#to put things into words the way u do

[seventh-fantasy]

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]

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

[queencaramilflinda]

Everyone during neverafter 15: oh my god these social interactions are going horribly they’re all doing so bad!

Me, neurodivergent and cannot read social cues: idk mostly these seem fine

[rogdona]

i adore how well you do volumes in 3D etc it all looks so graceful

UR NOT GONNA BELIEVE HOW HAPPY THIS MADE ME!!!!!!! 💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗

trying to convey volume is something ive been trying to get better at, IM AM SOSOSO HAPPY U LIKE IT!!!! TYSMMMM, REALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗

[some-mari-thoughts]

What do you make of the idea of Blackspace kinda fusing with Hellmari after a post-good ending Omori gave her true life, therefore making her the entire realm by technicality? Omori would do that cuz he needs something to kinda fill the void that appeared when Sunny left and he's getting desperate after not finding anything in Headspace to do that...

(woooooooooo explaining my omori au lore-)

Truthfully this is so wildly different to my idea of headspace and omori and after-good ending that i cannot make anything of this! i think that's up to u to decide

[natsmagi]

One of my least favourite Tsumugi misconceptions is that he's useless at being an idol. He's very good actually! It's pointed out multiple times in various stories by characters who are considered the top tier idols that Tsumugi is very good at his job, he's just also awkward and a bit clumsy off stage.

yea ! alot of misconceptions tend to stem from people getting a taste of the character in a certain context and then assume theyd be the same in different contexts when thats rarely the case. like just look at tsumugis romancing cruise performance That shit changed me forever

i do understand why this happens though, or why small misconceptions are rather frequent and inadvertently lead to mischaracterizations at times. often times we just take a surface level view at things and, naturally, observe what it is we see and compare it to things we already know. like i said in my last post tsumugi is bashful, not shy, but if people only see his more awkward demeanor around certain people theyre obviously going to assume thats the characteristic he has because thats what most of us are familiar with

i dont want people to feel insecure in their portrayals though !! q__q and youre free to be as self-indulgent as you want when u create ur little crafts as im sure many of us are using these characters as a means of our own self-expression. god knows i do it! but is it also not just as fun to truly dig into the character and to try figuring them out from an unbiased perspective ? again its why i dont want to put them into boxes!!! theres so much to them and by only focusing on one or two of their characteristics you are doing them a disservice!! youre free to exclusively PORTRAY your favorite aspects ofc, create for you and not for others! but i just want their complexities to be acknowledged and recognized 💔💔 though thats just one of my selfish little desires

[compacflt]

When it comes to historical research, do you research for things that DON'T exist? For example, foods that are common now but didn't exist in the average American restaurant or grocery in the '80s or '90's? Words, phrases, and entire concepts that are commonly accepted today but unheard of to the average American when Mav and Ice were at Top Gun?

Your writing is so unbelievably good.

not really because I don't care about food, I care about the literary device that is "taking communion." i.e. it doesn't matter what they eat, it only matters that they're eating together, for the plot.

And, okay, showing my little-kid bias, but was there actually stuff in grocery stores in the 80s/90s that wouldn't be there today/vice versa? brands might change, like okay Pringles might not exist but you still have potato chips; and obviously specialty stuff like what you find in your average Asian market might not be commonplace, but, like, were the 90s all that different from today, American-food-wise? its my assumption that they weren't, but I also wasn't alive in the 90s, so. Um, ectocooler Hi-C, maybe? that's the one 90s food I know.

attitudes of course are what change. today's concept of being so QUICK to publicly label sexual identities would be extremely foreign, for instance. obviously people did label their sexualities in the 80s & 90s, people were definitely calling themselves bisexual and such, but probably not the people ice & mav would be hanging out with, in the Reagan-era navy. which is what my fics are about. that's the whole point.

and, also, COMMUNICATION changes. I have never used a payphone in my whole life so I actually have no idea how they work. but they were ubiquitous "back then," and lend themselves to amazingly interesting conflict (omg I don't have enough change to call my boyfriend maverick who's mad at me!!!) which is why I lean on payphones so much in my writing. honestly, im gonna be real, the invention of the cell phone makes telling stories about miscommunication so much harder. instant-speed communication would make certain stories less interesting, which is why a lot of horror movies default to the "no cell service" trope to isolate their characters, or why some teen dramas have the characters reject cell phones on principle (Alyssa or James having a phone in 2017's "The End of the F***ing World" would solve most of their problems, which is why Alyssa smashes hers in the first five minutes and James basically says he views them as a cancer to society--if they had phones the story would be boring, so the writers took away their phones).

I also feel like people used to treat society differently "back then," i.e. Going Out was much more of a thing when there were 10 channels on TV and no one had cell phones, so you Went Out and had drinks & met strangers & interacted with general society to an extent im not sure we do anymore. So that experience is way more fun to write about in the 80s than today. (u can't see me but im seething with jealousy over ppl who were born in ~1965)

idk. im not sure I did a great job reproducing the zeitgeist of the 80s/90s in my fics, bc I wasn't there to have knowledge of what they were like. I got most of my presupposed knowledge about that time period from reading Calvin & Hobbes anthologies as a kid. oh well.

[jrueships]

BTW this is not to anyone, it's just a general i wanna just say Thang, calling people BUT MEN ESPECIALLY 'mother' or like 'my wife' my girlfriend u know u know. im not sayin the spicier examples.

does NOT , listen, N O T A L W A Y S mean

THEY ARE A BOTTOM!!!!!!!!! (The kind of bottom I'm talking about is the simplified, singular watered down version usually straight (eerily) young people love to throw away as an 'insult'. Which just emphasizes what im intending here.)

that perpetuates an already problematic perpetuated mindset THAT CAN NOT JUST BE 'AUTOMATICALLY EXCLUDED' just because IT ISN'T BEING USED IN THE CONTEXT IT ORIGINATED FROM. Serge ibaka is mother. DeMar is mother. But they also be bangin out bratty ass mfs on a daily basis like the shit is clockwork. Both can be done. that is all i wanted to get out there. ty. gootbye

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[lovesickeros]

im pretty adamant on being a genshin only blog atm bc this game has me in a death grip and won't let go for anything but at the same time.....path to nowhere..

[milflewis]

this is my formal petition to have the overlap podcast crew on the taskmaster for a season. or even just a special two parter. anything

[dandyshucks]

okay its going under a readmore bc its messy and a lot, i'll try to keep it succinct though. CW for some discussion of the ongoing g.enocide and things around that topic

so one of the friends is someone I've really respected and admired because they're a very intelligent well-spoken and kind-hearted individual. i've really been impressed with how they think about things and with their ability to write really fantastic essays (that they often share with this friend group because they're in school and enjoy sharing their work with us because a lot of us are interested in the things they write about). about a year ago, this person went through the process of converting to j.udaism and we were all very excited (and continue to be happy) for them. they've been really happy with the process and the community they've found and it's been really good for them.

however! this person has since stated they are a z.ionist! and they've said that it just means that j.ewish people should live in i.srael, it doesn't mean they support the i.df or what is happening in p.alestine currently. but I'm just... baffled at how they can think that non-p.alestinians occupying the country could EVER be done peacefully. it has ALWAYS been colonization. it was never going to be done in a peaceful manner.

do j.ewish people deserve a safe place to exist? absolutely! but I do not think, ESPECIALLY now, that that safe place can ever be located in p.alestine. I'm not the most educated or well-read individual, I've done a bit of reading over the past few months but my memory is shoddy and I consistently forget almost everything I've read, but as far as I can tell, this has been a non-peaceful occupation (...can occupation ever really be done peacefully in reality? i doubt it.) from the very beginning. p.alestinians were being kicked out of their houses from the start.

and to add onto the messiness of this all, I am the only i.ndigenous person in the entire group. I am the only one coming at this from an i.ndigenous perspective. and because of my perspective, I am ALWAYS going to be on the side of the population that first lived and existed in a place. i am always on the side of l.and back, i am always on the side of the first peoples. anything less would be essentially agreeing with colonization.

so it is just incredibly uncomfortable to be the only i.ndigenous person in this group while the rest of the group has discussed and expressed sympathy with this person for holding self-professed z.ionist beliefs (I do not believe this person has done the right reading to fully understand what they are saying, which is so strange because they are usually so good about educating themself). and I feel like if I try to say anything to argue or simply question this person, I'm going to rock the boat too much and make Everyone uncomfortable and the entire thing will blow up and fall apart around me. so my options seem to be either: a) say something, b) say nothing and stay in the group, or c) say nothing and quietly leave the group. none of which feel like good options!

and it sucks so much because there are people I genuinely do like in this group, and I've liked this one person and respected them since I met them, but they're really .... showing themself to be an unsafe person at the end of the day. I keep feeling like maybe I'm not seeing something or maybe I'm missing something, but I've looked at this from multiple angles and while I do absolutely see where they're coming from and even sympathise with some of it, I disagree with them on a fundamental level.

(also it seems really fucked up for them to be newly converted to j.udaism and endorsing what is essentially colonization and lowkey ignoring the fact that PEOPLE ARE BEING GENOCIDED RIGHT NOW so maybe we should not be discussing "but where are all the j.ewish ppl going to live :(" until the bullets and bombs stop at the very least(????????), while I've been indigenous and dealing with the consequences of attempted (and still ongoing!) genocide and colonization my entire life)

[munamania]

i won’t apologize for being a hater. seeing comments on chappell roans posts about being too hypersexual and needing to dial it down (mmm dial what down. say it very explicitly to me. what is making you uncomfortable in your own very clear words) and directly contrasting it with renee rapp just made me not like that girl even more i’m sorry! maybe she should try not being an annoying blonde bi girl who only seems to hang out with other blonde bi girls making mediocre pop. whoops

[heystephen]

not sure if me pointing out that billie eilish has not been protected like she shouldve been by the men in her life is me “dunking on things that people like” so much as me pointing out another insidious example of how young women in the industry are treated but okay

[ajdrawshq]

Is there any non-spoilery way you could talk about how isat isn't just about timeloops? because like I do want to check the game out eventually for sure if only because indie fun times but I'm busy for a while before I get the time and tbh I'm just not as curious because I don't know how it's gonna break that formula (also ngl no colors makes me lose 50% interest because I like. looking at colors. lots.)

UHM OK WELL UM. hm. how DO i do this without spoiling anything. im very not good at describing things especially things i Really enjoy so how do i put this . hold on i might need to look at some reviews so i know how to words. ok

as a disclaimer i havent fully interacted with a lot of (if any??) media that has timeloops so i cant say for certain what it does differently from similar media that makes it stand out from others. at the same time ive never seen something that is so directly About Timeloops in this way even if i consider stuff ive heard about in passing but i could be wrong (madoka n utena come to mind ?). ill try to think abt the things that arent Just timeloop related plus the stuff u mentioned and hope that helps it feel more interesting and less generic?

i think one of the main things i can say is that it Really makes you feel what the protagonist is feeling. more than anything ive ever watched or played or whatever . and thats saying a LOT given how much i empathize with protags in games. and its not even just an empathy thing here. both the story progression and the gameplay work in such a way that you experience pretty much everything the same way they do, while still having their own personal stuff u can learn about of course

on that note tho. that is actually something to be careful of for a few reasons. i know ur generally pretty good with darker content so i doubt thatll be a problem for u here (its not that bad tbh but there is IS a warning when u open the game/look at the steam page and it aint lying) but. due to the nature of timeloops. it CAN get tiring and this is very much intended. and this helps a lot w the story and themes in a way that its. like. think how kh days does repetition on purpose. its a lot like that (although i had way easier of a time getting thru isat than days? i cant remember how u feel abt days' gameplay but i think it was positive ? either way getting thru isat was way more bearable than days imo). it does do a good job at balancing this with a couple mechanics that mean u dont have to repeat everything all the time (i had like. Very few actual full loops by the time i finished) and theres ALWAYS new things happening, even if ur super thorough with everything. its pretty easy to do things at whatever pace u feel like and if u wanna focus on the main story only to make it easier it wouldnt take too much away from the experience (tho i do encourage talking to the npcs at least a few times), and theres always a goal to work towards. also dialogue skipping and the banana peel are ur best friends

sort of adding onto that. it really, really helps that u are sharing the experience with the protagonist. not only does that help u relate to them (even if u dont share as many traits w them as i do akvdjsn) but theyre probably the most beloved character in the game and for good reason!! its really fun to see their interactions with the rest of the main cast and the npcs, and watch them all develop in different ways throughout the game. and my goodness all of the characters are beautifully written - at first ur kinda thinking ok its a ragtag group of sillies in an rpg whats new. but their personalities and relationships and hobbies and problems and everything about them is just so well done.. they feel so natural. human even. every conversation feels real to me. one of the main themes of the game is the concept of change, and each of them represent and approach it differently, both positively and negatively. its hard not to fall in love with them as individuals and as a group because they just have so much going on, even the ones i didnt expect to like at all!!

the worldbuilding is also a fun spin on fantasy rpg worlds. it mostly revolves around the area u play in bc well. of course it does. but its vv interesting to learn about all the different cultures within the world and how they interact with and build on the themes of the game. theres all sorts of queer stuff going on and its all handled like a love letter to people who relate, and i can feel it even with what i dont relate to at all!! the way "magic" works and the ways people use it in battle and everyday life is super cool too, makes the whole thing feel a lot more believable and realistic :3 i dont wanna talk abt any specifics bc its more fun to learn abt this stuff ingame

OH AND THE TEXT.. EFFECTS?.. idk what to call that but the way dialogue (both internal and external) is written and programmed is funky as hell (affectionate). it was weird at first bc oftentimes (mostly for humor) its like. almost the way i type actually?? which feels strange in a legit game but it Works. it works so well and adds tone and vibes and a Voice in a way u usually cant get in a game without any voice acting. deltarune is also good at that but this one does it differently enough for me to consider it unique

HAVE I MENTIONED THE ART STYLE i love the art style . its so charming and expressive especially all the talking sprites n battle portraits. simultaneously silly n adorable while fully capable of being serious. and creepy. anyway look at the sillies i love them n their designs dearly (especially Siffrin (1st on the left) and Mirabelle (2nd on the left))

also on that note, the lack of colors....... i both totally understand being put off by that (i also love looking at colors n this part made me feel weird abt it when i was thinking abt getting it at first) and personally enjoy it? without saying anything spoilery (bc its really not), its just another part of the worldbuilding and themes that i now find really fun :3 should be noted that i usually have an anti blue light filter so it mightve been easier to look at w the yellowish tint going on. maybe it even looks better that way ? kinda reminded me of old films now that i think abt it.. neat!!

as a last thing i couldnt quite insert somewhere else. it is equal parts a comedy and a tragedy, and it is so, so effective at accomplishing this. the humor is fantastic and adds to the games' and characters' personality, every tragic moment is . for lack of a better word or phrase. absolutely fucking delicious. and i adore how well it can shift from one to the other gradually or in an instant, or just be both at once!!!! yippee!!!!!!!

aaand thats all i can say. i have no idea if that cleared anything up BUT i encourage u to give it a try bc i do think youd like it in the end. u probably wouldnt finish it as fast as i did but that might be a good thing jfbskndj but yeah!!!! in stars and time!!!!!! its good and i love it!!!!!!!!

[trafficpan-ic]

My second therapist is tumblr