With Permansor Terrae and the new possibility of Dan Heng and Bailu being tail buddies, I've been reminded of just how much I love their relationship because they're just so important to each other's growth and AUGH
Like I already liked Bailu, so this was just adding fuel to the fire, but their first introduction is hilarious.
Just right off the bat! No hesitation! She manages to embarrass Dan Heng so bad he goes silent! Please she's so funny skzjkekekr
And I can't even blame her for her lack of manners, because a) she's still pretty young whatever it's fine jfkdlsafnkas b) I don't think Bailu has ever met anyone like her before.
Dan Heng was chained up in the Shackling Prison from the moment he hatched, and he and Bailu were purposely kept away from each other. Dan Feng was almost universally hated, and that reputation smeared poor Dan Heng without even giving him a chance. Bailu grew up being told not to be like him, and none of her supporters wanted her being "tainted" by a sinner like him.
Bailu has never been off the Luofu. None of the other high elders have been to visit her that I can find. I'm not sure they even can; I don't know that they really get the opportunity to leave their designated ships. And unlike them, Bailu doesn't have thousands of years of legacy or lineage to lean on, to show her how to do all this. She's brand new. This is her first go around, and SO much of her own origins seem to have been kept from her. That must be horribly isolating, to know that something has happened to you, or even because of you, and everyone you know refuses to tell you your own story.
So of course she wants to meet Dan Heng. Of course she wants to learn from him. They both share a progenitor afterall- Dan Heng and Bailu are very much like martial siblings under the same (disgraced) master to me. The start of their relationship is very much rooted in their roles, the expectations placed on them, and their shared origin. Because Dan Heng is very obviously an offshoot of Dan Feng, but less obviously so is Bailu.
During the Sedition, Dan Feng quite literally split himself when he created the dragon that would eventually become Bailu. As Dan Heng puts it:
And the parts of her inherited from Baiheng are easier to see- Bailu is a dead ringer for Baiheng, and even her personality seems to have stayed intact.
If you talk to her in the parlor car, Bailu will tell you about her dreams, something she's always kept secret from the Preceptors monitoring her. She dreams of flying, something Baiheng was well known for in her career as a starskiff pilot.
But Bailu also tells Dan Heng that she remembers the waters resonating with her, and that's something that could have only come from Dan Feng.
Part of the reincarnation cycle of the high elder is this passing on of memories through dreams. Normal Vidyadhara don't experience this. The memories are fleeting and not fully formed, but they're there, and they're extremely important to the more traditional Vidyadhara, who believe this to be their sole link back to their aeon ancestor, Long the Permanence. So it makes sense for Dan Heng to have memories from Dan Feng (because that's literally just how being the Imbibitor Lunae works), and for Bailu to have memories from both Dan Feng and Baiheng, because she came from both of them.
And we see this with their inherited forms of cloudhymn magic, too. Dan Feng was an absolute terror on the battlefield, but he was also well known for his healing. For as much as his own people saw him as cold or unfeeling, Dan Feng really did care. He took care of people and kept them well during wartime. It was important to him.
Dan Heng didn't inherit a single iota of that healing cloudhymn, and he's resentful of it. All he got were the destructive parts of Dan Feng's power, which ties in perfectly with the fact that Dan Heng was the one to shoulder everything negative from Dan Feng's inheritance. It's a really interesting dichotomy between them, that goes all the way back to the very reason they were born.
Dan Feng loved Baiheng so much that he couldn't bear for her to have died for him.
Yingxing loved Baiheng so much that he couldn't bear for her to be forgotten by the world.
Jingliu loved Baiheng so much that she was willing to let her rest, even when her absence ached like an open wound.
Bailu was born out of love. She exists because of love.
Meanwhile, Dan Heng was born as a byproduct of hatred.
The Preceptors hated the Imbibitor Lunae enough to lie to Dan Feng and set him up to take the fall for the Sedition. And the people of the Luofu hated Dan Feng enough for the Ten Lords Commission to imprison him even beyond his forced molt. Dan Heng was born from someone else's execution, as a consequence.
And that quickly became the background noise for his life in the Shackling Prison, where instead of any kind of actual teaching, all Dan Heng got was reiterations of Dan Feng's crimes. He has probably never heard a single good thing about Dan Feng his entire life.
Which is what makes this line from their shared companion quest so so important to me, because!!
This was probably the first kind thing about his previous incarnation Dan Heng has ever heard! And you can see that he's still hesitant about it! There are a million words hidden in that "perhaps" aljfkdlsjkl
But it is only through meeting Bailu that Dan Heng can finally maybe begin to see Dan Feng as he was, as a person.
And this could have only come from Bailu because even though he was one of the only people to see Dan Feng as he truly was- and even though he does try and he gets better at it later- Jing Yuan still has a tendency to treat Dan Heng as though he were Dan Feng. Which understandably causes Dan Heng to bristle up quite a bit, because being treated like that means his entire personhood is being discounted. And Jingliu and Blade are. Well djsaljfdlkas
Dan Heng and Bailu are able to understand themselves better through knowing each other and forging a relationship together. Bailu gets to finally have someone who can teach her how to be a high elder. And from someone who not only respects her authority, but also respects her as a person, how novel!
And it doesn't come even close to erasing the fact that he inherited nothing good from Dan Feng, but through her Dan Heng can learn healing arts and he can take back a little bit of what he felt he lost out on. He can look at Bailu- the very physical manifestation of the fact that Dan Feng did know love, and knew it strongly- and maybe be just a little more ok with his own origins and who he came from.
Hot take: The reason why so many people still ship M*leven is their nostalgia for El and Mike's dynamic in s1 and the end of s2, a dynamic that has been nonexistent since then. Every time their relationship proves its toxicity and incompatibility in s3 and s4 and its staleness in s5 - and even when the cracks already start showing prior to then - instead of acknowledging the red flags on the screen in front of them, these shippers keep remembering and focusing on the way the two of them used to be in the beginning, never realizing that they were only a likable pairing back then because they weren't together; they were friends. These shippers remember that he was kind to her then, that she saved his life then, and that's what they continue to cling to. Even when Mike and El have no chemistry, when he treats her like dirt, when they invalidate each other's traumas, when they don't love each other they way they want to be loved, M*leven shippers' default is "but Mike took her in four seasons ago" and "but Mike caught her when she fell a season ago," even though neither of those moments are inherently romantic, and "but they were fixated on each other and missed each other" even though that was obviously a sign of trauma-bonded codependency that they needed to grow out of. M*levens scream "but Mike said she shouldn't be treated as a tool for her powers" "but Mike said he loved her for exactly who she was" "but El said he understood her" and actively choose not to comprehend the fact that this is telling and not showing because post-s2, there never actually is a scene where either of them show that their love is true. They are clutching onto a past dynamic that stopped existing in s3 and never returned.
ummm. . . so are we all ignoring the tragedy that is the fact that Terry Ives definitely knows when Jane dies? like, that woman could feel when her daughter was alive before, leading her to never give up her search and to still have enough mental capacity left to show that daughter her experiences—so with Jane gone, is there anything tethering Terry to this world anymore?
will Becky just come out one day to see her sister, still catatonic, silently crying? and she’ll have no idea what’s wrong, except for this pit in her stomach that tells her it has something to do with the little girl she was never able to properly help all those years ago; the girl with the same pained eyes as Becky’s sister, the ones that said she had seen far too much of this world’s horrors.
when that happens, all Becky will be able to do is hold Terry’s hand, hoping she’s wrong and that the little girl she still has a room preserved for, might some day come back to visit it.
I know the real Will Byers and if he knew that Chance helped beat Dustin into unconsciousness he wouldn't fuck him, he'd fuck him up. There is nothing interesting about Chance at all. . .boy is drier than dirt and if you want to put Will with a jock, why not Lucas?? If you want someone that you can mold like clay, who's got no background, why not pick a random extra and work from there? Just anyone who hasn't hurt Will's friends because that doesn't make sense for Will's character at all. Hell, Dustin ended up being single. Why not Dustin and Will?? Why not Dustin and Will? I don't understand what it is about Chance. Like you just want Will to be with a bully? Why?? I think if Will got with Chance, it would ruin his friendship with Dustin. He also helped fuck up Eddie's grave. Chance watched and laughed as Dustin was beaten over Eddie's grave. Will getting with Chance would sever Dustin's relationship with Will and I think it would sever his friendship with the others, too. Forgiving Chance and moving on is one thing but Will having him as a boyfriend is another thing entirely. I just don't see Will Byers falling for someone who helped hurt his friend. It doesn't make sense.
Like, sure, maybe for some reason you shipped them pre-s5, when Chance truly was a background character (I still wouldn’t fully get it though, since he was on Jason’s religious psychosis vigilante squad) but now that he has proven to be awful, the only reason people are still shipping them is because they think Chance is hot istg.
If you need other options that have existing actors to picture, besides Mike, here you go:
Lucas Sinclair (him and Max can still be together; Lucas has two hands and a big enough heart for the both of them, plus Max adores Will and they are besties)
Dustin Henderson (a total sweetheart, him and Will are nerdy together a lot, Will helped him build the monitoring setup for the van in s5 and Dustin wasn’t part of the whole D&D fight back in s3, plus he’s single in that awful epilogue)
Carlton, aka epilogue boyfriend (if you want someone who lives in Hawkins, make that where him and Will met when he moved there in the 18 months post-battle and pre-graduation, he is literally a blank slate to project all of your love for Will onto)
That one guy from season 4 with the “I Love Contact Sports” shirt at the roller rink (same reasons as Carlton, but maybe they met at the rink and then kept in touch after? you can literally even give this guy whatever name you want)
Richie Tozier (fuck around with the timelines a bit, make him Mike’s cousin or long lost twin or something, make him visit/get stuck in Hawkins at some point in canon, etc; let Will have a boyfriend who will love him loudly and also understand his trauma, to some extent)
oh god. . . little 12- or 13-year-old knight-in-training Mike spawning into the Upside Down with Will and being so incredibly distraught because this world’s rules operate so differently from his and he has no way of knowing how to save or even help this version of his favorite person, who is suffering so badly in front of him. . .
My personal Hopper-Byers family headcanon is that Joyce doesn’t know how to cut her own hair, even though she cuts Jonathan and Will’s, so she used to feel the need to pay to get it done. However, as soon as Jonathan was old enough to understand their money troubles, he learned how to cut his mom’s hair from watching her cut Will’s and also researching at the library (there were some bad haircuts along the way that Joyce swore were still nice, though). Then, when Jane starts living with them in Lenora, Jonathan also takes over cutting her hair, which leads to the majority of their bonding moments as siblings.
very true. she’d be so pissed that anyone would talk shit about her twin/brother.
like, i don’t think they understand that Jane would 100% use her powers to ensure that she gets to be president of the Will Byers Fan Club—much to the chagrin of Joyce, Jonathan, Robin, and the rest of The Party—and then make the first club activity hunting his haters down (she’s a little intense, but we still love her).
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