#this is barely even meta lmao it's just pouring out my heart bc they make me feel insane

[morethanwonderful]

God there are SO many stories that use a tragic death as an initial character motivation/a way to thrust a sheltered character into the real world, and so many of those where it's specifically a woman's tragic death as the inciting incident for the male protagonist's journey, but no other instance of that trope has cause me anywhere near as much heartache as Jiangli/Chen Baishao from Tai Sui.

Like, Jiangli gives up her life to save Xi Ping, and the story never ever lets you forget that she has become a part of him in this way. And Xi Ping never forgets it either.

Almost the entire second book is the story of Xi Ping going on an epic journey to avenge Jiangli's ruin and death. He names himself Jiangli when he needs a woman's name as "Zhao Qindan's" servant in book 3. Hundreds of years after her death in the extras, he takes "Mr Peony" as his final stage name and wears a white peony in his hair to honor her. One of the last twists of the novel is that Xi Ping being saved by Jiangli's life swapping talisman was fate, a destiny passed down from his probable ancestor Yuan Hui being saved by his mother in the exact same fashion.

A trod upon, cast aside sex worker gives up her life to save a boy that was a little kind to her, and in the process, she sets into motion the chain of events that will one day rewrite the entire world and topple all the systems that led to her abuse and destruction. A girl sacrifices herself for her crush and in doing so becomes an impression on the heart of the world's very last living god. Jiangli dies in the first story arc and she is inextricably tied to the cycle of fate and fall of immortality that the whole story centers upon.

In the final arc of Tai Sui, when Zhi Xiu and Xi Ping talk before deciding how to save the world together, Xi Ping speaks of Jiangli in fondness and in painful melancholy as a friend. He corrects a rumor that gives him credit for an accomplishment he helped her with. He maintains her as her own person separate from himself, but carries her death always as a part of him.

She doesn't change him exactly, because Xi Ping is by nature loath to be changed, but her imprint is always there deep in the core of his being.

There are so many ways that Xi Ping is marked by her death—so many ways that he carries her with him both consciously and unconsciously. She is dead and written out of the narrative and Xi Ping will never let you forget that she was a part of it. He grows around his grief for her, but it never goes away.

There's just the intense aching melancholy surrounding Jiangli and Xi Ping that makes me feel like nothing else. The tragic young woman death by origin story trope is so tired, but I can never be mad at this instance bc Chen Baishao is the all-time fucking example of it.