Untamed rewatch: more on 20
Mar. 24th, 2020 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootEp 20 is such a significant turning point in the story, I just have to poke at it some more. It pulls together so many of the previous themes and threads.
For one thing, I think Wei Wuxian's response to Lan Wangji (and vice versa) only make sense if you consider how they /met/. Both of them explicitly mention the surprise and /delight/ in meeting someone who's their match. (...well, Lan Xichen states it on LWJ's behalf, and LWJ can't deny it.) They've both been going it alone, in a lot of ways, isolated from their peers by the simple fact of both being prodigies, both being geniuses in their own generation, and suddenly they each have someone there who can match them, who they can measure themselves against, strive with and not be assured of winning. They both respond very effusively, each in his own way. WWX treats LWJ very much as he treats his own brother (and boy does Jiang Cheng notice that), seeking him out, always trying to include him, coaxing and jollying him along, getting them both in trouble and promptly trying to take all the blame. LWJ pays attention, doesn't actually push WWX away, even to the extent of lending his headband when they're in circumstances that require it (and boy does Lan Xichen notice it, and seems delighted by it all, pointing up for the audience how out of character this must be).
Above all, they relate to each other as equals.
So when they encounter each other again, on the other side of the Burial Mounds, LWJ is reacting to his only true peer suddenly practicing a form of cultivation he's been taught is both wrong and self-destructive. He's looking at the certainty (from what he's been taught) of losing the only person besides his older brother that he's genuinely on intimate terms with, and the only one of those two who's his equal and match, and he's flat-out panicking over it. And he kind of doesn't stop for the next ten eps.
WWX is watching his one true peer, the one person he might have expected to have a deep enough and intuitive enough understanding of cultivation to see what's happened to him, not see and not accept what he's done to survive. The evasion and (far flatter than usual) joking he uses to avoid answering what happened to him all seem geared to deflect questions about details until he sees how LWJ is going to respond. It isn't until LWJ responds with open anger and fear that WWX finally chooses equally open defiance and refusal.
I find it interesting that that's also the point at which WWX explicitly aligns himself and Jiang Cheng clan-wise to exclude LWJ. It's absolutely a winning move; JC's ongoing jealousy of LWJ guarantees that he'll support WWX and deflect LWJ /as a sect leader/. It's also a lot colder of a move than WWX would have ever made in the past, suggesting that he /is/ being affected by the malice he's channeling and leveraging. And yet... that last look he gives LWJ, as LWJ leaves them, is full of so much regret.
He really hoped LWJ would understand. And that he doesn't... I think that's really the first of the breaks that leads to WWX letting himself fall. The one that isn't healed in quite enough time to prevent the fall.
If LWJ finally does understand all of that, there at the end... well, it explains a /whole lot/ about the way /he/ snaps.
For one thing, I think Wei Wuxian's response to Lan Wangji (and vice versa) only make sense if you consider how they /met/. Both of them explicitly mention the surprise and /delight/ in meeting someone who's their match. (...well, Lan Xichen states it on LWJ's behalf, and LWJ can't deny it.) They've both been going it alone, in a lot of ways, isolated from their peers by the simple fact of both being prodigies, both being geniuses in their own generation, and suddenly they each have someone there who can match them, who they can measure themselves against, strive with and not be assured of winning. They both respond very effusively, each in his own way. WWX treats LWJ very much as he treats his own brother (and boy does Jiang Cheng notice that), seeking him out, always trying to include him, coaxing and jollying him along, getting them both in trouble and promptly trying to take all the blame. LWJ pays attention, doesn't actually push WWX away, even to the extent of lending his headband when they're in circumstances that require it (and boy does Lan Xichen notice it, and seems delighted by it all, pointing up for the audience how out of character this must be).
Above all, they relate to each other as equals.
So when they encounter each other again, on the other side of the Burial Mounds, LWJ is reacting to his only true peer suddenly practicing a form of cultivation he's been taught is both wrong and self-destructive. He's looking at the certainty (from what he's been taught) of losing the only person besides his older brother that he's genuinely on intimate terms with, and the only one of those two who's his equal and match, and he's flat-out panicking over it. And he kind of doesn't stop for the next ten eps.
WWX is watching his one true peer, the one person he might have expected to have a deep enough and intuitive enough understanding of cultivation to see what's happened to him, not see and not accept what he's done to survive. The evasion and (far flatter than usual) joking he uses to avoid answering what happened to him all seem geared to deflect questions about details until he sees how LWJ is going to respond. It isn't until LWJ responds with open anger and fear that WWX finally chooses equally open defiance and refusal.
I find it interesting that that's also the point at which WWX explicitly aligns himself and Jiang Cheng clan-wise to exclude LWJ. It's absolutely a winning move; JC's ongoing jealousy of LWJ guarantees that he'll support WWX and deflect LWJ /as a sect leader/. It's also a lot colder of a move than WWX would have ever made in the past, suggesting that he /is/ being affected by the malice he's channeling and leveraging. And yet... that last look he gives LWJ, as LWJ leaves them, is full of so much regret.
He really hoped LWJ would understand. And that he doesn't... I think that's really the first of the breaks that leads to WWX letting himself fall. The one that isn't healed in quite enough time to prevent the fall.
If LWJ finally does understand all of that, there at the end... well, it explains a /whole lot/ about the way /he/ snaps.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-24 08:06 pm (UTC)It's taking me this much time and attention to even begin to get the nuances of the relationship! I think that's because so much arises from the implied culture of the fantasy ancient China, and much of that comes from modern Chinese cultural assumptions, filmmaking tropes and acting styles that I'm just beginning to know.
It's really one of the most absorbing fandom things I've ever fallen into.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-24 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-03-24 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-03-24 09:59 pm (UTC)And then I had to go and read /all/ the fixit fic, and also write some more, because ow.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-24 11:24 pm (UTC)enablerguide. :Dno subject
Date: 2020-03-24 09:33 pm (UTC)Have you seen
Your thoughts dovetail amazingly, by explaining exactly how brutal a blow it is when LWJ fails WWX's Ancient Chinese Broccoli Test.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-24 09:55 pm (UTC)And then it breaks.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-25 10:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-03-26 07:15 pm (UTC)