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whetstonefires · 11 months

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Hi, I'm currently writing a fic and would like to ask for advice about the characterization of a slightly darker Lan Xichen. When he is in seclusion, in the midst of despair and grappling with feelings of anger, bitterness and resentment what do you think would be his lesson learned from everything? How would his actions/personality change particularly concerning his decision making as a leader? Would he become more manipulative/ruthless like jgy even while fully disavowing his choices? Thanks!

Okay so I do have a lot of thoughts about this!

Because there's a whole list of issues Lan Xichen has to unpack, and the deepest is in fact not the betrayed anger, or even grief or guilt, but having to reevaluate who he even is.

He's spent 13 years thinking Lan Wangji was the fuckup and he had tried hard and done everything right. Like, not flawlessly, there were all those people and even his sword brother he couldn't save and Lan Wangji he couldn't protect from himself, but still. He'd done it. Complex political and personal reality successfully navigated. Worst errors evaded. Not Like His Father.

He spent about 15 years (that's so much time!!!) having his most intimate personal relationship be with someone who was lying to and using him, and who (because he killed him!) he will never even be able to ask which parts were lies.

His entire decisionmaking system is wrecked. For him to come out of this cruel, with the confidence to do vicious things to others for some goal, he would have to somehow construct a new belief system, a basis for his convictions, that is even more narrow and sharp and coldly implacable than Jin Guangyao's was. Or at any rate more inflexible.

I don't think he's capable of this. He's like 40 years old! He's spent that whole time trying so, so fucking hard to be good, to be fair and kind and just even where these conflict with one another.

And what he has for it is a shattered decisionmaking base.

There's only so far a person can change themselves, even if they try to start over from first principles. And he doesn't have any real motivation to want to be really harsh, even if he doesn't want to be so soft anymore either.

If he had to knit himself back together under these circumstances and go forward and perform desperate feats, the way Jiang Cheng had to after the first time he broke (not as profound a break, not once he got his core 'back' and could resume most of his prior identity elements, but still the permanent damage is visible) I think Lan Xichen could get pretty dark.

If he was being forced to make constant life-or-death calls in a violent atmosphere and he didn't fucking trust himself but he knew his gentleness and his mercy and his desire to believe the best of people had been so utterly weaponized against him and those under his keeping before, I think he'd start making a lot of kill calls. He's capable of that, after all. He was a major war hero, flying from front to front, pulling asses out of fires.

He has killed lots of people! And commanded people he cares about into battle! He has the stomach for that kind of thing, when there's cause.

When Lan Xichen accepted massacres under the period of ascendancy of the Jin, let the Chang and the He and even the Wen remnants be wiped out and then erased without justice or remorse, he was using that same wartime stomach for necessity, and then trying to patch things over and let the world be peaceful, be healed.

Hide it until it stops hurting anymore. That's his basic methodology for things that it's too late to mediate.

And I think because that smoothing and that kindness and that looking-away-from-conflict are the parts of his failures most distinctive to him, as a person, they're the parts he would react against with the most violent distrust. And he'd need to lock down on his uncertainties and suppress them to function, which does not do good things for your judgment. So a Lan Xichen fresh from those traumas who had to fight a war could get pretty brutal. He could ramp his ruthlessness up by pretty rapid degrees.

If he did, he'd be doing it while leaning away from manipulation, going as direct and uncompromising and fierce as possible. (In imitation a bit of Nie Mingjue.)

If he wound up leaning away from ruthlessness hard enough he might accidentally become pretty manipulative, by way of trying to never actually force his will on others since he doesn't trust his own judgment, but I think that's a pretty outside chance. He's not actually a very subtle person and I think he's too old to really learn, and under the circumstances he'd probably be more insecure about hinting than demanding things. If he comes out too early and is overly centered on shame, maybe.

I don't think he could get as bad as Jin Guangyao no matter which direction he went, because he wouldn't be all that sneaky about it, his goals would still be for the sake of groups of people rather than himself alone, and he wouldn't have the confidence to totally refuse to take outside input on his choices. He also just gives a shit about other people, by instinct. All that puts some caps on his scope of villainy that jgy did not have.

Although under the right circumstances, with the ruthless route, he could get pretty volatile about taking advice, reacting unpredictably against attempts to gentle or redirect him as Dangerous Manipulation Again.

You could do a fantastic AU with that actually, with betrayed, hardened, trying-so-fucking-hard unstable Lan Xichen flipping out at a Lan Wangji who's trying to rein in his excessive brutality against like, suspected traitors. Like that's a role reversal you could make work by pulling the right trauma strings and it would hurt so good. Put Nie Huaisang in as a witness to an episode and really layer things up.

But I find it hard to imagine him going that way in seclusion. Taking all the pressures off a person in a mental health crisis is something you do for a reason. He is in there so he won't be forced to make decisions when he doesn't feel qualified anymore, as much as to hide from his shame and wrestle with the grief.

Putting the crisis-haver in solitary confinement is not actually a good idea! That will generally make many parts of the problem worse! Even with the ability to come out if he decides to, and even though privacy sounds like a good idea, isolation is a bit much.

But he's going to break a different way if he's alone with no responsibilities, and only himself to do anything for or to.

The most likely way for his seclusion to go bad, if it does, is self-destruction. That could look a lot of ways, and might or might not kill him, and if it does could do so at basically any speed.

If it doesn't just become an inward spiral of destruction but also is bad, though...let's see. He could still come out paranoid. Yeah. Having lost his faith in the ability and will of people to be good.

The most obvious way for this to turn ugly out the gate is that he reverses his previous arc (that's one of the reasons this doesn't strike me as probable) and instead of leaning toward 'wangji was right and i was wrong; i have to interrogate all my biases harder and reconsider my definition of acceptable sacrifices and listen to him' he looks at wangxian, and his brother's conviction that this notorious villain was always good at heart, that his crimes were mostly under duress, or exaggerations and lies, that he means well and mostly meant well, and wants to be better and to put all that behind him...

And remembers that's the story Jin Guangyao told him.

#ask #hoc est meum #Anonymous #mdzs #lan xichen #meta #mental health #characterization #like my understanding is that's a lot of the reason he DID extend wwx and lwj as much latitude as he did #because he had such firm principles about not judging people by their pasts #because he chose to trust jgy's stated good intentions over the implications of his record #and he was so fucking wrong

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llycaons · 8 months

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ep 32 (3/3): BRUTAL

in the book it was said that wwx was 'half-dead with fear' when he heard this. I loved the phrase

oh NOW you're telling him to play? lwj you're at some kind of crisis here you don't know WHAT you want

on my first watch I remember so clearly thinking 'oh teehee I've seen the spoilers there's nothing to surprise me only to GASP when this shot happened

I can tell it's su she's stupid upper lip and stupid nose too. he has very distinctive lower facial features

I was fully sobbing by this point so idk if I have any more commentary beyond *whimpering noises* look how terrified they are...that's their big sister

pretty fucked up that he's a jiang sect member

oohh, this shot is devastating. seeing him from across the battlefield, in this one instant, they're together again, and then-

this shot KILLS me. I know I talk a lot about wwx but jc loves jyl so much. he loves her so much. that's his big sister too. part of the reason the estrangement is so painful is because I get it. I get his anger and his violence and his bitterness. I don't agree with how he handled it, but I understand it

ohh this shot

honestly it looks a little wonky. there have been several shots this episode that have looked awkward. but who cares

I've been looking forward to the postres arc because it's not as relentlessly sad but I'm going to miss jyl SO much. look at her. she deserved the world

this is another line that slaughters me. she refers to wwx earlier at jinlintai, but this can also refer to their entire relationship. despite his closeness with jyl, wwx has often avoided true vulnerability or honesty with her. especially recently, for political reasons - stepping back, offering formality, running off, slipping away, bouncing her questions back to her. even with this person who's the closest he has to a mother, he couldn't sit down with her and entirely be with her in the way she wanted them all to be. and that hurt her! she wanted that closeness for all three of them, for the rest of their lives. oh jyl im so sorry you all couldn't make it in this lifetime

and this. fuck

oh! that WAS the brother of the archer! it was mentioned in the book but I couldn't remember if it was canon to here as well. ugh, how appropriate it was for revenge

HEY. DON'T PLAY THAT

I've seen a really angry post (in the lwj tag no less) trying to put this situation into a modern context and it characterized wwx as super careless and irresponsible and uncommunicative, who was directly the cause of jyl running into 'a gang fight' and 'getting caught in the crossfire' idk it was super defensive of jc punching wwx but I think it misrepresented a lot of details unfairly. like this is a really complicated and painful situation for EVERYONE that wwx does bear some responsibility for, even if it happened due to other people's decisions besides him. and also he was trying to save innocent people from being murdered, idc how little info jc had about the state of wwx's core he DID know that and he simply didn't care or like try to extend some sympathy and support for him? that's like one of the most understandable goals...ever

anyway saying that wwx was directly responsible for jyl's death is simply untrue. she chose to come to the fight (HOW DID SHE GET THERE??? HOW DID SHE KNOW ABOUT IT??? WHERE'S HER GUARDS??? UNIMPORTANT). she came to look for him, sure, but he never wanted her anywhere near it. she was injured by something they thought was under wwx's control, true. but she died because she chose wwx over herself

that's not something he had any control over. and to hold that over his head when there was nothing he could have done once he realized what was happening, for someone who already bears a lot of guilt for simply surviving/being loved/being taken off the streets, it's just a horrifically cruel thing to put on him. and hey, grief doesn't always make sense. but I understand completely why wwx did what he did next. and after he comes back to life, it's even more obvious how much he needs his close relationships to be with people who don't hold anything over him or blame him for simply being alive or demand things from him that he simply can't give

oh....

wwx kills this guy with his bare hands but like. who cares, right? no focus is on this man at all, curiously. jc could have blamed him instead. but he seems wholly convinced that every single bad thing that's ever happened to him was wwx's fault. to be fair, they don;t know about the second flautist yet so it doesn't look great for him, but also...you know how much your sister and brother loved each other! dude!

anyway i feel wretched

personal hightlights (what a joke. no this was a good episode)

god. "I want to stay with him a bit longer" and jyls' face when she sees wwx

madam jin breaking down and sobbing once she leaves the room

the heroic music setting wwx up as the villain of the story is a REALLY good touch

white paint on wwx's face <3

the cry-laughing

all of his lines on the roof but especially the ones about how he has to be careful who he hurts even though anyone can try to kill him with impunity and 'your hatred and admiration both come so cheap!' + the significance that has for wx

pulling out the arrow and killing the archer with it was BALLER

jc holding jyl in his arms is an unforgettable image

#cql re-rewatch

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thatswhatsushesaid · 1 year

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Confession: I kind of hate how it feels like the two options for fandom are fitting every character into flat fanfic tropes regardless of who they actually are, or nitpicking what is and isn't canon. Not just for mdzs, in general. Makes things much less fun. Like seeing people object to sex headcanons because canonically a character didn't have sex... Neither did Captain Spok but that didn't stop grandma

"neither did captain spock but that didn't stop grandma" kdsl;ja; 🤝 anon you made my morning

you're right though esp about the fitting characters into flat fanfic tropes. I feel fortunate I haven't experienced this as much in my corner of the mdzs fandom, but I absolutely saw a lot of it in the realm of the elderlings fandom back when I was more active there. (there was some canon basis for some of this since a lot of the narrative involved characters chafing against their societal roles and expectations, and the novels themselves extend that struggle into what it means to be a prophet and a catalyst; it was good, crunchy stuff.)

as for nitpicking what is and isn't canon, I'm of two minds about it. I absolutely enjoy some concepts that don't have much canon support (e.g., sangyao), but there's a serious problem in mdzs fandom with canon bleed and just... not recognizing that some things just are or are not canon. examples of stuff that is canon and should not be up for debate (and yet! and yet.):

the jianghu was a more corrupt and dangerous place while jgs was the lanling jin sect leader, and markedly safer and less corrupt under jgy as sect leader and chief cultivator.

wwx also did crimes??? not sure why this continues to be a thing that people clutch their pearls over.

mxy did sexually harass his fellow disciples; he confesses to this at the start of the novel in the notes he leaves behind for wwx, and it's the closest we will ever get to hearing from him in his own words. under these circumstances, I think we should believe him.

related, jgy is not on mxy's hit-list in the novel.

obviously I could go on, but I bring these points up specifically to explain why I'm among the people who really do knuckle down and hold their ground around canon discussions. because when stuff like this /gestures @ the above, is re-litigated again and again, it doesn't actually help us better understand the source material. it muddies the waters and makes it that much harder to engage in reasonable, text-based speculation on events in the novel that aren't as clear cut.

#asks answered #mdzs meta

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shanastoryteller · 3 years

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i read another one of those posts that was discussing the difference between i-societies and we-societies and how that difference effects interpretation and fandom and they used lan xichen as their example of this, specifically how people view his reaction to lan wangji’s punishment - either as perfectly understandable and expected aka totally morally fine, or see it as heinous crime that goes against basic decency

which immediately caught my attention because i’m sure y’all are aware i have some Feelings around lwj’s punishment and his clan

the reason i’m not responding to this post in a reblog is just because the op said that this was just their opinion and they weren’t looking to engage in discourse. so i’m just making my own post instead

the reason this caught my attention is that my Feelings really don’t have anything to do with the appropriateness of lwj’s punishment at the time that it occurred

the clan decided that wens needed to be killed. the clan decided wwx was culpable of the many crimes of which he was accused. not only did lwj go against his clan’s decisions, he injured his clan members in the process, either by protecting wwx or the wens depending on the media.

we live in a society

do i think that the clans deciding they really needed to kill a bunch of old people is morally reprehensible? yes. do i think they should have reevaluated their perceptions after no army of cultivators was at the burial mounds? obviously.

but they didn’t. they ignored evidence to the contrary and decided to go forward with their perceptions. however i feel about that, it’s what happened, which means from their perspective lwj went against them and injured his clansmen for no justifiable reason

of course they punished him for it. why wouldn’t they? if they didn’t, that would be insane and go against everything shown in the untamed universe and the lan clan in particular about punishment and responsibility

lxc is the clan head. regardless of his personal feelings, he has a duty to uphold the law and order of his clan. if he doesn’t, how can he effectively lead it? especially considering how his father broke away from those rules

all of this is true in universe. it’s what we have to work with. i may handwave or twist things in fanfiction for my persona satisfaction, because that’s what fanfiction is for, but this is what canon has given us

here’s why i don’t like lxc specifically in connection with lwj’s punishment

multiple members of my family have gone to jail. more than once

they committed crimes. they were guilty. they were judged by a trial of their peers and a sentence was passed down by a judge

while there are many things wrong with our criminal system, i know for a fact that they really were guilty of the crimes they were accused, and that their sentences were not overly harsh in proportion to their crimes

we live in a society

i would never say that this shouldn’t have happened or is unfair because it’s important to me that i live in society that has a way to deal with and manage crime (ignoring my specific feelings about the effectiveness and appropriateness of the current criminal system)

but i was always sad about it

i never wanted them to go. i worried about them while they were in there. they’re my family and i care about them and even if they brought it on themselves i don’t like seeing people i care about suffer. i didn’t want it to happen. i regretted that it was happening to them.

sometimes they committed crimes against me specifically or in ways that involved me. stealing from me and other members of my family, or getting in a physical altercation in front of me that i felt the need to try and break up

even when i was personally hurt and affected by their crimes, they were still my family, and i love them, and i’m still on good terms with them today. family can be complicated. love is messy

while lxc may not have been able to stop or lessen lwj’s punishment, and while as the clan leader he couldn’t speak out against the actions of his sect, that’s not really what my specific feelings are about

he never voices regret for lwj’s suffering, except to blame wwx for it. he never says that he didn’t want it to happen and that he hated that it did and that if he could have stopped it while still upholding a functioning society, he would have. even after the truth of everything comes out, and it turns out maybe lwj had a reason for his actions that should have been taken into consideration, he never readjusts his perception or voices that change in perception out loud. sure, you can argue that maybe these things happened off screen because this is a story from wwx’s perspective. but maybe they didn’t

the punishment is instead wholly correct and good without room for personal suffering

i like lxc for a lot of reasons. i find his reaction to wwx and all the accusations against jgy after the time jump to be admirable, for one. i’m perfectly happy to read stories and interpretations where’s he’s a pure badass cinnamon roll

but

the question for me was never really was lwj’s punishment appropriate in the context of his society or what social responsibility to lwj did lxc have as a member of society or as clan leader or his brother

it was: does your love exist outside of the bounds of social acceptability?

is your empathy able to exist outside the realm of responsibility? does your care and worry extend even through the societal failures of someone who matters to you?

if the answer to those questions is no, well

i’m just not going like you very much

#this is your grandma talking #sometimes i feel like some people #want to put every difference of opinion down to #an east vs west issue #but i just think people are more complicated than that #untamed

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namelessexistence · 3 years

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Am I the only one who loves the Idea of WWX and SJ being friends? Please Tell me I'm not the only one. Not only they are my favorite characters (for Very different reasons, but still) but I really think It would be beneficial for both. Hear me out.

WWX is not naive, he's not unfamiliar to the cruelty of the world, he doesnt have an close minded Sense of honor about what methods are acceptable to use in a fight according to what society decided was acceptable. He's cunning and good enough at deceit. But he is kind, selfless and heroic. He would be able to understand SJ in a way that LQG and most of righeous cultivators coudn't. But even so he represent a moral that SJ lacks, and, because WWX can understand him, because he doesnt live in a completo different world from SJ, WWX could be a positive influence to him. (And, as we know, SJ becoming a better person in virtually everyone's interest). WWX is protective and would defend SJ when SJ is wronged. No, he's not the kind of person to abandon, WWX and JC situation is completly different from SJ and YQY, I'll explain why later here in the post.

SJ is extremely loyal, even when he feels betrayed and abandones. Once he grows to Care about WWX, he woudn't turn his back to him, no mattter How mas he may be at WWX. He would never, for exemple, Tell everyone that WWX is an enemy of the cultivation world.

They both lived in the streets, they're both orphans. Of course they're not exactly the same circunstância. Almost no one knows about SJ's origin. But he knows and he never seem to forget. WWX'S origin is known. He may be a Head disciple, a prodigy, but, when he annoy some rich spoiled a******, he's the son of a servant. They're both defined by their low North, one internally, and the other externally. They both know How is like to live in a society where a lot of people around them believe that their birth makes them less. Being part of that society without really being part of It.

They are both targets of rumours, both acused of deaths they did not cause, Just because they were there and because people were already so inclined to think the worst of them. Os course the scum SQQ would kill LQG, he Said he would, didn't he? And he always envied LQG. Of course the evil Yiling Laozu would kill his own shijie that basically raised him. How manu people he killed that night? Just ignore the fact that the other people he killed that night were ALL fighters that already gathered with the intent of fighting against WWX and that he coudn't know that JYL, who's not a fighter and tecnically shoudnt be there, would run into the middle of the Battlefield.

They were both perceived as villains and, while It is true to SJ, to certain extend, they were condened for crimes they either did not commit or had justifications to commit. Yes, SJ commited some of the crimes he was acused of, but not all. Virtually the world turned against them. People who should defend them turned their backs to them. Actually, both books start by informing us that they were really bad people who met horrible, but deserved, endings.

Let me Tell why WWX didn't abandon JC like (SJ believe that) YQY abandones SJ. First, when WWX left the Jiang Sect, JC was a Sect leader, had a living sister. The war was over. There was no threat, not to JC. SJ was left as a slave of a cruel master. Every day that YQY didn't came back was a living hell and YQY was the only one who cared enough to try to save him. So, to start, SJ and JC were "left" in completly different situations.

Second, YQY had a promise of coming back, WWX had no promise to stay. The promise he did to JC was to serve him as his father served JFM. And guess what? Said father left to live his own life, and JFM had no problem with this.

Third, the reason. WWX left to save Innocenti lides and JC was fully aware of this. You can't say JC didn't help because WWX wasnt honest. The only thing WWX was keeping from him was the core issue, but It shouldn't affect the morality of that choice. JC already had a debt with WN and WQ without bringing the core to this. YQY didn't come back because he coudn't, I don't blame him for that, but SJ believe he didn't even try. In SJ's Head, YQY abandones him because SJ was not important enough, because YQY could live a bright New Life without SJ. That's not the true, but YQY never told the true even when SJ asked.

Só no, I don't think that, If SJ'S friend, that he already know to be a selfless and heroic person, left him, in his position as a peak lord, to save Innocent lifes and SJ knew that, he would be as bitter as he was with his friend leaving him as a slave to an abusive master Just because he didn't Care enough to come back to save SJ (once again, that's not the true, it's not what YQY did, but is what SJ believe).

And WWX woudn't have to abandon SJ If SJ was in JC's place, because SJ woudn abandon him. He coudn't abandon YQY, despite believing everything I wrote above. He woudn't Just say "well, If you won't do what I want, you can Just die with them". SJ would try to use his Power and influence to help WWX If he saw WWX as a friend. Because SJ is ruthless and deeply flawded, and he loves Very few people, but he would never abandon those few people to the Wolves. SJ coudn't even let LQG, whom he resented, die, or get over the guilt of not being able to save him. Why would he let a friend die? He woudn't!

#svsss #shen jiu #mdzs #wei wuxian

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paradife-loft · 4 years

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Close reading all the Jin Guangyao scenes: episode 10

Episode 11 | Episode 22 | Episode 23

So, when I was talking to @fatalism-and-villainy the other day, I mentioned how while doing this third watch of The Untamed, I was feeling really quite tempted to make a semi-liveblogging project out of doing a close analysis of basically every episode where Meng Yao/Jin Guangyao has a substantial scene.... Their response was only to encourage me in this further obsessive descent, and well, here we are.

I’m starting with episode 10 where we are in this watch right now, rather than going back to episode 4, because while ep4 is utterly delightful, I don’t really feel like I have a lot to say about it that hasn’t already been hashed to death.

Meanwhile, episode 10... oh boy! So much going on here. This episode is most interesting to me because the main theme we see in a majority of Meng Yao’s scenes, is how wholeheartedly invested he is in advancing the cause and prominence of the Nie Sect that he serves. Particularly in light of how we see him later giving the same loyalty and effort to the Jin sect, it’s a really cool (and tragic, tbh) precursor that shows a lot about how much he’ll make a point of doing well by those who’ve elevated him in turn.

So he first shows up with Nie Huisang, when WWX/LWJ/JC are all discussing with Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen what they ought to do with Xue Yang. Noticing the latter two (who are established already as being well-known heroes throughout the cultivation world), he asks if they wouldn’t come along to Qinghe to figure out how best to punish Xue Yang, and also what the best course of action would be for dealing with the Wen sect. Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan rebuff this offer... because they understand, accurately, that what Meng Yao is suggesting/asking about is for them to establish a relationship tying them, however informally (for now), to the Qinghe Nie sect.

(^This, incidentally, is the face he makes when they say “yeahhh, but no thanks,” or specifically, “We give less value to blood heritage and more to like-mindedness. We don’t want to depend on any cultivation family.” This is the face of “oh, okay, tell me no in such direct terms, when I went to the trouble of phrasing my suggestion a bit more obliquely, thanks so much,” and also, “Wow, doesn’t that sound nice to be able to do :/”)

Then a few minutes later, we get this wonderful facial expression! ...which I don’t actually have a whole lot to say about, except that I take it for... curiosity, mostly, about someone who’s had such an outsize effect on the local area, what with murdering a handful of minor cultivation clans? Interest in what inter-clan strategic advantages could be gained in one way or another with Xue Yang as a bargaining chip, source of information, etc.? Possibly also interest in the sense of, this is also someone who came from nothing and has been able to get a lot of important people to pay attention to him (even if not for a good reason), depending on how much he’s heard about Xue Yang as a person? There’s a lot of possibilities this is opening up, and I think he’s basically curious to see what happens.

Again, we just have him being very good at working the angles to get an advantage to the Nie sect (compared to the Wen sect in this case). Jiang Cheng even comments on him being thorough and formidable! (And Huisang mentions that Nie Mingjue really admires him; and Wei Wuxian says it looks like Jin Guangshan doesn’t know how to recognise talent... anyway.)

Mmmm, yep, douchebags gonna douchebag.... Nothing terribly interesting here that hasn’t already been noted a zillion times, since the basic fundamentals of his character relate to how poorly others treat him for his birth. (It is noteworthy though, I think, how the condensed timeline & events for Meng Yao killing his superior and ruining his relationship with Nie Mingjue in the process compared to the extended version in the novel, alters the first bit of screen time we get here seeing what Nie Mingjue is actually like as a leader. In the novel, his men in the army have a bit of a nasty gossip problem, but the person who mistreats Meng Yao and takes credit for his ideas later is a part of the Jin clan; in the drama, various Nie sect disciples have a gossip problem that he berates them for, but even so he still is, at best, ignorant of how his men’s mistreatment of the person he promoted and thinks highly of has continued.)

Oh boy, here’s where it starts to get fun! This is Meng Yao’s face as Wen Chao has just threatened to do “housecleaning” of the Nie sect if they don’t hand over Xue Yang, and it’s looking as though Nie Mingjue won’t be able to contain the conflict in a single one-on-one duel with Wen Zhuliu. It’s curious - he has a smirky face looking over toward Huisang when NMJ initially throws Baxia out in front of Wen Chao, like he’s thinking clearly the offered duel would go their way. Was he expecting the duel to be between NMJ and Wen Chao, who he’d clearly clean the floor with, and Wen Zhuliu stepping up instead took him off-guard? - Because that’s when he looks down thinking very quickly for a couple moments, and then tells Huisang he’s going to go check on Xue Yang.

As @veliseraptor and @ameliarating and I hashed out as this scene continued: what makes the most sense here is that, seeing how things might be going downhill for the Nie sect very quickly if something isn’t done to get the Wen sect off their backs, Meng Yao makes the snap calculation that the best course of action to keep them from getting massacred would be to free Xue Yang to hand him over. He doesn’t really look happy as he heads away from the entrance here; he looks like someone making the unpleasant decision to let a known murderer avoid justice because it will be better for his immediate concern of preserving the sect and clan he serves. Mingjue is uncompromising, but Meng Yao will look for the most advantageous option he can see and go for it, even if it’s a bit shady and perhaps not what his sect leader would prefer. Nie Mingjue respects him and listens to him well when he explains, after all, so with so much at stake, taking this gamble is probably worth the risk.

Aaaand, then we get to the part where he quite deservedly stabs the army commander who’s been treating him like shit for the past while! It’s not terribly clear (especially at this point) the exact chain of events that occurred before NMJ showed up, but from the number of other bodies in the back of the scene, I do think it’s quite plausible that Xue Yang actually did kill most of the dead Nie disciples there, as that would be... a lot of people for someone with a weak cultivation base to off very quickly. And the commander himself - I take that as a highly relished stroke of opportunism, honestly. Meng Yao picks up a Wen sword to use to kill him because he is good at quick thinking to avoid self-incrimination, but I don’t think he’d been intending on multiple homicides when he initially went back to grab Xue Yang before Wen Chao ordered his men to attack everyone and all hell broke loose.

Oh, ow! NMJ is getting ready to attack him, as Meng Yao frantically tries to talk him down - and Meng Yao still instinctively jumps in front of a sword for his sect leader! Like, truly, honestly, I do believe he had great regard for and loyalty to Nie Mingjue at the very least up through the end of this episode. Whether or not this particular sword thrust could have been fatal to either of them, it still says quite a lot about how he values Chifeng-zun’s person more than his own, even as he’s quite possibly gearing up to kill Meng Yao for what he’s done. That is just... a real intense instinctive sense of obligation and value differential between the two of them that he has, here. Ouch, ouch.

When they resume in the throne room, I think there’s a lot that’s already been said and/or is obviously central, with the line about “fame for merit” and how much it matters to him being the big one. (Why should being recognised for your merit matter so much??? says the one who essentially always has been - lining up one of the central conflicts that continues between the two of them until the ends of their lives.) But I do think it’s pretty fun and telling how seamlessly (performance-wise) Meng Yao slips in the definite lie about the army commander freeing Xue Yang, amongst all the other (pretty certainly true) reasons to condemn him, and then claims it’s all true. I think it definitely speaks of... familiarity with being in a position where others won’t take your own actual reasons for doing something as a good enough justification, and so you develop an intuition of how to mix in motives that also target and appeal to the person you’re talking to as well, to avoid harsh punishment.

Also... hmmmm..... >>>

Hey look, I’m just saying there’s some interesting thematic comparisons going on in this show regarding moral worth and who a person considers to have enough ethical standing and goodness in them to judge them for their actions and have them accept it, okay?

Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian are amazing narrative foils and I am probably never going to get tired of saying it.

Bonus round!

(When you’ve just been stabbed but you’re still really worried about the attack on the Cloud Recesses that Wen Chao has just revealed, because of what it means could be happening to one incredibly wonderful person! Better go make sure he’s okay, right?? ~*~ XiYao feels intensify ~*~)

#holy fuck this was a lot more than I was intending on writing at least for a first post here :'D #BUT HE'S WORTH IT <3333 #jin guangyao #meng yao #the untamed #meta #op #long post for ts #no good things for the poor sad cultivators #CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP

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hamliet · 4 years

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do you think jin guanyao had even a little bit of love for his son even though he killed him?

Well… I guess it depends on how you define love. I’ve spoken about this a bit before, here.

In my opinion, yes, he did. It just seems consistent with his character that he would–that said, he does describe himself as being frightened to look at his son thanks to Rusong, you know, being the biological child of two siblings who had no idea they were related. Which is horrible, and Sect Leader Yao’s claim that the child was likely mentally impaired is actually not scientifically accurate. But even if he was, it doesn’t matter. Rusong was an innocent kid who deserved to live and I’m sad over his fate.

In the post I linked, I spoke about how I think whatever happened to A-Song–which MXTX left deliberately vague–is likely in the middle. It probably wasn’t Jin Guangyao maliciously waiting and plotting for how to murder his own kid while framing an enemy sect leader, but neither was it likely “sect leader poisons his kid and Jin Guangyao was taken by surprise.” The person in the final version of the novel who conjectures that it was solely A-Yao’s nefarious plan is Sect Leader Yao, and he is about as unreliable of a narrator as you can get within this novel.

Jin Guangyao is also a highly unreliable narrator (still more reliable than SLY though), but from the few incidents we do know the truth of, the truth is likely in the middle. He always acts surreptitiously rather than upfront confrontation, he tends to hurt the people he loves most (I mean, look at his list in the end chapters), and he only acts when he feels like he has to–but he does not have to respond how he does, which tends to be a deadly overreaction. Yay tragedy? -___-

Mo Xuanyu

Mo Xuanyu was kicked out of Koi Tower because of “his own doing” according to Wei Wuxian. At that point in time, WWX had all the reason in the world to blame one more crime on Jin Guangyao, so whatever he read in those letters MXY left behind (with no reason to lie) must have convinced him. I know there are debates, but I think to read MXY as completely innocent borders on misreading based on what we have in the text.

Plus, Jin Guangyao had nothing to gain from banishing Mo Xuanyu–his level of cultivation was abysmally low, he was a cut-sleeve and timid–and we’ve never seen Jin Guangyao act out of sadism. He genuinely committed his crimes out of a belief that he had no choice (but he did have a choice, and that’s the tragic flaw of Jin Guangyao).

That said, given what we know of the context–that Jin Guangyao had accidentally married his birth sister–it seems pretty in-character for Jin Guangyao to overreact and pretty out of character for Mo Xuanyu to do something extreme (but in-character to develop inappropriate feelings to the one person who’s been nice to him), and send his little brother to a terrible fate.

Qin Su

He did not marry Qin Su out of a type of perversion, but to preserve himself and to preserve her. Her reputation would have gone the way of his mother’s, after all, if it came out they were pregnant with Rusong before they married.

It was a bad situation. I still hold that Jin Guangyao’s decision to marry her but not touch her wasn’t the wrong thing to do inherently, but his sin was rather that he deceived her instead of telling her the truth. He claimed to truly care about her, and while we’ll never know, it’s also said that Qin Su is the one who insisted that she would marry him and who fell in love first, so it doesn’t seem far-fetched that this might be the case.

Nie Mingjue

Nie Mingjue tried to kill him days before Jin Guangyao killed him. It’s not a coincidence they both wind up trapped in a coffin for 100 years: neither of them are morally better than the other (sorry Da-Ge, but righteousness without empathy isn’t righteousness). I mean, literally, if Lan Xichen hadn’t intervened Nie Mingjue would have killed Jin Guangyao, and because he would have done it in public doesn’t make it any more moral than Jin Guangyao poisoning him surreptitiously. But, we know that Jin Guangyao kept trying to improve their relationship until the moment Da-Ge called him the son of a whore, and then it was over.

We also know he truly cared about Nie Mingjue at first. One of my forever-gripes about The Untamed is that it changed the ending of the Sunshot Campaign, because in the novel Jin Guangyao killed Wen Rouhan to spare Nie Mingjue, not Wei Wuxian. He would have had much to gain from killing Nie Mingjue in that moment, but he did not. He knew Nie Mingjue might well try to kill him in rage after saving him (which he did) but he saved him anyways. Plus, for all NMJ’s conjecture about how Meng Yao manipulated him, it was NMJ who took the time to notice him when Jin Guangyao didn’t notice he was watching, so much like Jin Guangyao, Nie Mingjue kinda sucks at personal responsibility.

All that to say, Jin Guangyao probably did love A-Song in his narrow view of love that refused to utilize empathize as much as Nie Mingjue did. He empathized, learning where people were coming from but without understanding the point of empathy (i.e. “do unto others” or their lives are equal to his own). It’s this lack of understanding about the point of empathy that led to him killing A-Song: again, I expanded on this in the previous answer I linked to, but A-Song had a lot in common with his father in terms of their birth situation, and Jin Guangyao had always wanted to live regardless of how he was valued, so he should have extended the same desire to his son.

The tragic irony of Jin Guangyao’s situation is that the man only ever wanted a family–to love and be loved–which most other characters were born into. (I know it’s a common argument that JGY wanted esteem, but he only ever directed said esteem towards trying to make his family love him.) However, in his quest to love and be loved, he misunderstood that he didn’t have to be perfect. He wasn’t unloved because he was the son of a prostitute. He was unloved because his father was a terrible person who was bound by his own privilege, and so Jin Guangyao assumed he needed to get that privilege to earn love when he absolutely did not. He had it through three characters who foil each other: Lan Xichen, Qin Su, and Mo Xuanyu. He could have had it through other characters as well (if he hadn’t kept trying to cater to society Nie Mingjue would have come around–it’s not like NMJ gave him no chances). He just refused to consider that love and privilege did not go hand-in-hand, and ironically often oppose each other. It’s no coincidence that Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji only find love when they’re against society, after all.

Sigh.

#ask hamliet #mdzs #mxtx #jin guangyao #meng yao #qin su #jin rusong #mo xuanyu #nie mingjue #tw #trigger warning #tw child death #Anonymous

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butterflydm · 5 years

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The Untamed Rewatch (ep 1)

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Oh, yes, I was very correct about this all hitting me a lot harder after I’d seen the whole show. I am also watching it on viki.com this time and the subtitled translations are already a lot better than the ones on the tencent youtube channel. They flow much more naturally as lines of dialogue (there’s a new set of translated videos popping up, too, that I might check out on my… third viewing… that will probably happen after this one… I really like this story y’all).

Things that stood out to me on this viewing (note: I am going to be spoiling the rest of the story as well when talking about things, including the twists):

Okay, so in the drama, when Wei WuXian is brought back to life, it seems like he definitely does look like himself again from the start —he specifically questions Mo XuanYu’s cousin to see if the Mo family would recognize him and learns that they haven’t seen him without mask or heavy makeup since he left home for a while at thirteen. What I infer from the conversations is that their looks were similar enough that when Mo XuanYu called Wei WuXian’s spirit into his body and the magic reshaped it, his general shape didn’t change enough to be noticeable, plus the family didn’t really look at him much in any case. And Wei WuXian worries that the “Lans of Gusu” might know enough about how he looks to recognize him, even if they aren’t “him”. I mean, obviously the doylist/meta reason is that they hired Xiao Zhan for a reason and they’re gonna have him play the part, but yeah, thinking about it is interesting.

Wei WuXian playing wangxian on the piece of grass: fucked me up so much more now. This show does such an excellent job with this entire romance. The whole way they set up Wei WuXian both wanting and not wanting to see Lan WangJi again is a lovely representation of their push-pull dynamic in the drama as a whole.

Which brings me to how much I love that song. The wangxian love theme is absolutely beautiful, enough that even when they play it like ten times in one of the later episodes, I’m still like “aaaah, so pretty! <3”. The first time we hear it is when Wei Ying has the flashback to Lan Zhan in his Gusu robes when he’s talking to Lan SiZhui and it’s so subtle there but it starts building up the mood of their romance, piece by piece. And WWX is so overcome by the memory that he literally sinks down and sits on his heels.

I also really love Lan Zhan’s theme song, as well. Lan Zhan’s introduction is… a lot. I love that we don’t see his face until it’s WWX seeing his face again, too. And he’s just this floating ethereal being and WWX stares for a long while, transfixed… and then makes fun of the way he’s dressed, with a fond smile. There’s such a good job there of putting in a sense of familiarity and history with how Wei Ying reacts to seeing Lan Zhan again.

The set-up of the sixteen years ago, seeing that moment, and then when we come back to it 30+ episodes later as we see both that there was so much we didn’t know but also that the show didn’t at all ‘cheat’ about the emotions of the scene — the backstory information we get complicates the picture of that day that we start with but doesn’t undermine it.

Wei WuXian also comes back in a much better emotional place? Given the way resentful energy is presented in the drama as a corrupting force, I wonder if part of that is attributable to getting a ‘new start’ in Mo XuanYu’s body — his own original body had been put through so much physical trauma in addition to the emotional trauma. The removal of his golden core. Being thrown down into the burial mounds. Then years of resentful energy being held inside his body and built up over time. Even just getting a chance to wipe that out and start again in a body that hasn’t been through that trauma might be helpful. This fey, trickster Wei WuXian is reminiscent of how we meet him in the flashback.

Though, in the drama (as I understand it, his death happens differently in the novel), another element might be that we did see him reach a moment of peace right before he died — he saved Lan Zhan’s life. He was already able to break out of the stranglehold of his grief and pain long enough to do that before he died, so his mind already started the healing process (but then he died, so it was short-circuited — sort of? Wei Ying does make it clear he was aware of being dead and he even knows how long he’s been dead without anyone telling him). I’m not sure how much of that applies to the novel’s version of WWX, but that’s what I got out of the drama’s version.

I really love Wei Ying’s casual displays of power. Snapping his fingers to freeze Mo XuanYu’s cousin in place… it just comes so naturally to him. He just has this very spontaneous-feel to when he uses magic (is it still called cultivation in this context?) that makes it just part of who he is and it’s very charming.

We see the hints of Nie HuaiSang’s hand behind everything — he paid the storyteller to talk about the YiLing Patriarch for three solid days, probably to influence the timing of Mo XuanYu’s ritual. He makes sure he stays there to see the initial results through — which he does again in the final act of the story. I have much genuine love for Nie HuaiSang tbh. He gets his revenge thoroughly but doesn’t go incredibly overboard the way most of the revenge-based characters do in the series (though he is ruthless about it). He knows his own strengths and weaknesses — he’s not a fighter, but he knows where he can find one. He doesn’t have overweening ambition beyond what he can handle. If his big brother had never been murdered, I get the sense he would have happily stayed a decorative baby brother all his life.

The Lan juniors are the cutest lil beans in creation. I love the contrast between them, because we see that Lan SiZhui is much more polite and formal than Lan JingYi, but he’s also incredibly compassionate and his heart is very much present on his face at all times. He’s respectful but openly kind. The moments when his memory is getting tickled by the way Wei Ying is behaving is also… it means so much after having seeing the drama all the way through once. And I love Lan JingYi for many reasons, but also because I think his (tbh kind of straight-up bratty) attitude implies that the Cloud Recesses have calmed the fuck down a bit about their strictness in the past decade-plus. And he finds Wei Ying’s dramatics amusing for the most part, which is cute.

Lan SiZhui recognizing wangxian — I suspect he’s remembering Wei Ying playing it rather than it being a post-death memory of LWJ playing it, since Lan JingYi doesn’t remember it at all. And because if Lan WangJi played it for anyone after Wei Ying died, then I’m not sure he would have been so certain from the start that the person playing it had to be Wei Ying. Meanwhile, Wei Ying isn’t aware of the full emotional importance of the song to Lan Zhan, and he seems to play it a couple of times as a soothing action (self-soothing here, and then to calm down Wen Ning’s corpse in episode 2)? Likely because it reminds him of being cared for by someone (in this case, of course, Lan Zhan). Wei Ying keeps precious hold of things like this and is very sentimental from what we see, and it makes sense that he associates this song with affection in the same way that he associates lotus root and sparerib soup with affection.

I am… honestly not at all surprised that people (even apart from the Lans) are using all the cool shit that Wei WuXian created even while most of the cultivation world still condemns him. That was the way they behaved when he was alive, too. They wanted his cool shit but judged him for making it.

Wei WuXian standing up for Lan SiZhui and the rest of the juniors when Madame Mo is yelling at them: he’s such a natural defender, tbh (which, of course, ends up being a big part of why he and Jiang Cheng end up at odds because WWX doesn’t limit his caretaking nature to his family but extends it to literally anyone who needs it no matter the cost). He’s nurturing in a careless/teasing way at times but he’s also very protective. And that impulse to jump in to help other people is such a big moral thing that he shares with Lan Zhan.

Okay, so, thoughts on grief as presented in the drama: Lan WangJi is well-known and beloved by the young Lan disciples. His reputation is back to being spotless, because it’s been over a decade since he did anything wrong. so, I don’t think he was publicly still grieving, though I will note that the Lan junior disciples seem relatively open to the idea that the YiLing Patriarch was probably not the worst person ever and it wouldn’t suck if he really weren’t dead after all, kind of reminiscent of MianMian’s daughter talking about how the YiLing Patriarch only goes after bad people (Lan JingYi honestly sounds hilariously excited about the idea that the YiLing Patriarch might still be alive, tbh - what have you been telling these children, Lan Zhan? lol).

So while I don’t get the impression LWJ spent most of those years openly pining, I’m sure the subject of WWX has come up, as he’s still a popular monster-in-the-night for a lot of people, and LWJ probably did defend his memory, in his own quiet but solid way. But I also get the impression overall that LWJ put his deep grief for Wei Ying in the same box as his deep grief over his mother, and he did his duty.

Then, he realizes Wei Ying might be alive and everything changes. I love that they both instinctively think of each other by their given names, too. Even when Wei Ying isn’t sure whether or not he wants to see Lan Zhan, that’s still how he thinks of him first — as Lan Zhan. And Lan Zhan just stares at the sword while it’s giving off those black smoke trails, transfixed, and when he first wonders if Wei Ying is alive and there, it’s just... Peak Romance, y’all. Peak Romance.

It does crack me up that the second Wei Ying gets the chance, he dresses himself in his own colors of black & red and doesn’t stick with Mo XuanYu’s colors. The only effort he puts into his ‘undercover’ disguise is the mask. He deserves a “I don’t think you even tried at all” star tbh.

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#mdzs meta #the untamed | chen qing ling #wangxian #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian | wei ying #lan wangji | lan zhan #long post #text post #cql rewatch

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