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Word of Honor Poster Figs
The poster ad for the show is too iconic to not have a set of figs celebrating it!
The fig maker spent a lot of care and time on this set. These are not easy figs to make - there's a ton of detail on the costumes, and the pose is incredibly dynamic. The fans in China seemed really happy with how these turned out, and once these arrived on my doorstep, I could see why!
I'm really happy these figs arrived unscathed - there's so much going on with these I was worried something might get snapped off.
The only two assembly pieces were Baiyi and Lao Wen's fan, which were fairly easy to tuck into their respective hands.
Alright, time to get into the fig pictures! Here's the full poster again for reference purposes:
Dynamic indeed - just their hair alone!
These figs are a bit larger than the usual - a typical fig is about 8 cm. To the top of Lao Wen's hair bun is 12 cm, and then add on even more for Baiyi.
These figs actually stand up great. I was really worried about having them standing by themselves, just given the delicacy of the flowing hair, but the wide stance helps support them. The flowing robes do too, so even if they toppled back a bit the robe edges would catch them.
This is not my favorite hairstyle of Lao Wen's - I like his wispies around his face! But I will say I did appreciate he had a few different hairstyles throughout the show.
This is my favorite costume of Lao Wen's though!
Look at those robes and hair flying. Amazing.
I really appreciate how much detail the fig maker put into Lao Wen's red robe, with all the golden embroidery work even on the back. So nice.
The red and blue contrast is just gorgeous. The costumes for this show were just brilliant all the way around.
The detailing work on A-Xu's blue costume is rendered very well here too.
The fig maker did a beautiful job on A-Xu's hair and face here. Really nice.
Here's a pic of how they interlock a bit. I could have pushed them a little bit closer together, there's still a little bit of room in there before the flow of their costumes stop them. It actually helps make them more stable when they're interlocked together.
Here's all the details on the underside. They're all completely modeled out, with their black pants tucked into their black boots. I like the extra effort of the white underlayer for Lao Wen's robes, especially given that you can't really see it when the fig is standing.
The top front view of our two fighters. You can see A-Xu's sword mudra really well from this angle, and Lao Wen's blade hand as well.
And the same view, from the back. I really like A-Xu's married bun with hairpin style!
We also have a nice box card with the art here. I have the figs displayed just like this on my shelf, with the poster art behind them. They look wonderful!
Material: Resin
Fig Count: 492
Scene Count: 31
Rating: A dashing (and deadly) duo
[link back to Master Fig Index for more posts]
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Taolin Forest Wen Kexing (Handcrafted)
This beautiful figure showed up on the artist's Xianyu page as an immediately available in-stock piece, and I pounced on it. You can tell by my profile pic how much I like this costume, after all!
The artist works in ultralight clay, which has been a new medium to me, and so far I've been impressed. It is very light (as the name suggests!) and appears to be extremely flexible. I was initially very worried about her figures breaking in transport, as they all have very delicate thin little details, but everything seems surprisingly sturdy. It bends, but doesn't deform, and doesn't seem to break with careful treatment. I do baby my figs, but shipping / customs is always a wild card.
For something like this, I would normally absolutely air column wrap it to protect it from crushing damage. I don't worry about the fig breaking parts off - I worry about it getting squished! If this fig got crushed it would certainly destroy it, given all the thin, flat loops of clay making up most of this figure.
But, I didn't have to, because the artist packed it in a rigid styrofoam cooler box. This is of course deadly on the shipping fees, especially since my warehouse flags the wooden base as air freight only. But, the only thing worse than paying volumetric air freight charges is getting a crushed figure, so what can you do?
I too am deeply disappointed by my lack of quality unboxing photos. Why did I not remove this top layer of bubble wrap? NOBODY KNOWS.
This is an extremely tall figure, by far my largest figure by a wide margin. The full size, including base, is 27 cm, of which 2cm is the base. This makes the figure itself about 10 inches high for us Americans.
The fan is not clay but paper, which was a nice surprise. I would have been fine either way, but I like the paper. I'm also very appreciative that the artist included it in this rigid plastic box so keep it from getting squished inside the protective cooler. Box. Protective box.
Here he is without the fan. He's gorgeous! You can really see the detail on his belt and his long, elegant fingers.
In fact, here's a closeup of those hands and the beautiful detail on the belt. His fingers may look even a bit longer than you might expect, but that's because they need to hold the fan. You can even see the slight indent for the fingernails. This artist is just amazing. She says she puts her whole heart into crafting these figures, and you can tell.
Holding the fan as so. If you don't think I wasn't a little stressed out carefully wedging the fan in between those beautiful fingers, you have somehow (incredibly) missed all the other cases of my fig related anxiety on this blog. I'm not even a high stress person! Normally.
Alright, let's spin this beauty around, shall we?
My camera decided to focus on many things, but Wen Kexing's perfect face was not always one of them. So we'll get some closeups. But first, let's do our bottoms-up and top-down pics:
Please do note the beauty mark on the middle finger of his right hand!
For size comparison, here's Wen Kexing with his OG official fig counterpart:
You can definitely see what I mean by how big this fig is! Maybe I should call it a statue instead of a fig.
Alright, time for our close ups.
Just beautiful. I'll need to commission a matching A-Xu in the Taolin forest costume so I can have them heading off to Siji Manor.
This figure was an incredible price - less than $50 USD. An absolute bargain. I can't even imagine the time that went into this. This was less expensive than other individual figures or pairs of this size, so perhaps I just got lucky with the artist clearing space.
I had really wanted semi-realistic figures like this when Word of Honor was released and I watched it for the first time, so getting this now makes me really happy. The artist also had a snowy mountain set that I picked up around the same time, which should be arriving here relatively shortly. Please look forward to it! I can't wait myself.
Material: Ultra-light clay
Fig Count: 386
Scene Count: 26
Rating: Pure artistry
[link back to Master Fig Index for more posts]
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Snowy Mountain Wenzhou (Handcrafted)
When I posted about the beautiful handcrafted Taolin Wen Kexing statue from this artist, I mentioned that I had bought a snowy mountain set from her as well. That set made the long sea journey over to me, and is now ready for prime time!
These two were sold as a set, ready made. I was very excited to get them, since I didn't have a Zhou Zishu in this size and style yet.
I will tell you though, I messed up with this set. These were shipped in a very large box, so I figured I'd have them wrapped up in air column wrap to given them extra protection.
I did NOT think this decision through. It did not occur to me that the force of the air columns would press down too harshly on the figures. So, a couple things happened.
First, Wen Kexing's beautiful head (and please do take a minute to admire this gorgeous paint job) got broken - you can see how under his jaw there is a big crack. As I've said with these ultralight clay figures before, they're actually pretty flexible and tough - they just can't take crushing damage very well. In this case, though, it was an easy fix - I just pulled open the crack a little bit more (yes, that's as unpleasant as it sounds), ran a thin line of glue, and pressed it back shut until the glue bonded. Good as new!
The other issue, however, was that the force of the air columns squeezing up against the figures pressed all the beautiful drapery against itself. As you saw in the Taolin Wen Kexing, the artist very carefully molds all these wonderful curved folds and drapes everything against the figure in layers and layers of clay. She did on this set too, before some of those curves all got compressed together for a month, in the heat of early summer shipping. So, those folds arrived all flat and stuck to themselves. I tried running the rounded curved handle of a powder brush under the folds to loosen them up, which actually did separate them from each other nicely. But the sheets of ultralight clay are so thin, that I was afraid of ripping them if I was more aggressive. What I need to do is run the clothing under warm water and see if I can make the sheets a bit more pliable to re-bend back into place, but I have to work up the intestinal fortitude to do that first. Maybe later this fall.
Alright! I'll do the normal photographic circle around the two of them, and then do a bunch of closeups of each of them so you can see all the beautiful detail.
Beautiful! Even a bit squished, they're still incredibly lovely. The camera had a hard time focusing on both of them at the same time, so here's some detailed photos, starting with A-Xu:
Just amazing. The way she does the lips on these figures alone is incredible. Not to mention how we get this beautiful modeling on the neck, so when the light hits it we get the Adam's apple and the shadows of the muscles.
If this was me, I'd still be paralyzed in the initial stages of picking out the right colors...not anywhere vaguely close to starting in on the first drapery fold of the first figure.
Alright, on to Lao Wen:
Ridiculous. If I was this talented, I'd literally never shut up about it. I'd be insufferable. Luckily for everyone, that's in no way a problem.
The shine on the lips. I can't get over it, it looks so perfect.
It's easy for me to forget when I'm staring at Wen Kexing's immaculate face, but I can't forget he's holding A-Xu's drinking gourd for him!
Here's a picture of all three statues that I have so far. If you missed my post about Taolin Wen Kexing, it's here.
I'm out of picture slots, or I'd just keep posting pictures of these two, I love them.
Are there more posts coming about figures I've bought from this artist? Absolutely! I love her work. There's a couple Crown Prince figs, among others, that I'm really excited about (yes, I have been obsessed with watching Legend of Anle)!
Material: Ultra-light clay
Fig Count: 443
Scene Count: 30
Rating: Forever beautiful
[link back to Master Fig Index for more posts]
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Four Seasons Figthusiast One Year Anniversary!
Hard to believe it's been a year since I started posting the wide world of Word of Honor and Gong Jun / Zhang Zhehan figs. So far, I've posted a total of:
340 posts - almost all of these were figs. In there we had a few doll posts, a few merch posts, and a couple Junzhe fandom musings
492 figs - many of these were posted in pairs
31 scenes - mostly dioramas
In honor of the anniversary, I've compiled video of all my fig posts this year. I'm neither a good photographer or a good videographer, but I had fun making this and reminiscing.
Turn the music up if you can - I've set it to some of the happiest live sets I have from our favorites!
Here's the Master Index of Posts year to date, if you want to catch up on any of them.
So what's in store for the next year for Four Seasons Figthusiast? Well, I need to post as much as I can because my backlog of figs (and dioramas) continues to rise! I also have a lot more doll posts coming due to an influx of new doll outfits. Speaking of which, I'm about to head out on vacation in the next few days. I can't take figs due to fragility concerns, but ... I can take dolls. So, stay tuned for the international adventures of Junbaobao and Hanbao!
I'm also scheduled to start taking a formal Chinese class starting in the new year. It's mostly geared towards conversational Chinese, which is fine since I really want to be able to understand the interviews and various variety show appearances. I do also hope it will help me with interpreting some of these fig names. I'm historically really bad at languages (I dropped out of French 101 like 3 times in college), but I've really enjoyed what little I've managed to learn of Chinese so far in my basic combo of Duolingo/Hello Chinese. I'll probably throw a few update posts on how that's going next year as well.
I also have been meaning to post my Word of Honor costume pictures - that'll happen sooner rather than later! The costumes were my gateway into merch madness, and they're incredible. I can't wait to share them!
This fandom continues to be, despite everything, a deep source of joy and happiness for me. Sometimes it feels like the world is short on both, so I love and appreciate Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan for the gifts they have given us: this wonderful show and their own bright selves. I love and appreciate all the fan makers in China, who have poured their own love and care into these figs and dolls and merch of all kinds. This fandom makes me happy, and has helped me get through some tough times in the last few years. I also love and appreciate my readers - thank you for taking the time out of your day to read these posts. My hope is that this blog can be a small spot of joy in the day to you as well.
As I've said before, I'm not going anywhere. I'm looking forward to this next year of posting on my blog, and looking forward to the golden sunrise.
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Goodbye Jianghu
As you can tell from the title, these figs represent some of the last moments of filming for Word of Honor for Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan.
The inspiration for and the name of this set comes from Zhang Zhehan's Weibo post from March 23, 2021, marking the airing of the final episode of Word of Honor. His post is simply titled, Goodbye Jianghu:
It's such a beautiful picture of Zhehan - walking back in his white immortal A-Xu robes.
I had this picture in mind as the matching photo inspiration of Gong Jun, white haired and ethereal looking:
...but when I went to upload it, this clearly isn't it, after all. Did the fig maker just make a complementary fig to Zhehan's picture? I have no idea? I searched through every pic in my Behind the Scenes photo folder, and I could not come up with a pic that matched this fig. Let me know if you know!
On a side note, I recently bought a little lighted box to take pictures in, so I wouldn't be quite so dependent on the few daylight hours in my photography area. I tried it out with these figs, and we'll see how it goes.
Hmm, there's quite a bit of texture in the backdrop, isn't there? Well, we'll keep going!
Yes, those are some little tears welling up in Zhehan's eyes. Like Zhou Zishu, he is also tough on the outside but soft at heart!
I really, really love that Gong Jun's hand is tucked behind his back in his signature pose. Also, his big chunky white hair bangs are fantastically modeled here.
These figs stand up beautifully. So much so that I didn't put them on stands at all, which is extremely rare for my figs, if only because I like them to generally have a uniform look. But, in this case, I wanted to preserve Zhehan's pose just like this.
The robes help quite a bit in keeping them standing tall.
The slight motion modeled into these figs is great. Not overdone, just enough to make it interesting.
The little hands are adorable.
Aww, this is the clearest shot of the tears in Zhehan's eyes! Don't cry, little fig.
Here's a non-box background set of photos for contrast. In retrospect I probably should have picked a non-white clothed set of figs to try this out, since they're all slightly blending into (whichever) background. The LED light of the photo box is a little golden tinted, I see.
I really like how fig Gong Jun is very correctly wearing his black pants with this costume. I love this level of detail!
You can see them a little better here. Sorry for the reflection of the background underneath their hair, I have no idea how that happened! I see I definitely need to replace this little backdrop in the lightbox.
Zhehan's face is just so sweet in this set!
I love A-Xu's little married hair bun. Both of their hairstyles in the epilogue are A+ for sure.
The art on the boxes are very, very cute. We have the background with Zhehan's Weibo post and what I imagine is the background on the green-screen mountaintop from Gong Jun's pose for this fig. I'll keep looking around for it!
Material: PVC
Fig Count: 518
Scene Count: 36
Rating: 后会有期 - I'm sure we'll meet again someday
[link to the Master Post Index]
#word of honor filming#word of honor#zhang zhehan#gong jun#junzhe#word of honor cast#figthusiast#wen kexing#zhou zishu
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A Pair of Devils
Since I already spoiled these two figs in my two previous posts, let's move on to them!
The name of this fig set comes from the Scorpion King's line in Episode 11, when he wonders:
You'd never guess, Scorpion King.
These figs are of course not wearing their Episode 11 outfits - they're wearing their full Episode 1 regalia, where they are in fact in their most devilish personas - Ghost Valley Master Wen and Tianchuang Leader Zhou Zishu.
Neither of them look too happy about it, either. Unlike me! I'm absolutely delighted by these figures! I couldn't wait for them to arrive.
This is the absolute best rendition of Wen Kexing's red robes we've seen to date. It looks fantastic. He is of course holding the walnuts we see him rolling around in his hands in our first sight of him in Episode 1. The red eyeliner is of course totally on point.
Zhou Shouling is no slouch either, looking every inch the shadowy assassin civil servant leader.
I love this angle! It looks like they are ready to go head to head in the most epic end boss smackdown ever. When in fact, they're mostly going to be just flirting, snacking, and drinking their way together together through the first few episodes.
Now it looks like they've had a good discussion and are walking off together. Delightful!
Both of their hair styles look fantastic. We have the Ghost Valley Master crown, which we never really see in fig form, and the straightlaced yet elegantly sophisticated "it's murdering time" Tianchuang updo.
Speaking of elegance, we also have Ghost Valley Master Wen's signature young master hand-at-the-small-of-the-back pose. Zishu is all business here with Baiyi ready to go.
This is a particularly good angle of Wen Kexing - this heavy bangs hiding his face is exactly the kind of shot we get in Episode 1.
They do look miserable. All I can think of is Zhou Zishu on his knees before Prince Jin, saying "My will is broken...my bones yearn to go home".
They're a beautiful pair of devils though. The fig maker did a lovely job on these.
These figs stand up just fine - Ghost Valley Master Wen stands up superbly, thanks to his long trailing robes. Zhou Shouling leans a bit to his right side, no doubt the weight of his sword pulling at his soul.
Here's a great view of both of their headpieces. Such wonderful detail.
The box cards and the box card art is quite lovely! We have each of them with their respective colors.
Material: PVC
Fig Count: 359
Scene Count: 24
Rating: Diabolical indeed!
[link back to Master Fig Index for more posts]
#wenzhou#word of honor#word of honor merch#zhou zishu#wen kexing#gong jun#zhang zhehan#junzhe#figthusiast
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Building Block Figs - Catching Light
Continuing on from the last Building Block Figs - Basking in the Sun and Building Block Figs - Beautiful Fight Scene in the Middle of the Lake, Part 1 and Part 2, we have this wonderful set.
These figs make me laugh - I love them so much! I don't know why, I just find them ridiculously charming.
This building block set is 1,544 pieces, measures 8.4 x 17.6 x 15.6 cm, and is rated 10 hours. I did indeed take all 10 hours to build this, if not a little bit more.
Here is the sales pic of what the finished product is supposed to look like:
Cute, isn't it? As usual, sellers do a much better job of setting the scene than I do. I will say, though, that I did make two little tweaks to the set to make it a bit more canon compliant. Can you spot them?
It'll be easier to tell as we get better pictures, so I'll get into it!
First, here's the box of doom bricks. Like the others, this came in a generic sales box, with a super handy little unsnapping tool, and a sticker with a black and white image of the set and QR code instructions.
Once again, you'll notice my line up of extra bricks from the previous sets hanging out in quasi-neat little rows. Originally I figured I'll leave them all out in case I ran short of any, but in reality, this set maker gives me extras of each color every time. Which is handy, as you will see for later posts, when I make some adjustments to the fig sets to make them a bit more canon compliant.
As you can see, there's a LOT of extra bricks left over. To be honest, there shouldn't be so many white bricks - those are from another set that I made a major change to. I'll post about that one tomorrow.
Here's the different order of assembly - I went ahead and started with the base and tree, as they suggest.
As you can see, this is a very beautiful terrain here. I did not remember this area being so green and flowery from the show - in fact, I remember it being kind of sandy and desolate, but my memory is pretty lousy, there might be a scattered flower or so. Let's check.
HUH. There is not a flower in sight, is there. Hmmm. Well, this is kind of gonna bother me. Maybe I should have looked up the inspiration before putting together the entire 10 hour plus set, huh! Well, the little flowers are easy enough to lever off.
Hmm, anyway, moving on (for now).
So a couple things here. First, as you can see, there are only two green colors. I mean, one normal color really - the light green here is actually a neon green. It's brighter than it looks here. It looks great here, don't get me wrong, but now all I can see is the very sandy terrain of that screenshot.
Second, I tried something a little different here. It actually takes a long time to sort all the individual bricks, so in an attempt to shave off some time, I decided to experiment with this set. As you can see, I dumped the entire bag out to the right and am just picking out individual pieces as I go.
You'll note it's now evening. This tree took a LONG time to build. I actually timed myself up to this point, and to get to this mostly-done state took 2 hours and 58 minutes. I was pushing hard, too, because I really, really wanted to get the whole tree done that evening before I went to bed. But there was no way. I was too tired and was hitting the point where it was less fun and more work. So, despite really not wanting to, I summoned my inner adult and called it a day here.
Fast forward through time to the next day, and I'm all bright eyed and ready to bust this tree out. And it's done! I like this tree a whole lot...I think they did a beautiful job modeling it. Imagine if they had the full Lego suite of colors and special pieces! It would be really something. I kind of like it this way though (although I would take more colors, I can't lie). It really has an old-school style charm.
You can see the grey rock there where Lao Wen will be propped up against. And of course, the cheerful greenery and pink and yellow flowers.
Feeling VERY accomplished, I put the tree aside, and moved on to A-Xu.
Yep, looks pretty good. I was a little surprised they picked the medium blue color instead of the dark blue color, considering how bright the dark blue color actually is. But this looks fine too.
I am going to proudly say that I did, in fact, knock this fig out in record time. I've put together two and a half A-Xu figs by now (the half is going to be explained tomorrow, I promise!), so this third one went like a breeze.
As you can see in the back, I couldn't help myself, I was starting to make a few little piles of the colors I was working on. The big messy pile of bricks was kind of a pain, and I had to keep resisting the urge to sort them out.
And here he is! All done. He has a very solemn no-expression on his little brick face, which is appropriate. Can you see how there's a little bit of a neck (nothing too saucy or anything), the thin white layer of his under-robe, and then the lighter blue layer? I love it. Very charming. We also have his black belt with a bit of the tails.
It was yet another evening by this time, but since I did manage to finish him before I went to bed, I did indeed sleep the sleep of the righteous.
I woke up even brighter eyed and with pep in my step, ready to rock this last fig out. 10 hour assembly time? I don't think so!
I had now made three Wen Kexing brick figures, so the fourth one was gonna be just as quick as A-Xu was, no doubt. I pulled up the instructions on my phone, and got ready to go. 95 steps for our battle-weary Valley Master, huh? Huh. That's kind of a lot. But considering A-Xu was 85, not too bad. The tree was 119, by the way.
As I looked at the picture, however, I noticed that they had Lao Wen's (virtually) omnipresent hair wispies here. Given that this red wedding costume is the one outfit where his hair is pulled back all the way, it kind of bugged me. Which is funny because I've never liked how he doesn't have the wispies with this hair style on the show. It's my least favorite look on him, which is too bad, because I did like how they at least mixed his hairstyles up some. In my defense, I feel like I'm right (so right!) about how much better he looks with the wispies with this hair style, because you could see it at the concert. And he looked spectacular.
Anyway. Warring between my extreme desire for him to have the wispies and the simple fact of it not being canon, I started to build.
I got the first big chunk done very quickly indeed. Many of these figs are done where you do a big piece, and then set it aside while you work separately on the next piece. This is where I was.
And that's where I stayed, for a long time. I built this piece three times. I had to completely disassemble the entire thing the first time I built it, because I was off on my brick count, and the second time I had to disassemble it down to the first third.
Part of the problem was the way the directions were. As you can see, they still have the first "set it aside" part showing up on the directions directly under the new piece. Unfortunately, all that red blended into each other when I rotated the image around, and it was very easy to accidentally think I needed more or less pieces than I actually did.
I went ahead and built it with the wispies, as directed...and then just couldn't do it. I disassembled half the head and re-built it again without them. I also think that this fig, just like Lao Wen, does not look as good without them, but canon is canon.
Unfortunately, it was so late and I was so tired by the time I finished him (and yet also pretty jubilant), that I forgot to take a pic of the finished fig! Yes, I literally finished this set late last night, despite my best intentions of finishing it up and then triumphantly posting about it on the same day. It did, in fact, take longer than the 10 hours build time.
It took a long time, in general. My finger tips have actually toughened up a bit, so they don't feel sore from snapping the bricks in place, but my neck isn't all that pleased with me from hunching over these various sets for so long. So, I've been taking a few more breaks to stretch and do other things.
But, I woke up early today, and very happily took this set's beauty pics in the clear light of the morning. I love it!
I love how this set all fits together. We have the tree growing over the edge of the base, and Lao Wen there leaning up against the rock. A-Xu is standing with his elegant posture, and their little brick hands are reaching out to each other. Cute cute cute!
Wow, this light is great. I clearly should get up early to take fig pics more often.
The tree looks great, I think (and not just because I spent hours building it!).
This is a good view of the rocks behind Lao Wen here, and his big ponytail (I do like this part of his hairstyle).
The green doesn't look so bad on the ground, I think. I'll pull off the yellow and pink flowers, and maybe make a brown patch on the corner closest to A-Xu. That'll keep it colorful but make it a bit more like the show.
A-Xu's hair looks great, as usual. You can also see how I removed the wispies on Lao Wen's hair. I'll get a close up later so you can see it better.
Shoot, not my best pic - can't really see any of the detail on A-Xu's glorious night-black hair.
There we go, now you can. Oops, I see I knocked a tiny piece out of kilter on the bottom of his hair, I'll have to fix that. But! Here you can see both changes I made from the instructions - the lack of wispies of course, and then I made Lao Wen's guan gold instead of white. This took a while too, because I didn't have enough yellow pieces. The only yellow I had from any of the sets was literally from the yellow flowers here and the few extra they gave me of it. I actually pulled a few yellow flowers off the base there and replaced them with green or pink, just because I needed them for his guan. I then also carefully checked to see what internal yellow bricks were covered up by the black of his hair, and replaced them with black so I could save the yellow ones for the parts that did show. I'm very happy with how it turned out! It looks just like the white one, except, you know, yellow.
I don't know why they didn't originally design it with yellow, given that it is gold on the show, and they had already included yellow bricks with this kit. Maybe they felt the white stood out more or something. Anyway, it was bothering me it was white, so I'm glad I was able to figure out a way to make it work.
Alright, we're back around! And a bit of a different angle here, so you can see the poses a little bit more clearly.
Alright, a true top-down pic here. May I just say one more time how much I like this tree! The detail in A-Xu's guan is really nice too.
The bottoms-up pics are always tough here with the bases. Not a flattering picture, sorry A-Xu!
A close up of our noble shixiong with his little hand outstretched...
...and our weary shidi. What a great set, I love it! I'm so delighted by it, I can't even tell you.
Alright! come back tomorrow, for the much hinted at next set. And the last one, for a while - I have to wait for the remaining sets to be sent to me.
(Come back tomorrow, she says, as she still has some assembly on the last fig to do! I'll wake up bright and early tomorrow, and hopefully finish up).
Material: Plastic bricks
Fig Count: 506
Scene Count: 35
Rating: They're actually both reaching for their light
[link to the Master Post Index]
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White and Black Chocolate Beans
Here we have a brand new fig style! I think of these as "beady eyed" figs, but as you can see the fig maker calls it 巧克力豆, chocolate beans.
This style is adorable because the figs are smaller than the usual. Here's a comparison with the "usual" style figs:
See what I mean? Too cute.
These two beady-eyed figs from Episode 1 and 2 aren't quite representing the same scene as their larger counterparts above. Almost! You can see Wen Kexing is casually sipping his wine, which means that this is Episode 1 and he is sitting there eating lunch, unknowing that in a few minutes he will set his eyes upon someone that will change his life forever.
That someone, meanwhile, is wandering around in Episode 2, holding his hat and looking for a ferry across the river.
It's difficult to keep myself from re-watching all of Episodes 1 and 2 while looking for clips, but let's head on over to these figs.
Here they are, looking cute! They arrived perfectly, and thankfully pre-holding all of their accessories.
I am very grateful I did not have to glue on tiny fans and cups and hats.
I quite like this style of figs! I'd be very happy to have a whole set of Word of Honor figs re-envisioned in this style.
The proportions look great on these figs - the arms look good, and the head is cutely large without being oversized.
You will notice that these figs are on stands - while they arrived perfectly, they are overbalanced to the back pretty significantly. There was never any prayer of these two cuties standing up straight.
Wen Kexing's hairpin unfortunately came curved like this. As you recall, it does not do this in the show! If this was a PVC fig, I would just gently bend it back in place. However, since it is resin, I didn't dare. I just decided to leave it be until I figured out what to do with it.
I could just heat it up with a hair dryer and gently bend it back into place, but it'll take me a bit of time to work up the nerve to do so.
Both of their hair styles looks great. I love Zhou Xu's messy hairstyle, and of course Wen Kexing's looped hair and side wispies are tidily polished.
The pupil-less black eyes don't bother me one bit, I think they're very cute.
Both of their accessories look great. Very cleanly painted, with no overspray.
Both of them have pants with their boots, my continual favorite. This is a nice view of Zhou Xu's little hat and gourd.
It's easier to see the white pants than the black, but they're there.
Oh dear. The hairpin looks terrible from this angle, and EVEN WORSE, there's a crack in it! What the heck. Looks like I'll have to do some delicate glue work in addition to gently bending it. Yikes.
From this angle, the hairpin looks great! Too bad this is not the the figs are meant to be viewed from. On the plus side, A-Xu's little pony tail is adorable.
And here we have our box card of the two together. Too cute! I have another, equally adorable beady-eyed fig set on order, and it's currently in production. It's called Red and Blue Chocolate Beans, which you can imagine what episodes it is from! I'm looking forward to it very much.
Material: Resin
Fig Count: 488
Scene Count: 31
Rating: Chocolaty goodness!
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Pearl of the East China Sea
Here we have the brightest boy in Jinling City - Zhang Zhehan as the young Lin Shu from Nirvana in Fire.
The inspiration for this fig is pulled from several different places in the show, but the primary inspiration was brief flashback scene near the end of Episode 40. It's been cut out on the version on YouTube, but it is watchable on Viki, starting at 39:00 in the episode. I can't download it from Viki, but I do have a small clip I downloaded from somewhere years ago that plays out this scene:
Apologies for the lack of attribution, I am not sure who originally posted this.
I took a couple screenshots in better definition so you can see more of the detail:
I hate to admit this, but I have not watched Nirvana in Fire yet despite it's epic reputation. BUT I'm hoping to start next week! I have a long flight ahead of me and plenty of time to get started on it's 54 episodes.
I loved this clip when I saw it because of how delightful it was - the young Lin Shu is adorable, with a smile that can really can light up the city.
He arrived safely tucked into his polystyrene box. The little cutout to the right side of him didn't have anything in it. My guess is that it was originally for his lantern, but (very thankfully) it came pre-installed. We won't need to have me sweating over trying to carefully slide it into his little hand.
The pearl is definitely as big as a chicken egg!
The (fish? frog? tadpole?) lantern in his hand is SUPER cute. It's also from the show as well, since I recall seeing a clip of him carrying it, but unfortunately I don't have a shot of it. When I watch the show I will keep an eye out for it, and come back and update this.
This is also a good angle to see the beauty mark on his left ear. This fig maker always adds the beauty marks to Zhehan and Gong Jun's ears.
The lantern is really too cute. Look at the little feet! I'm a complete sucker for those claymation animals with the googly eyes, and this totally reminded me of it. I'm so, so grateful that this didn't arrive broken and once again that I didn't have to wrangle glue on it to stick it into his hand.
The scales on the lantern! Such great detail.
I love figs with cloaks. Here you can see the little bit of detailing for the fur trim.
As you can tell by the fig stand, this little guy did not stand up on his own. You might think the weight of that enormous pearl might drag him forward, but no, the weight of his head kept tipping him back. I glued him down right away - no chance of this little cutie falling and breaking something!
He's not in his full armor here like he was in the clip, he's wearing clothes that Lin Shu wears elsewhere. I think it was a good call by the fig maker to have the clothes be recognizable enough without being overpowering. It really allows the pearl and the lantern to take center stage.
I love this fig, I think he's just so cute.
The fig maker really captured the youthful roundness of his face, and rendered his hair perfectly. The detail on the fur trim on his cloak is subtle but very nice. Just a great execution all the way around.
He's wearing black pants tucked into his black boots, but it's a little difficult to see due to the color.
It's easier to see from this angle.
You can see more detail on the guan here, and we have a nice shot of his hand holding the pearl and the googly eyes on the lantern.
I like the hair a lot on this fig, it's a great look.
This fig maker always has great box card art, and you can see the name of the fig here - Pearl of the East China Sea.
Material: Resin
Fig Count: 493
Scene Count: 31
Rating: Even more precious than a pearl
[link to the Master Post Index]
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Warm Winter Clothes
Following up yesterday's New Year's figure, we have another New Year's figure!
Today's Wen Kexing happens to come from the exact same scene as yesterday's - the paper hanging party in Episode 28. This version, however, is properly wearing his fur-collared overcoat. I like this overcoat (as does everyone else, I think) because it matches the winter vibe of A-Xu's fur overcoat. A-Xu's blue outfit and overcoat gets a lot of screen time - it still remains a tremendous pity that this one only gets one scene.
But the scene is a wonderful one, so I can't complain (too much!).
This version of Lao Wen is holding a plateful of melon seeds out for his beloved A-Xu to snack on. You can tell he's offering these seeds to A-Xu because of the hearts in his eyes!
As you can see, the plate required what appeared to be minimal assembly. Just drop the plate (gently) onto those grooves on his open hands, and done, right?
I mean, more or less. I think I was expecting the plate to sit in his hands and stay in his hands. Instead, the slippery little thing eeled out every time I turned around. And even when I didn't turn around! I tried sticking it with putty at first, and then when I found the plate mysteriously lying on the shelf next to him, I called it quits and glued that thing down. It isn't going anywhere now!
He is super cute. He's made by one of my all time favorite fig makers. All her little guys have so much personality.
You can see the challenge here with the angle that the plate is at, right? No surprise it kept wanting to slide downwards.
I like how they designed the fabric detailing. Just enough to be beautiful but not too much to overwhelm the fig or distract from the overall presentation.
Little bit of paint overspray on the hairpin there, but since this hairpin is fixed and didn't require any assembly (and didn't break during shipping), I can't say I mind! I think it's really hard to avoid overspray from the black hair on the white hairpin when it's all one piece like this.
As you can see, he stands beautifully, with the help of his robe. No glue needed here.
The plate angle looks even steeper from this side!
He has the cutest little expression on his face - a very Wen Kexing expression, I must say.
You can see here how the fur detail on his robe was mostly painted on - no texture or too much in the way of modeling. I think it would be quite difficult or expensive (in the case of flocking, say) to do so. I think he looks great though, I don't mind the painted look at all, and the beaded chain is done gorgeously, with no paint overspray at all. I love him.
Hmm, I guess I considered the first pic my bottoms-up pic when I was taking pictures, so I didn't take another one. We'll just skip to the top down set.
I was going to say those seem like fairly large melon seeds, but compared to the size of fig heads, they're just about right!
Just the normal Wen Kexing loop of hair here and his iconic hairpin.
We have our gorgeous two-sided box card art here. Just a plain box, but these beautifully designed cards.
Material: Resin
Fig Count: 510
Scene Count: 35
Rating: Warm and as gentle as jade!
[link to the Master Post Index]
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Springtime Snowy Mountain Frame (Handcrafted)
Today we have another piece from my favorite ultra light clay artist.
I had previously bought a scene-in-a-frame from this artist that was a little smaller, and a little more chibi style (Mid-Autumn, Snow Mountain Edition):
I really like the cute chibi style - you know cutie smiling figs are my weakness! But, I saw this little frame in her store and was immediately taken by how sweet the scene was. I do prefer full body figs, chibi or otherwise, so this half-body size was something I had to wrap my head around. Eventually I was like, wait, why am I dithering around about this? It made no sense! So I stopped, and tossed it into my cart.
The fig maker sent it in a hard box, and also well wrapped and padded to protect it. Additionally, once I unwrapped the plastic there was some synthetic cotton batting all around the figs. This is the infamous "pearl cotton". Why infamous?
Let me tell you, I was pulling out microscopically small, invisible coils of this stuff for AGES. I kept thinking I had gotten everything, and then I would take pictures and find a big coil threaded through their hair or curling around their neck, or tucked into one of those little folds.
The plaque wasn't affixed very strongly to the frame, and freely moved around. It ended up being held in place mostly by the little flower branch. I can't take this kind of anxiety, so out came the glue.
Before I fixed it into place, though, I thought I'd take a few pics so you could see the detail that it was hard to get otherwise.
Here we have the underside of the layers and layers of robes. Just amazing detail.
Without the frame I was able to get the best shot of Lao Wen's face.
I glued the piece down, and it's pretty solid. This thing isn't going anywhere anymore!
These little displays aren't easy to photograph, so I'm going to do my best to try and get as many angles as I can.
Here we have A-Xu's beautiful face with his hair utterly perfect, and the a rosy bloom in his cheeks. His hair really is amazing here, with some individual strands arranged into his neat high bun. He's also wearing a beautiful white pin in his black hair. I very much think of this as his married hairstyle!
A close up of the painting on the faces. I don't know how this artist manages to get so delicate a look, but she does an incredible job.
Here we get Lao Wen's mass of white hair, pulled back in his simple mountain hairstyle. A-Xu's hair also looks great from this angle! I also really like the open expression on his face - he looks light and free of worries and cares.
Lao Wen looks singularly focused on A-Xu's beautiful face. Who can blame him?
The top down angle gives a lot of nice detail on their hair styles - you can really see the bangs and the the wispy, soft look of the twists of hair. That hairpin alone is just so delicate.
For scale purposes, here the frame is with the original Snowy Mountain figs.
Material: Ultra light clay
Fig Count: 433
Scene Count: 30
Rating: Endless happiness
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The Old King is Dead, Long Live the King
We're finishing up what has turned into a Wen Kexing week with bang. A bit of a gore warning on this post, both for fig blood and movie-scene blood. There's also some disturbing subtext here, depending on how you read this scene.
The scene that inspired this fig is from Episode 21, when some of the 10 Devils are recounting how Lunatic Wen deposed the previous Ghost Valley Master to become the new Ghost Valley master. And by "deposed", they mean, "skinned the old Ghost Valley Master alive". We're treated to a short flashback of this event through Changing Ghost's eyes:
The director's approach to this scene is pretty intense. This is no kingmaker power scene - from this perspective, it's not even a scene of revenge. Instead of some overpowered, unstoppably triumphant, bloody conqueror, we see a young, dirty, barely dressed man, covered in patches of blood, with the glassy, thousand-yard stare of someone living through their own personal nightmare.
Below are some photos of some of the scene that was cut from the final version. I'm assuming the bloody corpse of the old Ghost Valley Master was too gory for TV.
He looks traumatized and exhausted. He's got like one and a half layers on. His belt is just a strip of fabric and knotted in a tie so plain and utilitarian it's like I tied it. Hobo-Xu wore more clothes than this. The only thing that's in any way actually publically presentable is his hair, which you can see was originally neatly arranged (there's actually a braid in the front) and adorned with his hairpin. This is about as stark and non-glamorous as a scene as I could possibly imagine for someone taking both revenge and a throne. Full kudos to the directors and Gong Jun.
Our young Wen Kexing arrived safely in his protective box. Which is good, since for sure this poor guy doesn't need any more damage.
The fig arrived with the heads of his enemies, but not in his hands.
At his feet, where they belong. We have our choice here of two corpses.
Canonically, I had to have him hold the old Ghost Valley Master, of course. I'll leave the other corpse at this fig's feet on my display shelf.
The hair knot of the old Ghost Valley Master looks like it should fit tightly in Wen Kexing's hand, but it does not. It fits well, shape wise, but it's so loose it doesn't hold at all. I tried using some museum putty, but the putty isn't sticky enough and the cream/white of it shows through. I was going to glue it, but then decided there was enough room to try a sliver of a fig sticker instead, so that's what you see here. This seemed to work perfectly - the fig sticker filled in the loose gap.
The fig maker sure captured that thousand-yard stare. This fig looks as traumatized as Wen Kexing looked in the show.
No printed box for this one, but we do have a box card:
I like the blood red background of Ghost Valley the fig maker has here.
Speaking of the Ghost Valley, the background to my header picture actually is Ghost Valley. It's from the official art book / photo book from the show. I wanted to take a pic against the burning tree, but the photo in the book was too small.
We'll have a happier fig post tomorrow, I promise!
Material: Resin and the bodies and blood of his enemies
Fig Count: 392
Scene Count: 27
Rating: Sometimes karma comes in the form of Wen Kexing
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New Year Paper Decorations
Happy New Year from Siji Manor! Lao Wen is busy (with Chengling's help) decorating with beautiful paper cut outs. After all, he bought a whole basket of them - enough for every room!
I've had this little guy for a while, but today seemed like the right day to have him show off his big beautiful decoration.
The inspiration for this scene, of course, is the paper decorating party midway through episode 28, where Lao Wen does start off pasting paper decorations...
...but then rapidly abandons it to eat seeds with A-Xu and flirt with him.
Chengling is having fun with the paper decorations though - it's delightful. I love the whole Siji Manor arc so much.
I was a little worried Lao Wen wouldn't arrive with his paper cutout intact - it's fragile resin and the decoration is quite delicate. Luckily, however, he arrived perfectly.
The decoration is a beautifully done replica - here's a shot of the lucky fish from the show:
Pretty spot on!
As you can tell by the fact that he's on a fig stand, this little guy could not stand up on his own. It's a shame, since his feet are slightly larger-than-average boots, and he ought to be a very stable figure. But, he wasn't, and I wasn't going to risk any falls with that delicate ornament.
His chubby little arm is SO CUTE. I know I say I love all my figs, but this one is so cute!
You'll notice though that he is wearing just his robes, without his heavy fur overcoat. Which is not quite accurate to the scene, since this is in fact the only scene which we see this gorgeous overcoat. The rest of the New Years scenes feature him cooking (and eating) without it. Which is a real shame - if you ask me, the overcoat did NOT get it's due screentime.
The overcoat could theoretically be hard to render in fig form, although you'll see in the next post it wasn't that hard. But! I'm not here to quibble about cute figs, and frankly he does wear this outfit most of the time without the overcoat.
I had forgotten he was wearing his hairpin in this scene. I have a decently good (although nowhere near 100%) track record with hairpins arriving unbroken, and luckily, this fig added to the positive tally.
I like that the fig maker continued the belt detail all the way through the back, it looks great.
His face is super cute, with his open laughing mouth! I love him, he's adorable.
You can see the fig maker matched the lucky fish in his eyes, along with the same green of his outfit. This could have been a color combo that didn't work, but I think it looks wonderful.
The detail on this fig is nicely done, with the paint neat and clean.
You can see how nice and broad those boots are - pity about him tipping over so easily. I will note I laid this fig down to take pictures extremely gently.
Little bit of overspray on the hairpin, but that's because it's not removable, it's just part of the fig. Harder to have clean paint lines that way. Also thankfully, the decoration he is holding arrived just like that, and is also not removable. I am so grateful - I would have been terrified I would have broken it if I had to assemble it into his hands.
The hairpin really looks good overall - the overspray is really barely noticeable on the fig itself. The camera just brings it into sharp relief.
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2024 brings health, happiness, and prosperity to all.
Material: Resin
Fig Count: 509
Scene Count: 35
Rating: This year will be a good year!
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Building Block Figs - Armory
Following up on the recent sets of building block figs I've been posting, comes one of my absolute favorites!
As I mentioned with the earlier fig sets (Building Block Figs - Beautiful Fight Scene in the Middle of the Lake (Part One, Two, and Coda); Basking in the Sun, Catching Light, and Two Devils), I missed these sets when they first came out, so I've had to pick them all up on Xianyu. With the exception of this set! This one I couldn't get on Xianyu, despite my best efforts. I have only seen it for sale exactly once, and when I tried to buy it, it turned out the listing was only up to draw traffic, and the seller just had one other (vaguely related) set. I was resigned to just keep watching and searching for it and hoping for the best, which was a real pity, because just from the small sales picture I really, really had to have it.
Thankfully! Qilin, the merch wrangler extraordinaire (@88Qilin on Twitter), had bought this set way back in the day, and when she heard I was on the search for more of these sets, was kind enough to check in with me to see if I needed it. AND BOY DID I. She immediately sent it off, and it arrived in record time! She even included some wonderful little extras, that I took a picture of immediately, but for some reason can no longer find. I'll take another pic and add it! In the meantime, I'll add a placeholder:
[Qilin's extra goodies pic goes here]
I was so excited to get this set, I can't even tell you. I feel super, super lucky.
(Fun fact, Qilin is the reason I originally found out about fan made figs in the first place! I saw her post on Twitter (also way back in the day) about the New Year's series of 6 figs, and I absolutely had to have them. I had just reactivated my long-dormant Twitter account to keep up with the fandom, and I was super nervous to message her, thinking she would be like, "who is this total rando messaging me out of nowhere?!" But no, she was super nice, and very helpful, and it was entirely thanks to her I was able to buy the whole set. A minor miracle at the time, trust me, considering how green I was at navigating Weidian back then. If you ever want to buy figs directly, definitely check out her pinned post walkthrough on her Twitter page, it's invaluable information.)
The set came sealed and as usual, in a plain box. Inside there was the same set up as the other sets in this series - a double bagged bag of bricks, the card with the QR code for the online 3-D instructions, and a handy little tool to separate bricks.
The full name of this set is Lao Wen Sacrificed his Life to Save Ah Xu. It measures 8.0 x 5.6 x 12.1 cm, and is rated 10 hours to complete. The "hours to complete" ratings have been extremely accurate to date. But, I was determined to get this set done over this holiday weekend, so hoped that my prior experience on these would serve me well to get it done in record time. So I timed myself!
Here I am getting ready to start. Not a lot of colors, which is typical for these sets. Not too bad looking, huh? You'll notice that unlike the other sets, I didn't carefully pre-sort out all the pieces by size and shape. I simply sorted by color and left them in big piles like this, in a bid to shave off even more time. I was a bit curious if it would be faster to hunt-and-peck through each pile for the right bricks, or if sorting them was about the same. Given that it took about an hour to sort through the larger sets, I decided to roll the dice here.
The directions informed me there were 184 steps in this set. Not too bad! I sat down, put on my headphones, cranked up some music, and got started.
I finished the first little block just as fast as could be. I was flying! I was so proud of myself. It was a holiday weekend, the morning was bright and sunny, and I was having a grand old time.
The next step was to add a second base square in, and then a third and fourth. I added in the second base and kept on flying through it. And then...I ran out of a white brick in the largest size.
Which is kind of impossible. Each of these sets has extras of all the bricks - quite a few, actually. So I searched through the white pile a couple extra times, and sat there and wondered what was going on. As you know, I have lots of spare bricks from the previous sets, so it would be easy enough to pull the right one out, but this shouldn't be happening.
So I was like, wait a minute. I looked back at the phone directions for the step I was on, and said, hold on, I don’t see the character ��� for white anywhere. Uh oh. I Google Translated the characters that were there and sure enough, 透明 meant transparent.
I had just been going off the colors on the phone screen, and I mean, come on! The bricks looked white! If you scroll up and look at it, don't you think so too?
Anyway.
So, I pulled off all the white bricks, and replaced them with transparent bricks, and hey, what do you know, I had plenty of them.
Alright, alright, so this happens when you don't speak the language. Never fear, I'm back on track!
Dear friends, I was not back on track.
Sometime in all this confusion, I had spun around my little base square around, so when I attached it to the other base squares, I started filling in the top bricks the wrong way around. Luckily, I realized what I was doing after a few steps in, and I didn't have to totally reassemble it like I did with the Not White But Transparent Brick Debacle of early 2024. I just gently disconnected the base squares from each other, turned them around, and kept going.
So! I finished the first layer 1 hour, 46 minutes in. This, of course, includes the one major mistake and the one minor mistake. It's pretty big, isn't it? The other fig sets only had max 2 base squares, so I was pretty excited to see how nice and big this was. The transparent bricks look nice, huh?
I took a bit of a break. Made a little bit of lunch, tidied up a bit, and then came back excited to tackle the next round.
I was paying attention to the names of the brick colors at this point, believe me.
I finished the next layer 2 hours and 54 minutes in. Pretty cool looking, isn't it? It looks like some kind of disk in an alien language. I must admit when I got here, I was both quite happy and also a little concerned. Only layer 2? Still 138 layers to go, and it's been about 3 hours?
Well, no big deal if it took me longer, really. I was having a good time, and there was no actual rush. I will say that at this point, my finger tips were certainly feeling the constant pressing and snapping of the bricks. They had actually toughened up back when I was doing set after set after set, but it had been some time, and my fingertips were back to their usual soft selves.
Luckily for my fingers, I had errands to run and other things to do, so my sore little fingertips got a needed break.
The next morning, I was up and back at it!
The third layer was starting to look like the actual base of the platform from the show. I was pretty excited to finish this layer, I have to say. I took little breaks here and there, but I was pretty determined to make some real progress.
By that evening, I had gotten pretty far. I stopped here at 6 hours and 3 minutes.
I was inordinately pleased by getting to this step. I could see the robes carefully spread out here, just like the show, and their hands out there. There was also a little bit of white where I was starting Lao Wen's new hair color.
You can tell the passage of time by how the light keeps changing in each of these pictures! I always end with the bricks for the step I'm on laid out in front of me, so I always know where I am when I pick the set back up. My memory is just too bad otherwise, I'll forget what I'm doing.
Well, 3-day holiday weekends don't last forever, so I woke up this morning determined to finish this. There was a little bit of race against the clock today, since I had appointments I had to take care of, and I needed to have enough light left to take final pictures. So, I sat down, and started going as fast as I could.
At 7 hours and 6 minutes, I had built up the bodies, and was on to the heads. I hurried through my afternoon errands and got back around 3:10 pm. The sun sets here around 4:20, so I didn't have much time. Tomorrow I get on a plane, so it really was up against the clock! I didn't even put my headphones on this time, I just sat down and focused.
But, it turns out that I didn't need that much time. 45 minutes later, I was done!
Total hours clocked in at 7 hours and 51 minutes. I will tell you, I was indeed flying through this set - all those other fig sets that I made mistakes on definitely helped me. I knew what I was doing, and I went fast. If this had been my first set, or even my second (ok, let's be real, even my third), it would 100% have taken me at least the full 10 hours. It also helped that other than Big Error 1 and Small Error 1, I didn't make any other mistakes.
You can see how many bricks are left (which is why I knew something was up when I ran out of that white brick earlier). I will say that not pre-sorting the bricks is definitely the way to go - it's pretty easy to pick out the right ones, and certainly saves a lot of time just organizing them into piles.
Alright! Let's do some beauty shots, shall we? As you know, the light wasn't super great, but it was good enough!
Oops, I see I need to press down a little on Lao Wen's head to get the bricks firmly squeezed together. I'll admit my aching fingertips were not pressing down super hard at this point!
I really love the 3-D effect of the icicles ringing the platform. This set is just fantastic!
It's a little hard to see A-Xu's luxurious mane of hair here with the black on black, but it's quite nice.
Lao Wen's closed eyes! Please also note the little white underlayer on his robes here at his neck. So cute.
This is a nice angle to see A-Xu's married hair bun (minus one hairpin, of course) and Lao Wen's loop of hair.
This angle is the coup de grâce of this whole set for me. For the longest time, I thought the single bricks was his eyes and the marks down his cheeks were tears, but in reality I think the larger bricks are his eyes, and the smaller bricks are his eyebrows going up in shock and horror. But all I can see are (non canonically accurate) tears free flowing down his cheeks!
I did waste several minutes at the point I was building this just contemplating his face, and I was THIS close to subbing in the light blue for to make tears after all, because (sorry A-Xu) I find it delightfully hilarious. Little Lego tears! I can't even. But, I decided to go with the actual design for this so you could see it (and go back and replace them afterwards).
Ahem. Anyway. This is also a beautiful shot to see Lao Wen's long white hair draping over his shoulders.
More of the snow and icicles all the way around. It looks great.
Seriously, don't you think they look like tears? Right, anyway. This actually isn't a bad angle to admire the modeling on the clothing.
And we're back around. The modeling really is beautiful on this, with their robes carefully spread out behind them and to the sides of them.
Time for some closeups:
Aww, Lao Wen.
Aww, A-Xu, honey.
The bottoms-up angle was really hard to get on this set, since the base was so large.
The top down angle looks great I think. This is actually the first time that I'm noticing they have the scroll underneath them.
Honestly, I'm so impressed with this set. With only 9 colors, and some very basic building block shapes, they did a gorgeous job rendering this scene.
With my last picture, in the last of my fading light, here's my two sets of armory figs re-enacting this scene. The closest set is actually from the New Year's set of of 6 that Qilin helped me buy back in the day, so this really is full circle!
I couldn't quite get my camera to focus on both sets, but you can see the relative size difference at least. It's a big set!
Alright, these are the last of these sets for a while - there's two more sets of two single figures each, but I have not been able to locate them on Xianyu either. I'm ok with it though - this is the last of the big scene sets, and one I really, really wanted. The others are nice but not quite as special as the sets.
Thanks for the figthusiasts friends that have accompanied me on these building block fig posts! They're all quite long, so I appreciate you reading all my thoughts and experiences with these. I absolutely love them - they were a ton of fun, and I only wish I had more! I'd love to enact out the entire series with building block scenes - can you imagine?
Material: Plastic building blocks
Fig Count: 520
Scene Count: 37
Rating: Pure love
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Building Block Figs - Beautiful Fight Scene in the Middle of the Lake (Part One)
Figthusiast friends, it's time for a little something different! Today we have the first of a series of building block Word of Honor fig sets.
I first saw these sets earlier this year when I was browsing for figs on Xianyu, my favorite secondary market app. I stopped my scrolling in total surprise when I first saw a picture, and was like wait...are these actually Lego-type Word of Honor figs??? I zoomed in, and lo and behold, they sure were.
I absolutely loved Legos when I was a kid. My family didn't have enough money to be able to buy much in the way of expensive toys, but I did save up my babysitting money so I could buy a few of them myself. It took a long time at $1.50 an hour!
So, of course when I saw these, the nostalgia factor combined with my fandom fig obsession made these a must buy.
Today's fig is that the first set I found. It's called (via MTL) "Beautiful Fight Scene in the Middle of the Lake", which I must congratulate for being extremely descriptive and 100% accurate.
As soon as I saw this, I did an immediate search on Taobao and Weidian to see if I could just buy the set vs. pick it up off Xianyu. For two reasons. One, I can buy directly off Taobao (vs using a third party purchase agent for Xianyu), and two, I was hoping there was more in the series than this one figure. However, they were no longer being sold on either platform, so Xianyu it was.
I browsed around and was lucky enough to find a seller on Xianyu that did, in fact, have other sets in the series, and who was clearing them all out, brand new and unopened. She noted that she was still a fan, she just had never had the time to put these together and realized now with her workload she probably never would. I bought all three of her sets, including this one, for about $37 total, which is about half off the retail of 179 yuan per set they originally went for (about $25 each). I thought this was a great deal considering the actual costs of specialized Lego sets these days, even non-branded building block sets.
As far as I can tell, there are four big sets that are famous scenes from the show, and three small sets that are just our two favorite leads only. I was able to buy the three big scenes off that one person, and one of the set of figs-only, but I'm still missing some (too many!). I keep checking Xianyu. I was actually surprised to see the other day there was another set I didn't know existed - but sadly it ended up being sold out. I'll keep looking.
Anyway!
The Beautiful Fight Scene in the Middle of the Lake is a 1,236 piece set, measures 8.4 x 16.8 x 12.4 cm, and it's rated about 8 hours to complete. It's the fastest of the big sets (the remainder of which are rated 10, 10, and 11 hours respectively). In retrospect, should I have started with the smaller figs-only set (rated 2 hours)? Probably. But I was just so charmed by this set, and I only have one lake fig set to date, so this seemed like something very fun. Plus, as you will hear about later, I did not fully understand the specs until well after I was almost done assembling the very last set.
I had a surgical procedure that was scheduled this month (and is why I've been out of commission for a while), and I had specially saved up these sets as fun projects to make while I was recovering. I figured it would be nice to have something to look forward to.
So, post surgery, once I felt up to sitting up, I made myself a comfy little nest and settled in with my little boxes of treasures.
This is the pic from the seller - you would never know these were Word of Honor sets. They're just generic boxes from the manufacturer, with a small sticker on the top to indicate what set it is, along with a QR code.
I excitedly opened up the box, to find a bag o'bricks, a small black plastic piece and another sticker with QR code.
It turns out the little black plastic piece is a super handy little tool to quickly and easily break assembled bricks apart. Which is great if you accidentally assemble any steps incorrectly, as I would soon find out.
The QR code was for the directions, which were, in a quantum technological leap forward from my admittedly decades ago Lego experiences, online and fully 3-dimensional.
Pretty cute! I decided to go in order, and indeed start with the simple looking raft.
As a side note, I will tell you that I started this completely sure I was going to be able to assemble this set in an afternoon. I had somehow completely missed the MTL for the estimated assembly time until literally just now, as I was translating pics for this blog post. The set seemed fairly small in the picture, and while it has indeed been decades since I put together a Lego set, I'm (literally) an old hand at it. I felt extremely confident. Overconfident, you might say, given that my exact mental words to myself as I clicked on the raft image was, I'm gonna knock this thing out in no time.
Doesn't look like much, does it?
I figured that before I did anything else, I would sort by colors and shapes, so when I was ready to get started, I could move really fast. So I sorted. And sorted. And sorted some more. The bag doesn't look like a lot of bricks, but let me tell you, there were a LOT (1,236, which once again, I only realized until I was researching for this very blog post). Unlike Legos, these were all thin single-brick height, so there were no 4x4x4 type bricks, for example. It made it easier to sort, but as I was sorting (and sorting some more), I realized that it might take a lot of building to get significant height going.
Eventually, after about an hour, I got them all sorted, and felt very accomplished, if a bit tired. I took a little nap, and then settled back into my crafting nest, and then got ready to, and I quote myself once again, bang this sucker out.
The directions started with an image of the final product, which was helpful.
I will say the online direction interface was pretty amazing. I could zoom in, spin around, go upside down, view it any which way I wanted to by pinching and pulling at my phone's screen. It was fantastic, and certainly made it much easier. That little circle on the right side is the "next direction" button, and helpfully the number in the circle tells you how many steps you have left. There were 34 steps in this raft, and you can tell by the number here I'm not too far along.
Here's a little further as I gamely plug along. I got momentarily confused early on by the colors - there's a dark blue, a medium blue, and a light blue, and I had started assembling the raft with medium blue instead of dark blue. I got to figure out how useful that brick de-assembler was real fast, let me tell you. I also started screenshotting and translating the colors until I felt I had a good handle on what exact colors I should be picking.
You can see here how I can zoom in to figure out exactly where to place the bricks. You can't tell by the screenshot, but the bricks you are laying in each particular step blink, and are outlined in dark black like you see in the shot above. It's very handy.
I got into a groove pretty quick. For each step, I'd count and select the bricks shown in the little legend at the bottom, and put them in a little pile next to me. I did this to make sure I used up all the bricks each layer, as early on I was just following the directions and not realizing that some steps you had to put the brick underneath other ones, which would not be visible on the blinking screen unless I pinched and pulled the model to flip it around on the screen. If I got to the end of the step and still had bricks left, I knew one (or more) were hiding, and I could rotate the image around until I found where they should go. Yes, I did learn this the hard way, naturally.
After a good long time, I finally finished the raft! I will say, I was a bit puzzled that the raft is green and blue, as we well know the raft in the show is just bamboo.
Did I re-watch the scene just to make triple sure? I sure did!
So there's actually two rafts, this simple one here in the foreground, and then the bigger, sturdier raft there behind the boat. It's this first raft that this set is capturing, and more or less this moment, if not at such an acute angle.
I may actually rearrange the figures to be in this particular configuration later. Stay tuned!
It turns out that the raft is these colors because (now that I've put a lot of them together) the company doesn't appear to make many brick colors. The blues are unusual in the sense there are actually three different shades. The red bricks I have have only ever been one fire engine red color, and the brown bricks only one medium brown. So, rather than make the raft uniformly all brown, they made it colorful with the blue and green, perhaps to simulate the water. I admire the colorful nature of it, but I have to say, I'm contemplating re-doing the raft when I finish all the kits. Each kit has leftover bricks, and I seem to have a lot of brown bricks left over. I think I'm going to try remaking this with a brown raft base and black for the lines instead, with some blue and more of the transparent bricks to simulate water. Stay tuned for that, too!
So, by the time I finished the raft, I was beat. Super tired, and surprised it took as long as it did. BUT, I reasoned it only made sense since it was the very first piece I did, so naturally it would take longer than most. It was time to sleep.
The next day, I woke up bright and early, on a mission. On to Wen Kexing!
I started confident (confidence is never my problem, unfortunately, but it is sometimes A problem) that now that I had experience, I could in fact, bust this bad boy out.
I was merrily assembling away, and I happened to take a closer look at the directions - specifically, the little number in the bottom circle.
I don't know if you can see this number, but it is two of Gong Jun's favorite number 88. That's right, EIGHTY-EIGHT. I was like, what?!? How many was there in this figure? I've been going for a while (answer, as I scrolled back through the directions, is 111).
Remember how I said that these are all single-ply building bricks? Yep. Takes a bunch to turn them into a tall, yet humble philanthropist. Well, the only way out is through, right?
The directions kept having me assembling parts, and then having me set them aside for later. It looked nothing like a mild and gentle scholar, but I've found that, similar to life and perhaps also Ikea assembly instructions, sometimes you just have forge ahead and take it on faith that things are gonna work out.
Ah ha! Suddenly it IS starting to make a little sense. I recognize that costume!
(Sidebar to say, we all recognize this costume! And we know this gorgeous pale green outer robe is not, in fact, blue. I was slightly taken aback by this until I realized later the thing about the factory's lack of colors. The bright, intense grass green of the only green option (other than neon green, ahahaha) would have been even less suitable for our peacock's fine feathers, so actually this is a very good choice).
MAY I also note that number in the bottom right hand circle is 55. FIFTY-FIVE.
I'm gonna fast forward through the naps and the breaks, and just take one quick other picture break:
I just about cheered when I got to this point! I was like, oh there he is! You can also tell by the quality of light and the shadows that it was late at night at this point. On a different day.
Anyway, we arrive at the glorious conclusion:
Hooray! I was so happy and tickled at this point. I was just so charmed by him. His little rosy cheeks, his side wispies on his hair, the motion of him standing on one foot. The back of his hair is fantastic too, although you can't see it here yet.
On to our beloved A-Xu...
May I just say how DELIGHTED I am that this is indeed hobo-Xu? His little beard and goatee combo in brick form just made me giggle.
First thing, I checked to see how many steps our reclusive hobo had. 115, which I appreciated for Zhang Zhehan's birthday kadian, if nothing else.
You can tell by the colors and shadows that once again this is a different evening, here on step 77 and about to graduate to step 76:
Once again it looked pretty unrecognizable, except that now I had done one fig, I was starting to understand kind of where they were going.
Plus, Lao Wen got to watch this time. In the daytime, as you can tell by the nice bright light.
Annnd it's night time again. Ahahahaha, I love this fig! I really like how they did his bangs. You can see here too some of his glorious black hair streaming out behind him.
By the way, at this point the tips of my fingers were quite sore in a stingy kind of oversensitive way. Sadly, typing away at a keyboard all the time (also for decades!) at my desk job has in no way toughened up my fingers. I did not think snapping bricks into place and pushing down on them to squeeze them tightly together would tax them so much. Sitting here typing this, actually, my fingers are still sore (I am admittedly working my way though the last set, the 11 hour one).
It's yet another (different) evening, and at last, A-Xu is here! I was so happy to get to this point!
Annnnd I'm out of picture slots to do the full beauty 360 degree spin of these two. Sorry to make you wait (although you may be tired of such a massive post already!), but come back tomorrow for Part Two!
Material: Plastic building bricks
Fig Count: 500 (I'm gonna wait to count these until tomorrow)
Scene Count: 32 (same)
Rating: Lots of fun, actually. I'll give the in-depth low-down tomorrow!
[link to the Master Post Index]
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Character and Sincerity
There was a set of figs sold earlier this year where the fig maker required a handwritten statement in order to purchase them. The statement required was:
本人是龚俊和张哲瀚的粉丝，相信他们的人品和真诚。本人为自留目的购买手办，承诺不拆、不溢价或捆鄉转让。
[my MTL translation]: I am a fan of Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan, and I believe in their character and sincerity. I purchase the figurines for my own use, and I promise not to dismantle it, pay a premium or bundle it for transfer.
I've not going to tell you how long it took me to write this out, nor my utter lack of anything even remotely resembling proper stroke order, as I was literally just trying to replicate the look of the characters. And well, no words are necessary, you can see it in the picture above. All I can say is that my Duolingo / Hello Chinese combo of basic Mandarin did not prepare me for this!
I also smiled as I wrote out Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan's names, because I recalled a challenge question by a different fig maker, asking for the number of strokes in Zhang Zhehan's name, in order to qualify to purchase a Gong Jun figure. The same fig maker asked for the number of strokes in Gong Jun's name, in order to qualify for the purchase of a subsequent Zhehan figure. It's 36 for Zhehan and 20 for Gong Jun, by the way. Let me tell you, I did NOT appreciate all those thirty-six strokes in Zhang Zhehan's name. Nor was the 龚 Gong an easy character for me to write, let me tell you.
But while I was slowly and painfully transcribing these characters, the seller's required statement up on my phone and zoomed in front of me, I was also thinking about what I was actually writing.
I do believe in their character and sincerity. I believe in it so much that here I am, on August 13, 2023, reaffirming my continued love and support of them both. I will continue to support and cheer on Gong Jun, and I will wait patiently for justice to come for Zhang Zhehan.
I will never forget what a terrible, tragic day August 13, 2021 was, and what the unfolding days after that were like. But I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the evil, greedy people behind 8/13 can take Zhehan from us, but they can't make us let him go.
And oh, they have tried. I would not have believed the storms that have come and keep coming for the JZP fandom. So many people want the JZP fans to give up. They want our love and they want our money. Or rather, they want to destroy our love so they can have our money.
Well, they can't have it. What, did they think our love came so easy? The JZP that are left, the Haizhe that are still there and still waiting for Zhehan - we're as tough as they come. The fans that are still here have souls of steel, and no matter how battered or bruised we are, we're staying the course. We believe in Zhang Zhehan's character and sincerity, and we believe in Gong Jun's character and sincerity, and we believe in both their character and sincerity together.
I was there, I lived through it. I saw the devastation on Gong Jun's face after 8/13. I saw how he never unfollowed Zhehan's accounts anywhere, at great personal risk to himself and absolutely no benefit. If he had broken the CP or even just quietly deleted him after 8/13, not a soul would have blamed him. In fact, people would have celebrated and cheered him on, and pointed to his righteousness and the correctness of his priorities. He had absolutely nothing to gain on say, 8/29 by continuing to follow all of Zhehan's accounts, and everything, everything of all his newfound and hard-fought fame to lose. He was one of the few, if not the only celebrity in China on the days after 8/13 who had Zhehan's face and name prominently on his social media. I can't believe there are people that think that kind of loyalty comes cheap.
Sincerity and character is at the bedrock of my belief in why none of the slander and cruel commercialism of Zhehan's hijacked Instagram account can possibly be true. It's not just me that noticed the resurrection of the stolen account has been fundamentally about money. Money money money, wrapped up in "freedom" and "moving on". Look, I'm an American, and while freedom and moving on is literally embedded in our national DNA, guess what else is? Yeah. I can recognize cold hard capitalism when I see it, dressed up in marketing spin. When was Zhehan's character ever about money? When did Zhehan ever sell anyone out (even when they so richly deserved it and had it coming, Director Yu Zheng I'm looking at you)?
In all the personal challenges and tragedies Zhehan had already been through in his life - losing his father, injuring his leg, his girlfriend leaving him, losing his great love of basketball, his career stalling out prior to SHL - did any of that change him in the slightest bit for the worse? Or did it only make him more wiser, and sadder, and more introspective? Didn't it only make him more philosophical, more open, so much so he was able to dive deep into the personal pain of Zhou Zishu and unlock the strength and gentleness of A-Xu?
Was Zhehan so unable to hold on to his own original intention? Was his own character and sincerity some easily mutable thing that he's willing to torpedo for cash? I don't believe so. He sure didn't sound like it in the one audio recording we absolutely know is him, Li Xuezheng's audio recording from Jan 1, 2022. He sounded exactly like the Zhehan we've seen before.
So yeah.
One of the tricks about running a marathon that I learned long ago, if you're just a jogger at heart and not particularly strong or intensely fit, is to walk every water station. Give yourself a break, get some water. Take a bunch of deep breaths, look back and see how far you've come, and gather strength for the road. And water station by water station, you'll finish the race.
So that's what I'm doing on this long arc towards justice. I'm going to water my heart along the way, and refill my strength for the road ahead. I'm going keep collecting my little figs, I'm going to dress up my little baos Junbaobao and Hanbaobao, and I'm going to buy Gong Jun's endorsements and admire his magazines and watch his shows and every single success he achieves is going to feel good. Every little remembrance, every little win, any time we can all link hands and stay strong together gets us one step closer towards justice and vindication.
I'm proud to be a JZP. I couldn't be any prouder of my sisters and brothers in China and across the globe. We're still here.
I am a fan of Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan, and I believe in their character and sincerity.
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