universeuchu:

blackheart-biohazards:

I only just started seeing this sagau/self aware au stuff this week and suddenly I am seeing a ton of it.

Can someone explain the history/where it started from? I am very curious!

I may not remember much in detail, but I have seen the start of it so i can give a bit of info. SAGAU has actually been around for a long time now, most people just don’t tag it genshin x reader or genshin impact and just tag it sagau or self aware genshin so unless you look at those tags specifically you’ll come across it less.

The first person to post for it is a dark content 18+ blog that goes by streimiv. She was inspired by Dainsleif since when you enter the picture mode he is aware of the camera and will look right at it. The few fics she wrote for it were yandere and cultish in nature, but it grabbed a lot of people’s attention. Most of the blogs that wrote for sagau in the beginning have been deleted and I can’t really remember much names, but one of the popular ones was Wisteria(?). They posted pretty often and made a bunch of different scenarios and aus that mostly leaned heavily on the player being seen as a god/creator of Teyvat and the characters forming a cult. Most of it was still fluffy and generic for dark content.

At some point a different writer (can’t remember her name I think it had ‘pink’ in it though), came into their asks and suggested that the characters saw the player as a fraud instead of the real god. That picked up a lot of traction and then the imposter au was born which eventually got multiple different variations. The villain au being the first variation of imposter au where the player sides with the Abyss to get revenge on the rest of Teyvat (at the beginning the Abyss and any related characters always new who the real creator was, but now it’s mostly not the case). The Gold Blood AU where the player has gold blood upon arrival in Teyvat (usually involves severe injury or death to the player. Mostly angst). There was a disney princess au where the player had all the monsters and bosses on their side to protect them. The Fatui AU where the player sides with the fatui instead of the Abyss (This one either had a revenge plot or it’s the player simply hid away in Snezhnaya while the rest of Teyvat despaired). I know there was one where the reader was just a eldritch horror and not an actual player. A good writter for regular imposter au being Myuni-Moon(?) and another good writter for sagau in general being Azempyrea. There were others that I used to follow, but unfortunately I no longer remember their blog names since they’ve all been deleted.

Eventually issues arose surrounding Wisteria’s age and they were either banned or they deleted the blog. Unfortunately I can’t remember which one. They made a new blog later, but I blocked them so idk if it’s still up or not. Myuni also deleted their blog and I think that was because their parents didn’t approve of it. I saw a post saying they came back with a drive to their old works, but they said they didn’t know if they’d write for it again or not. Azem has deleted and remade their blog multiple times so I’m unsure if they currently have one or not.

At some point the original ‘Self Aware’ part of SAGAU became lost and most of what was being written was the impostor au with the reader actually being a god and isekai’d into Teyvat which led to some people writting more for just the self aware part where the reader is simply just the player and their characters gain awareness. Not much yandere or any cult behaviour from those writters, just the characters interacting with the player whether they new about it or not. @/Kalopsial-Star is a great example of a regular sagau writter. Most of the people writting for sagau is still for the cult and creator angle and I’ve stopped following the tag consistently for that reason so I can’t really follow up on more on this.

I hoped I layed it out in a clear way and that there’s not to many typos. I also hope this helped with your curiosity.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this up for me! It’s really interesting (and clear!) and definitely satisfies my curiosity while giving me a jumping off point to try to do more research if I feel like it.