The Untamed

 I've been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be good.  That's horribly unoriginal, I know.  And even more cliche is the sentiment that, as I've gotten older, it's gotten more complicated.  Anyone who reaches adulthood with any amount of reflection will experience the same, and I get that.  

However, there are some indications that the moral dilemmas our global society is currently facing are slightly novel.  We throw around phrases like "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism," but do we pause to reflect on exactly what that means?  That there's no option but for us to contribute to the world's and our own suffering?  (Picture here that episode of The Good Place where *spoilers* they realize no one has had a positive net good in decades.)

That knowledge can be pretty paralyzing.  It was nice when I believed right and wrong were clear-cut, when I thought working hard and doing all the right things would make the world a better place, that the rules were meant to help people, not to ostracize them.  

In my life, I've found myself on two extremes of moral/political poles, each time finding comfort in "being right," but also each time finding people who I agreed with being hateful (not rude, but actually full of hate and lack of empathy).  Turns out, no checklist of beliefs can make you actually care about people, no matter what each side tries to tell you.

Recently, I took a break from all that reflection when Netflix recommended to me a gay Chinese drama which was, in fact, exactly what I wanted to watch.  However, as is often the case when I think I'm abandoning my more serious pursuits to "do nothing," this wormhole just piled on another layer to the material of myself.  It offered no clear answers to the question of what it means to be good, but it made a pretty compelling argument that, whatever it is, the center of it is love.

The Untamed (Chen Qing Ling 陳請令）is a 50 episode series based on the novel Mo Dao Zu Shi by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu.  In the first two episodes I had no clue what was going on and almost stopped watching, but, quite honestly, I couldn't stop watching the lead actor Xiao Zhan, playing Wei Wuxian.  He was ridiculously expressive and charming, and it wasn't until I was completely obsessed with the show that I realized this actor is so popular fanfiction about him got AO3 banned in China.  I mean, he's that good.

So, yes, I found the lead actors WONDERFUL, and, yes, I'm a sucker for decidedly understated love stories (the leads' relationship isn't explicit because of Chinese censorship, but the novel it's based on is explicitly gay and it's very obvious in the series).  I was expecting to curl up on the couch and squee at the romance; I was not expecting for this show to make me think deeply about morality and love in the way it did.

What we have here is classic Brooke bait - the charming, bubbly, rule-breaking Wei Wuxian and the stern, stoic, but ultimately good Lan Wangji (played by Wang Yibo).  Lan Wangji must learn to be a little flexible, while Wei Wuxian must learn at least a little temperance.  What draws them together is my favorite thing to ever draw a couple together - equality.  The two men are the best spiritual cultivators (kind of like Paladin magic - religious and ancestral in nature) of their age group, and when they fight each other the first time they meet (hot), they both realize this.

But they are matches for each other in more than just skill.  Each is extremely intelligent and has a strong desire to do good in the world, an outpouring of natural empathy.  While Lan Wangji attempts to pursue goodness in the world through the strict discipline of his clan's teachings, following the rules that lead to goodness, Wei Wuxian pursues good based on his own inner-conscience, and just try to let a rule or leader stop him!  (Classic Lawful Good vs Chaotic Good)  Despite such seemingly opposing dispositions (Wei Wuxian much later in the series compares them to fire and ice), they are oddly similar.  Another character remarking on this similarity says, "when either of you are around, I feel like nothing bad can happen."

*spoilers ahead*

When an evil clan, the Wen clan, destroys Wei Wuxian's adopted clan and removes his adopted brother's golden core (the driving force behind the power to be a spiritual cultivator), Wei Wuxian finds a way to secretly (and painfully) give his brother his own core, leaving him, formerly the best, now powerless.  When the Wen clan throws him into an area of spiritual devastation no one has ever survived in, Wei Wuxian remerges three months later, no longer with spiritual cultivation power, but with a new, darker power - a power that goes against all the rules of the spiritual cultivation world, leaving the other characters and even us as viewers concerned.  Is he he good?  Is he evil?

When this happens, Lan Wangji is torn between trusting his soulmate with this new, dark power, and following not only the expectations of the other clans but also his own concerns about what this dark power might do to Wei Wuxian.  When the clans ban together to overthrow the evil Wen clan, Wei Wuxian is the only person to stand up for the innocent members of the clan and escapes with them into exile.  While Lan Wangji does not go with Wei Wuxian, he also doesn't stop him and works from inside the other clans to reach a reconciliation.

Ultimately, the standoff cannot, well, stand.  The "good" and "orthodox" clans will always need a scapegoat, and who better than the dark new patriarch of the evil Wen clan?  Everything comes crashing down in a giant battle where Wei Wuxian gives up his lonely pursuit of what is right, questioning if he really even was right anymore, and throws himself off a cliff.  BUT - there is no body found, and Lan Wangji spends 16 years looking for his soulmate.

16 years later, and through some complicated magic I don't quite understand, Wei Wuxian is back, and this time Lan Wangji will not let his reputation or anything the other clans say get in the way of his standing beside Wei Wuxian.  After 16 years, Wei Wuxian has become more subdued, not so confident that every whim of his is just, and Lan Wangji has become more flexible, refusing to let any rules keep him from supporting the one he loves.  Both men have had to question every aspect of themselves and those around them to parse what is good and what is evil, but, ultimately, they decide the one thing they don't have to question is each other.

Apart from our main characters, the surrounding story is also full of this questioning of good and evil.   The early episodes have a very clear-cut villain, an evil clan leader, but he ends up being the least interesting.  Later we see evil remerge in several characters whose evil motivations stem from their ostracization from the high society of the clan cultivators.  True, they are harnessing dark magic for nefarious purposes, but would they have done it if the clan cultivators were truly just and good?

It would be nice if good and evil were as simple as seeing which characters wore black and which white, which magic shimmered gold and which smoked black, but sometimes sacrificing the golden facade of good is the only way to truly be it.

We are even left with an example of a character choosing wrong - a foil to our protagonists (well, there are several, but this one in particular), Lan Wangji's brother, Lan Xichen believes in and loves the character Meng Yao, even with mounting evidence of truly heinous acts.  Lan Xichen is wrong, and Meng Yao must be taken down, but is he really wrong for choosing to love first?

And what does choosing to love even mean?  In the show we see several heterosexual couples meet disastrous ends.  Imbalance in power, lack of understanding, and moral cowardice in the face of societal expectations lead to heartbreak and worse.  The couples that rise above this are the gay ones (Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji meet an older pair of men in their adventures who serve as a model for them), the ones that risk it all to live outside of society's expectations.  The combination of Wei Wuxian's moral courage to defy expectations and Lan Wangji's ability to steadfastly endure anything for what is right ultimately lead to a much more fulfilling relationship than those who cravenly followed the rules.

If Wei Wuxian's "crafty tricks" or dark magic is a metaphor for "alternative lifestyles," it's an alternative maybe we should all look into, dark as it may seem.  As he says himself, "I don't care about anybody's open road, my only choice is a log bridge to devil. If there's a hope, then let's move.”

Love and morality both require bravery and, often, stupid "wu liao" (a favorite saying of Lan Wangji's) hope.  So, let's move.  我們走！