Is anyone else sad because Fang Duobing has a "Waiting For Li Lianhua On the Beach" outfit?
(On the left is the outfit in episode 40 after reading Li Lianhua's letter. On the right is the outfit in the special episode when he and Di Feisheng show up on the donghai beach to look for him 3 months later.)
While we're on the subject of costumes, @the-surreptitious-albatross and I just realized how different this outfit of Fang Duobing's is from his earlier outfits.
Here are some examples of a normal FDB outfit:
He prefers pastels, and his belts and wrist guards are often the same color as the pastel or a slightly darker version (and here, they have gold decorations).
Zooming in shows that he prefers his embroidery designs to be swirly and his hair accessories to be braided and color-matched or elaborate and silver (but still on the delicate side).
But check out this outfit: the embroidery is more angular and less swirly, as is the hair piece, and it and the belt and wrist guards are black with silver instead of matching the pastel of his outfit or being a slightly darker shade of it.
You know whose style he's echoing with all these changes? Who else tends to favor black wrist guards and belts with more angular designs?
Di Feisheng.
The images below make it a bit clearer: DFS's belt has gold decorations compared FDB's silver, and the shape is different, but you can see the similarities in the wrist guard design in particular.
It's not obvious how much their costumes are tying them together in this scene because we don't ever see them in the same frame; the camera constantly keeps them apart, as does the blocking of the scene, since DFS is on the rocks and FDB is on the beach.
That changes in the special episode when they both arrive on the beach at the same time, and DFS is wear his sect leader robes.
Here they are, in the same frame at last, and side by side, and you can see even more clearly with this DFS outfit how much the style of FDB's belt, wrist guards, and hair accessory is echoing his. The wrist guard pattern looks almost the same in these pictures! And the cut of the outer sleeveless robe is also very similar, which visually pairs them even more.
All this to say, FDB's clothing style shifts, the gentle swirls sharpened into points by his worry and grief for Li Lianhua, and it breaks my heart.
But the fact that he's visually echoing Di Feisheng now, that they're slowly becoming a matched set, is starting to put the pieces back together again.
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Li Lianhua is such a guy. I'm not even talking about the tragic hero backstory, just the guy who has a dog. And the wuxia equivalent of Howls moving castle, going around overcharging or giving away his questionable not-always-medical advice with no in-between. All those silly little faces and mannerisms. The sheer dgaf energy is off the charts. He learnt to cook and its bad. He's a smartass. He's also the damsel who is getting choked or tied up or attacked, but he is unfazed and unimpressed by all of it. He's like if a drama queen was a 1000 years old and had nothing new to be impressed by. His swagless demeanor and single housewife energy have captivated me. What a guy.
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