut, from what i have noticed, tends to be a toss-up.) as such, there can be a gendered aspect towards the categories of smut one is drawn to.

in a way, [cis] m/m can be both more familiar and more distant from one's self in a way that m/f or f/f can never be, and that can be conducive towards self-exploration. recognition of the self through the other and all that jazz; we've all done it!

the carnality of classical yaoi has been a subject of much criticism in fandom, often calling it "dehumanizing" or leading to accusations of fujoshi as "a bunch of straight girls" who are "fetishizing" or "objectifying" gay men.

however, classical yaoi can allow its writers and enjoyers to comfortably explore its taboo subjects of queerness and violence with an extra layer of separation from themselves beyond mere "it's fiction." it allows for the gradual unrepression of the things one is taught growing up, about the relationships between sex, purity, and righteousness; about what kind of person one is supposed to be in order to fit into those concepts impressed upon you by society.

(i'm specifying "classical yaoi" here because although i wasn't into the m/m scene until relatively recently (and most certainly was not around for it in the 2000s lol), i still remember the fujoshi discourse circulating tumblr in the 2010s, and i think that western m/m shippers in weeb fandoms have gotten a lot more conscientious about the way they portray gay men.)

undoing shame and repression is an important part of fully realizing one's own identity and becoming a healthy adult, which is probably why a lot of older gay people tend to say that if you realized you were queer in high school, your 20s are like a second adolescence. istaroth, in this pitch, currently has no specified age, although i imagine she'd be in high school still, since i feel that was the stereotype back in the day, and this concept plays heavily with stereotypes in and around yaoi, fujoshi, and their culture.

yet, this important parts of this fic would be to commentate on 2000s fujoshi, and why they yaoi the way they do. as such, it becomes important for venti to challenge istaroth on why she feels like everything must end in tragedy.

gender roles and personal agency

sex does not have to be violent, or compulsory, or anything you don't want it to be. and yet, to many people, it feels inevitable, and that inevitability, that lack of agency in the subject, can feel like (become?) an act of violence.

i'm sure many of us are familiar with the concept of the seme and uke in yaoi. basically, they're just who tops n who bottoms, but also, they're kind of genders in themselves because they come with this whole heap of expected appearances, behaviors, and so on, just like the arbitrary societal expectations of men and women. because the false oneshots and fics always end right before venti can take the story into his own hands, there would eventually come an argument between him and istaroth about the idea of agency:

venti: i don't mean to sound ungrateful or anything, but why is it that i'm always on the bottom?
istaroth: what kind of question is that? *gestures to venti's appearance* of course you're the uke
venti: (ﺧ益ﺨ)
istaroth: don't give me that face!!
istaroth: i get enough of that everywhere else.
venti: *sighs* all right, but i still don't get why my appearance has anything to do with it.
istaroth: it's a lot more believable for you to be the one overpowered by xiao than the other way around.
venti: i'm a god!
istaroth: canonically the weakest one!!
venti: so?? maybe i'm tired of being treated like i can't act for myself, only be acted upon.
venti: even if you're not going to give us a happy ending yet, i at least want to have some kind of control over what happens to me in the meantime!
istaroth: you're not supposed to take control of your own life!
venti: *stares*
istaroth: how are you supposed to know what you really want when you haven't lived long enough to know what you like?
venti: by claiming agency over your own actions and seeking out your desires?
istaroth: *stares*
venti: …no one's ever told you that before, have they.
istaroth: only when i've done something wrong.
venti: it's not a sin to want.
istaroth: it is when you're not supposed to.

it's a frustration as old as the moon for teenagers to feel a distinct lack of agency in their lives. the world is telling them how they are supposed to be, and many are punished for being how they want to be instead. girls especially feel the pressure to conform, to be passive objects, rather than active agents, in their own lives.

istaroth projects these frustrations onto venti by shoving him into the passive/submissive role in the yaoi relationship (the uke, even though saying it like that deals me psychic damage without fail), and she doesn't even realize that she's doing it, doesn't even realize that this doesn't have to be the way things are.

as you can see, the conversation also touches on topics of gender roles during sex, stuff like top/bottom, dom/sub, etc etc, though they're all rolled into "top/bottom" here because the normative idea is that the top is also the dom and that they're running the fuck.

there's also this sense that istaroth has accepted her role in society as a passive object, to whom life will simply happen, and whose endpoint she has no control over. she is resigned to the fate society has written out for her; why can't venti resign himself to the fake she wants to write out for him?

i think this conversation would also need a follow-up at some point, where venti n istaroth talk more explicitly about how relationships are expected to look a certain way. it would probably tie in with the irl fake boyfriend subplot, with discussions of how exhausting it can be to act a certain way with someone, even if you like them a lot (although istaroth is not certain whether she really likes this fake boyfriend a lot).

important to that conversation would also be a discussion around how the point of sex and intimacy is not guilt or shame (asking questions of where those ideas even come from) or control, how the point isn't always necessarily about reproduction or whatever, but that it's supposed to be fun and enjoyable. it's about trusting your partner enough to open yourself up to vulnerability with them.

the defining part of queerness is not meant to be guilt or shame; it's meant to be choice and acceptance. even if— especially if— you're "abnormal" in some way, this doesn't have to be something we must forever repent and live in shame about. why should it be?

at some point in their dialogues, venti figures out that part of the reason istaroth keeps dooming him n xiao is because she cannot find it in herself to imagine an ending where the people are both queer and happy at the same time, because she knows, deep down, that she is queer herself in some way. but, there's a Shame around that because of celestia, and so she cannot admit it to herself. yet, despite her inability to admit it, feels nonetheless like her life is on this trajectory to a tragic ending.

guilt

guilt is such a huge part of so many gay people's experiences that the new joy of gay sex (1992), which has long been lauded as not only an excellent sex guide for gay men, but also an excellent guide to what it means to be queer, has a whole section about dealing with guilt and how it affects people's relationships and sexualities.

once venti manages to convince istaroth that maybe being gay isn't a death sentence, and that maybe, even if she can't see it for herself at that particular moment, yaoi will be separate, yet familiar, enough to herself that she can use it to practice the concept of a happy ending.

this would lead to the titular catboy, as the way she goes around doing this is by writing a fluffy oneshot where in venti is a naïve catboy maid who seduces xiao (who is v mortified by the fact that this Gets To Him lol) and then if they fuck, it's just the sweetest and fluffiest sex by far in the entire "oneshot collection".

it would be so cringe by today's standards because of how completely over-the-top and earnest it is; yet somehow, the ending would feel bittersweet, even though on paper it should fulfill everything they set out to do, and they have the following dialogue in the author's notes:

venti: hmmm…
istaroth: what's wrong? i tried writing something happier this time, like you suggested.
venti: something's missing.
istaroth: well it has at least one catboy in a maid costume, so idk what else to do.
venti: are you happy with it?
istaroth:
istaroth:
istaroth: *looks away*
venti: *sighs*
istaroth: listen, i tried!!!
istaroth: i really tried this time.
istaroth: to imagine an ending that wasn't actively miserable.
venti: but you're not happy with it
istaroth: im sorry.

putting aside the fact that venti is allergic to cats (and might therefore not enjoy being a catboy), the reason this oneshot would fail as the happy ending that lets xiaoven escape their fate as tragic blorbos is because it lacks the catharsis istaroth is always trying to get from her tragic endings. the maid café has very little struggle or even plot compared to her usual tragedies, and she finds it hard to get invested in something so shallow as a result.

it is easy to fall back into habits of guilt when all the world but one is trying to shame you for your identity, and that guilt would bleed into istaroth's difficulties with writing fluff.

but, it would be good practice nonetheless, as it allows her to practice self-indulgence in a fluffy, rather than angsty, way in a space safe from the prying eyes of celestia, and is overall an important step in the direction of escaping their tragic narratives.

because ultimately, the story's thesis is as follows:

we are not doomed to the fates that others seem to write onto us.

and with time, patience, and practice, we can learn that sadness is not the only romantic emotion, that goodness can be fresh and exciting, and that being queer is not a death sentence. because happy endings are possible for us too.