I saw this pin and got so angry so I just have to rant about it because this ship got into fanfiction and ao3 and I was obsessed with it for three whole years
If anything zhongchi shippers are the ones who don't dumb down the characters like have you seen the fics on ao3????
Also the reason I ship them is that they kinda can't be together? Even if they both wanted to be. I view them as kinda of screwed from the start yk.
Because zhongli is archon of liyue who built it with his blood
And childe is the vanguard of tsaritsa.
But that's just what people see them as, both of them are very complex characters, childe while he is who he claims to be,he also is a family man at heart who loves the people around him to a terrifying degree and he's personally loyal to the tsaritsa not ideologically. Also I have very complicated feeling towards zhongli, people think of him as someone who can do no wrong but like out the archons he's more of the one leaning towards neutral, i honestly believe if liyue hadn't been created by him he would have gone crazy.
Also there's a lot we don't know about the both, like if it came down on it would childe betray the tsaritsa for his family or will he die in the final act.
Or what's zhongli hiding from us? Why does he remember rukadavata? Heck the tsaritsa traded something else for the gnosis and we still don't know what it is?
They're both are also similar in a lot of ways they're both extremely loyal to their home (childe to his family and zhongli to his people), they're both morally grey charcters,both equally mysterious and both have a penchant for fighting (zhongli was a war god let's not forget)
Back to my first point , they both love eachother but not enough to betray their home and that's just fucking heart wrenching.















