#character: fang duobing

[heymeowmao]

莲花楼 | Mysterious Lotus Casebook E3&4 ° he doesn't eat melon!! 🍉

[qpjianghu]

Li Lianhua + saying "I love you" without saying "I love you" (2/?)

Mysterious Lotus Casebook (2023)

[jianghushenanigans]

If you like Mysterious Lotus Casebook, why not try The Blood of Youth? We have...

Jaded protagonist who has lost all his martial arts and claims to just be a humble member of the jianghu, lying constantly about his prestigious background and the fact he's extremely famous:

(Here he is again but dressed like a woman this time for Plot Reasons):

His new sidekick: a puppy in the form of a teenager with floofy hair. Enjoyer of food, kicker of ass:

The leader of the demon sect who gets constantly nerfed by the narrative because if he was at full power all the time there wouldn't really be much of a plot:

The three of them eating together! Bonding! Bickering!:

Other key characters include:

Woman with chronic illness:

Women getting cool action shots:

This distinctive wig worn by the Purple Guy:

A man, I swear:

One actor who's in one of the tumblr famous cdramas that will make you go 'hey, isn't that that guy from the more tumblr famous cdrama!'

This actor playing a guy in love with an older woman:

These two actors playing Bros:

... hang on this is like half the supporting cast?? well anyway if you enjoying looking at actors and going 'hmmmm i swear i've seen them before' then This is the show for you:

This boat! I'm like 75% its the same boat but its difficult to tell with the lighting:

ANYWAY the acting is great the costumes are great the wigs are great I cried for two days straight please watch the blood of youth

[recapitulation]

Fang Duobing's Erya Sword

[ID: gifs of the series "Mysterious Lotus Casebook" showing Fang Duobing's sword. It features a decorative silver hilt with a tiger on the pommel and a piece of circular white jade hanging off of the end. In two of the gifs he is seen threatening Li Lianhua with it. /end ID]

[jflora]

first impressions

[thedreamerstoryteller]

So, it's a Cheng Yi thing. 🤭

[technicolouredmonochrome]

this is ridiculous but after watching mysterious lotus casebook fang duobing might just be my favourite character of all time???

he's just so endlessly optimistic and idealistic and it's ridiculous at first but he learns and grows and adapts but it doesn't turn him into doom and gloom man just makes him more practical and grounded. he's loyal to the people around him. he makes friends through the sheer power of puppy dog eyes and positivity. he will not hesitate to kill a man for touching LLH, but will also call out LLH when he's being a piece of shit. he has loving parents that he loves just as much in return and doesn't for a second waver when he finds out they are not his birth parents. he knows the power of chosen families. his love language is acts of service. he will never hesitate to stand for what he believes in.

his nickname is xiaobao (aka little treasure) and everyone that loves him calls him that because as much as they love him, they are also in awe of the fact that he would choose to love them in return with the full force of his devotion. LLH looks at this boy with his one memory of LXY that has changed his entire life and thinks: even if the entire world went to shit because of me at least i did one thing right.

i just love fang duobing so so much. and his character in mysterious lotus casebook is a wonderful portrayal of what it means to be optimistic in a world where good may not necessarily win, when you sometimes have to grapple with loss, where you might fight hard for something you believe in and lose it anyway. what it means to fall again, and again, and again. what it means to pick yourself back up. what it means to keep on going.

[wannabugi]

the only person who rly recognized li xiangyi w/o any prompting is zhan yunfei.

can we just talk about that.

they met when they were both teenagers, both equally as prideful, as good in their field. so prideful they make a stupid bet where one of them will never be able to tie his hair up again even though he's obsessed over his hair. and zhan yunfei loses, he watches his hair tie flicker in li xiangyi's grasp, and maybe he feels a sting of indignation and fury, but mostly he feels respect.

he grudgingly bows and turns away from li xiangyi's smug smile. he never ties up his hair again.

months later, he hears that li xiangyi dies. he sits alone on a rooftop and watches the moon and drinks and drinks and drinks.

he never ties up his hair again.

years pass. he becomes more steadfast and then older. or maybe it's the other way around--he becomes older, and then more steadfast. either way, he sees a shadow of an arrogant, playful boy with a red ribbon in his hair and a sword that flies like the wind in this girl with dark robes and a haughty look on her face. she's not very good with the sword, but she talks like she's still young and can win against the world, and she challenges him to a duel.

the weight of his sword is familiar in his hand. he accepts.

he loses.

he's not sure how. maybe he was distracted by the look of utter concentration on her face, or the spark in her eyes when she uses her first device and catches him off guard, or the gleeful laughter she lets out when she finally points her sword against his neck. there's still a few inches, and if he really wanted to, he could flick it away and take the upper hand. but he doesn't really want to.

he smiles and bows.

"young master he, my loyalty is yours."

years pass. he stays in the periphery of miss he's life. she finds him, sometimes, on warm afternoons and asks to duel. she never wins again, but she's happy enough sparring against him. she always casts a questioning glance to his tangled mane of hair, but never asks. he thinks he might be a little bit in love.

but the world is cruel and dangerous. he knows, because the world killed the eighteen year old who became the best and lost everything on the way. he's no use to miss he as a husband, so he remains in the periphery of her life, orbiting, steadfast.

he grows old in a way li xiangyi would never.

years pass. li xiangyi has been dead for 10 years. he could have tied his hair up by year 6, really, when he and all of 武林 no longer felt the loss so acutely, but he never ties his hair up again.

years pass. he sees a man dressed in pale robes, hair neatly arranged in a way that suggests he doesn't do much physical activity. he looks like a scholar, long hair floating gently in the wind. the man looks at him for a little longer than propriety calls for. his eyes flick between his and his hair. his first reaction is to steel his gaze, but then he recognizes the teasing amusement in the man's feature.

no.

li xiangyi died 10 years ago.

but there's no mistaking the apologetic smile the man gives him before he is ushered into the main room.

"you should tie up your hair again. you look scary like this."

li xiangyi died 10 years ago, but li lianhua is here, 10 years later, absolving zhan yunfei of his guilt and grief. they were never friends back then, but if they had grown old together, maybe they would have been.

[xiaogesword]

~ Zeng Shunxi sings to you while it rains ~

Wear headphones 🎧

Song: Zeng Shunxi's cover of How Can I Not Think of Her featured in his new drama A Lonely Hero's Journey. Includes: English translation, pinyin, Mandarin Native title: 教我如何不想她 by 赵元任 (1926)

Translation and rain sounds by me.

[difeisheng]

for all the threatening and light-to-intensive manhandling that di feisheng does, it's my firm headcanon that he's never actually followed through on genuinely torturing someone by his own hand. either because he didn't need to, but if not that, then because he didn't want to. it happened in jinyuanmeng, obviously, but i don't see that as something he would have carried out himself ("never again", he thinks of the child trapped in the di mansion, of how his own body keeps the score). and if he did, he wouldn't have taken pleasure in it.

fang duobing, on the other hand, is the protagonist whom we witness supervising forced interrogation in canon, and between that and the fact that he'll call di feisheng a 大魔头 to his face while having what i'm fairly sure is the higher onscreen kill count, i adore the subversion of the archetypes these characters seem to be on the surface.

[heymeowmao]

莲花楼 | Mysterious Lotus Casebook E3 ° If you're not guilty, don't run away.

[qpjianghu]

Outcast, fallen angel, you are loved. You are forgiven. You are redeemed. You are loved. -The Exorcist [insp]

Li Lianhua | Mysterious Lotus Casebook

[renshengs]

mlc ep 31 is like being gutted with a blunt knife. i keep thinking about li lianhua vomiting blood everywhere and collapsing and struggling with a poison that has only one virtually unattainable antidote, grabbing on to fang duobing and apologetically going "haha this must be scaring you" and fang duobing just. rolling his eyes and making him lie down. like, shut up. drop the act. let me take care of you.

and li lianhua has never let himself be taken care of. the burden of it, he thinks, is one no one is willing to take on. not qiao wanmian, who loves him but thoroughly exhausted herself trying to chase after the flicker of his shadow. not anyone. and then, after ten years of solitude, comes fang duobing, who will be angry with him but won't leave. who receives the burden of him with both hands. with complaint, which is so important! fang duobing will be furious and hurt with him for lying, for making weight-of-the-world decisions all on his own, but for all that he runs his mouth he would never blame li lianhua for being burdensome.

it's rotten work. it is. there's no denying it, but why should fang duobing care? he loves this man, rotten work or not. and isn't that a wonder, to have someone love li lianhua like that? truly fang duobing invented "i'll follow you to the ends of the earth with only mild complaining".

[recapitulation]

[ID: gifs from episode 34 of the series "Mysterious Lotus Casebook." Li Lianhua says somberly, "Li Lianhua has lived a carefree life for 10 years. It's time for it to end." Fang Duobing says, "For what to end? From back when we were on Yunyin Mountain to now, I'm afraid the poison in your body has already... I'm afraid there's less than a month left. The most important thing now is to find a way to save you, you know?" Li Lianhua says calmly, "Fang Xiaobao. Bicha Poison can't be detoxified." Fang Duobing, increasingly distressed, says, "Who said that? I've sent people to look for the Styx Flower everywhere. There must be a way to save you." Li Lianhua looks down. /end ID]

[mx-myth]

Thinking about how everyone wears different colours in mlc and how they're all connected...

Li xiangyi wears red. Yes it means happiness and joy and luck (ignoring the wedding symbolism for now) but it is also the colour of blood. He wears this bright, bold colour and still ends up dying on that ship.

Di feisheng's main colours are, for the sake of simplicity, black and red. Red for lxy but it's always darker and more muted on him - there's more blood symbolism for him (based purely on his reputation in the jianghu) but also more wedding symbolism compared to lxy. Black, tragically enough, corresponds with the element of water - it was a pitch-black night when he fought lxy, on a black sea, on a black ship - and that even fits with the western idea of black being for death. But he also wears bolder colours - we've seen him in purple and blue, for example - and this parallels fang duobing's outfits. Inherently a lot of the characters obsessed with the past (jiao liqiao and shan gudao, to name some) wear bold colours while characters who have left it behind/who are looking towards the future wear lighter colours (more to be said about this) and I think this is dfs turning away from the last and towards that future.

Brilliant example of this is qiao wanmian. She wears lighter colours and she gets over lxy and but I think it's important that one of her most iconic outfits is pink. Yes we all know how she and dfs are foils - this is yet another element of that. Pink is white and red: white, for death, for lxy; red, for happiness and weddings, also for lxy. Learning to live with her grief was definitely a long and lengthy process but it also helps her become her own person - she lets go of lxy and eventually learns that she has her own power, that she's strong in her own right, that she doesn't have to rely on men. She leaves xiao zijin and becomes the new leader of the new sigu sect and, while it's likely last her time to become a legend in the jianghu, she's certainly an inspiring figure.

Opposite of this is jiao liqiao. She's firmly still chasing after the past - her desire for dfs to love her back, her one-sided love rivalry with lxy. Her red is wedding red for dfs but it's also a giant fuck you to lxy - look, I'm better than you, I've got his attention and you don't. It's still true to an extent in the present, since she believes it's still dfs' attention that li lianhua wants (it is not). A-mian lets go of lxy (with some help for llh) but jiao liqiao never lets go of dfs, even when he outright rejects her. She's chasing her ideal of dfs, not who he actually is.

(I'm not going to talk about shan gudao. Same colours as dfs but the evilness is boosted to 100. He wears black and red as the classic Evil Colour Combo.)

Then we have the con man himself, li lianhua. In this new life of his he wears lighter colours - some blue, some green, but an overwhelming amount of it is white. As the show progresses he loses the blue and green. Yes he's looking at the future now but it's in the manner as someone staring down the barrel of a gun. There's nothing to say here because llh has it all planned out. He's already started dressing for his own funeral.

Lastly, the one and only fang duobing. He wears lighter colours too (in fact, he and a-mian are the only two I'd truly describe as wearing pastels). It's fascinating to note that there was no distinction between blue and green (his main colours) in old China. The symbolism of it is while it's the colour representing east (hahahahaha) it's also the colour of spring. I will never stop with the fdb/spring symbolism - he brings new life, he brings a new beginning, life will always go on if there's spring. (Spring is also the season when peach trees bloom, and isn't that something.) An interesting note is that he never wears any of li xiangyi's signature red. He really does leave lxy behind because he accepts that he's gone, because he loves li lianhua.

[lilianhuas]

ShunXi vs cold water