a little birdie told me ~ for the birds (annotated) ~ joy of my life

A Little Birdie Told Me

titled "a little birdie told me" on account of xianyun’s gossip + xiao finally talking about his feelings in gay court, yes, but also bc the way ganyu n keqing talk abt one another is meant to reflect onto xv, although not in a one-to-one kind of way.

the naming of the EARRING5 was a stroke of genius and i need you all to praise me for it

was originally thinking of having their acronym be smth along the lines of ER-DUO, which would be the pinyin for 耳朵 (ears), but then i got wondering where the 5 in 5G wifi came from, discovered that it basically stood for "generation", then laughed myself silly with the conception of "Extended Audio Range Receiver and Intercommunications Network (Generation 5)"

i left xiao (maybe) blowing his bangs out of his eyes ambiguous because as funny an image it is, i'm not entirely sure it's in-character,,,

though as a side note, the image i had in mind when writing that line actually comes from one of the genshin comic anthologies mihoyo commissioned back in like 2020. the xiao chapter (which i scanlated. all by myself. just btw) has him flippantly tossing his hair at one point lol

"a shard of zhongli rex lapis could never afford" is kind of meant to imply that zhongli was never allowed to grieve or to let grief become a part of himself during his time as the geo archon. like, he's supposed to be the god of stone, steady and unchanging as the earth, heartless and unfeeling in order to maintain his place of strength during the archon war. what room is there for grief, which necessarily changes a person in some way for their loss, in that?
when writing this chapter i realized that at no point did i ever specify when kq could have told zhongli abt her engagement plans, but i also couldn't really see her doing so before having her epic ""battle"" against him so. i just decided to imply that zhongli learned abt it through old people gossip lol
i chose a crane to be the bird depicted in the stained glass window mentioned in xiao's description of the courtroom bc it's associated with wisdom and also often used in euphemisms for death

my first thought had been for the bird to be a dove, but then i was like. "well, if it's a stained-glass window, then even if it's a mond style design, it's probably going to have mostly liyue sensibilities behind what it's depicting"
when looking through my notes on bird symbolism in china, i also considered the phoenix (associated with brides) and orioles (symbol of friendship, joy, and music) until i also remembered that This Is A Funeral Parlor and not a wedding chapel

the name "court of daydreams" was smth i came up on the spot when working on this chapter, specifically because i've always internally called this event "yanfei takes xiao to gay court"
but anyway, i was originally thinking i'd model the layout of their play-court after hong kong or taiwan, which is how i learned that hong kong and taiwanese courts are laid out differently

i then got lost down a rabbithole of trying to figure out what kind of court this would be like. i presume civil court since it deals with human relationships, but the argument is more surrounding why xiao hasn't done anything rather than anything he Actually Has done so like. i kind of gave up there lol
anyway, i looked at a layout map of a taiwanese courtroom and went "hang on a second. that looks like an ace attorney courtroom, with the witness stand literally in the center of it all"

taiwan was a colony of japan for a while, and the japanese influence is pretty visible on a number of aspects of the country so, like. i've done no research on this so this is purely conjecture on my part, but if courtroom layout is yet another aspect of japanese influence on taiwan, that checks out to me lol

from what i've gathered, hk courtrooms are laid out similarly to american ones, with the witness stand by the judge's table and the jury off to the side
but anyway, to maintain the silly vibe, i decided to write the scene as if it was set in an ace attorney courtroom lol

the joke abt kq complaining abt hu tao's lack of organization in her paperwork was brought to you by my coworkers, who apparently cannot alphabetize or put paperwork in its rightful place to save their lives.

like. not to vague or anything, but you guys CANNOT be putting the approved rental applications with our completed registration forms we have a clearly labeled binder y'know -_-

this is neither here nor there, but i actually used to greet strangers to my genshin world with "howdy stranger; welcome to yanfei's yakity taxity law firm how may i help you?", hence yanfei's greeting lol
this segment was written from yanfei's pov at first, with the later pov after kq's tcg match against zhongli at that time planned to be from xiao's pov.

then for some reason it was a massive struggle to write the first half of gay court from yanfei's pov, but i didn't want to just have two xiao povs split up like that so i didn't want to switch
and then i looked at my notes more closely and realized the povs were supposed to go xiao → keqing → yanfei instead of yanfei → keqing → xiao. godbless

i'm know i'm not the first person to consider the idea of characters having a distinct style to the way they wield their elements or something (i specifically remember thinking about this post by my dear mutual fern), but i still had a lot of fun thinking abt the characters' elemental signatures!

kq being lightning is very obvious, yes, but the comment abt lightning transforming the ozone is specifically meant to invoke the idea of xiao finding her a little unpleasant to be around lol

because this fic is meant to draw parallels btwn kq and xiao and their different approaches to pursuing their love interests: kq bold and proactive; xiao shy and frankly rather passive
i guess this is technically spoilers, but xiao is meant to eventually start being more like kq, bold and proactive: the lightning transforms the ozone

ganyu → glacier carving the valleys

this was mostly bc the other day i was sitting around at work and thinking abt i think the intersection of elementals for a char's vision and their home nations, and i was like. "well, ice is basically like if water was a rock. what sort of conclusions might we be able to draw from that?"
n i just ended up thinking abt how glaciers carved out valleys over the course of like. forever and a day, and i thought abt how ganyu is described as tirelessly steady in her work, and so in conclusion yeah glacier cutting through mountain rock

hu tao → moth dancing around the flame

like yes i know she's associated with butterflies, which are a different taxonomic suborder than moths, but the idea of moths being drawn to flames is far more common than that of butterflies being drawn to flames

and anyway, the flittering back and forth is supposed to be evocative of the way she plays around at the border of life n death

yanfei → counterbalancing hu tao's shifting energy

this one did take a little bit of thinking bc it was like. "well, how do you portray The Law™??"
jk it wasn't quite like that
i did know that i wanted it to be a scale, since i am always thinking abt her one character story abt the balance beam she got from her father, and so it's like. "well, what do you do with a scale? you try to balance things!"
there's also a bit of a romantic aspect to it as well, with yanfei maintaining some sort of awareness of what hu tao is up to at all times and perhaps subconsciously preparing for and responding to the chaotic changes and choices she makes
yanfei is steady, as a legal standard must be, in order to maintain impartiality and level-headedness between situations

and venti is ofc the sweet summer breeze

at least here in this situation he is. i think his literally godly control over his element makes him capable of being no less than a total hurricane if he so desires, but i think he chooses to be kind most of the time
it being described as a prelude to venti's presence was written with the lantern rite 2023 epilogue in mind, wherein venti goes like "whoosh whoosh…" before he enters the restaurant lol

"he feels […] as if he is receiving reprimand from a child" → you know how sometimes you can get kind of owned by small children who have yet to develop the jaded cynicism of many adults?

and the fact that they are A Child makes you feel kind of silly for letting that cynicism take such a deep hold on your worldview?
this line draws upon the fact that xiao has mentored ganyu for who knows how long at this point.

i also tend to interpret xiao as having a bit of a superiority complex over ganyu because of her insecurity over where she "belongs" in the world (i.e. with humans or the adepti)
if we want to portray him even more uncharitably, then you could also extend his habit of viewing humans as basically all like silly children to also viewing ganyu in a similarly patronizing light, hence the initial reaction of feeling like he's being scolded by a child
"yet also as though he is a child getting coddled by an adult" is like.

admittedly, the childhood amnesia that comes for us all does keep me from readily accessing most of my memories of my young childhood clearly, so what i had in mind when writing this might not necessarily be accurate to the actual experience of a small child, but i do have very clear memories of being a teenager at least

but anyway, what i'm trying to say here is that this line was written with the memory of doing bad things on purpose, getting caught, but not always severely punished, about it
or like. maybe not even necessarily on purpose, but perhaps out of habit, as if that excuses doing things you know deep down that you shouldn't do.
there's also room in the genshin lore to interpret ganyu as older than xiao, which i think is the most commonly-held view in the fandom, and so in this moment, xiao is also remembering that she is technically his elder (and can therefore be assumed to know more than him), hence the feeling that he is the child in the situation as well

"both for faults he knows, deep down, he carries still" is a line about stagnation.

like do you ever hit a point in your life where you're self-aware enough to know where a lot of your faults are, but for whatever reason, you don't want to put in the hard effort of fixing them?
like maybe you're burnt out, and fixing them would be too much effort and energy. maybe it's just not that big a deal, like the only person it really inconveniences is you, and putting up with it is just your normal. maybe you don't know who you are without it and are scared to find out. maybe you even think you don't deserve the quality-of-life fixing such a fault would bring you.
the point, either way, is that you kind of already know better, and so— why don't you do better?

and so finally, "they are children, the both of them" is a line which takes xiao's previous complicated feelings abt what his hierarchy/dynamic w/ganyu is and turns them into equals

neither of them is the adult, who is supposed to know how to navigate the world without asking others. neither of them really know what they're doing in regards to navigating human relationships.
the thing i wanted from this line was for xiao to be stricken by the feeling that he and ganyu are equals in matters of being human

all that is kind of complicated and almost certainly a little bit irrational lol but i like to think xiao has internalized a lot of things that are ultimately irrational if picked at a little bit too long because i <3 bullying xiao

plus, being human myself, i've had to unpack plenty of irrational and incongruous beliefs i hadn't even realized i'd picked up, let alone internalized, before so. i think it's fair

"he handles the memory like a baby bird still too young to leave the nest" when writing the first half of gay court from yanfei's pov, this line was originally "as if handling a baby bird which has fallen from its nest"

and like yeah obviously trying to convey a sense of delicacy and gentleness and immense care, but i think the revision adds this sense of like, xiao not being quite ready to share what happened in perfect detail, but still choosing to do so, and doing so with the greatest care he can afford it

"is it not enough that he knows it already?"

so there's this novel, chemistry, by weike wang, wherein at the start of the story, the protagonist's boyfriend asks her to marry him, but she cannot find it in herself to say "yes" outright. and so the question of marriage looms over the entire first half of the story, until eventually they have a conversation that goes like this:

the moment we're back in our old apartment, he asks the first question [will you marry me] again. say yes.
i want to.
he asks the second question [about his new job far away]. come with me.
i want to.
then say yes.
isn't it enough that i want to?

and like, maybe this is an unimportant detail, but the protagonist is first generation chinese, and you can feel the echoes of that cultural upbringing all throughout the novel. her boyfriend is white, and it is not enough to him that she simply wants to say yes.

and maybe she knows it. but in the end, her upbringing leaves her too much of a foreigner to agency, and so she struggles to act on it.

and so you can kind of see why i wrote that line from xiao with that quote in mind.

because yes it's something that venti (might) know xiao is insanely devoted to him already (bc we have to remember that xiao is also making assumptions convenient to his worldview here). but for as someone as insecure abt his place in others' lives as venti, for someone who values words as highly as venti, eventually xiao's inability to tell him abt his devotion will not be quite enough

"xiao finds himself showing his teeth" & "it's not that he wants to bite like an untrained dog"

the implication that xiao physically bites keqing here is not part of the authorial intent, but it's not exactly refuted by the text either, so. death of the author, kids
but to dig into the authorial intent here: i bit other kids growing up. not always on purpose. i also had a bad temper growing up, which still sometimes pops out if i'm not careful.

as i've gotten older and more aware of my own temper, i've developed a better understanding of what i experience leading into temper pops, and i've come to refer to the moments when i (half the time choose to) let said temper show as "biting" because that moment of snapped aggression reminds me of what made me sometimes bite other kids growing up.

but anyway, the implication here is meant to be that xiao becomes stressed enough that his karmic debts find a brief opening to dig into him, hence "the air has the clarity of after a rainstorm" in-between. he wrangles back control of himself.

"a failure to say 'no' is not the same as saying 'yes'" and the greatest problem with xiao is that likewise, to HIM, a failure to say 'yes' is not the same as saying 'no'.

i've said this before in more private spaces bc it's kind of nsfw. but xiao is the type of character who would benefit immensely from a safeword if he wasn't too goddamn repressed to acknowledge the idea that he would benefit immensely from a safeword.
unfortunately the people in his life care about him too much, and so his failures to say 'yes' are functionally the same as saying 'no'. it's kind of yuri, the way this results in a distance btwn xv because of their mutual desires for one another.

kq's final speech to xiao covers ideas that i had originally planned to cover in ch. 5 during her conversation with yanfei

y'know, stuff like the parallels btwn kq and xiao, as well as the major differences in their approaches to courtship and romance and relationships
and i think the fic is better for this actually, although i was really bummed at not being able to include it last chapter, bc kq is the kind of character bold enough to talk shit straight to other people's faces, and i think that her criticizing xiao directly in gay court is overall better than if she were to complain abt him to yanfei, who then has to try to present them neutrally in gay court later

this does kind of kill a joke i had in mind where kq may or may not realize she and xiao are actually pretty similar, but i think it's a worthwhile sacrifice

gay court part i was originally supposed to end when zhongli walked into the room to ask hu tao for a deck of cards; however, the more i thought about it, the more appropriate it felt to end xiao's pov before ganyu's testimony

for one thing, it's easier to draw xv-gq parallels when viewing things from yanfei's perspective here, since we can actually follow her train of thought when in her head lol
for another, it keeps xiao's pov from getting too dragged on or repetitive with his habitual self-denial

yes, zhongli using the exact phrasing "a children's card game" to describe genius invokation tcg and suggest its usage as equivalent to a life-or-death battle is a reference to yu-gi-oh the abridged series
kq's line upon agreeing to play against zhongli ("let's get this done quick. whether it's work or cards, we should take it seriously") is her serious duel line, whereas zhongli's ("games of chess and cards are both friends of the elegant aesthete") is his friendly duel line lol
"the birds and flowers intricately carved into the chair backing" bird-and-flower paintings (花鳥畫) are THE genre of art of all time. triple, perhaps even quadruple s-tier art to me. everything else aside from it and blorbo drawings can go home.
tbh i kind of like to imagine that cloud retainer collaborated with madam faruzan to invent the genshin tcg duel disks, because it just seems more right that a sumeru researcher came up with the thing, as tcg is canonically sumerian in origin.

unfortunately wasn't much way to imply that without the wording getting a little unwieldy. alas

gave kq the code name 'hukou' with the intended cn characters being '虎口' (lit. 'tiger's mouth' & fig. immense peril)

the train of thought was mostly that i took ningguang's code name, yuehua (月華) from a mora for a myth by cadriona, which associates kq heavily with the mythological white tiger of the west. that, plus the fact that kq's hair associates her with catgirls in fanon lol.
i initially ended up liking 虎口 because its pronunciation, hǔkǒu, is one tone off from 戶口 [hùkǒu], which is the word for the family registry, and so i just kind of liked that association in my mind bc it further associates her with the upcoming engagement (bc they'll have to register as a family together after they get married :3)
the tiger is also often associated with (usually military) strength and valor, as well as being full of drive and ambition. it's very kq is what i'm saying
there's also the phrase 甘冒虎口 [gān mào hǔkǒu, lit. 'willingly/happily risk the tiger's mouth/den'], which expresses a person's willingness to demonstrate their utmost loyalty, even at the risk of their own life

and i mean. c'mon. that is SO kq

yes, i chose the name "duel against the stone" because it sounds like the traveler's "duel before the throne" in inazuma. what of it
i coded a tcg dice roller simulator instead of actually writing the tcg game for a while, and at one point after testing it just to ensure debugging was done well, i rolled one of each dice…

make a wish everyone…..

"like the distant swell of a dragon's roar" was written with the cn onomatopoeia 隆隆 [lónglóng, for the rumble of thunder or gunfire] in mind, specifically bc it's homophonic to 龍 [lóng, dragon]
the gq screenshot for the tcg card was taken by meeee in august 2023 in mary-ann's house. i believe the models were star (ganyu) and blaze (keqing)

also ~*i*~ unbolded the genshin font :3

"the impression of her soul getting engraved onto a stone tablet" so i asked my friends if they think zhongli would give strong handshakes or "be one of those old asian men who makes you feel like you're shaking hands with a limp wet fish"

and ofc everyone said he'd have a strong handshake, which like yeah i know i get it but it would be so funny if his handshake game was just incredibly weak
that is until star said "BUT ITS ALSO FUNNY FOR THIS RANDOM OLD GUY to give you a handshake so firm for every minor agreement. as if it were all contracts of heavy weight" and i was like THAT IS SO CORRECT
but anyway, the exact wording here referencing kq's soul getting engraved onto a stone tablet is a reference to the ancestral tablets which are like involved in the tradition of worshiping one's ancestors n stuff

xianyun signing the second card with "take care of my girl" was inspired by the fact that like. i think it was either soon before my parents got married or after my paternal grandmother died, my mom had a dream where said paternal grandmother said, "take care of my boy"
the room getting so cold it brings yanfei close to a sneeze is a joke abt her snow voiceline ending in her sneezing c:
hu tao was originally going to be the one to say "you don't have to try [these trite mortal rituals] if you know you aren't going to like them" but then i remembered that ganyu actually has some pretty aggressive voicelines and also i want her to take pride and joy in humanity

she may have been the one to propose this whole matchmaking nonsense. but sometimes i am sure she is tired of being nice

"the illuminated beasts and the cultivated immortals" according to the wiki, humans technically can't become adepti, but i like the mental exercise of localizing parts of the original cn text regarding liyue to my own tastes. in this case: 仙獸 [xīanshòu, illuminated beasts] and 仙人 [xīanrén, illuminated immortal people]

i haven't read a wuxia novel since 2019, so i originally considered translating the latter as "cultivated adepti" but after talking it out w/star as to whether that sounded weird i settled on "cultivated immortals" instead
bc yeah why can't i imply that qi cultivation is a real thing you can do that lets you ascend to the status of adepti if you cultivate diligently enough. i don't see why not.

"do not broach the bounds which hold the sky above your head" celestia in cn is 天空島 [heavenly/sky island], so it's very common for me to reference celestia as simply 'the sky' or 'the heavens'

in this case, the implication is that mortals should not challenge the status n power of the adepti bc they're the ones protecting humans from getting smote by celestia

"i'm sure venti won't mind if you turn out not to be that innocent" a couple things going on here

firstly, yes, this can be interpreted as a dirty joke, wherein hu tao makes light of xiao's emotional repression. bc yeah dude venti likes you why would he be disgusted that you want to kiss him so bad. perhaps among other things.
secondly, xiao's been taken to gay court for, as kq said, "his crimes of making out w/venti w/o defining their rlshp" so it can also be read to reassure him that just bc he messed up by staying quiet on the roof of wangshu inn, he doesn't need to pressure himself abt doing it perfectly right the next time

"her voice chokes in silence" → considered phrasing it as "neither xiao nor yanfei say a word as the emotion of ganyu's voice chokes into silence" but i decided to leave xiao n yanfei's silence implicit
also ganyu describing an uncrossable gap of sorts existing btwn herself n kq for a time was phrased very deliberately bc gaps of seemingly insurmountable yet incredibly tiny distances are an integral part of what makes yuri yuri to me

and YES of COURSE ganyu's monologue abt that gap is reflective upon xiao's struggles to take initiative in courting venti, as well as reflective upon venti's feelings around wanting to be desired.
bc xv have a fucking Gap™ btwn them too!!! i talked abt it earlier with xiao's inability to say "yes" leading people to people treating his responses as a "no" bc he fucking sucks at talking abt his feelings lmao

"the room is silent, save for the obvious thoughts ruminating in xiao's head" it didn't occur to me until i was transcribing this, but the joke here is pretty much a pure rephrasal of the "stop thinking so loudly; it's distracting me" sort of thing you sometimes hear people use
"venti has seen with his own eyes the way xiao still strains against his chain" so there's this essay in butch is a noun close to the end titled "making her feel…" which talks abt how the author uses hir butchness to make the femmes ze meets feel… appreciated. worthwhile. desirable.

and there is this line in that essay that gets me every single fucking time: "I want you to know that you're enough to make a good dog break his leash, and that only my lifetime of practice in courtliness to femme things keeps me within the bounds of propriety, darlin'; that you'll always have me close to the edge but also that I'll never cross it."
and i forget if i mentioned this before, but if i haven't, i might as well make it clear— the way i've been writing xv in this fic draws heavily on my understanding of traditional butchfemme rlshps and the way they go about courtship.

i have indeed given some thought as to why i'm writing xv like lesbians in this way when they are in fact gay men (whom'st have their own culture surrounding rlshps), and the conclusion i have drawn has pretty much been "well. they are surrounded by sapphics, who are also the ones helping xiao navigate this situation, so it makes sense that he'd end up trying to court venti in a style more associated with sapphics. and also christ what the fuck are these butch testimonies of chivalry and devotion. ~~i feel like that~~ xiao would totally also struggle in this way."

anyway, what i'm saying is that venti is daydreaming abt being desired, and that i drew from butch is a noun when phrasing that line.

i actually almost published this chapter w/o the bit at the end where xiao gives venti the apple and then basically formally asks him on a date bc i was like, uninspired and lazy abt it
- like, it was originally supposed to be venti going down to wanmin to pick up his apple, and everyone else would be there for lunch after gay court's adjournment and thus basically Peer Pressure xiao into asking venti out lol.
- but the idea of figuring out how to wrangle that did not spark joy and so i was actually giving the chapter html one last look-over when i noticed that xiao apparently brought an apple with him to gay court, and i was simply ~*divinely inspired*~ to do that bit at the end hehe :3
"ganyu's careful secretary hand but signed in [xiao's] own rough brush strokes"
- secretary hand is a gothic/blackletter calligraphy style i am quite fond of, even though i don't practice it enough lol
- i've also always kind of imagined xiao as having what i would describe as "orphan handwriting" bc nevermind whether he is literate or not, when is he going to be writing stuff down anyway.
"and reaches out to fix the cecilia in his hair, loosened by the wind"
- remember how the cecilia was put there as an indication of xiao's willingness to play along.
- both gq and xv are going to have major events happening on double seven to progress their rlshps, but i mean. c'mon. there are going to be several more chapters after that so. someone's gonna fail. :)

the discussion prompt:

that said, i hope you all enjoyed The Xiaoven-Ganqing Parallels And Contrasts Chapter. though tbh i like to think of this fic as my thesis for xv-gq solidarity in general. Everyone Let’s Talk About Them. i expect to see everyone’s essays on xv-gq solidarity on my desk by <script type="text/javascript">document.write((new Date(Date.parse(new Date) + 604800000)).toLocaleString());</script> (whenever lol)

i also ended up scribbling so many thoughts on modding the yugioh duel disks for genshin tcg purposes that i separated it into its own page lol