solar flare: fic commentary.

[agentwilight]

solar flare.
thomiya.
yuhengs

author's commentary & thought process while writing and going back to solar flare. (aka i'm deep diving into thoma's thoughts because i love analyzing my characters.)



solar flare is honestly one of my favorites to this day. it's giving the typical college experience mixed with that childhood friends to lovers. one of the tropes i love so much that i incorporated into solar flare is the idea of two people reuniting with each other after years of radio silence, or very minimal interactions.

such is the case for thoma and yoimiya who, arguably, led different lives with only ayaka gluing the very little friendship that they have. it is worth noting that this fic is written in thoma's point of view, and thus is written with the premise of what goes on in his head during his reunion with yoimiya.

"Thoma didn’t exactly grow up with a lot of friends. He only ever had Ayaka (and this is not even because he made an effort to be her friend. His father works closely with Ayaka’s family, and therefore, it only fits that they hang out), Gorou, and Kazuha."

in this paragraph, thoma largely undermines his relationship with yoimiya. which is understandable given that he never really saw himself as someone who belonged in her world. (for context: yoimiya is the heiress of her family's company, and thoma's dad works for ayaka's family.) i intentionally left out yoimiya's views on their friendship until they make their way back to thoma's place. he is a very insecure person, and thinks that social and economic hierarchy are important in the environment he is in.

“If the rich kids can be fashionably late, why can’t we?” Thoma takes his jacket from the wall hooks and grabs his phone from the nightstand.

here i want to allude to thoma's subconscious desire to be one of those rich kids. after all, he didn't grow up showered in luxury stuff like ayaka, or yoimiya did. he has a very modest upbringing and probably had financial struggles here and there while growing up. all of us wants to be rich, thoma is no exception to that. it's one of the reasons why he's so heavily insecure and distanced himself from that crowd. the fear of never truly fitting in because his experiences are completely different from theirs.

What surprised him the most, though, was the presence of one Naganohara Yoimiya in the kitchen. She’s sipping from a red solo cup while watching Kokomi and Sara bicker. There’s an affectionate smile on her face, one that Thoma has seen on her face every time she hangs out with Ayaka. Speaking of Ayaka, the girl isn’t around and is probably with Kazuha watching a bunch of movies in his dorm room.

“You need to stop ogling, Yoimiya. Didn’t you stop hanging out with her before high school started?” Gorou hands him a red colo cup with beer. Thoma scrunches his nose at the smell, preferring to take shots instead of beer.

“Who said I was ogling her? I’m just surprised she actually found the time to go to a party. She’s always busy helping her dad out and stuff.” Thoma shrugs and sips from his cup of beer. What he doesn’t tell Gorou is that he finds the garter peeking through the pleats of Yoimiya’s tennis skirt attractive.

now we go to the party, which is one of my favorite scenes to write. admittedly i projected myself a little bit here, seeing as my college life is cut short by the pandemic and i had to do most of it online. i only had like, a few months after the pandemic in university before i graduated and i went straight to work after successfully defending my thesis and graduating university.

anyways, back to the main point, even in a sea of people, thoma still finds his eyes on yoimiya for the most part. the attraction was always there, albeit very much repressed due to thoma's desire to just remain a normal dude and stop trying to fit in with the rich kids. i just hope that my readers caught onto the little hint that thoma has been pining over yoimiya from a distance, as heavily implied by gorou's words in this particular excerpt.

He doesn’t even know why he cares this much about the impression he makes on Yoimiya. It’s been years since they last had a proper interaction, and yes, even if they’re both Ayaka’s best friends, they never had the opportunity to hang out with each other simultaneously. Such is the curse of growing up, Thoma guesses. Kids’ large circles tend to diverge into smaller ones as they get older.

this. this paragraph is one of my favorites, the exposition into the diverging circles of children as they grow older. honestly, how many of you have stayed friends with your high school circles? not a lot. i wrote this mostly drawing from my experiences with growing up and just not really clicking with any of my high school best friends anymore. although i have exaggerated a bit by turning thoma's feelings in a more romantic one instead of just someone who feels a bit sad that she couldn't stay friends with her best friends since grade school. after all, that's what makes us storytellers, right? drawing from real life experiences and turning them into something else, but still rooted in realism and common experiences.

also i really just wanted to make sure that it is seen how thoma still cares, even though he decided that he's not good enough for yoimiya. it's very telling of how we are as young adults, there are some things we wish to not care about, yet we still do. for some, it may be a hobby they couldn't pursue anymore for some life-altering reason, or an old friend we had a falling out with.

a lot of this fic centers on the transition from being a teenager to adulthood, the early 20s experience, as i'd like to call it. there's a lot of messy emotions, thoughts, and a lot happening all at once that sometimes it's so hard to process. there's a lot of coming to terms with what they want, and what they don't want. escaping hard life choices that comes with adulthood. yada yada. it's the reason why the series is called "disasters in adulthood", with the titles named after natural disasters. just like the earth changes ever so rapidly with all these natural disasters, human beings do as well, but of a different magnitude of disasters than these environmental ones.

“Oh. It’s you.” Yoimiya laughs and runs her fingers through Thoma’s hair. It makes him feel like he’s floating and he’s not even on something. Heat rises from his stomach, and decades’ worth of attraction seems to be surfacing on Thoma’s part.

i intentionally made it so that yoimiya would be the one to take the lead in this fic, mostly because thoma has always lived inside his head. while i said in the fic that he's practically a ladies' man, his pining and repressed feelings for yoimiya over the years just makes it so that he couldn't seem to properly function around her. it just feels so fitting for her to be the one to initiate a conversation, or physical affection with him.

also it's because yoimiya's character is so inherently bold and easygoing, as seen in the canon content. it's what drew me into her character, first and foremost. she's just herself, and isn't afraid to do things she wants to do just because people might say something about that. she's also just... a very strong-willed person, as shown when she told the traveler that she believes childe to be a good person regardless of his affiliations with the fatui simply because he showed genuine care and concern for the inazuman kids.

i won't dwell too much on that though because this is a thomiya fic and i have a chimiya fic that's awaiting it's own commentary.

This is what Thoma is happy about with his lifestyle. He has no life-changing news about arranged marriages or being forced to lead a group of companies he wants nothing to do with. In terms of aspirations and dreams, everything is a free game to Thoma. His father made sure that he knew that he didn’t have to do anything for their family: no drastic measures to ensure their nobility or power or anything of the like.

They’re as normal as they could be. It’s something Thoma wishes his friend Ayaka and now Yoimiya could enjoy.

now for all of thoma's insecurities and subconscious desires to be one of these rich kids, he also appreciates how his upbringing and family background made it so that he never has to worry about people micromanaging his life. it's the typical feeling we get when we think of all these families as crazy, the ones who force their kids into doing something for the sake of the family business and whatnot. i feel like one of thoma's charms in this fic is how he has all these desires, but he knows that he's also good without them. him distancing himself from yoimiya is not because he's jealous or whatnot, it's simply because he recognizes the differences in their backgrounds and is just doesn't know how to conflate those differences in a relationship.

you can say that thoma is afraid of dating or interacting yoimiya because his image of her would be ruined, but it's mostly because he just doesn't know how to deal with all of that on a deeper level. sure he could deal with being friends with ayaka, and being acquaintances with yoimiya (at least, in his perspective), but to acclimate himself to the harsh and high maintenance environment they're in is something he's unsure if he could handle. if he acts on his feelings for yoimiya, it would mean that he would have to integrate himself with her family, get used to the kind of high society stuff they get to, and that's just overwhelming for our boy thoma.

“Take me home with you?”

Thoma feels his stomach drop to the floor.

ah yes. people do not stay the same way forever, and thoma here gets the shock of his life because he didn't think yoimiya is the type to actually ask him if he could take her home. given the implications of her actions and the way she said it, of course it meant sex. it's so funny how thoma is just shocked over it.

She only placed her hands inside the pocket of his jacket that he lent her (his jacket swallowed up her frame, which evoked this weird feeling in his gut that he couldn’t quite explain) and asked him why he never hung out with her after Ayaka left. She sounds sad about it, which is certainly a surprise for Thoma. Pretty rich girls like her don’t hang out with average boys like him. His surname isn’t well-known across Inazuma, and he doesn’t have the power to cause an economic collapse if he wishes to do so.

Compared to her crowd, Thoma is nothing more than a speck of dust.

here we have yoimiya acknowledging that they did, in fact, drift apart. if it's not obvious or i haven't alluded to it enough, thoma thinks that yoimiya doesn't really care about their relationship fading away. in his head, he already didn't have much of a relationship with her. he only knows her through ayaka, and that's pretty much it. for yoimiya, though, she thinks of him as a friend. a genuine friend.

so most of thoma's thought process on this just deals with the disbelief that she, of all people, would want to approach him. that she thinks of him highly enough to ask why he deliberately chose to distance himself from her.

“I hate your reasoning and your point of view. You avoided me and decided that you’re just going to hang around with Kokomi’s not-so-secret admirer. I’m cooler than Gorou, and you know it.”

and yoimiya's reply is just one of my favorite things about this fic. she's assertive and isn't afraid to speak her thoughts, the very characterization i loved picking out from yoimiya's canon. in genshin canon, yoimiya has always been so genuinely outspoken about what she thinks, as evident when she talked to the traveler about the fireworks and how they don't exactly embody ei's idea of eternity. it takes guts to say out loud that you don't see eye to eye with your archon.

“You know, Thoma,” She kisses his neck, which sends chills up his spine, “there are so many times over the years where I debated whether I should approach you or not.” She kisses his throat, giggling when he swallows thickly. “You’re not exactly the easiest person to approach.”

of course, yoimiya's half-confession. what i loved the most about writing this is countering every single thought thoma had in his life. he who intentionally distanced himself from yoimiya thinking that he doesn't belong, and yet here she is telling him that she wanted to approach him. that she wanted to rekindle their friendship again, or that she wants to build something new with him. it's the perfect way to bring thoma out of his head about their whole situation.

also because i really love mutual pining lmao.

Doing this with Yoimiya is different, and he’s not ready to think about what could happen tomorrow morning when their thoughts are not clouded by desire.

just thoma thinking about the morning after, scared if yoimiya still feels the same way she does, or if it's all just the alcohol and the delayed teenage rebellion talking.

“Can we get lunch together?” Yoimiya looks up at him with pleading eyes. That’s when Thoma knows he’s a goner because he immediately says yes without even hesitating or trying to make sense of why she wants to get lunch together.

this is yoimiya's way of, you know, basically refuting thoma's fears. in the fic, it is seen that thoma is the one trying to give yoimiya the most reassurance or is the one trying to make her feel better with his words of affirmation, but it's yoimiya who gives him the assurance he never particularly asked for. i wrote their relationship in a way that it would be so seamless? verbal reassurance is still needed in every relationship, of course, but in here i wanted that whole begin again by taylor swift experience in thoma's perspective. he has all these fears, and the way yoimiya acts just casts all of those away.

to sum it all up: i wanted to write a fic that alludes to growing up in a more... wholesome yet realistic way (though it isn't as wholesome because they did have sex in this fic, but you know). it's basically two people finding themselves back to each other after mutually pining for each other for so long, and it works so well because their characters just compliment each other that way. in my head, i wanted a cute little university fic that's not too plot-heavy, or not too angsty like my other fics, and solar flare hit the nail on the head for that vision.

if this fic was a movie (which i probably have thought of doing at some point due to my being a film major), i'd imagine it to be just the feel good type of film i'd watch on a friday night when i'm trying to reset from the stress of working in the tv industry.

also, i've just been exposed to so many media that has a lot going on and i just want something that explores more about growing up, losing friends, reconnecting with them, and navigating new relationships. it always feels like a breath of fresh air to be reading, and writing something that isn't heavily dependent on big things happening all the time.

this is the very reason why solar flare is honestly so close to my heart, and why i'm so wary of writing another thomiya fic because i have no idea if i'll ever match the intention and tone i've set with this one.

anyways, that's all. if you're still reading this, thank you and i'm glad you got through that wall of text i just wrote HFJKDHFJKDFD.