watching back from the brink and ngl i am obsessed. it's light-hearted and doesn't take itself too seriously, but it also does have underlying fuckiness
tian yao represents the story of being completely heartbroken, both in an emotional and a physical sense. he was betrayed and ripped apart, and this is his story of healing and finding himself again - like, literally, he has to go around collecting his body parts, i'm obsessed, subtext is for COWARDS
and tian yao/yan hui is about "you are my rib", it's about being more than the sum of their parts, it's blood magic, it's "we must use our bodies together to cast spells", it's their physical bodies being bound together, if one of them dies the other will too
and yan hui could have SUCH a great story about why her master took her in, why he cast her out, etc, but also she's not the type to question things bc she's literally a hungry fool. i love her. she's this naive young woman with an injured dragon on her leash
and the story of fundamentally being on the spirits' side who are being persecuted by the sects - having the immortals and sects be the villains and seeing how scary they are from the other side - is chef's kiss parfait
it's also a story about learning to genuinely love and support each other when you've only experienced betrayal
but most of all, this is a story about two idiots who keep on being scammed
