Thinking about how the devs talked how the reason they came up with the Archon War as a concept was because they needed some kind of conflict for Xiao's backstory to make sense.
Xiao is single handedly responsible for one of the coolest and most important lore pieces in this entire game.
Truly the best boy of Genshin Impact.
Now give him a second story quest or else...
Alice being a menace and terrorising tf of them won't ever stop being funny to me
… yknow I was actually onto something with “if we have to mommywash raiden then we have to mommywash venti and zhongli with all their creations” because come to think of it, a lot of confused scara fans/kinnies out there LOATHE raiden and consider her a bad parent but nobody considers zhongli a bad parent for just Allowing what happened to xiao and all his comrades, and not getting the boy any meaningful help judging by xiao’s “im worthless aside from what i can do to serve the geo archon” personality in that event a year or so ago.
why does nobody consider zhongli a bad parent, you ask? haha, well. (i am visibly sweating as this fandom is holding a gun to my head, ready to fire if I even begin to insinuate that misogyny is still a problem in this fandom or even canon for that matter)
Venti and Zhongli have married and divorced so many times throughout the years they often forget if they’re married or not.
It became a running injoke between them to divorce or propose over the smallest things. Much to the eventual amusement of their fellow archons and friends. Because everyone knew, no matter what the two of them would love each other until the end of time.
Though they stopped officially getting divorced on paper since their last wedding was ordained by, as many of their weddings before then were, Makoto right before the cataclysm, and it felt wrong to break the vow of eternity they promised infront her when she was no longer their to renew it for them with a smile and an eyeroll.
Venti and Zhongli have a bond that can only be formed from committing war crimes and multiple atrocities against humanity together.
After going through the Archon war and watching/actively participating in the eternal imprisonment and/or murder of most gods until there were only a handful left: wow I’m so glad we’ll never have to contribute to such a mass slaughter ever again.
Roughly 2,500 years later, in Khaenri’ah: oh no
You cannot tell me that wouldn’t create the weirdest relationship ever from an outsiders perspective.
Zhongli pulls Venti away from some asshole who keeps trying to hit on Venti and isn’t taking no for an answer. Everyone watching commends him because he’s watching out for his partner, but Zhongli doesn’t get why. Because in reality Zhongli’s seen Venti decapitate someone for the same reason a few hundred years ago and he really just didn’t want to have to clean blood out of his jacket.
If you ask him about weapons Venti is surprisingly extremely knowledgeable. People assume despite his looks he must be extremely familiar in wielding each of the weapons talked about. But the actual only reason he knows all of it is because during periods of war Zhongli would drone on for hours about different benefits of each weapon an their subtypes for different kinds of battle.
They have each thrown entire mountains/typhoons at each other not as threats or genuine attempt to hurt each other. More so because they’re both multiple millennium old gods and that’s just their equivalent of play fighting.
When they’re together They’ll casually mention something about the archon war, to people that know who they are, like it wasn’t even a big deal. And the people they were talking to have to reevaluate their entire image of the two they made in their head because whatever the most sadistic thing they could think of couldn’t even compare to what the two just admitted to.
I don’t know I just think people should play with the fact these two are VERY old and literal gods who’ve witnessed most of Tevyats history and development more
