additional notes for chapter four
(on duty, sin, and recompense)
i found this essay when archiving the wip lighthouse, filed under "additional notes for chapter four". it's probably a smattering of thoughts, but i kept them all together for this essay.
writing date unknown; est. august 2022.
archived 10 july 2023.
what is a sin is defined by that religion’s scriptures, which are ostensibly the Word of God. therefore, it follows that what is and isn’t a sin is flexible depending on the context and religion, and technically, if your god tells you you have not sinned, then you have not sinned by the Word of God.
it is rather human, then, to arrogate oneself to reject the Word of God and insist upon one’s alleged sin, for humans are, by their nature, imperfect.
xiao is not a sinner, not in venti’s eyes. even in his youth of stealing dreams, he was himself a victim and not a violator, as he lacked the freedom, the autonomy, to choose.
i think xiao likes contracts because they gave his life structure and direction. he came out of a very overwhelming situation when he signed his contract — how does he live with himself now that it’s in his hands? there is so much he needs to atone for — i think he might have killed himself (or at the very least let himself die) had zhongli basically not said, “here’s what you can do to improve this shitty world you helped make.”
and that’s why he struggles to give up his duty to this day in canon— he’s served for over 2,000 years, but that’s a mere two hundred lifetimes out of the presumably hundreds or even thousands more he stole. it’s not until he feels like he’s paid enough back that he can put down his spear and have his life be his own again. debt forgiveness is simply not a thing to him.
as the last remaining yaksha, xiao feels like he must carry on and honor the legacy of his elder siblings. in order to do that, he must act in a way that would make them look good? competent? while compensating for their absence at the same time. but their absence also gives him this sense of futility. he will meet his end sooner or later, but his desire to maintain their legacy, as someone who fought until the end, motivates him to both live and die. live to his death, i suppose.
he feels trapped by his own life. perhaps it’s less that his life is the butterfly, but his duty the butterfly and his life, the jar. his life is not enough for what his duty demands, for his sins to be paid fairly, but he will hold on to what he has until he collapses because it’s all he believes he can do.
why do we fight for things to be fair, for debts to be paid? how do we justify our own cultural values? xiao fights for the safety, protection, and prosperity of liyue and its people, because he doesn’t want them to suffer under his hand again, suffer as he had before he had them to take care of. because he feels he is not enough, for his past actions have made him lesser.
to bring back the brass scale metaphor , xiao feels as if his sins (killing qiqi → nightmare motive; time under the evil god → contract w/zhongli) are on the heavy side of a literally broken scale, so that no matter how much he tries to tithe, the other pan never rises. to have something nice would simply be adding to the wrong side, for relief is the opposite of what he owes, and he will simply have to pay that back twice over later as a result.
venti relates to the struggle of legacy, obviously, and sees xiao’s futile struggle against his fate motivated by that, and is reminded of why he refuses to give in to the powers of celestia, even though he knows that, like xiao, he will either die holding on to his values/ideals or be forced to accept unfair actions to keep going. the difference btwn them, ofc, is that venti thinks xiao to be a man more sinned against than sinner himself. fuck celestia for forcing his hand like this, but he can’t help but to feel the weight of fate upon both of them.
→ he feels the unruly wind in xiao’s desire to keep going, uphold the yakshas’ legacy, against the constraints of his inevitable fate of suffering
i feel like the discussion of sin/righteousness in this fic is just gonna end up being very culturally christian and like. thanks xv for forcing me to character develop and confront and unpack the things i was raised with, but also, i hate the idea of potentially coming off as “cis white girl using fictional men (of color) to unpack her very specific, wasc flavor of prejudice.” because i know that’s not who i am.
i don’t know if traditional chinese culture has the same sort of thoughtcrime to it that christian culture does. i know that it values the origins and original intent of a tradition above the action, according to confucianism, but is it a crime if you follow a tradition w/o honoring its original intent in your heart if it doesn’t actually hurt anyone? if it helps other people, even? i don’t know.
but i do know that culturally, it values getting stuff done. taking action and making tangible differences. and considering others as people deserving the same amt of thought n care as yourself all the while.
罪, the word for “sin” in the christian-y sense, also means guilt, crime, blame. it is composed of 罒, net, on top, and 非, “un-”; “oppose”, beneath. for me, the obvious interpretation of the source is “to be caught/entangled in opposition/the wrong.”
the point of xv falling in love in lighthouse, the point of them drawing on beauty and the beast imagery, is that they are both flawed characters. they have both done terrible things, or allowed terrible things to happen, to others.
but that doesn’t mean they are unworthy of love or undeserving of forgiveness and kindness, because they are fundamentally human. neither truly believes themselves to be, but definitely believe in the humanity of the other. forgiveness is something that is necessary in life, in relationships, with ourselves, because self-cruelty is simply not sustainable.
yet, forgiveness is not smth xv can ever grant to each other, only to themselves. but, it is through being loved that they discover the idea of being granted forgiveness, and through recognizing themselves in the other combined with the willingness to love the other through their flaws, they eventually come to forgive themselves for their own sins.
because forgiveness does not mean we forget the harm we caused, or the scars we left behind. it is an acknowledgement, an acceptance, of [our] human nature and the vow to do better. it is not divine (although it often feels it must be), but instead, simply human.