◠ ◟ ☾ It seems to be today. The battle at the East Sea ten years ago was on this day. I didn't expect after fighting to the death ten years ago, ten years later, we'd be drinking together like this in our wedding room. ☽ ◞ ◠
I watched episode 38......I personally thought it was good (well, aside from the parts with obvious Maya erasure). In terms of Kuon content, I think this is a development alot of us were waiting for to really start rolling. The battle scenes were also well done.
Next episode seems like it'll be a clip compilation with more repurposed scenes from 38's original story, so I'm just going to wait for episode 40 to see how Kohaku does as Sumino.
Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 38 part two
(Masterpost) (Pinboard) (whole thing on AO3)
Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!
Shopping and Night Hunting
Xue Yang convinces Xiao Xingchen to take him along as his night hunting assistant, and the Empathy session jumps forward. The next thing we see is a whole street full of dead people with Xiao Xingchen standing over them with his sword, while Xue Yang looks on approvingly.
Xiao Xingchen explains that the whole village was Puppets, with no living people. Dude. DUDE. Even by the standards of a world that contains Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen, you are way too trusting of shit that people tell you.
A-Qing checks the corpses and they have white eyes, which makes her think they might really be puppets. Xue Yang makes some insane faces just so we know he's not actually turned over a new leaf.
Next we see Xiao Xingchen trying to buy potatoes (this is fantasy China, not pre-Qing historical China; they can have all the potatoes they want) and a vendor telling him to scram. Is Xiao Xingchen just asking for free potatoes? Is this the first time he’s realized that doesn’t generally work?. Xue Yang menaces the vendor by loudly stabbing a potato, and then calls Xiao Xingchen back over.
The vendor gasps and fills up their basket with food, and Xiao Xingchen smiles because he thinks that his buddy silently convinced the guy to give them food by...being nice? Unclear.
I Ain’t Gonna Play Yi City
Next we see ultrahot Song Lan arriving at the gate of Yi City, where A-Qing is happily picking up a money purse. ...whose? Do enough living people come through here that they just casually drop money on the ground? Song Lan twigs to her not being blind pretty quickly, although for politeness sake he lets her continue to pretend.
Song Lan asks if she's seen a white-clad sword-bearing daoist priest, and she quizzes him to make sure he's a good guy before helping him. Her entire set of security questions:
1. are you friends?
2. How tall is he?
3. is he hot?
4. What does his sword look like?
If this is not a mistranslation, these are not very good questions to ask if you want someone to believe you’re blind, incidentally.
Song Lan's answers:
1. ............... .... ...yes
2. me and him match like a set of salt and pepper shakers
3. like, SO hot
4. It’s named Shuanghua (”splendid frost,” per Viki), as all True Sword Fans know
(more after the cut!)
These answers are correct, pretty much, so he passes the security check and she leads him into the city. He comes carrying his sword Fuxue (”blowing away snow,” roughly), his horsetail flail, and his messy, messy feelings, which are going to be his undoing.
They walk through the super-abandoned town, which has paper decorations hanging up. These paper decorations are really well made, considering that they are still there when WangXian roll up several years later.
Song Lan has a little crisis trying to psych himself up to see Xiao Xingchen. Bro, you have been walking around looking for him for literally YEARS, and you haven't figured out what to say yet? Contrast with Lan Wangji, who went for the wrist-grab mere moments after discovering that Wei Wuxian was back, and followed it up by carrying him off to his bed.
Enemy Mine
While he's dithering, Xue Yang comes back, and A-Qing hides while Song Lan stands there being shocked.
We're treated to the Xue Yang version of sweet banter, where he tricks Xiao Xingchen into picking a short straw for chores, and then tells him he was tricking him because he was blind.
They have a laugh together and Xue Yang is handsy with XXC, causing Song Lan to clench his fist so strongly that we can hear his knuckles cracking.
You knew your ex was going to be at the party; if you can’t handle seeing him with a new guy you shouldn’t have come.
Then he sees Xue Yang go out to get groceries, and he grips his flail so hard that his palm starts bleeding. That sentence is about a weapon, not about his dick, incidentally.
More Empathy
But then empathy skips ahead, showing Xiao Xingchen stabbing Song Lan, while Wei Wuxian's hands shake and he says "Song Lan, don't!" like he’s in the audience of a horror movie. A-Qing, in the present, drools up some blood, which is pretty normal for her, TBH.
The Lan kids are alarmed and want to wake them up, but Jin Ling says to hang in there for a bit more. For a kid, Jin Ling isn’t bad at wielding authority.
A distraught Jingyi insists, however, so Jin Ling starts ringing the bell, and Wei Wuxian opens his eyes but doesn't come out of Empathy. He does stop skipping ahead, though, so we go back to Song Lan & Xue Yang's confrontation, which is possibly the best fight in the whole dang show.
We’re Gonna Get It On ‘Cause We Don’t Get Along
Xue Yang comes back from the grocery store to find Song Lan perched on his roof like a sexy vengeful raven. Xue Yang greets him sexily politely and with no anxiety at all, and Song Lan attacks.
Song Lan has had literally years to settle his mind and get his emotions under control and...he has not done that. Like, at all.
He could have cleared this whole situation up with about four words to Xiao Xingchen, and they could have fought Xue Yang together. But he was so unready to hug it out with his ex that he opted to face Xue Yang all on his own. Dumb. Ass.
Contrast this with Lan Wangji, who always talked to Wei Wuxian, no matter how estranged they had become. Trying to stab him counts as talking. And also contrast this with Jiang Cheng, who hashed everything out with Wei Wuxian in an excruciating public confrontation, after which they teamed up to save their nephew. Neither of those guys let their ooky feelings stand in the way of a reconnection, and their outcomes were way, way, way better than Song Lan’s.
Xue Yang and Song Lan get busy fighting, and Song Lan starts asking what the fuck Xue Yang is playing at, how long has he been deceiving Xiao Xingchen, etc.
Xue Yang is a perceptive guy, and he points out that Song Lan is holding back because he wants to ask these questions. He’s absolutely right; Song Lan wants to feel indignant and righteous, partly because he knows he himself has mistreated Xiao Xingchen. He’s putting himself in the role of Xiao Xingchen’s protector, when he doesn’t actually have that relationship with him any more.
I love this fight sequence for two reasons. First, because it showcases the actors doing a lot of moves themselves, and they both look amazing and move beautifully. (OP has slowed most of these gifs down quite a bit to avoid giving everybody a migraine, incidentally--the camera operator was moving around as much as the actors in these shots)
Second, because a lot of story happens in this fight; the dynamic between them, as two people with a very complex mutual hatred, is played out in their moves. Song Lan's moves are all strong attacks, expressing his anger and frustration, while Xue Yang’s are mainly defensive, avoidant, and slippery, because he is more interested in hurting Song Lan with words than with his blade at this point. He knows he has an unbeatable advantage up his sleeve, so he’s not particularly worried, even when Song Lan lands a couple of hits.
Xue Yang lays it all out for Song Lan, explaining that Xiao Xingchen, being blind, relies on his sword to point toward resentful energy. Hey, isn't that what Wei Wuxian's Compass of Evil does? So WWX only needs that thing because he can't carry a sword? That...actually makes sense. Anyway, Xue Yang figured out if he cuts people's tongues out, Shuanghua can't tell living people from monsters, which is so awesome and fun for Xue Yang.
Song Lan starts to lose his composure and calls Xue Yang a “villain,” which leads Xue Yang to mock him for his weaksauce cussing ability.
Xue Yang: You educated people have a disadvantage when cursing someone out.
Song Lan: Eat a bag of dicks, fuckstick.
Then he criticizes Xue Yang for taking advantage of Xiao Xingchen's blindness.
He gets a couple of licks in but then Xue Yang stops and points out that Xiao Xingchen is only blind because of giving his eyes to Song Lan.
This stops Song Lan in his tracks; I am not sure if he already knew that’s where his eyeballs came from, or if he thought it was a coincidence that Xiao Xingchen became blind after he, Song Lan, got new eyeballs. Then Xue Yang challenges Song Lan's standing to be fighting on Xiao Xingchen's behalf, reminding him that he's not actually Xiao Xingchen's friend. These are the same tactics that Jin Guangyao will later use on righteous, insecure Jiang Cheng.
Back when Xue Yang killed Song Lan's sect/temple buddies, Song Lan blamed Xiao Xingchen, and Xue Yang says now that that was his plan; he killed them to turn Song Lan against Xiao Xingchen.
It totally worked. Song Lan said that they should never see each other again, and Xiao Xingchen took it to heart and fucked off forever - after giving Song Lan his eyes. Contrast this with Wei Wuxian, who stuck by Jiang Cheng despite being blamed & choked by him after the Lotus Pier massacre.
Despite all this emotional turmoil, Song Lan is holding his own...until Xue Yang pulls out his secret weapon; half of a yin tiger seal.
He starts hitting Song Lan with corpse poison and resentment blasts and very quickly has him on the ropes.
He finishes up by cutting his tongue out. Yikes.
At this point it’s clear that Xue Yang was never in any serious danger; this was his plan for Song Lan all along. Song Lan goes to attack Xue Yang but now that he’s been modded, Splendid Frost thinks he’s a zombie, so Xiao Xingchen comes sailing in and stabs him.
Song Lan tries to raise his sword to XXC's fingers so he can identify himself, but at the last moment his eyes turn solid black and he drops the sword. Does that mean Xue Yang stuck a nail in his head already? *shrug*
Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen head back into the coffin house -- seriously, why do they live there instead of one of the many actual houses in this town? -- and leave Song Lan lying in the street, with A-Qing, who saw the whole thing, hiding behind a hay stack.
Xue Yang Must Die...eventually
After some more bell ringing, Wei Wuxian emerges from Empathy, pretty overwhelmed.
He gets up and goes over to Xiao Xingchen's coffin and looks closely at the wound on his neck, understanding that XXC killed himself, and why.
His face, in this moment. Suicide isn’t something he expected to have in common with his uncle.
He tells the kids and A-Qing to stay in the coffin house; he won't explain what he saw, except to say that Xue Yang must die. Then he goes off to kill Xue Yang, by which I mean to assemble his Xue-Yang killing team, rather than try to take him mano a mano like Song Lan did.
The first order of business is to finish rebooting Song Lan, which he does by pulling the second nail out of his head like he should have done four hours ago.
Note that Wen Ning and Song Lan were fighting for the ENTIRE time Wei Wuxian was doing Empathy. Corpses don’t get tired, I guess.
As soon as the nail comes out of his head, Song Lan quiets down, looking bereft, and crouches on the ground to try to reassemble his shattered consciousness. Unlike Wen Ning, he doesn’t have to bake in a cave for a month to achieve this.
We get a nice shot of Wei Wuxian, Song Lan, and Wen Ning looking like the cultivation world’s handsomest goth band.
Next, Lan Wangji cuts open Xue Yang's shirt so he can yoink his spirit-trapping bag, which he then tosses to Wei Wuxian.
Now Xue Yang is the one who's overly emotional.
Wei Wuxian, despite being very upset by what he saw in Empathy, is completely cool and in control of himself now, because that's just how he is in a fight. (Unless you kill his sister. That gets him very emotional, but the emotion is rage, at least initially, so it’s not a safe tactic.)
Lan Wangji gets in another poke with Bichen while Xue Yang is distracted.
Camera operator: Spare me!
Xue Yang decides to take his ball amulet and go home, disappearing into the fog while Wei Wuxian keeps talking smack at him.
