Hmm. I wonder if these episodes have actual titles that Netflix didn't bother to translate? Something appears on the screen at the start of each, but they don't tell us what it says. For all I know, it really does just say "Episode" and the number of the episode. Or maybe it's an actual title. Huh. Maybe next time I should use the Google Translate app on my phone to find out. Yeah, maybe I'll do that.
Anyway, rambling and incoherent notes follow the read more tag. They'll contain some spoilers in and among the random thoughts to myself, so read with caution if you read at all. (You probably won't, ofc. Most of these posts have precisely one view, which is definitely some kind of bot that scans every single post once.)
The sequence wherein the hostages have to hand in their swords at the indoctrination camp is a good one for displaying Wei Wuxian's more serious side. Or rather, for displaying that even at this point, where none of the tragedies have yet struck him, he's capable of being serious and behaving properly. Jiang Cheng is worried that he's going to make trouble and actually tries to literally restrain him, only to be assured that he wouldn't do anything to risk the clan like that. Then Wei Wuxian is actually the first to hand over his sword. I need to check the novel and see who was the first to hand over his sword there. Part of me wants to say it was actually Lan Wangji, but part of me also wants to say his sword was already confiscated by the Wen Clan soldiers who forced the Lan Clan hostages to march all the way to the indoctrination camp in the first place. (Of course, in this version, Lan Wangji is the only hostage, because Wen Xu slaughtered almost all the other disciples he could get his hands on.) For that matter, why would they have allowed him to keep his sword in this version? Maybe they only handed it back to him when they brought him in, so that Wen Chao could savor him being humiliated by being forced to turn in his sword in front of all his peers. (Though in this version we don't know if Wen Chao already has a hate-on for Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian and Jin Zixuan because they outscored him at the archery contest at the Grand Symposium. I mean, in my fic he does, though Wen Qing is surprised that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji managed not to meet each other at that time, but the show doesn't really mention it...except possibly Wei Wuxian may have mentioned it to Wen Ning in the archery scene? He asks him why he didn't see him at an event, but the way the name was translated didn't make it clear to me if it was the archery contest at Qishan's Grand Symposium (which is when Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning first met in the novel) or if it was something else.)
Ah, that's probably the only time in the entire show that Nie Huaisang is even shown with a saber at all, and he's only shown holding it so he can hand it over to the Wen Clan. (In the art book, where they're describing each character's weapon, they only describe his fan, and ignore the fact that he also has a saber.) It's odd, though; I don't think the indoctrination camp sequence in the novel even mentions Nie Huaisang at all. I think for whatever reason he ended up getting out of being there.
I definitely need to reread this sequence in the book (though it was very short, actually), because I feel like Jin Zixuan did not create a scene--and nearly start a fight--by refusing to hand over his sword. It may have been added both as a chance for Jin Zixuan to come off well (as opposed to what an absolutely jerk he was at Cloud Recesses) and to give Mianmian more screen time as she hurries to smooth over the situation as his attendant. Though in that situation, he probably shouldn't still be calling her Mianmian...but I think they really did make a conscious decision never to use her name until she finally introduces herself properly in the present, as if there's some significance to Wei Wuxian only learning her name after his revival. This moment also gives a definite start to Wen Chao's creepy fixation on Mianmian, and her obvious disgust at his attention. Her line about how the Wen Clan and Jin Clan have always been close is one that I think stuck with me pretty strongly, as I have a few ideas for fanfics along the lines of "what if Jin Guangshan decided to side with Wen Ruohan instead of acting as though he was leading the rebellion against the Wen Clan?"
Oooh! The interior shot of Wen Qing's house in Nightless City is very informative. There are bundles of herbs and paper-wrapped packets hanging from the ceiling, as well as shelves filled with medical supplies. The doorway she passes through to enter the room is not closed off with a door, but with red curtains. Hmm. In this scene, Wen Ning refers to Wen Ruohan as "Wen-bobo". But I seem to recall him using "Wen-shushu" later on in the scene with Wei Wuxian. Huh. That is odd. Maybe I'm misremembering? Because "bobo" is an uncle who is the father's elder brother and "shushu" is an uncle who is the father's younger brother, so obviously they're not both the case. Though "shushu" can also be an unrelated man of the father's generation (like Wei Wuxian referring to Jiang Fengmian as Jiang-shushu) so...hmm. For now, I guess all I can do is pay rapt attention to what he actually says in the different scenes. (Thankfully, there are no scenes in the fic where Wen Ning is in the presence of Wen Ruohan (there's pretty much only one scene with Wen Ruohan in it at all, and that's the scene in which he's killed) but there are definitely times when Wen Ning talks about Wen Ruohan, so I want him to refer to him correctly.)
Ah, poor Wen Qing! As soon as Wen Ning asks her if Wei Wuxian is there, she drops what she's holding and flashes back to being surrounded by puppets and being warned that if she disobeys Wen Ruohan again, he'll set his puppets on her brother.
It's both cute and pathetic that Jiang Cheng brought along the hair comb he bought in Caiyi Town with the intention of giving it as a gift to Wen Qing. (Also, the hair comb in itself is sort of pathetic? It's this little wooden affair, and the ones she wears prior to the fall of the Wen Clan are all gold. Though at least I was able to play into its patheticness in one scene in my fic, where he acknowledges that it was just a gift bought by a boy for the girl he fancied even though he barely knew her, whereas his new gift is appropriate for a man who knows the woman in question and is certain he wants to spend the rest of his life with her.)
I love the scene where Wen Chao is demanding that the hostages recite the Wen Clan book he gave them the previous day, and after Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan say they "cannot" do it, Wei Wuxian volunteers...and then eagerly recites a bunch of the Lan Clan's rules. 🤣 On top of being so very Wei Wuxian, it's also a great moment for how the other characters react: Jiang Cheng is clearly worried this is going to have negative repercussions on the Jiang Clan, Nie Huaisang is impressed with Wei Wuxian's nerve, Jin Zixuan is fighting not to laugh, and Lan Wangji shows just a hint of a smile. This is one of the rare moments from the drama that are so perfect that I want to insert them into the novel's canon, too. (Thankfully, the novel is so brief about the indoctrination camp's events that it's certainly not impossible to put this one in there.)
I'm not sure how story and culture appropriate the punishment of the three of them being made to take buckets of manure (or is it "night soil," aka human waste?) to fertilize fields actually is, but it's a humorous sequence, and I have to admit that there's something deeply gratifying about seeing someone as pompous as Jin Zixuan being made to carry a yoke with buckets of manure on it. (Looking at what's in the bucket Lan Wangji is pouring out, it would appear not to be human waste. It's probably from the stables. Then again, there's liquid in Wei Wuxian's buckets. Maybe it's both?)
Um. Wei Wuxian finally gets a moment to have a quiet word with Lan Wangji, and talks about what he heard regarding Wen Xu being on his way to Cloud Recesses, and he says that Wen Xu believed "Xue Yang's Yin Iron shard was in our hands." But, uh, Lan Wangji already had a piece of it? Xue Yang's piece wasn't even mentioned in connection with anything other than the attack on the Unclean Realm. (And I definitely heard Xue Yang's name in the line that was actually spoken, so it wasn't a translation thing.) Then he asks if Wen Xu caused trouble when the Yin Iron piece wasn't there. But there was a piece there and it was handed over, so...I'm confused.
I see even low level Wen Clan guards can do the immortal-binding ropes flung out of sleeves trick. Though that's perhaps more a matter of magical storage in sleeves than an actual power of the person? Agh! When Lan Wangji tries to take up a position in between Wei Wuxian and Wen Chao, Wen Chao whips him right on the spot where Wen Xu had his men break his leg. That is above and beyond the call of wrong. It's a great character moment that seeing Wen Chao whipping Wei Wuxian causes Jin Zixuan to stop what he's doing and shout at him not to cross the line. As much as he detests Wei Wuxian, he still won't stand there and watch if Wen Chao plans to murder him. I love the depth this episode adds to Jin Zixuan's portrayal in the show.
Jin Zixuan is standing right there behind them, hearing every word of the conversation between Wen Chao and Wei Wuxian (well, the speech by the former, really) regarding the location of the four pieces of the Yin Iron, and about Wen Chao's assumption that Wei Wuxian is the one who hid the last piece, rather than Xue Yang. It's not clear from the look on Jin Zixuan's face if he knows what the Yin Iron is or not, but you can bet he'll have told his father about it, on general principles. (This is good for my fic, because I had Jin Guangshan quite convinced that Wei Wuxian had it.)
*sigh*
And then that leads into one of the dumbest additions to the plot. The giant dog in the Wen Clan's dungeon. In a cell with a door the dog likely could not fit through. Making its presence entirely useless, because why would anyone keep a thing like that unless they wanted to sic it on their enemies in combat? Unless they just want to feed prisoners to it, but that's not very useful. Also, uh, if Wei Wuxian dies, then how would Wen Chao extract information from him regarding the piece of the Yin Iron that he thinks Wei Wuxian hid? I mean, yeah, Wen Chao is not exactly a great brain (I'm not sure he even has a brain, in fact) but still, particularly dumb move all around.
In my fic, I, needless to say, am pretending the giant dog incident didn't happen. (It's not even a very well-done effect. Only slightly better than the G'mork in The Neverending Story. Which was made in the 1980s...)
Okay, so what Wei Wuxian says when he sees the needles in the giant dog is "Bufotoxin Needle." So I guess it's not that Wen Ning managed to hit the dog's sleep acupuncture points (or whatever the proper term would be) but that those were specially prepared needles to cause sleep. Hmm. Good to know. Of course, that makes him think for a moment that Wen Qing is the one who saved him.
I'll want to spend more time than I can on right now on the following conversation, so I should stop here for now.
Right, so it starts out with Wen Ning asking how badly hurt he is, and then giving him a small bottle of medicine (which is dark-colored and shaped in such a way that I thought it was a pouch until I heard the sound of the lid clicking against the bottle as Wei Wuxian accepted it), saying "This is a natural energy booster. It can help you stabilize your energy and enhance your cores. And here, this can help stop the bleeding." He hands over a small pouch, too, adding "It is for external use only."
Rather than do anything with the medicine, Wei Wuxian asks about Wen Ning and Wen Qing, if they're all right. (Since, after all, Wen Qing had defied Wen Ruohan to help them earlier, it's obviously an important question!) Of course, Wen Ning assures him that they're both all right. I wonder if Wen Ning has any idea just how much danger he personally is in because of Wen Qing's actions at Fojiao? He obviously knows how much danger he personally is in if Wen Chao's men catch him helping Wei Wuxian this way, but does he know that if his sister sets even one more toe out of line, he'll be brutally murdered and turned into a puppet? Well, he does know that Wen Chao brought her back to Nightless City and she got in trouble with Wen Ruohan, so I suppose he knows enough.
That really does sound like he's saying "Wen-shushu" there, but he used "Wen-bobo" earlier, so...maybe he's actually saying "Wen-zongzhu" and I'm just not good enough at telling the difference? Though it would be weird to refer to his own clan leader with the name attached like that, but maybe that's because he's talking to someone from another clan? There's so much I don't 100% grasp yet about the nuances of the culture and the setting, so when compounded with a language so different from the ones I'm used to, there's a lot I'm struggling with here.
...pfft. Hellfire Hall. I...I just can't... 🤣
While the giant dog was nutty, this scene between Wen Ning and Wei Wuxian is really good. It's Wen Ning getting to show what a wonderful sweetie he is, and Wei Wuxian showing his mature side before repeated tragedies force it to the fore. Despite the danger he's in, he's genuinely worried about Wen Ning and Wen Qing, and blames himself for their plight (which is neither totally right nor totally wrong), and is also frustrated that Wen Qing has tried to take on too much by herself, thus putting herself (and her brother) into unnecessary danger. It's why he works so well as a character; if he was actually a gremlin all the time (as certain other characters accuse him of being) then the story would fall apart, burdened down by the weight of its lead.
Medical note: the bottle contains pills, not a liquid like most Western media would have. Seems like he swallows them whole, rather than chewing them.
Though Wen Ning is already calling him "Wei-gongzi" in this scene (and in talking about him in the earlier scene with Wen Qing), Wei Wuxian here addresses Wen Ning as "Wen-xiong," as if they're equals. When really it ought to be the other way around; Wei Wuxian should be using "Wen-gongzi" and Wen Ning should be using "Wei-xiong" or even just his name, since Wei Wuxian is of considerably lower station than Wen Ning. But that's part of what defines their relationship, I suppose.
After Wei Wuxian thanks Wen Ning for his help, Wen Ning replies that he doesn't need to be thanked. He goes on, saying "I feel terribly sorry for the things they have done, especially for what happened to Cloud Recesses."
Unlike in the novel, where Wei Wuxian hears the specifics of what happened at Cloud Recesses from a random fellow hostage, here Wen Ning is telling him, wracked with guilt. And he says that Wen Xu "burned down half of Cloud Recesses." So I may have gone overboard with the descriptions of the ruination in my fic. That's fine, I can lighten that easily enough.
.... 😖 According to this scene "Because the last shard of the Yin Iron was nowhere to be found, Lan-er-gongzi was brutally beaten and his leg was broken by Wen Xu."
But...um...we saw that happen. We saw Lan Wangji hand over the shard of Yin Iron that Lan Yi had been guarding for all those years, and we saw Wen Xu order his men to break Lan Wangji's leg out of contempt for...well, everything about Lan Wangji, really. It's certainly not about the lack of Yin Iron, because the piece of Yin Iron he was expecting to find is literally right there on the ground in front of Lan Wangji after his leg is broken. The camera zooms in on it and everything.
I feel like they accidentally filmed some episodes using outdated scripts or something. Maybe it's a translation problem? I hope? I don't know. It's awkward as heck, though. Though "awkward" kind of sums up everything about the Yin Iron, really. But it's such a big part of the episodes prior to my AU point that I had no choice but to include it!
Okay, I think this merits being added to the Things They Added to Highlight the Romance They Weren't Allowed to Mention tally:
11) Despite that he's bleeding terribly after being mauled by a giant dog, Wei Wuxian decides not to use the external medicine Wen Ning provided to stop the bleeding, because he wants to save it for Lan Wangji. (Who was not bleeding in the slightest when last we saw him.)
Hmm. Actually, Wen Ning seems to use "jie" the most, rather than "a-jie" or "jiejie." None of my sources mentioned that being a thing. Maybe he's saying the "a-" part too quietly for me to hear? Gnh.
Heh. When I first watched this show and saw them dragging Nie Huaisang away after he fainted (assuming he fainted and isn't just faking it) I was genuinely afraid that the Wen Clan was going to kill him. Like, I was really upset by that. Little did I know! 🤣 (I would still be deeply upset if anything happened to him, of course. I am extremely fond of the kitten who hides his claws. Despite what he did to all those innocent cats in the story's present.)
I love the fact that when Wen Chao tells the soldier he'll go to Mount Muxi personally to deal with the "evil monster" there, the soldier is just like "uh, no, let's tell your father, please, 'cause I don't wanna be flayed alive when you end up dead." And then Wen Chao 100% literally calls the hostages "human shields." The actual words in the subtitles. Admittedly, the hostages are too far away to hear him, but Wen Qing is standing right there hearing every word. She turns to look at him as he says it, but she's out of focus, so we can't see the undoubtedly horrified look on her face.
Ugh. Everyone else--including Wen Qing--is on foot as they're on the way to Mount Muxi, and there's Wen Chao riding along on a horse that a soldier is leading, with Wang Lingjiao sitting on the horse in front of him. Disgusting. (And the on-screen text identifying her is sadly lacking in details; rather than identifying her as part of the Wen Clan (I mean, duh!) it should identify her as "Wen Chao's mistress, former maidservant to his wife." That's kinda the more important part, ya know?)
Lol, I'd forgotten this. After Jiang Cheng expresses his disgust at Wen Chao's behavior, Wei Wuxian quotes (what he says is) a saying to him: "A whore with a troll is an everlasting couple." He's right; that's very fitting. 🤣
And then the episode ends after Wei Wuxian offers to carry Lan Wangji to relieve the stress on his broken leg.
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