The thing about working from home is that breaks are - different. I don't have a coworker in the next cubicle to stop by and ask if I want to go grab a coffee from the break room. Or e-mails to come to the break room for this that or the other thing.
Which means if I'm very, very busy it's all to easy to just... work.
It's part of why I sometimes deliberately stop to take a break. Refresh the mind. Come back better able to focus. (When I'm not dealing with some time-sensitive issue, that is. I think I rather like my job... figuring out what's wrong is interesting, now that I have at least a little bit of knowledge. Still just the tip of the iceberg though.)
Anyways, I'm taking one of those self-imposed breaks and figured I'd blather on about The Untamed again, which is still on Netflix. It's only one season, so it doesn't take near as long to get through as other shows, and I'm still unwilling to leave the story. (Which means I also read the novel, and watched the animated version, and rewatched the TV show. I'm sure some of that is escapism from the stupidity going on in the world today, but whatever. It makes it a lot easier to stay home and social distance.)
I wanted to break down some of what makes the story compelling to me. Fair warning, I'm going to give all the spoilers, so don't read any further if that's a problem.
In the very first two episodes we learn a) Wei Wuxian died, and public opinion was that he deserved it, b) he had been adopted into a family, and some people blame him for the suffering that family went through, c) someone cast a spell sacrificing their lives to resurrect him. (Also, apparently there's an entire Chinese genre dealing with cultivating your spirit to achieve immortality, which leads to some world building with fantastical elements. They're not sorcerers or wizards, they're cultivators. And they're not dealing with magical mysteries so much as spiritual ones.. there's a whole lot of world building that's a bit different from a more Western fantasy.)
Also, the resurrected Wei Wuxian is trying to avoid a few particular people. Lan Wangji and the man raised as his brother - Jiang Cheng, and feels some sense of care for his nephew - the orphaned child of his adopted sister.
There's a lot more to the first two episodes than that, but it already sets up an interesting dynamic. You know that whatever flashback scenes you get are not going to end well. After all, Wei Wuxian dies. You also aleady know that his nephew's parents are dead, which means Wei Wuxian's sister and her husband die.
You already know his first life ends in tragedy, and whatever that tragedy is alienated him from his brother and led to a pretty horrible public reputation.
You can also tell that his reputation is not justified. He's not thrilled at the idea of violence and murder, actively tries to give hidden help to some of the young cultivators trying to solve a deadly spiritual mystery.
There's thus a bit of comedy, both on his own part (a bit of a trickster character himself), and because the difference between his reputation and his actual character is sometimes hilarious.
So we have tragedy, comedy, mystery... also romance, in that the novel is a Chinese boy love story. The TV show had to get past Chinese censors so it's never explicit, but there's clearly a strong connection between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.
Some of the things I find compelling -
His relationship with his brother, Jiang Cheng. In the flashbacks (and The Untamed combines all the flashbacks in the story into one really, really long one... which means after the first two episodes you go back to the past for a very, very long time) you see how much they cared for each other, though they were never good at actually saying it.
You only learn towards the end of the show that Jiang Cheng let himself get captured in order to save Wei Wuxian. You do learn in the extended flashback that when he's captured he loses his 'golden core' (the spiritual core they cultivate. In a western show we'd probably say it's the core of their magic or something.) There are hints and clues, but we don't definitely learn that Wei Wuxian gives up his own core, transferring it to Jiang Cheng.
They cared about each other so much. And their relationship becomes horribly broken by the end of Wei Wuxian's first life.
You can argue about why and how that happened, but quite a bit of it was because of secrets. Or rather, one particular secret. Wei Wuxian thought telling his brother what he did would devastate him, and did everything he could to hide what he'd done.
Which meant that even though he could no longer do 'magic', he pretended he could. Rather terribly. He started cultivating resentful energy, which seems a bit like 'using dark magic', i.e. necromancy and the like. Which also gave him a horrid reputation and made everyone around him fearful.
So as the tragedy unfolds, you have these two brothers who once risked everything for each other grow so distance that Jiang Cheng is widely believed to be the one who killed Wei Wuxian.
You also have Wei Wuxian's relationship with Lan Wangji... which is kind of the classic trope of a chaos gremlin and ice king. Or the wildly creative outside-the-box thinker and the rigid type who lives and breathes the rules. I've realized I rather like that combination, since together they've got all. the. options. If a situation requires creativity and originality, you've got your chaos gremlin. If it requires more orthodox solutions (and the hard work and knowledge required to master a particular topic) you've got your expert.
So you have Wei Wuxian - trickster, wild and untamed, perfectly willing to break all 3000 of the Lan clan's rules, whether it means drinking alcohol or breaking curfew. And you have Lan Wangji, who was raised to abide by all 3000 of those rules. Who starts off rigid and inflexible and thinking that everything is black and white. (And who is very, very disturbed by his attraction to such a complete wild child as Wei Wuxian.)
In his first life, they never become a couple. Lan Wangji is too rulebound, too uncertain, too concerned about the dangerous path Wei Wuxian follows.
And Wei Wuxian? He's got a lot of other things going on. There was giving up his core (and trying to keep it secret), and a war...
And then the victors of the war went overboard in how they handled their defeated enemy, and Wei Wuxian wound up throwing everything over in order to protect those remnants. I would say 'his former enemies', but he got drawn in because a brother/sister of the other side had aided him back then (the sister was the one who actually did the core transfer).
So we have this 'almost lover' relationship (that's a great song, btw, that captures how painful it is when someone's an almost.)
Lan Wangji never really connects with Wei Wuxian. It started out with Wei Wuxian cheerfully imposing, and Lan Wangji denying. Then crap happened, Wei Wuxian stopped being the one to reach out, and the tables flipped. Except Lan Wangji rather sucks at reaching out, and didn't know what was really going on, and was too concerned about the dark path Wei Wuxian was choosing. So he mostly came across as scolding.
And then Wei Wuxian died, vilified by pretty much everyone. And Lan Wangji had 16 years to mourn and ask himself what went wrong.
When Wei Wuxian comes back, Lan Wangji seems willing to throw over everything and completely and utterly spoil him. Not that Wei Wuxian realizes (he's fairly oblivious through most of the story.)
He once dueled with Wei Wuxian over sneaking liquor in. 16 years later Lan Wangji keeps a secret stash on hand. Just in case.
There's a lot more to the story than that. Questions of blame, of the harsh world they lived in during their youth. Of family, found and lost. Of justice, and the lack thereof.
But this has already gone far enough for a quick break, so I'll leave it at that.
Which means if I'm very, very busy it's all to easy to just... work.
It's part of why I sometimes deliberately stop to take a break. Refresh the mind. Come back better able to focus. (When I'm not dealing with some time-sensitive issue, that is. I think I rather like my job... figuring out what's wrong is interesting, now that I have at least a little bit of knowledge. Still just the tip of the iceberg though.)
Anyways, I'm taking one of those self-imposed breaks and figured I'd blather on about The Untamed again, which is still on Netflix. It's only one season, so it doesn't take near as long to get through as other shows, and I'm still unwilling to leave the story. (Which means I also read the novel, and watched the animated version, and rewatched the TV show. I'm sure some of that is escapism from the stupidity going on in the world today, but whatever. It makes it a lot easier to stay home and social distance.)
I wanted to break down some of what makes the story compelling to me. Fair warning, I'm going to give all the spoilers, so don't read any further if that's a problem.
In the very first two episodes we learn a) Wei Wuxian died, and public opinion was that he deserved it, b) he had been adopted into a family, and some people blame him for the suffering that family went through, c) someone cast a spell sacrificing their lives to resurrect him. (Also, apparently there's an entire Chinese genre dealing with cultivating your spirit to achieve immortality, which leads to some world building with fantastical elements. They're not sorcerers or wizards, they're cultivators. And they're not dealing with magical mysteries so much as spiritual ones.. there's a whole lot of world building that's a bit different from a more Western fantasy.)
Also, the resurrected Wei Wuxian is trying to avoid a few particular people. Lan Wangji and the man raised as his brother - Jiang Cheng, and feels some sense of care for his nephew - the orphaned child of his adopted sister.
There's a lot more to the first two episodes than that, but it already sets up an interesting dynamic. You know that whatever flashback scenes you get are not going to end well. After all, Wei Wuxian dies. You also aleady know that his nephew's parents are dead, which means Wei Wuxian's sister and her husband die.
You already know his first life ends in tragedy, and whatever that tragedy is alienated him from his brother and led to a pretty horrible public reputation.
You can also tell that his reputation is not justified. He's not thrilled at the idea of violence and murder, actively tries to give hidden help to some of the young cultivators trying to solve a deadly spiritual mystery.
There's thus a bit of comedy, both on his own part (a bit of a trickster character himself), and because the difference between his reputation and his actual character is sometimes hilarious.
So we have tragedy, comedy, mystery... also romance, in that the novel is a Chinese boy love story. The TV show had to get past Chinese censors so it's never explicit, but there's clearly a strong connection between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.
Some of the things I find compelling -
His relationship with his brother, Jiang Cheng. In the flashbacks (and The Untamed combines all the flashbacks in the story into one really, really long one... which means after the first two episodes you go back to the past for a very, very long time) you see how much they cared for each other, though they were never good at actually saying it.
You only learn towards the end of the show that Jiang Cheng let himself get captured in order to save Wei Wuxian. You do learn in the extended flashback that when he's captured he loses his 'golden core' (the spiritual core they cultivate. In a western show we'd probably say it's the core of their magic or something.) There are hints and clues, but we don't definitely learn that Wei Wuxian gives up his own core, transferring it to Jiang Cheng.
They cared about each other so much. And their relationship becomes horribly broken by the end of Wei Wuxian's first life.
You can argue about why and how that happened, but quite a bit of it was because of secrets. Or rather, one particular secret. Wei Wuxian thought telling his brother what he did would devastate him, and did everything he could to hide what he'd done.
Which meant that even though he could no longer do 'magic', he pretended he could. Rather terribly. He started cultivating resentful energy, which seems a bit like 'using dark magic', i.e. necromancy and the like. Which also gave him a horrid reputation and made everyone around him fearful.
So as the tragedy unfolds, you have these two brothers who once risked everything for each other grow so distance that Jiang Cheng is widely believed to be the one who killed Wei Wuxian.
You also have Wei Wuxian's relationship with Lan Wangji... which is kind of the classic trope of a chaos gremlin and ice king. Or the wildly creative outside-the-box thinker and the rigid type who lives and breathes the rules. I've realized I rather like that combination, since together they've got all. the. options. If a situation requires creativity and originality, you've got your chaos gremlin. If it requires more orthodox solutions (and the hard work and knowledge required to master a particular topic) you've got your expert.
So you have Wei Wuxian - trickster, wild and untamed, perfectly willing to break all 3000 of the Lan clan's rules, whether it means drinking alcohol or breaking curfew. And you have Lan Wangji, who was raised to abide by all 3000 of those rules. Who starts off rigid and inflexible and thinking that everything is black and white. (And who is very, very disturbed by his attraction to such a complete wild child as Wei Wuxian.)
In his first life, they never become a couple. Lan Wangji is too rulebound, too uncertain, too concerned about the dangerous path Wei Wuxian follows.
And Wei Wuxian? He's got a lot of other things going on. There was giving up his core (and trying to keep it secret), and a war...
And then the victors of the war went overboard in how they handled their defeated enemy, and Wei Wuxian wound up throwing everything over in order to protect those remnants. I would say 'his former enemies', but he got drawn in because a brother/sister of the other side had aided him back then (the sister was the one who actually did the core transfer).
So we have this 'almost lover' relationship (that's a great song, btw, that captures how painful it is when someone's an almost.)
Lan Wangji never really connects with Wei Wuxian. It started out with Wei Wuxian cheerfully imposing, and Lan Wangji denying. Then crap happened, Wei Wuxian stopped being the one to reach out, and the tables flipped. Except Lan Wangji rather sucks at reaching out, and didn't know what was really going on, and was too concerned about the dark path Wei Wuxian was choosing. So he mostly came across as scolding.
And then Wei Wuxian died, vilified by pretty much everyone. And Lan Wangji had 16 years to mourn and ask himself what went wrong.
When Wei Wuxian comes back, Lan Wangji seems willing to throw over everything and completely and utterly spoil him. Not that Wei Wuxian realizes (he's fairly oblivious through most of the story.)
He once dueled with Wei Wuxian over sneaking liquor in. 16 years later Lan Wangji keeps a secret stash on hand. Just in case.
There's a lot more to the story than that. Questions of blame, of the harsh world they lived in during their youth. Of family, found and lost. Of justice, and the lack thereof.
But this has already gone far enough for a quick break, so I'll leave it at that.
