#yknow? since doing good is done consciously with intention. and word of honor really gets at that!

[onereallygoodlambonastick]

i think the reason why word of honor compels me more than mdzs is bc the two mains are ambiguous (to an extent), ever-changing and dynamic; as in, zhou zishu is basically a retired spymaster-murderer and he goes around teaching his kid and helping people on the fly and then there’s wen kexing who is kind of cursed and does batshit stuff and who also reads bedtime stories to his kid and fucks around with zhou zishi at every chance he gets. in mdzs wei wuxian and lanzhan are kind of.....good? like, really good? like, that isn’t in any doubt in the current timeline (in his current incarnation), even with wei wuxian’s past descent in the dark arts. lanzhan has been a moral stick in the mud since his inception. but unlike the moral stasis that that gets cemented into mdzs’s plotline, the storyline with wkx and zzs is just always in flux; both characters come from a morally decrepit and at best, ambiguous, background, with both having done terrible, terrible things, and here they are butting heads over who gets to die and who doesn’t and why they should try to keep living in a hostile and greedy world all while trying to be better than they are. in some ways word of honor doesn’t necessarily try to hammer in the “evil so evil this man is badddd so so bad” because the show is constantly humanizing wen kexing as it demonizes him, constantly putting zhou zhishu in his way and beside him, always having them forgive each other and be good and kind to each other, etc etc. the moral messaging in word of honor is v nuanced this way. this enduring struggle to do right by somebody is very compelling and far more interesting, personally