Slapped by Reality (Venti Fanfiction)

A/N + Beginning Thing

He strums a chord on his lyre one last time, his bitter song ending. He still smiles, but his eyes are dim. I can't smile back. I can only stare at the ground and pat his arm.

Venti takes a deep, exaggerated breath, and just like that, he's back. An outgoing, cheerful boy with barely a care. His grin widens and his turquoise eyes shine brighter. He could be an actor if he wanted to.

'So, what's your song?' He snickers.

'I can't sing.' He rolls his eyes.

'That hardly matters! Look, you can do whatever. Draw it out, recite it, sing it, play it on an instrument. Just do something! I want to know your story.' 

'It's not a very heroic one. It's not as good as yours.'

'Well, I don't care!' He sticks his tongue out. 'I sang my song, you tell me your story. Come on!' He stretches the last word for a very long time. It makes me feel guilty.

'Okay, fine. I'm not singing, though. I'll just... say it. Archons, this is going to suck,' I groan. Venti only giggles. 

'Just breathe. It'll come to you naturally.'

I don't know how much I can trust those words, but I begin nonetheless.

'Tell, me. What do you see when you close your eyes?'

Venti frowns, though he shuts his eyes tight anyway. 'Is this a joke? You see nothing, of course.'

I smile and close my eyes, too. The darkness welcomes me. 'Exactly. That is what a girl once was. Or at least, what she thought she was. And it was also what she hated.

'She didn't believe herself or like herself. She wanted to be someone else, someone better. She wanted to change who she was...

'And thus began her melancholy life of desperation and failure.'

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So. *Clasps hands* Another fanfiction :D

This fanfiction's main focus is my own original character, not Venti or anyone else. So if you were looking for an epic romance or lots of Mondstadt characters doing their Mondstadt things, you've got the wrong story.
In this work of mine, it's about a girl who's quarreling with her own self because she hates herself and wants others to like her, but she also thinks she doesn't deserve to be liked and needs to be less selfish, but then she thinks that's too dramatic, but then she thinks that's being selfish again and--
Overall, she's just really emotional (and maybe sorta kinda like me), and I really don't understand how people are willing to read about a person constantly having mental breakdowns but wElCoMe, I guess.

For someone as "lost" as my OC, we need to pair her up with someone, riight? And I chose Venti because a) I love him, and b) I feel like he could really understand Maude and what she's going through because of his past and all. 

Note to self: This won't be perfect, this is simply a fanfiction, and I know future me will come back and be like, 'tHiS iS sUpPoSeD tO bE pErFeCt WhAt ThE hEcK iS tHiS.' I do think this is better than Philosophical, as in better planned, better written (hopefully), better plot, and stuff. Also, I forgot the point I wanted to make, so let's continue.

So. *Clasps hands* Another angst :D

I haven't seen too many angst Venti books yet, probably because one would never imagine a main character feeling sad around that overly cheerful child-like god. And I will admit, 15% of this is me venting my frustration, 45% of this is me wanting to make something super angsty and emotional (aka lots of cringe, yaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAaaay), and 40% being me wanting to make people stop reading Philosophical cuz I'm in the middle of some major, major editing right now meaning some of the chapters won't make sense compared to the ones in the beginning but I don't want to unpublish it because what if it glitches and something funky happens and I die because I worked way too hard on it AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH--

Oh, yes. Some rules for my kind commenters: 

1) Criticism is welcome! Feel free to point out things like grammar/spelling errors! I may or may not make a lot of them, hahaaaaaaaaa.

2) To heck with rules, just have fun. If you aren't, you can always leave and never look back. It's completely welcome :)

Aaaaaaaaaaand finally, I rewrote this story, so the original chapters are behind the rewritten chapters. In my opinion, the new one's better, so you don't have to bother reading the original... please don't bother reading that-

That's it, probably. Thank you for reading this if you did! And if you decide to read the rest of this story, thank you so much, kind stranger :D