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Broke: the wooden puppet gets an arm ripped off and dies
Woke: the wooden puppet gets an arm ripped off and discovers existential dread
So, on rewatch I think that butterfly Wuhuo had no reason to enter the star stone illusion alongside the others. None that related to his plotting to kill Ji Ling, anyway. In fact, he actually had to make sure he'd be outside the illusion when Wu Zhiqi summoned the dragon deity power to attempt to stop the stone from shattering, or else he couldn't steal said power from him.
So, all of this to say that he still went in, at his own risk and against all reason, and no one can convince me that it wasn't because he was burning for a chance to see Yuan Xizai again. The real one, even if just in a memory. Perhaps even to get clarity on the events that lead to the explosion that killed him. But mostly just to see his brother again after 50 years. But then... Then the one in front of him isn't Xizai at all, cause Li Jie has been sucked into the star stone too and taken his place. So we get this devastating moment
The look of absolute defeat on his face while he's toying with the obsidian fragment his brother gifted him, thinking of the pointlessness of his life's journey, of all his wasted efforts.
Even in a illusionary do-over, Yuan Wuhuo still "achieves nothing". He doesn't get to see Xizai again, he doesn't get to save him this time either. He attempts to stab Tiandi to death but that fails when the illusion just patches itself back together; he then tries crushing the 6-eyed butterfly pupa that would make Tiandi lose control, but that too doesn't change anything. The explosion still happens, Xizai (now Li Jie) is still closest to it and gets hit by the biggest shockwave of it, and Wuhuo is powerless to stop it. Powerless to stop history from repeating itself.
No return, no finding it again. His brother is gone, nothing can bring him back. Not even an artifact designed to make you relive your past.
Headcanon that the fox plushie without eyes was sewn by Yuan Wuhuo in the first place. He admits he was the one who could sew in the family, and the doll specifically lacked eyes, as if made to comfort a small blind child into not feeling afraid of and alone in his disability. It's made of coarse materials, has no particular embellishments as if to drive in the fact that it was put together by someone barely scraping by, and wasn't bought. I think that's why Yuan Xizai held onto it for his entire life. How alone he must've felt once again when his brother enrolled into the Shilin Sect, and he only got to meet with him once a year.
I like to think that Yuan Wuhuo deliberately chose to add eyes to it when he stitched it back up. Because that doll is so symbolic to him. He got so angry when Ji Ling claimed it—when he superimposed himself (without knowing) onto the memory of another weak, scared blind person, and the image was one Yuan Wuhuo was not ready to accept. To see the doll bring comfort once again put into sharp relief that Ji Ling was scared and helpless. That he needed taking care of. That Yuan Wuhuo was, once again, bringing harm to that vulnerable person in the name of pure selfishness. Yuan Wuhuo doesn't complain about Ji Ling keeping the doll anymore after that. He doesn't take it away. But he doesn't free Ji Ling, either. A little bit because of grief, a little bit because of desperation, he's ruthless because to him the end justifies the means, much like when he forced Xizai to eat the dragon marrow. Up to that point, Ji Ling was pitiful, but not yet a person. He was a fox yao, and yao killed his parents.
That changes when Ji Ling shows him his very human, very kind heart. When he gives up his blanket to bring comfort to Yuan Wuhuo after he collapses. Ji Ling doesn't take the opportunity to search his robes for the key of his chains; the idea doesn't even occur to him because he lacks the opportunism to even think of it. He doesn't have a single mean bone in him; he's in this situation in the first place because he attempted to save someone and it backfired on him. What Ji Ling does instead is spend the night freezing just to help someone he felt needed it more. And that cracks Yuan Wuhuo's facade for the first time, forcing him to confront the truth he's been trying this whole time to keep at arm's length: Ji Ling does not deserve this. Xizai's death is not his fault. It's Wuhuo's.
And so comes the silent apology—repairing the doll he damaged, because he cannot make up for his ruthlessness, but he can make amends. Mending things was his job in the family. And so he mends.
The doll matters a lot to Ji Ling, perhaps as much as it had to Xizai. But Xizai is still not back, and Wuhuo would break, lose his raison d'être, if he lost that purpose to protect what's already gone. So he needs to hold on to the idea that Xizai can come back. That Ji Ling has that power. Because he brought Wuhuo back with his tears, didn't he? He must have deity power stored away somewhere. He's just keeping it from Wuhuo, surely, even if he spent years pretending to be weak and powerless and scared, flinching away from him, being pitiful and vulnerable and human in all the same ways his little brother used to be.
And that duality carries—Yuan Wuhuo wants Ji Ling to stay the villain (so he doesn't have to confront himself or his own actions), but he can't reconcile that excuse with the reality of Ji Ling being so upset that Wuhuo took away his only source of comfort, and looked exactly like Xizai when he begged him to stop. At some point, the line between Ji Ling and Xizai have started blurring, but he needs those lines to be drawn. They're his only shield.
So he fixes the doll, but he makes it different. He gives it eyes, a feature that Xizai's plushie never had. And I like to think there's symbolism in that, from a narrative standpoint. I'm sure he didn't mean to, he just wanted them to look different enough to separate the two. But he's taking away the feature that was originally supposed to bring that comfort: the lack of eyes. Ji Ling might be blind, too, but Wuhuo doesn't want that to be his responsibility. He doesn't want to feel bad for him, so long as Ji Ling cannot fulfill Wuhuo's obsession. And yet, at the same time... The fox pup's eyes (his tears) are also what brought Yuan Wuhuo back. If Xizai's sight was what made him vulnerable and in need of someone stronger to shield him, then the fox's are the source of his greatest fit of inhumane power yet: godly healing that can reverse life and death.
Stitching eyes onto the doll can then be read as a deliberate act, on par with how DYI-ing a doll without eyes had been. A visible difference, and a desperate attempt to draw up a mental divide as his last defense against the sympathy already clawing at his heart. His last defense against the unbearable, agonizing outcome of his own choices
(Episode 22 spoilers)
So, Lu Wuyi is lying through her teeth about everything throughout the whole episode. We all agree on that, right? It wasn't particularly subtle. Especially about double-crossing Ji Ling for her Wu Wangyan. I'm not discounting her trauma of seeing her jiejie die or her strong bond with her btw. I just think it makes no sense for a character who's starved for connection and love to suddenly turn against one of the only two people who've seen her for who she is and loved her unconditionally. My guess is that time-traveling LWY went back in time to prevent Ji Ling from dying for her (we don't know yet if it was for her but I've had this gut feeling for a few days now and it's not getting any weaker with today's crumbs). Notably it wasn't even her who said she cares more about WWY than Ji Ling, but she immediately jumped on it when he offered that explanation, bleeding heart and everything. To me, it read very much like she was making him forget about her on purpose (again) even if she had to break his heart in the process, maybe cause she holds some hope that it will prevent his future self-sacrifice if he thinks his affections were misplaced. It won't because Ji Ling still loves her unconditionally, but that's another story. I doubt she fully understands that anyway.
As a smaller tangent to this theory, I also think that her attempts to change the past keep getting thrown askew because of some time-fuckery variable we have not yet been introduced to. I'm way less sure of this prediction so I'm not holding my breath for it but I think she might be failing (and future!Ji Ling might also be failing at "changing the ending") because they're time traveling from different futures and keep getting in each other's way. At the very least, future!Ji Ling is suffering from time traveler's drawbacks, possibly more severely than LWY given he's also crying blood (hinting at even more rewinds from his end) and he still has his ring, though it looks like it's no longer containing any power. I also think that the frosty Ji Ling apparition had the same robes of the future Ji Ling with blodshot eyes, so make of this what you will
This scene goes hand in hand with Zhao Yuanzhou getting psychosexual hallucinations of his demon ex husband haunting the body of his new human husband, and how the inherent terror of those blurred identities unveils both Zhao Yuanzhou and Ji Ling's most deep-seated, most repressed and yet painfully visceral desire: being known, seen through completely, disarmingly, and beloging anyway. The community of souls only born from going through the highs and lows of fate with someone who has seen all of you, including the worst, most unlovable parts you don't want to acknowledge as parts of you.
This longing is something that both Zhao Yuanzhou and Ji Ling keep buried deep. They don't dare speak of it, of how much it hurt to have shared everything with someone, to have loved them and still love them and need them at your side, and yet not get to. They pretend there isn't an open wound in their heart, despite how much it bleeds into every relationship they form ever since. How it shapes them into people who already expect loss before they even let themselves love someone else fully. In their mind's eye, that loss becomes an inevitability, and one that they dread something fierce.
The doomed past and the more compassionate present blur together, cruelly taunting them. Who are they facing? Their new friend, or the person they didn't get to hold on to? Is there a difference between them?
The dread of Li Lun possessing Zhuo Yichen's body to kill Zhao Yuanzhou is weighty, but so is ZYZ's fear of the past repeating itself. When he sees ZYC's features blur into LL's, it's not the possession he's terrified of. He imagines them at the altar of their old oaths to each other, where new oaths were formed with new people. Li Lun isn't just an enemy to defeat: it's Zhao Yuanzhou's past coming back to remind him of his broken promises, of his failed "forever"s. He doesn't need to physically possess Zhuo Yichen for Zhao Yuanzhou to feel his haunting, suffocating presence.
If Li Lun was a beloved close friend ZYZ was forced to part ways with by the cruelty of fate, but still painfully present in his life in a way ZYZ can't bear to extricate himself from, to put an end to, then the butterfly demon is that and worse. In the latter, the haunting is twofold: it's Yuan Wuhuo the butterfly demon possessing Li Jie, and it's Yuan Wuhuo the human haunting the replica, the painted skin, close enough to the original to taunt Ji Ling with regrets and unsolved issues, but not close enough to bring relief to that hurt, to offer any closure. His existence itself feels like a slight to the idealized memory of the great hero.
In both cases, the image of a loved one no longer in their lives superimposes itself onto that of their newest kindred soul, with an urgency that spirals into almost frenzied desperation. As if to mock the hope of being known again, of being accepted fully. After all, fate is something you cannot change or interfere with. And if you were doomed by it once, doesn't that mean you'll always be doomed to lose what you hold the most dear?
I'm thinking about how in every GJM drama snow is always more than just an aesthetic, but a visual narrative tool cause it's always symbolic of loneliness. It was snowing in the scene where Zhuo Yichen learns of his brother's death and then lies in a fetal position in a bed of snow under that tree that holds so many memories. He teaches himself to use Cloud Light while it's snowing.
Snow as a signifier of deep loneliness comes up very often, and it's even expanded on in the ost. Pei Siheng sings about how he wishes "this snow storm would arrive later" in his and his sister's duet that's all about the somber realization that they've both been carrying their burdens alone in life, and now that the are finally at each other's side, sharing them, they cannot go on living on this borrowed time together much longer—PSJ will be left to carry on alone very soon, without PSH there to help her along the way anymore.
This symbolism carries over in Vos with the ice/snow motifs. Wu Shiguang's village is cased over in ice when his clan is exterminated. The Formless Moon members are chased by the ice curse when they cut off their spiritual tail, dooming themselves to a life on the run, alone in their fate as outcasts from the rest of the moon sisterhood. Ji Can, a demon cultivated through Ji Ling's loneliness, is covered in frost.
But even tho the ice imagery is more prevalent, there's also symbolism around snow, too. Li Jie's monologue to butterfly Wuhuo about witnessing both Ji Ling's glory and lonesome fate is also narrated over a shot of Ji Ling sitting still under the snowfall, his hand extended as if to feel its cold touch on his equally cold, lone heart.
"why are you bringing this up", you say
Well. Guess where else snow comes up again!
This is a dream sequence, not a physical location. Its attributes—the landscape around Li Jie and Yuan Wuhuo—change as easily as a passing throught when Wuhuo thinks of his family and we're transported back to the New Years festivities, watching the fireworks, seeing his memories. There's no frost anymore when Wuhuo "crosses the river" and walks into the warmth of that memory, into the warmth of his family's embrace.
In other words, what commands the weather in the dreamscape are Li Jie's emotions.
Yuan Wuhuo urges him to find out who he is, to decide what to make of his life from now on. Is Li Jie, too, only held up by a dead man's lingering obsession? Will he also fade once that last thread to reality fades away?
But Ji Ling is dead, and what remains is not the original Wuhuo's regrets or unfulfilled wishes.
What remains is loneliness. Because Li Jie's feelings aren't the imprint on snow of someone else's steps that he's retracing again. They're his own snowfall.
As much as I loved this episode (finally, an actual tearjerker that mostly works for me because it's based off character writing instead of just... Trite tropes with no buildup), I also have to say it highlighted GJM's main struggle as a writer: writing for vibes and ignoring plot holes. Cause what do you mean Bai Ze the all-knowing could sense a disturbance in the force and appear just in time to see Ji Can but he somehow remained in the dark about the captive in their basement for who knows how many years (was it close to 50 or am I misunderstanding the given timeline? I need a full rewatch). What do you mean Yuan Wuhuo became obsessed by the idea of reviving his brother with divine power and fruitlessly tried to abuse a fox pup into growing some out of nowhere when the same Yuan Wuhuo literally served the god who's the sole known holder of said divine power. Unless they give us a really good explanation for this next episode, not gonna lie, this all feels like gratuituos pain to make us cry.
I hope I'm wrong. I want to be wrong because so far this narrative conflict between the og Yuan Wuhuo, what became of him after the butterfly ate him, and Ji Ling is genuinely one of the most complex and intriguing aspects of the writing so far for me. The whole "reborn as leftovers of something already gone" theme they both have (in different ways) and the struggle with identity that follows is so fascinating to me. There's Yuan Wuhuo who saw himself as a protector, pledging his life as barter money to sustain his family financially, who ends up dying but resurrecting right after, with no family left to sustain, and the knowledge (and guilt) of knowing he'd exposed Xizai to that blast radius by bringing him along against his will. But that guilt is impossible to bear, so he seeks something (someone) else to blame; Ji Ling falls into that role perfectly. YWH is unable to grapple with the blessing he was bestowed, a second chance at living, cause he's trapped in the past, in that role as the big brother he can no longer fulfill. To him, this borrowed second life should've been Xizai's. What use is he, if even in death he could not keep his loved ones safe?
And then there's Ji Ling's misplaced guilt for being unable to bring back more than one person. He doesn't steal Yuan Xizai's face; it all happens because of chance—Fate perhaps, for that doll to be there, or moreso Yuan Wuhuo's bad karma taking its due. He doesn't want to have a human face any more than his captor, and yet he's still kind enough to see how much that stolen identity hurts YWH, despite his blindness. He senses that he's intruding on YWH's grief without the power to lessen that pain, when his presence serves as the living reminder of what YWH has lost and can't get back. Of what Ji Ling can't give him back. And so—in an almost perfect mirror of Yuan Wuhuo selling himself out to the demon hunters sect, treating his life as currency to repay a debt—Ji Ling similarly becomes willing to use himself as a bargaining tool to repay what he "owes" others.
Much like the Gong brothers in MJTY, Ji Ling and Yuan Wuhuo share the same wound (being unable to prevent an innocent's death), but Ji Ling attempts to become YWH's medicine anyway, despite how that hurts both of them worse. He's a band-aid at best, and he knows that too. The little fox abandoned by his litter can never be a true brother figure to Wuhuo despite the vacancy in his own life; that place was never his. Yet he offers anyway, hoping for the impossible: that it would soothe each other's crushing loneliness. It doesn't; it can't. And yet, it's the only way they know to fill that gaping hole in their chest. The doll might've gotten mended, but it doesn't mean the wound was never there. They both know this, but they play along like the real puppets in the show, continuing to live a borrowed, incomplete life. And in the culmination of that metaphor, in the end they become real puppets, too.
Ji Ling makes one out of wood and then punishes it for daring to not be happy with its borrowed life, and instead striving to find meaning in his meaningless birth; a punishment that no doubt speaks of Ji Ling's internalized self-hatred. "Do you still think you're special?" he tells the wooden doll in his likeness, with the same callous contempt he must feel for how his past self didn't have any divine power of his own, and "misused" what little he was granted by Chi Wen. But the stringmaster of Woodenhead Ji Ling is a puppet too, for a much worse farce. He's a fake god without godly powers. He's a borrower, once again, of powers not his. The only thing in his possession is time, and he gives it all to a cause that isn't even his.
As for Yuan Wuhuo, the puppet motif is mirrored when he becomes prey of the Six Eyed Butterfly. Once again, there's no relief in death for him. His final wish was to die in solitude, perhaps finally at peace with himself enough to realize how void the lie of Ji Ling's companionship as a little brother was. The hole in his heart could never be mended. It would never make him "whole", but he could pretend to be, for Ji Ling's sake, the fox pup who in so many ways is vulnerable like his brother had once been. But in a twist of irony, Yuan Wuhuo still splits: one twin gets his memories, the other is "leftovers". But both have borrowed identities. Much like Ji Ling who gets a painted face in the likeness of someone already gone, the butterflies steal the face of a man who should've died twice already. Neither of them is fully Yuan Wuhuo the mortal man, but they both can't let go of the obsessions that drove their original life. A little brother, a sense of void that cannot be filled. They're puppets with strings cut loose. And a sense of this must still carry over in their consciousness. "You're leftovers," Butterfly YWH says to his twin, with much the same callousness masking self-contempt of Long Shen scolding Wooden Ji Ling.
How dare you want to be a person, every iteration of them both says to their chosen subject of blame. But what lies behind that harshness is actually a burning question they still don't know how to answer: who am I? What makes me me, if not my memories, my experiences, my wants and needs? A question that I think encompasses so many of the themes of this show and applies to many other characters.
I wonder if Wen Xiao's misplaced smug confidence that her huanling powder would work on Li Lun was because she had used it on another dayao before but Zhao Yuanzhou had pretended it worked on him
Local 34k year old attempts to be a flirt, seven dead five injured soon later
