Tumgik
#is this even meta idk
lurkingteapot · 10 months
Text
Every now and then I think about how subtitles (or dubs), and thus translation choices, shape our perception of the media we consume. It's so interesting. I'd wager anyone who speaks two (or more) languages knows the feeling of "yeah, that's what it literally translates to, but that's not what it means" or has answered a question like "how do you say _____ in (language)?" with "you don't, it's just … not a thing, we don't say that."
I've had my fair share of "[SHIP] are [married/soulmates/fated/FANCY TERM], it's text!" "[CHARACTER A] calls [CHARACTER B] [ENDEARMENT/NICKNAME], it's text!" and every time. Every time I'm just like. Do they though. Is it though. And a lot of the time, this means seeking out alternative translations, or translation meta from fluent or native speakers, or sometimes from language learners of the language the piece of media is originally in.
Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn't. To lots of people, it doesn't. People have different interests and priorities in fiction and the way they interact with it. It's great. It matters to me because back in the early 2000s, I had dial-up internet. Video or audio media that wasn't available through my local library very much wasn't available, but fanfiction was. So I started to read English language Gundam Wing fanfic before I ever had a chance to watch the show. When I did get around to watching Gundam Wing, it was the original Japanese dub. Some of the characters were almost unrecognisable to me, and first I doubted my Japanese language ability, then, after checking some bits with friends, I wondered why even my favourite writers, writers I knew to be consistent in other things, had made these characters seem so different … until I had the chance to watch the US-English dub a few years later. Going by that adaptation, the characterisation from all those stories suddenly made a lot more sense. And the thing is, that interpretation is also valid! They just took it a direction that was a larger leap for me to make.
Loose adaptations and very free translations have become less frequent since, or maybe my taste just hasn't led me their way, but the issue at the core is still a thing: Supernatural fandom got different nuances of endings for their show depending on the language they watched it in. CQL and MDZS fandom and the never-ending discussions about 知己 vs soulmate vs Other Options. A subset of VLD fans looking at a specific clip in all the different languages to see what was being said/implied in which dub, and how different translators interpreted the same English original line. The list is pretty much endless.
And that's … idk if it's fine, but it's what happens! A lot of the time, concepts -- expressed in language -- don't translate 1:1. The larger the cultural gap, the larger the gaps between the way concepts are expressed or understood also tend to be. Other times, there is a literal translation that works but isn't very idiomatic because there's a register mismatch or worse. And that's even before cultural assumptions come in. It's normal to have those. It's also important to remember that things like "thanks I hate it" as a sentiment of praise/affection, while the words translate literally quite easily, emphatically isn't easy to translate in the sense anglophone internet users the phrase.
Every translation is, at some level, a transformative work. Sometimes expressions or concepts or even single words simply don't have an exact equivalent in the target language and need to be interpreted at the translator's discretion, especially when going from a high-context/listener-responsible source language to a low-context/speaker-responsible target language (where high-context/listener responsible roughly means a large amount of contextual information can be omitted by the speaker because it's the listener's responsibility to infer it and ask for clarification if needed, and low-context/speaker-responsible roughly means a lot of information needs to be codified in speech, i.e. the speaker is responsible for providing sufficiently explicit context and will be blamed if it's lacking).
Is this a mouse or a rat? Guess based on context clues! High-context languages can and frequently do omit entire parts of speech that lower-context/speaker-responsible languages like English regard as essential, such as the grammatical subject of a sentence: the equivalent of "Go?" - "Go." does largely the same amount of heavy lifting as "is he/she/it/are you/they/we going?" - "yes, I am/he/she/it is/we/you/they are" in several listener-responsible languages, but tends to seem clumsy or incomplete in more speaker-responsible ones. This does NOT mean the listener-responsible language is clumsy. It's arguably more efficient! And reversely, saying "Are you going?" - "I am (going)" might seem unnecessarily convoluted and clumsy in a listener-responsible language. All depending on context.
This gets tricky both when the ambiguity of the missing subject of the sentence is clearly important (is speaker A asking "are you going" or "is she going"? wait until next chapter and find out!) AND when it's important that the translator assign an explicit subject in order for the sentence to make sense in the target language. For our example, depending on context, something like "are we all going?" - "yes" or "they going, too?" might work. Context!
As a consequence of this, sometimes, translation adds things – we gain things in translation, so to speak. Sometimes, it's because the target language needs the extra information (like the subject in the examples above), sometimes it's because the target language actually differentiates between mouse and rat even though the source language doesn't. However, because in most cases translators don't have access to the original authors, or even the original authors' agencies to ask for clarification (and in most cases wouldn't get paid for the time to put in this extra work even if they did), this kind of addition is almost always an interpretation. Sometimes made with a lot of certainty, sometimes it's more of a "fuck it, I've got to put something and hope it doesn't get proven wrong next episode/chapter/ten seasons down" (especially fun when you're working on a series that's in progress).
For the vast majority of cases, several translations are valid. Some may be more far-fetched than others, and there'll always be subjectivity to whether something was translated effectively, what "effectively" even means …
ANYWAY. I think my point is … how interesting, how cool is it that engaging with media in multiple languages will always yield multiple, often equally valid but just sliiiiightly different versions of that piece of media? And that I'd love more conversations about how, the second we (as folks who don't speak the material's original language) start picking the subtitle or dub wording apart for meta, we're basically working from a secondary source, and if we're doing due diligence, to which extent do we need to check there's nothing substantial being (literally) lost -- or added! -- in translation?
1K notes · View notes
glorious-spoon · 1 month
Text
i don't really have coherent meta thoughts here, but there's something really tasty about the potential conflict between evan 'the only way i can tell people love me is when they yell at me for my dumb choices' buckley and eddie 'i will keep my mouth shut if it kills me' diaz
311 notes · View notes
jojo-schmo · 2 months
Text
Tumblr media
I wish I could tell the original artist that this drawing permanently changed the entire direction of my life in 2009. I want to shake their hand, look them in the eye, and admit I would not be who I am today if this drawing didn’t exist.
EDIT: Original artist is @ivynajspyder !!!!
#‘but jojo’ you ask. ‘that seems a little ridiculous’#‘don’t you think that’s a little much?’#no. NO. IT IS THE TRUTH.#little baby middle schooler jojo had just gotten squeak squad. the first kirby game she ever owned.#and she loved it even tho there’s a lot she didn’t understand#like who dedede was supposed to be or why copy abilities existed#I asked for the game because my roommate at swim camp had it and she told me the plot of the game when I looked over her shoulder to watch#(the plot she told me was completely made up btw she said kirby had to save the dimension from dark overlord and did not mention the squeak#and said stuff about meta knight being a bad guy idk I realize now she was just weaving a tale of her own haha)#SO I WAS NOT AWARE OF THE LORE. I had only played the one game and it’s the one people don’t like the plot of#but meta knight completely intrigued me#what was this blue sword wielding little kirby dude doing here??#so I’d replay his boss fight over and over again just to get that glimpse at his face#and I’d sit and wonder what it all meant. who was this mysterious swordsman??#and the boss fight was hard!!! it cost me to beat it at the time but I’d still do it to see his face#AND THEN AFTER LIKE A YEAR OF THIS it occurred to me that there was a kirby wiki online#so I found all the pictures of his face and my little fangirl-raised-by-deviantart mind ATE THIS UP.#and then I look up that one fateful google search……… the one that changed me#meta.#knight.#maskless.#and this drawing was towards the top of the results#I went feral about a fandom related topic for the very very first time#I lost my MIND. HOW can a character be so cute AND COOL??! I was a changed child.#I consumed the hoshi no kaabii anime like it was the only piece of media on earth#I drew comics about him. I made my first kirby oc ever to go on a grand adventure on him.#I filled my notebooks with kirby art to the point my mom was like ‘jossie. you REALLY need to branch out. these are just orbs.’#and now I am the kirby artist I am today. so yes. YES. this drawing did change my life.#thanks for reading. and thanks to the original artist. I tried to find them to link but nothing. so if you know pls tell me#THE END!!! and remember! your art makes a difference in people’s lives even if they don’t say it to your face!!!!
277 notes · View notes
huecycles · 1 year
Text
jevil & noelle friendship post
hi, i want to talk about how noelle and jevil would definitely get along well or even be friends! also how their characters contrast nicely with each other and could possibly have a dynamic as interesting and engaging as spamton does with kris. this is quite a long post, so yeah grab a seat lol. first off, take a look at noelle’s reaction to both of jevil’s items:
Tumblr media Tumblr media
noelle likes horror movies, and jevil definitely fits that scary clown trope. the description for jevilstail is “a j-shaped tail that gives you devilenergy”, and it can be equipped on noelle. considering her comment, and how she compliments susie’s tail later, this could mean she thinks tails in general are cute (perhaps longer ones? susie is often headcanoned to have a lizard-esque tail while jevil has his j-shaped devil one. noelle has a deer tail which is pretty small lmao, kinda unrelated but i’m sure it could be for a silly reason like that, and in susie’s case, highlighted by her crush on her).
the fact noelle can equip jevilstail and say she likes an item that gives her “devilenergy” is very interesting too, and kinda goes along with what she said in the ferris wheel cutscene, how she wishes she could break the rules and be more like susie who isn’t afraid to do that. compare that to ralsei’s “i’m a good devil, ok?” and susie’s “figured i’d grow one someday” and you’ll see how noelle likes the idea of being “devilish” but is pretty shy about it as she mutters it.
now let’s talk about devilsknife. devilsknife is a susie weapon, it is pretty powerful and the name itself is already scary sounding. of course, noelle can’t equip it since her weapon type is supposed to be rings, but she doesn’t seem that scared when presented with the item, unlike ralsei who says it feels “too evil”. this is what she has to say:
Tumblr media
devilsknife, as in jevil, smiles at her. now, how could she be seeing that? most people interpret this smile as the blade deforming itself to resemble jevil’s face, or his own smile being reflected in the blade. however, there’s a detail a lot of people have missed (as well as this little moment altogether which is one of few the indicators of jevil’s actual and current presence in chapter 2).
this is devilsknife’s description:
Tumblr media
there’s a skull symbol emblazoned in the blade (which is a hybrid between a scythe and an ax, aka what lets susie equip it due to her weapons all being axes). 
now, according to my own headcanons due to certain wording jevil uses in his fight, like “EVEN DEVILSKNIFE IS SMILING!” and “LET’S MAKE THE DEVILSKNIFE.”, plus how tasque manager has the exact same reaction to both of jevil’s items, meaning she knows it’s him/knows of his presence there - contradicting the common idea that jevil is not the jevilstail and thus not in the inventory due to his wording in chapter 1 - but still regarding the devilsknife with some strange familiarity which could imply she knows it is a weapon and has possibly not only met jevil but fought him before: “silly tail” vs “silly Devilsknife”, capitalized...
Tumblr media Tumblr media
...make me believe devilsknife and jevil are not one in the same, and are only “fused” (metamorphosis?) in the inventory. while i know certain details are hard to portray in a tiny sprite, you can see there’s no skull symbol anywhere in the devilsknife’s blade which has more empty space, and given how it’s “emblazoned” it would mean it’s a printed/engraved symbol somewhere.
so my small tangent here is that the skull only appears once jevil and devilsknife are fused together and in your inventory. considering how scythes are often seen as a grim reaper's weapon and associated with death, having jevil become the actual devilsknife and clearly maintain his conscience would nicely translate into a skull symbol appearing. the “THIS BODY CANNOT BE KILLED!” line also gives this some more depth. given how jevil’s "mind" is chained to his "body", as he gives a lot of emphasis to his body (”THEY CRAVED TO IMPRISON MY BODY”) and the association of how his mind is “free” while his body stays locked up paints a grim picture on how he was deemed insane, yet found a loophole in that, and thus “freedom”.
Tumblr media
scythes are also famous for beheadings. jevil has no neck, his head separated from his body. and bringing all that back to noelle, THIS is how he smiles at her. pretty morbid, right? cool as fuck too :o)
of course, these are noelle’s only direct interactions with jevil through his items, but i’d also like to bring attention to how her themes and symbolism go along so well with jevil’s, just like spamton’s go with kris’s.
kris is often likened to demonic imagery, aka their creepy red eyes, the use of the horns headband, how they have an interest in summoning demons due to their search history, and finally: king calling them "lightbringer" which is just what “lucifer” means in latin + that word itself is generally associated with lucifer, satan, what have you. noelle has obvious ties with angels: being called one by both spamton and pink addison while on a snowgrave route, her comment about growing big angel wings in the ferris wheel cutscene, the angel doll her and dess made which rudy keeps around as a good luck charm, and so on. spamton and jevil, respectively, are the opposites in that regard when compared to kris and noelle, so the contrast here is really damn fun to think about and explore.
another thing is how both noelle and jevil are incredibly powerful and involved in violent acts (though you know how snowgrave goes, of course), and how kris and spamton are in a very similar predicament as puppets who try to fight back. i believe just like how spamton and kris both managed to relate to each other’s despair and tried to help each other out (albeit in a very warped way in spamton’s case), i think noelle and jevil would have a similar thing.
lemme talk about something interesting in the snowgrave route. there is a pattern going on with noelle that is slightly overlooked, which is this:
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
1) a order is given by the player through kris, often “proceed”. 2) the screen goes black, the iceshock sound is heard. 3) noelle is completely confused about what just happened.
in the weird route, there are several times where noelle zones out, and while the moment people focus on is when she’s using snowgrave on berdly, the iceshock on the puzzles + the pink addison to get the freeze ring are very important. she comments later on how the battles are blurring together and how she cant remember a lot of details, she just followed "kris's" command and acted accordingly. a similar thing might have happened when she iceshocked spamton neo too, as the screen goes black again.
Tumblr media
considering how she says “there was so much snow, i couldn’t see anything” after berdly is in the ice, i believe whenever she uses her power while aided by the player (and later, her own, as seen in the last puzzle where she does it by herself, leading to when she encounters berdly where she was just about to freeze him, completely on “automatic mode”, seemingly just waiting for the actual order) her mind goes blank, and she just acts as instructed. noelle might even look like this while the screen is black, which is a bit haunting to me:
Tumblr media
going back to jevil, and knowing how prone to violence/chaos he is, i believe he would be able to sense her affinity for power and maybe even help her control it, likely for his own gain as he is hypocritical (strips the player of choice once you arrive with the key and refuse to open his cell), though similarly to spamton and kris, jevil could feel some kind of connection with noelle’s power and how dangerous it can be.
i believe jevil could help noelle get a hold of herself when using her magic and not just follow someone else’s commands, as well as keeping a clear head through it all. he’s pretty damn powerful himself, so he would instead help her come up with her own strategies and willpower, even if his teachings might fall flat due to his own insistence on having her cause chaos. i believe that can overruled by noelle's kindness and gentleness, and due to jevil's own influence on her (to be more bold and assertive, as she expresses she wishes she could be more like susie and break the rules like i said before), whatever "plan" he may have on turning her into this powerful killing machine backfires simply because she says no to him. lol his own strong personality boosts her shy and scared one so that itself is his own failure, i think that’s hilarious and a great character study for the both of them!
i headcanon jevil calls her "headlights" as a reference to how she's easily scared + a cruel nod to the “deer in the headlights” thing, which fits with his character who has probably a morbid sense of humor. noelle would definitely be intimidated by him at first, but i think she’d warm up to him due to her own interests in “scary” people, firstly her crush on susie and secondly her strange friend jevil who looks like a killer clown in the flesh. an easygoing, kind kid in jevil's life would also brighten it up :) he could definitely use a gentle presence in my opinion, i mean. guy’s said to be a loner, even if he had seam.
long post, but yeah! i know the susie and jevil connection is easier to make because of their brief interaction, devilsknife etc, but i feel like noelle and jevil being friends is very unique and more interesting to me personally. if kris has their scammer puppet uncle, noelle has the silly, slightly intimidating clown (also uncle coded) who helps pick out her fits for halloween and do her makeup. she also gets to wear out five hairbrushes on the wavy mess that’s under his hat, then braids his hair during the afternoon and shows him different hairdos, choosing the one jevil’s eyes dilated at. kris takes a picture of him looking handsome under noelle’s care and hits ‘send’ saying “ey uncle spamgton check out ur lover boy” while spamton tells them to “del3te THIS”.
it’s nice it’s cool!! let jevil and noelle be friends!!
2K notes · View notes
kuppikahvia · 2 months
Text
do you ever stop to think how amazing the multimedia aspect of alan wake is, like do you ever just stare into the void and take a moment to appreciate how they actually filmed so many live action scenes that work perfectly with the whole narrative and how the game has so many songs specifically made for it, singing about the events in the game, and don't even get me started on gods of asgard and the live performance of herald of darkness at the game awards that was identical to that musical part of the game LIKE HELLO??? a literal masterpiece
149 notes · View notes
teamsasukes · 9 months
Text
the chunin exams arc was so interesting for how it portrayed sakura's potential and how people in her life influenced it. kakashi lying about the team-based enrollment criteria because he thinks sakura would be likely to sign up only to appease sasuke, and being genuinely surprised when she shows up anyway. naruto being completely oblivious when sakura was upset preceding the exams and also after she cut her hair in the forest of death. naruto literally dreaming about saving sakura from enemies, being the hero to her damsel-in-distress. sakura moulding herself into a perfectly feminine lady because that's what society demanded and what she thought sasuke would want. versus sasuke calling her out for focusing too much on romance instead of her skills like she should be doing. sasuke picking up that she was upset because she felt inadequate and reminding her of what she was best at -- maybe even better than him -- and never begrudging her for it. ino hacking into her mind because she was sure, not a single doubt in her mind, that sakura would know the answers to the impossible questions on the written exam. ino and sasuke both stepping in to save her during her fight with the sound nin, but only after being spurred on by the brutal beating she took. ino and sasuke getting frustrated with naruto when he commented on how her haircut looked because it made sakura trivialize her experience and offer a fake explanation about women being fickle. the flashbacks revealing to us that ino affirmed that she would one day bloom into a beautiful flower. ino and sasuke serving as a catalyst for sakura to get stronger before pt 1 and pt 2 respectively. idk do you see what i'm seeing
429 notes · View notes
yea-baiyi · 1 year
Text
xie lian really is living the ultimate grey-ace fantasy though, because imagine you’ve gone 800 years not being attracted to anyone and you’ve been totally fine keeping a vow of abstinence you have no obligation to keep —
and then one day you run into this guy and your brain goes “he’d be a great husband” and suddenly you’re thinking about how he’s so tall and fixating on his hairline and his bone structure and wow his hands are so big, sure wouldn’t wanna be choked by him, and you’re a huge embarrassing mess around him. but turns out he is equally as embarrassing towards you and you end up liking him a lot and you guys flirt and joke around when you’re together and it’s great except you have massive walls up because of all of your centuries of trauma —
and THEN you find out that this guy has known you nearly your whole life, was actually the person beside you at all your lowest points, someone who has already been tested and come out fighting. he’s not nice and he’s seen some shit but he has literally crawled his way out from hell and proven himself to be good, and most of all already proven that he will stand with you and be by your side in every way that matters. all that before you guys even started dating, before you guys even MET in this lifetime. just the perfect alignment of a) attractiveness, b) compatibility, c) resilience as a life partner — and he came over and started talking to YOU.
maybe it’s just me but i’m chewing on the walls????
Tumblr media
968 notes · View notes
lost-tardis-room · 21 days
Text
Tumblr media
the (nuwho at least) doctor is ricocheting around this spectrum like a screensaver depending on who he's just lost and who he's just met i think
99 notes · View notes
quasarifxxy · 1 year
Text
What primarily drew me to Kazurei as a pairing isn't the roommate trope, nor the golden retriever and brood cat trope, or the gay spy x family gag, but rather this scene from Episode 8 (that I'm somehow still not over.)
Tumblr media
It's the mutual reluctance to love and let themselves heal, with the exception that Kazuki couldn't stand to see Rei in the same position as him, so he offers to take care of him anyway. Both, who had a rough relationship with love, let themselves confide in each other. Rei, who found comfort and experienced what it's like to be taken care of, and Kazuki, who can't help but to extend care because it's something that's just... natural to do in his position. Kazuki, who is hurted by love that is taken from him over and over again, offers what he'd regard as a bare minimum because deep down, he wants his remaining loved ones (and in this timeline just rei) to feel the love he always desired.
Though Kazuki is seemingly full of emotions every time (enough to almost repress his sadness), his actions are always so gentle and full of warmth.
Tumblr media
What makes it more beautiful is how Rei adapts Kazuki concept's, or rather, way to express love to Miri (with the most apparent example being Episode 9) considering Kazuki was probably one of if not the first person he'd experienced and therefore actively saw it from. He initially wasn't able to comprehend how to love and be loved, and only through Kazuki's deeds did he learn how comforting and nice it is to be cared for, so he wanted to extend that to Miri after realizing how much his family meant to him.
Going back to the topic, I genuinely adore how Kazurei is a pairing consisting of two people who weren't given the opportunity to love, and during their time before Miri subconsciously fulfilled each other's emotional needs. Though initially distant, they immediately clicked because they fit together like puzzle pieces. Similar desires but difference in approach and seek what the other has.
Tumblr media
While there is mutual understanding between them, being able to read each other, neither of the two had the will to step onto each others' boundaries and address it. It was satisfying to see them grow closer emotionally and form the courage to communicate, with great examples being the last few episodes of the series.
Tl;dr the soft aspect of Kazurei made me complerely fall in love with the pairing and I used to be neutral about it
532 notes · View notes
cruciomione · 5 months
Text
"fixing" the panic attack scene to be more platonic ™
im extremely active on twt and have been noticing a sydcarmy tweet go viral multiple times a week (like w thousands of interactions its crazy), and its really great to see how much people love and see it for this ship. recently carmys panic attack scene went viral again, and naturally, some ppl gave their piece about how we are all dumb for interpreting it as romantic. that sydney represents his love for his job or his duty to the restaurant (*sigh*).
this scene imo, is the most concrete proof of this ship. i can excuse (not really) interpreting every interaction between them thus far as platonic but this scene....i just refuse. this is gonna be a long post, not analyzing the scene per se because i can't possibly say anything that hasn't already been said but more "fixing" the scene to fit the narrative of antis, and i hope in doing so really shows there's no other way to interpret this scene as other than romantic. again its gonna be a long post bc im just ranting and i think i will lose my mind if i dont type this out.
lets go.
Tumblr media
so first off i like to think of this scene as an equation/experiment. simply a problem that needs to be solved.
problem/reason of panic = ...we will discuss this...
solution # 1 = claire -> failed
solution # 2 = sydney -> worked.
Problem/Reason
s02e09 opens up with carmy and claire finally consummating their relationship, with an interesting song choice might i add and carmy dissociating, looking sad, or broken (???) after. because many have said carmy pulling memories of sydney from his psyche to calm down have to do with work i always remember that, it really doesnt make any sense?
carmy is clearly having a panic attack due to him not being "fixed" as soon as he made it official with claire. he felt pressure from his family both currently and in the past to date claire because she is amazing and perfect. add mikey also being a part of that crowd, and carmy so desperately trying to connect with him when he cannot, is why i think he looks so despondent after that scene. i truly think he thought he would be a changed person after everything with claire and when that didn't happen he flipped...
we know this is the reason bc his panic attack starts with their sex scene and the lyric "I dont know" from strange currencies by REM.
this isn't to say that he isn't nervous or stressed about the soft open but its clear that he's not having a panic attack about work nor have we ever seen him have a work-related panic attack (correct me if I'm wrong). in s1 he has one or two due to him greiving his brother.
platonic fix: To make it about work I would have added scenes like when Carmy started that stove fire in braciole, his meltdown in review, some scenes of his horrible time at EMP, and him grieving his brother. i think these would represent his fear of failure, falling back into old toxic habits pertaining his career, the fear of fostering a toxic work environment like the ny chef and also the idea of "failing" mikey
but theres a reason why none of this occurs bc its not about his job or the opening of the bear. this is explicitly about his personal and romantic love life.
Solution # 1 : Claire
carmy proceeds to try and calm down by thinking of claire through literal rose-coloured glasses...
Tumblr media
the music is distorted, he's thinking of his abusive family, he remembers every one pushing him to date claire bc shes a #goodthing.
again...this is not about his job and wouldnt make sense to think of sydneys place in his work life as a soultion to his clear personal problem....
platonic fix: in the story of carmys love life claire and sydney act as narrative foils. they have been compared and contrasted for all of s2. my platonic fix for this would be making the NY chef this first "solution" of a work-related panic attack. he represents a horrible time in his life but also represents a time when carmy was at the height of his career. when carmy gets locked in the walk in and has his monologue, its alluded to that he will revert back to that mind set in order to not let everyone down.
NY chef abused him for so long, it makes sense that carmys psyche would readily go back to his insults and the time he himself was an isolated 'psycho' bc it yielded results.
nothing is black and white and i DO think sydney represents a healthier approach to the toxic mess that is the culinary world and does represent that for carmy. if the show was invested in that, sydney and the NY chef could be overtly contrasted like sydney and claire have been.
BUT again this isnt about his job and dedication as a chef...thus why he tries to think of claire to solve his personal problem, and it fails.
Solution # 2: Sydney
LMFAOOO.
carmy then in a crazy plot twist starts thinking of his platonic work bestie sydney adamu....the love song dedicated by the show to his relationship with his girlfriend is then made clear highlighting some pretty damning lyrics about desire and love.....all platonic btw. yes you are dumb if you think otherwise (*wink*)
Tumblr media
I actually have two platonic fixes for this...
platonic fix # 1: if we only wanted to focus on sydney as a person who calms carmy down because shes his work bestie who represents his responsibilty to the bear and the postive change they are trying effect in the culinary world, i would add scenes where they are...you know actually cooking???
i think its pretty crazy how the memories carmys immediately jump to are ones that have little to do with their jobs. when they first meet (would also like to note that when carmy first laid eyes on Sydney, he forgot she was there for a job, so this is his raw reaction to seeing a pretty girl lol) and when she comes back after she quit and their break up fight.
i would add their scenes in carmys kitchen (even tho this is extremely damning bc they were flirting DOWN - they don't make this easy at all). this represents their collaboration skills and the way they WORK and bounce ideas off of each other seamlessly. specifically the scene about him wanting to give her a star, representing his duty to her and the restaurant.
*and no shade to carmy but if his responsibility to the bear/syd as a co-worker was bothering him this much and calmed him down wouldn't he have just immediately called the fridge guy.....anyways*
platonic fix # 2 (the best one): if i was chris storer and joanna calo and i REALLY wanted to sell it that carmy isnt in love with sydney then i would put every single member of the OG beef crew + Nat to calm him down not just Sydney.
im talking to them laughing at family, carmy giving tina his chefs knife, richie in his new suit, carmys one on one w Marcus/trying his donut, nat telling carmy shes pregnant (signifing rebirth/wanting to rid all the toxic abuse from his family), carmy trying sydney risotto, and her face when he said it was tremendous etc etc...you get the gist
and honestly?
even as i type this out im tearing up a little bit bc that would have been really beautiful. carmy is changing. he can and is getting rid of old toxic habits from his family and the mess that is the culinary industry. things are changing for the better....that would be beautiful....IF his panic attack was about any of these things lol.
and to even look at this scene without this need for symmetry and we entertain the idea of carmy thinking about his job as a solution for his personal problem...carmy has said himself (s02e01) that this isnt fun for him. i dont think that means he hates cooking i kinda disagree with the ppl who think he isnt passionate about it. i just think currently its something that doesnt bring him joy but i do think its something hes starting to or at least could have started to enjoy if he just committed to working with syd...
conclusion
theres a lot of....delusion? denial? straight up bias? yes all of that, going on.
idk what is happening bc this show is really great at being subtle. but i dont know whats more in your face, dumbed down, even a toddler could understand, than this scene. if you dont come out of this understanding that carmy is falling in love/currently in love with Sydney...and i hate using this term..but you just arent media literate.
Tumblr media
bonus: bc it makes me laugh and connects the purpose and solutions.
i think we need a Snyder Sydcarmy Cut™ of bolognese and omelette.
the start of the episode is when sydney and carmy fight over claires inclusion in the menu, and also when sydney randomly asks him to define his relationship with Claire. the episode would continue until we get to the table scene.
i think its WILD how as soon as Sydney asks him to define their relationship, carmy starts calling claire his girlfriend. then the show proceeds to insert sydney in their romantic montage, shows her tattoo about heartbreak and someone getting in the way of your relationship...THEN proceeds to have carmy compare these two women in his mind and only calms down after seeing Sydney.
i could talk about this scene for AGES. wheres the straitjacket....
156 notes · View notes
em-um-canto · 21 days
Text
I want the fandom to think about how MUCH WORK AND BUROCRACY qsmp will have to go to
Like say
For Quackity to do the right thing and employ the egg admins back
To do that in the correct way the team (that is currently BEING REBUILD FROM SCRATCH) will have to make contracts for the admins
Contracts that HAVE to go according EACH COUNTRIES' labor laws
Contracts that NEED TO BE TRANSLATED to each of these countries' official language (and each translation need to be made official by a professional translator)
And giving the amount of countries we know admins are from (US, Mexico, Brazil, France, Portugal, England, South Korea, Germany ... and maybe more)
THAT WILL BE A LOT OF COMPLICATED PAPERWORK TO FULFILL
So yeah, it's gonna take A LONG TIME to sort all this stuff
88 notes · View notes
definitionofacritter · 6 months
Text
Ashton and Fearne.
Ruled and ruined and reborn through chaos.
Fated to bear the weight of the might of the emperor and empress of the primordial titans.
Chaos incarnate.
160 notes · View notes
seventh-fantasy · 5 months
Text
li xiangyi, yin, and femininity
Tumblr media
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.
138 notes · View notes
adhd-merlin · 10 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Christian iconography? in my Merlin??
330 notes · View notes
collieii · 8 months
Text
i really like how trimax constantly emphasizes that vash's kindness is a choice, a deliberate and powerful one. it contrasts him so well to knives, who's so disdainful towards humanity as a whole. but vash actually interacts with people and is involved in society. and, by extension, he's been hurt by it so many times. but despite this he chooses love everytime and defends humanity.
meanwhile, knives has never participated, always seems to watch people from a distance. still, he makes claims about the cruelty of humanity, and he uses the idea of human cruelty to justify his actions, despite the fact that he's likely never directly been victim to it the same way vash and the other plants have. not to understate the whole tesla situation, but he assumes that he has the authority to decide the fate of humanity, even though out of every plant he's probably not the one who's in the position to make that sort of decision. (and frankly, it's not a decision any single individual should be making)
Tumblr media
so this moment is so poignant, though vash might not be directly talking about himself we know it applies to him, we know how much violence he's suffered. it's written on his skin (his shirtlessness in that scene is very pointed). and we know that knives hasn't really experienced that. and knives is ultimately very self absorbed, he assumes he knows what's best for the plants and what they want, so he uses them to achieve his goals without consulting them. unlike vash, who as we see in the finale, has made efforts to communicate with the plants (communication and connection is such a big thing with vash!) he's familiar with them, and they him, and that's one of the reasons they seem more willing to follow vash's path than knives.
the difference between vash and knives is that vash sees everyone as an individual with inherent value. knives is unwilling to do this and he turns groups into monoliths, refuses to see individuals or nuance.
Tumblr media
one of the big ideas of trigun is that conflict occurs because people don't see those around them as individuals. so what really saves the day isn't guns or firepower, but understanding between people. vash helps facilitate this understanding between humans and plants because they're all familiar with him, he's put a lot of effort into getting to know everyone! and with everyone he meets he embodies the idea of love and peace, helps them believe that cooperation is possible.
253 notes · View notes
blighted-lights · 3 days
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
slaughterhouse posting part 2 that isn't going to be polished at all and has been sitting in my drafts for days, but this scene is so interesting to me because i genuinely have no idea what megatron wants from ravage in this interaction- and i don't know if megatron knows, either.
megatron starts out by saying that the decepticons' loyalty isn't to him- its to the cause. ignoring how this is immediately striking me as completely, blatently wrong due to the times we see megatron rallying the decepticons around himself when other leaders fail to do the same (nevermind the fact that he started the cause in the first place), he then gets angry with ravage when ravage confirms that- yeah, actually. you're not the cause anymore. we have moved on with someone new. megatron gets so angry he stands up, he looms over ravage, he raises is voice and balls his fist- and why else would he do this if he wasn't upset that they're moving on without him?
which would, of course, make megatron a hypocrite. he left the decepticons and refused to take any effort to rejoin them- he clearly doesn't actually want to return to the fold. but when the decepticons unite themselves and move on from him, it's different. i can abandon you, but you cannot abandon me.
i've always took this reaction as being an immediate, no thinking, gut reaction to finding out the decepticons are moving on without him. he's angry, potentially feeling betrayed by them, when he... doesn't have much of a right to feel that way. and it's not like megatron wasn't given an option to join the decepticons again if that's what he actually wanted.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
he was given a choice. he turned it down. he could of turned it down for any number of reasons, but no matter the reason, the point remains that he turned it down.
going back to panel after megatron snaps, ravage clearly takes megatron's outburst as him being upset that they've moved on without him. despite the aggressive way this interaction started with ravage attacking megatron, ravage spends most of this conversation attempting to reassure megatron. megatron gets angry that galvatron took over and they're moving on without him? okay- so then he wants to come back, right? he's upset he's been replaced?
Tumblr media
well, galvatron isn't permanent. say the word and you'll be back in charge. megatron says that the decepticons aren't loyal to him, ravage reaffirms that they were loyal to him but now they've chosen a new leader since he left, megatron gets angry that they're moving on without him, and then ravage reinforces their original loyalty to him by saying if he wants to come back, they'll follow him.
and then megatron turns it around; yes he was just angry that the decepticons were no longer loyal to him, but now that same loyalty is toxic, actually. and it is! it absolutely is toxic. but i think ravage backed him into a corner here, even unintentionally. he can't sit down and actually address why the decepticons moving on makes him angry without admitting some part of him wants to return to the cons. or at the very least he still feels possessive of them and doesn't want them to function outside of his influence. when given the option to rejoin, he responds by insulting the decepticon's (and ravage's!) sense of devotion/loyalty and then quickly changes the topic to seawing and the trial. he doesn't say a solid yes or no answer because he doesn't actually have one to give.
Tumblr media
ravage nails it down anyways. megatron has no idea what he wants from ravage in this interaction because he doesn't know where he stands anymore, let alone what he wants for himself. before ravage was revealed to be on the lost light, megatron was captain. he even seems content to BE captain- but ravage makes it complicated. ravage is a direct reminder of who he used to be and the people he used to surround himself with. worse, people he's abandoned and hurt in order to get to where he is as captain now. megatron left the decepticons behind with no command structure, no guidance, no plan- and ravage's mere presence is a bitter reminder that even if he's run off to the autobots, he can't escape that.
Tumblr media
he's settled into a state of stagmentation with the autobots. one he's content with, maybe- at the very least one he can live with where the guilt isn't as heavy. it is the easiest way out megatron saw for himself.
but if anyone can get him to doubt himself, well.
Tumblr media
who else better than ravage to stir up the past?
54 notes · View notes