The Untamed Episode 19: Hello, emergency services? I’d like to report an attack, by this episode, on me personally
Niche character trope of the day: characters who are Ready To Die, but are too stubborn, too competent, or too damn proud to do so by anyone’s hand but their own.
Because it sets up one of my favourite ways of forcing a character across a threshold: put them in a situation where there is no way out... except one: the unthinkable, the unforgivable, the step-too-far, the rule they will not break. So the choice is that, or death (in obscurity when they need it to mean something, or at the hand of one they do not deem worthy of being their executioner)
And so, ready (prepared and/or willing) to die, given the opportunity to die, given no conceivable way not to die... they will choose survival. ‘Ready to die’ is good. ‘Survive at what cost’ is good. But combine the two, and you get something so much more than the sum of its parts (self hatred! guilt! crossing a moral threshold so what is there now to hold them back! loss of self!).
And why do I bring this up, you ask?
So that’s. A lot.
But let’s start at the beginning, shall we, because the first thing that struck me about this episode (well, aside from ‘Wei Wuxian you look like hell’) is another series of lovely inverted parallels between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian.
Which is of course fitting because, while it hasn’t been outright stated, I am 99% sure Wei Wuxian has in fact given up his golden core (not quite his life and not quite his self but close enough as makes little difference) for his brother (protect them, at all costs, even your life. And so he does). And so there is something of a zero-sum game here: for one to rise, the other must fall; for one to live, the other must... well, we’ll get to that.
But we get this really excellent series of scenes back-and-forth, starting with a rather marked visual contrast:
[Good morning! Spot the difference]
One waking up, one cast down. One restored, the other barely alive. One outside, in the light; the other inside, in the darkness. One looking peaceful, rested; the other looking like hammered shit. One dressed for a fashion show; the other dressed like he scavenged rags off a rotting corpse (also is it just me or is his collar crossed the wrong way?). One at home, surrounded by family (even if it is only a dream, and burns down around him); one far away, surrounded by enemies. A fall, a rise.
And it keeps going:
[Don’t forget to say please (do your worst) and thank you (for my life)]
One calling out his thanks to the world, one remaining silent except to taunt his tormentors. Jiang Cheng using Wei Ying’s name and calling out his thanks, not knowing to whom. One at least returned from near death, from despair; the other being dragged towards it. Jiang Cheng finds himself. Wei Wuxian… well, this is after all a series of contrasts.
It’s just absolutely beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking to see Jiang Cheng’s joy on breathing in and finding that his golden core is restored, because his smile is so genuine and it’s set against this scene of Wei Wuxian, helpless and beaten and no one knowing the truth.
(Well...except possibly Wen Zhuliu. I mean, I have to wonder. He hits Wei Wuxian, and his whole superpower is being able to destroy someone’s golden core, and he doesn’t say anything but Wen Chao mentions him destroying Wei Wuxian’s, and Wen Zhuliu looks...like he’s felt something is a little off here).
[‘Is it him? Or are these gloves too fabulous to feel anything through?’]
And I have to wonder... what exactly was Wei Wuxian’s original intention here, in telling Jiang Cheng to meet him? He looks like death only barely warmed over; how was he planning on hiding the truth from Jiang Cheng? Was he going to make it a last farewell of some sort? But if so, what was his cover supposed to be? And if not, did he really think Jiang Cheng wouldn’t notice? Wei Wuxian is very, very good at not exactly hiding things but at drawing everyone into whatever truth he chooses to present and making it so through force of will and personality, but even then...
He couldn’t have know the Wen clan would be there, right? Couldn’t have expected to be taken? Couldn’t have intended to die at their hands…could he?
Either way, that brings us to… yeah let’s just talk about Wei Wuxian being tortured and how it is a very, very Good Look on him. He’s barely keeping himself upright before Wen Zhuliu hits him and Wen Chao goes to town! He’s clearly Not In Great Shape right now! Probably because he just had his golden core removed and I can’t imagine that was pleasant. And also it means he’s basically defenceless! But does that stop him from mouthing off? It does not! He just. Suffers very well. In pain and defiant is a good look on him.
But it’s more than that: it’s about how he just takes it; how he taunts them, challenges them to do their worst; and how, beaten and unable to stand unaided and lacking the power to defend himself, he manages still to look like the most dangerous one in the room.
Once, he seized Wen Chao’s whip and said, soft and dangerous, “do not try me.” Now, beaten and bloody and powerless, he looks Wen Chao in the eye and says, proud and defiant, “whatever torture you have, bring it on.” And somehow that’s even more terrifying. Beaten within an inch of his life, without a golden core, surrounded by enemies… but look at him and tell me you’d risk taking that chance.
It is. Let me just say once more and with emphasis. A very good look.
But you can also see just how close to the edge he is. There’s a moment when his smile honestly looks like Xue Yang’s. And then there’s the whole... laughing whilst being branded, black smoke beginning to curl from the pouch at his belt, and he is. This close to just losing control completely. He’s weak and exhausted and hurt, expecting to die and clinging to…consciousness, sanity, life, pride, by his fingernails; he’s so close to coming apart but he’s not going to give them the satisfaction and yet he’s not entirely all there and you see it in these moments.
I have a whole thing about... endurance, I suppose, and so of course literal torture of a character who somehow remains defiant is a lot, but that kind of almost-hysteria, the laughter that is entirely inappropriate and yet unsuppressible, the bordering-on-unhinged laughter that exposes this ragged edge of one whose extraordinary will has been pushed almost too far, is just... it’s a thing, okay?
And still he refuses to give them any kind of satisfaction, because he is beyond their reach now. He can withstand anything, because his pain does not matter. His body, his life, they matter little. So what more can they do to him?
But then, when Wen Chao tells him where they are, flying over the Yiling Burial Mounds, there is genuine fear in his face for the first time.
Wen Chao’s final taunt hits precisely the right mark: “Let’s see if you can keep smiling to the end.” Because that’s the painful side of this smiling, proud irreverence Wei Wuxian has. He can laugh anything off but that is a challenge to the cruelty of the world: to hurt him enough that even he cannot smile through it. Challenged with apparent invulnerability, there are always those who will not stop until they find a way to break it.
But instead of a smile there is that black smoke that once filled his mind with screams and now slows his descent. But in the end even that lets him fall. Which is not, I think, unintentional. This power will not save you, it says. You will fall, it says. And fall he does. (It is not Wei Wuxian’s first fall. Nor will it be his last).
And from there on out, literally everything about Wei Wuxian in the Burial Mounds is. An entire situation and everything I wanted.
All but dead, left to die, forsaken and alone in a place the living cannot possibly survive, wounded in body by torture and in mind by the screaming energy around him and nothing but emptiness where once was a brightly burning soul... and utterly surrounded by the resentful energy he once suggested harnessing and that now seeks to tear him apart.
And just… the utter desperation and the extraordinary endurance as he claws his way forward, holding on to something through sheer force of will because he will not go down like this. He will give whatever is required of him (his hand, his name, his golden core; whatever it takes) and if need be he will die. But not here, not like this, not alone and lost and for nothing. Not at the hands of the Wens, who will not even kill him themselves. No.
All those voices, and that whispered question “do you want revenge” (but also the sorrow and longing and almost hope at Lan Wangji’s gentle “Wei Ying” I’m fine this is fine) and he’s shaking and he can’t refuse but he can’t accept because either way he is lost, but there is no other way out and the voices are in his head and the screams surround him and he is drowning in anger and ghosts and “do you want revenge” and he is so hurt, so close to truly broken, and he needs to hold on to something—
And so, surrounded by resentful energy and restless dead—and what is he, by this point, but resentment and a restless soul near death but clinging on; how far is he truly from a vengeful ghost—how could he resist? He has so little left; he is so hurt and so tired and there’s only so much even he can take, and no other way to survive, and he will not die like this. And so he reaches, and so it replies, and so he finds an anchor and a way to survive but one that may also mean he is lost.
Just. The pain, the grief, the rage, the agony on his face as he draws the sword. And then that sharp, cold, terrifying stillness as he stops fighting it.
[Oh.]
Three Months Later
First of all: three months? That is... not as long as sixteen years, but a long time to be lost and fighting for self and survival in a place we are told, over and over, cannot be survived.
But let’s set that aside for a moment and instead give Lan Wangji his due, because damn he knows how to make an entrance.
[Lawful good is not lawful nice]
I just love his cold fury, his utter precision, the way with a word (“Kneel”) you know that he can and will end you.
Like here’s the thing: when we meet him first, through Wei Wuxian’s eyes, he seems law-abiding to a fault, uptight and inflexible. But just as we come to see what lies beneath the apparent carefree irreverence of Wei Wuxian’s outward persona, we see what lies beneath that calm stoicism in Lan Wangji and it is. A lot. He really has the whole ‘deadly grace’ thing down and that’s a whole situation.
Also I love how Wei Wuxian held his silence against the Wens when they tried to torture him into giving Jiang Cheng’s location, but it takes like half a second for them to cave to Lan Wangji when he asks where Wei Wuxian is. (But oh, the answer).
I also just love this weird cooperation/alliance/not-quite-friendship between Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji. Like? It’s so bizarre? They seem to have virtually nothing to say to one another? They hardly ever even look at one another? And yet they’re acting in almost perfect lockstep from the moment we first see them to when they both ask for an assignment to Yiling. They have absolutely nothing in common except one (1) self-immolating disaster of a human but they are Committed and I am weirdly about it.
Finally, I know Wei Wuxian hates him (or rather, their relationship seems to be a mutual ‘I hate that I have to kind of respect you’) but I actually like Jin Zixuan. As with most of these characters, there is a great deal more to him than meets the eye, and one aspect of that is a rather deep sense of honour. (He just has no idea how to talk to his not-quite-maybe-sort-of-girlfriend).
Wait, I lied, that wasn’t ‘finally’.
‘Finally’ is... the haunting flute music at the very end. I am. So here. For this.
I saw you standing there and I knew
I’m done for, it’s over, I’m through
playing games from the start
sinking your nails in my heart
you bring out the worst in me
looking back in my rearview
and nothing no nothing can change you
I decided to play when I knew you were fire
it started off warm but now I hear the choir
who do you think you are
leaving your keys in my car
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