I am not getting enough sleep
Jun. 23rd, 2023 08:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickMost days I'm awake at about 5:30 AM. There's an alarm on my phone but also there's a Squeaky Wheel who jumps on my head at like 5:25 AM because FOOD NAO. Anyway, this isn't too bad when I go to bed at a reasonable hour like a grown-ass adult.
When I go to bed at 1:30 AM for several days in a row because of a just one more problem related to media consumption, it's not enough sleep. In the same way that eating half a batch of no-bake cookies is not good for me, staying up late every night to watch episodes of The Untamed is not particularly good for me. This doesn't mean I'm going to not-do-it, just that doing-it has consequences. *sigh*
It is going well. I am quite pleased with how things are unfolding. (We are currently at the Buddhist temple, having just now dug up the reassembled and I guess fucked-to-death father of Silly Hat Guy. I'm pretty sure that's who it is, anyway.) (edit: I am wrong. It's not that guy, it's a different guy, see below. I assure you I do have the subtitles turned on and I am indeed doing my very best to pay attention. But, well, fail.)
This was a surprise, too. Silly Hat Guy was clearly not expecting that from his excavation project, so that's... weird. Probably like five or six episodes yet to run for those keeping track.
Some Very Satisfying Events have occurred.
1. Silly Hat Guy is a baddie. Yay! He's even a fairly convincing-to-watch baddie when he's not smiling and deferring, which rather shocked me. Nice.
2. Trustworthy reverent brave kind etc. beginner cultivator is in fact someone we know. He's Yuan, chubby cheeked child from the Wen Clan Refugees (back when radish-and-lotus-root farming were plot points). Lan Wangji rescued him and installed him as a resident of Cloud Recesses and he's grown up in the Cultivator Lifestyle. Yay!
3. Jiang Cheng (sorry, dude I will do better on your name) does, in fact, find out that he's the proud owner of a golden core from Wei Wuxian. And I was wrong about who told him, because it wasn't pretty lady doctor in red, who did the transplant, but her brother who was also there and saw it all. (Pretty lady doctor in red's brother is the Ghost General Wen Ning.) And it does not go well for him. Jiang Cheng definitely struggles with this information, the weight of a gift he never asked for and cannot possibly receive with thanks, it's too much. VERY nice. Our man Wei is kind of don't mention it while also being this is the debt that I owe to the clan who took me in off the streets and gave me a life and so forth. Many emotions. Manly crying. OOF. Very effective on several fronts and I do like that they spun this out over more-than-one-scene to give Jiang Cheng time to process his many feels.
4. Because of course Lan Wangji was also there for the whole core-transplant narrative, we got numerous useful flashbacks from Lan Wangji's perspective too and wow, gut punches for Lan Wangji a lot. Sorry, man, you didn't know. How could you have known? Also, he did not fucking tell you so it is Not Your Fault for not knowing. Try not to guilt. Guilt is for when you did wrong and you knew you were doing wrong, not for when you unintentionally did wrong because the party you were wronging WITHHELD IMPORTANT INFORMATION. Also, you weren't at all up front about the whipping and the three years of confinement either, so ... everyone's got their issues and certainly in hindsight it seems like using your words could have saved a lot of heartache for all parties. Too soon old, too late smart.
5. I have now decided that the not-very-socially-adept resurrected and not-quite-human-anymore Wen Ning is just... a delightful character. Tragic, but also delightful. Much bigger fan now than in the first half. Also I like him better as a dead guy than as a live one, go figure.
There still remain some concerning things that we don't have sorted.
1. Who... rounded up our evidentiary ladies and sent them to Lotus Pier to tell the tales? Was bribery involved? Are they reliable narrators? Why NOW after so long?
1a. If Scarred Up Lady Of Negotiable Affection is telling true about the fucking-to-death which we got to see in a flashback-ish thing, then why didn't she get killed with the rest of them? It seems very sloppy to leave one alive unless... she was being saved for later. There are not many reasons to save a witness like that UNLESS you want to eventually bring down the perp. We are full well aware that the man behind the curtain (lol, literally, even) for that shit was Silly Hat Guy going for some sort of poetic justice along the lines of "I hear you like to fuck? Fine. Fuck yourself to death. With whores. Die as you lived, asshole."
1b. There were only a couple of people on site for that. Silly Hat Guy, his dad the tied up person being fucked to death, and Xue Yang Evil scenery-chewer. Of those people, probably Xue Yang would have been saddled/gifted with the "dispose of Ladies of Negotiable Affection" job after the primary goal was accomplished... if he didn't volunteer for it up front. Silly Hat Guy does not go in for or relish wholesale slaughter that we've seen. His is a fairly intimate cruelty. (I am sorry. I am. ... Okay, I am not. *smirk*) Dad-the-tied-up was too dead afterwards to kill the ladies. But Xue Yang... he'd have been the man on the ground for that. Also, he wouldn't have missed one or forgotten one or anything like that. He'd have caught them all unless instructed otherwise. Who holds his leash, really?
1c. I thought after the events of Coffin Town that Xue Yang was for real dead. He was not in great shape when Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangyi left him with an arm cut off and Song Lan the not-quite-dead to finish the job. Did he escape? If he escaped (how? seriously I really thought he died, he was stabbed and got, like, death flashbacks and stuff) and is NOT DEAD, he could totally be looking to pull down Silly Hat Guy and burn it all to the ground because of #reasons. But I thought that he died for real before Song Lan went off with his sword and his friend the-blind-eye-donating-cultivator's sword and friend's... remaining spiritual energy in a bag because that's not even remotely weird.
2. Silly Hat Guy's dad (Edit: Not the dad. This is other dude, the third one in the pact of three, which by the power of wiki I am informed are called the Venerated Triad consisting of Silly Hat Guy and Lan Xichen the elder brother dude from Cloud Recesses and this dead guy whose name is Nie Mingjue. I was confused. I am frequently confused. It's OK.) that included Silly Hat Guy and also is buried in the box at the Buddhist temple. Silly Hat Guy DOES NOT expect that. Like, he's fucking shocked as hell.
2a. What was Silly Hat Guy EXPECTING to find buried there? He was all gleeful anticipation beforehand and definitely did not get what he was anticipating. Is he chasing the Stygian Tiger whatever? Button, button, who's got the button?
2b. How did thedad's head get OUT of secret room at Carp Tower (Silly Hat Guy lives in Carp Tower) *after* being seen by paper-Wei-Wuxian and *before* all the cultivators rushed in there to inspect it for ... evidence? Can someone teleport or what? That teleporting IS A THING we know but also you have to study it specially and it takes lots of energy and wipes you out.
2c. What is the motive for fucking with Silly Hat Guy in such a toying way instead of just laying out the evidence and letting the cultivators depose him in some reasonable manner?
3. Who is our mystery flute player? There was SOMEONE ELSE doing flute previously, twice. I didn't catch the one where Wen Ning accidentally killed Snobby Little Shit The Elder (husband to elder sister of Jiang Cheng, father of Snobby Little Shit The Younger, the now-orphaned nephew beginner cultivator who's all anti-WW) but I did know that Wen Ning wasn't SUPPOSED to kill him, that that was a thing gone horribly wrong. But the SECOND mystery flute player, during the Rooftop Flute Battle Against The Clans Following The Slaughter Of The Remaining Wens, that one was way more obvious and I did notice that in a wait, who else is playing the flute? sort of way.
Is it possible that Silly Hat Guy's henchman Su She is trying for a double cross? We know he's musical-ish because of his sneaky power-sapping playing in the Burial Mounds. That was on the flat guitar thing but maybe he also flutes? Many people play more than one instrument. He's got the incriminating marks from the Hundred Holes, so he's been carrying the water for this project in a blisters-n-calluses sort of way. He's all in, I expect.
As a kinda-trusted second, Su She he gets less focus on him and can run around Doing Stuff without so much being noticed... and as a second he is perforce a trusted inner-circle person for Silly Hat Guy's plans, at least some of them, because he has to provide support efforts. It's possible that he got assigned theDad Head project as "Quick, find somewhere to stash this -- the cultivators are coming to search the Secret Room and I need this Very Incriminating Item gone, stat."
I dunno, though. It's a pretty audacious move and if Su She has enough light to shine that brightly, he's definitely been hiding it under a bushel basket thus far. This is a plausible explanation but I don't think it's... ideal.
Anyway, it's gonna be a busy handful of episodes here. They've got a lot of strings to tie up.
When I go to bed at 1:30 AM for several days in a row because of a just one more problem related to media consumption, it's not enough sleep. In the same way that eating half a batch of no-bake cookies is not good for me, staying up late every night to watch episodes of The Untamed is not particularly good for me. This doesn't mean I'm going to not-do-it, just that doing-it has consequences. *sigh*
It is going well. I am quite pleased with how things are unfolding. (We are currently at the Buddhist temple, having just now dug up the reassembled and I guess fucked-to-death father of Silly Hat Guy. I'm pretty sure that's who it is, anyway.) (edit: I am wrong. It's not that guy, it's a different guy, see below. I assure you I do have the subtitles turned on and I am indeed doing my very best to pay attention. But, well, fail.)
This was a surprise, too. Silly Hat Guy was clearly not expecting that from his excavation project, so that's... weird. Probably like five or six episodes yet to run for those keeping track.
Some Very Satisfying Events have occurred.
1. Silly Hat Guy is a baddie. Yay! He's even a fairly convincing-to-watch baddie when he's not smiling and deferring, which rather shocked me. Nice.
2. Trustworthy reverent brave kind etc. beginner cultivator is in fact someone we know. He's Yuan, chubby cheeked child from the Wen Clan Refugees (back when radish-and-lotus-root farming were plot points). Lan Wangji rescued him and installed him as a resident of Cloud Recesses and he's grown up in the Cultivator Lifestyle. Yay!
3. Jiang Cheng (sorry, dude I will do better on your name) does, in fact, find out that he's the proud owner of a golden core from Wei Wuxian. And I was wrong about who told him, because it wasn't pretty lady doctor in red, who did the transplant, but her brother who was also there and saw it all. (Pretty lady doctor in red's brother is the Ghost General Wen Ning.) And it does not go well for him. Jiang Cheng definitely struggles with this information, the weight of a gift he never asked for and cannot possibly receive with thanks, it's too much. VERY nice. Our man Wei is kind of don't mention it while also being this is the debt that I owe to the clan who took me in off the streets and gave me a life and so forth. Many emotions. Manly crying. OOF. Very effective on several fronts and I do like that they spun this out over more-than-one-scene to give Jiang Cheng time to process his many feels.
4. Because of course Lan Wangji was also there for the whole core-transplant narrative, we got numerous useful flashbacks from Lan Wangji's perspective too and wow, gut punches for Lan Wangji a lot. Sorry, man, you didn't know. How could you have known? Also, he did not fucking tell you so it is Not Your Fault for not knowing. Try not to guilt. Guilt is for when you did wrong and you knew you were doing wrong, not for when you unintentionally did wrong because the party you were wronging WITHHELD IMPORTANT INFORMATION. Also, you weren't at all up front about the whipping and the three years of confinement either, so ... everyone's got their issues and certainly in hindsight it seems like using your words could have saved a lot of heartache for all parties. Too soon old, too late smart.
5. I have now decided that the not-very-socially-adept resurrected and not-quite-human-anymore Wen Ning is just... a delightful character. Tragic, but also delightful. Much bigger fan now than in the first half. Also I like him better as a dead guy than as a live one, go figure.
There still remain some concerning things that we don't have sorted.
1. Who... rounded up our evidentiary ladies and sent them to Lotus Pier to tell the tales? Was bribery involved? Are they reliable narrators? Why NOW after so long?
1a. If Scarred Up Lady Of Negotiable Affection is telling true about the fucking-to-death which we got to see in a flashback-ish thing, then why didn't she get killed with the rest of them? It seems very sloppy to leave one alive unless... she was being saved for later. There are not many reasons to save a witness like that UNLESS you want to eventually bring down the perp. We are full well aware that the man behind the curtain (lol, literally, even) for that shit was Silly Hat Guy going for some sort of poetic justice along the lines of "I hear you like to fuck? Fine. Fuck yourself to death. With whores. Die as you lived, asshole."
1b. There were only a couple of people on site for that. Silly Hat Guy, his dad the tied up person being fucked to death, and Xue Yang Evil scenery-chewer. Of those people, probably Xue Yang would have been saddled/gifted with the "dispose of Ladies of Negotiable Affection" job after the primary goal was accomplished... if he didn't volunteer for it up front. Silly Hat Guy does not go in for or relish wholesale slaughter that we've seen. His is a fairly intimate cruelty. (I am sorry. I am. ... Okay, I am not. *smirk*) Dad-the-tied-up was too dead afterwards to kill the ladies. But Xue Yang... he'd have been the man on the ground for that. Also, he wouldn't have missed one or forgotten one or anything like that. He'd have caught them all unless instructed otherwise. Who holds his leash, really?
1c. I thought after the events of Coffin Town that Xue Yang was for real dead. He was not in great shape when Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangyi left him with an arm cut off and Song Lan the not-quite-dead to finish the job. Did he escape? If he escaped (how? seriously I really thought he died, he was stabbed and got, like, death flashbacks and stuff) and is NOT DEAD, he could totally be looking to pull down Silly Hat Guy and burn it all to the ground because of #reasons. But I thought that he died for real before Song Lan went off with his sword and his friend the-blind-eye-donating-cultivator's sword and friend's... remaining spiritual energy in a bag because that's not even remotely weird.
2. Silly Hat Guy's dad (Edit: Not the dad. This is other dude, the third one in the pact of three, which by the power of wiki I am informed are called the Venerated Triad consisting of Silly Hat Guy and Lan Xichen the elder brother dude from Cloud Recesses and this dead guy whose name is Nie Mingjue. I was confused. I am frequently confused. It's OK.) that included Silly Hat Guy and also is buried in the box at the Buddhist temple. Silly Hat Guy DOES NOT expect that. Like, he's fucking shocked as hell.
2a. What was Silly Hat Guy EXPECTING to find buried there? He was all gleeful anticipation beforehand and definitely did not get what he was anticipating. Is he chasing the Stygian Tiger whatever? Button, button, who's got the button?
2b. How did the
2c. What is the motive for fucking with Silly Hat Guy in such a toying way instead of just laying out the evidence and letting the cultivators depose him in some reasonable manner?
3. Who is our mystery flute player? There was SOMEONE ELSE doing flute previously, twice. I didn't catch the one where Wen Ning accidentally killed Snobby Little Shit The Elder (husband to elder sister of Jiang Cheng, father of Snobby Little Shit The Younger, the now-orphaned nephew beginner cultivator who's all anti-WW) but I did know that Wen Ning wasn't SUPPOSED to kill him, that that was a thing gone horribly wrong. But the SECOND mystery flute player, during the Rooftop Flute Battle Against The Clans Following The Slaughter Of The Remaining Wens, that one was way more obvious and I did notice that in a wait, who else is playing the flute? sort of way.
Is it possible that Silly Hat Guy's henchman Su She is trying for a double cross? We know he's musical-ish because of his sneaky power-sapping playing in the Burial Mounds. That was on the flat guitar thing but maybe he also flutes? Many people play more than one instrument. He's got the incriminating marks from the Hundred Holes, so he's been carrying the water for this project in a blisters-n-calluses sort of way. He's all in, I expect.
As a kinda-trusted second, Su She he gets less focus on him and can run around Doing Stuff without so much being noticed... and as a second he is perforce a trusted inner-circle person for Silly Hat Guy's plans, at least some of them, because he has to provide support efforts. It's possible that he got assigned the
I dunno, though. It's a pretty audacious move and if Su She has enough light to shine that brightly, he's definitely been hiding it under a bushel basket thus far. This is a plausible explanation but I don't think it's... ideal.
Anyway, it's gonna be a busy handful of episodes here. They've got a lot of strings to tie up.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-24 10:07 am (UTC)That's why Jin Guangyao is so shocked - Nie Mingjue should not be in this coffin, because he used to have his fucking head in his secret treasure room/torture chamber.
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Edit now that I'm back home and also not asleep anymore. XD
And don't worry about misundertanding some stuff; IDK where you're watching, but neither youtube nor Netflix have the greatest of subtitles and there's also so much going on that it's easy to miss explanations. Especially in this part of the story, which is a lot of talking and reveals and stuff! :D
I'm so glad you enjoy that your predicitions re Jin Guangyao were correct! And he indeed makes for a convincing bad guy. (Gun fact: The actor went to the casting for the role of Lan Sizhui/a-Yuan because he figured, "Hey I have huge eyes and cute dimples, I'd be perfect for the nice Lan boy!" and the casting director was like, "Those are murder dimples, you'll be Jin Guangyao!" XD)
Also, I love the reveal that Wen Yuan survived and that Lan Wangji took him in. It's so satisfying when it comes out and it makes so much sense!
The golden core reveal is indeed a great scene that hits so well! There are understandable reasons why WWX didn't want to tell anyone about it, but if he had, indeed so much could've been prevented as many of the conflicts hinge on WWX suddenly doing very questionable (cultivation) things that don't make sense to the people who'd known him and cutting himself off from everyone, refusing their help. Jiang Cheng and his sister would've loved to help him if he'd let them and if they'd understood what the actual problem is. Lan Wangji even tried, but he's bad with words and also hadn't gone through his whole "perhaps only abiding by the rules isn't the greatest thing ever" self-search yet and therefore was still trying to also please his sect/family, which was unfortunately incompatible with loving the evil necromancer... There's just so much tragedy and drama around this situation and it's delicious!
I think why the one prostitute survives get explained in the temple... hopefully. It gets explained at some point but it's been a while since I saw the show so I'm not sure when exactly it's revealed. But there's a reason why she's the only survivor there (and yes you're right, Xue Yang did the murdering because he loves doing that and was working for the Jin at that time).
Xue Yang is definitely dead. You read the way it was shown right! ;D
I think it's not yet been mentioned who was supposed to be in the coffin but it should be mentioned at some point in the eps at the temple.
Yeah how did the hat get out? I'm not sure if they actually explain it but hopefully they do. I'm also not sure anymore if it was different in the novel...
What is the motive for fucking with Silly Hat Guy in such a toying way instead of just laying out the evidence and letting the cultivators depose him in some reasonable manner?
Yes indeed. Good question! ;D
The second flute player is exclusive to The Untamed and doesn't exist in the novel.
Good one remembering Su She.
I love that he's a character that shows up very early on in the show but he's so unremarkable that everyone always forgets about him. XD
no subject
Date: 2023-06-24 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-25 06:34 pm (UTC)