Word Of Honor - Tumblr Posts
(source tweet)
Drew this last year for JGY’s birthday but never posted it here. I hope he enjoys his tea with Zhao Jing 🍵
Happy Ghost’s costuming and makeup
Wuchang Gui and Happy Ghost gif collection 💚🧡
Mount Qingya’s denizens of ghost valley.
(Word of Honor is consuming my life if you can’t tell already).
Ghostly glances across an aisle
Do you have any headcanons for Changing Ghost you'd like to talk about? :)
Thanks for the ask! 😺
I don’t know if these are all headcannons so much as ideas-I-find-interesting, but here they are anyway!
-Wuchang Gui is the one who does Happy Ghost’s and Lustful Ghost’s makeup (and Black Grim Reaper’s, after White Grim Reaper’s death). Lustful Ghost only lets him do his makeup on special occasions.
This all started because Happy Ghost wanted to try his green lipstick one day and Wuchang Gui told him that maroon would suit him better. Happy Ghost took his advice, but his technique was lackluster, so Wuchang Gui offered to do it himself. It was the first time Happy Ghost ever let someone else touch his smile.
-Wuchang Gui was an imperial eunuch before he joined Ghost Valley. As for how he got sent there, probably treason (of which he may have charmed his way out of execution)
-he kept the old Ghost Valley Master’s crown. Wen Kexing had no interest in it, but Wuchang Gui planned to wear it once he overthrew him
-his hobbies include drinking wine and riding horses
-he doesn’t remember why he loves green so much
Hello, on Twitter I once saw you made fanart of Ye Baiyi and Wuchang Gui together in one picture, but I can't find it on your Tumblr account to reblog. Did you make your Tumblr account at a later date, or am I just not looking hard enough? I love your modern day fashion redesigns, btw. I didn't chuck out one of my green coats because I used it as a closet Wuchang Gui outfit after seeing them. Have a good day!
i made my tumblr way after twitter yes! twitter doesn't hold all my art either, usually it's on patreon or in my zines, so people have some exlusives :') here's the picture!
REFERENCE POST: very minor characters of Word of Honor
I originally gathered these blorbos together for a presentation called "Writing in the Margins: finding story in the minor characters of Word of Honor" (sometimes, in a pinch, I title slide deck party presentations like a paper because it's easy). My criteria for this presentation was that I wanted to highlight characters to whom a lot of people's reaction would be, "Who?" So characters like Gu Miaomiao and Gao Xiaolian and Deng Kuan, while my beloveds, are not here because they are just a bit too present in the story.
Why should you click through and read? Well, honestly, I'm adapting this as a resource for fellow fic writers who just want some folks to help flesh out the world. This post is divided into three sections: Chengling's Generation, Tianchaung's Orbit, and The Previous Generation. There's so much just going on in the background; let's take a look.
Chengling's Generation
Mu Yunge
Introduction: Episode 5* Suggested Episodes: 5, 7
* by "introduction", I mean the episode in which their name card appears, officially introducing them; for some characters, as with Mu Yunge, their first appearance in the show happens before that point
Mu Yunge is an interesting inclusion because I don't like him. He's pretty much there to suck, and then die. He's here for two reasons. One, he does a lot to flesh out his world; two, he's in the boyband in the concert they did after Word of Honor wrapped, and that is my favorite part.
I'm really only going to address the first one here. Oh, Mu Yunge. He's there to show how the Department of the Unfaithful operates, and how very present the violent misogyny they address still is in his world. He's also (to all appearances) a young man in good standing in the martial arts world. Deng Kuan is close enough to him that he's selected as one of the friends to take part in the deathmatch in his name. What does this say about the young men of that generation? And his death also has echoes in the background drama in the show: Mu Siyuan (his dad) becomes a loud voice against the ghosts and later Gao Chong.
Zhu Yaozhi
Introduction: 3 Suggested Episodes: 7, 14, & 24
Zhu Yaozhi is fascinating to me because he is such an encapsulation of what Word of Honor does with its larger plot. Because, like, there's all these moving pieces and a lot of them are moving in the background and the main characters don't really notice or give a shit, but they're definitely moving along arcs that make sense from their point of view.
This guy is a disciple of Yueyang Sect, Gao Chong's sect (along with Deng Kuan); we see him multiple times just doing kind of grunt work/investigation for them, most notably when he follows up on the guy Gu Xiang beat up for harrassing musicians and then is apologetic and embarrassed for believing his side of the story (episode 7). He's also buddies with Mo Weixu, Cao Weining's shixiong, and teases Cao Weining to him. (See this gifset for part of the scene in question, from episode 14). Early Zhu Yaozhi is a goofball who's just doing his job.
After Gao Chong's disgrace, he goes searching for Gao Xiaolian and we lose track of him until he turns up again in ep 24 being menaced by Mu Siyuan. Mu Siyuan wants him to say his master was evil and colluded with the ghosts, and Zhu Yaozhi refuses and tries to punch him. It's great. It also gives us Shen Shen to the rescue in the middle of his own loyalty/figuring out how to be truly righteous arc. I have a lot of feelings about this. He's such a useful character for showing us what Yueyang Sect is like and what becomes of it after Gao Chong dies.
Song Huairen (L) & Xie Wuyang (R)
Introduction: SHR: 5 / XWY: 8 Suggested Episodes: SHR: 5 / XWY: 9, 17
I've paired these because they're both Xie Wang’s competition, young men who also call Zhao Jing yifu. They are both disciples of Yueyang Sect; Song Huairen is supposed to be a favored disciple of Gao Chong. Xie Wang eliminates him the same night we meet him and plays it off to Zhao Jing as the shell game with the Glazed Armor going wrong.
Xie Wuyang meanwhile starts off as a character who makes Zhang Chengling’s life at Yueyang uncomfortable—up to and including whipping him during training. Very satisfyingly, Gu Xiang knocks him out when he’s giving Chengling a hard time in episode 11. Later on, after Zhao Jing has settled in at Yueyang, Xie Wuyang serves him in his private rooms doing stuff like giving him manicures.
Mo Weixu
Introduction: 14 Suggested Episodes: 14, 26-28
Mo Weixu is the son of Mo Huaiyang (Cao Weining's horrible shifu) and Cao Weining's da-shixiong. When he first appears, he scolds Cao Weining for having no ambition but then shoos him off to check on Gu Xiang anyway, and we see this mix of sternness-as-concern and indulgence continue. He's kind to Gu Xiang, and helps guide her through greeting their shishu Fan Huaikong properly, but he also warns Cao Weining that she might not be everything she appears. He's kind of the level-headed ballast to Cao Weining's naivete and worries about him.
Mo Weixu is not at Cao Weining's wedding. Mo Huaiyang says he had to cleanse his sect because his disciple and shidi were bewitched by Gu Xiang. However, in episode 36, Xie Wang specifically says that they never found Mo Weixu's body, even though they definitely found Fan Huaikong's. Fellow fic writers: you know what that means.
Tianchuang's Orbit
Bi Xingming (L) & Cheng Zichen (R)
Introduction: 31 Suggested Episodes: 31
Disciples of Siji hidden in Tianchuang! These two were both taken as disciples by men within Tianchuang and took their surnames; Bi Xingming’s first shifu is Bi Changfeng, the guy who took the nails in episode 1. Cheng Zichen's is a guy called Cheng Xiu. They show up in like one episode but I’m obsessed with them. They lead the party of Tianchuang ducklings who rescue Zhou Zishu and then get inducted into Siji as Zhou Zishu’s disciples. Bi Xingming is specifically shown to be very eager about this, but is told he’ll have to wait to have a ceremony about it till his shixiong Chengling comes back.
Princess Jing'an
Introduction: 1 Suggested Episodes: 1
Talk about one-scene wonders—Princess Jing'an left an impression on me. What kind of past interactions does it imply that she calls Zhou Zishu Zhou-shixiong, but he doesn't know she and Jiuxiao were in love? I have questions and I want to answer them. Also even in her like 2 minutes of screentime we see her sharp and defiant and angry and it makes me want to write her SO bad.
Qingluan
Introduction: [N/A] Suggested Episodes: 30
She is literally mentioned in like 1 or 2 lines in episode 30 so she’s less fascinating for her Word of Honor appearance than for how she is mentioned here paired with her role in Qi Ye (the novel that's the prequel to the novel SHL is based on): In Qi Ye, Su Qingluan (originally named Su Cui'r) is a beauty who becomes part of the crown prince party, gets caught working against them, and is confined to a house as Helian Yi’s concubine for the foreseeable future.
In Word of Honor, she’s one of the people (the list also includes Zhou Zishu, Yunxing, Qin Jiuxiao, and Jing Beiyuan) who swore together in her courtyard to make Jinwang emperor, which implies a much more active role in their party than in Qi Ye. We also know she killed herself before the events of canon (or at least as far as Jinwang knows; in the same section, Zhou Zishu says that Jinwang poisoned Jing Beiyuan to death with a straight face). This seems to be part of the whole party splintering over time. Once more: implied story, free real estate (jazz hands).
Jing Beiyuan's six siblings
At one point Jing Beiyuan justifies being called Qi Ye (Lord Seventh) by saying he's the seventh kid in his generation. (There's a different, much more absurd, justification in the novels). I take him at his word just because that's the funniest option. I don't have more to say beyond just:
Six
SIX!!!!!!
are they worse than him? are they normal?
just
SIX
The Previous Generation
Qin-furen
Introduction: [N/A] Suggested Episodes: 12, 24
SIDEBAR: the moms. The dads have SO much narrative weight in the story in ways that most of the moms really don’t—they’re often nameless or fully invisible—so I leap at even the tiniest mentions of what they’re like and think a lot about them. Qin-furen’s the only one who really lands in the sweet spot for this post: enough info to play with and not make a total OC, not enough screentime that I expect to find many fics with her.
This is the wife of Qin Huaizhang, Zhou Zishu’s shifu. She’s mentioned in just a handful of lines and unnamed. She rescued rabbits and apparently was fearsome with her husband about it. She was friends with Chengling’s mom, who had a similar dynamic with her husband, according to Chengling. In episode 12, Zhou Zishu says, “I wanted to practice martial arts when I was a child. Sometimes, when my master forced me to play, I would seek help from his wife. She always stood by my side and criticized my master.” I have spent a truly stupid amount of time looking at her gravestone trying to glean info, and I’m still not really sure what we should be calling her.
Yue Feng'er
Introduction: 19 Suggested Episodes: 19
The eldest disciple of her generation at Healer Valley and the wife of Rong Xuan. She rough-houses with Shen Shen and is known by her own title as well as being the eldest of the Three Heroes of Healers Valley. She’s presumably well-known in the martial arts world, and woven right into the web of friendships that started off all this tragedy. And she also loved her husband so fiercely that when he was poisoned she used a forbidden technique and took the heart out of a living man to try to heal him. She’s a powerful healer and at least as much a monster as he is and I like her so much.
A piece to celebrate Xue Fei’s birthday! He’s played some iconic roles, so I figured I’d draw my two favorites 💚💜
Ghost Squad funny expressions 1/? starting with Wu Chang Gui (aka Changing Ghost) cuz those wonderful lips couldn't go unnoticed gsbsbsbs
“Keep yourself under control.”
A mirror between eunuchs and ghosts
A touch allowed
Wuchang Gui (Word of Honor) - Dokomi '24 (Sunday)
For the 6 other people on this platform who have not forgottten about this gremlin. ("I'm not obsessed" I said as I took 6274814 screenshots to figure out what he was wearing)
Lipstick: 'Player' by Morphe (but I think it has been discontinued? D=)
Hat: Buckram fabric. Love it. Why haven't I worked with it before? It's lovely and stiff and I can sew it together (I hate working with glue)
So glad this came together after three years of looking at Xue Fei in the role. It took me ages to find a green I liked. 4387273859% will wear again. Everytime I spotted my reflection somewhere was an absolute joy.
Special Shoutout to the person who guessed I was Jin Yan from 'Blood of Youth' (same actor. "I'm not obsessed" I said as I watched another drama just for Xue Fei)
Had some celebratory Wolong Nuts at the con. They really are nice lol
🐎🍷Ghostly inspiration 💃🔪
Happy birthday to my friend and fellow artist, Karu!
@tbgkaru-woh