Changes to WWX’s Character from MDZS to CQL and Why It Matters
When I first watched CQL/The Untamed, I was mostly pleased by the interpretation and the extent to which it was the same as the novel I knew. And for a while, I thought, you know, some small differences aside, it’s mostly the same. Some CQL additions are even improvements, I thought.
But the more time that’s passed the more GULF I see in understanding of canon and characters depending on whether someone is primarily a MDZS fan or a CQL fan. The biggest and most important, I’ve decided, involve Wei Wuxian. So that’s why I’ve written this meta, which is, I should say upfront, all my own opinion and interpretation and not necessarily 100% accurate. I haven’t reread the novel just for this meta or anything. (I’ve read it twice, plus a lot of spot-checking, plus listened to the audio drama, and watched the donghua twice and read the manhua like halfway…seriously is this the potentially most confusing fandom ever or what?)
So, let’s talk about the differences in WWX from MDZS to CQL:
1. He’s not the MoDao ZuShi. Most commonly translated as Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, but there a lot of iffyness about that translation, so for simplicity’s sake I’m keeping it in pinyin. What this means is that he literally invents an entirely new and UNHEARD of cultivation branch/technique. He harnesses the resentful energy of the dead and that allows him to control fierce corpses. NO ONE HAD EVER DONE THAT BEFORE! He made it UP!
In CQL, of course, Wen Rouhan is using demonic cultivation way before WWX ever talks about it. He’s the one who started using fierce corpses puppets, not WWX. And it involves using something called Yin Iron, which are magic rocks, I guess. The show doesn’t seem to actually know how its own magic system works, so long as they don’t get in trouble with the CN government for talking about ghosts and demons. Or undead.
In this context, WWX is just someone who begins using the strategy and techniques of his enemy. This makes him first of all less inventive and brilliant, but ALSO less morally culpable. Also, we don’t really see WWX controlling puppets in the same way as Wen Rouhan in CQL. He controls, uh, smoke monsters, I guess. But in the novel, he’s 100% digging up and using the corpses of the dead to fight his battles. That’s….very squicky for a lot of reasons, especially in cultural context. He’s pretty much the epitome of someone who was so excited by the prospect that he COULD do something and he NEEDED to do something that he never stopped to ask if he SHOULD.
2. He didn’t forge the Yin Tiger Seal. Wait. Yes he did, you say. Well, maybe, but it’s very much not the same. In CQL the seal he has is just another piece of Yin metal that he turns into a seal and that somehow makes it different? IDK.
Do CQL people have any idea how special the Seal is? What a great undertaking it was to create? Taking a regular old piece of metal that, THROUGH CHANCE AND TIME gained incredible levels of resentment into LITERALLY the MOST POWERFUL SPIRITUAL TOOL EVER!
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