weddings & funerals; life, & death
originally scribbled 13 december 2022.
this fic was supposed to be incredibly stupid and self-indulgent and meaningless, but then when ranting abt where it was going to my friend star pretty early on into the writing, i realized that it was developing Themes and shit and i was like "aww beans" lol
anyway these are basically the major like. things. connections and stuff oooOOOooOOoOo
major spoilers for the planned direction for the fic. by the way.
- the running gag of yanfei overthinking the paperwork for xv relationship/hypothetical future wedding could easily result in themes of immortality vs. mortality popping up, since weddings n funerals, fake or not, are a major part of the story’s shenanigans
- like, the fake funeral affects xiao to the point where the advice he gives kq is a product of it, and that helps inform some of her decisions around the ring
- yanfei is also a very young adeptus— as a half-human, she’s living and maturing just like everyone else, but as half-adeptus, this first human lifetime is comparable to her childhood. she is knowledgeable by human standards, yet naive by adeptal ones
- hu tao is very open abt dying someday, which is part of why i’d argue her to be a good match for yanfei (see: the laotong fic), so while loss on the scale or gravity her cousins ganyu n xiao know is not yet something yanfei is experienced in, she’s well aware that it is coming someday
- xiao lives on the brink of life and death in general, with venti being a big part of why he’s still alive today
- yanfei, chronic overthinker, is bound to start comparing xiao’s choices to distance himself from humanity and fall in love w/a fellow immortal to her own decision to fully integrate w/humans n their society n how she’s currently in a relationship w/a mortal mortician
- she can’t fault him for who he falls in love with, or for not actively pursuing someone so capricious, esp when the tragedies of his past have made him so sensitive to loss, but she can’t help but to wonder if she’s setting herself up for similar withdrawal n sadness by being w/hu tao
- anyway, any anxieties she might have on this should be cleared up n dispelled at the fake wedding when zhongli gives his long, long, totally unprompted speech, n he says smth along the lines of how it is better to have loved n lost than to never have loved at all
- but anyway, there should be some sort of parallelism btwn the fake wedding n the false funeral as well, since they are the bookending shenanigans
- ganqing’s real engagement also happens midway btwn these schemes as well, in order to foil real gq development n progression against xv, n particularly xiao’s, stubborn refusal to allow these matchmaking schemes go anywhere
- like, the false funeral involves exactly three characters (xiao, venti, n hu tao) n is very improvisated/on the fly, and isn’t meant to be taken seriously at all as it signals the start of The Hijinks Ensuing
- the wedding is three days of manic, excited planning, involving like a zillion people, may or may not be the mashup of discarded bits from kq n cr’s individual wedding gq plans, n leads into the events of xiao’s confession
- though, he does run away from both (bc he’s expected to kiss venti, perhaps?)
- the funeral is the start, while the wedding is the end, subverting their usual associations as funeral → end of life n weddings → start of new life w/someone
- both are also games, in a sense, for xv
- while kq n cr do get competitive abt gq wedding n stuff, it’s never a game to them
- the false funeral pretends venti is dead in order to motivate xiao to act on his love, compared to xiao almost dying for real n the power of love saving his life again at/during the ynt fake wedding
- both of these are basically just funerals that never come to be
- also, marriages are technically contracts, so like, liyue weddings are probably one of the biggest cultural celebrations bc you’re forming a life contract w/someone!!! dude this is Huge!!!!
- in regards to xv relationship n xiao’s duty— it can be argued that xiao’s contract to protect liyue is akin to/metaphorically equivalent to a marriage contract in some ways. kind of like how nuns are married to god/jesus! xiao is basically a nun.
- anyway, this fits in well w/the Perpetual Boyfriends XV hc bc venti is def shy abt formal, binding contracts; while for xiao, to enter into a formal relationship w/someone might feel like it necessitates terminating his old contract, which, since he received that in exchange for his life (see: lighthouse, various others), to let it go might feel symbolically akin to dying
- ofc, hu tao n the two funerals-that-never-come-to-be also prepare xiao for the development necessary to accept that funerals n grief n change are not bad things; to end one stage of your life is not always such a sad thing