#daohua

OK.

So.

I have no excuse. On some level, desperately fucked up DaoHua/DaoYi will always own my heart, and I am not ashamed of this. And this has been helped along by my reading quite a lot of fucked up DaoHua in Mandarin on AO3 (thank you translation Firefox add-ons. 🙏), many of which involve the premise: what if Shan Gudao's coup had succeeded and he took Li Lianhua as his Empress?

So, here I am trying my hand at one? Heads up that this is going to go DARK fairly quickly, but this bit is still fairly tame.

...enjoy a snippet? Or not? 😅

***

The soon-to-be emperor stood in the dungeon, frowning down at the crumpled body of his nemesis.  Li Xiangyi was to kneel at his feet on the day he was crowned: beaten, broken, and humiliated, a living example to all who would dare oppose him.  He was not going to get out of it by dying.  Shan Gudao wouldn't have it.  He handed the box with the single Wangchuan flower to the trembling imperial physicians at his side.

"If he dies, you all die with him.  Understood?"

He then swept out of the room before anyone could tell him it couldn't be done.  He would not tolerate excuses, and he would not tolerate failure.  Li Xiangyi would live to grovel at his feet in front of thousands in the imperial square.  There was no other acceptable end to their lifelong entanglement.  Shan Gudao had lost to his shidi too many times in the past.  It was time for his shidi to learn what it felt like to lose to someone who was so much better than he that there was no chance to even hold his own.  And Shan Gudao was going to enjoy every minute of his humiliation.

**

"Bixia…"

"Is it done?"

"He lives, Your Highness."

Shan Gudao smiled.  "Excellent. For how long?"

The imperial physician bowed his head low to the floor, arms outstretched towards Shan Gudao.  "It is difficult to say, Your Highness.  This poison… this treatment… too much is unknown.  And there were… complications."

The smile fell from Shan Gudao's lips as he rose and began pacing his private study, stroking the sword hilt at his side.  He had claimed the sword as he had claimed its master, a spoil of a war he had trained to fight for over a decade.  It would be a reminder to his shidi that Shan Gudao now owned him, body and soul.  But what good was that reminder if it were only to last a day?  A week?  Even a year was not long enough to pay back the debt Li Xiangyi owed to Shan Gudao.

"What… complications, physician?"

The imperial physician slumped further, only rising when Shan Gudao grumbled about not being able to hear his response.

"Your Highness… it would be easier to show you."

there's so much I can talk about the framing of this shot, but something that stands out to me is how despite llh being 2-3 inches taller than sgd, in this scene sgd looks much broader, taller, and generally just larger than llh. I've mentioned how both times llh/lxy cries bc of sgd he looks much younger than usual, but even in general he's always appeared younger/more like a child in front of sgd, especially as lxy. Even in ep12 where him and dfs were in similar framing, their size difference didn't appear quite as stark as daohua, despite dfs being taller than llh.

If Shan Gudao and Li Lianhua were some sort of romantic. It would just fuck Li Lianhua up so much more in every format.

Shan Gudao dead? Yes that's his one and only dead.

Then if we still want to go difanghua route with this.

Li Lianhua being some sort of attracted to Di Feisheng whether it's physical or they agreed on some mental/psychological level whatever the word is for that or maybe even just respect for him and that's why Li Lianhua signs the peace treaty only for it end up with Shan Gudao dead. The man he loved, the man who looked out for him, his shixiong(? Is that the right word) the guilt being just as strong.

But then 10 years later he's falling for another bright man when he himself is very jaded and fang Duobing turns out to be Shan Gudao's son.

And the combined betrayal and pain, because the man he loved sired another child (if they were romantically involved if not it could still be painful) and here he is romancing said child who has now grown into a handsome young man and looks up to Li Xiangyi so much.

Oh the needles of pain would be pain-ing.

And then the reveal that he was never dead and all of this was a ruse to show him and hurt him. The man that supposedly loved him and said loved him (let's say they were physically involved too.) the person he opened his heart and body to was just playing it all.

With his heart and everything.

Well it's still pretty much the same as canon but it would also be a physical violation if we go that way and complicate the romance of my ot3 so much more.

Like it's pretty good in the drama but that extra bit of trauma.

Especially in the light blue outfit he looks so much younger than usual I can't

Fun bonus:

Ngl I feel like the mlc fandom is kinda sleeping on the sheer fuckery that is daohua, so here's ig now I'm going on a daohua tangent in my difanghua wip

Unhinged shit I've said on discord part 1/?