superborb | Ramblings on emotional through lines in CQL vs MDZS

tl;dr mixing and matching from CQL and novel canon is fun, but there really are significant differences in the emotional and moral lives of the characters so there is a limit to how much mixing can be done

I've been sitting on this post for a while, so I'm just going to kick it out the door. As always, anyone can do whatever they want and headcanon whatever they want.

To me, the biggest difference is the (potentially censorship driven) playing down of WWX's crimes. Actually, I am still thinking of the Qi Hun director discussing how they had to make changes to the Hikaru no Go characters so they'd seem more realistic in live action form. Even leaving aside any changes explicitly driven by censorship, I think the interiority of WWX's thoughts in the novel would be difficult to show in live action form.

In any case, in the novel, the story really goes, WWX loses control and kills tons of people through massive hubris; he then finally destroys half the Yin Tiger Tally and dies in the process. WWX really does perform true necromancy and defile dead bodies, which prevents them from moving on and is a huge cultural taboo.

WWX actually does the things he is accused of, even if at a smaller scale than the accusations. IMO, this makes the message against mob mentality stronger when everyone turns against JGY at the end, bc WWX is guilty and everyone forgets this, vs WWX is not actually guilty and is exonerated. (Though, CQL adds the human targets in Phoenix Mountain and WWX tossing the Yin Tiger Tally for people to fight over, both of which do not make anyone come out looking good.)

A major theme in CQL is how LWJ is right to love WWX bc WWX is morally correct, and LWJ recognizing this is how he knows they're soulmates. Contrast to novel canon, where LWJ is in an irrational, this-above-all love with WWX. This point is where I think mixing the canons becomes kind of strange in fic. You can't have the irrational love in a mostly CQL fic, bc that's /not/ the basis for their relationship. Conversely, WWX is /morally wrong/ in novel canon, so a mostly novel based fic has to acknowledge that.

Turning their relationship from text to subtext also means that picking up WWX's obliviousness to LWJ's feelings from the novel (where LWJ def acted like he hated him!!) and putting it into CQL makes no sense. In order to have it be subtext, their relationship is much more strongly developed from the beginning. In CQL, they call each other soulmates! They have a solid friendship at the least! They're pulled apart by outside circumstances, and putting the idea that WWX thinks LWJ hates him into CQL is a bit-- ill fitting.

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From:

rekishi

They're pulled apart by outside circumstances, and putting the idea that WWX thinks LWJ hates him into CQL is a bit-- ill fitting.

I guess the only way in which you could get away with it right post-resurrection-pre-Dafan-Mountain meetup is that WWX is risen from the dead. Not, of course in the larger context of who they were to each other pre-Nightless City.

I have yet to read the novel (I know, I know...), but to my understanding from other people, the changes to WWX' crimes were indeed censorship driven (as is calling the fierce corpses 'puppets' [caveat, no clue what it is in the Chinese original]). I would honestly prefer if WWX was actually guilty in CQL as well, it makes some things a bit more clear cut. I thought the second flautist was a cop-out, but I guess they can't have the main character that morally grey.

I've seen it rationalized that LWJ never claims not to be driven by favoritism or bias, but I will need to read the novel (and have the disadvantage of being limited to the translators word choices) in order to have my own opinion there.

Great post, thanks! I never quite know how to deal with the fault lines between canon and adaptation (in general, not just here) and this is a nice analysis.

From:

superborb

I mean, I do think it was probably censorship, but it's also impossible to 100% confirm, so I didn't want to state too definitively.

I do think LWJ is less morally upright in the novel, bc he actually injures the clan elders etc etc. In some ways it's more interesting, in others, not so much. (I do prefer the relationship in CQL, even if the overall morality is less interesting.)

From:

rekishi

No no, perfectly understandable. And I only have hearsay too!

He probably injured some people in CQL too, since LXC says 'he fought everyone'. But yes, of course from an intra-sect political perspective what he did was bad.

I like the CQL relationship a lot! I also think it needs to be seen distinctly from the one in the novel even though there is probably some overlap (especially...post canon).

I find the mix and match quite interesting, although as you say it can't be done completely irregardless of consequences, although I find it always interesting that some poeple say they can't differentiate the story when it is in fact different. I need to get around to that thing but with the Coldfire reread coming up that would be overcommitted.

<3

From:

superborb

Also, everyone is usually hesitant to say anything about censorship outright-- thinking about a second hand convo about an animation house producer who was interviewing for an academic position, but was unwilling to concede or discuss any impact censorship had on their work.

Oh true, but yeah, less specific damage.

From:

rekishi

I wonder if CQL, aside from censorship considerations, has tried to make the characters more like 'real' people. Not in the sense as that cultivators are real in the magic sense but more in the sense as that these people could exist under these specific circumstances rather than being obvious characters of a story.

I don't think I'm expressing this well. -_-

From:

superborb

Oh yeah, definitely! There's things that you can get away with in novel or even donghua form that you can't get away with in live action...

From:

rekishi

Yes that too! But also like, they're more relatable as people. Which makes sense in a live action show, because you can give people a face, literally.

I think Wang Yibo is a good example, no matter how well something is written or drawn, there is very little you can do to replace an actual human face with actual human expressions especially when we consider the amount of microexpression acting the man has had to do for LWJ.

From:

superborb

Yeah, otoh, in novels, you can really draw attention to some aspect of expression / force an interpretation! But overall, you just can't describe everything as thoroughly

From:

rekishi

Oh yes of course, every medium has it's advantages, that definitely goes without saying. Just wondering about some of the creative choices made on characterization and relationships etc. Mostly because I do love watching Wang Yibo act with his face. ^^;

From:

shati

I agree, although I mostly think of the mix and match as the actual events, and then you have to figure out which personalities/attitudes/motivations make sense for the events you picked. (Although you can definitely end up with combinations of events that are hard to explain by any means...)

Have you seen any multiple-realities fic where show characters meet novel characters, like multiple-realities style? I haven't, but there's so much.

From:

superborb

OOH that would be cool! I haven't seen any either! I suspect it's hard bc you'd need a really good grasp on how to make subtle characterization differences apparent

From:

shati

Yeah, it would definitely be hard, and I don't even know if it could make a good story -- I wondered because your post reminded me I mostly like WWX better in the novel and LWJ better in the show, and imagining them in the same story makes my head hurt. ಠ_ಠ

From:

narie

Aaaah this is such a struggle indeed, especially because there are things that I love best from both versions, but I agree they're not easy to reconcile at all. Also due to the limitations of WWX's POV in the novel vs the omniscient gaze of the show, LWJ becomes far more knowable, which often means that version of him ends up in MDZS canon works. I find his emotional arc far in CQL more satisfying, too; again perhaps because it is so much more visible. In the novel he is a failure at communicating his feelings even in the present, whereas in the show he may not speak them aloud but it's clear that he and WWX know where they stand (and I digress but why there aren't more fics set in the ep 42/43 interlude is an eternal mystery to me, and also a casualty of the streaming age), even if they are choosing not to speak about it. And WWX is far calmer and more nuanced in CQL too, in the present-day; much more emotionally mature than in the novel (which in some ways I think sets him up for some post-canon awkwardness, as he tries to make a place for himself in the world, because he's far more sensitive to all the rejection and loathing that comes his way, and also less deserving of it, but that's a whole fic)

I think as a character he could still work if he had killed all those people through his necromancy in CQL, or rather, I think that his character arc in the show has room for more pointed hubris during the Sunshot Campaign (tho I imagine he'd be even more traumatised in the present-day arc). But I guess we're meant to see Wen Chao and Wen Zhuliu's deaths as showing that he does have that same capacity for cruelty and viciousness as in the novel, he just never called upon to use it.

WWX's crossing of the line, and his moral ambiguity in the novel makes him fascinating, especially as the focus of LWJ's love there, because he's such a straight-laced man and he just... shortcircuits completely and falls in love with this 100% unsuitable rat necromancer and will do anything for him. I do honestly think the Lan Sect was at a complete loss for how to deal with him after he came out of seclusion and refused to repent for anything. They were not prepared for him; they just wrote him off, gave him that house in the hills and a small salary and just let him go off killing his demons and not bothering (with) him at all.

I was rewatching episode 1 (and 33) yesterday and the scramble that ensues for the seal when WWX tosses it makes it clear they're all awful people, and makes his decision to throw himself off more poignant. We see Yao and Ouyang and all other sect leaders scrabbling madly for this tool, laying their hypocrisy bare. All they want is power. There's no space for him in the cultivation world.

From:

superborb

Yes! Par of this is definitely the adaptation requiring a POV change. It's just so much more obvious what LWJ is feeling, even if they didn't make the choice to make them better at communication.

I do wish they had kept more of the hubris, which would still allow him to be "morally good" while giving him a more nuanced flaw.

Something something parallels with Qingheng-jun?? But yeah, LWJ going completely off on his own looking for the chaos is very different from what is probably expected of him...

I had some thoughts that didn't quite crystallize about how WWX choosing to commit suicide instead of trying to reverse some of the damage he did with his death is An Interesting Choice. I don't think I really understand what his motivations are in that scene. Yes, the pointed reminder that the other cultivators are just power hungry, (going after the tool they've derided!), but is that really... the right thing to do.......... after all the themes of upholding morals!

From:

narie

I do think the show takes their romance and relationship far more seriously than the book, and that includes making them both a bit more mature. It's a change I really appreciate, TBH.

But the cliff scene is fascinating, because it's only once Jiang Cheng fails to kill WWX that he really freaks out and twists away. This morning I had a moment of wondering if he's doing it because he has a sudden moment of fear that together, LWJ and JC can pull him up, when he very clearly doesn't want to be alive any longer. His sister is dead (his fault), the Wens are dead (his fault), and everything he touches turns to ruin. I can see how he decides that he can't keep going. And I think by ep 42/43 he's coming to terms with it and deciding to carry on but like I said I wish it got more attention in fic.

From:

superborb

I do wonder if drama adaptations tend to try and make the characters more mature (based on what they think an audience would prefer?)

But yeah, in order to have a subtextual relationship and romance, it needs to be a lot more thought out than just a textual romance!

Yep, the addressing of how he's definitely actively suicidal in the drama is really rare; I wonder if people just think the long period of being dead wore away the edges? Or they just don't want to think about it

From:

narie

I haven't watched enough cdrama adaptations to be able to comment, but in MDZS/CQL the difference is certainly striking. And yeah, to make the romance between them work without actually showing it, it has to be a lot more heartfelt and less WWX trying to gay chicken LWJ like he does in the novel.

I think it's a very tough topic to address sensitively, so I understand leaving it out. One of my fav fics does have LWJ breaking down and asking him if he still wants to die and that moment sticks with me on every reread, it rings true and sad to me. LWJ being haunted by WWX being dead instead of WWX having jumped to his death in front of him when LWJ was trying to save him, I think, are two very different things.

From:

superborb

Oh, even in CQL, we really don't get to see a lot of LWJ's interior thoughts, do we. We get the immediate surrounding time of the YLLZ era, but not very much how he felt about that a decade later after he's more settled and sure of himself.

From:

jo_lasalle

I generally concur with your breakdown of the differences between the novel and the drama. (And I imprinted so hard on the drama version of LWJ's love for WWX that the novel, while cute, never really had a chance to get me as invested.)

I find it interesting that you've found a lot of mixing and matching like that in fic. I see some intentional fusion / accidental bleedover too, though mostly either on plot elements, or on, for want of a better word, the more yaoi seme style LWJ characterization. I haven't read a lot of fic that felt like it was blurring the emotional through-lines like you're describing, though now I'm wondering if that also has to do with my own preconceptions. (i.e. if the LWJ characterization doesn't actively clash with drama characterization, I just assume it's drama verse, and the "this-above-all" love is the earned one from the second half of the drama.)

Turning their relationship from text to subtext also means that picking up WWX's obliviousness to LWJ's feelings from the novel (where LWJ def acted like he hated him!!) and putting it into CQL makes no sense. In order to have it be subtext, their relationship is much more strongly developed from the beginning. In CQL, they call each other soulmates! They have a solid friendship at the least! They're pulled apart by outside circumstances, and putting the idea that WWX thinks LWJ hates him into CQL is a bit-- ill fitting.

Mild disagree on the obliviousness. I agree WWX isn't as hopelessly oblivious as in the novel, but he still a) hits the Mian Mian stupidity peak, b) IMO has a lot of heteronormative assumptions going on that would mess with his perception of LWJ and c) crucially, post-timejump, there's the convo in the temple where it's clear he still doesn't know LWJ is with him because the dude is in love with him. (That thing where he's like, 'OH, you keep supporting me because you feel RESPONSIBLE for something that happened to me!' or similar.)

I would say, though, that outright "he hates me" only fits with CQL in a very limited timespan, when WWX is at his worst mental health-wise.

From:

superborb

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of borrowing plot elements which makes sense! I do see a lot of blurring of the characterizations though, especially when it's set in a vague mix of the two; like, the author never made a decision about which world it was set in?

I think it's more when authors try to pull in the "LWJ hates me!" thing, bc while WWX might not know the depth of LWJ's feelings, he also definitely knows that LWJ doesn't hate him lol. Like, misunderstanding that it's romantic, I can see, misunderstanding that it's even a friendship, I cannot.

From:

jo_lasalle

This is genuine curiosity - is this drama-based Modern AU, or do you see the "he hates me!" a lot in drama-based canon fic? (I have a somewhat odd set of likes and dislikes that means that even though I read pretty widely from the tag, i.e. not just based on recs, I might totally have a skewed view of what's out there in general.)

From:

superborb

I actually don't read a lot of modern AU, so it's mostly drama based canon!

From:

jo_lasalle

HUH! Fascinating. Thanks for elaborating!

From:

unrelaxing

A major theme in CQL is how LWJ is right to love WWX bc WWX is morally correct, and LWJ recognizing this is how he knows they're soulmates. Contrast to novel canon, where LWJ is in an irrational, this-above-all love with WWX. This point is where I think mixing the canons becomes kind of strange in fic. You can't have the irrational love in a mostly CQL fic, bc that's /not/ the basis for their relationship. Conversely, WWX is /morally wrong/ in novel canon, so a mostly novel based fic has to acknowledge that.

This is interesting to me from somebody who hasn't read the novel, because in CQL it can read like LXC becomes this character through his blindness of JGY's crimes, and through his near-decision to die with him.

I do think, though, that CQL's strength re the mob mentality message is the fact that WWX didn't commit the crimes he's accused of, and it's entirely through gossip and accusations and etc. that a lot of the lore on WWX's crimes is built on-ish!

From:

superborb

Mmm, but I think WWX was framed for those crimes pretty well, so it would be hard even for an objective bystander to know that he was innocent!

From:

issenllo

I grapple with that too, partly because I read the translation of the novel and didn't like it... I know. >_> Partly because LWJ turned out be so... seme-like, and it may have been all because of censorship, but the mutual trust and friendship between both of them in Untamed was more my speed.

Another thing that I prefer is Untamed's interpretation that WWX comes back in his own body, rather than Mo Xuanyu's (of course this was due to the need for actor recognition, but). I like the tension that this Yiling Laozu was the same Yiling Laozu, the one that killed loads of people, and just because he's all jokey now but doesn't mean he isn't stil deadly. I like that he doesn't get to whitewash what he's done just by reappearing with a new body. I mean, his stance during that scene during the second siege of the Burial Mounds could so easily be seen as sinister, when he starts throwing threats around.

(I guess the morality in such shows, like in wuxia shows, is pretty rubbery: you get to kill as many people as you like so long as you can vaguely justify it: they were trying to kill me first for being the evil Yiling Laozu! Though they sanitised it a lot in the Untamed. This explained (to me) why LWJ didn't just flatout kill JC.)

From:

superborb

Aha, yeah, I did also prefer the relationship in CQL bc I tend to prefer the friends to lovers over obsessive love storyline

Mm but I feel like there is something scary about YLLZ being able to take over someone else's body too.

From:

issenllo

Mm yeah, but WWX as YLLZ is plenty scary all by himself, heh. A bit of a pity he wasn't even more badass when he comes back - but that brazen "Did I kill your family?" (second siege) was in retrospect, really awful. Like it didn't matter to him.

From:

superborb

Yeah, it's odd, bc CQL nominally is making WWX less morally gray, but then does things like that where he really callously treats people and it's a bit incongruous

From:

issenllo

I interpreted that remark as him going for shock value, but yep, it is undenied that he has killed hundreds if not thousands. It's why Mo Xuanyu summoned him, after all.

From:

lirazel

From:

superborb

Would be curious what your thoughts are! I didn't closely reread the novel, so I am sure I missed a lot of things

From:

responsibledurian

Random passerby here, I agree with this a lot, especially the bit about lwj's character and his love for wwx. It puts dark lwj in a new perspective for me, there's no other way to make him irrationally in love with wwx and stick to cql canon other than to make him dark.

I agree that the most significant change is probably making wwx an innocent victim of other people's nefarious plotting as opposed to an arrogant mass-murdering necromancer whose redemption was destroying himself with the tiger seal. It's his character setting and the story is framed around him, so any change to his character will unavoidably have a rippling effect on everything else.

I personally find that easier to digest though, it's one big change and cause and effect can be kept track of a lot more easily than all the smaller changes they made. I think a lot of things that at first appear as surface-level changes really inform the characters a huge amount, like it's kind of amazing, and everything can be traced back to censorship in one way or another. For example, wwx has to constantly swoon in lwj's arms because it's the only censorship-passable excuse to rub their bodies together, but it makes his character come across as more dependent, less in control, more vulnerable, and he just has a weaker mental fortitude in cql than in the novel overall. I also feel like cql doesn't do a very good job of depicting lwj as a man of action, like of course he can't do the "action" that he does in the novel, but he spends so much time making googly eyes at wwx that if cql was an actual BL drama, his inaction doesn't make sense without an underlying cause in-narrative. I often see it get explained as a self-expression related shortcoming or an imprisoning wwx phobia on lwj's part and stupidity or self-esteem issues on wwx's part and it can be jarring reading cross-tagged fic sometimes because these clash with their novel characterisation. So I think people subconsciously notice these gaps and automatically fill them in with whatever's closest, whether it's a headcanon or bits of original canon.

(Also I'm especially fascinated with the episode 2 transition, even something as small as that, with wwx fainting (can he even stay upright without leaning on lwj anymore lol) and saying he wants to go back to Lotus Pier ends up being a huge difference just because of how much it informs the character, same for lwj taking him to the Cloud Recesses off-screen, it makes them so different from the novel already, it's amazing.)

Anyway, I'm very curious about what Qi Hun's said about Hikaru no Go cause I haven't come across it, but I'm not sure the cql production team approached it from a "How do we make these characters more realistic" perspective. I'm learning more towards just going with the flow of the censored setting (from what I've heard no BL, no reincarnation, no ghosts, no zombies, no violence, and yeah, probably no villainous mass-murdering main character too, since the same change has been made to the donghua) for half of it and flying by the seat of their pants for the rest. I think they wanted to play it extra safe and aimed for having their cake and eating it too with the whole best friends and here's fanservice thing, because there's a bts bit where they talk about how wangxian's relationship can be seen as romantic only by novel readers and would be seen as platonic by general audiences (I think this was in relation to wq/wwx). So this makes me think they didn't write the script with a plan for a coherent romantic through line for the characters, just the rivals to sticky best friends plot (at least until fans started making a fuss about the wq/wwx romance and then who knows). As an adaptation, I think Hikaru no Go does a better job as well, it's a bigger production and it doesn't need to make any of the censorship considerations cql does, so the core which is the hikaru-sai and hikaru-akira relationships is the same. I suppose it depends on what a person is looking for, like whether the overall plot and themes are conveyed, whether the major storybeats make it in and so on, but I've always been more interested in character-driven stories, so for cql I'd have preferred something more faithful to the original characters. That being said, I don't think the team set out to adapt the novel too faithfully either, I think their goals were 1) get the broad strokes on screen, 2) have wwx and lwj appear in as many shots as possible and 2.5) have reasons to smoosh them together.

Anyway, sorry, I think I went on a bit of a tangent, this looks really long in the preview. I hope my novel bias is not too obvious, I really like both, haha. But I think fics tend to follow the same formula as well. There's been a trend of authors focusing a lot more on getting their story on rather than being too concerned with canon since ao3 rebranded fanfics as transformative rather than derivative, so I don't think we'll see very many cross-canon fics accounting in the differences anytime soon.