#even today he wouldn't wear the helmet all the time if he didnt pf

[yi-dashi]

//I want to say Yi had very particular tastes in fashion and self presentation before the war, and it’s not something he has especially grown out of in his middle age. I throw around the word vanity in my own mind, but I don’t think he did it all for the sake of pride. Pride in himself is a part of it, as Yi’s ego can still get the better of him even today, but it was more a result of wanting to stand out in an otherwise homogeneous culture at any cost.

  He loved the outside world. He loved talking to traders who had apparently traveled broadly. He had access, or so I figure, to clothes and textiles from other places. You bet he was going to go around dressing in trailing robes, flowing ribbons, with hair adornments and nail polish. He was already considered mysterious and talented before any addition to aesthetics. I can totally see Yi leaning right into the presentation of a Master Sword-Poet before his time.

  It also wouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone when Yi had dissenting opinions on the war, though it probably did surprise people that Yi acted on these opinions. Other people definitely saw him as vain and frivolous. Despite all his tastes, he was more than happy to drop it all in the pursuit of a worthy cause. Without the strict societal structure, he didn’t have any use for his theatrics outside of Wuju.

   He still considers himself at war today, which means he hasn’t rebounded from the idea that personally fulfilling aesthetics are useless. He’s also developed a different alter ego to present outwardly these days, which lends itself to some other problems. If he ever falls back into some sort of normalcy, his tastes in clothing, and other accessories, might fall in a middle ground between the Wuju norm as seen in Poetry with a Blade, and his past extravagance.