#I like to think he wrote a lot | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bleedingoptimism · 6 months

Text

It’s a little after eleven when Eddie finally manages to get Tarja to bed. It’s hard for her without her plushie. And really, Eddie is very thankful having a hyper-fixation with her toy seems to be the only ‘consequence’ of having divorced parents Tarja seems to have right now. He always worries if having two homes and constantly moving between them is good for her or not. Especially with Tommy being Tarja’s other dad, but against all odds, he’s good to her. So their kid is doing just fine. She’s happy. And if she’s happy, Eddie is happy.

He’s getting ready to open a beer and relax when there’s a knock on the door. He smiles, assuming is Steve bringing Toothless over and almost knocks his beer to the floor when he opens the door.

Steve looks… well he looks amazing, dressed to the nines. Must’ve been date night. But his eyes are red and puffy, his face covered in dark blotches, and his lips are swollen like he’s been biting them too much.

He’s hugging Toothless to his chest and he smiles at Eddie when he sees him, but he looks so sad it breaks his heart.

Eddie throws the beer behind him, sure it will land on the couch and cradles Steve’s face between his hands, “What did that asshole do?

Steve leans into his touch and shuts his eyes for a moment before sighing and stepping away from him, walking inside and sitting on the couch still holding Toothless like a lifeline.

“Nothing, he was just-” Steve shakes his head and chuckles darkly, “He’s just so mean,”

Eddie drops to his knees in front of him and dips his head to look Steve in the eye just like he did that day in the park.

“Break up with him,” he says.

“I can’t.”

“Tommy doesn't deserve you, Steve. You are worth so much more than what that asshole makes you feel. You deserve better. More. Everything,” Eddie pleads, placing his hands on Steve’s knees and squeezing, “If it’s because of Tarja, we’ll figure something out, ok? Lots of people keep in contact with their parent’s significant other after they break up” He rushes, the speech he didn't have quite prepared last week coming out of him in a single breath, “We are friends, right? So you can still visit and see her. Visit me. You don’t have to stop being a part of our lives.”

Steve is staring at him right now like Eddie just gifted him the moon and he’s so beautiful it’s kind of hard for Eddie to keep eye contact, but he squeezes Steve’s knees again to ground himself and does. Steve needs to know he’s very serious about this. About him.

Eyes shining, Steve takes a deep breath and nods slowly, a tear falling down his cheek that Eddie follows with his eyes and watches until it hides under Steve’s v-neck shirt.

“Hey, even I didn’t put up with Tommy's shit for Tarja’s sake and I birthed her,” he jokes awkwardly, trying to make him laugh and feels like doing a little victory dance when Steve snorts cutely,

“Okay,” he hiccups.

“Yeah?” Eddie smiles back at him, relieved.

“Yeah,” Steve sighs, “Fuck Tommy.” And drops back on the couch, looking exhausted, “Can I stay here tonight?” he asks in a whisper, like he’s afraid Eddie will say no. As if.

“Yeah, of course,” Is what he answers, and has half a mind to invite him into his bed but knows it’s a terrible idea. So he lends Steve his favorite flannel pajamas and sets blankets and a pillow on the couch and they say their goodnights.

And if he does a little dance when he closes the door to his room, no one is there to see.

In the morning, Steve stays for breakfast. And attempts to kill Eddie by making his heart explode, cooking it himself from scratch with Tarja’s help, who is so happy she won’t stop running around the kitchen making Toothless fly and sing about ‘happy family breakfast time’.

It’s actually hard to tell if she’s happier to have her plushie back or that Steve is there. Eddie, on the other hand, knows exactly what he’s happiest about. Death by tenderness. Is that a thing? He amuses himself thinking about a couple csi’s with sunglasses saying it,

“He died because he witnessed something too cute,”

“Ah yes, death by fondness. I’ve seen it before.”

After, Eddie walks him to the door and Steve smiles sweetly at him, and holds his hand, squeezing it once before letting go, “Well, see you. I guess,” he says bashfully and there’s a moment there, a second where time stops and Eddie thinks he should kiss him. Wants to kiss him, needs to kiss him.

But he doesn’t. Because Steve is still dating Tommy, and just because he said he was going to break up with him doesn’t mean he wants to start something new with Eddie.

Eddie himself called him his friend for the first time last night for christ sake. ‘Fucking chill’ he thinks to himself.

🧸

And then a week goes by without hearing a word from Steve. But Eddie doesn't hold it against him.

At first, he figures he needs time to think but then he starts to wonder if he really is going to break up with Tommy. Four days in, he gets paranoid about it. Maybe Steve got brainwashed into thinking Eddie is bad for him. Maybe Tommy told him Eddie was putting ideas in his head, that he shouldn’t talk to him anymore… With him telling Steve to break up with his boyfriend and all...

He’s well aware of how manipulative Tommy can be and has seen the way he belittles Steve to keep him around, so he knows it’ll be hard for Steve to actually go through with it.

And he can’t exactly show up at Tommy’s and steal Steve away, no matter how appealing the idea might be. The only thing he can do is just think of Steve, wish him well, and send him strength to do what he needs to do. At the end of the day, it needs to be his decision. His choice.

As Tommy’s week with Tarja approaches he starts getting more and more anxious, wondering if it’ll be Steve or Tommy who picks her up.

When the day finally arrives, and the doorbell rings, Tarja runs to open the door and Eddie peeks his head through the hallway.

“Daddy!” Tarja screams.

“Hey, Tata! You ready?” Tommy says and Eddie steps into the hall to greet him too.

“Not yet!” Tarja chuckles and Tommy smiles at her,

“Okay, go get ready. I’ll wait here,”

Eddie walks to the door and leans on the doorframe, “Hey,”

“Hi. Long time no see,” Tommy says and then adds, “You look great,”

“You don’t,” Eddie answers, because it’s true. He looks like shit. Greasy hair, bags under his eyes, chapped lips, wrinkles on his clothes, “What happened?”

“Steve broke up with me.”

Eddie’s eyes go wide and he smiles, he doesn’t even try to hide it, “He did?”

“Don’t smile, fucker,” Tommy says but there’s no heat behind it. He knows he deserves it.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, not sorry at all.

“Stop,” Tommy whines because Eddie’s smile is actually getting bigger,

“Sorry,” he repeats and then clears his throat, “Did he tell you why?”

“Because I’m a horrible person,” Tommy groans.

“Hey, the first step is to ad-”

“To admit it, yeah, yeah. I know” Tommy interrupts him, groaning again.

Eddie sighs, and punches Tommy’s shoulder lightly, “Look, Tommy, I’m just going to say this because, well… you are pathetic. You need to do better.” And then he points to his back, to where Tarja’s disappeared to get her stuff, “She’s going to grow up and realize you are an awful person and she’s not going to want you in her life. And I’m not going to dissuade her from it, because I already don’t want you to be in mine, you know that, right?”

Tommy looks at him seriously and then nods once, fast and hard. Like he gets it. Like he agrees and is determined to change. And Eddie hopes for Tarja’s sake he is. But knows, deep in his heart, that either way, she’s going to be fine.

“Also, just a heads up. I’m in love with Steve and I’m going to ask him out,” he adds in a rush when he hears Tarja running up behind him.

“You are shitting me,” Tommy whispers, shocked and clenching his teeth.

Eddie laughs, “Nope,” he says, closing his lips loudly around the P.

“Eddie,” Tommy warns him like he’s waiting for Eddie to say he's joking.

“What? I hear he’s single,” Eddie smirks.

“You motherfuc- Hey Tata!” Gathering Tarja in his arms, Tommy drops the subject but he glares at Eddie as he kisses Tarja’s cheek goodbye and murmurs ‘unbelievable’ as he’s leaving. Eddie closes the door and starts laughing at the look on Tommy’s face.

He needs to call Steve.

He tries a couple of times but he doesn’t pick up and he starts worrying Steve might not actually want to talk to him, and then there’s a knock on the door but Eddie, too preoccupied with his anxiety, opens without looking, thinking Tarja forgot something.

When he doesn't hear her, Eddie looks up from his ‘ignored calls’ screen to see nonother than Steve standing there, looking nervous and like a fucking dream with a bouquet of flowers in his hands. A fucking bouquet of flowers. For him. For Eddie. All different shades of red, because he knows is his favorite color.

Eddie just blinks at him a couple of times and Steve flushes even more and drops the hand holding up the flowers, scratches the back of his neck nervously, “This was stupid, the flowers were fucking stupid. They are stupid. I’m stupid, right?”

A laugh bubbles out of Eddie and he grabs him by the scruff of his shirt and pulls him inside. He closes the door once they are both in and slams Steve against it, crushing their lips together. Steve circles his arms around Eddie and holds him close, instantly returning the kiss with fervor.

They kiss as if it were fate. They kiss until it's hard to breathe and Eddie pulls away only to kiss him again, and again, and again.

“Not stupid,” he murmurs between kisses and feels Steve’s smile against his lips.

Eventually, Eddie takes a step back and lets Steve into his home properly, “Hi,” he says cheesily.

“Hi,” Steve says back grinning, then he lifts up the bouquet again, which is now completely ruined by him still holding it strongly while they made out like crazy, and his smile drops,

“Shit,” he pouts cutely, god Eddie wants to eat him. He laughs and takes the flowers anyway, putting them in an empty glass bottle, because he doesn’t own a flower vase, because he’s a normal human being. ‘Who the fuck owns a flower vase?’

“Come here,” he says, holding out both hands for Steve to take and follow him.

Steve takes his hands but doesn't move, instead swings them from side to side, “Wait, let's talk,”

Fuck, yeah. They should. That’s a good idea. Fuck. Damn, Steven Whatever-The-Fuck-Is-His-Middle-Name Harrington and his sensible and very logical choice…

Eddie huffs exaggeratedly making Steve chuckle and redirects them to the couch, where they sit still holding hands, “Alas,” he says dramatically, “You are right, we should talk. I actually wanted to ask you out properly, not debauch you the second you walked through the door. Sorry about that” he lies, not sorry at all, again.

Steve blushes and smiles, drawing little circles with his thumbs on Eddie’s hands, “Yeah me too. I wanna do this right. Ask you out. Go on dates. I think we should take this slow,”

Eddie makes a face and groans at that. He doesn't want to take it slow. He wants Steve to move in right now or something. Steve rolls his eyes amused at his interruption and keeps going,

“I came here to ask you out the right way because I want you to know I’m committed. But we should think about how this will affect Tarja… and Tommy too. We should go out a few times, spend some time alone, and I want you to meet my friends and my parents and I want to meet your friends and your uncle too and just do this properly and-”

Eddie interrupts him with a kiss, he can’t take it anymore, he’s been dying to kiss Steve for months now and he’s so sweet and thoughtful it makes Eddie insane, makes him feel like he needs to ruin him, but in a nice way, like with devotion and love.

Steve lets go of his hands to wrap his arms around Eddie’s waist and hoists him until he’s straddling Steve. Eddie leans his elbows on Steve’s shoulders, and buries his hands in his hair, pulling and messing with it.

“Okay but have you considered having hard, hot, wet sex, and then maybe we do what you said?” He asks panting against Steve’s lips and actually feeling how that punches the air out of him.

He hugs Eddie closer to his chest and whines, “Yeah okay, we can do it your way,” and gets up, lifting Eddie with him as if he were weightless. Eddie squawks and laughs all the way to his room.

🧸

They spend the week together, talking, eating, drinking, laughing and fucking. Except it’s more than that because when Eddie is inside Steve, with his tongue, his fingers, or his strap, it feels like more. It feels like love. Like fate.

Steve, still determined to take things slow, doesn’t stay there all the time, going back to Robin’s where he moved back to after breaking up with Tommy. He actually brings her over one day and the three of them spend the afternoon together. Eddie decides they are going to be best friends immediately because Robin is hilarious and merciless. When Steve gets back the next day he kisses Eddie so good and hard his knees almost give out on him and tells him he has Robin’s seal of approval. Something he knows Tommy never got.

When the week passes Eddie says goodbye theatrically as if they were cross-star lovers in a bad soap opera and Steve chuckles and calls him ridiculous but kisses him so passionately that Eddie drags him right back inside and they say goodbye again a few hours later.

They had decided to wait until Eddie talked to Tarja about her feelings over Tommy’s and Steve’s breakup and whether she still wanted Steve around or not before having him over again.

But when Tarja gets back home she’s gloomy and silent. She hugs Eddie in greeting when she arrives and then spends the rest of the day lying face down on the floor and occasionally sighing loudly, obviously trying to make Eddie ask her what’s wrong.

And really, Eddie shouldn't find it as funny as he does, but he thinks about calling Wayne and telling him he gets it now when Wayne used to tell him he had too much personality.

Eventually, he lies on the floor next to her and asks. Tarja looks at him with big sad eyes and says, “I haven't seen Steve in a million years! And Daddy said he is not his boyfriend anymore! So I’ll never see him again and I miss him”

Eddie coos at her, “I’m sorry you miss him little dragon, but you can totally see him again! Would you like me to call him? Since he’s my friend too?” Already trying to strategize on how to tell her they are more than friends.

Tarja lights up and jumps off the floor and onto Eddie, punching the breath out of him, “Yes! Yes! Call Steve! Steve smiles more when he’s with you than he did with daddy anyway. Why don’t you boyfriend him instead?”

Well… that was easy.

He chuckles and shakes his head, “That’s a great idea sweety, go grab my phone,”

Tarja runs and grabs Eddie’s phone off the table and hands it to him, he doesn’t bother getting off the floor so she kneels beside him listening attentively as he dials Steve’s number.

“Hi, handsome, you talked with Tarja already?” Steve greets him after it rings twice.

“Yeah about that, turns out Tarja talked to me, actually,” he chuckles, “Hi, by the way”

“Hi,” Steve repeats lovingly and laughs, “What do you mean?”

“She had this awesome idea!” he says winking at her and she covers her mouth with her tiny hands to hide her giggles, “That, since you are not with Tommy anymore, you should be my boyfriend instead,” he continues, voice going soft and chuckles when he hears Steve's breathless ‘oh’ on the other side of the line, “Come over?”

“Of course, gimme an hour? I'm with a client” Steve hums and Eddie whispers he’ll give him anything he asks for and hangs up.

An hour later Tarja is still lying on the floor, only now it’s with papers and crayons spread all around her when the doorbell rings. She looks up at Eddie excitedly and he nods at her, “Go on then”

Tarja runs to the door and opens it wide to reveal Steve standing there as beautiful as ever, giving Eddie a deja vu of the first time he saw him.

“Papa Steve!” Tarja yells and jumps up to hug him.

Steve gasps and falls to his knees with her in his arms and looks up at Eddie with shocked wet eyes.

‘So much for taking it slow,’ Eddie thinks with a smirk.

Fin.

☝️first part

☕🥐💕?

#stranger things #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #trans eddie munson #kid fic #i wrote something #i keep thinking about #you know how kid memories are weird and warped in your minds #i keep thinking about tarja being very much convinced that she is the one who got them to date just cause she suggested it to eddie #when she's older i mean #like they cannon convince her other wise she soooooo sure cause she perfectly remembers telling eddie to 'boyfriend' steve and that they #were not together before that #steve and robin think its hilarious #eddie hates giving her the credit #dunno if tommy gets a redemption ark but i imagine tarja and him have coffee from time to time and they catch up on their lives.#and tarja rolls her eyes a lot at him but he's not as bad as he used to be #its mostly like 'yeah yeah dad im sure tthings were different in your time sure'

1K notes · View notes

strangersteddierthings · 5 months

Text

In the 19 years Steve's lived in this house, never once has he slammed his front door like that. Too scared of his parents' wrath should it have caused any damage.

It feels good.

He almost turns around to do it again, a fuck you to his parents and every decision they ever forced on him, but then he remembers. They're all in there. Nancy, Jonathan, Argyle, Eddie, Robin. In his living room, making declarations and decisions about Steve's life for him. Or, well, one of them is.

Like his parents do. Did?

He didn't grab his keys, wallet, or even his coat, but he's not going back for them. It's cold, sure, but Steve's sure his anger will keep him warm until he reaches a destination. Any destination.

He just doesn't understand why- Why they keep doing this to him.

Why he keeps letting them.

No. No, that's a lie. He keeps letting them because he knows, deep down, he's not a fighter. Not for himself.

He'll put himself between the ones he loves and danger in a heartbeat; he's done that since the first time he watched a petal-faced monster peel its way out of the Byers' wall in '83.

But his parents trained the fight right out of him when it came to himself. It was easier to not argue, to just do what they wanted. They'd smile at him when he was good. They'd take him with on shorter business trips when he behaved. His mom would even allow a quick hug if he impressed a shareholder with how well-mannered and quiet he was.

He won their affections with obedience.

He's never- Nancy and he love each other now, but in the same way they all love each other after having survived the horrors the Upside Down. But Nancy never loved him the way he'd once loved her. That was bullshit.

Even Robin and Dustin. He knows they love him now. Will love him forever, going forward, but both had admitted to having a predetermined idea of who Steve was and what he was like and they weren't wrong but they also weren't right because Steve's never been Steve a goddamn day in his life.

Steve hadn't even known Steve until monsters came into his life.

The way everyone used to refer to him as the Steve Harrington was a judgement all its own. A thing that he was, and had no say to be otherwise.

Even Eddie, in the Upside Down, and now, in his own house.

Steve finally feels like he might be becoming who he really is and he's surrounded by friends and it just made him stupid. He'd thought it was confidence, when he pulled Eddie aside to talk, to confess, but then-

Eddie telling him he's confused. Like Steve is a child learning new concepts and not an adult who has been questioning how he feels about men since he first noticed other boys in middle school.

Eddie telling him, 'you don't want this, man. Not really.'

It's not fair.

Robin came out to him, and he'd just wanted to make her laugh so she would quit looking so scared. Eddie came out to him, and Steve had thanked him for trusting him. Jonathan, Nancy, and Argyle confess to all dating each other and Steve congratulated them. But Steve comes out and gets told he's confused?

And Steve didn't even refute it. Just got so hurt he couldn't be there anymore. Left his own house because he'd told Eddie he had a crush on him, and asked if he'd like to go on a date sometime and Eddie said no and told him he was confused.

Eddie doesn't get to decide that for Steve! No one but himself can decide if he like guys or not. No one gets to tell him he's confused about what he's feeling.

It's- that's bullshit, is what it is!

Steve turns on his heel and marches back to his house. His hurt has fully morphed to anger now.

Steve hasn't run away from a fight since '83, and he's not going to start now.

He rips his front door open and is greeted to everyone just inside the door, in various states of putting their winter clothes back on. All the faces look concerned, but he scans for Eddie's.

Eddie who looks relieved for all of two seconds, when it seems to dawn on him that Steve is angry, and it's directed at him.

"The appropriate response," Steve growls as he steps through his door and punctuates those words by slamming it shut again. (It's not as satisfying this time, because he sees how it makes his friends jump.) He barrels on with his words, eyes never leaving Eddie, "when someone comes out to you, is to say 'thanks for telling me' or perhaps even 'thanks for trusting me' or, if one is so inclined, to just say 'cool, dude' but you don't get- you don't get to tell me I'm confused!"

Eddie takes a step back, knocking directly in Argyle, who steadies him, but he doesn't say anything.

Maybe Steve should be more calm about this, given the audience, but he's not able to stop the words now that they've started. "I'm not confused, and I know exactly what I'd be getting into. You don't get to- to try and make your rejection my fault. If you don't wanna date me, just say so. But you don't get to try and tell me how I feel about you!"

From the corner of his eye, he can see Nancy trying to subtly shift herself and Jonathan away from the door, probably to get out of what really should be a private conversation, but Jonathan's a bit preoccupied by catching Robin around the waist as she lunges towards Eddie.

"What the fuck did you say, Munson!" Robin growls, arms swinging out like she's going to claw Eddie to death.

Argyle has inched back a bit, putting distance between him and Eddie in case Robin breaks free. "You dudes should probably talk this out in private."

"Byers, if you don't let me go right now-"

"Robbie, I got this," Steve says, because Robin shouldn't be turning on Jonathan when he's done nothing wrong. Robin continues to glare at Eddie for a few seconds before she makes eyes contact with Steve. He raises his brows slight -I got this- and she furrows hers -are you sure?-, so he tilts his head -yes, really- and she deflates in Jonathan's arms and allows him to drag her away.

"We'll just be in the rec room," Nancy says, looping her arm through Argyles and following after Jonathan.

Eddie doesn't bolt, which is a bit more than Steve expected. They both just stare at each other until they hear the click of the rec room door.

"Steve-"

"That was fucked up, Eddie," Steve interrupts.

"Yeah. It was," Eddie says, but doesn't offer up more, even though Steve is waiting for an apology.

"That kind of reaction is exactly why I didn't come out sooner. What would be the fucking point if no one even believed me? Or worse, if you'd given me that kind of reaction like, six months ago, I probably never admit to liking guys out loud ever again. You can't just- you can't decide this kind of shit for other people!"

"I know! I- I freaked out, and panicked, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry Steve," Eddie says, and he sounds sincere and looks almost fragile while saying it that Steve loses a bit of his steam. He doesn't want to just keep yelling at Eddie.

"Yeah. Well. Thanks for apologizing," Steve mutters, crossing his arms with a huff.

Eddie worries his bottom lip before he seems to gather all his courage and says, "have I fucked everything up between us?"

"No. Not- I'm going to, like, need some time to get over my crush, but no. It's- it'll just be take time-"

"No! I mean, I can't- if you don't, uh, like me like that anymore I get it, but I- what I meant was. Well. No, I guess that answered my question."

Steve is confused, now. For real, and not about his sexuality. "What?"

"What?"

"You did it again. Deciding for me if I liked you or not."

"Shit. Fuck! Sorry," Eddie drops his head into his hands and groans. "I'm fucking this up so bad."

"Than use, like, real, whole sentences and speak to me!"

"I like you!" Eddie blurts. "I have a crush on you, too, but I- I fucked it up!"

"Yeah. Kinda."

Eddie makes a really pathetic noise at that.

"Not so much we can't, like, figure it out, though," Steve offers. "Not, like, right now, because I'm hurt and angry, but like, I'm not going to stop liking you because of one fight. Not. Uh, not now that I know you like me, too."

"Oh," Eddie whispers, then frowns. "For real?"

Steve rolls his eyes. "I said it, didn't I?"

"Sorry, it's just, just good things don't happen to me. It's- I'm processing, okay."

Steve lets out a long-suffering sigh and heads towards the rec room. "If you want to leave to 'process' alone, I get it, but you're welcome to stay. We can get this party re-started and hang out."

Eddie's silent a moment, and Steve thinks he's going to ask if Steve's sure, but instead he gets a quiet, "yeah. I'd like to stay." and the sound of Eddie's footsteps following him to the rec room.

@i-less-than-three-you @nburkhardt @afewproblems @skepsiss

#steddie #pre-steddie more accurately #my fic #we have a lot of fic where it feels like the miscommunication is just one character deciding how the other feels #and i LOVE that trope. The angst of it all it just *chefs kiss*#but I dont think steve would let people get away with telling him how he feels #i think hed get hurt and then angry #so i wrote it #thats a lie. this STARTED as that trope (i even warned the discord babes) but while I wanted steve to stay sad instead he got mad \:#so its not actually the story i wanted to tell but it's the one i got

646 notes · View notes

essektheylyss · 6 days

Text

One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.

(Buckle in. This is a long one.)

In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.

As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.

Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.

This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.

I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.

But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.

So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.

But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.

But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.

It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.

He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)

So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.

But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.

(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)

#something something hope is a weapon hope is a discipline hope is a garden to cultivate!!!#HE'S SO GOOD HE IS TRULY EXEMPLAR OF THE WHOLE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEIN AND I DO NOT THINK THAT'S AN ACCIDENT #truly just like. enormous proponent of letting trust and curiosity into your heart regardless of the horrors.#it's hard and it makes you more vulnerable and sometimes it hurts so so much but it will also save your fucking life!#cr spoilers #critical role #essek thelyss #cr meta #I was gonna apologize for the length but I'm not sorry. I'm also not sorry for being insane about him but he's so special to me.#head in my hands he's so GOOD HE'S BEST BOI! GUIDING LIGHT NORTH STAR!!! LOOK AT HIM!!!#also truly if i had two nickels for a span of time with no essek sightings where I wrote a lot of fic #with deliberate personal acknowledgment that I was writing some pretty maximal arcs for him in terms of character growth #and then end up getting essek for half an episode and having to go OH WE'RE GOING THAT FAR ACTUALLY. FUCKING INCREDIBLE.#yanno. two nickels. but good lord I am thriving that it's happened twice #augh this is ONE of the pieces I need to write this week. we're not gonna talk about it

331 notes · View notes

baalzebufo · 1 year

Text

more of my awesome bread dough boy

#alloyart #fake peppino #pizza tower #peppino spaghetti #my personal hc is fakey CAN talk! he just mimics and creates a lot of imperfect sentences #also he still makes weird noises and occasionally like. Backwards Italian. but he is generally understandable #not much tag rambling this time... read the thing i wrote about fake peppy on my blog instead im proud of it lol #continuing with my running joke that fake peppino wants to make peppino into a pizza . i think he can kneading him like bread dough #peppy is none the wiser. hes just glad hes so good at massages. really gets the stress knots out

2K notes · View notes

zevranunderstander · 13 days

Text

number #1 tactic that people use to not sound as racist as they are when they talk to black people: 'uhh so you AMERICANS need to stop pretending everything is about YOU. why should i know this im not from the us :/' (= is talking about like. a phenomenally internationally well-known black artist)

#myposts #kendrick lamar #drake #i updated it from 'white europeans' to 'people' because some people pointed out that 'gringo' is probably more south american lingo #but the point i wanted to make is like. there is this subset of european people (quite a lot of them)#who try to deflect by saying them not knowing these things isn't because of an active lack of disinterest in black culture and influences #and like. them not knowing who a certain black person is is never an educational failing on their side of any sorts #but instead are pretending that like. they are by virtue of being european always correctly educated on What History And Art Is Important #like. 2 months back that one post pretending that 'us europeans dont need to know all your AMERICAN writers 🙄' talking about james baldwin?#like just because that person didnt know who james baldwin was #they immediately were mad at the implication that They Didn't Know Someone Of Cultural Significance #and twisted it into 'well he cant be that important by virtue of me not knowing him'#like completely ignoring that the european school system also has. race problems and also ignoring that he lived and wrote in France too #but like. its this really racist defence mechanism of like. 'well you stupid americans always make everything about yourselves'#i hope i make sense i didnt think this would blow up lol #and like some people in the notes of that post were so smug about not knowing who Kendrick Lamar is #bc to them thats like 'oh im too cultured to be listening to rap of any sorts' like completely dismissing his music as kind of second class #by virtue of it being rap and black music and him not being in the White Mainstream as much as other musicians #(i mean hes still like 24th most listened artist worldwide but you get what i mean)

165 notes · View notes

quinn-pop · 8 months

Text

let’s do some autistic meta knight headcanons!! over explaining my interpretation of meta knight yet again wooooo

this orb has NO idea how to talk to people!!! outside of work anyway. a lot of this is partially due to upbringing (suppressing his emotions all the time) but he does not know how to express emotions, like…at all.

this goes into a few things

1. yeah talking is hard. even after figuring out what he wants to communicate he will struggle. conversation can be so overwhelming, especially under pressure. he will need time lol

2. because of that, forming connections is hard. i really don’t think meta is much for shallow relationships, and certainly not early in the timeline. which also means he has very little experience with friendship. so a lot of the relationships he did have went kinda neglected, and issues that probably could’ve been worked on by talking became…*cough romk* escalated.

3. honestly i wouldn’t be surprised if meta convinced himself he couldn’t feel emotion (anymore) until like. katam-ish. he tried very hard lol

vulnerability is terrifying. (though this gesture here is also just comforting, like his little cape cocoon thing he does.)

unmasking—yeah im taking the mask thing very literally here—is a big deal and a very slow process for mk. i’m sure he has a lot of feelings on that lol. it served as a way to ensure no one could ever, y’know, see him.

i can’t say i think he’d ever fully ditch it—there’s always gonna be some days that are more stressful than others and if having it could help him get through it, it just makes sense. mainly when working.

it really is about vulnerability. granted, i don’t think he has the most expressive face (in my head every astral just tends to stare at things) but i doubt he has much control over it. can’t fake a smile but also can’t hide it. probably blushes easy because yeah, astrals; just look at kirby’s face.

just the idea that someone might be able to read his expression and know what he’s feeling before he’s ready for them to (or even understands it himself…) yeah he doesn’t want that

but emotional turmoil aside, i think his mask also hides a lot of his stims

remember that whole “suppressing your feelings” thing? yeah turns out that ignoring half your instincts isn’t a good idea. so in true meta knight style, he tries to stim as subtly as possible

1. he has the least control over his wings, so they will flick and twitch on their own. they’re usually a good indicator of how he’s feeling, not unlike the body language usually seen in cat ears and tails lol. flapping is also an extension of this of course, though he probably suppresses it more.

2. this also effects when he takes his wings out. pretty much every time he’s excited or nervous it just happens. kinda makes me wonder if his wing cape ordeal might also go into the suppression thing… (i’d say yes, but using a cape is also very comforting so it’s not necessarily a bad thing)

3. going back to the mask thing; he stims a lot underneath it. think like biting or pursing your lips. he bites his tongue and clicks his mouth. that sort of thing. his mask also makes it harder to notice that he is constantly sighing, humming, grumbling…all that

one nice thing about the mask though is that it helps a little bit with lights!!! woo

(look at him and his magically floating glasses)

sensory stuff—i think he’s mostly bothered by light and sound. maybe a bit of texture. he’s pretty sensory avoidant and perfectly happy standing off to the side not touching anything.

the one exception to this is physical affection, which is, despite all of this, most of how he shows affection. it’s a lot easier to hug someone than to try to explain your feelings for them, after all.

i think he would like pressure though. so that’s probably part of it. and i’m pretty sure there’s some connection in here to fighting (dang, is that the only way he knows how to get his energy out?)

anyway, pretty much all of this is in contrast to kirby, who i would gladly nominate as the champion of Doing Whatever He Wants. he might pick up a few bad habits, but he will never mask the way meta knight does. he might not understand how he feels, but he’s in tune enough to express it…usually.

this is a very good thing for meta because it helps him to do the same thing. kirby’s so energetic, it’s hard to not want to stim with him. it reminds meta to be kinder to himself and explore his own emotions. he can also help kirby understand themselves, so this connection is very important.

yeah, at the end of the day, everything kinda just boils down to kirby and mk as parallels

this is the conclusion i promise

to me, meta’s arc is about growing stronger by growing kinder, and this is mostly by learning to be kind to himself. letting himself be a person again, loving and understanding other people, and eventually, letting go of all the expectations placed on him and doing the things he’s always wanted to do…

autism headcanons are fun for me because it’s cathartic to write, but at the same time, it just makes sense in this sort of narrative. meta is, to me, inseparable from these things. and so is kirby! that’s a dynamic that’s a lot of fun to play with, and it’s at the heart of my kirby interpretation.

if you actually read all this WOW thank you

#i almost considered not posting this on a wednesday but then i wrote everything and uhhh yeah i think i gotta so #happy cringe day wednesday #for as many notes as i have on these characters i really don’t talk about it much #but meta knight is a special case because i am terrible at subtlety and he wouldn’t be meta knight without it #so this is to contextualize some things #because of what ill have in the next few days haha #basically these are just things i consider when writing meta #but a lot of it is subtextual and i dont know how well it comes across #kirbyposting #kirby #meta knight #headcanons #autism headcanon #this is practically an essay lol oops #i have like 2/3 of a fic that explores most of this in a way i probably won’t do again #but we’ll see if i ever finish it #god kirby concepts are so fun to chew on #i overthink everything i make so much lol

429 notes · View notes

aq2003 · 6 months

Text

really love how throughout a lot of smith and jones martha is really skeptical and apprehensive towards ten (+ one of my favorite exchanges between them - "what, people call you 'the doctor'?" "yeah?" "well, i'm not. far as i'm concerned, you've got to earn that title."), not taking everything he says at face value, even doubting the fact he's an alien until over halfway through the episode.. And like. i really truly think the thing that wins her over isn't him kissing her or any of the other insane mixed messages he manages to send, it's this scene here, where he /earns that title/ in her eyes:

(+ david's bit in the commentary, where he says: "[the doctor] has actually sacrificed himself, and - i would say, that that final act of selflessness is what finally, eventually, welds martha to him. [...] and she now returns it. she returns that act of selflessness.")

this is what their relationship is built on. it isn't about martha being the second-best replacement to rose or a rebound or whatever. bc it isn't really about rose. it's about doctor-in-training martha meeting someone (quite literally, "the doctor") whose ideals she aspires to, and doing her best to be the same person to him as he is to everyone else. it's about ten in return admiring her intelligence and inquisitiveness and how she cares for human life, recovering his compassion, letting himself lean on her for support - and then remembering at the most inopportune moments that he's supposed to not need anyone and be on his own forever. And around in their little nightmare loop they go where they save each other over and over until one of them breaks

i've seen ppl look at martha and go "why she does she admire/why is she so in love with ten if he acts like that to her?" or something along those lines and like. it's not just the fact she's in love with him (in fact i'd argue she actively tries to push it aside post-gridlock). it's the fact that she knows he's the kind of person to put everyone else's lives/well-being over his own. she trusts him to save her when she's in trouble even though it's been like two days at most that they've known one another bc she recognizes that same "deep all-encompassing drive to help others" in him. and she also recognizes, much much earlier than him, that he needs someone to save him, especially when he's unwilling to save himself. and yeah for a bit she thinks he returns her feelings and is just playing hard-to-get, but she realizes pretty early on that this probably isn't the case, and i think that realization fully solidifies here:

(this is when she's listening to ten talk abt gallifrey). And idk it might just be me but i think this expression isn't just her empathizing with his loss. it's also guilt, for wanting something from him that he's clearly unable to give when he's wracked with so much grief. (and you see it in the next episode, where tallulah asks if they're together and martha says for certain that they're not, and that he doesn't know about her feelings for him. she keeps everything to herself bc she now knows that when he shut her flirting down at the end of 3x01 it was the genuine reaction of someone who a) isn't interested and b) is scared of getting close with someone else again)

freema described their dynamic as "she's keener than him" and i think about this all the time. martha doesn't really take what ten throws at her. what she does instead is constantly poke holes in his already-failing front of "i will show someone the wonders of the universe so i can ignore what is wrong with me". what she does is stand up and fight him when he tries to go off on his own. what she does is put aside her well-being in favor of helping someone - just like what she saw him do for the people in the hospital when they first met. tldr, that's the doctor and his doctor and rip martha you would've loved who's gonna save u now by rina sawayama

#THIS ISNT ABOUT ROSE WE CAN STOP THINKING ABOUT THAT WHITE GIRL FOR 1 SECOND. IDC #ALL SHE DOES W REGARDS TO MARTHA IS REMIND HER THAT TEN ISNT GOING TO FALL IN LOVE W HER.#ALL SHE DOES W REGARDS TO TEN IS REMIND HIM THAT EVERY TIME HE LOVES SOMEONE HES FATED TO LOSE THEM. WE CAN IGNORE HER PAST THIS. GBLESS #martha jones #tenth doctor #dr who #ten and martha #'theyre like a rebound' shooting you with my laser eyes sorry. martha says it when she still thinks he's taking her on dates #if he hadn't opened up about gallifrey she would've been totally fine w him taking her back home #and meanwhile ten is very unaware of any kind of romantic element until like the fuckinn. last possible moment lmfao #they are doctor and mentally unstable bus driver. Or perhaps grieving man (genderneutral) and their One (1) friend that has to support them #um idk what this post is. i wanted to pick apart martha's brain for a hot second.#edit:#it's not like 5 am and i'm reading these tags and they're a lot more mean than i meant to put them down as #Not changing them bc i already wrote so much it's out there in the world already sorry. just imagine i'm saying this all nicely #10 era

362 notes · View notes

yuri-is-online · 4 months

Note

I can get why yutus so afraid of azul. He's heard a hundred stories about a suave, smug, but clingy octopus and then he meets him and hes this possessive little swinderler who's trying to get him to sell his soul to him and fuck his parent lmao

referencing the tags on this ask about this au

Tako Yutu didn't have the easiest time as a kid.

He was a chubby little thing raised by a single parent who didn't have the clearest memories of his father, or of their past at all really. I wrote Yuu and Yutu as being a sort of outcasts in the community because people thought they were strange, and were skeptical of Yuu's amnesia. Azul! Yutu was really bothered by that, much like his dad he got bullied and sought solace in books, but unlike him Yuu decided to enroll Yutu in some martial arts classes and hey. He was pretty good at those, his submission holds are real bad news, even won him some competitions. But he's not some muscle head even if he sort of looks like one (he didn't really drop his baby weight so much as he did bulk up) so when he gets his first real look at his father... everything in him is screaming that this guy is sketchy. He knows that Azul and the twins are watching him even if he can't see it outright and to make matters worse, when he asks his parent about him they make a face. A face Yutu knows well that he thought was reserved for the annoying nosy couple who lived next door to you and not his father. His father who Yuu's few memories had made sound wonderful; his father who was supposedly talented and hard working, smart and proud of it, but so desperately in love with his parent they still longed for him with broken memories in a completely different world. His father who Yuu had said he was so much like.

"He's not a bad guy." Yuu says and Grim huffs.

"Don't listen to them Henchuman 2." Yutu has no idea how he feels about Grim calling him that. "Azul's reeeeeeeal bad news. If he's interested in ya' it can only mean one thing, he's after your tuna and he's after your magic."

"That's two things." A smooth voice says at the same time he does and for once, Yutu sees surprise on Azul's face when he tries to make eye contact and not carefully calculated confidence.

"Well they do say great minds think alike." His father says and extends a hand. "But I must say you didn't strike me as the shy type, it is Yutu right?" The way he says it, the way he shakes his hand, Yutu knows he at least suspects him. So he smiles and makes sure to make his handshake just a touch too firm when he responds.

"That's right." Yutu is impressed that Azul doesn't flinch even slightly when he pulls back his hand, if anything his little action makes his smile wider. "And not so much shy as just curious and knowing better than to poke my nose where it doesn't belong."

"Not until you've asked anyway." Azul really isn't content with letting him remain ambiguous, he thinks nervously glancing back to Yuu. "But still there really is no need to bother the prefect over such trivial things, if you have questions about me you can just pay me a visit at the Mostro Lounge. My door is always open to poor unfortunate souls such as yourself." Azul smiles at him and adjusts his glasses and Yutu is... impressed even if the thought of being alone with this man terrifies him. But he's going to have to be eventually, Azul really wants to talk to him for some reason and Yutu finds himself wondering if he's going to find it possible to lie, or just what price he will be expected to pay to have the privilege of keeping his secrets.

But when he looks at the way Azul talks to Yuu... he isn't sure if he likes it but he does find it funny. Azul is so horrendously down bad and Yuu is so unaware of it (there's a part of him that thinks Azul might be a little bit jealous of him which he finds really funny). And Yutu understands why Yuu likes Azul so much. He is everything they remembered him being: smart, ambitious, and motivated. It makes him a little more secure in his existence even if he doubts that Azul will like having a son like him. But that's ok too because a son like him is exactly what's needed to make sure his parents get to stay together in this timeline.

now if only he can convince him to stop bugging him for his real name

#<3 asks #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #future kid au #azul ashengrotto x reader #i was in a big azul phase when i wrote all this au stuff so azul and riddle yutu are more fleshed out than some of the others #idk i like talking about this au #and it is nice to be able to post something since my current work is still fighting me for every inch i am so sorry #meh i had a um picked out for azul yutu that required him to have a lot of physical strength to not get hurt using it #so he sort of needs to be stronk ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ but he still feels self conscious because his dad is a smort guy who dislikes muscle heads #... not that i think azul would hate yutu because he is extremely smart and good at reading people and more importantly #he's his c:#and that's really what matters #sorry for the essay in the tags i should be asleep

117 notes · View notes

thermodynamic-comedian · 3 months

Text

i can understand being a jonah magnus hater. i can understand being a peter lukas hater. but if you hate simon fairchild, i do not understand you. not one bit. you are a liar of some kind, surely

#personally i like all three of them a lot and i think all of them are excellent characters #but like i guess some people could find jonah's antics annoying instead of cute.#and i find it believable enough for someone to dislike peter's general demeanor.#but simon? he's just pure silly #jonny wrote him silly. karim played him silly.#tma #the magnus archives #simon fairchild #jonah magnus #peter lukas

111 notes · View notes

43sol · 1 year

Text

i can finally go back into the tiger and bunny tag ヽ(*。>Д<)o゜

#one difference in this new season is that there was a lot more death like 100% more not just in like headshots #plot threads kinda went little tangled at the end there but overall not too bad #some character resolutions i wanted a bit more from but oh well #Lunatic they kinda wrote in a corner so understandable how they closed that one tho #lol first thing I said was nooo whos the director of justice noww #also the fact he was taking government calls in his little torture dungeon man cave #got barnaby crying multiple times NICE #i would have liked a bit more angst for moi #already thinking up some sillay stuff hehehe #tiger and bunny #tiger and bunny 2

642 notes · View notes

faunandfloraas · 2 months

Text

Eternity, Bang Chan - 2024 // Eternity, Arthur Stace - 1932 to 1966.

In 1932, residents all over the city of Sydney started noticing something interesting, the word “Eternity” written on the pavement or wall, over and over again. The word was seemingly written by the same person each time, in a beautiful copperplate script. The mystifying and intriguing presence of graffiti before graffiti was commonplace had Sydney residents pondering who this "Eternity man" could be. In 1956, the mystery was solved- Arthur Stace, a former soldier and alcoholic, turned man of faith, had inscribed the word over Sydney's suburbs more than half a million times between 1932 and 1966. He chose to write the word in the early hours of the morning, when few people were around, managing to keep his identity a secret for over 20 years. Something about the word eternity, written in fleeting chalk on the ever-changing city streets, seemed to compel locals- Newspaper writers published account after account speculating on the identity of this unknown man and the occasional false confession helped to maintain the air of wonder and mystery that surrounded the anonymous "Eternity man". Even after his identity had been revealed, Mr. Eternity, as he came to be dubbed, continued writing his eponymous "Eternity" across the walkways and walls of Sydney for another decade, becoming a beloved character in the city until his passing at the age of 82, in 1967. Now, nearly 60 years after the final "Eternity" by Arthur Stace was written, his message of eternity still manages to permeate the minds of Sydneysiders- becoming a representative word of the city.

#As soon as I saw the music video was all him (and berry) walking around sydney and the song was called eternity I couldn't not think of this #and no one optimizes sentimental Sydney boy like Christopher Bang so.#Thus this idea was born.#stray kids #Bang Chan #christopher bang #bystay #skz #skzedit #stray kids gifs #skz gifs #sydney #arthur stace #cb97 #funny how he wrote it in chalk and they've all long since been washed away- and he was poor and had no children #yet his little eternity signature means he'll be remembered a lot longer then he ever would have been otherwise #at the 2000 olympics they lit up an eternity across the harbour bridge in his writing #and there's a theater named for him too

145 notes · View notes

eggcats · 12 days

Text

I got distracted thinking about Housewife Vox, and if I had Vox's powers, I'd have blown out the city's power grid. So this is a completely self-indulgent (with some nsfw-ish near the end) fic offshoot of that post.

The other post you can choose to be one-sided, but this RadioStatic is reciprocated here. You were warned.

There's like, quite literally over 3k words here, and none of the (mild) nsfw-ish stuff doesn't even start until we hit 2k. Oops.

Alastor isn't completely unaware he's essentially kidnapped someone to live with him, in a way that could be misconstrued as a partner. He's been in hell for about 20 years, and before that, he lived in areas no one would exactly call....normal to typical white picket fence Americana. He's not completely ignorant of how it looks.

However, he's never been really good at noticing when other people have Those Kinds of feelings towards himself. (He doesn't feel those things, and so he doesn't even notice any supposed signals being sent). It's not even always intentional, it just never occurs to him that someone could (or would) be interested in him in such a way.

And so. He doesn't realize how Vox feels towards him. Not until he invites him to Cannibal Town to meet his beloved Rosie, and Vox can barely bring himself to be his typical charming self.

The tea is awkward, and Alastor is a little upset that, apparently, Vox is only okay with his cannibalism when it's not in his face - but isn't willing to accept it when he can't ignore it. Alastor is aware that his tastes are a little alarming to most of hell's population, but he thought Vox accepted it in him. (Perhaps he only made him dinner when it was venison because he could ignore the rest of it? Alastor assumed he usually prepared his sinner meat simply because he was the one bringing it in, but perhaps he was mistaken.)

It's not until the next time he visits his dear friend and he laments the issue when he discovers the truth. (He adores his Rosie, but the laughter she did in his face for his confusion he could have lived without. If he was any less of a gentleman, he would have mocked her snorting, but alas, his mother raised him better than that).

So now Alastor has to consider the fact that Vox himself is also aware of the strange dynamic they are living under and is apparently very interested in keeping it. (Even to the point of trying to scare off potential competition, an idea that is so laughable that he can't help but chuckle a bit.)

If that's the case, then he will simply continue on as normal. If he mentions him and Rosie simply being extremely close but neither having any romantic interest in the other before the next time he invites Vox to Cannibal Town, there's nothing more to it. (Vox's expression after doesn't do anything to him, nor is he pleasantly surprised how non-judgemental his picture box is when he isn't attempting to stake a non-contested claim. He also pointedly ignores any looks Rosie might be throwing him behind Vox's back.)

Alastor, therefore, believes himself to have resolved this "issue."

Vox, however, doesn't realize how blatant his affections are and is somehow convinced he's keeping them hidden. Vox, while enjoying PRETENDING to be a housewife to an attractive (cannibalistic, violent...oh, those teeth...) man, is terrified of accidentally crossing a line he's not aware of. He knows Alastor is okay with how they're currently operating, because Alastor is the one who created it. But, he hasn't shown any interest in anything MORE, and so Vox feels like he must content himself with just that - fantasies.

(If he sometimes imagines being swept off his feet when Alastor gets home and ravished on "their" marriage bed, well, that's between him and the walls).

Or it would be, if Alastor wasn't Alastor.

See. Alastor has a great deal of affection for Vox, but he's aware that they are in hell and that no one is here by accident. He doesn't LIKE the idea that Vox may simply be using his own interest for an advantage over him when he's vulnerable, but Alastor can't deny the very distinct possibility.

Even excepting that issue, Vox himself did not land in hell with the same right-out-the-gate power, and as it stands, any of Alastor's enemies would surely target Vox as a weakness of his. While certainly his picture box isn't completely as helpless as he likes to pretend, the idea of anyone even attempting to stake any kind of claim on him makes Alastor want to bite something.

So whenever he leaves, he uses his shadows to observe what Vox does on his own in Alastor's living space. He doesn't tell Vox this for a magnitude of reasons - wanting to see how he operates when he thinks he's alone, as well as Alastor having the ability to self-reflect enough to know his possessive ownership of things he considers HIS isn't something most others are okay with when that comes to other people.

(Alastor will find out later that Vox is absolutely more than okay with Alastor considering him his and very much LIKES his possessive attitude).

And for the most part, Vox doesn't do anything of note. Alastor has his shadows keep watch on him, but to allow Vox his privacy, he doesn't actually have them report directly or watch through them - unless his shadows believe something is relevant for him to see. So for a few weeks, his shadows presence around Vox when he is away is more of a security measure than anything else.

But eventually, they pick up on something strange. It's not a lot at a time, but it seems like Vox has taken it upon himself to steal small amounts of money from him. Alastor tries to negate this by simply inviting Vox shopping along with him and allowing him to choose whatever he wants to purchase. Alastor has even suggested Vox going shopping with his money on his own (while being protected from the shadows, of course) but even that was rejected.

Alastor can't understand any of it. He would understand if Vox was looking for some kind of escape from living with him, but the one (and only) time Alastor suggested Vox having his own place to live, Vox looked like he had shot his beloved pet in front of him. (Alastor is ignoring how pleased he is by this response. He didn't WANT his Vox to leave, but he refuses to be a similar man to his father and force him to. He enjoys treating Vox as if he belongs to him, but he wants Vox to want the leash - and not force it upon him).

Perhaps he simply enjoys theft. There are worse sins in hell, and it's not like Alastor is HIDING his money from him. The money would have undoubtedly been spent on his picture box regardless, so he doesn't mind as long as it brings him pleasure. To each their own.

Except one day after Alastor leaves, so does Vox. Which isn't completely unheard of, but him taking the stolen cash IS enough of a deviation from normal that his shadows alert him about it.

So Alastor follows him, determined to understand how the mind of his picture box works (so he can take care of him better so he'll never leave). And Vox goes clothes shopping, which wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary, except he (very poorly, his dear Vox is many things, but unnoticeable is not one of them) sneaks into the women's section and selects one, very simple, 1950s style dress.

Alastor wonders if he finally figured out the issue. For some reason, his Vox wants to wear women's clothing but isn't comfortable letting HIM know that. His dislike of both purchasing such items with Alastor (as well as simply shopping when Alastor would be aware he is, and expect to see what was purchased) makes sense to him.

This is easily solved. The idea that Alastor would CARE what clothing his picture box wants to wear is laughable - cannibalism is fine, but a dress is too far? Ridiculous.

He knows Vox has not been in hell for very long, so perhaps he hasn't yet realized that such societal taboos are generally accepted, considering the large magnitude of sins the rest of the population has committed. Not to mention that even while he was alive, he knew a great deal of people who regularly cross-dressed (such people were generally rejected by society enough to not care about anything society rejected about HIM).

Alastor is a little personally upset that his picture box believes HIMSELF to be someone who would be upset by something so minor, but perhaps they simply haven't lived together long enough. Regardless, now Alastor has a solution to this theft issue, and then he can purchase as many clothes, in whichever styles, for his dear. And perhaps he'll come to him the next time he wishes for something of his own.

Issue number two, resolved.

Sort of.

Vox has been planning this outing for months. He's been meticulous about only taking small amounts of money at a time to avoid detection. Vox is fairly certain Alastor doesn't suspect a thing - or else why would he continue to let his money be unguarded around him or take him on shopping trips and buying whatever he happens to look at for more than a few seconds.

Surely, if Alastor noticed the small amounts of change going missing every so often, he'd kick Vox out. (The time Alastor suggested he find his own place, he's certain his heart stopped for the second time. Luckily, before he could say anything incriminating about how much he WANTED to live with Alastor, he changed his mind about removing Vox from his life).

He knows it's a big risk, but a part of him NEEDS to fully embrace this fantasy of being a housewife. It's all he can think about.

(He might have convinced himself that if he can have one (1) singular self-indulgent fantasy to his heart's content on a day he knows Alastor will be gone, maybe he can put this behind him and stop wishing for more than he can have. It's one thing to pretend to be his housewife, but he knows it will never happen - if he can just get it out of his system, maybe he can Stop This Nonsense).

The entire walk to the clothing store Vox feels like he's being watched. Which he KNOWS is ridiculous - the only time anyone ever pays him any attention is when he's next to Alastor - but the feeling persists. It makes him even more anxious about this purchase than he already is (but he's committed at this point so he can't quit now).

Vox selects a fairly modest dress in a style that he had seen any number of women wearing when he was alive. (He tries to ignore how he has to make sure it buttons up due to his head. He's only insecure about it when he thinks about it, so if he ignores it, he can pretend he looks like anyone else).

He makes it back home to Alastor's place with plenty of time before he's due to be back, and so he wastes no time in changing.

When Vox returns home, Alastor fully intended on leaving his shadow and no longer observing him. The only thing he wanted to make sure was that he returned before Vox had the chance to change out of his dress, so Alastor could show what a good mate how little he cared about such frivolous things and perhaps be permitted to help him select such clothing on his next outing.

However, Vox's sudden utterance of his name was certainly unexpected. Alastor almost left his shadows, certain (somehow) he had been caught and spotted, and planned on how to explain his observation in a way that Didn't alarm his partner.

Except. Nothing about whatever else Vox is doing seems to indicate that he knows Alastor is watching. Vox seems to be having an internal conversation with some imaginary version of himself, as he seems to be responding to words that no one (and certainly not Alastor) is saying. This is a unique development that Alastor did not anticipate, and he is not entirely certain how to continue from here. Certainly, Vox is under the assumption that he is alone now, but everything else he is doing indicates that on some level he is pretending Alastor is also with him.

Surely the correct thing to do would be to watch to make sure he has not missed anything with Vox’s recent behavior towards himself.

Nothing catches Alastor quite off guard more than when Vox suddenly tosses himself onto his own bed, with a breathy “Oh, Alastor!” accompanying it. This is certainly something the real Alastor has never done, and he is currently uncertain why the sudden imitation is being performed.

Until Vox begins to touch himself (while continuing to say his name) and suddenly Alastor realizes what is going on.

Oh. That’s. Unexpected.

Is this the reason for the dress purchase? Or are they unrelated? Certainly Vox has never done quite so intimate things while saying his name before, as there is no way his shadows would NOT inform him of such activity. Does the dress arouse him in this way, or-?

Oh. Vox seems to have purchased the appropriate panties for such an outfit as well. Alastor has quite a good view now, and can see just how excited his picture box is with this apparent fantasy. He hasn’t removed any clothes yet, but considering his breathy whines and moans this is not a deterrent in the least (perhaps it enhances the sensation)?

This is quite the new development and Alastor isn’t quite certain what would be the most appropriate course of action. Certainly, despite his words saying otherwise, Vox is very unaware of just what show he is putting on for Alastor. Typically the correct course of action would be to leave him his own privacy.

But for whatever reason Alastor cannot turn his eyes away.

Alastor knows himself, and his wants and desires and has never felt the desire or need to do such carnal actions, such as those being performed in his name. However, it never occurred to him how pleasing it could be to hear his name being spoken in such needy tones. He knows he quite enjoys it when those he is tearing apart are begging for mercy, but it never occurred to him that he might enjoy the same things in a dramatically different context.

Alastor watches as Vox raises his dress, and begins to touch himself through his panties. Despite being clothed, he can see everything quite clearly and watches as Vox becomes more and more aroused. It’s not until a breathy “Alastor, please!” is uttered that Vox finally shoves down his panties and takes himself properly in his hand. It’s….quite a captivating sight.

He watches as Vox becomes more and more excited, his mouth open as he pants, little digital hearts visible in his eyes, and a constant array of gasps and moans of his name being sung into the air above him. It’s more entrancing than anything he has ever seen before, and Alastor can understand wanting someone to desire you if this is how it looks to be worshiped.

Alastor will purchase him the entire clothing store if this is his response to such clothing. So help him, Vox will never wear pants again if he can help it.

It doesn’t take long for Vox to bring himself to completion, with a crescendo of Alastor’s name that he will save in his microphone for all of eternity, lest he dare forget the beauty of it. Alastor has not seen anything more divine than Vox with his back arched, crying his name, as he finishes all over himself with just the imagination of Alastor being there.

Vox will never be allowed to utter another name from his mouth in such a way or Alastor will rip their spine out of their mouth for even daring to attempt it. Vox belongs to him, and he will never make those noises or put on a show for anyone other than Alastor (even if he has to chain his soul to himself to prevent it).

Alastor watches as Vox recovers, panting and coming down from his euphoria, and considers his next move. He is…unsure…how to broach such a topic to him, as this is nowhere near his specialty and such actions typically do not arouse much interest in him.

He had plans for providing Vox the dresses and other clothing he desired, but bringing up these specific desires has never before been something he has ever wanted. (But oh, how he now wants). It’s a unique experience to want to watch as Vox takes himself apart for him (wanting to take him apart himself) but not simply just wanting it as seemingly others do.

However, he is broken from his reverie by the noise of crying, and not the delicious version that he was just privy to. No, these are tears born of heartbreak and Alastor is both confused and alarmed by their appearance. Surely this type of self-pleasure is supposed to be pleasurable to the one doing it, or else why would anyone ever do such a thing?

Why is his beautiful noisy picture box upset and who does he have to gut to prevent it from ever happening again?

He watches as Vox hugs himself on his bed and mumbles something that sounds alarmingly like “Stupid, like he’d ever want something that looks like you….” and Alastor is leaving his shadows before he even realizes he’s doing it. Before Vox notices he’s no longer alone, Alastor has wrapped his arms around him and holds him tight.

(Vox might have yelped in surprise and accidentally shocked Alastor in his charming way where he can’t control his electrical impulses. Alastor responds with his own pleasing radio waves to relax his current until it returns to normal).

It seems to take a second for Vox to realize that Alastor being present means that he must have in some way witnessed his previous actions (and can certainly see not only him in a dress, but one that is very clearly wrecked in one very specific way). It is always so fascinating to watch how emotions play out on the face of his picture box, and this is no exception. However, before Vox can once again send himself down into the pit of self-loathing, Alastor hums a tune and rubs his own cheek against Vox’s.

“I must know. Was this a response to the dress or myself?”

“Wh-what?!”

“Regardless, I will purchase whatever dresses you desire if this is the result. My only requirement is that you allow me to be present next time.”

“H-how…?! What? Uh….I mean….you’re not…mad?”

“Why on earth would I be upset? Unless of course you meant to do this in a way where you would refuse my participation or observations, in which case I will lock you away until you change your mind.”

“You-you WANT to be involved? But you’ve never-?”

“Oh certainly! While I’ve never desired such things for myself, watching you desire them is certainly an experience I would like to have! You are such a fascinating creature, darling, and I must keep such things all to myself.”

“Can….can I kiss you?”

While doing such actions has never been something Alastor has had much interest in, doing them with Vox and watching his responses to them is quite another story. Left to his own devices, he would never desire such things nor wish to do any of them - but looking into the shy and hopeful eyes of his delightful picture box changes his perspective quite a bit. He has the most entertaining and pleasing responses to quite literally anything Alastor does to him, and it is quite enthralling the effect he has on the other.

He will be holding onto him for as long as he can, digging his claws into Vox so deeply that he will not ever be able to even imagine an afterlife without Alastor present.

#hazbin hotel #alastor #vox #hazbin alastor #hazbin vox #radiostatic #staticradio #staticlovetune #i think thats the reciprocal one #help ive fallen in 2sided radiostatic and i cant get up #fic #mine #be nice to me ive never actually written anything more than a fic prompt #but this wont leave my head so i have to write it or perish #also vox crossdresses a bit here bc housewife vox is too hot of a image to contain itself #wow i wrote a lot of words #watch as Alastor becomes more and more possessive as this goes on lmao #he witnessed vox pleasure himself to him once and was immediately like i will destroy anyone who even thinks of you like this you are MINE #housewife vox

65 notes · View notes

seventh-fantasy · 7 months

Text

li xiangyi, yin, and femininity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#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.

146 notes · View notes