Meet Me at the Magpie Bridge

titled “meet me at the magpie bridge” for basically a single but elaborate reason. in short, in the legend of the cowherd & weaver girl (which the double seven festival celebrates), after the lovers are separated, it is the magpies which are said to gather annually in order to form a bridge to facilitate their reunion, which is where we get 「搭鵲橋」 — to act as matchmaker; lit. “build a magpie bridge” and 「鵲橋相會」 — lit. “magpie bridge meeting”, a reunion of lovers after a long separation. i think the events of the chapter make the title self-explanatory from here.

• the first segment was originally supposed to be from kq’s pov, but for some reason, that felt like pulling teeth, so it was swapped to xianyun’s pov
• regarding the bit at the start where she sees kq replace her hairpin after holding it up to the sky— you can estimate the time of day in the afternoon by holding your hand up with your fingers pointed parallel to the horizon and counting how many fingers up the sun is (this is a really poorly-worded explanation lol), with each one being i think half an hour?
• anyway the thing w/the hairpin i imagine she probably carved intervals or smth into its side to help tell time more precisely lol. we love you kq survival hairpin
• can you imagine. how much paperwork. fontaine n liyue would produce btwn the two of them. the nation of legalese + the nation of contracts.
• oracle bone script is considered The Earliest form of chinese writing, and in reality, Most of our surviving samples of it are written on, well, bones, but there’s apparently enough evidence to suggest that the written language of the time looked similar enough, so we’ll just pretend that wangsheng managed to preserve some paper-or-bamboo records or something in their secret bunker lol
• “when he managed to string bonanus along week-by-week for a series of kung-fu adventures starring a great condor and its chosen heroes” → this is a reference to legend of the condor heroes by jin yong, which is a hong kong novel published serially in a newspaper from 1957-1963 and is where a lot of wuxia tropes come from
• “each life belongs to the one who lives it” this is neither here nor there, but i do sometimes characterize xiao as believing in this idea that “a life belongs to the one who saves it”, so i find it fun to contrast xianyun (one of the only other anemo liyue chars) as believing somewhat the opposite
• qixing labor contract section 12.2 had 12.2 as the number selected as a joke abt ganyu’s birthday (dec. 2nd)’
• “glances that seem to suggest they just witnessed a lamb blithely miss a fork in the road” comes vaguely from 歧路亡羊 [qílù wáng yáng] (lit. meaning that a lamb goes astray at a fork in the road and fig. meaning to go astray in a complex situation), but mostly i used it to invoke this sense of a close call
• originally my notes/scribbles said “flying too close to the sun” but i was like “should we really be making an icarus reference? let’s see if we can give it a diff flavor”
• yes i made “yuheng engagement support project - last statements” have YESPLS as its initials on purpose
• this was originally supposed to be in the first segment, told from kq’s pov in prose, but then i switched to xianyun’s pov and felt like that was getting long enough as it was, so i changed it to meeting minutes bc i was lazy
• i think it’s funnier this way tho so i’m not mad
• honestly i tried to schedule things in such a way that they wouldn’t be violating any labor laws where i live (hence the bullet points that say “mandated 30 min. break”)
• ANYWAY it’s never stated but the reason they don’t get paid for their participation in shenaniganery is bc this is ultimately still a friend scheme lol
• also i don’t know if i’ve ever mentioned this before, but i currently work in city parks and recreation (yes like the tv show that i’ve never watched), which means i’m usually working holidays for special events and have a reasonable idea of what the behind-the-scenes looks like lol
• really big public holidays w/events have three shifts (morning, afternoon, evening/night, w/our bosses there from like 5am to midnight or later), but it’s pretty normal to just have a morning/afternoon or afternoon/evening two-shift event. some smaller ones are just one long shift (7-8 hours, incl. 30 min. break). a lot of prep work is usually done in the days or weeks before by whoever’s at the front desk regardless of event size
• we do usually have formal meetings going over the different shifts, who’s assigned to them, and what to expect for bigger events (though i will say. those usually could’ve just been emails.), so what’s shown in the itinerary section is basically just a fictionalized mix btwn the handouts we receive and the notes i take at those meetings bc in real life it’s just a lot of snickering in the back rooms while muted in a zoom meeting together
• as i’m sure you can imagine, setup and breakdown is A LOT of running around and taking care of miscellaneous tasks
• ningguang would actually be a rather odd by my standards because she’s not on the ground getting stuff done, but then again, all i ever know our boss’s boss is up to during special events is that he’s talking to people over the walkie talkies and riding back and forth in one of the golf carts or smth
• there can be a lot of downtime depending on the event, though! especially once it gets going, we peasant laborers are often sitting, standing, or squatting in one place for most of its duration while our bosses continue to literally run around (albeit not quite so much) in their event running
• oh right. all this just to say that when we have fireworks, we’re usually scheduled to show up about two hours before they actually begin, though i think it’s usually public works who handle the actual fireworks. we just wear hard hats and run around with fire extinguishers lol
• the afternoon prep notes are shorter n have no interjections partly bc i got lazy n ran out of steam w/that idea, but also bc that’s the part of the plan that’s actually, like, witnessed by the reader
• i don’t think that the bridges leading into and out of liyue harbor have in-game names, so i took the liberty of naming the one by the general goods store 枋橋 [fāngqíao]
• i arrived at this name by googling ‘banqiao taiwan’ to see how it was written in cn (as seeing it on signs is how i learned to read 橋 [qíao, bridge] a while back), and on the wikipedia page i learned the area was called fangqiao until japanese colonial rule, so i went with that to avoid directly hc-naming genshin places after real locations
• i can’t believe i finally get to archive the fact that i came up w/an adeptus name for yanfei’s father a few years ago, back when i was working on same old laotong, but never got to use
• anyway the name i chose was 「知法保義真君」 (“the perfected lord who knows the laws and protects righteousness/justice”) for reasons that are plain to see and specifics i don’t remember anymore lol
• “she could talk the sparrows off a drum tower” → 鼓樓上小雀 〔耐驚耐怕〕 [gǔ lóu shàng xiǎo què (naì jīng naì pà)], lit. “little sparrows atop a drum tower (enduring shock and fright)” is smth i found in the chinese dictionary by the taiwanese ministry of education (the moe dictionary for short).
• my understanding of the meaning is that basically it’s one of those things where you only say the first half and all the meaning is imparted through the usually-unsaid second half, and the gist is that bc the little sparrows atop a drum tower hear the sound of drums all the time, they end up unafraid; hence, it’s become a metaphor for unflappability.
• hence the joke here being that yanfei talks enough for even a flock of sparrows accustomed to war drums to get sick of the sound and fly off lol
• there being a “mostly harmless” option on the potential danger form is a douglas adams/hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy reference
• xiao continuing to guard the cecilia in his hair despite not understanding why people are invested in him and his happiness is simply an indication that he really does still want this thing he does not understand. it’s arguably a rather selfish thing, i suppose? or at the very least, it’s a betrayal of all the times he’s ever lied abt either not understanding or not wanting certain aspects of humanity for himself.
• the way i’m imagining the EARRING5 setup to work here is that like. yelan’s role is similar to that of an old-fashioned phone line operator, where you call in n are like, “hai, i’d like to talk to so-and-so” and they basically hook you up
• ningguang is basically the overseer of what’s going on idk i forgot what i was going to say
• xingqiu was originally supposed to be the one to suggest they torture the treasure hoarder, but as i sat around and thought abt it, i realized i couldn’t pull up any references where a chivalric hero would decide to kidnap and torture a random goon for information without it being framed as like. a bad thing.
• i was also going to make a joke wherein ningguang would say smth abt having to sentence xq to like, “be abandoned on the side of the rivers and lakes to survive by his wits” or smth like that, which would’ve been a reference to the fact that like. the martial arts world in wuxia novels is apparently sometimes called 江湖 [jīanghú, lit. ‘rivers & lakes’].
• i say “apparently” bc the first time ~i~ encountered it (while translating 神鵰侠侶 コンドルヒーロー II) and plugged it into pleco, all i got was that it’s a metaphor for people living hand-to-mouth, or poor folk living on the edges of society
• i have a hard time finding english sources on the ‘jianghu == martial arts world in wuxia novels’ thing, but i poked at the cn wikipedia page for the concept, and they seem to cite 《水滸傳》 [water margin, one of the four famous chinese novels] as an example, as it does indeed have a band of martial arts comrades having hundreds of chapters of adventures, and was also known as 《江湖豪客傳》
• originally it was hu tao who was supposed to scold ganyu for not maintaining the temperature on the supreme cuisine machine, but then i remembered she’s supposed to have band practice, so i changed it to yaoyao
• i spent a fair bit of time thinking abt whether it makes sense for a child like yaoyao, who is famously praised for being polite, would reach out to grab ganyu’s wrists like that. bc that is not really a polite thing to do in earnest y’know.
• but i mean like. i thought abt it a bit, and i remembered some of the kids at work, and tbh the thing is that even very good kids will still have moments where they have trouble keeping their hands to themselves, esp. when they’re younger. they mean well, and it’s often the most intuitive way to get someone else’s attn or guide them to what you’re trying to do, so i forgive yaoyao for this indiscretion
• if any of you are thinking, “wait i thought kq had an eight-step plan for the gq engagement thing; why is it twelve now” hohoho
• first we must remember that. kq was just fucking winging it when she first mentioned it to xiangling back in ch 3, and when xianyun mentioned it to zhongli in ch 6, that was as a bit of gossip from guoba and not to be taken as accurate information
• that said, although it is true kq was just making shit up in ch 3, i do think it’s funny if afterwards she sat down and came up with a plan with numbered steps in case anyone asked again later
• i’m well aware that the tour de france is a specific famous bicycle race and not just a way to say you’re touring france. however, i will not give up how the phrase “tour de fontaine” rolls off the tongue
• re: xiangling’s eyes glazing over whenever she says xingyun aren’t dating— are they glazing over bc she’s sick of waiting for them to get together, or bc she’s sick of people asking her if they’re together? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• spent a fair bit of time thinking abt kq’s mix of annoyance and excitement abt the way everyone seems to be messing w/her regarding her proposal plans
• assuming i don’t cut that bit and then subsequently forget to remove these notes, i think that in general, being placed in a situation where you are being matchmade is, like, extremely embarrassing and frankly kind of annoying. as a grey-aro ace i lowkey think people just should not be doing that shit lmao
• but at the same time, the obnoxious relatives and playful ribbing from friends… even when i was put through the wretched matchmaking wringer as a real human person over a decade ago, there was some part of me that was having fun with the suffering bc i did like the person my friends were trying to (very crassly) set me up with in that way.
• it’s kind of difficult to describe and justify, other than a, “i’m glad that all these other people are excited and having fun with it too.”
• on a story level, i also find it interesting bc it kind of reinforces one of my points, which is that kq and xiao are actually quite similar characters. they’re both stubborn, impatient, kind of rough people who hold a lot of care in their hearts; the main difference is that when kq wants smth, she reaches out for it.
• while writing this chapter i found out i’ve apparently been consistently referring to third-round knockout as “three round knockout” throughout this fic. i could not tell you why. but since it happens across multiple chapters i’m just keeping it
• venti explaining how to tell when wine is ready as “you smell the cork” is… well, i’m not a wine connoisseur (i don’t really drink), but (forgot if i talked abt this before lol) i read like 200 chapters of this manga called drops of god a few years back, which goes into excruciating detail abt wine tasting and sommelier skills, so I’m Aware That There Is A Whole World Out There That I Know Very Little About, which is better than ignorance at least
• that said, i didn’t have the time to reread like 200 chapters of manga just to see what exactly the characters said in their Multiple conversations abt When Is The Right Time To Drink A Wine (and How Do You Know?) for this one joke (while simultaneously Knowing that there is a wealth of knowledge out there about this subject that i could access preventing me from just making shit up and moving on), i poked around on the internet a bit— mostly going off a memory of a tumblr post that i cannot find anymore which said that smelling the cork is a part of the Ordering A Bottle of Wine At A Restaurant Ritual™ (bc if it smells moldy, then that means something went bad)— and found this youtube video with like 168 views by an old man which corroborated it enough that i was like “yeah the joke’s accurate enough”
• “sweetened envy” → i spent a lot of time struggling w/this particular bit n how i wanted to balance btwn a sense of pride, excitement, and envy. after deciding i was leaning too much into the more wretched parts of being envious, i cut a lot and switched to calling it “sweetened envy” to convey a sense of “i’m jealous, but only bc you get to do this thing i also want to do first n i’m so excited abt it” instead
• “the lifting of the thunder’s curtain” → phrasing inspired by the euphemistic “bamboo curtain” separating various communist states in asia from the capitalist ones from the 40s-80s
• “everything i loved was still there at heart, even if it had slightly changed its form” → smth-smth confucianism and how we should love not the Form of the ritual but the Meaning, the Spirit of the thing
• “remember what happened last time w/the lantern rite fiasco” → reference to v2.4 lantern rite where kq beat up a bunch of treasure hoarders who stole a heap of fireworks lol
• “the bitter taste of muteness” → 「啞巴吃黃蓮，有苦說不出」 [a mute person tasting bitter herbs is forced to suffer in silence]