thinking about how Kaeya dresses to make himself look bigger. the fur cape, the curve of the neckline down his chest, etc - it all makes him look more muscular, and maybe more intimidating. meanwhile as a teen, his outfit was both much less bold and kept to his shape more. -
Diluc left when Kaeya was seventeen. Not yet of age, approaching the most pivotal years of his life, and Diluc left.
The worst part wasn’t exactly leaving—it was coming back.
Because when he first set his eyes on Kaeya after all that time, he almost didn’t recognize his little-
Is this official art?? Image search showed me a Genshin Facebook page in German and I couldn’t tell if it was official. I’ve never seen it before,, LOOK AT THEM
(I found it on Reddit btw)
thinking about how kaeya won't accept himself as the good person he is. he will state his favors for others were for personal gain or out of duty, or he'll pretend he wasn't involved at all, all because he can't stand the idea of someone mistakenly believing he is good
I know this probably doesn’t mean anything, but it makes me think about the practicality of using a former symbol as part of a new one. If the symbol in Arle’s eye was plastered all over the crimson moon dynasty, then the eclipse dynasty could just lay the 4-pointed star on top
Kaeya is human. He wakes up every morning and blinks the sleep out of his eye. In the winter, he longs to pull the blankets tighter around his shoulders; in the summer, he kicks the blankets off in the night, sweating through his shirt. He dreads going to work, even if he is-
Kaeya as a kid being so obedient to the point that it’s concerning…
The only time he’s disobedient is when Diluc is involved and drags him along. When Kaeya finally breaks a rule of his own volition, Adelinde sighs in relief - then gives him his scolding, of course
This is a thread on the headcanon that Kaeya based his present personality on Varka's. It comes with some evidence, but this is mostly speculation because we haven't met Varka yet. This is NOT an analysis, and it may very well be false.
Kaeya is tired.
It’s something that came on slowly, seeping in through his skin and eventually settling deep in his bones. And now it’s just as much a part of him as the hair on his head and the blood flowing through his veins.
It must be part of adulthood, but if he looks-
Headcanon: Kaeya has many scars, both due to his being a knight and his past, but the way he dresses is carefully constructed to show the parts of him with the least scarring to give the impression of being less scarred than he is (his forearms and chest)
this fits how kaeya changed as a person. before diluc's eighteenth bday, he was trying his best to blend in with what everyone expected of him. afterward, he uses his deceit as more of a weapon. part of him expressing more outward personality is making himself more threatening
expanding on the idea of Kaeya having a boss fight. imagine he has a cryo phase first, followed by a phase where he turns into his abyss form. in the first phase he's wielding ice blades like this:
Kaeya turning evil would make no sense and it hopefully won’t happen, but that won’t stop me from hoping we’ll get a boss fight against him at some point
Kaeya’s potential hurt/comfort dynamic with Lisa is underrated imo, especially because of the specific role of his secrets and how that influences their perception of each other.
Lisa is highly educated and intelligent. Kaeya knows this, and I hc he perceives her as someone
Kaeya was twenty, and Diluc was twenty-one. They weren’t the same teenagers they had once been. But after being gone for so long, Diluc could only look at that man whose very existence had become unrecognizable to him and wonder: Where had his little brother gone?
Both Diluc and Rosaria sometimes climb in through Kaeya’s windows when they’re worried about him. One time, Diluc slips in after after Kaeya’s absence at Angel’s Share that night to find Rosaria already there and caring for a sick and feverish Kaeya
brother. It was as if another person had divested the Kaeya he knew of his skin and stretched it haphazardly over their own person, the impression of a child Diluc knew so well worn over a man with features that were ever so slightly wrong.
Kaeya had been taller than Diluc-
he wants people to think of him positively, but doesn't want them to get close. he learned the hard way that's something he can't do, so now he guards himself in many ways including this
thinking about young kaeya always being cold in the winter, but the ragnvindr family was always so warm to hug.
thinking about kaeya in the first winter after diluc left, shivering, buried in blankets that can't quite replace diluc and crepus.
Thinking about Kaeya doing mundane things. Kaeya waking up every morning and staring at the wall for a bit because he’s tired. Kaeya spilling a bit of water on the floor and accidentally stepping in it. Kaeya doing his laundry. Kaeya doodling little pictures of the people he-
since shortly before the latter’s fifteenth birthday, but Diluc had never felt well and truly towered over until now. And perhaps it was simply that his brother had filled out a bit, no longer the lanky teenager he had once been, but for the first time, Diluc felt small next to-
thinking about kaeya and rain, in the context he was born in khaenri'ah and came directly to mond from there.
Kaeya was first left in Mond during a horrible storm. Water cascaded from above in amounts he'd scarcely seen before, quickly soaking his cloak. Lightning arced through
diluc during his time away from mond lying to people over and over again to get necessary information, get out of bad situations, keep himself safe, etc., slowly starting to understand more and more how exactly kaeya ended up the way he did
his brother.
Still, for how tall his brother was, it took more to change the truth Diluc’s mind had already accepted.
The first time Diluc manned the bar at Angel’s Share after returning, Kaeya was there. He’d been expecting it. He knew his brother came here every-
sometimes i think about how klee's presence might indirectly help kaeya take care of himself better (maybe jean too). if kaeya doesn't sleep one night, he may not care at all until klee asks him why he looks so tired. then he suddenly regrets not sleeping, because how could he-
evening, and yet—
“A Death After Noon, please.” Carefully, with empty eye contact that Diluc avoided and an even emptier voice.
The words came out before Diluc could think better of them. “We don’t serve alcohol to minors.”
A startled laugh burst from Kaeya’s mouth, sounding-
such strong drinks—the ones that could knock the inexperienced out with just one glass—without seeming affected at all?
Since when did Kaeya look at him like that?
… Kaeya was louder, now. He no longer hid himself in the shadows as he once had, instead putting out a carefully-
Is this official art?? Image search showed me a Genshin Facebook page in German and I couldn’t tell if it was official. I’ve never seen it before,, LOOK AT THEM
(I found it on Reddit btw)
almost forced. “Nice try. You do know I’m twenty years old now, don’t you?”
Twenty years old.
Diluc mixed the drink and didn’t say any of the words that sat heavily in his throat, begging to be let out. Since when had Kaeya grown so much? Since when had he started ordering-
seemed only one of them had fallen.
It was hard to get used to the new Kaeya. The new Kaeya was confident, and the new Kaeya wore the symbols and name of his origins proudly on his person. The new Kaeya was bold, reckless, unpredictable, and he would do anything to achieve his-
manicured facade into the daylight, almost as if he had something to prove. There was more to it, Diluc knew. He would never so naively take Kaeya’s actions at face value again.
Still, Diluc found it so easy to settle back into that routine he’d had with Kaeya before—night and-
On April 30th, Jean hears a knock at her door, almost inaudible over the steady thrum of rain. She pulls herself out of bed, shivering at the late night chill, and makes her way to the door. For a moment, she's surprised to see her living room empty - a part of her expected-
Jean's mother thinking of kaeya and diluc as "well-behaved" and "good influences" because of how they act around her, not knowing Jean's the only one keeping the three of them out of trouble
perhaps both were facades. Because some nights, beneath all the smooth talk and wit, beneath the layers upon layers of masks, Diluc thought he saw sadness behind Kaeya’s gaze. But he glowed when he spoke with his friends, and he had so, so many—as a kid, he’d been attached to-
day, shadow and light, two sides of the same coin, yet flipped. Diluc would never be a knight again, but Kaeya seemed to have taken up the position with no grievances. And now, Diluc found himself working in the shadows as his brother maintained a careful public face, and it-
goals. Anything.
And perhaps that had been Kaeya all along—perhaps it no longer served Kaeya to force himself into obedience, into a place where he was lesser to Diluc. He had taken on this new life without Diluc so perfectly, as if Diluc had never been there to begin with.
Or-
@artofweirdbird
even beyond lore stuff, it's really sad to me how this and a lot of other stuff firmly suggests kaeya sees his happiness itself in mond as a lie. one he wants to hold onto, yes, but he's very aware he's running away from the "truth" by latching onto this happiness
Diluc at the hip, rarely making independent friends of his own until he was a teen. Maybe some of it was real, but certainly not all of it.
After all, Kaeya had lied to him from the moment they’d first met. What was a few more years, decades of it, when it was all he seemed to-
I’m tempted to make a thread explaining what I meant by this since I’ve seen it reposted on several other social media sites with people horribly misunderstanding it, but I think the people who actually care about the lore don’t need an explanation 🤔
@ThatsKinda_gay
It isss, I wonder if that’s because some of the older members are from early khaenri’ah/possibly crimson moon dynasty (Rhinedottir)? But it’s also layered over ANOTHER eight-pointed star so I gotta give it some thought
Kaeya’s secret is revealed to the knights. Lisa shrugs and says, “I’ve known.” Albedo blinks, unperturbed. Jean nods calmly as if she, too, knew.
Then a recruit asks, “What’s Khaenri’ah?”
Nobody knows about Khaenri’ah. It’s old news. Kaeya lives happily ever after. The end
It’s still great to me how Kaeya cut himself off mid-sentence because he saw the play and Traveler has the option to just indulge him and ignore what he was saying before.
Plans are out the window, Traveler is simply along for the ride. A wonderful dynamic
"Diluc killing Kaeya" - thread request for @/kopipim
There was no smell more dreadful than that of Kaeya’s burning, melting flesh.
Diluc had smelled a great many things in his life. He’d burned many people to ashes, had charred the remains of more Fatui footsoldiers than he-
I AGREE SM ANON!!! this is pretty much my exact headcanon as well. this is really fun in contrast to diluc too, because of course diluc's over here with his heart attack signature dish. speaking of diluc, i was discussing something related to this today. sometimes i consider-
Rosaria and Kaeya don’t talk about their respective issues and backgrounds, but they each know more about each other than almost anyone else. They both just have a way of figuring people out, and they both come to trust each other and see no need to discuss it.
Crack idea where kaeya was taken in by crepus wearing an eyepatch because he had a lazy eye but because he was a silly kid he played it off like it was mysterious and then he got too far in and had to commit
Diluc’s face turns red when he laughs. It doesn’t happen much anymore for obvious reasons. When he was younger, Kaeya thought it was hilarious. Now he has a goal of getting Diluc to laugh so hard he turns into a tomato
proud of his job. Exhausted, he stands there, wondering why he’s even trying at all. But then he gets ready, tugs his boots on, and walks to Headquarters. He walks the same route as he does every morning, and it’s burned so deeply into his brain that he arrives there without-
@chimppower1
Kaeya puts so much effort into extravagance and boldness, but it’s painfully obvious that it’s part of his facade. Makes me remember the bird in borrowed feathers fable about a jackdaw (kaja in Swedish!) putting on a peacocks’s feathers to fit in (and is later found out…😭)
perfectly. He reaches for the book on his bedside table and wonders how long he can delay sleeping. He isn’t looking forward to waking up in the morning.
And eventually, Kaeya sleeps. Because despite Khaenri’ah, despite the destiny running deep in his veins, despite everything—
I know there's symbolism behind this etc etc but ignore that. do you think Kaeya just found out his constellation was a peacock one day and was like "yeah I'm going to make this my sense of style for the rest of my life"
even thinking. There’s a buzzing in the back of his mind, a deep-seated discontent that seems to have come with adulthood.
Kaeya goes about his day. He talks, he eats, he drinks. He can’t get comfortable in his office chair and thinks he should probably get a new one, but the-
@artofweirdbird
I honestly really hope it is a confirmation because it would be so interesting and also means there’s so that much more left for us to unpack about his backstory that he hasn’t shared yet
price doesn’t seem worth it. His back hurts, but that’s fine.
The weight of his sword is real and heavy in his palm. It once made him sore all over to swing it, but his body has long since grown used to it. He’s lived this life, and it shows in the calluses that line his-
And, just like everybody else, Kaeya returns home at night. He wonders if he has the energy to take a shower but does it anyway. He doesn’t bother to let his hair dry before he heads to bed. His clothes stick uncomfortably to his skin in the places where he didn’t dry himself-
palms. In the one nail shorter than the others where he broke it on the edge of the table. In the way his hair sticks up when he goes back inside on a windy day, and in the faded marks of Klee’s doodles on his arms that he hadn’t fully managed to wash off.
the first chapter of my lethal company fic is here! and this doodle i made months ago that i don't want to look at anymore, but it would be a waste not to post it
Kaeya and Bennett - thread request for @/mimirmoon
Unlike with most others, sparring with Bennett gets easier over time.
It’s not that Bennett is getting worse at fighting; quite on the contrary. But with each clash of their blades, Kaeya finds that he understands Bennett more-
Me, knowing full well I just re-activated his hangout: oh my god, no way, who’s that?? Kaeya Alberich, Cavalry Captain of the Knights of Favonius??? In Sumeru??!
it's not that he doesn't want to be seen positively, but maybe when others see him in such a way, he's so horribly aware that he doesn't *deserve* to be seen like that - he is a deeply selfish man after all, isnt he? why would he deserve someone's thanks if everything he-
The constant urge to overexplain yourself so nobody can possibly misinterpret what you mean vs the knowledge that you are annoying everyone with how much you’re talking
Kaeya turning evil would make no sense and it hopefully won’t happen, but that won’t stop me from hoping we’ll get a boss fight against him at some point