As always, what's beyond the read more tag is my rambling and incoherent thoughts as I'm taking notes on watching the show in order to be able to edit a massive fan fiction based on the drama's version of canon. Don't click through to the rest if you haven't seen the show and/or read the novel, because it won't make sense and might contain spoilers. (Technically it likely won't make sense even if you do know MDZS, just because I'm simply jotting things down as I go, and merely using my blog so that it's all in one place where I can find it more easily than like a Google doc or something.)
The zombie-like puppet villagers are called off by Wen Qing playing a...mini-xiao? I have no idea what the instrument is called. Main thing is...actually, two main things. First, why does the drama want to rob Wei Wuxian of almost all his innovation? It's weirdly frustrating. Or rather weird and frustrating.
The second main thing is why does this work? The implication in the novel is that there's either something special about Wei Wuxian, post-Burial Mounds, that allows him to control the dead through music, or that he's figured out something unique in that time that allows him to do that. Or possibly a combination thereof. It's not something just anyone can do--quite obviously so, since everyone after his death seems to think there's something special about Chenqing that allowed his techniques (witness Jiang Cheng insisting on having it at Lotus Pier, and Xue Yang wanting to study it to allow him to better control the dead).
This is, as far as I can recall, the only time we ever see anyone other than Wei Wuxian using music to control the actions of the dead--er, of puppets. Wen Ruohan uses the Yin Iron, and Xue Yang's control method is unclear as I recall, but definitely related to him having the half-rebuilt Yin Tiger Tally.
Oh.
No.
Stupid.
There's a major time we see someone else using music to control Wen Ning himself. Duh. Biggest example of them washing Wei Wuxian's hands clean for this version. (Which is odd since they also seem to be setting up Chenqing as actually having some evil spiritual powers of its own.)
Okay, so...I guess that means the musical control technique isn't so impossible for normal people in CQL canon.
That's a problem, because I made Wei Wuxian's musical techniques in my fic impossible for others to replicate. But those techniques aren't the same techniques, so...hrm. I feel like the best way to be accurate to the drama would be to make it so anyone could use them without going to the extreme lengths I went to in order for him to be able to teach his techniques to others, but if I did that then huge chunks of story would crumble away and I'm not sure how...I mean, technically replacing them wouldn't necessarily be needed, but I do feel like it would probably be very obvious that something was removed?
I guess I'll have to reread those sequences with a critical eye to see if it's possible, or if I just need to say "oh well" and "I guess these techniques just work differently."
Huh. After that, she made some kind of hand gesture, aimed some energy at the bonfire in front of her, and the puppet-ified villagers just came to a halt. What...? Maybe it's a spell she knows that just temporarily freezes people in place. A defensive spell that would work on anyone?
And then Jiang Cheng is just magically inside the temple. I mean, sure, he could have arrived before them. And the way he makes his presence known--a return prank on Wei Wuxian--is very cinema/TV, and actually pretty in keeping with his character. The implication that he was in the temple with them the whole time and never showed himself, including while they were fighting the massive statue and being surrounded by hordes of near-undead villagers, is entirely out of character. No way he would pass up the chance to fight a huge, soul-sucking statue monster. He'd be out there fighting it with all his heart, trying to outdo Wei Wuxian. (And failing at it, because that's like a constant of their characters.)
Ah, but there it is, the most perfect tsundere moment! "Do you know how worried I...how worried my sister was?" LOL. He's so cute.
Hmm. Wen Qing is trying to lure the shadow bird down with a torch? And preparing to attack it with an acupuncture needle. So...do they actually have physical form under that smoke despite the way they looked in close-up? Or...something?
Anyway, Cultivator Powers tally should probably have already gone up about five times in the last two episodes, but I'm trying to mostly only use it for things that seem significant and/or like things I probably ought to have used in my fic. But this one seems like it belongs on the list.
10) Lan Wangji summons up a ball of flame-like blue light in his hand then pushes it down towards the ground; this then forms a field that impedes the advancing enemy without harming them. They're sort of moving in slow motion through/towards it, but that may just be because what else were the extras supposed to do to show they were being stopped? He used this earlier in the episode as well, but it feels very much like a thing where it would have been useful in later sequences--particularly during the Sunshot Campaign!--and yet was absent there.
The implication is that Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing traveled together on the way to Mount Dafan, at least part of the way. I guess after she ditched the soldiers accompanying her, she caught up to him or something. Hmm. That should have come up at some point in the fic. Especially in the early part, where he's still unsure if he's doing the right thing by trusting her.
Crazy Wei Wuxian Power...or is it a Cultivator Power? Hmmm. Pretty sure we never see anyone else use it, but Lan Wangji knows what it's called, so...well, but maybe Nie Huaisang asked about the skill in between the earlier use of it in the temple and this scene, since it would be a pretty long walk back down from that temple. So, yeah, we'll call this one Wei Wuxian's.
9) Golden Silk Barrier. Gold-colored cords (about the size of a bungie cord) appear in the air in a net shape. In the first use, it was basically a wall blocking the advance of the puppets, and in this case he uses it to form a protective basket over Jiang Cheng, Nie Huaisang and Wen Qing. (Despite that surely it would have been more efficient to deal with the shadow bird if they had three combatants instead of only two...but at least Jiang Cheng is appropriately pissed at him for leaving him behind. And yet also kind of not because it means he gets to stay there with Wen Qing.)
I wonder if I should count "Glitter Talisman" as a Crazy Wei Wuxian Power? I guess not, because it doesn't go off so we don't know what it does. It sounds...well, it sounds like its name was translated into something that makes me think of Velvet Goldmine, so I am obviously imagining something entirely inappropriate. (OMG. I want to see a crossover where they somehow summon Maxwell Demon. That. That would be. Amazing. Possibly also horrifying, but amazing.)
I'm noticing a lot of their leaps in the show--particularly in a combat situation--involve pirouetting through the air. I'm not even sure if I can find a way to add that to any of the few combat scenes in my fic. Though at least I tend to deal more with the lead up to and aftermath of the battles, instead of the battles themselves...
Looks like Jiang Cheng can also send out sword glare from his fingers. I guess that's just a thing in the drama? I suppose I ought to move that from the Crazy Wei Wuxian Powers tally to the Cultivator Powers tally. Okay, so that will make CWWP notched down to 8 and CP up to 11. Logically, I suppose it's not so out of line with genre conventions? In Thousand Autumns, the leads (and I think a few others?) have learned to use their fingers to perform sword techniques, so there's some precedent for that sort of thing.
What the heck is "Darksteel"? Nie Huaisang said his fan is made of it. I guess it's the kind of metal they usually use to make their swords? (Or saber in his case.)
Okay, after Wei Wuxian catches the bird while it's attacking him, the shadows melt away and there's an actual bird in there. Despite that you could see right through it earlier. 😰
I'm pretty sure I wrote this down before, but I'm gonna write it down again because it's important to get it right. "We are a collateral branch of the Wen Clan of Qishan specializing in medicine. After leaving Qishan, we lived here for generations." And then we go into the flashback of the earlier Dancing Fairy attack. And I cannot guess the age of either Wen Qing or Wen Ning in the flashback.
Admittedly, I am not good at guessing the ages of children. (Or adults, for that matter.) But Wen Ning seems to be really, really young. Like a-Yuan's age, maybe. Wen Qing is maybe more in the 8-10 region? Maybe? I know so little about children that it's hard to guess.
Wait, if she's that much older than he is, then she's way too old for Jiang Cheng. Or rather, he's way too young for her. Imagine a woman in her late twenties being told "here, marry this flighty, immature teenage boy!" Total nightmare!
Anyway, based on what she says after the flashback, only the handful of people in the graveyard there are actually part of her branch clan. I guess the others who were attacking them in puppet state were just local villagers unrelated to them? Ugh, that only complicates matters (in my fic) further...
Going back to the opening of the graveyard scene, I'm counting about 17 adults? Ack. So many fewer than I thought. I mean, that'll make things easier, but also...ugh. My rewriting become even more complex.
The following scene in Inferno Palace clearly shows three pieces of Yin Iron floating above the vent. Um. Where did the third one come from? Anyway, we don't see where Wen Chao is for that conversation, so maybe there really are communication arrays set up in various Wen Clan fortresses across their holdings.
Back to our main cast, Lan Wangji is asking Wen Qing about the Dancing Fairy attack in her childhood and the subtitles call it "twenty years ago." Which it obviously wasn't, if Wen Ning is too young for the lectures and Wei Wuxian is not too young for them, but also still a teenager. I'm pretty sure that's a translation issue caused by how the languages handle talking about numbers. Unfortunately, it's also less than helpful. And then while Wei Wuxian is talking about it, it's at ten years ago, which is definitely not right, either. *sigh*
Anyway, the important thing is that the sequence of events is definitely that Wen Ruohan took the shard of Yin Iron from the Dancing Fairy first, and then she went on a rampage and started sucking out souls. But if he's had it for fifteen years (based on my guestimates regarding Wen Ning's age in the flashback and now) how did it take him that long to get any clue how to use it? Was he really unable to figure it out for himself and needed Xue Yang to tell him how? That's super-weird.
And without any anything they're suddenly in Yueyang. Part of what I was hoping to figure out was how long this journey took them, but that is 100% impossible to guess considering the absolute lack of travel scenes.
Oh crap. Meng Yao isn't there yet. I said he was there for weeks waiting for Nie Huaisang. Well. That will require some rewriting! (Maybe he was there for weeks and then left and came back later?)
Okay, so unlike in the earlier scene, now they're paying with coins on a string, like you'd expect. I...what was the point of the chunks of raw silver earlier, then? (Well, okay, actually they looked like ordinary rocks that had been painted silver-colored, but...they were obviously supposed to be actual nuggets. Who would even carry those if...well, maybe that's a genre convention I'm just unaware of...?)
Ah. Okay, important to know: the Chang Clan estate is in the southeast of Yueyang. (Why would Lan Wangji specify the part of the city? Maybe there was a deleted scene where the Yin Iron fragment they have was pointing them in that direction? It really feels like there were originally going to be even more scenes in this drama-exclusive arc and they got pared down, only they got pared down a bit too much.) Their house is a few li outside the city. Oogh. That does not work with what I wrote in my fic. Crap. More rewriting.
So the waiter tells them that the nightly knocking on the doors of the Chang Clan's home started ten days ago (or I guess it would be eleven, since he says that for ten nights it's happened) and that whenever anyone goes in there during the day, the place is empty. Where does Xue Yang put the corpses during the day? Or does he use an illusion spell to hide them? (And why?)
Anyway, the Yin Iron gives Lan Wangji a vision of some of the deaths taking place inside the Chang household. Somehow.
Two contrasting things strike me as they're entering the Chang Clan's estate and seeing the massacre that took place there. First, all the blood that's still liquid everywhere, despite that allegedly the actual slaughter took place more than a week earlier. Second, this is three teenage boys walking in there and discovering fifty horribly murdered people. On reflection, even worse is the fact that the murderer is also a teenage boy. According to The Untamed's version of the characters' ages, anyway, since they've made Xiao Xingchen the same age as Wei Wuxian, and it's firmly established in the novel (and I believe also established during the Yi City arc) that Xiao Xingchen is only older than Xue Yang by a matter of months.
Of course, it's hard to think of any of them as being teenagers considering the actors are so visibly in their (early) twenties, but...the dialog firmly pushes at us that the characters are still teenagers at this point in the story. Which makes them discovering all those bodies particularly horrible.
...
I feel like there's something more I ought to say right now, something I should be using to draw all my thoughts together, but nothing is coming.
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