#and wuyan answers “ofc. fighting people and being the strongest. here's the list of potential opponents”

[hanayotta]

i've also been thinking about how the main trio share the theme of striving for freedom and running away.

li lianhua was the first that i saw this in, with him running from his past, his legacy and the image people in general have of him as li xiangyi. from the expectations and roles that come with it. furthermore his relations, past and present, all those who get too close and threaten to limit his freedom. also (according to my personal interpretation) trying to evade societal norms he used to be bound by, like heteronormativity – which he used to fulfill in his relationship with qiao wanmian. now he immediately shuts down any woman making advances on him, without exception.

then, actually more obvious than li lianhua, is fang duobing, who's ALSO trying to escape the heteronormative life plans his family has for him, the arranged marriage to be exact. he keeps choosing to refuse the path prepared for him to instead chase after li lianhua, his dream of becoming a detective and follow his heart into the jianghu. but also wanting to have the freedom to choose li lianhua and spending time with him, against all better judgement or alledged better options.

finally you've got di feisheng who we only later find out has been trying to free himself from the gu bug all this time and by extension the shackles of his horrible past. he also doesn't care to fulfill the expectations people have of him: of exclusively being this evil final-boss leader of the jiangyuan alliance and of wanting to rule the world. even wanting to be strongest martial artist isn't on the forefront of his mind anymore, against wuyans expectations, with li xiangyi out of the picture. funnily enough he too struggles with heteronormativity or, well– he seems pretty certain about not being interested in having a female partner. unfortunately for him the world's largest yandere hasn't gotten that memo yet. so she is another factor he continuously runs from (in a broader sense).

funnily enough, while all three of them experience flight impulses in various situations, they often don't understand or respect it in each other, like with fang duobing chasing after li lianhua and them trying to force a cure on him. or li lianhua trying to "return" fang duobing to his family, seeing it as the better option for him. i think, out of all of them, the best understanding in this context is the one li lianhua has for di feisheng, which kind of shows in the openness with which he treats the amnesiac "a-fei" – as opposed to how fang duobing treats him on occasion, trying to link him back to the image of the bad guy.