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Fang Duobing says that even though Yu Louchun holds the Red All Over the Mountains 漫山红 feast every year, nobody has ever found out where he lives. But there are three exceptions:
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 🤭
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Li Lianhua not putting his head against fdb's neck is such an interesting detail to me bc cheng yi himself is a stickler for realism and detail (eg in IS when his character passed out he made sure not to use his arm to cushion his fall), so unless llh was in fact not fully unconscious during scene, there's nothing else that can explain why he isn't fully limp against fdb
And I'm more inclined to believe that llh has some semblance of consciousness here, half bc medically I don't think llh would actually be in a full in coma during this scene, and half bc despite everything, llh still has lxy's pride engraved in his bones. He might be too weak to stand or even talk at the moment, but there's some part of him that's too proud to accept having to fully lean on and rely on someone, a mentality that extends even to the very last moments of the show where he'd rather run off and die on his own than have people who care about him watch him fully loose his senses and mind. So hence, llh being unwilling to go fully limp and rest his head against fdb's shoulder, because he wants as much independence and pride in a way as he possibly can in this situation, even if it's just holding his head up by his own will
the part of this first face-to-face confrontation between shan gudao, fang duobing, and li lianhua that is hitting me the hardest on my second mlc watchthrough is how, given the camera angle during shan gudao's evil villain monologue, he doesn't even seem like he's looking at li lianhua. and he's standing right across from him.
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.
because to actually walk these diverging paths, shan gudao would have to put down the giant chip on his shoulder long enough to recognize that there was someone else walking along the path beside him, willing to help him carry that burden.
Fishing for Di Feisheng
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).
Anyway, this meta was brought to you by writing my fishing/anniversary post-canon sequel fic (in which DFS has very negative feelings about fishing because of all this) and my phone changing “Di Feisheng” to “Die Fishing.”
In episode 23, Fang Duobing trades a secret to A'Fei for a favor and thereby reveals that Di Feisheng had been what iQiyi translates as a "supervillain." Once A'Fei departs, Li Lianhua is visibly annoyed with Fang Duobing and scolds him. If Li Lianhua were asked why he's angry with Fang Duobing, I do think he'd say that Di Feisheng's mind can't handle being exposed to that particular memory yet. He says as much, more or less.
(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.
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To me, the tragedy of Di Feisheng waiting at that beach is not that he's still clinging to an image of Li Xiangyi from the past and is waiting for him to return. It is that he is waiting for Li Lianhua. Yes, Di Feisheng starts out looking for Li Xiangyi in Li Lianhua, but is he really just stuck there for the entire show? I think he dares to think they've succeeded in trusting and knowing each other the way they failed to a decade ago. Li Lianhua may always run, but not from Di Feisheng. Not after they've saved and stood by each other the way they have. He dares to think he knows Li Lianhua and waits, only to realise he was wrong once again.
I have Feelings about these shots
This 1 second framing is the only signal you get that Li Lianhua is wiped out from the energy he just spent getting the skull back. You get this for one second, Fang Duobing looking at him for two, and then when he walks over Lianhua's act is being hungover
And Duobing buys it, you don't really register it even though you know what happened, we move on so incredibly quickly to the next plot point
Idk, it just feels worth shouting out specifically cause it's glossed over so effectively
also his little 'mmh...' of vague dismay while Fang Duobing tells him how awesome he looked is precious to me
on twitter here and here, forayuarchive has been talking about how LLH & FDB really act like an old married couple, and i couldn't stop thinking about it too. as a native chinese speaker, the level of informality, familiarity and bickering, in how FDB and LLH speak to one another (especially in the later episodes) are reminiscent of how bickering old married chinese couples are often depicted.
when FDB is angry/upset at LLH, he calls him "死莲花" - "Damn Lotus/Damn Lianhua". the way FDB says it is in a manner where you might imagine old spouses scolding one another when nagging/bickering (to clarify, it's not romantic per se, but it's extremely informal & familiar).
for example, in ep 35, FDB calls him Damn Lotus in the note he left LLH when he went to look for the styx flower. CN fanghua fans on weibo managed to painstakingly transcribe the note (see forayuarchive's tweet about it here with the eng translation) - it's extremely informal and reads like a short note a spouse/partner would write when leaving their shared home in a hurry.
