#patron of memory

[ghostyjpg]

yeah so fun fact i finished this half an hour before stream today.

[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.

[bonefall]

Thunder and Clear Sky are fighting and oh no! Clear Sky seems to be winning? But what’s this?? IT’S SLASH WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!

Funny enough I WAS actually planning a moment like that with the Wind Coalition. I might shuffle it now...

It was going to be one of the first times Bumble really showcases how good her ability to translate is. Thunder Storm was trying to painfully negotiate with Shadow's Group, or gets in some scuffle with Sky's Clan again (was still working out the details) and JUST as it seemed lost, Bumble shouted "HELP! MURDER!" in Parkmew, causing a cluster of WindCo cats to burst to the rescue

But maybe instead I can shuffle it so that there's a moment towards the very, very end of the diplomacy section where Clear Sky brings his WHOLE forces to destroy the tiny Clan, and THAT is when Thunder and Slash realize they've been pitted against each other.

Hmm... maybe I should back up and cause some sections in that diplomacy arc where Tall Shadow and The Wind Runner offer what Thunder needs in their talks, in exchange for being mercenaries against Slash's cats. Thunder accepts several times, since he was in Clear Sky's group where he "saw that it's true, theyre violent and aggressive..."

Show how it can benefit him to accept what the other groups believe about Slash and his cats, but also REJECT it by showing that in the end, it oppresses BOTH Thunder and Slash to be fighting each other and Thunder was completely wrong to accept their words at face value.

Thunder Storm isn't immune to being an enforcer of the systems he created a Clan to reject.

I think it would also be really good form to change Slash's name a little, because he's SO BAD in the original text, just to differentiate what I'm doing with him.

Hmm... since none of the other groups seem to have a Leader Power yet since they're so new, maybe SLASH and his group is the one with a little bit of magic? I could have Slash be able to die a couple of times.

I could have the white marks on his legs spread up every time he takes damage. Instead of straightforward "lives," however bad it was determines how vertical the slash is. So a REALLY bad death stands straight up, while every drain from weakness or starvation just loops around the leg.

Kinda like one of those heartbeat monitors.

Maybe the other groups call him Slash because of that, but it's not his real name...

[weedsigh]

"you're worth more than what others label you as, pocket" is this a new patron line? cause it's my first time hearing it in over 40 games and I really like it :')

[wizardofpalmsprings]

Too bad Siobhan isn’t there to translate “In nomine patris et filii et Santo Patron”. Wouldn’t break Brennan nearly as bad as “No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time” but I feel like it would still get him

[delarpix]

Some moments from DND campaign

[yeyinde]

https://www.tumblr.com/yeyinde/757486398049812480/thinking-about-simon-who-just-gets-out-of-prison?source=share

are you doing more on this one??? I literally started salivating I love terrifying men

this actually started the butcher!Simon series because i wanted to add too much into it, that i had to split it up lmao but this one is an unhinged mix between Tom Hardy's character from Warrior (vibes) and TCM. i will def be finishing it!!

[svampira]

[smallboyonherbike]

@btvspolls :))

(i know this isn't comprehensive i'm doing this off the top of my head bc i can't sleep. pls feel free to re run this differently would love it)

[immren]

not to ramble about my oc again but i was thinking about immren and his lack of selfhood due to bhaal's influence. then his realization that his body doesn't even belong to himself, it belongs to bhaal and his patron (who infested itself within his body)

so i was thinking about in my second immren playthrough (redeemed durge this time) and when he dies + gets revived by withers, his body doesn't belong to bhaal anymore + his patron recognizes that he Died so it leaves his body (its a really gross sight. freaks everyone in the party out). and Something Something, immren being allowed to be a person finally

no more warlock......... sorcerer only time...

[itslookingback]

was never a die hard fan of the came back wrong trope but if the dm lets me i cannot wait to rp it in our campaign if i die :3

[kaurwreck]

hey, really random question: I keep hearing this tiktok rumor being spread that apparently, chuuya’s appearance is really similar to a guy the real life dazai dated/had a crush on at 15??

I don’t buy this, but I was wondering if you had any idea what fact this was based off of/embellished, like if you knew what fact these people were talking about and exaggerating- nowhere I’ve looked has backed this up.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about and don’t feel like researching this that’s totally cool, I just know you do a lot of looking into the real authors and was curious if you’d come across anything like this.

It comes from a passage in Memories (also translated as Recollections) about Dazai walking home together with a boy from his class. There isn't any merit to the comparison.

I have great fun projecting the authors onto the characters, but I'd warn against projecting the characters onto the authors. They were whole people, and fandom's habit of plucking disparate quotes from context to caricature in lieu of literary analysis does a disservice to their wholeness.

[ace-and-ink]

i loved you, i think i did

or i do, i still

if the memories give me butterflies,

was it once true?

if it feels like you made my heart skip,

do you still?

you must, you should, you do

why else would i feel like that

when i remember you are forever away?

i love you, honestly

i love you, i do

i’m certain i did,

i think i’m certain i do

it’s surely love

why my stomach lurches thinking of you

let me prove it

let me prove myself

i swear i will,

just tell me i deserve to

i love you, truly

i love you, i do

memories, the memories

our bestest times, i still recall

i remember you trying to teach me to ride a bike;

the first time you cried in my arms;

seeing you downtown a few months ago

the way you pulled me into you with a vice grip;

curling up on your couch, clutching myself through cramps;

watching a movie from your youth

and i still listen to that song you showed me from it;

eating chili for the first time, though i never told you that;

crying in spite of myself over a movie

that’s existed forever it feels;

using the wrong wording and losing you for weeks;

i still remember the “plip plips”

of the fireballs in that mario game

i remember, i remember, see?

i haven’t forgotten you, i haven’t forgotten this

i love you, candidly

i love you, i do

you make me feel

that means something, right?

i felt then, i still feel

you still make me feel,

yet i still don’t feel enough

downtown a few months back,

you hugged me so tight,

like the vice grip i remembered

i fucked up my words a few years ago

and not having you sent me into

a depression i hadn’t felt so strongly before

i woke up from those dreams

with a somber ache in my gut

and thinking of the way things were

makes my stomach churn

and that means it was good, right?

i feel, you make me feel

that’s important, isn’t it?

i love you, sincerely

i love you, i do

i’ll tell you all i remember

tell you i deserve to love you

beg i deserve for you to love me

i remember our good times

my heart twists when i think of you so far

i dream of you, even

i dream of you

i’ll confess all this

spill it from my poorly sealed lips

to say i’m deserving of loving you

i’ll say it and shout

“see? see?

i remember! i think about you!

i love you, i swear!”

i love you, really

i love you, i do

i dreamt

and i thought

and i wept

and i imagined

and i can place you there, if i must

those fantasies

barely, but you’re there if i squint

i loved you once, i’m certain of that

as for the rest,

i’ve never been sure of much

i love you, surely

i love you, i do

i don’t know who this poem is supposed to convince,

me, myself,

or the girl with a suffocating hug

who could say just the right thing to make me cry

who could persuade me to her will with ease

who i know i miss,

but i don’t know if i want

and i know i don’t need

but i loved her, certainly

and my heart wept when she spoke in that tone

so surely it meant something, right?

i loved you, i think i did

and i could still, i could try

if she used that voice again

i would have no choice

— i love you, i swear

[clonerightsagenda]

Was reminded of this post yesterday and felt I should clarify that it is entirely from a human perspective and Hera would probably be annoyed if she found out. She's not a human four year old! That's patronizing!!

Now she is also projecting onto their relationship, she's just projecting over 'we're unwanted fuckups who were thrown away to fail and die, but they'll see, they'll all see!!!' instead.

Ironically post-amnesia Doug is more likely to go 'same hat' re: not fitting in on Earth, having a hole in your head, and people wanting to change your memories. Can't project your daughter onto someone if you don't remember having a daughter! I doubt this makes her feel better.

[kris-mage-fics]

Patron saint of Fandom Olds

Oh, nice! It sounds like fun to be the patron saint of Fandom Olds! Tbh, I was about to disagree with you, anon, and point out I've only been in fandom a few years. But then I remembered how I was really active on a well known Magic: the Gathering forum years ago when I still played. I also read a lot of the novels that WotC used to publish for each set. Over 20 years later I'm still pissed that my girl Rayne was fridged just so her husband, Barrin, would join the plot! So I guess I started out in fandom a lot longer ago than I thought, lol!

What do you think I'm the patron saint of?

[catsidhesilvie]

Ahhhhhhh Zilvra got big character development tonight in session!!

Long Zilvra lore and motivation musings!

She finally met her patron, after attempting to touch a shrine that granted visions to answer your most burning question/worry. Zilvra forced everyone else to go before her because she was nervous and afraid of what she might see, only for a wild fox to scurry in just in time and grab her skirt hem to stop her. (The question, by the way, would have been either "Who was it who kidnapped me to the feywilds in the first place" or "What happens when I regain my memory?")

Her patron then materializes and says that he has been pleased with her service and wishes to offer her a choice to stop her from digging around in her history -- he could either consider the contract fulfilled, take back the powers he granted, and and restore her memory (as was originally promised) now........ OR, extend the contract, since his last warlock didn't work out all that well and Zilvra was particularly useful. If she agreed to remain his for the occasional errand, he promised her all kinds of power and even to help with her friends who died (whose players are currently playing other characters...... hmmmmm something doesn't add up but Zilvra wouldn't necessarily know that), but asked in exchange that she handle the last remaining evil druid left in the woods. Then, he said he wished for her to rejoin him in the feywilds and serve him from there.

Her whooooole thing was that she wanted to escape the feywilds! That's what started her whole adventure in this game. She made the deal with this patron to get out, getting her warlock powers essentially just to complete his mission since she wouldn't have her memory of her druidic powers. The thought of her going back willingly would be totally against her motivations since the start............... but. He promised even more power, which would be useful (seeing as the party is about to fight a dragon), and said that she might like it in the feywilds more if she was as strong as she would be with a resealed pact -- that she could control some of the feywilds herself, even, to shape her own desires into reality.

It wouldn't have tempted her initially, because the whole ordeal has made her highly value freedom. Now, though, having learned of her past from a fellow surface drow in town who chanced to recognize her, she knows that she doesn't have much to return to post-adventure. That makes her slow down and actually consider the offer.

Her entire goal since level 1 was to escape the feywilds and complete her patron's task so that she could be done with it all and return to her old life and an important task she had been working on - she couldn't remember what it was, but that it was her duty. Thanks to this chance encounter with the other drow, she learned what that duty was.

She had been a druid, albiet a Circle of Spores druid -- which still placed her as "other" in her drow village in the underdark. When their home had been included in an attack by mindflayers, Zilvra had been sent to the surface to try to fetch assistance, since mindflayers were too powerful a foe for the drow alone. Being a druid, Zilvra was deemed most likely to be able to find surface allies. Instead, she vanished, and the help she was supposed to bring never arrived.

She had been trapped in the feywild, or otherwise unaccounted for, for 200 years. Now, her former home in the Underdark was in ruins -- the drow had succeeded in their fight against the mindflayers without her, but not before their town was leveled. The drow the party met explained that the matron of their house and other members of their town had recently returned to rebuild, but others had, like him, scattered to the wind, so she was free to do as she wished.

Zilvra's thirst for freedom turned into a curse of options. >:)

Where would Zilvra go, when this is all over? Her cleric friend has other friends and a place to return home to. Her wizard friend is only part of the party to finish the business of their deceased friend, and also has a home far away. The new barbarian in the party is still mildly standoffish and seems to be a mercenary only helping them for the coin. She does care for Mab, but even Mab had chosen to join the party for a particular goal -- to avenge his clan and retake his former home in the mountains from the dragon. Zilvra couldn't just invite herself to stay with any of them, and she wasn't sure that she wanted to return to the underdark as a deserter, or worse, a failure.

If she regained her druidic powers and memory, perhaps she could join a local circle and help to protect the forests.... if she could find a group that would accept her as a drow. Her warlock powers had granted her the ability to appear as a wood elf (or anyone else) at will, so getting by on the surface would be a fair bit more difficult if she only had her own humanoid face.

There was also the building anxiety of what she would be like with her memory restored -- was she still her? Did she think and act the same way? Would she still care for the friends she's made (the only ones she's ever known, given the technicalities)?

Her patron being fey, she was limited in what questions she could ask without giving offense, but he did elaborate that her tasks, should she decide to stay his, would primarily be related to protecting the wood from humans and others who would try to over-hunt or otherwise over-harvest the forest sacred to the fey -- something that, as a former druid, she assumes that she would be totally in line with.

Swearing her servitude to her patron indefinitely by doing what she would already be drawn to doing in exchange for purpose, power, and maybe even a chance to save her lost friends.... it suddenly became far more tempting than she could have considered.

SO now, two questions remain:

Can she trust her patron?

And

what does she want in the end?

Initially, Zilvra was unfalteringly loyal to and completely trusting of her patron, because she remembered that SHE had agreed to the deal to escape the feywilds. She trusted her own judgement, and his by extension. She initially kept her pact a secret, was focused on her mission above all else, and simply joined the party to try and increase the strength at her disposal with which to complete her patron's unknown mission -- but as time passed, she slowly started to see things didn't add up. Finding that she was a druid now cursed to make flowers wither was like a twisting knife, a cruel joke. Was it from her patron? Was it from another fey? Her patron being silent after her friends died and she had thought she'd completed her patron's mission also made her frustrated and wary, and the question of WHY she needed to have her memories suppressed continued to fester.

Meeting her patron now and having it confirmed from his own mouth that HE didn't want her to remember anything to keep her useful to him caused her suspicion to compound. For him to not want her to remember, to go so far as to travel into the material plane to stop her moments before touching something that would give her an answer to a question she hadn't stated, there must be something he has her doing that would go against her true self -- she just can't imagine what, unless she either wouldn't have been willing to work with him specifically, or if she did have something else important out there waiting for her. There's also the possibility that I haven't had her think of yet where she could have been a Talos-following druid herself -- not all druids are good druids! And oh man that would be a twist, having her hunt down and murder the druids that she had been seeking :O

Ultimately, she made a smaller bargain with him: she continues to serve him for now, and will defeat the last remaining evil druid in the area. The party will use her warlock powers as well to try and make progress in defeating this dragon. In one month, her patron will return with the same offer, and she will decide whether to give up all her warlock powers in exchange for her memory, and possibly returned druidic powers.... or, she will choose to sign a permanent contract in exchange for greater powers and assistance with her deceased friends, and eventually return to the feywilds with her patron.

Knowing the way time works in the feywilds, she warns the party she doesn't know if they will see him in a few days or a few years -- but that she has bought time. If it seems that they won't be able to defeat the dragon that terrorizes the area on their own, she could take that power to help.

I think, character-wise, it makes the most sense for Zilvra to reject her patron's offer. While she is tempted by her friends being somehow savable from death, the cleric of the party pointed out to her that it sounded fishy, so a seed of doubt exists to compete with her guilt over their deaths coming from a fight for her personal quest.

She will always be curious about her past, and she wanted to leave the feywilds. I think if the party gives her any indication that they will support her when she gets her memories back, or gives any idea of where she could go after this fight is over, she will choose to regain her memories, hoping that the experiences which she has gone through with them will stay with her and prevent her from being aggressive to them as non-drow.

That said, I don't anticipate that the DM will be swapping her class just before the final battle.... so I'd imagine that she won't hear from her patron again until at least just before the final confrontation with the dragon, and she might be able to ask to keep the powers for just one more fight.

AND there is always the chance that the DM is tricky and makes it so Zilvra doesn't reallly get the choice -- either she thinks she has to take the power to succeed, or she learns more about her past and does NOT jive with it.

Ofc then there is the bit where I decided to make Zilvra's downtime activity for the next few days as they await the Festival of the Moon researching local druidic groups and drow druids, sneakily, to see if she can discover any bit of history about herself from the surface before she was kidnapped by fey. If her patron catches her, that could be a whole ordeal bahaha.

I'm down for anything but ahh this is so fun :D