#my brain says one story at a time thanks

[mayakern]

just wanna say i love what you do and i love your creations!! you can feel the care and time you take in your designs, and they always turn out so lovely. i now own five of your skirts!! i plan to own more as skirt restocks come out (i have my eye on that cloud one when it comes out, for sure.) a tad sad ill never get my hands on the milk skirt as milk is like, my Thing™, but i can understand discontinuing it for lack of sales. i still think it was cute regardless!!! thank you for your time and effort. got my eye on your book series when it comes out in full (i hate waiting between books). hope you have a lovely day.

aw thank you that’s very sweet!! 🥺🥺

thank you for enjoying and supporting my work / our store

spitfire won’t be finished finished for a couple years at least, as i’m currently in the middle of editing the “first” book (which is being split into books 1 and 2) and am about 1/4 the way thru writing the “second” book (which is being split into books 3 and 4)

the hope is once i’ve finished the structural edits on book 1 that i’ll submit to pubs, and even just hearing back from pubs takes months tbh, not to mention the whole process of trad pub (if it gets accepted by trad pub)

anyway all that is to say, it’s a slow process so i hope ur ok with waiting!! and also thank you to everyone who already read spitfire (and maybe even firebrand) and who has been so supportive and patient of this strange meandering path i’ve been taking 😭

[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]

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

[svtskneecaps]

literally it's 3am where i live and i'm on mobile but FUCK IT i haven't posted any actual writing in like a YEAR on this blog whose description include the words "I WRITE" and i can't tell if i'm even going anywhere with this so fuck it under the cut is the prospective absolute mess of the first chapter of the flipo family time loop fic. (for clarity, flipo family as in slime, mariana, and juanaflippa) this covers loop 0, aka the relevant parts of canon. words: 1630

parts of it i popped off with and other parts i hate; up to you to identify them. also the italics and other formatting got erased when i copy pasted and i'm re-adding all of it by hand so if i missed a spot, no i didn't. if i missed an accent on a letter in spanish that was a typo, if i missed a ¡ or ¿ that may have been on purpose.

oh and for obvious reasons, content warning for mentions and mild descriptions of child death and child murder. no blood, and most of it is a three word mention; i'd say the brief paragraph beginning "Tilín didn't scream" is most of the reason this warning exists.

Charlie Slimecicle stepped off the train.

He’d been hoping for a bright, sunny day to start their vacation, but was sorely disappointed. The portal had apparently taken them pretty far, since they’d gone from noon to night time. Talk about jetlag. They hadn’t even been on a plane.

“What happened to the other guys?” he wondered aloud as he stepped onto the platform.

“Yeah no clue,” Phil said, scanning the empty station. “Thought they’d meet us here.”

“Guys!” one of the Spanish speakers--Vegetta, he’d said, when they’d all met up at the first station--called, from a lectern at the wall. “There is a book!”

They crowded around as he read the instructions aloud--something about pressure plates, Slime wasn’t paying that close of attention. He was a little more preoccupied with making sure it only felt like his brain was dripping out of his ears. That would be kind of embarrassing.

Which was not to say that he wasn’t enjoying the constant onslaught of people talking over each other using words he may or may not understand. In fact, it was the opposite; he was frankly thriving in the absolute chaos that kicked back up around him as a timer appeared in the wrist communicators they’d been provided along with their tickets.

“Como se dice ‘we are going to die now’?” He giggled, chasing Phil and Fit to one end of the station.

“¡Vamos a morir!” shouted Spiderman, echoed seconds later by the black bear in the collared shirt.

Giddy over the high of attempting to use his high school foreign language for the first time maybe ever, Slime absolutely didn’t contribute much to solving the puzzle, and before long the sound of the timer ticking down was accompanied by a loud buzzing alarm.

“It’s been an honor!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs. “It’s been an honor!”

The bear ran past them again, shouting, “I’m going to die!” in English this time.

“Adiós amigos!” Slime yelled.

The countdown ended.

And then his communicator buzzed, and there was a video playing on the screen, showing a cartoonish yellow duck in front of a blurry beach stock photo. He skimmed it absently--some generic welcoming message and another side quest for them--distracted by Maximus audibly losing his shit laughing across the station.

“Come on, I’m trying to take a vacation, I gotta work now?” Fit complained. “This is ridiculous.”

Slime wanted to jump on that bit, but the message cut off with coordinates marred by static and the noise of the emergency weather alert system and he lost his train of thought completely.

“I got the English book!” Spreen called, holding it with two fingers like it had personally offended him.

“English leader,” Vegetta said, seeming to find that amusing.

“English leader.” Spreen laughed and flicked the book away. Slime stepped back but somehow it still nailed him in the chest.

“Guess I’m reading then,” he said cheerfully.

“In Spanish?” Maximus said.

“Um.”

Vegetta called something, backing across the plaza with the book open in his hands. Phil backed up to the wall.

“Here,” Phil instructed, “we’ll read it here.”

“Okay okay.” He flicked it open. “So we have to get water wheel planks--”

Their peace lasted a grand total of thirty seconds as voices suddenly began shouting, overlapping in chaotic chorus.

“What is that?” Fit demanded.

“Is that coming from the other side?” Phil stared up at the top of the wall.

“This is the thinnest thick wall I’ve ever seen,” Slime said, giddy laughter bubbling out of him again. “Is this thing made out of pencil shavings? If I sneeze on it, is there gonna be a hole?”

“Nevermind, we’ll read it over here.” Phil dragged them away again, but the Spanish speakers were dispersing into the trees.

“Forget the book,” Fit said, “follow them!”

(In the end it was explosives that took the wall down, which in hindsight was a precursor to how a not insignificant portion of time on the island was spent. The first day, however, it was just funny, much like everything else.)

(That was to say, the first first day.)

The communicator had indicated that today there was something special planned, so he made an extra effort to wake up.

“Morning Jaiden!” he called to his upstairs neighbor.

“Hi Charlie!” He could hear her farming through the wall. “Glad you woke up on time!”

“Well you know, you know, El Backflipo couldn’t miss it,” he joked, sifting through his backpack. “Got any spare food? I’ll trade you uno backflipo.”

“I have so much toast, come here and get some, free of charge.”

With a quick backflip and some toast to start the day, he popped open the map.

“There’s a lot of people down the wall,” he noted, their green dots so clustered they formed one. “Wanna check it out?”

“Yeah sure.” Jaiden tossed some seeds into a chest. “Do you know what this event’s gonna be?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted cheerfully.

She laughed. “Yeah, me neither. I guess there’s an egg involved, but that’s all I know.”

He dug around in his backpack for a paraglider, nodding along. “Yeah, yeah, un huevo, I get you.” Shuffling the landmine from Vegetta to one side, he yanked out his glider and threw himself out her window. “Let’s go!”

(nothing like getting struck by lightning to wake a guy up in the morning)

Slime fiddled with the communicator as he waited for the line of people to get through the ticket machine; he already had his own, a nice B for Backflipo. The new live translations still boggled his mind. He had to fight the urge to chant weird shit under his breath, just to see what the bubbles would say.

He paid a little extra attention when Mariana walked up to the machine. That guy seemed cool. They’d done that pequeño dormir together on day one, and he had a good sense of humor. Egg parenting would probably be funny.

He was thrilled to see the B for Backflipo on the ticket Mariana stepped away with, even if Mariana was decidedly less so. This was gonna be good.

(it was, and it wasn’t)

So, Mariana wasn’t exactly the coparent of dreams. Then again, Slime was pretty sure Mariana could say the same about him. In fact he was pretty sure Mariana had said the same, but in Spanish, when he wasn’t checking the translation.

It was great. They thought they’d killed a child immediately and then decided to fake their own child’s death to get away with it, and then confessed their sins to a bilingual angel and built a farm and then he buried himself beneath an improvised cross and went into a coma until his sins were forgiven, or something, except his sins weren’t forgiven in time to save his own child’s life.

And then Juanaflippa was dead. Dead at Mariana’s hand.

His bitch wife killed their daughter.

(Everything went faster, after that.)

Slime wanted to kill him.

Slime wanted to kill him for killing their fucking daughter, but of course, Mariana couldn’t even be bothered to be around to take care of her alive, never mind to pay for his crimes when she died by his hand!

(in a better world, his rage started and ended there. in a better world, the anger fizzled out with the lack of a target.

this was not that world)

There couldn’t be an Egg Event with no eggs.

If he killed them all, it would bring her back.

(in a worse world, he succeeded. in a worse world, the Egg Event ended there.

this was not that world)

They held a trial.

If he won, it would bring her back.

(in another world, he didn’t convince them. in another world, they left his daughter in Hell.

this was not that world)

Tilín was still before she hit the ground.

Tilín didn’t scream. Maybe they didn’t have time. It happened so fast. He was sure it happened fast. Almost too fast. But everything went so fast, now, even though Flippa was back. Yet, time slowed down for this, like a rubberneck driving past a highway accident, watching him desperately trying to shock their heart back into motion.

“YOU KILL MY BEST FRIENDS,” Flippa wrote. He begged her to understand. She wrote, “i can’t believe it.”

She wrote, “I HATE YOU.”

(in a better world, the error would have been caught in April instead of July.

this was not that world)

His daughter fell to his bitch wife’s sword. The same way. The next day.

They’d only just gotten her back. And Mariana killed her again.

He only left eggxile for the funeral. She wouldn’t stay dead, but he had to be there.

Time went even faster after that. He was Gegg, or maybe Gegg was him, or maybe Gegg was Gegg, or maybe. . . ?

He went back to eggxile.

He wasn’t leaving without them. Tilín. Juanaflippa. He would do whatever was necessary. He would pray to any higher power. Lil J still owed him a goddamn favor, but the guy wouldn’t pick up his calls. Maybe if he put more shit in the shrine; angels liked shiny shit, didn’t they? He went back to the mine, where the gasses swirled in his head. He built the shrine. He mined. He built the shrine.

He went back to the mine.

He went back to the mine.

He went back to the mine.

“This is where I sit, this is where my bitch wife sits, and this is where my daughter sits, if I had one!”

He’d said that before. No he hadn’t. Yes he had.

No, he just needed to clear his head.

Charlie Slimecicle went back to the mine.

Charlie Slimecicle stepped off the train.

[kismetmoon]

something something something flatlanders don’t kiss with their mouths because they’ve got too much going on (sharp teeth, retracted eye, etc.) so instead close their eye and press them against each other as a sign of their utmost trust when they’re vulnerable.

[Plain text ID: a digital drawing done in a lineless style of two original, stylised Flatland characters; Atlas and his daughter Stella.

Atlas is a light grey isosceles triangle with a central eye, dark grey limbs, chips in his top and bottom corner, two scars on his left side and one across his eye. He also has a long, dark grey tail with a banner-shaped tip. Stella is a more humanoid character with a large eye for a head, black stick limbs and a thin black tail with a heart-shaped tip. She is wearing a lacy white gown.

Atlas is standing and his eye is closed in a content expression. He is holding Stella to his left with both arms and they are pressing their closed eyes together. Stella is sitting in Atlas’s arms and smiling. She is touching Atlas with her hands; one is laid on his surface and the other is wrapped around his arm that is supporting her body.

The behind them is a yellow crescent moon with a navy earth shadow directly behind Atlas and Stella. The rest of the background is beige.

End ID.]

[crossbackpoke-check]

re your notes on the mack post: oh. my. gosh and also 100% AGREED 😵‍💫

(he and will are both ******* those old men lbr)

- @bondedpairs

sometimes i have brief moments of introspection in which i wonder whether or not there are things better left in my drafts and usually i say fuck it we ball and then we DO ball and i love y’all for that. would you still love me if i whip out my footnotes and references

FOOTNOTES:

*somewhere in there is an aside about mack having to think about joe stroking somebody ELSE’s dick on the bench and having a panic about it.

**i DO see the will smith mackelini celebrini ?!;&/‘os everyone has been posting. that is the devil talking as in i cannot become invested or else it will ruin me. f1vegas you are NOT forgiven for putting ‘the tk/pat parking garage vibes of it’ in front of my eyes like my! god! i do NOT WANT TO KNOW THE NARRATIVE (too compelling i think. too much to get into with the bc(?)/bu rivalry and zeev buium was there and there’s another shark too somewhere??. i can’t care about a fish a MACKEREL you guys and will smith is not allowed to be my sharks bicycle because the team whoré borde already exists!!) where i was trying to go is sometimes you both fuck the same old man and he’s like. losers. get a polycule. and they end up together (obviously to me jumbo is in an ???? with patty and burnsie)

ABBV. REFERENCES:

ro’s other post where mack says to “ask smitty about [hunting cougars]” (src: holyjost)

ko’s transcript of fun facts from the interview that made me too endeared. girl nobody made you take advertising courses?? change your major

aforementioned f1vegas post. this is by tags alone because after reading that i was not capable of watching the video

[pinkieroy]

I'll never understand jealous people

[ourhouseishaunted]

70% of my trigun thoughts are abt how plants (independent and dependant) work and what they symbolize and their relationships with other characters and the world and stuff and the implications of independent plants coming with the earth forces and what it says about how earth has progressed since SEEDS left the planet, 20% of my thoughts are "hope those guys (meryl milly vash livio ww knives) are having fun" and 10% is rotating trimax Rem Saverem around in my head at all times

[niuxita21]

One day I’m gonna write a book. Can you imagine? A novel about everything that you and I have gone through? [Mariana laughs] It would be called “Ana and Mariana.” We’re going to be free soon, and we’ll be able to reinvent ourselves. So I’m sure you’re gonna write that book, and it’s gonna be awesome. We’ll see what happens. We have to let things flow, right? I think your novel is gonna be one of those that are pretty dark. Maybe one of those that are so romantic that you can’t put them down?

[bibiana112]

I'm going to draw wktd fanart (to cope with a highly specific situation) while I still have the time for it (looming employment) and that is a promise to myself (I probably have something else I said I'd work on but whatever)

[todayisafridaynight]

Hahahaa he's so "bright talented young man alters himself to attain greatness and escape a life he was unhappy with but despite warnings (he ignored them) fails in the end and dies while his father lives on without him"

Secondly though I also HAD to throw on some Mother Mother. Notably, Body (tbh a disabled bitch anthem imo) and Arms Tonight (y'know. Bc the end of the game). Stg I'll send you the playlists for the Arakawa's when I'm done with them. I take my sweet ass time tho v sorry hahaha 😂

Litcherallyyyyyy thats what im sayin bro..... esp when in the story of icarus his father helps him escape the island/helps him succeed and when icarus does fail his father is left imprisoned.... does that not happen to our icarus too.... does that not happen to his father also..... wild....

And take your time with your playlists, no rush ! A dude knows what its like tryin to make it Just Right

[random-kido]

Turns out the app just glitched on me the first couple times I looked! Both are still there and are now saved so I don't lose them again 😀👍

Now I can hopefully stop thinking of them so often lmao

[sailorsleepymoon]

Latest news in being a person with anxiety is wanting the same thing as someone else but being anxious about why they want it

[alatariel-galadriel]

love when the cringe response emerges to memories of past events that are definitively not cringe, thanks brain :) :) I needed that

[mad-hunts]

things had gotten quiet again and in all honestly, jack thought that maybe giving his father some space might be best. he didn't know the full story behind how barton and nico had met in the first place... but there was a tension there that was hard to explain. so, even though jack wanted to learn more about nico, a thought had come to mind that they could probably use some private time to talk. being deprived of touch for so long and suddenly getting it, too, by having barton hug him back? it felt nice to the point where all jack wanted to do that day was stay like that. for, the touch itself might've shocked him, but that soon faded into a feeling like he was real again.

albeit for only as long as the hug lasted. jack found himself pulling down his left sleeve, then, because he was now afforded a moment alone. though unlike barton who seemed to simultaneously revel and loathe being left to his own devices by others; jack, like a true extrovert, drew energy from interacting with others. and although he didn't mind being alone sometimes, being quote unquote 'good company to yourself' wasn't always easy. the long and jagged scar on the inside of his left arm was not something he liked to look at, as a rule. but jack had been thinking about julien a lot lately since he died in september.

as he let out a soft puff of air, he approached a cabinet on the wall that held all sorts of things within it. jack was looking for one thing in particular though. he let out a soft 'yes' in victory as he found what he wanted (a pack of tarot cards) and smiled for a moment. at least, up until jack heard the faint sound of someone tossing and turning. it turned out to be jervis which concerned him. maybe instead of waking him up, jack could make him some of that yuzu cha tea he'd brought along with him. he'd purchased it back when his boyfriend was sick a little shy of a month ago and it seemed to help him a lot. thus, jack reasoned that maybe it could do the same for his father.

quietly, he set down the deck of cards on the table before trudging to the kitchen. jack was about to proceed into the main room of the warehouse but halted at the corner when he heard barton and nico were talking to each other. now, he didn't necessarily mean to be nosy, but the instant he heard something like, 'you know that i expect for things between us to be settled after this, right?' from nico's side? jack couldn't help but want to listen. he just barely peeked over the corner of the kitchen, to try to hear them better. barton seemed to go completely silent at that before raising an eyebrow. ❝ uhh, yeah, why wouldn't i know that? and i'd say that you preventing me from a possible death is the perfect recompense for what i did for you. ❞

recompense. didn't that mean to pay off a debt? jack knitted his eyebrows in confusion at this, wondering what the hell his father could be referring to. but it seemed he just needed to wait to get his answer, ❝ yeah, well, its not like i wanted to kill mikhail. it was an accident. i just wanted to spook him into leaving my sister alone. he was an insane stalker who she broke up with for a reason. and yet, the damn cops wouldn't do anything about him, so i had to do something before he killed her. or worse. ❞ barton held both his hands up at this and let out a mix between an incredulous scoff as well as chuckle.

❝ ahh, i mean, i get it. you don't need to defend yourself to me. your sister has been your guardian for years and she's also your best friend — right? though i, personally, would've been happy to kill this guy if he was stalking my daughter or something. i suppose that's one of the many ways in which we differ. ❞ barton wiggled both of his eyebrows once before raising both of his arms up in a shrug-like gesture. ❝ but your uncle is still someone i consider a friend, so when i got the call about how you contacted him in a panic about accidentally killing someone... and that he called me because i was the only person he could trust to get rid of all the evidence? i have to admit, my ego was stroked. ❞

barton smirked around the water he lifted up to his lips before he took a quick swig of it, ❝ and i never like to pass up an opportunity to have someone owe me a favor. ❞ jack quickly moved back to the corner of the kitchen right when he saw that his father's eyes were moving towards him. so, nico wasn't really here of his own free will, but because he owed barton a favor? his eyes darted across the floor as jack tried to plaster on his best smile and crept out of the kitchen. his father rose both of his eyebrows at his sudden appearance, ❝ oh, hi, son. how is jervis doing? ❞ jack nearly stumbled as he picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulders. ❝ ahh, he's fine. the guy is still dead to the world though. ❞

he took out the jar of yuzu cha he had in his backpack, before looking at barton, who simply nodded. nico looked up from the floor then, ❝ mm. just to let you know, if your father is still okay by the morning, then i'm out of here. ❞ jack saluted at this before sauntering into the kitchen. but once he reached it, he let out a deep breath and just stood there to try to calm his nerves. it seemed he was right on time to catch jervis waking up. placing the yuzu down on the table near the bed, jack only rose a hand in a wave towards the other before speaking just above a whisper. ❝ hey. ahh, you're awake... that's awesome. how are you feeling? ❞

Blackness. Cold, frigid blackness, swallowing him whole. No bottom, no edges. Time bends, stretches, snaps, like threads pulled too taut. Memories flicker, stutter, unravel like reels of old film catching fire mid-playback. Jervis floats somewhere in it, the void pressing in, pulling him under, as his body remains slumped against the cold floor. But in his mind, he's somewhere else. Everywhere else.

He blinks, and he’s suddenly younger, much younger. The world around him smells of damp wood and copper, the air heavy with salt. His parents are there, their faces blurry and featureless, standing by the shore. A storm looms in the distance, its howl drowning out his calls to them. He can taste the brine, feel the cold slap of rain on his cheeks. “Mum! Dad!” But his voice comes out small; swallowed by the wind. His hands — so small now — reach out, fingers straining to touch, but they slip through like smoke. And then they're gone, swept away by the tide…

The blackness recedes into cold, sterile light. Arkham's damp walls closing in. White coats loomed over him, their faces shadowed. The cold metal of the restraints bit into his wrists, sweat trickling down his temples. Tick-tick-tick went the clock, just above his head. The tick-tick-tick became the rattle of pills in a small, plastic bottle. White pills. Green pills. Pink pills.

The needles dig deep. Medication floods his veins—no, not medication, poison. The kind that silences the mind, dulls the edge, but never quite kills the thoughts. They still buzz, frantic, scratching at the walls of his brain. Reality and memory bleed together in front of him, like ink on wet paper, smearing and distorting. He could barely tell which was which.

The room was spinning. Everything. Spinning.

Fifteen minutes. Enough time for billions of cells to generate. But not enough to save her. Sylvie's face appeared, pale and lifeless, framed by dark hair like a broken doll. The hospital room swam in and out of focus. The beeping of machines, the cold, sterile air. Where was Alice? The baby. Where was she?

His hands flailed, desperate to touch something solid, anything real. He found nothing but empty space. And then—wet streets of Gotham under dim streetlights. He was running, slipping on the rain-slicked pavement. Chasing someone. Or was he running from something?

“…and have you fret, picking your cuticles bloody…” Now it was his uncle’s voice cutting through the haze, thick with the smell of tobacco and vanilla. Once comforting, now suffocating. “I warned you, didn’t I?” Stephen’s hazel eyes glinted, hard and cold behind his glasses. “Walls, kit. You built them so high you can’t even see over them.”

Walls. Brick, steel, iron bars. Arkham, again. He laughed, or maybe he tried to. The sound splintered, jagged, snapping like bones.

Sylvie. Alice. Gone.

“You forgot.” Sylvie’s voice now, silk-soft, brushing past his ear. “You forgot to take your meds.”

STOP IT!

Light exploded into his vision, searing, blinding. His pulse pounded, his breath ragged. The Bat-symbol loomed before him, casting a long, jagged shadow.

“You belong in Arkham.” It wasn’t Sylvie’s voice. Not Stephen’s. Not even his own. But it echoed, reverberating inside him. His chest seized, breath caught in a cold vice. Was it fear? Or the shadow gripping tighter, squeezing out the last of the air? The Bat-symbol grew larger, swallowing the world whole.

Flicker. Jump. Alice’s laughter, bright and clear, breaks through the fog. She’s laughing because she doesn’t know—doesn’t know what the world is, what it does to people like him. She trusts him. How can she trust him? He can’t even trust himself.

No. Not laughter. Crying. No. Screaming. Her face warped, twisted, blurred.

The iron scent of blood. Flashes of hands—his hands—shaking, slick with red. His? Someone else’s? He couldn’t remember. He didn’t want to remember. He’s tumbling now, spiraling through the dark, limbs heavy, body collapsing on itself. Everything bends. Folds. Chess pieces scatter across a board, his fingers trembling, knocking them over one by one. He tries to pick them up but they slip through his grasp, the board tilting, falling away.

Another hospital room? No. Too still, too silent. No warmth. Not a hospital. Pitch-black. Arkham, yet again. The isolation tank. 10 inches of lukewarm water that matches his skin temperature. Sylvie’s body was rigid, waxen, chestnut hair tangled and tickling his skin as she floated next to him. “Jervis, love,” her voice drifted from somewhere far off, behind the static hum of his mind, “you never did know when to let go, did you?” A chuckle followed, soft and cold. Not hers. Not really. Sylvie was gone, gone, gone.

Jervis' heart thundered in his ears, loud, uneven. His hands twitched, searching for something to ground him. A surface, a texture, anything. His fingers closed around... nothing. Then, the tank vanished. He was weightless. Falling again. The voice—his voice—screamed something incoherent, something desperate.

“Jervis. Jervis, wake up.”

It was Stephen again, calling to him from somewhere far away, his voice low and warm, a lifeline thrown into the swirling abyss. Jervis clung to it, his mind thrashing in the dark, his body heavy and limp on the cold warehouse floor. But Stephen wasn’t here.

He knew it, even as the voice grew louder.

The darkness peeled back like tar, choking him, wrapping tight around his throat. The warehouse floor beneath him — solid, cool, gritty — replaced by a somewhat lumpy mattress. He wasn’t swimming. Jervis' eyes fluttered open. His joints were like jelly, his lungs burned, heart still racing. Barton. Matilda. His body felt detached, a stranger’s. But slowly, awareness crept in. The dream, the memories, they all slipped away like ash seeping through his fingers. He wasn’t falling anymore. But the past—the blood, the voices, the walls—they hadn’t left him. Not really.

Somewhere deep, a whisper curled into his mind: You’re still running.

[sleepyjuice]

toxic!rafe will blow your phone up the second you post something on instagram that he’s ‘iffy’ about.

you posted a photo dump which consisted of some random photos of the beach, some of your friends, one of you and rafe of course, but the one that had rafe seeing red was the last slide, which was you in a bikini. he texted you several times at first, and while you were literally typing your response, he called you. your fingers were typing so fast to respond to him that you accidentally declined the call, and he did not like that. you immediately went to call him back, but another text from rafe rolled in, saying ‘fuck you don’t talk to me we’re done’ you sighed loudly, knowing damn well he was talking out of his ass right now, so you sat back and waited for the inevitable next string of texts to roll in. which they did, only seconds later.

rafe <3: do you get off on making me mad or something

rafe <3: like i’m racking my brain trying to understand why you do the things you do and that’s all i can come up with

rafe <3: and i see at least 4 guys have already liked your post like that’s crazy to me?? thought i told you to block all the guys that followed you?? of course you didn’t

rafe <3: also who even took that pic of you??? bc i know damn well it wasn’t me so who the fuck you posing for with your fucking ass and tits out? WHAT THE FUCK

rafe <3: DO NOT PUT YOUR SHIT ON DO NOT DISTURB answer me rn.

rafe <3: nah it’s cool actually i’m gonna go hit up my other gfs so you have a good night.

you rolled your eyes at that last text, deciding to fully turn your phone off. you knew he would likely try to text or call you again very soon but you didn’t want to deal with it right now. this wasn’t your first rodeo, you knew nothing you could say to him right now would calm him down, so letting him freak out on his own was the best method to his madness.

three hours had passed since you turned your phone off. you had caught up on some reading and turned on your current favorite show, but found yourself interrupted by a knock at your front door. you expected it to be rafe, but instead it was a large bouquet of your favorite flowers and a gift bag. you glanced around to see if rafe was lurking around, but saw nothing. when he freaked out over text and was able to reread his actions, he usually waited a bit longer to show his face as opposed to a verbal argument.

you brought the flowers inside and set them on the counter before grabbing the card attached to the side of the bouquet.

sorry we argued. you are so beautiful and i love you so much. got you a little gift and sent you some money for food and i set your appointment with your nail girl for tomorrow at 10. love you forever baby -rafe

you couldn’t help but smile just a little. the flowers were beautiful and the note was pretty sweet, so you chose to ignore the part where he said ‘we argued.’ you didn’t get a word in, but you let it slide. especially after you opened the gift bag to see the new dior bag you had been wanting.

you hurried to turn on your phone, immediately seeing a $500 apple payment from rafe as well as a new text from a few minutes ago.

rafe <3: hope you like the flowers and bag baby. love you! :)

you: i love them. thanks rafe, love you too

rafe <3: good to hear. lmk what you end up getting for dinner and i’ll pick you up tomorrow to take you to your nail apt. can’t wait to see you baby

you would order yourself dinner that was obviously way less than $500, but you would send rafe a picture and thank him again. you’d facetime him before bed and conversation flowed like nothing had even happened just hours before. he’d ask you what color nails you were getting, tell you funny stories about the old men at the country club and excitedly plan what you two were going to do the next day. the cycle seemed like it would never end, but you often forgot about the bad when he was talking so sweetly to you and all you could think about was how excited you were to see him tomorrow.

[salemlunaa]

YOU’RE TRYING TOO HARD ꧂

burning yourself out over something so simple never ends well…

If you know me, have been following me for a while or frequent my posts, you might notice a pattern, I never use the word “enter” when it comes to the void/“I AM” state. I always use the words “tap in” or “induce”. Why? because you can’t enter something that IS you. It’s not possible,

you are the void,

you are I AM,

you are pure consciousness,

you are an awareness,

stop trying too hard, as soon as you think too hard about it, as soon as you look for “symptoms” as soon as you ask yourself if you’re “doing this right” youve fucked up. Why? because you are the operant power, let me ask you a question: who do you think you answer to? why are you asking if you’re doing this correctly when YOU’RE the god of your reality?

do you think you answer to these bloggers, including me, sitting back up after 5 minutes of “nothing happening” to go back to tumblr and double check the posts on here to see if you’re “doing it right”? do you think you answer to these success stories of people you don’t even know, copying what they did to the very detail so that you can shift? do you think you answer to the a million and one methods in this community, limiting yourself to thinking you cant shift if you dont do it like they did it, like that video said you should, like this specific blogger said you should? why are you answering to other people if YOU are the operant power, like you say in your affirmations? why are other people controlling you in YOUR reality? you are being sooo pathetic right now…

stop. trying. so. hard. this shit will always be as easy as breathing, this state of pure consciousness is owed to us

as a god you answer to no one, stop asking if you’re doing it right.

there’s nothing to do, just be

fuck methods and just be

get rid of this mindset that you have to work hard to shift/ tap into the void or “I AM”/ induce pure consciousness

get rid of this mindset that you have to put in any effort at all

get rid of this mindset that you need a method

although time is a concept, why are you putting hours of effort and energy into a routine to help you, what do YOU need help with? you’re a god, you don’t need a routine, just be.

As soon as you acknowledge that you are trying too hard to immerse yourself, take a step back for a second and remind yourself of the truth: no effort is needed!! Like i say, you can rack your brain so much that it drains you, trying to find the “cheat code”, and let me tell you, it won’t end well, and you will know that when in years time you are still here, still looking for “instant methods” all while living a life that you dread.

It should never be a chore, the second it feels that way or the second you feel that you’re draining yourself because you just “can’t seem to get it” take a step back, only for a moment, and calm yourself down because something that only takes you seconds is never that serious.

Relax, Deep breathing, Affirm “I AM”, Let go, that’s it. that’s all you need, nothing else, i PROMISE you

JUST BE, SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU CAN. NO EFFORT NEEDED!!🐆💋

also thank you to beyoncé for this gif and for letting me make this post (iykyk lmao)