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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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So, Word of Honor, Episode 36 (and “Episode” 37) again, because I want to do a little bit more unpacking of this, particularly with some of the extra material and information that people have been able to point me to.

Spoilers, obvs. For right now, I mainly want to pull out this bit of my initial reaction to 36 & 37, because I think it remains a key point for me:

It would be nice, though, if the connective tissue from 36 to 37 made any sense. Or existed whatsoever. Just, like, throw me a bone, show, some kind of explicit hand-waviness that actually gets mentioned for why Ye Baiyi apparently was not as smart as he thought he was and didn’t really know what he was talking about when he was doomsaying about how one of the pair will surely, oh surely perish. None of this “Sooooo, they managed to figure out the technique and master it?” from some random shidi who never actually gets an answer. I mean, the door was left open for fanwankery on this one, with what looks to be a very last-minute conceit of all this being a story told by grown-up Chengling to his disciples, which begs the question of how much of what he’s telling them is totally accurate, given any number of issues …

I do feel like there’s an interesting meta thing going on here, in that the entire show has been about – let’s be honest, it was never really about the plot – queer-coding this couple in ways that supposedly fly enough under the radar that people can handwave them as Just Good Friends and Brothers (I mean, I guess) with a Bury Your Gays tragic ending (ugh) for good measure. And Chengling is telling a story in-universe that seems to conform to some of this same formula. And yet, we all know well and good that these guys were husbands … So are we supposed to carry the same assurance out of the show, on a meta level, that what appears to be happening in the story at the end of Ep 36 – what we discover we’re learning through Chengling’s story-telling, isn’t really the truth? Just, look: While we’re getting the Good Friends and Brothers push, there’s stuff like obvious voice-over work that doesn’t match the much more queer version of what the actors actually said, which is apparently blazingly clear to any viewers who know Mandarin and can manage to lip-read. The show has literally put de-queered words into these characters’ mouths. You can’t trust what you hear. But apparently the show has also made this obvious enough that, if you’re a good enough speaker of the language the show is being told in, and you have a good enough eye, you can see what is actually going on. Are we being taught to trust our eyes more than our ears, are we being told that what we’re being told – by the end of Ep 36 on a meta level, by Ye Baiyi-through-Chengling’s-story on an in-universe level, and by what we learn about what happened from Chengling’s story, itself, also on an in-universe level – is inherently untrustworthy, but that if we “speak the language” of this show well enough, and have a good enough eye, we can decode it and see what “actually” happened and is later made explicit in Ep 37?

So, that’s a lot, but the reason I wanted to pull it back out is because I feel like this no-homo, surface-level, smoke-and-mirrors effect that gets layered over a queer bedrock of “reality” is precisely what the show did with its ending, and I want to approach that on a couple of different levels. Particularly since I’ve seen several reactions from other people who didn’t seem to have seen/didn’t have access to the extra of “Ep” 37, or who also found it difficult and vaguely unsatisfying to make the leap from Ep 36 to full belief in, and commitment to, “Ep” 37.

When I first posted this, I was really leaning on the idea of a classic Rashomon effect, given that we see – imho – a final Zhou Zishu/Wen Kexing scene in Ep 36 that’s filmed to lead us to believe that Wen Kexing died, with a subsequent cut to Zhang Chengling wrapping up a telling of the “story” of ZZS and WKX to his disciples. The easiest fanwank on this is that all of what we’ve seen so far has been Chengling telling the story of ZZS and WKX to his disciples, making him an unreliable narrator who in fact doesn’t know the truth of what really happened. I was actually reminded of the contrast in The Untamed (god, I don’t need to warn for spoilers for The Untamed, do I, we’ve all seen Chen Qing Ling at this point, right? Anyway, SPOILERS FOR THE UNTAMED) between the cliff scene in Episode 1 when they make it look like Jiang Cheng stabbed Wei Wuxian, leading to his fall off the cliff, and you go back later and realize this is the version that the storyteller was telling to the people in the teahouse vs. Episode, god, what is it, 33? When we see the cliff scene in “real” time, and discover that’s not what actually happened, that what happened is that Jiang Cheng stabbed a rock and Wei Wuxian shook himself free of Lan Wangji’s grip to fall to his death. You can’t trust what you hear. Also … well, we’ll get back to Chengling in a minute.

The second level of uncertainty to unwind is Gao Xiaolian calling bs on Chengling’s story. So, I felt like the kid who’s practicing his forms in the snow and being coached by ZZS in “Ep” 37 might actually be someone, not just a random kid, and that might be important, but I could not for the life of me figure out who he might be. I wasn’t aware until I watched some of AvenueX’s wrap-up of the show (I think that’s the first place I heard this info pointed out) that this kid is supposed to be the son of Gao Xiaolian and Deng Kuan, and the dad who comes to take him home is Deng Kuan (formerly Da-shixiong of Yueyang Sect, who – let’s face it – Gao Xiaolian really wanted to marry). Seriously, I spent so much time making fun of ZZS’s stupid facial hair tricks in this show, and then they actually do just put a dumbass mustache on a guy, and I completely don’t recognize him. I have to admit, the mustache threw me enough that I had no idea that was Deng Kuan (well, and maybe only seeing him for three episodes also helped). But if that’s Deng Kuan, and if the kid is his and Gao Xiaolian’s son, then she would have some reasonable standing to know a story detailing WKX’s death was bs.

Finally, and most crucially – thanks to everyone who directed me to resources (including AvenueX and other fans who were able to do some translation) who were able to talk about the voiceover work in this final ep, because when I talk about how you can’t trust what you hear, but if you speak the language well enough and have a good enough eye, you can catch what’s really going on? When I talk about de-queered words being put into these character’s mouths? Apparently, this is what happens to Chengling in the final scene. That last scene - and the story he tells his disciples - apparently DOES provide the connective tissue from Ep 36 to Ep 37, but you can’t trust what you hear. Apparently, this is one of the places where you can see something different from what you hear if you’re able to lip-read, with Chengling telling the disciples something much closer to the idea that two people who love each other equally can equally support each other through this cultivation technique and both come out alive.

In the AvenueX discussion of this (Livestream #21, starting around 1:22:30), there’s an additional tidbit about the use of the word “cauldron” – I believe by Ye Baiyi - to describe one person in the pair, a word with a specific and widely-understood meaning within the genre that’s not necessarily known outside of the genre with, yes, sexual connotations. (Come on, slash fans, don’t tell me you don’t giggle every time you pass a perfectly innocent Jiffy Lube auto shop, at something that the mundanes don’t think twice about.) Apparently, “cauldron” is in the script, I believe it’s in the English subs, and it apparently was in the original Chinese subs, until too many people started talking about it and how it had been slipped past censorship, because it’s a perfectly common Jiffy Lube auto shop, right? and then it appears Youku went back and changed the character in the Chinese subs to something that doesn’t even make any sense. So again, we get an example of a case where if you’re a good enough speaker of the language this show is being told in – in this case the vernacular of wuxia – with a good enough eye, you can catch what’s really going on. Something that then gets no-homo’d. And has some nonsensical de-queered meaning laid over top of it. How many times do we have to do this until we learn the lesson that you can’t trust what you hear?

ANYWAY, I’m wondering if the visuals are important, too: Something we see in the last scene with ZZS and WKX in Ep 36, when WKX is either unconscious or dead (CLEARLY UNCONSCIOUS), is that ZZS – twice – doesn’t let WKX’s hands fall. He catches him by the wrists and then catches him again by the hands as WKX’s hands start to slip away from ZZS’s hands – aaaannnnd end scene. I have to wonder if that’s not a subtle but important detail, that we see ZZS refusing to let WKX physically slip away, and maybe, by implication, refusing to let WKX slip away from him into death.

Also, again with Ye Baiyi – in the flashback when WKX is yelling at ZZS, Ye Baiyi says “No one dies!” as he comes bursting into WKX’s sickroom. And then even reiterates it – “No one dies before me!” But then the voiceover during the qi transfer, he’s supposedly going on about here’s how WKX is going to have to kill himself to save his husband? I think the script has dropped the ball in a few places, but that would really be a tremendous flub. That also deserves some unpacking, but I’m running out of free time right now.

So, just some additional thoughts. I will probably have more, but next up, I think, will be a re-watch from the beginning.

One last thought, tho’: What’s the likelihood that Nian Xiang is Actual A-Xiang and Goa Xiaolian’s/Deng Kuan’s kid is Cao Weining, reincarnated?

#zhou zishu #wen kexing #zhang chengling #gao xiaolian #deng kuan #ye baiyi #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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canary3d-obsessed · 4 years

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 09 second part

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Blather)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Wen Chao’s Weird Bird, Redux

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji walk away after killing the dire bird, and then Wen Chao, who was standing like 2 feet away, comes to collect its resentful little corpse. He totally heard Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji talking about him.

Wen Memorial

Now we visit the Wen memorial, which Wei Wuxian 2.0 won’t remember when he sees it again. Everyone who isn’t a Wen is confused and awkward while the Wens have an impromptu family conference. Agenda: 1. weeping 2. apologizing to ancestors for involuntarily being turned into temporary zombies. 3. getting the fuck out of dodge before it happens again

This is a burial place, and the non-Wen cultivators are deferential and tentative where before they were bossy. Wei Wuxian’s affect is particularly different from his normal swagger and decisiveness.

Look how gently he asks Wen Qing about this place, thinking carefully and making his expression conciliatory before he opens his mouth to speak.

(more after the cut)

The others react to this revelation by becoming even more awkward and uncomfortable...

But Wei Wuxian responds with shock and sympathy, once again showing why he makes friends wherever he goes, and why he is so vulnerable despite his many strengths. There is no “not my problem” setting in Wei Wuxian’s heart.

It occurs to me, in watching his reaction, that Wei Wuxian doesn’t have a single living blood relation, as far as he or we know, and at this point he has never met a single member of his own clan. Yes yes, he has an adoptive family, and that’s lovely; I’m an adoptive parent myself. But genetic family is also super important, particularly in the ancestor-revering culture we see depicted in The Untamed.

In any case, this moment of standing before the grave of Wen Qing’s people, with these few remaining members of her family--people who he will later get to know so well--seems to resonate with him.

Baby Wen

The scene at the shrine includes our first look at random cute kid massively important character Wen Yuan.

Let’s pretend Wen Yuan is a different age from however old he will be at the end of the Sunshot campaign, since the actor did not magically change ages. Here the character is probably two years old.

Rich Gege Lan Wangji in this scene is wearing the same gorgeous blue color he will be wearing years later when Wen Yuan grabs him and won’t let go. Maybe A-Yuan’s pre-fever memory was super good, and he remembered that Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian belonged together.

Chicken Hunting

Wei Wuxian seems to be all in on this chicken hunt, making sure Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang join him, but then he circles back to talk privately with Wen Qing and Lan Wangji. This was a ruse to distract Jiang Cheng.

Wei Wuxian is very good at manipulating Jiang Cheng and he does it frequently. He takes this ability way, way, way too far when he concocts the whole golden-core plan, which I’ll get into in the relevant episode. But this sibling dynamic is not great in either direction.

Incidentally, nobody asks about the giant chain mark on Wei Wuxian’s throat after he and Lan Wangji come back from their time in the woods together. What kind of rep does he have, exactly?

Having cornered Wen Qing, Wei Wuxian starts to question her seriously, but can’t resist an opportunity to flirt with Lan Wangji like an embarrassing dumbass.

Lan Wangji’s communication skills continue to improve, as he angrily tells Wei Wuxian "bì zuǐ! “ instead of storming off or shanking him with Bichen. [Chinese vocab OP has learned from watching CDramas: bì zuǐ (shut up), duì bù qǐ (sorry), nú cái zuì gāi wàn sǐ (your servant deserves to die for her offense)]

Wei Wuxian makes a visible effort to drag himself back over the line into propriety.

While Wei Wuxian apologizes to Lan Wangji with his eyes, Wen Qing wonders what she ever did to deserve being stuck in the middle of this crap.

Eventually the boys get the whole Wen backstory, and Wen Qing hits the road.

In what will become a repeating motif, Jiang Cheng asks Wen Qing to forget her family, abandon her clan, and bail on her little brother.

What the fuck, dude. You wouldn’t do that to Wei Wuxian and he’s your shige, not your didi. You are on this very road trip out of a sense of concern for him. As a female orphan who is the elder to her male sibling, Wen Qing’s obligation to Wen Ning is enormous even if she didn’t love him to bits. Not to mention she seems to be the clan leader for the Dafan Mountain Wens at this point. Jiang Cheng should understand her, but doesn’t.

Club Ruohan

God I’m boring

At some point in the episode we stop by Club Ruohan. Yawn. WRH tells Wen Chao he’s a dumbass for targeting Wen Qing’s people, and to get back to his fucking project already. Wen Chao talks about wanting to get “Wei Wuxian” and his homies - he doesn’t namecheck Lan Wangji, the ringbearer Yin Iron having person. Just bird-killer Wei Wuxian. That doesn’t bode well for Lotus Pier.

Wen Ruohan is actually fairly reasonable, for a power-hungry megalomaniac who’s busily corrupting himself with dark energies. Most of the atrocities in the “fuck all of the other clans” campaign were Wen Chao’s idea.

Downtown

The gang goes to Qiting and Lan Wangji gets ready to go doorknocking to find out where the next hunk of Iron is. Wei Wuxian stops him and says that his plan is stupid and it sucks.

In a truly amazing display of his developing trust in Wei Wuxian, socially awkward Lan Wangji asks WWX for advice on how to proceed.

Wei Wuxian’s answer is to go drinking. But...he’s not wrong. And he explains his reasoning to Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji before the grabbing and dragging part. Lan Wangji seems to be getting used to that part.

In fact Lan Wangji has already become a lot more comfortable with Wei Wuxian’s extroversion and high spirits than Jiang Cheng is, even though Jiang Cheng isn’t nearly as introverted as Lan Wangji. That’s love for ya.

Tavern Talk

Wei Wuxian slaps a heap of coins down on the table and proceeds to extravagantly order...three jugs of wine. That seems pretty moderate, but they all react like he’s a big spender.

Wei Wuxian: No worries, Rich Gege's got me covered

Wangxian’s old-married-couple dynamic appears on the scene fully formed, as Wei Wuxian slowly undresses a bottle of wine and Lan Wangji tells him to stop dawdling.

Chatting with the guy at the Inn works exactly as well as Wei Wuxian said it would, as he tells them about creepy doings at the old Chang place.

Lan Wangji’s bag of holding, which was definitely not tucked into his perfectly smooth chest placket a second ago....

bursts forth like the xenomorph in Alien, startling everyone and causing Lan Wangji a lot of pain and brow furrowing.

Wei Wuxian leaps over and puts a steadying hand on his shoulder, and tells him to relax and concentrate, in a bit of a role reversal from earlier. Lan Wangji doesn’t shake him off.

Once the Yin Iron settles down again, they dash off to investigate the creepy doings, leaving Nie Huaisang behind to meet up with Meng Yao. I’m sure everyone will be glad some day that they created an opportunity for Meng Yao to join them and the new enemy they are about to capture.

Cheng Compound

At the Cheng compound, the door is shut and there are creepy noises. Time for a talisman!

It’s sweet how when anything fucked-up and necromantic happens, these guys immediately look to Wei Wuxian for the right way to deal with it.

The outfits here form a nice a nice contrast, with the two clan lineal descendants dressed in near-matching blue with silver crowns, while Wei Wuxian has changed out of his blue and red robes and into his future signature black. The leather hair band is as fancy as he gets - he wears his outsider status pretty proudly, even at this early age.

The boys open the doors on a scene so grotesque, even gravity has become meaningless.

Lan Wangji: This is horrifying, so extremely untidy

Jiang Cheng: Do I know any of these people? No? Ok, this is fine then

Wei Wuxian: I wonder if I could kill this many people all by myself. That would be epic.

#fytheuntamed #the untamed #chen qing ling #the untamed gifs #wangxian #the untamed spoilers #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs #weird stuff keeps happening with my keep-reading cuts #sorry if there doesnt seem to be a cut on this post #i swear it's there

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imaginaryelle · 4 years

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I just re-watched THAT scene and a thought hit me: Lan Wangji just stands there watching Wei Wuxian fall from the cliff... Why doesn't he jump onto his sword and swoops down to at least try to save him? Or is he all out of spiritual power? Or does it simply take to long to start and rev the sword? Not saying it's a plothole, I was just wondering...

I mean, I think this is a fair question and I know I’ve seen it discussed elsewhere. I just can’t seem to find the post or remember if any conclusions were reached, so I’m excited to dive into this. As always if anyone has insights or headcanons they want to add on to this, please do.

Because I like pictures, here’s ep 33 Lan Wangji holding his sword and staring in horror as Wei Wuxian falls (what is Jiang Cheng thinking? Who knows.)

Why isn’t Lan Wangji doing anything? He just stands there for long enough that Jiang Cheng backs away and leaves him on the outcropping, all alone.

Poor guy.

Okay, moving on. I think there are at least two ways to approach this, and one is from the production perspective (since this cliff encounter is a thing that only happens in the drama) and the other is from the in-universe perspective (aka, Doyalist vs Watsonian), so I’m going to look at both.

For the production pov, there’s really only one scene (I think) where we see anyone actually riding a sword in the drama, and it’s when they’re confronting the water demon/abyss in Caiyi (ep 5). At that point there’s no prep time, everyone just jumps up and then steps onto their swords (which is actually even more ridiculous to me than the image had already been in the novel because I thought they were at least riding on the scabbard but no! Riding the bare blade like a skateboard. I love it.)

How majestic.

Lan Xichen is the only graceful and cool person here. The only other sword-riding shot in this scene that shows more of a person’s body than their head and shoulders is when Lan Wangji drags three people into the air at once and we get a brief glimpse of Su She’s feet kicking wildly.

So, based on this scene’s execution and the general scarcity of other sword-flying scenes (even with the Nightless City confrontation, Lan Wangji just flies in with his quqin, no sword under his feet), my out-of-universe theory would be a combination of budget and aesthetic at play. If the production can get by on wire work with super extra long jumps that don’t seem to require actually riding the sword, they will. It’s logistically simpler, and it frankly looks better on screen. It’s also a staple of the entire film genre, whereas this sword thing is not, so the crew and effects people would have more experience with it as well. (In-universe I have a lot of questions about Wei Wuxian’s retained ability to do those jumps. Do they not use spiritual energy? Does he still have spiritual energy, just not a golden core? Is he using resentful energy instead? How does this work?)

From a more story-side view on the production, they’re working against the fact that they changed the plot to add Lan Wangji’s presence at Wei Wuxian’s death and they want to capitalize on that relationship, so having Wei Wuxian knock himself over the edge as he destroys the seal (or something where he steps back as Jiang Cheng rushes him or any other number of possibilities) no longer fits with the emotional beats they’re trying to hit. Also they really need Wei Wuxian to die here for the plot to function. Having Lan Wangji mount a sword and swoop down to try and save him again just adds extra complications and delays the desired outcome of WWX = dead and LWJ = distraught. In that sense, it really does start to look like a plot hole, because it feels like they’re ignoring the capabilities of a character in order to get the result they need. I do think they try to address this, but since multiple people have this question and I personally had to watch the scene more than once while actively thinking about it to notice all the relevant details… the efficacy of those efforts is maybe questionable. (Also like.. why does Jiang Cheng wait three days to go look for Wei Wuxian’s remains? Why is anyone waiting at all? Why is anyone surprised they can’t find a corpse when the visual we get implies Wei Wuxian is falling into lava? There are many, many questions that can be asked here and for a lot of them the out-of-universe answer is probably going to resemble “because the plot/original source material demands it” without much helpful in-universe support.)

In-universe (and probably more pertinent to your question), yeah, Lan Wangji could be low on spiritual power (and upon rewatch, I think he genuinely is). He could be physically exhausted as well as injured, too. For someone who carried three people in two hands 2-3 years ago and canonically has only gotten stronger since, he sure is having trouble pulling one person up over the side of a cliff. And that exhaustion really isn’t outside the realm of possibility, no matter how strong and powerful he is. He just traveled pretty far! If the theories that he found A-Yuan before coming to Nightless City are true (since he’s not injured in those flashbacks), he likely spent a ton of spiritual power even before getting into this battle where he first confronted Wei Wuxian and then started fighting pretty much everyone on the field by himself. Then, in a moment of fear-induced distraction, he gets injured! He’s actively bleeding! So yeah. He could definitely just be physically exhausted.

All that blood loss is not a good sign, and it actually speeds up (visually) as he expends this effort. We can see his arm trembling all throughout this scene, and then his grip slips (thus the face). Even after that he slips again, not losing his grip, but losing the strength to hold himself up at all. In the end he’s literally just lying on the rock depending on gravity to keep him in place and putting everything else he has into holding on to Wei Wuxian. He can’t do more than glare in Jiang Cheng’s general direction and tell him to stop.

Bichen is right there. If he had spiritual power left, I think he’d probably be sending his sword out to block Jiang Cheng’s angle of attack. That, or he needs two hands to accomplish such an action (It doesn’t require hand motions later/in the future, but maybe he develops that skill precisely because of these events). So yes. He’s physically exhausted. He’s spiritually exhausted. But I think there’s more going on here, too: He’s also at the end of his rope emotionally, and that’s how he ends up standing there, horrified and unmoving.

He’s had a rough time recently: Everyone hates his best and only friend/love of his life, and he has to listen to them call for his death/judgement at fancy dinner party meetings on and off for over a year. No one will listen to him when he tries to present a different view. Even his own brother is (not unreasonably) much more concerned about Lan Wangji’s personal safety than what his silence on this issue is costing him emotionally, and his uncle is distinctly unsupportive of the friendship from the beginning.

I think Lan Wangji spends a lot of time questioning his upbringing in those months (we see him actually verbally do so when he’s punished after Wei Wuxian’s death, but I think it starts well before that). What is right and wrong? Who decides it, and how? When does justice and holding people responsible for their actions turn over into unjust persecution? What is true, and what is a lie, and how much does that matter when weighed against social/political/spiritual harmony? These are concepts that are buried pretty deeply in the Lan Sect’s teachings but the world is twisting all of them before his eyes, and I have to think that takes a toll on him. Additionally, just as things start looking up (they let him write the letter to invite Wei Wuxian to Jin Ling’s celebration! They listen to him, other people support his idea!), he has to deal with the facts that:

1) His best friend who he’s in love with just killed a bunch of people, including Jin ZiXuan and some of Lan Wangji’s own Sect brothers.

2) Wei Wuxian is clearly losing control of his resentment-based cultivation path, and is thus personally in danger on a spiritual level, and

3) Everyone now wants to kill Wei Wuxian again, possibly even more than they did before, and anyone who supports Wei Wuxian is an enemy of the entire cultivation world.

Later in the series, Lan Wangji says he regrets that he wasn’t at Wei Wuxian’s side at Nightless City. That he didn’t support him, despite what we see of him trying to help Wei Wuxian find Jiang Yanli and then, after she dies, stop him from killing himself. To me, this could very easily imply that Lan Wangji is still trying to walk a tightrope in those scenes, or perhaps trying to be a bridge. He’s deliberately not choosing a distinct side, because he refuses to hate and reject Wei Wuxian, but he’s also refusing to declare open support. He’s acting entirely on his own, in a balancing act between friendship and love vs his family, his entire life’s teachings, and all of his society. Certainly I find that sort of situation exhausting, and I’ve never had to do it for something so high-stakes or large-scale.

Then there’s the actual cliff scene itself, where he’s visibly desperate. How intense does an emotion have to be for Lan Wangji to so clearly show it?

Wei Ying, he says, come back. He knows Wei Wuxian is breaking down. He at the very least guesses that he’s going to do something wild like step off that outcropping, which is why he follows him in the first place. But he has no idea what to do, so he tries the same thing he’s been trying for years: Come with me. Let me help you. This is a bridge, and he’s offering to help Wei Wuxian cross it. But just like every other time he’s tried it since the Sunshot Campaign ended, it doesn’t work.

Note that Lan Wangji actually is flying here, without the sword, so if he doesn’t have any spiritual power when Jiang Cheng shows up, this is probably a last, desperate burst to go with this last, desperate act.

I don’t think he really has a plan here. Not a new one, anyway. This is a still a plea of Let me help you. And, notably, Wei Wuxian doesn’t accept his help.

Not once during this whole scene does Wei Wuxian reach up with his free hand or try to help Lan Wangji help him in any way. He smiles, and he says: Lan Zhan, let me go. Because he doesn’t want a bridge. He doesn’t want to go back. Honestly it’s a pretty explicit and heartbreaking message: Lan Wangji’s offer of help is not enough to make Wei Wuxian want to stay alive. Not right now. He needs more than that. He’s lost too much to believe, right now, that anyone is going to choose him and his side, or that he’s worth that effort. And to be clear, Lan Wangji isn’t even offering that in this situation. Wei Wuxian is one slippery handgrip away from death, and Lan Wangji is still not saying “You, I choose you.” From anything Wei Wuxian can be expected to infer, his offer here is no different than it’s ever been: let me show you the way back to the right path. Let me help you fit back into the world the way you used to. And Wei Wuxian can’t do that; he has no golden core, it’s literally impossible even if the rest of the world would let him try. But at this point he doesn’t want to go back either. He doesn’t even want to try. That world hates him, and willfully misunderstands him, and has taken too many people from him now for it to be worth staying in. He wants to die.

And then Jiang Cheng arrives.

Wei Wuxian’s reaction to his brother’s presence is to smile, say his name, and just–accept his hatred. He closes his eyes and waits for the sword to fall even as Lan Wangji calls for Jiang Cheng to stop. The only time he shows distress between stepping back off the cliff and his actual death is when Jiang Cheng twists his sword and compromises the stability of the outcropping so that Lan Wangji is also in danger.

I think it’s possible that if Jiang Cheng had also reached for him and tried to pull him back up, things might have gone differently. Maybe that would have been enough to alter Wei Wuxian’s thinking. But as it is, when Wei Wuxian falls, he falls with his limbs relaxed and a smile on his face. There’s no flailing and screaming like when he was thrown into the Burial Mounds (in ep 33. There’s some arm-waving in ep 1). And I think that moment of him pushing Lan Wangji back and then letting go, more than anything, is what stops Lan Wangji in his tracks, because Wei Wuxian could have saved himself. He had strength and energy left. Enough to push Lan Wangji up and back and nearly to a standing position. He could have accepted Lan Wangji’s help, easily. But he didn’t, because he wanted to die, despite all the effort and inner turmoil Lan Wangji has gone through on his behalf (most of which Wei Wuxian doesn’t know about but, still).

That’s a pretty serious emotional kick in the head. Lan Wangji cannot ignore, at this point, that even if he did have any physical or spiritual energy left, Wei Wuxian doesn’t want to be saved. And that’s when we get this face (actually from ep 1):

He has nothing left. He has at this point spent over a year, maybe two, trying to save someone who, when it came down to the final moment, didn’t want to be saved. There’s nothing more he can do, in this state of exhaustion and despair, and it wouldn’t matter if he tried.

Personally, I think he looks like he’s about to be sick, and I don’t think it’s just the image of Wei Wuxian falling and dying that’s working on him here. It’s also the knowledge that he fucked up. He didn’t do enough, or more accurately, didn’t do the right things, in order to encourage Wei Wuxian to keep fighting for himself or anyone else (I’m not saying this is a healthy or reasonable thought, I just think it’s a thought he’s having). And I think this realization plays directly into how he treats Wei Wuxian when he comes back sixteen years later. He knows that questioning Wei Wuxian on his path of cultivation doesn’t go where he wants it to, so he doesn’t do it. This time is going to be different. He’ll break rules. He’ll drink alcohol. He doesn’t scold Wei Wuxian for making dumb, selfless decisions like transferring the curse mark from Jin Ling’s leg to his own, he just accepts it and expresses concern over Wei Wuxian’s well being. He stops asking if he can help and starts just doing it: Wei Wuxian can’t walk so he’ll carry him. Wei Wuxian needs someone to speak for him, so Lan Wangji will do that, with his brother and with the whole cultivation world. And then we come to this:

This is exactly the same move. Wei Wuxian will protect Lan Wangji, but not himself.

But.

Lan Wangji is no longer trying to be a bridge. He’s not going to hold out his hand for Wei Wuxian to accept or disregard. He’s crossed over to be on Wei Wuxian’s side. And that’s what makes the difference.

#lakritzwolf #cql meta #the untamed #chen qing ling #wangxian #lan wangji #wei wuxian #possibly i got a bit carried away #but this was fun #tw: blood #tw: suicide #in the novel lwj makes that change before wwx dies #and is thwarted by a combination #of wwx's breakdown and his own clan #but the drama cut that scene #so it had to happen after #long post #so long #seriously

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franniebanana · 3 years

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CQL Rewatch - Episode 6

What I learned from this scene: Jiang Cheng is really picky about women and Wei Wuxian is perfectly happy being without a woman (as long as he has alcohol), and THAT parallels what Lan Wangji says later on that he’s fine being alone too. A little thing, but it shows that while Wei Wuxian talks big about all the cute women in Yunmeng, he has zero experience and isn’t really even interested in them. Jiang Cheng, on the other hand, IS interested, but is terrible at talking to them.

Call me crazy, but I don’t actually think Lan Wangji walked in there just to punish them for making noise/disturbing others. By the way this scene is acted, it seems like Lan Wangji is genuinely curious about what they’re up to, to the point where it almost feels like he wants to join in. Like he’s really taken what Lan Xichen has said about making friends to heart. And that all is super cute to me if that’s true. Like he hears the noises coming from their room (maybe he was already going there to see Wei Wuxian anyway!) and thinks, “Sounds like they’re having fun! Maybe I can join.” I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility for him to think that way, albeit probably hesitantly. And it’s not like he walks in with a dour expression, ready to throw the Gusu Lan Sect rules in their faces. It’s not until he sees the alcohol/Wei Wuxian asks him to drink with them that he pulls the rules card out.

Lol his look here. DON’T. TOUCH. ME. The phrase “if looks could kill” was made for people like Lan Wangji. He has nailed that glare. But like, how ballsy is Wei Wuxian to suggest drinking? He KNOWS Lan Wangji will not willingly break the rules, and if he doesn’t know, then he’s a dummy!

I love how quickly this whole thing unravels for Wei Wuxian. He thinks it’s so funny at first—stick Lan Wangji with a talisman, get him to do what you say—only he has no idea that Lan Wangji has absolutely zero tolerance for alcohol and his response is to immediately pass out. The sheer panic in Wei Wuxian’s face and voice is delightful to watch, honestly.

I’ve watched this scene so many times in the last week or so. I like it better in the special edition, since we get more wangxian and more drunk Lan Wangji—two things that I will always take more of. The part I like is that it shows how much Wei Wuxian commits and takes responsibility for his actions. He gets Lan Wangji drunk, so he spends half the night making sure Lan Wangji is okay. It’s a very sweet scene: the two open up to each other about their parents and it’s a very unifying moment for Wei Wuxian, finding out that Lan Wangji has suffered, just like him—that he is a human being with emotions, parents, that he’s experienced loss too. Wei Wuxian, up to this point, has dealt with his troubled past by clowning around and being generally optimistic, which is obviously not how Lan Wangji has handled his own past.

Lan Wangji probably remembers nothing of their conversation (or very little) but Wei Wuxian, who can hold his liquor a lot better, remembers all of it. It’s still fun watching them grow together, even after watching this so many times. Every time they experience something together, it just brings them closer. Really calls to mind themes of fate and destiny, though I like to believe that fate had nothing to do with them falling in love.

And here’s where Lan Wangji says he’s fine being alone, to which Wei Wuxian basically goes, “EH?!” in his mind, but instead calls him and his father boring. And then things get a little heavy, since Lan Wangji fully admits that he has no mother (in other words, his mother is dead). I assume (and Lan Xichen says later) that Lan Wangji would never have divulged this information while sober and it’s interesting that Wei Wuxian never lets on that he knows. It’s kind of a shame, really, that they never talk about it again. He only talks about it with Lan Xichen, but it would have been nice to see the two of them really talk about their parents.

In my mind, they slept in the same bed. Like, not that they did anything, because let’s be honest: they passed out. In my movie, Lan Wangji would have passed out again, and then Wei Wuxian would have put him in bed, and then passed out right next to him. It’s sort of strange that Wei Wuxian dragged himself across the room to sleep upright on the floor. He doesn’t seem like the type to do something like that, and why should he care if they share a bed? Especially given the fact that he’s also drunk.

It’s also super cute how Wei Wuxian is only like half-dressed (I say half, but it’s more like three quarters): his overdress is not pulled all the way on. His shock, then laughter here kind of indicates that he doesn’t remember much from the previous night, or maybe he forgot, and then remembered. The amusement is short-lived, though, since as soon as Lan Wangji wakes, up, he flips the fuck out and drags them all to get punished. I kind of wish we’d gotten to see that, although I do love the way they wove in the conversation between Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen.

His fucking face. He goes from, “Ah, Wei Wuxian, that rascal!” to “Wangji, WTF?!” I love that so much. And the thing that makes it funnier is that Xichen was the one to suggest that Wei Wuxian might be a good friend for his brother, and now it kind of ends up biting him in the ass, since he’s KIND OF a bad influence. Obviously, the next scene shows that this hasn’t really had a negative effect on Lan Wangji, since he is willing to accept punishment for something he had absolutely no control over, even when Wei Wuxian chastises him for doing so, and announces to Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen that, in fact, Lan Wangji was forced to drink the alcohol.

Which brings me to the punishment scene. I like this scene a lot too. I love Lan Wangji’s tenacity here, how he refuses to try and get out of the punishment even though he drank the alcohol against his will. I love how Wei Wuxian immediately comes to his defense to try and get Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen to stop the punishment for Lan Wangji. This is a good contrast to earlier scenes when Wei Wuxian would not admit to breaking the rules and was always trying to make an excuse for himself. Here he doesn’t do that at all. He fully admits to breaking the rules and to dragging Lan Wangji down with him. I know Lan Wangji is upset here, but I think he’s mostly upset with himself for allowing himself to break the rules (even though he really had no choice in the matter).

Another great Yunmeng siblings scene. Wei Wuxian complaining about being punished and Jiang Yanli just keeping it real: you shouldn’t have broken the rules. She’s such a good big sister, though, because while her speech has a touch of disapproval, she’s still very sympathetic to their injuries. I do feel like she’s a little harder on Jiang Cheng, because she knows he’s better than that and he has to be better than that if he’s going to be a clan leader someday. As usual, she’s softer with Wei Wuxian, who she just has an abundance of sympathy for. And I don’t see that as a bad quality at all—I think she and her father are willing to see past some of his behavior because overall he’s well-intentioned and, as is discussed later on, he’s not going to be clan leader. His job will be to support Jiang Cheng, not to run the place, and he’s a fierce friend and extremely loyal to the Jiang Clan.

But anyway, this scene is cute how both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng tell Jiang Yanli that they need more protein to heal and she should really add some lamb to the soup.

A few minutes ago, he could barely walk, and now he’s literally running down these steps. Maybe you don’t need that cold spring, after all.

RIP that other shoe that he originally kicked off right into the spring.

I love all of Lan Wangji’s expressions here and his responses to Wei Wuxian’s advances (I can only call them that, because he’s such a flirt here). You can totally read this scene that Wei Wuxian is just teasing and taking the piss with Lan Wangji, but I’m not going to, and I’m assuming, if you’re reading this, you aren’t either.

Wei Wuxian was delighted when he saw that Lan Wangji was also at the cold spring. He clearly went there for his wounds, but I think the wounds are all but completely forgotten as soon as he sees Lan Wangji.

I also love how shy Lan Wangji is, that as soon as he hears him coming, he immediately dresses again. He doesn’t leave, but he doesn’t want to be seen without his clothes on. That’s incredibly endearing to me that he is so modest. And then you have Wei Wuxian, who threatens to take off his clothes several times (although this is the only time he does it for reasons outside of teasing Lan Wangji). He does not care—he’s seemingly not modest about his appearance at all. I really do love all the contrast between these two characters—it’s not that they’re opposites of each other—it’s not that simple—but there is a lot of contrast which I think just keeps things interesting. I have nothing profound to say about it (or anything else, really), but I just find it really enjoyable to watch. And a side note, the contrast between Lan Wangji and Wang Yibo constantly leaves me in awe; it’s hard to believe that Yibo pulled off this character so well because he was such a goof on set.

Wwx: A lot of benefits come with being my friend.

Wwx: [immediately starts undressing]

I see what you did there, writers/directors.

But ironically, it turns out that a lot of not-so-beneficial things come from being his friend. Because Lan Wangji becomes so devoted to him, he ends up getting in a lot of trouble within his clan and without. Obviously he’d do it over and over if he had the choice, but the fact remains that Wei Wuxian becomes a pariah and, to a lesser extent, Lan Wangji was headed that way as well. Really, if Wei Wuxian hadn’t died, Lan Wangji might have ended up living with him in Yiling. That would have been quite interesting, actually.

I don’t care how many times I’ve seen this episode—this scene will kill me with its cuteness. Wei Wuxian so wants to be Lan Wangji’s friend here! He’s adorable! “Don’t leave me alone!” and “Come to Yunmeng, and I’ll pick lotus seeds for you!” and “There’s cute girls at Yunmeng!” Oh, wait, Lan Wangji doesn’t care about cute girls haha. I just love the change in the relationship. Wei Wuxian approves of and respects Lan Wangji and wants to be closer to him. It’s not just an interest or a fascination now—it’s something deeper. It’s the shared experience at Biling Lake, it’s the drunken confessions about their parents, it’s the 300 hits of the bastinado, and the secret cold spring pond where they can heal together.

Note how long it takes Lan Wangji to actually try to leave here. That’s telling enough on its own, how long Lan Wangji tolerates Wei Wuxian. He’s willing to put up with the jabbering and the endless chattering from Wei Wuxian. This is so much progress!

I have absolutely nothing to say here, other than that Yibo looks so fucking hot in this scene.

Because other than him and of course the headband, I find the stuff with Lan Yi to be kind of boring. I like her and all, but it’s just like, meh on all this Yin Iron stuff. I read about how this is just a big trope in cdrama, so it is what it is. Personally, I found the book to be compelling without all these shenanigans, but I understand that the written word doesn’t always translate well to the screen (especially when you are censoring the relationship between the two main characters).

Oh, and the rabbits are also fucking adorable. The more rabbits, the better.

Aaand now you’re married. Thanks, bye. Other episodes: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

#wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #cql #the untamed #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #jiang cheng #jiang yanli #lan xichen #lan qiren #wwx #lwj #cql rewatch

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its-chelisey-stuff · 4 years

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The Untamed, eps 41-50. Well, I didn’t need my heart anyway...

Warning! This a very long post, mostly about my feelings. LOL.

So, ep 41. Whoever thought going to the bad guy’s house was a good idea, needs the severe punishment of transcribing all 3000 rules from the Lan Clan. WWX got all the truth but no proof except his word, which of course, only his bf believes. At least that opened the way for that confession at the stairs, surrounded by enemies who were ready to kill them. Who knew such a scene could be so romantic? Also, who the f*ck needs an “I like you” or “I love you” when you can get the message across in a more original and swoonie way while also making it clear that you’re in your SO’s side no matter what. Even if it means you become a public enemy as well. Lan Zhan just got better and better each episode after the flashback ended (and even before that he had his moments of brilliance). That dude has set the bar high for all the boyfriends in the world. Very high.

God! Those looks!!

And then he woke up in LZ’s bed, who attended to his wounds, saw him topless and we finally learned about those scars on his back and why it took him 3 years to go look for WWX. And excuse me?! My heart. (Also, @dangermousie, whom I’m forever grateful for convincing me to watch this drama, even if it wasn’t her intention lol, brought to my attention the reason why LZ had that Wen iron branded scar on the exact same spot as WWX and I lost it. I really did. LZ is so extra and intense, I love it.) Learning about LZ’s parents and his childhood from his oldest bro, was such a moving, bittersweet and beautiful scene. Everything about the uncle’s punishments and how he tried to keep LZ away from WWX made so much sense. Hell, even the fact that LZ loves so intensely and all-consuming it’s clear. And also, it made the romance of the show all the more clear, which baffles me. I kept reading about these so called censors, but I don’t think those were monitoring the show, not really. Hurray for love conquering it all!

So the whole core thing was something I suspected since WWX said there was a way he could recover it for his brother. It was a bit obvious to me, but I was only 80% sure because I thought having no core meant having no “magic” at all (i.e. no use of talismans, or little paper dolls and certainly no controlling zombies or spirits) but I guess it was more related to combat abilites, like the sword thing? Please forgive me if I’ve got it all wrong. But of course I got my confirmation and it was still terribly sad. And the fact that Jiang Cheng acted the way he did, didn’t have his brother’s back and just gave up on him to the point of trying to kill him when he was already attempting suicide by falling off a cliff?

I know I’m in a minority here, but I dislike him too much now... Of course WWX doesn’t have any sort of bad feelings towards his brother because that dude is just the best at being good but Lan Zhan and myself certainly did and I’m pretty sure he’s just never going to let go of his hatred and contempt towards Jiang Cheng and the only reason he tolerates him is because of WWX and the sacrifice he did. I clapped so hard when he picked up the unconscious body of his bf and stepped out of Lotus Pier without a look to Jiang Cheng who was going trhough a well deserved breakdown patrocined by my boy Wen Ning.. I hope he spends every day agonizing over the fact that he has WWX’s core. Something he considered to be everything to be “special” and that his brother gave it away, to him, just because he loved him.

I’m just torn and can’t decide which one do I love more. Lan Zhan or WWX? The two of them have their bad moments, but they also have their good ones and their super duper good ones. But I guess I don’t have to choose and plus, I love them for different reasons. WWX was a moral compass that called the powerful ones out on their double standards. He was the best and most kind and giving person despite his many traumas and I do wish he’d have thought more highly of himself because he was just better than everyone else, lol. He was so selfless sometimes that I wanted him to be selfish once in a while.

And I loved Lan Zhan for being such a stone cold bitch to everyone, so bluntly honest, who gave zero f*ck to anyone who didn’t deserve a second of his time BUT when he fell for WWX he fell SO HARD it’s amazing he didn’t have any lasting marks... oh wait, he did have those. He didn’t exactly changed, but he did risked everything he valued and believen in because, well, WWX mattered more. And he loved with such an intensity (and a dosis of EXTRA) it surprised the feels out of me lmao. And let’s not forget he saved Yuan and raised him to become the most adorable and thoughtful teenager ever. He did an amazing job with that kid and put all the other parent figures to shame.

The last 3 eps were so fun because of the never ending monologues. Reminded me when, in books, villains just talk and talk and talk and everyone is forced to listen.

I never felt bad for Jin Guangyao. Sorry not sorry. He was a psycho murderer two faced manipulating bitch. Yes. His story, his upbringing and the fact that he was never respected is something that no one deserves. And he had the misfortune of being the son of a disgusting evil monster who died in super disturbing way, but the moment he started plotting with the evil, killing (bad or good) people and the fact that he married and had children with his sister, knowingly, was just too much. He just lost me completely. I can never feel bad for someone like that. He was a kind of villain that just gave me the biggest creeps and I think I can’t get past that to feel empathy for him. I’m so glad LZ cut off his arm, such a badass moment. I just feel bad that Xichen was deceived for so many years and, in the end, was sort of manipulated into killing someone he loved, even if he was a piece of trash. Xichen BEST BRO (only rivals with WWX) IN THE WORLD deserved better and I can’t believe he seriously considered to die besides that evil bitch!

Nie Huaisang? Wtf? I was so taken aback... I still don’t know what to think about him. Like, he really really surprised me and I guess he did avenge his brother but I just had this image of him that was completely different and lol I think I need to rewatch the drama to let his plan sink in and finally process it.

So, let’s talk about that ending. After the final battle, LZ and WWX managed to sneak out (how their young fans students even let them is a surprise to me) but Yuan and Wen Ning caught up to them and WWX finally learnt the truth about Yuan’s real identity. Such a sweet moment. WWX realized that his efforts in saving the last Wens were not in vain. Awww. I loved that whole scene and I loved that Wen Ning decided to take on his own journey. He deserves happiness, I hope he gets it. But I think I need to read the novel to have more of a closure with the Jiang Cheng thing and his nephew. I mean... it can’t end like that, right? I know things can never be the same but I hope he tries to mend his relationship with his brother. And that Jing Ling gets to know WWX for real.

I can’t help but think, that if things were different, if Yanli had survived and WWX somehow didn’t become no1 enemy, maybe he would’ve been Jing Ling’s favorite uncle.

But okay... that ending. The real one. I mean, wtf? I’ve never liked this faked goodbyes. Never. Be it movies or dramas. They make no sense. But well, I guess they thought, somehow, that the drama needed it so the ending was even more touching. Tell you what, if it was done for that final brilliant smile on Wuxian’s face when he sees Lan Zhan, then I guess I can forgive it.

The Untamed was a whole experience of another kind. A very good one and I’m glad I watched it. Before watching, I couldn’t understand why everyone was so crazy about it, even months after having finished it and now, I completely understand. I was crazy about it as well and it will remain one of my fave shows. The story, the characters, the romance, the moral questioning, the issues that adressed, everything was done perfectly. It took my heart.

Now excuse me while I curl up in a fetal position thinking about this drama and my feelings for it and watch fan edits of them on Youtube.

Note: By the way, does anyone know of any dramas where Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, separately of course, are the leads in a modern era drama? I tried looking it up, but it looks like Xiao Zhan has made only one modern drama set to air this year? And I thought WY had a drama, but has it aired? Do the chinese actors are like the korean ones in the sense that, when they become famous, they do projects every 2-3 years?

Thank you, The Untamed. It was truly a unique and wonderful experience. I loved this story so so so so much. And the romance was delicious.

#the untamed #xiao zhan #wang yibo #lan wangji #wei wuxian #lan zhan #wei ying #cdrama

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nutty1005 · 4 years

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Understanding an Actor’s energy using Xiao Zhan

Original Article: https://www.weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404487545764315185#_0 Original Author: 诗债累累 Editor and Image Source: 萝卜皮皮虾

What is the most important mission of an actor’s performance? That is crafting a role.

What is an actor’s energy? That is the ability to charm his audience with his performance and allow them to feel the emotions and meanings behind his actions, with the actor as the medium and the aim of crafting his role in mind. The clearer the emotions and meanings are in the delivery, the higher the energy.

In terms of performance arts, the display of energy is done externally via body movements and lines, and internally via emotions. To quote Hegel – “A scene full of conflicts can show the most perfect and profound development of beauty.”

By using the keywords “body movement” and “emotions”, and inserting them into a scene full of conflicts, we can split them them into two types of scenes – “smile emotions” and “cry emotions”. The interesting part about these representative performance is that there is tragedy in the smiles and there is hope in the tears.

Smile emotions:

Character entry

Return from Burial Grounds

Nevernight City

Snowy night outside of Jing Chamber

Cry emotions:

Rescue of Jiang Cheng in Lotus Pier

Rescue of Wen Clan in Qiongqi Lane

Never Night City

Reawakening after 16 years

Let us look at these one by one.

Smile Emotions

1. Character Entry – the high spirited young man

Besides just a good looking young man, Xiao Zhan also displayed the curiosity and the eagerness to break any rules in his performance. Based on the free spirited characterization, we can vaguely infer his parents’ character as well.

2. Return from Burial Grounds – Vengeance, major shift in personality and the blurring between good and evil

The situation and experience in the Burial Grounds were not clearly shown in the drama or the novel. Based on the descriptions in the later episodes, the general idea is that he went through hell and back, grasped a new power and learnt how to control this power. In understanding this new power, he went through various experimentation and created the Tiger Seal in order to focus the power and control it. This smile not only meant that he was able to take revenge, it also represented his unlimited talent in the demonic path, as well as his disdain at the society, self mockery.

3. Never Night City

The dark clouds in his background are similar to how Wei Wuxian was like then – confused as to whether he was good or evil, unable to see the light of hope. How did he get to such a state? How did get himself into trouble? He was so prideful that he would not lose control. The loss of his family caused him severe grief and indignation. For all that befell on him, there was no one he confide in, there was no one who can give him an answer. The smile/laugh spoke of all the despair he felt.

4. Snowy night outside of the Jing Chamber – Nothing matters anymore

In Wei Wuxian’s first lifetime, he fulfilled his promise of wanting to assist the weak and never to go against his conscience. He was unrivaled during the Sun Shoot Campaign and he saved the remaining innocent Wen clan members. When he was facing off against every other person during Never Night City, he saw the false righteousness of their treachery. If not for the death of his Shijie, he would not have despaired and taken his own life. The smile at this time, was in mockery of his life, but also contained his relief of finally being at peace.

Cry Emotions

1. Rescue of Jiang Cheng from Lotus Pier

At this moment, Wei Wuxian was at his weakest point, and he might also be looking at the last bit of kindness remaining in the world. Despite putting on a false front, his heart is weak and that is shown with that tear drop. All of his energy is sapped away, and he’s totally disheartened.

2. Rescue of Wen Clan in Qiongqi Lane

At this time, Wei Wuxian has not really thought clearly about how he intends to protect these people. He saw the world with the naivety of a young man, and refused to let go of his principles to join the society. He cried because he thought he was just bidding farewell to a friend who he thought had the same aim, but in fact, he was putting himself into a precarious situation.

3. Never Night City

From the confident young man at the Qiongqi Lane, who thought he could survive any traps laid by his enemies, to witnessing his brother-in-law’s death, to being encircled at Never Night City, to sinking into madness and arrogance. He had lost his faith in human values and his reason for existence the moment his Shijie had died for him. This tear, was release, was acceptance, was redemption. His tragedy could only be ended by him and him only.

4. Reawakening after 16 years – Surreal

He chose his own death, but his revival was not of his own design, nor did he know why he was brought back. The tear was for this helplessness.

There is this ancient fable about Zhuang Zi (who is a revered Taoism scholar) who dreamed that he was a butterfly. After he woke up, he forgot that he was Zhuang Zi. He thought, did he dream of becoming a butterfly, or did a butterfly dream of becoming him? This surreal state could be applied to Wei Wuxian.

“If only that was all a dream, how great would that be?” – this tear was also realisation.

Who would not want time to stop at when everyone was at their happiest? The world remains treacherous, and he still had to make a choice between the easy path and the right path, but he would rather go on the right path alone. Therefore, even if he was given another chance to live again, he will insist on the right path – this tear was also his hope.

#xiao zhan #sean xiao #xiaozhan #肖战

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adhd-wifi · 4 years

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Wei WuXian, Trauma, & ADHD (Part One???)

What’s up y’all I’m here with another ADHD-Wei Ying post, featuring his trauma this time. In case anyone is wondering, here’s the first one. Full disclosure, I have not formally studied psychology and mental illnesses, speaking only from my own experiences plus what I’ve researched to understand my own conditions and otherwise. Specifically, I will be talking about ADHD and its relationship with PTSD, but not as much about the latter as I know less about it.

As usual, this is long and rambly and contains a bunch of spoilers, so it’s under the cut we go. :P

== Line Break ==

Wei WuXian grew up with a strong sense of loyalty towards the Jiang Sect, especially Jiang FengMian, believing that he owed them for giving him a home, a happy life, and the chance to become a cultivator, but never truly considering himself a proper family member, mostly due to Yu ZiYuan as her abuse towards him often targeted the fact that he wasn’t a “true” son to her and JFM. She also often compared Jiang Cheng to him, and JFM never bothered to address that problem and continued to favour WWX. As a result, WWX, who didn’t see JFM’s flaws due to gratitude and being spoilt by the man, ended up blaming himself for YZY’s abuse of himself and JC, and this led to him growing up internalizing the idea that he was a “burden”.

This is a common response in children with ADHD, since ADHD causes difficulty with emotional control and children in general tend to blame themselves when they are put into such a situation, so an ADHD-WWX would take this to quite an extreme (more on that later). Of course, we must also remember that he had been alone on the streets as a child for months, and there are surely factors of trauma involved in there. But I’ll also get into that later when I talk about this trauma as a whole.

Moving on, after Lotus Pier fell, we know WWX’s sense of guilt and debt to the Jiang Sect increased severely, and then he went through three more extremely traumatic experiences, namely; the golden core transfer, being thrown into the Burial Mounds, then actively taking part in a literal war. This was basically the most traumatic period of his entire life, and he was incredibly driven by a terrifying desire for revenge against the Wen Sect, which JC encouraged.

WWX maintained his sanity (for the most part) throughout all this. Of course, we do see him change drastically, his happy and positive personality almost completely gone, but for the most part, he seems…”alright”. Now, it’s important to note that WWX not EXPLICITLY showing signs of trauma is in fact fairly common, as people suffering from PTSD do often repress things and pretend things are okay, so take this theory I have with a grain of salt.

That theory is because he’s “alright” because he’s used to the trauma symptoms already. To elaborate, ADHD and PTSD (assuming this is what he ended up with), actually have a lot of overlap, to the point that even today there are multiple cases of misdiagnosis between the two, especially in terms of childhood trauma. In my theory, I’m guessing that WWX honestly thinks “he’s fine, because the symptoms he’s experiencing are basically things he’s already lived with throughout his life, and they just “got worse” because he lost his golden core”.

Of course, this begs the question: “What if he just has PTSD (as a child) and not ADHD then? He does have trauma from being on the streets and abuse with the Jiangs.”

It’s certainly possible, and I will admit that part of the reason I so badly want to think that WWX has ADHD is because I have it and I relate to him, but it really isn’t the only reason. I do see signs of ADHD that aren’t inherently related to PTSD (they could be, as everyone reacts and responds to trauma differently, but it’s not likely). Said signs which I mostly copy-pasted from my previous ADHD Wei Ying post are:

Came up with a wild and unorthodox solution for a difficult question despite already knowing the “proper” solutions (Literally just his head being full of thoughts and ideas that aren’t necessarily anxiety-based)

His idea of organisation is a chaotic mess to everyone else (Inability to recognise mess rather than the inability to keep things organised)

Obsessed with spicy food because everything else is is too bland (Sensory issues)

Locked himself in a cave to work on inventions while forgetting to eat and sleep (Hyperfixative behaviour)

Somehow remembered a short, nameless tune Lan Zhan played for him once despite there being several factors that should’ve led to him forgetting, all because that tune was a special moment between him and Lan Zhan

Now, I want to talk about one specific trait that is a symptom of both ADHD and PTSD-related trauma responses, which is the fact that WWX reacts explosively when he’s angered, though he never reacts like that for his own sake. Let’s examine the two scenes when he punched Jin ZiXuan for insulting/hurting Jiang YanLi.

In the first incident at the Cloud Recesses, he punched JZX and fought him badly enough to get himself expelled and caused JFM and the Jin-Thot himself to directly speak to Lan QiRen about it, but WWX is shown to have gotten over it fairly quickly, even playing with ants during his punishment and being proud of punching the peacock. In the second incident, which we know as the war camp soup incident, WWX again punched JZX but instead of fighting him, he angrily leads JYL away while making it clear that he thinks JZX doesn’t deserve her. We also know that WWX remained angry for quite a bit afterwards.

While it’s obvious the second incident is much more severe than the first, with JYL actually present and brought to tears because of JZX, and also the stress factor of them being in the middle of war, it’s still also very obvious that WWX’s explosive anger response has very significantly worsened. The main difference here is the fact that remained angry afterwards, meaning he’s lingering on the incident longer, while he got over the first incident easily. This alone leads me to believe that the first incident was more of an explosive ADHD response, while the latter was the result of both trauma and ADHD.

So anyways, this post got longer than expected and I’m honestly still not done. For now, I’ll leave this post as “Basically why I think Wei WuXian has both ADHD and PTSD”, and MAYBE post a part two about the specifics and comparisons of the two conditions.

I would love to discuss this further with anyone who may have better knowledge of PTSD and trauma responses, because I do find Wei WuXian’s relationship with his mental health a really strong point of his character. So if you do had knowledge in that field, please let me know if I made any mistakes and feel free to ramble on right back at me.

Thanks for reading!

#wei wuxian #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei ying #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #the untamed #chen qing ling #cql #mdzs headcanons #my hcs #adhd wei ying #my posts #my ramblings #my metas #mental health metas

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farmerlan · 4 years

Text

Farmer Lan’s Rewatch Guide to The Untamed - Episode 13

And then I said I wasn’t flirting. You know, like a liar.

episode masterlist here

SPOILER WARNING!

[Wei Wuxian asks, again, if Lan Wangji’s leg is fine, and doesn’t take no for an answer. He offers to piggyback Lan Wangji, but is brusquely declined. He sends a message to Wen Qing to ask for a break - Wen Qing grants his wish, but Wen Chao cottons on and warns Wen Qing about her intentions.

Wang Lingjiao orders the cultivators to find the cave, and we also learn a little more about her background. They find the Xuanwu cave due to Wei Wuxian’s talisman. While walking inside, Mianmian slips and is caught by Jin Zixuan. Wen Chao lashes out at them with his whip, but Jin Zixuan blocks it for Mianmian. Wen Chao reminds them all of his superiority and then proceeds to kick Wei Wuxian down a cliff edge. He is helped up by Lan Wangji and the rest of the gang follow (lol Jin Zixuan says he’d rather be down here than watching the ‘mean couple insult us’ <- Netflix subs but mean is such a softer way of translating what he actually calls them, which is pretty close to ‘bastard couple’)]

Differences from the novel:

The novel went way faster on this part of the story because it was focused on the later wangxian part haha.

As discussed in Episode 12, Wei Wuxian never actually offers to piggyback Lan Wangji because he never got the chance to. :(

Wen Qing doesn’t appear in the Xuanwu arc at all.

Guys, guys, guys, listen. I know baby Wei Wuxian is a pro at using the talisman but - some rando found the cave entrance in the novel.

The Wen Chao scenes here don’t happen. Mianmian doesn’t slip, Wen Chao doesn’t go on a deranged rant, doesn’t whip or kick anyone (wow, he is almost pleasant in the novel). Jin Zixuan actually volunteers to go first, and they all reach the pond without any incident.

[They arrive at the Xuanwu pond and Wang Lingjiao volunteers Mianmian to be the human bait - Jin Zixuan stands up for her, but Wen Chao insists that he delivers Mianmian to him. When he hesitates, some Jin disciples attempt to make a move, but are foiled by Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan. A fight breaks out and Wei Wuxian recites Wen Mao’s teachings back to Wen Chao, who doesn’t recognize it at all and is made a fool by Wei Wuxian. They fight but right as Wen Zhuliu is about to come to his rescue, Wei Wuxian takes Wen Chao hostage with a sword to his neck.]

Differences from the novel:

This scene plays fairly close to the novel, including Wei Wuxian’s badass recitation of the Wen sect teachings back to Wen Chao. Some minor differences:

Both Jin Zixuan and Lan Wangji initially stand up to protect Mianmian upon hearing Wen Chao’s intention to capture her and use her as human bait.

It’s actually Su She who attempts to capture Mianmian but he is foiled by Lan Wangji. Although he doesn’t actually say anything, his eyes clearly convey his anger on behalf of the Lan sect for having such a traitorous disciple. For shame, Su She! You immoral scum!

[Right at that moment, the xuanwu appears, disturbed by the movements on his carapice. Wen Chao, dumbassTM that he is, causes a disturbance and everyone’s attention is turned to fighting the monster. In the meantime, Wang Lingjiao attempts to brand Mianmian’s face with the Wen sect’s branding iron, but is saved by Wei Wuxian. The Wen sect makes their escape and cuts off all of the ropes and blocks the exit.

As the cultivators try to figure out an alternative plan, Wei Wuxian hurries to comfort Mianmian, who is feeling guilty for causing Wei Wuxian’s injury. Meanwhile, Lan Wangji astutely observes that there must be another entrance, due to the presence of maple leaves in the cave without any maple trees.]

Differences from the novel:

Honestly, not a whole lot! The drama pretty much depicts what happens in the novel.

[They distract the tortoise to give Jiang Cheng a chance to investigate the underwater exit, and everyone proceeds to escape - but Mianmian trips and the scent of her blood agitates the tortoise. Lan Wangji decides to stay back to help Wei Wuxian distract it, but his leg is bitten in the process. They run into a small tunnel to hide until the tortoise loses interest.]

Differences from the novel:

Mianmian doesn’t trip, but the tortoise does get agitated by the scent of blood. In the novel, Su She attempts to shoot an arrow at the tortoise as he retreats, but misses and strikes Wei Wuxian’s arm instead (BRAVO!). Wei Wuxian doesn’t think before pulling out the arrow, but then immediately realizes what he has done as the scent of his blood fills the air. Lan Wangji pushes him aside right as the tortoise lunges for him and ends up getting severely bitten in the leg.

The tortoise then attempts to swallow Lan Wangji whole. Wei Wuxian stops this by literally clutching on to its teeth and forcing its jaws apart. As Lan Wangji falls into the water, so does Wei Wuxian, and he immediately carries Lan Wangji to shore and into the tunnels - so he does get to piggyback Lan Wangji after all! Hilariously, their dialogue at this point goes:

Lan Wangji: You?! (somewhat surprised that Wei Wuxian was able to manage all of that while being injured)

Wei Wuxian: Of course it’s me - are you pleasantly surprised?! :))))

Lan Wangji: What is pleasant about this? Put me down!

[Wei Wuxian rips off the sect ribbon from Lan Wangji’s forehead and uses it to make a tourniquet for him. He then proceeds to strip (and also attempts to strip Lan Wangji) as a tactic to shock Lan Wangji into spitting out the stale blood within his body. Upon realizing what he was trying to do, Lan Wangji thanks him, and then proceeds to press some of the medicine into Wei Wuxian’s own chest wound from the iron and tells him off for being brash.

Wei Wuxian plays it cool and says it’s fine for a man to have some scars, especially if it was for protecting a girl - a girl who will likely remember him forever. Lan Wangji says that since he knows she’ll remember him, then he should not go around teasing people he’s not serious about. Wei Wuxian accuses him of liking...Mianmian (WRONG target dude) and Lan Wangji’s like ...why am I stuck here talking to you.

Wei Wuxian plans their exit strategy, but Lan Wangji says there won’t be anyone from his sect coming since the Cloud Recesses went up in flames. Wei Wuxian is stunned into silence and asks after his family. Lan Wangji reveals that Lan Qiren is heavily injured and Lan Xichen has gone missing. Wei Wuxian offers him his outer robe, but sees that he is already asleep, and secretly worries about Jiang Cheng and Yunmeng.]

Differences from the novel:

This scene in particular plays out in greater detail in the novel. In general, Lan Wangji talks/interacts a LOT more in this scene in the novel. In the drama, he’s visibly emotional, but still fairly reserved. In the novel, even Wei Wuxian notices that he is in an unusually foul mood, and way more easily provoked than usual - he eventually finds out why.

The PUSHING. After the stripping and the blood vomiting happens, Wei Wuxian uses the herbs in Mianmian’s medicinal sachet instead of what he obtained from Wen Ning for Lan Wangji’s wounds. They have the conversation around Wei Wuxian’s general flirtatious attitude like they do in the drama, but Lan Wangji gets really mad as he exclaims “So you know that you’ll remain on her mind forever!” and literally shoves Wei Wuxian, who falls onto the ground.

The BANTER. In the novel, it’s gotten to the point where he is straight up squabbling with Wei Wuxian. Just look at this exchange right before he bites Wei Wuxian.

LWJ: Don’t tease other people if you aren’t serious about their feelings. Your casual words and actions may mean nothing to you, but it riles up others!

WWX: It’s not like I’m teasing you, so why are you getting riled up? Unless…

LWJ: Unless what?

WWX: Unless you like Mianmian!

-pause-

LWJ *coldly*: Please stop spouting nonsense.

WWX: Fine, I’ll start spouting onesense instead. (It’s a pun on the Chinese idiom, 胡说八道, which LWJ just used.)

LWJ: Is this entertaining for you, this kind of wordplay?

WWX: Super entertaining. Also, not only am I quick with words, I’m quick with my abilities too.

LWJ: ...Why am I sitting here talking crap with you???

The BITING. Upon concluding the above dialogue, Lan Wangji straight up sinks his teeth into the crook of Wei Wuxian elbow and refuses to let go. Like a dog. In fact, Wei Wuxian scolds him for acting like a dog and runs to the other side of the cave HA. And then he follows this up...by thanking Wei Wuxian, who at this point is just straight out flabbergasted at what is going on.

The CRYING. I mentioned previously in Ch 12 - Lan Wangji’s father was still alive and the sect leader at this time, and Lan Wangji reveals that he is fighting to stay alive. At this point, Wei Wuxian freezes, because although he knew Qingheng-Jun was injured, he wasn’t aware that it was that serious, so this was new information, and he finally understands why Lan Wangji has been acting out this whole time. When he turns to look at Lan Wangji again, he sees tear streaks on his face - and instantly feels afraid and powerless. He internally narrates that with men like Lan Wangji, they would probably only ever cry a handful of times in their lifetime, yet he didn’t know how to comfort him given the situation. So he just calls Lan Wangji’s name, but Lan Wangji tells him to shut up - and then adds, “Wei Ying, you really are an annoying person.” Ouch. Wei Wuxian feels infinitely worse that Lan Wangji has to deal with his presence on top of all this grief, and so only stays far away from him after offering him his undergarments to keep warm.(1)

Overall thoughts:

(1) This is his set of inner robes, the layer that goes against his skin. He thought about giving Lan Wangji his outer robes, but decided against it because it was filthy and he knew the Lan sect emphasized cleanliness. But also, nobody is missing the subtext here...

All in all, this is the definitive scene that we can all point to as the time when Lan Wangji.exe stopped functioning. I was re-reading the Xuanwu arc for the purpose of recapping Episode 13 and this realization hit me that like, holy shit, if I were to put my bets on when Lan Wangji started having/realizing his feelings for Wei Wuxian, this would be it.

Specifically, this is when Lan Wangji loses control. We all know how important control is to Lan Wangji - it’s part of the asceticism and self-governance expected of him as a Lan sect disciple, and he embodies this even more so than anyone else. Never a hair out of place, never a word that comes out of his mouth that hasn’t already been thought through. To allow himself to be provoked to this extent, to let someone see him so completely vulnerable - I know he was in a fragile state, but I don’t think he would have displayed this side of him to just anyone. After all, he gritted his teeth through the entire time he was at the Wen sect. So, I don’t know, Lan Zhan, why are you sitting around bullshitting with Wei Ying? Hmmmm?

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junglejelly · 4 years

Text

Prompt fill - Xichen Week Day 7(+11): Himbo/Seachen

(On AO3)

One day.

Jiang Cheng just wanted one day of peace and quiet, away from home, away from his responsibilities, away from his idiot brother and his nutcases of a mother and father. Just a few hours alone — him and a boat and nothing else.

Clearly, that was too much to ask for.

His solitary little fishing expedition had lasted exactly two hours, and then everything went to shit. This day off must have been more sorely needed than he thought, because he had fallen asleep right there in his little boat, in the middle of the river, fishing rod hanging out the side and face baking in the morning sun.

As a man who grew up his whole life on a lakeshore, he should have known better — and he did, he did, goddammit, it wasn’t his fault that his stupid body betrayed him and abandoned him to drift on the currents like an absolute amateur, dead to the world, until his boat literally crashed into a clump of rocks.

That was half an hour ago. And now…

Jiang Cheng stomped angrily through the underbrush, slapping away any branches that dared cross his path. The fact that the ground was made up of dead leaves and soft moss only served to make him angrier, as they cushioned his steps so as to render them almost silent and thus robbed him of his god-given right to express his rage via the soles of his boots. Which, incidentally, were damp and squishing with every step. As was the rest of him. Because, as if getting stranded in the middle of a forest tributary wasn’t embarrassing enough, he obviously also had to be pitched overboard at the impact, lose his oars, and get his boat hopelessly stuck on the rocks.

So there he was, half an hour later, trawling the woods in search of a branch thick and sturdy enough to act as a lever and hope it would be sufficient to lift the (thankfully undamaged) boat out of its rocky trap.

He was having no luck so far, though. No likely candidates were presenting themselves on the ground, and any branches he had tried to pry loose from a living tree had resisted his attempts.

His stomach growled.

Well, great. It must be nearing midday. Good thing he’d thought to set up his net before leaving the scene of the disaster. Maybe, he if was lucky, some fish would —

Just then, a twig slapped him in the face, making him yelp and jump back in surprise.

That’s it, he thought vengefully, spitting out a mouthful of leaves, his pulse rocketing up in indescribable fury. Fuck this. FUCK it. I am DONE.

“Fine. FINE! Keep your shitty branches!” he shrilled into the forest.

The forest did not answer.

He whirled around and stomped (soundlessly, goddammit) back the way he came.

As he neared the bank again, a splashing sound made him quicken his footsteps. Finally, some good fortune! Judging from the noise, he definitely wasn’t going to go hungry in the next few hours.

Actually, it was a bit strange that he could hear it so clearly from all the way over here. Just how big was this fish, exactly?!

He stepped out of the underbrush.

… And stared. That’s it, he thought. I’ve finally lost it. Finally gone off the deep end. It had to happen eventually, right?

In front of him, the mermaid kept struggling.

After a few moments, when Jiang Cheng was sure this hallucination wasn’t going to suddenly disappear, he stepped forward and called out.

“Hey. You there. You, uh… you need a hand?”

The mermaid immediately flailed upright (well… the parts of it that weren’t a giant fish tail, holy fucking shit, anyway) and its eyes snapped to Jiang Cheng’s.

It looked… male? Probably? Hard to tell, with all that hair sticking everywhere and all those… well. Fins. And scales. (Scales! What the fuck!)

Jiang Cheng was spared from his imminent meltdown when the mermaid’s eyes creased in a smile and he (it? did mermaids even have genders?) exhaled in relief. “Oh, would you? I seem to have gotten myself in quite the predicament…”

Yep, definitely male, going by that voice. Jiang Cheng stared some more. Well, if this guy was going to act so chill, who was he to do otherwise?

“Right. Sure. Let me just… Hang on.”

Feeling like he was having an out-of-body experience, Jiang Cheng unsheathed his knife from his belt and approached, before a thought struck him and he stopped abruptly.

“Wait.” The mermaid looked at him questioningly. “Is this a trap? Are you gonna eat me?”

The creature tilted his head. “...Eat you?”

“Or drown me, or abduct me, or whatever,” Jiang Cheng amended hurriedly. Okay, that was dumb, nobody had ever heard of a mermaid eating its victims, but give him a break, he was under a lot of pressure here. He just said the first thing that popped into his mind!

Either way, the mermaid seemed offended. “Drown you? I would never!” He splashed his tail agitatedly. “We’re not savages, you know!”

“Well, forgive me for assuming,” Jiang Cheng muttered. “Never met a fucking mermaid before.”

“Mer, actually,” the mermaid — mer — corrected, politely but firmly. “Merman, if you must.”

“...Right,” Jiang Cheng managed, before he stepped closer (close enough to touch, and to see that tail right there in front of this face, what was his life) and attacked the thick netting with his knife.

It was, sadly, unsalvageable. Jiang Cheng didn’t even want to know how the… merman… had managed to get himself that badly tangled up into it, though it did use to be a good, strong fishing net, wide enough to get a generous catch in one go, if luck was in your favor. As it was, though, it was about to be turned into a pile of frayed rope bits. He could kiss his much-anticipated lunch goodbye, Jiang Cheng thought morosely.

“I was just trying to free the fish inside,” the merman said then, apparently feeling the need to explain himself and unknowingly adding insult to injury. “The poor things had gotten themselves trapped, I just couldn’t leave them that way.”

“Yeah, no, obviously,” Jiang Cheng forced out. “Wouldn’t want them to remain trapped in a fishing net, in case any old fisherman happening nearby could just lift them out and eat them for lunch, huh? No way, that’d be ridiculous,” he added, perhaps a little more hysterically than necessary.

“...”

Jiang Cheng didn’t look up, forcefully focusing on his task, but he could still feel the moment when the penny dropped and the merman gasped in realization.

“Oh! Oh no! Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t — I really… I simply thought —”

Obviously distressed, the merman continued to babble and wring his hands for a while while Jiang Cheng worked on the last few threads digging into his tail.

“Oh, how awful of me! How thoughtless! Of course it was your net, I didn’t realize…” He trailed off for a moment, then seemed to reach a conclusion. “I must make amends,” he declared. “I shall catch you some fish. Bigger fish. Better fish,” he added, nodding to himself.

Jiang Cheng snorted. “Isn’t that, like, fratricide for you?”

The merman looked miffed, but, considering the circumstances, he must have felt like he owed it to Jiang Cheng to tone down the disapproval. “Of course not. We do eat fish, you know.”

“You do? Huh. Well, either way, don’t bother. I don’t think I could even stomach it, at this point,” he replied dejectedly. “I just wanna go home. And then maybe sleep for the next three weeks and hope that’s enough to forget this horrible, horrible day.”

This appeared to distress the merman. “Truly? Then you must allow me to repay you in another way. Anything you wish, that I am able to offer you. Name it, and it is yours.”

Jiang Cheng laughed ruefully. “Can you magically lift my boat from those rocks?”

He couldn’t. There was no way. That boat was well and truly wedged in there, stuck in between jagged boulders and buried in a tangle of driftwood.

“Oh! Of course! I didn’t see it there,” the merman replied happily.

...What? Jiang Cheng checked again, to see if the boat had moved from its previous immovable position.

Nope. Still there.

“Listen,” he started doubtfully, “thanks for offering, but I don’t think anyone can move that thing. I’ll probably have to come back with a few people,” he sighed.

“Nonsense,” the merman smiled. “Just get me out of here, and we’ll have it down in a flash.”

Jiang Cheng still doubted that, but whatever. No skin off his back if the merman tried and failed to rescue his stupid boat from the stupid rocks.

“You’re pretty trusting for a mermaid — sorry, merman — aren’t you?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? Our peoples have coexisted peacefully for a very long time, you know. Just because meetings between us are rare, does not mean I should feel threatened by your presence.” With a wide grin, he continued, “Quite the opposite, in fact — I am delighted to have made your acquaintance! Circumstances notwithstanding, of course.”

Jiang Cheng considered that. “You know, I thought Wei Wuxian was shitting me all this time, but…” He observed the merman critically. The pretty face, the silky hair held back by a glistening white ribbon… “Are you… are you that Lan Zhan guy, by any chance?”

The merman perked up. “Wangji? You know my brother?”

“He’s your brother?” Well then. Small world, huh. “I don’t know him, but my brother won’t shut up about him.”

“Really?” The merman clearly found this piece of information fascinating. “Where do they know each other from? Do you know?”

“Sorry, no clue. Honestly, I thought your brother didn’t even exist until a second ago. All I know is that my idiot of a brother claimed to have met a mermaid a few years ago and hasn’t shut up about him since.”

“Merman,” the other corrected again, absently. He seemed to be absorbed by the revelation.

“So?”

The merman snapped to attention again. “Hm?”

“Your name,” Jiang Chengs reminded him pointedly.

“Oh!” He drew himself straighter at that, a sunny smile settling on his features. “My name, yes. My name is Lan Xichen. A pleasure to meet you.” He dipped his head.

Lan Xichen. How… mundane. Boring, even. It was almost offensive, that such an exotic creature could have such an utterly normal name.

The creature in question kept beaming, completely unaware of Jiang Cheng’s uncharitable inner monologue.

Jiang Cheng blinked, slightly perturbed by the (frankly alarming) degree of cheeriness being displayed by the man — Lan Xichen, he reminded himself — while he was still restrained and a total stranger was brandishing a knife near his delicate fish parts.

Whatever. This guy probably wouldn’t live past thirty, with survival instincts like those, but that wasn’t his problem.

“Right. Well, I’m Jiang Cheng.”

At that point, Jiang Cheng’s intense sawing efforts finally paid off, and the last knot fell loose. He carefully picked at the threads digging into the fragile-looking membrane until every last scrap of rope fell away. He had half a second to survey his work — some areas looked a bit bruised, but at least no blood had been drawn — before Lan Xichen retracted his tail out of reach and under the surface. Jiang Cheng thought he could see him swish his tail a few times, cautiously testing it against the current, checking it for injuries. The river water was clean and crystalline there, and the sun danced off the merman’s light, silvery blue scales in undulating patterns.

When Lan Xichen refocused on Jiang Cheng, his smile was blinding. “Thank you! You have my gratitude, and that of the Lan clan.”

“...Yeah,” Jiang Cheng managed, dazed by the combination of glittering scales and beaming smile.

“Well! Let’s get to it, then,” the merman said cheerfully, already swimming away. Jiang Cheng stared.

Now that the urgency was gone, he was struck all over again by how utterly bonkers the whole encounter was. Would people back home even believe him, if he told them about this? Well, Wei Wuxian would, at least, he thought manically, gawking at the delicate fins rippling all along the merman’s tail as he swam away.

Wait. Away? Was he leaving already?

He ripped himself out of his trance just as the merman broke the surface again, long hair plastered to his neck and shoulders, and hoisted himself up on a boulder near the stranded boat.

He hummed thoughtfully, prodding at the thing and testing his grip.

“Wait,” Jiang Cheng started, “be careful, don’t —”

Too late. Lan Xichen gave a mighty heave, and with a grunt, the boat slid free of the rocks.

“— ...hurt yourself,” Jiang Cheng finished lamely, once again reduced to staring idiotically as his boat rocked slightly from the momentum, scraped but unharmed.

Somewhere on his periphery, Lan Xichen laughed brightly. “See? I told you it wouldn’t be an issue.”

“You sure did,” Jiang Cheng replied automatically, still not sure if he should believe his eyes. What, did merpeople have super-strength, or something? Or was he just that dumb, and the damn thing was never actually stuck in the first place?

Oblivious to his distress, the merman slipped back into the water soundlessly and took it upon himself to steer the boat toward the shore where Jiang Cheng was still kneeling like a useless moron.

When it bumped against the grassy bank, Jiang Cheng unfolded himself enough to find the anchor and tie it to a nearby sapling — not exactly secure, but good enough for the few minutes it would take for him to depart. Probably. Hopefully.

“Thanks,” he threw at Lan Xichen. The words felt inadequate, but he wasn’t sure what else he could say.

The merman watched as Jiang Cheng bent to retrieve the sad remains of the fishing net. It was completely ruined, but hey, he wasn’t about to leave it here and litter the woods like a barbarian. He threw the tangled mess into the boat, where it flopped with a pathetic, wet thunk.

A low whine drew his gaze toward Lan Xichen. “I’m sorry,” the merman said in a tortured voice, looking for all the world like a kicked puppy — and wasn’t that a feat, Jiang Cheng thought, considering he was a fucking fish. “I’m so sorry.”

“Are you seriously apologizing to me right now? For a stupid fishing net?” He demanded. “You could have stayed stuck and literally died.”

The merman pouted. “Still.”

“I give up,” Jiang Cheng signed, stepping into the boat to investigate the damage.

No holes, no water accumulated at the bottom, not even any scratches bigger than a hand-span. A miracle, really. Or rather, just compensation for all the rotten luck, Jiang Cheng thought grumpily. As if to prove him right, he also remembered — the oars. Those were still gone. Ugh. Seriously, fuck his life.

As he walked around, he caught the merman tracking his lower body with interest. His legs, he supposed — must look pretty weird to him, really. “So, have you ever actually met another human before?”

“Not up close, no,” Lan Xichen hummed.

“And yet you let me approach you without a single misgiving.”

“Well… yes?”

Jiang Cheng couldn’t help it — he dropped his face into his hands. “Oh my god,” he muttered. “You actually have zero sense of self-preservation.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t ‘hey’ me, you weirdo! Seriously, what the fuck! How are you still alive? How old are you, even?”

“Twenty-nine,” the merman grumbled, sinking lower into the water until his nose barely peeked out over the surface, but otherwise taking the chastisement without protest. Something told Jiang Cheng that this must not be his first time being admonished for this particular reason.

“Twenty-nine! That’s older than I am!” (Barely by two or three years, but Lan Xichen didn’t need to know that…) “Even I know better than to be so trusting, and I’m not the one from a rare species and with a tail so gorgeous people would probably kill to get their hands on it!”

Lan Xichen popped back up. “You think my tail is gorgeous?”

“...!” Jiang Cheng was pretty sure he was about to burst a blood vessel somewhere in his brain. “That is so not the point! Are you kidding me right now? That’s your takeaway from everything I just said?!”

“You think my tail is gorgeous,” Lan Xichen repeated, his lips stretching into a grin so wide Jiang Cheng wouldn’t have hesitated to call it shit-eating on any other face. Not this one, though. It was much too pretty and delicate. “You like my tail,” he said again, looking much too pleased with himself, and then — “Thank you. I like your legs, too. They’re quite nice.”

Jiang Cheng spluttered. “You —!”

The merman laughed, a tinkling, delighted sound, before diving underneath the surface and into a series of gleeful rolls and spins and splashes.

Okay, Jiang Cheng thought resignedly, that’s fucking adorable.

He braced himself for Lan Xichen coming back up, but despite that, he was still slightly stunned by the sheer brilliance of the merman’s smile when he reemerged.

“I like you,” the merman said without preamble, effectively shocking Jiang Cheng into a stupefied stillness and thoroughly frying his brain, all in one fell swoop. “Can we meet again?”

“I — I, I, uh...” Jiang Cheng stuttered.

Lan Xichen just hooked his fingers over the lip of the boat and let himself float there, smiling patiently, his eyes shining with a gentle mirth. Golden, Jiang Cheng thought distractedly. They’re golden. Huh. He hadn’t even noticed that. How did he miss that? And since when was gold even a real eye color that actually existed?

“Jiang Cheng?” the merman prompted gently.

“What?” Jiang Cheng startled. “Yes? I mean… What?”

“Can I see you again?” he asked once more, hopefully.

“...”

Jiang Cheng was pretty sure he was dreaming, at this point — but in that case, he figured, might as well go all the way, huh? What could it hurt? Nothing, that’s what.

“...Sure. Yes. We can… do that. If you want.”

Lan Xichen’s soft smile grew into a full-blown grin again, his eyes almost disappearing into happy creases.

“But,” Jiang Cheng continued, trying to distract himself from the sight, “for that to happen, I’m going to need to go home first. Which is not looking likely right now,” he finished ruefully.

The merman tilted his head. “Why is that? Is there something wrong with your boat?” He drew himself from the edge and gave the boat an appraising look — not that he was likely to know anything about them, Jiang Cheng surmised. Silly fish.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he sighed, “except that it doesn’t have any oars. They got lost when I hit the rocks earlier. Probably floating somewhere far away downstream.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well…” Lan Xichen hedged.

Jiang Cheng met his gaze. “What? You got another miracle up your sleeve?”

“Not a miracle, but…” Lan Xichen diverted his glance sideways, towards a fallen tree resting on the bank. Its long-dead branches hung halfway into the water, gnarled and sturdy against the current. “Would one of these do?”

“Already tried those,” Jiang Cheng replied. “Don’t waste your time. They’re way, way too thick, no one could possibly —”

— aaand there he went again. Oh well, Jiang Cheng decided, settling in for the show. Maybe at least this way he could get revenge for earlier. He would sit there and point and laugh at Lan Xichen’s attempts, because there was no way in hell —

CRAAAAACK!

Jiang Cheng knew his eyes were bugging out of his head, okay, he knew, but listen. Listen. This time, he was positive he couldn’t have made a mistake, like he might have with the boat. This time, the branches were obviously enormous and obviously very, very securely attached to their trunk. He had checked. He had gone and touched those branches with his own two hands, and he knew —

Lan Xichen came back then, and lifted the thing out of the water to present it for his appraisal. A huge fucking tree limb, the straightest and smoothest he could probably find on that dead tree, which he had just snapped clean off with his bare fucking hands. And was now bringing to Jiang Cheng, like a proud puppy with a ridiculously oversized stick. Seriously. Seriously.

Jiang Cheng wanted to scream.

Instead, he very carefully grabbed the branch to deposit it inside the boat. Damn, but that thing was huge.

“So, is this one enough, or do you need anoth—”

“Shut up.”

Lan Xichen’s mouth snapped shut.

Jiang Cheng held out his hand imperiously. “Give me your arm.”

The merman raised wide eyes toward Jiang Cheng, a confused little frown pulling at his lips. “What —”

“I said,” Jiang Cheng growled, “give. Me. Your. Arm.” When the merman just kept staring at him uncertainly, he burst out, “Oh my god, you ridiculous dolphin, just come here already!”

Apparently deciding to trust Jiang Cheng despite his obvious bout of temporary insanity, Lan Xichen slowly approached and extended one of his arms towards him. With a wary look, he mumbled, “Dolphins aren’t even —”

“Shut up! I know they’re not,” Jiang Cheng snapped. With a tug, Lan Xichen’s arm was promptly brought over the edge of the boat for closer inspection, forcing the merman to grab the rim with his other hand for balance. He took the rough treatment without complaint, looking perplexed.

Jianf Cheng started with his hand, working his way up to the shoulder progressively. He carefully examined the webbed fingers (hadn’t noticed that, either), then poked and prodded at the wrist (all normal, same rotation as a human’s), the forearm (pale and muscular), the elbow (yup, just a regular elbow), the upper arm… Hm. Well, outside of it being pretty thickly toned, he couldn’t find anything. Why couldn’t he find anything? There was clearly something funky going on with this man’s arms, because no one, human or merman, should be able to win a contest with a boulder or rip an entire trunk off of a —

The merman cleared his throat.

It was then that Jiang Cheng realized with horror that he’d been… he’d been groping the poor man for several minutes, holding him in place and squeezing his biceps and just generally pawing at him like —

He dropped the limb immediately, feeling his face heat up with a vengeance and trying to hide it behind a scowl. “What?” he barked. “Don’t look at me like that! You’re the one who’s freaky!”

Unruffled, Lan Xichen offered, “Perhaps if you told me what you were looking for…?”

Jiang Cheng gaped. “Well, your —!” He paused, then flailed in the general direction of the fallen tree. “That thing you did! Twice! With the tree, and the… the rocks!”

“Ah,” the merman nodded in dawning comprehension. “Yes. It has been said that we of the Lan family have been blessed with unusual arm strength.”

“Excuse me, ‘unusual’? More like fucking monstrous, let’s be honest here — but I, uh, mean that in the best way, of course,” he amended hurriedly when Lan Xichen sent him a stricken look.

The merman lowered his gaze, lips wobbling.

Ah, shit. Goddammit, Jiang Cheng had really stepped in it this time. Calling a merman a monster, not even two seconds after molesting him, and after he’d been so disgustingly nice to him, too? Pathetic. Disgraceful. Despicable.

“Come on, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry,” he tried.

A tiny sniff, barely audible behind the curtain of hair that fell before the merman’s bowed face.

Oh, no. “Lan Xichen, please,” Jiang Cheng coaxed, quickly getting desperate. “I’m sorry, I promise that’s not… It’s not what I…” He scrubbed his hands over his face “Ugh! I don’t know what to say,” he lamented.

Lan Xichen peeked at him shyly from behind his sleek tresses. “Maybe if you gave me another compliment…?”

Jiang Cheng opened his mouth, the words already halfway out, before he snapped it shut and squinted suspiciously at the merman.

He braced his hands on the edge of the boat and leaned even closer.

There! That glimmer in his eye, that was —!

“Lan Xichen! Are you screwing with me right now?!”

But the merman was incapable of answering, already howling with laughter, his façade collapsing in less than an instant. Jiang Cheng stared. Lan Xichen’s laugh was loud and uncontrolled, little snorts slipping out now and then, though he tried to hide them behind his slightly webbed hands — all for naught, as the crinkle in his eyes betrayed his glee with no hope of concealment.

Jiang Cheng was mesmerized. As Lan Xichen’s laughter settled into quieter giggles, he felt something take flight in his heart, or in his gut, or maybe in some other, equally ridiculous internal organ with asinine romantic connotations.

Whatever.

He felt like he should be mad — the little shit had emotionally manipulated him just now, and so skillfully too! He’d bought into his charade hook, line and sinker (ha!) — but no. He felt… proud, maybe? Fond, definitely. And awed, maybe, by this creature, by this meeting, by the improbable set or circumstances that had led to it.

He shook his head, his lips tugging up in a helpless smile, never taking his eyes off the merman now clinging to his boat once more.

“Lan Xichen,” he breathed, almost reverently, “you are something else.”

When the merman reached for his hand, he didn’t offer any resistance (turnabout was fair play, after all). Lan Xichen laced their fingers together over the edge of the boat, right in the middle, like a symbol. “But you mean that in the best way, of course,” he stated solemnly, his voice wobbling with yet more laughter.

Jiang Cheng couldn’t help the incredulous laugh that escaped him then, or the grin that settled over his face. He took a moment to marvel at that, and squeezed the hand clutching his. “Of course. The very best.”

#xichenweek2020 #mdzs fic #my fic #seachen #xicheng

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ouyangzizhensdad · 4 years

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On the importance of MianMian: musings on the differences between the novel and CQL (PART 2/2)

If you haven’t already, please read through part one first, otherwise this will probably not be very cohesive or comprehensible. There is also some bonus meta because I keep having thoughts about MianMian.

In part one, I contrasted MianMian’s first appearance in the novel and the web series in order to show how MianMian’s characterisation and position within her society were established quite differently in both works. In this post, I will explore the domino effect of those adaptation choices, as well as consider how the two subsequent appearances of MianMian in the novel got translated into a visual format in CQL. Through this exercise, my goal is not only to illuminate the depth and significance of this minor character in the novel, but also to argue that the way her scenes were adapted in CQL ultimately reduced the impact of the character and excised many of the nuances put into her portrayal despite increasing her presence in the work.

(although kudos to CQL for casting Ann Wang because I do not get tired of looking at her face: look at that smile 😳)

The Servant’s Daughter Valued Jin Cultivator Standing up to a Room of Powerful Cultivators

In the novel, we meet MianMian for a second time after the Sunshot campaign has ended. Cultivators from the main sects and allied sects (including some who used to be loyal to the Wens!) are discussing at Jinlintai Wei Wuxian’s actions after he protected the Wens and set up residence on Mass Grave Hill. By that time, it appears her position in her sect, and even her sect’s position, has grown. We can speculate as to why (my personal take is that MianMian proved herself during the war and that her sect is one of the sect who pledged loyalty to the Jin and gained influence as a result). What is important is that she goes from someone who is so inconsequential she might have not even have been a disciple yet when we met her to someone who stands next to a sect leader (who we can safely assume in this context to be her sect leader). A lot is hinted about her character and what she experienced since we last saw her through that small and innocuous detail.

Suddenly, a careful voice interjected, “It’s not killing indiscriminately, is it?”

Lan Wangji seemed to have entered a realm of zen that blocked all of his senses. Hearing this, however, he moved, looking over. The one who spoke was a young woman with a fair face, standing beside one of the sect leaders.

I will not repeat here the entirety of her speech, which highlights the hypocrisy and the bad faith of the sects, and particularly the Jin sect’s unwillingness to shoulder any blame for their deplorable treatment of the Wens. Instead, I find important to highlight how the other cultivators present react to MianMian based on her positionality.

First, MianMian’s opinions are undercut by the people present due to the fact that she is a woman. Her motivations for speaking out are reduced to the irrational ramblings of a maiden in love.

“You can stop arguing,” someone sneered suddenly. “We don’t want to hear the comments of someone who has other motives.”

The woman’s face flushed.

“Explain things,” she said, raising her voice. “What do you mean, that I have other motives?”

“There’s no need for me to say anything. You know deep down and we know too. You fell for him back in the cave of the Xuanwu just because he flirted with you? You’re still arguing for him, calling white black no matter how irrational it is. Ha, women will always be women.”

The incident of Wei Wuxian saving a damsel in distress in the cave of the Xuanwu was indeed once a topic of conversation. Thus, many people realized immediately that this young woman was ‘MianMian’.

At once, somebody murmured, “So that’s why. Explains how she’s so desperate as to speak up for Wei Wuxian…”

“Irrational?” she fumed. “Calling white black? I’m just being considerate as it stands. What does it have to do with the fact that I’m a woman? You can’t be rational with me so you’re attacking me with other things?”

Then, when members of her own sect disparage her for speaking up, they suggest that her place in the discussion, in this palace of gilded power and privilege, is ultimately illegitimate or at the very least incredibly easy to render illegitimate.

“Stop wasting your time on her. That this kind of person actually belongs to our sect, that she was even able to find her way into the Golden Pavilion; I feel ashamed standing alongside her.

Many of those who spoke against her were from the same sect.

In this situation, not even her fellow sect members are willing to come to her defense or to give her the benefit of the doubt; she is to be shamed and separated from them, lest her actions reflect badly on their own standing.

MianMian’s choice to leave her sect behind is meaningful because she is not privileged. She does not have anyone powerful in her corner to back her up. She does not have many options; people act like she should be glad to even have made it this far, and we can infer that she only achieved her current position due to her skills and hard work. It is also meaningful because she is making that choice while knowing that she’s giving up on the privileges of the social position that she has worked to achieve. The fact that she is giving up on something big is highlighted by the reactions of many cultivators after her departure, who think she will come crawling back to find once more the security and privilege of the position she left behind.

Saying nothing, MianMian turned around and left. A while later, someone laughed. “If you’re taking it off, then don’t put it on again, if you’re so capable!”

“Who does she think she is… leaving as she pleases? Who cares? What is she trying to prove?”

Soon, some began to agree, “Women will always be women. They quit just after you say a few harsh words. She’ll definitely come back on her own, a couple of days later.”

“There’s no doubt. After all, she finally managed to turn from the daughter of a servant to a disciple, haha…”

Beyond what it means for her characterisation and the themes explored in the novel, this moment is significant because there are clear parallels between how she is treated in that moment and how WWX is talked about for protecting the Wen remnants and, later, for ‘deserting’ the Jiang sect. In fact, just before MianMian speaks out, sect leaders call WWX a “servant” and the “son of a servant” when underlying the ‘nerve’ of his ‘arrogance’ toward the sects with his actions.

One of the sect leaders added, “To be honest, I’ve wanted to say this since a long time ago. Although Wei Wuxian did a few things during the Sunshot Campaign, there are many guest cultivators who did more than him. I’ve never seen anyone as full of themselves as him. Excuse my bluntness, but he’s the son of a servant. How could the son of a servant be so arrogant?”

These passages are also reminiscent of the way WWX is discussed by cultivators celebrating his death in the prologue:

“That’s right, good riddance! If the YunmengJiang sect had not adopted him, educated him—this Wei Ying would have been a mediocre scoundrel all his life, nothing but riffraff…… what else could he be! The former head of the Jiang clan treated him as his own son, but what a son! [...]”

“I can’t believe Jiang Cheng really let this arrogant manservant live for so long. If it were me, when this Wei first defected, I wouldn’t have just stabbed him; I’d have cleaned house straight away. Then he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to commit all those deranged acts later. When it comes to these sorts of people, how can you even take sentiments like ‘same clan’, ‘same sect’, or ‘childhood loyalty’ into consideration?”

Due to the circumstances of their birth, even people who manage to achieve a higher position in society hold a tenuous grasp on the power and respect they have gained: their legitimacy is fraught. And even if they play the game right, the lines of legitimate belonging are always ready to be renegotiated by those in power. Despite the “few things” he did during the Sunshot Campaign that aligned with the interest of the sects, and despite being raised among the gentry in the Jiang sect and being perceived as a gongzi, WWX remains in the imaginary of the cultivators who see themselves as the legitimate holders of power as someone who needs to “remember his place”, someone who should be grateful and loyal as he has been “allowed” to raise in influence and be treated well in society despite being the son of a servant. And so when he stands against the interests of the sects, he’s not just betraying them: he betraying the social order which gives them legitimacy. This is directly tied to MianMian’s treatment in this scene. In the novel, MianMian is not only shamed and dismissed because she speaks out against the sects: it is also, if not primarily, because she did not, in the process, “remember her place”.

The scene as it is presented in the novel thus goes out of its way to set up a clear parallel between WWX and MianMian, not only in regards to their righteousness, but also in regards to how they are perceived and treated for being the children of servants. It also takes pain to underline the unfair treatment of women in that society. Moreover, if we’re only considering MianMian’s characterisation, it says a lot to see her have reached this level of importance in her sect despite her circumstances and then for her to let it all go.

In CQL? You’ve probably guessed it; all of these nuances are evacuated from the text. On top of the fact that MianMian continues to be established as a valued member of the Jin sect, the scene is cut short and a lot of the censure sent her way is excised. There are no mentions of her ‘having made her way’ into the room of powerful people who are allowed have an opinion on the state of the world. No mentions of her low social background and no mocking that she will crawl back to her sect after realising she can’t make it into the world without their influence and support. No dismissal of her based on the fact that she is a woman, or suggestions that she is standing up for the YLLZ only because she is enamoured with him. The scene is turned into a pale shadow of its original.

Instead of these elements, we do get a gasp from JZX (which becomes a dangling plot thread because he does not stand up for her nor does he reach out for her even though she’s supposed to be his good friend, nor do we see him being conflicted about being unable to beyond his gasp) and MianMian telling JGS that she is leaving his sect, which I’ll admit is pretty baller. But it does not even come close to having the significance and thematic implications of the scene as presented in the novel. CQL!MianMian stands up against the organized smear campaign against WWX and the sects’ unwillingness to accept their faults, and is only disregarded for having spoken against them: not because of who she was while she was raising doubts about their evaluation of the right and wrong. And that is significant, because it undercuts the discussions the novel explores through so many other characters about the impacts of being considered inferior by others.

The Travelling Rogue Cultivator who Stayed Home

Finally, in the novel, we meet MianMian once more when her daughter, Xiao MianMian, stumbles upon something she should not have seen while accompanying her parents on a night-hunt. The reason their paths cross is that, just like Wangxian, MianMian feels compelled to pursue night-hunts other cultivators disregard for their lack of glory in order to help the common people. This is her life mission as a travelling rogue cultivator: differently put, she goes where the chaos is. This set-up serves to highlight that MianMian and Wangxian are like-minded and share the same definition of what it means to be ‘Righteous’.

He asked, “Did you come here to night-hunt as well?”

Luo Qingyang nodded, “Yes. I heard spirits are haunting a nameless graveyard on this mountain, disturbing the lives of the people here, so I came to see if there’s any way I could help. Have you two cleaned it up already?”

The night-hunt also serves to reintroduce the theme of deception and rumours, and the ways in which MianMian is a character who is not swayed by public opinions but knows how easily others may be.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji exchanged a glance. “This was a lie too. No lives were lost. We looked it up. Only a few villagers who robbed the graves were bedridden for a while after being scared by the ghosts, and another broke his own leg when running away. Apart from these, there were no casualties. All those lives were made up for dramatic purposes.”

“So this was what happened?” interjected Luo Qingyang’s husband. “That’s absolutely shameless!”

“Oh, these people…” sighed Luo Qingyang. She seemed as if she remembered something, shaking her head, “They’re the same everywhere.”

This is because in the novel MianMian is tied to many themes, and always in a positive manner. Like WWX, she represents the good that is stifled by an unjust social order. She also represents the people who choose to defy and deviate from this social order to pursue a righteous life rather than trying to find vindication and power within that very social order (ie JGY or XY). Like the juniors, MianMian is a character that represents hope for the cultivation world, the potential for small but significant change. Like WWX and LWJ, she represents integrity in the face of the corrupting influences of power and politics, as well as the desire to protect the common people. Like Cangse Sanren, she represents the courage to make her own path in the world, and to marry for love with no considerations for social status or conventions, and the decision to becoming a travelling rogue cultivator.

On top of all these great things this scene accomplish, it is also just incredibly cute. After their talk, their parting is described like such: “Soon, the group had gone down the mountain, and Wei Wuxian could only say goodbye to them with some regret, continuing on another path alongside Lan Wangji.” Honestly, my ‘WWX and LWJ become Xiao MianMian’s shushus’ agenda is alive and well and I will not accept anything else.

In CQL, however, the reunion happens by pure coincidence. The scene is in actuality a mash-up between the reunion we have in the novel and another scene that takes place earlier, in which fugitives WWX and LWJ enter the home of strangers as they are looking for some water (and end up frolicking in hay).

Simply by changing the circumstances and the setting of the reunion, something is lost of the thematic connection between WWX/Wangxian and MianMian, even though viewers still get told that MianMian is someone who night-hunts. Without entering into the specific debate of whether show don’t tell is the only acceptable storytelling strategy, I think it’s fair to say that it is more effective to run into MianMian as she is night hunting based on the same rumours of hauntings as Wangxian instead of seeing her get home, pull a sword willy-nilly after hearing something suspicious in her backyard and finally getting told that she was out night hunting.

Moreover, having to recreate most of the beats of MianMian’s last appearance into this new context seems to have been quite confusing to the CQL production team, and seems to have breed, as a result, a lack of internal coherence to the scene (cut between the end of ep 43 and the beginning of ep 44), regardless of any of its other pitfalls as an adaptation.

In the CQL version, when we meet the family on their way back to their home, Xiao MianMian had been running around and her father chastises her by telling her something along the lines of “Don’t run around, what if you had gotten caught by the YLLZ?”, thereby suggesting that MianMian’s husband believes what is said about WWX. To this, Xiao MianMian replies But Mom Says he’s a Good Guy Though. Obviously, the intent of the writers was to show that MianMian had never bought into the rumours about WWX. However, this exchange makes seemingly no sense if one thinks about it for longer than a second. It suggests that MianMian had never talked about this topic with her husband or that he had never heard her talk about the YLLZ with their daughter. Considering how dangerous the YLLZ is said to be, and that they were night-hunting while he was a fugitive, I don’t see how that would have not come up even if for some unlikely reason she had until then only talked about the YLLZ with her daughter. Of course, one could suggest that MianMian’s husband says this to tease their daughter, fully aware that the YLLZ’s reputation of swallowing children is a tall tale, but the tone is not quite right? And it does not jive with the fact that MianMian is not on board with defaming people: I don’t think she’d be okay with her husband knowingly using the myth of the YLLZ to scare their kid into obedience because it’s convenient to do so? A miss.

To make matters worse, when WWX later asks MianMian is she’s back from night-hunting, Xiao MianMian says that they are back from searching for the YLLZ. First, there is a clear lack of coherence with the previous exchange between Xiao MianMian and her father. And again, it’s hard to get to the meaning of that exchange: is it implying that MianMian was looking for WWX to offer him her help? She certainly doesn’t once she does meet him, so that appears unlikely or at least it’s a plothole/dangling plot thread. But why be looking for him, if she knows he’s not the monster the rumours make him out to be? Clearly, the writers wanted to tell the viewers that MianMian is a rogue cultivator, and figured that having her back from a night-hunt would be enough: but why this line by Xiao MianMian about searching for the YLLZ? Is it just the fancy of a kid, who makes up her own stories while her parents pursue other cases (especially since MianMian says she was looking for puppets)? But then Xiao MianMian does say that ‘we’ were searching for him...

I can’t figure it out. I find it even weirder that, when WWX asks Xiao MianMian whether she is scared of the scary YLLZ (although she’s literally just said moments before that she was not scared of him in her exchange with her father that WWX certainly heard), Xiao MianMian starts replying that she is not scared and MianMian cuts her, apologizing to WWX that he daughter is too young and naive. What is she apologizing for? How is her daughter naive for not being scared of the YLLZ? Or is she apologizing for her daughter suggesting they were searching for the YLLZ? If so, why cut her now and not when she suggested that they were searching for him?

What’s happening in this scene?!

Also, even an attempt to keep lines as close to what they were in the novel ends up backfiring with the new context. In the novel, out night-hunting, MianMian asks “ 什么人” when she sees WWX come out from the direction of a graveyard (she has not seen LWJ yet). Knowing that she might suspect him of being a corpse or a spirit considering that it is night and that he is leaving a graveyard said to be haunted, WWX responds “不管是什么人，总归是人，不是别的东西 “ (No matter who I am, I’m a person after all, and not something else). In CQL, when MianMian hears a sound in her backyard, she asks “ 什么人” and, after LWJ comes out and is recognized by MianMian, WWX still responds (??) with a similar yet slightly different sentence: “ 不管是谁，反正是个人，不是东西 “ (No matter who I am, anyway I am a person, not a thing). This exchange in the context of the scene in CQL baffles me because: why would there be then an expectation that they would not be a person in this situation? Why would he say that after MianMian has seen and recognized LWJ, thus knowing full well that it is a person and not a spirit or a corpse? As well, why change “ 别的东西 “ (something else/different thing) for “ 东西 “ (thing) since MianMian’s question does not imply by itself that she thinks they are not people since she asks "什么人” (literally: what person?), making WWX’s statement that he is “not a thing” completely come out of nowhere? And it’s so much more perplexing than his original statement that he is not “something else” from a human.

I’m spending time on these two lines because I find them to be a sort of microcosm of some of the questionable adaptation choices made in CQL: at times the web series chooses to keep things from the novel even after changing the context in which these elements unfold without understanding how these no longer work within their new context. Yet, at the same time, it feels comfortable making what appear on the surface to be minute changes without thinking through the implications of them, and thus changing the point of these elements through these minute modifications.

Aside from these elements which prevent this moment in CQL to give us a scene that is internally coherent, let’s further interrogate some of the adaptational changes made between the novel and the web series, and their impact on the themes and characterisation.

One change that conflicts with the characterisation and the thematic discussion regards WWX inquiring about MianMian’s husband. Unlike in the novel, where WWX engages him in a little bit of chitchat and then feels forced by conventions to ask to which sect he belongs, CQL makes it seem as if it is an information WWX wants to ask because it’s literally the first thing he says to him, not even after a salutation or a “well met” (I will be magnanimous and believe that that choice to do so was for the sake of brevity and not because the preceding dialogue had not been written in the novel and the CQL writers couldn’t be bothered to come up with something). This, however, makes it look like WWX puts a lot of importance in knowing someone’s allegiance to a sect, which is the exact opposite of how he feels about it.

She pulled the man up, “This is my husband.”

Noticing that they held no malicious intent, the man softened visibly. After some chatter, Wei Wuxian asked out of convenience, “Which sect do you belong to and which kind of cultivation do you practice?”

The man answered frankly, “None of them.”

Luo Qingyang gazed at her husband, smiling, “My husband isn’t of the cultivating world. He used to be a merchant. But, he’s willing to go night-hunting with me…”

It was both rare and admirable that an ordinary person, and a man at that, would be willing to give up his originally stable life and dare travel the world with his wife, unafraid of danger and wander. Wei Wuxian could not help feeling respect for him.

Of course, without WWX’s thought process provided to us in the narration, the implications of MianMian’s husband being originally a merchant are a little bit lost in CQL, even if CQL!MianMian provides that piece of information. Of course, CQL could have chosen to include WWX’s musings, since it does include in this very scene some voice-over thoughts earlier. It is a shame though, that it does not, since MianMian and her husband are clear parallels for WWX’s parents in that regard: his father also left a stable life to travel the world with his wife.

Although, to be fair, CQL!MianMian is no longer a rogue cultivator who travels the world, so it is not like her husband made the decision to travel the world with her. Indeed, by frankensteining the two scenes from the novel, MianMian is by default no longer a rogue cultivator who travels the world: she is a rogue cultivator, sure, in that she does not belong to a sect, but she is a rogue cultivator with a home she clearly needs to inhabit during the day, what with the fact that they raise animals (we see little chicks in the background and there are piles of hay), and who night-hunts close enough to her home to be able to come back home in the morning. Moreover, without the context of meeting MianMian at the same glory-less night-hunt as Wangxian, it is harder to express the idea that MianMian is someone who chooses, like them, to do so for the common good and not for any prestige or rewards. MianMian is no longer another cultivator who goes ‘where the chaos is’ and, in terms of positive female representation, it is truly a shame. After all, the novel frames this as a positive and admirable trait which we see in our two main (male) protagonists: to have a woman follow, independently, the same path as them is meaningful.

Finally, instead of the scene closing with a regretful parting that hints at the sense of kinship between MianMian’s family and Wangxian, we get a truly (imo) patronizing ending. In CQL, their conversation is disrupted by threatening sounds. LWJ then instructs MianMian to stay in her home and protect Xiao MianMian while LWJ and WWX take care of things. So feminism..... such empowerment... To be honest, if CQL meant to change things and put MianMian in scenes where she wasn’t originally, why not have her go with Wangxian? Why not have her be there for the Mass Grave Hill Siege? Why not have her leave her daughter with her husband and let her be a badass? Instead, they conveniently check her out of the action after putting her directly in the middle of it. Instead of having MianMian be away from the sects and doing her own rogue cultivator thing as the events of the novels unfolded in WWX’s second life, explaining her absence, CQL reintroduces her just before an important moment but chooses to send her away once more, to stay home and protect her daughter, probably because they did not want to take the time and energy to figure out how and where she would fit into these scenes in which she had not be written in the novel. This is the kind of adaptational choice that makes me question why people consider CQL a more progressive work of fiction with regards to its treatment of female characters.

Final Musings: sometimes, less is more

Does an increase to the number of appearances of a character shape their impact on the audience? Or, conversely, does it dilute their meaning within and their impact on the text? There is not a simple answer to that question. Certainly, repetition is in itself a literary device, and many readers need salient and blunt reminders to get a message across, the likes of: the important characters are the ones you see the most often. Likewise, having a character feature more often in a work can provide the necessary breathing space to explore more and in more depth their psychology, motivations, past, actions, etc. However, the simple act of increasing the presence of a character does not inherently increase their impact on a work of fiction nor does it increase the nuances and depths of that character.

It is possible to adhere to a cynical or optimistic perspective regarding CQL’s decision to feature MDZS’ female characters more prominently. It is not hard to divine why the decision could have been made solely for the financial incentive of “pandering” to a female audience who dares to want to see themselves on screen. Conversely, one can imagine a production team animated by good intentions, who simply want to give more limelight to these female characters. Whether purely motivated by a profit-based logic or solely well-intentioned, or at a vector of both motives, it is clear that the CQL production did not increase the screen presence of MDZS’s female characters out of a desire to tell a stronger, more effective version of the original story they were working with. And that is why the urge to quantify good representation will always end up failing us in my opinion.

While it can be productive to consider trends, it does not give us a better media landscape or better individual works of fiction; it does not necessarily give us more impactful or better written female characters. This type of analysis urges us to see female characters as female first, without truly attempting to understand their purpose and treatment within the story. While MDZS has fewer female characters, these characters showcase different personalities and occupy different positions within the social world of the novel; they have arcs and thematic resonance and they cannot be simply replaced by a “sexy lamp” without disrupting the plot completely. They are also often given a surprising amount of depth, if readers are willing to pay attention to all that is found in the text and in the subtext.

For such a long novel, MDZS is able to remonstrate a certain amount of restraint wrt its storytelling. The timespan it wants to cover is expansive, its cast of characters not insignificant, and the story it aims to tell is ambitious. It is easy to imagine a meandering version of MDZS where many more characters are present, including many more female characters, or where the existing female characters get an extended presence within the narrative. But would those female characters have been more impactful? Would the story told have been a better one? The way the CQL production team chose to adapt MianMian hints that this is not a done conclusion.

(+ bonus MianMian meta)

#mdzs meta #mdzs #mianmian #luo qingyang #cql vs mdzs #mo dao zu shi #modaozushi #IT'S FINALLY DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!#this is my manifesto

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razberryyum · 5 years

Video

The Untamed/陈情令 Rewatch, Episode 9, Part 2 of 2

(spoilers for everything MDZS/Untamed)

[covers MDZS chapters 28 and 29...kinda….]

WangXian meter: 🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰+🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰 +🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰🐰+🐰+🐰+🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰+ 🐰🐰🐰

Continued from Part 1:

Aside from the fact that Wei Ying grabbing and pulling on Lan Zhan’s tassle like a leash is really one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen, I think it’s also adorable how Lan Zhan went from not even tolerating Wei Ying touching his sleeve to now putting up with him poking him and holding onto his wrist. Once again he never makes any attempt to shake him off and instead allows Wei Ying to lead him forward. Watching the little ways Wei Ying is changing Lan Zhan is so endearing and rewarding. I’m so glad Wei Ying came on this mission with him. According to Big Bro Xichen, Lan Zhan’s never had friends before, the reason he wanted Lan Zhan to attend classes at Cloud Recesses was so that he could make friends with people his own age. However, considering his cold and aloof disposition, it’s doubtful he would have made any friends if Wei Ying hadn’t come along and been so insistent on gaining his friendship. Just thinking of the boys that were at Cloud Recesses with them—Jiang Cheng, Nie Huaisang, Jin Zixuan, Wen Ning, in addition to all those other nameless disciples—whom among them would have even made the slightest effort to get through to Lan Zhan? Jiang Cheng and Jin Zixuan couldn’t care less, Nie Huaisang seems downright scared of him, and Wen Ning probably feels the same, not to mention, I can‘t even imagine shy sweet Wen Ning trying to proactively make friends with anyone anyway. Therefore, if it wasn’t for Wei Ying, Lan Zhan would have ended up as friendless and alone as he started out being. He probably never experienced something as simple as sitting down and having a meal or drinks with his peers, and yet now he’s doing it as if it was just the most mundane event for him. To think, if Wei Ying hadn’t invited himself along on this secret mission, thereby eventually bringing in Jiang Cheng and NHS as well, Lan Zhan would’ve been all alone through this journey...who would’ve been there to comfort him when that yin metal went all haywire on him?

Fascinating thing about this moment that I noticed is that the words (the Chinese characters specifically) Wei Ying uses to calm Lan Zhan are the same exact words that Lan Zhan uses later on at Phoenix Mountain when he is trying to calm Wei Ying down as he is being overcome with dark rage.

I would love to think that Team CQL set up this parallelism on purpose to show how Lan Zhan remembers everything that Wei Ying did for him and said to him, even down to the usage of two simple calming words. It melts my heart to imagine Lan Zhan carefully collecting all these memories and holding on tightly to them because every single moment they shared together became so important to him. When I think about how he probably lived on just those memories alone, not only during the sixteen long years when Wei Ying was dead, but probably even during the times when they were apart while he was still alive, I just feel so unbelievably sad for Lan Zhan that my eyes always well up with tears.

Yeah, I pretty much get weepy once a day because of these boys. Unfortunately I’m not exaggerating at all.

Nie Huaisang/Ji Li Appreciation Time

To be honest, I don’t know if what I feel about Nie Huaisang could really be called love, even though I think I’ve thrown that word around when referring to him at least once. I definitely don’t hate him...he’s too complex and interesting and adorable in his own way to hate. And I did buy into his dumb, naïve and helpless act for a long time, much like everyone did. But I can’t say I really love him anymore either because of what he did to dear, sweet Big Bro Xichen, which was really unnecessarily cruel. It’s premature to go into all that now, so all I’m going to say is, while my feelings towards him are probably more on the ambivalent side overall, I do really appreciate him as a character, especially at this point of the story, because he’s always so funny and entertaining. I’d like to think that he did genuinely like Wei Ying as a friend because, as exemplified in the scene above, Wei Ying was actually really nice and considerate to him, not to mention protective. I hope that was part of NHS' motivation for reviving Wei Ying later on, and not just because he thought the Yiling Patriarch would be the only one strong enough to deal with the Stygian tiger seal.

Despite how I feel about NHS, I do really enjoy Ji Li’s portrayal of the character, and I think his voice performance is awesome as well. I believe he’s the only actor on the show that used his own voice whereas everyone else’s dubbing was performed by a voice actor, and his voice work definitely made NHS even more fun as a character. He definitely has a talent for voice acting. He’s been cast in the Hikaru no Go live action due to be released next year and I cannot be more excited. I can totally imagine him as Sai. (Although, there’s not much information on the show yet from what I can see; looks like one of the male leads has been cast and also a female, but no other information on their actual roles...God I hope they don’t decide to turn Hikaru no Go into a BG romance because that’s not what it’s about AT ALL.)

ChengQing

We didn’t really see his reaction but when Wei Ying grabbed Wen Qing’s wrist, I did wonder how Jiang Cheng felt about it. Here he is, trying his hardest to gain Wen Qing’s favor, but all of his efforts seem to be mostly futile since she hardly gives him the time of her day. Honestly, for a while as I was watching the show for the first time, I did worry that Team CQL was trying to create a love triangle between Jiang Cheng/Wen Qing/Wei Ying. Even after reading the novel and knowing nothing of the sort exists in the source material, because Wen Qing’s characterization in the show was already so different from her novel counterpart, my concern remained for quite some time. I hated the mere idea a lot because it’s such a tropey and stupid gimmick, especially since Jiang Cheng really didn’t need yet another reason to be angry at Wei Ying. I’m glad they didn’t go in that horrible direction after all, but I don’t think I was able to breathe easy about the issue until after her death. Poor Wen Qing, she gave me so much anxiety throughout the first half of the show; I would be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a teeny bit relieved when she died because I was finally able to lay my worries to rest completely.

Odds and Ends

I just love these three stooges; they’re so adorable together and I wish we got to see them engage in more shenanigans before all the fun was over forever.

When I first saw this scene, I thought it was pretty horrific and creepy; really, it’s one of the most effective scenes in the show. However, now, when I see this scene, my heart clenches a little because I know that’s the same fate that will eventually befall the Yunmeng Jiang sect as well. The fact that both Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying are present to see that horrible tableau just makes things worse, especially the sight of those two sect leaders hanging in the doorway. Completely heart-breaking.

Wen Qing being able to control the ghost puppets with the flute was totally a creation for the live action since she never did that in the novel, but I actually thought it was a neat touch. At first I thought she was going to be the one to teach Wei Ying that ability, but when that didn’t pan out, I wondered if he was inspired to learn that ability after seeing her do that. While it does take away Wei Ying’s inventiveness since in the novel that was a skill he developed on his own, I didn’t mind that change since it also established that other people can control the ghost puppets as well, which nicely sets up what Su She does later on with that skill. Interestingly enough, she’s playing “Rest” so now I wonder if she learned that during her time at Cloud Recesses and if so, does that mean essentially Wei Ying’s inspiration for fluting can be traced back to his time there as well, which means he was able to survive the Burial Mounds really because of his tutelage by the Gusu Lan sect. Omg that’s so sweet.

Anyway, I just wish we got to see Wen Qing do more with that skill, it’s kind of odd how later on she relied on Wei Ying completely for calming Wen Ning when she seems to be perfectly capable of that feat as well. It’s like the show forgot she had this ability.

Question I still had

So basically, Lan Zhan met A-Yuan this early on but he completely forgot about that little Wen kid when they crossed paths again in Yiling? It’s no big deal, but I just thought that was rather odd considering Lan Zhan is usually more observant than that and of course he has a really good memory. I guess there’s always the possibility that he just didn’t care enough about the Wens to notice the kid.

Overall Episode Rating: 8 Lil Apples out of 10

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satonthelotuspier · 4 years

Text

Here we go, the second fic for XiCheng Jiang Family AU I promised for the weekend. This is set post moving in together which happens some time after this fic

I’ll probably do a summary post at some point for these as there’s a few of them now, in the interim follow the tag below for more if you missed them.

CW for themes of past manipulative relationships and reference to JC’s mental health which is a recurrent theme.

Jiang Cheng finished adjusting the cuffs of his dress shirt in the mirror and did a final check to make sure the tuxedo jacket sat correctly on him.

He rarely had to dig his one and only tuxedo out of the wardrobe, his siblings were the ones more comfortable dressed up than he was but he supposed he might have to invest in one or two more in the near future, or at least some extra suits, as he was likely to be involved in an increasing number of corporate events as Lan Xichen’s partner.

And really, even though he hated the idea of polite chitchat with the banking elite it wasn’t enough of a reason to dump Lan Xichen, he mostly liked the man, after all.

He decided he’d pass muster; the jacket and pants sat on his frame nicely and emphasised all the right places, and his hair had been freshly cut that morning and he had tamed it carefully with product after his shower. With a final check of his jawline for stubble and his teeth to make sure they were pristine he decided he was ready. Even he was pretty sure his appearance wouldn’t show Lan Xichen up at this event, and that was unusually confident for Jiang Cheng.

Thinking of the devil summoned him and Lan Xichen walked out of the bathroom, fastening his watch. He pulled up short when he saw Jiang Cheng dressed and ready; he made a hum of appreciation then moved over to wrap his arms around Jiang Cheng’s waist.

Jiang Cheng’s face had already started heating up from the moment Xichen had laid his interested eyes on him; he tried to wriggle away.

“It took me so long to look this perfect, if you muss me or crease me in any way I’ll break your legs” despite his warning Lan Xichen still leant in to steal a slow, surprisingly deep kiss.

“It would be worth it” Lan Xichen nuzzled his jawline as their lips parted, breathing in the scent of his aftershave, “You look so good I just want to undo it. What cruel human nature” Lan Xichen mocked. He pulled back a little to check his watch and eyed Jiang Cheng calculatingly.

“No” it took Jiang Cheng a few seconds but he soon worked out what that look meant, “Absolutely not. I’m not joking”

Lan Xichen actually pouted.

“I’m not you, I can’t just throw clothes up in the air and have them land on me and look like you do, it took ages to put myself together so I don’t show you up tonight” there was a hint of whine in his voice and Lan Xichen relented.

“Alright. Although I wish you wouldn’t worry so much about showing me up, I don’t need you to be your version of perfect, I just need you to be there with me”

“I need me to be my version of perfect” Jiang Cheng stated the crux of the matter, and Lan Xichen couldn’t argue with him on that point.

“Fair enough, but tonight I get to peel you out of it. Let me take care of you”

A shudder shook Jiang Cheng at the inherent promise, (or was that threat?) of Lan Xichen hyper fixating on his body for the night.

Lan Xichen let him escape his hold then.

“Here by the way, I have something for you” Lan Xichen moved to the bedside cabinet and picked up a small jewellers box.

“Xichen...”

“I know, I can’t keep just buying you things. But these are to give you a confidence boost tonight, I promise they’ll work” he opened the box and showed Jiang Cheng the silver lotus cufflinks on the velvet lining.

And really they were perfect; Lan Xichen always picked out the most meaningful, fitting gifts. And Jiang Cheng did appreciate them and logically understood they were a drop in the ocean for Lan Xichen, but it still made him uncomfortable to accept so many presents.

He daren’t explain that a lot of his own insecurities were tied up in it; that he was sure when Lan Xichen did finally tire of dealing with him and decide they weren’t what he wanted any longer that Jiang Cheng would feel like he had to give everything back and it would be so much easier for him if there wasn’t that much.

But they were beautiful, and he knew the pleasure Lan Xichen took in giving gifts to others so all he could do was accept them.

“They’re perfect, thank you” Jiang Cheng told him. Lan Xichen made quick work of swapping them for the cufflinks Jiang Cheng had been wearing, which he slid into his dress pants pocket.

Jiang Cheng knew what that meant; he was going to use them himself, “You can’t wear those”

“Of course I can” he moved over to take his shirt off the hanger and slip it on.

“They’re nowhere near as expensive and classy as the millions of pairs you must have. What is with this kink of wearing my stuff?”

“I really like wearing your stuff. It makes me feel closer to you if I can smell you on me”

“You can’t smell me on cufflinks. And if you can that is some weird werewolf level shit, should I be worried?” Jiang Cheng moved to the mirror again to readjust his cuffs a final time and run one last once over.

“I still know they’re yours though” Lan Xichen explained patiently as he made short work buttoning his shirt. “Help me with them?” he held his wrist out in Jiang Cheng’s direction. Jiang Cheng moved obediently to assist despite knowing full well Lan Xichen really could have done it just as quickly on his own. They’d become so disgustingly domestic since moving in together, honestly it was enough to rot his teeth.

And he craved it with everything he was.

He was going soft.

Maybe it was that Lan Xichen was taming him.

Once he’d finished Lan Xichen placed a quick peck on the end of his nose in thanks before moving to the mirror to fasten his bow-tie.

***

Jiang Cheng stood with his hands in his pants pockets next to Wei Wuxian; he had drunk a couple of glasses of champaign on first arrival to give himself a little buzz of courage but he’d decided against more because of the inherent danger of accident and emergency of Jiang Cheng plus glass. Wei Wuxian had no such qualms and was drinking steadily; his almost inhuman alcohol tolerance was a sight to marvel at.

They chatted back and forth about familial nothings while their eyes remained on the two jade-like Lan siblings who stood in a group of their peers across the room. Lan Xichen talked, his gestures elegant and understated, his dynamic personality and open face held everyone’s attention while the more stoic Lan Wangji at his side added only the occasional nod or monosyllabic answers.

“We are so whipped” Wei Wuxian mocked as he realised what they were both doing.

And Jiang Cheng was about to automatically deny he had any idea what Wei Wuxian was talking about, that he wasn’t watching Lan Xichen, that he absolutely wasn’t whipped, but he realised there would be no point.

Wei Wuxian knew him far too well, and it wasn’t even a badly kept secret how he felt about Lan Xichen. He was so whipped, and he probably didn’t even care anymore.

“Do you ever just look at him and there’s so much emotion your chest isn’t big enough to contain it all?”

He sort of understood what Wei Wuxian was waxing lyrical about; he did sometimes feel like he couldn’t bear how much he cared for Lan Xichen, that it was too much for a single human to feel. It terrified him. He was very self-aware of his emotional state at any given time; he had to be in order to control his disorder, and that there was this enormous reliance on another person for his emotional well-being was sometimes overwhelming, but he couldn’t change it.

“I think he’s OK” he answered eventually, and Wei Wuxian laughed. He threw his left arm over Jiang Cheng’s shoulders and pulled him in for a side-hug, which, seeing as they were in public and he wasn’t out to show Lan Xichen up, he didn’t pushed him off or elbow Wei Wuxian in the ribs like he would have at home.

“Jiang Cheng, never ever change”

He was about to respond when he felt the arm over his shoulder tense, and he looked up into Wei Wuxian’s face to see a hard, angry look take over from his normal lively amiability. “What the fuck is he doing here?” he hissed.

Jiang Cheng followed his gaze and he tensed up too when he identified who Wei Wuxian meant.

Jin Guangyao.

Jiang Yanli’s brother-in-law, Jin Ling’s uncle, and Lan Xichen’s ex-boyfriend.

“If he dares to even look at Xichen-ge I’m going to punch him right in his smug little face” Wei Wuxian threatened.

Take a number and get in line. The only reason both Jiang Cheng, and it seemed Lan Wangji, hadn’t already done so was the fact it would embarrass Lan Xichen if they did.

“We all know Xichen doesn’t want that. I think you need to go and keep your husband out of trouble” Jiang Cheng was fully aware of the irony of sending Wei Wuxian over to stop Lan Wangji doing something stupid; it was much more likely they’d combine forces and do something completely imbecilic instead, but he had to hope for the best.

He himself went hunting for a waiter carrying champaign, procured two glasses and was just about to move to Lan Xichen’s side for moral support when he turned to find the man of the moment behind him. Jin Guangyao also reached for a glass from the waiter’s tray with a nod at Jiang Cheng, “You’re Wangji’s ditzy brother-in-law, yes? Jiang Wanyin?”

What the fuck? Who actually did that? Like some cheesy rival in a crappy romcom.

“Jin Guangyao, Jin Ling’s wicked step-uncle” he raised the glass in his right hand as acknowledgement. If he wanted to play that game then it was on. And like fuck would he give the other the pleasure of talking about him in the same sentence as Lan Xichen.

He wasn’t quite sure what would have happened because Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji walked over to extricate him at that point. He didn’t enjoy the feeling of running away but it was probably for the better. He didn’t want to cause any kind of scene that would embarrass or hurt Lan Xichen, Lan Wangji, or their bank tonight. He was here to prove he could do this for Lan Xichen.

Jiang Cheng did walk over to Lan Xichen then, offering him the spare glass, “Don’t say I never give you anything” he mocked softly and Lan Xichen smiled at him; it was tight and unnatural on his face though.

“I would never, thank you Wanyin” he couldn’t hide the fact his hand shook a little as he reached out to accept the champaign, however, and honestly, who would blame Jiang Cheng if he walked over right now and floored that elegant, handsome, but twisted little fucker Jin Guangyao?

***

He, the tag team of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, and even Lan Qiren, the boys’ uncle, spent the rest of the evening running protection for Lan Xichen. The other tried to carry on like everything was fine but it really did bother him.

For someone as calm and laid back as Lan Xichen was it merely highlighted how badly he’d come out of that relationship.

That he’d had the strength and will to take on someone like Jiang Cheng after that was almost impossible to understand.

Still, despite their best intentions of keeping the other safe, Jin Guangyao was persistent.

Jiang Cheng had had to take a business call and when he returned he scanned the room, unable to find Lan Xichen anywhere. His worry spiked, he really should have refused the call, his commissions be damned.

He did find Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao in an alcove off the main room; and he was brought to a halt at the first words he heard.

It appeared Jin Guangyao had cornered the other; Lan Xichen’s head was bowed and he actually looked physically smaller.

“...you can’t actually think he’s going to stay with you? He’s going to realise sooner or later he can’t cope with how high maintenance you are. There’s only so long the attractiveness of your bank account can balance out the fact you come with it”

“But he doesn’t like the fact I’m rich...” the voice was so small Jiang Cheng barely caught the words over the rush of blood in his ears.

“Well of course not. He’s going to tell you that, isn’t he? But what else is there about you to draw in a man like Jiang Wanyin? You’re so sheltered and disconnected from the real world, from his world. What can it be but your money?”

Jiang Cheng had heard enough; he squared his shoulders and walked to Lan Xichen’s side. He took the other’s hand, interlocking their fingers, and tugged at him.

“Come on, you said we weren’t going to stay too late, Snowdrop needs her evening walk still, and we’re taking the boys out tomorrow” he paused briefly to give Jin Guangyao a final look up and down.

“Hmm”

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh, nothing, just trying to work out if the convenience of having a travel-sized boyfriend would ever have made up for your toxic personality. The answer is yikes no” he started to walk away, before pausing again, “Oh, and I don’t want to be that crazy boyfriend, but honestly my medication doesn’t always work. Breathe in his general direction again and I will end you” he smiled sweetly and dragged Xichen away.

***

Later that evening, or early morning as it was, as they walked through the park together with Snowdrop bounding out in front of them to chase the stick Jiang Cheng threw, he finally felt Lan Xichen relax a little.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t let him get to me” his voice was still quiet, and Jiang Cheng squeezed the hand he’d barely let go of since the party.

“Why are you saying sorry? It’s his fault. How can you not let him get to you? You spent how many years being groomed into reacting like that by the prick?”

Jiang Cheng stopped and turned to face Lan Xichen, “Process it however you need to, lets deal with it, and then we can get on with our lives together. He doesn’t get to decide whether we make it or not, only we do that”

A half smile pulled at Xichen’s mouth, but it died, “Am I high maintenance?”

“Fucking hell Xichen, I hope not, otherwise I’m not sure what that makes me. You are the gardener of this relationship, we flourish because you tend and prune and live with my thorns, even if they occasionally stick you” he poked Xichen in the forehead in retribution for the thought.

“I love you Wanyin” Lan Xichen caught him up in a tight embrace then; burying his face into Jiang Cheng’s hair.

“I know” they stayed locked together in the moonlight while Snowdrop pranced around their feet and barked eagerly as she returned with her stick.

#Jiang Family AU #Xicheng #lan xichen #jiang cheng #modern au #mental health cw #manipulative relationships cw #shay's stuff #mdzs #mdzs fanfic #mdzs fic

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imaginaryelle · 4 years

Text

Author Interview

Thanks to @dafan7711 for the tag!

Name: Alex (they/them)

Fandoms: MDZS & The Untamed, Marvel Avengers (comics), Good Omens, Dragon Age & Mass Effect, Star Wars & SWTOR, Star Trek, Sherlock Holmes; the list goes on but these are the main ones.

Where You Post: Tumblr and AO3.

Complete: 72 works on AO3; a few (less than 10?) oneshots are only on tumblr.

Incomplete: Posted? I think the closest is these two snippets from my Wangxian Modern Musician AU (1 | 2). Unposted? The well is bottomless.

Coming (hopefully) Soon:

1. Wangxian Modern Musician AU: Wei Wuxian has been out of the live music scene for more than a decade and just happens to land a traveling show with his ex as his first get-back-in-gear gig (thank you, Nie Huaisang). Features include hand massages, yearning in taxis, getting-back-together uncertainties, publicity angst and comfort softness alongside traveling show hi-jinks.

2. MDZS/Abhorsen Fusion: What if. Just stay with me for a second. What if. Lan Wangji was the Clayr-raised Abhorsen who was chosen for the role over any of the Lotus Pier disciples and Wei Wuxian was an Abhorsen-raised free magic necromancer who became more of a free magic creature instead of falling properly into Death? Possibly he can also turn into a rabbit I’m still working on details here but I am. Excite! Thank you for your time; @suspiciouspopsicle and I have a lot of ideas we like to play with for this AU.

3. So Many Wangxian Things Okay, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergent A-Yuan!kidfic, Everything; Also Some Juniors Friendship Things; Possibly Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian Reconciliation While Night Hunting.

Do You Accept Prompts?

Absolutely, though I tend to be focused on one fandom at a time for actually answering them (I try to note what fandom’s at the top of my mind in my tumblr sidebar). Currently, that’s MDZS & The Untamed (shippy stuff-not just wangxian, sibling or family relationships, hurt/comfort, whatever). Also, kissing, hurt/comfort and domestic moment prompts are always likely to be answered fastest. I cannot resist them and am unlikely to build an entire world and accompanying plot and thus get lost for weeks on end.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write:

Wangxian Modern Musician AU! Which is, as a point, from an anon prompt that I got a bit carried away with.

Favorite Story You Wrote:

What, ever? Hm. I’m going to go with Practical Exercises in Free Will (Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley) today. It’s a choose-your-path fic, which was both challenging and enjoyable to put together. I should definitely do more of those.