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imaginaryelle · 4 years

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I just re-watched THAT scene and a thought hit me: Lan Wangji just stands there watching Wei Wuxian fall from the cliff... Why doesn't he jump onto his sword and swoops down to at least try to save him? Or is he all out of spiritual power? Or does it simply take to long to start and rev the sword? Not saying it's a plothole, I was just wondering...

I mean, I think this is a fair question and I know I’ve seen it discussed elsewhere. I just can’t seem to find the post or remember if any conclusions were reached, so I’m excited to dive into this. As always if anyone has insights or headcanons they want to add on to this, please do.

Because I like pictures, here’s ep 33 Lan Wangji holding his sword and staring in horror as Wei Wuxian falls (what is Jiang Cheng thinking? Who knows.)

Why isn’t Lan Wangji doing anything? He just stands there for long enough that Jiang Cheng backs away and leaves him on the outcropping, all alone.

Poor guy.

Okay, moving on. I think there are at least two ways to approach this, and one is from the production perspective (since this cliff encounter is a thing that only happens in the drama) and the other is from the in-universe perspective (aka, Doyalist vs Watsonian), so I’m going to look at both.

For the production pov, there’s really only one scene (I think) where we see anyone actually riding a sword in the drama, and it’s when they’re confronting the water demon/abyss in Caiyi (ep 5). At that point there’s no prep time, everyone just jumps up and then steps onto their swords (which is actually even more ridiculous to me than the image had already been in the novel because I thought they were at least riding on the scabbard but no! Riding the bare blade like a skateboard. I love it.)

How majestic.

Lan Xichen is the only graceful and cool person here. The only other sword-riding shot in this scene that shows more of a person’s body than their head and shoulders is when Lan Wangji drags three people into the air at once and we get a brief glimpse of Su She’s feet kicking wildly.

So, based on this scene’s execution and the general scarcity of other sword-flying scenes (even with the Nightless City confrontation, Lan Wangji just flies in with his quqin, no sword under his feet), my out-of-universe theory would be a combination of budget and aesthetic at play. If the production can get by on wire work with super extra long jumps that don’t seem to require actually riding the sword, they will. It’s logistically simpler, and it frankly looks better on screen. It’s also a staple of the entire film genre, whereas this sword thing is not, so the crew and effects people would have more experience with it as well. (In-universe I have a lot of questions about Wei Wuxian’s retained ability to do those jumps. Do they not use spiritual energy? Does he still have spiritual energy, just not a golden core? Is he using resentful energy instead? How does this work?)

From a more story-side view on the production, they’re working against the fact that they changed the plot to add Lan Wangji’s presence at Wei Wuxian’s death and they want to capitalize on that relationship, so having Wei Wuxian knock himself over the edge as he destroys the seal (or something where he steps back as Jiang Cheng rushes him or any other number of possibilities) no longer fits with the emotional beats they’re trying to hit. Also they really need Wei Wuxian to die here for the plot to function. Having Lan Wangji mount a sword and swoop down to try and save him again just adds extra complications and delays the desired outcome of WWX = dead and LWJ = distraught. In that sense, it really does start to look like a plot hole, because it feels like they’re ignoring the capabilities of a character in order to get the result they need. I do think they try to address this, but since multiple people have this question and I personally had to watch the scene more than once while actively thinking about it to notice all the relevant details… the efficacy of those efforts is maybe questionable. (Also like.. why does Jiang Cheng wait three days to go look for Wei Wuxian’s remains? Why is anyone waiting at all? Why is anyone surprised they can’t find a corpse when the visual we get implies Wei Wuxian is falling into lava? There are many, many questions that can be asked here and for a lot of them the out-of-universe answer is probably going to resemble “because the plot/original source material demands it” without much helpful in-universe support.)

In-universe (and probably more pertinent to your question), yeah, Lan Wangji could be low on spiritual power (and upon rewatch, I think he genuinely is). He could be physically exhausted as well as injured, too. For someone who carried three people in two hands 2-3 years ago and canonically has only gotten stronger since, he sure is having trouble pulling one person up over the side of a cliff. And that exhaustion really isn’t outside the realm of possibility, no matter how strong and powerful he is. He just traveled pretty far! If the theories that he found A-Yuan before coming to Nightless City are true (since he’s not injured in those flashbacks), he likely spent a ton of spiritual power even before getting into this battle where he first confronted Wei Wuxian and then started fighting pretty much everyone on the field by himself. Then, in a moment of fear-induced distraction, he gets injured! He’s actively bleeding! So yeah. He could definitely just be physically exhausted.

All that blood loss is not a good sign, and it actually speeds up (visually) as he expends this effort. We can see his arm trembling all throughout this scene, and then his grip slips (thus the face). Even after that he slips again, not losing his grip, but losing the strength to hold himself up at all. In the end he’s literally just lying on the rock depending on gravity to keep him in place and putting everything else he has into holding on to Wei Wuxian. He can’t do more than glare in Jiang Cheng’s general direction and tell him to stop.

Bichen is right there. If he had spiritual power left, I think he’d probably be sending his sword out to block Jiang Cheng’s angle of attack. That, or he needs two hands to accomplish such an action (It doesn’t require hand motions later/in the future, but maybe he develops that skill precisely because of these events). So yes. He’s physically exhausted. He’s spiritually exhausted. But I think there’s more going on here, too: He’s also at the end of his rope emotionally, and that’s how he ends up standing there, horrified and unmoving.

He’s had a rough time recently: Everyone hates his best and only friend/love of his life, and he has to listen to them call for his death/judgement at fancy dinner party meetings on and off for over a year. No one will listen to him when he tries to present a different view. Even his own brother is (not unreasonably) much more concerned about Lan Wangji’s personal safety than what his silence on this issue is costing him emotionally, and his uncle is distinctly unsupportive of the friendship from the beginning.

I think Lan Wangji spends a lot of time questioning his upbringing in those months (we see him actually verbally do so when he’s punished after Wei Wuxian’s death, but I think it starts well before that). What is right and wrong? Who decides it, and how? When does justice and holding people responsible for their actions turn over into unjust persecution? What is true, and what is a lie, and how much does that matter when weighed against social/political/spiritual harmony? These are concepts that are buried pretty deeply in the Lan Sect’s teachings but the world is twisting all of them before his eyes, and I have to think that takes a toll on him. Additionally, just as things start looking up (they let him write the letter to invite Wei Wuxian to Jin Ling’s celebration! They listen to him, other people support his idea!), he has to deal with the facts that:

1) His best friend who he’s in love with just killed a bunch of people, including Jin ZiXuan and some of Lan Wangji’s own Sect brothers.

2) Wei Wuxian is clearly losing control of his resentment-based cultivation path, and is thus personally in danger on a spiritual level, and

3) Everyone now wants to kill Wei Wuxian again, possibly even more than they did before, and anyone who supports Wei Wuxian is an enemy of the entire cultivation world.

Later in the series, Lan Wangji says he regrets that he wasn’t at Wei Wuxian’s side at Nightless City. That he didn’t support him, despite what we see of him trying to help Wei Wuxian find Jiang Yanli and then, after she dies, stop him from killing himself. To me, this could very easily imply that Lan Wangji is still trying to walk a tightrope in those scenes, or perhaps trying to be a bridge. He’s deliberately not choosing a distinct side, because he refuses to hate and reject Wei Wuxian, but he’s also refusing to declare open support. He’s acting entirely on his own, in a balancing act between friendship and love vs his family, his entire life’s teachings, and all of his society. Certainly I find that sort of situation exhausting, and I’ve never had to do it for something so high-stakes or large-scale.

Then there’s the actual cliff scene itself, where he’s visibly desperate. How intense does an emotion have to be for Lan Wangji to so clearly show it?

Wei Ying, he says, come back. He knows Wei Wuxian is breaking down. He at the very least guesses that he’s going to do something wild like step off that outcropping, which is why he follows him in the first place. But he has no idea what to do, so he tries the same thing he’s been trying for years: Come with me. Let me help you. This is a bridge, and he’s offering to help Wei Wuxian cross it. But just like every other time he’s tried it since the Sunshot Campaign ended, it doesn’t work.

Note that Lan Wangji actually is flying here, without the sword, so if he doesn’t have any spiritual power when Jiang Cheng shows up, this is probably a last, desperate burst to go with this last, desperate act.

I don’t think he really has a plan here. Not a new one, anyway. This is a still a plea of Let me help you. And, notably, Wei Wuxian doesn’t accept his help.

Not once during this whole scene does Wei Wuxian reach up with his free hand or try to help Lan Wangji help him in any way. He smiles, and he says: Lan Zhan, let me go. Because he doesn’t want a bridge. He doesn’t want to go back. Honestly it’s a pretty explicit and heartbreaking message: Lan Wangji’s offer of help is not enough to make Wei Wuxian want to stay alive. Not right now. He needs more than that. He’s lost too much to believe, right now, that anyone is going to choose him and his side, or that he’s worth that effort. And to be clear, Lan Wangji isn’t even offering that in this situation. Wei Wuxian is one slippery handgrip away from death, and Lan Wangji is still not saying “You, I choose you.” From anything Wei Wuxian can be expected to infer, his offer here is no different than it’s ever been: let me show you the way back to the right path. Let me help you fit back into the world the way you used to. And Wei Wuxian can’t do that; he has no golden core, it’s literally impossible even if the rest of the world would let him try. But at this point he doesn’t want to go back either. He doesn’t even want to try. That world hates him, and willfully misunderstands him, and has taken too many people from him now for it to be worth staying in. He wants to die.

And then Jiang Cheng arrives.

Wei Wuxian’s reaction to his brother’s presence is to smile, say his name, and just–accept his hatred. He closes his eyes and waits for the sword to fall even as Lan Wangji calls for Jiang Cheng to stop. The only time he shows distress between stepping back off the cliff and his actual death is when Jiang Cheng twists his sword and compromises the stability of the outcropping so that Lan Wangji is also in danger.

I think it’s possible that if Jiang Cheng had also reached for him and tried to pull him back up, things might have gone differently. Maybe that would have been enough to alter Wei Wuxian’s thinking. But as it is, when Wei Wuxian falls, he falls with his limbs relaxed and a smile on his face. There’s no flailing and screaming like when he was thrown into the Burial Mounds (in ep 33. There’s some arm-waving in ep 1). And I think that moment of him pushing Lan Wangji back and then letting go, more than anything, is what stops Lan Wangji in his tracks, because Wei Wuxian could have saved himself. He had strength and energy left. Enough to push Lan Wangji up and back and nearly to a standing position. He could have accepted Lan Wangji’s help, easily. But he didn’t, because he wanted to die, despite all the effort and inner turmoil Lan Wangji has gone through on his behalf (most of which Wei Wuxian doesn’t know about but, still).

That’s a pretty serious emotional kick in the head. Lan Wangji cannot ignore, at this point, that even if he did have any physical or spiritual energy left, Wei Wuxian doesn’t want to be saved. And that’s when we get this face (actually from ep 1):

He has nothing left. He has at this point spent over a year, maybe two, trying to save someone who, when it came down to the final moment, didn’t want to be saved. There’s nothing more he can do, in this state of exhaustion and despair, and it wouldn’t matter if he tried.

Personally, I think he looks like he’s about to be sick, and I don’t think it’s just the image of Wei Wuxian falling and dying that’s working on him here. It’s also the knowledge that he fucked up. He didn’t do enough, or more accurately, didn’t do the right things, in order to encourage Wei Wuxian to keep fighting for himself or anyone else (I’m not saying this is a healthy or reasonable thought, I just think it’s a thought he’s having). And I think this realization plays directly into how he treats Wei Wuxian when he comes back sixteen years later. He knows that questioning Wei Wuxian on his path of cultivation doesn’t go where he wants it to, so he doesn’t do it. This time is going to be different. He’ll break rules. He’ll drink alcohol. He doesn’t scold Wei Wuxian for making dumb, selfless decisions like transferring the curse mark from Jin Ling’s leg to his own, he just accepts it and expresses concern over Wei Wuxian’s well being. He stops asking if he can help and starts just doing it: Wei Wuxian can’t walk so he’ll carry him. Wei Wuxian needs someone to speak for him, so Lan Wangji will do that, with his brother and with the whole cultivation world. And then we come to this:

This is exactly the same move. Wei Wuxian will protect Lan Wangji, but not himself.

But.

Lan Wangji is no longer trying to be a bridge. He’s not going to hold out his hand for Wei Wuxian to accept or disregard. He’s crossed over to be on Wei Wuxian’s side. And that’s what makes the difference.

#lakritzwolf #cql meta #the untamed #chen qing ling #wangxian #lan wangji #wei wuxian #possibly i got a bit carried away #but this was fun #tw: blood #tw: suicide #in the novel lwj makes that change before wwx dies #and is thwarted by a combination #of wwx's breakdown and his own clan #but the drama cut that scene #so it had to happen after #long post #so long #seriously

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