TL;CR MEME

[retellers]

1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.

Comments

[evocationary]

oh xie lian I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

and so does lup, because he really is just a wonderful presence, like. i think this tends to be a trend with your characters and mine is that yours are the calming presence to the burning personalities i tend to play? burning in a lot of ways. in lup's case, xie lian tended to be a person that she was immediately comfortable with.

mostly because he's easy to tease! and he doesn't get super angry or uncomfortable with her when she DOES tease him. the very first time they met he just like, immediately accepted that her name was queen taako and he was chill with her bossing him around. and like - i think she kind of pack bonded immediately because he was digging in the trash? the mcelroys specify that the twins had a scrappy childhood and i imagine there were times where they may have needed to find food in the trash because they didn't have the money to get ingredients to make their own? so she sees xie lian digging around and without really realizing it she just was like nope, can't have that, we're feeding this boy forever now. she did it with clementine too. it strikes a chord in her to see people hungry, especially when she can fix it. and of course she has to do it in a way that makes it look like she doesn't care, so she yells at him and boinks him with a piece of bread, but like. she cares.

so then they establish their buddy system like, immediately, and she knows that she has someone on her side, which just really comes into play over and over again. he comes in when the VR shit with her umbrella prison got bad and turned the simulation off, and didn't judge. didn't press too hard. let her explain it on her own terms, and like - even showed her some of his stuff, to get her mind off of it. she genuinely liked xie lian from the start, because he kept giving her reason to.

and then he comes out of his cyoa and she about develops an ulcer because his dumb ass can't manage to stay out of trouble for more than a few seconds!! but like - i think it was here that lup realized how much xie lian like... has to him, past the ditzy blonde thing. she didn't remember it at the time, but it was easy enough to slip into the way she comforts magnus. like, i can't stop you from feeling horrible about this because it's the type of person you are, but i can encourage you to direct it elsewhere. i think lup is decently good at pulling people out of their spirals and that's really what she was trying to do during that thread was like... just make sure he didn't wallow in it.

lup is a decently hard person to phase, but i was especially mean because memory loss is the ONE thing that she can't handle, because it's tied up so much in the adventure zone's whole... plot. she was doing pretty okay for a few weeks there (she really never got to a point of absolute despair like beau did at least) but like even so, it's disheartening to constantly be faced with death you can do nothing about. so the bumbo thread was really, really good i think for both of them. a really genuine giggle session was something she needed, and i think something he needed too, and that was the point that she decided xie lian was just her friend now, instead of some dude that she got along with.

so then week three comes along and lup... forgets her name. and xie lian handles it really well. this is what i mean by the mem loss being a fucking terrible thing for her, because forgetting her own name is actually the second worst thing i did to her this game. identity is obviously important to everybody, but her name is like - i mentioned it in tags and things, lup's name is connected to her brother. lup and taako, it's always been just them. and then he forgot her, and he didn't even recognize her name, so it's tied up in her trauma of the one person she loves more than anything in her entire life not knowing who she is. so she forgets this, and she realizes that she's forgotten it with xie lian, and his immediate response is to reach out and hug her. which was a+, the best move, because after reliving a loss of name trauma and the reminder that she'd spent a decade being unable to touch people - like, pulling her in for a hug was the best thing he could've done.

the fact that he'd only JUST figured out what her actual name was too, lsmdfks, god.

but he basically just kept on being a good, solid, not judgemental support for her. after taako, bringing her tea and vodka, like - he knew what she needed and she appreciated that. AND HE HEALED TAAKO FOR HER TOO i don't think she thought about it too closely at the time but xie lian saving her brother from death was another little expression of trust. she trusted him to do it, and she thanked him, genuinely, enough to tell him just about everything about her? she didn't tell everybody she's a lich, especially not early on, but he'd proven himself to be enough of a solid force for her to be able to just... say it, without thinking twice. he wouldn't use it against her. he saved her brother, and by extension, he saved her. and that was why she told hua cheng that she'd do anything to make sure xie lian was taken care of, past her respect for hua cheng in general. it was no skin off her back to make sure that he was okay in the same way he'd gone out of his way to make sure SHE was okay.

so then shiro dies, and she thinks okay, okay lup, it's time to give back. so she's sincere. she tells him she's sorry, and she gives him a hug, and she listens, and she tells him that he is not to blame, because she cannot stand to see him take all that on his shoulders. no spiraling. i think they did this a lot, actually, there was a lot of like - that's how lup comforts people? it's more "stop doing this to yourself" than "oh bb it's okay" with her, because she's incapable of being direct sometimes. all the protags in her life get too bogged down with taking all the guilt on themselves and she takes it upon herself to be like look, be angry, be upset, but don't hold onto it. that's important.

she also braided his hair, which - is a thing leftover from taako, from when they were little. and when they were grown up, too, just like. hair braiding was intimate in the family way, a sign of trust. for someone like lup, who has a hard time just handing over pieces of herself... idk, xie lian just has a very interesting way of putting her at ease. she never felt like he was asking anything of her, or that he was holding onto things to use them later, like chess pieces. he just... is. comforting.

(also i just remembered and have no place to really put it but xie lian picking up her lingo and using it was her FAVORITE thing. calling the white no face a ding dong with bad vibes was fantastic and also I GOT XIE LIAN TO DAB)

SO THEN WE GET TO week four, and hua cheng does a murder, and lup KNEW he did a murder, like a little bit into the trial, because blanca had let her know that hua cheng was awake. but she'd made a pact with him, and putting suspicion on hua cheng would've hurt xie lian, so. no way she was going to do it. but that was the same conversation that she tried to pretend she had blanca's power and THAT WAS SO FUNNY bc xie lian just like, let her do it. he let her have her moment, lmfsdks

but she really just collected him even further into her little circle, like Chess Team was all important to her in various ways but she never did really lose that trust in him. she had issues with other people in the game here and there with thinking that maybe if she told them something, they'd use it against her or for their own gain, but - never with him. and she really does love him for making her feel comfortable like that. it's nice to just have another adult to lean on in general, someone that she can look after the Chess team with. like yeah emet and blanca were there but lup wants to noogie emet half the time, and she liked having another responsible person past blanca to deal with stuff.

anyway long story short i think like... xie lian is someone she really relied on, and someone she hoped that relied on her, too? it made her feel a little better to have someone she knew was going to do the right thing. good god, would be buddies with again.