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...and more thoughts on how to read certain lines
I'm trying to figure out why Blade is so popular, but also I realized that a huge driver behind the Blade/Dan Heng ship is because of this line from Jingliu:
“我们几人中，要说谁和他走得最近，那只能是你。”
The "you" here refers to Dan Feng/Imbibitor Lunae.
I think a lot of fans take this to mean Dan Feng is the closest to Yingxing, but that's ignoring the order of the pronouns. What Jing Liu is saying is that Yingxing is an arrogant little shit and of the four friends, he grew the closest to Imbibitor Lunae. What this sentence does not imply is that the person closest to Imbibitor Lunae out of the Quintet is Yingxing.
It is still entirely possible that the person closest to Imbibitor Lunae was...someone else. I don't think I need to clarify whom I would like that to be.
Shipping goggles off, I do think that Dan Feng and Jingliu were probably not old friends, since Jingliu accused Dan Feng of failing to understand her, Jing Yuan, and Baiheng's feelings when it came to dying in battle. This greatly suggests that Jingliu, Jing Yuan, and Baiheng have far more front-line experience than Dan Feng (and we already have confirmation that Yingxing was never on the front-lines). It also suggests that Dan Feng went off to revive Baiheng knowing Jingliu and Jing Yuan wouldn't approve. Baiheng's ghost doesn't approve either. Meanwhile, the civilian Yingxing was far less accepting of a "noble death in the battlefield", so it makes sense why he was the one Dan Feng turned to for help.
In short, I don't think Dan Feng and Yingxing going off to do taboo revival experimentation has anything to do with them having the closest relationship, and everything to do with them being the only two who couldn't accept their friend's sacrifice.
Shipping goggles back on, I do think it's relevant that Jing Yuan is the only one who has been shown to call Dan Feng by his name rather than Imbibitor Lunae. Now granted, Baiheng was joking around, Yingxing was mocking the title, Blade and Jing Liu intentionally use the title to make a point to Dan Heng that they don't see him as anything but the continuation of Imbibitor Lunae. Nonetheless, it's very ship-worthy that Jing Yuan always calls Dan Feng (and Dan Heng) by name rather than using the Imbibitor Lunae title. This suggests that he has a very casual, accommodating, and definitely equal relationship with Dan Feng. Jing Yuan also seems to be the person most considerate of the angst that every incarnation of Imbibitor Lunae is burdened with memory fragments of their past selves. And my shipping brain chooses the headcanon that Jing Yuan intentionally avoids the title out of respect for each incarnation's personality and treats them as different people. Which is why he apologizes for overstepping when he failed to do that with Dan Heng initially.
Also, at this point, I'm starting to get tired of trying to find evidence of the Quintet's relative ages. Fandom has collectively decided that Jing Yuan is the youngest. However, since we never hear Baiheng refer to Dan Feng as anything other than 饮月君 or 龙尊大人, I'm going to assume Baiheng is actually younger than Dan Feng, hence the polite speech. Based on that logic, Jing Yuan is probably of a similar age as Dan Feng. Meanwhile, we know Yingxing met Jing Liu as a very young child (no taller than her sword), but also that upon first meeting, the two were not friends and Jing Liu always felt Yingxing was too arrogant. So it's likely that Yingxing is actually the youngest of the group and acted out a lot, while the older people kind of...well, tolerated his arrogance due to him being young.
Ergo, the order of ages is something like this:
镜流 >>> 丹枫 ≈ 景元 > 白珩 >>> 应星
Since we know Baiheng was a Nameless traveler on the express earlier in life and she wrote at least one book documenting her adventures, and the median lifespan for Foxians is 307, it's reasonable to assume she settled down in Luofu after growing out of her "adventuring" phase. Assuming a linear conversion rate, 200-years-old is a pretty decent time to "retire" from adventuring, given she would've spent close to 2/3 of her lifespan doing what she wanted. (Assuming 84 is the expected human lifespan, the equivalent human age is ~56yo, which, trivia moment, is just past the retirement age for women in China.) So, I would place Baiheng's age somewhere between 150-200 years old at the time of Quintet becoming a thing. At the time of Sedition, Baiheng likely has passed 200-years-old, but nowhere near 307. If Baiheng had been close to the median life expectancy of Foxians, I doubt Dan Feng would've tried to bring her back to life, seeing as she would've lived a pretty full life.
Finally, I think this is the moment Jing Yuan fully emotionally accepted Dan Heng as someone with no connections to the Quintet. I think he's always known it on an intellectual level, but this is the moment he's accepted the loss emotionally. The voice acting here is the coldest, most distant, I've ever heard Jing Yuan utter. Not only is he curt, his words are also accusatory(“我想你也该离开了” aka "It's about time you left already"). It's almost like he's saying Dan Heng has nothing to do with this and it's time for him to stop hanging around a place that holds special emotional importance for Jing Yuan. Dan Heng is, at this moment, an intruder on an old memory.
I mean, granted, I also think Dan Heng is a fucking idiot to angst over his identity and be like "I should go" when the man he's talking to is obviously emotionally distraught. I imagine had this been Dan Feng, he would've said something to soothe Jing Yuan's angst, but since Dan Heng has no words of comfort, Jing Yuan in this moment gave up hoping for any kind of emotional support from the guy. And consequently, this ship is sunk.
I just want an AU where Jing Yuan gets a happy ending. o(TヘTo)
no subject
There's also the fact that Jingliu, Jing Yuan, and Baiheng probably had military roles and jobs they needed to attend to, and probably weren't around as much as Dan Feng would be to interact with Yingxing.
> Dan Feng and Jingliu were probably not old friends, since Jingliu accused Dan Feng of failing to understand her, Jing Yuan, and Baiheng's feelings when it came to dying in battle.
Dan Feng & Jingliu's relationship seems to be one of those wuxia novel relationships, where the top tier martial artists get into a fight and become friends (不打不相识, 心心相惜, etc.) They don't seem to be the type to sit down and discuss philosophy over tea, for instance. They're more likely just to go spar.
As for his rejection of "noble" death... I think (and this is just IMO) that's likely due to the fact that Dan Feng was supposed to be a healer as his primary job, and not supposed to take to the battlefield (unless something has gone terribly wrong). Much less risk losing himself to unleash his full dragon powers, and become an artillery piece that was forced to do a lot of collateral damage (see lore). I mean, look at the character background design for Jiaoqiu. He's also a retired battlefield doctor and has obvious PTSD about it, and seems to be on the verge of wanting to use Abundance-flesh in probably taboo ways too (his internal dialogue talks about making Hoolay into medicine).
As well, there is also the fact that his Vidyadhara heritage would skew his views. From the POV of the Xianzhou long-lived species, they live for a very long time, and their "death" is usually heralded by a meltdown into insanity. To therefore die in battle for a worthy cause then seems to be a good alternative. Yingxing on the other hand was a short-lifed species, so obviously, he wouldn't see death the same way. Dan Feng is from a species for which each real death means a dwindling of the total population, so ditto there.
> them being the only two who couldn't accept their friend's sacrifice.
Yes. IMO it was as much PTSD as it was culture clash.
no subject
Presumably, as the High Elder (effectively the clan leader), Dan Feng also had a shit ton of bureaucratic stuff he needs to attend to. And being the nominal head of 工造司 (from Jingliu's narration it didn't sound like Yingxing ever had real political power when holding the position), I can't imagine Yingxing had that much downtime either. I feel like these guys were probably similarly busy. If Jingliu's assessment is to be trusted (which, big if), the reason Dan Feng and Yingxing grew close is due to their shared arrogance for people they considered lesser.
This my interpretation. Their friendship seems to be built on admiration of each other's fighting prowess, less of a "let's share our feels and thoughts" type.
This is how I interpreted the lore, but fandom writers seem to really like sticking Dan Feng on the front-lines when his role seemed to be mostly that of a combat medic. (Again, given the whole not being able to procreate deal with Vidyadhara and him being 龙尊, it's highly unlikely the Cloud Knights would stick someone that important on the front-lines and risk political rebellion from the Luofu Vidyadhara citizens.)
I agree. Although the culture clash thing does bring up an interesting question of whether Vidyadhara places any value on "family" as the rest of us (humans) understand it. Like, would they even be able to wrap their brains around the idea of familial piety and things like marriage vows? Does monogamy even matter to these guys? Are they even capable of sexual interest anymore? Doomed ship is doomed.
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I think there's two reasons for this. One is that he seemingly put himself in a non-backline role when he joined the Quintet on their adventures (and it usually sounds like they had these adventures together as something of an elite spec ops unit or something rather than backed by an army). Even though Dan Feng's role in said team is probably the healer/sustain unit, it's not exactly safe considering the kind of things they handled.
The other reason is that we don't hear a lot of the Luofu's high tier fighters, which is more due to the game design focusing only on a few individuals at a time and ignoring the backdrop. But it makes actually discussing or thinking about said backdrop in a fic context a bit jarring. I mean, the ship has at least multiple billions in population, but the high tier fighters that we've ever heard of are essentially the Quintet and the former General. Even in the present day, you take out Jing Yuan and it feels like the most powerful fighter on the ship is the very inexperienced Yanqing...
Thus, when writing fight scenes for fics, it's hard not to throw Dan Feng into things just due to the apparent lack of alternatives...
> Like, would they even be able to wrap their brains around the idea of familial piety and things like marriage vows? Does monogamy even matter to these guys? Are they even capable of sexual interest anymore?
I am not sure there's any kind of familial piety, since they don't have parents. At most, they have mentors/teachers, but as Bailu's and Dan Heng's cases show, not everyone gets those.
They do still have sex and fall in love though. There's plenty of intermarriage/relationships between Vidyadhara, and with outside species. It's probably filled with tragedy, and awkwardness when lifespans don't sync up...
There's this one Vidyadhara dude who fell in love with the same Xianzhou lady for several lifetimes. The lady, on the other hand, went from thinking it's all quite romantic to have a boyfriend who still comes back after rebirth, to getting tired of it all and now rejects his advances (she's probably close to hitting her mara-limit, IMO).
BTW, just came across this tidbit:
blahblah...One day, it will be reborn in the egg and become a male or female Vidyadhara. When the time comes, the Luofu craftsmen will have improved their skills and be able to pass back what they have learned to it. It will then be able to fulfill its mission and share its knowledge with the people in its homeland.
(CN version, search for 朱明 keyword)
It hasn't really been picked up by the fandom as much, but it seems to imply that when you do the egg rebirth cycle you can potentially switch genders? Potential kink spotted...
no subject
LOL, yes, actually I did see that get mentioned a few times in fic. Never actual kinkification tho'. But it's one of the biggest support for 二人论 camp.
Actually am curious where this comes up. Is it in an item description, fictional recounts, or is this from an NPC? Because if it's part of the folk stories, then it's probably just story tellers having to make up stuff to make banal everyday drudgery exciting. If it's being relayed as a personal story, then there's more reason to believe this stuff was actually happening.
I mean it probably got tiresome after the first two rounds, let's be real. But also this guy's cycle is either faster than normal or he's unlucky AF... (But also presumably this is the biggest hope for all the Dan Heng/Jing Yuan shippers.)
no subject
Currently, it's in various databank entries and scholar articles about Luofu culture. It seems to be folklore at this point, yeah. Or at least, about as historically accurate as the likes of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I'm guessing.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Like, the Quintet probably had military support behind them for a lot of the stuff they did. But they also handled stuff together on the front lines a lot, most likely, in order for them to get recognized as a "Quintet" with enough fame to get passed down in pop culture despite censorship of their individual names after the Sedition.
Also a bit of mention in Jing Yuan's character story. (BTW, part III of this supports your earlier claims that Jing Yuan was adult when joining the Quintet, and if that's also when he met Dan Feng and Yingxing, then he would've been an adult at the time too.)
> But also this guy's cycle is either faster than normal or he's unlucky AF
My guess is that it's a combo of having a shorter cycle than average, plus the girl in question having a longer sane lifespan than average as well. Technically the Xianzhou long lived species are biologically immortal as long as they don't get hit with mara.
This is the full transcript of their quest if you're interested.