so interesting how mitski called her album ‘the land is inhospitable’ when all throughout it, however alone she feels, the land is there and present. there’s the mosquitos, there’s a bug at the bottom of her glass, there’s the snow, the frost, a bird, the moon, the darkness as a living, breathing thing. and more importantly, every one of these elements is a manifestation of her feelings; the loss she feels, the love she feels. like a love that’s haunting the land. and then we get to the second part of the album name, ‘and so are we,’ we understand that it’s bc she is also being haunted by love. it’s the only thing she has, ´my love mine all mine’. except it’s everywhere. the land is inhospitable because it’s being haunted by this love, meaning she belongs, meaning in the end she can say she’s ‘king of all the land’ bc it’s her love that reigns, meaning no matter how ‘inhospitable’ it is and how much it hurts, she could never let it go
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Note: this is not a Stancy story.
“Say it,” he bites out. He’s pushing too hard, being too mean, and he doesn’t fucking care. “Say you love me.”
Nancy’s eyes slide off to the side and she—she laughs, like he’s making a joke, but he can see in the way she’s got her arms wrapped around herself that they both know it’s not a joke.
“Steve, come on,” she says.
There’s a hot, buzzing feeling in him like a hurricane.
The words peel out of him: “But…we’re soulmates.”
He’s gripping his forearm, holding it out in front of him even though he’s wearing long sleeves. It doesn’t matter. They both know whose name is written there in careful, neat cursive, like a puzzle piece slotting next to the blockier name scrawled on Nancy’s wrist.
Nancy reaches out to push his arm down and out of the way, out of her eyeline, but she laces her fingers with his like she’s trying to calm him down. Like an apology.
“Steve,” she says. “Let’s just—can we focus on the important stuff, here?”
This is important, why don’t you think that nothing could be more important than this. Steve doesn’t say it because he’s trying to be better. He can be better for her, for Nancy, his soulmate. So he swallows it down and nods, gripping her slender fingers tight in his.
———
It takes him a while, but he figures it out. It’s fate. It’s gotta be. It’s all a big part of their story, the one they’re gonna tell at their wedding, about the time they broke up and made bad decisions and were really unhappy. When you find your soulmate early, sometimes you have some growing up to do, he’ll say. Or maybe Robin will say it. He can’t imagine a wedding where Robin’s not his best man. Best lady?
It’s so stupid, but there was a moment, back in ‘85, when he thought maybe Robin could be his true soulmate. Like maybe there was some giant cosmic error, and the smart, funny, beautiful girl he’d been overlooking all summer was really the one he was meant to end up with after all.
When she tells him about Tammy Thompson, it’s almost a relief. The universe isn’t wrong after all. He actually feels really sorry for Robin, because without a name on her arm, how’s she supposed to know who to pick? And with the gay thing—it’s gotta be tough even just knowing who’s an option. He doesn’t think he could handle that kind of uncertainty.
It’s a good thing he doesn’t have to. All he’s got to do is hang on until his story and Nancy’s story bend together again, and become their story. He thinks it’s kind of romantic, even: like he’s been given this time to learn to be a better boyfriend.
So he’s in good spirits, especially when Eddie Munson gives him a heavy look that shoots through his veins like lightning and says as unambiguous a sign of true love as these cynical eyes have ever seen. If even Eddie can see it after spending about five minutes around them, probably not even knowing about the soulmate thing, it must be true.
———
Afterwards, he finds himself unexpectedly alone with Nancy in the hospital, waiting their turn to see Max and Eddie. It’s not exactly the stuff of fairytales; even though they’ve had a chance to go home and shower and get some sleep, they both have Upside Down gunk caked into their fingernails and purpling shadows under their eyes. The fluorescent lights overhead are way too bright. The flimsy plastic chairs are digging uncomfortably into his thighs.
But he’s not gonna get a better opening than this quiet moment, with Nancy slumped against his arm, tired and lovely.
“Hey, are you—” He clears his throat and tries again. “Hey, Nancy. Did you…think about, uh, what I said? About…you know. The future?”
She goes tense.
“Yes, Steve. I did.”
Maybe something in her tone should be warning him off, but he’s on this road now, careening down the fast lane with no exits in sight.
“And? What did you think?”
Nancy takes a deep breath, then lets it out after a second in a heavy sigh. “Steve, I…I’m with Jonathan now. You know that.”
“Yeah, but that’s—I mean, you know it’s not the same.”
“No.” She slips a thumb under the cuff of her sweatshirt and rubs it over her wrist. It looks like something she doesn’t even know she’s doing. “It’s not the same, no. It’s…Steve, it’s better. This way is better.”
He ducks down, tries to meet her eye. “Nance, I know I was kind of a shitty boyfriend, but—things are different now, right?”
Finally, she turns to him. Her back straightens, shoulders square, like she’s bracing herself.
“Yes, things are different,” she says slowly. She reaches out to take his hand in both of hers, soothing. “This hasn’t changed for me, though. It’s not about—I just can’t be with you, Steve. Not like that. I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t say but we’re soulmates again like a child, but it lives in his throat, in the thump of his heart. Maybe she just needs more time.
Maybe not, though.
(ETA: continuation here!)
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okay... idk at all if this has been discussed or that I'm just stating the obvious. I'm posting any way to get more feedback.
so. can we be sure that the last boat scene even happened (in the way we saw it at least)
yeah the letter was delivered to the intended recipients. the letter also did say 李相夷绝笔 lit. the final writing by li xiangyi. there's a brief exchange between him and the assumed "boatman" asking him where he was going. and we see he spat blood while writing yeah but:
llh/lxy's eyesight had been failing for some time.
Professional Letter Writers are a thing in the past in service to people who can't write their own letters (idk enough to verify the historical accuracy in this specific context though)
what has been bugging me since forever is the manner of speech of the letter. yeah it's different from their everyday speech, but that's actually perfectly fine since this is A Letter so I'm good with it being more formal. but... there's something I just can't quite pinpoint. especially with the use of the 君 jun pronoun by llh/lxy to refer to dfs when there could be other pronouns with less connotations of intimacy (and scholarly/imperial court system) implied and still conveyed cordiality, marking a shift in their relationship. (I'm not well versed with wuxia as a genre enough to know what are the conventions. someone else who does can say something though.)
whatever these put together means (eg. he may not have written the letter personally, or he wrote it in a different situation from what we saw, etc etc.) alongside:
this scene existed only as part of a visualisation as the letter content is revealed to the audience (or assumed to be fdb reading the letter to dfs & guests of the wedding spectators of the duel)
the boat lxy/llh jumped on is not the same as the one he was writing the letter on - the boatman is also not on it despite the conversation at the beginning, but lxy/llh's dressing and hairpin are the same as the ones before he jumped. (the boatman delivered the letter so he's real though.)
also as @wonderfulnonsense happened to have just pointed out in the tags left in my other post: it's in fact the same boat he took to go fight dfs at donghai 10 years ago. (edit: or maybe it isn't? as pointed out by anon.)
if we viewed whatever we perceived in this scene as imaginary (not what actually happened), then the reading of it being a metaphor for lxy/llh being on his way to enlightenment just makes sense. (the boat being a carrier on his spiritual transformations.) especially when you consider that 彼岸 the other shore is another concept in buddhism to represent enlightenment, alongside the motif of lotuses. (credits to @markiafc for the buddhism reading - edit: mark's meta here) and then, consider the beach ending... yeah.
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