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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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Y’all. It’s Word of Honor, Episode 12, and I forgot for a minute which episode this was, then almost hyperventilated when I remembered.

Due diligence first: This may probably almost assuredly does have spoilers for the entire show, so if you’re still, at this point, trying to watch all 36.5 episodes unspoiled, drive by and come back later. Also, when I said past installations were hella long, I didn’t know what I was talking about. I’m getting ready to talk A LOT.

OK, so. There are a couple of key scenes in this episode doing a lot of load-bearing, and I actually want to talk about more than That Scene, if you can believe it. We’ll get there, but first I want to go back to the idea of something something food as bonding, because we get a couple of examples in this episode, including a scene with so much going on when you do a second watch. Some of it is stuff that can easily sail right over your head the first time around, when you don’t know what’s coming up. It’s the last scene of the ep, which is around a restaurant table that stands in for the family table for these wanderers, even though it doesn’t feature an actual meal in this instance. This is going to be the second time we see Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishou sitting at a restaurant table this ep, after they’ve returned from their abortive mission to break shit at the Scorpion base (because that’s ZZS’s idea of a good-time date, because he’s a chaos gremlin who only hides it by standing next to WKX). They’re back to day-drinking while they wait to pick up their kid from Hero’s Conference Summer Camp when A-Xiang shows up and comes over to sit with them, initiating an entire discussion about family dynamics. It starts with her asking WKX why ZZS is still hanging around, WKX’s query about whether she doesn’t “approve of him staying with me,” ZZS’s determined meet-the-in-laws facial expression, and A-Xiang apparently giving her blessing to their relationship, despite the fact that earlier in the ep she worried over whether ZZS had roofied WKX to get him so interested, or maybe ZZS was a succubus, depending on whether you read the subtitles or her lips. Then there’s a big discussion about Chengling, and whether he’s safe now that he’s turned over the Mirror Lake Glazed Armor to Gao Chong (we’ll get to that), and ZZS does not look reassured. WKX tries to get A-Xiang to leave Yueyang Sect, supposedly for her protection. She is taken aback at this suggestion, and ZZS, former head of Tian Chuang, is on the scent like a bloodhound, interest instantly piqued, because he’s a whole-ass troll and is not going to lose the opportunity to do anything that will irritate WKX. This is the iconic scene when WKX asks if ZZS is ok with A-Xiang following them around, and ZZS has a split-second look of “On our honeymoon? Are you fucking kidding me with this?” before the troll mask slides smoothly back into place, and he smiles saccharine-sweet and tells WKX he’d love to have a beauty travel with them, leading WKX – after that shot of vinegar – to proclaim that no, she’s not coming with them, and to tell her to just go wherever she wants, followed by ZZS’s smugly pleased look at his successful manipulation of his new husband.

Well, it turns out that A-Xiang doesn’t want to go anywhere, she wants to stay at Yueyang with Chengling, yeah, that’s it, and to give her credit, I do believe this, even though it’s clearly not the only reason she wants to stay. She and Chengling had a super-sweet scene back at YY Sect earlier in the ep, where he continued to call her Xiang-jiejie and got very excited to see that she was ok after getting beat up for him, and she got very excited for him, to the point of jumping up and down and clapping her hands, when she found out ZZS had agreed to take him on as a disciple. And then she immediately got distracted by the metric ton of food that had been sent to Chengling’s rooms at Gao Chong’s order and which was just sitting on the table not being eaten, because the flip side of something something food as bonding is that refusing food from someone is a rejection of them, even if you don’t literally flip the table like a big drama queen, and Chengling has no intention of eating at the Yueyang family dinner table staying at Yueyang Sect instead of running off with his Murder Dads, which he also made explicit this ep by once again rejecting the idea of marrying Gao Xiaolian. What he does do, however - now that this is technically his food – is turn around and give it to A-Xiang, his jiejie, further symbolically cementing their relationship. Clever, show. Anyway, later, at the restaurant, A-Xiang tells WKX she wants to stay at YY Sect to watch over Chengling during Hero’s Conference Summer Camp because stupid babies need the most love, and I have to hand it to her, she’s fearless, because she knows this may be a safer excuse than Cao Weining, but it also wasn’t that long ago that WKX verbally peeled off her “human” skin and put her in her place as a “ghost” when she showed (what he considered to be) too much concern for and emotional investment in Chengling, in the exact same situation of being stuck inside Yueyang Sect. I have to wonder how much of this is her natural fearlessness, how much of it is a mark of how her connection with Chengling has strengthened, and how much of it is, as she’ll tell WKX, he seems more “human,” when he’s around ZZS, providing an aura of safety in this situation. Anyway, at this point, ZZS hears someone trying to sneak around? eavesdrop? and demands to know who it is. It’s Cao Weining, himself, on his way up the stairs, and we briefly detour the conversation for WKX to demand to know how A-Xiang didn’t realize someone was following her and for CW to admit he’d heard A-Xiang was on the way to the restaurant to meet WKX, and he was afraid she’d leave! Which is Zhou Troll Zishu’s cue to fuck with all of them by suddenly “realizing” exactly why A-Xiang doesn’t want to leave YY Sect – he looks immensely pleased with himself, y’all – and CW is super excited to hear that A-Xiang doesn’t want to leave! She wants to stay! Maybe for him?!?!

WKX is so irritated. He is so irritated. And he has NO poker face. It’s hilarious. He has a little temper tantrum? fit of pique? and says that he’s A-Xiang’s master and that he decides where she goes or stays and that what she says doesn’t matter, literally three minutes after telling her to just go wherever she wants so that she won’t be underfoot on the Railing A-Xu World Tour. A-Xiang, faced with this Dating My Daughter BS from her Murder Dad, just gives up and flops back down into her chair in that eloquently silent passive-aggressive way of teenaged girls throughout time and space. ZZS is so pleased with himself and the little family drama he’s ginned up that he can barely contain himself. Whole. Ass. Troll. I’m dying. At this point, CW changes tacks and is Very Concerned about ZZS’s illness, and he tells them that his master knows many people and some of them are probably very good doctors, and meanwhile he’s edging his way (he thinks) surreptitiously around the table toward the remaining empty chair, and btw he’ll introduce his well-connected master to ZZS, and then he starts to sit down at the family dinner table and WKX picks up his fan and blocks him, saying “I’LL take care of A-Xu.” OH MY GOD. It’s too much. And then, ZZS grabs CW’s wrist and pulls him down into a seat at the family dinner table. So, this looks like kind of a trolly joke on WKX – just like the last time they were all around the dinner table together, when ZZS kept extending all the courtesy and info to CW that WKX had to pry out of ZZS with a crowbar - but CW is now seated at the family table, and this is our sign this character is going to be here for the long haul, because now it’s going to get serious real fast, on a couple of fronts. First, ZZS thanks CW but tells him that he’s terminally ill and doesn’t have much time left. CW didn’t realize it was so serious, and he talks about how his master and Gao Chong are good friends, and Gao Chong has a good relationship with three sages of the Healer’s Valley who might be able to do something, and HOLY SHIT, y’all. I had forgotten this little comment, because on first watch, it didn’t mean anything yet. Now … NOW … The silent conversation that WKX and A-Xiang have at each other with their faces at this point has to be seen to be believed. WKX is incredulous and glowering. A-Xiang kind of wants to crawl into a hole in the ground and let the earth cover her up. Meanwhile, even ZZS seems kind of uncomfortable and keeps his eye on WKX after this. On first watch, this seemed like maybe it was about CW continuing to be so try-hard and not being able to read the room on the subject of ZZS’s illness. On second watch, while I adore CW, this is exquisitely painful, and I’m not sure how WKX didn’t snap out his fan and cut off the boy’s head right there at the table. For CW to talk about Gao Chong’s good relationship with the Healer’s Valley, given what happened to WKX’s parents? Yikes. On the ZZS front, I think there are a handful of things going on, at least one of which is already there on first watch, given we’ve just seen in the previous ep, during the rescue from the Scorpions’ lair, exactly how protective WKX is of ZZS (and remember this, it’ll reverberate down through the show, it was maybe the first brick in ZZS’s surety that however, whenever, WKX would be there after ZZS was kidnapped back to Prince Jin). WKX has just reiterated this - like, 30 seconds ago - in rather dramatic fashion while showing that it extends to dealing with whatever illness ZZS has going on. CW is treading on WKX’s toes emotionally as well as (we’ll learn later, although we already kind of know, given the qi-energy work WKX has been doing with ZZS when he has A Spell from the Nails) sort-of-professionally here. In addition, on re-watch, we know ZZS is probably, at this point, putting together his initial conclusion that WKX is Rong Xuan’s son, and while this isn’t correct, it also would provide a link to and likely painful break from the Healer’s Valley, given how Rong Xuan went out and the fact that his wife – WKX’s mom, ZZS suspects – was the “Fairy Godmother” of the Healer’s Valley.

So, clearly I’m going to be stuck on this scene for the entire post, because there’s more, and now we’re getting to the key reason I find it so significant that CW gets seated at the family table here. At this point, ZZS says he doesn’t want to waste his time looking for medical treatment, he wants to enjoy the healthy time he has left, traveling the world with his soulmate and doing whatever he wants to do without regret. He’s watching WKX while he says this, and by the time he reaches the end of it, he’s smiling like sunshine at WKX. (GOD, ZZH, your FACE. You really are going to KILL me.) He’s looking at WKX like WKX is the sunshine that ZZS dreamed of dying in when he gnawed his way out of the trap of Prince Jin’s palace in Ep 1 and rode out into the snow, in visible emotional distress and physical agony, with no idea of what was in front of him except freedom and death, and all he could do was keep his seat and go forward into the frosty cold. He’s looking at WKX like WKX is the sunshine we saw him turn his face up into as soon as he walked out of the hut where he took refuge and planned his disguise. And also, y’all. This is. This is an end-of-life discussion. This is advance directives. I really want to emphasize how important that is. The baby of the family isn’t here, but this is a guy getting the rest of his family sitting down at the table to discuss his terminal illness and laying out his priorities and goals, which are quality of life, no aggressive measures. This is a HUGELY IMPORTANT discussion for him to be having, and he’s making it clear to these people, who he considers the closest thing he has to family at this point. These are the people who matter, and they’re the ones he’s trusting to follow his wishes, to help him live and die the way he wants. And oh, WKX hates this conversation. Everything in him is resisting it, you can look at his face and tell. And that’s fair, too. One of the compelling things about this show for me, I realized halfway through on my first watch, is that you get to watch not just ZZS but his found family dealing with his terminal illness in their own ways. There are several places in the show when ZZS gets irritated at people who seem to be making his impending death about them, and that’s understandable and also fair. But also, their feelings are valid too! The people who love you get to feel grief and process it when you have a terminal illness. That’s part of the messy business of being human, even when you’re on your way out. (And then the show sidesteps it, into icy remoteness, and I have many thoughts that I’m still picking through about that, but this is a dynamic that does play out through a lot of it.) But yeah, ZZS then goes into a discussion with Cao Weining about making sure A-Xiang is taken care of. And so WKX is now not only dealing with the emotional baggage of his zhiji’s impending death, but also losing his little girl to adulthood, even though this is part of what he brought her out of Ghost Valley for. And I think ZZS knows how hard all this is for WKX – like it’s not obvious from his face – because he’s watching WKX - not CW - as he talks about getting A-Xiang settled. And I just. I cannot tell you how much I love every single dinner table conversation that happens in this show and how much stuff is packed into them. And in ways that never feel info-dumpy.

ANYWAY, some other stuff happened earlier, including some deep conversation between ZZS and WKX on the bank of a the a river while Chengling is apparently sleeping off the excitement of making his bow to his shifu. ZZS – who’s apparently over his Big Mad again - tells WKX that ZZS’s own shifu taught him the most important kind of courage was going your own way, which somehow means a) doing something even while knowing it’s impossible (thanks, Yunmeng Jiang) and b) trusting people even though they’re hard to know. So what that all boils down to is ZZS knows it’s hard for geezers like him and WKX to show their hearts, and he (ZZS) can’t do this alone so he’s GOING TO MODEL HOW IT’S DONE WKX ARE YOU WATCHING AND TAKING NOTES, followed by a very awkward shoulder punch and ZZS telling WKX “So, you’re the one that I know.” He doesn’t use zhiji yet, he literally says “the person I know.” It’s a very awkward shoulder punch, like ZZS has probably not roughhoused or maybe even voluntarily touched another person without some kind of violence behind it since his breakup with Jiuxiao and he’s unsure how to do it anymore - which is not literally true, as we’ve seen him lift Han Ying to his feet at least twice, but it’s still how it comes across. WKX is torn between being super eager to hear what ZZS has to say, like he’s trying to catch every crumb of teaching he would have learned as a shidi at Siji Manor, and being soooo uncomfortable as his plans for zhiji-ship unfold with the apparent expectation that he will also share things with his zhiji at some undefined point in the future. WKX finishes the wine, and ZZS wanders off. WKX continues to look uncomfortable as he stares in emo splendor out across the river, perhaps wondering if he can just dump ZZS in it again and get him naked that way, instead of having to bare his own soul.

Later, Chengling wakes up and is SO HAPPY to see that his Murder Dads have made up. ZZS says they can go anywhere they want in the big wide world, but first they have to get the Glazed Armor out of Chengling. He doesn’t give a shit what happens to it after that, and when Chengling points out that his entire family and sect died over it, ZZS responds that that’s proof it is Bad Fucking News and should be got rid of. Chengling also wants to go to the Hero’s Conference and hear about the history of the Glazed Armor, which leads to another Rong Xuan flashback, narrated this time by WKX, who calls Rong Xuan the “Death Sword,” and talks about how he went bad, stealing and killing for books and scrolls to put in the Armory. In the flashbacks, we see a growing number of younger Five Lakes Alliance guys and eventually also get ZZS’s shifu, Qin Huaizhang, thrown into the Cool Kids Group, along with who we will later learn are Zhen Ruyu, Gu Miaomiao, and I think Rong Xuan’s wife, Yue Feng’er. WKX talks about Rong Xuan’s belief that all martial arts descended from the same source, and I suddenly wonder if this is something Rong Xuan got from his shifu - who was that? Oh yeah, Ye Baiyi. (Although we don’t technically know that yet.) WKX talks about Rong Xuan slowly going bad, and the Five Lakes Alliance calling a Hero’s Conference to kill him, leading to his suicide at Ghost Valley and a huge battle between the ghosts and the jianghu that’s left everyone licking their wounds for 20 years. ZZS has on his thinky face as WKX talks. WKX says that if, 20 years ago, the Five Lakes Alliance would have just opened the Armory and shared its collected knowledge, Mirror Lake Sword Sect wouldn’t have been obliterated. Chengling wants to know why this is different from the story he’s heard, and WKX tells him that history is written by the victors. ZZS says they should let bygones be bygones, and WKX isn’t happy with that at all. Chengling feels like he should go back to YY Sect, because his dad died over the Glazed Armor, and he can’t sit all of this out just to stay safe. Both of his Murder Dads look like they’re sucking lemons at this point. ZZS finally says, OK fine, might as well give it to the Five Lakes Alliance as anyone else. Chengling doesn’t want to just walk away from it after that, though. As WKX is doing 11-dimensional chess in his head, trying to figure out how this fits into his own plans (you can see it on Gong Jun’s face), ZZS asks Chengling what’s more important: his safety or the Glazed Armor. My little dude. If you’re not going to say your safety, I need you to stop and remember that you just spent eleventy-three eps begging the two most dangerous men in the jianghu to be your new Murder Dads and then think about your answer some more. Chengling says, well duh, the Glazed Armor. Somewhere a buzzer sounds. WRONG ANSWER. If you wanted to thrust yourself willfully and idiotically into danger, you should have stayed an orphan at the tender :coff: mercies of the Five Lakes Alliance. Now, you have two new Murder Dads, and you are grounded.

Seriously though, ZZS then talks about how there’s nothing more important than life, and this would be rich coming from a guy who spent so much time trying to drink himself to death in the gutter, if we hadn’t also watched his journey and seen those decision points happen in earlier episodes as he climbs out of his pit of suicidal despair: Allowing himself to enjoy being desired. Allowing himself to desire. Choosing to spend his remaining days living, not just dying. Also, if Chengling seems fixated on the Glazed Armor, I would ask you to remember that his dad literally cut open his stomach and shoved it inside of him with the admonishment to keep it safe, and also to remember that WKX still manages to have the hairpin his parents gave him umpty years ago, as if we don’t have enough Chengling-Zhen Yan parallels in this show. ALSO ALSO, it is probably super important that WKX hear ZZS, right at this point, tell Chengling, the Zhen Yan stand-in, that his life is more important than his revenge. And anyway, ZZS says, if your dad and Rong Xuan (IF YOUR DAD, RONG XUAN) could see you, he they wouldn’t want you burdened by this. So, OK. New plan: Chengling will go back, turn over the Glazed Armor, stay to watch the Hero’s Conference with his popcorn, and then Murder Dads will pick him up after.

Now I’m going to cut, because this is really so long, but we’re getting to That Scene under there, I promise.

Neither ZZS nor WKX are happy about sending Chengling back to the Five Lakes Alliance. They’ve both made it clear that they place the jianghu sects on par with Ghost Valley. ZZS knows Five Lakes has been doing some kind of dealing with Prince Jin. WKX has his own reasons for not trusting these m’fkrs with a kid. Standing outside YY Sect (when everyone has changed clothes, and ZZS and Chengling are obviously matched in powder-blue outer robes), ZZS reminds Chengling to let EVERYBODY know he’s GOT RID of the Glazed Armor. WKX tells him to otherwise shut up, play dumb, and not worry about whatever kind of tricks Gao Chong and his brothers get up to. Also, make sure you have those snacks we packed you. Do you have your backpack? Chengling goes in for the hug with WKX and clings to him, which leaves WKX kind of awkward and ZZS with a weirdly irritated face, and meanwhile Chengling is asking WKX, you’ll be staying with us after, right? Because he wants to stay with WKX and Xiang-jie FOREVER. WKX looks at ZZS for help and kind of to ask with his eyebrows, well, will I be staying with you forever? I don’t have a lot of sympathy for his predicament at this point because he’s the one who taught the kid this exact tactic. Serves you right, buddy. ZZS has to literally pull Chengling away, and then after they send Chengling into the YY compound, they both stand around and worry at each other for a bit until ZZS decides they need to be day-drinking, instead. Leading to The Scene. You know the one I mean.

I’m just going to go ahead and talk about the extended version, because there’s really no other version, right? This is still up on you Youku Youtube, but you have to be sure you watch the correct version of Ep 12, the one that’s 45 minutes long, instead of 44 minutes long. It’s the version that’s on Netflix. I’m not sure about Viki. Anyway, ZZH apparently had considerable input on this scene, from suggesting the characters call each other’s names three times each - giving us, among other things, the opportunity for that delicious shiver from ZZS the third time WKX calls his name – to his insistence that ZZS’s outer robe be falling off his left shoulder like the minx he is, and I just. Once again, I cannot, y’all. It’s so tasty. So delicious. These two murderous idiots are SO IN LOVE, and SOMEONE IS GETTING SOME TONIGHT. How did I live before this show came into my life? Anyway. Day-drinking, sitting outside a wine shop, across the table from each other, quiet, just vibing together, and we get some voiceover to give us WKX’s thoughts, which are ruminations on the idea of doing things that aren’t allowed (like he’s ever had a problem with that) and trusting people even though it’s hard (which, ok, this he could use some work on), and he finally asks out loud why ZZS is willing to gamble that WKX is “the one he knows” – again, not using the word zhiji, yet – and whether ZZS thinks WKX is a good or bad guy. ZZS tells him he’s a dumbass, is what he is, but then gets philosophical about how bad people can be forgiven if they put down their killing tools (this is an interesting translation, given his former line of work. Not weapons. Any kind of killing tools, which presumably means instruments of torture, as well.) and that good people shouldn’t go to hell just for for doing a bad thing. Which is not the last time I’m going to suspect that ZZS’s ideas hopes re: good, evil, and restorative vs. retributive justice are not just about WKX but also about himself. Anyway, WKX is very pleased with this and says “So, I’m a good guy!” and then flips on a dime and says no, he’s more than a good guy! He’s Philanthropist Wen! which UGH. My dude. It’s become obvious at this point “Philanthropist Wen” means you’re pulling out some kind of bullshit to use as a buffer from your feelings or whoever is causing those feelings, so just … STOP. ZZS fortunately just laughs at him, and WKX stares at ZZS’s perfect perfect face across the table for a minute as ZZS stares out into the middle distance, coyly letting himself be admired, before WKX calls his name (A-Xu, in this case). “What?” ZZS asks, rolling his head against the pillar he’s leaning against to look over at WKX. WKX gets up and moves closer, coming around the table to sit on the same side, and says his name again. ZZS kind of peers at him in puzzlement, brow charmingly furrowed. “Do you ever stop calling me?” he asks (the answer is NO, btw), and WKX’s response is to lean back on one elbow on the table, look him right in the face and say his name a third time, whereupon ZZS gives the most utterly delightful full-body shiver I have ever seen, and then blinks, briefly attempting to put the brakes on this game of Gay Chicken by calling WKX “Philanthropist Wen” (bullshit buffer, bullshit buffer, bullshit buffer) and a creep. It’s WKX’s turn to laugh, because that shiver should not have been so obvious if ZZS didn’t want WKX to know he was on the hook. WKX then leans back on both elbows on the table and turns his face up to the sun (because of course he does) and explains how great it is to be alive, with the sun shining, and to have someone to call. We get this shot here of … I mean, it’s a shot of the two of them sitting at the table in this tableau, but what it really is, is a side shot of ZZS that shows him heavy breathing, bosom heaving – seriously, y’all, the chest rise ZZH is achieving here – before ZZS throws in the towel and admits that WKX is right. He calls WKX’s name (Lao Wen, in this case). WKX is still enjoying the sunshine and his triumph at Gay Chicken, and merely “hmm?”s in response, eyes still closed. ZZS tilts his head slightly in that charming laopo way and says WKX’s name again, leading to a more inquisitive “Huh?” and actual eye contact. And then ZZS grins, sits forward, leaning toward WKX with that gd shoulder of his outer robe inching down like the fucking minx he is, and I am gone before the third “Lao Wen” is even out of his mouth. SOMEONE IS GETTING SOME TONIGHT. (Can we not fuck it up this time, please?) WKX laughs, leans in and says “What?” “Let’s drink!” “Cheers!” End scene. I am laid out on the couch, slain by the sexual tension ZZH managed to achieve merely by the way he leaned forward on a bench and his insistence that his outer robe be slouching a couple of inches down an otherwise clothed shoulder. HOW.

So, I warned you this was super long, and I’m not done yet. Other things that happened in this ep:

Post Gay Chicken, WKX and ZZS adjourn from the wine shop to have lunch downstairs at the Getting Lucky Inn and carb up for further day-drinking, and WKX asks about ZZS’s hobbies, leading to the revelation that ZZS was a nerd who only wanted to practice his sword forms all day. His shifu used to “force” him to go out with him, fishing and catching birds, and frankly, as a kid whose mom used to tell her to put down the book and go outside to play, I feel you, my dude. ZZS talks about playing with his shifu in the ice in the winter, and I’ve barely said to myself, “Hey, self. The hallucination we saw from ZZS back in Ep 5, when they were under the influence of the Drunk Like A Dream incense, the thing he wanted most in the world, was Qin Huaizhang and Jiuxiao making a snowman at what we’ll learn was Siji Manor, with Jiuxiao calling for his shixiong to join them, I wonder if this is a callback to that?” when we get a flashback to kid!ZZS and Qin Hauizhang building a snowman at what we’ll learn was Siji Manor. WKX’s face while ZZS is talking about his childhood is so so soft and fond, it’s like another dagger to my heart, particularly when I think about how, if things had gone just a little differently, he would have been there, too, which is a thing we don’t even know yet, at this point, on first watch. WKX says that when he was a kid, his parents yelled at him for not practicing his martial arts, but then he later mentions that when he was a kid, he didn’t have a chance to play and no one taught him martial arts, which would seem to be a contradiction if we didn’t know, on second watch, that there were two sharply delineated periods of WKX’s childhood, and don’t think that ZZS doesn’t catch the discrepancy, because he gets his thinky face on again. They’ve been talking about children and disciples, so naturally their talk turns to THEIR child and disciple, and then they have to figure out something to do while they continue to wait to pick him up from the Conference, because I guess it’s still too early in the day for sex? Which is when ZZS suggests going back to the Scorpion lair to make a big mess - if WKX is interested, of course, and WXK is all, “Have you met me?”

Scorpion lair is already thrashed when they get there. ZZS kind of pointedly asks WKX if he thinks Five Lakes or the Ghost Valley did it, and WKX responds that neither of them could manage it, but it would make sense for the Scorpions to destroy it and abandon it, as a way of keeping their secrets. ZZS is all, hmmmm, thinky face, again, and walks away to poke around some more, leaving WKX to muse aloud that Changing Ghost is dumb but ambitious, letting us know that he knows CG is colluding with the Scorpions. Jokes on all of them – this will only further WKX’s plans!

We get a v. v. brief scene somewhere in here of Prince Jin with some old sketches of the Glazed Armor that reminds us he’s got the Danyang piece, brought to him by Han Ying, who took it off of the pickpocket who sort-of-stole it from WKX.

Cao Weining ruins A-Xiang’s reputation, after assuring her that he knows how important reputation is for girls, lol. TBF, she is being questioned by Gao Chong about where she was when Chengling disappeared, and it’s not going great, including Gao Chong telling Gao Xiaolian to shut up when she tries to speak up for A-Xiang; A-Xiang despairing of Xioalian’s stupidity when Xiaolian tells everyone that A-Xiang is an old friend of Chengling’s from … you know, somewhere somehow that A-Xiang would really rather not reveal, thanks; and Gao Chong yelling at A-Xiang enough to get her back up and have her snap back at him that he’s a bully, and why should she fake speaking softly to him, anyway … basically, to turn her into the girl that Cao Weining instantly fell in love with at a restaurant after she beat up a bunch of drunk bros who were harassing a girl. And maybe CW remembers what happened that time, because this is about when he pushes his way forward and blurts out that A-Xiang is a good girl and she was with him all night! Which gets about the pole-axed reaction you’d expect from everyone, and fortunately Chengling shows back up about that time.

Chengling removes the Mirror Lake Glazed Armor from his stomach and turns it over to Gao Chong in a scene that doesn’t have any dialogue, but does follow immediately on from That Scene and just continues using the same song, over the action, that was playing for most of That Scene under the dialogue. I’m not quite sure of the meaning of that, but it certainly ties Chengling into the ZZS-WKX unit, particularly since it’s symbolic of him cutting his ties to Five Lakes.

Last but not least, once Gao Chong has the Mirror Lake Glazed Armor, he asks Shen Shen for his piece. Shen Shen actually has a moment here, because no matter his faith in Gao Chong, that’s kind of a weird ask, buddy, and makes you look a little bit suspicious. Along with Gao Chong’s own piece, that will make three pieces he’s holding. Meanwhile, suspicion is that Ghost Valley has the other two pieces, which is BS – we’ll learn that Zhao Jing still has his piece, hanging around Xie’er’s neck, and the Danyang piece, which Ghost Valley briefly had, they lost again, when WKX took it from Imposter Hanged Ghost AKA Long-Tongued Ghost, allowed it to be pick-pocketed, and then it eventually made its way via Han Ying to Prince Jin. Shen Shen finally gives in, just as Zhao Jing returns, flushed with success from his trip to Longyuan Cabinet – remember that – where Long-gongzi agreed to send someone to the Hero’s Conference. Funnily enough, Long-gongzi’s dad couldn’t see Zhao Jing while he was there. Maybe he was tied up with something. Har har.

Did I say last but not least? No, really, this time. Last but not least, we learn that they only had to invite the Longyuan Cabinet to the Conference for Glazed Armor info because Shen Shen couldn’t get anyone to answer him when he went to try to invite the Changming Sword Immortal to the Conference - despite the fact that he stood around the deserted Changming Sword Hall and called out for days, probably while Ye Baiyi giggled outside. This is so on-brand for both Shen Shen and Ye Baiyi that I almost can’t stand it.

#zhou zishu #wen kexing #zhang chengling #gu xiang #cao weining #gao chong #gao xiaolian #shen shen #something something food as bonding #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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SO. Back to the beginning, Episode 1 of Word of Honor. This is likely to be a little bit different experience than the prior posts, when I was watching the eps as they aired, compared to now approaching the show as whole and complete. May be rummaging around for things I missed the first time through, stuff that takes on new meaning set in additional context – we’ll see how it goes.

With that in mind, spoilers for not just this ep but possibly for the entire series. Get out of the car now and come back later, if you haven’t seen all 36.5 eps and want to watch it unspoiled.

First thing to strike me, right up front: You know, I think we tend to lose sight in later parts of the show – when we’re getting Laopo!Zhou Zishu pouting so he doesn’t have to cook dinner - how terrifying ZZS is in his own right (and by “we,” I actually mean the show, too). One of the things the first few episodes gets right, I think, is the sense of eerie inevitability and dread created by both the falling lanterns of Tian Chuang and the blowing paper figures of the Ghost Valley, and how similar they are. I think it’s easy to lose that - when the lanterns and the paper figures are gone and our charming and adorable couple are busy being charming and adorable at each other, in between varying rounds of being wracked by guilt and PTSD – easy to lose that this is there too, part of them – both of them - under the skin. I think it’s particularly easy to lose that for ZZS, when he’s already done a lot of work, off-screen, pre-Episode 1, during the 18 months he was putting in those first six Nails, to come to some kind of equilibrium, and meanwhile we watch Wen Kexing’s entire torturous process play out on-screen. Wen Kexing’s story is one of reaching an equilibrium, but Zhou Zishu’s story is one of maintaining it, which I think may be less showy, but is equally valuable, just as I value the Four Seasons Manor arc, especially, for giving us a vibe of two adults comfortable in an already intimate relationship, as opposed to the veritable sea of will-they-won’t-they tug-of-war coming-together-for-the-first-time-as-emotional-AND-plot climax relationships that we’re usually awash in.

Anyway, straight up we’re introduced to an assassin who, we discover, doesn’t like to get blood on himself. It looks like metaphorical blood is fine, just not actual blood, but then we discover, well, maybe he’s not as OK with metaphorical blood as he schools himself to look. Also that conversation with Li Jingan about her dad having to die because he’s a traitor to the country – I now wonder how much of that particular conversation Zhou Zishu mentally brings to the table in later conversations about his own father being executed for the same reason. Also, wait wait wait. Zhou Zishu tells Jingan that he took Jiuxiao’s body back to Four Seasons Manor and buried him next to their shifu, but I don’t remember seeing another grave there, other than Qin Huaizhang’s and his wife’s. Script inconsistency, or are you supposed to be lying, ZZS? I mean, would you be so downcast at the state of Four Seasons Manor when you arrive with your husband and son for your honeymoon, if you’d actually been there only a couple of years before? It didn’t fall to pieces overnight. Also, HAIRPIN FORESHADOWING ALERT. Our first sign of how important the hairpin is, the way ZZS’s impassive face cracks wide open when he sees the hairpin that Jiuxiao made and realizes he must have given it to Jingan. Clearly important!

Mmm. Here’s a point for the “Prince Jin is a f’kn asshole” list – Prince Jin wants ZZS to deal with Bi Changfeng personally when Bi Changfeng requests to leave Tian Chuang. And OK, ZZS is the leader of Tian Chuang. But you’re never going to convince me Prince Jin wants ZZS to deal with it personally because Prince Jin is actually so very furious that Bi Changfeng made a mistake. You will never convince me this isn’t a … it’s not even a test of loyalty, at this point, because Prince Jin has no reason to think yet that ZZS is anything other than the faithful hunting dog on a leash that he’s been, lo, these many years. Putting ZZS in a position where not only is he losing the last of the direct disciples of Four Seasons Manor, but he’s being asked to (as good as) kill him with his own hands - it’s just cruelty for the proof of your power and influence over someone. Also, given Prince Jin’s later diatribe about how everyone leaves him OMG (have you considered it’s your personality?) (But also Beiyuan! I know who you are now, and yeah, I would have let Wu Xi bride-kidnap me away from this jerk, too), I have to wonder if Prince Jin isn’t trying to make ZZS feel exactly as isolated as he, himself, feels, as part of his overall desire to make sure that ZZS has no one other than Prince Jin so that their positions are parallel – only having each other in the whole world. I also have to wonder if he’s not hoping for precisely the reaction ZZS has to Bi Changfeng – you’d rather be dead than be with me? Because that hurts, you can see it on ZZS’s face (thanks already, Zhang Zhehan), and I rather suspect Prince Jin wants it to hurt. I notice we get an echo of this later in the ep, with Prince Jin saying pretty much the same thing when ZZS asks for the final Nail. GOOD. I hope it hurts you just as much. I wonder if ZZS realizes this while he’s kneeling there in the throne room. It’s probably too late for him to get any satisfaction out of it.

OH, HEY. That’s HAN YING already, one of the two people accompanying ZZS to put down Bi Changfeng, looking super-pained like he knows what this is all costing his beloved. Han Ying, I really hope you got to tap that at least a few times before ZZS made his break for it. Is that one of the reasons Prince Jin seems to have such antipathy for you, or is it really just that he can’t stand the idea of someone whose loyalty to ZZS is greater than their loyalty to Prince Jin, himself? (Seriously, y’all, why is there not much much more Han Ying/ZZS fic?) Meanwhile Duan Pengju, omg, this asshole, is already looking smug and punchable. Really, he’s kind of enjoying the Seven Nails placement a little too much. Showing your hand pretty fast on the petty evil thing, show.

So, one thing I didn’t catch the first time around, is that ZZS isn’t just self-injuring to punish himself when he takes the knife to his chest – he re-opens wounds on all the places where the first six Nails have already been placed, so it will look like the placement is fresh. If you can’t tell he hasn’t just put them in, there’s no reason for anyone else (read: Prince Jin) to suspect he’s bought himself some time before he loses his senses. As far as anyone knows, he’s going to fall over with locked-in syndrome any day now. Which just makes the implications of Prince Jin vowing that he’s only letting him go for now EVEN ICKIER. For all Prince Jin knows, what he’s going to get back is a flesh doll that will just lie there, although I guess on the plus side, ZZS would never leave him again. Thanks, show, I need a shower, now.

ZZS says all the right things to argue his case to Prince Jin – he’s only good as a weapon, he has no skills nor utility for building and governing the country – and I think partly this is because he just knows the right things to say. I mean, you don’t become the Number Two guy in the country, with thousands under you and only one above you, if you can’t play imperial politics. But I also wonder if deep down he doesn’t actually believe it – he was successful at building Tian Chuang, but he couldn’t maintain Four Seasons Manor and even drove it to ruin. So, I’ll just be over here, clutching my chest, over my heart. Fortunately, Zhang Zhehan provides quick distraction from this pain, and I … Y’all. I can’t. I just. I CANNOT. When ZZS drops to his knees and starts stripping in the throne room. Just. Mmmmmrgh. THIS VISUAL. Although, you want to know what one of the hottest parts actually is? That pair of leather bracers hitting the floor on top of his belt, and ZZS isn’t even in the shot at that point. OK, fine, I am willing to read some dirtybadwrong fic with this whole scene premise at its heart, even if it does include Prince Jin. Zhang Zhehan, you are KILLING ME. I might have rewound this part. More than once. You can’t prove anything.

Aaaand then we get that gorgeous, painful shot of ZZS riding out into the snow that I know I’ve talked about before (including the way I get an odd echo of Lan Xichen off of it). There are several places in this ep where the cinematography is to die for, and this is one of them, the bleakness of the landscape and Zhang Zhehan (and his FACE) deep in that shadowing cloak against the stark snow as he rides out into freedom and the unknown. Then cut to somewhere green and forested. Interesting that the show starts with snow and ends with snow. That parallel with the imperial cage says some things about immortality that could stand to be unpacked – but later. Because ZZS is putting his face on – literally – and I am once again in pain, only it’s not the good kind of pain. It’s caused by that dreadful fake facial hair. There are some things that could be unpacked here, as well, about the fact that making ZZS supposedly unattractive involves a clearly fake goatee, a single aesthetically placed scar, and darkening his skin. I’m going to try to step carefully here, because this is kind of out of my lane, but it is … a noticeable thing. That probably ought to be noted.

So, ZZS takes just a moment to turn his (fake) face up to the sun and feel the warmth on it … and then with 10 minutes left, we’re on our way to Ghost Valley, where there’s some chaos and then Hanging Ghost gets got by a Mysterious Stranger To Be Revealed Later, who chokes him out (remember this). The Mysterious Master of Ghost Valley appears dramatically on his High Ledge to Make Some Pronouncements while playing with some walnuts omg (rolling two of them in one hand – remember this), and we see his eyes, which are partially obscured by chunky sidebangs, which are farther forward on his forehead than we’re going to see later, not only hiding some of his face but making it look more angular. The troops get berated, shit rolls downhill, and another dude gets choked (remember this) as Ghost Valley Master’s hair continues to artfully hide most of his face and he worries about his manicure post-kill (remember this). War is declared on Hanging Ghost for stealing the Glazed Armor, and more chaos is set into motion.

All of that takes literally two minutes, and then we cut to three months later, and no one realizes it yet, but the fam is getting together. ZZS is tits out in the gutter - only beginning his career of being a minx who flashes his collarbones an awful lot for someone who has Very Secret Scars He’s Hiding On His Chest - happily drinking himself to death in the sun (we really need to talk about this correlation of snow and immortality vs. sun and happiness …). Meanwhile, slo-mo shot of Wen Kexing looking precious and perfect, with delicate pink lips and dove-grey robes, as he checks out the rough trade in the gutter. Oh, the expectations this show is getting ready to smash. We cut from a shot of pristine precious WKX to ZZS holding up his hand, and we get a shot of the sun through ZZS’s fingers looking an awful lot like some shots of characters halo’d in light that we’ll get back to much much later in the show. Chengling appears out of nowhere to be Best Boy. A-Xiang is purple and smol and ready to brawl, and I already love her. I already love them all! So much! Here are my delicate and precious feelings, show, go ahead and stomp all over them!

#zhou zishu #prince jin #han ying #wen kexing #gu xiang #zhang chengling #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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So, Word of Honor Ep 23, and LISTEN. This is going to be another long one. We are in it, now.

(Clearly, spoilers, so if you’re thinking you might want to start watching and don’t want to know everything up front, scroll away and come back after you watch the ep.)

Look, I’m just gonna talk about this first because I can’t even process anything else, or function, until I get this out of the way: I came for the bl and the pretty boys, but at this point, I have to reiterate what I said after Ep 22, that I am so grateful Zhou Ye got her fingers into Gu Xiang and absolutely refused to let go of this role, through everything. She’s going on my actors-to-follow list, and I’ll also be following scriptwriter Xiao Chu into whatever she writes from now on. A little bit, I’ve come out of Ep 23 thinking, did anything else even happen, other than That Scene with A-Xiang and Wen Kexing? (Oh, yeah, That Other Scene with Wen Kexing and Cao Weining about Gu Xiang.) The show is going to have to work to top That Scene for me. The first time watching, I couldn’t even really focus on how the Gu Xiang/Cao Weining and Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu relationships continue to reflect each other and how everything A-Xiang expresses during this conversation is exactly what Wen Kexing feels/fears about himself but cannot say out loud. All of that was there, and I mentally picked through it and unpacked it some more on a re-watch of the scene, but the first time through, I was too busy being legit distressed about Gu Xiang’s fear and pain and how desperately she wants this new thing and how afraid she is, not only of fucking it up or having it fucked up for her, but of getting it. Last night at dinner I compared this storyline to a kind of reverse Persephone story, where she’s being pulled by her lover OUT of the land of death, but is nevertheless having to leave behind everything and everyone she knows and is familiar with, including her beloved brother/parent figure. And all this after being told for essentially her whole life that what she’s doing is forbidden and unworkable, that the human world and the world of Ghost Valley do not mix. (We just saw Wen Kexing have his own little mental stall over this, just so the show can make sure we don’t forget.) And Gu Xiang is so unprepared for all of this and so terrified by it, despite the fact she wants it so badly, that she literally cannot do anything - this shining, clever, fierce girl who will stab you if you look at her the wrong way because she’s been taught to survive above all else - she can’t do anything other than sit down with her arms wrapped around her knees pulled to her chest so that she’s the smallest target possible, protecting all the tenderest, most vulnerable places, and weep. Y’all, it is killing me even thinking about it. I might have to take a minute.

So, then they come at me with the second hit of the one-two punch, which is the scene between Wen Kexing and Cao Weining, where Wen Kexing talks about how this little girl not only saved him, but he calls her meimei, and at that point, I’m done. I’m just. There’s nothing else I need right now from this show. I realize this is supposed to be a story about Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu, and up until now, my ride-or-die has been Zhou Zishu, but whatever. Fine. I WANT TO LIVE HERE AT LI MANOR FOREVER, SHOW, WHY MUST A-XIANG AND CAO-XIONG GO BACK TO HIS SECT? Listen, I think it is a far, far better idea if Cao Weining marries in to Four Seasons Manor, and Gu Xiang’s paternal figure is the ... lol, I almost just called him the Ghost General ... he is who he is, so frankly, I don’t know why he should be so concerned about following social conventions, like having daughters of the house marry out. (I know you think you’re protecting her, Lao Wen, but YOU ARE BREAKING UP THE FAMILY. I need them to stay with the rest of you forever. I need Zhou Zishu to continue to call A-Xiang a “good girl,” because I suspect that hasn’t happened very often in her life, and she needs more of it.) Then, as a last kick in the ribs, once I’m down, the show has WKX tell A-Xiang that she’s not a wild girl because she’s his girl. Thanks, show, I didn’t need my heart for anything like pumping blood to oxygenate my brain or any of my body parts. It’s OK. I can do without it.

Anyway, going back and looking at multiple story-telling levels of all this, there’s the additional issue that during That Scene, A-Xiang is also a proxy for Wen Kexing, saying things that he can’t. (For emotional and psychological reasons within the show, and for practical reasons because they probably wouldn’t pass censorship.) Maybe some things that he can’t even let himself think, at this point. So every time, from here on out, when Zhou Zishu asks Wen Kexing about his past and Wen Kexing momentarily freezes with that trapped look on his face, we can think back to this conversation with A-Xiang and realize that Wen Kexing is terrified by his relationship with Zhou Zishu, despite how desperately he wants this new thing. He is so afraid of fucking it up, but he’s also so afraid of getting it, and he’s so unprepared for it that he literally cannot do anything - this fierce survivor, this ghost king, who will crawl over corpses and skin a guy alive and kill you if you look at him the wrong way because almost (almost) all he’s known is to survive above all else - he cannot do anything except mentally and emotionally curl up so that he’s the smallest target possible, protecting all the tenderest, most vulnerable places. So thanks, show, for what promises to be a repeated exercise of stabbing me in the heart.

Just a little bit more about these scenes: I also think we’re getting at least one, maybe two other foils in the story-telling, which are more about the Wen Kexing-Gu Xiang relationship. Maybe less supported but nevertheless intriguing, I have to wonder if, when he took on that little girl despite (or maybe because of) still being essentially a child himself, Wen Kexing was trying to re-create - even subconsciously - something of the shixiong-shidi relationship he experienced for that brief time with Zhou Zishu as a child. Yes, she saved him by making him keep his heart, because he had this actual nurturing relationship to at least try to model their relationship on. I also think that we’re maybe supposed to be seeing them as a foil to Xie Wang and his AWFUL yifu, who appears to have taken on a kid and turned him into a murder weapon not in any effort to help him survive, but to use him as a tool in his quest for power. Both Wen Kexing and Zhao Jing have produced Poorly Socialized Murder Babies Who Love Them Very Much, but I think Wen Kexing actually had his kid’s best interests at heart, as he understood them, and tried to do the best he could with the extremely broken tool box he had to hand. Also, he loves her back. All that doesn’t mean she’s not fucked up or necessarily any better prepared for the “human” world than Xie Wang, but it may have made the difference between an amoral murder baby who can learn better and an actual sociopath.

In other comparisons, that first convo of the ep between Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing - when ZZS says that he doesn’t want to see more sins on WKX’s hands - is essentially the same convo that Cao Weining had with Gu Xiang in the previous ep, when he tells her that he wants her to be more careful because he knows she actually will feel bad for killing innocent people. This is the same conversation because these two relationships are the same relationship. (Note, I don’t think they started out like this, or that their beginnings were all that similar. Cao Weining was much more of a pursuer and initiator than Zhou Zishu was, in the beginning. But I think the courses of the two relationships have converged, at this point, with Cao Weining and Zhou Zishu knowing what they want and being all in, while Gu Xiang and Wen Kexing also want it but are too fucking scared of it for practically the same reasons.)

Meanwhile, speaking of Xie Wang - what are you up to Xie’er? Do you want the Water of Lethe so you can drink it and get over your awful yifu? Are you finally at the point that you’re doing some critical thinking about this relationship? Or do you want the Water of Lethe so you can slip it to your awful yifu, so that he’ll forget about his obsessions with power that prevent him from focusing on YOU? You call Beauty Ghost an idiot, but I think you may be empathizing (though not sympathizing) a bit much with the women of the Department of the Unfaithful.

Finally, that brief little moment of Zhou Zishu’s face when Wen Kexing spits out his wine after stealing it from him ... Oh, god. You didn’t realize how bad it tasted, did you? Your sense of taste is going.

#zhou ye #gu xiang #wen kexing #zhou zishu #cao weining #xie wang #word of honor #little and broken #but still good #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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Back, finally, with Word of Honor, Episode 11, which involved a lot of waving my hands around over precious button Zhang Chengling and his concern about whatever ridiculous argument between his Murder Dads left his shifu in a snit and must be solved right this minute. I really think if he could’ve just pushed their heads together like two Ken dolls to make them kiss and make up, he would have. Didi, I could eat you up with a spoon, although not in the creepy way that Du Pusa threatens. I promise.

First, though, due diligence: Spoilers, possibly likely for the entire show, not just this ep, so scroll away and come back later if you are still, at this point in the game, trying to watch the whole 36.5 eps unspoiled. Also, this is hella long. Strap in. Hashtag long post (remorseful).

First thing I actually want to do is point out a couple of scenes that I found particularly striking for various reasons. The first one is not quite the opening scene - which is super-brief and involves Yueyang’s prep for the Heroes Conference, Gao Shan (AKA Chengling’s bully-in-chief) being smug about Yueyang’s upcoming ascendance (oh boy, are you in for a surprise, you little schmuck), and Gao Chong’s extreme weariness at the idea of Yueyang’s upcoming ascendance. Gao Chong is very tired, y’all. It’s been a long 20 years. There’s also a ginormous sword on display, like Yueyang is now having a dick-measuring contest with who they think is the disciple of the Changming Sword Immortal (and oh boy, are you guys in for another surprise. I’m not sure what part of “immortal” y’all don’t understand). But I digress - as I said, this is a very brief scene, and then we cut back to Luo Mansion, where we left Ghost Valley and Lunatic Wen at the end of the last ep. Everyone is gone except for Wen Kexing, who’s still plotting, Beauty Ghost, who’s trying to stay tf out of this current shitshow as much as possible (good luck with that), and Tragicomic Ghost, who is totally and completely Done With This Shit. She berates WKX for acting crazy, he gets snappy back – I feel like their relationship is maybe a little bit fraught at this point – and Beauty Ghost attempts to soothe the waters, leading to an eyeroll from Tragicomic Ghost with a directive to stand the hell up and stop being scared of this idiot child throwing his weight around. WKX dismisses Tragicomic Ghost so he can plan a Very Secret Mission for Beauty Ghost in secret. WKX is … he is super-tired at this point. Painfully, achingly tired. I would almost say weary. We can see it in Gong Jun’s face. It’s a nice subtle bit of acting, and it definitely says something about WKX’s relationship with these women that he’s willing and able to show it in front of them, even as he’s still throwing his weight around.

Anyway, Liu Qianqiao proves her smarts by showing her hand just enough for WKX and us to see that she’s seen through the Lunatic Wen act to the utility of chokin’ out a dude as a warning, to try keeping Changing Ghost in line (good luck with that), but she also assures all of us that she only wants to serve the Ghost Valley Master and has no agenda of her own. WKX assures her that he has everything under control (Uh … huh. OK, my dude) and tells her he has a task for her, before detouring into a quiz about her disguise technique (learned from Qin Huaizhang, Zhou Zishu’s shifu at Siji Manor, and this is probably a tipoff that the Very Secret Mission will involve disguising herself), about Siji Manor, and about why she never visited there. We get some interesting vague hints about her past, including the fact that she met Qin Huaizhang when she was “little” and he took pity on her “disfigurement,” according to both the Youku and Netflix English subs. @coralcoloratura pulled out 童年时 (tóngnián shí) from the Chinese subs for me, which does mean “childhood.” Given that the going story is Yu Qiufeng’s wife threw acid in LQQ’s face over their affair, this opens up some questions about how old LQQ actually was when all that happened. Viki subs, per @janedrewfinally, add that she says she treated Qin Huaizhang to a meal, so she couldn’t have been too young. But Qin Huaizhang dies when ZZS is just 16, and LQQ can’t be any older than ZZS, and is likely younger (good lord, I just checked actor ages, and Ke Naiyu is 7 years younger than ZZH, so that’s probably not a good age gap to port over to the show, because just. No.). All this leads me to place LQQ at somewhere between Zhang Chengling’s age and Gu Xiang’s age (at most) when this whole tragic backstory happened, which is still pretty freakin’ young, and I can see why she would consider herself a child, at least metaphorically, in terms of naïvete, if not literally. I don’t know how much exploration has been done about this, on the fannish side of things, but it seems like an area rich for exploration. Also, I CANNOT TELL YOU how much I now want to read the AU of WKX and LQQ both actually being brought to Siji Manor at various times by Qin Huaizhang and staying there. I suspect that with those two shidi backing him, ZZS might never have had to go to Prince Jin in the first place. (Clearly this makes some things problematic, including A-Xiang, but I keep thinking about ZZS, WKX and LQQ growing up together … And anyway, I’m ALSO willing to read the AU(s) where WKX’s storyline stays the same, but LQQ does come to Siji Manor – both the AU where she and ZZS together manage to save the sect, and the AU where she goes with them to Jin, and the kind of weapon she could be for ZZS there, as he runs Tian Chuang. Who’s writing all this? Anyone? Anyone?) Anyway, when WKX asks why she didn’t visit Siji Manor, LQQ tells WKX that she’s a ghost now and doesn’t want to think about the living world anymore, which is probably a way of saying she wishes she had gone there and doesn’t want to talk about her many and varied bad decisions back in the day; it also acts as an unknowing reinforcement of that bright line WKX is desperately trying to maintain for himself between the world of ghosts and the world of humans. Plus it gives him the chance to speak the very portentous line that “Yes, we’re ghosts, and ghosts disappear in the light,” pulling the theme of light back in, again and giving us all kinds of foreshadowing. Cut away as he leans in to whisper her mission to her.

The other really striking scene, for me, happens near the end of the ep, when Gao Chong visits the shrine room, with the memorial tablets of his various brothers and friends. This hit me not just because of Hei Zi’s acting (which is great, don’t get me wrong) but also because this is a scene that reflects both backward and forward in the show - back to ZZS in Ep 1 and forward to the two scenes that Zhao Jing will have in this same room – as well as giving us all sorts of subtle clues about relationships throughout the show. So first of all, we see, in a shot that will mean more the deeper we get into the show, tablets for Zhen Ruyu and Gu Miaomiao (or, “his wife,” as the Youku subs call her, and this is me, rolling my eyes), who were apparently close enough to Gao Chong that he keeps memorial tablets for them on his home altar - which helps explain why WKX is so incensed that none of these Five Lakes Alliance assholes helped his parents when they were turned out of the Healer’s Valley, although that’s not something we would have known yet on a first watch through the show. Gao Chong lights some incense and apologizes to the tablet of Zhang Yusen for letting Zhang Chengling get kidnapped. He talks about waiting 20 years to learn the truth – which is kind of cryptic, but probably means the truth about who poisoned his sword before the spar with Rong Xuan, which we hear about in a later scene this ep – and gets a little bit salty about the fact that it doesn’t matter if everyone else doesn’t believe him, but why didn’t Zhang Yusen believe him? Again, I’m assuming this is about Gao Chong’s protestations that he’s not the one who put poison on his sword. We also learn in this same ep – from Chengling – that Zhang Yusen’s break with the Five Lakes Alliance seems to have at least started that far back, and that Yusen would have been at Mount Qingya to stand with Rong Xuan against his other Alliance brothers, if Yusen’s shifu hadn’t broken his legs so that he couldn’t travel there. (Yusen clearly had some strong feelings about this, if that’s what it took to get him to sit still for it. Also, it makes me wonder how Ye Baiyi’s feelings about Chengling might change if he ever learned that Chengling’s father intended to defend and stand with a guy who Ye Baiyi considered his own child, as well as his disciple.)

Gao Chong then proceeds to have a little crisis of faith – he’s very tired, y’all, it’s been a long 20 years – and talks about how no one understands him, and he’s old, and everyone’s dead. He also yells at Rong Xuan’s tablet, calling Rong Xuan da-ge but also saying he’s sorry he ever met him, but then there’s this brief little moment after, when he seems a little bit shocked at himself for saying it out loud, which reminds me, honestly, of the moment in CQL (we’ve all seen The Untamed, right, I don’t have to put spoiler warnings for it, right?) when Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are in the Yunmeng Jiang memorial hall and Wei Wuxian talks about Yu Ziyuan’s punishments back in the day, then pats his own mouth and says “My fault, my fault, my fault” before bowing to her tablet. Like, yes, their relationship was multiple levels of fucked-up, and his reaction is not out of place given some of his continuing neuroses, but also, this is just not a thing you do, speaking ill of the dead to their faces. I’m sure Gao Chong does regret ever meeting Rong Xuan, and the way that led to the building of the Armory and the Five Lakes Alliance to guard it, and the position that ultimately put Gao Chong in - not to mention that if he never met Rong Xuan he never would have accidentally killed him. But you can’t say things like that OUT LOUD to the MEMORIAL TABLET. Then contrast this to Zhao Jing, who literally takes a piss on the tablet in one of the later episodes. Because he’s the worst. And THEN, Gao Chong kneels and talks to the tablets of Zhang Yusen and Lu Taichong, his dead Five Lakes Alliance brothers, saying they must have met again in the netherworld, and that they’re probably swearing about him right now, and this is the point when I sit straight up and exclaim, out loud, “Fuck. Me. This is Zhou Zishu’s breakdown at the mirror in Episode 1.” When he talks to Jiuxiao about how Jiuxiao and Jing’An must have met again in the afterlife by now and are probably discussing what an awful shixiong ZZS is, right? And then Gao Chong even laughs bitterly like ZZS, and cries like ZZS, and I just. OK. FINE, show. I’ll try to go a little easier on Gao Chong, because you’re clearly linking him to ZZS, here, and I’m willing to forgive ZZS for anything. I suppose I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t try to extend just a little bit of the same grace to Gao Chong.

So, that’s a lot of verbiage, and I haven’t even gotten to Wenzhou yet, but trust me, I have some things to say about them. While WKX has been terrorizing the troops, ZZS left Han Ying’s place and immediately started drinking again, because that continues to be the best way – in combo with his Nails – he knows to kill himself by increments, but so sad, he’s run out of wine as he wanders the marketplace, alone and zhiji-less. Inside Yueyang, Chengling finds a note purporting to be from “Xu,” instructing him to meet at the North Gate that night, and like the little idiot they keep calling him (he really is too pure for this world), he takes it at face value. On his way that night, he runs into Gao Shan, who inadvertently almost saves him by interrupting his sneaking around to try to bully him back to his room. Something something food as bonding, because the lie Zhang Chengling comes up with is that he’s hungry (he’s not eating Yueyang’s food, and it’s not nourishing him), and he’s on his way to find something to eat (because he and his Murder Dads are in a mutually nourishing relationship, and that’s who he wants to be with). Also, no, he would prefer going to find something to eat for himself and not eating whatever Gao Shan will bring back to Chengling’s room. (A little bit, I’m sad there’s never any place to fit in some canon-complicit long-form enemies to failboats to lovers fic for these two. I have to admit, I would read it. Someone should do something with the tension between them, although I don’t really want it to be anything that will make Best Boy permanently sad.) Anyway, A-Xiang shows up just as Gao Shan is about to frog-march Chengling back to his room, and Gao Shan never sees her coming before he’s knocked out on the ground. A-Xiang is confused about the note but nevertheless helps Chengling get to where he’s supposed to meet “Xu,” whereupon she gets beat up and gets her didi took by the Scorpions. (There’s an interesting moment here where Pretty Arhat is fighting with A-Xiang and asks what her relationship is to Beauty Ghost, which whaaaaaat? THERE’S some backstory I need more on. I’m assuming this is based on A-Xiang’s hand-to-hand fighting style, which I think is the only thing Pretty Arhat has seen at this point, and exactly WHEN has she gotten so familiar with Beauty Ghost’s fighting style? Also, I like the apparent nod to Beauty Ghost’s influence in raising A-Xiang (and we’ll see more of this).) Meanwhile, ZZS has been inexorably drawn to the place he left his child disciple child and is moping right outside of Yueyang, so he sees Pretty Arhat fly away with Chengling. Murder Dad 1 springs into action.

Yueyang disciples run around like ants whose hill has been kicked over, looking for Chengling in town, and two of them encounter Wen Kexing, out for a midnight stroll in a fetching pastel blue and green combo. They ask him about seeing a guy. With a pipa. Or maybe without a pipa. So maybe just a guy. Wen Kexing correctly deduces they’re asking about Phantom Musician Qin Song, who covered Pretty Arhat’s getaway by incapacitating everyone with his magic music. YY disciples are excited and tell WKX yes, this dude was involved in kidnapping Zhang Chengling! Y’all. WKX’s face when he hears that. He is not happy. Almost immediately, he spots Qin Song on a rooftop. Murder Dad 2 springs into action.

So, WKX the Ghost Valley Master finds Qin Song, asks him where Chengling is, crushes his playing hand, threatens to break every single bone in his body one at a time (meanwhile dropping the tidbit that he learned the number of bones in the human body from his dad), and tells him a little story about a time when – apparently – he asked another guy the same question (about WHO? has A-Xiang been kidnapped in the past, because that’s about the only other person I can imagine him being like this about?) and only had to break 80 bones before he got an answer. Meanwhile, ZZS actually finds Chengling, in the Scorpion lair where Du Pusa and Pretty Arhat have variously been molesting him (srsly, I feel like I should probably say something to a trusted adult Murder Dad), torturing him with unpleasant magic pixie dust, smacking him around (he loses a tooth, y’all), and waterboarding him. During all this, Pretty Arhat says she’s yet to meet a man who can stand up to waterboarding, and I’m kind of reminded of WKX’s scene threatening Qin Song, and I don’t know if that’s on purpose or not. Chengling literally spits in her face and proclaims that he’s the son of Zhang Yusen, none of whose sons are cowards, and about then, ZZS busts down the door like he’s WKX (by throwing Monster Jiang through it), tells the Scorpions he’s their daddy, and gets into a big fucking fight with all three of them. He flags a little bit somewhere in here as he starts having some Nail pangs (which, yeah, it must be getting about midnight, which is when that’s supposed to happen) and spits some blood, but he reassures Chengling and then tells the Scorpions no one can stop him from killing who he wants and getting what he wants (OK, Wei Wuxian …). Then he shoots some projectiles from some little contraption up his sleeve that we get a quick look at that I did not remember AT ALL from my first watch of the show but is literally like the gun hanging over the mantel in the first act. Huh. Anyway, he kills Monster Jiang, and Du Pusa (who didn’t give a shit about Monster Jiang OR Qin Song earlier), wants to capture him alive, supposedly so she can get revenge for them by teaching him how it feels “to want to die more than live.” Joke’s on you, lady – too late! That’s literally his constant state of being!

About this time, Qin Song comes flying through the doors – or what’s left of them – gasping his last breath as WKX makes his dramatic entrance. Chengling not only calls him “Wen-shu” but also has already figured out exactly how to manipulate Murder Dad 2 and tells him that in addition to kidnapping him, they also hurt ZZS. WKX is predictably murderous, and Du Pusa and Pretty Arhat run away and hide behind the skirts of Xie Wang’s robes as the Zombie Drug Man Army approaches. WKX tells ZZS to take Chengling and leave, ZZS refuses, and Xie Wang LITERALLY SAYS “IN LIFE AND DEATH YOU WILL NEVER PART. WHAT A TOUCHING MOMENT.” and I am DYING. Also, this will not be the last time ZZS/WKX will exhibit what Xie’er wants from his Awful Yifu. Anyway, Xie’er calls ZZS “Leader Zhou,” then tells WKX that he’ll tell them who he (Xie Wang) is if WKX tells them all who he is first. ZZS is Very Done with all of this and smoke bombs the Scorpions to escape. Xie’er shows he actually does know who both of them are – even though each of them doesn’t know everything about the other’s identity yet, and won’t for a while – by telling Du Pusa and Pretty Arhat that they’re the leader of Tian Chuang and the leader of the Ghost Valley and wondering “How did these two devils end up together?” Like calls to like, I guess.

OK, this is getting super-long, so I’m going to attempt to wrap up with the actual Wenzhou material. We cut to Murder Dads and Chengling sitting in the forest, around a campfire, and Chengling is in heaven, back with his family. He’s super-emotional, and ZZS is all, come on, be a man, don’t cry (OK, crybaby). WKX gives some campfire-cooked rabbit? maybe? to ZZS, who starts a precedent by passing it to Chengling. Please, A-Xu. WKX wants to feed his laopo, will you eat something, ffs? Chengling, still emotional, tells them that he knows they’re the only ones who are sincerely kind to him, that Five Lakes Alliance has all kinds of agendas and none of them care about him, and nobody has asked him what he wants. (I know, bb, they were awful.) ZZS asks what he wants, and Chengling says he wants to learn martial arts, to get revenge, and to not be a useless child anymore. Oh god, the cut to WKX here. His face, y’all. He is not cool with the fact that Chengling thinks he can’t be a child anymore, and probably with whatever role he (WKX) had in it. He is so sad. It’s killing me. However, it’s not as if WKX has lost his edge, and he also pounces, asking Chengling if something happened that made him suspicious of the Alliance. Chengling spills that his dad already didn’t trust them and also told him not to trust anyone ever, but he trusts his Murder Dads! This kid, I tell you. He tells them that his dad hid the Mirror Lake Glazed Armor in his stomach and starts getting ready to cut it out for them before ZZS stops him. He tells them Yusen gave him a letter for the Changming Sword Immortal detailing Rong Xuan’s injury (and we get our first iteration of the story of the battle between the Five Lakes Alliance brothers and Rong Xuan, the poison on the sword, and how that turned Rong Xuan evil). Per Chengling, the original argument was about the Combined Six Cultivation Method. Also per Chengling, the Alliance bothers should have been responsible for Rong Xuan after that, but no one stood up for him – I mean, Zhang Yusen would have, but his legs were broken. We learn that the poisoned sword that injured Rong Xuan belonged to Gao Chong. ZZS looks taken aback, but this all just CONFIRMS WKX’s SUSPICIONS.

Cut away for another scene. Cut back. ZZS has suddenly remembered that he’s pissed off and that someone (else, not him) is sleeping on the couch tonight. Earlier, they were sat in order of Chengling, ZZS, WKX. Now Chengling has been put between them. WKX asks for wine, A-Xu is being passive-aggressive and ignoring him before finally handing the wine gourd to Chengling to pass to WKX. He won’t even look at WKX. It is hilarious, particularly as he only remembered he was mad after they’d all eaten dinner, which WKX cooked, and the pair of them made sure their child was OK. Chengling wants to know if they fought and tells them there’s nothing confidants can’t resolve. He’s in full puppy mode. He tells WKX to hurry up and comfort ZZS, because you know he looks tough on the surface but he’s got the softest heart! Didn’t you teach me that tough women can’t resist clingy men? ZZS’s indignant little face at this is a picture. Chengling offers to apologize for WKX. WKX’s face is all fondness for Chengling, except for the eyebrows, which are doing the Tragic Sadness Eyebrows at ZZS. ZZS is all, OK, fine, although he immediately changes the subject and starts talking about the kidnapping attempt. He tells Chengling that the world is dangerous right now, and the safest place for him is Yueyang Sect. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS? Chengling sadly nods. My little dude, c’mon. ZZS’s Nails are bothering him and WKX takes the chance to feed him qi, which ZZS accepts – might I note - without complaint. WKX waxes rhapsodic about A-Xu’s shoulder blades, and says he once saw a dead body with beautiful shoulder blades. Smashcut to a flashback of two people who we don’t yet know are Zhen Ruyu and Gu Miaomiao dead on the ground. Although this takes place immediately after the scene of Gao Chong at the altar, when the first tablets we see are Zhen Ruyu’s and Gu Maiomiao’s, we also don’t know yet to connect those names to these bodies. Tricksy, show. We see Zhen Yan place his hand on Gu Miaomiao’s back, and WKX’s voiceover talks about how he could tell she was a beauty despite the blood everywhere. ZZS interrupts this morbid tale to say they should let the past stay in the past, and then tells WKX, “My condolences,” even though WKX hasn’t actually mentioned anywhere in the story about this dead body that it was even anyone he knew, let alone someone he was related to. Because A-Xu isn’t stupid. Immediately after this - after saying they should leave the past in the past - ZZS asks WKX who he is. WKX goes into his Philanthropist Wen evasion spiel. ZZS shakes his head, visibly steels himself, and apparently comes to the decision to model the behavior he’s trying to encourage by coming clean about his real name, his relationship to Siji Manor, all of his bad decisions, his choking guilt over the deaths of all the Siji Manor disciples, and his reign of state-sanctioned terror as founder and leader of Tian Chuang. Notably, the very first word Chengling speaks to ZZS after hearing this rundown of supposed and actual crimes is to call him “Shifu” again to get his attention before asking for more info about the Scorpions. THIS CHILD. MY HEART.

ZZS tells them both, “I spent half my life alone, doing things I didn’t want to do and killing people I didn’t want to kill,” and I literally want to reach into the screen and shake WKX, because OMG LAO WEN. You are reflections of each other, and he’s baring his soul, and you’re going to continue to be so afraid that he’s not going to accept every part of you that it’s going to be episodes and episodes before you open up, and even then, only after he figures it out on his own. :hands: To make things even more OBVIOUS, ZZS then asks Chengling if he still wants ZZS to be his shifu after learning all of this, and Chengling doesn’t even hesitate, he says “Of course,” and ZZS and I are both about to cry. UGH. Zhang Zhehan, your face. It’s killing me. This is a man seeing the hope of resurrection for the sect he was convinced he had ground into dust. ZZS and Chengling are both so busy being emotional at each other that WKX has to take matters into his own hands, encouraging Chengling to bow, and we get a real bow to shifu this time, in a scene that once again mirrors the later scene when Zhen Yan makes his bow to Qin Huaizhang to become a Siji Manor disciple.

ZZS tells Chengling, all right, then. You are the first disciple of the sixth generation. (SHIXIONG. NO PRESSURE.)

End ep.

#zhou zishu #wen kexing #zhang chengling #beauty ghost #liu qianqiao #gao chong #gao shan #du pusa #pretty arhat #qin song #gu xiang #xie wang #tragicomic ghost #luo fumeng #qin huaizhang #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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So, Word of Honor, Episode 36 (and “Episode” 37) again, because I want to do a little bit more unpacking of this, particularly with some of the extra material and information that people have been able to point me to.

Spoilers, obvs. For right now, I mainly want to pull out this bit of my initial reaction to 36 & 37, because I think it remains a key point for me:

It would be nice, though, if the connective tissue from 36 to 37 made any sense. Or existed whatsoever. Just, like, throw me a bone, show, some kind of explicit hand-waviness that actually gets mentioned for why Ye Baiyi apparently was not as smart as he thought he was and didn’t really know what he was talking about when he was doomsaying about how one of the pair will surely, oh surely perish. None of this “Sooooo, they managed to figure out the technique and master it?” from some random shidi who never actually gets an answer. I mean, the door was left open for fanwankery on this one, with what looks to be a very last-minute conceit of all this being a story told by grown-up Chengling to his disciples, which begs the question of how much of what he’s telling them is totally accurate, given any number of issues …

I do feel like there’s an interesting meta thing going on here, in that the entire show has been about – let’s be honest, it was never really about the plot – queer-coding this couple in ways that supposedly fly enough under the radar that people can handwave them as Just Good Friends and Brothers (I mean, I guess) with a Bury Your Gays tragic ending (ugh) for good measure. And Chengling is telling a story in-universe that seems to conform to some of this same formula. And yet, we all know well and good that these guys were husbands … So are we supposed to carry the same assurance out of the show, on a meta level, that what appears to be happening in the story at the end of Ep 36 – what we discover we’re learning through Chengling’s story-telling, isn’t really the truth? Just, look: While we’re getting the Good Friends and Brothers push, there’s stuff like obvious voice-over work that doesn’t match the much more queer version of what the actors actually said, which is apparently blazingly clear to any viewers who know Mandarin and can manage to lip-read. The show has literally put de-queered words into these characters’ mouths. You can’t trust what you hear. But apparently the show has also made this obvious enough that, if you’re a good enough speaker of the language the show is being told in, and you have a good enough eye, you can see what is actually going on. Are we being taught to trust our eyes more than our ears, are we being told that what we’re being told – by the end of Ep 36 on a meta level, by Ye Baiyi-through-Chengling’s-story on an in-universe level, and by what we learn about what happened from Chengling’s story, itself, also on an in-universe level – is inherently untrustworthy, but that if we “speak the language” of this show well enough, and have a good enough eye, we can decode it and see what “actually” happened and is later made explicit in Ep 37?

So, that’s a lot, but the reason I wanted to pull it back out is because I feel like this no-homo, surface-level, smoke-and-mirrors effect that gets layered over a queer bedrock of “reality” is precisely what the show did with its ending, and I want to approach that on a couple of different levels. Particularly since I’ve seen several reactions from other people who didn’t seem to have seen/didn’t have access to the extra of “Ep” 37, or who also found it difficult and vaguely unsatisfying to make the leap from Ep 36 to full belief in, and commitment to, “Ep” 37.

When I first posted this, I was really leaning on the idea of a classic Rashomon effect, given that we see – imho – a final Zhou Zishu/Wen Kexing scene in Ep 36 that’s filmed to lead us to believe that Wen Kexing died, with a subsequent cut to Zhang Chengling wrapping up a telling of the “story” of ZZS and WKX to his disciples. The easiest fanwank on this is that all of what we’ve seen so far has been Chengling telling the story of ZZS and WKX to his disciples, making him an unreliable narrator who in fact doesn’t know the truth of what really happened. I was actually reminded of the contrast in The Untamed (god, I don’t need to warn for spoilers for The Untamed, do I, we’ve all seen Chen Qing Ling at this point, right? Anyway, SPOILERS FOR THE UNTAMED) between the cliff scene in Episode 1 when they make it look like Jiang Cheng stabbed Wei Wuxian, leading to his fall off the cliff, and you go back later and realize this is the version that the storyteller was telling to the people in the teahouse vs. Episode, god, what is it, 33? When we see the cliff scene in “real” time, and discover that’s not what actually happened, that what happened is that Jiang Cheng stabbed a rock and Wei Wuxian shook himself free of Lan Wangji’s grip to fall to his death. You can’t trust what you hear. Also … well, we’ll get back to Chengling in a minute.

The second level of uncertainty to unwind is Gao Xiaolian calling bs on Chengling’s story. So, I felt like the kid who’s practicing his forms in the snow and being coached by ZZS in “Ep” 37 might actually be someone, not just a random kid, and that might be important, but I could not for the life of me figure out who he might be. I wasn’t aware until I watched some of AvenueX’s wrap-up of the show (I think that’s the first place I heard this info pointed out) that this kid is supposed to be the son of Gao Xiaolian and Deng Kuan, and the dad who comes to take him home is Deng Kuan (formerly Da-shixiong of Yueyang Sect, who – let’s face it – Gao Xiaolian really wanted to marry). Seriously, I spent so much time making fun of ZZS’s stupid facial hair tricks in this show, and then they actually do just put a dumbass mustache on a guy, and I completely don’t recognize him. I have to admit, the mustache threw me enough that I had no idea that was Deng Kuan (well, and maybe only seeing him for three episodes also helped). But if that’s Deng Kuan, and if the kid is his and Gao Xiaolian’s son, then she would have some reasonable standing to know a story detailing WKX’s death was bs.

Finally, and most crucially – thanks to everyone who directed me to resources (including AvenueX and other fans who were able to do some translation) who were able to talk about the voiceover work in this final ep, because when I talk about how you can’t trust what you hear, but if you speak the language well enough and have a good enough eye, you can catch what’s really going on? When I talk about de-queered words being put into these character’s mouths? Apparently, this is what happens to Chengling in the final scene. That last scene - and the story he tells his disciples - apparently DOES provide the connective tissue from Ep 36 to Ep 37, but you can’t trust what you hear. Apparently, this is one of the places where you can see something different from what you hear if you’re able to lip-read, with Chengling telling the disciples something much closer to the idea that two people who love each other equally can equally support each other through this cultivation technique and both come out alive.

In the AvenueX discussion of this (Livestream #21, starting around 1:22:30), there’s an additional tidbit about the use of the word “cauldron” – I believe by Ye Baiyi - to describe one person in the pair, a word with a specific and widely-understood meaning within the genre that’s not necessarily known outside of the genre with, yes, sexual connotations. (Come on, slash fans, don’t tell me you don’t giggle every time you pass a perfectly innocent Jiffy Lube auto shop, at something that the mundanes don’t think twice about.) Apparently, “cauldron” is in the script, I believe it’s in the English subs, and it apparently was in the original Chinese subs, until too many people started talking about it and how it had been slipped past censorship, because it’s a perfectly common Jiffy Lube auto shop, right? and then it appears Youku went back and changed the character in the Chinese subs to something that doesn’t even make any sense. So again, we get an example of a case where if you’re a good enough speaker of the language this show is being told in – in this case the vernacular of wuxia – with a good enough eye, you can catch what’s really going on. Something that then gets no-homo’d. And has some nonsensical de-queered meaning laid over top of it. How many times do we have to do this until we learn the lesson that you can’t trust what you hear?

ANYWAY, I’m wondering if the visuals are important, too: Something we see in the last scene with ZZS and WKX in Ep 36, when WKX is either unconscious or dead (CLEARLY UNCONSCIOUS), is that ZZS – twice – doesn’t let WKX’s hands fall. He catches him by the wrists and then catches him again by the hands as WKX’s hands start to slip away from ZZS’s hands – aaaannnnd end scene. I have to wonder if that’s not a subtle but important detail, that we see ZZS refusing to let WKX physically slip away, and maybe, by implication, refusing to let WKX slip away from him into death.

Also, again with Ye Baiyi – in the flashback when WKX is yelling at ZZS, Ye Baiyi says “No one dies!” as he comes bursting into WKX’s sickroom. And then even reiterates it – “No one dies before me!” But then the voiceover during the qi transfer, he’s supposedly going on about here’s how WKX is going to have to kill himself to save his husband? I think the script has dropped the ball in a few places, but that would really be a tremendous flub. That also deserves some unpacking, but I’m running out of free time right now.

So, just some additional thoughts. I will probably have more, but next up, I think, will be a re-watch from the beginning.

One last thought, tho’: What’s the likelihood that Nian Xiang is Actual A-Xiang and Goa Xiaolian’s/Deng Kuan’s kid is Cao Weining, reincarnated?

#zhou zishu #wen kexing #zhang chengling #gao xiaolian #deng kuan #ye baiyi #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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OK. Moving on, slowly but surely, Episode 2 of Word of Honor.

For anyone only just peeking inside my door, this is a re-watch, so there are SPOILERS not just for this ep, but possibly for the ENTIRE SHOW. Scroll away and come back later if you haven’t seen all 36.5 eps and want to watch it unspoiled.

So, the major thing that hit me during this episode: On re-watch, with context, Wen Kexing’s thirst is now super-complicated by the fact that he thinks he’s recognized the Siji Manor Swift Moving Steps™ from A-Xiang’s throwdown with Zhou Zishu at the end of Ep 1. He gets his confirmation in this ep when he goads ZZS into their first fight, in Chengling’s (badly green-screened) peach-blossom front yard. This complicates the stalking and the flirting, particularly the poetic references WKX uses here to talk about ZZS’s footwork, giving it a level that ZZS (along with the audience, back on our first time watching) simply doesn’t have the context to understand yet. (Well. ZZS not getting all the info that WKX has. That’s the start of a pattern. I mean, at this point, WKX certainly doesn’t owe this random guy a peek into his deepest traumas - EVEN THOUGH it would make things about 10000x less complicated, which is also part of the pattern - but I’m just sayin’. It sure is the start of a pattern.) So ZZS blows off WKX as a PUA asshole with an apparent kink for rough trade with appalling facial hair - just like all of us, as the audience, at this point, were beginning to watch open-mouthed at the speed and intensity of WKX’s thirst for some apparently random dude who he spotted tits out, drinking himself to death in the gutter. Don’t get me wrong, WKX is still thirsty as hell, and he was out to tap that even before he saw the Siji Manor Swift Moving Steps™, but now it’s all mixed up in memories of his shixiong that we won’t see, and ZZS won’t know about, for several more episodes. WKX’s still not sure this is the same guy, but it’s at least an associated guy. So our additional context from later episodes now makes it look like all the stalking isn’t just about having the hots for some rough trade who keeps flashing his collarbones, it’s also about regaining a kind of emotional intimacy that WKX hasn’t had for umpty years of trauma and abuse and killing his way up the ladder. This specific flavor of emotional intimacy isn’t something he can get from A-Xiang, even if she saves his heart – this random drunk dude is triggering some memories (that we won’t see for several more episodes) of feeling protected and cared for, unconditionally, and this guy is literally the only person left in the world who could/can make WKX remember those kinds of feelings. And WKX chases it like he’s starving, because he is. Because anyone in his position would be. Prince Jin will eventually do the same kind of thing to ZZS, grabbing onto him like a drowning man at the only thing he thinks will keep him afloat.

Also, WKX may have had slightly more home training than A-Xiang, but he’s had a lot more – and more recent - grooming by a psychopath. I remember reading somewhere that Zhou Ye talked about how A-Xiang seems slightly off, not quite right in the way she acts, at the beginning of the show, and this was a deliberate acting and directing choice because she was raised in the Ghost Valley, literally doesn’t know how to act right in normal society, and has to learn how as the show goes along. I feel like we see some of that with WKX, too, not just in the hard sell with ZZS, but also in some of his mannerisms and reactions – less so than when he’s playing it up in the Ghost Valley, but still noticeable. I think you can see this in the aftermath of the fight with the ghosts, when both WKX and A-Xiang are watching the reactions from and interactions among ZZS, Chengling and Boat Man, and they both seem kind of ... baffled? Occasionally taken aback? At normal reactions that the other three are having to events. When you set them together in that scene, it’s noticeable, particularly with the way A-Xiang keeps checking in with WKX as if to say, really? This is how humans act? It’s little things that on my first time watching, I initially wrote off to …. not necessarily bad acting, but to overacting, to Gong Jun maybe not being quite settled into WKX’s skin yet, that smoothed out as Gong Jun got more comfortable with the character and with playing off of Zhang Zhehan and seemed more ... natural. NOW, I wonder if this also was deliberate, if this is WKX not being quite settled into a human skin, which smooths out as he gets more comfortable in acting human again and in being around ZZS and Chengling. But meanwhile, he’s like a starving feral dog who’s spotted a piece of meat, and I chose every bit of that metaphor specifically, because psychologically and emotionally, that’s what’s going on, and it’s the way ZZS reacts to him, too.

ZZS is already gun-shy and touch-averse at this point (see the moment he jerks his hand out from under WKX’s hand at 31:20, while they’re both transferring energy to Boat Man) – he just wants to be left alone to die, is that so gd hard? - it’s clearly a trial for him to have to even be around this many nattering idiots. But I also have to think some of the instincts that made him so successful and kept him alive for so long in Tian Chuang have to be screaming at him, every time this rando approaches him, that something is not right about the guy. And even when you’re as suicidal as ZZS is right now, instinctive behavior is hard to overcome, and we see how quickly he steps back away from WKX, at 12:58, when WKX steps close enough to invade his personal bubble. At the same time, everything in WKX is screaming at him to plaster himself to this guy. And so, we set up the constant WKX push, ZZS retreat that we’ll get for several more episodes.

Other thoughts:

Chengling got the spirit I guess, but my lord. He gets beat down and gets his sword took about 5 times in the space of a minute and a half. Good thing his Xiang-jie is there. (Have mentioned how much I love A-Xiang? I just want to be sure everyone knows how much I love A-Xiang. Already. She is a fierce, feral, ray of brightness in every scene she’s in.) Here’s the thing, though – knowing what we know now, I can’t believe not a single one of the Ghosts says “WTF, Amethyst Fiend, why are you making this difficult for us to get the Glazed Armor your zhuren wants us to get our hands on?” They MUST recognize her. Or is this a set-up that the ghosts are in on, to make Chengling and whoever’s with him trust WKX and A-Xiang? But who knew Chengling would even escape? And that seems unnecessarily convoluted when they could just kill him and Boat Man. Did the plan get tweaked when ZZS showed up? If so, I can just imagine what these rank-and-file ghosts are thinking about what WKX wants this kid and this guy alive for, given they don’t know he’s trying to destroy the Ghost Valley – maybe that WKX’s going to do the same thing to Chengling that was done to him by the previous Ghost Valley Master. (Oh. Oh, although - here’s an AU thought – what if ZZS hadn’t turned up at just this particular moment? And what if WKX had intended to kill Chengling, too, along the rest of his family (I mean, presumably this IS what was supposed to happen)? But what if this Ghost Valley Master - whose heart has been fatally compromised by A-Xiang – sees this little soft-hearted soft-eyed dumbass, with his parents and everyone else he knows and loves dead and on fire around him? What if he does end up collecting another kid, at that point? THEN WHAT HAPPENS? Complicated by the fact that WKX’s got emotional skin in the game from jump, in this scenario, but Chengling knows up front about WKX’s part in the Mirror Lake massacre.)

OH MY GOD. I had to watch the same four seconds of footage about five times to try and figure out what’s going on, but there’s a point during the fight with the ghosts when ZZS is still having his Seven Nails Torment Moment, and Boat Man is busy dying, and Chengling is, well, Chengling has been beat down and had his sword took, and meanwhile A-Xiang is dealing with one of the ghosts, and another one’s coming up behind her, getting ready to brain her with his sword. And then at 29:01, it looks like he gets yoinked backward, and he goes crashing through a door, but then there is – I swear to god, y’all – a shot of two walnuts (remember those?) falling on the ground near him, and I guess the implication is that WKX, still hidden in the shadows, knocked him backward by throwing a couple of Walnuts of Death at him? Who knew Wolong’s Famous Nuts were crispy, delicious, and good for self-defense?

Oh, WKX. “Zhou Xu.” It’s so close, isn’t it? So close to “Zhou Zishu.”

Second ZZS/WKX physical fight happens over ZZS insisting that WKX leave Chengling tf alone and stop trying to see his injury. Well, there’s the beginning of another pattern.

#wen kexing #zhou zishu #gu xiang #zhang chengling #gong jun #zhou ye #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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SO. Word of Honor, Episode 10, and everyone is deep in their feelings … well, their feeling, which is misery.

First, due diligence, and I really mean it on this one: SPOILERS not just for this ep but for the entire show. Out of the car, for now, and come back later, if you want to watch the whole thing unspoiled.

Well, it’s the breakup episode, y’all. Everyone is wallowing in misery, and Our Couple is taking that out on themselves and in some cases (:cough:WKX:cough) on everybody around them. We open on sad-sack Wen Kexing digging sadly in the dirt with a sword, the bodies of the Four Sages of Anji laid out beside him as he gives a RIP speech about how you have to be careful when making friends, because they’ll turn out to be bad news, which is clearly yet another warning about himself, because I don’t think anyone in the mob who killed these aging hippies in the last ep was a friend (although I suppose it could be argued that WKX is talking about their friendship with Gao Chong getting them killed) and anyway, you have to understand that WKX is a demon under the skin, not even really human, you guys, and he’s only ever going to disappoint everyone. Has he not made this clear by now? His sword breaks at this point, which probably ought to tell him he’s not going to be able to bury any of this mess. Then Zhou Zishu shows up and is understandably unhappy at the way his decision last ep to walk out on faith for this guy has gone completely pear-shaped, and he asks some rather pointed questions about whether four dead Sages of Anji is what WKX wanted and if he’s happy now – questions that sound, my dude, a little confrontational. I mean, I think you’re entitled, given the situation, but I’m just sayin’. WKX flings off ZZS’s hand and wants to know if “Leader Zhou” has only ever killed bad people, which is a hit that lands, and it hurts, just like it was supposed to, and this is definitely one of those nightmare scenarios where everyone just keeps digging themselves deeper. ZZS is all, FINE THEN, and leaves. Again. Because WKX is apparently a demon in human form who’s only ever going to disappoint everyone. Including his zhiji. I love you with all of my heart, ZZS, but a little bit, you come off like you only showed up to twist the knife, my man. Anyway, ZZS stomps off to go mope at Yuefan Tower, the scene of his bad decision to trust this guy BEFORE finding out he sets up revenge murders for fun. We’re treated to a flashback sequence of some of ZZS’s Tian Chuang state-sanctioned violence, including a pile of bodies in a burned-out house with a little girl who reaches out to him and calls him “shushu” (which I think is a reference to something that actually happens in Qi Ye); killing that official dude and making Jing’an drink poison, from Ep 1; inserting the Seven Nails into Bi Changfeng - a whole bunch of bad shit that WKX has dug back up way more successfully with a few words than that grave he was trying to dig with his broken sword. ZZS sighs mournfully and unfairly beautifully (your FACE, my dude) over the fact that he thought he found his soulmate, but he was apparently WRONG, and meanwhile, we see Han Ying lurking worriedly and devotedly in the background.

Then, both of these morose motherfuckers proceed to drink themselves (even more) stupid over each other, WKX in a brothel and ZZS moping by himself downstairs at the (No Longer) Getting Lucky Inn, leaving poor Han Ying and A-Xiang to eventually deal with them. ZZS is literally falling over as he calls for more wine – you are a sloppy drunk, laopo, although I have to admit, you’ve worked your way through a lot of bottles, so I suppose it’s understandable – and WKX proceeds to drink his four ... five? ... four, I think, girls under the table and clearly has no intention of sleeping with them, because it might interfere with his waxing drunkenly and mournfully about finding a thing you thought you’d lost forever but not being able to keep it at the price of giving up your big revenge murder plan you’ve been working out since you were 8 years old. (Also because he’s gay af. I’m just sayin’.)

So, yeah, Han Ying and A-Xiang eventually have to deal with these two, and for my money, the single most important scene of the ep - thematically, at least - is the one we get between A-Xiang and WKX, where a couple of big things are going on. One of the themes I see again, running through this ep, is the separation between the human world and the world of “ghosts,” and how that line is policed, and how Wen Kexing tries to maintain it as a bright line, in order to maintain his own distance from Zhou Zishu and the world. Now that things have gone so spectacularly wrong with ZZS, he’s going to dig in on the “ghost” side of that line for all he’s worth – much harder than he was digging that grave for the Four Sages of Anji, given he breaks the sword and gives up halfway through on that one, but this one he’s determined to get all the way to the bedrock on. So yes, in this scene we get the theme made explicit again, of human-ghost separation - which will echo and rebound throughout the rest of the show, until we see its awful, gory truth made manifest when it turns out WKX is horrifically correct and A-Xiang is NOT, in fact, going to be allowed by “humankind” to leave Ghost Valley and walk up to the human world with her lover, while meanwhile, if WKX is going to get out of the valley, he’s not staying in the mortal world but is going to end up on the icy remote mountaintop. BUT ALSO, this may be the first time we really see the show put A-Xiang forward as a proxy for Wen Kexing. This is going to be an increasingly weighted Thing as we go on, of course, but what I didn’t remember on my first watch-through - even after I realized what they were doing with the A-Xiang/Cao Weining and Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu parallels further down the road – is that, in this first time we really see it, it’s not even about their respective love interests, it’s about their respective relationships with Chengling. I mean, clearly, clearly, when WKX is being a drunk asshole to A-Xiang about how she’s been too long in her human skin (and huh, interesting that, when we also have instances where fake skin disguises are literal), and DON’T EVER FORGET WHO YOU ARE, HEARTLESS AMETHYST FIEND GHOST VALLEY MASTER HEARTLESS AMETHYST FIEND, and who among them would ever pity you me you, he’s really talking about his recent breakup with ZZS, in which he got called a crazed psychopath just for setting up a few amusing revenge murders. But here’s the thing – what triggers the diatribe is A-Xiang saying she feels sorry for Chengling trapped in Yueyang Sect, in the course of nattering on about what’s up with Chengling, and what she and Chengling have been doing together, and how much Chengling misses WKX. Which is, A-Xiang tells WKX, a lot. After which WKX puffs himself up and proceeds to be a drunk asshole to her, because of course, he’s not worthy of having anyone care about him, they might think he’s human, or something, and then he’s only going to get hurt again when they find out he’s NOT. So, all that happens. We also find out in this conversation that Changing Ghost was responsible for the pile of heads; that A-Xiang was at the Funeral/Wedding Game and saw Deng Kuan become the last survivor and get set free in much better condition than he later showed up at Yueyang Sect, so what the hell’s happened to him in between; and that A-Xiang definitely thinks her Murder Dad master is crazy but isn’t afraid that he’ll end up killing her someday. I mean, let’s be clear, I don’t think she’s absolutely positive that he won’t go crazy and kill her – she’s just not afraid of it. Zhou Ye is fantastic here, because she has A-Xiang give WKX this gorgeous little smile that’s so simple yet just so filled with love and trust and faith and everything that must have kept his heart alive all those years, the one that she probably gave him even after he burned her mouth on congee that was too hot, and I end up clutching my chest because I think she’s killed me. And then in a horrible twist on what’s eventually coming down the pike, she tells him that she’d follow him even if he’s crazy, and that if he killed her, she’d even follow him in death, and GOD. MY HEART. Because we’re going to see that in fact, he’s going to almost follow her into death, and then he’s going to dream of her leaving him instead of actually staying with him after death, and the only thing keeping me together at this point is the idea that Nian’xiang will actually be A-Xiang reincarnated so that she can be with WKX and the rest of her family again.

Anyway, all of this is apparently a dress rehearsal for WKX, because he then gets himself dolled up in some luscious green robes and proceeds to go to Tragicomic Ghost’s mansion in order to terrorize the troops and spread the misery. He requests a report from all of his top ten nine eight devils; credits them with three Funeral Games (I guess we don’t get to see the other two), annihilating Danyang Sect, destroying Mirror Lake Sect, killing Mount Tai Sect’s leader (Ao Laizi), and leaving a pile of heads for Yueyang Sect to find. He’s doing his best Lunatic Wen bit, but come on, my friend, do they really deserve credit for ALL of that? Do they really? It sounds like you have your suspicions, as well, because you want to know who was responsible for the Mirror Lake massacre. Everyone looks around, pointedly not meeting his eyes, so, hmm, it must have been Long-Tongued Ghost, right? Right? (Who we last saw getting killed and getting his (Danyang) Glazed Armor took by Wen Kexing while pretending to be Hanged Ghost.) Changing Ghost, who’s supposedly Long-Tongued Ghost’s superior and who’s smart enough to sense the wind shifting, even if he’s not sure in which direction, hastily says that LTGhost doesn’t listen to him anymore. (Yeah, because he’s dead.) At this point, White Grim Reaper is dumb enough to draw attention to himself, and WKX chokes him out just ‘cause. ‘Cause he’s Lunatic Wen, and fuck you, that’s why. Both Tragicomic Ghost and Beauty Ghost look more Completely Done With This Bullshit than scared – in contrast to the men, who are shitting their pants - which is an early indication that their relationships with WKX are different than his relationships with the male Devils. WKX also makes some pointed comment about how oh dear, he’s killed someone, and they were already low on manpower, but as a chief of GHOSTS, that’s all he has to work with, isn’t that RIGHT, Changing Ghost – which sounds on the surface kind of like policing that line between ghosts and humans, but really seems more like he has his suspicions about exactly who Changing Ghost is actually working with, because while he may not be as smart as A-Xu, he’s not DUMB. Now, let’s all come up with a plan to fuck over the Five Lakes Alliance during the Hero’s Conference. Aaaaand … end scene (and ep).

Meanwhile, Han Ying is dealing with his poor, drunk dumbass charge, and we see ZZS wake up in some richly appointed rooms, in some strange bed, and he’s clearly thinking “Oh snap. What I do last night?” Also, feeling the hangover. Once he manages to get his boots on, he notices a shrine, complete with candles, and just about this point, Han Ying busts in like he’s WKX or something (although to be fair, it is his bedroom), and wants to know exactly wtf is wrong with ZZS, getting blackout drunk with his actual face hanging out like he doesn’t care who recognizes him? (I just have to take a moment here, and point out that ZZS, who went all in, in the last ep, and who will continue to be the more open one as this relationship goes on, is being berated here for not wearing a mask, for showing his real self, while the issue for both A-Xiang and WKX is going to continue to be keeping on a protective mask/skin, even though WKX accuses A-Xiang himself in this very ep of thinking the mask is real and not just a cover for her true face. Anyway.) Oh, and also, My Lord, how is your injury? DO YOU NEED SOMEONE TO TENDERLY CARE FOR YOU? I like this scene, because Han Ying’s actually kind of angry at ZZS, and a little bit, he shows it, and we get to see that he’s not spineless, even in the (blindingly beautiful) face of ZZS, he’s just devoted. And if that means keeping this dumbass safe from himself, well, Han Ying will try to do that, too, even if it’s enough to drive him to find religion, as we also find out in this scene, explaining the shrine. I suppose he needs all the help he can get. Anyway, ZZS tells him that he’s too mean to die just yet, although he doesn’t expect any blessings on his path, and Han Ying responds – and I think this is important, given ZZS’s decision last ep to spend the rest of his life living instead of dying – that “any day we live is a day gained.” (HAN YING. MY BELOVED.) ZZS pulls some Glazed Armor out of his robes to give to Han Ying, and they both realize that it looks exactly like two pieces Han Ying already has his hands on, gdi WKX. At this point, ZZS reiterates that he just wants Han Ying to lay low and stay safe, Han Ying reiterates his undying devotion, and ZZS has clearly had it with these kids and their starry-eyed devotion. He tries telling Han Yng again to just live a good life - as if Han Ying is at all wired that way – before making some dramatic pronouncement about expecting to have to deal with what’s coming to him in hell and sweeping out the door in the last we see of him this ep.

Let’s see, other things that happened:

Gao Chong, Zhao Jing and Shen Shen confer over their complete loss of face in the run-up to the Hero’s Conference; Shen Shen gets very offended and denies killing Ao Laizi, which is the rumor going around town; Gao Chong says the Ghost Valley isn’t responsible for Ao Laizi’s death (which they are) or for spreading the rhyme about the Glazed Armor (which they are); Zhao Jing says Five Lakes Alliance can’t get a reputation for forcing other sects to do things (when he can manipulate them into doing what he wants), and Shen Shen wants to know WHY THE HELL NOT (oh, Shen Shen) when the jianghu has always been, and I QUOTE, “a place where the strong pery on the weak,” so again, I have to kind of side with WKX on this one about the hive of scum and villainy. Or I would if you guys seemed capable of actually accomplishing anything.

Elsewhere in Yueyang Sect, it’s been Bullying Hour again for Chengling, and A-Xiang is furious when she finds out, threatening to break the legs of whoever’s responsible for smacking him around (she really is like the most delightful Chengxian love-child, I have to say). She also has some Wolong Nuts – crispy and delicious! – for him. Gao Xiaolian shows up with some treats, but Chengling doesn’t want her food, and also he doesn’t want to marry her, because he doesn’t want to be Gao Chong’s puppet, which is kind of new, because he said a couple of eps ago at the Five Lakes monument that he would abide by Gao Chong’s decisions. I guess now that he’s found out from A-Xiang that their Murder Dads are still around, he thinks there’s still a chance to run away with them. Gao Xiolian runs away, crying. Harsh, Chengling, but it does give him the chance to complain to A-Xiang that he’s effectively under house arrest, WHERE ARE OUR MURDER DADS TO SAVE ME?

Last but not least, there’s this incredible scene with Yu Loser Qiufeng, leader of Mount Hua Sect, in which one of the Mount Hua Virgins (tm WKX) comes complaining that everyone is looking down on them. Yu Qiufeng tells him that the entire jianghu is falling apart and to suck it up, and then another Virgin (tm WKX) shows up to say that some people from Mount Tai Sect are here to talk about Dead Ao Laizi, because the Five Lakes Alliance killed him omg. Yu Quifeng’s response is literally “Tell them I’m not here,” and when the disciple wants to know how he can possibly say that, Qiufeng’s response is literally “Say I went out. Say I’m sick. Say I’m dead.” (OMG, Zongzhu can’t see you right now, he’s dead!)

#wen kexing #zhou zishu #gu xiang #han ying #zhang chengling #yu qiufeng #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 2 years

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Note to self re: WoH Eps 4 & 5

Why ... isn't Song Huairen wearing the Yueyang sect uniform? I mean, sure, he's one of ZJ's traitorous twinks, but surely you wouldn't want to ADVERTISE that by standing out. Even Deng Kuan, who's YY's head disciple (if not, apparently, FAVORITE disciple*) wears the uniform.

*Also despite Song Huairen being Gao CHONG's fav disciple, I think we definitely are given the idea that Deng Kuan is Gao XIAOLIAN's fav disciple, and I feel like general sentiment is that she was set to marry Deng Kuan before he went missing and Chengling showed up. So now I'm wondering about what kind of hot mess YY politics must have been to manuever.

Also note to self, re: WoH Eps 3 & 4

Every time I watch, I'm more struck by how SUPER-protective ZZS is of Chengling's bodily autonomy, the way he re-directs WKX from looking at or questioning Chengling's injury, and the way he, himself, lets Chengling know he's going to let him keep it private. I can't help feeling this is related to his own issues with keeping the Nails secret. This has ... potential for fic exploration, the shared experience of protecting a secret hidden in your own body.

#zhou zishu #zhang chengling #yueyang sect #word of honor #kind of #word of honor episode reax #(quick rewatch before getting back on track)

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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So, Episode 7 of Word of Honor, and where to start? No, I’m kidding, I know exactly where I’m starting, which is with some recognition of what a great job this show does of developing 98 percent of its multitude of characters, because the first two things I’m going talk about this week aren’t even Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing OR Wen Kexing’s thirst (AKA, the three main characters of the show).

Well, I guess I’m really starting with the usual warning – this is a re-watch and so there are SPOILERS here, not only for this episode, but for most of the show. Scroll away and come back later if you’re trying to watch all 36.5 eps unspoiled.

SO, I mean, come on. Of course I’m starting with the Smartest Man in the World, who has finally shown up in this episode, and I’m reminded once again what an actual cinnamon roll, too good for this world, Cao Weining is. He’s maybe the single completely good character we meet – even Chengling wants to burn down somebody’s house at one point because he’s mad. But Cao Weining is almost too good to be true – and yet, there he is! Living his best life, being good, eating good, falling in love, and refusing to let his beautiful, clever, fierce girl’s neuroses come between them. I love him, y’all. And not just because he instantly falls in love with A-Xiang when he happens to see her beat up a bunch of drunk bro assholes in the inn where he’s having a quiet little lunch by himself before she storms into his life like a purple whirlwind. But let’s do think about this from his perspective, yeah? And let’s remember it as we watch the progression of their relationship, as we wait for the revelation we know is coming, and as – many eps down the line – he learns the truth of her. Cao Weining’s first experience of A-Xiang is someone who’s brave and capable, who defies outsized odds to come to the rescue of those in need, who doesn’t allow women and girls to be abused, who expects proper behavior from the representatives of the jianghu, and who is absolutely fearless in demanding just treatment and never even thinks to be intimidated when she faces unfair censure from an authority figure. This is the girl WKX raised, y’all. This is a girl who embodies everything Cao Weining has been taught to believe in as a cultivator. And this is the girl Cao Weining sees every time he looks at A-Xiang. Maybe, just maybe, this is the truth of her, and Cao-dage sees and understands it from the very first time he spots her, and anything else he’ll learn about her is really extraneous. (Hmm. I wonder what other relationship we’ll eventually end up seeing that kind of dynamic in, where someone truly knows you and believes in you, so everything else is unimportant?) Also, Cao Weining tells A-Xiang she’s very beautiful, and how many people do you think have ever told her that before in her life? He asks why he would want to fight and hurt her, and how many people – particularly men, given where she grew up – have ever told her that before? He buys her lunch – twice, because the first round gets cold. Remember a few episodes back, when WKX asked her who the second cutest person in the world was, and she responded that it was someone who would buy her a meal? Well, here he is. For bonus points, it is hilarious how badly WKX responds to Cao Weining’s very existence after ZZS points out the pair of them having a toast at the same inn that WKX and ZZS have stopped in WKX has dogged ZZS’s footsteps into. Poor Cao Weining doesn’t even get the shovel talk – although to be fair, he doesn’t get the full-court Ghost Valley Master press, either, so WKX must have been holding back somewhat – he just gets told to get out, before WKX grabs A-Xiang by the ear and delivers some scathing commentary on her taste in men, like he didn’t immediately fall for some rando who was tits out, drinking himself to death in the gutter.

ANYWAY, from the Smartest Man in the World, we’re going to move to Han Ying, My Beloved, who we see interacting with the Five Lakes Alliance again, this time in the person of Gao Chong, leader of Yueyang Sect and host of the upcoming Heroes Conference, da-ge of the 5LA. I had honestly forgotten we got to see so much of Han Ying this early on. What strikes me here is that this is a guy who I actually could believe is the second-in-command of Tian Chuang at what is it? 21 years old? When he’s doing his job, and ZZS is nowhere around for him to make pining puppy-dog eyes at, he’s focused and determined and a bit forceful and somewhat threatening and, frankly, appropriately arrogant for the job he’s been sent to do. He’s also wearing a cloak with a mini-Collar of Evil. He comes off as, dare I say, a capable leader of an assassin organization and a guy who’s able to do a proxy flex for his boss without looking completely ridiculous - which puts him one up on Duang Pengju, omg that asshole, and also makes me feel a little better about how I want ZZS to wreck him (or I guess, technically, him to wreck ZZS, because I’ve never seen a character (except Marcus Flavius Aquila, THANK YOU for your service, Channing Tatum) who put off such subby service-top vibes. WHY is there not more Han Ying/ZZS on AO3, fandom? I thought better … worse? … better? … of you.) When Gao Chong claims the Glazed Armor is a myth, Han Ying basically calls this older, respected zongzhu a liar and gets up in his face before refusing a dinner invitation and sweeping out in his mini-Collar of Evil with a credible “PAH.” My boy has layers, y’all.

What else? We start out the ep at Luo Mansion, a wedding scene, and I’m struck by how the Ghost Valley colors match traditional wedding colors, here. I’m thinking about how A-Xiang’s wedding dress won’t be red (and I think green was more common during the Tang dynasty?) although all the decorations will be, and I’m thinking about how we have this wedding as a book-end to that wedding, and I’m thinking about how it’s interesting that a girl who was raised in the Ghost Valley and protected by the Department of the Unfaithful meets a man who’s going to be so faithful to her in the same episode as this wedding with/of the dead. Ghoul, who’s one of the attendees from the Ghost Valley, also remarks that the red makes him hungry, so there’s a meat reference to throw into the thematic basket, I guess. (Also, hey. Ghoul is played by the same guy who’s Sun Yongren in Killer & Healer.) Lovelace (ugh) briefly menaces one of the Department handmaidens before Luo Fumeng shows up, and I think she’s Yun Zai or Hong Lu, one of the two maids that A-Xiang rescued from him, although I’m not positive, because her hairstyle is so different and hides a lot of her face, here. So, we’re all attending the “wedding” of Mu Yunge, the apparent fuckboy who got got a couple of episodes ago as bait for Ao Laizi when Changing Ghost got his hands (briefly) on the Danyang Glazed Armor. We did see a brief scene with Yunge in the last ep, when he woke up tied up in bed, being menaced by someone who appeared to be his dead lover – who hanged herself while pregnant with their child – but turned out to be Beauty Ghost using a face-masking technique similar to ZZS’s disguises. In the interim, Ghost Valley has kidnapped 10 cultivators as his wedding party, and – this is the important plot point – that includes Deng Kuan, head disciple of Yueyang Sect. We get to see some of Beauty Ghost’s ruthlessness here, as she carries in the dead woman’s memorial tablet draped in a red cloth – how’s that for some foreshadowing (my f’kn HEART) – to set it down in the “bride’s” place before Yunge is forced to bow three times. (Dead girlfriend was a Mo from Broken Arrow Manor, and I … am not sure if that is significant or not. Is she possibly related to Mo Huaiyang? Does anyone know which sect is associated with Broken Arrow Manor?) Beauty Ghost also kills two of the 10 “guest” cultivators for talking without permission as she explains the next event to them – cage match. Only one of them gets to get out alive. Deng Kuan, the best of them, apparently, pleads with everyone to not let themselves be divided, but we can all guess how this is going to go. I guess maybe he’s the other completely good character we meet, but he sure is a punching bag. He ends up the last man, sort of, standing, as he kills the final other person in self-defense, but not before getting stabbed, and he goes down and is out for the count.

Meanwhile, cut to Zhao Jing and Shen Shen drinking and gossiping at an inn on the way to Yueyang. Shenshen – Shenshen – continues to bemoan Chengling’s uselessness, and also talks about the torture the other Zhang family members underwent just in time for Chengling to overhear in the hallway, so thanks a lot for even more trauma, Shenshen. Zhao Jing is so sad about it all, y’all. He’s just so very very sad, can we just stop talking about it, Shenshen, because you’re making him sad, and he’s just going to let Da-ge figure it all out, OK? Uh-huh.

Fourth plot thread of the episode is ZZS skulking around, following Chengling, trying to convince himself that this kid is safe now that he’s turned himself in to gone to live with the 5LA, even as ZZS spots Tian Chuang spies in the ranks of the Yueyang disciples and among the dumpling vendors on the streets outside. ZZS follows the dumpling vendor, gives him a code phrase and almost gets his head taken off by a Scorpion blade for his trouble, before stabbing Dumpling Man in response. WKX picks this exact moment to wander back into ZZS’s orbit, taking the chance to flirt as Dumpling Man spits up blood and dies in the alleyway, because of course he does. WKX tsks, accuses ZZS of being cruel, and quotes some poetry about fair faces and poisonous hearts, which - like all of his poetry - has a double meaning, because which of them is he really talking about, ZZS or himself? ZZS notes that WKX is openly wearing the (Danyang) Glazed Armor because of course he’s looking for trouble, but WKX loosens his stays and clutches his pearls and replies that he couldn’t possibly be looking for trouble – him? Philanthropist Wen? He’s not a merciless killer like ZZS. Whereupon ZZS finally says out loud what he’s been clearly thinking since he started going on about what an awful person he is in the LAST EPISODE, which is why the hell don’t you stop following me around, then? There’s some more flirting, and WKX continues to follow ZZS around, and ZZS takes note that WKX is obviously flaunting the Glazed Armor out in the open, and then there’s a little sleight of hand when Famous Pickpocket Fan Bu Zhi, oh noes! Steals WKX’s Glazed Armor right off his belt when he isn’t even looking! before WKX continues to follow ZZS around, conveniently into the same inn where Cao Weining and A-Xiang are having lunch. After WKX attempts to chase him away, we discover Cao Weining has had his wallet stolen. WKX deploys his Sadness Eyebrows to convince ZZS to turn over his wallet to pay for Cao Weining’s and A-Xiang’s lunch. ZZS – who does an admirable job of refusing for a bit – finally caves, and WKX orders lunch for everyone, on ZZS. Now all we need is Chengling, because the fam is not complete without Goldbean.

#cao wening #gu xiang #han ying #liu qianqiao #beauty ghost #zhou zishu #wen kexing #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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Moving on to Episode 4 of Word of Honor, and y’all.

Wait, first: If you’re new or just visiting, this is a re-watch, so there are SPOILERS not just for this ep but for the ENTIRE SHOW. Maybe a lot of them. Scroll away and come back later if you haven’t seen all 36.5 eps and want to watch it unspoiled. (They’re all gonna be tagged “word of honor episode reax”)

A couple of big things, first:

So, right up front, I don’t know for sure that this is the first time we’ve heard the word, but it’s the first time I’ve twigged to it in this re-watch. As Zhou Zishu and Chengling are leaving the inn in the morning, at the very beginning of the ep, Wen Kexing asks why ZZS continues to call him gongzi and wants to know if he’s still too much of an outsider for a less formal form of address. He uses the word 外人 (wairen) (at 2:30) for “outsider,” which is how the subs translate it here. Anybody who’s been around for these flailing reactions since the first time I watched the show might remember that I made a deal about this somewhere around in the late 20s of the episodes, based on a post from someone that I scrolled quickly past while avoiding spoilers and that I have NEVER FOUND AGAIN and am STILL LOOKING FOR, that alerted me to the use of this word and its nuances in ep 25. There’s a conversation there about WKX possibly taking over some of Chengling’s training at Siji Manor, and WKX demurs, calling himself “外人.” Youku translated it there as “someone else,” as in having “someone else” train your disciple, and ZZS responds with “And you’re 外人?” again translated as “someone else.” This actually seems to mean “stranger,” or “outsider,” as they do actually translate it here in Ep 4 - presumably someone who’s from outside your sect, at least in the Ep 25 instance, in which WKX is labeling himself that while he’s in the midst of his upcoming crisis, trying to keep his emotional distance from ZZS and Siji Manor. It’s used again in Ep 26, when ZZS finds WKX giving training advice to Chengling, and it’s one of the ways they have WKX and A-Xiang reflect each other, when she uses it in Ep 29, and rejects it as a description of herself, in order to claim a place in Cao Weining’s sect/family (which, now, knowing … GOD. My HEART). Anyway, I found it super-interesting that WKX is using this word here in Ep 4 to push against ZZS’s boundaries, in contrast to the way he’ll use it later, to try to fortify his own walls against ZZS and Siji Manor. I begin to suspect that he doesn’t want to tell ZZS who he actually is because, maybe, just a little bit, he wants ZZS to figure it out, to recognize him, to truly know him (zhiji) without him having to spell it out. We kind of travel back around to this idea near the end of the ep, when WKX is questioning ZZS about the Baiyi sword, and ZZS tells him that their relationship is like the fish that ZZS unsuccessfully tried to cook and threw on the ground – raw (i.e., unacquainted) – to explain why he keeps shutting out and shutting down WKX. Only we know now that isn’t entirely true, and WKX certainly suspects it isn’t entirely true. (Also, just an observation, ZZS says in that later scene that he’s not interested in who WKX is. DON’T TELL HIM THAT, my dude, now it’s going to be 3,246 episodes before he’ll give you any personal info.)

Also, just a note – I think we make the switch from Zhou-xiong to A-Xu in this ep. (ETA: No! I have been reliably informed by @janedrewfinally that this switch happened back at the end of Ep 3 (at 41:18), and it seems to be part of what precipitates the Completely Reasonable, Not At All Flirtatious, Utterly Heterosexual No Really, Like Bros way that ZZS takes WKX's wine jar. You know the incident we mean.)

The second thing that I really started turning over in my head here is the developing relationship between WKX and Chengling, and this is one of the things that took me so long on this one, because I wanted to go back and look at those two, specifically, in the previous eps again, and revisit their interactions both with and without the mediating factor of ZZS. The first time WXK sees Chengling is in the marketplace at the end of Ep 1 when Chengling ends up giving his token to ZZS. But I think the first time WKX sees Chengling is maybe when WKX’s sitting in the cutout window with his drinkie during the massacre of Mirror Lake and ZZS draws the Baiyi sword to protect Boatman Li and Chengling, just before they make it to the boat and float away back to the mainland. I don’t know how much of the beginning of the fight in the abandoned temple WKX then sees before A-Xiang makes her entrance, but there’s a lot of Chengling flinging himself in front of Boatman Li and ZZS in a way that’s not entirely dissimilar to the way Zhen Yan will fling himself at his parents’ bodies in flashback in a later episode, and then WKX definitely sees dying Boatman Li charge ZZS with Chengling’s care, then make Chengling bow, in a parallel to the scene we’ll get later when Qin Huaizhang accepts Zhen Yan as a Siji Manor shidi. In Ep 3, there’s a lot of weird sympathetic looks from WKX as A-Xiang berates Chengling over dinner (she doesn’t quite have this jiejie thing down yet, and she’s probably never had someone younger than her to take care of) for not taking care of himself so he can be strong and get his revenge for his family’s deaths. This time out, Ep 4, we start with the beggar gangs coming after Chengling, which has some resonance with the former Ghost Valley Master and his Ten Devils standing around the bodies of Zhen Yan’s parents and debating what they’re going to do with this kid before they steal him away. You can see WKX’s eyes start to narrow as the lead beggar dude talks, and he eventually even asks them, “What are you going to do if he doesn’t want to go, take him away by force?” We get a LOT of cutting to WKX in this conversation, even though he ostensibly has nothing to do with this, it’s really a convo between Beggar Guy, ZZS and Chengling. WKX pulls focus, and he eventually provokes that fight, and sure, he wants to see ZZS fighting and hopefully get a look at the Baiyi sword, and he even may think that’s the extent of his ulterior motives, but I’m not sure that actually is the full extent of his motives, there. This episode is also when we really see WKX start to encourage Chengling to continue to press at ZZS about taking him as a disciple, including the first use of the infamous “Tough women can’t resist clingy men” saying. Chengling comments that he was just supposed to be Son #3 who stayed home and took care of the old people, and WKX comes back with the Extremely Significant Comment that “When the children want to fulfill their filial piety, the parents have died,” which is not only Extremely Significant, but also sounds like it may be a quote from a poem or other literature? Anyway, a lot of this is just to say, KINDLY AU ANON WHO WAS THINKING ABOUT WRITING THE STORY IN WHICH WKX GETS CUSTODY OF CHENGLING BECAUSE ZZS IS NOT AT MIRROR LAKE, ARE YOU STILL OUT THERE? Hopefully you are hard at work, writing, because I have been having thoughts about this relationship.

What else? Kind of chronologically:

First of all, it continues to physically pain me to have to look at that horrifying facial hair, ZZS. I cannot WAIT to hit Ep 6.

We open this ep on WKX rolling walnuts in his hand in a way that is reminiscent of SOMEONE who we’ve seen do that before – multiple times, given they put that shot of Ghost Valley Master in the opening credits. Nevertheless, I didn’t catch this right away on my first time through. It took me a few episodes, and then I FINALLY noticed the opening credits shot right in front of my face. Point to you, show. Once you know, this ep practically shoves it in your face, recreating not only the walnut rolling, but a dude getting held up in the air and choked out (which we’ve seen before, in Ep 1 (and will see again)) before being slammed down on the ground with WKX crouched over him (which we’ve seen before, in Ep 1). Later, WKX is concerned about his manicure (which we’ve seen before, in Ep 1). It’s actually a little bit funny that both he and ZZS - a master assassin and a guy who literally skinned another dude (and maybe ate him?) to take his throne – are both so prissy about actual, literal blood. Anyway, is it significant or a coincidence that WKX waits until ZZS and Chengling are out of sight before actually going wild-eyed? You know the look I mean.

OH MY GOD, it’s Lovelace. I had blocked this dude from my mind. Eurgh. Nevertheless, there are a number of things I love about his scene, and all of them are related to A-Xiang, my feral beloved - from the way she clomps into the room, completely unworried about stepping the least bit gracefully while making her presence known and stomping (lit. and fig.) all over his dramatic little bit, to the way she berates him, threatens him with “Aunt Luo,” bares her teeth at him, and makes the eye-gouging motion at him. She is the best, and I adore her. I also love how she literally laughs in WKX’s face at his comment that maybe he just wants to be friends with ZZS, OK, is that alright?

The fight with the beggar gangs in this ep may be the first time we see something similar to the cage of spears maneuver in Prince Jin’s throne room all the way up in Ep … what? 30? … although it won’t be the last time we see it, and each time we see ZZS is perfectly capable of avoiding it or escaping it, making me suspect that Tian Chuang only “trapped” him in it because he let them, just like he only got taken back to Prince Jin in chains, in the first place, because he let it happen. We see it at 5:30 with the beggar gang’s staffs, when ZZS breaks it up by literally flinging another dude into the middle of it. We see it at 5:41, when he kicks his way out of the formation. And we see it at 8:15, when the sheaths have come off the swords, and he feints under them to break his way out. Just noticing.

When WKX is talking about the Baiyi sword as they all sit around ZZS’ sad little raw fish in the dirt by the lakeside, he mentions that Rong Changqing created three master works – the White Cloth sword, the Dragonback, and the “Great Wild Land,” per Youku’s translation. ZZS has the Baiyi sword, I assume the Dragonback is Ye Baiyi’s sword. Is the Great Wild Land actually the Ghost Valley? Given what we learn from Ye Baiyi in the back nine about Rong Changqing and his plans for Ghost Valley? Anyway, then we get some magic pipa playing, and ZZS (trying to, apparently) play WKX’s xiao in musical self-defense, and even though he leaves his opponent bleeding, WKX takes the opportunity to make suggestive comments about teaching him how to blow properly, just in case WKX’s been slacking on his act as a cheesy pick-up artist and anyone’s beginning to see through him. ZZS yells at Chengling for his lack of martial skill, then yells at him for crying, because that always works, particularly with traumatized teenagers who have had their entire family and sect massacred like, two nights ago. As a shifu, I’m not sure how you manage to inspire such devotion, my dude. WKX plays the indulgent parent, but also reassures Chengling that ZZS has good reasons for yelling at a traumatized, newly orphaned kid. I suppose he is getting him ready for all the yelling that’s going to go down once they get to Five Lakes Alliance and Chengling has to deal with Gao Chong and Shenshen. Chengling’s response, with WKX’s encouragement, is to ask to be ZZS’s disciple again. Was Han Ying (who I guess we’ve yet to actually meet at this point (EDIT TO ADD: NO WAIT, he was in Ep 1)) this much of a little dumbass to 24-year-old ZZS when Han Ying was 14? (EDIT 2 TO ADD: And who is writing this story, omg.) Although, ugh, that makes me realize that part of ZZS’s bad mood is that Chengling asking to be a disciple must be bringing up a shit-ton of bad stuff for ZZS about how he got all the other Siji Manor disciples killed. (Wen Kexing sees himself in Chengling, making his bow to Qin Huaizhang, one of the few good things that ever happened in his life, while ZZS sees all those red flowers on the mural back in his rooms in Prince Jin’s palace.) A final lakeside observation – A-Xiang pokes at ZZS’s uselessness as a cook here, and WKX will later ask him why he’s so utilitarian about food and drink, when they’re the greatest pleasures of life. (Really, WKX? THE greatest pleasures? Although that’s certainly an interesting comment given where we end up, in the end.) And it makes me begin to wonder – is ZZS so bad at cooking, and does he continue to avoid it, at least partially because he’s already losing his senses enough so that it interferes with preparing a tasty meal?

Also, we meet the Four Scorpion Assassins, and Pretty Arhat and Evil Bodhisattva have some pretty bold names, but now I’m back on my thing about the women in this show, and wondering what kind of enlightenment or release these two feel like they’ve had, and how it may or may not resemble the mindset of the women of the Department of the Unfaithful in Ghost Valley. I’m not well-versed in Buddhism, though, and am maybe not the person to take on how that religious symbolism is or is not used as a metaphor for female freedom in this show.

This is getting kind of long, so one last observation for now, and I think I may have mentioned this before: WKX has color-coded ZZS and Chengling as a unit in the robes he bought for them when he also rented out the entire inn. He’s not in the same color, but he is in a complementary shade and tone, which I find interesting. Also, his sash is sort of salmon, not the red of his Ghost Valley getup, but not completely divorced from it, either.

#wen kexing #zhou zishu #zhang chengling #gu xiang #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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OK, Word of Honor, Episode 9, and I know last time I got deep in the weeds about symbolism, but this week, I’m getting back to basics and rambling on (and on) about what this show is really about: Zhou Zishou and Wen Kexing and their relationship.

First, though, the usual warning: SPOILERS. Not just for this episode, but potentially for the entire show, so drive past and circle back around later if you want to watch all 36.5 eps unspoiled.

Bear with me on this one, because this ep spends a LOT of time on ZZS and WKX, and I think a lot of that time is ZZS making some Monumental Life Decisions, including how he’s going to proceed in this relationship and how he’s going to approach his life moving forward. But I’m finding myself needing to work through it chronologically, and it’s. A Lot. Also, let’s face it, ZZS has been my ride-or-die at least since he dropped to his knees and started disrobing in the middle of the throne room in Ep 1, so a chance to wallow in his emotional journey is a chance I’m gonna take.

So, we do have a brief opener when we find out Dead Guy who the Yueyang disciple was shrieking about at the end of the last ep is Fang Buzhi, AKA the Nine Clawed Fox, the guy who lifted WKX’s (Danyang) Glazed Armor (along with some replicas). He got got by mysterious somebodies in the previous episode, and we find out now that he has three tiny needles in his neck, which ZZS recognizes as a Tian Chuang technique. This leads ZZS to 1) assume it must have been Han Ying who did it, so the (Danyang) Glazed Armor is now in the hands of Tian Chuang, and 2) realize that maybe this is not the best place for the former leader of Tian Chuang to be hanging out right now, so he makes their excuses, because he knows that Gao Chong must be VERY BUSY now that he’s got this corpse on his hands, so they’ll just BE GOING, thanks so much. Gao Chong hopes to see them at the Hero’s Conference, and WKX responds in a Significant Tone that of course he’ll be at the Hero’s Conference, and now ZZS has his Thinky Face on again, because WKX is not nearly as subtle as he seems to think he is when he’s making Pronouncements.

The ZZS/WKX Show really starts kicking into gear that night, at the Getting Lucky Good Luck Inn, where we open on ZZS wandering contemplatively around his room, looking beautiful in the soft light of evening (your FACE, Zhang Zhehan) and ruminating on Prince Jin’s motives for wanting the Glazed Armor, like he’s never met this power-hungry asshole before. Also, he thinks to himself, wtf was that, with Gao Chong keeping anybody from seeing Chengling in the last ep? There’s a knock on the door, which momentarily confuses him - understandably, because as we’ll see, WKX doesn’t generally get the concept of announcing yourself and waiting to be invited in by knocking first, preferring to dramatically bust open doors (at least to ZZS’s bedroom) and grace you with his presence, whatever your thoughts on the matter are. He’s accompanied by waiters and dinner, and ZZS realizes his senses are going, presumably because he can’t smell this spread that WKX has procured in an attempt to prove what a good provider he is (what did I say about food and bonding? ZZS fed him in the market, and now it’s his turn to feed ZZS). WKX tells us that life is just three hots and a cot - which gives away more about your life than you would likely be comfortable with us knowing, Lao Wen, given how close to the vest you’re holding your cards – and that everything else can wait if you can have a meal with someone you like. :coff: (Also, remember this, it will come around again.)

Cut to dinner by flickering candlelight, the better for soft lighting to caress ZZH’s exquisite face, but ZZS isn’t into it at all, staring into space instead of eating WKX’s proffered Courtship Delicacies. This earns what’s possibly WKX’s most hypocritical and amusing comment yet, which is to ask ZZS, “What is it that you can’t tell me?” ZZS - apparently - is still feeling soft about WKX’s help against Tian Chuang’s Chengling-kidnapping attempt - or maybe he’s thinking that a little bit of opening up on his part will soften up WKX - because he hardly has to have a spoon dug into his ribs at all to admit that he’s wondering if it was a mistake to bring Chengling to Five Lakes Alliance. My dude, just steal him back, then. WKX laughs at him and tells him he’s got such a handsome face (true) along with a kind and innocent heart (false, he’s a former government spook and assassin, a part-time ill-tempered gremlin, and a whole-ass troll), and therefore girls will clearly go crazy for him (true, just ask me). ANYWAY, A-Xu, (WKX continues) now that the requisite random no-homo boilerplate is out of the way, are you really thinking of taking on Chengling as a disciple, because now is apparently not too soon to have the adoption conversation about Our Son. I almost expect him to pull out the adoption papers then and there. Instead, he pulls out a story - which is awkwardly placed and kind of clunky, actually, despite being thematically important - of a dog he had once, given to him by Someone Very Important, although of course he’s not going to say who that was (:facepalm:), and his mother warning him that he’d have to take care of it for life, and then he betrayed it.

So, there’s a lot going on here. We’ll eventually find out that ZZS gave Zhen Yan a puppy, so will this story of a gift dog jog ZZS’s memory into realizing that WKX is Zhen Yan without WKX actually telling him, so that WKX can tell his Bundle of Neuroses that it’s not reeeaaallly WKX’s fault ZZS figured it out? Also, WKX sees ZZS being like this about Chengling, and in the Chengling = Zhen Yan equation we’ve already established, is it possible this will prime ZZS to remember another disciple/young boy he took responsibility for, at one point? Of course, on ZZS’s side of things, it’s possible that hearing about this dog that WKX failed is likely to remind him of the way he failed his own responsibility to all the other disciples of Siji Manor, so, excellent way to take a stab at his heart, WKX! However, ZZS breaks the miserable tone we’ve become mired in by smacking WKX, chiding him for comparing their son to a dog, and getting them drinking. See, here, Chengling is the dog. Earlier, the two sisters A-Xiang rescued were the dog. Later, A-Xiang will be the dog. Unfortunately, WKX is going to have a blind spot and never quite realize that, in the Ghost Valley schema he’s set up, the Department of the Unfaithful is also the dog, but we’ll get to that in later eps. For now, cut to later that night: After dinner and a washup, ZZS sits on his bed, and we get some special effects to indicate that his hearing is also giving him problems, so he deploys his special Nightly Nails Torment meditation pose, and then we get the second instance of WKX playing the xiao to help him meditate and rest. (Junjun, your hands on that xiao …) ANYWAY, we get a gorgeous little bit of physical acting from ZZH here that could easily have been overplayed but is nicely restrained and subtle, with just the slightest smile when ZZS realizes WKX is playing, and then his whole body visibly relaxing as he allows himself to sink into WKX’s now-familiar musical embrace the meditation. It is :chef’s kiss:

Cut to next AM, when ZZS is now a very cranky boy, and I get this, because I also am exceedingly irritated when people bust into the room where I’m sleeping with an abundance of cheerfulness and try to get me to interact and do things without at least half an hour to creep my way out of bed, two cups of coffee, and an hour of silence before any attempts to converse like a reasonable human being (I’m looking at YOU, mom), and I don’t even have the excuse of seven Nails pinning me. Also, when WKX whips off the blankets, we learn that ZZH dresses to the right. :hands: I’m just making an observation. So, WKX wants to go to Yuefan Tower like some kind of wide-eyed tourist, and despite some smacking and scowling and death threats, we then smash-cut to the Tower, where ZZS has apparently come to the conclusion that the only way to deal with the ADHD gremlin crawling into his bed is to humor him about this daytrip. I think you could have come up with some more creative ideas that didn’t involve leaving bed, but I guess you’re not the fast one in this relationship, Zhou-ge. Srsly, though, I’m sure WKX would have been happy to do all the work, my dude. (I don’t always have strong top-bottom preferences, but you probably aren’t going to have much luck convincing me that ZZS is not a pillow princess who wants to just lay back and be spoiled. “Aren’t you a very capable man?” indeed. WKX has to do ALL THE WORK, god. I don’t know if I’m swimming against the current here – god knows I was in Inception fandom, where I felt the same way about Eames - but here we are.) Also, I can’t believe WKX didn’t just sit in the bedroom and creep on A-Xu’s beautiful sleeping profile for at least the amount of time it would have taken to drink a pot of tea, another viable option if it was me in this scenario. Tch. What kind of stalker are you, Lao Wen?

ANYWAY, at Yuefang Tower, ZZS tells us about the Four Sages of Anji, a senior-citizen polycule of soulmates who are, conveniently, at this very moment, on a boat in the lake beside the tower, playing music and sword-dancing. This is the first time they’ve been seen in 10+ years, after they put down their various swords and ran off together to live like hippies off-the-grid in the woods, probably skipping around naked, drinking “tea,” and having lots of sex. ZZS sighs wistfully while recounting this tale and calls them “a breath of fresh air.” There’s some discussion and poetry quoting and literary references to soulmates, and somewhere in here we get a shot of ZZS and WKX from behind which makes it super-obvious how hard they’re working the costumes to make Gong Jun look as broad as possible. He’s got the power shoulders on this set of robes, compared to Laopo ZZS’s soft, unstructured, flowing robes, and with those shoulders tapering down to the belted waist, they’ve got Junjun seriously working the Chris Evans Dorito silhouette. Meanwhile, focus back on their conversation: ZZS thinks that “the world is not important, finding a soulmate is,” giving some MAJOR FORESHADOWING for the end of the show (which we are accepting as “Ep” 37 because WE ARE), when we get that icy separation from the rest of the world but they have each other. WKX gives him a yearning look. ZZS looks back … there’s really no other way to put this … coyly, not meeting WKX’s gaze directly. This offers WKX and us a chance to admire his profile once again, thank you, Laopo. ZZS waits until WKX looks back out at the lake before looking at him directly, and his face journey, y’all. He’s thinking that it might not be bad to spend his remaining time with this soulmate, I think he’s starting to re-think the slow suicide, and he’s also thisclose to just letting WKX have him. Y’all, he seriously wants WKX so bad, here. It may be the first time we’ve seen this level of interest from him - it may be the first time, in all that we’ve seen of him, that he allows himself to even have that kind of interest. I think this is the next big step from Ep 6, when he allowed himself to enjoy being desired - now he’s allowing himself to desire, to want something again, other than a chance to drink himself to death in the gutter. This, right here, is a crucial point when he makes the decision to spend whatever time he’s got left living rather than just dying, and I’m flailing on the couch. This is the face of a man who’s ready to Make Some Declarations while getting railed within an inch of his life. SOMEONE IS GETTING SOME TONIGHT. Or he would if he wasn’t going to turn out to be such a fuckup. FFS, WKX.

But first, we cut to a scene of them back at the marketplace, wandering through as WKX mocks various sects in town for the conference – including the Mount Hua boys, who apparently look like virgins make their first trip to a brothel – and ZZS supplies background info on them. WKX asks if ZZS can tell what sect WKX is from, and ZZS calls him a messy bitch before asking if WKX can please stop making him play guessing games about everything and just tell him what WKX so clearly wants ZZS to know. (I know, right? But no, because then WKX might get what he wants, and he’s way too terrified for that, so you have to guess. That way, it’s not his fault when you figure out who he is and reject him, as anyone clearly will do because he’s unlovable and unforgiveable and not even really human, A-Xu.) WKX immediately changes the subject to ramble about the Hero’s Conference and how laughable all the sects are for wanting to be seen as heroes, blah blah blah, rinse and repeat. ZZS comments that only inexperienced people want to be heroes, that experienced people know “every character of the word hero is written in blood,” and yes, the character they’re using for hero, “ying,” is still the same character used in Han Ying’s name (which is not, by the way, the “ying” used in Wei Ying’s name, to cross streams for a moment). ZZS says he’s too old to be a hero (I and my knees feel you, my dude), now he’s just a wanderer, and he asks if WKX wants to be a hero or a wanderer, and WKX says that as a wanderer, all he needs is ZZS, and I’m telling you, someone absolutely would be getting some tonight if only he wasn’t such a fuckup, Lao Wen.

I’m’a try to wrap this up soon, because it’s gotten v. long, but we then cut to that night at the Getting Lucky Inn, ZZS drinking in his room, WKX busting in with his usual dramatic flair, with wine, inviting ZZS up to the roof to drink and look at the moon. He clearly has ulterior motives, but unfortunately for everyone, we’re going to discover they’re not the ulterior motives ZZS is expecting. As they lean back on the roof together, hands almost-but-not-quite touching, a romantic tune playing, WKX tells ZZS that he’s like, really happy! Just super happy! So happy! Ask me why I’m so happy, A-Xu! Spoiler alert: It is, unfortunately, not because he’s getting ready to get some from his laopo. This is particularly unfortunate, because ZZS chooses this moment to take another big step in this relationship, telling WKX that he’s not going to ask about things WKX doesn’t want to tell him, that he’ll wait for whatever WKX wants to tell him. On the surface, this comes off a little bit like, I’m done with asking when you’re not going to answer anyway, but in context – particularly on the back of the earlier scene when ZZS watched WKX turn on a dime and immediately change the subject to avoid exposing anything when ZZS asked WKX to stop making him guess everything – this is as good as a declaration of going all-in. ZZS is committing to this relationship on faith, without having all – or even most – of the answers about WKX, and his approach is going to be to wait until WKX is ready to reveal whatever information he feels safe and comfortable revealing. In practice, he’s going to end up being better or worse at this, depending on the day, but what it reminds me of, already, is that moment in the 20s (Ep 21? 22?) when A-Xiang and Cao Weining are arguing about her killing the beggar guy, he approaches her, she yells at him and points to the ground to indicate exactly how close he’s allowed to get to her, and his respect of that boundary she lays down is instantaneous and absolute. That’s what ZZS is saying he’s going to at least try to do, here. It also reminds me of the way he’s going to respect WKX’s decision on whether or not WKX is going to claim his place as a disciple of Siji Manor, without it affecting their relationship, so we really are starting as ZZS means to go on, here.

Unfortunately, we then find out that what WKX is actually so happy about is that his plan to burn down the jianghu is starting its next big step, and their romantic evening is interrupted by a bunch of dudes fighting and killing each other over a bunch of fake Glazed Armor. WKX mentions that he’s so happy the show’s started; he’s alternately amused, satisfied, and smug as they watch various fights; he seems to be expecting ZZS to also be amused; and I feel like the implication is that this was his real motive for inviting ZZS out onto the roof, to be able to watch this show with him. ZZS – who’s spent enough time standing ankle-deep in blood for six lifetimes and was working hard just a few weeks ago at drinking himself to death to try to forget what that feels like - is displeased and horrified, rather than very proud of what WKX has accomplished; he pushes WKX away from him when WKX approaches him to ask if he doesn’t think it’s all so very amusing; and he calls WKX crazy, then turns his back on him and walks away. To make things worse, the next morning, after WKX brings breakfast to ZZS’s room and actually knocks, only to find that ZZS has left in the middle of the night, WKX will witness an angry mob gathered outside the house in the woods where the Four Sages of Anji are staying for the Hero’s Conference, demanding a piece of the Glazed Armor the Sages are supposedly holding for Gao Chong, and eventually leading to the deaths of all four of these peaceful aging hippies whose commune in the woods was ZZS’s ultimate dream, leaving WKX horrified by the fact that his actions have consequences, including some that are going to make his boyfriend even more pissed off at him.

SO. All that happened. There were some other people in the episode, too:

We see A-Xiang and Cao Weining having lunch. She asks him why he’s not eating, calls him fat and cute, then proceeds to tell him about Ghoul, who likes to eat the faces of pretty boys. Her conversation skills could still use some work. Cao Weining vows to kill the ghosts of Ghost Valley who would do such awful things. A-Xiang actually ignores this slander about the evil of the residents of the Ghost Valley in a way that she doesn’t usually – usually she looks kind of unhappy when the Evilness of the Evil Inhabitants of the Evil Ghost Valley comes up, going all the way back to ZZS’s comments in Ep 2. Right now, she’s too busy pumping Pooh Bear for information, asking about why the Ghost Valley would have left a pile of heads on Yueyang’s doorstep if the Five Lakes Alliance is so great, so what is Five Lakes going to maybe, perhaps, do about this? Cao-dage is suspicious … that A-Xiang might be scared, but don’t worry, he’ll protect her. Oh, sweetheart. I could eat you up with a spoon, right along with Ghoul. Also, it finally registers that A-Xiang called him cute, but she has to step away for a quick confab with a henchwoman.

We also have to watch Chengling get bullied some more by a Yueyang shixiong who I think is Gao Shan, who we’ll later see bullying some prisoners in the Yueyang dungeon as he admits that he’s doing it to relieve his own frustrations and make himself feel better - fantastic disciples you’ve got there, Gao Chong, I’m super-impressed by the morality and ethics you’re instilling as a sect. Once again, I have to consider WKX’s position on the jianghu as a hive of scum and villainy. Anyway, once Bullying Hour is over, Chengling runs into A-Xiang, and he can’t manage to prevent the waterworks as he confesses that he thought he’d never see any of them again and that ZZS didn’t want him. UGH. Zhou Zishu, come and get your child back. He’s at least somewhat mollified by Xiang-jie telling him she’s been sent to take care of him, and god knows she’s managed to keep WKX fed and clothed this long, so she has some experience as a minder, as counterintuitive as that seems.

We get a quick shot of Han Ying (My Beloved) with two identical pieces of Glazed Armor, apparently realizing that there are fakes out there.

Deng Kuan shows up, beaten and stumbling, and nearly gets turned away at the front gates of his own sect as a beggar – have I mentioned how unimpressed I am by the Yueyang disciples? Deng Kuan appears to be the only one of them worth anything – before they realize who he is. He is put to bed and tenderly nursed by Gao Xiaolian, who cries over him as he won’t wake up.

Finally, Gao Chong, Shen Shen and Zhao Jing (uh-huh) are horrified to discover that there’s fake Glazed Armor fk’n everywhere in town, making Five Lakes Alliance look ridiculous, which is just fabulous as the Hero’s Conference is coming up, guys. Shen Shen, because everything is a nail, vows to kill anyone who makes problems. Later, Hei Zi, who plays Gao Chong, has an utterly fantastic moment after the deaths of the Four Sages (wow, I did not remember that we wrapped up their entire storyline within a single ep), when he’s haranguing Beggar Gang Chief and is literally all, “You want the Glazed Armor? :pulls a piece out of his robe: HERE. You want some more? :pulls another piece out of his robe: TAKE IT.” It’s a great acting moment, his delivery is perfection.

#zhou zishu #wen kexing #zhang chengling #gu xiang #cao weining #han ying #deng kuan #gao chong #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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Ep 27 of Word of Honor, and that was … Well. That was definitely the unicorn chaser to spending so much time and hugging with Awful Yifu in the last episode.

(Spoilers, as ever, so scroll away and come back later, if you’re still planning to watch unspoiled.)

I mean, what is there to say?

Ha, no, really, I can find plenty to say. Buckle up, I guess.

Clearly, I’m going to talk about The Scene, and there’s a lot going on here, besides the obvious cake frosting of everyone coming to everyone else’s rescue and the fighting and the crying and the declarations, and then once it’s all over, when everybody’s still hopped up on adrenaline, before the crash hits, the shouting and the laughing. At the end of it, we’re not even 20 minutes into the ep, and I feel like that should have been the climax (har), but they probably knew nobody would be able to concentrate on anything else that came before it. I’ve seen a couple of interviews now where Zhang Zhehan said he wanted to play Wen Kexing, and given the chance, he would probably still pick that role, and then everyone involved in the interview rambles on about the complexity of the Wen Kexing character, and it makes me worry that Zhang Zhehan isn’t giving himself or Zhou Zishu enough credit for the depth and range that he pulled out of the character. There’s a lot of various people yelling at various other people in many different places in this show, but there’s not been a scene yet that I felt it like I did when ZZS shouts at WKX after Ye Baiyi finally goes away, wanting to know what the fuck he was thinking. That felt real, and it felt layered – like, there’s a bone-deep fear that’s giving that anger extra strength, fear about the fact that WKX could be so self-destructive. Which also may force ZZS to confront for the first time the idea that WKX could die and leave him alone, just like all his other shidi died and left him alone. I’d have to go back and rummage around in previous eps, but I feel like this could be the first time ZZS really has to confront the idea that could happen, and he’s probably not at all prepared for it, because he’s understandably expecting to be the first to go. But this idea that WKX could just disappear, and get himself killed (because let’s face it, Ye Baiyi tossed them both around like toys), and ZZS would never see him again – that he would abandon ZZS like that, just to hide his secrets – I think that might be part of the anger, here. (You don’t fail me … and Zhou Zishou’s expectations for what constitutes not being failed are a pretty low bar, consisting mainly of not getting yourself killed like a fucking dumbass, and even that bar suddenly seems to be too high for Wen Kexing to clear.)

There’s also a clear parallel here, need I say, to the scene in a previous ep when Gu Xiang (WKX) begs Shen Shen (Ye Baiyi) that even after Shen Shen (Ye Baiyi) kills her (him), could he just for god’s sake not tell her (his) boyfriend who she (he) really was. Wen Kexing’s supposedly thought-out plan was basically just going to be what A-Xiang came up with on the fly, and stupid babies need the most love, I remind myself grimly, particularly when all this is about something Zhou Zishu already knew anyway, because he’s a brilliant former merciless assassin, not a good-hearted self-deprecating cinnamon roll who thinks he’s the least talented person in his sect like Cao Weining. We’ve also got some tasty philosophical stuff in this whole confrontation, including competing responsibilities – loyalty vs. justice vs. integrity – along with ideas of retributive vs. restorative justice. This is another good Zhang Zhehan acting moment, because that whole bit about how, actually, Grandpa, his shifu would have been about guiding his shidi toward kindness and making up for the mistakes he made – I actually believe he’s wholly thinking about Wen Kexing when he pulls out this philosophical rapier, and not at all about how restorative justice benefits ZZS, himself, considering how much blood he has on his own hands and that earlier conversation about frying in oil for 80 vs. 100 years. Good job, my friend. The one thing that makes me sad about this scene is that I’ve seen That Extra, and I hate we were robbed of not only Zhou Zishu actually laying his head on Wen Kexing’s shoulder but of Gong Jun’s single crystalline tear spilling down his cheek. Zhang Zehan’s right, that was a better take.

Anyway, Ye Baiyi proceeds to put WKX under house arrest, which, just. So he has to live with ZZS for the rest of his life? Please don’t throw him into the briar patch, right?

Also, yes, WKX. He’d die for you, dumbass. God.

Just to drive home the point of how the Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishou and Gu Xiang/Cao Weining relationships are the same relationship, we then go to a scene … well, we then go directly to a scene where Cao Weining is just sitting there, chin in hand, gazing adoringly at Gu Xiang, much the way Wen Kexing has been gazing adoringly at Zhou Zishu since about Ep 3 2 1 … but that also leads into a scene where Cao Weining is interrogated about Gu Xiang by his shixiong in a milder, miniature version of the grilling ZZS just took from his elder. “Do you know who she is?” Whoever she is, he’s going to continue to respect her boundaries. “I promised her, so I won’t betray or distrust her.” “We’ve been through so much together.” (“We’re in the same boat anyway, we might as well stay together.”) I won’t fail you. Nobody in this scene has actually made the Ghost Valley connection, yet, and Cao Weining is not as canny as Zhou Zishu, so we’re not yet going to get any kind of resolution on the issue in this relationship - but given the way these relationships are running on parallel tracks, I have positive feelings about how Cao Weining is going to meet this challenge (not that I didn’t, anyway) once the info finally does come out.

What else, what else? We do go back to Xie Wang and Awful Yifu in this ep, and oh boy.

Xie’er: Ghost Valley Master’s faithful minion Heartless Amethyst Fiend has been sent by her master to sneakily follow Cao Weining and infiltrate the Gentle Wind Sword Sect where the Glazed Armor is being held.

A-Xiang, chillin’ outside the gated community in a rustic cabin with her fiancé, doing some mending and waiting for her wedding day: Never speak of my former master again, I have utterly left that life behind me. Also, what should we have for dinner?

I can see how you would come to the conclusion you did, Xie’er, but wow, the only time you’ve been more wrong in your life is about your Awful Yifu. Speaking of which, it appears the cat Awful Yifu is out of the bag. Xie Wang is still all, “Since you saved me, you can take my life back if you want,” and here we are in Zhou Zishu-Prince Jin territory again, shades of ZZS in Ep 1 not even blinking as he offers himself to Prince Jin and takes the gamble that he won’t just get his head cut off for his troubles. ALSO, I distinctly remember telling you, Xie’er, that you were empathizing (although not sympathizing) a bit much with the women of the Department of the Unfaithful, and here we do in fact get an explicit comparison, looking back to the conversation with Beauty Ghost about her loser boyfriend, when you refer to yourself as “also a gambler” as you take your leave of Zhao JIng. You need some Water of Lethe, buddy. Or do you think – to return to that conversation and the parallels with Beauty Ghost – that if you remember all this, you’ll stop making the same mistakes?

A last few random things:

lol, let’s all take a minute to giggle over the fact that ZZS has, in Ye Baiyi’s words, associated with this dude. Is that what the kids are calling it these days? Sorry, but I had to pause the show at that point to snicker like a 12-year-old.

Chengling: “How dare those ruffians beat my two dads! Let’s burn down their house.” Wow. OK. Xiang-jie has been … some kind of influence on her didi.

Last scene of ZZS and WKX, oh my god:

ZZS: You’re feeling bad for keeping a secret from a kid? What about me? How are you going to make it up to me?

WKX: Oh, my goodness, look at the time. I’m feeling so … sleepy. Yes, that’s it. I must go to bed. You also must be so … sleepy. You should. You know. Go to bed. Too. Also. To cure your … sleepiness. As you do, in a bed. Where I will also be.

Me, to the screen: He’s going to make it up to you on his back.

Also me: :facepalm: You are a pair of merciless killers. How are you this adorable?

#zhang zhehan #zhou zishu #wen kexing #ye baiyi #gu xiang #cao weining #xie wang #zhao jing #zhang chengling #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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Word of Honor Ep 6, and let’s talk a little about what’s canon, and what’s not, and about the particular slip-slidiness of the line between them on this show.

But first, due diligence: If you are NEW or JUST VISITING, this is a re-watch, so you’re going to find SPOILERS not just for this ep, but for the entire show. Scroll away and come back later if you haven’t seen all 36.5 eps and want to watch unspoiled. Also, heads-up, this got super long, because I had to talk about that stuff up there and then still talk about the ep. Hashtag long post (remorseful).

So, “canon,” as applied to fannish source material (in Western fandom, at least) traditionally has been considered the official stuff – the episode, the book, the comic, the movie – based on the religious definition of “canon,” the collection of texts accepted as genuine and official within a religion. The word “fanon” – widely accepted fannish ideas – plays on this, as does the fandom concept of “word of God,” or things the Creators have said about the text but outside of it. Is it in the show as it aired or the book as it was printed? Canon. Is it not in the show as it aired or the book as it was printed? Not canon. (Apocrypha? Maybe. Anyway.) Generally, I think we’d say that things like material in the first draft of a script that doesn’t make it through revisions and onto the screen isn’t canon, even if you can get your hands on a copy of the first draft. The final product that airs is what’s canon. BUT this gets super slippery in something like WoH, in a way that’s exemplified in this episode. This ep is one of the places where people who can lip-read Chinese have spotted some significant dialogue changes between what the actors say on-screen and what lines have been dubbed in. (Everybody’s dubbed in cdramas, it’s just the thing that happens. You have your on-screen actors, and you have your voice actors. The ONLY person in The Untamed who did his own voice dubbing, for instance, was Ji Li, who played Nie Huaisang. All the other characters had voice actors dubbed in. In fact, the voice actor for Jiang Cheng in The Untamed is the voice actor for Wen Kexing in WoH.) One of the descriptions of WoH that I’ve heard is that this show was filmed as a bl and dubbed as a bromance. The thing is, nobody tried very hard to hide the shift. There are plenty of places that you can clearly see the actor’s mouths don’t match the dubbing, and they’re not artfully shot or edited to hide this. They’re fully on-screen, mouthing words that don’t match, right out in the open, almost like they want to you to pick up on it. Almost like it’s canon, because it’s right there on-screen, aired in the episode. In my first-watch reactions to Eps 36 and 37, I talked a lot about how the dubbing puts a layer of de-queered no-homo over what the on-screen actors are saying in these places, but if you can see what they’re actually saying and understand it, does that make it canon? What does it mean, both textually and meta-textually, if you can’t believe what you’re hearing – what you’re being told – because it contradicts what you’re seeing? How does that affect what we’re told about Our Protagonists and its “truth,” particularly in the final scenes? How much is the show deliberately working against censorship in this way? How much is it teaching us to look deeper than what we’re hearing on the surface?

Several people have talked about what’s actually being said by the on-screen actors in places where this happens, and I’m going to direct you to AvenueX on Youtube if you want a complete overview, because she’s reliable and has a good compilation that’s easy to find. She has a couple of videos called “Lip Reading for Sugar,” and the March 9, 2021, installment includes the Ep 6 incidences, the most significant of which are: At 3:05 in the ep, when WKX throws himself on Zhou Zishu’s back during the zombie Drug Men attack, calls him “mom,” asks ZZS to carry him, and tells “mom” that “your shoulder blades are the most beautiful.” Only no, Gong Jun didn’t say this, if you watch his mouth compared to the sound of the words. Instead of “niang” (mom), he says “Zhou Zishu.” Twice. “Zhou Zishu, carry me.” “Zhou Zishu, your shoulder blades are the most beautiful.” This is not only important because it emphasizes he’s gay for Zhou Zishu’s shoulder blades, but also because he’s fucking baked on Drunk Like A Dream incense when it happens, and later, ZZS will reveal that Drunk Like a Dream makes you see what you most desire, and he’ll confront WKX about how he “kept calling” someone’s name while he was under the influence of it. This makes no sense with the dubbing we get, because with “mom” dubbed over ZZS’s name here, WKX only calls Zhou Zishu’s real name once while he’s under the influence, at the end of ep 5. That is not kept calling. ANYWAY, once WKX clears his head and flies them away from the Drug Men, back to the a lakeside, there’s another disjunct at 5:05, when the dubbing has WKX tell ZZS not to play hero, that he doesn’t lose face if WKX helps him, and ZZS responds with something about your grandmother’s bear, which AvenueX tells me is a real Chinese idiom, although not for what. What Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan appear to actually have said, though, is that WKX tells ZZS that this was just like a hero saving a beauty, with the implication that ZZS is the beauty, the damsel in distress, and ZZS respons that no, it’s like the beauty saving the hero, without a lick of concern that he’s the beauty, the damsel, in this scenario, just that he did all the work killing Drug Men and now this asshole is going to act like he’s the one who did the saving. At 31:24, dubbing has WKX telling ZZS that he’ll give ZZS whatever he wants if ZZS can get him some of the Drunk Like a Dream, but AvenueX tells me that he actually offers his body in exchange, in a way that implies marriage. And at 32:22, when ZZS asks WKX what he saw under the influence of the Drunk Like a Dream, the dubbing gives us some random story about baby WKX throwing a rat on his mother’s bed, while Gong Jun’s mouth seems to be saying something something about being in the bridal chamber with his beloved … so circling back to our first instance at 3:05, WKX using Zhou ZIshu’s name is now super-interesting, eh?

Another slip-slidey point of canon here is that there are two versions of this episode. The original version didn’t have the rabbit-washing scene. That was an extra that was inserted later into a Special Version ep when Youku reached 2 million subscribers. But the Special Version is now available on Youku’s channel (it’s the one I watched for this re-watch), AND it’s the regular version that’s on Netflix. So at 25:28, we now get this adorable little scene where ZZS and WKX are cleaning two rabbits in the lake before cooking them, and WKX splashes ZZS who pretends to be irritated before splashing WKX back and running away up the riverbank, chased by WKX. It’s flirty and playful and ALSO a foreshadowing of the flashback we’re going to see in a later ep, when they play together for an afternoon as children. Wasn’t canon before. Now it is.

Anyway, even with the (bad) dubbing that we get, this is a fantastic WenZhou ep. We open with them still being menaced by the zombies Drug Men, with a lot of swordwork by ZZS before he starts flagging because of his Nails Issue, whereupon WKX instantly sobers up, goes Evil Ghost Valley Master on Imposter Hanged Ghost who’s controlling the Drug Men, kills him with his Fan of Death, then scoops up ZZS and flies him off to a lake, where he attempts to tenderly check ZZS’s pulse and take care of his wounds before ZZS slaps away his hand like an offended maiden. WKX has to give him the qi smackdown in order to hold him still to :coff: pull down his robes and suck out the poison from the Drug Men scratches on the back of his shoulder. :hands: I remember the first time around, watching this with my mouth hanging open, demanding to know the heterosexual explanation for this. (Also, if you’re rummaging on Youtube, the Five Straight Guys Watching Word of Honor for this ep is not to be missed. They’re a little questionable in their reaction to the poison sucking, but before that, they’re a bunch of squeamish babies over using the dagger to further slice open the wounds to get to the poison, and it’s HILARIOUS. They can’t even look at the screen once the dagger comes out, hiding behind their hands. I love them, more and more as the eps go on, but they are WEAK compared to even the newbiest hurt/comfort fangirl.) There’s some more back and forth between WKX and ZZS about revealing their true selves to each other, no you, no YOU. WKX makes it clear that he knows there’s something really wrong with ZZS, and then they fight, set to romantic music, and ZZS ends up falling in the lake. I do the victory arms ( \o/ ) to myself where I’m sitting on the couch and startle one of the cats, because FINALLY we’re going to get rid of that execrable fake facial hair. ZZS fucks with WKX by staying underwater long enough that WKX panics and also dives in, we get some really cheap and awful underwater effects, and ZZS reveals his face! They end up back on the edge of the lake, drying their perfectly dry outer robes, while they sit around the fire together in their perfectly dry inner robes, but I am not going to complain because y’all. I CANNOT with how smug and pleased ZZS is for just a moment about WKX mooning over how pretty he is. Then he remembers to be an ill-tempered gremlin and pokes at WKX with a flaming stick, but I had to rewind four times just to catch that little moment of satisfaction about being admired again – it’s subtle and gorgeous and Zhang Zhehan is going to kill me with his face one of these days. ZZS demands dinner on this date, and fake-coughs pitifully to get WKX to go hunt something down, while he stays and does his delightful little thinky face as he pokes at the Soul Winding Box they got from Imposter Hanged Ghost. Then we get a shot of WKX looking at ZZS before he heads off to catch some rabbits that confirms he now knows he’s really Zhou Zishu, rather than Zhou Xu.

So, we’ll get back to the Ghost and the Box in a minute, but I do want to mention that this whole ep is layered through with mini-references and thematic stuff. Imposter Hanged Ghost rings his little bell to control his Drug Men, and remember that, we’ll see that again. WKX asks if ZZS came from the Healer’s Valley when ZZS offers him an antidote to the Drug Man poison; we learn later that WKX, himself, is the one who came from the Healer’s Valley. When ZZS gets the Soul Winding Box open and finds a piece of the Glazed Armor inside (Danyang’s, taken off of Ao Laizi by Ghost Valley before he was hung at the gate of Sanbai Manor), he gives it to WKX, tells him to throw it away if he doesn’t want it. WKX says he couldn’t possibly, and that he’ll wear it because it’s his first gift from A-Xu. Compare this to the way Xie’er will wear Awful Yifu’s Glazed Armor around his neck. We also see some of the thematic and referential stuff come up in conversations that form a repeated pattern in this ep of ZZS stressing what a bad and dangerous person he is: He scoffs at the idea he’s from Healer’s Valley, and asks if he looks like someone who practices medicine; WKX responds that he looked like a professional killer (true) who was cruel in the abandoned temple (presumably while escaping Mirror Lake) and frightening to a kind-hearted man like WKX who can’t even kill a chicken (particularly amusing given the prep for New Year’s dinner in a later ep, when WKX is the only one who CAN). At the lakeside and again after ZZS hightails it away from Sanbai Manor when they spot Han Ying there (HAN YING, my beloved), WKX asks if ZZS is a fugitive, what he’s hiding from, and says that he’ll protect him – by reason, because would he kill anyone unreasonably (omg, where to even begin? How many guys have you choked out at this point)? When they’re arguing about ZZS revealing his “true” face, ZZS warns that most people who’ve seen his real appearance are dead (probably true). WKX says he’s not afraid of death (not his own, at least, we’ll see that the thing he’s afraid of is ZZS’s death). ZZS warns WKX that he’s not only sharp-tongued, he’s ruthless (true). He tells WKX that he’s murdered many people (true) and set them on fire (not unlikely, frankly) and committed many crimes (true, in a way, although they were state-sanctioned, making them legal, if morally reprehensible). This is the ZZS who put the Nails in himself, who talks to himself about what a truly awful shixiong he is, who tells Prince Jin that he’s only good as a weapon. I like how we see this at the same time that we’re starting to see the side of him that’ll preen when someone thinks he’s pretty - this is a process, and it’s subtle, not as high-drama as WKX’s, but it’s there, nonetheless.

We also formally meet Xie Wang in this ep, artfully posed and playing his pipa among the bodies – old and new – of Zhao Coffin Home. He and Changing Ghost have a bit of a slapfight over whose fault it is that Imposter Hanged Ghost, who was actually Long-Tongued Ghost, got killed and got his (Danyang’s) Glazed Armor took by WKX, when Changing Ghost stole it from Ao Laizi, put it in the Soul Winding Box and gave it to Long-Tongued Ghost specifically to deliver it to Xie Wang. Xie Wang is super cool through all of this, and I think we get a sense of how deadly he is by the way Changing Ghost backs down. So, here’s what’s falling together: Some iteration of Ghost Valley is working with Xie Wang and the Scorpion Sect, giving the Scorpions access to the Soul Winding Threads, which we saw used at the Mirror Lake massacre and in the woods outside of Sanbai Manor to kill Yu Tianjie in the last ep. Via Xie Wang, Ghost Vally has access to use of the Drug Men, which we’ve seen at the Zhao Coffin Home (so far), although we haven’t yet been told (I think) how Xie Wang got access to the potions to create Drug Men (we also know ZZS read about Drug Men in a book somewhere, and got enough info to engineer an antidote to them). Xie Wang and the Scorpions have access to Drunk Like a Dream incense, which had to come from Prince Jin’s court, having been engineered by ZZS based on a much stronger formulation. Han Ying, from Tian Chuang in Prince Jin’s court, has been seen at Sanbai Manor, Zhao Jing’s place.

Meanwhile Chengling is doing poorly, with no appetite and getting bellowed at some more by Shen Shen, who would be the worst if only I didn’t know everything I know, which makes me cringe when Zhao Jing refers to Chengling as “my son, now.” NO. RUN, Goldbean. For some more thematic and referential stuff in this ep, WKX calls Chengling a “lonely chick with no one to rely on” and tsks over the fact that he’s “surrounded by hounds smarter than foxes” now that he’s under the care of the Five Lakes Alliance. This is clearly to manipulate ZZS into thinking Chengling is better off with ZZS, but it also sounds like an awfully apt description of Zhen Yan in Ghost Valley. I’m just sayin’.

#zhou zishou #wen kexing #xie wang #zhang chengling #zhao jing #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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OK, y’all, I’m back, finally, with Word of Honor Episode 8, and I have … a LOT of notes on this one. I’m trying to figure out how to organize this. Buckle up, I guess, because this is kind of a long one.

First of all, the usual warning: SPOILERS. This is a re-watch, so there are spoilers not only for this episode, but for the entire show. Scroll away and come back later if you want to watch all 36.5 eps unspoiled.

So, this is an ep that’s really good to me, because the found-family dynamic is one of the things that sold me on the show, and a ton of the ensemble work that builds and enriches that dynamic is centered on scenes about food and eating together, on literally nourishing the body(ies) of the family, from A-Xiang’s repeated instances of cooking bread on a stick over a fire, to fish soup with Ye Baiyi, to Wen Kexing’s elaborate New Year’s meal, and all the various and sundry restaurant sit-downs in between. Feeding each other and eating together is how these characters form bonds. Alternately, inability to provide sustenance or rejection of food implies distance. The point at which Zhou Zishu is still denying Chengling’s request to become his disciple, he’s unable to cook a fish properly for the poor kid to eat. Cao Weining falls in love at first sight and immediately buys A-Xiang not one, but two dinners, because the first one gets cold and he’s going to spend the rest of his life providing the best (emotional) nourishment he can for her. Paying for Ye Bayi’s meal earns a favor from him. When A-Xiang is separated from Wen Kexing and Zhang Chengling and Zhou Zishu, she eats up the little corn family she sees as representative of them, as if she can keep them with her by taking the food that represents them into herself. Despite the fact that Zhou Zishu is losing his sense of taste (evidenced by his ability to suck down wine that any and everyone else spits out in disgust), he continues to fully participate in meals, sharing food and both accepting and providing choice bits to Chengling and WKX at Siji Manor, in a scene that is possibly the most heartfelt domestic bit of the show. Rejecting (dramatically so) the table that’s been set for him by Prince Jin is symbolic of Zhou Zishu’s rejection of their relationship. And as we ultimately learn from Ye Baiyi’s storyline, eating is what makes us human, with all of our messy, painful, gorgeous connections to the world, in contrast to the icy seclusion of immortality. Which makes me feel some kind of way about the facts that WKX started out by burning A-Xiang’s mouth on too-hot porridge before he learned how to take care of her and was saved by her in Ghost Valley and that A-Xiang and WKX, who are both trying to find their way back to the human world from the world of ghosts, become the primary physical nourishers in their relationships with Cao Weining, Zhang Chengling, and Zhou Zishu. It also makes me feel some kind of other (ambivalent) way that part and parcel of the immortality Ye Baiyi achieves for a time and passes on is predicated on being willing to only eat and drink ice and snow, and the symbolic ways that separates you from the rest of the world and from forming the various connections we see forged through food.

All of which is to say that I’m delighted by this ep, where one of the first scenes is an extremely awkward dinner scene at the restaurant with ZZS, WKX, A-Xiang and Cao Weining, which not only plays into a lot of that, but is also comedy gold, and possibly one of the best scenes of the ep (and I say that knowing we’re eventually going to be getting to Han Ying, My Beloved). It’s hilarious how irritated WKX is by the mere fact of Cao Weining’s existence (JunJun, your little pouty face, it’s amazing). And it is triply hilarious how much of a whole-ass troll ZZS manages to be when he realizes the opportunity this presents. I’m not sure we’ve seen ZZS this cheerful … well, yet, at this point in the show, as when he’s just realized how much WKX clearly disapproves of this character who’s after his baby girl and how much of a chance this provides to fuck with WKX. It’s such an asshole move, but at the same time, it’s so weirdly charming to see him willing to play like this. It gives us a great character grace note right in the middle of the comedy - it’s the sort of teasing we see from him with Jiuxiao over the hairpin in Ep 1, and at the same time, it’s also kind of subtle, I think, in the way it calls back to almost the entire ZZS-WKX relationship up to this point. ZZS has clearly been paying attention – almost everything he says to Cao Weining is him giving up with both hands stuff that WKX has had to pry out of him with a crowbar. And it’s blazingly obvious that it’s deliberate. When he compliments CWN, ZZS comments that “it’s our fate to meet each other,” directly echoing what WKX said to ZZS in Ep 2. He waves off the price of dinner, telling CWN that “money is just a possession” after making WKX beg for his wallet and deploy the Sadness Eyebrows before he was willing to hand it over in the last ep. He immediately volunteers his name (or, at least, the name he’s using, Zhou Xu), and asks CWN’s in return. He waxes eloquent about CWN’s sect and background. WKX’s entire face journey through all of this is a delight to watch. ZZS repeats that it’s their fate to meet, and WKX’s eyes almost roll out of his head. ZZS invites CWN to sit and have a drink together, and WKX’s mouth literally drops open. Finally, when WKX learns that A-Xiang is not going to make this interloper go away because he’s her ticket into Yueyang sect, he orders her to go find his wallet (presumably knowing that CWN will follow her when she leaves). As CWN leaves, ZZS reassures him that making friends is “mostly about resonance,” and the implication I presume, is that there is resonance between ZZS and CWN (and yeah, in more ways than one, as CWN will be the ZZS stand-in as these two relationships grow more and more parallel), in contrast to a supposed lack of resonance between ZZS and WKX. I … am not entirely sure that this is just to fuck with WKX, although it’s definitely part and parcel of that, or if it’s a little bit of ZZS trying to convince himself, particularly given a moment later in the ep, which I’ll get to later. In which case, sure, A-Xu. You keep telling yourself that. You didn’t get off at ALL on him staring at you like you’re the most gorgeous thing on earth. Uh-huh.

Outside, A-Xiang and CWN have a little foodie moment together, and if there ever was a fandom that needed a food-truck AU, it’s this one. I’m SO glad that after A-Xiang and Cao-dage got married, they settled down together and opened that little restaurant just down the mountain from Siji Manor. (Shut. Up.) Meanwhile, ZZS and WKX continue to drink inside, now that they’ve gotten rid of the kids. They discuss Mo Huaiyang (:spits:), with ZZS calling him a “cunning old fox” and wondering what a big rabbit like CWN is doing in his den (owowowoOW). WKX promises to get A-Xiang to check on ZZS’s disciple inside Yueyang Sect – he kind of emphasizes that your disciple bit, like he doesn’t really care at all what happens to Chengling, nuh-uh. OK, my dude, you keep telling yourself that, I guess. There’s yet another discussion about Philanthropist Wen’s real motives, which he claims are to empty out hell, which is metaphorically taken to mean saving the damned, although he probably literally means razing Ghost Valley and maybe the jianghu along with it, as he warns ZZS once again that “the fiercest ghosts tend to disguise themselves as human.” And because everything has a triple meaning in this show, this also, again, is also, again, a warning about himself – that he may look human, but he’s not, really.

Meanwhile, Chengling’s been delivered to Gao Chong at Yueyang Sect, where he’s undergoing the worst kind of family bonding. We learn where ShenShen gets his sparkling way with people, when Gao Chong’s first move is to frown at Chengling, feel his biceps and want to know if he’s sick, because he’s such a weakling. We also see where ShenShen gets the yelling and threats of violence. Both Gao Chong and ShenShen put the press on Chengling for the Glazed Armor, as he continues to insist he doesn’t remember anything about it, while Zhao Jing continues to be the “reasonable” one, tearfully telling Gao Chong to be nicer to the traumatized orphan for the sake of his father, oh, oops, I didn’t mean to remind Da-ge of the estrangement with Mirror Lake that’s mentally torturing him now and make him so emotional that this conversation gets cut short, no really, that was not my intention at all, my bad. Sure, buddy. Anyway, this gives us confirmation that Zhang Yusen hadn’t been interacting with his Five Lakes brothers for a while before Mirror Lake was targeted. But never mind that, you can trust us, Gao Chong tells Chengling, and follows up by asking him: Besides us, who can you trust? Which does not actually sound that trustworthy, my guy, and I begin to suspect that Five Lakes Alliance is running things because you’re the biggest bullies, as not a single one of you seems to know how to be the least bit politic. Except for Awful Yifu, who’s not so much adept at politics as at skullduggery. ANYWAY, when asked who he can trust, we can see Chengling thinking “MY NEW DADS” like it’s lit up in neon over his head. We also see him continue to press or clutch the place on his abdomen where we previously saw his injury, so that’s still bothering him, and I can’t imagine why it might do that any time he has to argue with one of these Five Lakes assholes about the Glazed Armor, amirite? I do also notice, though, that he calls both Gao Chong and Zhao Jing “bobo,” which I think is a more familial term for uncle? as opposed to “shishu” for ShenShen, which is martial, and I’m not sure exactly what distinction he’s driving home by doing so, but there you go. Chengling is sent away to rest, and on leaving the hall he immediately gets bullied by Xie Wuyang, one of Zhao Jing’s undercover Yueyang twinks, before being rescued by Gao Xiaolian, daughter of Gao Chong. She takes him to his new room, which faces right onto the training grounds, because no one’s told him yet how much he needs to build himself up, right? And we get to see a bunch of little Yueyang shits who acted like good boys and promised Xiaolian to her face that they would train with Chengling but who then immediately turn around and start mocking him as soon as she goes away, so WKX’s assessment of how the jianghu is full of assholes continues to look kind of correct. What is Cao Weining doing in this whole hive of scum and villainy?

We get a brief detour here to go with Xiaolian to meet Cao Weining and A-Xiang, and she agrees to let A-Xiang stay with her, before a disciple comes to get her to help set up for taking Chengling to worship at the Five Lakes Alliance memorial. Xiaolian helpfully lets us know that this is weird, because it’s going to be dark soon. A-Xiang sneaks away and informs WKX and ZZS that this is weird, because it’s going to be dark soon. ZZS and WKX also spot some of the Tian Chuang Action Lanterns and surmise that some “feudal lords” seen outside the city are up to no good, so they go and skulk in the bushes along the road to the Five Lakes Alliance monument.

This is getting super-long, so I’m going to get right to the next important part, which is the bit where Han Ying (My Beloved) and his Tian Chuang forces have laid a trap for Gao Chong and Chengling on the way back from the monument, and they try to kidnap Chengling. Han Ying continues to be cold, haughty, and capable at his job right up to the moment when ZZS jumps out of the bushes to foil the kidnapping with his signature Swiftly Moving Steps and a frankly ridiculous bit of gauzy fabric tied around the bottom half of his face as a disguise. Han Ying’s instant change of demeanor is something to behold – he can’t even notice that WKX has him by the throat around the hearts in his eyes as he recognizes ZZS. Which, let’s face it, he ought to, because ZZS spent a decade and a half running around with all of these guys with the bottom half of his face covered, so you’d think more of them would recognize him, but apparently the Cover Girl bangs throw them off. Anyway, WKX grabs Han Ying and they use him as a hostage to get Tian Chuang to release Gao Chong, Chengling and a bunch of Yueyang disciples. Once everyone else is gone, WKX and ZZS drag Han Ying into the bushes, where he hits his knees ten times faster than WKX has yet for ZZS, so maybe it’s WKX’s own fault that he’s left standing around, ignored and vinegary. Han Ying is back to the puppy-dog he was around ZZS in Ep 1, and interestingly, the way Zhang Zhehan is styled here makes ZZS look more severe than he has in a while – he’s got a lot of his hair up in the high pony that looks a bit like the topknot from the front, all the rest of his hair is back behind his shoulders, and his bangs are pushed back out of his face more than usual, making him look more like his Tian Chuang self as he talks to Han Ying. Who he calls Ying’er, and omg, fuck you subtitles, for not including this because HE CALLS HIM YING’ER AND I’M DYING. (Also, oh god, I just realized that the Ying of his name is the same character as “hero.” Which, just, the simple fact of it, of course, but also it was used in the “hero saving the beauty/beauty saving the hero” (overdubbed) lip-read from Ep 6, and now I’m dying on the floor, because that’s kind of a weird little link between Zhen Yan WKX and Han Ying already. It’s likely coincidence, but it’s potentially USEFUL, yes, all my fic writers out there?) Anyway, Han Ying is desperately worried - he knows something’s wrong, because ZZS isn’t bothering to disguise himself with that awful fake face anymore to keep himself safe from Prince Jin’s spies, and also, HOW IS YOUR INJURY, MY LORD? (DO YOU NEED SOMEONE TO TAKE TENDER CARE OF YOU?) WKX continues to look vaguely uncomfortable about this whole thing that’s going on right in front of his salad. Han Ying swears he’ll do anything for ZZS. WKX clears his throat loudly to draw attention and suggestively asks if he should leave for a while. (I am not shitposting here, this actually, literally happens.) ZSS literally huffs in annoyance and ignores him. He tells Han Ying that he saw signs of Tian Chuang at Yueyang and thought they were after him. We can see Han Ying thinking, “No, if I’d known you were here, you’d have found me on my knees by your bedside waiting patiently like a good boy.” We learn that Duang Pengju (that asshole) has had Han Ying looking for the Glazed Armor since the Mirror Lake massacre, probably to take credit for anything he finds. Han Ying reiterates that he’ll do anything for ZZS, and ZZS tells him to stay out of all this, saying that what Han Ying can do for him is stay alive (well, OW).

After this, we get a scene of ZZS and WKX still hanging around by the side of the road after dark. ZZS sincerely thanks WKX for his help, and says he owes WKX a favor. WKX asks him what’s really going on with ZZS and Chengling. ZZS says that he couldn’t stand around and do nothing while this kid was in danger, likely stirring some Zhen Yan feels in WKX that we don’t officially know about yet, at this point. ZZS asks WKX, again, about his Weird Thing about the Five Lakes Alliance and whether it was a coincidence that WKX was at Mirror Lake for the massacre. WKX goes vaguely Ghost Valley Master wild-eyed and says of course not! before laughing and saying, “I followed you, remember?” He gets friend-zoned and follows up by asking ZZS, “Why don’t you ask what I think of you?” ZZS – pretty unconvincingly, tbqh – says he doesn’t care and stomps off, leaving WKX to stare after him soulfully and call him zhiji. Much like that resonance thing earlier - you keep telling yourself that, A-Xu. The next time we see them, they’re at the marketplace, probably the next day, and you remember that thing I said about bonding via food? We’ve come back full circle to that, too. Zhen Yan WKX is 7 years old again, he wants some reassurance that he is ZZS’s super-special friend, and he works his way through the marketplace making ZZS buy him every sweet thing to eat that he can find. Every time ZZS has to pull out his wallet, he makes this pissy little face, but he keeps paying. ZZS is hopeless at cooking, but if you can’t make your own, store-bought will do, WKX is craving reassurance, and as uncomfortable as ZZS is with how close WKX has gotten at this point, he continues to provide it. I also want to point out another censorship dub here, thanks again to AvenueX on Youtube: As they’re figting over the way WKX is spending ZZS’s money in this scene, when WKX tries to grab ZZS’s hand, and ZZS is all ‘”Don’t touch me,” the voice dubbing has WKX say that repaying ZZS is no big deal, he’ll just let ZZS order him around, with ZZS’s response being to tell him to get lost, then. OTOH, lip-read gives us, from WKX, that it’s no big deal, he’ll sell the rest of his life to ZZS, with ZZS’s response as a threat to sell him to a brothel, then. :hands:

Quick wrap-up from there: They go watch some exotic dancers, only there turns out to be an unexpected pile of heads in the follow-up magician’s act, which turn out to be from the guys who were in the “bridal party” at the Ghost Valley “wedding” a few eps ago, and everyone swears vengeance against the Ghost Valley. WKX and ZZS go to visit Chengling, who is supposedly sick and can’t see them, but they get introduced to Gao Chong. Gao Chong and WKX are weird at each other, and ZZS is increasingly suspicious. He’s got his thinky face on, and we don’t get any literally pokey fingers, but I can’t help but think there are some mental pokey fingers going on, as he turns over all the info he knows in his head. Then some Yueyang disciple comes shrieking in about a dead body, omg, death, destruction, death, and Gao Chong is all, Seriously? In front of guests? before we’re out.

#zhou zishu #wen kexing #gu xiang #zhang chengling #cao weining #han ying #gao chong #shen shen #zhao jing #gao xiaolian #something something food as bonding #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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SO, Episode 28 of Word of Honor was a roller-coaster ride.

(Spoilers, as ever, so scroll away and come back later if you want to see it unspoiled.)

They managed two entirely separate scenes in this one that had me going “Did … did that just happen? Is this really happening?” Let’s get this one out of the way first: The scene of Zhao Jing in his serial killer lair with the altar and memorial tablets and his serial killer trophies. Y’all. I swear, scene opens with a shot from behind of drunk Awful Yifu in his Fantasy Ancient China underwear staggering through a set of doors into a room with candles and draperies, and before I was able to register the rest of the set design, my brain gave a terrified squeak and started rabbiting around like, “Oh my god, please do not let this be Xie’er’s bedroom. Oh my god, they wouldn’t actually go there, not even hinted, surely that would be too far!” Then my eyeballs caught up and registered the set, so I thought I was safe, but that didn’t even turn out to be the moment in the scene that had me going “Is this really happening?” (Although I do think the fact my brain immediately jumped to that scenario speaks to the creepy vibe the show has managed to build between Awful Yifu and Xie Wang). So, Zhao Jing is a sloppy drunk and absolutely shitfaced, stumbling around and yelling at his dead brothers, and I’m sitting here watching him, feeling like I need a shower, with my skin a little bit trying to crawl off my body, and then he picks up Rong Xuan’s memorial tablet and pours an entire stream of alcohol out of the pitcher all over it, and I say, out loud, to the screen, “Oh my god, they just had him figuratively piss on that tablet.” Only, no, they didn’t, because there was no need to have him do it figuratively because then, he literally whips it out of his pants and takes a piss on the tablet, complete with sound effects, and I’m open-mouthed, thinking “Is this really happening?” As some background, I grew up in mainstream U.S. culture where ancestor veneration isn’t formally practiced - although it isn’t an entirely absent part of our cultural mythos, it’s just that now when I when I offer cultus to the Patres Patriae, it’s deliberate and intentional – but I’ve been doing ancestor work in my particular flavor of polytheism for long enough, and intensely enough, that I had a visceral reaction of disgust and horror to this. Hand literally clapped over my mouth in shock, even after watching all of his ranting at his dead brothers and spitting at his dead shifu and just generally being a disrespectful asshole with delusions of grandeur building up to it. So, yes, show, you have indeed convinced me that Awful Yifu is the worst, even in an episode that also devoted that much screentime to Prince Jin.

Fortunately, the other “Is this really happening?” moment was at the other end of the spectrum, somewhere in the face of how married Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing are, which I cannot believe passed censorship. I know I keep saying that, but every time I think I’ve adjusted to how far they’re going to go, the show laughs gay-ly as it pushes the envelope another mile down the road. Truly, this show is the gift that keeps on giving where these two are concerned, and not just because of Zhang Zhehan’s face. I realize I had to spend 50 episodes deciphering Lan Wangji’s smallest microexpression (not that I’m complaining), but I can’t believe how expressive both Zhang Zhehan and Gong Jun are in these roles, with Gong Jun’s little sadness eyebrows when WKX wants ZZS to humor him, and how soft Zhang Zhehan’s face gets when ZZS looks at WKX, and how great they both are at making all this look like a pair of adults who are in an established relationship and confident of each other. I’d be as weak as Wen Kexing if Zhou Zishu pouted at me the way he does when he tells Chengling that he can’t do anything to help decorate the Manor except observe and direct because he’s oh, so injured and frail, poor him. Wen Kexing can laugh at Zhou Zishu when ZZS pokes at him by saying the papercrafter was such a beauty! (Compare this to his reaction back in the day, when ZZS deftly manipulated him out of bringing A-Xiang along on their honeymoon adventures by calling her a beauty and implying she might draw attention away from WKX!) Wen Kexing waves kitchen knives at Zhou Zishu in (somewhat fond) exasperation! Zhou Zishu now accepts Wen Kexing piling his plate with food at the table as perfectly normal! There’s no crying in Spring Festival! They send their kid outside to watch the fireworks so they can have sex some alone time! (Merciless killers. How the fuck so adorable?) Someone must have backed up an entire truckful of money to the house of someone very important to get this aired, because what is the heterosexual explanation for … any of this?

Other thoughts:

We continue to get small things that maintain the parallels between Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishou and Gu Xiang/Cao Weining, including the mirrored theme of finding a home with a welcoming family, shown through family dinner, and expressed through WKX’s description of his former self as a “lonely ghost,” echoing A-Xiang’s self-description (to Shen Shen in an earlier ep) the same way.

HAN YING! Listen, I am stupidly attached to this bit player, and not just because he’s a familiar face (because half of Wen Xu’s screentime in The Untamed was just a disembodied head hanging at the entrance to the Unclean Realm, so it’s not like there was time to get … attached). And I say stupidly attached because ever since we first saw the way he looked at ZZS with big puppy heart-eyes, I knew he was going to be a goner. I just know they’re gonna fridge him for the next step in ZZS’s journey, because something has to pry ZZS out of Four Seasons Manor, as much as I, personally, would like nothing better than to see 8 more episodes of wedded bliss for two gay dads and their son. (OK, one thing I would like better would be if their daughter and son-in-law came to live with them, too.) At least it looks like Han Ying will get to die taking a figurative bullet for ZZS, which will make him happy and might prevent him from finding out the Glazed Armor he’s so proud of bringing is actually pointless, because don’t think that didn’t hurt to know while I watched him being so proud of managing to get his hands on it. But I’d prefer he didn’t die at all, show. Also, why on earth are there only two (completed) stories under the ZZS/Han Ying label on AO3? Because yes, I have looked. I have the search open in another tab right now. Why haven’t more people taken advantage of this guy’s utter devotion for ZZS? How are people looking at the way Han Ying reverently brushes his fingers over the single white blossom on the wall mural in ZZS’s rooms back in Prince Jin’s palace and not falling all over that?

Xie’er, oh, Xie’er. You’re killing me, here. I need someone to rescue you, you desperate affection-starved little sociopath. So, to recap, last time we met, your Awful Yifu finally let it slip that he was never ever going to acknowledge your existence in public. So now, you’re being a very clever boy, setting up a scheme to manipulate him into having to publicly acknowledge you if he’s going to claim credit for your successes (because I’m sure you can’t even contemplate failure) in service to Prince Jin. So clever, but I hate to tell you, you’re clever at everything except learning from your mistakes when it comes to your Awful Yifu. You really learned nothing from Beauty Ghost, did you? Ugh, your sad little face as you watch your hot mess of an Awful Yifu while you wait for the maids to make tea – it hurts me. Please tell me you’re playing some kind of long game, and you’re just a really great actor. Because he’s sloppy drunk, and right now, watching your face journey, I think maybe you think that makes what he’s saying true – that he’s not guarding his words, and he means it when he tells you that of course he loves you and would never leave you. “Are you still angry with me?” Awful Yifu literally asks. “Alright, I’ll apologize. I was just mad. It didn’t mean anything. We’re together in this. I’ll always stand by you.” Xie’er, you have got to stop believing gaslighting abusive men who shovel that BS. This is what they call the honeymoon period in the cycle of abuse. Seriously. This is textbook. Please stop making the same mistakes over and over again. Maybe think about the fact that your Awful Yifu is, single-handedly, the reason the Department of the Unfaithful actually exists in the first place. He is THAT AWFUL. I would like to think actually seeing his serial killer trophy room will make a difference, now that you have some confirmation of what Tragicomic Ghost told you and not the ability to wave it off as part of some he-said, she-said situation where how could we ever possibly know the truth, despite the fact that Zhao Jing has shown he’ll stab anyone in the back in his quest for power? But, then, I also thought maybe learning last ep that he never planned to publicly acknowledge you would make some kind of difference. Are you going to roll the dice again, gambler? Because I’ll tell you right now, the house always wins. (Not that you’d listen to me anymore than you listened to Beauty Ghost.)

(Also, wait wait waitwaitwait. Waitaminit. This is pure speculation and probably way too out there to be true (oh, but, someone’s going to write this AU for me, right?) Hot-mess drunk yifu tells Xie’er that they’ve been depending on each other “ever since I picked you up and brought you back home.” I can’t remember if we know anything about Xie Wang’s background at this point, but it does sound like Zhao Jing might have literally yoinked him off the street to raise him. He … he doesn’t think Xie’er is actually Yan’er, does he? Only he kidnapped the wrong orphaned urchin by mistake? I’m just sayin’, thinking back to Shen Shen’s reaction to finding out Zhen Yan was still alive, it would be exactly the kind of thing Zhao Jing would do, to keep this kid that his brother(s) wanted to find hidden right under their noses.)

Chengling and the chicken. I can’t, y’all. And Zhou Zishu’s face as soon as he realizes what Wen Kexing is telling Chengling to do – he knows this is going to be a show.

Prince Jin, you are almost as bad as Xie’r and his awful Yifu combined:

Prince Jin: Zhou Zishu, you mastermind, your super-secret spy network continues to spread everywhere, including into my very own palace. Oh, the things you must be plotting against me!

Zhou Zishu, chillin’ at Plum Blossom Manor, day-drinking, dressing up in pretty festive robes, taking advantage of his disciple’s unpaid labor so he doesn’t have to raise a finger for himself, and providing his husband with sex so incredible he is never required to actually cook: “OK, my gay husband and our son-with-two-dads, how about we just stay here together forever and be happy?”

Also Prince Jin: *Creeps on Zhou Zishu like a gaslighting m’fker*

Anyway, if Prince Jin always knew what Han Ying was up to all along, is the letter about ZZS’s father a plant, with false info? It was just kind of suspiciously hanging out in the open on Prince Jin’s desk.

#zhao jing #xie wang #zhou zishu #wen kexing #gu xiang #cao weining #zhang chengling #han ying #prince jin #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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