The Untamed What is good and what is evil?

The Untamed beanies
@trinpie, @kimbapnoona, @linda-palapala @shach @jenmole @zette @giegie0384 @1tea1 @alasecond

Can I ask a question? I’ve not read the novel but there’s all these references to the 33 scars on Lan Wangji’s back. I had always thought it was the number of lashes he suffered as a punishment for betraying Gusu sect and helping WWX. But the drama clearly had the uncle ordering 300 lashes. The only way that resolves this contradiction is that only 33 scars remained. But it’s also absurd that he could have survived 300 lashes of these horrible twin rods. His back would have been broken! Sheessh! Why am I thinking of Brokeback Mountain now?


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    Hopefully somebody will know! I sort of wondered about that too, but figured something was lost in translation. I don’t speak Chinese but have noticed sometimes numbers they translate aren’t to be taken literally. Somebody around here speaks Chinese, maybe they’ll know.

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    I remember the scars but dont recall there being 33 scars or 300 whippings so cant comment on the numbers. But considering they are cultivators, they can survive much worse things then the average person can. But he was so badly wounded afterwards that it took him 3 years to heal (which is why it took him 3 years to search for WWX body).

    I’ve not read the book but someone told me WWX death is different in the book vs drama. In the book WWX didnt die at Nightless city and LZ wasnt there when WWX died. He only heard about it later. But LZ got the lashes for helping WWX at Nightless city which caused him to not be there when WWX died at the burial grounds (he was actually killed by Jiang Cheng in the books). And the lashes might refer to the fact that in the novel LZ injured 33 cultivators while defending an injured WWX after helping him in Nightless city. Maybe a lash for each one?

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      I read the novel – except for these chapters, which for some reason I skipped…
      Anyone know which chapters they are so I can actually go back and read them?

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        I just read about these things so not sure where in the book they are. But I dont blame you for skipping those chapters lol

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      Yes, I also thought that he received 33 lashes for injuring 33 cultivators but now I can’t remember which part of the drama said that or I read it somewhere else. But in the show, as I replied Linda Palapala above, the uncle said 300.

      If it’s a normal whip, he may have bled to death but those rods looked too hard. 3 years to heal, more like permanently incapacitated! Well, I guess we just have to believe the cultivation made them strong enough, lol.

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        I mean, there is a lot you need to suspend belief in with these dramas! Many times people in these dramas somehow survive things they really shouldn’t.

        And it must have been some weird writing or something? Maybe they were really trying to show he did major wrong? Idk! 😅 Even though I love this drama I will be the first to admit it is far from perfect. Just in the first ep. it shows WWX snapping and freezing someone, something I can’t recall him ever doing again in the drama…

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          I am all for suspension of belief. If I don’t, I can’t watch any drama. This is wuxia which though isn’t exactly fantasy, still has all those mystical elements.

          Speaking of faults, I am not objective. If I like a drama, I am very forgiving of the faults as long as they aren’t too much. But if a drama gets on the wrong footing for me, I tend to nitpick.

          My pet peeve is pretentious dramas – those pretending to be ‘deep’, insightful and thought provoking when they are just wannabes. I like to tear into those.

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            My daughter calls the pretentiousness “taking themselves too seriously”.
            As far as these numbers, I never pay attention to numbers in c-dramas. They never make sense and seem to be inconsistently translated. I’ve noticed that in all wuxia I’ve watched, so it doesn’t bother me anymore.
            All these imperfections mean nothing in light of how well the characters are written and how good the cast is. So I don’t pay attention when it’s a drama I love otherwise. I only nitpick when I didn’t like the drama anyway.

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            Yes, dramas that take themselves too seriously. Sometimes, it’s also the viewers who read too much into. Have you come across reviewers who come up with too much inferences and their own thoughts that it’s beyond what the writers intended? I roll my eyes whenever I read those.

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    They deviated from the novel. I think they added more lashings to drive home the cruelty of the act and the pain that he was in. Plus earlier on, he and WWX had received 50 lashings for drinking, so sticking with 30 would not have driven the point home imo.

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      Ya that’s what I’m guessing. They are really trying to show he majorly messed up in their eyes by giving some ridiculous number.

      And they did get 300 lashes for drinking, it was the other 2 that only got 50. But it was with the flat boards rather then the stick things.

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      Yes! Thanks for the bringing up the punishment for drinking. I was also thinking it was odd.

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        With 3000 rules, I didn’t find it so odd.

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          I love that there was always this underlying mockery of rules besides WWX openly mocking them.

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            Ha, that mockery was great.
            I was just thinking (in answer to your original question). Cultivators are abnormally strong physically, mentally and spiritually. The higher the cultivation the stronger. And LZ was an advanced cultivator. So he would have survived so many lashings.

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    As long as we’re asking questions: how do they fly, anyway? And how can they ride on their swords? And make talismans out of the air?
    But seriously, I do have a question from episode 43? 44? When WY was asking LZs brother how he got the scars on his back. I was absolutely positive the brother said at one point LZ told him that WY was his soulmate. And then later in the episode WY is thinking how wonderful it is to have a soulmate.
    But when I went back and rewatched the episode, the word LZ said was WY was his “confidante”. But that puts a whole different meaning to it and doesn’t make sense in the context of WY saying “soulmate” later. Am I just remembering wrong? Or was it in the novel? Aargh, I’m losing my mind.

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      can you give the exact segment? I just went over part of ep 43 – the word WY used when LZ was playing the zither and he was standing at the door drinking wine, was “confidante/close friend”.

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      One of the subbers went and changed the subs from soulmate to confidant. It was soulmate the first time I watched it. But it was changed to confidant on my second watch. So annoying.

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        I have been cracking my head and maybe it’s because my vocab of Chinese words and phrases are limited but I can’t think of a Chinese word for soulmate. Whatever it is, if the phrase “知己” is used, then confidante is definitely a literal translation. The thing is when we use this Chinese phrase, the meaning is more than that – it can mean an intimate friend, someone close to your heart.

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          And thanks, that puts it in perspective because in English “confidant” is way less significant than “soulmate”. Soulmate is someone like your lifelong partner, the love of your life, probably someone you’ll marry. A confidant is only someone you might tall a secret to.

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          Yes, 知己 was definitely used. I rewatched that scene not too long ago and the subs that was once soulmate was changed to confidant. It’s so true that sometimes the Chinese phrase has so much more meaning that it’s really hard to express in English.

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            Seems to me Chinese character for confidant has the same meaning as soulmate in English. In English you can have several confidants (people you confide in) but a soulmate is the one and only special person in your life. Oh, well.
            I was up to ep 8 on my rewatch but then Viki just posted the “final edits” were finally done. So watching ep 47 more and I realize other phrases are different too. Most of the final editing actually enhances the meanings, but changing that one word to confidant really made me sad.
            Guess I’m going to have to start all over from the 1st episode now that the final edits are done, just to see what else has changed.
            Even if I ever learned Chinese, I wouldn’t be able to tell the subtle differences in meaning!

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        Thank you! I really thought I was going crazy. And @outofthisworld reply makes sense too, because the Chinese character might be literally “confidant” but it has the context and meaning of what English speakers would call “soulmate”. Confidant is just someone you’d confide in.

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    Honestly I never pay too much attention to details like that, for me they are there to show protagonist character’s traits. But after Legends I noticed that there is the second drama that put “righteousness” of “the righteous” in question.

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      I think that discussion about righteousness is wonderful as are many others. Wei Wu Xian nailed it when he said that even without JGY, someone else would have made him the common enemy. They just needed a bogeyman and because WWX was a free spirit who didn’t care to put up appearances and niceties, he was an obvious choice. His knack of reading people’s real intentions and speaking out loud antagonise many.

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        And in both The Legends and The Untamed, the self-righteous wanted to kill people “just in case” they committed crimes later on. For me, that’s why at the end of Untamed it was significant that LZ and WY wouldn’t harm Nie.

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      I loved how in Legends the “Righteous” sect should have been called the “self-righteous” sect.

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    They probably changed it for effect. There’s a theory though that 33 whip marks is for the number of strokes in writing Wu Xian and 13 years of waiting is for the number of strokes in writing Wang Ji.

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    So, in the novel, flow of events is as follows:
    Flow of actual events before WX dies:
    – the fight happens
    – WX escapes (we know this later in the novel that LWJ took him away from there to save him)
    – LWJ took him to a cave and nursed him while confessing his love to him, which WX didn’t exactly register and kept telling him to “Get Lost”
    – 3 days later gusu sect finds them (hush mission because they can’t afford world knowing about this and clamouring to kill LWJ too)
    – LWJ fights gusu lan people, badly injuring 33 disciples
    – anyway, LWJ is taken back, punished with 33 whipps and sometime in future (couple of years later) WX dies while LWJ is in seclusion
    – in the book they say even 1 whip needs a long time to recuperate
    *****************
    Now in the drama, they completely omitted the whole confession scene and the real purpose of getting hit.. and their reasoning was fairly ordinary.. so in order to make the punishment sound severe they made it 300 whippings 🙂

    I don’t think in the drama itself, they ever mention 33.. but yeah they did show us this in episode 33 .. so hidden meaning much

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      Do you know which chapters in the novel this is? I couldn’t find it last night and I really want to read them w/o necessarily reading the whole novel again!

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        this whole conversation is LXC telling WX about the truth of the night of the war, which he has forgotten
        LXC is furious once he realizes that WX doesn’t even know that LWJ is in love with him..

        it is a very funny , cute chapter.. despite the tragic setting

        should be post 95 and between 102/103

        this is guayin temple scene and after the 3rd drunk scene (iconic chapter 95)

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    I have not finished the novel yet and the story about the scars has not been brought up. Only that Wei Ying saw the scars. But these two gifs above just reminds me of Lan Zhan’s character song. I’m sure you’ve seen/heard it. What a beautiful song!

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      I love love Lan Zhan’s character song. In fact, I couldn’t get it out of my head last night.

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        @outofthisworld Sort of off the subject, but every once in awhile I mention the word “kishotenketsu” the 4 act play that is used in most Asian storytelling, it’s a bit different from plot driven 3 act Western stories. What reminded me was a comment you made about the ending of Untamed and the “plot” and evil isn’t always defeated, etc. Do you remember that comment? Anyway, kishotenketsu puts a whole different light on why Asian dramas can be different from Western (introduce conflict, escalate conflict, resolve conflict). 4 acts is 1) introduce characters, 2) develop characters 3) introduce a twist, complication, etc., 4) tie together the 1st and 2nd act with the 3rd act. So you don’t necessarily even have to have a conflict (though most do).

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        The character songs and their duet are always on repeat. As I type this, their duet is playing in my head. I can’t move on from this show!

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