#the reason I brought them up
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lin-lizzie · 2 months ago
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HI OK so I’m afraid I don’t have drawing references and I’m in bed rn but anyways
SPECTRIL HUSBAND LORE.
cough cough anyways… oh btw spoilers
His name is Lyx! He is (my self insert I’m sorry) a tiefling rogue!
He used to do assassin jobs before the Infinights formed, and technically was an infinight? 🤷
After the disappearances of the Infinights, he stuck around with the interns to help them and well. Find his husband.
Wasn’t taken by Paralyte because he managed to escape by the skin of his teeth
When they found Spectril… well yeah he was a bit heartbroken but then learned apparently he though Lyx was dead??? As told by Paralyte, so Leonard assumed that TWO lovers of his were dead oh wow that’s sad
But alas the two fight over… well, committing a giant fucking genocide
Ultimately though he chooses to stay and help Spectril with the raid
Only to kind of backstab him and help the Ishbjorn and uhh whatever the other people were to stop fighting and save innocent civilians who couldn’t fight (children as an example)
Which leads to him and Spectril getting into a fight
Then everything is resolved
Spectril and Lyx happily catch up with each other
Like old married couple the entire time
When the origin of the Infinights came up, Lyx knew and didn’t say anything about it but chose to blame himself for not being strong enough to do it on his own (how stupid are you)
Yada yada
Spectril and Slique fucking dies
Heartbroken husband
He leaves the Infinights
Masked person leads the anarxs
New Infinights fight their bosses (Slujj, Inku, Quadron)
When defeated Anarxs come in with masked person
Spectril and Slique save the Infinights
Masked person takes off mask seeing Spectril and Slique
Masked person leading the anarxs is Husband
He tries to make the anarx go after him
Slique and Spectril save husband
Turns out Entropa made a deal with Lyx
Lyx took it as he was lost after Spectril “died”
Ended up controlling the anarxs the entire time
I’ll just leave it there in terms of in campaign plot…
Lowkey don’t know what his alias would be
Like Lyx is his real name
Oh yeah he came from a small tiefling village
Casted out for. Was it being trans? Lowkey forgot
Probably going to change that though
But yeah he did go to Boulderay at a young age and met Slique and Spectril— I mean cough cough Ostin and Leonard
Three of them were besties
After the events of the campaign Lyx becomes a bartender
Totally not also part of my first ever dnd campaign story which has Lyx and Spectril as husbands and the main tavern is Lyx’s tavern noooo—
Left horn broke off on a mission, and he gave it to Spectril
“Lyx… why?”
“Well why not give my significant other a part of me?”
Lyx is very cold.
His weapon of choice is a kusarigama!
In the rock climbing competition between the interns and Slique and Spectril, he uses the kusarigama to his advantage
Oh pronouns are they/them/theirs mixed with he/him/his sprinkled in
Human looking tiefling, old Lyx used to be purple tho
Pink hair (wow what a shocker)
Debating on keeping his heterochromia or just making both eyes purple…
Scar on covered eye because ofc 🙄
If y’all want more. Especially on BOTH Spectril and his husband. Lmk. I miss my husband.
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schemelin · 2 months ago
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Palmer and Altairus
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xulips · 7 months ago
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I saw yr siblings parallels things for the tenmas... So what abt the shinonomes & uhhh hinomoris if I spelled that right :p
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the light in their eyes is what came into mind
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tanglepelt · 2 years ago
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Dp x dc idea 31
Danny is having a conversation with some dc hero this is the gist.
Hero: so your a meta
Danny: whats a meta
Hero: so an alien???
Danny: aliens exist?!
Hero: so where are you from
Danny: Illinois
Basically Danny has no clue what’s going on in the outside world. Whether it be a info blackout in amity or just him being to stressed to keep up. Just this hero trying to figure out what he is.
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turtleblogatlast · 7 months ago
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Small but significant character moments that I actually really adore are from both the times we see the boys as tots. There is a reoccurrence that happens in both of them that I find so incredibly interesting.
For the turtle tot short, Splinter leaves the boys with weapons. In the short, Raph is the one who suggests they do “what Lou Jitsu would do” and Leo is the one who takes point when Splinter comes back to reprimand them. Leo, in taking point, is the one to defend them and get Splinter off their tails.
And then, in the flashback regarding the Kuroi Yōroi helmet, Raph is the one who grabs and throws “Skully” as a way to replace their missing ball which breaks it into pieces, but Leo is the one who speaks for the group and rushes into action to fix the teapot.
I love this for multiple reasons, but the biggest are how it shows that Raph has always been inclined toward the bold and fun and making the plans to include his brothers in what he loves and believes they’d love, whereas Leo has always been inclined to be the “Face” of the group and shoulder the attention even if it’s potentially negative all while coming up with on the spot attempts to fix the situation.
#rottmnt#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#rottmnt raph#rottmnt leo#rise Raph#rise leo#I really do love this bit of character writing a ton#again it’s so small but like this is consistent!#little Raph just wanted to have fun with his bros 😭#Leo immediately coming in with the save both times (and more - remember Bug Busters?)#I really love too how none of them pointed fingers like#it was Understood that Leo would speak for them#listen there’s a reason Leo is the Face Man and it’s NOT just because he’s got a pretty face#he can talk both himself and his fam out of situations and I wish we saw it even more because it’s amazing to witness#circling back to Raph his bold nature is something I ADORE about him but I don’t see it brought up a lot which makes me so sad#like this boy is a RAPHAEL he is bold!!#and it’s cute too how the other bros immediately go along with it too#imo the Raph in these tot flashback is the same Raph that glues them all together as a bonding exercise#side note but damn…Leo saves them from punishment in the tot short and immediately gets jumped 😔#but yeah man I think a Lot about the little dynamics between the bros and how those dynamics could have first came into being#Leo being the face of the team and having been it since childhood-#-makes all the moments of immediately choosing to sacrifice himself when HE royally messes up all the more notable#if it’s one bro or the whole group individually he’s more chill about it but often still lets himself be the talker to get them out of it#he will do his damndest to get his brothers and himself out of trouble but once they’re in it he’s in the front with a smile#his own safety be damned#Raph is actually the same in that respect - he’ll jump into danger fists first but all bets are off when a brother is in danger#and like how Leo’s been the face - as the eldest Raph has been the de facto leader of sorts#he’s the one who is shown to make up their games! and I think that’s very cute#anyway their clashing in the movie is so interesting for a lot of reasons but one of them is that it shows how-#-even a longstanding dynamic like Raph and Leo’s that’s WORKED for so long is still susceptible to flaws…and to time
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bigcats-birds-and-books · 10 months ago
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Books of 2024: WELCOME TO YOUR WORLD: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives by Sarah Williams Goldhagen.
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lunar-wandering · 6 months ago
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do y'all think Macaque is falling back into the role that Azure and the others put on him by remaining on the outskirts of the group because he thinks his input/presence is unwanted (and yeah his presence isn't really wanted by MK and the others BUT. something about the fact Macaque is placing himself at the edge of the group, the edge that Azure and the others pushed him to, doesn't really sit well)
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#Monkie Kid#lego monkie kid#monkie kid spoilers#lmk spoilers#im gonna be completely honest: i think the only reason Mac HASN'T apologized is cause he thinks they wont listen to it#so he's trying to do things WAY more subtly and it's NOT working out#and when i say ''he thinks they won't listen'' i dont mean he thinks they won't forgive him#honestly the group would be split 50/50 between ''forgives him'' and ''suspicious but willing to let him try''#i FULL OUT mean he thinks they won't listen. that they won't even hear his apology and will just talk over/ignore him#or completely misinterpret what he's saying#THAT'S what he thinks#when he was being the villain he was putting on a show. it's HILARIOUS how obvious his actions are a front when you rewatch s1 and s2#but like?? being actually him?? he does NOT expect them to listen to him when he's just himself#sort of like a. ''if you want people to listen you have to anger/frighten them into paying attention'' kind of mentality#not a good mentality to have#it DOES explain why he reacts Like That whenever someone does something that indicates they DID pay attention though#like. listen hear me out. i do NOT think Macaque expected MK to remember the Warrior thing.#so when MK brought it up it hit him like a truck#also why he reacts like that when Wukong somewhat seriously answers his ''you know this is just the calm before the storm'' question#+ when Wukong says ''we''#cause he does not consider himself part of the group. hence staying on the outskirts#GOD this guy is such a delicious pack of trauma to dissect. thank you lego for giving me not one#not two#but THREE traumatized monkeys to analyze
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askblueandviolet · 3 months ago
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I need to see the spider demons please 😭🙏
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23z567 · 3 months ago
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immult · 2 months ago
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it's crazy to me that the only way you can fail the matron's test is by trusting your best friend or mother and caring for their plight. but not as crazy when you know they're a follower of the betrayer and a ruidusborn though, right?
imogen sounds so defeated when she asked if trusting her mother was bad. then imogen repeating the same again to the hells with this really helpless look. because the matron, a near-omniscient being, has written off her mother as something too rotten to be trusted.
"you know your mother best in the end" the way that does not change the fact that YOU have viewed her mother in the worst light. it's killing me but i have to love the consistent portrayal of the holy, at every level of the realm, putting the burden on others to find goodness or redemption in ruidusborns. but until proven otherwise they are personally fine with reducing ruidusborns to caricatures of an evil turncoat.
the matron of ravens was not there when the gods, despite luz/sarenrae's insistence to give it a chance, decided to distrust the rotten fruit and plucked it right off from its tree, setting off their own end.
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natabatts · 9 months ago
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they’re enjoying painting class ❤️💙
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here-comes-the-moose · 4 months ago
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When I’m writing my Modern AU but then try to figure out and calculate how the life I gave the Batch is financially possible:
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deeva-arud · 11 months ago
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Deeva Årud - Club Wear Voice Lines
When Summoned: Lights dimmed, tension building up… Are you ready to feel our rhythm? Summon Line: Playing music with friends is fun, I’m glad to be here even though I’m starting to feel a bit nervous.
Groooovy!!: We’d be delighted to see you at our next show. Spotting a familiar face among the crowd is always nice. Home: “Let’s rock and roll”, as some would say. Home Idle 1: I joined the Pop Music Club on my second year. Perhaps it’s quite a drastic change from my previous club but… it’d be a lie to say I’m not enjoying my time here. Home Idle 2: Most of the time I’m the one suggesting we should practice, but somehow Lilia, Cater and Kalim always distract me with all these unknown snacks and gadgets. Sometimes I have the feeling they do it on purpose… Home Idle 3: I need to warm my hands, it’s hard playing an instrument when they’re cold. Home Idle – Login: *humming Piece of My World* Ah- sorry, I didn’t see you there. Can I help you with something? Home Idle – Groovy: I’ve been playing violin and other instruments since I was a kid. My family has always had a connection with music and I’ll gladly continue this legacy. Conveying your thoughts and feelings through sounds is quite satisfactory. Home Tap 1: My first concert with them? Since it was the first time I’d be playing in front of many people, I knew I’d have a hard time trying to look at the audience. Cater noticed and told me to look at him so I could feel less overwhelmed… Let’s say I didn’t expect him to be so literal. His clones substituted the audience because no one came to see us. Home Tap 2: Hm, my violin? Indeed, it’s not the same one I use at Mostro Lounge. An electric violin is more suitable for the club’s activities. I’m surprised you noticed it. That means someone’s been paying too much attention to the musician playing ambience music… That was a joke. Home Tap 3: Kalim and I joined the club in the same year so I got to see how much he’s improved his drumming technique. It’s impressive. Certainly, Lilia’s been an excellent teacher to him. Home Tap 4: I like the idea of having customized masks for our performances. Maybe I should mention it once we have enough funds. Home Tap 5: I recently accepted to do some vocals just for our club sessions. You can come see us, but please refrain from telling everyone else. At the moment, I only feel comfortable singing for a few people. Home Tap – Groovy: When it comes to a band like this many wouldn’t think of a violinist, but that actually gives songs an interesting feeling, don’t you think? Duo: [DEEVA]: Ready for a shocking performance, Cater? [CATER]: Ready as ever, Dee-chan!
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86future · 2 months ago
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[ 2ND CHILDREN / 5TH CHILDREN ]
— The truth is, Unit 02 simply isn’t compatible with the other EVAs. (E14)
— I never imagined this boy could synchronize with Unit 02 without replacing its core. Quite astonishing. (E24)
Death & Rebirth Pamphlet / Cruel Angel’s Thesis OP / EVA-02 wiki / DEATH (TRUE ²) / E16 / E24 / DEATH (TRUE ²) / E22 / 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo Cover / E09 / The End of Evangelion / E09 / E24 / NGE Manga / The End of Evangelion
#neon genesis evangelion#nge#asuka langley soryu#kaworu nagisa#shinji ikari#mine#there’s something here that I find really interesting wrt narrative relevance#bc both asuka + kaworu r rly important thematically#point blank the show would be fundamentally different w/o asuka in it#but asuka exists outside of the ikari bloodline#if shinji dies there’s no show. if rei dies she’s replace bc she’s still necessary#asuka was incapacitated and they brought in a new pilot#all asuka wants is to be the most narratively relevant person in the room but she’s the least. she exists outside of the ikari bloodline#and so she ranks below shinji and she ranks below rei#unit 02 isn’t compatible w any of the other evas!#meanwhile kaworu is what kickstarts instrumentality. but if it hadn’t been kaworu it would’ve been smth else#he’s there for five minutes and then he’s gone. he shows up in glimpses#he doesn’t get to actually matter either not beyond a concept#i think there’s smth that ties them together there#which ofc makes their relationship to shinji fascinating#also lol I wasn’t going to include this as actually being anything but I do think it’s funny that 2+3=5 get it#2nd children + 3rd children = 5th children#im very funny#anyway where kaworu idealizes shinji well asuka has to tear him down#and in many ways this is for the same reason#all of the kids are means to an end. but i think asuka and kaworu r this the most#bc they could be anyone. Thats the thing#there’s no reason it has to be them. they could be anyone#the joke addition is ofc: feliz jueves vs quieres ser mi novio shinji?
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musicalmoritz · 2 months ago
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Defending Hakubo online isn’t enough, I need boxing gloves
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rinbylin · 1 year ago
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li xiangyi, yin, and femininity
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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.
#莲花楼#mysterious lotus casebook#lhl#lhlmeta#my posts#a big win for the inaction fandom. lxy would have been patron saint#this inevitably turned into a 'lhl is a taoist and buddhist story if not a very chinese story' meta hbhjbjhbhjjb#the last thing i do before going to sleep is write this meta. the first thing i do after waking up is write this meta.#i feel so insane writing this. it kept growing like a monster. do you think this is a joke it's like my part-time job now#but it's one of the few times in my life i have confidence in my insanity. so.#crazier thing is. this meta is approaching 6k words yet i still think there must be things i haven't covered.#the last section is so nuts idk how i even wrote it guys i think i was possessed#it's also like the most pretentious way to put that he's dead in this world ok hjbjhbhjbhjbjbh#to be clear iirc the drama didn't say LXY'S POWER/ENERGY IS YIN in the same way it literally said dfs's energy is yang#but it's definitely implied by the explanation of the flower's healing properties for both of them. on top of yangzhouman#also fuck. another reason he didn't choose to save himself was so dfs could have the yang flower which he believed was what dfs wanted#thank u frens mark and ana for indulging my brain in the first time i brought the lxy as woman thing up. for it to have come this far#ofc disclaimer is that a lot of this is my own reading. it doesnt have to be agreed by everyone#i would be very happy though if any part of it resonated with anybody#also a good part of the analysis is based on my memory of the show. though i did revisit parts selectively to verify. sooooo. yeah.
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