one of the best tropes is “and if [character a] [does something in private that shows their affection for character b]...then nobody has to know” LIKE DO YOU REALIZE HOW TENDER THAT ACTUALLY IS
Side note: Some characters are called uncle/aunt but this does not mean they are blood related to the character addressing them. These are terms often used to be polite and/or affectionate.
Family
Side note: I am only including terms that are often used in The Untamed, and have been a result of some confusion due to poor Netflix translation.
Shushu 叔叔 (Uncle) – literally translated as “father’s younger brother” and often used to politely address men much older than the speaker.
Dage 大哥 (Big Brother) – also used to politely address men around the same age or older than the speaker.
Ge/Gege/Xiong 哥/哥哥/兄 – elder brother or older brother.
Di/Didi 弟/弟弟 – younger brother or little brother.
Jie/Jiejie 姐/姐姐 – elder sister or big sister.
Martial Family
Shigong/Shiye 师公/师爷 - Grandmaster
Shifu 师父/师傅 - Master
Shibo/Shishu 师伯/师叔 - Martial Uncle (what Xiao Xingcheng is to Wei Wuxian)
Shidi 师弟 - Junior Brother (what Jiang Cheng is to Wei Wuxian)
Shijie 师姐 - Senior Sister (what Jiang Yanli is to Wei Wuxian)
Miscellaneous
Lao (老) – Elder - usually appended to a person’s surname to show respect.
Xiao (小) – Little - usually appended to a person’s given name to show familiarity & affection.
While I absolutely love the name Sizhui, because what's more romantic than naming your child after the yearning you have for his other father, I keep wondering what courtesy name Wwx would have given A'Yuan if he had had the chance. Do you have any ideas?
oof, y’all keep coming for my weakness by asking me to name things， and I am truly so, so bad at coming up with names
Well, let’s see… the ‘yuan’ of A-Yuan is 苑, ‘emperor’s garden,’ which makes me think of Wei Wuxian’s lotus garden in the Burial Mounds…
there’s an essay by Northern Song thinker and writer 周敦颐 Zhou Dunyi called 《爱莲说》Ailianshuo，and it’s literally just this man waxing poetic about how much he loves lotus flowers. It’s a classic of Literary Chinese prose, and as a bonus, contains the line:
莲，花之君子者也 lian, hua zhi junzi zheye / The lotus is the nobility among flowers.
(in contrast to chrysanthemums, which are the hidden worthies; peonies, which are the wealthy, etc)
which has a fun resonance with Jin Ling’s courtesy name, 如兰 rulan, which Wei Wuxian defends by saying 君子如兰 junzi rulan / the noble man is like an orchid.
For me, the part of 《爱莲说》that’s always stuck with me is this sequence:
出污泥而不染，/ [The lotus] emerges from mud and filth, yet remains unstained
濯清涟而不妖，/ washed in clear ripples, yet not lurid
中通外直，/ hollow center, outer uprightness,
不蔓不枝，/ no tendrils, no branches
香远益清，/ its scent travels far, bringing a delicate fragrance
亭亭净植，/ it stands, straight and clean,
可远观而不可亵玩焉。/ to be admired from afar, not to be be touched or played with.
The first line, especially – emerging from mud and filth, yet remaining unstained – feels particularly powerful in the context of A-Yuan’s upbringing and Wei Wuxian’s hopes for him to slough off the ugly legacy of the Wen Sect.
(and if 不染 buran, unstained, reminds anyone of a certain dust-avoiding sword… well. At least it’s more subtle than 如兰 rulan this time around)
but if I’m gonna level with you all, 温不染 Wen Buran as a courtesy name doesn’t really sound nice to me, despite how much I like it’s literary reference, so I’m going to pop down to the next line and pick up 清涟 qinglian / clear ripples, because 1) it’s a lovely image, 2) it’s got hella water radicals like the 湛 zhan in 蓝湛 Lan Zhan, and 3) there’s a subtly subversive argument to be made that the subset of the Wen Sect that Wei Wuxian defends, that A-Yuan grows up in, is different from the 污泥 wuni / mud and filth of the major Wen Sect. A-Yuan may have his roots in the mud, but he grows through the clear water of the Burial Mounds community, to become a lovingly-tended lotus who can rise above his origins, back straight, upright, noble, elegant, righteous.
tl;dr it’s a total shot in the dark, but I’d make my argument for 温清涟 Wen Qinglian for an AU A-Yuan courtesy name
One of the reasons why I find so interesting villains as Xue Yang or Meng Yao is that they are the terrible shadow cast by an equally terrible social order: they are the consequence of classism, social inequality, the oppression of tyrants. Their actions have no revolutionary intention, they are opportunistic, but understandable at that level. The thing is: in episodes where their background and motivations come to light, there is this reaction from others like "all for a finger?", or (1/2)
boy oh boy, Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang are such fascinating characters, which is probably why I love them as antagonists while being totally uninterested in trying to redeem them as people
So I actually had the opposite reaction that first anon had -- I didn’t actually feel that either Jin Guangyao or Xue Yang’s psychopathy were prioritized over their background. At least to me, it was pretty clear that Jin Guangyao, Xue Yang, and Wei Wuxian were all intended to be foils to each other, since so much of their characters revolve around the difficulties of hailing from a lower-class background in a highly elitist world. They all handle it in different ways: Jin Guangyao, as we all know, will do anything to escape the shadow of his shameful birth but never can, whereas Xue Yang owns it, deploys his unofficial status as a 流氓 liumang (rogue, scoundrel) as both defense and explanation for why he’s literally the worst. Wei Wuxian, in contrast to both Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang, doesn’t let his birth station define him; in fact, he’s the only one to refuse the stigma that comes with a lower-class origin. So what if he’s the son of a servant? He can still drink you under the table, or take you in a fight. Wei Wuxian refuses to be ashamed of his parents, unlike Jin Guangyao, and Wei Wuxian refuses to let his lack of status determine the limits of what he can do.
(of course, this is glossing over the fact that all of them had very, very different childhood situations, in which Wei Wuxian somehow manages to be the luckiest of the three and given the greatest opportunity to rise in rank)
CQL as a whole is actually profoundly pessimistic about the way society runs -- the world of CQL is elitist, fickle, irrational, unjust. It lets people like Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan fall through the cracks; there’s very little accountability for the crimes done by people in positions of power (Jin Guangshan, Wen Ruohan); and society often eats its own, uses people up and casts them aside with little gratitude or appreciation for their sacrifice (Wei Wuxian, and I would argue Nie Mingjue as well as Lan Xichen). I think it’s pretty telling that what the show suggests is the happiest resolution for Wei Wuxian is a departure from the world that caused him so much pain. Of course, Wei Wuxian comes back for Lan Wangji, but I still find the leaving, the renouncing of worldly affairs (for however long we interpret it being) a crucial component of CQL’s narrative.
This kind of ‘happy ending’ -- one in which the hero sets down their burden, puts aside their responsibility of giving and giving and giving to a society that will continue to take and take and take with little to no thanks -- is something that... well, I hesitate to characterize it as ‘inherently Chinese’ in any way, but it’s something I’ve seen much more in Chinese media than I have in Western media. The joyful resolution for a character isn’t necessarily found in the wholesale reforming of society in response to the hero’s actions, but rather, the ability to retreat from the world, to live one’s own life in peace and tranquil joy.
In a way, it echoes what Xue Yang says to Xiao Xingchen, moments before the latter opens his throat:
Xue Yang: 你的师尊抱山散人多聪明啊，你为什么不听她的，好好在山上修仙问道？搞不懂这世上的事，那你就不要入世! / Your esteemed teacher, Baoshan-sanren, was so smart! Why didn’t you listen to her and stay on the mountain, cultivating immortality and studying the Dao? If you can’t understand the affairs of the world, then don’t enter it!
Crucially, Xue Yang says 入世 rushi / to enter the world, which is a concept often linked with the Ruist school of thought (入世有为 vs. the vaguely Daoist 出世无为) -- the idea that it’s the right, responsible, and moral thing to do to enter into society/the world and to do good, as opposed to exiting the world/society and larking off to become a hermit somewhere, to farm and cultivate your own morals and be good. Entering the world, especially with the intent to do good and enact reform, is the noble thing to do -- it’s what Xiao Xingchen chose, what Lan Wangji ends up choosing at the end of CQL. Exiting the world is the path of self-preservation, because the world will unapologetically consume you if you aren’t careful.
All of which is to say that -- I personally thought that CQL was pretty clear on how shitty society is, especially considering that Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang are villains produced by circumstance. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but I believe that Jin Guangyao could’ve turned out to be a perfectly nice young man if more people treated him as like, a decent human being. Xue Yang is a little more complicated, because his whole ‘my-finger-is-worth-more-than-your-life’ business is a tricky moral perspective to recalibrate, but I think a Xue Yang who grew up without being consumed by his own vengeance and victimhood would have been vastly different from the Xue Yang we know (and love, and hate) in CQL.
That being said, just because Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang’s villainy are in part produced by societal circumstance does not excuse or justify their villainy.
Because in the end, it’s all about choice, isn’t it? second anon up there (sorry, it took me forever to get to your point, which is an excellent one!) points out that Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang lack a certain degree of empathy that would allow them to perceive the pain of others as equal to or greater than their own. They spend so long stewing in their own resentment and victimhood and dreams of vengeance that they struggle to take the feelings of others into account -- I’m sure Jin Guangyao was perfectly kind and courteous to Qin Su, but the moment her emotions spiraled out of the parameters of her usefulness, he eliminated her, never mind that she, too, was reeling from the incest reveal, never mind that she, too, is a living and breathing human being who feels pain and distress. Likewise, Xue Yang vastly misestimates Xiao Xingchen and his response to pain -- he drives Xiao Xingchen to and past his breaking point, and never for a moment guesses that Xiao Xingchen might choose death over continued existence, because the thought of killing himself has never crossed Xue Yang’s mind (how could he? He still needs to get revenge on everyone who’s ever wronged him).
And this is probably the biggest difference between Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao, Wei Wuxian and Xue Yang -- Wei Wuxian is so goddamn empathetic that one of his signature cultivation moves revolves around his ability to listen to other people’s lives and feel what they feel. Or, to borrow a line from Doctor Who:
All that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made [him] kind.
Wei Wuxian goes through so much shit, has to put up with all sorts of terrible, undeserved misery and agony, and instead of becoming bitter or vengeful, he remains kind, loving, forgiving, generous.
Every single person, when they’ve been wronged, has a choice -- what do you do with all of this hatred and resentment and frustration when someone insults your heritage, belittles your achievements, impugns your moral character? Do you turn it inwards and let it fester and ferment into vengeance? Or do you unleash it outwards, spewing virulence and viciousness at the people around you? Do you internalize it, bury it deep down inside yourself until it becomes part and parcel of your personality, a deep and abiding self-hatred that often comes hand-in-hand with lack of self-worth? Or do you externalize it, let it drive you in your purpose and reforms?
Madam Yu internalizes her resentment until it boils over into toxicity and abuse, inflicted upon her own family; Su She externalizes his resentment by simultaneously imitating and slandering the person who (he perceives) did him wrong. Jin Guangyao lets the ugly comments get to him, and uses his long-simmering resentment as fuel for his machinations and manipulations. Xue Yang is so wholly consumed by his victimhood that he goes off the deep end into psychopathy.
Wei Wuxian has the astounding ability to take all the shit the world throws at him, and rather than lashing out with it, accepts the hurt for whatever it is -- and then forgets it. Erases it. Lets go of it. This isn’t to say that he won’t fight back or stand up for himself -- most of the time he gives as good as he gets -- but he won’t linger on the resentment, won’t let it consume him, control him completely. He understands pain, and misery, and suffering in a way that few other characters in the show can compare with, and if someone is hurting, he’ll take their side, regardless of what crimes their sect may have committed in the past.
If, however, you’re hurting, and you use your own hurt as an excuse to hurt others, that’s where Wei Wuxian’s vast reservoirs of empathy run dry. Inflicting pain upon others is always an active decision, and where there is choice, there is moral responsibility.
Hi! This is a super small detail, but I was rereading chapter 113 of MDZS and I noticed that when WWX's listening to the rumors about JGY, in one translation, he says "the things they said about me were definitely better than what they’re saying about Jin GuangYao" while in another he says " the rumours that they spread about me were more malicious than Jin Guangyao.” Since they have opposite meanings, it was kinda bugging me and I was wondering which meaning is more accurate? Thanks!
Hi there! Excellent question, I love scrutinising these kind of small details!
The original Chinese is:
“好吧，再怎么说，传我这种也比传金光瑶的那种强点。”
“Well, as it turns out, what they spread about me was [强] than what is being said of Jin Guanyao.”
Here’s the definition of 强 according to MDBG:
I’ve mentioned that elsewhere in a reply breaking down some of the nuances of the Chinese language that get lost in translation, all those definitions are valid in a vacuum even if they seem contradictory.
The context is needed to determine the correct meaning of the term. The rumours about Jin Guangyao are that the discovery that he fornicated with his blood-related sister gave him such a fright that he became impotent. Those about Wei Wuxian are that he abducted a thousand maidens to his den in Burial Mounds and that he defiled them in order to cultivate his demonic skills.
强 is used here in the comparison to denote a greater intensity. What they’re saying about Jin Guangyao is bad and ludicrous enough, what they said about Wei Wuxian in the past was worse and outlandish.
I’d translate it like this:
“Well, as it turns out, what they spread about me was more strongly-worded than what is being said of Jin Guanyao.”
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