allycat796

Here goes episode 2:

· Nothing makes a character more relatable than having an exasperated one-sided conversation with an unruly animal. I think every pet owner has been there at least once.

· Wei Wuxian continues to be intensely relatable in his awkwardness when he overhears people talking about him. And he has such a hard time restraining himself from, idk, giving them a lecture about how his invention actually works, or whatever he was going to say. Probably for the best that he didn’t jump in and “well, actually” them because that would be pretty suspicious of him.

· This guy is apparently saying wwx is his idol, which I hadn’t caught before. That’s so funny to me, like, yeah he murdered thousands but his compass is really cool! But probably super uncomfortable for wwx, because you know this guy probably doesn’t admire him for anything he’d want to be admired for. The person he’s calling his idol is a construct, who might barely have anything to do with the “real” wwx, etc. etc.

· So wwx can just put people to sleep with magic, I guess? I’m not sure we see this again, just like the paralysis spell (?) he uses on that guy in episode 1. My theory is this only works on people with low spiritual power/no golden cores, and that’s why he doesn’t use it during the main plot. (If that’s the case, it would be another reason for wwx not to tell anyone he’s missing his golden core, I guess. If people knew they could do stuff like this to him it’d make him way more vulnerable. Not canon, but a reasonable headcanon, I think.)

· Wwx: Oh thank fuck, people screaming for help. Now I can run away from this crying woman without looking rude.

· I mean, ok, he did seem genuinely concerned about the dancing girl and her mom, but I know which situation I’d rather deal with. Me *handshake meme* wwx: having no idea what to do with crying people.

· Jin Ling. Oh, Jin Ling. Rude, entitled, unsportsmanlike, coddled in some ways even as his actual emotional needs aren’t being met…this poor kid. I love him.

· The thing with the 400 spirit capture nets is…well, it’s just not good. Jiang Cheng wants this kid to succeed on his own merits, I think, but then makes it impossible for him to actually do that by giving him massive and unfair advantages against his competitors. Is anything Jin Ling accomplishes even really an accomplishment, under these conditions? And Jin Ling’s gotta be aware of that on some level. It’s kind of insulting to him too! Indicates a lack of faith in his abilities, even as Jiang Cheng pushes him to win.

· Also makes it nigh impossible for the smaller and weaker sects to claw their way up to success on their own merits.

· Now’s as good a time as any to mention that I’m probably gonna be fairly critical of Jiang Cheng throughout this. I’ll try not to be unfair, because it’s not like I hate him. He’s a really good character! But he frustrates me a little and I often find myself disagreeing with fandom interpretations of him, so…yeah.

· Wei Wuxian getting dragged around by his donkey…I really love stuff like this, such a good and quick way to humanize a character and make him endearing, even with the whole dark shrouded past thing he has going on. Of course, if there was too much of this it would get old quick, and you can’t use stuff like this as the only way to make a character likable, but I think the show strikes a good balance between letting wwx be a bit ridiculous (aren’t we all?) and taking him seriously.

· Wei Wuxian mentions that he didn’t know Mo Xuanyu was the lovechild of Jin Guangshan. I guess we’re to understand from this, in addition to wwx’s general cluelessness about mxy, that unlike in the novel he didn’t leave any writings behind? And instead just told wwx to kill his family before he…disappeared into the ether. I’d imagine conveying mxy’s backstory through dialogue is the easier route in a visual adaptation, so this choice is reasonable even if it’s not my favorite.

· Oh wwx, my buddy, my guy, you just can’t not step in it. I don’t think he should just let Jin Ling drag “Mo Xuanyu” through the mud, but if he could just have chosen literally any other way to rebuke him…

· Jin Ling goes straight for trying to stab “Mo Xuanyu” with a pointy object. He’s right to be angry, especially since he would expect Mo Xuanyu to know who he is and what happened with his parents, but this reaction is really extreme. Emotional regulation? We don’t know her. Yet.

· “Why your uncle and not your dad?” Wei! Wuxian! This will never cease to make me cringe and facepalm, like, he really just keeps digging that hole. Jin Ling’s behavior does warrant consequences of some sort, I think, but wwx has unknowingly gone way too far.

· And here comes Jiang Cheng to take wwx down a peg. I actually don’t usually feel like wwx needs to be taken down a peg, but in this specific case…he kinda does. Or, at least he needs to know that Jin Ling is Jin Ling.

· Ah, yeah, ok. I feel bad for Jin Ling, because he’s just been humiliated and then the cavalry arrives in the form of Jiang Cheng to…humiliate him some more. He does help him off the ground, sort of? But also calls him an embarrassment while he does it.

· “Anyone who uses the yllz’s tricks should be killed and fed to the dogs” hmm, not sure how literally I’m supposed to take this for cql. We know, from Jin Ling in a later episode, that Jiang Cheng does catch people he suspects of being Wei Wuxian fairly often, but it’s not clear what he does with them.

· Ok, Jin Ling just went for “Mo Xuanyu” with his sword again, so I’m guessing fairly literally?

· Lan Wangji! We love to see him, though unfortunately he will also humiliate Jin Ling some more. Can somebody please just be nice to this poor little brat?

· Jiang Cheng’s tone as he talks to Lan Wangji raises my hackles, and I’m just an audience member. Scorn under a deliberately thin veneer of politeness, that gets thinner as he keeps talking. And those digs at his former relationship with Wei Wuxian…not cute!

· Of course, Lan Wangji’s icy disregard is also not cute. They’re both being super rude! A beautiful relationship, it is not.

· Sizhui does all the talking for Lan Wangji, which, hmmm. Depending on how many years you think have passed since wwx died, he’s either ~16 or ~19, either the same age as or older than our leads at the start of the show. And in the context of this society, he’s already clearly old enough to be leading night hunts by himself, so making nice with people is technically part of his job? But this does seem like the type of situation Lan Wangji should maybe deal with himself. Could be inappropriate, or it could just be another form of training. Hard to tell.

· Jin Ling is, again, being kind of the worst but I still don’t think Lan Wangji should be using the silencing spell on him lmao.

· Oh, you know Lan Wangji wants Jiang Cheng to fight him so bad. Like, he destroyed the spirit nets in part because they were unfair, I think, but also a good 45% of the reason was to see if he could get Jiang Cheng to start a knock-down drag-out. And Jiang Cheng wants to do it, but manages to restrain himself.

· The sneering. His actor is good at making that expression feel real, but god, at what cost? Also, he snaps at Jin Ling some more and tells him not to bother coming back if he doesn’t catch the prey. Obviously, he doesn’t mean that, but based on some of Jin Ling’s later actions he seems to have taken that sentiment to heart.

· I think when he was a kid, Jiang Cheng was told simultaneously that he had to win (over wwx) to be good enough, and that he could never win. Obviously, a pretty shitty combination of messages to absorb, which basically just amounts to: you can never be good enough. And now he’s trying to avoid that for Jin Ling by doing whatever it takes to make him win. Essentially, still teaching him that he has to win to be good enough, but without that second part. Only 1 out of 2 toxic messages passed on is definitely an improvement, but still not ideal. At least he’s trying.

· In a pretty direct and most likely deliberate contrast to Jiang Cheng, Lan Wangji just tells his juniors to try their best but not take risks. He’s not perfect, but I like this approach better, and I think the narrative agrees with me.

· Lan Wangji sees “Mo Xuanyu” and gives him a lingering look. What does that mean? Does he suspect it’s Wei Wuxian but want to let him have his space? (If so…ouch!) Or does he put “Mo Xuanyu’s” resemblance to his old friend down to wishful thinking?

· I thought the images of the Jiang siblings in the water were supposed to just be representations of where wwx’s head is at, but then he reaches out and touches the image of Jiang Yanli like he thinks it’s actually there. Are we really supposed to think that he’s just straight-up hallucinating, or is this just trying to convey that he’s really in his feelings about these old relationships?

· “I thought I could be indifferent to the world” bitch in what universe? Literally, what have you ever done or thought or said that would give you that impression?

· Wei Wuxian has some pretty big holes in his memory…he seems to not be able to remember visiting Dafan or the Wens’ graves at all. Wonder if that’s a residual side effect of being dead, or if this is just his usual level of forgetfulness. And then he seems to hallucinate Wen Qing, so overall not doing great.

· Lan Jingyi seems pretty sure that Lan Wangji is going to punish them for forgetting their signal shells, which makes me think he’s punished them before for being out of line. I doubt these punishments are particularly harsh—probably just lines—but I think this is evidence that he’s not as ridiculously indulgent with the kids as he’s sometimes made out to be.

· Wei Wuxian’s critical thinking skills make it so he doesn’t need to remember things, anyway. Also love how he just can’t pass up a teachable moment, and clearly wants to lead the kids into figuring out the answer themselves. He’s so into this that he loses track of Jin Ling. Big absent-minded professor vibes here.

· Could either Jiang Cheng or Lan Wangji not…go somewhere else to wait for their kids?

· Wei Wuxian ~~was raised by Yu Ziyuan~~ knows multiple tough women, so I’m assuming this “weak woman” nonsense refers more to her not being a cultivator.

· I guess Wei Wuxian remembers sealing the statue now? Idk, this is another part that’s just kind of ???

· Jin Ling putting himself and everyone else in danger by not releasing his signal flare and running straight at the monster instead…I’m sure that has nothing to do with Jiang Cheng’s parting words to him.

· Is it physically possible to carve a flute in this short a time? Well, Wei Wuxian does love to attempt the impossible. No wonder the flute sounds really bad, though.

· I don’t really get this whole thing about the statue being an illusion, especially since for an illusion it sure was good at seriously harming people in the same way the original did. I think it’s supposed to be something like, Nie Huaisang put it there to lure Wei Wuxian or make him call Wen Ning or…something? In which case he’s responsible for more collateral damage than he is in mdzs. But, like Nie Huaisang, I really don’t know.

· When Wei Wuxian’s playing sounds bad, the show makes sure to let us know, either through the diagetic soundtrack or by having other characters mention it. So, I assume any other time it sounds fine to the viewer it sounds fine in-universe too. He’s good at playing the flute, fight me!

· Jiang Cheng snaps at Jin Ling for doing what he told him to do earlier, then shuts him down when he tries to point this out. He hasn’t quite learned that you shouldn’t say things if you don’t want people to believe/act on them.

· The first thing Jiang Cheng does upon realizing that Wei Wuxian is himself is to try yeeting him out of his body with his lightning whip. The thing is, if Wei Wuxian were forcibly possessing someone else’s body, this would be the morally correct thing to do, but Jiang Cheng doesn’t even try to find out the full picture before going at it. And although this won’t kill wwx, it still hurts; can’t blame him for trying to avoid Jiang Cheng/not returning to Lotus Pier.

· Flashback time! I love Jiang Yanli but it also does feel like a good half her dialogue is “A-Xian!”

· Jiang Cheng wakes Wei Wuxian up by…threatening him with his debilitating phobia. I have a younger brother and we don’t do stuff like this to each other even as a joke, but all sibling and sibling-adjacent relationships are different, I guess…

· I’m gonna probably be a little critical of wwx and jc’s relationship as well, even back in the “good old days” because imo it wasn’t, like, that great. The love they have for each other is real, but you can see the cracks even at this point and if they ever reconcile, I’d hope it would look fairly different from this.

· Wei Wuxian is a little shit who doesn’t listen, and Jiang Cheng nags him about things I really don’t think he needs to be nagged about, like getting that little rabbit thingy for Yanli. Fun stuff.

This is…so long. But I think it’s partially because all the character introductions, so maybe there’s still hope for me.