Incoherent ramblings and spoilers follow the read more tag. Posted publicly just because it's easier for me to find my notes again this way.
It's astonishing to me how badly I recalled some of this stuff after my previous rewatch. I thought Wen Ruohan was Force-strangling Wei Wuxian during this confrontation, like he had been to Xue Yang earlier. Nope, he yanked Wei Wuxian through the air across a pretty wide distance to actually have his throat in his hand. Not that there's a huge difference there, tbh.
The Yin Tiger Tally is already in two pieces here on its first use--unlike in the novel, where it's not split until after Wei Wuxian first uses it and realizes that it's way too powerful, since it wiped out swathes of his allies as well as the enemy, so he split it in two to prevent it from ever being used accidentally (and probably didn't actually name it until after that happened, given what a regular tiger tally is)--and the only thing it's being shown to do is control and then disable puppets created with the Yin Iron.
😰
And other people would want this, why, exactly?
*sigh*
Anyway, I like that Lan Wangji was already flying up there to rescue Wei Wuxian when Meng Yao suddenly stabs Wen Ruohan, so the only thing for Lan Wangji to do is to catch Wei Wuxian as he's falling. Although, tbh, I would have liked to see what would have happened if Lan Wangji had fought Wen Ruohan. They're both so massively OP.
Wow. In the aftermath of all this, Jin Zixuan comes running into shot, and there's actually blood on his clothes! Not his own blood, of course, but the fact that he got mussed even a little proves how intense the battle must have been. (Lan Wangji, of course, is still spotless. 😅)
Oh boy.
This is gonna be one of those episodes in terms of subtitles, isn't it? Following the cries of "We won!" from the Jin Clan peons (wouldn't "Victory!" have been better? "we won" sounds like it's talking about a game, not a war), we go back into the throne room of Scorching Sun Palace, and Lan Xichen is cradling Nie Mingjue's head on his lap as he kneels on the ground, with Meng Yao on one knee beside them, holding Baxia and watching...and the subtitles have them addressing each other by their full names. Earlier episodes kept Nie Mingjue's "Xichen" as Xichen, while only moderately modifying Lan Xichen's "Mingjue-xiong" to Mingjue, but here, in this dire fearful-for-my-friend's-life situation, they have them using full names in the subtitles. 😰 Not just inaccurate, but tone-deaf as well.
...
....and Nie Mingjue's dialog to Meng Yao just referenced something that was omitted from the drama. In the previous episode, the confrontation was limited to Wen Ruohan, Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao. The part where Meng Yao killed all of Nie Mingjue's men who were captured along with him was not filmed. But Nie Mingjue just referenced it. 😰 Or maybe it was filmed and they just cut it for time...? I hope...?
Okay, wherever I read that, it was correct: Lan Xichen is already calling Meng Yao "a-Yao" here. Wow. Just how much happened between them when he sheltered the fleeing Lan Xichen?
Well, the dialog here confirms a sequence of events more like what was in the novel (aside from changing the timing of Meng Yao saving the fleeing Lan Xichen) and does not imply what was implied in the previous episode, that Meng Yao and Lan Xichen had already discussed him going to the Wen Clan as a spy. I think. Gnh. It's so hard to get a read on minor implications when the dialog is not only badly translated, but inconsistently badly translated! If the subtitles at least read like they were all translated by the same person with the same knowledge of the language and the story, then I'd have a better idea of how to handle them.
*sigh*
I think there's a reason most people don't write massive, in-depth fanfics using CQL canon beyond the fact that the novel is better...
Also, I'm quite sure the show likes to use the original dialog from the novel in big scenes, even in times like this when it conflicts with what's gone before. Because I feel like a lot of Lan Xichen's big speech here is straight out of the novel, as there are a lot of points that line of up with novel canon instead of CQL canon...
...though the way Meng Yao kneels down at the end of the scene, like he's willing to accept it if Nie Mingjue still plans to kill him, that's a good touch. (Who knows if they intended him to actually mean that offer of being willing to accept death, but it's good, dramatically.)
It's not a good time to skip three days, however, and that's what happens.
And given how clunky the subtitles in this episode are being about names, I'm honestly surprised they kept "Lan Zhan" as Lan Zhan and didn't change it to Lan Wangji. 😅 I'm not clear why Wei Wuxian slept for three days, though. Are we supposed to take that as being due to having unleashed the Yin Tiger Tally? Because three days of unconsciousness does not seem normal after partial strangulation.
Ah, okay, it was because of the Yin Tiger Tally. Well, that's okay, then.
I really want to know what the gesture means when Wei Wuxian puts a finger on the side of his nose and sort of flicks it forward a few times. It definitely means something, but the context isn't such that its meaning is apparent, and I have no idea how to find out what it means.
...they're just standing there discussing things, obviously in a very nice house in the finer district of Nightless City, and suddenly they can hear noise from outside as men are chasing fleeing people--most of whom are screaming things like "don't kill me!" in women's voices--to kill them, and neither of them much seems to care. Lan Wangji describes it as the others pursuing the Wen Clan's remaining "evil." Yikes. And Wei Wuxian doesn't even stick to the topic, instead asking where the three pieces of the Yin Iron are. And Lan Wangji's answer?
"Destroyed."
That's it. Just one word: "Destroyed."
In episode seven, Lan Yi says that "The Yin Iron is the spirit of heaven and earth which can't be eradicated." But here we are in episode 23, and it's been "Destroyed" just like that. 😰
Maybe this is just a translation issue? Looking at the transcript I made of Lan Yi's scenes in episodes 6 and 7, they're not well translated episodes, either. (Okay, technically, there are no well translated episodes, but some are better than others, and those are showing pretty iffy grammar, which is a good reason to suspect that the actual sense of the lines may also be off.)
*sigh*
At least I tried to make up some concrete rules regarding just what can be done about the Yin Iron, and then stuck to them.
Huh. We're in the audience hall/throne room/whatever, and the...lava pit or whatever it is in the center is no longer filled with lava or whatever. But it really didn't look like ordinary fire!
See? That doesn't look like flames. That looks like lava. But now there's nothing there?
That doesn't make any sense!
Argh!
Why is everything conspiring to make it even harder to fix my fic than it already is? 😭
Maybe I should ask around in a few Discord servers I'm in to see if there's anyone with a lot of MDZS knowledge that I can talk to about this, see if they can help me decide how to handle some of this...
Anyway. First mention of Qiongqi Path specifically. Coming from Jin Guangyao, who seems to have embraced full-on evil mode as soon as he got his new name. 😰 His lines are: "The Wen Clan has a place called Qiongqi Way. It's a secluded ancient road in a valley, which is easy to defend and difficult to attack."
In the novel, Qiongqi Path (which the Jin Clan tried unsuccessfully to rename) is the primary road from the Yiling/Yunmeng area to the Lanling area. Now, I'm pretty sure part of it was indeed in a deep valley (hence good for an ambush), but...secluded? I mean, I guess it's secluded in the sense of parts of it being distant from major cities, but...
The problem, of course, is that since the translation is so questionable, I have no idea how much of that represents a change from what Qiongqi Path was in the novel and how much of it is just, you know, crap translation. And again, I have no idea of any way to ask anyone. I mean, there are experts on AO3 who speak Chinese and have informational works that people can ask questions on (and goodness knows I've already done so in the past) but I'd hate to ask them to watch huge chunks of the show just to tell me how much it's deviating from novel canon. Even if they'd actually do it, I wouldn't have the nerve to ask them to do so.
I mean, I guess I can just put an author's note on the first chapter saying that I've taken liberties of shifting things more like the novel in places, since in some cases it's unclear if it's actually supposed to be different, or if it's just the awful translation that makes it sound different....
Hmm.
In the conversation between Lan Xichen and Meng Jin Guangyao after Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangshan leave, Jin Guangyao says that he spent "so many years" following Nie Mingjue. I wonder just how young he was supposed to be in the show's canon when he first tried to go to Lanling? I'm pretty sure there's a flashback just using the same actor, but...if it followed novel canon and he was fifteen, and then I went with my own alteration to ages and had him and Jin Zixuan be twenty at the time of the Cloud Recesses study arc, then...yeah, that'd be a pretty good number of years. Maybe I'll take that line as tacit permission to make them a bit older than the others who should be the same age they are.
Oh, also as a note to myself, in the dialog in this scene, when Lan Xichen said that surely even the women and children of the Wen Clan, as well as cultivationless civilians, were not also evil, even Nie Mingjue agreed with him that the defenseless civilians did not need to be killed. (Though they both walked their position back a bit after Jin Guangshan vomited out some heartless nonsense at them.) A reminder of what's in this drama-exclusive scene, so I can compare it to their positions later on...
Okay, so according to this dialog, the music Lan Wangji was playing for Wei Wuxian earlier is called "Absterge." (Another particularly obscure word that's being thrown into the translation, making it feel particularly out of place.) Presumably this is the same as what is translated as "Cleansing" in the novel. (I'll have to see if that's what's mentioned in the present, when they're talking about Nie Mingjue's murder.)
Huh. That conversation does seem to say that the sword is absolutely made of a piece of the Yin Iron, despite that the sword contains more metal than the entire original Yin Iron in the flashbacks to Xue Chonghai. I...what? Why? How? Why? 😖 (Also, what happened to the excess when Wei Wuxian forged the Yin Tiger Tally? The sword contained a lot more metal than that. (Though that's a question for the book as well, lol.))
I'm just glad that doesn't actually affect my fic much, what with Wei Wuxian following an entirely different path forward.
They're standing on a precipice on the highest tier of Nightless City (the same one Wei Wuxian eventually throws himself off, I'm pretty sure) and somehow they hear the screaming and pleas for mercy of a crowd of Wens (including, women, children and men chained at the wrists) who are being chased through a forest somewhere well outside the city, being shot down by Jins with bows.
They apparently have hearing that would make Superman jealous. 😰
Also, it is astonishing that they managed to make the Jin Clan treat the Wen Clan survivors even more horribly than they did in the novel.
And Jin Zixun personally taking aim at the last fleeing survivor, a woman carrying a small child. Ugh. I hate that guy so much.
....this translation, man.
"Resquiescat."
Um.
Okay, so technically, it's not impossible for them to be aware of Latin. The Silk Road that connected China to the merchants of the Roman Empire was long before this time, and there was actually a Roman legion that went missing that may have ended up in China. But the Western Roman Empire had already fallen by the time this show's material culture draws from (or was about to fall, depending on which end of the period you're talking about), and the Eastern Roman Empire used Greek. Also, despite the exchange of goods, there would have been literally no reason for anyone other than a few merchants to learn the language of the people on the far end of the trade route. Well, merchants and maybe a few scholars whose primary interest is in cataloging foreign lands and matters associated with same. Young masters from families who basically run local territories like lords? Absolutely would not learn Latin.
Therefore, using Latin to make it sound more fancy or whatever they were thinking, is absolutely stupid.
And, actually, trying to make it sound more erudite is actually pretty counter to Daoism, if I'm understanding it correctly. (Which I may not be.)
Obviously, in my fic I'm following the official translation of the novel and using "Rest," but...I just had to vent about the absurdity of using the Latin "Resquiescat."
I get basically why they changed the timing of the sworn brothers oath between the Three Zun, but...did they actually change the language of it to remove all the violent intent towards he who breaks the oath, or did the translators just decide to ignore it? I feel like there wasn't even time in what was said for the full violence of it. 😰 Then again, in this version, Jin Guangyao didn't dismember the deceased Nie Mingjue, just had Xue Yang decaptitate him, so...the violent imagery wasn't as necessary, I suppose? And yet, unless they just wanted to make Jin Guangyao's eventual hatred of Nie Mingjue that much more unreasonable, it still needs to be there? After all, part of what turns Jin Guangyao into what he is by the end is all the hatred he receives on all sides, and the fact that he's so hated and distrusted by someone who swore to treat him as a brother is a big part of that. (In Nie Mingjue's defense, in the novel Jin Guangyao had stabbed him, rather than taking a sword blow in his place, so he had a lot more reason to hate and distrust the little weasel.)
Ah, this is why I had it in my head that Jin Guangshan used "Fengmian-xiong," because he uses it here, talking to Jiang Cheng as the Jiang Clan arrives at the banquet. (The Lotus Pier trio are all wearing white bands tied around their waists to indicate that they're still in mourning. I should remember that and use it somewhere.) The subtitles also did the insane thing of saying he said "Fengmian Jiang" instead of getting the order right. Even though at no other time (that I recall) do the subtitles ever mistakenly put the given name before the family name.
It seems like speaking of oneself in the third person by name is an aspect of formal speech; I've noticed it several times now throughout the drama, and I spotted it being used even in the translation in at least one place in Thousand Autumns. I don't get the rules for it enough to dare try to use it, though; I'll just have to consider it to have been "translated" along with the rest of the dialog in my fic. 😅 Anyway, in this case, Jiang Cheng just referred to himself in the third person as Jiang Cheng. Not as Jiang Wanyin or just Wanyin, but as Jiang Cheng.
I...I swear, I'm not sure if the drama ever uses his courtesy name at all, beyond writing it on the screen on his first appearance. I'm going to have to pay close attention from here on out on that score.
But if that's the case, if the drama basically just discarded his courtesy name altogether...does that mean I have to stop using it in the fic? I really don't want to have all and sundry just calling him by his birth name all the time...especially not when most people use Wei Wuxian's courtesy name correctly! I mean, I know it's one of the points of their characters that no one respects Jiang Cheng and everyone always instinctively puts him beneath Wei Wuxian, but that's taking it a step too far, surely! Poor Jiang Cheng, never getting any respect despite how hard he's always working. 😭
Wait. Jin Guangshan just made it sound like he didn't see Jiang Fengmian again after the scene in Cloud Recesses, but it was to Lanling that Jiang Fengmian took Yao-zongzhu in whichever episode that was. Wouldn't Jin Guangshan have seen him then? WTF?
I want to reach into the computer screen and smack the subtitles until they relent and rearrange themselves into something less garbage.
Upon Nie Mingjue's arrival to the banquet, Jin Guangyao addresses him as "Chifeng-zun." That's translated as "Red Blade Master," which is what it means according to the official translation of the book, so that's fine. (Though it's weird that the subtitles consistently translate Chifeng-zun while leaving Zewu-jun, Hanguang-jun and Lianfang-zun alone. (Aside from removing the dash and making Zun and Jun into their own word.)) Then Lan Xichen warmly chides him that as they are now sworn brothers, he should use "da-ge" instead.
The, um, the subtitles don't say that.
First, they say "sworn allies" instead of "sworn brothers."
And then they have him tell Jin Guangyao to use "Clan Leader Nie."
You know, the thing he used when he was Nie Mingjue's subordinate. The thing that Jin Guangshan just used moments earlier. The thing lots of people use.
Instead of "da-ge," "big brother!"
Gnnnarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
The fact that some episodes are translated that badly I understand and accept, albeit grudgingly.
The fact that they had to do something that asinine in this particular case, in lines where names and titles are so freaking crucial to the dialog....! That I will never accept, not even grudgingly.
This show so needs a proper translation.
Oh, it's not just the Lotus Pier trio; all of the Jiang Clan people are wearing the white waistbands. Even though all the others were recruited after the fall of Lotus Pier. 😅 Symbolic, I guess.
Huh. I wonder what was the point of that dialog about Jin Guangyao's soft sword? About him finding it sinister and throwing it away? Are we supposed to be surprised when he still has it in the present, is that it? (I mean, he does still have it in the present, surely! It's his primary weapon in the novel...)
Hmm. There's a couple of shots during the banquet where we see Nie Huaisang looking over at Jin Guangyao, but his expression is hard to read. Possibly worried about things going badly with him seated so close to Nie Mingjue. But it makes me wonder if I have any scenes at all where Nie Huaisang asks after Meng Yao's fate following the end of the Sunshot Campaign. I feel like I don't have any, and that's actually kind of out of character for him, since he seemed so attached to Meng Yao in the earlier, invented-for-the-drama scenes. I should see if I can find a place to add in at least a mention of the subject, if not a full scene.
And the episode ends in the middle of Jin Guangshan trying to reinstate the engagement between Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan in such a way that it will force Jiang Cheng to seem subordinate to him. Despite how much of everything in between my AU point and this moment I completely rejected, I still borrowed this moment to the extent of quoting a lot of the subtitles (which changes to how names are used, and fixing up some grammar issues, and removing the weird reference to angels) because it fit so neatly with where I wanted to go with Jin Guangshan's character.
I even still had Wei Wuxian walk in on the proceedings at exactly the same moment and make a bit of a ruckus, but I did it in a way that I felt was a little more natural. Also in a way that didn't have him stepping all over Jiang Cheng's right to speak for himself. 😅
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