Untamed: responsibility and power

[branchandroot]

This is the promised entry with actual contemplative thoughts about Untamed, as opposed to general fulminations about the last ten minutes. The thing I keep coming back to is the change that the drama made in Wei Wuxian’s responsibility/culpability.


In the novel, the two really major times Wei Wuxian lost control of Wen Ning, it actually was his own loss of control that caused the problem.

In the drama, both times are due to the interference of another—-in the first, Asshole Su, and in the second Jin Guangyao.

And I feel like, on the one hand, it works on the obviously intended level of making drama!Wei Wuxian way more of a woobie who is unjustly judged and blamed by a world that’s just looking for a scapegoat. But on the other, that really reduces the moral complexity.

The novel makes all of Lan Wangji’s warnings accurate. Not at the time, but eventually. It makes the tragedy about Wei Wuxian’s very human weakness—-emphasizes that he is only human, despite his incredible power. And I did like that.

I mean, I also like the long tension, in the drama, of the injustice to Wei Wuxian, and his eventual vindication that grinds everyone’s nose in their human weakness of casting blame. But I also really, really liked the complexity, in the novel, of that still being true and yet Wei Wuxian also making fatal mistakes in overestimating his own control of demonic powers. Which works so perfectly with his character, with how strong he really is, and the natural arrogance that grows out of that, layered with his desperation to a) not let Jiang Cheng know about the Core transplant and b) not, you know, get killed. Repeatedly.

I liked Wei Wuxian just a little bit more as an arrogant little genius who got caught in the bind of need and duty and his sense of right, and of almost being right that he could beat the demonic odds... and who lost everything because of it.

Starting from that point, his current-day self is even more tasty, for me.

Comments

[aldanise]

Does this explain why I’m seeing stories popping up in which demonic cultivation/using resentful energy isn’t at all harmful?

I haven’t watched Untamed yet because time, but I’m *really* attached to how grey the novel’s narrative makes Wei Wuxian’s pre-death actions. I thought the novel made a point of showing how resentful energy made Wei Wuxian more volatile and contributed to, well, general loss of control during confrontations. The incidents with Wen Ning that you hone in on here are really telling!

[branchandroot]

Very likely, yes. There are some instances of drama!WWX being physically injured after using that form of cultivation, but it's very fuzzy whether that's because of the resentful energy itself or because he's just pushing himself way too hard for a man with a severely underdeveloped core.

[libitina]

I think about that a lot with this story. The big thing that has sold me on MXTX's writing had been how many of her characters are messy and ambiguous. That takes to much attention space to write, and I love how complicated the world is.

It also changes the fundamental rules for how forever corpses/puppets work. The novel is very clear that once one person/force is influencing them, it keeps having primacy. And the show is the opposite. And I find it favoring that they thought this through and unraveled it and broke the basic rules of the world so much to make such a similar story.

Sort of.

I only found the novel through the show. But it had been interesting reading the reactions of people who read and loved the novel years ago. The next time I re-read I want to go through and highlight all of the digging up of corpses and genuinely horrifying stuff he does.

Thanks for the meta!

[branchandroot]

My pleasure! I love that ambiguity, too, and really missed it. And, honestly, I also missed the intensity of how mastering the Burial Mounds affected Wei Wuxian, in the novel! I mean, he literally becomes someone whose closest friends are fierce corpses, and we lost all of that nuance. That whole scene, when Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji first catch up to him, was such a gut-punch and yet so subtly done.

[dancing_serpent]

I have only read snippets of the novel so far, so I don't know yet which version of WWX I'll prefer.

But I have to say that I really liked the way the systematic campaign against his person ruined everything for WWX, and how his own attitude only furthered to dig himself deeper. I don't know if it would have had such an impact on me going by novel-canon.

[branchandroot]

I'll be very interested to see what you think, when you're finished! There's a lot of digging himself in deeper, in the novel, that's for sure.

[anotherslashfan]

I read the novel before I watched the drama, and the changes made to WWX were the only ones that truly bothered me - he felt so unique to me because of his greyness.

(For the record, I think drama!LWJ is a major improvement over novel!LWJ.)

[branchandroot]

Me too! It's fairly rare to see that kind of ambiguity carried all the way through a story.

(And I'm right with you on drama!LWJ.)

[ranalore]

Oh, okay. I thought I remembered, when people first started mentioning the novel, that he had, in fact, lost control a few times, so he was more culpable in his own downfall.

I do tend to like gray and ambiguous characters, and I like the ambiguity of several characters and events in the show. I wonder, though, if novel!Wei Wuxian would hit me in the id the way drama!WWX does.

I do feel like post-return to life drama!WWX is shaped by his belief that he lost control, at least in the death of Jin Zixuan. And we as the audience don't learn he didn't until Lan Wangji asks about the other flute, which I think is the first point he truly lets himself believe maybe that's the case. Prior to LWJ's confirmation, as he says, he thought he imagined it.

[branchandroot]

*thoughtful* I don't know if novel!WWX would hit quite the /same/ id-point. For me, at least, the novel id-point was more "ngh, drool" exactly because of that darker edging, but novel!WWX is still utterly defined by his empathy and resilience-of-goodness. It's just that the novel is much more explicit about just how /far/ down he's come back from.

[solo]

I don't have anything useful to say except 'I love both versions' but I do want to say thank you for a very interesting read!

[branchandroot]

My pleasure! I do quite like both versions, myself, each for its own reason.