(fengqing 🏹⚔️)

//2ha spoilers

my 2ha secret santa gift to @/martyrsdaughter on twitter! they asked for shuangmeimeng so here it is uwu

i love seeing discourse surroundning mei nianqing cause i have literally no idea how to feel about him. he's so girlfailiure coded. he runs away from his crazy ex but doen't even try to win custody of their shared pseudo son and just fucks off drawing pictures in some ruins about said ex. he looks down on mu qing for the crime of being poor.he tells little baby hong-er that he's a cursed monster and is going to die. he's all love is love being gay is okay with xie lian but severely judges his taste in men. he literally had the heavenly emperor torment him for centuries and yet his biggest headache in life was his 17 year old lousy disciple. he helps his disciples defeat his evil ex and then returns to him and spends the rest of his life chilling with him under a mountain. he's cool with all sorts of war crimes but draws the line at being poor and dating ghost kings. what even is this man on.

True Love <3

(original audio by average_jake_)!

I think one of the funniest things about the Sabzeruz event is that the devs choose to go with Candace, Traveler, and Paimon having a whole "Ooh, two mysterious men are going into an alley to have a 'private' conversation; they must be bad guys!" only to then go "Oh just kidding, it was only Alhaitham and Kaveh doing typical Alhaitham and Kaveh things."

Except the "Alhaitham and Kaveh" thing in question this time was talking about Mehrak, a sentient robot that Kaveh built using absolutely forbidden technology, and which he then whole-heartedly willed would develop a consciousness of its own, violating one of the central taboos of his nation's governing agency, committing what amounts to an inherent and extreme felony punishable by law.

Alhaitham and Kaveh: Listen, we're not bad guys discussing illegal activity here. We're just two men having a private, personal conversation. Happens all the time.

Paimon, Candace, and Traveler: Oh cool, they're not doing a crime; they're just gay.

But they were, in fact, doing a crime.

eng ver of endo and takiishi profiles (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧

stanning fengqing is so useless bc 100% of their interactions are them canonically trying to off one another, but the way i need to interpret them are borderline delusional. like yes, look, they briefly glanced at each other in absolute loathing and abhorrence of each other's existence, and they do indeed strike at each other's most mortifying moments with the intention to hurt deeply. BUT if you look CLOSELY at how their gazes LINGER then you can tell that they actually very slightly in a very teeny tiny way yearn for each other in a way that transcends distance and time...no no wait come back i swear it's true—

«Thank you for giving me a family»

Just realized that the pick up line “did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?” Would both work SO WELL but also fail miserably for hualian. Like it could go multiple ways:

Hua Cheng being all flirty and trying to be smooth (successful): hey, gege, did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?

Xie Lian, oblivious: which time?

——

Hua Cheng being all flirty and trying to be smooth (successful): hey, gege, did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?

Xie Lian: yeah, it’s a pretty long fall. But, I’m fine, really. All healed 😊

Hua Cheng, freaking out and checking Xie Lian over: gege!! 😱

——

Xie Lian trying to flirt and be smooth (failing, but it’s hua cheng so he’s into it either way): San Lang, did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?

Hua Cheng: No. I didn’t fall, I jumped. How could I stay in heaven if my god was walking the earth?

Xie Lian, blushing profusely: San Lang!!!

——

Xie Lian trying to flirt and be smooth (failing, but it’s hua cheng so he’s into it either way): San Lang, did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?

Hua Cheng, staring lovingly at Xie Lian: gege’s my heaven, and he’s the one that caught me.

Xie Lian, equally besotted: San Lang…🥹

——

Hua Cheng, before Banyue Pass and still disguised as San Lang: gege, did it hurt when you fell from heaven?

Xie Lian, shocked: San Lang knows even this!?!? He really is amazing! 😃 (see the second option for how this progresses)

——

Surprise beefleaf!!

Shi Qingxuan, flipping his hair and fluttering his eyelashes flirtatiously: Ming-Xiong, did it hurt when you fell from heaven?

He Xuan disguised as Ming Yi, feeling pretty murderous over the question: …

Shi Qingxuan, oblivious to it: because you must be an angel 😘

He Xuan, reached his “Shi Qingxuan threshold for the day” and walking away: …

Shi Qingxuan: eh?! Ming-Xiong? Where are you going??

——

Lmao just looked up the actual pick up line and realized I remembered it wrong, so have some more 🤗🤗

Hua Cheng being all flirty and trying to be smooth (successful): hey, gege, did it hurt?

Xie Lian, not sure what incident he’s talking about: I have a high pain tolerance 😊

Hua Cheng: …

——

Surprise FengQing!!

Feng Xin: hey! Did it hurt!?

Mu Qing, annoyed, wondering what he wants: did what hurt?

Feng Xin: when you fell from heaven?

Mu Qing, drawing his saber: …is that a threat? 😡😡😡

Feng Xin, realizing he fucked it up: 😳😳😳

——

Jun Wu, trapped in Mount Tonglu: did it hurt?

Mei Nianqing, sitting to the side, reading a book, not even looking up: did what hurt?

Jun Wu: when you fell from heaven?

Mei Nianqing, flipping a page and still not bothering to spare him a glance: you’re the one that fell, my lord, not me.

I just want to say, before anything else, that I love your blog! It's so helpful to me when I write things. I'm also sorry for how long this ask is going to be. I normally ask anonymously but it won't let me put the photo in.

I really like this hanfu set but I don't know exactly what dynasty it's from, or even if it's actually historically accurate.

I also wanted to ask about the hanfu from Flourished Peony, and how accurate they are. Specifically that one pink round-collar hanfu Mudan wears when she's getting flowers from the mountain that I thought was a men's item, rather than a women's one.

Sorry about the long ask!

Going to answer both of these together since they're about the same show.

About the hanfu in the picture, this is a Ruqun (襦裙) set from the Weijin. The biggest giveaway is the stripe at the sleeves (it looks like 2 stripes but I have another pic of this outfit and you can see it's actually 1 decorative stripe with two bright borders). Also, if you look at this pic below with it untucked in the skirt, you can kind of see that there's a horizontal piece of fabric along the waist area.

If you take a look at my post about the Ruqun (here) you'll see an artefact that's very similar.

For Flourished peony, I'm only going to comment on the hanfu as I don't have enough knowledge about Tang dynasty hair or makeup right now to make any judgements. I'm also not looking at the patterns on the fabrics, I'm literally only looking at the styles of the clothing themselves.

Disclaimer, I haven't watched the show. These photos are from Google and Baidu promotional pics, and I did click through a few eps to take screencaps.

And if anyone has a screencap of, or can let me know which episode, the "pink round-collar hanfu Mudan wears" that's mentioned in the ask I'd really appreciate it (I tried looking for it but couldn't find it T__T)

Looking briefly through some of the posts regarding this show, it seems the production team put a lot of effort into recreating the Tang Dynasty aesthetic, from costumes to props (there are some people who have found props and matched them to museum pieces). For the most part, the clothing seems appropriate for the time period, the only nitpick I'll do is that it seems to mix together clothing styles from early Tang all the way to late Tang (but the show isn't set in a specific period of the Tang Dynasty, so they can kind of get away with that).

Most of the men seem to wear the round-collar robes that was most common during the Tang Dynasty (my post on it here).

This style of qixiong dress (over-bust dress) seems to be most common in this show, and definitely a staple for women's hanfu during the Tang Dynasty.

If you look at the width of her sleeve here, it doesn't appear very wide. Sleeve width became wider and wider during the Tang Dynasty, so looking at these sleeves it seems more early-going-into-Gold-era Tang (my post on Gold-era Tang hanfu here).

This style looks more early-Tang with the very form-fitted sleeve and the non-qixiong skirt. I can't see clearly the pattern of her dress here, but early Tang skirts often had alternating coloured blocks on their skirts (called jianqun/间裙子)(my post on early Tang here and here).

I can't tell clearly if this dress is a qixiong dress, or a hezi dress. Hezi dresses so far are not backed by any artefacts, there are rumours of its existence but nothing has been unearthed to verify it (someone asked me about this, I posted on it here).

Looking at the long outer robe with the wide sleeve, even if this was a qixiong dress, this would be late Tang, edging into the Five Dynasties post-Tang (my post on this here).

In the first pic, the two maids are wearing outfits that are very typical in early Tang. The collars, the little vest/half-sleeve of the shirt, etc.

I'll nitpick that historically, Chinese capes did not have hoods attached. They came separately.

You can see in this pic (from the 1987 Dream of the Red Chambers), the woman is wearing her cape, the man is holding the hood for her.

My personal theory is because of the various hair styles women have, and the various hats/guan (head pieces) men wear, a separate hood offered more flexibility. Like in this pic from Romance of the Three Kingdoms (1994), he's wearing a very tall guan so trying to fit it under a hood that's attached to the cape would be difficult. But this is all just my guesses, don't quote me xD

This maid is wearing a round-collared robe usually associated with men, but actually during the Tang Dynasty it wasn't uncommon for women to wear this style of robe as well.

This man has half the robe on, the other half off his shoulder, displaying the half-sleeve underneath. This was a common way men wore their robes in casual situations (it looks like he's hunting) (my post on this here).

I took this screenshot because you can see the difference in lengths between these two men's robes. One is calf-length, one is ankle-length. Men's robes also got longer as time went on during the Tang Dynasty. It's possible this servant is wearing a shorter robe to make walking easier, but going by the length of the man in red, this should be at least late-Tang Dynasty (post mentioning robe length here).

This outfit's sleeve is very wide, indicating later in the Tang Dynasty. I think people believe form-fitted sleeves were more for younger girls, servants, or women of lower class who had to work and large, wide sleeves were for higher-level women or older women who sat around all day. In actuality, sleeve width was an indication of time period during the Tang Dynasty (for both men and women).

This look is straight out of a Dunhuang Buddhist donor mural. They painted these to commemorate people who were devoted to Buddhism and/or gave a lot of offerings, you can find these murals at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang City today (my post on this here).

I know I said I wouldn't discuss hair but just this one, since it's such an iconic look for the Tang Dynasty. This hairstyle is a clear replica of the Ladies with Flower in their Hair painting (簪花仕女图), but they've changed the clothing. This painting was originally believed to be from the Golden-era or Mid-Tang, but in recent years historians believe it's more likely to be late-Tang or Five Dynasties (possibly even Song Dynasty) painted. Even in China a lot of people still associate it with the Tang Dynasty.

So overall, the show's production team clearly did research to replicate Tang Dynasty clothing. For the most part, they did a good job, no cross-dynasty clothing being tossed around. There's a bit of mish-mash for which period of the Tang Dynasty the clothing's from, but that's not a huge issue. Given some of the crazy costumes that's come out of period dramas in recent years, big applause to the production team to the costuming department.

(Re: This post)

My lacquer allergy is getting better, the blisters have calmed down but some of the popped ones have left me with areas where the skin has peeled. They've scabbed over now, and I think it's in the heeling phase so once the new skin grows I'll be OK (this time, lol).

Unfortunately, since it's all around my wrists the scabs are making it difficult for my to rotate my wrists in any direction. I can barely hold chopsticks, use my toothbrush, pull my clothes on, etc. Luckily I can still practice playing the Guqin so my teacher is having me take it easy on the making side, and focusing more on the playing.

In the meantime, a few Hanfu books I ordered arrived, so I'll post some recommendations until I can hold my stylus pen again :D

Hanfu book recommendation:

"华夏衣橱" Huaxia Wardrobe (Huaxia means China)

This book covers the Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties, it also includes a chapter on Peking Opera costumes and a section on clothing for different holidays/seasonal days like winter solstice.

It includes clothing for casual occasions, special events, for men and women. Each outfit is drawn out, with each garment name labelled. It also details information on hairstyles, hair accessories, makeup, traditional colour palettes, fabric patterns, etc.

This book isn't text-heavy, relying mostly on pictures to relay information. The layout is fairly simple, so if you're just starting to dig into Hanfu history I think this is a good book to use.

An extra little perk is the side of the book is printed with 2 famous historical paintings, a very lovely touch :)