#wen kexing from woh

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

an angle that i think is underexplored with wkx is that he is very unpleasant to be around for the first third of the show because he is a fake, self-righteous gossipper. he talks shit about people behind their back with an insufferable, righteous air. he avoids vulnerability and lifts his voice to make clear he holds the monopol on being morally correct. ive seen him put into queen bee and mean girl clique leader roles but i think rather than this, he is much less self-contained and less self-aware as he is convinced he is. in media, the queen bee or the leader of a mean girl clique is calculatated, whip smart, self aware, and unapogoletic about it. she doesnt want to change, she likes what shes doing. she knows shes mean; she enjoys it. wkx thinks he is the underdog, but he has too much power to be the underdog anymore. hes like a white feminist girlboss thinking he is being oppressed when in actuality, he is on his best way to becoming what he seeks to call out. in our witch hunt purity culture public humiliation perfomative activism era, this is incredibly on the point

[lofe-arts]

New Fandom, Who Dis?

So recently, enabled encouraged by the MDZS Meltdown Renegade peeps I was convinced to was Word of Honor (AND DID IT IN A VERY REASONABLE FIVE[maybe 6?] DAYS RHI) and obviously became immediately obsessed with Xie Wang.

You can fit so much fucked up relationships in this badboy. Had to stop in the middle of an episode to draw this. Did a whole new style i've never even tried before, as you do. Lots of fun 100% recommend both FAFO in drawing your blorbos and also watching Word of Honor.

They all need so, so much therapy and I do not want them to have it.

-

Buy it on Redbubble

[mount-everwhite]

Silly Love Songs - Wen Kexing & Zhou Zishu | Word of Honor (by Crying Raven)

[luckydragon10]

It's BACK! :D Happy Valentine's Day yet again!

HanWenZhou Valentines!

It's not too late for a few more fandom Valentines cards... special hanwenzhou edition. 😍

These Valentines cards were a team effort:

@antique-forvalaka - art creator

@fractured-ice - moral support and essential keeper-awaker

@luckydragon10 - writer

[whumpfish]

So, I have been in a very long, very hot shower because I hurt like a bitch, and I think I have narrowed down the basis of my major whump pet peeve, and I'm going to be using my pet fav series Word of Honor to do it.

You cannot survive sustained/chronic/severe pain if you don't develop a relationship with it. The first couple episodes of Word of Honor aren't about Zhou Zishu x Wen Kexing, they're about Zhou Zishu x Zhou Zishu's pain/condition. And that latter relationship continues to evolve and stay at the forefront on a parallel path to the development of the former.

He saddles himself with this thing as penance, because when he makes that decision, he believes that being crippled is "a fate worse than death." And then he goes on living, and discovers that life goes on, so he makes an increasingly-less-guarded peace with it. So when he meets Wen Kexing and Gu Xiang, he's doing his own thing, enjoying the good parts of what remains of his life even though his condition remains at the forefront, and will for the rest of the series. He's integrated it into his life to such an extent that Gu Xiang readily dubs him "Sick Man."*

That's what gets my goat every time: whumpees that aren't allowed to develop a relationship with their pain and are instead thrust into relationships with "caretakers" who don't do much more than provide warm blankets and snuggles and therapy-approved conversation on demand, and be "heartbroken" over how broken and pathetic the whumpee is in their eyes. Because the reality is that the relationship with pain has to be established before any other relationships can go anywhere.

Pain/illness kills relationships. People leave. They just do. It becomes too much of a bother to make changes to their own lives, and they jet.** And it's just you and your pain/condition until you can find the few truly good people who will give you love and reasonable help. You have to develop a relationship with it. It's your new roommate for the rest of your life.

You and your pain are going to be in the wars. You're going to get mad and scream and throw things at it. You're going to resent it for being the only one who's there with you every day. You're going to think about all the shit you can't do anymore, and you'll be frustrated to tears.

But eventually - if you're allowed - you make peace. You stop hating your roommate for holding you back from parties, you just find someone who can drive you home, or stay in with you. You'll find other people who have the same kind of roommate, and then you'll all get along.

And if you are very, very, galactically, fictionally lucky, you find a partner who will help you stand your ground against life and what your roommate pain has made of it. This is what happens in Word of Honor.

Wen Kexing is by no stretch Zhou Zishu's perma-caretaker, or "Caretaker" in the sense that plagues new wave whump. But he cares, and offers what help he can, when he can, without hovering and without kid gloves. He looks for a cure earnestly but without coddling or pitying Zhou Zishu for being a Sick Man. It's a more honest and realistic portrayal of someone ill/disabled and someone not who loves them than I've seen anywhere else.

My relationship with my pain is ongoing and continues to evolve. It takes things from me, but it gives me things, too. My love of whump, the Pain Genre, is one of those things. Whenever my pain spikes like this, my tolerance for fluff in the whump zone plummets, so just know that whenever you get ornery meta from me, my pain and I are sitting around having wine (gingerbeer, can't have wine with the new meds, thanks a lot pain) and bitching.

The reason there's no good chronic pain rep outside of WOH is that characters are not being allowed to develop relationships with their pain, and are only allowed to have relationships with other things and people, and those relationships are inevitably trainwrecks, or insultingly unrealistic and saccharine, because an entire segment of the character's life and personality and identity is being masked or exploited instead of embraced. So let your whumpee have a relationship with their pain/conditions/traumas. Chronic pain/illness havers the world over will thank you.

[variouspolltournaments]

Propaganda

Zhou Zishu: Ok so his villainy is kinda downplayed in Word of Honor/Faraway Wanderers (especially in WoH) cause like the whole point is that he wants to retire from being a villain but like I think he still fits here. Like ok episode 1 opening scenes are him leading an attack to wipe out a whole household of an official for opposing the crown prince, being told that he's on the evil side, him going to the official's daughter and telling her she needs to commit suicide, having the last remaining member of his martial sect request a torturous 3 year execution that he invented basically because he can no longer serve under him, and then the reveal that he also picked the 3 year torture execution thing in order to quit and also because he thinks he deserves it. This is like the first half of episode 1 in the show where they downplay some of his more evil stuff!

In like episode 10, we also get a flashback scene that confirms he killed children in service of his goals, but also like his main regret/thing he has the most guilt over is that he lead all of his martial brothers to their deaths by bringing them along with him. He only felt bad about killing Princess Jing An cause she had been Jiuxiao's lover, not cause like he falsely accused her father of treason for not going along with what he was doing. When he does good stuff, he says he's trying to take a couple years off of his punishment in the afterlife. The only reason he's not actively hated by the martial arts world when he returns is cause they don't know he was the leader of Window of Heaven. He meets Wen Kexing, the Ghost Valley Master, who is considered one of the worst evils of their era and is like "yeah we're soulmates I guess." When Xie Wang sees the two of them together he says "why are those two devils together." He's invented some of the cruelest torture techniques of their time too

Again, I'm just pulling these from the show where they tried to make him a better person!!!! That's not even touching on the stuff in Qi Ye, where they show more of him from before he quit. He doesn't get redeemed, he just retires

Zuko: He’s a villain. His goal for most of the series is to catch the only survivor of a genocide to be allowed back into his old position as a prince. In pursuit of this, he threatens an innocent old woman, burns down a village, steals a healer’s horse, etc.

He’s a protagonist. His story, from horrible backstory to his other obstacles and even his emotional journey are all portrayed throughout the series. He eventually learns that his family are evil and goes against them to join the team of heroes.

Also, this is Zuko. You guys know Zuko.

[hiemaldesirae]

Food for thought: everyone makes human Vox tall....but what if the dude was short? Like, 5'5 or 5'4? And Alastor was 6'2? And if the two were changed back into their human forms (but still had their demon powers) Vox is just...short. yes, he's beautiful, with his mismatched eyes and a streak of pure white hair (that he used to dye red in the human world) amongst his dark navy hair, but he's short. He doesn't even have any brawn to level the playing field--he's scrawny as well. Alastor finds it delightful. Finds his muse delightful--and beautiful, but he always knew Vox was beautiful as a human. Why wouldn't he be?

YOURE SO RIGHT NONNY (extremely loud correct gameshow sound effect playing)

i always thought of human vox as having like, a generally tall but very lithe sort of figure, sort of like stolas from hb. maybe not 6'2" tall but 5'10 or so? but hes so thin that he's got a thigh gap in human form too :') i imagine he would have to have some muscles, but like the lean kind that you develop as an actor because you dont want the whole bulging vein kind but the kind that lets you do weird stunts instead of having to sub in doubles. still the appeal of a small vox is so appealing to me.... AUWGDHAJ

that last sentence reminded me so much of my beloved wenzhou btw (woh/faraway wanderers). just every time that wen kexing gives a backhanded compliment about zhou zishu with something like 'oh, he must be beautiful under [the ugly skin mask he's wearing to disguise himself as a peasant]! only a beautiful person would do something so stupid :)' and thats how i imagine alastor acts with vox. like 'oh he must have been gorgeous in life, only a beautiful person would act so fucking stupid and think they can get away with it'. and hes fucking right

[misspermitted]

My fav memes from WOH pt 4 (this one is small, I’m procrastinating)

The duality of Wen Kexing

I could write for ages about Wen Kexing’s costuming but it comes down to absolutely SERVING

He would, he does

Some fun novel content!! I gotta read more of it tbh but from what I can tell, also gay

Zishu literally the entire first meeting: wow he’s… NOT ATTRACTIVE AND IM JUST A LITTLE BEGGAR don’t pay attention to me! (Looks again out of the corner of his eye) Jesus Christ I’m so so gay

[xiao-chuhe]

Please note that Mei Changsu is automatically excluded from this poll by virtue of him being able to blow every single one of them out of the water with his scheming :')

[bl-bracket]

#1 Himbo Loser's Bracket Round 1: Gu Xiang (Word of Honor) vs Mork (My Ride)

[Submitted Reasons Under Cut]

Gu Xiang: "HEAR ME OUT! She is strong and a capable fighter and is always ready to kick some ass. However she is also quite naive in certain things and doesn’t understand much outside of like fighting and whatever else Wen Kexing tried to teach her. Like she is definitely the muscle of the group, not the brains (though if we’re being honest none of the kids in woh are the brains). Despite being quite brash to the point of coming across as rude, she’s also quite kind and definitely loves the people she cares about so fiercely that like you can forget that she’s been subjected to the horrors since she was small."

Mork: "Baby boy just wants to love and be loved. Dropped everything to get his girlfriend through college only for that to go wrong. That didn’t stop born green flag Mork from devoting himself to someone new again though. The kid is a human Labrador who deserves the world."

[forcebook]

Hi MJ! I hope you're doing well! I'm rewatching some of my fave eps of WOH so naturally I thought about you! And I was thinking maybe Zishu calls Kexing 'Lao Wen' because Kexing talks like an old man. You know in book quotes and riddles and rhymes. I feel like we talked about this but I don't remember...

hi eboni!!! i’m doing well! hope you are too!!

ohhh you’re rewatching woh and thought of me??? 🥺🥺🥺 that’s an honor! thank you so much!!! ❤️💙

omg yeah, i think we’ve talked about this before but it’s always a good time to talk about it again akdkkskdks

but basically i do agree with you! it definitely started as teasing because wkx talks like an ancient person. and he also behaves like one most of the time because of how fast he had to grow up in the ghost valley and raising gu xiang all by himself. he’s got that Single Dad™️ vibe to him

it’s only when he’s with zzs that he allows himself to be more playful because zzs brings out that childlike joy from when they first met as kids. wkx wishes to be that person again but his speech pattern and years in hell still give him away 😭😭😭

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

thinking about how the department of the unfaithful is likely a thematic parallel, almost a foil, to wkx. and im not even talking about luo fumeng or liu qianqiao, im thinking of the many women working there, those that have notably no martial arts or power of their own, who are somehow part of the valley and take care of "women's work", the servants, the invisible threads that keep the machinery running. the machinery being wkx's era of ghost valley; still violent and hostile, but notably more inhabitable, with a clear direction of right and wrong.

alright, im going on a tangent, but what i mean is: everytime wkx has personally to do with these women, he is confronted with their "uselessness", their institutional weakness. they dont have any worth beyond the small acts of service they can provide; they dont have money of their own, they are not established in any way in the jianghu, they dont carry titles or achievements to their names, they are rarely portrayed as anything but unfortunate victims of their circumstances. his reflex reaction is always to send them away--out the valley, back to the human world. and he is puzzled and carefully apathetic when they remind him that they dont have anywhere to go but the valley.

im assuming that he has a hard time understanding this; hes not stupid and hes not unsympathetic to the systemic and institutional struggle women face, so im guessing he very carefully does not think about this too hard, to avoid finding parallels to his own experience. these women are prey as he used to be prey, but he is strong and established and has his martial arts now, he doesnt want anything but jump back into the human world--trying very hard not to think about what he fears is true: that there is no place for a ghost like him, and what the life h envisions with zzs is all but an illusion.

the women of the department of the unfaithful reminding him that even as weak, adorable, pretty, and as far removed from the state of ghost as they are, they are still finding it hard to edge out a life anywhere but in ghost valley and let everything remain exactly as it is, i mean, that must be difficult for him. i feel like a big part of wkx has internalized victim blaming, or that he is terrified of the invitable nature of these women's fates.

i mean, he so often looks back at the times when everything was still good and well, before he went to the valley, and im wondering if he is not thinking that he deserved what he got, and that there was nothing he could have done. he has suppressed the memory of how exactly the murder of his parents comes to pass, and he later reasons that he is the one to blame for it, because he was the one who lead the wolf into the sheep's den. so he might think, even as innocent and blameless as he was as a child, maybe it was inevitable for him to be and stay and die a ghost

[baek1nho]

hello! im looking for a similar vibe drama to fill the word of honour-shaped void in my heart ;; do you have any recs? thank u!

hi! i do have a couple recs, i am always thinking about word of honor.

a journey to love — wuxia cdrama; the main leads have similar background and kind of same dynamic, especially with the found family aspect. in the beginning the narrative reminded me of word of honor too. I loved this drama a lot but it is very sad.

laws of attraction — thai bl; charn, one of the protagonists is very similar to wen kexing. also tinncharn has some parallels with wenzhou. this drama is so silly and fun.

the blood of youth — wuxia cdrama; a lot of the woh minor cast is in this drama. i think if you liked the vibe of word of honor you'd like this one.

heroes — wuxia cdrama; i really enjoyed this drama, it is another drama that ends in tragedy too. su mengzhen & yang wuxie are another wenzhou coded pair to me.

i haven't seen them but there's legend of fei & guardian which are other priest (word of honor's novel writer) adaptations as well as a taiwanese bl unknown apparently coming out today. they might have a similar vibe bc they came from the same author.

[dangerouscommiesubversive]

@giraffeter asked about the WenZhou ghosts WIP file! This one is fun and I love it a lot--I actually posted a little snippet from it a couple of months ago.

The basic thing is, I love ghost stories, and I have a still in-progress series of MDZS fics in a modern-with-cultivation setting that are all about ghosts and the hunting thereof, so naturally I've been thinking about ghost stuff a lot over the past. Year or so. Good lord, have I been working on the series that long? Anyway, I also rewatched Word of Honor not long ago because I wanted my partner to see it, and they loved it as much as I do and we spent a lot time talking about it, and all of this naturally led to the idea that I should do a WoH ghost story in a setting sort of adjacent to the MDZS ones. Unlike those stories, this one doesn't have any ghost hunters--Zishu's just a mundane hitman attempting a short and eventually fatal retirement, who finds himself unexpected tangled up in the affairs of an extremely strange nightclub singer with very cold hands.

Here's the scene of them actually meeting, after an initial very alarming encounter in which Wen Kexing singled him out of the crowd while performing:

After “Mack the Knife,” the singer didn’t linger near Zishu, instead making his way back up to the stage for a final song

(There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy…)

before taking a bow and disappearing along with his backing band. No encores for this performance, apparently. This was something of a relief to Zishu, who’d been uneasy ever since the singer had first approached his table, but just as he was signaling to the one server on duty that he was ready to pay, a shadow fell over him and the singer himself pulled out the other chair and sat down. Before Zishu could say a word, he’d signaled to the server himself, accepting an empty wine glass from the harried woman and pouring for himself from Zishu’s bottle without so much as asking.

“I’m sorry,” Zishu said, as mildly as he could, “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

The singer took a sip of wine, eyebrows rising, and then said, “We haven’t been, but I have strong feeling that we should be, and my intuition is never wrong about things like that.” He reached across the table with the hand that didn’t hold his wine glass, red nails gleaming in the light. “Wen Kexing.”

Eyeing him suspiciously, Zishu took the proferred hand and was shocked for a moment by how cold it was, although he didn’t comment. “Zhou…Xu.”

“Boss, oh my god.” Zishu very nearly jumped. The drummer from the stage, a young woman in mostly purple, had materialized at Wen Kexing’s elbow, her eyebrows and mouth drawn down into a scowl. “I look away for two seconds and you’re just, just bothering random alcoholics, I can’t let you out of my sight.”

Zishu snorted. “Excuse me?”

“Wasn’t talking to you, Mister Two-Bottles. Boss, come on—”

Despite the young woman’s tugging at his arm, Wen Kexing would not be moved, one hand coming up to his chest like a dowager clutching a pearl necklace. “Bullied! By my own baby sister! And don’t be rude, A-Xu isn’t a ‘random alcoholic,’” the air quotes made more than usually vivid by those long red nails, “we’re very dear friends.”

Zishu felt his eyebrows shoot up at the affectionate address, and then higher at what came after it. “Are we? I don’t remember that.”

“Of course we are, my intuitions are never wrong, wasn’t I just telling you that?”

“You did tell me that. I don't recall agreeing.”

“Well, why would you? We’ve only just met. But we’re going to be the closest of friends, I’d stake my life on it.”

And here is Wen Kexing's truly wild set list, which is a very satisfying-to-me combination of jazz and blues classics and more modern songs that I think sound good, or would sound good, when sung in a sort of smokey, sexy torch song style:

"Ill Wind," composer Harold Arlen

"Hot Ones," Shudder To Think, originally performed on the soundtrack for Velvet Goldmine

"Why Don't You Do Right," probable composer Kansas Joe McCoy, notable recordings including Peggy Lee, Sinead O'Connor, and Amy Irving singing as Jessica Rabbit

"I Get a Kick out of You," composer Cole Porter--WKX is, of course, singing the original lyrics, the ones that reference drug use

"Glory Box," Portishead

"Undisclosed Desires," Muse

"Fell in Love with a Girl," The White Stripes, although WKX switches "girl" for "boy" and thus is more performing the Joss Stone version

"The Ballad of Mack the Knife," composer Kurt Weill, German lyrics Bertolt Brecht, Marc Blitzstein translation (the one that Bobby Darin and Louis Armstrong were working from)

"Nature Boy," composer eden ahbez, originally performed by Nat King Cole

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ Disabled Characters Showdown Revival Round 1 Matchups

We will be beginning with matchups of four with two characters moving forward. From there it will be matches of two until we are left with 7 characters to add back in. (Why seven? Bc math) (Why the v fours- literally no reason it doesn’t save us time)

Quinni Gallagher-Jones vs Kate Rose vs Gobber vs Heart

Darth Maul vs Monkey D. Luffy vs Shi Qingxuan vs Yang Xiao Long

Zhu Yuanzhang / Zhu Chongba vs Wu Zetian vs Crona vs Hearthstone

Hermann Gottlieb vs Day vs Israel ‘Izzy’ Hands vs Ianthe Tridentarius

Shane vs Dezi vs Andrew Minyard vs Xue Xian

Jonathan Sims vs Nico di Angelo vs Frankie Stein vs Ballister Boldheart

Wen Kexing (WoH) vs Princess Sapphia vs Jesper Fahey vs Wylan Van Eck

Norma Khan vs Wen Kexing (FW) vs Buddy Aurinko vs Jedidiah A.A. Martin

Takashi ‘Shiro’ Shirogane vs Ashton Greymoore vs Lenore Vandernacht vs Lilith Clawthorne

Viktor vs Shallan Davar vs Aurelio vs Luke Skywalker

Chu Sangwoo vs Ayda Aguefort vs Daan vs Charlie Spring

Runaan vs Suletta Mercury vs Arthur Lester vs Melanie King

Entrapta vs Juno Steel vs Sydney October Sargent vs Havelock Vetinari

Vespa Ilkay vs Valerie Day vs Adam Parrish vs Song Lan

[nightnightsleeptight]

Quotebook - Word of Honour episode 2

"How come his bullshit is so fragrant." - Zhou Zhi Shu

I'm using that. I'm using that from now on, and I'll refuse to elaborate to my friends where it's from.

But anyways, I'm mildly in love with Wen Kexing, which was very unexpected because I usually don't fall too hard for drama characters. Let me tell you though - that fan waving!!! As a first-time watcher of WoH I am not even surprised that people love this drama so much because how do you even wave the fan that smoothly????? Truly though, as soon as I saw his smirk I knew I had no chance.

Context behind Quotebook if anyone cares or sees this in the sea of other Tumblr posts: My (irl) friends and I always yell "Quotebook!" for all the memorable lines we hear or say, so I feel like it would be fun to start a documented quotebook here on Tumblr as a pretty new person who loves many lines in things I watch! I'll also waffle a bit because this seems like a nice place to talk since people can just scroll right past my posts if they do not wish to see my stuff!!!

I've only just started properly using Tumblr, so my posts will be passable at best. 😊

(edit to add too hard - I crush on drama characters often especially if they’re women!)