#which translates to the Queen Mother's Ghost Banquet

[taomubiji]

The Banquet of Seowangmo (Xiwangmu), Queen Mother of the West (18th-19th Century)

The painting depicts the Queen Mother of the West's Banquet. The Queen Mother would invite immortals to her banquet to eat ripened peaches of immortality. According to legends, King Mu of the Zhou dynasty went to visit her in his quest for immortality.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 21, part one

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff) (Previous Post)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Reunions

All together in The Unclean Realm, The Yunmeng trio find a spot inside where they can sit down and have a proper Yanli-Wuxian reunion, while Jiang Cheng sits across the table watching them. 

For years Jiang Cheng has been rejecting Wei Wuxian's free and easy affection; now Yanli might be the only person Wei Wuxian offers to hug until Wen Yuan comes into his life.

Jiang Cheng is really going through it. He'll do nearly anything for Yanli--except, uh, stay in the goddamn inn with her when she's sick and the Wens are hunting them--and what makes her happiest is Wei Wuxian. He's brought them together, and so he's happy, even though he's excluded from their dynamic. This absolutely fucking kills me.

Here Jiang Yanli and Wei Wuxian are sweetly pledging to always keep the trio together and put each other first. Neither of them will keep this promise. 

Wei Wuxian will leave first, to take the Wens to the Burial Mounds. Jiang Yanli will leave second, staying in Lanling at Jin Zixuan's request instead of accompanying Jiang Cheng to retrieve Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng will be the last to let go.

(more after the cut)

Nie Huaisang comes literally running in, filled with joy at Wei Wuxian's return. When he goes to pat his shoulder Wei Wuxian flinches away.

I feel like something important is happening in this rapid sequence of glances and expressions between Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang. NHS is startled, and WWX realizes he's shown something about himself that he didn't want to show. He glances at Jiang Cheng and back at NHS before laughing and covering his slip with a squeeze of NHS’s hand.

NHS switches from shocked to cheerful just as quickly, helping with the coverup. It’s like they have a quick mutual agreement, rooted in their history of shared shenanigans, to not point out that something is wrong.

Meanwhile, Lan Wangji is wandering around the grounds, having feelings. At this point it's presumably been at least a couple of weeks since their breakup fight. 

He sees Wei Wuxian sitting contemplating his flute, and as he sees him he goes from sort of neutrally apprehensive to full on angry judging, complete with sword clenching. 

Part of this may be that his feelings are hurt over their fight, but the larger issue is his distress over Wei Wuxian's apparent heretical cultivation.  That, at any rate, is what's on his mind when he's selecting music, later in the episode, and when he's selecting flashbacks. 

Party Time

Later, the Nies host an excruciating party to celebrate Wei Wuxian's slaughter of Wen Chao return. Jiang Yanli is sharing a table with Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng is sharing a table with his crippling social anxiety. 

Everyone starts grilling Wei Wuxian about his sword, because that's suddenly all anybody cares about even though Jiang Yanli, Nie Huaisang, Meng Yao, and probably plenty of other people don't carry swords most of the time.

Wei Wuxian says "after the Wens caught me, Wen Zhuliu crushed my core, so I can't use my sword any more, too bad so sad, can we change the subject?" And everyone is very understanding and admires his resiliency. HA HA HA HA HA. Of course he doesn't opt for that simple lie, but instead mopes audibly without saying anything.

Nie Huasiang tries to change the subject by asking how he killed Wen Chao. Apparently "I had a sexy ghost mostly flay him" isn't good party chat, though, so neither Wei Wuxian nor Jiang Cheng opts to tell the story. 

Everyone lapses into awkward silence, all the more noticeable because there are no dancers, musicians, or entertainers of any kind at this event. OP has gone to audit-kickoff meetings that were more fun than cultivator banquets.

Moment of Clarity

While the awkwardness builds, we hear the sounds of the Song of Clarity. Lan Wangji is skipping the party, which is part of why Wei Wuxian is so mopey. But instead of sitting and stewing in his anger, Lan Wangji has shifted gears, and is starting to work on his "save Wei Wuxian's soul" plan.

This isn't the God-botherer version of soul saving, however. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian disagree about correct practice, but they both are still practitioners within the same spiritual system, and the majority of their beliefs are closely aligned.

Lan Wangji has powerful magic at his disposal, and now he's taking a step back from his plan of forcing persuading Wei Wuxian to give up heterodoxy, and instead he's preparing to use his magic to offset the consequences of Wei Wuxian's choice.

He still isn't ready to accept that choice, but he's working on it. This is a big moment for Lan Wangji's relationship with Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji is a deeply, deeply uncompromising person, as well as being super bossy, and he’s taking his first steps toward supporting Wei Wuxian’s free agency. 

Wei Wuxian leaves the party in the middle of Yao's toast, saying "I have to see you and your lover all over my tumblr dashboard but I am NOT going to listen to you talk!" He takes his wine to go roam around near Lan Wangji's quarters to pine and feel conflicted.  Lan Wangji has thoughtfully set up a projection scrim to catch his shadow and make the pining easier.

Jiang Cheng comes looking for Wei Wuxian, partly to reprimand him for rudeness and partly to see what the hell is wrong with him. Jiang Cheng is trying very hard to be pleasant. He's bad at it, but he's trying.

Wei Wuxian is trying to be unpleasant and he's pretty good at it. He won't say why he isn't using his sword. He’s obviously super fucking depressed about it, calling his former self childish for liking to spar, and only smiling once during the whole exchange.

He finally tells Jiang Cheng that he will always want to do the opposite of what Jiang Cheng tells him.  Jiang Cheng lets this go with an eyeroll.

(Point Break Quote Alert)

But actually this is a sign of trouble, right here in River City, with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for abandoning the Jiang Clan. Wei Wuxian has just told Jiang Cheng he has no intention of obeying him; not just about the sword, but in general. That's no way for a disciple to talk. 

OP has nothing to say about this gif. OP watches gif over and over and over and over

Wei Wuxian ends the conversation by tapping Jiang Cheng's chest with his flute and then walking away. The (still nameless) flute has no problem with this - does it, like Subian, recognize Jiang Cheng as an extension of Wei Wuxian?

The next day, Wei Wuxian is chilling in his room, looking ungodly sexy in his bold slashed robe, holy frack. I mean, he is sex-on-toast at all times, but the cut of his post-burial-mounds combo is particularly heart-stopping when he decides to stick a knee or two out. 

He's meditating and flashing back to being in the burial mounds, where he was also meditating. I admire his ability to fractally meditate about meditating. 

Chenqing

He didn't put a sock on the doorknob, so Jiang Yanli comes in and startles him. He brandishes his flute at her before calming down. The flute definitely does not see her as an extension of Wei Wuxian, because when she touches it, it smokes and then knocks her out of the frame so fast it's comical.

Did they put her in a jerk vest for that shot?

Wei Wuxian hides the flute from her, freaked out by its behavior. She, however, is unfazed, and gives him the first & only affirmation he's gotten about his new cultivation path, and says the flute is "like Mother's Zidian."  She kind of walks him through the whole "first class spiritual tool" concept, beaming with approval and telling him he must name the flute.  

Jiang Yanli is hardcore Jiang Clan, seriously. Freedom and impossibility. You survived 3 months of mystery trauma and now you're all fucked up? We'll roll with it. You have a demon flute now? Rock on. You're going to use necromancy to beat the other clans in a group hunt? Gold star for you.

He names the flute Chenqing, which @hunxi-guilai​ translates and explains in depth over here.

Bichen

Lan Wangji has finished practicing the Song of Clarity, and regardless of whether it's had an effect on Wei Wuxian, he himself seems much calmer. 

As Wei Wuxian contemplates Chenqing, Lan Wangji contemplates Bichen and remembers Wei Wuxian's assertions about resentful energy way back in Gusu summer school. 

This time when he grips his sword, it's loosely, as if he's made some progress with his anger.

Soup

Jiang Yanli sits Wei Wuxian down for some soup, and talks to him about what's going on with him, saying he's changed. He insists he's fine and works very hard to be convincing.

She's not convinced but says she won't press him, and then abruptly shifts tone and works very hard to act like everything is fine. She leaves, taking a lot of soup with her, and Wei Wuxian remarks that it's unfair she is giving so much to Jiang Cheng. But of course, some of it is secretly for Jin Zixuan.

Everything isn't fine, as Wei Wuxian scream-meditates with resentful energy just rolling off of him. He's got some of the dark energy stored in the Yin sword in his bag of holding, but I get the impression that a lot of it is just stored in his body.

Club Ruohan

At some point in the episode we stop in to check on Wen Ruohan. He and his wind machine are mad that Wen Chao is dead. 

Meanwhile, his interpretive dances with the Yin iron now turn his puppets into...Klingons? Sure, why not. 

Literal Stand-Up Meeting 

Jiang Cheng needs Wei Wuxian at games night a meeting and comes running to Jiang Yanli to find him. He is freaking out and she tells him to chill. 

No matter what fuckery is going on in the world, Jiang Yanli is going to find herself a nice little outdoor table and she is going to sit her ass down and have some tea and civilized lady activity. Queen.

This shot of the meeting is composed so nicely. The blocking (placement of actors) in this scene encapsulates the familial dynamics, and I’ll talk about that as soon as I finish admiring Jiang Cheng’s proportions. 

Here we have four clans represented by four family pairs around the game war table. The Jin cousins, despite their differing personalities, are side by side, matchy-matchy, in lockstep. Jin Zixuan lets Jin Zixun do the talking for him, so maintains his own rep as a reasonable guy.  

The Nie brothers are even closer together, also in matching greys, Nie Huaisang giving all of his attention to his brother/clan leader. You can see his careful watching of his brother's temper...not fearful for himself, but fearful for Mingjue.

The Lan brothers have a growing distance between them; they are in different colors (which is pretty usual for them), and Lan Wangji is standing well away from his brother and the rest of the group. Partly this is his personality, but it's also symbolic of his growing distance from his brother and other proper cultivators. He's carrying WWX-related secrets, and he's wrestling with what he's learned.  

While Nie Huaisang is looking at Mingjue, Lan Xichen is turning around to see what's up with his own volatile sibling.

Lastly you have Jiang Cheng, alone in the room, with his shidi nowhere to be found, and seriously feeling the heat because of his isolation. 

He's alone in his purple, but the color value (lightness/darkness) of his robes exactly matches Xichen's. 

And Xichen, bless him, makes a point of speaking to him respectfully as a fellow clan leader, gives him a path out of the "where is your brother" conversation, and is just generally his kind and helpful self with Jiang Cheng.

Next: Awkwardness Increases!