Li Lun lives in my head rent free

Cdrama: Fangs of Fortune (2024)

We will just keep arranging and combining~ | Fangs of Fortune 大梦归离 | iQIYI

Cdrama: Fangs of Fortune (2024)

#大梦归离 白玖和他的哥哥姐姐们 #林子烨

As you probably could tell, I'm on a vos rewatch for characterization, and something I noticed is that Ji Ling has the habit of striking what I call the Long Shen Pose, meaning that peculiar "regal" way he stands with his left arm bent over his belly and his right arm bent behind his back. Cool, you might say, but why are you bringing that up. Well, because it's posturing. He notably only does the pose when either A) he wants to appear more authoritative as Long Shen or B) right after he accidentally lets a little too much of Ji Ling slip out and he feels like he needs to resume wearing his mask. You can literally see this in action in the star stone illusion when Lu Wuyi questions why he's acting so considerate and uncharacteristically warm to her, and he immediately shakes himself, schools his expression back into aloof distance, and strikes the Long Shen pose.

It's even in the middle of a conversation about acting!

So naturally after picking up on that I got curious to double check if this was something that he was copying from the real Chi Wen to better sell the act, or if it was part of the persona he adopted in order to appear a more legit deity. Basically, similar to how he lies that he doesn't like the taste of meat because the one he's impersonating is a vegetarian who is expected to live a life of simple, frugal meals and abstinence from worldly pleasures, in true ascetic monk fashion.

With all that in mind, I was paying extra attention to how the original Chi Wen held himself in all those brief glimpses of him we got here and there, but much to my disappointment, his arms were always flat at his sides, never bent in the same pose Ji Ling often does.

"is he just improvising, then?" I wondered next, already wondering if my search would be fruitless too in the more extended flashbacks of Ji Ling's past in that one episode we see the whole story. "If Chi Wen doesn't do the Long Shen Pose there either, I'm going to go off the assumption that this is what Ji Ling decided looked like a dignified, kind but aloof gentleman," I told myself.

Until, and this is where I proceeded to cry emoji at my screen...

The reveal.

Second picture is Ji Ling's vision from his fox eyes, as evidenced by the general blurriness and tilted up perspective. He never did see Chi Wen's face distinctly, or else puppet Ji Ling, who inherited the same memory, would've been able to tell that the Long Shen he knew and the Long Shen who saved him from the rocks were different people. But the one feature that stood out to him and the one he (consciously or subconsciously?) still emulates to this day is the striking, noble figure Chi Wen struck as he approached him for the first time, lending some of his godly powers to a lowly little blind fox.

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yuan wuhuo was human before he was consumed by the butterfly who was a yao. the butterfly demon was two beings not one, therefore we got li jie and new yuan wuhuo. if i remember correctly the whole deal about the butterfly demon was that after they consumed yuan wuhuo's consciousness/memories they are fully reborn, bc that's part of their ability, but when yuan wuhuo dies at the shilin sect his body doesn't dissolve like the other yao's does. in later episodes li jie also says that he cannot wait for ji ling's heart stone to recultivate bc he will not live that long, but both he and yuan wuhuo were the new forms of the butterfly demon. who was a yao. which means they too are yao right?

but then when li jie first arrived at the shilin sect he had no token to keep him safe from all the traps, and one would assume long shen would be able to tell whether he was human or not, or at least bai ze would tell him. but if both li jie and yuan wuhuo were human how come yuan wuhuo had the butterfly demon's powers? did only one of them become a yao while the other stayed human? what happened to the other butterfly demon then? where did he go?

This scene goes hand in hand with Zhao Yuanzhou getting psychosexual hallucinations of his demon ex husband haunting the body of his new human husband, and how the inherent terror of those blurred identities unveils both Zhao Yuanzhou and Ji Ling's most deep-seated, most repressed and yet painfully visceral desire: being known, seen through completely, disarmingly, and beloging anyway. The community of souls only born from going through the highs and lows of fate with someone who has seen all of you, including the worst, most unlovable parts you don't want to acknowledge as parts of you.

This longing is something that both Zhao Yuanzhou and Ji Ling keep buried deep. They don't dare speak of it, of how much it hurt to have shared everything with someone, to have loved them and still love them and need them at your side, and yet not get to. They pretend there isn't an open wound in their heart, despite how much it bleeds into every relationship they form ever since. How it shapes them into people who already expect loss before they even let themselves love someone else fully. In their mind's eye, that loss becomes an inevitability, and one that they dread something fierce.

The doomed past and the more compassionate present blur together, cruelly taunting them. Who are they facing? Their new friend, or the person they didn't get to hold on to? Is there a difference between them?

The dread of Li Lun possessing Zhuo Yichen's body to kill Zhao Yuanzhou is weighty, but so is ZYZ's fear of the past repeating itself. When he sees ZYC's features blur into LL's, it's not the possession he's terrified of. He imagines them at the altar of their old oaths to each other, where new oaths were formed with new people. Li Lun isn't just an enemy to defeat: it's Zhao Yuanzhou's past coming back to remind him of his broken promises, of his failed "forever"s. He doesn't need to physically possess Zhuo Yichen for Zhao Yuanzhou to feel his haunting, suffocating presence.

If Li Lun was a beloved close friend ZYZ was forced to part ways with by the cruelty of fate, but still painfully present in his life in a way ZYZ can't bear to extricate himself from, to put an end to, then the butterfly demon is that and worse. In the latter, the haunting is twofold: it's Yuan Wuhuo the butterfly demon possessing Li Jie, and it's Yuan Wuhuo the human haunting the replica, the painted skin, close enough to the original to taunt Ji Ling with regrets and unsolved issues, but not close enough to bring relief to that hurt, to offer any closure. His existence itself feels like a slight to the idealized memory of the great hero.