#also it’s not clear in the first section

[intervex]

Survey: flags & coinings for combinations of intersex and disability

SURVEY URL: https://forms.gle/d6fUWH7jXBTmEBdS9

In the survey I specify ten different ways that intersex people can identify with disability. I show you 13 different flags which play with disability & intersex visuals in different ways, and I ask you to rate which use cases are most suitable for each flag.

The second page then does the same deal, but with proposed terms. If flags aren't your thing you can skip the first page and go straight to the coining section. 💛

Based on how long it took a friend to do the survey, it will probably take about 15 mins to complete.

EDIT TO CLARIFY: you do not have to be both disabled and intersex to fill in the survey! I ask you on page two if those terms apply to you, so just be clear if you're not disabled/intersex. 💜 I think flags & terms should be ideally legible to out-groups, so the feedback is appreciated! But if there are ties I will prioritize the data from people who are both intersex & disabled.

Yesterday, I posted three flag designs for ways that intersex and disability can go together, and I put up two polls on coining terms. And I got really constructive feedback! Thread is here, also see replies. People had suggestions for alternate coinings and use cases that I have incorporated into the survey.

The survey does not ask you for personal information and I am not collecting emails. If you're logged in with Google it will hopefully save your progress. I turned on the options for people to edit their responses after submission (you'll need to save the special url!) and the option to see other folks' responses.

You can answer the questions in any order. You can skip questions as you desire. You don't have to justify any of your answers.

At the end of the month (September 2024) I'll post the results on this tumblr. If you want a reminder to look for the results, I recommend adding a reminder to your calendar on Oct 2 to come back here. 💜

These are the 13 flags in the survey. In order of appearance, they are:

And under the cut I'll list out the nine use cases. If you have Long Covid like me you might want to have this tab open beside the survey so you can refer to the different use cases.

The ten use-cases I specify are:

"Any reason": Intersex person who identifies as disabled (for ANY reason). Would include ALL of the following cases.

"Variation-specific": Intersex person who considers their specific intersex variation to be a disability. May or may not view other intersex variations as disabilities (e.g. "CAH is a disability but Klinefelter's is not"). Does NOT imply this person accepts the medical model of disability.

"Personal case(s)": Intersex person who considers their personal intersex variation to be a disability. May or may not view others with the same variation as disabled. (E.g. "My CAH is disabling but not everybody has the same experience"). Does NOT imply this person accepts the medicalization.

"Intersex as part of disability community": Intersex person who considers the intersex community to be a member of the broader disability community and/or that intersex rights/justice should be considered part of the disability rights/justice movements. Again, does NOT imply a medical model of disability.

"Debility by intersexism": Intersex person who has a disability caused by intersexist violence. Would include chronic pain from IGM, PTSD from medical trauma, PTSD from bullying, mobility limitation from surviving a hate crime. The term "debility" is used in disability studies for disablement that is caused by structural violence, often implying a slow wearing out from perpetual minority stress.

"Iatrogenic disability": Intersex person who has an iatrogenic disability. Iatrogenesis is when medical intervention causes disease/disability - such as chronic pain caused by surgery. The term applies regardless of whether the surgery was consensual or involuntary. Somebody who *chose* to get genital surgery that wound up causing chronic pain would fall under this category, but *not* the previous category (debility).

"Commonly correlated disability": Intersex person with a disability which is commonly correlated to their intersex variation. Like Deafness and MRKH. ADHD and EDS are known to be more common amongst intersex people.

"Unrelated disability": Intersex person who has a disability that to them is clearly unrelated to being intersex. Like they acquired a disability through being a combat veteran, and so to them there's no link between this disability and being intersex.

"It's complicated": Intersex person who is disabled and the connection between the two identities is complex and not easy to pin down. Maybe they have a disability where it /might/ be linked to being intersex but they don't know. Or they can't draw a neat distinction between disabling and non-disabling parts of their intersex variation. Or they read the last seven cases and are like "wow I have none of that clarity about how my intersex variation relates to being intersex".

"Any-linked-reason": Intersex person who is disabled and they see *any* kind of link/connection between being intersex and being disabled. The link can be vague/messy! Umbrella category that would encompass #2-7 and #9 (everything except the "unrelated disability" group.)

Tagging @queercripintersex @posting-stuffies @headpainmigraine @intersexflags @daydreamerdisease @interachive since you all chimed in with feedback on the original thread. 💜

[ladytauria]

44 and 45? I just finished the sweetness of honey so I'm desperate have more haha

<333 i’m so glad you’re enjoying it!

the sweetness of honey, chapters 7-9

have a sweet moment between tim & jay from the start of chapter 7~

Tim pads down the hall. He still hasn’t put on a shirt, leaving him in the same pajama pants he was wearing last night. They’ve fallen a little; the legs covering Tim’s feet, the waistband riding low enough to expose the juts of Tim’s hips and the trail of hair leading down to his groin.

Jason can’t stop his blush.

“G’morning,” Tim mumbles, in the vague direction of the couch.

It makes Jason’s mouth twitch. “Good morning,” he replies, meeting Tim halfway; pressing the warm cup in his hands.

Tim blinks at him—and then down at his cup, something almost like wonder in his face.

Then it softens, and he cups Jason’s face, pulling him in to kiss his cheek.

“Th’nks,” he murmurs, before raising the cup to his lips and taking his first sip with a sigh. He lets Jason’s face go; his fingers slipping from his skin and leaving him cold where he was touching. He shuffles past him, padding back over to the coffee maker as he drains the cup.

Jason leans against the island, arms crossed loosely over his chest. Tim sets his coffee cup down before reaching for the cereal. The play of muscle under his skin makes Jason’s mouth dry.

He wants…

God, he wants to touch him. The wanting runs deep enough his palms almost itch with it. He tucks his hands under his arms. That doesn’t stop him from imagining, though. What Tim would feel like, taste like, under him. Jason thinks his thumbs would fit perfectly in Tim’s back dimples, the ones peeking out over his waistband. A nice anchor, for Jason to skim his lips over Tim’s spine before scraping his teeth over one of his shoulder blades…

He wets his lips.

The light streaming in from the windows, catching on his scars. There are more of them on his back, though none as prominent or deep as the Y-shaped scar on his front. There’s one shaped like a starburst; all raised edges and mottled skin. He wants to brush his fingers over it. To kiss it—to feel it under his lips, his fingertips.

Jason drags his gaze away. The kitchen feels all too warm. He thinks about withdrawing to the couch, rather than continue to ogle Tim. But—

Then he spots them. A collection of deep purple bruises on his upper back and shoulders. They look… tender. Sore.

He can’t help but draw closer, then. Jason doesn’t touch them, not directly; his fingers just skimming the edges of them instead. Tim starts, and glances over his shoulder before pressing into the touch.

Such a simple gesture shouldn’t have Jason’s heart swelling again, but it does.

Tim doesn’t explain.

Jason doesn’t ask. Not yet.

Instead, he rises onto his toes and presses the softest of kisses to the largest one. Tim shivers. His exhale shakes—and he presses back against Jason’s touch again.

This time, Jason presses back.

(jaytim) the sweetness of honey — tim’s pov

i shared one snippet of this here! but have another, from the same chapter lol

“Now, I need to check your bruises.”

The way the pup tenses up again makes him want to take the words back. He knows he can’t. So instead he just sits back on his heels to wait.

Jason bites his lip again. At this rate, Tim is almost worried he’ll split it. But then he lowers his eyes, lashes kissing his cheeks, and rolls up the sleeves of the suit jacket. Once his hands are free, he pulls his shirt up, bunching it up just beneath his chest.

The obedience damn near coaxes a rumble from his chest. What a sweet pup.

“Thank you,” Tim murmurs, wanting to encourage it.

Jason’s ribs just show through his skin, not quite as prominent as Tim might have feared. There’s a trail of faint, dark hair leading from his belly to his groin, and, the way his belly jumps, slightly—

Tim almost wants to sink his teeth into it.

He recoils mentally, and pinches his thigh. No. Bad. This is a terrified, hurting pup, no matter how sweet and enticing he smells. Tim breathes in slowly, and then reaches out. He needs to check to make sure whatever caused the bruise didn’t break anything.

Tim reaches out, slowly, just barely brushing his fingers over the pup’s skin. Jason flinches; sucking a sharp breath between his teeth.

Tim stops immediately, leaving his hand right where it is. He doesn’t even think about it; the deep, low rumble tumbling out of his chest without conscious thought.

Its effect on the pup is immediate. He whines—a soft, helpless little keen that has Tim rumbling louder in response. He scoots closer, until he’s between Jason’s knees. Both of his hands rest on Jason’s skin, curving around his waist. The pup is so small under his hands—he half expects his hands to meet at his back.

They don’t, of course.

“It’s alright,” he soothes.

Tears spring to the pup’s eyes. Tim’s heart aches. It aches more when Jason raises his hand, pressing his palm over his eye, like he can stop the tears from falling.

“You’re alright.” He rubs his thumbs over Jason’s skin, trying to offer what comfort he can. “It’s okay to cry, pup.”

Jason sniffs, the sound loud in the quiet. “I—I—”

“Shh, puppy, I’ve got you.” Tim keeps one hand on Jason as he rises to settle on the couch beside him. He cups the back of Jason’s head with the other hand, and with both, he tugs him forward. The pup’s arms come up automatically, wrapping around his neck. His shirt falls, covering Tim’s hand.

Jason sobs, burying his face in Tim’s shoulder. Tim holds him closer, tighter, arm winding around Jason’s waist to press him more firmly against his chest.

Tim is struck, deeply, with the urge to hide him away somewhere. To usher the puppy off to his den, wrap him in softness and warmth, so that no one can ever touch him again. He wants to go back out, find the rest of the ring, and tear them apart.

He buries his nose in Jason’s curls. His— The pup needs him here. And even if he didn’t… He’s not Tim’s pup to protect, no matter what his instincts think.

Don’t get attached, he tells himself. He ignores the part of him that says it might be too late for that and begins to rock Jason slowly, stroking the back of his neck with a thumb.

The pup’s whole body shakes with the force of each sob. The worst of it is that Jason doesn’t make a sound beyond the occasional sniffle.

Tim holds him tighter, closer, murmuring soft reassurances in his ear. He wishes there was something more he could do, but… he knows the best thing he can offer Jason right now is a safe place to cry.

[ wip ask game ]

[rinbylin]

li xiangyi, yin, and femininity

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[icewindandboringhorror]

sneeping with his legs up over his head for some reason... weird boye

[blood-choke]

hiiii… i wanted to ask more about this particular val scene where mc and her talk about that portrait and mc is a bit stuck on the word husband and wants val to know theyre not a man. can i ask what inspired that type of convo? i wanted to know if it’s something you’ll touch up on again? is this underlying feelings mc had before their entombment… worried that val sees them as a man just because mc is masc? cause i know that’s kind of broader discussion in the lesbian community iirc….. was that why you wanted to incorporate it? this ask has so many questions LOL but basically i wanted to say i was intrigued and it did made me think more on those type of dynamics (thinking back to those resources you rb’d a while ago that go more into depth about diff things in the lesbian community)

oh boy get ready for another long-winded answer from me!

a lot of the feelings mc has about their gender are inspired by Leslie Feinberg's work (mainly Stone Butch Blues)

Feinberg was someone who lived & passed as a man for years of hir life, and wrote a lot about the complexities of hir gender and what it was like being a "gender outlaw."

there was actually a scene in particular from sbb that kinda put the kernel of an idea in my mind that led to this narrative of the mc feeling overshadowed by Standard and anxious about being perceived as a man. it's towards the end of the book when Jess (sbb's protagonist) meets Ruth (a trans woman that Jess falls in love with)

Jess offers to help Ruth carry groceries up to her apartment, and Ruth takes this the wrong way & is offended, partly because she thinks Jess is a man.

One Saturday afternoon I found her clutching two huge bags of groceries and fumbling with the downstairs front-door lock. I pulled out my key.

“Here, let me.” She didn’t say thank you. She hurried ahead of me on the stairs.

“Can I help you carry those?” I offered.

“Do I look weak to you?” she asked.

I stopped on the stairs. “No. Where I come from it’s just a sign of respect, that’s all.”

She continued up the stairs. “Well, where I come from,” she called out, “men don’t reward women for pretending to be helpless.” Once I heard her apartment door close I kicked the stair in anger and frustration.

later, after they get to know each other better, they have this interaction:

I laughed and picked at my salad. “Do you know if I’m a man or a woman?”

“No,” Ruth said. “That’s why I know so much about you.”

I sighed. “Did you think I was a man when you first met me?" She nodded. "Yes. At first I thought you were a straight man. Then I thought you were gay. It’s been a shock for me to realize that even I make assumptions about sex and gender that aren’t true. I thought I was liberated from all of that.”

I smiled. “I didn’t want you to think I was a man. I wanted you to see how much more complicated I am. I wanted you to like what you saw.”

i think the inspiration here is quite obvious, hahaha. i figure anyone that's read sbb can sense the similar through-line here in my work. though the conversation between mc and Valentina has a much different tone.

there's another scene later as well after something happens to Jess and she has to have her jaw wired shut. she's working at a new job and is unable to speak, and she's also passing as a man at this job. she overhears some of her female coworkers talking about her and they refer to her as a "creep" and speculate that she's always watching one of them. Jess overhears all of this and then walks out of the job, goes home and pulls the wires out of her mouth herself:

After I was sure I’d gotten the last piece of wire out of my gums, I rinsed my mouth with whiskey and then drank the rest of it so I could sleep without remembering how Marija’s words had stripped me of my humanity.

butches & gnc women still face this kind of dehumanization; compared or likened to men in a derogatory way, accused of being "heteropatriarchal," the predatory stereotype of the fat ugly lesbian, and on the other side they're also hypersexualized, especially online and in queer spaces. butchphobia is a specific kind of misogyny that hits from all sides, even from the people that are supposed to be a part of your community. and this attitude especially effects trans women and women of color, who are already experiencing all of these things due to transmisogyny and racism.

i also really wanted to use this to touch on the kind of gender essentialism that we see in a lot of these cis feminist discussions - to these women at this job, Jess had committed no real crime other than being quiet and being the “wrong” kind of man. something about this scene has always stuck with me and really bothered me, but it's hard to put into words; on one hand i can admit i have probably been one of those women who made some kind of similar remark about a man i barely knew, but i've also been someone on the receiving end, too, because of the way i look. the mc in blood choke is put into this box, but they can't fit in, as someone who has been on both sides and doesn't really understand where they belong because of it; how can she stand beside Valentina or Hana or Clear when they might see her as a perpetrator, someone who can't be trusted? how does this mindset harm both the women and the men of the council and everyone in between? how can we break this cycle?

one of the films i mentioned recently when talking about the character designs was The Same Difference, which is specifically about the Black lesbian community and the discrimination within that community based upon gender roles (though this is not something limited to just the Black lesbian community)

a lot of the women in that doc talk about the boxes they're put in as AG or stud lesbians - they can't have their hair long, they can't wear makeup, they can't do this or that, they have to be aggressive and hard or else they're not real studs. they discuss stud on stud (or butch4butch) and how other lesbians look down on those types of lesbians, as well as the disdain for bisexual women for "betraying" the community. it explores the way misogyny and the patriarchy still oppress these women and forces them into this restrictive gender role despite their refusal to adhere to the other role originally assigned to them, and the way racism specifically intersects and exacerbates it for Black lesbians. there's a stud that's an exotic dancer and wears a weave, and a lot of other studs have a problem with this because a weave is "a female thing." another section follows a pregnant stud, and how the community shuns her for that, because she "dresses like a man and acts like a man" so why is she getting pregnant when she should be "the man"?

mc doesn't remember how they felt before entombment, but waking up they feel this need to prove themselves - both in that they are hard and aggressive like a butch should be, but also in that they want to be this person for Valentina or Clear or Hana (or all of them) that is safe and comforting. but they aren't sure how to do that when the world perceives them as this one specific thing - as a husband, as Standard, as a man, specifically this man who hurt Valentina.

of course we've already seen this to not be true of the companions with the last chapter as the mc learns more and spends more time with everyone. but this is kind of the foundation of where this whole idea came from. it started with my novel & i chose vampires for that story & this one because there is a long history of lesbian vampirism (and also because it's sexy) but there's this "curse" that both Hana & Valerie talk about in their respective stories, the first one being the racism she's had to face, the transphobia, along with this alienation and perception of lesbians as predatory and conniving and aggressive, as vampires, which i just think really lends itself to expanding upon these issues lesbians & trans women face both in general and within the community.

anyways if you want to read more i suggest Stone Butch Blues, which you can get for free on Leslie Feinberg's website, as well as S/he, by Minnie Bruce Pratt, available on the internet archive, Gender Failure by Ivan E. Coyote & Rae Spoon also on the internet archive, and you can rent The Same Difference for $10 on vimeo.

[badolmen]

I can fix him*

*bad writing, underutilized gameplay mechanics, characters with unfulfilled potential, funded by bootlickers

[skitskatdacat63]

Christopher Nolan making movies: I'm gonna make a film that is so confusing and non-linear

[watery-melon-baller]

lads a script is being written!!!

[exopelagic]

this election feels so hollow even though it’s likely ostensibly gonna be a good outcome. labour really just sucks fucking ass rn huh

[thevioletcaptain]

pov! you're me, considering signing up as a participant in a new challenge, but as you're reading the rules and requirements you notice that they've straight up pasted in several sections of copy you wrote for a challenge you founded and have been running for the past seven years (and they didn't ask permission or provide credit!!!)

[tragedy-peanut-gallery]

Baldursgateposting is on a slight delay because I reached a point in the game where I’m paralyzed by indecision and idk what to do anymore COME BACK MOON LESBIANS PLEASE TAKE ME WITH YOU I CANT TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!!!

[spark1edog]

have i told the story about someone accidentally calling me autistic and everyone laughing and she apologized later but i was like i mean no offense taken really bc i probably am. and she was like 😅ok?

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Heads up 7 up

tysm for the tag @wildswrites !!

Rules: post a 7 line excerpt.

Here’s this weird little section from BODY BACK. Perhaps mildly spicy as a warning??? Mostly strange! I have no gauge lol. Jeremiah bait!

They aren’t exclusive, don’t even know each other’s last names, and besides, how can Jeremiah help how everyone magnetizes around him? Harrison can’t blame them. Jeremiah is illusory under the disco ball’s speckled light, his throat long, biteable, his eyes syrupy in his high. A woman takes him by the shoulder, but not just any woman—Biyu, and her eyes are pinched, analyzing, because she’s looking at Harrison, her glossy crimson nails on Jeremiah’s cheek, and she’s kissing him too now, her body joining the cluster, and it’s good, the way they all roll limbs to synth, the way they turn into each other’s faces and kiss, kiss, kiss. The music clangs, their mouths full of spit. The DJ says to hold your partners close, and they don’t have to. They are not simply together, not simply in chrysalis, but osmosed in their becoming.

Open tag on this but please do this if you see this & say I tagged you! I want to read your stuff!! :)

[winter-spark]

Okay, so for Juza celebration week day 3, I'm gonna discuss some Juza ships and the questions of who's more fun to see pining, who fell first, who fell harder. (I hope this counts lol. The prompt is favorite relationships and I could instead talk about his friendship with Omi or Sakyo or something but here I am choosing to go the shipper's route instead lol.)

Before I start, I do want to say I sorta see Juza as demi. Demiromatic, demisexual? Both? Maybe. One of them? Definitely. Is this important for the post? Well, I'm not posting anything else this week so my headcanon has to go somewhere. Also yes. because this is a ships post. Read: not really but still.

Okay first up Juban:

For Juban it is obviously pining!Banri. I think also it's definitely a Banri fell first, Banri fell harder situation. I'm sorry I don't make the rules I just follow the feelings. Like, Juza is just trying to vibe and eat his food Banri, get up lol. I think in this case Juza's not pining lowkey because he'd rather not think about it. Like why think about how they'd be as a couple when a confession would make him want to cut his tongue out. Well, maybe not his tongue because boy's gotta eat but like a confession to Banri? That would never make his to-do list. I fully heartedly believe that whenever he realized he liked Banri he imagined Banri laughing at him and locked it up. Not that the feelings are gone but like he's filed it away as 'no' or 'never gonna happen' so he's content. (So kinda like Muku but a completely different vibe.) Either way, that's what is most fun to me for them. Like I'm sure pining!Juza is fun but for Juban and their canon dynamic, it's more fun to think about it as Banri just trying to attain his crush's attention and it almost working but also sorta backfiring on him, like that's just how he flirts. I wanna say "good luck getting together ya goobers" but somehow it doesn't feel impossible to me even with this set up lol. Like I dunno exactly how for suresies, I just know it's plausible. Right now I'm thinking either they'd fall into a relationship like it just sorta one day they're dating and nobody talks about or really adresses it until like months later OR sorta an argument into confession type thing, like maybe one of them is being sorta annoying (out of concern or something but whichever on of them it is he's not gonna say it at first) and they end up in an arguement about whatever it is and then the other is like "why do you even care?" and I'm not a great writer but like then either comes in a flat out confession of sorts or it's bit more arguing that like lowkey forces em into a confession. (I have one more alt but that's bcuz it was a chat post that I could see being them and I might just post it as a chat post some day. idk we'll see.)

Okay so, I'll be honest I'm not sure I'm knowledgeable enough on other Juza ships but I do want to consider two more because I'm curious. I'm not fully sure I ship them but I think the possibility is interesting. So yea I'll literally be typing those as I think. (the previous section was kinda like that but it was originally barely coherent tags for another post lol)

Next up, Tenma & Juza:

(I'm not especially sure I actually ship them so much as a couple of weeks or so ago I read their card bonus story thing (cross backstage?) and thus I'm curious as to see them a bit more.) So, lol this is gonna sound repetitive but I do think pining!Tenma/Tenma fell first is more fun to think about because I think based on that short and Tenma being like "I don't/didn't need your help but I'm going to help you out because I don't want to owe you anything which I sorta already don't because I didn't ask for your help" can very easily be translated to "It's not like I like you or anything" in a romantic reading of their relationship. Like I sorta imagine it as Tenma trying to do nice things for Juza but always having/giving a flimsy excuse for why he's doing it. And the moment Juza is like nice to him back Tenma gets lowkey(but probably actually highkey) embarrassed. And I think it'd be funny if Tenma convinces himself that his crush on Juza is actually Juza having a crush on him because "of course, he has a crush on me, that's not a foreign thing for me, people get crushes on me all the time" Yuki: "What are you muttering about? It's breaking my concentration." I'll be honest I'm not entirely sure who would fall harder(at this rate it's likely it'd probably be Tenma ngl but it could be Juza idk), regardless I do think Juza probably really admires Tenma and his acting and he probably has a decently easy time telling him that and the following interaction would be something like: Tenma(probably somewhat embarrassed): Well of course you do, don't you know who I am? Juza: ??? Yea? That's why I'm talking you??? Summer Troupe: lol! Autumn Troupe: *facepalm* Tenma: *more embarrassed* I think Juza developing a crush on Tenma in this scenario is funny because he'd probably see Tenma as a little awkward and weird but finds it somehow endearing, but it's partially because he's seeing that even someone as famous and popular as Tenma struggles to talk and get his point across to people at times, or maybe that's just a bonus. Either way, Juza is very willing to take the time to understand Tenma even at his most confusing because Juza has been misunderstood his whole life pretty much. Idk if this paragraph sounds right, if you guys don't think so, I'm sorry for being wrong &/or this not making sense. Update! Because I've realized that would line up more with early-on stuff. I've remembered that I've seen two comics with them interacting. One was the one where Tenma was like 'Juza let me thank you by taking you to this pancake(? it was something sweet) shop I passed by', and Juza was like 'alright let's go'. & Tenma led them to a Ramen shop like 'I coulda sworn it was here', & as they eat the noodles Tenma's like 'I'm really sorry', & Juza's like 'these are good too'. & then the other comic with them that I saw was the one where them, Tsuz & Tai were heading home from the college together getting a lot of attention from Tenma's fans and Tenma apologized and Juza was like 'Let me know if any weirdos try to mess with you' and Tenma's like 'thanks! -^^-' (which is so much growth from the cross-backstage thingy). That was their interaction there. So now I'll update the thoughts with that dynamic in mind. I mean uh I feel like that other stuff is still plausible just as they bond more, Tenma's more comfortable with flat-out showing his gratitude and joy and stuff. I feel like as a couple they'd sorta be like Tenma's the super supportive I'm gonna do a bunch for you boyf and Juza's the protective one, you know? Like Tenma would but something sweet on his way home because he feels Juza's been doing a lot and working hard, and Juza would, whenever he can, accompany Tenma home so he doesn't have to deal with being approached and so he doesn't get lost. Probably results in a lot of impromptu dates at cafes and stuff.

And lastly, Sakuya/Juza :

(Because while I know nothing about them as a pair/their dynamic and I don't quite ship them, I think they could be very cute ngl (aka I want to ship them. I mean come on they're so intrinsically similar yet so different at the same time) So for starters, this is a demi x demi ship in my head. They are both demi to me. Demiromantic or demisexual? Both? Hmm pretty sure Sakuya is demiromantic(or maybe gray-romantic) but if he's not demisexual he's definitely under the ace umbrella in my head. As for Juza, see above. Okay so to me Juza definitely fell first. (See? I do think Juza can fall first.) As for pining, I am leaning towards pining!Juza but I'm curious how pining!Sakuya would be in this dynamic in particular. Maybe I'll let these two have mutual pining. Actually yea, that could be fun. Lol how I'm imagining it now is them using their shared passion for acting to try to impress each other not realizing the other is already impressed with them. Like, if this was a mutual pining story a very "hey wanna see this play with me" & "I've been practicing this part really hard, I hope he's watching me perform" with a "oh my gosh he's so cool" type deal from both of them. It'd be very cute, in my humble opinion. Also, I sorta think it's completely plausible for them to fall equally as hard for each other. idk, I don't make the rules. More importantly, they're a pair who'd be tired in the morning because they spent all night together... practicing acting! They'd help each other practice acting a lot and probably loose complete track of time lol. (Have they had a bonding event yet? I haven't read it if so.) But like back to the falling equally hard thing I think it's just that when they both already think the other is super amazing they're both only gonna appreciate the other more once they find their footing as what they can do for each other as a couple. Like Idk. Idk. It's hard to say one of them fell harder after they literally got mutual pining when the whole point of this format was to be like 'mutual pining is fine but have you considered how fun it'd be to focus on [name] pining' they broke my format. But they were cute about it so I'll let them slide.

So yeah Happy Juza week, this has been on the three Juza ships that compel me the most currently.

Actually, the order I did them is funny because like I thought I'd have almost nothing in the Tenma section and knew I was putting pining!Tenma then pining!Juza in the Saku/Juza section so I put Tenma/Juza in the middle but now it's kinda like a sliding scale. Like Tenma/Juza is the middle ground between Banri/Juza and Sakuya/Juza. Like energy/vibe-wise you know? And that's funny to me. Also lol that I actually had a lot more to say about Juten(?) than I thought I would.

[callixton]

breaking my thousand words a day streak :( but yknow that's okay bc i went over by like 700 yesterday. also as much as i want to publish this fic it cannot be the priority (<- telling myself this so i believe it)

[inkblackorchid]

Btw this is chapter two of the WIP fic. or. well. it might be. Finished this a couple of days ago but forgot to post it lmao