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wei wuxian ( intro / tag )

xie lian ( intro / tag )

he xuan ( intro / tag )

sha hualing ( intro / tag )

qi yan ( intro / tag )

kaz brekker ( intro / tag )

mo xi ( intro / tag )

xiao chiye ( intro / tag )

kaul hilo ( intro / tag )

zhao yunlan ( intro / tag )

robin swift ( intro / tag )

daro nirulun ( intro / tag )

qi yan finds it easy enough to be outgoing; she's comfortable around other people and comfortable expressing herself. but her motivation for being outgoing or social is not because she necessarily enjoys it, but it's because she sees the value in it. communication is one of the most important skills a person can have, and if you can project yourself to be capable and composed, then that goes a long way. keeping to yourself doesn't have any benefits, not when reaching out and making connections is so vital.

at the same time, she's comfortable by herself, too; she doesn't rely on others' opinions of her or others' validation in order to feel accomplished. so she's social in social situations, but if she were home alone for the afternoon, she wouldn't necessarily specifically seek out company just for the sake of having others around her. she'll take herself out for dinner and go out and do other things by herself if there's no one she needs to foster a better relationship with, because she is satisfied with her own company.

but when it comes to interacting with other people, she's very keen on emphasizing her own eye contact and posture. you won't catch her on her phone, or multitasking, unless she purposefully wants to seem casual. but nine times out of ten when she has a conversation, that act of conversing is what she's most focused on. she thinks through what she's going to say, of course, but a lot of her mental energy in the background is also dedicated to reading the other person's body language and making mental notes about how they react. that's why she far prefers in-person communication to anything in written format or through technology, because in those latter cases it's harder to interpret the impact of the conversation without seeing the results firsthand. one sign of qi yan being genuinely close to someone is when she starts texting more casually, because that would hint that she's not overthinking their interactions.

she's good at carrying on conversations, though. she'll naturally lean into new topics and ways of expanding whatever is being talked about, and it wouldn't feel like she's interviewing the other person even if she's doing most of the talking. not that she's always the most active participant; qi yan is a good listener, too, and knows how to respond so that the other person fully believes they're being heard.

and although she's a solid listener, she does like to have control over what's discussed, and tries to direct the conversation as subtly as she can most of the time. if a topic feels like it's moving beyond her, or into a subject that isn't relevant to what she wants to know or that she isn't interested in (or in some cases-- a subject that she wants to avoid talking about), she'll smoothly redirect.

when qi yan speaks, it's always with a calm sort of confidence. the cadence of her voice is low in pitch and her volume is a little on the quieter side-- but not in a way that projects anything close to being shy or meek, and she enunciates well enough that she doesn't have a difficult time making herself understood.

he usually goes to bed around eleven or midnight but may stay up later on occasion-- depending on what's happening he could be up until two or three, usually if he has company over, if there's some kind of clan business to take care of, or if he's having a late-night conversation which he would never want to cut short just to sleep.

so yes, on a general night he'd go to bed around eleven, though that doesn't mean he falls asleep right at eleven. if there's something on his mind it could be up to two hours before he actually falls asleep. he'll lay in bed, with his eyes open or closed, and simply think, his mind going a hundred miles an hour. sometimes if he's especially exhausted, this annoys him to no end, and he'll toss and turn and get frustrated that he can't fall asleep. if he gets up and smokes a cigarette, sometimes that helps settle him down when he gets back in bed. and if he goes to bed physically exhausted after working out or exerting himself then usually he can fall asleep faster, too.

and then he'd generally sleep until around eight in the morning. if it's a special occasion or he had an especially hard time getting to sleep, he might sleep in a little later (nine, ten, eleven in the morning...), but by eight the sun's usually streaming through the windows and his internal clock is telling him it's time to wake up.

you know, depending on how much of his canon life he remembered, this would be a very different answer, and i am tempted to save this one for later, but i know i'll never get to it otherwise.

so just based on DC chiye and what he remembers or believes of his life at this point in time: no, he doesn't really struggle with the past! mostly because there's very little for him to struggle with. he hasn't had to face any serious struggles or obstacles in his personal life, really. coming from wealth, and privilege, and success, he's had it fairly easy.

that doesn't mean he doesn't think about the past at all. for example, chiye feels a solid sense of nostalgia about his life back home with his family, and misses them-- especially his brother jiming. a lot of times, when he's out with meng while she hunts, he reminisces on very vivid experiences learning about falconry from his brother when he was younger. he also often imagines his dad's voice and what he would have told him, and especially his father's laugh. so the past does affect him in that he values it and takes every opportunity to connect back to it.

(as a side note: i think the city magic probably intervenes with chiye's mind a bit, just to keep him from wondering why he hasn't heard from his family (since he's still unaware); once in a while, it does strike him as odd that they haven't contacted him, but then the magic smooths it over and makes chiye forget that concern again and again.)

and after he first arrived in the city, believing he'd been sent by his father, i think he did have a little bit of resentment for being stuck here against his wishes when he would have much rather stayed home, living the life he'd already been used to in social circles where he didn't have to start over from scratch. but at the same time, i think that by now he's come to appreciate his position here and really enjoy the sense of responsibility he's been given, because that shows his family trusts him with the legal firm that bears their name. his father believed chiye wouldn't ruin their reputation, so being here is more of a chance to prove himself than anything.

he definitely has social media, but more to scroll and keep himself busy more than anything. he prefers to be looking at something or reading something or watching something at all times, so he would be the type of person to pull out his phone if he's in line somewhere and has to wait even thirty seconds, or-- he'll also be on his phone idly scrolling social media every once in a while watching movies, cooking dinner, whatever it might be. this would probably get annoying for other people to deal with after a while. and when he realizes this, he would try to quit social media, and he would manage probably half a day before giving in and getting back on it.

but he IS more of a passive social media viewer than a poster himself. as much as wei wuxian likes attention, i think he's mature enough now as an adult to also not need the whole world to know his whole business. and he wouldn't want to play the algorithm games, wouldn't see the point in trying to get more views from strangers, and if he wants his friends and family to see what he's up to he'll just show up at their homes and talk to them in person.

so i don't see him posting much on tiktok, or anything like that, as much as he would watch it. the only place i would see him posting fairly regularly-- and im not even sure this counts as social media proper-- would be reddit. he'd be in a bunch of really obscure topics, chatting and making friends. reddit's great for learning things and sharing tips & tricks, which he would be really into.

other than that, his instagram, he would update maybe once every four or five months with one single giant photo drop of interesting things he's seen or photographed in those past few months, though wei wuxian wouldn't actually feature heavily in the images himself. he doesn't take many photos of himself, except on special occasions, and even then it's usually so he can get a picture of himself with other people.

he's a little bit of a picky eater; most of the food in this world, to him, tastes like tasteless cardboard. it's really not very good. he thinks pizza, for example, should only be fed as a punishment. terrible. he also has no stomach for spice, so things that actually should or would taste flavorful, he also tends to unfortunately avoid.

because he doesn't have many positive memories associated with food-- even in his childhood, meals were just something to tensely sit through rather than actually look forward to-- he doesn't particularly see food as something to savor and enjoy; it's necessary fuel and not much more than that. he eats his meals fast, so if he goes out to eat on his own he's usually in-and-out in twenty minutes regardless of how long it takes the restaurant to cook and prepare the dish. and if he's busy, he'll just skip meals and make up for it on the next one.

niru doesn't give much thought to animals, actually. i think he would be mildly baffled by zoos; just take the animals back to where they belong, let them run free, and be done with it. you would not find him ever visiting at the DC zoo.

when it comes to pets instead of wild animals: fish are food, so anyone with pet fish, he'd shake his head at. with cats, he sees more as a nuisance than anything; i'm inclined to think stray cats are far more common than pet cats back in kekon. he doesn't feel strongly anti-cat, but if one was hanging around niru's house, he wouldn't feel the need to leave food or water out for it. not in a callous way, but: he'd be confident that if it's out there and alive, it can probably fend for itself well enough.

i do think he'd enjoy dogs, though. and dogs would like him, so he'd be the kind of person who'd probably make a lot of friends with dogs he passes on the street during walks with their owners, and be able to pass a few minutes of friendly chatter with said owners as well. he wouldn't ask for permission before petting them or scratching them, he'd just do it.

i think he would enjoy having a pet dog, too, but if he eventually gets one, he wouldn't walk it on a leash; he'd be that guy letting his dog trot next to him down the sidewalk and roam around the park on its own, and just train the dog well enough that it'd come back when he called. he'd let the dog sit on any of his furniture and kind of have a run of the house.

i took a dog breed quiz here with niru in mind to find out what dog breed would be right for niru, and it came up with these:

kaz much prefers writing by hand to typing; he'll use computer software if necessary, but he'd much rather be scribbling away at his desk rather than clacking away at a keyboard. and always in pen, never in pencil. (kaz brekker does not use an eraser. if edits need to be made, he'll strike it through and start over). fountain pens are preferred over ballpoint.

his handwriting's semi-difficult to decipher, although i imagine people who read it a lot would get used to it-- but he writes in a slightly elegant scrawl that's not quite a cursive, but also not quite neat. he'll do a flourish or loop here or there especially at the beginnings of sentences but the rest tends to be crammed narrowly together, and written with a lot of pressure on the paper with the vertical strokes of each letter.