skygiants | (no subject)

tenillypo and I (along with it seems more or less half the internet) have been watching The Untamed, the live-action version of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. Because of scheduling, we've been gulping it down at a rate of approximately 5 episodes a week; last week we finally finished!

Of the three of us, I was the only one who'd read the novel first (

genarti has read the first few chapters,

tenillypo was coming entirely fresh) which has made it an interesting experience. The biggest change between the two versions is in the pacing of the stories -- Grandmaster paces its backstory reveals throughout the novel, allowing the reader to experience them through the perspective of an older, chiller, already-re-incorporated Wei Wuxian; The Untamed gives you a brief intro to Wei Wuxian's return to the world and then plunges the viewer back into thirty linear episodes of backstory about his tragic fall before returning to present-day reunion road trip hijinks.

Personally, I missed the novel's pacing, because half the fun for me is having the contrast between the younger and older versions of the characters played out over the course of the book; also, the show's pacing in general has a way to stop and linger around climactic moments for several episodes in a way that loses a lot of the zippy energy of the rest of it. Also also, in order to maintain backstory pacing, the show has added a whole evil MacGuffin plot that (as

coffeeandink has pointed out) takes a significant amount of responsibility off Wei Wuxian's shoulders for literally inventing zombie magic, which is kind of frustrating as it very much blunts the point of the message that the cultivation world turned on Wei Wuxian for innovating frightening war magic that it then cheerfully went on to continue using.

On the other hand, I did appreciate that the show slithers its way around censorship by replacing all the backstory's moments of fraught mutually oblivious sexual tension with intense explicitly mutual but technically not sexual pairbonding. For example:

BOOK: Lan Wangji, overcome with fraught pining, anonymously kisses a blindfolded Wei Wuxian
SHOW: Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have a fraught discussion in which Wei Wuxian says "I used to see you as my soulmate in this life" and Lan Wangji says "I still am"

On the one hand: it's a bummer China can't show makeouts; on the other hand: I think we can all agree that the show's version here may in fact be better.

These changes, plus the amazing array of long-suffering micro-expressions displayed by Lan Wangji's actor, significantly shift the tone of the romance overall. Book!Lan Wangji spends all his time stoically pining for a man he believes is oblivious to his feelings and will never return them; tv!Lan Wangji spends all his time mildly annoyed that his useless undead husband, to whom he has been married for twenty years, forgot another anniversary. Both great tastes and I'm glad to have experienced both!

Speaking of actors, I already loved the novel version of Jin Ling (the bratty nephew of everybody in the cast) but Jin Ling's actor in the show was a true standout for visibly incorporating all the most annoying traits of the actors who played his father and his other variously terrible uncles into his performance. Truly sublime; a very gifted child.

The show also makes a significant effort to give the few female characters more screentime. I'm not sure how well this serves Jiang Yanli, the sweet but tragically doomed sister, who does appear significantly more often but still unfortunately never gets to do anything besides make the same soup recipe ad infinitum. Wen Qing, on the other hand -- an irritable but virtuous doctor from an evil clan who helps our heroes out at a few key points -- has been elevated to a main player, which is probably the best choice the show ever made, except then it makes her disappearance from the story midway through and the absolute lack of women in the future plot significantly more frustrating. Justice for Wen Qing! (as I requested, in my Yuletide letter.)

(If I had to rank my five favorite characters, it would probably go as follows:

#5 - Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, inextricably linked in favor as they are in life
#4 - Jin Ling; I love a furious gremlin child
#3 - Jiang Cheng; I love the man who taught the furious gremlin child all his worst habits
#2 - Wen Qing; the combo of 'irritable but virtuous doctor' and 'irritable but virtuous elder sister' is too powerful for me to resist
#1 - Lan Jingyi, because someone has to love the most mediocre Lan child and that someone was, inevitably, going to be me.)

My other favorite thing about the show: the special effects on Lan Clan members summoning their magical zithers from Z-space with a strum of their fingers. Amazing. Flawless.

I still have not seen the donghua past the first episode but that will probably be next!

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There's still a lot of Jiang Cheng in Jin Ling, but he's definitely mixed in a lot of the nose-in-the-air attitude of the actor who plays Jin Zixuan as well, with an occasional nod to Jin Guangyao for variety, and the result is ... honestly beautiful.

The fact that WWX doesn't invent necromancy is really my biggest beef with the show. He still makes a lot of innovations on the form, but come on! Let him have this! The morality overall of WWX's edgelord years is much less gray, no parading through the streets with a zombie harem at all, which feels like the tradeoff for getting the stronger existing relationship with LWJ -- it makes it (ironically, given censorship) a better romance but a weaker plot, I think.

...I admit I am now a little disappointed that the show didn't have them summoning guzheng out of the air at every opportunity.

Yes, I feel like adding JZX's worse qualities on top of JC's and JGY's would truly be "yes the Jin clan are ALL jerks but ALSO I understand why this child has no friends he did not make while at risk of death by corpse powder"

It also sounds to me like dumping all the Bad Magic blame on the Wen clan is letting everyone else off too lightly for the fact that the sects are all pretty messed-up. Mistakes were made by MANY, including WWX himself!

The Lan clan could probably straight up murder people by hitting them with guzheng, so this is truly a wasted opportunity for dual utility weaponising, I'm just saying.

The actor who plays JZX in the show also has this hilarious quality of ... like .... you know those cats, the ones who stare vaguely past you like if they ignore you, you'll have the decency to go away or stop existing? That's JZX and it's kind of wonderful.

Mistakes are definitely made by many clans in the show as well -- the abuse of Wen prisoners is played more or less as it is in the show, and there's a lot of squabbling about leftover magical macguffins -- but, like, we didn't need a magical macguffin to start with! There's plenty of leftover human evil to go around.

I'm pretty sure that's how Lan Jingyi uses his guzheng.

The WWX inventing necromancy sounded weird to me, so I looked for it in my reread.

Chapter 72: "After the Sunshot Campaign, the criticism of Wei WuXian cultivating the ghoul path that the sects had once veiled began to rise."

It's not new. The older generation has reasons for reacting so horrified by it (other than its generally horrifying nature). And LWJ's comments about its effects are not extrapolations but based on previously collected data.

I think the implication is that most of the actual techniques are lost/have been deliberately suppressed, right? I guess WWX doesn't invent them so much as reinvent them, but in any case he's definitely innovating them for this generation rather than just following what the Wens have already done.

Absolutely deliberately suppressed! One of the reasons why I like the Yin Iron maguffin is that it establishes that every 50-100 years someone makes a thing and gets a terrifying amount of power, and that the in between times aren't so much peaceful as people reacting to the catastrophes (trying to avoid the bad parts, trying to regain the power, not realizing they are the same thing).

Also, I hear he found a cave with a book with strange techniques written by an old mystic.

Oh, wait! So I'm rewatching the show. Episode 22 at 13 minutes in. After the first battle outside the throne room with puppets? (at least the first battle we're shown of the actual Sunshot campaign) Wen Ruohan is pleased with the success and says, "Sure enough, this method is effective." to which a shadowy subordinate bows and replies, "Thank you, Your Excellency."

So does that mean it's a 'stolen technique'?

(arguments against that - I thought that way back when they were studying in Cloud Recesses that there were stories of Wen clan's puppets being problems.)