Before starting, I went back to the earlier episode, when Jiang Cheng is first captured, and I checked, and the person Wei Wuxian tells Jiang Yanli to shelter with is referred to as "Liu-popo" so...probably my earlier conclusions about her were right? I guess? I dunno.
Anyway, rambling and incoherent notes filled with spoilers follow the read more tag. Also, given the contents of this particular episode, there is some very triggering content being discussed, so proceed with extreme caution.
Okay, so.
Gnh.
This location, labeled with a big sign as the Supervisory Office, is absolutely not the same place where Wen Qing was treating Jiang Cheng's wounds. This is a fortress, that was a private residential compound.
So....maybe the subtitles were wrong, and although Wen Qing was assigned to lead the Yiling Supervisory Office, she also just plain had a house in Yiling and that's where they were staying, and the subtitles just didn't bother making that clear? That would explain why she was absent for large gaps of time--and why she didn't examine Jiang Cheng's wounds until hours after his arrival--but it makes for a larger author's note I'll have to leave. Also will complicate some of the scenes in my fic that take place in Yiling later on, but...oh well.
The look on Jiang Cheng's face when he's told a woman hanged herself inside! The pain in his expression: he's afraid it's Wen Qing.
I feel like the conversation about the reversed talismans almost feels pointless in that in the drama's version, Wei Wuxian is sending illusions to hound them into suicide, rather than sending actual ghosts after them.
Anyway, one thing of note where my fic is concerned is that the Jiang Clan man who comes to inform Jiang Cheng that they found a survivor in the dungeon does address him as "zongzhu." So that's something I got right, anyway. 😅
Despite her Wen Clan robes, it doesn't make sense that they're being abusive towards Wen Qing here, considering they found her in the dungeon and that she is literally in chains. You would think their policy would be "the enemies of our enemies are our friends."
Oh, god, this scene between Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing is so painful to watch. Jiang Cheng wants so badly to ask her to leave her clan for him and yet he can't bring himself to say that last, most important part, the part where he loves her, so it comes out sad and halting. But this is also one of those scenes where it's frustrating that the changes made for the earlier part of the show aren't allowed to play out as they logically should. Because really in this situation? It would make more sense for Wen Qing to say she would agree to leave the Wen Clan and join another clan if Jiang Cheng will rescue Wen Ning from Qishan. And considering he and Lan Wangji already went in there without their swords to pull off a daring raid, would it really be outside his abilities to rescue her brother? I mean, maybe it would be, but he'd never acknowledge that fact.
Another option would be that he could take her "prisoner" and let word spread that she was "captured" so that the Wen Clan won't punish Wen Ning for her defection, but she wouldn't just walk right back in there to meet her eventual tragic fate.
Short version: don't do this to me, drama! Don't make things even more tragic than they already were! (Not unless you plan on giving me a sequel series where Wei Wuxian travels in time to prevent all the tragedies!)
He was carrying it with him all this time! 😭
Hmm, this may qualify as a Cultivator Power:
16) When Wei Wuxian starts playing Chenqing to attack Wen Zhuliu and Wen Chao, Lan Wangji gathers power in two of his fingers, and then aims it at the hole in the roof through which he and Jiang Cheng are watching the scene below. This creates a thin film of light blue energy in that hole, which is presumably a shield against the dark magic? It's not explained, but that's all I can think on seeing it.
I love the fact that Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng are just watching the chaos uncertainly until Wen Zhuliu gets rid of the ghost(?) woman and starts launching an attack on Wei Wuxian. Then they're both bursting down through the ceiling to protect him. 💕
This reunion gets to me every time. After trying to sound angry at him for being gone so long, Jiang Cheng can't keep up the act and just hugs Wei Wuxian, clearly fighting not to cry. And Wei Wuxian is in such a bad state inside that he barely knows how to react, and by the time he's halfway trying to hug back, the hug is over. 😭 It's the moments like this and the beautiful performances that ensure I truly love this show despite the periodically dumb things that happen that shouldn't.
Lan Wangji watching the hug is great, too; he's clearly hurt that he's not the one getting to hug Wei Wuxian, but he's not actually jealous, because he knows this is brotherly not romantic. And he knows it's not his place to intrude.
Aaaaaaand already we're back to "wait, what?" territory, as Jiang Cheng says they agreed to meet "in the town at the foot of the hill" and that he waited "for five days" when in the previous episode he says they agreed to meet at a teahouse in Yiling, and implied that he waited for three months. 😅 This is one of those cases where I feel like they're using the actual dialog from the novel, without worrying about the fact that it contradicts some of their original dialog elsewhere.
But I don't know how much of the "wait, what?"ness of it is actual problems with the script and how much is just wonky translation. As "original dumplings" proved yesterday (guffaw!), there are countless hurdles to jump over in translating from Chinese to English.
Okay, the line here is translated as "Lan-er-gongzi. It's a domestic affair of the Jiang Clan of Yunmeng. Please leave it to us." The language sounds a bit more formal and distant than Wei Wuxian's usual language (or maybe that's just the performance, how would I know?), so maybe he is in fact repeating that line of Lan Wangji's earlier?
Wait, what even was that line? Rats...okay, found it. It was towards the end of the dialog with Lan Yi, when Wei Wuxian offered to help find and seal the Yin Iron, and Lan Wangji (as translated in the subtitles) said "It's a family matter of the Lan Clan. It's none of your business." Which, uh, does not actually sound like his kind of phrasing. So probably this is repeating his line back at him. (Which is in itself odd because I'm pretty sure this line comes from the book. Meaning they added that line with the intention of radically altering the nuance of Wei Wuxian's line at this point.) Maybe they did that to make it seem less implausible that Lan Wangji would simply accept that and walk off, knowing that Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng are about to make the begging and crying Wen Chao meet a horrific death. (I seem to recall that in the novel they actually had to physically eject him from the building before they could torture Wen Chao and Wen Zhuliu to death. (Here Wen Zhuliu was just strangled by Zidian. Which honestly is kind of better? Because as many awful things as Wen Zhuliu did, he wasn't actually an evil person, and derived no pleasure from his actions, he just placed his own sense of duty above everything else, including other peoples' lives. If only he'd been saved by someone from a just clan instead of by Wen Ruohan, he could have been a great hero. (Imagine if he'd been so indebted to Lan Qiren instead!)))
As Lan Wangji is leaving the building, there's a sign that the subtitles say says "Woyue Mianyun." Um. Transliterating a sign does not actually tell us much, guys. We were told earlier that this was some kind of relay station or something, I think?
Actually, it's irrelevant, so I should probably stop typing and get on with it, considering there's only like five minutes left in the episode.
After Lan Wangji walks out and looks pained remembering some of Wei Wuxian's cold words to him inside (and after a scream of anguish from Wen Chao), we go back to the now-empty Lotus Pier, and see Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng bowing in unison in the Jiang Clan's Ancestral Hall. Er, the subtitles call it Ancestral Shrine, but I like Hall better. 😅 Anyway, somehow there are already tablets in place for Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan.
Maybe that means in the drama Lotus Pier isn't currently empty, but that the Jiang siblings have returned there...no, it can't, there's a big reunion scene later in the episode and Jiang Yanli is still at Qinghe. Maybe Wen Ning's men delivered the ashes to some of the locals in Yunmeng and they added the tablets after the Wens left? I mean, there's probably the equivalent of an undertaker, or at least an artisan who makes said tablets, so...
...probably not strictly relevant to my fic, but if I have a better idea what the chronology is supposed to be in the drama, then I can better be sure that my fic lines up with that of it that came before my AU point.
Overall, them going back to Lotus Pier first before going to Qinghe doesn't make much sense--and I'm quite sure the novel specified that the trio first returned there together--but I think they specifically did it so there would be another scene wherein Wei Wuxian is bowing in unison with another man, so that if any censors looked at the scene that's actually from the novel--when he and Lan Wangji are bowing together--the production team could point out the earlier scene to prove that it doesn't mean anything "inappropriate." Even though the one in the novel is specifically intended as two of their three wedding bows. (Despite that neither has yet confessed to the other, lol!)
Okay, actually the big reunion scene is pretty understated. He's crying, she isn't. Hmm. Maybe there's more of it in the next episode. They hadn't really gone much past addressing each other, after all. (Though she called him "Xianxian" this time instead of "a-Xian.")
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