skygiants | Entries tagged with the untamed

Eight chapters and two years into this AU I am back in Wen Qing's POV! A new chapter of the Jiang Yanli golden core AU, mostly featuring stressed eldest sisters staggering around in the woods.

Shamefaced but pleased to actually to be able to slide in a new chapter of the 'Jiang Yanli loses her golden core' AU under the wire before a full year has gone by! Anyway this is the Wen Ning POV chapter, in which he is dead.

TBH half the reason I started writing this 'Yanli sacrifices her golden core' AU was because I could so clearly hear the outsider POV ".... Soup Girl?" reaction in my head and I'm thrilled to have finally gotten there. New chapter, Mian Mian POV!

Who amongst us has not wished for Jin Guangyao's star turn at Guanyin Temple to include a kicky Broadway solo number?

"Guanyin Temple (Remix)" (Watch on Vimeo)

Audio from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Nothing Is Ever Anyone's Fault

(AO3 | Tumblr)

Thanks to

genarti and

shati for a.) enabling b.) very patiently providing feedback on 3 million drafts while I agonized over correct placement of sepia tone for maximum comedy

After many months, I have finally written some more of the 'Jiang Yanli loses her golden core' AU, in which, after five chapters, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have one whole scene together! It goes better than it hypothetically could have!

I have not abandoned the 'Jiang Yanli loses her golden core' AU and to prove it, here's a fourth chapter, which is largely composed of Jiang Cheng screaming and crying.

"All I want postcanon is for Jiang Cheng to be completely drowning in dogs," I said, and then, unfortunately, I wrote 13,000 words of it.

Five Dogs, One Cat

Hey it only took me three chapters of this 'Jiang Yanli gives up her golden core' AU to get to Jiang Yanli's actual POV!

Anywhere here is the third chapter, in which Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian both return from the wars.

I have now seen both Untamed tie-in movies!

The Living Dead is the one in which Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui go on a ghost-fighting adventure and, unfortunately, I did not think it was much good at all.

Some facts about The Living Dead:
- the town in which Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui find themselves were apparently famous for making lanterns for the Wen clan ... last year. The film takes place postcanon. The Wens have been defeated for sixteen years. Nobody finds this at all confusing but us.
- the most prominent NPC has an elaborately tragic tale to tell about his beloved sister. Wen Qing's name is not mentioned one single time.
- relatedly, Wen Ning and Lan Sizhui do not have a single conversation about their shared history or any of the things that tie them together
- the most prominent NPC has like half an hour of extensive backstory flashback
- Wen Ning has two minutes of character development in the film in which to be mildly sad about being a zombie
- Lan Sizhui has no minutes of character development, none at all
( spoilers )

Fatal Journey is the one where the Nie brothers go on a road trip to fight their ancestors' bad decisions and it is significantly better in that the characters we know a.) act like the characters we know b.) have significant emotional development based on, in fact, their characters and c.) occasionally form a gratuitous human pyramid!

I actually really enjoyed many things about this film, including:
- the fact that Nie Huaisang does quite a lot of things that are useful and absolutely none of them are fighty
- genuinely adorable and emotionally affecting Small Nie Brothers flashbacks
- it's very funny that the Nie tomb inexplicably opens up into the Mines of Moria
- truly amazing special effects
- seriously I'm not sure I've ever laughed so hard during a fight scene
- WHEN MINGJUE'S HAIR SPONTANEOUSLY UNBRAIDS ITSELF AND EXPLODES IN A TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE POOF
- I DIED
( spoilers )

things I did not enjoy about this film:
- Nie Huaisang's wig for this movie has no braids in it? I don't understand?? costumers why

[pops into the Untamed section of the AO3 ten minutes late with Starbucks]

heeeeey friends it's the first chapter of what's looking likely to be an extremely long Jiang Yanli-centric AU that nobody asked for!

Title: and the other gold
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Summary: "What," Wen Qing said, "do they teach all you Jiangs? Do they raise you on nothing but ballads and martyrdom?"

(or, the one where Jiang Yanli manages to slide in before Wei Wuxian to sacrifice her golden core)

a.) YULETIDE! I got three fantastic gifts this year and am feeling very undeserving because, for the first time in years, I only managed to write one.

Two of my gifts, to my very great delight, are Wen Qing Lives fics for The Untamed, the first one a canon divergence AU that not only saves Wen Qing but gives Jiang Yanli actual stuff to do while we're at it:

Ring the Bells (That Still Can Ring)

“There has been enough death.” Jiang Yanli moved forward, one measured pace at a time. She stroked Jin Ling’s head as she walked and added, “Don’t shout. He’s sleeping.”

and the other an amazing postcanon fic about Jiang Cheng and Lan Sizhui chasing down rumors of a healer that has immediately become my new actual canon:

The Past Didn't Go Anywhere

There's a woman traveling the countryside. She wears the white of mourning and she always travels alone. No one knows what clan she came from -- she never even shares her name. If you ask too many questions about her past, she'll leave and never come back.

However! in addition to all this bounty! I have had the great honor to also receive the VERY FIRST Chicago Typewriter ghost OT3 fic on Yuletide, which I have been desperately wanting for years and had almost given up hope of ever receiving! AND IT'S KIDFIC. WITH A GHOST PARENT.

may your song always be sung

“I could be happy with him back,” Seol agreed.

"He'll be back, then." Se Joo looked thoughtful. "Don't you think he'll come be with us because we need him here?"

So that's Yuletide; later tonight or tomorrow I will start reading the rest of the archive but for now I'm just going to bask.

b.) also, hey, while we're at it, it's Hanukkah and also Christmas! The overlap is kind of weird and (although I am having as usual having a really pleasant time with

ep_birdsall's family) conceptually I don't love it, but it does mean I can count my Yuletide gifts as Hanukkah presents.

In the spirit of the weird overlap: a few days ago, after we all remembered the existence of Christmas Hallelujah, I decided that Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird (translators of Hallelujah into Yiddish among other acts of radical Yiddish punk cabaret) were now legally obligated to release an album covering Christmas classics in response.

catchaspark, immediately:

oh the weather outside is dreary,
and the workers all are weary,
but since we know where we are,
kill the tsar, kill the tsar, kill the tsar

Although nowhere near as good, I've also got

silent night
let us unite
workers all
join the fight

and it really takes only the barest nudge to turn Un Du Akerst (which we're singing in my chorus this year) into a "Carol of the Bells" medley:

klapt der hamer, mit zayn gezang
tserayst di keytn, fun shklafn-tsvang!

DA DADADADA DA DADADADA DA DADADADA da dadada

so if anyone else wants to take advantage of this weird Chrismukkah day to write some radical Jewish Christmas carol covers, please be my absolute guest!

genarti and

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!