#terapsina’s lbfad rambles

[terapsina]

Okay, so a lot of people have taken up this quote to comment on Love Between Fairy and Devil and I have THOUGHTS:

(spoilers for the entire show)

A hero would sacrifice you to save the world but a villain would sacrifice the world to save you.

Changheng is that first one. He puts his duty above his heart which is admirable if more than a bit sad (but he also puts his piety to his clearly corrupt brother above his heart, which is not, and he learns this lesson too late).

Ronghao is that second one and this makes him truly a monster. It is not beautiful, it's ugly and awful and no matter how satisfying it sounds to imagine that a villain would burn down the world for you, the reality of it is horrific.

(in fact, we even KNOW that because our universal reaction to the 'I will destroy your home and kill everyone you know for you' rather made us all slap our own foreheads at the sheer stupidity)

But Dongfang Qingcang and Xiao Lanhua? They're the third kind. The ones who would sacrifices themselves so that the one they love would not need to be the one who falls in their duty to save the world.

(at least by the end, in the beginning... there was the before mentioned stupidity)

First she does it for him (as well as for both her own people and his). Because if she had not he would have died.

In fact this is exactly what she tries to do again once she comes back.

And then he does it for her because he does not want her to sacrifice herself for him and the world a second time. And so he takes her place.

Really it's Xiao Lanhua who says it best herself.

I love all the people. I also love one person.

They do not place the world above their love for each other, but they also by the end have come to respect each other's sense of duty and loyalty and so she cannot hate him for his need to defend the Moon Tribe (or to seek vengeance even). And he does not try to whisk her away once he realizes that she plans to give her life to stop the Evil God Tai Sui.

They would not burn down the world for each other. But they would burn down themselves for each other without thought.

#love between fairy and devil #xiao lanhua #xiao lan hua #dongfang qingcang #moon orchid #ronghao #changheng #lbfad spoilers #terapsina’s lbfad rambles #terapsina rambles #otp: in thousands of identical orchids i will find you in an instant

[terapsina]

Thinking about how Lbfad is all about love- and not just romantic love, but all kinds. Romantic, Platonic, Familial, Brotherhood, sisterhood, love towards the people, even self-love.

Oh, absolutely. This show portraying the variety of love in all its forms is one of my favorite things.

Plus I also love how there's such different ways that this love is shown in both healthy and decidedly less so ways. Seriously every relationship in this show has its darker reflection.

Like the love between Xiao Lanhua and Dongfang Qingcang in stark mirror against the very obsessive and selfish love that Ronghao has for Chidi Nvzi.

The brotherhood of Dongfang Qingcang and Xunfeng that was so deeply broken but then starts healing once the truth comes out, held against Changheng's blind loyalty for his brother which is clearly utterly without reciprocation.

Xiao Lanhua's love for her shifu and the way Siming's lies were told in order to protect her, against Dongfang Qingcang's relationship with his father and how his father put his country before his son and did utterly terrible things to someone who only wanted his father's love.

Shangque's earned loyalty to the Moon Supreme, against Dieyi's loyalty to Ronghao and how he constantly betrays it.

The friendship between Changheng and Ronghao. Against the more true friendship between Xiao Run and Cricket. Or the eventual one between Changheng and Danyin.

Though it's not just darker reflections either. There's also just... reflections too.

Like the initially reluctant and one sided friendship based on lies between Xiao Lanhua and Jieli. In mirror to the initially reluctant and one sided friendship based on lies between Dongfang Qingcang and Xiao Run.

Or the unrequited romantic love that Changheng felt for Xiao Lanhua which would eventually be a requited friendship. In mirror to the unrequited romantic love that Danyin felt for Changheng which would eventually be a requited friendship.

Seriously, this show is so FULL of various relationships which show both the best and the worst of all the various colors that love can come in and I think that if anything makes this show special, it might truly be THAT.

#love between fairy and devil #dongfang qingcang #xiao lanhua #ronghao #changheng #danyin #jieli #shangque #dieyi #siming #chidi nvzi #anonymous #answers #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles #lbfad spoilers

[terapsina]

Okay. THIS is how you write a love story between a vengeful demon king and a lowly pure hearted fairy and make it WORK.

You tie his fate to hers so that any harm to her befalls him, make it so he has to follow any order she gives him and he ends up needing to count every flower in her garden while seething with absolute FURY, then add some body-swap hijinks, grumpy gathering of morning dew to help her heal while having angry murder thoughts.

(No but seriously, THE BODY-SWAP HIJINKS)

And to add comedy to the entire thing make the fairy oblivious to exactly why the demon king is doing any of it - or even of his identity of being the demon king so she keeps telling him about how the "dead" demon king is known to have had bad breath and green skin and was very ugly while he's visibly going impotently berserk.

It's great.

Can't wait to see how Orchid ends up completely stealing Qingcang's heart through all this drama.

(No, I haven't gotten this far in the show yet but as this was actually the scene that made me aware of Love Between Fairy and Devil and then made me start watching it...)

#love between fairy and devil #dongfang qingcang #orchid #xiao lan hua #qingcang x lan hua #terapsina rambles #also i'm beginning to suspect there's some kind of racism/genocide stuff happening here and it's not actually fairy=good and demon=evil #otp: in thousands of identical orchids i will find you in an instant #terapsina’s lbfad rambles #moon orchid

[terapsina]

You know, one of my most favorite scenes in the show might be the one where Xiao Lanhua rejects Changheng.

Not because of any kind of petty reasons (though I have to admit that it was a bit satisfying from that point of view too) but because it's such a mature scene.

Like. Her earlier crush on him did always come across as sort of surface level and juvenile. Something she'd call being in love but also something that wasn't really. More admiration with no actual substance. Something with a touch of hero worship more than anything else.

And then there comes a point where Changheng finally does tell her how he feels. And she's grown immensely from the fairy we were first introduced to, and so when she rejects him it's not a conversation of her loving Dongfang Qingcang more, or that Changheng is too late, or that she doesn't love him anymore.

It's about how she's grown enough now to recognize in herself the fact that her earlier feelings were born out of gratitude, out of admiration. But that they weren't the kind of love that she's found now.

And I'm not saying that Xiao Lanhua couldn't have fallen in love with Changheng for real (maybe in a world where he had never erased her memory of them being friends). But she hadn't ever really had the opportunity to develop a real emotional connection to him, and now that she'd developed that connection with Dongfang Qingcang she could recognize it the way she hadn't been able to earlier.

So I thought it was a very nice scene to watch.

#xiao lanhua #xiao lan hua #changheng #chang heng #love between fairy and devil #lbfad spoilers #spoilers #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles

[terapsina]

I seriously don't remember the last time I fell into a new fandom THIS FAST and THIS DEEPLY.

I can't even identify it. Is it just that it's so full of some of my favorite tropes? Or the perfectly executed romance? Or that I just love fantasy and this is a very well built fantasy story? The characters in whose heads it's so easy to see into? The way everyone MAKES SENSE? Just how goddamn beautifully stunning the sets and the scenery and the cinematography and the CGI is? The way the story is so well paced that I never grew bored? The fact that it balances its comedy with its pain and makes me genuinely feel both right alongside these characters?

I don't even know but.

THANK YOU.

#love between fairy and devil #moon orchid #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles

[terapsina]

I might be wrong here but I think the scene where Dongfang Qingcang chooses not to exchange the hairpins is actually the turning point in him actually beginning to deserve Orchid’s affections.

And maybe more importantly it’s the point where he really begins to understand what mistakes he’s been making so far.

Like. He’s tried before, right? When he recreated her home inside his kingdom he wanted to relieve her homesickness. But what he actually DID was make for her a gilded cage.

(and then throw a childish temper-tantrum)

And he’s saved her life multiple times but in the beginning it was largely because her being in danger puts him in danger (though yeah there was already more going on under the surface of that, and he was also genuinely worried about her... not that he was aware of it).

And then he did realize she was important to him and decided that it was a smart idea to tell her he’d burn her home down to make the Fairy Realm pay for their slights against her without getting it through his very thick skull that this would not AT ALL be what she’d actually want.

But here he begins switching out the hairpins which would allow him to read exactly what she felt (something he’d have earlier done with no compunctions as was shown when they were arguing about why she would refuse to take said hairpin out in the first place). And then decides NOT TO.

And he says it’s because he wants to prove that he’s able to read her without cheating. But that almost doesn’t matter as much as the fact that him leaving the real hairpin on her pillow is him finally beginning to respect the boundaries she’s setting.

And okay, it does leave him with the incorrect opinion because he misunderstands exactly why she smiles when Xiaorun/Chang Heng gives her the jade stone. But I fully prefer the angsty misunderstanding to if he’d actually disrespected her choice to hide her feelings and had found out that no, she hadn’t been enjoying Chang Heng’s advances.

#dongfang qingcang #love between fairy and devil #xiao lan hua #otp: in thousands of identical orchids i will find you in an instant #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles #moon orchid

[terapsina]

Okay I’m actually a bunch of episodes past this but I still can’t help thinking about how funny that scene where Dongfang Qingcang is in Orchid's body and Chang Heng catches up with him is.

Like...

Chang Heng: *so relieved* *sort of confessing* *tries to touch her face*

Dongfang Qingcang: *silent glare* *visible murder eyes* *BITES*

That scene honestly nearly overshadows the one later where Orchid impulsively rushes to kiss Dongfang Qingcang to save his life and switch back their bodies.

Not really though. I really do love how instinctually she chose to save him there.

#dongfang qingcang #chang heng #xiao lan hua #love between fairy and devil #terapsina rambles #otp: in thousands of identical orchids i will find you in an instant #terapsina’s lbfad rambles #moon orchid

[terapsina]

Qingcang is so dumb, I love him.

I mean...

*Qingcang looks at a vision of Orchid marrying someone else* 'my stomach feels tight, clearly Orchid is feeling something stupid again'.

You sure Mr. Moon Supreme? Is that why you proceed to interrogate the fairy on if she's SURE the tree mirror shows ACCURATE prophecies?

(special condolences to the dragon who needs to act like his lord isn't being very very very blatant)

#love between fairy and devil #dongfang qingcang #xiao lan hua #terapsina rambles #lbfad spoilers #otp: in thousands of identical orchids i will find you in an instant #terapsina’s lbfad rambles #moon orchid

[terapsina]

Okay so I know that Xiao Lanhua and Jieli weren't true friends until the later half of the show. But honestly if you think about it they weren't NOT friends either. Like, Jieli was selling fake cures, sure, but she also seemed to keep letting Xiao Lanhua get away with 'putting it on her tab' way way waaayyyyyy past any common business sense.

So it feels like they might actually have been the closest thing to friends that Jieli allowed herself to have at the time?

#jieli #jie li #xiao lanhua #xiao lan hua #love between fairy and devil #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles

[terapsina]

There is one thing I'm not sure I completely understand and am wondering if I missed something about. And that's to do with Xiao Lanhua's damaged immortal root and some of the events around it.

(spoilers)

.

.

.

.

The story she knows is that her shifu "accidentally" damaged it by watering her with wine and then considered letting her die until Chang Heng spoke on her behalf.

But that made sense back when we thought that her shifu was a probably alcoholic and careless person who abandoned her to go wandering about the mortal realm.

But then we find out that she's the one who cultivated Xiao Lanhua into an orchid to hide her and was always aware that her accolade was the missing Goddess Xi Yun. And that she's been imprisoned for the past five hundred years and didn't abandon Xiao Lanhua at all.

So first of all. Is it even the truth that her immortal root was damaged by alcohol? Or was the damage caused by Si Ming literally changing her nature to hide a goddess as a fairy? Because that does sound like something that would have consequences, right?

Second of all? Why in hell would Si Ming then ever consider letting Xiao Lanhua die?

I feel like there's a whole story hiding in this. Did Si Ming consider letting her die? Or did someone else find out about the damaged immortal root and bring her before Lord Yun Zhong and the rest of the high immortals, which is where Chang Heng spoke on the little orchid fairy's behalf?

Or was Si Ming either following or trying to fight against Xiao Lanhua's fate from her destiny book? (She did say she hadn't been able to change her fate, which implies that she tried).

I might just have missed the explanation that was given, but yeah I'm just a bit confused about this part.

#xiao lanhua #xiao lan hua #si ming #love between fairy and devil #meta #lbfad meta #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles

[terapsina]

I wonder how long those epilogues are going to be?

Like full on episodes? Or like two ten minute long short-film type of contained stories?

I mean I don't really CARE I will consume it grinning either way. But I'm just wondering.

(as long as we get the wedding. I just really really want to see that wedding finally)

#love between fairy and devil #moon orchid #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles #otp: in thousands of identical orchids i will find you in an instant

[terapsina]

OMG I just realized something. I am absolutely not a fan of Hanahaki Desease fic trope for a HUGE number of reasons. But if there's a ship for whom that trope actually WORKS within the confines of the world, it's Xiao Lanhua and Dongfang Qingcang.

#love between fairy and devil spoilers #xiao lanhua #dongfang qingcang #otp: in thousands of identical orchids i will find you in an instant #orchid fairy #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles

[terapsina]

You know. I did some math. And the actress who plays Xiao Lanhua was 25 when she played her. If we accept that it takes 1500 years to get to that age for a fairy then a pregnancy for an immortal would probably last like 45 years.

...my condolences to every immortal who's ever been pregnant 😳

#xiao lanhua #love between fairy and devil #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles #as for why i was doing this math #...reasons

[terapsina]

You know I guess it actually does make sense to translate Xiao Lanhua to Orchid because in universe she's not supposed to have a given name? Orchid is a description of who and what she is.

A lot of the early scenes between her and the other fairies wouldn't make sense if people referred to her as Xiao Lanhua (like when they kept calling her by the wrong flower).

At the same time when we talk about her we use her name like a name and names don't get translated, in which scenario it feels both more appropriate and more respectful to refer to her as Xiao Lanhua.

So I will probably continue using that when talking about her (I'm just not entirely sure yet if I should start using Orchid in the fics I write for this fandom?).

Anyway. It does feel like both versions should be correct? But I think I'd like to hear some more opinions on this.

#xiao lanhua #love between fairy and devil #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles

[terapsina]

I think it's implied in the story that Changheng's deity of war because of what happened to his mom, and something about it being a shameful thing to his brother the fairy emperor but what do you think about it?

IDK the whole thing with Changheng's mother was very vague and confusing. It sounded like she'd left? Or abandoned her post? Or committed treason that probably shouldn't have counted as treason? Or something like that?

But I didn't really notice there being a connection between that and why Changheng was God of War. Except maybe in the way that it might have motivated him to overcompensate in the other direction, where he tried to prove himself worthy of his brother's affection and trust SO HARD that he earned the title/position/power? + followed his brother's every order despite how many of them sucked.

It did definitely make him into the person he was in the beginning of the story.

#changheng #chang heng #love between fairy and devil #lbfad spoilers #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles

[terapsina]

Done with episode 31. I'm gonna need therapy after this show.

I feel like my insides have gone through a meat-shredder.

Also if all the idiots don't get their happy endings I'm going to throw all the expensive vases I can get my hands on at all those responsible.

#love between fairy and devil #terapsina rambles #terapsina’s lbfad rambles #moon orchid