《陈情令》aka《魔道祖师》aka MDZS aka The Untamed... kill me

[cashew]

OK, first, The Untamed is a horrible translation of the Chinese title. I'm seriously offended. It completely fails to capture the original title's meaning, which is something like (excuse the terrible translation) "by the order of suppressed/hidden/old emotions", with a metaphorical meaning of "enslavement to unspeakable desire". Personally, I would've gone with a title such as "Entangled".

Next, uh, I was dragged into watching both the cartoon/anime MDZS and the live action The Untamed by a friend who was curious why this thing has taken over the English speaking fandom. I was wrong. This series is not a Wuxia. It's straight up folkloric fantasy. (Edit to add: tanithryudo says it's Xianxia, which I'm going to note here because she's better at this stuff than I am.) Allow me to go on a tangent and quickly explain Chinese period drama tropes.

Modern Chinese period drama comes from a long history of historical storytelling and novel writing. Almost all of the Chinese historical dramas were adapted from written novels, both historical and modern. (I'm actually hard pressed to think of an exception at the moment.) So, to talk about the gradation of historical accuracy in Chinese period drama, one must understand the story categories.

In order of most historical to least historical, it goes something like this:
正史 ➡ 野史 ➡ 戏说 ➡ 武侠 ➡ 神魔
There are probably other genres, but the majority of the Chinese historical stories fit somewhere in there.

正史 (Zheng Shi): AKA Novelized History. These are stories where the author considers their writing to be truly historical, often well researched, but not without authorial bias. Sometimes things get a little...iffy, but the intent is to accurately retell the historical events with slight embellishments for dramatic purposes. Stuff like the movie Apollo 13 would be categorized under this genre. The classic Chinese example of this is《史记》(Records of the Grand Historian).

野史 (Ye Shi): AKA Romance of... These are stories where the author isn't trying to retell the historical events accurately. The audience is also not expecting historical accuracy. The story is set in an explicit historical period, the main characters are all real historical figures, and the actual historical events are the major plot points that got woven into a narrative for entertainment purposes. Sometimes, the story would incorporate supernatural elements depending on the time it was written. (Less so in modern novels.) Shakespeare's Henry V would fit here. The classic Chinese example of this is《三国演义》(Romance of the Three Kingdoms).

戏说 (Xi Shuo): AKA Legend of... These stories deviate from historical events greatly and inject a lot of fictional drama. However, the main characters are usually real historical people. Their feats, achievements, relationships, and sometimes even their titles might be completely made up. Think of this as the Historical RPF. Here, the most historically accurate aspect of the story is the cultural practices and values portrayed in the work. English Arthurian legends would fall into this category. The classic Chinese example of this is《包公案》(Judge Bao). (The famous《红楼梦》(Dream of the Red Chamber) would also be in this category, as the story is semi-autobiographical, with a lot of supernatural embellishments, name swaps, and set in an earlier "non-existent" dynasty to avoid getting into trouble with the emperor in the Qing dynasty.)

武侠 (Wu Xia): AKA Martial Arts Fiction. Historical accuracy is optional. Historical time frame is optional. Some of these stories don't even take place during a real dynasty. Anachronisms are the norm. However, real historical characters do show up, often as side characters or as a cameo, to help establish a general sense of when the story is supposed to take place. Sometimes characters from completely different time periods who did not coexist will interact. The main characters are always fictional and often part of 江湖 (aka the underground resistance). Supernatural martial arts is a must-have. Good versus Bad fighting to save the soul of the nation is the main theme. This is a purely Chinese story genre, but if push comes to shove, I'd say something like The Iliad would be a Western equivalent. The UR example is《水浒传》(Water Margin).

神魔 (Shen Mo): AKA Folkloric/Mythological Fiction. Magical fantasy story that uses traditional folkloric storytelling tropes. Talking animals/magical beasts often show up. Instruments are used as weapons. Ghosts, gods, monsters, the underworld, magical MacGuffins are also necessary. Reincarnation is happening left and right. Someone is trying to achieve/gains immortality. A pretty boy will cross-dress to seduce an enemy for strategic reasons. Flying. So much flying. Inter-species romance often happens. But most importantly, the story is set in a nebulous "past". We're talking Odyssey levels of historical inaccuracy. The classic Chinese example of this would be《西游记》(Journey to the West).

So, what am I trying to say with all this?

I guess I'm starting to understand why Saiyuki is a thing. But also, why can't the better written folkloric stories be the ones that get popular. Why did it have to be《陈情令》? (Also, I can't call this series by its English translation with a straight face. It's so bad it makes me want to die.)

Finally, the live action TV series is so, so much better paced and plotted than the anime adaptation. Even with the cheesy special effects, the live action still outstrips the anime by miles. (To say nothing of the MDZS web novel. Kill me. The unrestrained indulgence is soul-crushingly embarrassing. I couldn't read past the first chapter, it's so bad.) Ugh.

Friend aptly described this as "Chinese Twilight, but with more gay". Yeah. That about sums it up.

*crawls into a hole*

Comments

[tanithryudo]

Hey, Twilight was hugely popular to have gotten where it is. So yeah. :p

My exposure to MDZS largely comes second or third hand from other chinese novels or novel discussions. I tried reading the original story once and lost interest pretty quickly so *shrug*. My impression was that it was low-end 仙侠, which I think is a genre that only recently established itself as a category. Baidu classifies it as 玄幻 which honestly is just generic "fantasy".

Is it classified as wuxia in the West or somewhere? Might be just because the western audience haven't been exposed to the overflow of wuxia vs xianxia vs xuanhuan stuff that chinese audiences have, and thus haven't needed to create separate categories for "ancient-era chinese-origin stuff".

[cashew]

Yeah, I'm not really ragging on Twilight (even though it sucks), because I've been convinced by Lindsay Ellis that girls deserve their trashy stuff if boys have theirs without being ridiculed. Like, trashy BL exists and it's OK. I can hate it, but I've accepted that this is just the way the world works...

I haven't gotten very far into the story and I don't intend to unless friend keeps dragging me into it. So far, I haven't seen the 侠 tropes, which might come up later. I just have a hard time believing it will play a role, given the BL nature of the work. Without saving the world, usually for moral reasons, the novel wouldn't really qualify as wrangling with "侠义", which is pretty important to the X侠 stories.

Meh, genre is a pretty fluid thing anyway. A lot of the 仙侠 stuff get their inspiration from classics like 聊斋, and the tropes of folkloric storytelling is usually preserved. It's a bit of a genre blend, taking traditional folklore, with their ghosts and monsters and magical MacGuffins and magical Daoshi, and combined them with the "save humanity/the world" morality from Wuxia. Kind of like how Star Wars is more Science Fantasy than SciFi, all the fantasy tropes in a SciFi setting.

Honestly, 玄幻 isn't a very useful category. LotR and MDZS can all fit under this, and it spreads as far as to include even soft SciFi. It's basically a gigantic umbrella that doesn't help the readers find what they want at all. 🤷‍♂️

Is it classified as wuxia in the West or somewhere?

I...actually haven't seen an official classification, but in my very limited random exposure, I've seen Wuxia being thrown around, probably because, like you said, it's a short hand for "ancient-era Chinese-origin stuff" that isn't straight up historical. I'm mostly just posting to express how 😱 I'm feeling after watching the thing. And how the anime adaptation is significantly worse. I don't know what the hell happened there. Like, I'll bitch and moan watching the live action, but at least it's watchable. The anime is just a bad production. That won so many awards. What.

[tanithryudo]

I think X侠 as genres do encompass more than just "侠义" now, especially with the explosion of works that came with the information age. There's a lot of works out there which take "侠" to be a focus on action sequences and still get categorized as X侠. And the difference between wuxia and xianxia is just a matter of power levels (the former can jump good, the latter can literally fly).

This is especially egregious in those 1000+ chapter epics where the author is getting paid by the word count, and thus have a tendency to turn into a bunch of repetitive themes held up by fanservice, lots of fight scenes, endless level up, a harem of beauties, and generally lacking a concrete central plot (that is in any way addressed by the story rather than background window dressing).

Of course, those type of stories generally don't get adapted to TV/film, because those mediums do require a coherent story format. But even with TV/film, I think there are works out there which are not about the traditional "侠义". There's a few I've heard where it's more about the hypocrisy and lack of heroism in wulin, and the protag is an anti-hero.

[cashew]

Fair enough. As I've said, genre is fluid and with modern stuff and genre mixing, there are arguments to be made for expanding/changing genre definitions. I'm a bit of a traditionalist in these matters, but there's no reason to die on this hill.

Wait, what do you mean the web novel authors being paid by the word? I thought it's mostly self-publishing and the popular ones get a print deal. How does the web novel publishers avoid bankruptcy otherwise?

[tanithryudo]

Pretty much all major platforms (qidian, jjwxc, etc.) nowadays allow authors to set qualifying works to be pay-to-read. Readers buy per chapter (though usually the first dozen or so are free to serve as a hook for new readers), and the price is based on the wordcount. Like, there are several stories on jjwxc that I like well enough to pay for the newest chapters right as they come out.

With a frequently updated work with large enough following, the author can live off this income.

It's also from these sites where physical book publishers, as well as TV/film studios, find works to adapt into book/TV/film. It's easier for them to find which stories are more popular because the platform keeps track of all kinds of metrics from the readership.

[cashew]

Ah, so kind of like a Patreon system, but integrated into the web novel platform. How do they deal with cross platform posting? And how is copyright enforced? I feel like this is the 江湖 of publishing...

[tanithryudo]

Yeah, aggregator sites that specialize in pulling the content of VIP stories and posting them for free are a major problem. I'll have to admit that even I have read a lot of pirated works, usually when I'm not sure I'll like the work enough to pay for it. On the flip side, there were also works where I read the pirated version and liked it enough to go back and pay for it on the official platform, to support the author.

There's an...I guess, evolving battle of wits between authors and piracy sites. One common tactic is that the author will first post up a fake chapter first when they update the story, and then switch the text to the real contents a few hours later, so that the automated aggregators will end up pulling the fake text. Another tactice I've seen is that some authors put the last couple of paragraphs of story into the author's footnotes section, and that section is sometimes not picked up by aggregators, etc.

But I think the main tactic is that authors who want to do this for a living want to build an actual fanbase, who will support the author just so they can push the author's numbers up on the daily/weekly/monthly rankings or whatnot, and who have the extra money to tip the author in addition to the base chapter fee. That way they don't have to depend on the income from random passerby readers, who may or may not decide to read a pirated version instead.

As for copyright... I don't know how that works on the legal end. But from the readers perspective, it seems that building up a fanbase will also result in fans attacking or reporting other works for possible plagiarism. I've seen flamewars erupt in the comments section whenever allegation of plagiarism comes up. Though, depending on how rabid and undiscerning the reader, sometimes it's hard to understand the difference between actual plagiarism and just the nth time rehashing a tired cliche/trope.

[cashew]

...

=_=

I'm suddenly reminded of the terrible fandom wanks. And the ridiculous Omegaverse lawsuit. (Yes, the fandom trope of A/B/O has a fucking copyright lawsuit.) Anyway, if this becomes a really big industry, there's going to be some serious reckoning at some point and I don't relish how the fans will react.

*shudder*

[sailorstarsun]

*hides*

I'm, like... Super-duper into MDZS and all of its incarnations right now. It's the #1 thing I'm into at the moment, and all of my waking thoughts are devoted to it. I'm sorry.

Also, your explanation about different genres is super interesting. =D

*goes back to hiding*

[cashew]

*hugs*

No no, don't hide, keep enjoying it. If men can like their trashy sport teams and their trashy comic books without being judged, why can't women have their trashy BL without judgement? I've been super into Tenipuri, and that was about this same level of "oh god, kill me". So I completely support you being into MDZS.

I'm just expressing my personal "OMFG what am I watching?" feelings as I look on in embarrassment, since I feel a kinship to the material that I don't have when looking at other country's entertainment.

I mean, I'm into soccer RPF at the moment, so...yeah, I've got no high ground here. XD

your explanation about different genres is super interesting

I'm glad that you found it interesting! I just felt the need to blab about the cultural tropes/background surrounding MDZS due to how much it draws on the cultural milieu formed through thousands of years of storytelling. Also, there are a lot of cultural concepts that don't translate well at all, so I'm leery of how Western fans are interpreting the stuff they're seeing... MDZS's dominance in the English-speaking fandom makes me want to clarify things.

[sailorstarsun]

Then, I will enjoy it to the fullest. ;P
It just... has everything I love in a story, and (especially) has so many wonderful characters. I'm a sucker for great characters, so MDZS is a trove for me.

(and don't even get me started on the CQL actors, who are all precious and deserve all of the love and support (◡‿◡✿) )

"since I feel a kinship to the material that I don't have when looking at other country's entertainment"

That's understandable. I get that.

"there are a lot of cultural concepts that don't translate well at all, so I'm leery of how Western fans are interpreting the stuff they're seeing"

Of course, fandom is gonna fandom, and both Tumblr and Twitter are crawling with crazies (who tend to get yeeted to my block list really fast), but I've found, generally, the western fandom is trying hard to be respectful and to educate themselves where they can. They try to use proper terms, and I think most people are trying to learn about name suffixes, and so on. It's been interesting.

[cashew]

LOL, obviously you don't need my blessing. I'm not the fandom gatekeeper (I'm not even in this fandom, just someone who's looking in). Just wanted to clarify that I'm not judging. (OK, I'm judging the material, but I'm not judging the people who are enjoying it.)

don't even get me started on the CQL actors

Ahaha...not gonna lie, took me a while to figure out CQL = 陈情令. As for the actors themselves...>.>...hm, yeah, I'm gonna just stay out of that giant quagmire. RPF fandoms can get really entitled really quick and forget that the real people might not be so...appreciative of the RPF out there.

fandom is gonna fandom

This. I mean, I've seen how the Western fandom tried to argue that Goku is Caucasian, so I can't say I have very high opinions of fandom as a whole. Sure, there are always individuals who make an effort, but fanon has a tendency to be dominated by the...how do I put this? Those who put in the least research often become the most popular in fandom. =.=

*has flashbacks to Tenipuri ship wars*

And none of this is helped when a lot of the Chinese readers themselves aren't as well up on their history as they ought to be...