If Wishes Were Horses

In the drama, in episode 6, when Lan Zhan was drunk and Wei Ying tried to adjust his forehead ribbon, Lan Zhan bats his hand away and says the following sentence: “If not parent, wife or child, how can I let anyone else touch it?”

HOWEVER

In the following screenshot (taken by some fan so I’m sadly unsure which scene it’s from), you can see the Gusu Lan Sect rulebooks.

Please note how the one rule circled in red is literally the only rule that is easily decipherable, like even the rules right next to it are so very slightly blurred or partially hidden:

If you’re having a hard time copying down the characters, don’t worry, I did it for you: 非父母道侣前 不可摘抹额

Not only that, I also translated it for you and the exact translation (I did a breakdown of each character’s’ meaning at the very bottom if you’re interested) is: “If before a person who is not father, mother or cultivation partner, it is forbidden to take off forehead ribbon”.

Cultivation partner.

CULTIVATION PARTNER.

C U L T I V A T I O N P A R T N E R.

Nowhere in the rule is the word “wife” mentioned. They really went with the gender neutral “cultivation partner” in the official rulebook. They really just said “fuck your heteronormativity, we’re going all inclusive”. They really did that.

They really did that.

That there is a single rule in that shot that is decipherable and it so happens to be about cultivation partners and forehead ribbons? Coincidence??? I think tf not. It’s way too deliberate of a shot to be anything BUT done on purpose.

Once again, I’m amazed by the crew’s dedication to this ship and the fans for noticing it. Honestly, it’s such a small detail that it would literally never get noticed, yet it means so fkn much to the fandom. Even if it did get noticed, unless you know the meaning behind it, it’s not like it would get flagged either.

Is it something that is worth getting this excited over? I say, up to you. Personally, it quite literally made my day because it’s such a small detail that the crew thought to include. It’s especially meaningful since, based on my recollection, we’ve never heard the term “cultivation partner” mentioned ever in the drama, it was a novel-only thing that Wei Ying uses (I may be wrong so don’t quote me on this, or just let me know if I am).

Yet, after all the times we’ve seen Wei Ying mess with Lan Zhan’s forehead ribbon (I know y’all thinking about episode 6 with drunk!Lan Zhan and Lan Zhan tying their wrists together later in that same episode but hello? episode 40?? when paperman!WY was tugging on his ribbon and LZ barely even scolded him?? hello????), we can now pretty much very safely assume that Lan Zhan considered it okay for Wei Ying to do so because, wife be damned, Lan Zhan has already recognized Wei Ying as his one and only cultivation partner (brb, sobbing)

Seriously, once again, I gotta thank the crew for further validating the fact that WangXian became cultivation partners at the end of the series.

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The breakdown:

非: Unless, apart from, non-

父: Father

母: Mother

道侣: 道 = Tao (from Taoism) which in this case, would refer to cultivation and 侣 = companion, this literally means cultivation partner

前: Before

不可摘: Cannot take off

UK: okay, we’re not going to walk away with no deal, so we’re giving you another three months to give us what we want.

but in finnish we call the community the rainbow community. families with one or more queer parent are called rainbow families. queer and trans kids are called rainbow youth. we’re called rainbow people.

rainbow is such a nice way to describe us (dodie’s rainbow is a beautiful song which i think sums up the niceness of it). it’s beauty. it’s joy. it’s simply nice.

and it’s inclusive no matter what. once when i went to a rainbow youth event, the adult supervising the event said something so simple, but something that will stick with me forever. i’m not very good at translating stuff, but basically she said “everyone fits underneath the colours of the rainbow.”

1. The prime minister, and now most media outlets here, HAVE labelled it as an act of terrorism from someone with extremist views. No one is saying he’s mentally ill, and no one is saying he’s a lone wolf.

2. This is most likely the biggest terror attack in New Zealand in nearly 30 years. (Edit: its officially the worst mass shooting in the entire history of the country. I’m sick). This isn’t just another mass shooting for us, and we’re all panicked for a reason.

3. With 49 confirmed dead now, it’s guaranteed we’ll at least know someone who knows someone who was in that mosque. It’s a small country.

4. While they’re not perfect, the police here aren’t as corrupt as those in the USA. They are here to help anyone who feels unsafe, and they will be taking measures to keep Muslims safe especially. Already they’re not letting white people into the mosque in my city.

So he died when I was like nine, and Franz died a few months later. We weren’t close, I was a kid, never really thought of him again. Fast forward about ten years later, I come out to my grandma as gay, and she goes “My brother Gusti was gay, you know?” And I’m like OF COURSE!! IT MAKES SENSE!! But the interesting part isn’t that he was gay. The interesting part is how this badass motherfucker got himself a boyfriend. (2/?)

So the year is 1933 and the Nazis just started hunting down gay people. Dear uncle Gusti is 18, a flaming homosexual, and has a pen pal in Hamburg he found through an illegal gay magazine. His name’s Friedrich, he’s about the same age, and actively gay. A very dangerous thing to be in Hitler’s Germany, obviously. So when Friedrich writes what he knows will be his last letter, explaining how he is about to be found out, uncle Gusti makes his decision. (4/?)

He gets up the same night the letter arrives, takes the family car and crosses the border illegally, DRIVING THROUGH WHOLE FUCKING NAZI GERMANY to pick up his man. He brings him back to his family… And they’re chill with it!!! They fake him a swiss passport, introduce him as a german cousin who didn’t like the political climate there, and let him move in with them. He takes the name Franz for safety reason. (5/?)

Him and Gusti start dating shortly after, and their relationship becomes a family secret. They opened a b&b together in 1946 and eventually it was given over to my grandma. I’ve never been prouder of my family (6/6)