~ Chilumi | タル蛍 ~
okay, so here's the story behind chilumi, and how it's Directly Responsible for all this genshin impact nonsense.
so my bff, nat, was looking for soulmate au fanfiction one day in the spring of 2021, and she did not care what fandom it was for. as such, she ended up reading this chilumi fic called vixere.
it was a very engrossing read (something i can also vouch for, having read the first two dozen chapters at least before it entered headcanon territory n basically domesticated lumine and– i'll get to that later): enough to make her willing to download genshin impact n play it enough to unlock n play childe's story quest.
at least, that had been the plan.
because unfortunately, genshin impact has a way of weaselling its way into people's brains and turning them into worms. and about a month later, at around the time when i was being lured into genshin via a different friend (star) with the promise of ANIME SADBOYS (xiao), nat was playing venti story quest, and becoming, quote, "a venti simp."
(anyway, the rest of this story probably belongs under xiaoven, but whatever!! (for now!!!!))
anyway, so after star told me a bit abt anime sadboy xiao (whom'st she thought i would stan, n unfortunately, she was right), i asked nat abt who this xiao character got shipped with, n that star told me there were two usual options: this character named venti, and the traveler, but that she didn't really like xiao x traveler for various reasons. anyway, so then nat went looking through the xv tag on tumblr, basically on a whim over xiaother/xiaolumi, started spamming our discord server w/fanart, n in doing so, absolutely shattered the glass floor that we did not even realize was right beneath us, n we rapidly descended into genshin hell together.
AND NOW IT'S TIME FOR ME TO TALK ABOUT WHY I THINK SO MANY CHILUMIS ARE WRONG ABT CHILUMI
now, as i mentioned before, chilumi is at Direct Traceable Fault for all this genshin impact nonsense. and, since chilumi fic is what got nat into this, she's obvs gone looking for more, read some, n then sent the good shit to me. at one point, i also started digging around for chilumi fic, so, like, suffice to say, we've both read a Lot of chilumi fic.
now, a lot of our opinions n headcanons for lumine's characterization are informed by the early chapters of the aformentioned fic, vixere (which, like, makes sense– it was compelling enough to draw nat into this game at all), which characterizes lumine as this honestly wild, incredibly spirited, almost feral spitfire who could and would fight her way through any of her problems.
this is what nat and i have affectionately dubbed "Feral Lumine" and is the basis from which pretty much all our lumine headcanons have grown.
which, like– okay, basically, here is our ideal lumine:
- FERAL
- tired of everyone's shit (but is too kind to turn away people who really need it)
- a little hard for others to get along with (but has genuinely deep and emotional bonds w/the friends she does make as a result)
- full of grief beneath it all
- and finally…
…
… BISEXUAL
lumine, to us, is not naïve. she has made hard decisions before, is forced to make sacrifices, and is disappointed over and over and over again in her unwavering search for her brother. she is a powerful outlander, and while she will help those in need if asked, she also will not hesitate to choose violence if necessary.
i know the final point made was bisexual (which is indeed very true and important to us), but above all, these major points of lumine characterization should support a sense of ruthless independence.
this is why i ended up dropping vixere at around the point it caught up with then-canon 1.3/1.4: in the switch to full headcanon territory, the narrative ended up changing lumine in such a way that we eventually came to dub "domesticating her"/ she ran over to snezhnaya, met childe's family, n seemed to lose a lot of her sharp edg. by the time it got into engagement soap opera plot shenanigans, i had stopped seeing the lumine i loved so much in the fic, and unlike nat, whose first exposure to the game had been through the fic, i knew the characters well enough by then to have established tastes for them, so i dropped it.
(for what it's worth, nat also told me that the story started to go downhill at around the point when it diverged from anon, so even to her, unfamiliar as she was with the source material, there was a Drop.)
((god those first two dozen chapters or so were so banger tho))
to be fair to the author, her subsequent works didn't domesticate lumine quite so much, n i'm honestly still pretty fond of their childe. (also, looking through their twt, i like how unapologetic they are abt being "silly and cringe" n how they use their popularity to be a force for good :33) but, vixere was a defining fic for early chilumi, n the resulting fanon that has ~fanned~ out from it is beyond any one person's control.
but anyway, basically? the reason i think so many chilumi shippers are wrong about chilumi is bc they treat it very Heterosexually™ (bc bi4bi chilumi is its own energy, and it's FUN) and domesticate lumine into a housewife. while a lot of them do seem to acknowledge childe's fall into the abyss, very few seem to realize that it's trauma and something to be explored instead of treating it like some sort of yandere character trait baked into him. maybe i just haven't read enough chilumi fic, but the rarity of the exploration of his trauma just feels like a disservice to his character to me.
though honestly, i get the impression that a fair number of chlm shippers– especially the ones who subscribe to lumiharem– tend to view lumi as like a sort-of quasi-self-insert character. this is not really my style of engaging with fandom, but i feel like it would explain the intensely varied voice lumine is written to have, even in her general (semi-feral?) behavior remains the same: many authors are probably writing her in a similar voice to their own.
n honestly, it's hard to blame them for this when the travelers get so few voicelines outside of their character profile, which i doubt a lot of people study all that closely. for that, i do blame hoyo, tbh.
i don't want to say that chilumi is boring by default, or that even the shippers treat it boringly. i've been there, both when it's honestly true and when it's honestly not, and i just do not think that is the case w/chilumi!! in my time prowling the chlm tag on ao3, i have found them to have just a fuck ton of incredibly creative and totally banger aus and fic premises. i would not be listing chlm amongst my ships (as basically my fave/preferred pairing for both of these charas!!) if i felt it had no interesting potential that i liked!
i just,, find a lot of lumine characterization to be jarring, and the flatting of childe's character to be disappointing, and i have a hard time seeing the version of chilumi i imagine to work most compellingly as a result. that's all.