versus:

at first with the way her face crumples i thought it was her breaking down and crying before i realized that it's once again qingshuan who's exhibiting those emotions.

The first jasmine has such a way of showing things, telling tales, it's visually pleasing, the plot is there, but it feels subtle.

Ye li plots and schemes, but she doesn't explain what she's doing, she doesn't shout it to practically anyone, she just does it.

The plot as well, when it's appropriate, a backstory is shown.

I'm not explaining it very well but it just feels grounded and subtle.

The revenge is there, but it's not bulldozer, it's a water drop, one by one, persisting, and slowly breaking its way through

the more we see of qingshuan, the more i think that in addition to being an obvious sign of traumatic grief she acts as our glimpse into ye li's internal dialogue. the contrast between ye li's contained affect compared to qingshuan weeping, when just seconds before ye li was clearly very emotional about the blank page. qingshuan incongruously says she's not sad and tells ye li to not be afraid. i can't help but think that inside, ye li feels like a scared and lonely little girl.

i love that we get these glimpses into ye li's deeper psyche. we know she's messed up for reasons we can't stop speculating about, but have you thought about how re-traumatizing all of this is for her? basically manifesting her mother's ghost while she's haunted by so many more. of course she's afraid.

this image was beautiful also, the two of them facing each other but also standing so far apart; ye li holding an unlit lantern while qingshuan is spotlit by an almost otherworldly glow:

more visual stunningness when she walks out into the stormy night, just begging for a gifmaker's deft touch:

but the fact that she really believes that all of them are still alive and help her when she needs them but in reality she is the one who does all these things on her own is very sad.

i can totally see, once someone is telling her the truth she will get a mental breakdown. because half of her "reality" she thought she would live in, was/is a lie.

Just so y'all know, this moment is what lives in my head