Frustratingly, I keep thinking of things I should have said in earlier posts, but I only think of them at times when I can't immediately write them down--in the bath, for example 😅--and then by the time I'm sitting down the next day to take notes on the next episode, I've forgotten them again. 😰 I think one of them was to make a few general observations:
One, that the show likes to imply magical abilities it doesn't show. Rather than showing a lot of scenes of people flying on their swords (which does look kinda silly, tbh), they show their feet landing on the ground after they've hopped off their flying sword, and so the flying is merely implied. Or like in the Mount Baifeng section, all we see is Lan Wangji's sword blocking a blow from Jin Zixuan's sword (which I feel like it wasn't Jin Zixuan who actually attacked him in the novel, but Jin Zixun? or am I crazy?) but later on we hear dialog about people seeing the sword glare flying off into the sky; there was no on-screen effect for the sword glare, but since it was mentioned in the novel we're just supposed to assume it was there. I think this is mostly a budgetary thing, since whatever their budget was, it would still have needed to be much higher if they had shown the effects in all those cases.
Two, that they like to draw so closely on the novel in important scenes that they don't mind contradicting what's been present in the show as a whole. Sometimes this could be due to the translation screwing up details, but sometimes not. Wen Ning's speech is a case in point here: he definitely doesn't stammer in this version, though his dialog is haltingly and hesitatingly delivered, and yet when Wei Wuxian is confronting Jin Zixun to find out where he took Wen Ning, he specifically mentions Wen Ning's stutter. So...yeah. Actually, maybe I basically mentioned these things already, just not in such a concrete fashion?
I don't know. The problem with forgetting things is that you forget them.
(OMG, what does that even mean? Am I even conscious enough to do this right now?)
Uh.
Anyway.
Rambling incoherence (and perhaps more incoherent than usual today?) and spoilers follow.
Awwwwwwww! Wei Wuxian is getting angry about how Jin Zixuan doesn't deserve Jiang Yanli, and he clanks his wine bottle down on the table, and so a-Yuan reaches over to takes his hand comfortingly. That child really is a true treasure. 😊 (I'm glad that he, at least, gets to grow up into a perfect young gentleman and safely reaches his happy ending!)
Hmm. The situation at the Burial Mounds is starting out very differently from what I remember in the novel and why am I writing this down when this is so exceptionally far from anything that happens in my fic? Ugh, too many notes on the wrong subjects...
Huh. One of the other remnants just called her "Wen-guniang." Does that mean only the ones who are from Fojiao (or rather from Dafan, since I never actually noticed them using the name Fojiao in the show) call her "Qing-guniang" and everyone else is more distant?
...if that is the case, then...I guess I only need to have them call her "Qing-guniang" since the ones who join the Jiang Clan with her are all from Fojiao?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is....
So...that was Wen Ning watching him go down the mountain?
...that...uh...
...doesn't that invalidate their own chronology?
I mean, if Wen Ning didn't go down until after Jiang Cheng did, then how was he already beaten up on Wen Qing's return to Yiling? If she was the one who accompanied Wei Wuxian down the mountain, then wouldn't she have been the one captured first?
I don't understand it.
Maybe the flashback to the golden core transfer when Wen Ning finally spills the beans will explain it? (Probably not, though...)
This....this could break my fic.
I had Jiang Cheng get down in time to (somewhat unwillingly) intercept the Wen Clan guards who are transferring the battered Wen Ning from Yiling itself (where Wen Chao had been demanding answers from him) to the Yiling Supervisory Office to lock him up. But if that was Wen Ning standing on the mountain watching him go down, then how could he get there first?
Well, maybe he knew a faster route down...? (Or flew part of the way.)
Huh. Maybe that actually makes it work better? Like, it's less of a coincidence that he's being transferred from the one location to the other if they both started their journey down at around the same time?
Hmmmmm....
....well...
Maybe it doesn't even matter? I doubt anyone would expect that heavy a level of compliance with the show's canon. Especially since probably no one will start reading a 500k word fic in the first place.
Okay, Wei Wuxian does mention that there used to be a "talisman wall" around the Burial Mounds, so I guess I'm okay to have such a wall there in my fic. 😅
I think this qualifies as a Cultivator Power:
17) Lan Wangji is playing a song on his guqin that sends out small waves of energy towards the berserk Wen Ning, paralyzing him in place. (Since I have Wei Wuxian develop a dizi technique in the fic that does the same thing, I can specify it as being based on this Lan Clan technique.)
One problem I'm seeing for my fic above and beyond everything else is that the terrain around the Burial Mounds is filled with rocky spires, and the path leading there is very narrow and in places even has stairs. This is a problem because I had them going up to the wall around the Burial Mounds with a cart. 😰 (On account of having heard that Wei Wuxian was thrown in there from a flying sword, so Wen Qing got them a cart rather than just horses, because she assumed all they would be retrieving was his corpse.) Again, I'm not sure how picky readers are likely to be about something like this.
I really need someone I can talk to about all this.
....um....
In this episode, Wei Wuxian says he named the...well, the subtitles are calling it "Demon-Subdue Palace." In an earlier episode, someone was already using that name as the name it had when it was Xue Chonghai's stronghold, before that mountain became the Burial Mounds.
So...which is it, guys? Is this a translation problem, or is this a "we're borrowing novel dialog despite that it contradicts what went before" problem?
I mean, I guess it doesn't matter, since I don't mention the name of the place in my fic, but...
...ack. It gets worse. Now this dialog is saying that it's the same name Xue Chonghai used, but that it means something different when Wei Wuxian uses it. Which it's like...um...
...ugh. I have so many problems with that that I don't even know where to start with them.
And this is all irrelevant to my fic, so I probably shouldn't even try to start.
Okay, so I think that was the remains of the "talisman wall" in that scene, in which case the overgrown graveyard is actually outside the wall....and therefore would show up in my fic. (Though since that's where Wei Wuxian landed, technically it would mean he didn't actually land inside the Burial Mounds? Maybe the wall just cuts through a massive graveyard...?)
They really like putting snowflakes/frost on Lan Wangji's eyebrows for some reason. 😅
I'm not clear on why he's kneeling there holding up rods, though. It's clearly some kind of punishment, but for what? Are we supposed to believe it's just because he visited Wei Wuxian? That's nuts. There's no hint of him getting in trouble for that in the novel. Heck, they wouldn't even know he'd gone there unless he told them so. (Though he certainly would tell them if he thought he'd broken the rules...) It's weird.
Hmm, it does seem to be a punishment, as someone comes out from inside and tells him that permission was given for him to leave now. (The subtitles said "Master Lan," but I'm not able to parse what they actually said. It might have been "xiansheng," indicating that they meant Lan Qiren. That would make the most sense, certainly.) It's still weird, though.
LOL, and now we get scenes of con artists claiming to be Wei Wuxian's disciples so they can sell pathetic crap. 🤣 But we're back to people paying with lumps of "silver" instead of coins (even though the line of dialog said a single "silver coin" was the price). That was the case in the previous episode, as well: before Lan Wangji left the teahouse in a fury, he left a lump of "silver" on the table to pay for the food he hadn't even touched yet before the ill winds blowing behind him left him too angry to eat.
Why do they keep showing people paying with unworked metal instead of with coins?
I don't understand it in the least. Coinage was very firmly established centuries earlier than the eras the production team was drawing on for the visuals in the show, so why have they avoided it in every instance of showing payment other than that one episode?
It's very bizarre...and again I worry that if I'm going to follow up on the show properly in my fic, I need to reflect it, but I cannot even begin to imagine how! (Admittedly, it's not the kind of fic where I spend much time talking about in-person money--the only time I can think of, off-hand, is during the hunt for Xue Yang, when Wei Wuxian has to pay off an innkeeper he accidentally triggered, showing her a portrait of Xue Yang without having any of way knowing that the man had murdered her husband--but it'll be more awkward all around if I have to try and convert any mention of coins into mentions of...I don't even know what I'd call that.)
But I mean look at that! All the random townspeople in the square are paying with lumps of "silver" instead of with coins. How am I supposed to deal with that in my fic? Or do I just ignore it because it's so nonsensical?
LOL, I tried to use Google Translate to see what the con man's banner said. They claimed it says "The Supreme Being, His Good Ancestor." But they also transliterate what they think it says. And the latter part they have as "qi liang xianzu" which I suspect indicates that it actually says "Yiling Laozu" (which would only make sense) and it's possible that the part they think says "zhizun" should say "shizun"...but I don't know if it actually works that way.
Here's the banner, so you can see that it's slightly at an angle, and the slight rumples in the cloth could have messed with what the program read the characters as being. Now, whether or not the characters it mistook them for make other characters that sound similar...I have no idea. I don't know how it works.
Whoa, I just compared the characters it thought it was to the ones actually on the banner, and so many of them are wrong! The first two are right, but all the others aren't. Combination bad angle, rumpled cloth and the camera not entirely liking hand-calligraphy, I suspect.
The banners people had when they showed up to the Burial Mounds in the novel, looking to become Wei Wuxian's disciples, those banners were typically translated as things like "The Supreme Evil, the Yiling Laozu" in the official translation of the novel. (I'm paraphrasing, of course, but they were specifically using the word "evil," I remember that very clearly.) Dunno if that's what this says or not.
It's a great touch that Wei Wuxian goes right past the two arguing con men, and neither of them notices him or has any idea who he is. 🤣 (It is not great that he's lounging on a hand cart that Wen Ning is pushing. It's like c'mon, dude, you're a healthy young man. Walk on your own two feet, don't make your devoted friend carry your weight for you as though he was a servant!)
Anyway...I wonder if there's any larger significance to the locks of loose hair dangling beside their faces? It seems to be something about youth or immaturity, maybe? Wei Wuxian never loses his, but several of the other young men--notably Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng--start out with them but lose them later on. Not sure if there's a deep or social meaning to that.
I don't try to describe people to any real extent, so I suppose it doesn't really matter, but I'm curious...
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