Chapter One: Wild Goose Chase

chapter titled “wild goose chase” bc in english, to go on a wild goose chase means to waste your energy chasing a pointless outcome that bears little to no reward or to chase after something impossible, while in chinese, geese are a symbol of marital bliss n have historically been considered a very good betrothal gift.

i wrote this chapter in like two days by hand in a tiny notebook because if i didn't write something powerfully stupid, i would have ripped my own writing to fucking shreds with my own teeth. these notes were scribbled out as i transcribed it for posting.

i chose to call it kq’s “professional bubble” rather than her “personal bubble” bc like. she n ganyu are already together. she’s making room for herself less on a personal level n more on a Professional one. bc they are at work lol

i chose baixiao as the secretary of ningguang’s to fetch kq bc:

1. her name, 百曉, means “a hundred understandings” n like. she knows what’s going on underneath the desk just immediately.
2. she was the only secretary whose name i could remember when i was writing this by the seat of my pants at work (no internet) bc my own cn name shares the character 曉.

“like bees to bananas” is a reference to the fact that the bee sex pheromone or something smells like bananas.

“welcome to hu tao’s funky fresh funeral parlor” comes from the fact that i hated how awkward it is to let strangers into your genshin world n just say “hi”, so i started saying, “howdy stranger, welcome to yanfei’s yakity taxity law firm” bc yanfei is permanently glued to my account’s profile picture lol. anyway, when i managed a friend’s acct for a few months as he drowned in schoolwork, i’d usually use his hu tao and decided i needed a greeting for her, n i ended up with “welcome to hu tao’s funky fresh funeral parlor”.

i’m sure most of you also caught it earlier, but hu tao saying “what’s the name of the grave” is a play on the phrase “What’s the name of the game?”, which means “What’s going on?” or “what are we doing?”

hu tao saying that she’s pretty sure the monders would wanna know if their god is getting married is both a throwaway line as a joke, and a potential setup for a sequel in which ayaka receives an invitation to venti’s wedding in mondstadt and takes thoma along as her +1. bc ayaka has no reason to know that venti is the anemo archon, the major gag of the sequel would be in thoma’s surprise that “ god is getting married??? ayaka, you didn’t tell me you knew god!!!! how come no one told me he was getting married?????”

for no reason other than self-torture, i chose to translate the little poems i wrote for hu tao n kazuha’s poetry battle into cn. i’m not good enough at cn to know if they’re good, or portray the things i want them to, but they are as follows:

天明蝴蝶 (tīan míng hú díe)
飛行中斷 (fēi xìng zhōng duàn)
天明毀滅 (tīan míng huĭ mìe)
代表蝴自望 (daì bĭao hú zì wàng)

bc tianming (天明), dawn, sounds like tianming (天命), heaven’s will, the dawn is therefore associated with fate, and how i’d translate my intent back here would be as follows:

when fate cut short the butterfly’s flight, the butterfly wished to destroy destroy heaven in turn.

although i’ve never been able to get a clear answer from anyone i’ve asked as to what makes for good cn poetry, what i’ve gathered from reading a textbook analyzing chinese classic novel hong lou meng (also known as dream of the red chamber or the story of the stone) is that tone-contrast, wherein the 1st n 3rd tones are contrasted w/each other n the 2nd n 4th tones are contrasted w/each other, is a desirable thing.

rhyming, as far as i can tell, isn’t all that important in cn poetry, though if it happens then that’s exciting! that’s why i’m pretty attached to the 1st n 3rd lines: not only do díe and mìe exhibit tone contrast, but they also rhyme.

you might be wondering where the expression of “freedom” in kazuha’s lines went. it gets kind of like, lost/implied as 自由 gets reduced to simply 自, which also has the side effect of making the cn version emphasize the fact that watching heaven burn is reflective of the butterfly’s personal hope/wish.

this is also neither here nor there, but the poem’s subject being a butterfly who will fight fate for the sake of freedom was in some way inspired by the fact that xiao’s story quest is titled “a butterfly’s dream” in en. in cn, i found out that it references a different cn short story called “the governor of nanke” which has a similar ideas of dreaming of a different life n mistaking it for reality, but again, that’s neither here nor there.

venti calling kq ganyu’s “aiqing” is a play on keqing’s name, 刻晴, and the word for “romantic feelings”, aiqing/愛情.

hu tao cutting in n saying xiao would never think the dihua flute was being played for him as a confession of venti’s feelings is true, but not for the reasons she states. instead, i think he’d dismiss them on the grounds that he’s making up meaning where there is none because he wishes it was there.

混血 (hunxie) — mixed blood; refers to mixed race people. if it’s a slur, then it’s one i’ve been called, but i’m like 99.999% sure it’s not. anyway, i chose hun-xie over something in english like “half-adeptus” bc to call her half-whatever would pick a side of her heritage to single out and subtly otherize, which would undermine the whole point of her valuing them both as a part of herself.

“whatever tiny wish gave him the anemo archon’s eye” was a pretty tough phrase to end up on bc this chapter’s rough draft was written entirely by hand in a tiny notebook, where i use cn on character names n fandom-specific nouns to obfuscate what i’m writing about, as a result, the notebook reads “whatever tiny wish gave him 風神之眼” which i felt could’ve been transcribed in two ways:

1. the one i’m pretty sure i had in mind when i first wrote it down: “anemo vision”. bc 神之眼, literally translated out as “eyes of god”, are called “visions” in english, then it’s possible to eventually come to the interpretation of xiao’s wish having caught the eye of the wind god, venti, with, like, romantic implications behind that.
2. “the anemo god’s eye” removes the reference to xiao’s vision, leaving it to the more lore-informed readers to piece the tunnel back there themselves, while centering the romantic implications more. this is the interpretation that was eventually chosen bc i felt that centering the romantic implications was the better choice in a romcom, and also bc i think it’s easier for readers to connect “eyes of god” to “visions” than it is for them to connect “visions” to “eyes of god”. also, i had some friends vote on it.

other words considered before just making up the word “desponsiary” included candidate, parti, desponsate, swain, suitor, consort, beau, courtier, romancist, and 媒人 [meiren]

• “candidate” felt too much like they were considering other characters (they absolutely are NOT), and venti was just one of several options
• everything except for meiren else came from onelook reverse dictionary-ing it so like, strap in
• “parti” → dated, comes from french. means someone, esp. a man who is considered to be a good choice for marriage.
• not gonna lie, i almost went with this one. what held me back n kept me looking was being unsure of whether i was using it correctly. also, it’s apparently just merged with the word “party” by this point
• “desponsate” → already elaborated on, ended up using it as the root for “desponsiary”.
• mostly didn’t use it as it was bc it’s a transitive verb, n i was like, “i’m pretty sure that’s a verb, and i’m looking for a noun. specifically an objective noun.”
• “swain” → apparently a poetic term for a rural lover, or a male lover in a pastoral setting
• while cute, it gave me the implication that venti was already in some way romantically involved, of his own initiative, with xiao, whereas the word i wanted specifically needed to have the person be involved bc of other people’s actions. like, the word i wanted needed to describe a person who may very well be fully unaware of the matchmaking schemes around them
• suitor, consort, beau, and courtier fell into similar problems as “swain” bc they all gave me the impression of someone who was actively wooing someone else of their own initiative.
• i eventually turned to cn bc i was like, “matchmaking was like, A Whole Thing in the ancient days, i’m sure they have a word for when someone reaches matchmaking age n the matchmaker is currently looking for a marriage candidate for them”
• doing this also made me think, “hey couldn’t we just use the word… ‘matchmakee’?” but then i was like “NO that sounds dumb and not classy enough for zhongli”
• anyway, looking up “matchmaker” yielded 媒妁 (meishuo), so i poked around on zdic.net for the word’s origin/related words. i can’t read very well, but 媒 kept popping up. hoping for the best i picked it up to look into later, but ultimately it appears to also refer to the person pairing up the people n not the people being paired.
• i still have no idea if there’s a cn word for this either.

the following (plus a few more!) were the discussion questions i left in the a/n on ao3. some of my own answers should be clear from the notes i just transcribed, but not all hehe

1. "desponsiary" is a made up word derived from the archaic word “desponsate” (meaning “to betroth”) and is itself supposed to mean "a member of a party who is currently undergoing the betrothal process, but has not yet had the engagement finalized". what sort of other connotations do you think this made-up word should have when considering it shares its latin root, despondere, with the modern english word "despondent", meaning "to be sad or forlorn from loss of hope"?
2. in the original cn text of genshin, visions are called 神之眼 [shen zhi yan], or "eye[s] of god". with this in mind, how might one interpret the line, "whatever tiny wish had given [xiao] the anemo archon's eye"?
3. hun-xie, or 混血, means mixed-race but literally translates out to "chaotic/mixed blood". why might ganyu choose to refer to herself as hunxie rather than something like part adeptus, half human, etc?
4. do you think venti's reasoning strengthens or diminishes the story's justification for not having xv get together immediately? regardless of answer, how do you think the opposite could have been achieved (i.e. what could venti have said to either convince or fail to convince the audience that he should not be the one to confess)?
5. though most of the main cast are women, the plot is mostly driven forward by a scheme to set up two male characters. considering the frequency that women in fiction are used as props for men's characterization and development, what do you feel could or should be done to circumvent this?