#because novel zzs is self-aware enough to know his crimes are... as bad or worse

[verycharismaticdragon]

forewarning: this post uses critical tone towards a certain scene in Word of Honor (specifically, ep.9’s “... that you’re actually crazy” scene). If you’re not in the mood for reading such thing, please be kind to yourself and scroll past this post. 

Ok, I think I worked out what bothered me the most about “I didn't realize that you’re actually crazy” scene in SHL – I mean, lots of things about it bother me, but I did know they’d bleach out the grey morality for c-nsorship reasons, so I should’ve been ready for some ridiculous righteousness coming from the mouth of mr.childmurder… but, ok, you see, the truly disturbing thing about this scene is how similar it feels to what happened between Zishu and Jiuxiao in the novels.

Novel Zhou Zishu has always shielded his too-honest, too-righteous shidi from the realities of what he does for the Crown Prince. But then Liang Jiuxiao finds out. Finds out that his shixiong, the person he admired deeply, the person he wanted to travel jianghu with, was the one who exterminated the whole family of a loyal official, including a four-year-old child they all knew and played with and loved. Understandably, Jiuxiao freaks out, and confronts Zhou Zishu – going as far as telling him that murderers should pay with their lives… To put it shortly, Liang Jiuxiao sees Zhou Zishu’s true face for the first time, and is horrified by it.

This is almost beat by beat what happened in SHL – Zhou Zishu sees the extent of hatred Wen Kexing (the person he wanted to travel jianghu with) is capable of, and rejects him over it. 

And even the fallout is similar – in the novel, Zhou Zishu internalizes what Jiuxiao said to the point that it largely informs his decision to use the nails; in the show, it is this rejection that leads to Wen Kexing trying to hide his identity as the Valley Master, and to him internalizing the idea that his life is worth less than Zishu’s.

And look, I think the show didn’t mention Jiuxiao confronting Zhou Zishu over the murder of the Jiang family (unless I missed something in conversation?), so maybe it didn’t happen in the show’s canon – but I certainly didn’t know that when watching the scene, so to see Zhou Zishu inflict on Wen Kexing exactly the kind of emotional damage that made novel Zishu want to stab himself full of nails and go die was… disturbing, to put it mildly.

Anyway, if the confrontation between ZZS and LJX didn’t happen, then... Okay, it’s impossible to tell if the similarity between scenes is coincidental or not, but there are a few other beats in show!wenzhou’s relationship that feel pulled out of qi ye (like, drugging your lover so they’d be safe while you go off to do something incredibly dangerous that will almost certainly kill you? not something novel wenzhou ever did or would do, but jing beiyuan sure did just that to wu xi), so I can’t help but feel like this one is too; and if it isn’t coincidental, if the Zishu and Jiuxiao’s story in Qi Ye was taken as inspiration for something between SHL’s wenzhou… that also feels deeply wrong, because the novel reiterates several times that relationship between Zishu and Jiuxiao and Zishu and Kexing are fundamentally different.

...But, of course, show’s wenzhou is also completely different from novel’s wenzhou. I guess in the grand scheme of things this scene might not even be the biggest divergence from their novel interactions, just the first glaringly obvious one, and maybe that’s part of the reason my brain got so caught up on it – either way, writing this helped me work out some of my feelings regarding it, so I’m going to cut off this stream of consciousness here. 

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- TYK/SHL comparisons masterpost - - tyk meta masterpost -

#ofc the first thing that tripped me up in this scene was seeing zzs have /morals/ #and being disturbed by something wen kexing does (that isnt flirting) #because novel zzs is self-aware enough to know his crimes are... as bad or worse #but this is. probably c-nsorship. for my peace of mind im gonna tell myself its bcus of c-nsorship #but i felt there was something else niggling at my mind and i finally worked it out #wenzhou #zhou zishu #liang jiuxiao #wen kexing #qi ye #tian ya ke #word of honor #tian ya ke meta #word of honor meta #(btw did you know that in the novel zzs only calls wkx crazy over flirting with/liking him. never anything else.) #(its really wkx: i like you <3 zzs: sounds bad get well soon) #tyk shl comparisons