#corner.txt

[sunflwrsite]

also we were all betting on cxs or qiao ling FORCING lu guang to cosplay but all along he was in the fucking anime club?? and is a POPULAR, WELL KNOWN COSPLAYER at that??? he seemed pretty content too, and rather natural, if reserved, at the con/clubroom.

underneath the enigmatic act he's just a nerd who loves good stories god i adore him. praying yingdu drops more wack lg lore pleasepleaseplease

[sunflwrsite]

love the idea that xia fei is for the most part unperturbed by vein's weirdness because why is he used to vein describing people as tasty he's not shocked at all just mildly disgruntled cos his boss's off-putting freak aura he's emitting has scared xia fei's new friends away

[sunflwrsite]

the little insights we got into veifei are so interesting to me — xia fei actually having a temper that vein has to assuage; xia fei seeing vein as warm hearted, and him being the very first person he thinks to call when in a bind...at the same we know xia fei owes a lot to vein, we know (from the character profile) that xf hates owing people favours. we know that in the grand scheme of it all vein is using xia fei in spite of also taking such good care of him

also there's something about the introduction of their dynamic: xf turning down food, because his boss doesn't like him 'sneaking snacks.' there's that implication of control under the guise of care, and the timing of vein calling at that moment too, reminds me of xf's pv — one as the watcher, the other being watched.

anyway all this rambling is to say veifei toxic yaoi goes crazy in excited to see what's in store for them...

[sunflwrsite]

newest tbhx episode making me cry and going woah. wow. ur kind of really Really cooking here. firm man's story and the way in which the public view him an the unshakable, immovable hero (object), deifying him to the point of dehumanisation...the way in which the wolf girl is shunned by her classmates for daring to depict him crying and expressing human emotions — because Someone Like Him displaying vulnerability would equate to tarnishing his name. these standards of toxic masculinity that are imposed on him becoming a disabling burden....im Normal about this show!!!!

[sunflwrsite]

lu guang's trauma from watching cxs die over and over results in him becoming more distant the more loops he does. not because he's (that) numb or cares less but because he gets flashbacks to holding a dying cxs in his arms. so he can't be as affectionate as they were in the first few timelines — it's just too painful

[sunflwrsite]

god i love you qiao ling. she likes to run, she's business minded, she will beat shiguang's asses at video games (and generally too), she won't hesitate to knock some sense into her friends, she's full of guilt and it eats her alive but it's cos she cares so so much. and she probably regularly barges into the photo studio in pink pjs and a face mask. girl of all time

[sunflwrsite]

ok so i was Thinking....what is it that vein Wants as a character?—i think that by the end of yingdu chapter we get a vague sense of what could be the trajectory of xf's arc (resolving the mystery of vein's strange "death"), and in S2 we get lx's opaque "I wanna bring the parallel lines of time together" spiel...but vein?

in yingdu, he's at first characterised as a punisher or arbitrator of 'justice', (but that could of course just be lu guang projecting onto vein), and then later as not unkind but decidedly shady, transactional and with ulterior motives. and THEN, the hint of a past ("xiao weiying"); finally he's shown to be fallible, not really as terrifying as lu guang's nightmares at all.

we do not however, i don't think, get any sense of Why he's Doing All That, aside from knowing he's on allegiance with liu xiao, and does stuff solely for his own amusement.

which!!! led me to think about his origins, which we get a potential interpretation of via the story he gives to cxs when he goes into see wang qing. but outside of the canon, the PAIN mv lore (which i will not be quoting verbatim but might dig around to find it again), puts forward a slightly different version of that story. crucially, a fire caused by liu xiao is what gets vein what he wants— power and inheritance.

vein already got what he wanted. now, he wants nothing in particular; he starts a modelling agency on a whim, just because! sure, he'll go along with lx's plan, why not! he's at the top of the food chain now, he's is no longer the unlucky youngest son. but the missing piece that clicked in my mind is, he's also indebt to liu xiao.

so he's acting in part out of amusement and what he Thinks is his own volition, but it's tainted by this sense of debt that lurks beneath the surface. and to me this fact that vein is under the impression that he is in no way constrained by this debt, and the fact he may have been single mindedly preoccupied with power no matter the cost... gives me a feeling that at his core he might be kind of empty.

this also makes his fondness? fascination? amusement? with xia fei more interesting — someone who is young and scrappy and doesn't care what it takes to strive towards his goals; xia fei's "youthful defiance", and his determination. yet, xf is also full of this emptiness — he's not in modelling for pure love of the game, he just wants money, and his getting into modelling is framed as downright degrading ("body/shell for rent" and the scene where xf assumes his roommate is literally saying he should sell his body in That way). it's such a fun and fascinating contradiction, that both xf and vein bear.

[sunflwrsite]

god i wish shiguang really were eloping and running away to bridon for the best honeymoon ever but instead. the horrors