Tch. I am sitting here starting to watch this episode in all but pitch darkness, because it's storming outside and what little light there is is not getting into my house, but I refuse to turn the lights on at 8 o'clock in the morning. (We will leave aside the question of why tf I am starting to watch an episode of The Untamed at such an early hour....particularly since this is not a happy episode...)
Anyway, beyond the read more tag is rambling nonsense jotted down as I rewatch the episode. There will be spoilers, so don't go past the read more tag unless you already know the story of Mo Dao Zu Shi.
So, this episode starts with a scene that was added for the drama, of Yao-zongzhu and two of his men turning up at Lotus Pier looking for help. (This is in itself weird, because according to the map on the wiki, Yao-zongzhu's home is heck and gone from Yunmeng. The closest clans (other than the Wen, lol) to them would be the Nie Clan and the Chang Clan, but the Nie are being assaulted by the Wen already, and Xue Yang already wiped out the Chang Clan, so...still, Yunmeng is a long way off. I know the drama is acting on a very different map, but it still feels odd to me.) A note to myself on this scene is that it's the Yao Clan men who were wearing the helmety hats among the hostages earlier.
That guy in the center of the picture, between the camera and Jin Zixuan. He's from the Yao Clan.
Uh, anyway.
This scene is frustrating to me because Yao-zongzhu is one of the first to turn on Wei Wuxian in the post-Sunshot Campaign section of the story. (Well, among the small clan leaders. Truly the first is Jin Guangshan, obviously.) He's also hyper-ready to say nasty things about the Jiang Clan as a whole in that period, so...I guess they decided that since he was going to do some things that would make the audience hate him, they wanted to make the audience hate him more by adding ingratitude to his other flaws? 🤷 I should probably not even attempt to figure out what they were thinking in most cases, because I don't seem to be very good at it.
According to this scene, the Wen Clan has all but exterminated the Yao Clan, so that the two disciples and the wounded leader are the only ones left. (The implication is that the two disciples in question are among those who escaped from the indoctrination camp, and yet they're the ones who survived. I guess because all the others were protecting them?) Following the Yao Clan disciples begging Jiang Fengmian to save Yao-zongzhu, Jiang Cheng informs his father that Wen Ruohan has ordered the clans of all the escaped hostages to be exterminated, with no exceptions.
Um.
A) How does he know that?
B) Why doesn't his father already know that?
C) If that's so, then why weren't they more ready for the Wen Clan to attack them? (Jiang Cheng even has a line about how he doesn't think the Wen Clan will spare them 'easily.')
D) Why does no one mention the (near) extermination of the other clans when they're talking about why they have to rise up against the Wen Clan?
E) Who would even be left if the Wen Clan actually did exterminate all the other clans? I feel like the cultivators don't even pay attention to the existence of normal people most of the time (esp. in the drama's version), so wouldn't being the only cultivation clan left be sort of self-defeating, because there would be no one left for them to lord over?
*sigh*
I should never try to apply logic to things.
None of this stuff bothered me the first time I watched it.
Oh well. Moving on.
...and another problem.
Jiang Fengmian comments on the Wen Clan "rampantly slaughtering" other clans, and says that he thinks only the Jin Clan might stand a chance against them. (Uh, why would you think that? They're not very impressive, actually.) Wei Wuxian then actually voluntarily says something nice about Jin Zixuan, that he's "somewhat a decent person." Okay, that doesn't sound all that nice, but compared to what he usually says about Jin Zixuan, it's high praise! Then he says all this other stuff about how even if the Jin Clan don't officially rebel against the Wens, he doesn't think they'll stand by and watch the other clans being exterminated.
But Jin Zixuan already told him that everyone was gathering at Lanling because they were all going to rise up against the Wen Clan. So...he already knows that the Jin Clan is planning to officially rebel. So why wouldn't he say so? And why wouldn't Jiang Fengmian already know about that?
😖 The problem is, I can never be sure how much is an actual problem with the dialog and how much is crappy translation. Because, like, what if that wasn't what Jin Zixuan said? What if he only said that he thought everyone would soon rise up against the Wen Clan? Or that they ought to do so? And then that refugees from slaughtered clans were gathering in Lanling was essentially unrelated, or connected to his determination that the Jin Clan should be leading the rebellion that he felt needed to happen.
Tch.
Where are babel fish when you need them? I would so be willing to stick a fish in my ear if it meant I could actually understand everything being said in programs like this without having to depend on questionable subtitles.
Anyway, after that, we get a particularly stunning moment. Jiang Cheng starts talking about going to Lanling for help in rescuing Wei Wuxian from Mount Muxi....
...and he refers to him as "a-Xian."
This is, as far as I know, the only time in any version of canon that he refers to Wei Wuxian in such a close manner. Despite that they're brothers in all but blood, so that's kind of how he ought to be referring to/addressing him that way all the time: it's how his father and sister both speak of and to Wei Wuxian. But normally he doesn't dare, because of what his mother would say. But between the horror of what they've just heard and the impending tragedy that they're all trying to tell themselves they'll find a way out of, he's stressed enough that something more natural comes out instead.
I love that kind of moment so much. The little glimpse into how he really feels.
It's not clear how soon this scene is after Wei Wuxian wakes up. Everyone's wearing the same clothes, but...they kind of wear the same clothes for whole stretches of the show, and don't change until something's actually different. Given that it sounds like Jiang Cheng hadn't yet told his father that he'd gone to Lanling to get help for that rescue, I'm guessing it hasn't been all that long. Admittedly, they don't have a very good father-son bond, but given how much threat there is to their entire clan because of everything that's going on, you'd expect him to have broached the subject as soon as he could. It's probably not more than a day after Wei Wuxian recovers consciousness, maybe two at the outside.
And the scene concludes with Jiang Fengmian announcing that the next day he'll take Yao-zongzhu and his men to Lanling to protect them.
As Jiang Fengmian and Jiang Yanli are leaving the docks with the Yao Clan men, Jiang Fengmian announces he'll be gone "several days." Nnnn....I feel like it's gotta be more than just "several" days. Admittedly, travel by water is faster than travel by land, but...it's still a long distance, and according to the map they put in the art book, neither city is actually connected to a river. 😰 My own map, based on the map from the wiki, has them both on rivers in the Yangtze system, but it's not a short or simple trip, because it would be downstream to a point and then turning and going upstream on a different tributary.
I wonder if it's just normal in these kinds of dramas not to be concerned with how long it would actually take to get places? If it's a genre convention, I suppose I shouldn't let myself get hung up on it...not sure where I could ask to find out if it's a genre convention, though.
When Yu-furen comes out onto the dock to bring Jiang Yanli some food for the trip, she also brings some medicine, which she doesn't want to admit is for her husband. I'm not sure if their attempts to set up that deep down she actually does love her husband is a good idea or not. Heck, I'm not even sure how we're supposed to take her innermost feelings for him in the novel. It's established that she must have had some warmer feelings for him at some point, but...she's not a character--or indeed a character type--that I feel particularly capable of understanding. (Which would be one of the reasons I have not yet attempted any of my fanfic ideas that start out before the fall of Lotus Pier. I don't have to understand her character if she's already dead. (Ack, that got grim.))
Huh? As translated, Wei Wuxian says to Jiang Cheng that the fact they killed the Xuanwu of Slaughter will be an excuse for the Wen Clan to target them. That...that makes no sense. (Especially since Wen Chao took credit for the monster's death despite having run away with his tail between his legs.) I feel like that line must have been badly translated. (Though I did hear the name Xuanwu in it, so the fact that he mentioned it is at least accurate.)
And Wei Wuxian suggests they need to come up with a plan to deal with it when the Wen Clan arrives at Lotus Pier, and Jiang Cheng's idea of a plan is that he'll kill everyone they send there.
Not much of a plan, dude. 😰
Wei Wuxian looks deeply disappointed by that "plan," but doesn't try to argue with it.
Another scene at Scorching Sun Palace, in the audience hall. Hard to tell how many puppets there are (these two massive columns that aren't even connected to the ceiling are blocking the view) but probably around 30ish. At least four or five of them are the upgraded kind, but not much more than that many. So far, that's fitting what I have in my fic. (I had to try to explain what they are, after all, and why Wen Ruohan would bother with the normal kind at all when there's a more powerful version he can deploy.)
Wen Chao reports to his father that "Xue Yang is defiant and is causing trouble everywhere." He even speculates that Xue Yang has already been killed by someone else by now. (If so, how would he be causing trouble "everywhere" then?) Then, perhaps prompted by the bad news, Wen Ruohan starts to have some kind of attack, and his hand is producing a black smoke. He orders Wen Chao to bring Wen Qing to him because he needs an acupuncture treatment. But she's already been sent to Yiling, ofc, so Wen Ruohan has to fend off whatever it is himself. Which he does, with great effort.
And then Wen Ruohan asks what the men Wen Chao sent to Mount Muxi found in the cave, and Wen Chao reports on the death of the Xuanwu of Slaughter, and says he found indications that there had been a seal on the beast, which was why they hadn't noticed it before. And that whatever had sealed it in place was now gone, prompting his father to attack him! Wen Ruohan insists that anything that could seal such a beast was far from normal, and demands that Wen Chao find it.
*sigh*
They actually did pretty strongly set up that the sword was a seal and had special powers, and I apparently either didn't pay enough attention to that on my previous rewatch or forgot it by the time I go far enough into my fic for it to matter. 😖 All the more rewriting I'll have to do, then. It shouldn't actually change that much about my fic, though; it's more incidental than anything else. But it's a detail I'll have to be careful to spot and change whenever it comes up.
...how has it taken me over an hour to watch fifteen minutes of this show?
I am definitely taking way too many notes...
...though that long stretch staring at different maps and trying to figure out where the heck their map is supposed to align with the actual rivers definitely didn't help, now that I think about it.
Back to it, Wen Chao asks--as translated--"have you taken any other clans in Yunmeng into account?" Which, as translated, suggests that Mount Muxi is near Yunmeng and that other local clans might have gone into the cave and taken the item that had sealed the Xuanwu of Slaughter in there? Or...something?
I don't think that's actually what he said at all. Especially since the only clan in Yunmeng that we know of is, you know, the Jiang Clan. I feel like he's actually asking--albeit probably in a very round-about fashion--if his father has any orders regarding the Jiang Clan. Which is why he's so thrilled to be given permission to kill them if he wants.
Oh god. Waterworks incoming.
As the youngest Jiang Clan disciples are sent off to fetch back the kites from their archery practice, Wei Wuxian comments to Jiang Cheng that it's been ten days since the boat left for Lanling. So that at least gives me a solid time estimate: a boat trip from Yunmeng to Lanling and back takes about ten days. Hmm...ten days minus however long they spent in Lanling. (In my fic, I specified they'd stayed a few days, at Jin Guangshan's urging. (Or was it Yao-zongzhu's? Good grief, I wrote it and I've already forgotten it...)) Jiang Cheng says he got a letter from his father a few days ago (and for some reason Wei Wuxian didn't know that, despite that they spend all their time together?) and that they should be back soon.
And their reactions about the Wen Clan "going too far" to kidnap the young disciple (translating "shidi" as "young master" is a crazy stretch, btw) are kind of....um...weird, given the earlier scenes setting up that the Wen Clan is slaughtering whole clans left and right. It's like, why is kidnapping a single kid worse than slaughtering a whole clan?
Anyway. When Wang Lingjiao arrives, she greets Yu-furen in a way that indicates they've met before? That doesn't actually make much sense to me...and I feel like in the book it was specifically the first time they'd met.
They really should have changed the kite for the show. In the novel, the Wen Clan's sign is the sun, so a round, golden kite that could be compared to the sun was a sensible thing for Wang Lingjiao to seize on as "conspiracy" against the Wen Clan. In the show, the Wen Clan's symbol is a double-headed bird in a nest of fire. So the kite should have shown a bird with two heads, then it would have made sense. Or, you know, given the name of the war is the Sunshot Campaign, maybe they should have left the Wen Clan's symbol as a sun. 😰
This confrontation is so painful to watch. Even though Wei Wuxian didn't do anything wrong, he's taking that beating so willingly, and Jiang Cheng is hurting so much watching it. Even after Wang Lingjiao had said that anyone trying to shelter Wei Wuxian would be like outright saying that he was Jiang Fengmian's love child, Jiang Cheng still breaks free from Jinzhu and Yinzhu to try and shield him with his body.
And when it sounds like Yu-furen will cooperate with Wang Lingjiao's demand to have Wei Wuxian's hand cut off, Jiang Cheng is begging his mother not to do it, but Wei Wuxian just lies there, thinking he'll have to learn to fight with his left hand from now on. 😭 This is a defining moment for both of them, in my eyes. It shows how much Jiang Cheng truly loves Wei Wuxian as his brother, and how much Wei Wuxian is willing to sacrifice for the clan that took him in and raised him with so much care and affection.
Oog. I definitely screwed up. According to this scene, every city was to have a Supervisory Office. Not just a handful of the newly conquered and/or border cities.
Well. That's going to change a few scenes. (But, weirdly, not actually all that many. Probably only a few, really. I can change the scene where Wen Qing was talking about how many Supervisory Offices there are to one where she says something along the lines of "there are supposed to be Supervisory Offices in every city, but at the time of the attack on Lotus Pier, not all of them had been established yet." And one of the intelligence reports Meng Yao can send to Lan Xichen can be about which cities have full Supervisory Offices worth bothering with, and which are just a few minor officials with no military support.
I do enjoy watching Yu-furen slap Wang Lingjiao so hard she falls over.
I kind of wonder, though. If Wang Lingjiao hadn't run her mouth off about turning Lotus Pier into a Wen Clan Supervisory Office, would Yu-furen actually have gone through with cutting off Wei Wuxian's hand (or arm, it's translated differently at different times), or had she always planned on crushing this small Wen Clan contingent after the doors were closed? There's no firm indication in canon, and I don't feel like I understand Yu-furen's character well enough to have a good idea of it.
I think what Yu-furen is saying to Wang Lingjiao as she grips her by the throat is either a common saying or a variation on same: "You should look at the owner before you kick a dog." Actually, maybe that suggests that despite how much she hates Wei Wuxian, she still wouldn't have maimed him on the Wen Clan's orders.
Ooh. This is just a translation thing, but "How dare you barge into my house and penalize my family members before me?" makes it sound like even she, deep down, feels like Wei Wuxian is actually part of the family. She doesn't, but the translation makes it sound that way. I think it's more like "my husband's things are my things, thus his disciples are my property, so anyone trying to harm them is trying to harm my possessions." Only said with considerably more dignity. 😅
I love that all Yu-furen has to do is nod at her "maids" and they promptly and efficiently start killing off all the Wen Clan soldiers that Yu-furen already knocked across the room with Zidian.
Okay, I don't think this came up in my fic, but just in case, I should remember the sequence of events in the drama's version is that Wen Zhuliu comes in to save Wang Lingjiao from Yinzhu and Jinzhu, and then he speaks a bit with Yu-furen before the fight between them starts. Wang Lingjiao runs out to signal the army, and Wei Wuxian still hasn't recovered from being beaten with Zidian, so he tells Jiang Cheng to stop her before she can launch the signal.
Jiang Cheng hits Wang Lingjiao in the back of the head, knocking her down, but before he can finish her off, he hears Wei Wuxian shouting something along the lines of "look out, Yu-furen!" Turning back, Jiang Cheng sees the fight is getting serious, and he's worried for his mother, so he runs back in to help her. Wen Zhuliu hears him coming, and suddenly diverts the attack he was aiming at Yu-furen's torso to hit Jiang Cheng in the chest instead, sending him flying backwards, spitting up blood.
And that gives Wang Lingjiao time to set off the signal flare. Which is 100% a physical object, despite whatever it was Lan Jingyi did in the first episode. (Well, he is a member of the main family, whereas Wang Lingjiao has basically no cultivation training or spiritual power whatesoever.)
In the wake of the flare going off, Jinzhu and Yinzhu recover enough to take over the battle against Wen Zhuliu, giving Yu-furen time to grab the two boys and take them to the boat on Lotus Pier's private dock.
After Jiang Cheng asks her to come with them, Yu-furen hugs him to her, and I have to wonder just how often she's ever done that. He doesn't seem to know how to react to it at all. Then she lets go of Jiang Cheng and starts screaming at Wei Wuxian. 😰 I know she wants him to understand that she didn't save him for his own sake, but...she knows she's going to die, and she still insists on having her final conversation with him start with "I hate you so much!" He's got a strong spirit, so he doesn't seem too torn up by hearing that, but...
....god, everything about this scene is just torture for Jiang Cheng. That had to be so hard to film. (Also probably a bit weird and awkward, because that actress is in no way old enough to be his mother. She's like ten years older than he is, or maybe fifteen years at the most?)
In my fic, I have times where both Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian look back on this moment, and for Jiang Cheng it's this crushing memory--well, it's crushing for both of them, but in different ways--but the part he focuses on in terms of the exchange between Yu-furen and Wei Wuxian is that "I hate you so much!" In his memory, that's the last thing she said to Wei Wuxian, was to tell her how much she hated him. But in Wei Wuxian's memory, the last thing she said to him was to order him to protect Jiang Cheng with his life. (Which is not 100% accurate, but pretty darn close.)
Anyway, in addition to kicking the boat away from the dock, she also sent a talisman after it which presumably is what steered it from the small lake into the river feeding out of it. Only after they're far away from there does she allow herself to cry, knowing it's the last time she'll ever see her son. The last the boys can see of her is her slowly, calmly walking back towards Lotus Pier.
On the other boat, Jiang Yanli points out to her father that the voices calling out from the small boat ahead of them sound like "a-Xian and a-Cheng." (Still trying to keep track of which one she more typically lists first...) The person steering the boat doesn't seem to be a member of the clan; I guess they just hire ordinary boatmen.
Well, I wasn't out of line when I had Wei Wuxian say that Jiang Fengmian specifically went back to Lotus Pier for Yu-furen's sake. After he's bound the three of them back together with Zidian (since Jiang Yanli isn't safe and sound in Meishan like in the book), he says "I will go back for my wife." So I guess he's assumed that his disciples are all lost causes already and only Yu-furen could still be alive? 😰 I mean, it's correct, but...yikes.
His parting words to each of them are telling. He tells his actual children not to cry, but he tells Wei Wuxian to always watch over "a-Cheng and a-Li." So much for everyone saying he loves Wei Wuxian more than his own son! I wish Yu-furen could have seen that exchange. It makes me feel like I was very much on the money with this passage:
“If he hadn’t found me and brought me home and raised me beside you, then what could I have ever known of cultivation? I’d probably still be living in the streets of Yiling right now: the best I could have hoped for would have been to be the leader of a band of other street kids, still fighting stray dogs for food. But he let me join this amazing world of people who can do miraculous things; I got a taste of a world I didn’t belong in.” He sighed sadly. “But did Jiang-shushu really do all that just because he had loved my parents? Or did he see me as an investment in his future—in your future? Wasn’t I always trained to help and support and protect you? Wasn’t that the last thing both your parents said to me, to order me to protect you?”
Jiang Cheng did his best to withhold both his tears and his guilty conscience. He was all too acutely aware of the fact that the last thing his mother had said to Wei Wuxian was to tell him how much she hated him.
Having now watched these scenes again, I feel like this was one of my better scenes. (Then again, this is the golden core confrontation, so I was cribbing heavily both from the actual confrontation in the novel and from the one in the drama (which was one of the scenes that drew pretty heavily on the novel's dialog as far as I can tell looking at the very different translations of both), so maybe it's not surprising that it's better than my usual stuff.)
Even though he's also calling out a bit to be allowed to accompany the others back to Lotus Pier, I think Wei Wuxian has come to terms with what's happening better than the other two. He's even holding Jiang Cheng's hand to try to give him strength and support:
I can't believe how much this is all making me cry. The performances and the music, and the characters' obvious pain...it just all gets to me so much.
Ironically, if I'd read the book first, I doubt this sequence in the book would have made me shed a tear. (Since I didn't read the book first, it makes me cry copiously, because I remember how much it made me cry on the show.) But it's always easier (for me) to relate to others' pain when I see it performed rather than merely described in words.
Anyway, that's where the episode ends, before we see Jiang Fengmian's last return to Lotus Pier. 😭 It's a terrible stopping place, but I've cried a lot already, and also the power has blinked off briefly twice this morning already (albeit only for a second or two) due to the storm, so I really don't think I can keep going today.
Also it's already 11:00, despite how early I got started. (Though waiting for my internet connection to come back up twice didn't help on that score!)
No comments:
Post a Comment