Hopefully today's episode won't take as long as the last two days' episodes have, now that the scenes describing what the Yin Iron is (as well as its history) are over, and instead most of the Yin Iron content will just be the voyage of the leads hunting for the pieces of it. Considering how much I dislike the basic concept of the Yin Iron plot all around, it frustrates me that I had to incorporate it this heavily into my fic. (Though at least by removing Wei Wuxian's demonic cultivation altogether, I got rid of the largest problem with the addition of the Yin Iron subplot, in that Wei Wuxian's new techniques are no longer copying things the villains have done.) There's a new wrinkle in my rewriting process, though, in that what the art book had to say about the Yin Iron is actually very different from what the subtitles have had to say about it, which I...I'm not sure if the art book is basing its text on design documents that got changed later on, or if the subtitles on Netflix are that bad in their attempts to avoid "confusing" the Western audience. Unfortunately, I feel like it could go either way. *sigh*
But that's a worry for later on! Right now, it's time to move on to the next episode, and continue my incomprehensible, random note-taking!
So, we pick up where we left off, with Wei Wuxian sitting with all the little bunnies from Lan Yi's cave, who are now in one of the many bamboo forests around Cloud Recesses, minus their mini Lan Clan forehead ribbons (which were super adorable, btw).
Nope, I'm wrong, we don't. (Yeah, I wrote the above paragraphs before starting the episode.) We start out with Wei Wuxian going to say goodbye to Wen Ning, who has already left. The Wen siblings were given guest housing that's much more standard for Cloud Recesses than what the Lotus Pier trio were given, which was all natural bamboo construction. (Not sure if that's even remotely relevant to anything, but it's interesting.)
Anyway, then we go back to the bunnies, including repeating the brief amount of scene from the end of the previous episode, so the scene of going to say goodbye to Wen Ning was actually something that happened earlier. That's...why did they wait to put it here instead of ending the previous episode with that and then they could have just put the bunnies once, at the start of this episode? 🤔 Maybe they just knew how popular the bunny visuals would be and wanted to have them in both episodes? Rabbits (well, technically hares) are very important to the original novel and the relationship between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, after all. And they also have strong symbolic connections to gay men in China because of Tu'er Shan, so obviously the show wanted to highlight them as a signal to any audience member who didn't already know what kind of novel MDZS was. (I wonder if there were any such audience members in China? In the west, sure, but...enh, how would I even know? And more importantly, does it even matter?)
After Wei Wuxian tells Jiang Yanli that they can take one of the rabbits back to Lotus Pier if she wants, she says she doesn't want that because the rabbit would be sad to be taken away from its friends and family. Jiang Cheng gets this pained, haunted look on his face when he says that. Is he thinking of how someday his sister will get married and leave him (and the rest of their family, but mostly him) behind, or is he thinking of his own desire for Wen Qing and how that would force her to leave behind the brother she cherishes so much?
Um.
Did that just imply that Wen Chao is capable of traveling in the form of one of those shadow birds?
Because that is nuts.
Enh, nah, his boots wouldn't be muddy if that was the case. I guess he was just accompanied by one. This scene, though...I feel like this is...how do I put this?
I feel like Wen Chao's character is different in the drama than in the novel. He's more openly pathetic in the novel, literally capable of nothing but chasing after girls and blustering. For the new material in the Yin Iron plot in the drama, they've tried to make him more dangerous and threatening, which then makes much of his actual storyline from the novel (particularly his reaction to Wei Wuxian hunting him down following his time in the Burial Mounds) inconsistent with his earlier characterization.
It might have made more sense to give the Yin Iron plotline material to Wen Xu, who is only mentioned as a concept in the novel, and never actually makes an appearance (well, aside from Wei Wuxian witnessing his death during the Nie Mingjue Empathy session), and yet that also might have frustrated the viewer since the heroes aren't the ones who finish off Wen Xu? 🤔 I suppose it's a problem that doesn't really have a solution. (Aside from not adding the Yin Iron subplot in the first place...)
But suffice it to say that I feel like purposefully scraping mud all over the carpet belonging to the head of one of the other Great Clans is a lot more aggressively offensive than the novel version of Wen Chao would act. (I can see him not thinking to clean off/remove his boots before entering, but treating the interior carpet like it's a doormat and scraping the mud off in there, no.)
And on his exit...it really feels like they're trying to imply he turned into that bird...
😰
I'm just gonna add that to the (unwritten) tally of "things from the drama I'm just plain disregarding in my fic because wtf else can I do with them?" (Along with things like the giant dog in the Indoctrination Camp sequence... 😰)
LOL, Jiang Cheng is more angry that Wei Wuxian left without saying goodbye to him than that he went off on an adventure alone. Their bond (prior to it being horribly scarred and broken by tragedy) is really too cute.
Posting the above picture here to prove my point that this bird is absolutely not any kind of owl. That head is shaped like an eagle's.
Whatever they are, they seem a bit OP in terms of what all they can be used for, but the visual effect in close-up is really quite cool. (For the distance shots, it's not much to look at, though.)
And we get another Crazy Wei Wuxian Power!
8) "Binding" or "Bonding," a light blue line of energy that connects Wei Wuxian to whoever he snares with it, keeping them within a short distance of him. (Subs call it 4 meters, no idea what the actual measurement would be in their time.) The fact that it's light blue--the color usually reserved for Lan Clan techniques--suggests he invented it specifically with Lan Wangji in mind. This is the rare Crazy Wei Wuxian Power that actually comes back, as he uses it once more, in Yueyang, but it never makes another appearance after that, despite that there are undoubtedly times later on when it would be useful. (Though perhaps he's no longer capable of it after he no longer has a golden core?)
And they're already in Tanzhou. Hmm. That is like the furthest south point on the map from the Wiki, and further west than Lotus Pier, while Gusu is the location furthest to the east. Crap. Obviously, the drama's location for Tanzhou is different from reality's. I'll have to change my map, I guess. 😭 There were some cloud-themed lanterns earlier, so I guess it's somewhere in the Gusu region...? But...the locations for the Yin Iron pieces that Wen Ruohan was going over before had a four directions of the compass theme to it, right, and south was the direction he was missing, so Tanzhou would have made sense for "south" unless it's supposed to be the central part and it's the south piece that's unaccounted for? 😰 Unless it's supposed to be further east than Gusu and it's the "east of Gusu" piece...? But that...argh!
Hmm. Wei Wuxian is still calling Nie Huaisang "Nie-xiong." I thought he started calling him Huaisang-xiong around now. Maybe that was later in the arc?
They get to the burned-out garden (which was evidently fine in the previous scene if the "Lady Florist" was sending a rain of flower petals onto the town) and say that they were too late "again." Uh, when were they late before? This is the first stop on their journey!
Hopefully that's a translation issue.
A single feather--clearly belonging to an eagle or bird of similar size--leads Nie Huaisang to conclude that it was one of the Wen Clan's shadow birds, which the Netflix subs stupidly decided to call "Dire Owl." 😬 The problem there is that look at the bird in the screenshot above! That thing clearly cannot leave behind normal feathers! It has no physical form, but is made from smoke!
What...what...what...argh! I have no idea how to handle this. Admittedly, I don't think this particular incident is brought up in my fic directly, but I need to figure out how to "explain" it to make sure my fic is consistent with a way of looking at the events of the drama prior to the AU point.
Sign above the door is translated as saying "The Florist's Mansion" which is probably also wildly inaccurate, but at least does make sense.
I'll go with the assumption that the "flashback" to Wen Chao arriving at the place and taking the Yin Iron piece was their imagination of how that went down, because it made no sense and sort of implied that everything was burnt and ruined when they got there.
As they're walking away from the town, Nie Huaisang says "The Yin Iron depraved the peony, the leading flower, and the true Lady Florist was held in captivity. The fake one invited all the cultivators to find other shards of the Yin Iron."
That...as translated, that doesn't make much sense.
Maybe I should take it as Wen Chao, having heard rumors about the Lady Florist, thought she might have a piece of the Yin Iron, gets there, finds she doesn't, and uses borrowed power from his father's shard to--no, wait, Wen Ruohan has three by the end, so Wen Chao has to have actually acquired one at some point, and this is pretty much the only point at which he can do so.
So I guess she really did have one? But...ugh, it only makes sense if she doesn't, and then it was Wen Chao sending out the fake invitation to lure in Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian.
The troops accompanying her just addressed Wen Qing as Qing-guniang. (I think.) So that's probably how most people in the Wen Clan would address her in the drama? Her position seems slightly different in CQL than it was in the novel; she's possibly more closely related to Wen Ruohan--and was directly raised by him, which there's no reason to think she was originally--but the administrative positions she had held in the past seem not to have happened in this version, as she may be younger than she was in the novel. (In the novel, it was clear that her post at the Yiling Supervisory Office was just one of many she had held, whereas I suspect in the drama's canon it was the first time she'd been put in that kind of position.)
People only seem to pay with chunks of unworked metal in the drama instead of coins. Um. Why? Coinage was in use from the Qin Dynasty onwards, and the art book says they were drawing on the visual aspects of the Wei and Jin Dynasties (which is pretty funny considering character names in the show!), which came centuries later, so...why aren't they using coins?
It's very weird.
But if there's never any footage of using coins to pay instead of chunks of unworked metal, then I guess I have to make sure that's the case in the fic...? (Though I don't really bring much notice to how they're paying for things, specifically.)
I wonder if they're avoiding using coinage because they really did decide that this is an alternate history wherein there is no empire because the imperial government crumbled and the cultivation clans are all that's left? Maybe Xue Chonghai destroyed the empire itself?
Huh.
You know, I could work with that. I mean, it's weird as heck, but it would also make it a lot less galling that I have a scene where the clan leaders are literally dividing up territory after the Sunshot Campaign.
Ooh, gotta make sure my fic reflects that Wen Qing does have some martial ability. She wouldn't be able to hold her own in a fight against one of the major warriors, I'm sure, but she clearly has some training.
Overall, I really need to fix up my portrayal of her. I don't think I did the character justice at all.
*sigh*
Because for some reason they decided that everyone in the show should carry their swords in their hands at all times, Wei Wuxian literally just had to tuck his sword between his legs, holding onto it with his knees, so he could make a gesture with both hands.
Why? Just why? Why wouldn't they carry them on their backs or on their belts, like in every civilization that has swords? And, you know, like they did in the novel?
I mean, yes, showing them tightening their grip on their sword is a useful shot to indicate "this person is upset/angry at what is happening" or "Lan Wangji is fighting against his desire for Wei Wuxian" but...it's just so awkward most of the time! And it has people having to go into combat with their swords in one hand and their sheathes in the other. Like, uh, no?
Obviously, I just tossed that for my fic, and decided to follow the book on that score, but...it still bothers me on all possible principles. (Well, maybe not strictly all, but a lot of them.)
Hmm. I feel like I treated Fojiao in my fic as having a "main street" and what I'm seeing here does not indicate the presence of such a thing. This is clearly a town that was built with the expectation that no one would get about by any means other than on foot. Though there are a few more open places, it's still not a town designed with any expectation of people coming though with a cart or a carriage, for example.
What's slightly problematic is that there's a larger house further up the side of the mountain, in the opposite direction from the shrine to the Dancing Fairy. It's never called attention to--likely it's really part of the mountain where they were filming--but given it seems to be part of the town...I'll need to address it in my fic. Maybe it was Wen Qing and Wen Ning's home while they lived there?
Both "soul taking" and "spirit snatch" are in the crazed mumbling from Wen-popo. Who doesn't look as old as I thought? As described in the novel, she's probably in her eighties. This woman is probably more like late 60s? Still old enough to have raised Wen Qing and Wen Ning, though. Well, not raised them, but having served as their wet nurse/nanny until their father died and they were taken to Nightless City.
Ah.
Here's what's important to my fic. The chronology of the Dancing Fairy as a soul-sucking evil.
"But twenty years ago the dancing fairy statue started to cause trouble." At which time "too many people died" leading the region to become bleak. So Fojiao lost a lot of people at that time. (I think that's how I put it in the fic on that score, but I'm not 100% sure.)
It's the "Tiannu Temple"...which probably means "tiannu" is what they're translating as "Dancing Fairy" since I seem to recall that it's actually supposed to be "heavenly maiden" or something...
Hmm, does shooting a whole bunch of immortal-binding ropes out of his hands count as a Crazy Wei Wuxian Power, or is it just an expansion of the Cultivator Power that was in earlier episodes, with ropes coming out of their sleeves?
....probably the latter...
Though I'm not sure those are actually immortal-binding ropes. They seem to be more yellow-gold bonds of power than actual ropes, while the ones in the first episode were absolutely actual ropes. Maybe these are more related to the Crazy Wei Wuxian Power he's going to use in the next episode.
Either way, I feel like I vastly underpowered everyone in my fic.
That's a weird feeling. 😅
!!!!!!! How can Nie Huaisang call Lan Wangji Hanguang-jun in this sequence? Lan Wangji doesn't get awarded that sobriquet until the Sunshot Campaign! OMG, someone really goofed.
Ah. And this is why I thought the bloody cracks were on cheeks. Because--as I said in an earlier episode's notes--it's easier to show that in a scene where the person is moving around. There are actually a fair number of young people (well, people in their 20s-30s) in the town in this scene, though. Either I need to change how I describe the people of Fojiao in my fic, or I need to address that not everyone who was there during this sequence is still there by the time the party gets there later.
I may be able to work with that, though. Like, the different location represents different infection methods. Or something.
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