this is a neck veins appreciation post
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might as well throw in some pingxie thoughts while i’m at it
i have. many things to say about pingxie. but on the subject of reducing relationships to one dimensional tropes specifically, it does them just as much of a disservice.
my favorite variation of pingxie is in the books (very shocking i know, although that’s technically the original them and not a variation), and by comparison to what’s shown in the dramas (which are fun and self-indulgent don’t get me wrong), the books are the slowest of slow burns. never forget we see everything in them from wu xie’s pov exclusively (at least the main entries), so we can only infer xiaoge’s own growth and development from what wu xie sees of it, but it very much exists.
wu xie has a complicated opinion of xiaoge in the earlier books, mostly because he doesn’t quite know what to make of this man who looks younger than he is and completely blows him off on their first meeting (blows everyone off in fact) much to his displeasure, which leads to the initially derogatory nickname ‘menyouping’, and yet is also vastly competent and knowledgeable. he’s cold and indifferent, yet wu xie feels safe around him and trusts him more than he likely should from the get go, mostly because wu xie’s good at reading people’s intentions and character on an instinctive level he doesn’t always manage to rationalize early on. he’s fascinated and would like to know him better, but also finds him deeply unfathomable, even incomprehensible.
and then you have xiaoge, who it merits saying, is repeatedly described as largely indifferent to most things (and he genuinely is), doing what he deems necessary but otherwise not bothering to involve himself with other people or social niceties. this is a man who spends his time off to the side sleeping or contemplating the sky, and yet in the space of four books he goes from not giving two shts about wu xie (or more than he would the average person) to voluntarily interacting with him, siding with him in quiet ways, helping him through unspoken little acts all the way up until a turning point wherein he first tries to keep his distance from wu xie en route to tamutuo in an effort to keep him from getting further involved than he already is in dangerous things he has no concept of, except by then he’s shown enough uncharacteristic interest in wu xie that wu xie notices he's being cold and distant. this all culminates in the infamous moment where xiaoge eventually lets himself act on thoughts he’s likely never fully analyzed himself, let alone shared with another person, leading to the “if i disappeared no one would notice” moment.
and from there all the way until post ten years later and into things like yucun biji, the reality is that pingxie were never the serious immortal and the dorky clumsy mortal boy he adopts, nor are they the vulnerable strong one and the eventual protector, or any other trope variation really. pingxie are two people who at the start stand on opposite sides of a line neither of them were ever meant to cross, and to all intents and purposes should never have met for how very different the worlds they come from are. they’re people that circumstance threw together who chose to stay together, and keep choosing each other. they don’t need each other to exist, and could have gone their separate ways had they wanted to, but the importance of their relationship lies in that they stay together by active choice, and that in doing so, they meet in the middle.
wu xie matures and comes to understand a number of things through hardship while xiaoge is behind the gate that untether him just enough from the world that xiaoge isn’t quite so unfathomable anymore, while xiaoge comes down from his imposed pedestal just enough that he tethers himself to wu xie (and pangzi) and learns to live rather than exist
neither of them became a different person for the other, and the core of their relationship (and the beauty of it) is in the harmony and understanding they eventually achieve. reducing all of that to archetypes is honestly a little tragic
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Quixis uses They/Them pronouns,
But not in a "I don't feel connected to a gender" way, more of a "the multiverse is so big that you realise even gender is fucking pointless" kind of way
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drew this at my conservative grandparents’ house :>
(also LISTEN TO THE SONG IT’S SO PERFECT FOR MY LIL ROMANTIC AZIRAPHALE)
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FOR @fushiglow ♥
not me imagening stsg from their fic 😩pls go read it !!
shop.
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my phone lockscreen for the last few months has been “the meeting on the turret stairs” by frederic william burton. every time i watch an episode of rings of power i spend a significant amount of brainpower dissecting all interactions between arondir and bronwyn. i feel like this is not a coincidence.
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I've seen a lot of people writing Danny as a space ancient and Dan and Dani as ghosts with moon and sun cores, being sort of parts, versions of Danny and therefore weaker. Now, consider: Dan and Dani are both powerful ghosts with really cool cores and stuff but Danny is just some guy™
Dan, who came from an alternate timeline and is kind of from the future but also not, is Clockwork's apprentice and will eventually become an ancient of time. He probably only agreed to have some lessons with Clockwork to understand better what happened to him, but he enjoys his apprenticeship now.
Dani, with her love of travelling, loves seeing all the different places the world offers to her, and that includes space and different planets and maybe even parallel universes, and she accidentally ends up being an apprentice of the space ancient. For now she's probably a baby ancient of freedom or something like that, but she might become an ancient of space in the future.
We can also have something like Dan having a core of destruction or Dani being the Speed Force if you want it to be dcxdp, or any headcanon of yours about their cool powers.
And then there's Danny. And yeah, everyone knows that he's super powerful, but also he's just some guy.
It can go different routes. Does everyone know that Danny is just Danny? Or do they think that with siblings (well, technically a clone and an alternate version, but whatever) so powerful, he must be even stronger? Is Danny actually something terrifyingly eldritch and ancient and strong, almost a god, but he just doesn't know himself? Or is he just really some guy?
Now, because it's obvious that I have a dcxdp brainrot, have a regular "JL summons/meets a powerful ghost" but its Dan and Dani, and they keep mentioning their original/brother who won a fight against them at some point. The JL is very concerned about Dan and Dani's godlike powers, and they can't imagine what Danny is like. And then they meet him (in his human form), and it's just a young adult in casual clothes, very friendly and helpful, with no evident powers. Imagine the confusion. Imagine Dan and Dani, radiating power, in their eldritch ghost forms, admitting that fighting Danny for real is the dumbest thing to do and not even they would succeed... And then there's Danny is jeans and silly t-shirt, waving shyly.
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