#he does a shit job balancing his obligations to his sect (i'm not talking jc and yanli

[winepresswrath]

You know what I just thought of? The Untamed might be how the story will be told in MDZS once a long time has gone by. Think about it: WWX didn't invent demonic cultivation but instead got the idea from more evil people, JGS and JGY were the root of all his image problems, there's evil magic metal that corrupts people rather than regular human nature - it's the perfect mostly sanitized propaganda piece with good guys and bad guys more neatly divided, which is what tends to happen to history.

I like this, but I admit that I personally fall into the camp of people that think there’s plenty of moral complexity in The Untamed. It definitely takes out or glosses over some of the darker stuff from the book, but both by virtue of its medium (visual storytelling with pretty broad acting) and because of a bunch of pretty deliberate adaptation choices The Untamed is also much more of an ensemble than MDZS, and I think giving other characters more time to establish their perspectives and motivations adds back in some of that complexity.  It goes out of its way to establish that the baseline of the cultivation world is violent and unjust and all our heroes are complicit in that (that archery scene! the general attitude towards blood feuds! Mingjue in his capacity as Mr. Righteous saying that it is basically impossible for the Jiangs to owe Wen Qing and Wen Ning anything in light of what their family did to his, and in fact kind of lowkey suggesting that acting otherwise is an unfilial dereliction of duty!).

Also, everyone is 300% less repressed and the question of how Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji feel about Wei Wuxian is not supposed to be much of a mystery. This doesn’t actually make the drama more complex, but it does give it yet more room to highlight the perspectives and motives of characters who are not Wei Wuxian, which I do think makes it harder to miss the complexity. We get stuff like The Untamed putting in the work to make sure the audience understands how we get from Jiang Cheng telling Zixun to shut up or put up in front of a war room full of the most important people in the cultivation world to Jiang Cheng saying “look I agree he shouldn’t have killed members of your clans but his heart was in the right place,” to Jiang Cheng at Nightless City, not taking the “fuck Wei Wuxian in perpetuity” vow but also very much not protesting when everyone else does. Is it spoonfeeding? Maybe, but it’s also delicious. Subtlety is dead to me I only want Wang Zhuocheng’s cryface.

That being said, these may just be things I’m particularly interested in and thus paying attention to? I’ve definitely seen meta from people who came away from both the show and the book under the impression that most conflicts were caused by people being too dumb or evil to handle Wei Wuxian’s awesomeness and equating “inconvenient to wangxian” with “bad,” and I’m going to be mean and say I think the problem is less with either work and more with their reading and viewing comprehension. I am very sympathetic to the pains of having your favourite elements of a book minimized or absent in an adaptation. Wei Wuxian is definitely a lighter shade of grey, considerably less repressed, and much less of an asshole in The Untamed, and Jiggy does get a hell of a villain edit (I think he’s plenty villainous in the book! but if I was a Jiggy apologist coming to The Untamed I’d be miffed). I get being annoyed about those changes! Just, you know, Wei Wuxian does still very much torture a lot of people to death for vengeance in a story that is in large part about the role vengeance plays in maintaining the cycle of violence.

[viterbofangirllovestheuntamed]

i think robininthelaberynth is the person i saw suggest that the untamed is how wwx would like to remember the events of mdzs and that works for me too like i think as good at not dwelling and moving on as mdzs wwx is the second flautist would HURT and it's the sort of thing he might wish was true in a secret corner of his heart and then there's jiang cheng's face which i love but it would be kind of hilarious if in universe he only looks like that to wwx because he knows him so well and everyone else is but jin ling is just looking at minor variations on madame yu's sneer but yeah i really don't think the wwx of the untamed is lacking in complexity or moral ambiguity! he tortures (a lot of) people to death he makes a superweapon he can't control properly and is pretty cavalier about that he does a shit job balancing his obligations to his sect (i'm not talking jc and yanli i'm talking all the OTHER sect members he's also ditching and sticking with the murder bill while pretending that's nbd and they should just be chill) he's a real dick to a lot of people including people who love him! he's also kind and generous and extremely heroic and very traumatized and just a fundamentally loving person who wants the world to be better than it is he's trying so hard in an impossible situation and he's just a baby! and i have absolutely seen book only people declare that wwx has never done anything wrong in his life and not in the fun way i respect and cherish stop saying he only murders because of his poor self esteem and love of justice let him murder for low self esteem and justice but also rage and vengeance and a half articulated conviction that he might as well play judge jury and executioner because he's better qualified than JGS (via op)

You know what I just thought of? The Untamed might be how the story will be told in MDZS once a long time has gone by. Think about it: WWX didn't invent demonic cultivation but instead got the idea from more evil people, JGS and JGY were the root of all his image problems, there's evil magic metal that corrupts people rather than regular human nature - it's the perfect mostly sanitized propaganda piece with good guys and bad guys more neatly divided, which is what tends to happen to history.

I like this, but I admit that I personally fall into the camp of people that think there’s plenty of moral complexity in The Untamed. It definitely takes out or glosses over some of the darker stuff from the book, but both by virtue of its medium (visual storytelling with pretty broad acting) and because of a bunch of pretty deliberate adaptation choices The Untamed is also much more of an ensemble than MDZS, and I think giving other characters more time to establish their perspectives and motivations adds back in some of that complexity.  It goes out of its way to establish that the baseline of the cultivation world is violent and unjust and all our heroes are complicit in that (that archery scene! the general attitude towards blood feuds! Mingjue in his capacity as Mr. Righteous saying that it is basically impossible for the Jiangs to owe Wen Qing and Wen Ning anything in light of what their family did to his, and in fact kind of lowkey suggesting that acting otherwise is an unfilial dereliction of duty!).

Also, everyone is 300% less repressed and the question of how Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji feel about Wei Wuxian is not supposed to be much of a mystery. This doesn’t actually make the drama more complex, but it does give it yet more room to highlight the perspectives and motives of characters who are not Wei Wuxian, which I do think makes it harder to miss the complexity. We get stuff like The Untamed putting in the work to make sure the audience understands how we get from Jiang Cheng telling Zixun to shut up or put up in front of a war room full of the most important people in the cultivation world to Jiang Cheng saying “look I agree he shouldn’t have killed members of your clans but his heart was in the right place,” to Jiang Cheng at Nightless City, not taking the “fuck Wei Wuxian in perpetuity” vow but also very much not protesting when everyone else does. Is it spoonfeeding? Maybe, but it’s also delicious. Subtlety is dead to me I only want Wang Zhuocheng’s cryface.

That being said, these may just be things I’m particularly interested in and thus paying attention to? I’ve definitely seen meta from people who came away from both the show and the book under the impression that most conflicts were caused by people being too dumb or evil to handle Wei Wuxian’s awesomeness and equating “inconvenient to wangxian” with “bad,” and I’m going to be mean and say I think the problem is less with either work and more with their reading and viewing comprehension. I am very sympathetic to the pains of having your favourite elements of a book minimized or absent in an adaptation. Wei Wuxian is definitely a lighter shade of grey, considerably less repressed, and much less of an asshole in The Untamed, and Jiggy does get a hell of a villain edit (I think he’s plenty villainous in the book! but if I was a Jiggy apologist coming to The Untamed I’d be miffed). I get being annoyed about those changes! Just, you know, Wei Wuxian does still very much torture a lot of people to death for vengeance in a story that is in large part about the role vengeance plays in maintaining the cycle of violence.

[peridot-tears]

#i think robininthelaberynth is the person i saw suggest that the untamed#is how wwx would like to remember the events of mdzs#and that works for me too#like i think as good at not dwelling and moving on#as mdzs wwx is#the second flautist would HURT#and it's the sort of thing he might wish was true in a secret corner of his heart#and then there's jiang cheng's face which i love#but it would be kind of hilarious if in universe#he only looks like that to wwx#because he knows him so well and everyone else is but jin ling#is just looking at minor variations on madame yu's sneer#but yeah i really don't think the wwx of the untamed#is lacking in complexity or moral ambiguity!#he tortures (a lot of) people to death#he makes a superweapon he can't control properly and is pretty cavalier about that#he does a shit job balancing his obligations to his sect (i'm not talking jc and yanli#i'm talking all the OTHER sect members he's also ditching and sticking with the murder bill while pretending that's nbd#and they should just be chill)#he's a real dick to a lot of people#including people who love him!#he's also kind and generous and extremely heroic and very traumatized and just#a fundamentally loving person who wants the world to be better than it is#he's trying so hard in an impossible situation and he's just a baby!#and i have absolutely seen book only people#declare that wwx has never done anything wrong in his life#and not in the fun way i respect and cherish#stop saying he only murders because of his poor self esteem and love of justice#let him murder for low self esteem and justice but also rage and vengeance#and a half articulated conviction that he might as well play judge jury and executioner because he's better qualified than JGS

Important tags by @winepresswrath​

You know what I just thought of? The Untamed might be how the story will be told in MDZS once a long time has gone by. Think about it: WWX didn't invent demonic cultivation but instead got the idea from more evil people, JGS and JGY were the root of all his image problems, there's evil magic metal that corrupts people rather than regular human nature - it's the perfect mostly sanitized propaganda piece with good guys and bad guys more neatly divided, which is what tends to happen to history.

I like this, but I admit that I personally fall into the camp of people that think there’s plenty of moral complexity in The Untamed. It definitely takes out or glosses over some of the darker stuff from the book, but both by virtue of its medium (visual storytelling with pretty broad acting) and because of a bunch of pretty deliberate adaptation choices The Untamed is also much more of an ensemble than MDZS, and I think giving other characters more time to establish their perspectives and motivations adds back in some of that complexity.  It goes out of its way to establish that the baseline of the cultivation world is violent and unjust and all our heroes are complicit in that (that archery scene! the general attitude towards blood feuds! Mingjue in his capacity as Mr. Righteous saying that it is basically impossible for the Jiangs to owe Wen Qing and Wen Ning anything in light of what their family did to his, and in fact kind of lowkey suggesting that acting otherwise is an unfilial dereliction of duty!).

Also, everyone is 300% less repressed and the question of how Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji feel about Wei Wuxian is not supposed to be much of a mystery. This doesn’t actually make the drama more complex, but it does give it yet more room to highlight the perspectives and motives of characters who are not Wei Wuxian, which I do think makes it harder to miss the complexity. We get stuff like The Untamed putting in the work to make sure the audience understands how we get from Jiang Cheng telling Zixun to shut up or put up in front of a war room full of the most important people in the cultivation world to Jiang Cheng saying “look I agree he shouldn’t have killed members of your clans but his heart was in the right place,” to Jiang Cheng at Nightless City, not taking the “fuck Wei Wuxian in perpetuity” vow but also very much not protesting when everyone else does. Is it spoonfeeding? Maybe, but it’s also delicious. Subtlety is dead to me I only want Wang Zhuocheng’s cryface.

That being said, these may just be things I’m particularly interested in and thus paying attention to? I’ve definitely seen meta from people who came away from both the show and the book under the impression that most conflicts were caused by people being too dumb or evil to handle Wei Wuxian’s awesomeness and equating “inconvenient to wangxian” with “bad,” and I’m going to be mean and say I think the problem is less with either work and more with their reading and viewing comprehension. I am very sympathetic to the pains of having your favourite elements of a book minimized or absent in an adaptation. Wei Wuxian is definitely a lighter shade of grey, considerably less repressed, and much less of an asshole in The Untamed, and Jiggy does get a hell of a villain edit (I think he’s plenty villainous in the book! but if I was a Jiggy apologist coming to The Untamed I’d be miffed). I get being annoyed about those changes! Just, you know, Wei Wuxian does still very much torture a lot of people to death for vengeance in a story that is in large part about the role vengeance plays in maintaining the cycle of violence.