cashew | On the subject of looking at old poems for BL hints (Reply)

A recurring theme in the analysis of JYxDH ship hints is the focus on JY's line: 我入估人梦，明我长相忆。

Which, of course, is a play on 杜甫's poem 《梦李白二首·其一》. A lot of fans have been freaking out over this, but I feel like maaaaaybe fans are a little too excited over a rather sad reality. See, according to this analysis, 李白's relationship with 杜甫 was a bit...uh, one-sided. Quote:

杜甫和李白的第一次相遇是在洛阳，当时的李白是国民偶像，杜甫是他粉丝中的一员。

两人一起游山玩水，分别后，杜甫经常写诗思念李白。

他前后给李白写过十几首诗，每一首都满怀尊敬或思念：赠李白、忆李白、怀李白、梦李白……“白也诗无敌，飘然思不群”“世人皆欲杀，吾意独怜才”……

而李白却只给杜甫回过三首，其中还有一首是调侃的——《戏赠杜甫》：

饭颗山头逢杜甫，顶戴笠子日卓午。

借问别来太瘦生，总为从前作诗苦。

太扎心了，大部分都是杜甫在“单相思”。

Translating the basics, 杜甫 wrote tons of poetry talking about 李白, but in return, 李白 only wrote him three poems, one of which was making fun of 杜甫 for being too skinny and working too hard at writing poetry.

Ouch.

If we go with the fans' interpretation that JY's line is meant to compare his feelings toward DH with 杜甫's feelings towards 李白, this ship is so, so doomed.

Meanwhile, 李白's actual best friend was 元丹丘. Apparently the two of them lived together for a while, did a lot of traveling together, and sought out a bunch of monks/daoists to learn the religious scriptures and stuff. Also, 元丹丘 was fond of making longevity medicine (仙药) and 李白 was fond of trying them out.

If we're gonna look to archaic poets for inspiration (and presuming 丹恒 is 李白 in this analogy), I feel like maybe 元丹丘 is a better model when looking for BL hints.

But overall, I'm not really sold on any of this trying to dig through the archaic literary references for hints of potential BL hints, mostly because it feels like a stretch and the game clearly is only BL baiting, they're not going to actually commit to text a canon BL ship. Also, if anything, it feels like JYxDH is a ship that's kind of doomed to fail because a) age gap, b) long distance, and c) JY just has too much on his plate to really deal with DH's angsty teenager phase. DH needs to seriously step up his game if he wants to be in contention for being shippable with JY. (This is why I prefer the already doomed JYxDF ship, because at least Dan Feng was dealing with stuff that's comparably difficult to the shit JY has been handling and thus they probably have more of a shared life experience.)