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Look, the ideal trio dynamic is obviously:

One (1) ultra serious dude One (1) hyperactive puppy One (1) suave man with a fan

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They had no business looking so damn good together. *sobs*

Fancam for the anhui television drama awards ceremony performance

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i watched this very convincing YT video about the solutions to save li lianhua and how solution 2 is a combination of li lianhua's yangzhouman and di feisheng's beifeng baiyang (windy poplar), because li lianhua, at the end of the show, knows how to use beifeng baiyang. di feisheng states at the end of ep 38 that he taught li lianhua the technique

beifeng baiyang is, as di feisheng puts it, a technique "that seeks the path of survival in great danger" while yangzhouman uses (and fosters?) stability. di feisheng also states in ep 38 that using beifeng baiyang should be able to maintain, even temporarily, li lianhua's stamina and the use of his meridians /chi channels. notably, bicha poison fucks up his chi channels, so im guessing it's part of why using yangzhouman while poisoned by bicha is hard and exhausting and li lianhua struggles to do so when he runs low on energy

and tbh i did not think about it properly until now, but li lianhua really does have the means to keep himself alive for long enough until they find a better solution, just by using a combination of beifeng baiyang and yangzhouman, doesn't he?

we could absolutely have more chronically ill li lianhua traveling (or staying in place) while fang duobing and di feisheng scour the world for something to detoxify him

(let's not even get into the whole yin and yang imagery of beifeng baiyang x yangzhouman i need to sit down)

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Di Fei Sheng most important achievement:

Reaching the eight level of Windy Poplar ❌❌❌

Reaching the supreme level of hair conditioner and haircare routine ✅✅✅

#No this is not a L'*réal (Because You're Worth It") ad

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#永远不要怀疑角姐的执行力✨#jiao liqiao#lhl#our girl got tripped by gender envy and a realisation that she could just break gender roles that came a bit too late#had she started working on that earlier#by the end of the story it would be over for absolutely everyone

You know...now that you mention it...how WOULD the series look if she immediately tied him up and made him her malewife after the East Sea fight?

Let's be real, if Jiao Liqiao didn't become obsessed with Di Feisheng she would have taken over the world by now.

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I desperately wanted Xiao Se to kneel at the end scene ngl. >< But nevermind, bowing is good enough!

Okay I've finished The Blood of youth and in my opinion:

- the drama ended in the best way possible (we are ignoring episode 25/26) for our main character but its funnier when you think about how Xiao Lingchen told the late Emperor to pass on the throne to his least favourite son.

- before they revealed that he had written two edicts I was seriously wondering like "...do you really not like Xiao Chong that much old man???"

- but I'm glad he wrote two. man really said "go fight it out between yourselves"

- in all seriousness though, I think he did that because he trusts these two princes to be mature enough to not repeat his mistake. Also because both Xiao Se and Xiao Chong have proven that they are mature enough to lead Tianqi, no matter who ends up on the throne.

- and his trust was not misplaced! Xiao Chong didn't immediately announce the edict in his hands because 1. Xiao Se isn't even in the palace, 2. I'd like to think that he knows that Xiao Se has no intention of being Emperor, and would much rather roam the jianghu instead and 3. he wants to let Xiao Se announce it himself, whether he accepts or rejects the edict, instead of making that decision for him.

- I loved that Xiao Se was still himself at the end of the show, that he did not forget those who helped him along the way and did not lose himself in the (one-sided) bloodbath that Xiao Yu started.

- The only issue I have with the ending was that Zang Ming wasn't there when the edict was read out??? Dude did not sacrifice his eyes to be left out like that...

^ the contrast to the start!!

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Is anyone else sad because Fang Duobing has a "Waiting For Li Lianhua On the Beach" outfit?

(On the left is the outfit in episode 40 after reading Li Lianhua's letter. On the right is the outfit in the special episode when he and Di Feisheng show up on the donghai beach to look for him 3 months later.)

While we're on the subject of costumes, @the-surreptitious-albatross and I just realized how different this outfit of Fang Duobing's is from his earlier outfits.

Here are some examples of a normal FDB outfit:

He prefers pastels, and his belts and wrist guards are often the same color as the pastel or a slightly darker version (and here, they have gold decorations).

Zooming in shows that he prefers his embroidery designs to be swirly and his hair accessories to be braided and color-matched or elaborate and silver (but still on the delicate side).

But check out this outfit: the embroidery is more angular and less swirly, as is the hair piece, and it and the belt and wrist guards are black with silver instead of matching the pastel of his outfit or being a slightly darker shade of it.

You know whose style he's echoing with all these changes? Who else tends to favor black wrist guards and belts with more angular designs?

Di Feisheng.

The images below make it a bit clearer: DFS's belt has gold decorations compared FDB's silver, and the shape is different, but you can see the similarities in the wrist guard design in particular.

It's not obvious how much their costumes are tying them together in this scene because we don't ever see them in the same frame; the camera constantly keeps them apart, as does the blocking of the scene, since DFS is on the rocks and FDB is on the beach.

That changes in the special episode when they both arrive on the beach at the same time, and DFS is wear his sect leader robes.

Here they are, in the same frame at last, and side by side, and you can see even more clearly with this DFS outfit how much the style of FDB's belt, wrist guards, and hair accessory is echoing his. The wrist guard pattern looks almost the same in these pictures! And the cut of the outer sleeveless robe is also very similar, which visually pairs them even more.

All this to say, FDB's clothing style shifts, the gentle swirls sharpened into points by his worry and grief for Li Lianhua, and it breaks my heart.

But the fact that he's visually echoing Di Feisheng now, that they're slowly becoming a matched set, is starting to put the pieces back together again.

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This is an awesome AU.

We'd get the DiFang even faster because I can completely imagine Di Feisheng feeling frustrated with basically no one in the entire world believing that he did not kill Li Xiangyi.

And FDB is the first one who actually agrees with him that something about the situation is suspicious.

I'm just imagining JLQ repeatedly trying to murder FDB in this AU because in the absence of LXY to hate, obviously the person stopping DFS from paying attention to her is SGD's son.

ok so I keep coming back to an au where like.

Instead of faking his death, Shan Gudao fakes Li Xiangyi's death, and still blames the Jinyuan alliance for it.

(and, because, y'know, what's the point of winning if you don't have anyone to see it, stashes poor Li Xiangyi in a convenient dungeon somewhere. if you don't start with your own captive audience, a shidi is fine.)

Shan Gudao thus becomes the head of the Sigu Sect, bc...like, he is second in command, and now he's got 1)prestige and 2)time to work on his ultimate goal of Becoming Emperor Of Everything Ever. Probably does the occasional 'expedition' to 'search' for his beloved shidi's 'missing body', by which I mean go and update poor captive Li Xiangyi on whatever new terrible step in the 'take over the world plan' he's up to, and/or do a bit of torture, psychological or otherwise.

Di Feisheng, on the other hand, is fully losing his shit trying to work out what in the actual fuck happened to Li Xiangyi, because someone has clearly murdered him. And on the one hand, he's now, kinda, the top of the jianghu, and on the other, he hasn't exactly earnt that, has he, and winning by default doesn't fucking count, that's not skill, that's random luck.

And sure, literally everyone in the damn world is out for his head because of the whole ' "murdered" Li Xiangyi' thing, but that's 1)more fights to test his skill in 2)not the point, he has to find out who Really murdered Li Xiangyi, if that means mowing through every idiot stupid enough to get in his way when he can't just lay low, so be it. (A surprising number of people are thrown off by a mask.)

all of which is to say: in this world the kinda sketchy and mysterious guy wandering the jianghu on a quest to find a corpse that Fang Duobing latches onto is Di Feisheng, who-- is initially tolerating this idiot in part because he's Li Xiangyi's disciple, which means he has just as much interest as Di Feisheng does in working out what the fuck actually happened a decade ago, and in part because --

well. ten years of looking for a dead man, let alone a famous dead man like Li Xiangyi, is an awful long time to find nothing at all. a suspiciously long time, really, like there's not actually a dead man to find.

like Li Xiangyi is still alive.

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Li Lianhua's will: I bequeath my dog, my swordplay and my homoerotic rivalry to Fang Duobing

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"It's better to sleep at home, don't you think Xiaobao?" part 1

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Must not be late to shan gudao funeral

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Okay my queue is running out and I don't have time to replenish because it's holiday season and I need to use what little free time I have to finally edit this big chapter for another fandom.

I honestly can't believe my last post is going to be about SGD of all people lol. I need to think of something to say about DiFangHua that is not emotional wounded cries of turmoil.

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The biggest mystery in MLC is why only some people in the palace were under the influence of the karmic bugs. How did Shan Gudao decide who to possess? And why did he not possess everyone?

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Not me thinking about whether Jiao Liqiao ever considered making herself a man in order to win Di Feisheng's heart...

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#And like. it's so CLEARLY a modern dishware set 😭#Historical ceramics are beautiful and stunning and there are so many contemporary ceramicists making cups/pots that would look so much more#historically 'accurate' (for any given definition of the word) than what they're using#extra points I suppose for using something with a brown and white glaze but it's soooooo glossy and it has a perfect footring#with glaze perfectly applied in the center#it couldn't be more obviously mass-produced if they tried

You're right OP and you should say it. 😂

They have one (1) SINGLE ceramic set for this entire show and it's killing me slowly every time it pops up (to be fair to them, it's a frequent crime across so many dramas lol)