Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 42 part two
(Masterpost) (Pinboard) (whole thing on AO3)
Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!
The Rude Descending a Staircase
Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian end up on the landing halfway down the stairs, with cultivators all around and the various authority figures up at the top of the stairs. Wei Wuxian pulls his arm away from Lan Wangji and shoves him away, telling him to dip.
Lan Wangji's--whose reaction faces are what he has instead of dialogue in every episode, not just this one--makes a face that says "you dumbass, you think I give a shit about my safety or reputation? I'm not going to let you face these motherfuckers on your own."
Jin Guangyao comes gloating down a few stairs and asks Wei Wuxian to remove his mask. WWX removes his mask, showing that he really is Wei Wuxian, and all the cultivators around him jump back in fear.
We get a fake-surprised face from Nie Huaisang, a smug bastard face from Jiang Cheng, and a resigned face from Lan Xichen. We don't get a Su She reaction shot even though he also already knew WWX's identity since he's been that annoying Ghost-Mask guy all along....which means Jin Guangyao also knew all along? Presumably Su She would have told him.
Jin Guangyao reacts by saying "Yiling Laozu, bukui shi Yiling Laozu" which translates approximately to "Yiling Laozu, you really are worthy of being called Yiling Laozu." This phrasing is important because it comes up in Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian's conversation in Episode 50. Shoutout to Hunxi Gulai for this linguistic analysis.
Being Yiling Laozu is all about a reputation that has been built by people for their own ends, and Wei Wuxian's chief concern at this moment is to protect Hanguang-Jun's reputation. Hanguang-Jun is also a constructed identity that doesn't perfectly match the real Lan Zhan, although Wei Wuxian doesn't quite get that yet.
(more after the cut!)
Jin Guangyao tells him "boy howdy you sure did fool everyone; even Hanguang-Jun was fooled by you" and Wei Wuxian says "that's right!" even though he fooled hardly anybody, particularly not Lan Wangji.
Lan Wangji finally speaks, and says nope, I knew he was Wei Ying all along, gazing at Wei Wuxian with utter devotion.
Then he draws his sword and starts singing "Stand By Your Man" stands ready to defend WWX. Wei Wuxian tries to stop him, despite being surrounded by 40 people who definitely heard what Lan Wangji just said and who have eyes to see that he's drawn a sword on everybody.
WWX grabs his wrist and says he, himself, is used to this kind of thing, but Lan Wangji doesn't have to roll with him. He says they should escape and then Lan Wangji can tell everyone that he was tricked by the Yiling Laozu, thereby preserving his reputation. I'm really not sure how "I didn't realize the twink I've been banging was the Yiling Laozu" is supposed to help his reputation at this point, but okay.
Lan Wangji puts on his serenest expression and asks if WWX remembers what he asked LWJ back in the cloud recesses. WWX says "bitch, you have spent the past two months roasting me about my bad memory and now we're in a high-pressure situation and you have the nerve to ask me that?"
Just kidding, thanks to a convenient flashback, WWX understands exactly what LWJ is asking him. He flashes back to when he first woke up in LWJ's bed and asked if, in the past, did Lan Wangji trust/believe in him.
Lan Wangji didn't answer him at the time, because his answer would have been "nope," but WWX figured that out and was hurt by it. (See Episode 33 part 2 for my recap of that).
Lan Wangji doesn't answer the question, exactly, this time; instead he says "the feeling of walking down the single-plank bridge until the dark end really isn't so bad." This is another callback to an earlier time (in Episode 29), when he watched WWX walking away from him into the burial mounds with A-Yuan. WWX said his bit about "walking the single-plank bridge" to compare his life path to Lan Wangji's, unaware LWJ was listening.
Lan Wangji isn't answering WWX's question directly; he's skipping over his answer in order to explain that he's arrived at a new way of seeing things. He's saying "I didn't put my trust in you in the past, because I was keeping to the broad road, but now I have learned to prefer the narrow path, and I am putting my trust in you now."
Then he actually honest-to-goodness SMILES at Wei Wuxian, complete with cat-blink, and Wei Wuxian laughs and smiles back, looking into his eyes, accepting this as the declaration of love it absolutely is, and says Lan Zhan ah, Lan Zhan. Viki translates that "ah" as "oh." Ignore whatever Netflix's subtitles say it means. I believe that it is idiomatically used after a name to indicate affection; Lan Xichen calls LWJ "Wangji-ah" later in the episode.
Then Wei Wuxian warns him that if he really goes through with this - leaving with Wei Wuxian - his reputation will be ruined. They turn back to back to face the crowd and WWX asks him "do you still want to fight [them]?" Lan Wangji says "too much talking" and WWX chuckles and then hollers "Fight!"
Then we FINALLY get a fight scene, and it's well choreographed with a couple of good moves in it for Wei Wuxian and his beloved Suibian - which, I'd like to point out, he is wielding just fine in a skirmish, although he's not flying on it or doing fancy stuff.
Although the show isn't as clear as it should be about this, I think this is a solid indication that WWX 2.0 does have a core; it's just not very good. (Novel WWX 2.0 definitely has one, per the author.)
We also get to see Lan Wangji use Su She as a springboard. Then they jump down to the bottom of the stairs.
Suddenly Jin Ling appears with his sword drawn, even though he totally was not there in the wide shot. The adults make reaction faces while Wei Wuxian suddenly decides to forget everything he knows about teenagers. First he tries to walk away without saying anything, then he says "I'll explain it to you later, ok kiddo?" and tries to walk away again.
Jin Ling stabs him in the liver with a full-sized sword. Unlike Qin Su, who died instantly from a similar stab, Wei Wuxian has plot armor so he is just wounded. He mumbles "why did this brat stab me in the same place as his uncle" and Jiang Cheng, who is still at the top of the stairs and has hearing like a bat apparently, makes a pained face. Then Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji stumble away together while Jin Ling has feelings.
I Can't Stand the Rain
Next we see them stumbling through a forest in an absolute freaking downpour. Wei Wuxian is pretending not to be tall while Lan Wangji holds him up. This is one of the rare times Wang Yibo's physical mismatch with other versions of Lan Wangji (novel/manhua/donghua) stands out to me. Those other versions of Lan Wangji would 100% have snatched WWX up in a princess carry at this point. But Wang Yibo perfectly embodies Lan Wangji's physical grace and his complex emotional life, so I'm ok with him not manifesting the Extremely Tall and Utterly Fucking Jacked elements of the character.
Lan Wangji has wet, shivering WWX lean against a tree while he transfers spiritual energy into him, hearkening back to their Xuanwu Cave adventure, so many years ago. We flash back to the time on Mount Yeet when Lan Wangji tried to warn him against using the Yin Tiger seal, and that other time on Mount Yeet when Lan Wangji tried to keep him from plummeting to his death.
WWX laughs a bit and when LWJ asks him why, WWX says in the past, when everyone feared and flattered him, LWJ was the only one who scolded him; now when everyone hates him, LWJ is the only one standing by his side. I think this means that WWX finally understands that LWJ's scolding of him came from the same devotion that his current care is coming from, but it's hard to say because he promptly ruins the moment by horking up a bunch of blood.
Camera operator: Bruh! Whyyyyyy?
(Continued in Ep42 part 3!)
Soundtrack: Superfly by Missy Elliot
Bonus: "The Rude Descending a Staircase" I reference up above is a 1913 cartoon by J.F. Griswold that parodies Marcel Duchamp's 1912 cubist painting "Nude Descending a Staircase."
TW: mentions of genocide, totalitarian regimes, political extremism, and alcoholism. This one gets silly after I get lost in the sauce of analysing Bonta's political structures throughout history.
He was trying to toast them but couldn't reach. That's when the Darkness began to grow within him. That's the true sad backstory of Joris.
Not the last time he's too short for a toast in canon.
"ALBUM PHOTO"
Also, I will be real, by now I am actually unironically fluent in the Astrubian alphabet (non-cursive, non-handwriting). I don't know whether to be ashamed or proud of the lengths I went to, for this blog.
I think this takes place at the same time period as episodes 26 (A Hairy Mystery) and 50 (A Deadly Charm), because during both of those he also lived in Bonta, while Lou worked in law enforcement in some way. This would place those episodes before, or slightly before, all the adventures Kerubim would have with these three guys.
We are making some real progress here, folks.
Bonta, city of good, city of justice, everyone. Nothing corrupt or evil has ever taken place in it.
And it is definitely not just as bad as Brakmar.
Yes Kerubim. There are.
"DOSSIER"
Presented without comment.
Let's ignore the yet another instance of Kerubim being an unreliable narrator, or that ticket saying "KANI LAND", and focus on more important things:
Do you think Lou utilized girl power correctly when she sentenced three men, one of whom was scammed, the other of whom was robbed, and the third of whom is literally mentally ill, to prison? Do you think it was real Bontarian justice when she accepted a bribe to reverse that decision, and then decided to put the man who gave her that bribe in jail for four months to ensure she would receive it?
People who have only watched the shows may not be aware just how canon Bonta's evil nature is, and how much of a joke and a sham its "The City of Good" name is. It hasn't been explored in the Wakfu series, — actually, on the contrary, it has been portrayed as unquestionably good, through its aid to the Sadida Kingdom, through Joris's good deeds, — while in this series, its corruption is mostly played as a joke.
But it really is an unending nightmare that keeps failing everyone within it.
From people who are forced to mold themselves into an aspirational, heroic image, by completely destroying themselves with untreated mental illnesses and alcoholism, — like Bakara, or, to a lesser degree, Kerubim,
To people caught within its intrigues, unfairly convicted or framed. Like Julith's framing, which was an inside job, perhaps by the Huppermage temple itself.
To the fucking Huppermage genocide that happened centuries after, during a civil war, which has forced the survivors to flee to an island.
To the tolerance and acceptance of nobles like Ush.
Bonta has sucked badly for 600 horrid, horrid years, and it will likely never stop sucking, because the gods who founded it also suck ass.
It's such a tar pit, it's insane.
Anyway, man I wonder if trying to fix a city for 600 years, while knowing that this city killed your parents, made your aunt an alcoholic, and then resulted in the genocide of your people, would make someone want to start, perhaps, a militant fascist dictatorship with LOTS of guns, and slavery (BUT WOKE) as well as exploitation. Because only they, all alone, with like, two other people, can fix it. With guns. Haha.
Man, my headcanons are getting more delusional by the m——
this is crazy, he's never smiled this much or this wide like. he loses all his power, relinquishes responsibility and decides to live for himself and all of sudden he's like *so* sweet omg........
