#but for the most part before I write it

[starscream-is-my-wife]

This is part 1 of a continuation for my other post where LL Megatron gets trapped in the G1 universe, I was thinking about how someone would go insane in this cartoon world and thought "what if Megatron had someone else to accompany him" so, I gave Starscream an existential crisis

Edit: final part is out, I tagged everything as G1 x LL AU!

[senblades]

I've had a realisation,

So, we all like to dunk on Akechi for having a stupid plan- which, well, yeah; but I think that a lot of people (whether they like Akechi's character or not) tend to miss the point:

That being, that the holes we all poke in his plan; "Why didn't he just kill Shido at the start?" "There's no way he'd live/be free after that," "His plan to ruin Shido's reputation would never work," are actually far more revealing as to Akechi's priorities, than they are of him just being 'stupid'.

For starters, "there's no way he'd live/be free after that." -as a fandom I think we've all already come to the conclusion that Akechi's regard for his own life is spotty at best. I wouldn't necessarily say that he wants to die by the time of the third semester, which really just adds to the tragedy of the whole situation, but I digress. Point is, the kid needs therapy, moving on.

"His plan to ruin Shido's reputation would never work," Ah, now this is where I think some cultural differences start to come in to play- I won't say much, since I'm relatively uninformed, but by the sounds of it, revealing that Shido has an illegitemate child is actually the kind of thing that would make a lot of people raise their eyebrows. And, more importantly, the kind of thing that would really throw his "easy election win" into some serious jeapordy. (AND, it's never exactly stated that "revealing himself as an illegitemate child" was Akechi's tactic to ruin Shido- more of a "hey, Shido, guess who it was that ruined you, you piece of shit?"- which, well, more on that mindset later)

Next, "Why didn't he just kill Shido from the start?" This is where I think a lot of people get tripped up. To my memory, there is not a single point in the engine room where Akechi says that killing Shido is the cornerstone of his plan (localisation differences notwithstanding. I'm sure someone will come yell at me (/lh) if this is the case). Now, to be fair, Akechi in the engine room is really just him giving a very desperate powerpoint while he sharpens his sword- so I don't doubt that he's skimming over a couple points. But, you'd think that Akechi would remember to mention that if that really was his main goal.

Okay, so Akechi doesn't want to kill Shido. Cool, follow-up question, "Why didn't he just give Shido a pshychotic breakdown from the start?" That's the kind of thing that would have ruined Shido's reputation, too, right? And, it would have been before he would have had the means to try and cover it up. Well, finally, I can get to my point:

Akechi needs Shido's disgrace to be loud, because he needs everyone else to care, too. Akechi's revenge isnt just against the man who left him and his mother for dead, but also against the society that continued to leave him for dead, again and again; the society that only lauded him as something special if he slapped some pretty wallpaper over the past he had absolutely no control over.

Looking at it like this does a lot of things:

First, it really amps up the whole "the PT's justice and Akechi's justice foil each other". Akechi's revenge is also a vehichle for revolution, since it is, in essence: "Look! Look at the man who you lauded as a saviour! Look at me, the man who brought him down. Aren't we both disgusting, in your eyes? Take a look at yourselves. Aren't we all the same?"

That leads pretty nicely into Akechi as a pawn for Yaldabaoth, too. Akechi wants to make sure he and Shido go out with a bang, and leave a shitshow in their wake. That's prime God of Control real estate! It's also prime "metaphor for Ruin" real estate; you get the point.

And, finally, an interesting point comes from all of this. That being, that, well- the only reason that Akechi's plan wasn't going to work, is that he placed too much stock in the idea that Shido has any concept of loyalty or gratitude. Shido, as we all know, is an absolute piece of shit- and still, Akechi had believed that maybe, just maybe, his father would feel bad for being terrible to his son.

(I'm not going to go on too big of a tangent, but that is an interesting insight into Akechi's idea of Justice, and into what his personas might represent. Contradiction, as ever, is the name of the game, and Akechi simultaneously believes that there's no way to get anywhere in life without force and violence, and that there is also a fundemantal truth of what is good and fair within human hearts)

The message of this, I'm pretty sure, is not: "Akechi failed because of that lingering belief in humanity" (wouldn't that be one hell of a heel-turn lmao), but rather: "Akechi, with his distorted (ha) priorities, was never going to be happy in any quest for vengeance, even if his plan succeeded entirely"

tl;dr, Akechi needs therapy. Wait- Maruki, no! Not that kind of therapy!

[fatedroses]

More than just the Demon.

[cowchickenbeefpork]

Does anyone else get "mother who hates her daughter because she sees all the parts she hates in herself in her daughter" and "daughter hating herself because she's becoming just like her father" vibes within lestat and Claudia? No? Okay....

[galedekarios]

i don't know how to put this into words yet so it makes complete sense so bear with me while i gather my thoughts, but...

i think a lot of the criticism i have re: decisions bioware made with veilguard are (at least in part) the company's direct responses to the (in my eyes) often unfounded and disproportionate hate that inquisition received from the fanbase.

[suddencolds]

of painkillers and lenience

...hello! 😭 I wrote this way back in April; it's been sitting in my drafts ever since. Chronologically, it takes place shortly following Atypical Occurrence.

I wasn't sure if I was ever going to post this. I suppose it's more a character study than a proper romantic installment :') but it's an exchange I'd been wanting to write for a long time.

you can find everything I've written in this universe here!

—

Summary: Yves comes down with something. His best friend wonders where Vincent is, in all of this.

—

Perhaps it’s merciful that it’s on a Sunday that Yves wakes up with the slightest tickle in his throat.

Yves has an idea what it means. He’s had the flu enough times in his life to know that it comes on quickly. Maybe if he attempts to sleep it off, he’ll have a better time over the next few days.

Or maybe not. He cancels his Sunday plans, goes through his itinerary. There’s a slew of emails he’ll have to send off, a handful of meetings he’ll probably have to reschedule for this coming work week. He’ll need groceries, too, to last him the week—ideally something that won’t take too much effort to make. Resting now seems like it’d be a waste of time. Best to get everything over with before the illness has a chance to properly settle, he thinks. 

He really does mean to stop by the grocery store. It’s perhaps just the timing that doesn’t work out as planned. Between figuring out how to reschedule everything that’s coming up with work—figuring out who he can ask if he needs to reallocate any of his assignments to anyone else, rearranging things for clients, and getting all the paperwork in order—all of it takes him nearly two hours. He wanders into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea, finds himself having to turn aside to cough, notes the unpleasant sting in his throat when he turns back around. 

It’s not terrible yet, but he feels distinctly off. His head feels a little heavy, and everything he does feels strangely—sluggish, maybe. Like he can’t quite manage to be as efficient as usual. Judging by past experience, he’s probably going to crash in a few hours.

He can already feel a headache brewing. Staring at his computer screen probably hasn’t helped with that. If he takes something for it, it’ll probably be at least tolerable when it gets worse.

He opens the medicine cabinet, rifles through the couple bottles and the first aid kit he has stashed in there.

Right. He’s out of Advil.

It’s no matter. Just a quick grocery trip, then—he can grab the rest of his groceries while he’s at it. Yves shuts the bathroom cabinet, grabs his wallet and keys, and makes it all the way to the doorstep outside when the wave of dizziness hits him.

All of a sudden, he feels a little lightheaded. Heat crawls up under his skin, prickling and unpleasant, as if something in him has cranked up the heat generation to the max—but that can’t be right, because he’s shivering inexplicably in the wake of it. He leans his weight back against the wall, squeezes his eyes shut.

Fuck. He probably should have gotten groceries first, before sorting out everything for work. Perhaps going out on his own now would not be the wisest.

He heads back in, locks the door, and—after some thought—calls Mikhail.

Mikhail picks up on the second ring. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Are you busy?” Yves starts, but the words catch on his throat, and he has to stop immediately to muffle a cough into his elbow. 

There’s a moment of silence on the other end. “It depends what you’re about to ask me for,” Mikhail says.

Yves swallows. Shuts his eyes. He doesn’t like asking for help, but he doesn’t think he’ll be in any state to be doing this on his own over the next few days. “It’s not that urgent. Just if you have time,” he says. 

He can almost feel Mikhail rolling his eyes on the other end. “You’d say that even if you were bleeding out.”

Yves laughs, startled. “I promise I’m not bleeding out. Just—do you think you could run to the store and get me some Advil?”

There’s another, longer pause on the other end. “Any time is fine,” Yves says. A part of him already regrets this. “If you’re busy right now—”

“I’ll be over in a few,” Mikhail says. Then the line goes dead.

—

He doesn’t remember drifting off, but when he wakes, it’s to a knock on the front door.

The knock is just for courtesy, of course. Mikhail is one of a few people whom he’s permitted the privilege—or the burden, perhaps—of having a spare copy of his apartment key.

Yves opens the door anyways.

There, in the windy April weather, Mikhail shuts an umbrella and leaves it dripping at his feet. “You look even worse than you sounded over call,” is the first thing he says.

Yves blinks at him, surprised. “Did I really sound that bad?”

In lieu of answering, Mikhail just looks at him, scrutinizing, the corner of his lip ticking downward. “What is it? An injury? A migraine?” When Yves shakes his head, Mikhail presses forward to pick a stray lint ball off of Yves’s shirt. His hand makes contact with Yves’s shoulder, and he frowns.

Before Yves has a chance to explain, he feels a tickle—not the first, today, and certainly not the last—surface. It’s irritatingly difficult to ignore, more irritating still when he finds himself forced to turn away, to duck into one arm—

“hHehh-!’ hEHh’yyiISCHh-HHEEW!”

The sneeze is rough enough to scrape against his throat. He coughs tightly into his raised arm.

“A cold,” Mikhail says, with a frown. “But usually you don’t take Advil for colds. Wait—don’t tell me this is something worse?”

Yves winces. What is he supposed to say to that? “The Advil was all I needed,” he says. “Thanks for making the trip. I owe you one.”

“No, I’m sure of it now,” Mikhail says. “If it were only a cold, you would’ve driven out to get this yourself.”

“It probably isn’t,” Yves says, neglecting to mention that he knows exactly where he caught this. “Thanks for bringing these. I’ll take the next couple days off. I—”

The next sneeze sneaks up on him. He ducks into his sleeve again, taking another step back.

“hHhEH’iiDzzsCHH-yYew!” The sneeze sends a burst of pain through his temples, and for a moment, he’s glad his face is too deeply buried into his sleeve for Mikhail to see.

“Does Vincent know?” Mikhail asks.

The question catches him off guard. “What?”

“That you’re apparently unwell enough to ask me to pick up Advil for you.”

Yves doesn’t like where this conversation is going. “I told you not to come if you were busy.”

“It’s not a problem,” Mikhail says. “But if you’re sick, shouldn’t he be over here, taking care of you?”

 “He’s had a really busy few weeks,” Yves says, which is true, but simultaneously might be true at any point during the year. He clears his throat. “I - coughcough - wouldn’t want him to catch this.”

“So he doesn’t even know,” Mikhail says.

…Perhaps Yves should’ve thought of a more convincing excuse. Mikhail isn’t the type of person to drop an issue after he’s raised it, and Yves had, perhaps, neglected to think about how—for all Mikhail does to appear casually disaffected—he’s one of the most perceptive people Yves has ever met. “He doesn’t have to know.”

“What are you talking about? He’s your partner. I’ll text him,” Mikhail says. It’s then when Yves recalls that Mikhail probably does have Vincent’s contact—exchanged before their trip to France, so that he could text them all to coordinate the rides to and from the airport.

“Wait,” Yves says, unable to keep the panic out of his voice. “Don’t. If you text him, he’ll - snf-! - feel obligated to come.”

Mikhail doesn’t lower his phone. “I’ll just ask him to drop by,” he says. “You can talk to him about it when he gets there.”

But that won’t happen—can’t happen—because Yves knows that if Vincent were to see him like this… 

I’d feel terrible if you caught this, he’d said. He’d sounded so upset over it. How can Yves, after all his reassurances last week, admit to him now that he’s faring badly enough to need someone to look after him? 

Besides, Vincent probably has enough on his plate already. Yves knows enough to know that in their line of work, taking time off almost always means being swamped with assignments upon return. 

“Please don’t ask him anything,” Yves says.

Mikhail looks long and hard at him. He looks as though he’s trying to puzzle something out. “Did you guys get into a fight, or something?”

“No,” Yves says. “It’s nothing like that.”

“Then, if you’re on good terms, why are you so resistant to the idea of him coming over?”

Yves squeezes his eyes shut, and then opens them. He can think of a dozen more excuses to field away the questions—that isn’t the hard part. Mikhail has always been good at seeing through his bullshit, but if Yves has to steer this conversation to a close through sheer willpower, he thinks he can do it. But then again—

Maybe it’s fine, he thinks, if Mikhail knows. For better or for worse, Mikhail is his best friend. Yves knows that if he asks him to keep his mouth shut about this, he will. 

“Vincent is my coworker,” he says, slowly.

Mikhail’s eyebrows creep up. “Yes, I’m aware.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Yves says, with a cough. “He is just my coworker. Nothing else.”

The alarm that flashes across Mikhail’s face is unmissable. “You two broke up?”

And there it is—another crossroads, where Yves thinks the easiest course of action would be to reshape the current lie into a simpler one, to keep the trappings of their fake relationship intact. With anyone else, it would be easier, that is.

Yves says, honestly, “We were never together in the first place.”

“But you went with him to France,” Mikhail says, confused. “Not to mention, to Margot’s new year party, and then to Joel and Cherie’s housewarming. Are you telling me—”

“That was all an act,” Yves tells him, and waits for this information to register. “There is nothing between us that’s real. That’s the reason I haven’t called him.”

The recognition settles on Mikhail’s face. Then he laughs, a little disbelieving. “You’re really not dating him? Why would you lie about that?”

“Do you remember Margot’s party?” Yves asks. It seems like the right place to start, after everything. “Erika was there with Brendon. And I was bitter, and—to be honest, jealous—and I wanted to show her I was fine. So I asked Vincent to go with me.”

“That was months ago,” Mikhail says.

“It was easier to just keep up the act, after that.” Yves says. “Easier to have him accompany me once a month than it would have been to stage a proper breakup. But obviously, this is all temporary. I just haven’t figured out when it’s going to end.”

Mikhail is quiet for a moment. Yves looks past him, at the staircase that leads down to the first floor.

“You’ll be fine, then,” he asks. “If you two break it off.”

“Of course,” Yves says. “I know it’s going to happen someday.”

“You won’t be upset at all?”

“What is there to be upset over?”

“From the way you spoke to him, I really thought there was something there,” Mikhail says.

“He is a good liar,” Yves says.

“Maybe so,” Mikhail agrees. “But you are not.”

He says it so calmly, it barely registers as an accusation. But Yves hears it, loud and clear.

“Vincent is attractive,” Yves says. “Anyone with eyes can see that. That’s all there is to it.” it feels wrong, even as he says it. Yves has always known Vincent to be attractive—that much hasn’t changed. But he knows that the feeling in his chest when he sees him at work, in the break room, or at lunch—the unusual ache—is a little more than that. 

“Margot’s party was at the end of December,” Mikhail says. “It’s April, now. Margot wouldn’t tell you this, but since I don’t like withholding my feelings from you, I will.”

Yves waits—waits for Mikhail to tell him how all of this has been unduly dishonest, how Mikhail doesn’t appreciate having been lied to.

But Mikhail doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he says: “If you’re still intent on keeping this fake relationship up…” Here, he meets Yves’s eyes, a little sternly. “You should think about who you’re really doing it for.”

It’s only for convenience, Yves wants to say. Now that we’ve set things up already, it’s merely the path of least resistance. But that isn’t quite right, is it?

“Don’t worry about me,” Yves says, trying a smile. “Vincent and I have talked this through already. Whatever happens with our arrangement, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Mikhail says. He pockets his phone, and then hands Yves the bottle of Advil. “Sorry for the interrogation, then. If you believe it to be fine, I trust you.” Perhaps that’s the worst part of it. Mikhail has never been the type of person to stay quiet about any foreseeable problems, but Yves knows that his agreement now is not a tactical retreat, nor is it an acknowledgment that it’s not worth arguing over something they won’t agree on. Mikhail is dropping the subject because he really trusts him.

Yves just doesn’t know if that trust is justified.

Mikhail turns on his heels, steps delicately past the hinge at the bottom of the doorframe. 

Yves clears his throat. “Thanks for stopping by.”

Mikhail nods. “Feel better soon. If you need anything other than Advil, just give me a call.”

Then he’s gone. Yves shuts the front door behind him and wonders just what exactly he’s gotten himself into.

[fictionadventurer]

There's something about reading really great writing that's so relaxing. You can just sit back and let the words wash over you, knowing that you can trust the writer.

[seiwas]

HI MY BELOVED ANGEL!!! i am sending u mattsun + campfire as well as kisses n hugs <33

SAINTTT hello 🥺 thank you for sending a prompty!! 🥹 idt i've ever written mattsun fully before so this is something new!

help me get back into the writing groove! send me a character + any word and i'll write a short blurb about it!

contains: exes, stranded-y situation, feelings are complicated, some expletives

mattsun + campfire

"i told you we should've brought the spare—"

"yeah, let me go back in time for a sec and do just that."

"asshole."

lesson #1: nothing good ever happens when you're stuck in a car with your ex on the way to somewhere remote.

you blame iwaizumi for this one. who the fuck chooses to spend their birthday weekend in the fucking wilderness?

(okay, you don't actually think it's so bad. to be fair, he did plan this a year ago. and it did sound like a good idea. then. at the time. anywhere with the boys was always guaranteed fun―at least, until you and matsukawa broke up.)

"can you pass me the flashlight?" he points at the backpack behind you. when you hand it over, your fingers brush over his as he takes it away from you.

and you hate it, because―

lesson #2: you should never be alone with your ex when you still have feelings for them.

you'd agreed to take two cars to the camping spot: iwaizumi's with oikawa and hanamaki and matsukawa's with you. there was no way you'd fit in one, and hanamaki ultimately decided to ride with iwaizumi because, "you and mattsun have shit to sort out," he'd said.

with night setting and the two-hour headstart they managed to get ahead of you, the best thing you and matsukawa can do is to set up camp temporarily and wait for them to come back for you come sunrise.

you sigh.

leaves crack underneath your feet as you maneuver around your camping space. the light from matsukawa's flashlight tells you where he is, just a bit deeper in the forestry as he looks for wood to help set up the fire.

you unload the car in the meantime, bringing out some snacks and sleeping bags while waiting.

matsukawa eventually comes back with arms full of wood, and you help in whatever way you can, clearing the space and fetching more twigs when needed.

the entire car ride here had been quiet, so it's not surprising that this entire process has been equally as silent. until―

"did you already pull out your tent?" he asks, half of his body disappearing into the trunk of the car.

"huh?" you go closer, "i only brought out the sleeping bags."

then he sighs, ducking out from the trunk with a hand on his hip, "we only have one tent."

"what?"

"makki must have gotten yours with his when he decided to move cars."

his hand runs through his hair, a habit you know well. it lights up all sorts of weird feelings in your tummy

you don't know how to feel―

"i can sleep in the car."

―but you know that you definitely don't want him to do that. all things considered, you were friends first. and you've both been trying to be friends again since the breakup. you wouldn't want to cause him discomfort like that.

so, with a deep breath, you say, "it's okay, we can just share."

"are you sure?" he stares at you.

you nod.

after setting up the tent, you eat a few energy bars and clean up from the day's events. the campfire provides ample enough heat, but with how fast the flames are burning, you're doubtful it'll last the two of you the entire night.

it’s much later on, past midnight, that your doubts are proven right when you and matsukawa are cramped together in a tent made for one. it started to get cold a few minutes ago, and you've found yourself inching closer and closer to the warmth you’ve gotten used to laying against for the past two years.

he's only pretending to be asleep, you know that much, too. the rise and fall of his chest is hardly there; you can see it, how he's holding his breath being this close to you.

"issei," you whisper.

he opens his eyes, eyelids lifting lazily as he meets your stare. the vibration of his hum reverberates to you.

"it's cold."

for a moment, your stomach drops at the thought that he could ignore you; how it would make perfect sense for him to. you broke up with him after all, and he doesn't owe you anything, much less favors as intimate as this one.

but he closes the already dwindling gap between you, wrapping an arm around your waist as he pulls you closer. it's near, far too near for exes to be―noses touching and all.

"warmer?" his voice comes out hoarser through the whisper.

you nod, your head shifting up and down—which, truly, is where you ultimately fuck up. you feel it, a little chapped but still pliant against your lips.

in your carelessness, you accidentally brush your lips against his, the sensation alone surprising you enough to inch your head back as you mutter your apologies.

"sorry? really?" he asks, eyes half-lidded still as he chuckles.

his question settles into the small space you're in.

your vision trails from his eyes, down to the slope of his nose, until it lands on his lips again. a little split like you've always known, but still your favorite. still the only lips you want against yours.

when you lean in again, you know you're fucked, because―

lesson #3: the number one rule is that exes shouldn't kiss each other anymore.

[griem]

ijbol idk man releasing screenshots of very polarizing things said in a private discord server between friends in a public "callout" post is #the most #tumblrific thing ive ever seen LOL.

#opinion 😱 in tags

[kris-mage-fics]

I was super lucky to win a commission from @nerdferatum and can't thank Sara enough for this absolutely gorgeous art of Kyrahlise and Shery! I'm in love with it have literally cried over it three times now! I really hope folks can see some of the romance novel cover art inspiration going on here, I thought it was what Shery deserves! Also, please zoom in on the full piece, because you can't see Kyrah's adorable freckles here with how much tumblr compresses the image, and that's a damn shame. Now please excuse me while I go stare at it some more!

Edit: In my excitement, I forget to tag @shepherds-of-haven because without the game there couldn't be this beautiful drawing!

[rinbylin]

li xiangyi, yin, and femininity

we all know that li xiangyi is a character of fractured identities. and li lianhua is an unreliable narrator to his own story. these make him not the most straightforward character to study. but I've believed in treating li lianhua as a part of li xiangyi, rather than separates. and there must be a common thread that ties all of him together. thus, I offer what I have found to be the most useful lens to use to view him as a cohesive whole, regardless as li xiangyi, li lianhua, or any other identity he may reinvent into: his 阴 yin qualities. (yin of yinyang)

this framework suggested by the drama's text itself has helped clarify to me his strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and struggles. by identifying this constant, too, makes it so much easier talking about what has changed in him.

[to the, hopefully growing, boli lhl hivemind @markiafc @ananeiah]

-

there are some notes on the concept of yinyang and chinese conceptualisation of gender I have to preface with.

[disclaimer: of course, I'm not even trying to cover a tip of what experts have extensively studied and debated in a depth it deserves. all I'm doing is try to parse the broad, fundamental ideas that are needed to explain my blorbos through my own spotty brain filter. so there bound to be nuances I've overlooked or some degree of my own interpretation. pretentious but needs to be done.]

阴 yin and 阳 yang are concepts characterised by passiveness, darkness, gentleness, femininity etc, and proactivity, light, toughness, masculinity etc respectively. a very key and handy concept to have in mind is their relationship to each other - which I'll not attempt at explaining better than literal scholars have:

Yin and yang exist only in relation to one another internally as the way warmth-coldness only exist relative to one another. Furthermore, when using yin-yang as an organizational schema, achieving balancing harmony is always the goal, not domination nor subordination of one to the other. [x]

while yin and yang can be symbols of femininity and masculinity, it doesn't mean all female are yin and all male are yang. it's certainly not a strict 1-to-1 equation. the concept of gender in chinese context is more social than biological. this suggests room for fluidity, and shaping of identities, often through social rituals as one journeys through life. it also means that there can be femininity in the masculine, and vice versa - in fact, that's only healthy because you need a good balance of the two worlds. no one part is better than the other. if you think of the two components as relative to each other, they are always interacting and affecting each other, rather than being strict and inert binaries. simply put, it needs to be kept in mind that there are greater nuances in applying yin and yang to the definitions of gender, and to avoid at all cost a simplification of this framework into a binary.

sure, the show has implied that lxy's powers and energy are yin-coded. but femininity is only one of the multiple attributes of yin. so how are we extending lxy's yin to femininity specifically? it's in the text that substantiates and qualifies lxy as feminine. dead women being used as proxies to his character. being literally dressed as a woman in order to put himself into their shoes and feel what they've felt. adopting a name that happens to be very, very feminine - 莲花 lianhua (lit. lotus flower) (it must be caveated that chinese names are NOT gendered. but there are just some names that are more feminine than others.) him coming to lead a life revolving around traditionally feminine, domestic things as li lianhua. him having interactions with the women around him like he's in his own element - no pressure and tension at all, unlike with all the other men.

as such, I'm more willing to use yin and femininity interchangeably in discussing lxy (while it's not necessarily applicable to every point that will be mentioned albeit there being some degree of implied association). and it's for the sake of elucidating what I feel is an intention or very plausible reading of the canon text in parsing feminine experiences in lxy's character. and thus, his queerness.

one last note is that taoism is going be mentioned quite a bit as well because of how much it as a philosophy honours the yin quality. its key tenets include valuing passiveness and inaction as a form of action, and submitting to the nature of things. and we will see how those come up in lxy's life too. (though I'm not gonna attempt to deep dive into it here beyond broad strokes of it.)

-

a huge part of li xiangyi's yin actually manifests in him being a passive person. this applies not just to li lianhua, but also li xiangyi. I know. ok wait hear me out. the idea of yinyang is after all components that can change and are relational to each other: thus, there were points in li xiangyi's life when he was less passive than other points, but they ultimately don't match up to the degree of aggression displayed by other men around him. so relative to their display of proactivity and aggression, he can be considered as passive. the best example is that of shan gudao proposing to launch an offensive on jinyuan alliance, while lxy - as much as he was arrogant about it - was standing his ground on not taking action in favour of peace.

it has already showed up in his childhood as well. he wasn't a particularly competitive child: 从来都没有谁要和你争 nobody has ever thought of competing with you over anything, he told sgd as he recalled of their times growing up. it was in fact sgd who was desperate to control and override lxy's presence. baby lxy did not hesitate at all over giving up on winning in favour of protecting his only rare few close relationships left in the world (given how hard-earned relationships are when they're non-familial !!!!). as much as I resent the one-dimensional writing of sgd, he has served as a very strong marker to highlight on lxy's yin.

-

I've harped on it several times before but this is the time I finally get to explain it proper: my own theory is that li xiangyi became an unparalleled swordsmaster because of his yin/feminine quality, not in spite of it. an interesting point that had been out in the open unclaimed until it was brought up in our friend group is that, li xiangyi does not actually fit anybody's conventional image of a 武林盟主 wulin mengzhu (ie. ruler of wulin). it would most likely have been some burly, muscular, ultra-masculine dude. even if they don't look like the demonic monk, it should be someone more like di feisheng. but. it's li xiangyi, the boyish, delicate-looking kid, who came to the top. (no wonder people - mostly men - love or love to bully hate him like weak men hate powerful women??)

"why didn't they cast someone who looks more like a wulin mengzhu (read: traditionally manly)?" no, no that's precisely the point. nobody said wulin mengzhu have to look manly. and also who is to define the manliness required to be in a place of authority? (or in my other meta, we would ask, who is to define anybody gets to have the authority over anyone else at all?)

by taoist ideal, gentleness is the most refined form of strength. li xiangyi has been haunting and distracting me in my chinese calligraphy practices lately because I'm thinking about how this must be the closest to what it felt like lxy becoming the best swordsman in jianghu. (so pretentiously brainrotten of me, I know, BUT IT'S REAL and I'm suffering.) mastering a chinese art is essentially about mastering a delicate balance between force and gentleness; being able to draw force from softness 柔中带刚 and an ability to maintain this balance. a beginner will instinctively hold a brush for the first time with brute, unrefined force. some fairly reputable contemporary calligraphers, according to my teacher, can be seen as being either too soft or too forceful - but are still able to pass off as good enough. it's then, the master of masters who will have the sophistication of a firm yet flexible control of the brush with the appropriate use of gentleness/laxness that produces a harmony of strokes. this idea extends to any other sort of chinese craft or practice including traditional chinese medicine, and I believe, swordsmanship too. I'm taking a fucking leap of faith here to say this because I practise NO sort of (chinese) martial arts, I must caveat. (someone who does may want to say something...) but theoretically that should be how it works.

it is not for no rhyme or reason, or *handwaves* that lxy emerged to the top AND is almost undefeatable. among a competitive, forceful (ie. yang) wulin, li xiangyi stood out with a power and energy defined by yin (ie. gentleness and stability) that led him to create his signature 扬州慢 yangzhouman. it is characterised by 慢 slowness (my calligraphy teacher says to us all the time to take it slow), and also described by dfs as 中正绵长 - which I would best describe by painting a picture of a steady and stable stream. these precisely speak of the essence of a mastery of gentleness as strength to me.

conversely, dfs's way in mastering power is very largely premised on taking action because he literally had no other choice in the environment he grew up in. both of them develop in opposite ways. it was the case of gentleness for lxy clearly because he grew up in a safe, nurturing environment that had allowed him to be slow and steady at his own pace, drawing on his natural gifts.

-

now top of the wulin world at 17, li xiangyi founds sigu sect. li xiangyi, the boy before becoming menzhu and li xiangyi the leader of sigu sect are not the same.

how then did a (relatively) passive boy like lxy end up founding sigu sect. this lxy is the one who was fostered into competition - though not in an abusive, twisted way. in fact he was raised in a rather taoist way by his shifu: to be honest with yourself and respect your opponent. so he honoured whatever powers he had been bestowed with by nature. he gives into it. even so, at another level, I just have a sense that shifu and shiniang's competitive marital spat had an insidious effect on the boys...though the detrimental effect was more on sgd than lxy. baby lxy feels like a sweet-natured kid who was just in his own zone, you know - some (aka sgd) would say, too much of him even, to have not realised what was wrong at all with his shixiong for years.

that's not all of course. I've always gotten the vibes that his attitude behind forming sigu sect felt more like, this is what all the good men of jianghu do and I will have to do it now especially that I'm the best. it didn't feel particularly personal to me, but rather what would have been expected of him by the social climate of wulin jianghu (eg. lxy saying to 光耀师门 bring honour to his teacher). it's definitely not an expectation from his shifu, who explicitly told him that he was never expected to become a noble figure of any sort, but just to be alive and contented. as concluded by the man himself as li lianhua: "有些人入了江湖是为了立心，而有的人入江湖为的是立命。我却不知道自己真正想要的是什么。some people enter jianghu for the cultivation of the mind, others for a cultivation of a meaningful life. but I never knew what I truly wanted." he was ultimately, unwittingly a passive player in his own story of becoming the great sigu sect leader.

(at this point, as a side note, I do wonder if there were any other similar sects or alliances that function the same as sigu sect that came before it. because I'm damn well sure there must be something, as likely as there must have been generations of wulin legends who came before lxy. but of course, this is not what the story is concerned with at all and I'm ok with that.)

it's crucial to point out that, even despite this being the phase of his yang in the display of taking action and enacting firmness, lxy had still done sigu sect with the sole purpose and manner of upkeeping peace and order (in the way of the pro-universal love, anti-aggression mohist 侠 xia leader of the people). he's still very characterised by yin in my books, especially when vis-à-vis to sgd.

a li xiangyi full of himself and made himself too useful to the people was only bound for a great asteroidal fall, in the concept of 物极必反 - or in taoist lexicon 反者道之动 (ie. anything that has reached its limit will only start developing in the opposite direction). if you think you're above all, you can only go down.

this manifests during the next time he took action - and it was one so forceful that it overpowered even his opponent, dfs who ended up being the passive, receiving party in this case - was in initiating the battle at donghai 10 years ago... and gee oh boy. it didn't end well - for both of them, but even more so for lxy. (dfs was like 'tis but a scratch (shrugs)' as compared to him being ripped off his tendons by jiao liqiao like nezha did to the dragon prince. truth is he had to go into a 10-year healing retreat served by his entourage. :p) ok, I digress.

xiao zijin was quick to attribute sigu sect's fall to lxy's arrogance - in turn setting the stage for lxy's 10 years of self-hatred and the framing of lxy as a villain? irresponsible figure? by jianghu. (god forbid girls do anything! ok for legal reasons, this a joke.) lxy lost his mind in ways I believe he never had in his life there and then upon seeing his shixiong dead. so, you could say he led the jianghu world to ruins out of love (using this term loosely). but it feels inaccurate to say it's due to arrogance. he did not do that out of self-importance or ego, especially when the revenge for sgd was a collective decision made by sigu sect as we know from the flashback. so when llh pinned all fault on himself for being arrogant in the past, it is with caution to take his words because that's the unreliable narrator in him speaking.

-

anyway, it's precisely li xiangyi that is capable of bouncing back from such a fatal crisis, equipped with his yin and a mastery that gave him the power of flexibility.

it's extremely vital to re-establish that literally the only thing that was keeping li xiangyi alive, physically, as li lianhua is yangzhouman. (monk wuliao literally said that to lxy even though he did facilitate in saving him.) it's the yangzhouman that was drawn from lxy's mastery of yin. without yangzhouman, li xiangyi would not even have the chance to become li lianhua and undergo any needed process of transformation. without li xiangyi, there would have been no yangzhouman. no li xiangyi, no li lianhua, get it?

the point is not to deny the change li xiangyi wants to make and has made. but to acknowledge that change isn't about complete erasure and destruction. something from you survives. something in you had kept you alive to have you come so far, regardless of all the bad bits that you want to denounce of. you've always been worth it.

bringing back the thing about his new name: the distinction must be made that he did not pick it because it was feminine but it just so happened a feminine name had resonated with him. (read: he didn't necessarily identify as a woman but identified with femininity. at least within the parameters of canon text.)

he also made an interesting choice to retain his surname for someone who was desperate to sever ties from his past. hmm. or maybe he wasn't that desperate? when li lianhua says li xiangyi is dead, I believe it meant that li xiangyi the sigumen menzhu is dead rather than li xiangyi as an entirety. li lianhua is a returning to the path lxy could have gone if he did not establish sigu sect, the path that shifu wanted him to take. when he walked to the doors of sigu sect in the aftermath, nothing was actually stopping him from going back (people were still around and alive, instead of all dead people, you know)... except for himself. taking that action would have been too much for him. so he went with the flow of life giving him a chance at rebirth and walked away. there, inaction as a form of action.

zhan yunfei and qiao wanmian have said to li lianhua, oh that doesn't sound like li xiangyi at all. but has it been considered that, maybe it was sigu sect's lxy who wasn't the real lxy? sigu sect lxy was one big performance of the values of masculinity and heteronormativity that llh had came to an awareness of, and eventually struggle with again and resist against in the final year of his life. there had only been some glimpses of his true nature allowed (validated by fang duobing talking about lxy at his altar).

imho, most flashbacks of lxy during that period felt impersonal and more like a template of a hero expected to marry his girl at 18. going through all the motions and steps of a normative life even before he was old enough to grasp and explore his own identity and what it meant in the world. no wonder he denounced so much of what he had done as lxy including liking girls. walking away then also meant a walk away from those duties and expectations. li lianhua is li xiangyi liberated from masculine duties and heteronormative performance.

in doing that, he had the opportunity for the first time in his life to explore what he truly wanted, at least within the parameters of what he could afford to do at that point. he could go on to build a domestic, feminine life within the space of jianghu (as I've established here). it's a kind of feminine lifestyle that doesn't quite exist in mainstream society - being a woman there meant to stay put in a domestic space without much room to move socially. nor did it exist in wulin jianghu because even the women there like shi-guniang and jlq were expected to be masculine, aggressive, competitive. so building a mobile home in the space of jianghu is his way of defining the life he wants and can have. li lianhua is the extension of femininity in li xiangyi - and one that can be free.

it's also worth talking about in my opinion what is one of the most important and a favourite dihua moment: when dfs said to lxy that his greatest weakness was to like being a hero. and a swordsman should be without weaknesses. I'm forever wrapped up in how many layers this can be read in. was he mad at lxy for liking to be a hero or having weaknesses, or both? if the former, it was dfs criticising, based on lxy's public reputation, lxy's oversized illusions about being a hero - a figure of masculinity with an unrealistic sense to uphold noble goals eg. saving the world etc. that is actually perfectly logical coming from dfs, the straightforward, no-nonsense, morally neutral guy with no illusions about heroism (in this case, he feels more like a yin). but at the same time, we should understand that lxy's motivations behind the donghai battle are more personal than noble. if any, it was actually the opposite of noble - it was like he was acting out of the role of a caretaker of his family, and at a cost of the peace and order of jianghu he was set on guarding(!!) dfs also knew that lxy was there just for his shixiong. and so, dfs, who happens to be the epitome of yang, can be read as a symbol of masculinity disapproving of lxy for being sentimental and emotional; for having the "feminine" desires to simply want to defend his family (not saying those are exclusively feminine traits but they have been conventionally associated as feminine). I think both layers of reading are correct and should work together to contribute to the complexity of their characters. (we can see how it contributes to lxy and dfs being the perfect yinyang halves to each other, which I will come back to briefly touch on later.)

-

for 10 years he lived a life of seclusion and staying-in-his-own-lane a taoist would be proud of. he knew he was dying and has always been ok with dying, as he claimed. but did he want to die? to think of it, it was the opposite. because in those 10 years when he could have 100% just taken action to take his own life, he didn't. in fact, he lived on and took care of himself in the way shifu wanted him to. he had simply preferred letting nature run its course. if bicha didn't take him, he wasn't gonna do anything. but if he died one day very soon, he would be ok with it too. sure, he was maybe banking on a lead to sgd's whereabouts to appear during his last years alive but that clearly wasn't the only thing on his mind for NINE years because he didn't actively go out seeking for that either. this is basically him telling dfs that he would just lie in the sun and wait for the sweet release of death, if dfs were to force him to fight. not even the mortal threat from dfs was enough to move him into action of fighting back or killing himself.

time and again, lxy as llh was dragged into fdb's cases but not only that, he also maintained an impersonal distance with them. it's starkly different from the usual (wuxia) hero archetypes (for eg. fdb) who would be more impassioned and personally invested in the plight of the victims- or unlike most seemingly aloof protagonists who would somehow grow emotionally invested over time. one of the many things I love about llh is that he never tries a second time to persuade people out of their decisions he finds unwise (eg. him just wanting to move on in response to the girls in 女宅 insisting on staying behind with their slave master at first.) he will not interfere in other people's choices made in their own lives. it's not his business. he didn't even want to be there, to be honest.

however as the story progresses, more and more people - especially men, his past, and the leads to the truth came back to demand and taunt him into doing something. they vary from well-meaning people without any harm intended such as fdb intruding upon his private space completely uninvited and qwm wanting him back; to dfs merely seeking him as a mean to an end initially (eg. I only need him to live long enough to have one last fight); and finally, on the other end of the spectrum, outright aggressive and hostile people like sgd and xzj who wanted him to die. under all this pressure, he tried his best to deflect, but he does waver especially when it comes to matters concerning the people he cares about aka his obsession wish of 10 years of looking for sgd's remains that had lied low until fdb entered his life, and then later on taking revenge for his shifu.

looking for sgd became his final bid at taking action. he was operating on a slim chance of getting some emotional closure from finding out his shixiong is dead for real, yes. what a good plan. but objectively unnecessary. or surprise! uhhh...finding out his beloved shixiong is actually alive and would strangle him for one corn chip? AND OH NO IT GOT WORSE- uncovering a devastating truth about his shifu's death that he could have totally gone on with life fine without knowing if he had continued not caring.

but it is sometimes just impossible not to care - it is only human to care. and he is human, not an icon in the image of a hero. so he took a chance, once more, and it killed him in unprecedented ways. it's donghai all over again. things in life don't go as planned. you fuck around and it fucks you back. finding out the truth behind his shifu's death and his family background from the past did nothing for him as li lianhua living in the present.

it's no wonder that this lxy decisively relinquishes the desire to take action in the end. he goes back to letting nature run its course. and this time, stands firmly to it despite everyone begging him otherwise. wangchuan flower could only give him a recovery (or survival?) rate of 30%. there's a 70% chance of failure and even in the 30% he was not sure what he was to become. in comparison, dfs took a 10% chance game of survival in a heartbeat, and it pushed him to new heights. that's how they differ: he thrives by taking risks and action while lxy the other way round. so, something like that has happened before and he wants none of it again.

-

he leaves lotus tower, only taking his horse and a sack - relinquishing almost every other material belonging he had - and sets off on a journey. before xzj interrupted...where to was he going?? I wonder. we don't know for sure, I think? and are we allowed to know? that makes the scene he had with xzj an understated inflection point in the very last part of his journey. yes, he was already on his way to...maybe die? but not necessarily. you don't have to travel distances with your belongings for that, right? or speak to dfs personally about not wanting to fight? (borrowing one of @ananeiah's takes.) regardless, he was definitely leaving behind jianghu - not only wulin jianghu (he already did that 10 years ago), but also the jianghu space he had carved out in the last 10 years.

what sparked the decision to jump off the cliff in him was dfs's words from the night of their wedding 10th donghai anniversary: 横扫天下容易，断相夷太剑不易 conquering the world is easy, breaking xiangyi sword is not. in the original context, dfs was talking about defeating lxy being harder than conquering the world. but when it came to this scene, it was to lxy about forsaking the very last worldly possessions he had after already giving up on lotus tower and hulijing (including releasing his horse), especially his only connection left to swordsman lxy.

perhaps it had dawned on him that, wanting things at all was bad for him. in the last 10 years, he lived a life of seclusion, wanting very little. but he had still wanted things. there were still things he couldn't let go of that had led him to this state. despite having lived on an identity inspired by a buddhist teaching for 10 years, maybe it was only at this point that he was finally the closest to reaching an understanding of it. (I wish I was knowledgeable enough right now to dive into the possible buddhist reading here but alas. I'll leave it to our resident expert @markiafc)

it doesn't quite matter in the end where he was going after all. what mattered was that he literally went where the water took him and we're not supposed to know where it ends. I'm not seeing this in a bad and pessimistic way though. I think the relief in all this is that he had tried his best to within his abilities. also it's a form of enlightenment in relinquishing a desire, an obsession, a need to take any more action in order to live well. thus his ending felt to me relatively tender, empowering, and kind - albeit bittersweet and heartaching - than other possible kinds of ending, in a story where it was very possible for him to have died under the knives of his opponents or bicha at any moment, outside of his control.

-

if you've come so far in this post, congratulations! but also a reveal is that... you're not immune to the dihua propaganda threaded throughout this post. :P

as mentioned, other men like sgd and xzj in lxy's life were incredibly hostile to him. their yang nature overwhelmingly powers his yin. but dfs is different. dfs is the yang counterpart that fits perfectly to his yin.

dfs's yang is one that contains yin, that mirrors lxy's balance of yang in yin. it was suggested in text they are yinyang-coded meant to complement each other, given that whenever wangchuan flower's yin vs yang properties were discussed, the two men were always spoken about in the same breath. more importantly, as with the above few analyses of dfs's words playing a big role in shaping of lxy's choices with multiple meanings - as well as their day-to-day interactions - we can see that they constantly play off each other.

dfs's yang energy has been used to help lxy prolong his life (though not saving him entirely), while lxy has used his yin energy to save dfs and subsequently helped him attain his breakthrough. dfs has also helped lxy in his breakthrough of yin but not in the same way as dfs's cultivation of his combative powers, and rather, it's for lxy an understanding of his own path to take in life - a cultivation of the mind (both times 10 years before and after). given how significant dfs is in the shaping of lxy's realisation of the yin path - alike his shifu has, it's no wonder that they were the only two people lxy had imagined in his last sword dance of a farewell to jianghu.

with each of them coming together to form the perfect yin-yang model, they're a harmony of yin and yang representing the cosmos. what I also love is that they didn't start out as a perfect fit, but only towards the end of the story was the harmonisation completed, which makes sense for two components that are always in a flux influencing each other. the fact that they were number 1 and 2 of wulin, and being the only ones capable of understanding each other in a level nobody else could... it all reinforces the cosmic sense of their relationship. they're the halves to a whole, fitting in a specific way nobody else can.

(I mean. technically this is going into the space of extrapolation based on a tangential interpretation of canon text, so do take it with a pinch of salt. but of course this pinch of salt can do wonders for a shipper's feast... :P and this certainly could have been a meta of its own expanding on dfs's side of the analysis, but this is it for now in this context.)

-

to think of it, li xiangyi has actually died more than that one time that turned him into li lianhua. first was a death of him as a nanyin royalty - I resent having to bring up nanyin like it should hold any weight to the narrative as far as I'm concerned, but the point being that he had a completely different (familial-based) life before that still stands. then he had a rebirth as li xiangyi, disciple and swordsman to his shifu and shiniang, and later died again when li xiangyi the sigu sect leader took over. lxy the sigu sect leader died at sea in the battle 10 years ago and came back as li lianhua. (just like nezha, died after battling at east sea and rebirthed from the lotus) li lianhua then dies by the end of the drama.

there can be a myriad of interpretations as to what exactly happened to him, including the possibility that he's still alive. regardless, we can agree that li lianhua as an identity has ran its course, and he had to evolve again. but into what form?

in the line of thought of yin and femininity, and how his transformation has been in an increasing degree of presentation of femininity - even way back when I was watching the show, I had the idea of him living socially as a woman post-li lianhua. I don't know what he would be realistically doing or what could be practical for him in such an identity. but conceptually it was sensible and compelling to me before diving deeper into the details. (I have more elaboration to do on this that I won't be talking about here publicly but it is in the same strain of idea as this other comparative meta I wrote.)

I think the next possible identity lxy can assume - alive in the material realm or not - is one that will be beyond a material being. a nameless entity. once you've gone through the phases of life - from not knowing to knowing, and perfecting knowledge, then to the surpassing of knowledge - you surpass all worldly existence, and become one with the cosmos.

I end this off with an excerpt from Tao Te Ching's Chapter 41 (I'm not pretending to have read the whole book ok but I couldn't resist including this):

明道若昧，进道若退，夷道若纇 [...] 道隐无名 The bright path seems dim; Going forward seems like retreat; The easy way seems hard [...] The Tao is hidden and without name. (x)

the character translated into "easy" is the same 夷 yi of li xiangyi's name. somehow this seems to encapsulate the journey of his life: one that seems blessed and smooth-sailing but ending up to be rocky and turbulent. but at the end of the day, after all that he had been through, he will become hidden and without name.

[whumpfish]

So, I have been in a very long, very hot shower because I hurt like a bitch, and I think I have narrowed down the basis of my major whump pet peeve, and I'm going to be using my pet fav series Word of Honor to do it.

You cannot survive sustained/chronic/severe pain if you don't develop a relationship with it. The first couple episodes of Word of Honor aren't about Zhou Zishu x Wen Kexing, they're about Zhou Zishu x Zhou Zishu's pain/condition. And that latter relationship continues to evolve and stay at the forefront on a parallel path to the development of the former.

He saddles himself with this thing as penance, because when he makes that decision, he believes that being crippled is "a fate worse than death." And then he goes on living, and discovers that life goes on, so he makes an increasingly-less-guarded peace with it. So when he meets Wen Kexing and Gu Xiang, he's doing his own thing, enjoying the good parts of what remains of his life even though his condition remains at the forefront, and will for the rest of the series. He's integrated it into his life to such an extent that Gu Xiang readily dubs him "Sick Man."*

That's what gets my goat every time: whumpees that aren't allowed to develop a relationship with their pain and are instead thrust into relationships with "caretakers" who don't do much more than provide warm blankets and snuggles and therapy-approved conversation on demand, and be "heartbroken" over how broken and pathetic the whumpee is in their eyes. Because the reality is that the relationship with pain has to be established before any other relationships can go anywhere.

Pain/illness kills relationships. People leave. They just do. It becomes too much of a bother to make changes to their own lives, and they jet.** And it's just you and your pain/condition until you can find the few truly good people who will give you love and reasonable help. You have to develop a relationship with it. It's your new roommate for the rest of your life.

You and your pain are going to be in the wars. You're going to get mad and scream and throw things at it. You're going to resent it for being the only one who's there with you every day. You're going to think about all the shit you can't do anymore, and you'll be frustrated to tears.

But eventually - if you're allowed - you make peace. You stop hating your roommate for holding you back from parties, you just find someone who can drive you home, or stay in with you. You'll find other people who have the same kind of roommate, and then you'll all get along.

And if you are very, very, galactically, fictionally lucky, you find a partner who will help you stand your ground against life and what your roommate pain has made of it. This is what happens in Word of Honor.

Wen Kexing is by no stretch Zhou Zishu's perma-caretaker, or "Caretaker" in the sense that plagues new wave whump. But he cares, and offers what help he can, when he can, without hovering and without kid gloves. He looks for a cure earnestly but without coddling or pitying Zhou Zishu for being a Sick Man. It's a more honest and realistic portrayal of someone ill/disabled and someone not who loves them than I've seen anywhere else.

My relationship with my pain is ongoing and continues to evolve. It takes things from me, but it gives me things, too. My love of whump, the Pain Genre, is one of those things. Whenever my pain spikes like this, my tolerance for fluff in the whump zone plummets, so just know that whenever you get ornery meta from me, my pain and I are sitting around having wine (gingerbeer, can't have wine with the new meds, thanks a lot pain) and bitching.

The reason there's no good chronic pain rep outside of WOH is that characters are not being allowed to develop relationships with their pain, and are only allowed to have relationships with other things and people, and those relationships are inevitably trainwrecks, or insultingly unrealistic and saccharine, because an entire segment of the character's life and personality and identity is being masked or exploited instead of embraced. So let your whumpee have a relationship with their pain/conditions/traumas. Chronic pain/illness havers the world over will thank you.

[hulloitsdani]

i want to know your anna thoughts so bad hi.

Hullo! Sure I can provide some Anna thoughts! I have so god damn many. Some other characters are also going to work their way in here too, if you don’t mind. And buckle up, this is gonna be a long one. I got a whole short story for y’all here.

Without further ado, I present to you: The Commander Anna Post

Let’s have some fun, shall we?

So in the age discussion of the feh main cast from a while back, I mentioned how I accounted for Anna’s bizarre position in Askr’s military by making her a child soldier. She has been fighting since she was a young teenager and has logged a decade of combat experience at this point.

I want there to be some fun consequences for this. For example, Anna is rocking some very serious injuries that will likely be with her for the rest of her life. Most notable being her left shoulder. Just by looking at her in full commander regalia, it’s not obvious that there’s any kind of issue. But Anna can’t lift her left arm all the way anymore. Her armor does an excellent job covering up the inconsistency, as it doesn’t allow for that level of mobility anyway. But take the armor off and you can see her shoulder is an absolute mess. It is, and I quote, “the worst healing job I’ve ever seen” according to Veronica.

It’s a bizarre sight for the kid. It’s not the type of thing she expected to learn about an enemy commander. Perhaps THE enemy commander. But in this situation that hardly matters, as she is the group healer as they all trek deeper into the realm of the dead. And Veronica is tending to her wounds only to find the pitiful scarred skin, warped and uneven from a hastily rushed healing process. It’s from a long time ago, she explains. From when she was still just a foot solider. But that… doesn’t make sense does it? Was Bruno not her ally? He has the capacity to heal— he was the one who taught Veronica the little she knows. Even his worst attempts were leagues better than the work done here.

Anna can only shrug, a motion made mostly with her right shoulder. He didn’t reveal that he was a mage of any kind while he was with them. So, even if he wanted to, there’s a chance he could not afford to. Veronica doesn’t know what to say to that. There’s this… uncomfortable knowing between the two of them. They know now, in retrospect, that swallowing down the truth like that must have ate Bruno alive. Just another reason for his sorry state that they didn’t catch until it was nearly too late. Add that to the pile of tiny behaviors that now make sense, right? The intensity of his expression as he insisted Veronica learn how to heal despite her protests and the daggers he’d stare into the intricate scaring on Anna’s shoulder. Throw them all in. Every last piece.

Commander Anna looks at the princess and unexpectedly breaks the tension with a laugh. You see, it’s funny, because this is exactly how she started to figure out Zacharias was Bruno. Very few know about her shoulder. She’s not exactly brazen about it, nor do the people she interacts with have the medical knowledge to glean how serious it is. She doubts even Kiran knows, to be honest. The only person who knows without a shadow of a doubt is Zacharias, because he was there when it happened. He’s probably the reason why she survived that day at all. So, you must imagine her surprise, when a masked stranger targeted this weakness and forced her to fight left handed. It was the most bizarre fight of her life! Fighting someone who clearly knew her, but she herself could not place!

Veronica was not there, but she can picture the lunacy of it. Bruno fighting his comrade as the commander attempted to fight a stranger. She hasn’t really seen Anna entirely thrown off before, but knowing that her brother managed it brings her satisfaction. She deserves it after all the times her and the rest of these fools have done it to Veronica. Feels like comeuppance. She chuckles. They both do. Gods she’s having a moment with the enemy commander. What has the world come to?

Fjorm has a far less positive reaction to piecing it together. After the events of book 2, she knows her time is short. She… cannot face the remains of her family in this state. It would be a slow painful death to rot away behind castle walls and wheeze into soft silks. No, she would much rather die on her feet. Put her body to good use while it’s still able.

So she trains. She trains until she feels her bones threaten to snap. She must have been at it for hours before the commander offers to spar her. With how busy Anna normally is, it’s a rather rare opportunity to spar one on one. Fjorm instantly leaps for the chance.

So they fight, and Fjorm can see it. The way her left arm lags and the scarring that curls out from beneath her sleeve. Burns maybe? Possible electricity? Clearly an old injury from a mage. A weakness in her defenses that she can exploit, surely.

Anna makes no such thing possible. Maybe she learned since her fight with Bruno or maybe Fjorm isn’t fast enough to take advantage of it, but Anna easily evades any attempt to use this against her. Focusing her left just seems to earn Fjorm a swift jab in return. From there, the fight might already be over. Anna’s left arm might be lacking but her legs and mobility sure aren’t. She takes the opportunity to effortlessly bully her way into Fjorm’s space and renders her lance useless. It’s infuriating, but Fjorm is learning. She can do this— she has to. Ten losses deep is when Anna calls it. They put good work in and it’s time for lunch!

Fjorm is ready to throw her lance into the sun.

She insists she can keep going, but the commander is not budging. Still, she tries to push her luck. But once a look of annoyance makes a home on her features, Fjorm knows that’s it. Another disappointing loss. Damnit. She turns to find someone else to spar, but is very surprised to find Anna will not allow such a thing. They are both going to take a break, or Fjorm might find herself barred from the training grounds. She states that if Fjorm cannot be trusted to keep her own wellbeing in mind, then she cannot be trusted out here at all.

However, Anna provides her with a singular counter offer. This can all be avoided if Fjorm tells her what’s wrong. Because she isn’t stupid, something is clearly amiss. And Fjorm— at wits end and most definitely exhausted, dehydrated, and starving—flips her lid a bit. Begins to go off. She’s angry at Anna, and her stupid backswing with her axe, and her own inability to deal with it despite her inherent disadvantage with a lance, and how she keeps failing in front of the people here, and how weak she must appear, and how even the commander of an army in Askr is outclassing her as a warrior and leader, and how she can’t even hate her for it because Anna is just doing her job, and how that all means that the problem must lie within herself!!!

That’s, uh, wow. That’s more than Anna bargained for. She briefly internally wishes that Kiran or Sharena was here right now, as they’re far better at this type of thing. Maybe… she should just go for the most obvious one, yeah? Yeah! Anna isn’t a leader. Commanding people and leading them are vastly different skills. Complimentary! But different.

Look, on ledger, the order entirely under her name, but in practice it is run by four people. Alfonse, Sharena, Kiran, and herself. And it very much HAS to be. The order operates at such a large scale now that the division of labor was necessary. Anna is not so egotistical to think she could run this whole operation by herself, either.

This includes the actual leadership position of the order. Anna is very good at telling people what to do and when to do it, but actually rallying people to a cause? That’s wayyy above her pay grade. Hardly has the force of personality to pull that off. But the others do, and so does Fjorm. Hell, Fjorm has that is SPADES. Despite having lost just about everything, she managed to rally her broken beaten homeland against Surtr and Muspel through sheer force of will. That’s kind of insane, and it’s a little bizarre to the commander that the savior of Nifil can’t see that.

Besides, she’s not a better fighter than Fjorm either. She quite physically can’t be! Fjorm is angry that she couldn’t defeat her in less than ideal circumstances, but let’s be real, all she needs is a little practice. And maybe a full eight hours of sleep. And some food. And water. Can you see what she’s putting down here? The only real leg up Anna has on Fjorm is that she’s going to ask for help, despite the heavy hit to her ego. It’s why the order exists as it does, after all.

That conversation leaves Fjorm with a lot to think about. Both as a person and of her view of Anna. She apologizes for behavior and swears to do better. As proof of her determination, she takes her up on the offer of lunch, much to Anna’s amusement.

Much later down the line, Sharena learns— PROPERLY learns, within the realm of dreams. She’s not blind though. Over the years she has noticed the scaring and the favoring of her right hand. Soooo, Sharena makes an effort to cover her! Stick by her left! Her massive shield is more than capable of protecting her too! And that’s the routine they fall seamlessly into as they follow Peony through Freyr’s dream land and Freya’s nightmare.

Anna generally deals with the challenges of that place better than the rest, for the aforementioned reasons. She knows her limits, she asks for help, and she talks her problems through. The vulnerability may be uncomfortable for her at times, but it is not enough to prevent her from doing so in order to progress smoothly. It might hurt her pride a little as commander, but Sharena and Alfonse are her friends, no? She can say that now, after walking through literal hell and back with them. So she doesn’t mind if they are the ones to see the child she grew around to protect.

Rather angry kid, if you can believe it! Stubborn too. Getting split and copied throughout time and space as a result of Askr and Embla’s never ending war had that effect. And Sharena gets to see that little girl, stubbornly clinging to her axe, bleeding from a wound on her leg that she knows one day will scar over.

It’s from one of the first battles she was ever in, Anna explains. As a merchant, her dad saw it fit to train her in order to defend herself from bandits. And she had put those skills to use before— but not like this. Never like this. It was the first true fight for her life. Not very pleasant, as you can imagine! She still gets nightmares sometimes, as you can see. Happened a few times in the realm of the dead actually. But, luckily, it no longer haunts her as much as it once did. It’s just a scar on her leg now!

The sentiment doesn’t comfort Sharena much. This is, frankly, awful! She hates how scared she looks! A-and how large the wound on her leg is! She hates how… unaware of it she personally was! Why didn’t Anna tell her about this sooner? To which Anna can only shrug. Nobody asked, and if she’s being honest, she probably wouldn’t have told. Not the whole truth anyway. She can admit when she needs help but… she’s still human. It’s a lot easier to admit she had a nightmare than admit that she finds the very thought of bleeding out a worse death than drowning. Still gets her the help she needs, without being more vulnerable than necessary. Sharena rests her head on her shoulder.

“Are all of your scars like this?”

Anna… blinks. No. They’re not. Not even the one on her leg is all bad. She was saved by this elderly couple and their son, who saw the fighting and began dragging injured soldiers off the battlefield. They made awful puns the whole time they stitched up her leg and gave her the best tea she ever had. Anna has bought a lot of different teas trying to find it, but to this day, she has no clue what it was. Makes it better, to be honest. Sharena looks at her expectantly, waiting for her to continue.

Ah, story time then? Okay. Well. Uh, this line on the inside of her elbow is from a bandit. Rather nasty encounter, but she returned the favor by shoving an entire container of expensive makeup powder into his eyes. Her dad was so mad but god it was so worth it. And this scar on her thumb is from one of her first times cooking in the road. She was pealing a potato but one of her sisters slammed into her and nearly took off her finger. This nick on her clavicle is from the first battle she ever won. When the enemy finally retreated she screamed so loud that her voice was raw for a week. Then there’s this scar underneath her chin, which has to be the most embarrassing ones she has. Zacharias and her had some leftover money one week and decided to treat themselves to a drink or two or five. In trying to make it back to the barracks, they both fell. Hard. She walked away with this, but Zacharias fully fractured his wrist. Explaining what happened to the healers the next morning was dreadful. And… and then there’s the one on her shoulder. Anna was actually recovering from it when she met Alfonse and Sharena.

The princess sits up for that one. Really? Gods she didn’t show it. And it’s because, on some level, she couldn’t. It was from the last battle before the shaky truce was called between Askr and Embla. The one Veronica will inevitably break. And the truce was called for good reason. The battle was hell on earth. Anna… nearly died there. She should have died there, frankly. A point blank strike from a lightning mage with metal armor in the rain should have been the last mistake she ever made. But by some miracle, it wasn’t.

… In retrospect, she thinks it’s because of Zacharias. Things got hazy after she went down, but knowing what they do now, he must have used his own magic to kill the mage and heal her. She didn’t walk out unscathed, but it was enough.

Haha, gods, she will never stop feeling guilty about him, will she?

Anyway, the injury was pretty bad. Her shoulder never moved the same again. But seeing as they were both recently hired to be Sharena and Alfonse’s retainers, they couldn’t exactly let Gustav know how serious it was. Might cost them the job. So a truly comical level of shenanigans went into ensuring it was kept secret. Including this game she created where every time Zacharias accidentally touched her injured shoulder, he would pay up 10 gold. He was not a very touchy guy, but even Sharena knew that this was something he just did. A tiny reassuring shoulder pat to convey that he was listening. So this was, perhaps, the best money making scheme Anna ever came up with. His apologetic look would shift so quickly into one of so much instant regret. And Sharena, upon reflection, remembers this.

WAIT WAIT WAIT SHE REMEMBERS THIS. THATS WHAT THE NOTE PASSING THING WAS!!!! Alfonse had pointed out in one meeting that the new retainers were passing something between each other and Sharena insisted it must have been notes because of how boringgggg it was. BUT NO IT WAS GOLD. ZACHARIAS TOUCHED HER SHOULDER EARLIER IN THAT MEETING AND SHE WINCED. HE THEN WAITED A WHILE BEFORE PAYING UP TO NOT MAKE IT OBVIOUS. THATS HILARIOUS!!!

Anna starts cackling as Sharena begins to line up all the pieces. The nightmare fully dissipating as she shares in this silly secret. There’s a chance she would have died with it. Hell, we know of a world where she probably did. This is not a story she’d even give to her family of merchants, who despite being direct reflections of her, do not share the scars she’s littered with. Never had to be, and thus don’t quite understand. But, Sharena does. All her friends do. And it feels weird to say that because real friends have always been in short supply. But gods this is too good. How absolutely absurd it is, that they are in the realm of dreams trying to find their missing friend and defeat the goddess who took them, and Commander Anna of the Order of Heroes is about to pop a lung laughing as she tells Princess Sharena of Askr about the fallout from the time she nearly died.

It’s dumb! This is dumb! And it’s possibly the happiest she’s ever been.

[desultory-novice]

Apologies AU - Good Ending Drop

Hey, everyone. It was my goal to finish Apologies in tandem with the Tournament, but for health reasons, I won't be able to as I planned. Because I tied the story to the tournament and don't feel like untangling it again and making everyone wait more, I'm going to give you all the ending spoilers, as I promised I would if I became unable to finish the story.

What I'm about to describe is THE Good Ending. The True Ending I had planned out almost from the beginning!

-

In the main-verse...

Susie, who sees too much of herself in Adeleine, decides to take matters into her own hands to bring the girl's older brother back.

She takes the vial of Dark Matter Swordsman DNA that was harvested from King Dedede. Meta Knight catches up with her and argues against it. It's foolish, dangerous, and liable to be nothing but painful to all parties involved. But Susie anticipated interference and asked Zan to bodyguard her. When Zan arrives (late) to the lab, the argument has caused the vial to begin to react to all the negativity in the room. Zan recognizes its contents as Dark Matter and insists on calling Lord Hyness, who in his own quirky way, analyzes their problem and suggests that while the contents are too weak to survive on their own, a resurrection could be possible, using Void's powers to mimic a hive queen, supplying whatever creature emerges the power to survive on Popstar without burning up into ash...

-

In the tourney-verse...

White-Haired Noir is at peace with his life and has come to accept the death of his precious little sister many years ago, but...a part of him still wishes to make Adeleine happy.

Using his fairy-born dimension sight, he discovers an Alternate Noir who is 98% percent compatible with main-verse Noir. This is the Purgatory!Noir from the Re_Birthday post. And he drags this unstable, utterly clueless Noir out of this peaceful void without his permission and secretly "volunteers"  the massively confused, un-alive but un-dead teen boy for the Kirby OC Tournament.

It is White-Haired Noir that is the "good" voice on phone and in Noir's head, encouraging rationality. His goal? Get Noir some friends. Get him to face up to/open up to people about his past. And get him caring about his life enough that he wants to live...! 

White-Haired Noir has seen what the main-verse Star Allies are attempting and knows that the odds of them actually bringing "Noir" back instead of just an emotionless monster are low without a compatible "Noir Soul" (haha) to inhabit the new vessel.

Over the course of many in-tourney events, including Noir learning to have faith in the sibling bonds he built with Gooey despite being Dark Matter at the time, learning to separate himself and Adeleine as individuals instead of clinging to her to his own neglect, privately opening up to King Dedede, who put the pieces together post-possession, about some awful stuff Noir put up with for years in secret from Raquelle's father (who privately loathed Neichel AND her kids and took it out on Noir) to "pay" for Adeleine's good life...

And lastly, using the power of wishes to interrogate if THIS Noir's true wish is to die and be free, to have never been born, to have had a normal "perfect" life, or if he simply wishes for a second chance to be with those he cares about... White-Haired Noir determines that Tourney!Noir is ready and reveals his plan to him. Noir confesses to him that he really does want to live and be with his family again and offers up his stronger soul for Susie and the gang's vessel.

-

Back in the main-verse...

The experiment is a success! They have brought, well, something back. It is not quite like Dark Matter Swordsman in form, nor is it exactly a human boy. It looks a little bit like a spiky haired-Gooey.

After some tense questioning of the emotionless, memoryless, unresponsive goo, it...suddenly seems to awaken. With the voice of a deeply shaken and scared young boy, the violet-eyed blob questions the mad scientist, cultists, and masked man surrounding him... Where the hell is he? And where are his little brother and sister?

Meta Knight welcomes Noir back to the world of the living.

Later, after Noir has time to dress himself in an appropriate scarf, Adeleine and Gooey are brought in and it is a happy and tear-filled reunion all around as Noir confirms that, while this form is strange, it's not dangerous and he's not in pain. He is then re-introduced to King Dedede, whereupon it's revealed that even though Noir likes him, he's still a snarky teen punk at heart, as he sasses the king horribly. (Dedede has gained another kid, but at what cost? XD)

...And that's it.

That's the ending to Apologies I've held onto for nearly a year.

For reading through all that, here is a short comic I drew a while back of the reunited family having a snowball fight in White Wafers.

-

(Not to unnecessarily over-explain the story but because the comic is a little vague, I have to tell you that no, Noir does not ever return to human after his revival. I meant it when I wrote in several places that their parting on Shiver Star was the last time they'd see each other "...in this form." This is merely meant to depict a moment in which Adeleine, seeing her brother alive and smiling and laughing and having real fun for the first time in so long, is able to imagine his old self smiling and is at peace that her brother is finally free from the hurt and misery he bore up with for so long.)

(...And yes, he has a long, silly tongue just like Gooey. Which is why he hides all but his eyes behind the scarf. Gotta keep up that cool older brother look even as a little goo creature! While Noir can't become human - frankly, he doesn't miss having a human body, given the stuff in his adolescence and being over-stressed, underfed, under-slept and just overall sick all the time in his later teens - he does eventually acquire the ability to shift into his old "Swordsman" form for short bursts of time.)

-

(Lastly, you might wonder how I could have had this exact ending in mind from almost the beginning when so much of it is tied up in recent posts like the tourney? ...Well, originally what was going to happen to allow Noir to be properly resurrected into the Dark Matter Goo body is that the Dream Rod from Star Allies was going to appear in response to a grieving Adeleine's wishes to see her brother again, bringing Noir-as-Swordsman back. At least for a LITTLE while, as it would be revealed that with Zero dead, Noir, who was entirely composed of Dark Matter at this point, couldn't survive on Popstar. Every moment he was there, his body was burning.)

(Still, he lasts long enough to have one final talk with Adeleine that helps heal him from the torturous events of DL 3 - in which we learn a highly disappointed Zero drove Noir to the absolute breaking point, shattering his mind and his newly regained soul. Adeleine also tells Noir she has finally realized everything he did for her during their childhood and apologizes to him for not seeing it before. With dawn on the horizon, Noir asks to look over Adeleine's sketchbooks with her before the end... He dies one last time, peacefully, while Adeleine finally gets to properly mourn him.)

(Then, all the "main-verse" sections proceed to happen as stated above!)

-

(...Okay, okay. One last thing. There was also an alternate ending planned where Magolor, taking advantage of the fact that Merry Magoland was built on a nexus point, finds a way to reunite Adeleine and White-Haired Noir - still a teen in this version - using his theme park as a union point, as special birthday gift for Adeleine.)

(I was kinda fond of this one for reuniting the timelines, but it opened up a lot of questions such as, if Magolor made it so that Noir and Adeleine from two different dimensions can see each other as long as they're both in Magoland, could others from the WH Noir-verse see the main-verse this way? It invited too many questions, so that's why I scrapped that one and just let White-Haired Noir grow up instead.)

[rainbowresurrection]

Kinda got a love/hate relationship with the history of K/S because it's like. Can I please have a queer discussion about this 1960s television show without it being reduced to "shipper discourse". I thought Spock and Kirk were homo long before I knew that their characters spawned a fanfiction counterculture. The bisexual dude who wrote the episode that really kick-started the movement didn't know it was going to coalesce into the fan phenomenon that it did, he was just writing what he knew how to write best: the repression of burning male desire, and two dudes doing homoerotic shit. Can I just talk about the repressed burning male desire please, and the implications of a gay angle to Kirk and Spock's story, without it being referred to as shipper discourse. Can I do that. Does this make sense