#much in the way of restoration (and who knows in what condition these eps survive; if the original films are still held then they'd be

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WBL: Fighting Mr.2nd, episode 5 meta

The first meta of episode five will go to… Pei Shou Yi and Yu Zhen Xuan, because I find parts of myself relating. Hard.

It starts with a bodily crash, their paths in life colliding, and it might take nothing less to get Pei Shou Yi to notice you, in a way that matters.

I don’t know enough about his condition, affectionate disorder, but I think it might be a disconnect between you and your own emotions. Something that happens with depression, too, a numbing of those feelings, until you are not able to identify them correctly anymore. That I do know a bit more about. Your emotions lose depths, because all you feel is numb and nothing.

Sometimes you’ll have to go the reverse way to relearn your connection to them. I remember a therapist telling me, that I did look sad, showing the trembling chin of held back tears, and all the bodily symptoms of it. All I could do back then was shrug, say thank you for the feedback and that it is interesting, because I didn’t know I felt sad, I just felt numb and nothing.

You’ll have to interpret the symptoms your body shows you, to find a way to identify what you are feeling. Interesting in that context is also the thing how you practicing certain physical actions and behaviors, mimicking them, can create the emotional response it is connected to, like smiling can actually make you happy.

So it is a bodily crash, that gets through to something in Shou Yi.

And Pei Shou Yi sure can feel annoyed at his dropped items, at the inconvenience of it for his daily life. That something goes against the strain. He can detect that. Just anything deeper, emotion wise is not connected to his conscious self for the time being.

Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, though. Doesn’t mean it can’t express itself in a longing for something vague that is missing. (Hence the stare into the distance that he has been doing for fifteen years now, that we saw back in season one, and that is the main thing he does in this ep, waiting and longing). Or in an inexplicable decision to help someone out, one you shouldn’t/can’t care for.

Doesn’t mean that your emotions won’t want to jump at any life line they might be given, to claw themselves out and back into life somehow, someday, to feel and be. Without you realizing, because you are in the haze of depression, that has numbed the pain, and with it all the good, in a misguided way to protect you, make you survive.

You care. You are a doctor after all, a profession where you have to go through the motions of caring, because maybe that will bring some of it back.

And Pei Shou Yi and Gao Shi De sure seem related, with their lack of respecting others drawing physical boundaries, pushing them off, others stating their own agency, and PSY and GSD going over them, because their intent of protection in their mind trumps the other’s self-determination.

But like the title profile themes of this episode spelled out, it will be left to see who will tame who, and whose life will be affected and overthrown and broken into.

It’s another subversion of the perceived roles of active and passive that WBL loves to play with, especially in this ep, but also with the whole show. Who is stronger, who is in control, who sets boundaries, who is affected… the answer WBL gives is always, both, each and every one of them, in ways we didn’t see coming, they didn’t see coming, and that is life, the divide into those roles as static is an illusion.

Then the bite. You remember Doc Pei Shu Yi treating his patients? When it hurts too much, find something to bite onto.

‘You must be in a lot of pain.’ What I think happens in that moments, is that yes, Yu Zhen Xuan sees Pei Shou Yi, but Pei Shou Yi sees him just as much and also sees a mirror, in the intensity of Zhen Xuan, sees parts of himself he cannot access. Some part of him relates, a connection is formed.

And because that connection was open in that second, I think Zhen Xuan fell so hard for Shou Yi, because he was the only one he could see in this world, because he was a mirror for Zhen Xuan, too, because he was stunted, interrupted in his perception of ‘reality’ and making it make sense for yourself in a way that Zhen Xuan, being neurodivergent, has experienced himself in this society, this world that seems to be made for the neurotypical.

Everyone not fitting in might get lost in a haze at times, lose access to themselves because of the discrepancy in what they should be and what they perceive they are, the interruptions of that, and the losing and finding access to yourself again.

Back to going through the motions, and how it can lead you back, a sense of fake it till you make it, till you are restored and your heart believes it:

I think Pei shou Yi is already going through the motions, has been for long, with taking care of Yu Zhen Xuan, caring for him, although he can not identify it as such, but I hope the act of doing so, continuously, will lead him to the actual thing eventually.

Faced with Xuan’s intensity and feelings, and willpower, that he can mirror, relate to because it’s outside of himself that something inside relates to. Maybe because he is missing it, not lacking it, just having lost his access to it.

Maybe Zhen Xuan will need to crash into him again, with determination, holding up the mirrors that they are, and show him how much he has grown and found his place, for Shou Yi to follow him, and find what he thinks is gone, in their own special way, without rules of how it should be done, just them, creating their own reality.

Because Pei Shou Yi still thinks Zhen Xuan is the one who lost control of his life, is the troubled one, the troubled youth.

But if we look closer, he has his life in a good place, is successful in his job but also not playing someone who he isn’t to get there, he is himself and has found his place.

He is not the one lost, having lost control, even if he is cuffed at the police station. Because it is his decision to stay there, to make you get him.

With his changing careers and longing looks into the distance, who feels more lost, although he thinks he made the right decisions for the both of them?

Oh, WBL I love you and all your subversions of themes and roles and expectations, and how you do it to make them all perfectly human.