#ep36

[melonatures]

zhou fei hasn't been on the screen for 7 minutes, i'm ready to stop watching

[melonatures]

zlh def dialed in most of this performance, but his best moments are when xie zheng is sad about his mom and trying to explain it all to changyu, like he showed up for work for ep36

[melonatures]

yes yes yes, lying face down in bed wracked with pain and voice almost gone, this is the right way to ask her to marry you, not when she's fucking unconscious. also just that he's been thinking this whole time, how do i make this legit how do i make this legit how do i make this legit? like his marriage to changyu is very very very important to him. also i think seeorseem pointed out in some tags something about how the show uses pain to illustrate depth of romantic feeling? like back when changyu first found out he was xie zheng and she was like we were never married and he grabbed her hand and his wound broke open and he started bleeding, and that's a direct through-line to what happens in this episode, where the pain is 100-fold, and he welcomes it, and uses it both to break from his uncle and to draw changyu more 'legitimately' and firmly closer to him, and to ask her honestly for marriage. (also love that later after the aphrodisiac poison fiasco she upends all this by just being like. we already are married. you married into my family and that's real and lovely.)

[melonatures]

#someone (who i trust) who watch the whole show: do they ever successfully merge yan zheng and xie zheng? #changyu is soooooooooooooooooo in love with yan zheng so like does xie zheng ever manage to live up to yan zheng? #does he get the chance to i mean? #cause yan zheng had so many opportunities to be good to her that's basically all he did. but xie zheng has to do other shit too asdfghjkl

xie zheng taking a hundred and eight whippings from his uncle who tried to kill him and who changyu saved him from and then kneeling in front of his dead parents' memorial tablets with her while his back is still raw and bleeding and telling them she saved his life and made him realize it was worth living and that he will never betray her and will love her until he dies definitely works as him living up to yan zheng!!!! especially when changyu comes to pick up his prone body and calls him yan zheng and he not just recognizes it but welcomes it. that act + name calling is one of saving for him, like yan zheng is not an identity he has to overcome or fight or let go of, yan zheng is as precious to xie zheng as he is to changyu because yan zheng means him being loved and experiencing love himself, yan zheng means him wanting to live, yan zheng means existing beyond the narrow life he imagined for himself as only avenging his parents' deaths and dying in war. he *likes* it when she calls him yan zheng, 'yan zheng' is like 'as you wish,' it's her saying she loves him.

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