15 Subtleties (+1 Bonus) about Episode 15 You May Have Missed

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15 Subtleties (+1 Bonus) about Episode 15 You May Have Missed

1. Xiao Duo dispatches Cao Chunang to go protect Yinlou, rather than having him continue to assist/protect him. He does this because he has discerned that he is the target and if he went to her and protected her, he would actually be putting her in danger. 

2. After Yinlou jumps in the river after him, Xiao Duo has to make some decisions very quickly. His priority would be to make certain she doesn’t drown. That is one arm around her waist and the second arm to swim with. (I do not believe for one second that Yinlou knows how to swim, much less well enough to manage the vicious current we saw) 

Deng Huo would have had to have been abnegated. Luckily, he chose himself a love interest that despite being the very embodiment of Alex Sparrow lyrics (She’s Crazy but She’s Mine), is also intelligent. That is why we see Deng Huo cinched tightly in Yinlou’s fist when she wakes up on the river bank.

3. Another strong contrast with Emperor Fu and the issue of consent. While Murong Gaogong has always simply called Yinluo by her first name, Xiao Duo waits until she gives him permission to. Here again we see, where the Emperor tried to manipulate both her and the situation (painting his nickname on the lanterns he presented her) to functionally trap her into sharing her nickname with him, while she tells Xiao Duo her nickname (in a bit of a reaction to what she processes as him putting distance between them - she is basically saying “No, you belong close to me.”)

4. Xiao Duo made her a bed that she slept in their second night in the fisherman’s hut. You can see it in the hut, when she opens the doors after waking up the next morning as the Scooby Gang finds them.

Xiao Duo goes from smitten to completely enchanted when 2 contrasts with Rong’an are highlighted:

5. Xiao Duo reveals his feral nature to Yinlou in this episode. He had always made certain to fight unarmed or bladeless (with his scabbard) when he had to participate in a physical confrontation in front of her before.

In the fight on the ship there are no holds barred. He knees a man in the head. Kicks one off the side of the ship. Slits two men’s throats. Yinlou does not see a threat that could be wielded against her, that must be reined in and dominated. She charges into battle to aid him, at her own expense. She “ bandages him up”, has a conversation about plans and strategy, agrees to listen to him, cuddles up to him, reveals a secret to him and ultimately falls asleep in his arms - all while his face is splattered with blood.

“Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” - Mr. Beaver to Susan, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis

This is basically paradigm altering for Xiao Duo. To have someone he does not have to be “on” 24/7 around. “If I made a single misstep, I would have died horribly.” - Xiao Duo to Rong’an, Episode 23. He can legitimately relax around Yinlou and reveal all dimensions of himself.

He had learned the hard way with Rong’an that this was a privilege and aspect of intimacy he could not allow himself:

“It was smart and knew to be obedient to gain your love. Whenever it revealed any bits of its feral nature you had it beaten within an inch of its life. Once tamed, it’d be exceedingly obedient and let its owner have its way with it.” - Xiao Duo to Rong’an, Episode 5

Rong’an sees him as a beast (Episode 5), a naughty cat that has run into someone else’s house, so she must pull out all its teeth and claws and let it feel pain (Episode 4). The people see him as a demon. Children cry and flee, even abandoning their toys once they recognize him. Yinlou sees him as the best person in the world, aside from her mother (Episode 6), a “leader [and] a very gentle person” (Episode 13), “unpredictable…stunningly beautiful” (Episode 8), “kind and righteous and beautiful” (Episode 9), the person she “want[s] to be with now” (Episode 8), as a daylily (possessing unique sweetness) (Episode 4).

She regards him as a playmate, a drinking buddy, a teasing victim, someone she can strip formalities with (bites him, slaps him, opens his sword, grabs on to him constantly), who she can fall asleep safely in their lap (Episode 8) or in their arms (Episode 15), a partner-in-crime to go on her adventures with (breaking into the Imperial Kitchens, taking boat rides).

And while there were hints of this before, this episode gives Xiao Duo irrefutable proof that she can deal with his darkness;

• She reframes the mythology surrounding Deng Huo:

                                     “They that had fought so well

                                      Came through the jaws of Death,

                                      Back from the mouth of hell,”

                                            - The Charge of the Light Brigade, Lord Alfed Tenneyson

• She accepts his mission with such startling maturity that he initially misinterpreted it as being blasé: 

                                 “Theirs but to do or die”

                                           - The Charge of the Light Brigade, Lord Alfed Tenneyson

Yinlou can accept violence from him and take his ferality in stride.

“Manhood is melted into curtsies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones, too.” - Beatrice, Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare

Rong’an beat him into a synthetic submission, chasing the illusion of domestication. She wanted curtsies, compliment, tongue (service, not action), she wanted him trimmed.

Yinlou invites him back to manhood, to valor, to action, the unpruned wildness of his heart. She invited him to be dangerous. And implicit in this invitation is affirmation, “You can handle this. You are competent. You belong. You have carved out a place for yourself. You have what it takes.”

6. The second juxtaposition to Rong’an that is drawn in this Episode is that surrounding coldness.

“Fengyi Palace is cold. Can you bear to leave me alone?” (Episode 1)

“It’s cold in the palace. Let’s keep each other warm, shall we?” (Episode 23)

“It’s so cold today. Your hands are warm.” (Episode 1)

Claiming coldness as a ploy to manipulate physical closeness is a long-standing tactic of Rong’an’s sexual predatorization of Xiao Duo.

When Xiao Duo opens his eyes after Yinlou’s query as to whether he was cold, there is an initial tiredness (I know this game) and wariness to his expression that almost immediately vanishes when his brain catches up to him.

A disequilibrium and panic settle over him, as he reflects on his initial reaction to the word and a guilt for having associated such motives with her. He realizes she wasn’t even asking him to rectify the situation, she is just bored because she isn’t falling asleep and making conversation. 

And he chooses to engage. You can tell he is unnerved and disoriented by the choice he makes, even as he is making it. She tells him twice she is warm with him, which make him brave enough to tell her “With Her Highness around, I feel much warmer too.”

She is beyond reciprocal, chastising him for calling her Her Highness, that her name belongs in his mouth. And then deciding to reveal her nickname to him. He is speechless and completely captivated.

7. I am truly thankful for the characterization of Yinlou in this show. We get a FL with genuinely flustered reactions to medical emergencies and fight situations. This is something I really appreciated about her character. While she is highly intelligent and can keep pace with Xiao Duo’s brain and sometimes even make him dizzy with her logic and choices, she is also realistic and relatable.

So often we get the FL who is perfectly calm in the midst of a medical crisis. This agitates me to no end. Especially if the actress is playing a young character. Especially if they have never had to deal with that type of crisis before. Especially if they were not raised in a military or medical family, that they had heard in principle how to handle these situations or had even seen them unfold before them.

She rushes into the middle of a fight on deck with a sword she has no idea how to use, with no plan of what to do. Simply impulse. Adrenaline and cortisol. And fear. Her best friend was in danger. He had thoroughly extensive combat, weapons and self-defense experience. Probably a trick or two up his sleeve. And was basically infallible/unbeatable in her eyes. (Man took out 10 guards with his sword scabbard. Man can simply cock his neck to the side to evade life-threatening arrows. Man can run matrix style in a circle with his body at a 45 degree angle to the ground. Man can scale mausoleum walls. Man can do a front tuck off of a horse, while getting in a crescent kick to take down one opponent and dodging the sword of another. Man literally just pulled off a Jack Sparrow ‘Thank goodness for that, because if I wasn’t, this’d probably never work.’ and flew around the deck using the mainsail’s halyard. And these are only the things she has seen him do. She is well aware that he is much more skilled than what she has witnessed.)

None of that registered in her rational brain. All that mattered was that her best friend was pinned down and vulnerable. And her response when he asks her what she is doing is 100% honest. She does not want to be there, but she couldn’t stop herself. She couldn’t control her legs.

Or when her hands are shaking as she is attempting to make due with a makeshift bandage; she is terrified she might lose him, if she doesn’t do it right. Or when she overdoses him on hormone suppressants thinking they are restorative pills. She doesn’t ask what the typical dosage is for a wound. Her brain goes 1 pill = a healed Xiao Duo. More pills = a more healed Xiao Duo faster. Or when she panics about pulling the arrow out. Or when she screams from the shock of him doing it himself and so abruptly. Or when she rips the bottom of her dress, causing herself to fall over, because he needs a bandage NOW! When she tries to convince herself “It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.” Or her attempts to somewhat gracefully recover (which she fails abysmally at) from the embarrassment of having screamed. “It hurts so much and you didn’t scream, so I screamed for you”. These are much more realistic and relatable responses to these situations. And I just want to say I loved that the writers understood that an intelligent FL does not equal a calm, cool and collected FL.

8. The conflation of Ah Duo and Bu Yinlou in Xiao Duo’s fever dream as the two people he cares most about and his fear of history repeating itself and him losing that person.

9. Xiao Duo became a man to Yinlou in this episode. I don’t mean in any romantic or sexual sense. I mean he was humanized to her. Previously, he had been a combination of a national folk hero and guardian figure that just so happened to become her companion and best friend. But he was still borderline mythic in her eyes. She assumes he has pills that can heal any wound and revive the dead. She thinks the Zhaoding Bureau knows everything that happens everywhere, because they obviously have an infinite and infallible spy network. When he is actually hit by an arrow, having not dodged it - her brain does not compute.

If she had not dispelled this version of him from her brain, no romance would have been possible for them. This transformation of him from hero to man also transformed their emotional intimacy from this elusive, opaque thing that they were playing a weird combination of Hot Potato and I’m Not Touching You with, into something crystalline and lucid and accessible.

10. In a moment of panic this Idiot tried to put the genie back in the bottle (no can do Xiao Duo) by telling Yinlou he slept outside because “It’s cooler outside.”

Because the entire theme of their confession to each other had been feeling warmer with each other, this is basically a false regret rejection, as he tries to dodge the can of worms that has been unleashed. Luckily for us this flies over Yinlou’s head due to her embarrassment of thinking she had snored in front of him. And so time and our romantic storyline march on.

11. Tong Yun isn’t there with them at the fisherman’s hut. Who do you think tied her dress sleeves back, so she could move around more comfortably?

12. Of the cherries, Yinlou says “There’s only one left,” referring to Xiao Duo’s bitternesses. “It’s quite sweet. Take it.” She wants to know if he can live up to his name Fang Jiang and leave his resentment entangled in the past. She will wait for his return.

13. When they are playing the world’s most adorable version of morse code love letters through the bedroom wall, Xiao Duo initially nods in agreement when Yinlou asks him if he thinks she is beautiful, before realizing he shouldn’t. 

14. The beauty of Yinlou’s speech at the end of the episode is that she truly invited him. She made it his choice. Xiao Duo has spent the whole show advocating for her freedom, her liberty of agency. Here she supports his choice. Most likely the first person to do so for him.

She understands the masculine heart. She does not attempt to dissuade him from his mission, his crusade. She does not pepper him for details. She simply holds out the cherry - unassuming, quite vulnerable and hopeful. He may spur, he may retreat or…he may enter.

It is not a subjugation she is inviting him to. It is an affirmation, an acceptance, a home.

15. Yinlou carved out the time to research the scripture Deng Huo (his dual sword) derives its name from, when she was staying in the mausoleum, so she could better understand the origin and symbolism associated with it.

16. To those I saw making comments on how he kissed her in her sleep:

He had not realized she was asleep. When she doesn’t respond he stops immediately.

She says nicknames are for the people closest to you to call you. And he immediately calls her by her nickname, which is basically declaring/asking “Am I the one closest to you?” She responds (on the brink of sleep) “Fang Jiang,” aka “You are the one closest to me,” aka she gives him permission after he explicitly asks for her consent to kiss her.