the otp dissertation
this essay is a copy of a free-response question i submitted to some youtuber's genshin shipping survey, and is itself edited from discord dms sent to a girl i met via genshin, who asked what the appeal of xiaoven was.
personally, i like to use xiaoven to explore the tensions btwn duty n freedom, as well as how one's culture shapes one's character, and especially within genshin, how that interacts with the home culture of the element of a character's vision.
like for example, with liyue, their nation's ideal is technically "contracts", that's more a symbol of fairness and equal treatment, though i tend to interpret it as mostly fairness. being based very heavily upon chinese culture, there's also a very huge emphasis on duty towards one's community and caring for it; xiao definitely exemplifies these kinds of cultural traits in how devoted he is to his own duty, wherein he slays demons at the cost of his own well-being. geo is also a very grounded element, and he was raised in that kind of very grounded, down-to-earth culture. however, his vision, a representation of his greatest desire, is that of anemo, of freedom, and while xiao is a very duteous character, his vision betrays his true desires.
venti is obviously the anemo archon, the purest form of that ideal of freedom; venti also saved xiao's life in dihua marsh by playing his flute for xiao when he was dying due to the burdens of his karmic debts. that was like, a whole thing.
while at first, it might also seem that venti doesn't get anything out of the relationship aside from, like, a cute boyfriend, that's not actually the case if one explores venti's character a bit more deeply. venti is a character who hides a lot of sadness in him, as well as loneliness and fear of people leaving. as an archon, he's obviously immortal, but he also cares greatly about human beings and is, to our knowledge, the closest to them in general.
but being immortal means he outlives them by a lot, and so he can't get close to them bc he's obviously got A Lot of Feelings, and we Know that he grieves a lot for his friends bc he's still affected deeply by the loss of his other human friends in history, like the nameless bard, whose form he still takes, as well as vannessa, one of the characters in the genshin manga.
and so venti has a lot of abandonment issues, and yet he can't really bring himself to ask anyone to stay with him bc he is the god of freedom, and "what is freedom when demanded of you by a god?" he refuses to ask anything of anyone as a god, which is why he runs around pretending to be a mortal bard.
but xiao knows venti is a god, and the way xiao behaves around gods is like, the opposite of how venti would wanna be treated-- y'know, like, very devoted to the point where he'd die over it sort of thing. n so venti can't ask him to stay or anything, even if he'd like that.
ANYWAY, so, like, assuming character development happens n stuff as xiao learns to let go of his duty n stuff, i think that xiao's stability would be really good for venti, as like, something steady he could return to time and time again after his adventures, since xiao obviously can't die from old age like most mortals, and venti can also help keep him alive in general.
and like, venti's also had to have done some questionable things in the past. like he was one of the major players in the archon war, he has to have some war crimes, and he carries a heavy burden of guilt over a lot of things that have happened to mondstadt in the past, so another aspect of it is the fact that these are two deeply guilty characters who would probably see the other as a better person than themselves.
like it's pretty obvious from xiao's perspective, but in terms of venti → xiao, it might not be so clear. however, underneath xiao's "don't touch me i'm an evil tainted monster" thing, xiao is actually a very gentle character who wants so badly to be good, yet thinks he is incapable of such things bc past trauma n stuff, and i think a character like venti, who is very good at reading people, would be able to see that, and how despite his past, xiao still tries to be good.
at the end of the day, their dynamic just compels me, and tbh i actually don't really care all that much whether it's portrayed as romantic or platonic so long as they find meaning and importance in their relationship to each other. the way xiao's vision literally betrays his heart's desire and the way venti represents the purest, most ideal form of that desire makes me froth at the mouth. it's two deeply lonely, incredibly guilt-ridden people finding solace and stability in one another, who learn to love themselves bc someone else, whom they judge to be a better person than they themselves are, has shown them that it is possible for them to be loved, to be worthy of love.
simply distilled they are two people who think they are in a monster × monsterfucker relationship, and that the other person is the monsterfucker. and i am obsessed with that.