Xiang Liu and Xiao Yao’s Story and Romance

 HeadInTheClouds:

Speaking of Green Flag Jing, there is a trend in recent years of using someone's preference for fictional characters/relationships to cast moral judgement on them - with the implications that the one doing the judging is morally superior because they liked the superior person/ship. How pathetically insecure do you have to be to do this!

Precisely this. They think they're somehow responsible for the morality policing of other people's thoughts. It's absolute tyranny. Well, tyrants are often pathetically insecure and History has many examples.

 HeadInTheClouds:

Words like gaslighting, toxic, abusive and redflag are thrown around like free candies on Halloween, to the point of being meaningless.

This. It's sad because it downplays the very real situations when they are warranted.

 HeadInTheClouds:

I can play this game and labelled Jing as a Nice Guy. The kind that expects romantic reciprocation for thir niceness, but will turn nasty if rejected or (and this would be more Jing's style), cries, mopes and threatens suicide. But, you know, Jing already does his fair share of things that I can side-eyed him for. I don't need to whack on some social-concept/label to to justify my dislike for certain behaviour of his.

Again, precisely this. But he is such an ideal husband material! Look at his saintly kindness!!

 HeadInTheClouds:

I'm cackling at the thought that a Yao/Jing fan interpreted the crystal ball as an invitation to a tryst ?. 

So this person thinks XY sent the crystal ball to XL as an invitation to a sexy, romantic rendezvous? I mean, there are some posters here who probably yelled "i volunteer as tribute" whenever XL appears on screen (you know who you are ?), so I don't blame poor XY for wanting a piece of that. But, how do they reconciled this with XY supposedly only/forever love for Jing? I guess for some YaoJing fans, XY wanting to sexed XL up is more acceptable/tolerable than her actually loving XL..

And how do they accept this "slutty" XY ending up with their purest, greenest flag ever (*sarcasm*), Jing? Then again, they don't seem to have issue with YaoJing sneaking around with their affair so this sort of trysts are probably a-ok with them.

?

Based on her explanation, that's my understanding of her interpretation. It seemed like the thought process was basically that XL could never be marriage material or a viable endgame in XY's eyes, so the mermaid beckoning to the shell must be an invite to do what XY saw the mercouple doing. A moment of passion with XL since Jing was married and unavailable and there would clearly be no passion in her marriage with Feng Long. 

 AH :

On the occasions where a female lead falls for a toxic male lead in a C Drama, they usually don't let the leads have a happy ending together (e.g., Maid's Revenge / The King's Woman).

Exactly. So what was that pathetic post all about? When did they ever let a truly bad boy get the girl?

And Xiang Liu doesn't even fit in this category, so it's doubly wrong. I'm dying on this hill.

 AH :

But falling for the "bad boy" who ends up not being that bad instead of the more straight-laced "good guy" SML and still getting a happy ending is pretty common (e.g., Arsenal Military Academy, Fall in Love, Love Between Fairy and Devil, Sound of the Desert, The Story of Ming Lan).

Yes, they're not even that bad to begin with. I really need to watch Sound of the Desert tho.

 nathsketch:

AH, I just uncovered all your spoiler covers lol. Sorry.

Lol, exposed! But only half since half of the originals didn't even work ^^

But they really should fix the quoting function so it doesn't remove spoiler covers like this. Seems like it defeats the purpose. 

 AH :

Having Miao Pu say this feels... wrong. As if XY wouldn't have created such a beautiful and meaningful scene that required so much care and effort if Miao Pu hadn't said that this "last" poison creation should be special.

The fact that XY was regularly sending poisons to XL and that this would be the last one also seems like something that XY would keep to herself and not share with anyone. Not even Miao Pu. 

It wasn't even Miao Pu, but another maid Shan Hu who said it when she saw Xiao Yao struggling on what to create for that last poison.

 AH :

This feels like they are setting up Ah Nian's situation as analogous to XY's situation with TSJ and inserting it into a YaoLiu scene.

It didn't occur to me until you mentioned it. I honestly wonder sometimes whether scenes are adapted haphazardly - how does what Xiao Yao say tie back to the previous scene when she is clearly waiting for Xiang Liu to respond. I dislike that A Nian's impression of Xiao Yao, and her subsequent comment was totally replaced:

For seven days, Xiao Yao appeared to be really considering her decision. Every day she sat on the jagged rocks outside Dragon Bone prison and looked out over the blue ocean.

When A Nian went to look for her, she was met with the breathtaking sight of flaming red heather blooming all over the desolate cliffs against the blue horizon, and Xiao Yao dressed in white sitting barefooted on the black jagged rocks, waves cresting at her feet.

The view before her was indescribably beautiful, yet A Nian felt a sense of age-old desolation and loneliness. Xiao Yao's profile reminded her of the legends of the sea, of a fisherman's daughter standing by the ocean day and night, waiting for so long for her lover to return that she finally turned into a rock.

:

A Nian asked, "Sister, why were you outside Dragon Bone prison that night?
Xiao Yao replied, "I came to meet a friend."
"Did Nine-Headed Demon Xiang Liu give you any trouble later?"
Xiao Yao shook her head.
A Nian mused, "I thought that demon was pretty fascinating."
Xiao Yao stared at the blue ocean in silence.

-- Vol 2 Ch14  (Chapter 31)

 AH :

But even so, I don't love the phrasing of the last part. The intended meaning might be, "I'm not going to let you settle for a marriage that will make you miserable." but "Have you asked if I allowed it?" doesn't quite hit that note. Maybe it just feels a bit rich to imply that she should be asking him for permission given that he just rejected her invitation to come to her and to give her a reason to not go through with the marriage. That rejection was practically telling her to go ahead with the marriage.

The actual words are 你问过我答应吗？(literally: Did you ask if I agreed?). Perhaps the literal translation would have worked better.  

I don't quite see it as the need to ask his permission. Rather, I think back on the lesson he gave her when she asked for his blood to activate her bow, that she should claim what she wanted in life, yet here she was basically allowing her life to be dictated to her even when she was clearly unhappy about it. So I am thinking that rather than actually expecting him to come and get her, and going through with the marriage because he did not, he wanted her to stand up for herself and reject the marriage on her own accord. In other words, he wanted her to be strong and stand up for what she wanted, instead of always taking the passive stance, waiting for someone to decide it for her.  

If indeed this is what the script was trying to say, then it reaffirms Xiang Liu's approach to loving her which differs from her other suitors - empowering her to protect herself, rather than just having her dependent on someone else's protection.

This reminds me of something Tong Hua says repeatedly in her interviews. 

"My view is that love can make life very beautiful, but it is not the only thing in life. Women should first live their own lives well. Only a woman with financial and mental independence can embrace love calmly."  -- Tong Hua.

 liddi:

This reminds me of something Tong Hua says repeatedly in her interviews.

"My view is that love can make life very beautiful, but it is not the only thing in life. Women should first live their own lives well. Only a woman with financial and mental independence can embrace love calmly." -- Tong Hua.

So much this

That's why the ideal ending for me would be seeing Xiao Yao finally working out and overcoming her abandonment issues and being healed and empowered enough to be on her own without having to rely on that codependent, fragile fox as a clutch. Her character development was basically zero considering she never really dealt with her own problems in a healthy manner. It would be so great if she even maybe found another dude at the very end, someone totally new who embodied a little bit of all the others, but the great aspects of them.

@AH

I've just finished reading you fanfict (the only fanfict of lyf that I've read)  and I just want to say thank you, it did help me get some closure. Very well done. 

 blabla100:

@AH

I've just finished reading you fanfict (the only fanfict of lyf that I've read)  and I just want to say thank you, it did help me get some closure. Very well done. 

Oh good! Glad to hear it helped. Thanks for saying so! ^^