Mmm, more incoherent rambling and spoilers follow the read more tag.
Mostly, I have no comment to make on the conclusion of the Yi City arc, except that because they left "story night" as partial post-Empathy flashback material, we completely lost the role a-Qing (a-Jing, I guess) played in it, which also alters the significance of the daily gift of a piece of candy from Xiao Xingchen: he wasn't just giving one to Xue Yang, but also giving one to her. So in the novel he's not being preferential between them, but in this flashback (which is admittedly Xue Yang's flashback) it looks like Xue Yang is getting preferential treatment.
More frustratingly for me, it also removes Xiao Xingchen's story from the "story night" scene, which was about Baoshan-sanren and her other disciples, including Wei Wuxian's mother. So it would have been useful for further information about Baoshan-sanren and her mountain within the drama's version of the story, but...oh well. I'm going to have to have an author's note at the start of the whole fic saying that I've somewhat blended drama and novel canon anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter too much.
Oh god, the scene with Song Lan beside the coffin with Xiao Xingchen's body in it. That gets me so hard. The way his hand shakes as he's reaching out to the coffin, and the look on Lan Wangji's face that says "I understand your pain as no one else can." It's all so... 😭 Also the look on Lan Wangji's face after Song Lan has left, which is exceptionally complicated, this sort of "I envied your freedom when we were young, but now I feel guilty because I've had the man I love restored to me from death, while you're alone and bereaved." (Oh, actually, the body's not in the coffin anymore? I guess they buried it without telling us or showing the grave?)
....and to fully dispel the mournful mood, the music once again returns to "The Rites of Spring" as Lan Wangji does some kind of unexplained magic thing to expose the headless corpse that was hidden underneath the coffin.
I really want to know what the heck they were thinking by using such a famous piece of classical music for additional scoring.
...
Maybe it's not as well known in China? (Given one of the sequences in the Nutcracker number, I wouldn't be surprised if Fantasia has never been released in China...) Because here, "The Rites of Spring" automatically calls up images of dinosaurs fighting each other, or protozoa floating about, or earthquakes and volcanic upheavals, depending on which part of the piece it is.
Short version: it's very distracting.
Ah! The floating ghostly image of Baxia above the coffin is in a sheath. So I suppose the sabers have sheathes for when they're being carried on the back (well, otherwise the bearer might cut himself!) but they aren't necessarily stored in one. (Also some of the sabers in the saber tomb sequence had impractical curved tips that would make a sheath virtually impossible.)
Hmm. Suddenly we're in Tanzhou again. I guess that means Yi City is near there. But that was...hmm. I feel like they went west from Qinghe to get to Yi City, didn't they? Dang, I don't think I took notes on the direction because I didn't think it would matter.
Oh well.
I'll just have to admit that I abandoned the show's alternate geography in favor of the reality-based geography on the map in the wiki. 'Cause I'd have to fully restructure vast amounts of the story if I had to rework the geography of the fic. (Since I actually cover the whole war, which is more than twice as long as the war in the drama, I needed to have an idea of the layout of where the major cities are in relation to each other and stuff...)
Ah...I remember when I watched this the first time, I think I just about cried at the scene with Lan Sizhui and the toys being sold on the street. Realizing that he was actually a-Yuan all grown up--well, no, I think at the time I didn't dare to do more than hope that was what it meant, but actually looking at it a second time, it's not like they wanted us to have any doubts, what with including a shot of the little flying toy in the air in the Yiling teahouse. 😅 (Then again, they would have expected a large percentage of their viewership to have already read the novel, I'm sure, so there was no need to be too subtle about it.)
LOL, what must those juniors think of seeing their esteemed Hanguang-jun walking down the street carrying a paper lantern decorated with bunnies? 🤣
And another for the tally of Cast Members with Obviously Pierced Ears: Lan Xichen (but only one ear, so it's less obvious, also it's not infected so it doesn't show as clearly)
I don't know why I started noticing this, but I can't stop noticing it now. (I think it was that ripped piercing on one of Wang Yibo's ears, honestly. It's hard not to notice that. It looks super-painful.)
Oh! This is something I'll need for my fic: according to this scene, there's a special "Portal Technique" that one must cultivate before they can use "Portal Talismans." So that's yet another thing I'll have to have the characters confused by when their enemies keep escaping with teleportation talismans (I wonder if I should use "portal" since that's what the Netflix subs use?) because the enemies escaping using them surely wouldn't have studied such a technique. (It's a modified talisman that works differently, y'see.)
Anyway, I'm guessing they mainly added this scene with Lan Xichen because he hadn't had a strong enough presence in the show, and/or because it had been too long since his last appearance.
Which is an entirely irrelevant note so why did I bother with it?
Ugh, my brain.
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