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branchandroot) wrote2020-01-15 05:30 pm
branchandroot) wrote2020-01-15 05:30 pm
Untamed: responsibility and power
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.
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.
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(For the record, I think drama!LWJ is a major improvement over novel!LWJ.)
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(And I'm right with you on drama!LWJ.)