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It’s been awhile but I’m writing a little something again, here’s the outline:

#it’s a part two to Sweet as Cherry Wine #fanfic writer #apothecary diaries #the apothecary diaries #gyokuyou x lihua #lady lihua #lihua #consort gyokuyou #lady gyokuyou #gyokuyou #ah duo #ahduo #Gyokuyou x ah duo #Gyokuyou x Lihua x Ah Duo #Ah Duo x Lihua #wdym I have to make up all these tags myself #fine ill do it myself #I’ll be the only yuri writer for this fandom if i have to be

it's very fun for me when a character's design can tell you so much about their history and influences. the apothecary diaries is no exception because so much of who maomao and jinshi are is referenced in just the colors used in their respective designs.

with maomao, the colors of her most identifying features (hair, eyes, freckles) reference the greenness of foliage, the blueness of sky and sea, and the blackness of the earth. these colors tie her to nature, which she heavily relies on as an apothecary. in contrast, jinshi's identifying features are primarily purple/violet, which across many cultures connotes royalty, nobility, and even divinity. when viewed together, it's almost like the colors themselves are saying that where maomao is of the earth, jinshi is of the heavens; where she is human, he is celestial.

these colors, specifically of the hair and eyes, also link them to their parents. color-wise, maomao gets her hair from fengxian and her eyes from lakan. on the surface, these can correspond to how she gets her looks from fengxian and her intelligence from lakan. but on a deeper and broader level, i feel they also reflect how maomao inherited her mother's exterior (such as her circumstances and culture from living in the pleasure district) and her father's interior (such as his eccentricity and the way he utilizes his abilities to gain power (tho in maomao's case, that power comes more in the form of a higher-up's favor)).

in jinshi's case tho, his color can be traced only to his mothers, anshi and ahduo. the fact that it's hard to say what he got from whom works perfectly well given the secrets around his identity. on the surface, he gets their ambiguity in appearance (ahduo's androgyny and anshi's youthfulness despite her age (altho jinshi looks older than he is)), which he's also used as a tool (ahduo's allows her to pass as a man and anshi's as a younger girl). and while i don't know these characters enough to say what exterior/interior jinshi actually inherits from them, i think it would have something to do with how his fate is tied to the palace and to the desires of the emperor, and how he isn't truly free despite having all this power and influence. personally, i think it's interesting that he doesn't share the emperor's or the former emperor's colors at all, which i really want to take as a sign but like. what do i know, i haven't read the LNs yet and even if i have, it might be too soon to tell 😂