#jingyan/mcs

[mira-likes]

Anyway, thoughts now that I’ve finished the season

- really wondering why the emperor chose to reveal the fact that Fan Xian is his son, and do it at this specific time. What does he gain by it? (The novel spoilers could probably tell me, but I’m avoiding all of those.)

- I needed to see everyone’s reactions to the parentage reveal and there were hardly any from the imperial family!! Except from the Princess Royal, whose reaction I cared about a lot less than the Second Prince’s! But he didn’t get to have a proper reaction of his own because his feelings took a backseat to hers. But he had to have so many feelings!!! You can’t tell me that this little gremlin who’s been obsessed with Fan Xian didn’t feel a lot of emotions upon finding out that they’re brothers!

- though I guess for him murder (attempted) is an emotion

- the Crown Prince got even less of a reaction—we see him after the fact. But what did he think!!! I know what he told his mom in that chilling conversation, but what does he actually feel!!

- also the Crown Prince never resembled his father more than during that convo with his mom. My god. She’s telling him her traumatic backstory and his reaction to this is like, wow, yeah this is hella difficult for me politically. I think it’ll be fine though if you beg an apology from the guy you just said you wanted super dead. Oh, was I insensitive? Sorry. Here are some tears. (He’s looking forward to the time when he won’t have to pretend to cry or care anymore.)

- even the First Prince’s reaction would be interesting. This troublesome kid he met is his brother. Does he even care? Then again, he seems to have checked out of the family entirely, minus his affection for the Third Prince. But he looks at the Second Prince and the Crown Prince like he’s internally dreaming about being as far away from them as possible at all times. He’s so “not my zoo, not my monkeys” with them, he doesn’t even care when Fan Xian maybe poisons the Second Prince. What’s another brother to this, especially one embroiled to the neck in political struggles? Maybe he views Fan Xian, the Second Prince and the Crown Prince as enrichment in each other’s enclosure

- the Third Prince so doesn’t get what’s happening, I’m not sure he even actually understands that Fan Xian is his brother. I think he has long been schooled by the First Prince to keep away from all political struggles, and also that knowing as little as possible is a great virtue. But now he’s a duckling who’s following Fan Xian, who’s likely to instil different if also useful lessons

- also Fan Xian may say what he likes about the Fan ancestral hall, but I’m pretty sure the emperor will have Thoughts about it. Because we’re circling back to the original point—the emperor revealed Fan Xian’s identity for a reason. I don’t think Fan Xian slinking away and saying, “hehe, nothing to see here, just an ordinary law-abiding Fan son,” is going to cut it.

- (if not for that, I could’ve seen the emperor being content that his secret kid is running the Imperial Treasury and the Inspection Bureau, and so both these powerful assets effectively are in his descendants’ possession. Others would’ve thought he’d given them away, but mwahaha little do they know he’s kept them in the family. And he could’ve let Fan Xian stay an uncontested Fan if that were his goal. But why drag his identity into the light? What is he hoping to achieve?)

[trisshawkeye]

Rewatching Nirvana In Fire has only been enhanced by having fallen down the Three Kingdoms rabbithole since my last rewatch. Mei Changsu quoted a poem by Cao Zhi in the last episode we watched and I got so excited

[egelantier]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 琅琊榜 | Nirvana in Fire (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe/Xiao Jingyan Characters: Lin Shu | Mei Changsu | Su Zhe, Xiao Jingyan, Consort Jing (Nirvana in Fire), Yan Yujin, Yan Que (Nirvana in Fire), Lin Chen (Nirvana in Fire) Additional Tags: Genderbending, Identity Porn, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Reincarnation, Fix-It, Arranged Marriage, Hurt/Comfort Summary:

Twelve years after the Chiyan massacre Jingyan, bitter and grieving, is urgently called back to the capital and presented by unexpected marching orders by his mother: he's to leave his military career and marry Mei Changsu, an eighteen-years-old maiden who claims to be a daughter of his mother's old friend, mysterious Mei Shinan. Jingyan is furious, but he's too filial a son to disobey his mother...

[24cardpickup]

When will his love return from the war?

(Never, unfortunately)

):

[sinni-ok-sessi]

this fic is really bringing to light how much I just kinda smile and let a story lead me by the hand, because it turns out I've watched this show six times and I don't actually know whose house we're in for this emotional scene

[thecrenellations]

some sketchier ones (Nirvana in Fire ep. 42)

Wei Zheng's story / Spring Hunt outfits / Who taught Yujin to ride?

[winepresswrath]

None of this is changing how hype I am for NiF 3, which will apparently feature Wu Lei in some capacity.

[acesgroupchat]

Drabbles December 19:

90: “why didn’t you tell me” | A door closing

64: Mei Changsu/Lin Chen/Xiao Jingyan

The door clicks shut and Jingyan immediately drops his forehead onto Lin Chen’s shoulder. Lin Chen’s fingers wind in his hair, steadying his head. Kind of him, since otherwise he would probably be thrown off with how hard Lin Chen is laughing.

“You know, I always assumed he learned that particular act at the palace. I take it he didn’t?”

Jingyan snorts. “Anyone that obnoxious would have gotten banished in a matter of months. I’ve never seen that before.”

Lin Chen’s eyes cut to the door and his mouth goes rueful. “And yet, that’s the man we both love, somehow.”

[bitterflames]

relevant to previous post: i crave all the jingsu hand kissing fic/art/etc. so bad you don't even understand. the "tell me every terrible thing you ever did and let me love you anyway" of it all

[convenientalias]

Why Nirvana in Fire Wins at Revenge Story with Identity Porn

Nirvana in Fire was my first ever cdrama that was a revenge story with identity porn. Since then, I've seen many other dramas along similar lines. A League of Nobleman. Blood of Youth. City of Streamer. Fighting for Love. Legend of Anle. Long Ballad. Princess Weiyoung. Rise of Phoenixes. Sword Dynasty. Weaving a Tale of Love. Word of Honor. Some of them are quite good but none of them really hit the same way. So, apart from the fact that it was the first one I ever watched, I thought I'd made a brief list of reasons why I think Nirvana in Fire is the best.

Lin Shu's Identity

I just appreciate that when shit went down and Lin Shu's whole family and army and many of his friends were killed and he became a man on the run, he was a full-grown man (okay, still pretty young, but definitely not a child) with his own life and even an army position.

A lot of these identity porn dramas will have their MCs meeting ppl for the first time in many years, in disguise, but they only knew these ppl when they were children. Childhood friends are great and all that, but can they hit as hard as the complicated, fleshed out relationships that Lin Shu had and lost? He had a friendship of many years with Jingyan. He had an engagement and a longstanding friendship with Nihuang. He has friends from the army, younger cousins playing the role of "we don't even understand what happened back then and maybe that's better", older friends and relations who he actually knew as an adult.

Simultaneously, his past identity increases the threat of discovery for Lin Shu. He's a known factor to many, many people in the capital. Yes, they think he's dead. But small things like a hazelnut allergy or his mannerisms or his previous friendships with people are still memorable enough that even with a completely different face, if he's not careful, he might give himself away. He's not infiltrating a group of strangers or people who only knew him as a kid. He's infiltrating a group of people who were close to him for many, many years of his life.

HOWEVER. Lin Shu's identity is not so important that everyone in the capital is still obsessed with him twelve years later (with some exceptions). This isn't Mysterious Lotus Casebook where we're all still pining for Li Xiangyi, because...

2. The Chiyan Case Wasn't Even About Lin Shu?? (Also, No One Cares About That Ancient History Anymore (Jingyan, Sit Down))

The Chiyan case wasn't about the Lin family at all, really.

No one specifically wanted Lin Shu dead or had a big grudge against his dad or anything. It's all about power, military and political. For some conspirators, it was just about getting a leg up in court. But mostly, it was about Prince Qi, the previous crown prince. The Lin family just happened to be friends with him and ended up in an uncomfortable (highly murderable and frameable) position.

Lin Shu may mourn his family, but for the majority of the show, he doesn't talk about it. He doesn't talk about his mother and his family back at the capital either committing suicide or being killed indiscriminately. He only mentions his father's name a handful of times in the whole show. Lin Shu's drive is that his father's ARMY was killed, tens of thousands of men. That's the weight on Lin Shu's shoulders: the death of all these innocent men because they were in the way. The Chiyan Case; the Chiyan Massacre. The denouement of Lin Shu's victory (not to give too many spoilers) is not just his father's name being cleared of a treason charge. It's when there's finally a memorial put up for the Chiyan Army, with memorial tablets that he can publicly visit to pay respects.

Why does this make it a better revenge story with identity porn? A couple reasons. First, Lin Shu is very much the center of the story and has very personal beef, but he treats himself like a tool and his objective isn't about himself or familial connections (they're part of it but they're not everything). He doesn't even know all the people he's avenging. That's fine; he'll still carry that weight. I just think it's neat.

Second, the fact that the Lin family (and the whole Chiyan Army) were really just collateral damage for getting rid of Prince Qi really emphasizes just how careless the current regime is of the value of human life.

Third, as Meng Zhi says when Lin Shu comes to the capital, everyone at court is busy with their own little power struggles and no one has time to care about Lin Shu or protect him. Lin Shu's like yeah that's fine :) I'm not anyone's focus anymore and the Lin family has been swept under the rug like we never existed :) and no one even talks about the Chiyan case anymore for fear of being accuse of treason :) that's all okay because I'm about TO MAKE THIS EVERYONE'S PROBLEM ANYWAY and honestly the fact that everyone's trying their hardest to forget will just make them more oblivious when I come to fuck them up.

3. All Of This is Whose Fault, Again?

That's right, folks, we're in a show that knows that when shit goes down at court and your family gets framed for treason and the emperor orders them executed, sure, you can blame the conspirators who framed them all you want, but also, YOU KIND OF DO HAVE TO BLAME THE EMPEROR.

People have said enough about how great this is on a thematic level of accountability but seriously I've seen so many shows dodge this. ~It's not the emperor's fault bc he was misled by these conspirators~ or ~the emperor is only a puppet emperor, if he actually had power instead of this evil person, he would put everything right.~ Or, if they dare to blame the emperor, maybe he's just an evil emperor and was bad all along. NIF says yeah, he was lied to on many levels. There was a whole complicated conspiracy going on and many people to blame. But he could have taken things slower. He could have required better evidence. He could have trusted people who had supported him for many years, at least enough to listen to their side of the story BEFORE KILLING THEM. And why didn't he? It's not because he's an idiot. It's because he's an emperor, and emperors don't like seeing other people gain enough power to even potentially become a threat. It's because he wasn't looking for the truth, he was looking for an excuse to kill. And he's not unusually evil for that; this kind of callousness towards murder and grasping for power at all costs is more the norm at court than any kind of honor or morality.

The Emperor's a nice guy sometimes! He used to fly kites with Lin Shu when he was young! His sons give him a headache, but honestly, relatable, they'd give you a headache too! He likes Consort Jing and honestly, who wouldn't! And he killed one of his sons, one of his closest friends, and an entire army, and he would do it again without hesitation. He's not especially evil. Being an emperor is bad enough.

4. Other Bad Guys

It's worth mentioning that Lin Shu's opponents are not stupid.

Xie Yu and Xia Jiang, Prince Yu and the Crown Prince, even the Empress and Noble Consort Yue: They aren't all geniuses, but they aren't idiots flailing around in spite. They're pretty smart, and if Lin Shu wants to take them down, he has to be smarter.

It's also worth mentioning that this is not one of those shows where the protagonist happens to take down his opponents mostly by standing still and just defending himself when they lash out at him. This seems like an obvious thing in a revenge drama, but the number of times I've seen the opposite, the protagonist swearing revenge and then just struggling with self preservation.... but no. Lin Shu has A Plan. He is going to be proactive and actually take his enemies down. Admittedly he will do this by revealing their past misdeeds but this isn't a case of "the misdeeds will just happen to pop up". This is a case of "I will actively unearth skeletons from where you threw them in a well in an abandoned manor".

TO SUM UP

Without going into the things that make Nirvana in Fire a great show in general (great acting, good pacing and plotting, good costuming, and so on and so forth) I think the main things that make it hit for me as a revenge story with identity porn are 1) letting the MC's past identity be that of a grown man who actually had a life (more connections to the past, but also more to lose and more danger in the present as a result), 2) the fact that the offense that the MC is avenging wasn't even like a personal thing to the offenders (bc! it's fucking infuriating!), 3) the fact that the drama is willing to face the root of the problem (the problem is both corruption at court and the fact that the highest arbiter is flawed, not just individual conspirators), 4) the supply of multiple good antagonists, and 5) LETTING THE MC ACTUALLY, ACTIVELY PURSUE REVENGE AND THAT'S THE MAIN PLOT AND WE AREN'T SPENDING MOST OF OUR SCREENTIME ON SIDEPLOTS AND ROMANCE OR MERE SELF PRESERVATION. These may not seem like large things but my friends, you would be surprised how many revenge dramas I've watched at this point that can't do them.

ok I'm done ranting. Feel like most of this is actually stating the obvious but I'm just in a mood and had to get it out. (...also possibly I've been let down by some revenge dramas lately but I won't get into it. it's okay. we can't all be Nirvana in Fire; only Nirvana in Fire can be Nirvana in Fire.)

[hardwareabstractionlayer]

(the post editor malfunctioned and after a series of unfortunate events the original ask post is gone, so I had to make this screenshot mockup of the ask, sorry)

Thank you for prodding me to finish up a draft that's been sitting there for an inexplicably long time.

I will divide puns into exact homophones, which are pronounced exactly the same, and near homophones, which consist of the same phonemes with different tones. Though exact homophones are much punnier in speech, Internet jokes rely heavily upon text input and most people use phonetic-based Chinese input systems, meaning their autocompletes will often suggest near homophones and people will use them if they're funny enough.

To make this slightly statistically sound and not just me making up random puns, I grabbed 700k viewer comments from the years NiF was available on Youku, 2015 to 2020 (courtesy of danmu box). These danmu/弹幕 comments are timed to a particular moment in the show so they splash across the screen while you watch.

Let's start with the heavy hitters:

Xie Yu/谢玉 is an exact homophone of xièyù/泄欲, literally discharging desire, which means satisfying one’s lust or orgasming. Xie Yu's name occurs 5000+ times in the comments versus almost 900 orgasms.

Prince Yu/誉王 is an exact homophone of yùwáng/欲王, meaning prince of lust, and a near homophone, of yùwàng/欲望, which means desire (or the chaotic evil penis). The latter is far more likely to be autocompleted and shows up 1500+ times versus 200+ for the prince of lust.

Yùjīn/豫津 is a near homophone of yùjìn, 欲禁, or forbidden lust/abstinence. Because bath towel/浴巾 is an exact homophone and again far more likely to come up first in autocomplete, people overwhelmingly refer to him as the towel. In the comments, bath towel is used nearly 7000 times, 10x more frequently than his actual name, which is made up of two not-super-common characters.

Mei Changsu is often addressed as Su-xiong/苏兄 by Jingrui and Yujin in canon, which is an exact homophone of sūxiōng/酥胸, a literary term for supple and beautiful breasts that might have the same old-fashioned connotation as heaving bosom does in English. I'm going to call him gorgeous tits because he does bear a striking resemblance to the azure tit:

I've seen Chinese MCS fans note this resemblance before, but these birds don't have titillating names in Chinese so you can have this bonus joke for English speakers. Anyways, gorgeous tits are invoked in nearly 6000 comments versus almost 1200 for Su-xiong itself.

Now you can enjoy one of the comments from the above screenshot exclaiming over these names:

浴巾裹着酥胸，泄欲，这都什么什么 a bath towel (yujin) wrapped around gorgeous tits (su-xiong), orgasming (xie yu), what is all this

And the following off-color joke retold many times throughout the episodes:

Why is Mei Changsu called Su-xiong and not Mei-xiong? Because he has gorgeous tits, not tiny ones (Méi-xiōng/梅兄 is an exact homophone of flat-chested/没胸).

Here are some rarer-but-still-good puns:

Gōng Yǔ/宫羽 is a near homophone of gòngyù/共浴, bathing together (cue viewer comments about how she and bath towel belong with each other).

Níhuáng/霓凰 is a near homophone of nǐhuáng/你黄, slang meaning you’re perverted.

The emperor lives in Yǎngjū Hall/养居殿, a near homophone of penis hall since yángjù/阳具 is the yang implement, though it's most popularly punned with pigpen (I wrote about this here if you scroll to the end).

The travelogue Mei Changsu wrote annotations in, 翔地记, is an exact homophone of xiángdìjì/降帝记, or records of subduing the emperor (which I can only interpret as MCS’s Dom Diaries on how to conquer Jingyan).

To conclude, here’s a stacked area chart of the four horsemen of punny NiF names and how often they're spammed:

[thelaithlyworm]

oh help, we got up to that time when jingyan gets to interview wei zheng.

were there any survivors? if you lived, who else? was there a chance?

and mcs is just sitting waaaaay off in the back of the room where no-one can see his face because he can't tell this story and it's hard even to listen to this story, but people need to hear it...

[waterlilyvioletfog]

Okay so sometime in ep 18 or 19, Commander Meng and Mu Nihuang try to argue that maybe, JUST MAYBE, Mei Changsu should let Jingyan know his identity bc then maybe they wouldn’t have to do so much sneaking around and lying to Jingyan all the time and also idk maybe it would be important to the man who has literally never gotten over your death??? But MCS shoots this down, explaining how 1) it would distract Jingyan with ~feelings~ and we can’t have that! 2) it would give Jingyan leave to not listen to me 3) I’m going to die anyways 3) sneaking around and lying is very important to the whole get the throne business and we need Jingyan to have plausible deniability etc etc. MCS is VERY clear that under NO circumstances are they to tell Jingyan that he is Lin Shu. His plan is: put Jingyan on the throne, get justice for Meiling, and die quietly in a corner without causing Jingyan further pain (this last is not spoken aloud, obviously). On re-watch, there are two big flaws in this plan: 1) Jingyan isn’t stupid!! Mei Changsu will have to actively misdirect him at all times to keep his cover from being blown, which is not possible because unfortunately MCS is NOT an emotionless automaton. This is proven in, like, the literal next scene. 2) Jingyan, who has loved Lin Shu for a lifetime, might just be capable of loving Mei Changsu too, which should surprise no one because he is, in fact, STILL LIN SHU.

[exitvelocities]

thinking about grief and love and my two favorite cdrama ships today, namely di feisheng/li lianhua (dihua) from mysterious lotus casebook (mlc) and lin chen/mei changsu (linsu) from nirvana in fire (nif). i apparently go for the old married couples where one of them is actively dying.

both mcs and llh are main characters dying from incurable poisons and both are more or less ok with that whereas their partners are less so. after that they do diverge quite a bit; lin chen rather famously declares that he doesn't know lin shu, mei changsu's previous identity, only mei changsu. di feisheng, on the other hand, is obsessed with who li lianhua used to be, li xiangyi, di feisheng's one and only rival.

lin chen shows up at the beginning of nif to set up mcs and then fucks off for 40+ episodes only to show up at the end to try to discourage mcs from fulfilling what he feels is lin shu's (his) destiny, because he's no longer lin shu but mcs and mcs has inherent value of his own. dfs starts out forcibly trying to cure llh to turn him back into lxy, but grows closer to llh over the course of mlc and they drink nuptial wine together and talk about the moon. at the end, dfs leaves the probable cure for llh's poison with him rather than shoving it down his throat like he would have at the beginning.

most relevantly to me, lin chen gets the chance to go with mcs to the very end. he enlists and follows him to meiling. he works to keep mcs going as long as he possibly can, he looks mcs's death in the face and does his best to delay it. he's there until the very last second. llh doesn't even leave dfs a body.

lin chen lives with the grief as it looms closer and closer and knows the shape it takes in his life. he's a doctor, he's faced this before even if it's much, much more personal this time. dfs is left widowed at the altar at their beach wedding with a hundred guests. he searches relentlessly for llh with all of the considerable resources available to him, and finds nothing. i wonder a lot about how long he searches. does he search forever? does he eventually give up? does he, a man steeped in death since childhood, actually know how to grieve?

i don't really have a conclusion to draw. i'm just thinking about who these two men leave behind and what different pictures the ones left have to work with. mcs leaves behind letters, but not to jingyan and not to lin chen, who most likely has to coordinate their delivery. llh leaves dfs his only letter where he offers fdb as his successor.

maybe it's that lin chen has to watch mcs die but gets the closure of being with him up until his final moments and dfs gets nothing. no goodbye, no grave, just the shards of lxy's broken sword. llh didn't even leave him those on purpose. maybe he gets the hope that it's not true, but at what cost?

god i love these two ships so much.

[anndramarama]

Every time I re-watch NIF I love Mei Changsu more but like him less, if that makes sense. This time I'm more and more outraged for Jingyan, who was helped by him, that's true, but by denying him access to all of the facts MCS and everyone who did know he was Lin Shu robbed Jinyan of so much agency.

And what can Jingyan do about that? Not much. Of course he wants the case retried, and to finally be able to worship the deceased properly, which is an endgame goal they all have in common, but later? It's not like he could have refused to be emperor. And he makes that comment to MCS about not even daring to hit him let alone get into a physical fight, so you know the idea of just punching MCS in his stupid face (before he hugged him) had crossed his mind more than once.

So Jingyan is robbed of agency and painted into a corner and has to sit in the worst seat ever for the rest of his life? Personally I would have faked an illness (or my death haha, but he's too good to do that to his mom), promoted one of the nice younger princes, packed a few things and fucked off with Tingsheng to jianghu to tour around for a few years.

Lin Chen would have been right on board with that I think. I could see them ending up at Langya. Jingyan would have been delighted for the opportunity to learn a trade or set of skills that wasn't related to fighting and politics, and Lin Chen would help out by happily censoring all his news. Would they be together in that scenario? Sure, maybe, but not at first: it would take Jingyan a while to understand how to ask for what he wants and even be in a relationship, and if Lin Chen's head isn't permanently done in after more than a decade at Changsu's side I would be surprised, so it would have to sneak up on them.

But in canon Jingyan is miserable and is going to stay miserable, is the thing. The people around him seem happy and relatively content but he's trapped, like they all are, and is only able to interact with his loved ones in ways that are strictly scripted and regulated by tradition. Jingyan deserved better, but so did literally everyone else.

I haven't watched the sequels, if that's really what they are, so don't know how ominous Gao Zhan's comment about the wind rising is meant to be, but I don't think anyone in that universe was going to see a happily ever after. Which is what makes it a great drama, of course, even if a fictional universe that depends on peoples' natural tendency toward hubris and avarice and paranoia and the corruption that comes with absolute power is difficult to process at times.

Anyway. Just going through some thoughts after this rewatch. I'm not done watching it either, or writing about it. I went through some seriously old WIPs for it that never made it out of the doc but I'm not sure if I want to write for it or just stick to meta this time around. We'll see.

[fateandloveentwined]

poetry lines befitting MCS and XJY

These are mostly chinese tang shi and song ci poetry quotes, with a great biased amount from Su Shi because OP doesn't know better. Crude, 5-minute english translations below. There are lines I semi-made up or adapted from fandom/cpop songs (that is, most of Xiao Jingyan's lines), ngl OP is rather embarrassed of them because they aren't good at all looking back now but we'll just leave them here or else XJY would end up with zero quotes.

梅长苏 Mei Changsu

想那日束髪从军，想那日霜角辕门，想那日挟剑惊风，想那日横槊凌云。 ——夏完淳

Think to the day I tied back my hair and enlisted. Think to the day the horn rang at the frostbitten tents, think to the day I danced my sword making the sound that deafens the wind. Think to the day I took to the lance, and it pierced through the skies, rising higher than the clouds. — Xia Wanchun

将士百战身名裂。 向河梁、回头万里，故人长绝。 易水萧萧西风冷，满座衣冠似雪，正壮士、悲歌未彻。 ——辛弃疾

The warrior fights a hundred battles, yet what remains is his severed reputation. He looks to the bridge over the river, thousands of miles back, past acquaintances forever gone. In another life, over the howling of the west wind and the cold Yi rivers, the banquet sits, clothes adorned in snowlike white. The courageous man strides through the blizzard, the song of lament never ceasing. — Xin Qiji

零落成泥碾作尘，只有香如故。 ——陆游

The plum blossoms wither and drift to the ground, crushed into earthly soil and dust. The prevailing fragrance is what remains. — Lu You

亦余心之所善兮，虽九死其犹未悔。 ——屈原

So long as this is what my heart longs for and treasures, though I die nine deaths, my heart does not regret. — Qu Yuan

君臣一梦，今古空名。 ——苏轼

Lords and lieges ebb into nothing but a dream; in the river of time transcending present and past vain titles remain, cast into the void. — Su Shi

无波真古井，有节是秋筠。 ——苏轼

The heart is at peace like the ancient well that does not ripple; the integrity is as the autumn bamboos, steadfast and unfaltering. — Su Shi

舳舻千里，旌旗蔽空，酾酒临江，横槊赋诗。 ——苏轼

The warship moves a thousand miles, ensigns enshrouding the sky. He pours out wine by the riverside, holds out his lance, and writes verses as he speaks. — Su Shi

对一张琴，一壶酒，一溪云。 ——苏轼

Facing but a guqin, a jug of wine, a stream of cloud. — Su Shi

江山如画，是我心言。 ——风起时

The rivers and mountains of the kingdom outstretches before me, as moving as in art: this is my heart’s will. — from the song “Feng Qi Shi”, when the wind blows

战骨碎尽志不休，冰心未改血犹殷。 ——改自《赤血长殷》、王昌龄

Bones completely crushed from the battle, yet aspirations unwavering. The heart has not changed; the blood flows red still. — adapted from the song “Chi Xue Chang Yan”, the noble blood flows red, and poet Wang Changling

袖手妙计权倾变，敛眸笑谈意了然。 ——改自《赤血长殷》

With folded arms, he devises labyrinthine strategies. The sceptre of power sways and shifts. He shrouds his gaze modestly, and in conversations of small smiles, he discerns the intention of men. — adapted from the song “Chi Xue Chang Yan”, the noble blood flows red

萧㬌琰 Xiao Jingyan

潜龙一朝御风翔，长歌挽弓射天狼。 ——《长喑》

The submerged dragon rises one day to ride the winds. Singing high and long; the bow is drawn pointed at the invading Sirius. — from the song “Chang Yin”, the Long Darkness found here

挑灯殿阙思悄然，闻钤行宫寝无眠。 ——改自白居易

Awashed in the raised lamps of the imperial palace, thoughts whisper in grievance. The bell rings at the Jiu’an grounds, and he lies abed sleepless. — adapted from The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Bai Juyi

驰骋沙场繁华梦，谈笑鸿儒君臣纲。 ——改自《致陛下书》、刘禹锡

Dreams soar in the flurrying gallops of the battlefield, flourishing dreams of splendour and joy. In pleasant dialogue with scholars, civility obliges polite smiles into the etiquette of lords and lieges. — adapted from the song “Zhi Bi Xia Shu”, a letter to Your Majesty, and Liu Yuxi

铁马并辔封疆，几回魂梦游；更鼓落夜未央，笔下兴亡断。 ——取自《长喑》、《赤血长殷》

Armoured horses riding in parallel at the borderlands — how many times has the soul wandered to such dreams of the past. The hourly drums sound ceaseless across the long night; under the emperor's brush, the fate of prosperity and declination writes. — adapted from the song “Chang Yin”, the Long Darkness found here, and “Chi Xue Chang Yan”, the noble blood flows red

揽尽山河只手倾，昂冕袖手瞰苍生。 ——改自《长喑》

The future of his kingdom sweeps into a tilt of his hand. With crown upheld, he folds his arms in his sleeves awatching humanity. — adapted from the song “Chang Yin”, the Long Darkness found here

咫尺抚眉峰，万丈叠远峰；梦底枕笑纹，惊风掀水纹。 ——《致陛下书》

Up close, the furrowed brows are smoothed. Ten thousands of feet stretch before him, converging into mountains at a distance. In the deepest dreams, the markings of a smile lie; he stirs up the wind which marks and rips tides in the tumultuous waters. — adapted from the song “Zhi Bi Xia Shu”, a letter to Your Majesty

Two (three) things to note:

My dying obsession with Su Shi, sorry I can’t help it that perhaps over half of the all the poetry I know is from him;

To be really fair, my favourite description of Mei Changsu is 运筹帷幄之中，决胜千里之外, used in describing Zhang Liang in Si Maqian's Records of the Grand Historian. He orchestrates masterplans in the tent of the army; he determines the victory of the battle from afar, thousands of miles from the front.

As for my favourite depiction of Lin Shu, it is definitely Su Shi’s description of Cao Cao: 舳舻千里，旌旗蔽空，酾酒临江，横槊赋诗。 The warship moves a thousand miles, ensigns enshrouding the sky. He pours out wine by the riverside, holds out his lance, and writes verses as he speaks. Xin Qiji’s verse above just fits the entire story of Mei Changsu so much, it deserves a mention.

I was assembling/making these lines up for something back then and so just listed whatever came to mind (for reasons I know not I kept on listing stuff for MCS, but maybe XJY was the typical good emperor kind of person so wasn't as inspiring coming up with quotes for him).

If there are lines of poetry you find really befitting the two characters, we're more than interested starting a thread here just for that purpose.