[25/08/24] wow, i’m surprised that you clocked me because the continuity errors in worldbuilding between the first and second posted snippet are so bad hjdkflgsa

but yeah! it’s from the same universe that i am haphazardly piecing together as inspiration hits. it’s csj-focused i would say, i don’t know if you can call it ebs* if khj and kjy never technically meet (at least, as of my current plan for the fic -- if i can wrangle a way for the three of them to feasibly meet up, maybe i’ll implement it) and i haven’t decided yet what either of their relationships with csj is. i don’t want to spoil too much (unless anyone wants to come into my dms and help me get this into a semblance of coherence), but it’s a high fantasy, sci-fi setting and i’ll split it up into two parts to make it a little easier:

csj and khj: i’m going back and forth between the idea of having them be two kids from a closed institution in one of the last habitable parts of the world they come from or kids living on a generation ship/space station. it’s pretty dystopian (they don’t know about the current state of the world/anything outside of what the academy shares with them, and they don’t know what awaits them after graduation). their current life consists of a lot of ambiguous lessons, physical and skills training, and it’s also highly controlled and surveilled. despite all of that, they manage to grow up pretty well** and, to borrow pacrim terms, are basically drift compatible (no drifting involved here, but [redacted for spoilers]).

csj and kjy: it’s actually kind of hard to talk about this without spoiling much, but when csj and kjy are together (as in, in the same location), it’s on this planet that is entirely covered by oceans. the planet was colonized by human settlers (if you’ve ever read the waves by ken liu, it might help with the understanding the complications of the timelines with the planet and also csj’s childhood with khj), and kjy is the descendant of one of them (ie. she was born on this planet). i’m still working out the details because as much as i love underwater settings, the logistics makes my head hurt, but just assume that a bunch of technological advancements has made it possible for humans to live underwater (not only in closed, dry underwater environments but actually live as aquatic animals for most part) and also that kjy also has some adaptations that csj does not have that makes her more suitable for her living environment. time and age is harder to place at this point, but they meet after csj and khj are no longer together (again, physically) and are both adults. csj joins kjy’s colony, but csj doesn’t really get close to anyone else because she’s an ‘outsider’ here, so she mainly just hangs out with kjy and be emo over khj.

* this is somewhat of a lie because i absolutely do not have a brain worm for a scene where csj and kjy are making out and fantasizing about khj (it sounds fucked up but trust me on this, there’s no other conceivable way to make this work at the moment) but i just don’t know if i want to make that ‘canon’ since i’m not actually settled on the nature of anyone’s relationship right now ** this is somewhat of a lie as well because years down the line csj actually starts to process what growing up with an absolute lack of privacy did to her (“even the things we thought were our secrets, i think they knew about it [...] they let us think we were so smart, when they were always two steps ahead.”)