Yet another entry in my rambling notes on rewatching The Untamed, posted to my blog because I am lazy like that. Probably very weird, dull and incoherent for others to read. Hence why I'm putting the majority of the text behind a read more tag.
Okay, so we're starting with the ceremony to officially begin the lessons at Cloud Recesses. This ceremony would seem to be invented for the show, as the implication in the novel was that the students from other clans who came to study under Lan Qiren were coming at whatever time was convenient for their own side of affairs, and just joined in the lessons he was giving to his own students within the Lan Clan. What's in the show, however, is different, clearly established to be something unusual, and with an arranged start and stop date. So more like mini-college or something. 😅 (Though that's also kind of fitting since they've upped the age of the characters for this sequence; in the novel they're all fifteen, whereas in the show they're ??? I mean, the actors are all in their twenties, but later on there's a reference to someone being a "teenage hero" (I think it was either Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian or just one of them, but I can't recall, which is exactly the sort of detail that is why I'm rewatching the whole show) so at least some of them are supposed to still be under 20, but obviously not by very much.)
Anyway, the Salute Ceremony or whatever it was called (not relevant to my fic so I don't feel like going back to check its exact name) starts with a mention that the Lan Clan has 3,500 rules. This is slightly different from the number in the novel (closer to 3,000 at this point in the novel, but over 4,000 by the time Wei Wuxian is revived), so I need to remember that in case it came up in my fic. It also includes listing a bunch of them, but I don't think I'll write any of those down right now unless I recall them being specifically mentioned in the fic. (Or a place where mentioning them would make sense/be necessary.)
LOL, "A headband is not for another purpose." OMG, why would...ah, I can't stop laughing at that one. Wei Wuxian managed not to break that one until the Indoctrination Camp, anyway. Hehehehe...of course, that wasn't nearly as much fun as the time drunk Lan Wangji broke that rule, but of course that had to be cut from the live-action version, like almost all of his drunk scenes did. 😭
Speaking of Lan Clan forehead ribbons, though! I so want the new scale figure that was up for pre-order from Good Smile Company! It's a pair figure, with Lan Wangji in the process of giving Wei Wuxian his own forehead ribbon. It's so sweet and lovely...
...and so $300. 😭😭😭
I cannot justify spending that kind of money on a single piece of merch. But look at it!
Isn't it just too precious?
*ahem*
Sorry. Been wanting an excuse to post about that for ages, and finally having one, I couldn't resist.
I'll get back to the episode now.
"Don't go tuft hunting."
Um.
Tuft hunting?
What....what does that even mean? Is it a kind of bird? I...
I mean, technically, the viewer was probably not expected to be paying attention to what the rules are as they're being droned on and on and on about, but just paying attention to what the characters are doing, but with subtitles it's hard not to read them, so...
I still wanna know what "tuft hunting" is. 🤣 But maybe kinda don't wanna know, too.
Interesting. So, during the reading out of all the rules, Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang are having a hushed conversation regarding the caged bird Nie Huaisang has snuck into the room in his sleeve. When Nie Huaisang presents himself to Lan Qiren, Wei Wuxian looks surprised, clearly having had no idea who he was talking to. Very different from what's in the novel, where it's not even clear whether Nie Huaisang was more interested in talking to Wei Wuxian or Jiang Cheng or if they started the conversation with him or what. (Given what he's secretly like, I'd expect he wanted to talk to them, what with Jiang Cheng being the heir to one of the Five Great Clans.) This makes it almost accidental that they become friends, since they just happened to be sitting next to each other when the bird started peeping and mildly disrupting the recitation.
It almost sounded like Nie Huaisang's whispered prompt to Meng Yao had him calling him "a-Yao." That...that would be...I mean, looking at their positions within the Nie Clan (despite that Meng Yao shouldn't even be with the Nie Clan yet in the book's chronology), it's not entirely wrong for him to be so casual with Meng Yao--Nie Huaisang is the heir (in the show's chronology; in the novel his father would still be alive at this point, making him second heir) while Meng Yao is in a lower position--but it also is pretty wrong? The high rank he has by the time he's dismissed from the Nie Clan in the novel is something he must surely already have by this point, practically Nie Mingjue's second in command, and addressing someone in such a high post that familiarly, as if he was a low rank or significantly younger...yikes. That would be very wrong. I'm hoping I just couldn't make it out very clearly because it's a whisper and that he actually just addressed him as "Meng Yao."
And a new tally is born:
Cast Members With Obviously Pierced Ears (listed by character name so I don't have to look up actor names for everyone):
1) Meng Yao (not just pierced, but actually the hole looks slightly infected, calling all the more attention to it)
I know I shouldn't call attention to things like that, but I can't help noticing weird stuff like that. (I've been known to be distracted by chicken pox scars on actor's faces in movies. I just spot weird things and then fixate on them.)
Oh man! Okay, I wanted to pay extra close attention to the bit where two random people were gossiping about Meng Yao being the illegitimate son of Jin Guangshan, because I wanted to see if I could figure out what Jin Zixuan is thinking on hearing that (I know what Meng Yao is thinking, and it's one of those heartbreaking moments where your heart goes out to him even knowing what he'll become later on) and although I'm still not clear what Jin Zixuan is thinking per se, I did spot the fact that the two people who are gossiping are wearing robes with the Lotus Pier emblem on the shoulders, meaning those were Jiang Clan disciples saying all that! That is absolutely something I need to take into account in my fic.
Yep, watched it one more time, still can't quite pin down what Jin Zixuan is thinking, though I'm quite sure he wasn't happy about it. Just not sure if he's hurt that his father's lechery is the main thing the Jin Clan is talked about for, or if he's annoyed that they're talking about his family at all, or displeased that someone like Meng Yao is related to him, or all of the above? Probably a combination of all of the above and then some, really. Meanwhile, Meng Yao looks like he's about to cry. His origins really are painfully tragic while also being uncomfortably real.
Ah, but then Lan Xichen goes over to accept the gift personally (despite that some servant-type accepted the Jin Clan's gift), complimenting him in the process. Considering the show wasn't allowed to acknowledge same-sex romance is a thing, it sure ships those two hard. Not that it really seems possible to read the novel and not come to the conclusion that there's a romantic (if not also sexual) side to their relationship, but...even the novel doesn't push the Xiyao ship as hard as The Untamed does.
Hmm. Seems like the Netflix subs calls the jade travel tokens "passing jade pendant." That's...uh...really awkward. I think I'll just stick with the book's version of "jade travel token." (Especially since the subs might call it something else later anyhow, not always being internally consistent.)
Cultivator Powers:
7) Starting and extinguishing fires. Wen Chao seems to be Force-strangling one of the Lan Clan guards, but he's actually lighting his robes on fire, which Wen Qing then puts out with a gesture and a bit of a wave of red energy. Huh. That may be awkward for the fire-fighting sequences of my fic. (OMG, why are there two different times in one fic that I have cultivators out fighting fires? Admittedly, fires they're responsible for in their war, but still! Not that I actually show them out fighting the fires, as such, but if they can put out fire that easily...then again, maybe that was just because it was some kind of special Wen Clan technique? I...uh...I may have to pretend this moment of the show didn't happen...cough)
Wen Chao then says Wen Qing is from a "minor clan." Also using that suffix version of -a that I didn't want to try to define on my glossary page because it seemed a bit too subtly complex for me to really grasp it.
I like that when it comes to a fight looking to break out, Meng Yao immediately places himself in front of Nie Huaisang to guard him. That's a good touch.
Cultivator Powers (again!):
8) By playing his xiao, Lan Xichen makes all the drawn swords in the room fly up out of their wielders' hands and fly up into the air, only to land point-down at their feet. (That reminds me, I need to double-check the novel and make sure there really was mention of Lan Xichen playing a xiao, and whether or not he used it for cultivation purposes the way the Lan Clan use the guqin. Because if there wasn't then I made some mistakes in some of my other fics. It's okay for this big long one, since it's CQL canon, but...)
Note to self: the classroom(?) where the Salute Ceremony was held is translated as the Orchid House. (Never know when it'll be useful to add a building name in the rewrite!)
Ooh, great line from Wei Wuxian: "Resisting evil guys is an endless joy." I should have him use that in the fic somewhere. 😆
As always, the subtitles are really falling down on the nuances of how characters address each other. There's a big difference from what Wei Wuxian said in calling out to Lan Wangji--"Ji-xiong!"--and what was written on screen--"Wangji!" Ah, how I would love to have this show released with a really good set of proper subtitles! Someone needs to work together with Seven Seas and license their translation so they can actually use the same words whenever the dialog is lifted wholesale out of the book. (Which I suspect happens with some regularity, but I have no way of knowing for sure, since I don't speak the language.)
Oh my. Okay, so we just entered a building at Cloud Recesses, and the subtitles call it "Songfeng Shuiyue Pavilion." The flipping back and forth between translating what place names mean and simply transliterating them is weirdly frustrating. From the looks of it, I don't think it's Lan Xichen's house, which is one of the only two buildings whose name I specifically use in the fic. I think this one is Lan Qiren's house, which is fine, 'cause its name is never mentioned in the fic. I'm not sure it's even a location anyone visits in the fic. I use the name of Lan Xichen's house twice, and Lan Wangji's house once, so if they do something like this for those I'll just have to stick with Seven Seas' translation of the building names. (Which is obviously what's there now, lol.)
Hmm. Lan Xichen just said that the Wen Clan can "channel fire." That's...very unlike the book, per se, but does explain what happened at the gate when Wen Chao set the guard on fire. Are the Wens literally the Fire Nation now? That would kind of be hilarious. (All the more so since one of those firefighting sequences in the first draft of my fic basically had the Twin Jades water-bending...😅 (Which is obviously wrong: if the clans of MDZS were to practice bending a la ATLA, the Lan Clan would obviously be air-benders.))
Lan Qiren calls the attacks turning people into puppets "spirit-taking incidents" in this scene. I should remember that phrasing so I can mix things up a bit.
Okay, so Wen Qing is evidently not as famous as a doctor in the show: she had to tell Wei Wuxian that she was a doctor. (She also has visibly pierced ears, but as Jiang Yanli is typically shown wearing earrings, this is clearly a setting where women do in fact pierce their ears. (From what I've read, there was some debate, historically, as to whether or not it was acceptable to do so. For the same Confucian reasons that led to not cutting their hair.) So I'm not adding Wen Qing to the tally for visibly pierced ears.) I may want to retouch some of the dialog about her medical career, then. Although probably not too much, since it seems like the drama's version of Wei Wuxian is pretty uneducated as to the other people in the cultivation world. Which made sense in the novel at this point in the story, since he was only fifteen at that time. With him being 18(?) or so, it makes less sense.
Wow. There are some buildings really high up there at Cloud Recesses!
I can't quite imagine what purpose some of those would even serve. I mean, maybe the really isolated ones up near the top are where people go to cultivate in seclusion? Hmm. I wonder where Lan Wangji's mother's house would fit into that image? I doubt there's any way of figuring it out. (It's not a location in the fic anyway, so it doesn't matter. I'm just curious. 😝)
(Watching Jiang Cheng practice his combat moves is slightly cringe-inducing. In the close-ups on his footwork, he's seconds away from stepping on his robes. I hope no one got hurt in filming that. 😰) Anyway, Jiang Yanli mentions their ancestral policy being that of "frank actions and unrestrained minds." Which, as she points out, sums up Wei Wuxian nicely. I should remember those terms and use them in the fic along with the "attempt the impossible" family motto that came from the novel. (I mean, I think it's used in the show as well, but...hasn't been yet, anyway.)
I get goosebumps of horror watching them eat fish skin and all. Ick! Am I just too squeamish, or is this an American weakness on my part, or is it actually as gross as I take it to be? (I get the same reaction when anime characters do the same thing roasting a fish whole, without removing its skin or anything, but it's just so much more cringe-inducing when it's live people doing it. I mean, admittedly, those might not be real fish they're eating, but something made to look like real fish, but still! Do not put whole dead fish in the mouths of pretty men!) [EDIT - there was a quote in the art book from the actor who plays Jiang Cheng about how awful that was to film because the fish were barely cooked and smelled terrible. 🤢]
Um...is Jiang Yanli not eating at all? She didn't even have a bowl of the soup she made herself! Not only did Wei Wuxian not bring her a roasted fish, she didn't even have any of her soup! What the...how self-sacrificing can one woman be that she won't even eat because she's too busy feeding and playing peacemaker for her brothers? (Not that Wei Wuxian is actually her brother, but she does think of him as her brother, not just as her shidi.)
I don't know if the whole paperman thing was something Wei Wuxian could always do--the novel was sort of vague if it counted as part of his demonic power set or if it was more acceptable as a technique--but him sending one to climb up Lan Wangji's arm and all the way onto his face in the middle of a lecture is too cute.
Cast Members with Obviously Pierced Ears:
2) Lan Wangji (again, what really caught my eye isn't just the piercing, but something wrong with it: in this shot in the classroom (during the question about Wen Mao) it looks like the piercing on one of his ears got ripped, leaving behind a tear rather than a regular piercing))
See what I mean? That looks like his ear is actively damaged. Maybe it's just a trick of the light or something, but it's wince-inducing. (And yet I went and screen-shotted it for everyone to see. 😰) The other side appears to be double-pierced, but pretty far apart.
(No, I have no reason to care about whether or not the actors have pierced ears. I just got weirdly fixated on it for some reason.) Ooh, but I need to remember that Wang Yibo has attached earlobes. That means in CQL canon fics it won't work to have Wei Wuxian suck on Lan Wangji's earlobes.
I feel deeply dirty for having even thought that, let alone writing it down.
I may crawl in a hole and hate myself for a week now...
I'm not sure if this is a Crazy Wei Wuxian Power or a Cultivator Power...but I guess probably the latter?
9) When Wen Ning accidentally fires an arrow at his sister, Wei Wuxian manages to throw a talisman that moves so fast that it intercepts the arrow and moves it off target. This is definitely physically impossible in about a zillion different ways. 😅 Made a nice scene, though. (But the way Wei Wuxian is correcting Wen Ning's archery form is surprisingly suggestive considering they're not allowed to do anything to mention same-sex relations. I guess whoever was in charge of the adaptation decided that Wen Ning's loyalty to Wei Wuxian (prior to becoming a fierce corpse) was more born out of romantic interest than friendship?)
Anyway, having gotten to the first scene wherein Wen Ning speaks, I can see that they did abandon his stutter for the drama. He seems to have a little difficulty forming his thoughts into words, leading to a hesitation when he starts talking (which is not something that will be easily conveyed in text!) but no stutter. At least not as of episode 4. Maybe it will happen later on, but that would be odd, to say the least. (That probably explains why I wasn't giving him a stutter in the early portions of the fic, and only had him start stuttering later. I'll just have to take it out of the later portions.)
But speaking of the Wen siblings. I want to know who in the world picked out the footage for the opening and closing credits and why they chose as they did! Every single image of Wen Qing in the opening and closing credits is from the scene where she and her brother are handing themselves over to the Jin Clan! Every. Single. One! That is so deeply messed up. (And, I might add, why her death hit me like a truck when I first watched the show, because I had assumed from the way those images were shown out of context and from the fact that I already knew from episode 2 that Wen Ning survived to the present, that she was going to make it!)
Okay, actually, I take it back. There is one image of her in the credits other than from that scene: there's a scene of her kneeling in the mud and the rain holding Wen Ning's body in her arms and crying over him as he lies there seemingly dead with a spear sticking out of his gut. But between nighttime, rain and her position, you literally cannot see her face to know it's her; you only know it's her after you've seen that episode.
The credits seem to heavily favor moments like that: there's considerable footage of the battle in Lotus Pier and its aftermath, as well as a number of shots of the battle in Nightless City. Very little footage from the present, and of the footage that's from the present portion of the story, the parts that leave the most impact (aside from the ones from the Yi City arc) are several shots of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji from the final ten minutes of the last episode. 😅
The most bizarre selection of imagery, all around!
Admittedly, I don't have a lot to compare it to. I've only watched one other complete cdrama--Word of Honor--and one partial one--The Legend of White Snake. I can't really recall what the opening and closing credits visuals were for Word of Honor because I honestly didn't like either piece of music so I just skipped the credits on that one. (And thank goodness that I spent that much less time on that show! Ugh, deliver me from shows that end that badly! Why would anyone spend 34 episodes trying to make me invested in a romance just to do that to them?) As to The Legend of White Snake (which I decided to check out because the male lead was a doctor rather than the traditional "scholar' in the myth), since I only got through...uh...actually, I don't remember how many episodes I watched. Maybe 14? Maybe less? I dunno; I got the impression it wasn't going to show me enough of how traditional medicine is typically depicted to be of any help in handling Wen Qing's medical work in my fic, and I really didn't care about the romantic leads at all, so I figured I was better off quitting while I was ahead and the secondary characters I did care about were all still alive. So, although I can't say where the various footage in that one's opening and closing came from, I can say--with what I know of the original myth, largely gleaned from watching the CG movie Green Snake that's a sequel to the myth--that the opening and closing credits seemed to contain the entire freaking show. They literally included the two leads getting married, and also the heroine being locked in a tower, and...yeah. Pretty much the entire show. I'm not sure if that was a special case because it was based on a famous myth, or if that's just normal.
I think maybe that's not entirely normal, though, because there was a large part of the plot of The Untamed that did not end up in the opening and closing credits at all. None of the footage of Wen Ning in the opening and closing credits represents his fierce corpse version--er, intelligent puppet version? Whatever they're calling his Ghost General version in the show. He's already become the "Ghost General" when he and Wen Qing turn themselves over to the Jin Clan, obviously, but there's no footage in the credits of him actively being the Ghost General. No combat footage of him, nor any footage of him in the present at all. (Well, maybe one of those shots in Yi City contained him? It went by so quickly that it's hard to be sure.) Wen Ning's such a crucial part of the story--it was the friendship and gratitude that Wei Wuxian felt for him that led him into the circumstances that cost so many lives, including Wei Wuxian's--and having the opening credits mostly only focusing on his bond with his sister while ignoring his bond to Wei Wuxian is markedly odd to me.
Not the only odd choice, either. Jiang Yanli is shown in only two ways: alone and with Jin Zixuan. She's never shown in the opening and closing credits with Jiang Cheng or with Wei Wuxian, despite the sister complex they both have about her. [EDIT: No, I was wrong. She was shown with them once: crying in the rain after the fall of Lotus Pier. Again, what a scene to pick! 😫] And of the junior trio, only Jin Ling is shown at all, and only once very briefly at that! For that matter, Jin Guangyao is only shown once, very briefly, and he's the freakin' principal villain!
Actually, it's weird which villains they choose to show and which they don't. Since I'm only four episodes in, I can't say for sure which villains truly have the most screen time, but based on my memories of watching it originally and my partial rewatch earlier, I'd guesstimate that the villain screen time count (from most to least) is somewhere along the lines of: Jin Guangyao, Wen Chao, Wen Ruohan, Xue Yang, Wang Lingjiao, Su Minshan, Wen Zhuliu. In the opening and closing credits, we have one fairly neutral shot of Jin Guangyao, just a medium shot of him standing there, one shot of Wang Lingjiao imperiously marching into Lotus Pier with a crowd of Wen soldiers, a close-up shot of Xue Yang's face, a combat shot that includes Xue Yang (but which you only know that after you've seen the episode, because it could really be just about anyone in black at that distance) and Wen Zhuliu is probably in that Lotus Pier combat shot somewhere.
That's it. No Wen Chao, no Wen Ruohan. Despite that Wen Chao is the main villain of the entire hunt for the Yin Iron subplot added for the drama, and despite that the show is building up Wen Ruohan as being a Sauron-like presence.
It's...
...odd.
I mean, I totally get why at least half the shots in both opening and ending are just Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji or both of them together. That makes sense. It's their story, after all. And they're played by what may very well be the two most beautiful men on the planet, so having them on screen is always wonderful. But...the choice for the rest of the shots is...somewhere between weird and inexplicable to me.
...
Yeah, I didn't really have any point with all that.
I just wanted to say it. Just because I was thinking it.
Anyway! Final tallies as of the end of episode four:
Things Added to Highlight the Romance: 5
Crazy Wei Wuxian Powers: 6
Cultivator Powers: 9
Mistranslations of "shufu": "Grand Master"
Cast Members with Obviously Pierced Ears: Meng Yao, Lan Wangji
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