#woh ep 37

[sollucets]

aaaaaaaaaaaaa you're watching woh and you're on ep 9 already???? that means you're almost on ep 12 omfg MAKE SURE TO WATCH THE SPECIAL VER TO EXPERIENCE PEAK ROMANCE THAT SUNBATHING SCENE HAS CHANGED THE TRAJECTORY OF MY LIFE REWIRED MY BRAIN ETC ETC (and made me choose this url)

here's a playlist with all the slightly extended gayer episodes (ep 12 has the biggest difference) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk3CgXKvqvFp_0e1wE1twwEJc-PL9BmKS&si=5Otgb4Xw4v-856U0

also!!!! there's a very short but extremely important ep 37 you can find it on tumblr somewhere or ask me and i'll find it for u <33 oh and also there's a car commercial that is an important part of the lore so lmk when you finish the show trust me it'll heal your heart akdhsjsk

also also!! watch the "lip reading for sugar" videos by avenuex because censorship made them dub over a lot of lines that were considered too gay for chinese tv 👀 (it has two parts first on eps 1-15 and the other on the rest of the show) her videos on poetry and cultural references are also really interesting

hope u enjoy the show 💜💜💜

- @ahxu-laowen

yes the rumors (me admitting to it) are true. i, rowan "i think that's lao wen" "i don't go here" "literally never watched a c-drama" sollucets am making my way through word of honor :'>

uwah sof this is marvelous thank you for ur wisdom!! i think that playlist was what i was already using, if not that specific one necessarily... but most of those videos have history/watch progress on them. so i think i was doing it right

and those lip reading videos are Wild!! those are so interesting thank you for pointing me at them. ive stopped so i dont get ahead of myself too far but thats so fun to me. thank u

i'm "on" episode nine in the sense that i started it a little, but i havent finished it or anything yet so the last i saw was eight. and im really really enjoying it so far!!! i will eagerly await episode twelve but im already a big fan of everything going on. i really love the fight scene style & their developing connection (god... soulmates....) and i understand now. wen kexing truly shaping up for among the characters of all time ranking. look at him

[cryptidafter]

30, 29, 27, 18, 20, and 16! for the ao3 writers wrapped

Since I already did 30 here and you asked for 15 in another message, I'll swap those out <3

15. What WIP are you taking into next year with you?

This one you already know about but I'm working on a wenzhou shaving fic which is proving much more challenging than it sounds. The other is a Ning Yi-centric fic, a bit of a reimagining of ep. 37 centering on Ning Yi's parental issues (and how they affect his relationship with Zhiwei)

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

I'm pretty fond of this one:

27. What do you listen to while writing?

It depends on my mood. Most of the time, I have a hard time concentrating if I have music playing so I usually don't have anything on but occasionally I'll throw on a favorites playlist and have that on low in the background.

18. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

Ha, Ye Baiyi by far (hence why I haven't posted that rongye story yet and likely never will). Runner up is Wen Qing. There's something about more stoic, generally abrasive characters that give me a hard time. It's difficult trying to really illustrate what's going on inside their heads without it seeming OOC.

20. Which work of yours have you reread the most?

What an embarrassing question! lol. A tie between xiyao nighthunting and my first WOH fic.

16. What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag?

According to AO3 stats, it's "Post-Canon" which makes a lot of sense lol.

[axiang-n-chengling-s-dads]

Pacing Issues in SHL/WoH

Rather I should name this issues that would be fixed with the correct pacing (ie a few extra scenes), but whatever. To preface ik the show had time and budget constraints, and ofc censorship, and love the show a lot. But these were a few areas where I thought a 4-5 min scene could also mostly fix things.

1. Wen Kexing's Fake Death:

That Wkx has to fake his death is obvious. Zhao Jing is hell bent on killing Wkx and the Ghost Valley, the most Wkx can do is set it up on his own terms to fake his death, which is why he returns to the Ghost Valley. There is also the fact that Wkx's death as the Ghost Valley Leader metaphorically marks the end of his kill-everyone revenge. Now when he comes back to take revenge, he does it in a righteous manner as the son of Zhen Ruyu avenging his parents death.

I would be remiss as a Sherlock fan if I did not compare this to Sherlock's Reichenabch Fake Death-- as he does not tell John, so does Wkx not tell Zzs.

That Wkx does not tell Zzs initially is understandable:

Zzs as we know is pretty injured. He has just come back from facing a lot of torture from the Prince, and already he had his Nail Problem ™. As we're told, Zzs needs to rest, and get into better health so that the nails can be removed.

Wkx's plan is at best risky-- how to be assured that only Chengling kills him? And not any of the hundreds present there? What if things go wrong, as they can at any moment? Zzs would at the least want to help Wkx, play a part-- which is dangerous for him as he's still injured.

So ofc in Wkx's mind it's best if he's not told until the plan is completed. Wkx makes sure to only tell those who are necessary to the plan, just like Sherlock does, telling only Molly, Mycroft and the Homeless network.

At this point we also know Gu Xiang did not know of the plan. As was pointed in another person's meta-- Wkx is a lone wolf, accustomed to relying only on himself and the bare minimum ppl required.

Moreover, there's the fact that Zzs was not supposed to be there during Wkx's death, just like John was not supposed to be there at Sherlock's death. In both cases John and Zzs suddenly pop-up and you can see that Wkx is anxious as he tries to keep Zzs away from him ("I lied to you Zhou Zi Shu" just like Sherlock says "I am a con man, it was all a trick").

When Zzs comes to take revenge, everyone other than him seems to know Wkx is alive. Why? The answer is that, as we see, Zzs probably ran away and was in hiding until he came to seek revenge at the Conference. Had he returned to the others, like Gu Xiang he would also be made to know of the truth.

This is the recurring theme of the show: the prey thinks all along that he's the Predator- similarly because of this unfortunate circumstance of Zzs being absent and then removing the nails, Wkx who thought he'd outsmarted everyone, really gets one upped by Fate.

Now, the last part that really ties this in is not explicitly stated at all, hence causing a lot of confusion and feelings about Wkx being OOC.

If only they had one 3-min conversation where WKX is like-- "where were you all this time, I was looking for you to tell you that I'm alive" and Zzs says something about preparing to take revenge, obvs not wanting to tell Wkx what really happened yet.

2. Side Character Deaths:

Episode 35-36 have a lot of deaths.

For Gu Xiang and Cao Weining, though the initial premise of their deaths is wonky (ie that no one was around to check on these new Intruders) the theme is apparent (that good people cannot survive in jianghu bc neither GX nor CWN once think of being cautious of the Gentle Wind Sect Leader). But still as viewers we can be asked to suspend our logic sometimes. Thier actual deaths are done beautifully.

But the others, that is, Tragicomic Ghost, Alluring Ghost, etc- Thier deaths are too quick and aren't given enough time. As for Xie'er and Zhao Jing, their deaths occur entirely offscreen.

For Zhao Jing we can say fuck the villain and let it go, but the rest of the characters the show spent a lot of time making us feel sympathetic towards-- giving no time to Thier deaths doesn't make us feel cathartic or fully give time to process them. A bit longer for each of them would have been wonderful, esp for Xie'er.

3. Wen Kexing's Sacrifice:

I have seen some criticism where it's said that Wkx sacrificing himself took away Zzs's autonomy over his death, which he has always wanted and has been a major character point. And they're right.

See, Wkx's immediate reaction on waking is understandable: given the choice to sacrifice yourself so that a loved ones lives, who wouldn't take it?

Also Wkx has cost Zzs his life, if he'd not done what he did, Zzs could have taken the treatment, gotten the nails out, and lived. Now, he will die. Wkx owes Zzs a life now.

Moreover, as Wkx would most definitely think: who does wkx have to live for if Zzs is gone? Other than Chengling, everyone else he loved would be dead-- the ppl he knew from Ghost Valley, Gu Xiang-- when Gu Xiang died he was ready to die at that point too.

But Zzs? He has so many to live for-- Chengling, all his disciples, Qi Ye, etc. As we know, Wkx thinks very highly of Zzs. He does not however consider, that the person Zzs wants to live most for is Wkx himself-- when Zzs tells him this in that World Armoury Cave, you can see the immediate regret on his face-- but what can Wkx do?

The thing is, at the end of the day Wkx thinks he owes Zzs this life, and that Zzs is more deserving and has more to live for.

Again all of this you'd really need to think about, and since it is one of the final, really important scenes, it's... Best if they'd shown all of this reasoning themselves.

What the show really needed here, was a scene where WKX finds out it is due to his own mistake that Zzs is going to die-- he would go berserk, and then probably also go through what I've described above. That scene would really help a ton.

4. The last scene of 36/ ep 37:

This one is the least to blame because I cannot Imagine the hoops the team had to go through to give us what they did.

The last frame of 36 is interesting, because it's very abrupt. I suppose they did it in the hopes of making audiences feel that it was incomplete and to go and look for another episode and stumble upon the Easter Egg?

That being said, it really is confusing what exactly is happening in the last scene or how Wkx survived-- there are many theories about how both parties need to be completely devoted to each other etc etc. And also the lip reading which makes things clearer. Story-wise it really is an issue, but taking in the outside elements I really do not blame the Show Team for what they did.

Also a side note to everyone despairing that WenZhou won't be able to travel the world like they wanted to-- they had previously said they'd love a reclusive lifestyle, so they are happy here, and they can also leave anytime!

So I assume in a few decades, maybe once Chengling dies, they can descend the mountain, travel the world for a good 10 yrs minimum (or if their aging is just unfreezed then they have like 30-40 years) to travel the world, go back to Wkx's peasant home and pay respect to his parents, and also meet GX and CWN's reincarnations!

So yeah in conclusion ™, a few added scenes really would have helped, and yes this is a critique ™ but i also understand the hurdles they'd have faced in terms of time and money budgets and censorship. This show does not exist in a void but is influenced by real outside phenomenons!

[shijiujun]

“They’re in LOVE,” I whisper.

[kexing]

hello! Maybe I am missing something but how in the world was the team able to film/release the WoH special episode? Most of the C-Dramas I have seen were either not happy ends (Guardian) or quite vague (Untamed) so to see an obvious happy ending was so refreshing. <3

hi! well, that’s a bit of a mystery tbh aksjsjjs

i mean. i think they were able to film the special episode because that was the ending that the woh crew had planned from the start. you can notice by all the changing lines and how the “official” ending is so abrupt and weird. the actor who plays the scorpion king even said that they had to go with that ambiguous ending, otherwise they couldn’t air the show so they were probably obligated to do That with ep 36 to fully pass the censorship.

now, how was youku able to release it anyways? that is truly a mystery to me because it technically defeats the purpose of the official ending?

censorship: sorry youku but wen kexing has to go

youku: sure, he has to go… TO THE MOUNTAIN WITH HIS MAN WHERE THEY’LL BE IMMORTAL HUSBANDS HELL YEAH 🌈🌈🌈🌈🥳🥳🥳🥳

and youku absolutely does not consider ep 36 ending the official one either? because they have bts videos of ep 37 on their youtube channel and even the woh concert trailer had zhou zishu and wen kexing saying things about living on the mountain together.

hell, our official fandom name is mountain people!

youku does not give a flying fuck and we love every moment of it but how are they able to get away with all of this? i wouldn’t know.

sorry ❤️💙

[chalkrevelations]

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’.

[sinqueen69]

Oh! To the anon who asked about Word of Honor, please be aware that it's got a separate epilogue scene that you either need to pay for (on either youtube or viki) or look for elsewhere. Asking for a link in the tags should also work! It had to be separated from the last ep due to censoring, but it's important to the plot

I had totally forgotten about Episode 37! Thanks for reminding me!

Here is a tumblr link to a good quality version with english subtitles for when you get there WoH Anon!

https://wohdaily.tumblr.com/post/652416091821391873/wenzhou-happy-ever-after-with-english-subs

[gingersnapwolves]

Kouri, mum and I have been watching WoH and loving it, but this weekend we watched the last 2 eps and I gotta say I was really disappointed :/ if you'd ever consider it, I recommend just stopping at 34 and make up your own ending. Idk what the book is like, but I felt let down on so many sides :(

yeah, so here's the thing

from what I understand (and someone please come correct me if I'm wrong), the show actually has 37 episodes, not 36. And if you want the happy ending, you need episode 37.

Youko on YT only has 36 eps listed, and Viki has episode 37 behind a paywall

I'm not sure where you were watching, but my guess is that you haven't seen the actual happy ending that multiple followers have promised me ...

[theyilinglaozus]

Heyyy, word of honor anon here again, I got the vip youku pass with your help and I've finished the show now and..... Well. Yeah. That hurt? I'll have to stalk tumblr now and watch some nice gifs of them. I think I'll go search for that ep 37 you mentioned...

But I'm still questioning how tf they got through censorship, while I was watching the untamed I thought that had to be the gayest shit I've ever seen, and I did watch films like brokeback mountain, but I had to revise this statement while watching woh, because that was somehow even gayer, it's amazing :D I'm really glad I watched it, even though I'll need some time to get over it I think, god damn it Chinese fantasy gays

Ahh hello! I’m glad you managed to get a VIP pass sorted out okay in the end and that you were able to watch the rest of the show! 💖

Thankfully episode 37 is a good, happy one, so it should give you a bit of joy after all the insane emotions that the last few episodes have us all go through 😊 It is a bit of a wild ride there at the end, isn’t it? 

I love both The Untamed and Word of Honor dearly, but I agree with you and find it really interesting to see how they differ and how they manage to get around the censorship in different ways. I honestly don’t know if it’s partly due to the thought that Word of Honor would flop before it aired that they got a bit more free with letting it pass or what - but I do believe that no one was expecting it become as beloved as it has. Even the cast and crew are pleasantly surprised, seeing as they were working with things like filming during the pandemic and budget constraints. Honestly, given everything they were up against I’m so happy to see Word of Honor doing as well as it is and seeing so many people fall in love with it. I think it’ll be a show that many will remember fondly 💖

And if you liked Word of Honor and haven’t yet done so, may I suggest reading the novel? It’s fully translated now, and is known as Faraway Wanderers. The show changes some things in the storyline, and I’d definitely recommend reading it if you’re not yet ready to say goodbye to the characters. It’s actually also goes hand in hand with another of Preist’s works, Lord Seventh, which is a story focused around two characters that show up toward the end of Word of Honor. Oh, and Zhou Zishu is still around in the Lord Seventh novel, so you get a lot more backstory for him before Word of Honor/Faraway Wanderers.

[skylightdistraction]

Watch the woh special episode (ep 37) if u haven't already!! You can find it on tumblr it's very short

Akskfkks thank you guys!! I did end up seeing the epilogue and I feel much better about the ending now. Still sad about poor Gu Xiang and Cao Weining ): but at least WKX and ZZS got a decent ending, even if it's primarily hiding behind a paywall

[sassassassins]

#showyourprocess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES — When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

I was tagged by @baoshan-sanren for this word of honor set (thank you!!!)

I'll be tagging:

@cescedes for this wangxian set with really interesting blue coloring

@thatgothsamurai for this fanart of Wen Kexing that lives in my head rent free at all times

@yvlan​ for this lovely lwj set

@ostardust for this heartrending wangxian set (especially the last gif with the blue coloring in the trees)

@absentia123 for this aesthetic edit of Wen Ning

no pressure, especially if you’ve been tagged already or if you made the edit a while ago!!

I was very excited about this set. I started thinking about it when I was writing a meta about Zhou Zishu that included the line "A ghost and an assassin, two entities who should never see the light of day, walk side by side in the human realm."

I thought that could serve as a summary for the drama as a whole, so I tweaked the wording and turned it into a gifset.

Process:

1. Choose moments -

gif 1 was Zhou Zishu as an assassin, so it had to be ep 1

gif 2 had to parallel gif 1 with a shot of Wen Kexing looking towards the camera, and I wanted a moment with the red robes, so ep 31

gif 3 has the text "step into," so I chose the moment in 32 when Zishu steps towards Kexing for a visual pun

gif 4 had to be episode 37 when they're diffused in light (I found 37 on tumblr, downloaded it, and cropped it to avoid the subtitles)

That also meant the set started with Zhou Zishu's first appearance and ended with the final shot of the whole show, and it set up a nice color gradient of dark to light.

2. Import video frames to layers in photoshop - I have the raw .mp4 files downloaded, dm me if you want to know where to get them. I use frame animation, so I then selected 63 frames for each gif and set the frame rate to 0.07. I really like all gifs in a set to be the same length, and I think 0.07 usually looks natural and smooth, so I try to have my number of frames as multiples of 7. Does that matter? Probably not, but it makes me feel better.

3. Create smart object from layers

4. Add base coloring - for Word of Honor, I borrow @zhouszishu 's coloring as a base, which they shared here. I do my own coloring for cql sets, but their WoH base coloring is gorgeous and I like saving time.

5. Add text - I used Trajan Pro Bold, which is a basic font that comes with photoshop. I tried using a fancy font I downloaded from the internet first, but then I realized I didn’t know what I was doing and gave up. :)

6. Sharpen gif - I follow this glossy sharpening tutorial

And now for the fun part -- figuring out how to add effects!! I am a photoshop newbie in many ways, so I was looking at tutorials while doing this.

The process was largely the same on each gif, so I'll break down the most complicated one:

I had the base gif and the base coloring, and I wanted to make the background red.

Following this tutorial, I used a giant soft brush (300-400 pixels, 0% hardness) and colored the background red, then set the blending mode to color. I did the same thing in black around the edges, but with blending mode soft light. There was still some blue showing through between the ribs of the fan, so I used hue/saturation to desaturate the blues to make it less obvious.

Then I added the text and set the blending mode on the text to "difference" to get the effect of reversing whatever is behind it.

I then added a gradient mask (solid to transparent), clipped the mask to the text layer, and played around with it until the gradient was visible, but you could still read the text.  And we end up with this!!

I then repeated that with each gif, and made additional adjustments on each, including using a giant soft brush in black around the border of gif 1 to make the rooftop less visible and intensifying the greens in gif 3

I had subtly different versions of gif 1 and gif 4 saved, because I wanted the text to dissolve into the background, but also to make sure you could still read it. I also made an alternate version of gif 3. I like to save multiple versions and usually an alternate gif or two to make sure I actually like the way things look when they're uploaded. So I made this:

But I decided that final version was more satisfying even though the text placement is meh, because he actually completes the movement before the loop restarts.

And that's it!! Nothing too complicated, and I am in awe of so many other creators on this site. But thanks for tagging me!

[birthbyfantasy]

dont know where you're watching but be careful to not miss out on episode 37 (of WoH)

I'm watching on youtube! So still 5 more eps to go.

[cryptidafter]

stalling finishing ep. 35 and 36 of WOH because they genuinely hurt me

Just...everything the characters have gone through and overcome leading into this devastating conclusion (yes, I know, ep. 37 is there but it honestly doesn't hit as hard for me. I love immortal husbands but it did fall a little flat. Especially in comparison to the novel ending). I've spoken about how I feel about the "Bad Ending" before - I think it's actually fitting for the way the drama played out - but that doesn't mean I can't still complain! lol

[itsthechocopuff]

* Whisper * you can find woh on YouTube except for "ep 37" special ep or whatever

thank you!!

[eldritch-elrics]

Long story short, definitely use either Viki or youtube for WOH. And remember to watch the epilogue ep 37 at the end, which is also missing from NF. The fandom has been having a field day with how awful the NF subs are, because they erased all endearments and nicknames in a show where terms of address are actually part of the plot. Finally, have fun!

nice nice ok, viki it is then. thanks!

[kexing]

Hi!! I love your blog!! I come to it everytime I'm hyperfixating on something! I wanted to ask, how to watch ep 37 of woh?

hi!!! thank you so much!!! i’m always happy to provide!! akdkksks 🥰

ep 37 is quite short, just an epilogue really, so we have it here on tumblr because it’s pretty hard to find elsewhere.

HERE is the ep!

and in case you want some further explanations about the whole ep 36/37 weirdness, i recommend reading THIS POST and also THIS POST afterwards! i think they do a great job of cracking the codes aldkskkd

hope this helps!! ❤️💙