As always, random and incoherent spoilers follow the read more tag.
So, we dive right into the Empathy session with this episode.
And when we get to the flashback to Nie Mingjue witnessing Meng Yao killing that asshole, afterwards, in the argument between them, we get more dialog than we did at the time, including a line that Meng Yao specifically picked up and used a Wen Clan sword. Despite that we see him using a saber. Does that mean some of the Wens use sabers? I mean, the puppets--particularly the urukhai-looking ones--use sabers, so I guess it does?
Huh.
I may need to make sure to work that detail into my fic. (I mean, I guess it's not totally unsupported by the novel, considering the prompt that led to Wen Ruohan delivering an ultimately fatal insult to Nie Mingjue's father was that someone had gifted him a fine saber.) But it's clearly not all of the Wens who use sabers, because we see Wen Qing's sword, and it's a sword, not a saber. I think we must have seen Wen Ning's sword at some point (like during the Cloud Recesses study arc) as well, but I didn't take note of it. But again, it would have been a sword, not a saber. Oh, wait, we did get a clear look at it at one point: it's the sword Wei Wuxian drew when he was afraid Wen Qing was going to turn them in soon after their arrival in Yiling, and it was most definitely not a saber. Wen Zhuliu was definitely using a sword, too, but then again he would have learned cultivation in the Zhao Clan, so that's a different issue entirely.
Maybe it's a regional thing? Like the Wens from areas closer to Qinghe use sabers, and the ones from closer to Nightless City use swords? Hmm.
I kinda feel like the prop department and the dialog department were not in sync on that scene, and so the wrong weapon prop was used. 😰 I suppose I should go back to some of the Sunshot Campaign episodes and have another look at the combat scenes, but we get so few images of the Wen Clan actually fighting. Hmm. No, actually, there's the battle in Lotus Pier and the shot that's in the freaking credits of a bunch of Wens aiming their swords at the bodies of Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan, and they're definitely swords, not sabers.
😖
I guess I'll just have to figure that out later on. Or just ignore that it was a saber prop and leave the dialog I already have about him using a Wen Clan sword. (Or maybe split the difference and change it to "Wen Clan blade" so that it works whether it's a sword or a saber. That could work.)
Okay, so I mentioned earlier that there was dialog referring to Meng Yao killing Nie Clan men in the Scorching Sun Palace but they hadn't shown it. Now they show it. Which makes sense, I guess; they don't want to show the same scenes twice, and they didn't want to tip off the audience too soon to the fact that Meng Yao is the actual villain of the story. (Those of the audience who hadn't read the novel yet, that is. Obviously.) Naturally, this problem wasn't a problem in the novel, since we only get these scenes during the Empathy session at all; the novel was almost always glued to Wei Wuxian's side, so we saw almost nothing that he didn't see.
This was also the scene that implied that Meng Yao was already working with Xue Yang (and possibly had freed him?) before the Wen Clan attack. But it didn't fully specify that he had. We saw him talking to someone who was hidden around a corner and what little of the other man we saw--a bit of robes and a boot--was black-clothed, but that doesn't mean much. We also saw that he didn't want to admit to his tormentor who he had been talking to, but again that means very little.
In my fic, I went with the assumption that he wasn't the one who freed Xue Yang (indeed, I assumed Xue Yang simply freed himself, possibly using the piece of Yin Iron he had concealed somewhere somehow), but if he did, then I may be a little bit screwed. 😰 And yet, I feel like the show never went further than this in suggesting he was working with Xue Yang already at that time. I certainly hope it didn't, anyway... 😰
Oh, wow, there's actually a reference to the ultimately fatal insult that led directly to the death of Nie Mingjue's father. And wow that reference must have confused the everloving smeg out of me when I first watched this! 😅
The piece is now being called the "Song of Clarity." I am already feeling fuzzy enough on details. I can't remember if "Cleansing" was the song being played for Nie Mingjue (and modified to be lethal) or if it was something else. 😭 My need to reread the novel has apparently become critical. (The fact that they use the same piece of music in multiple scenarios where it may or may not be the same piece of music in-world is not helping, ofc.)
Pfft. The modified part is painfully obvious. Like, stupidly painfully obvious. It's even got a different level of reverb on top of having switched to a minor key and a radically different melody.
And by the conclusion of this episode, I am fully reminded of just how hateful the drama made Jin Guangyao, and am suddenly feeling conflicted about my decision to make him not evil in my fic. 😰 (Though, really, I mostly did so in order to have the fic go in a different direction than the original story. Because if he followed his canonical "being accepted by his father and going full evil" path, then the fic's story would just be the canonical story only without as many tragedies since Wei Wuxian hadn't started practicing demonic cultivation and the Wen remnants had already been saved through other methods (largely that the ones we actually know the names of were already accepted into the Jiang Clan during the war). But by preventing Meng Yao from ever becoming Jin Guangyao, then I was free to have the story go in a different direction, and also to have the villain be Jin Guangshan for a change.) My version is more true to the book, so I'm trying not give in to that conflicted feeling, but...dang, did they work hard to make him unrelentingly evil! And the type of evil that really relishes his own evil, too. Like he's seriously enjoying being so nasty. In a different way than Xue Yang, but... (At least in Xue Yang's case, it's straight out of the novel that he delights in his own cruel ways.)
Hrmmmm...
I feel like the drama really did intend it to be that Meng Yao released Xue Yang. If that's the case, I may need to change around the interrogation scene so that he actually did do so. In which case, I'll need to make up a reason for him to have done so that wouldn't promptly lead everyone to be like "off with his head!" Admittedly, he doesn't play a particularly large role in the rest of the story, but I still don't want to just summarily off such a major character. Besides, I really liked the mental gymnastics Lan Xichen goes through in thinking about his own feelings for Meng Yao, and don't want to lose them. 😅 That's probably the bigger part, actually. No, not probably. Definitely.
Spare Meng Yao for his own sake? Nah.
Spare him for Lan Xichen's sake? Heck, yeah. Lan Xichen gets a whole lot of misery he doesn't deserve in canon, so it's only natural to want him to be happy in fanfic.
Hmm. I had been toying, at the time I was first writing this, with saying that the Nie that Meng Yao had murdered was a Wen Clan mole. What if he wasn't, but someone else was, and it was because of that mole that Meng Yao had released Xue Yang? Like, maybe that mole had been courting Meng Yao to also become a Wen Clan spy--and maybe it was through that mole that he had previously met Xue Yang before the events in Yueyang--and since the mole had already told him that Wen Chao was on his way to retrieve Xue Yang, Meng Yao chose to release him not so much for his sake but to protect the Nie Clan? Like, he wanted Xue Yang to escape and rendezvous with Wen Chao and thus prevent the attack, but Xue Yang didn't cooperate (big surprise!) and so the attack still went off. Yeah, that might work. Even if the show doesn't go any further than this in implying that Meng Yao was the one who released Xue Yang, I may do that anyway, just to feel a little more in sync with the drama's version of events.
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