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Shiguang! Fake! Dating! AU!

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Face-off

Part 3 - Cheng Xiaoshi & Lu Guang

Page 13 - 14

Page 11 - 12 < . >

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If they can’t be normal about each other, why should I be normal about them?

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The thing is, when Cheng Xiaoshi finds out about the timelines and Lu Guang going back— and with Qiao Ling now at least having an idea, I think it’s inevitable that he finds out— I think he’ll be mad, but not for the reasons we’re all expecting. He’s not going to be mad at Lu Guang for breaking his own rules, and he’s not going to be mad at Lu Guang keeping secrets because he has a right to know. Not initially, at least.

No, I think he’s going to be mad that Lu Guang put himself in this isolated, lonely situation and had to suffer on his own.

“I know, I should’ve told you.” Lu Guang will say, staring at Cheng Xiaoshi’s feet instead of his eyes.

“Yeah, you should’ve told me.” Cheng Xiaoshi will reply firmly, stepping up to grab Lu Guang by the shoulders. But it’s gentler than Lu Guang expected, and so are the words that follow. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with that alone.”

Lu Guang’s head snaps up then, searching Cheng Xiaoshi’s eyes for something. “What?”

Cheng Xiaoshi looks mad still, but now Lu Guang can identify the sadness underneath. “You went back to when we first met, right?” At Lu Guang’s hesitant nod, he continues. “I get not telling me right away then. You couldn’t. But all these years, Lu Guang? After everything?”

“I didn’t want to burden you.” Lu Guang answers. “And I didn’t know how telling you would affect the timeline. I needed— I needed to keep you safe.”

“And I need to be there for you!” Cheng Xiaoshi says, his fingers tightening on Lu Guang’s shoulders. “That’s my job! Wherever one of us goes, we both go.”

“Cheng Xiaoshi…”

“I hate to imagine how alone you’ve felt,” Cheng Xiaoshi confesses quietly. “How hard it must’ve been to deal with all of that without support.” Lu Guang swallows, but he doesn’t say anything. He can’t, his throat is too tight. “That’s the worst part, you know? To know that you’ve been suffering. Even during the good times, you were weighed down by this. And that— Lu Guang, that kills me.”

“I didn’t—“

“I know what it’s like to feel that alone.” Cheng Xiaoshi continues. “I felt like that for years. And then you showed up. You showed up and I was never alone again. You bore every burden with me, fought every fight at my side. You listened to every fear and worry I had. You cured my loneliness and all this time, I could’ve been doing that for you but you didn’t give me the chance.”

Lu Guang looks down. “You have been there.”

But Cheng Xiaoshi shakes his head. “Not the way I should’ve been. Not the way I want to be.”

“I’m sorry.” Lu Guang says again, more quietly this time.

“Just promise me,” Cheng Xiaoshi ducks his head to catch Lu Guang’s eye. “Promise me you’ll tell me everything this time. Okay?”

“Okay.” Lu Guang agrees.

And he does. He tells Cheng Xiaoshi everything, slowly but as it applies. And the ache of loneliness vanishes almost instantly.

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Cheng Xiaoshi?????

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I actually need to talk about how Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi take on characteristics of each other in times of crisis.

Cheng Xiaoshi comes back to find Lu Guang bleeding out and unconscious on the couch and Qiao Ling possessed. You would expect him to do something extreme, right? You’d expect him to tackle Qiao Ling or run to Lu Guang, putting himself in between Lu Guang and the danger. But he doesn’t. He stays put and he thinks and he plans. He takes on a level-headed approach to try and minimize the damage, to stop anything worse from happening.

Lu Guang, upon seeing Cheng Xiaoshi shot, completely forgets about logic. He lunges towards Qian Jin, who is not just holding a gun still, but actively pointing it with his finger over the trigger. He throws himself directly and recklessly into what could very quickly turn into a bad and dangerous situation without a moment’s thought. He beats the shit out of Qian Jin, too (everyone cheer) instead of taking any sort of logical route or attempting to de-escalate in any way.

When Cheng Xiaoshi thinks that Lu Guang is dead, he almost jumps back in time but doesn’t, because he respects Lu Guang’s rules and wishes. He acknowledges that doing so would break the rules and fundamentally alter the past, so he tries his best to grapple with his feelings and take a logical approach to handling his grief.

When Lu Guang sees Cheng Xiaoshi die, he does jump back into the past. He admittedly tries to be rational, trying not to change too much because he knows the consequences. But then we get him in Bridon arc purposefully creating waves and starting to nudge things off track because he can’t handle or cope with the idea of losing Cheng Xiaoshi again.

And I know they’re meant to be yin-and-yang, right? Personality, color scheme, everything about their dynamic. And this always strikes me because in each side of the yin-and-yang, there’s the small circle of the other half. And they have that, too, in their personalities. When the other is threatened and they are left to their base instincts and fears to react, they react like each other.

I could argue that they replicate the parts of each other that they admire in a crisis. That they have a sort of unconscious “what would Cheng Xiaoshi/Lu Guang do?” sort of moment in the split second before they react. I could argue that they aren’t completely right without each other, and that shows. Or just that they’re so ingrained in each other, even their basic instincts reflect this.

I just think it’s really interesting and important to acknowledge because neither one of them is a 2D character. They have their archetype but they aren’t pigeonholed into that alone. Lu Guang is actually quite caring and open about showing it, often the opposite of what we see in the quiet, reserved one. And Cheng Xiaoshi isn’t stupid and all forgiving and even recognizes the outcomes of his recklessness, something not typically seen in the brash and outgoing one. They are very multifaceted in their personalities and dynamics and it’s even more so in their personal dynamic because of how close they are and how much they’re able to be truly genuine together.

Anyway, this got more rambly than I meant for it to. I just think it’s important to acknowledge the impact they’ve had on each other and how it’s demonstrated 🫶🏻

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Two mimir

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Face-off

Part 3 - Cheng Xiaoshi & Lu Guang

Page 11 - 12

Page 9 - 10 < . >

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soft shiguang

[ID: Three drawings of Cheng Xiaoshi leaning back against Lu Guang, head on his chest. The first drawing is Lu Guang kissing/nuzzling the top of Cheng Xiaoshi’s head; the second is Cheng Xiaoshi turning halfway to face Lu Guang; and the third is them finally kissing.]

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Finally!! My last installment in @shiguangfluffweek! For the free day prompt, I decided to revisit the prompts from day 3 and write my original idea for those!

This is my first time finishing an entire event week and I’m thrilled!!

Now I’m off to work on my long fic for you guys :)

Read the final fic here!

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Hurt my own feelings with a couple of these 👍🏼

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Okay returning to work was more than I expected and I fell behind, but I’m back with @shiguangfluffweek day 6: scars! I’ve been so excited to write this one!!

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I’ve made too many of these lately

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This amv is absolute cinema!!!!!! Sharing it for more people to experience :)

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If I see one more post like “Cheng Xiaoshi clearly doesn’t care about Lu Guang that much because he was able to accept Lu Guang’s death and start to move on” I will actually go insane. So let’s talk about it!

The implication here, of course, is that because Cheng Xiaoshi does not jump into the past to save Lu Guang the way Lu Guang repeatedly resets the timeline to save Cheng Xiaoshi, it means that Cheng Xiaoshi doesn’t care the same amount.

This of course overlooks the scene in officer Chen’s car where Cheng Xiaoshi stares very intently at officer Chen’s phone background and even begins to question when/where the photo was taken. He openly contemplates jumping back into this photo to try and save Lu Guang. And you know what’s crazy? He would be jumping into a photo that is TWO YEARS old— he would become someone who hadn’t even met him or Lu Guang yet. The amount of effort he would have to go through to make their meeting seem believable is extreme and there’s really no way to do it without DRASTICALLY altering the timeline.

Which brings me to my next point. You know WHY he doesn’t end up doing it? Not because he doesn’t miss Lu Guang and certainly not because he doesn’t care. He doesn’t do it because he remembers Lu Guang’s words and his rules. It’s his unwavering respect and love for Lu Guang that stops him. Because there would be no way for him to do it without drastically altering the timeline and because he knows that it would first and foremost upset Lu Guang and then secondly not even guarantee that he survives, he doesn’t do it. Cheng Xiaoshi cares about Lu Guang so much and it’s literally that same love that stops him from doing the exact thing Lu Guang always does for him.

So let’s compare that, shall we? Because the important thing for us to acknowledge here is that they are Lu Guang’s rules that both of them must follow, let’s start there. Lu Guang set the rules, he enforces them, and he’s the one who insists on repeating them before every jump. It’s been shown time and time again that Cheng Xiaoshi doesn’t care much about consequences and that he will do things without sparing a thought towards the future. The rules exist namely to keep him in check, sure, but they aren’t his rules.

So when Lu Guang goes back in time, he is breaking his own rules. He is compromising his own morals and beliefs. When Cheng Xiaoshi doesn’t go back in time, he is refusing to compromise Lu Guang’s teaching and beliefs. He is honoring Lu Guang by sticking to everything he knows Lu Guang believes in, even though it goes against everything he is. They do the exact same thing in opposite ways: they go against every instinct they have, compromise their own beliefs, and try their best to honor each other.

So don’t you dare tell me that Cheng Xiaoshi doesn’t care to the same extreme that Lu Guang does. His reaction and his lack of action is exactly in the same vein as Lu Guang’s diving back into the past. But because they’re different people and they are showing their love for each other, it manifests differently.

It really is that simple. Cheng Xiaoshi, known for being impulsive and reckless, stops and actually thinks about this, about what Lu Guang would want and how he can/cannot get away with this. He puts all of his own feelings aside and for a brief moment, thinks like Lu Guang. Lu Guang, known for being level-headed and controlled, completely loses his sense of mental stability and immediately falls into action that is driven solely by emotion. He is reckless, he is not controlled by his mind, but instead by his heart. For a brief moment, he acts like Cheng Xiaoshi.

When something happens to one of them, the other takes on their characteristics. For that time, the other lives on through them— even in death they cannot be truly separated. So yeah, their reactions are equal and opposite in a yin-and-yang sort of way, each of them completing the other. So do not ever look me in the face and tell me that Cheng Xiaoshi cares less.

Also, just for arguments sake, we can’t guarantee that Cheng Xiaoshi wasn’t still going to jump back. It’s very possible that he just realized the sheer recklessness of jumping back into the photo of someone who didn’t even know them at that time and had decided that he would wait to pick a more suited photo— like one he took, maybe. We’ll never know because he finds out Lu Guang is alive and the need to jump immediately ceases to exist. But if the argument above can’t convince you that he cares just as much— if the scene of him remembering the most mundane moments while curled in on himself and sobbing over the loss of them can’t convince you— then just know that you can’t prove that he wasn’t still going to jump back anyways, he was just going to try to be smarter about it.

Cheng Xiaoshi loves Lu Guang just as deeply and recklessly and it shows in everything he does.

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Hi!

I just wanted to let you know that I stumbled upon your blog because of a sk8 post, and after looking around the rest of your blog for a solid 3 minutes, all your posts about Link Click made me curious. So I am about to give it a shot!

Have a good week :)

OH NO. I mean don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to have you look into it and please know that my dms are wide open and waiting if you have any incoherent screaming that you’d like to do while you watch it, but please be warned that this show (while worth it) is going to hurt you very, very much.

I cried through like most of season 2 in its entirety and at least one of the plot lines from season 1 earned some tears from me, too. Again, I LOVELOVELOVELOVELOVE the show and do highly recommend it but coming from sk8 (especially after the fluff that was the ova), I just want you to be aptly warned!!

But the plot is genuinely so interesting. And ALL the characters are phenomenal. I have said to several people how truly impressed I am at the show’s ability to make me care deeply about every character, not just the main trio. It is full of suspense and every time you think you know what’s going on, you’re right but somehow also wrong. The development is great and for the fact that time-travel can be confusing and hard to explain, they do a really phenomenal job of making it all make sense. Really a 12/10 show in my opinion!!!!

(Please scream to me while you watch it. Please, I’m begging!!!)