#tied to the fact that Dan Feng too struggled with that reclamation of the self vs. giving up on himself entirely for a role
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It's sort of ironic how fans often link the leaf 🍁 to Dan Heng, considering "Feng" means "maple", but it's also so fitting
#The leaf following Dan Heng on his idle animation like the past identity he can't entirely leave behind because it always catches up to him#How the imagery appears on his splash art and his ultimate because it's irrevocably linked to who he is#even if in his trying to reclaim his right to be himself#The way he catches the leaf‚ looks at it thoughtfully and then lets it go...#I always loved his idle but after finding out the meaning I thought like I was being hit with a club#The fact that apparently according to some magazine he named himself after the 'Dan' engraved on Cloud Piercer is also very juicy#Because he chose himself to be linked to that past he is trying to break free from. It really enhances how the past is not something he is#negating entirely but something he wants to move on from. Likewise we see him try to get responsibility from his past and make things better#while he keeps reminding people he is himself and no one else#I've seen people read under romantic lens the fact that 'Dan' in engraved on the spear and that it marks how it's Dan Fen.g's#tied to the fact that Dan Feng too struggled with that reclamation of the self vs. giving up on himself entirely for a role#And it surprised me tbh. Romantic or platonic I didn't read it under that view at all maybe because I had read like in July#that the High Elders are named using the first character of their past ('Bai'‚ 'Dan'). I don't remember that appearing in canon explicitly#but it's a repeated pattern and back in the early Bail.u/Bai.heng theories it was something very often brought up#So my reading was that Yingxin.g was acting like a Furnace Master there#He had made a spear for the High Elder‚ and that role would transcend Dan Feng as a person and fall onto someone else eventually#As it does in some way onto Dan Heng now‚ to whom the spear responds#Yingxin.g the Furnace Master more than the friend had made a spear for the High Elder‚ and that role would transcend Dan Fen.g#I don't know... I've often read very sweet interpretations of this but the way I saw it I can't help but find it heartbreaking haha#Anyway I'm saying this because read this way his other idle animation‚ the one with the spear‚#also enhances the continuity of his self with Dan Fen.g's not just in personhood but in role#And considering Dan Heng's voiceline about Cloud Piercer is also a choice he makes even if the spear preceded him#So again a choice that is perhaps somewhat conditioned by the preexisting context but a choice he makes nonetheless#Like how he takes responsibility from his past but also decides to move on and reclaims his identity as something separate#Anyway... the Cloud Piercer thing is all theories for now. I don't think we know for sure if the continuity of the same first character#is something established in canon. Maybe it just happened these two times with Dan Heng and Bailu#because of the particularity of their cases#But I think it is coherent and that it would enhance this narrative motif or subject in Dan Hen.g's characterisation and arc#I find that concept of his very intriguing I hope it will be well developed in the future#As of now I find what they've done with it thus far a bit dull most of the time considering the potential it has
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