#i'm soft for them

[swallowtailcherry]

I don't know why, but I wanna treat Apollo and Qin like puppies!

Not in a bad way, of course. Just pat them on the head, hug and kiss them.

[cresccents]

it  had  been  a  while  since  she  saw  sienna,  words  only  exchanged  by  letters  .  memories  only  taking  shape  and  kept  alive  by  looking  at  her  first  attempts  of  what  couldn’t  even  be  considered  a  dress.  as  she  adjusted  the  heavy  basket,  her  heart  was  beating  with  anticipation,  wondering  how  she’d  gift  her  the  basket  filled  with  dresses,  carefully  stitched  with  dedication  and  appreciation  for  the  person,  who  had  somehow  saved  her,  taught  her  something  she  could  truly  be  proud  of.  “  sienna  !”  she  waved,  her  breath  caught  in  her  throat  as  she  finally  spotted  her.  her  eyes  softened  at  the  sight  of  her  friend,  stepping  closer  to  close  the  distance  in  an  instant.  “  have  you  been  well?  you  somehow  got  even  more  beautiful,  i  hope  my  gift  will  do  your  beauty  justice.  ”

@sparkledcrowns ( sienna )

[occasionallyprosie]

I'm attached to Legend and Twilight right now, they're just so...

I'm so soft for them, and I've successfully written a whole (start of a) chapter with just fluff of these two :D

[boggleoflight]

classics - muse a tends to muse b’s wounds with more care than necessary (for ystran and the boys!)

“It isn’t worth the fuss.” The knuckles were broken, mended now to where F’ystran could move them painlessly again, but Nahte held fast. Aether hummed and wound over their hands, and Lily fluttered curiously from one of Nahte’s shoulders to the other, as though she herself was trying to get an idea of what it was that had her master’s attention so fixed.

F’ystran could not quite push past Nahte’s expression, that mixture of stony and pleasantly serene that made it difficult to parse what thoughts circled his head. The mismatched blue of his eyes remained glued to the bruised span of the back of F’ystran’s hand, impenetrable in his paradoxically gentle—infinitely gentle—way.

“It needs to be tended to, if you’re keen to hold a sword any time soon,” he replied, glancing up to F’ystran’s eyes. He smiled, then, soft and coaxing. “Just a moment more.”

It did not need it, the tingle of the aether weaving up the length of F’ystran’s forearm in want of things more pressing than the leftover bruise. The small scrapes and chafes stitched shut, skin smooth and unmarred where they had been that moment before.

It was excess, and one F’ystran would not tolerate from any other healer. From Nahte, it was not unwelcome. Where a plethora of tiny aches had built, they now eased away, leaving only warmth in their wake.

The promised moment passed, the glow of the magic dissipating into the air. Task complete, there was a heartbeat of hesitation, both of Nahte’s hands holding F’ystran’s one. Neither seemed fit to part in the silence that had fallen. F’ystran, without fully meaning to, squeezed Nahte’s fingers, thumb smoothing just a fraction of an ilm over the side of his hand.

“Thank you, Nahte,” he murmured. Nahte smiled, returning the pressure. F’ystran near thanked him for that too.

---

Featuring @lookbluesoup's boy! Set between when F'ystran started telling people Nahte was the only one allowed to heal him and when they finally got together. The rituals are intricate.

[katsinspats]

I think my copy of the game is broken they've been doing this for 30 minutes

Crop of the Biolizard edit I did bc it makes me laugh:

[s2pdoktopus]

You know those fanfics where Zidian evolves into a magic snake? That's the idea but it's the fuzzy worm thing.

[somewhereincairparavel]

"jason is a knockoff watered down percy" NO hear me out, jason actually parallels annabeth immensely, sharing SO many similarities with her personality, not percy, in this essay I will-

edit: my full analysis is out now! here

[blackkatdraws2]

[Toon x Mobster] A tender moment.

[Animation timelapse here!]

[AUDIO USED:] Chet Baker - Almost Blue Sound Effects edited by me!

[literarymerritt]

Thinking about Them 🥺

Art Tumblr | Twitter

[obl1tus]

Her features soften; earlier anger seeping into something milder, more tolerant. . . something akin to regret. She exhales heavily, a small dip of her head in acknowledgement as they pull away. " I know. " she says gently, blue hues full of sincerity. " I don't enjoy it either. " her lips twitch, trying for something teasing " Even if I am difficult to deal with sometimes. " The truth is; they both have their demons. Years of distance and time have fractured the bond they once shared; the people they used to be. They're both different now, both re-learning the other and Bryn is no longer the girl who would follow at his heels as a child of pull him into games. She was no longer the girl who was full of optimism and joy, always smiling. Perhaps she had never been that girl. And Finn? Finn was darker now too. She's silent for a beat, then speaks again, voice tentative. " Do you want to get out of here for a while? " there's no expectation, just a quiet offer. " Some air might do us both good. "

Isolation was a cancer to the soul. It had consumed all his light and positive thinking throughout the course of his imprisonment. His mind had him convinced he no longer mattered to anyone. He was forgotten. Unimportant. That's why he knew with certainty this moment was reality. Her reaching out and actually pulling him in for a hug was something he could not have imagined during his years in slumber. His response is delayed, but his arms circle around her frame and he holds her close. The weight on his chest lifts and he finally feels like he can breathe again. "Good" he says after some moments, when he dares to try his voice again. "Then let us put this behind us." He pulls back so he can look at her, his expression softer and his features visibly more relaxed. "You know I hate fighting with you."

[thesulkycroissant]

Recently I was talking about this panel of Bruce moping around in Dick's room at the Manor -

- and people in the reblogs mentioned that this was after the earthquake that destroyed the Manor and therefore Bruce would have to restore Dick's room, which reminded me after some time of this panel from an earlier issue of this run -

Something so endearing to me about the idea of Dick saying, "This isn't the Wayne Manor I grew up in!" and Bruce then painstakingly recreating his room for him.

[klayr-de-gall]

Eternal Sun

As you can see, the brainrot has taken over.

[lazylittledragon]

vampire fam is back from the dead <33

[kuschelkissen]

I love this episode so much. It has given me the line that is keeping me sane in all this dooming darkness surrounding what happened to Cheng Xiaoshi: even if you can't see hope, doesn't mean there is no hope.

And you kinda reinforced this by pointing out how the girls mirror them. I really hope you're right about this and that Lu Guang will succeed in his plans of saving him.

I think it also allows us a glimpse into the future because I'm pretty sure there WILL be a fallout between those two once Cheng Xiaoshi finds out what Lu Guang has been doing. We all know he would hate that. He is such a highly empathic guy and he seems to value everyone else more than himself (shown not only by him trying again and again to change the past to help people, regardless if it might erase his future. Because he KNOWS that, has been hearing it from Lu Guang since the beginning. And he only actually realises what this is doing when it's not his life being changed by his doing, but Emma's... but it's also shown in a more obvious way by him LITERALLY STEPPING IN FRONT OF QIAN JIN'S GUN TO PROTECT SOMEONE ELSE. Not once. SEVERAL TIMES. And only one time to protect Qiao Ling, the other times he was staying between QJ and Lu Tianxi, who had until shortly before that been working against them. That guy has no sense of self-preservation, I swear!)

Where was I.

He's empathetic and selfless, and I just know he will hate that Lu Guang put him over everyone else. Because why him, what makes him more special or better than anyone else?

So they will have their fallout, I'm sure about that, and I'm also sure that they'll find their way back to each other like the girls.

The damn noodle lesbians are singlehandedly keeping my hopes up for a happy ending for these two, since everything else about this damn show seems to make me want to throw hands and give into despair 😭💔

Rewatching Link Click: Easter eggs in your noodle soup?

So I've just finished watching both seasons of Link Click/Shíguāng Dàilǐ-rén, which means that obviously I'm watching it all over again. What did you expect me to do, sit around waiting for Bridon arc while the Bilibili official account taunts us with replays??

Besides, Link Click is one of those dishes that is best served twice. The early episodes are packed with hints and foreshadowing that only become clear once you've gotten up to date, so I've made it my mission to catch 'em all.

You don't say.

It's well known that certain early mini-arcs (for instance Chen Xiao's basketball match, and Doudou's kidnapping) have implications for the larger plotline or at least contain important exposition/character insights that the story would not feel complete without. There are also several that get written off as filler, or are generally considered to not have any purpose beyond familiarising the audience with the characters and setup, and lulling you into a false sense of comfort before everything goes to shit. Episode 2: Secret Recipe, AKA the Noodle Lesbians episode, beloved as it is, tends to fall into the second category.

Or does it?

On a rewatch, I still don't think it does anything to advance the main plot. We don't even really know where it fits into the timeline, because we're never told what day it is and Lu Guang's watch is never shown on screen (I'll get around to a longer analysis of this another day). However, I'm instead inclined to believe that it's one of the most important episodes in the show - if not THE most important - because it's essentially an allegory for the story of Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang, and gives you a bird's eye view of how the relationship between them is going to develop - which, as you know, is what the show is all about. And the fact that it's not situated in a specific time, in a show that cares heavily about timeline construction, makes it better.

The episode starts with this quote from German photographer August Sander, who believed that, through photography, he could reveal the characteristic traits of people. "The portrait is your mirror. It's you." It's pretty explicit, when you think about it. This episode is a mirror of the entire series, specifically of its protagonists.

Moving on. The episode's storyline is quite simple: two college "roommates" start a noodle shop together, and as time passes, they drift apart and eventually fall out as their priorities change. Yu Xia, the business-oriented one between them, wants to get hold of the secret ingredient used by Lin Zhen, to whose cooking the shop attributes its success. Does Yu Xia really want to steal the secret recipe? Or is it just one of the many things that the quieter Lin Zhen keeps hidden from her that she desperately wants to know, along with everything that went wrong between them? Your guess is as good as mine. Either way, there are lots of indirect parallels between Xialin of the noodle shop and Shiguang of the photo studio, even if for now they're very distinct individuals with their own personalities and struggles. It does, however, give some indication of what's to come.

This question isn't purely rhetorical, as we find out in the very next arc, where Cheng Xiaoshi has a fight with Lu Guang over letting his client's loved ones perish in the Wenchuan earthquake. Even if they eventually come to a consensus, they have fundamentally different life philosophies and approach their missions in very different ways. Cheng Xiaoshi is a hyperempathetic idealist who keeps trying to use his forays back into the past to fix his clients' personal problems, while Lu Guang remains utterly indifferent and staunchly against interfering, even in life-or-death situations. Which turns out to be a facade, because we later learn that he's just as much of a meddler as Cheng Xiaoshi - except he's focused on a singular, selfish goal, which is to keep Cheng Xiaoshi alive at any cost.

Let's go back to the noodle shop. After ten years of running the business together, it becomes clear that the ladies' aspirations are no longer compatible. Yu Xia has big plans for the shop. She wants to broaden their customer base - for profit, of course, but also so that more people can be made happy by the chance to taste their noodles. Lin Zhen's dreams, however, are on a smaller scale - perhaps only on a personal scale. Throughout the episode, it seems that she only really cares about making noodles for one person.

Sound familiar?

At the risk of digressing, it needs to be said that Yu Xia and Lin Zhen are absolutely very much a WLW couple. This isn't bait, it's elegant and really quite unsubtle queercoding that says 'to hell with censorship' loud and clear. Honeymoon jokes, the taxi driver assuming Lin Zhen had fought with her husband, and Lin Zhen's very bold attempts at flirting... we see you.

More to the point of this post, I think it's important to point out that Lin Zhen does not actually care for too many people other than Yu Xia. She's all worn out from making noodles for customers, but she forgets all about that when it's time to make a bowl for Yu Xia. She also keeps her special ingredient - which is one of the secrets she shares with Yu Xia, as we find out - highly guarded. She's never going to let these pesky reporters in on something so intimate.

Why is this important? Because, as it turns out, the episode's storyline - and Lin Zhen's motives - are all about saving Yu Xia.

We learn that the secret ingredient is a local specialty from Yu Xia's hometown. Lin Zhen has been using it for years, keeping the taste of home alive while Yu Xia's drifted further and further from home to the point where she can no longer remember where the ingredient came from. At the end of it all, when Yu Xia returns home, she finds Lin Zhen there waiting for her. Lin Zhen, mind you, does not hail from the same town. The girls met in college. It's home to her simply because it's Yu Xia's home.

This comes directly after a pilot episode that establishes the contrast between urban isolation and rural/familial warmth, through Emma's eyes, and in a show that continually reinforces the concept of longing for home and loved ones. By forcing Yu Xia to reevaluate her priorities, Lin Zhen manages to bring her back home - which is a place that includes herself.

Perhaps it's too early to say. But to me, it's a pretty neat thematic parallel of Lu Guang's solo quest to save Cheng Xiaoshi from death; which is intertwined with a greater goal of giving Cheng Xiaoshi a home, one that is safe and secure and surrounds him with those that love him and are there to stay.

But in the process of achieving this, one of his biggest obstacles is Cheng Xiaoshi himself - his insistence on interfering with the timeline so that Lu Guang can't predict events with certainty, his objections to the way Lu Guang does things, and the definite resistance Lu Guang will come up against if Cheng Xiaoshi learns about his plan. Pretty much every minor mission they undertake is a rehash of the same argument; Cheng Xiaoshi wants to use their combined powers to make a difference to other people's lives, and Lu Guang just has one goal in mind which means that he's going to ignore absolutely everyone else.

Notice how Yu Xia's looking to the future, while Lin Zhen's dream is to go back to a point in the past? Neat.

And when they finally part ways because it's clear Yu Xia is not going to support Lin Zhen's goal? Yu Xia asks her where she's going to go after they part ways, and Lin Zhen says:

I wonder where we've heard that before.

And if you need any more proof that this episode is in fact intended to be a mirror, do consider:

Their seating positions are mirrored too. Yeeeeaaaaaahhhh.

In conclusion: if this allegory is to be believed, then trust that Lu Guang will eventually succeed in his mission and Cheng Xiaoshi will find his way home to him. It'll happen, guys. In the meantime, at least our beloved noodle ladies will be living a peaceful life out in the countryside.

Since I don't know how to shut up and this website seems to be giving me infinite space to yap, let me include some more details about this episode that I found cool. There are so many.

Lin Zhen and Lu Guang are both shown while this line is being said. What with all that the fragrant flowers represent, it makes you think about what these characters' best memories might be and how much they treasure them.

This is such a tiny detail that you'd almost definitely miss it on the first watch, and it seems insignificant - until it isn't. When Cheng Xiaoshi hops into the girls' picture taken during their college days, he screws up and suggests they'd be better off dabbling in tech stuff like apps or intelligent management than running a noodle shop. Lu Guang makes him quickly eat his words, but they seem to have still struck a chord with Yu Xia - because later we see that she works over years to integrate an intelligent supply chain management system into their business. In fact, one of the reasons for Lin Zhen to alienate herself from the business is because she feels like it's gotten too techy and lost its human touch. Not really fair considering it was her own idea, is it?

I mean. This is probably a stretch. Digitization is pretty inevitable for big businesses nowadays, so Yu Xia, being as enterprising as she is, might have gone for it whether Lin Zhen suggested it or not. But it's interesting to think that it might be Cheng Xiaoshi's tiny alteration of the past that unfurled outwards like a hurricane from the beating of a butterfly's wing and catalysed their falling out. Especially because these kinds of bootstrap phenomena very much occur in later episodes and are a core feature of Link Click's time travel model.

Some suspicious behaviour on Lu Guang's part. He's quite certain there are no useful clues in the last picture Yu Xia and Lin Zhen took in front of their shop, despite it being the only one taken by Lin Zhen (seriously! you could go to her house, look through her phone, the possibilities are endless!) and the fact that this is the photo Cheng Xiaoshi did end up solving the mystery in, thanks to the ticket stubs he found in her purse (see?) Secondly, they outright miss a picture in the envelope - the most important picture of all which would have given them the answer right away, since this was when the fragrant flowers were first used. Not your best work, Lu Guang.

...or is it? Lu Guang is pretty meticulous, and it's unlike him to slip up in such obvious ways. He's also skilled at slipping things back into envelopes when he doesn't want them to be seen, as we know. Could it be that he didn't want Cheng Xiaoshi to solve the mystery? But why? Maybe it's metaphorical, like so much else of this episode: he doesn't want Cheng Xiaoshi to uncover his true intentions. The fact that all this is ultimately for his sake.

Interestingly, Lu Guang was very dejected at the idea of them seemingly being out of luck - they'd tried so many times and failed to fulfill the mission. Was he, perhaps, thinking about another mission he'd hate to fail? Anyway, it falls to Cheng Xiaoshi to cheer him up and give him hope for another try, which he accepts, with a small but genuine smile. My heart.

If you've scrolled this far, I'm glad you enjoyed my ramblings! I must say I don't know much about how Tumblr works so apologies if I mess up on formatting or tags, but I'll probably get the hang of it soon enough. I'll also probably end up enjoying Tumblr more than Twitter since it allows me unfettered yap space and won't feed my writing to the machine (yet). It's late and I should probably stop stop thinking bout it around now... but look forward to more random ramblings and thank you for reading!

[canisalbus]

This has nothing to do with anything but I'm in the middle of a houseplant fixation and I'm having a lot of fun. I've always had indoor plants, sometimes more, sometimes less, but it's starting to feel like I might've finally figured out some of the more advanced stuff, like personalized substrate mixes, different pot types, fertilization, growth lights and humidity.

My plants are doing really well now! I've repotted a few, trimmed the ones that took damage during the winter (or got hit by a thrips infestation late last year) and propped the cuttings, and they're putting out roots! I've never tried propagating anything before, it's exciting times. I'm going to plant them soon, maybe later this week.

Every morning and every night I do a little routine plant tour, simultaneously marveling at them and endlessly worrying about whether they're happy and thriving or not. They're making so many big, shiny new leaves right now and it's driving me to the brink of tears.

Very stressful but also tremendously rewarding. Just felt like sharing, since I've been mostly inactive or focused on complaining about health woes lately.

[moeyoon]

𝒔𝒐𝒇𝒕 𝒌𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒔

requested by @daughterofscotland ♡