#mlc meta

Today’s crying-about-Di-Feisheng thought is fishing-themed: when DFS is captured outside Di Fortress, he was baited with the wangchuan flower, trapped by a hook (well, 2 actually), and was wearing his fish scale themed outfit. 

This is giving me extra feels because of the whole legend of how the carp who swims up a waterfall and leaps the Dragon Gate would become a dragon (thanks for the meta about this, @pastelcheckereddreams), given how much he loves and is associated with waterfalls and that he is wearing a dragon head hairpin with his fish scale robe, and given that the Jinyuan alliance’s symbol is a dragon head. 

(Have a screenshot of the scales + dragon head pin + hooks. Also, DFS bloodied and in pain.)

(I also think DFS was thinking about the legend, too, given that he goes almost to the top of a small waterfall to remove his mind control bug while wearing that outfit and his dragon head hairpin, and thinking about the way the show emphasizes how different this moment is, given that for most of the rest of the show, he’s at the base of waterfalls or the middle tier.)

I’m having additional feelings about the fact that the blue embroidery on the sleeves of that outfit look kind of like a stylized dragon’s face surrounded by either waves or clouds, which would further cement the association

I wish I had a better shot of the sleeves to be confident that the embroidery is a dragon from head-on, with clouds/waves around it, because then it would be even clearer that he was directly invoking this legend when freeing himself from Di Fortress, but either way, it's still very very true that DFS, who generally preferred to wear reds and maroons, had a vibrant blue fish/dragon-accessoried outfit that he had saved to wear for when he finally freed himself.

So, I am crying about the way the narrative has him get caught and trapped like a fish at the moment he thought he was finally free and able to become the powerful dragon-like being that’s been his goal his whole life. 

And how it’s the second time that he’s almost died after having been “fished” by a hook to the shoulder and then nearly been non-consensually married off to a woman (the first time was after he floated downriver from the base of the waterfall after being poisoned by Wuxin Huai).

listen to shan gudao speaking about li lianhua like he isn't even here, standing directly across from him with tears streaming down his face, having to speedrun all the stages of grief for the brutal murder of his understanding of his relationship with his shixiong. like that's what is really at the bleeding heart of this confrontation: they have profoundly different understandings of what is happening here, and only one of them is remotely compatible with reality.

(spoilers, it's not shan gudao.)

screenshots alone don't do cheng yi's microexpression game justice here. he's incredible. give this man all the awards for this role, he deserves them.

contrast shan gudao's abject refusal to look li lianhua in the eye throughout his entire villainous monologue with fang duobing's laser focus on li lianhua--which i think deserves praise and recognition all on its own, quite frankly, because he, too, is going through it! this is his first time speaking with shan gudao since learning that he's his father, rather than his uncle--since he was a disabled child struggling to swing a sword from his wheelchair--and this? this is the reception he gets, from the man who called him trash and abandoned him? but compassion and kindness come as naturally to fang duobing as avarice and resentment do to shan gudao, and so it is no hardship for him to shelve his feelings while li lianhua is clearly just barely holding it together next to him. right now, fang duobing has both the strength to carry them both through this moment, and the willingness to do it. because he loves li lianhua (again, however you choose to interpret that love, be it romantic or platonic--that's what it is), sincerely and artlessly, and he doesn't want to see him in pain.

which is a real bummer for fang duobing because, well:

of course, li lianhua's agony here has nothing to do with being the 'joke' that shan gudao is making him out to be, because li lianhua has never looked at his relationship with his shixiong as a scale in need of balancing, or as their time training together as martial siblings, and then running the sigu sect, as a ledger of wins and losses to be scrutinized and tallied up. (i may come back to this paragraph in the future because there's something specific to unpack here about li lianhua's very particular feelings re: how he failed the sigu sect, and his shixiong, and his shifu and shiniang, and how this failure--to recognize shan gudao's resentment and contempt for what it really was--is just the last nail in the coffin when it comes to his feelings about his life as li xiangyi. but i can't quite get the thoughts to come together. rip.)

now shan gudao is willing to look at li lianhua, and once again i don't think the screenshots do the flicker in shan gudao's expression justice. it's this minute, blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment of surprise and uncertainty, which to me only emphasizes how unnecessary all of shan gudao's machinations prior to the battle at the east sea really were. because over and over and over again, we see him confronted with concrete evidence that his perception of himself, his relationships, and his place in the world is at odds with how things really were, and are. and frequently, reality was not even to his detriment!! or rather, it didn't have to be, but each time he encountered one of these crossroads and diverging paths where an alternate path was available to him, he balked at taking it.

like full disclosure, i haven't actually been active in this fandom for much longer than a month, but one thing i've noticed while reading fic and some meta is this characterization of fang duobing as someone who is always gullible and easily led, and that stopped being the case like four episodes ago tbh. because look:

fang duobing knows. he knows that li lianhua is full of shit in this moment, that there is far more to this story than he's letting on. and he's clearly annoyed and frustrated, but he isn't distracted from his point, either, which is that in his opinion, di feisheng is a clear and present danger to li lianhua's life. and he's got some opinions about that, obviously! because, as we established in yipin tomb, he cares about li lianhua!

even when li lianhua is /gestures below, like this:

(deflection, deflection, misdirection, "ohh, my head, young master fang don't scold me, i'll faint" never before has a cdrama protagonist been in more desperate need of a spanking, but i digress)

this 👆is fang duobing deliberately picking and choosing his battles in their relationship. and he is choosing not to push the issue of li lianhua's transparent deception because that would be such a waste of his time when he knows what is more important: li lianhua's safety. that's what he's got his little cane corso vinegar puppy teeth dug into right now, and he's not going to let go. but! he has figured out that sometimes the best way to needle information out of li lianhua is to give him what he wants.

so he does.

it's an effective strategy, too, because look what happens! li lianhua does start to talk. but, uh, before we can get into the meat of what he ends up saying, we have to take a minute to acknowledge the subtitle elephant in the room:

"""weired."""

anyway, li lianhua is couching all of his replies in his usual brand of irreverent malarkey, but not everything he says is pointless bullshit, and fang duobing knows it. he's going to take this comment to heart, that "a-fei" doesn't want li lianhua to die, because that is the partial truth he knows is hidden in and amongst the rest of the nonsense. that's the information that matters most to him, and even if he doesn't like the deception when it comes to li lianhua's safety, he doesn't push for more details.

and then, of course:

"besides, i have you. 😏"

yes, you do have fang duobing! cherish him, li lianhua! don't underestimate him!

but in all seriousness, i love that this is how he chooses to end the subject, and i love that fang duobing's reaction is an easy confirmation of what li lianhua says. because yeah, that's kind of his point, li lianhua! fang duobing is here for you, to protect you and to endure your aggravating circumspection in all things, because he enjoys this on some level lol. they both do.

not freak4freak, not clown4clown, but some other third thing. waves my hands vaguely, it'll come to me at some point.

(apologies for the clumsy editing in the last screenshot, i just could not grab a screencap of this moment with the subtitle that worked for me. so i stole the caption from a split second before this moment and slapped it onto this one.)

i think what makes chengyi's delivery so devastatingly impactful here is his gentleness, which works because while i'd never describe li lianhua's verbal interactions with fang duobing as rough or callous, he tends to try to protect or spare his feelings through obfuscation and avoidance where possible (i will come back to this subject later, i have Thoughts). understandably, that isn't an option here because he has run out the clock and is out of time, and he has no cards left to play except the one that will hurt the most: the truth, which no amount of tenderness can blunt. because the truth is that he's going to die, has actively been dying, and there is (in his opinion) nothing fang duobing can do to stop it.

He acknowledges the difference.

He likes the Li Lianhua version better (cf: "you're not my shifu").

Even if Li Lianhua/Li Xiangyi doesn't die or disappear forever, Fang Duobing knows there's no going back to traveling around in the Lotus Tower with LLH.

How long has he known that? To what extent did he know that was the cost of exposing LLH's identity to Sigumen?

He's just about the only non-antagonist who'd rather have Li Lianhua than Li Xiangyi. (Or at least, who's capable of acknowledging that fact.)

(Many thanks to @guzhufuren for making the gifs for this! My hero.)

But that serves to conceal that Li Lianhua's irritation stems from what it means for him personally that Di Feisheng can't remember being Di Feisheng anymore. As long as Di Feisheng is just A-Fei, no one knows Li Lianhua is Li Xiangyi, except when Qiao Wanmian shows up briefly. But Qiao Wanmian has an entirely different approach to Li Lianhua having been Li Xiangyi. She isn't desperate for him to be Li Xiangyi again the way that Di Feisheng is. Because that is vital here! Li Lianhua knows that if Di Feisheng starts to remember being a "supervillain," he's going to remember Li Xiangyi and he's going to go back to wanting Li Lianhua to be Li Xiangyi.

Xin Jue aka "Ghost King Sabre 鬼王刀", who came to look for his abducted wife, only to find out that he was too late and she had already killed herself.

Murong Yao, who came to look for his childhood sweetheart Chi Long.

And Di Feisheng, who came to look for his wife Li Lianhua 🤭