The Untamed Costumes Extra:

The Untamed costumes extra:

Waist ornaments

We all know the beautiful, tasseled ornaments the Twin Jades wear hanging from their belts:

So, I thought an extra costume post looking at these and other waist ornaments seen in the Untamed might be called for.

Various kinds of waist ornaments, yaopei, have tradionally been worn with hanfu. The long tasseled jade waist pendants often seen in historical c-drama (and in the Untamed), are the type of yaopei called jinbu that were originally worn to hold down the hanfu skirts; @ziseviolet who runs an amazing blog on hanfu has this excellent post that provides more information.

So, in addition to the esteemed Lan brothers, who else wears a jinbu in the Untamed? Let’s start with… him.

Jin Guangshan is wearing what to me looks like the most traditional style of jinbu among those seen in the Untamed. It comprises a carved nefrite jade (hetian jade?) piece that looks like it might be a variation of double dragon head huang (the lower picture is a piece from Han Dynasty era, shamelessly stolen from the net). From the jade are hanging three pendants of various yellow gemstones, perhaps yellow topaz and amber?, each adorned with a golden yellow tassel.

And we have more Jins wearing jinbu. No, not Jin Zixuan, who actually dresses rather modestly to be called a Peacock, but his half-brother.

Chief Cultivator Jin Guangyao wears not one but two identical waist ornaments hanging from his jade-decorated belt. The pieces comprise tassels of the same yellow as Jin Guangshan’s, and beads of silver and various gemstones in red (ruby or garnet?), yellow (topaz?) and dark gray (that’s a tough one… translucent black jade?), but I have not managed to find a good close-up shot of them. Do you know how many in-focus below-the-waist close-ups the are in the Untamed? Not bloody nearly many enough!Also, a little side note here! I have been watching the Monarch Industry / Rebel Princess, and just noticed that Emperor Ma Zitan wears rather similar double waist ornaments with one of his outfits. So this is probably a specific style of jinbu?

And we have Jin Ling, who wears the Jiang Clarity Bell hanging from his waist (the only one seen to wear it thus in the Untamed).

Jin Ling’s waist ornament is quite interesting, because in addition to the small silver bells (two instead of one) it has two carved Bodhi Root beads (one depicting a lotus bud), a carved lotus pendant in what looks like white nephrite jade, and pale yellow double tassels with silver caps; identical to the ornament Jiang Yanli drops onto a stone, breaking the jade pendant, while waiting for news from Lotus Pier after the Wen attack.

So, do all Jiang Clarity Bells have the same construction? Are they all identical? It doesn’t seem to be the case: at least the one Jiang Yanli gives to Wei Wuxian in Yiling before her wedding is different, with a different kind of large lotus bead:

So it seems that the waist ornament Jin Ling wears is the one that belonged to his mother, with the broken jade pendant repaired or, perhaps more likely, carved anew at some point before Jiang Yanli’s death. If that is the case, Jin Ling has something from both of his parents: his father’s sword and his mother’s clarity bell. I do not remember if that was mentioned to be the case in the novel?

Talking about Jiang Yanli, she is the only woman in the Untamed seen wearing a jinbu. This takes place during the Phoenix Mountain hunt and when she stays at Jinlintai afterwards, and both her outfit and the jinbu are clearly Jin in style.

The jinbu comprises various silver beads together with a red, a yellow and a dark grey gemstone bead (similar combination as later worn by Jin Guangyao) and what seems to be a flower of some kind (not a peony, though), also in silver. And the Jin-yellow tassel.

Let’s get back to the jinbu that the esteemed Lan brothers wear, which are quite distinctive. In addition to the two jade rings, they have some additional beads in silver and gemstones, and a long tassel.

The jade rings in Lan Wangji’s jinbu are, I think, the finest white mutton fat hetian nephrite. Zooming in on the left image, it seems that the rings are not smooth, but might actually have carvings on them. If that is the case I’m guessing it could be a cloud motif of some kind, perhaps something similar as on the jade rings in the bottom image (again, found in the net). The additional gemstones seem to be either blue or colourless, perhaps topaz and aquamarine. The tassel is grey, similar to the tassel on Bichen.

Lan Xichen’s jinbu has jade rings of what seems like translucent moss-in-snow type of jadeite, similar to the bangle in the bottom right image. Similar to Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen has additional silver as well as blue and clear gemstone beads in his jinbu, including a rather large blue stone above his tassel. It also seems there is a reddish bead, close to the top (seen in the uppermost image). Lan Xichen’s tassel is very dark blue, nearly black, a similar shade as also found in Shuoyue’s and Liebing’s tassels.

In addition to the Twin Jades, Lan Qiren also wears a jinbu, but his is somewhat different from those worn by his nephews: instead of the distinctive two jade rings, Lan Qiren’s jinbu has a large, flat medallion of white, carved nephrite jade and a decorative chinese knot. Unfortunately, I was not able to find any clear close-up shots of either one, so I’m not able to say anything more precise about them… If I come across any later, I’ll update this.

The additional beads in the Grandmaster’s jinbu are quite small, and seem to be rather dark (blue?) in colour, but it is quite impossible to see what stone they might be made of (lapis lazuli might be one option). The tassel of his jinbu is also grey, or perhaps bluish grey.

To end this, I should perhaps point out that even if I’ve made the assumption that the additional beads would be gemstones, I’ve understood glass beads were also traditionally used, so coloured glass might also be a feasible option, also in-universe.

But what would I give for a few clear closeups!

Shout-out to my wife @thesurestthing who originally announced her romantic intent by messaging me that she had a crush on me and wanted to be my girlfriend. Made the entire process much less confusing.

Sun Tzu is so fucking funny to me because for his time he was legitimately a brilliant tactician but a bunch of his insight is shit like "if you think you might lose, avoid doing that", "being outnumbered is bad generally", and "consider lying."

KUNG FU PANDA X WUXIA

K guys, have an idea here and i need some feedback if you know anything about wuxia, Xianxia or just a single danmei, y'know how Kung fu panda is actually based completely on not only Chinese culture but heavily inspired by the wuxia genre as well? You can even see the resemblance on some things, the qi being just like spiritual energy than CAN be stolen, like what happened with kai on KFP 3, the wuxi finger is basically a forced qi deviation, the power that you can cultivate by training, the way that oogway literally ascended to a heavenly realm as a god after years of cultivating spiritual energy, like we only needed Po to bleed from his mouth and we have literally everything for it to be an actual wuxia/xianxia story, so i was thinking, why not make a fan comic of the story of the movies as an actual wuxia/xianxia with human characters and a bit more blood and exaggeration????

You may be thinking "why tf would you want to do that with a kids movie" or even just "why?"

And my answers are: because i love Chinese fantasy and kung fu panda so i want to combine them further, and for the second question i would like to say that just because i want to...but that's not the case my fellow internet people... It is because the human versions of the furious five that i always come across on Pinterest i hate with a passion 🕴🏻

Not to say anything bad about the artists skills or to bash their designs at all, but i would love it if people weren't so forgetful about the fact the furious five are you know... Chinese I feel like people isn't taking advantage of that culture at all

And not only Chinese, we're talking about historical periods of old china were no one was allowed to cut their hair or show skin below the neck

Like why would po wear a tiny shirt? Why would po be bald? Why would monkey be black? (It kinda rubs me the wrong way how some people make specifically monkey the only dark skinned character i think it reads racist ngl 🤨) Why would tigress have a pixie cut? Why would viper show so much skin when she's the daughter of a respectable warrior and would basically be very close to being a princess? Like- things like that are completely fine, nothing wrong to the vision they have on the characters, but to the neurodivergent hyperfixating me, the fact that no one overanalizes anything about this kids movie about a panda eating dumplings is outrageous, it's not them, it's me 😔✊🏻

SO

I've spent a few months organizing ideas on how i believe a more wuxia/Xianxia design of the characters would look like

I've been trying to keep the design closer to the animals they supposedly are but it's kinda hard (◎_◎;)

For Po i keept his body shape and decided a bun or any kind of high hairstyle would be ideal for him since he was a cook and still cooks a lot, a ponytail or half up hairstyle would get on his way a lot. I decided to give him vitiligo to mimic the panda spots on his original design, crashing his weight, height and skin to add the unique factor that was present on the movie by him being the only panda on the valley, He's the only one I've actually drawn yet but it is still in development

For tigress or however tf you spell it, English isn't my first language. I decided to go for a sharp and serious look

To keep it simple, I'll be giving her a light brown shade of hair, i want to avoid giving them vibrant hair colors but still having some nods to their color pallets on the movies, giving her an almost reddish light brown hair and mostly red and orange robes with black accents and accessories as well keeping her original outfit with a few changes. I wanted to give her a ponytail since i don't feel like she'd put all of her hair up; and instead of claws, she will have a variety of knives at her disposal for battle

Next, for viper, my favorite gal

I wanted to make her look significantly more elegant and younger that the rest of the five since, like i said, she is from a prestigious family, i wanted to accentuate how pampered a girl from a good family could look, i also decided to keep her ribbon dance plot, the only reason to why i gave her arms, since i love the idea of her fighting with her legs but that ribbon dance so i decided to give her congenital hand differences as her disability, turning the "her family uses fangs to attack and she was born without them" to "her family uses pressure points to attack and she was born with mostly dysfunctional fingers", this way she would still be considered an exceptional warrior with ribbons that she can control with her wrists and arms. I also want to give her a really really dark forest green colored hair :D

M O N K E Y

For monkey i wanted to go for a little more adult vibe as well as for mantis; i wanted to give him some scruffiness since he started out as a prankster until oogway found him...yeah that family friendly story isn't going to work, let's face it, monkey was living in the streets stealing what he could for fun, my man was a criminal and homeless, he wasn't a good person and even po said so while telling his story to the kids, so, I gave him a style that would resemble someone who once was carefree and from a low social position that still doesn't care much about material things, but cares enough to not disappoint or dishonor his masters. I will be giving him a more yellow and light brown wardrobe to resemble his colors on the movie and as for attack, he'll use a long cane like he sometimes does in the canon

Now for crane (≧∇≦)/

Crane is very simple to imagine as a human so there's not much i can say about his design other than the fans, i decided to give him a pair of fans as weapons, using them to cut down enemies as if they were blades and also to give him the stability to fly, since i won't take away his ability to fly as it is something common on wuxia and or xianxia stories, i like to think he is the only one who trained this flying technique by watching real disciples on temples he'd clean, but still needs his fans for stability and to be able to carry and support the weight of multiple people hanging onto him

LASTLY ~mantis~

The mature vibes~ i wanted to keep him looking a bit more like a warrior since that was his job before training under shifu's roof, he had a reputation and prestige, so i thought he might look a bit more professional; I'll also give him green robes but i haven't decided if he'd use a weapon or not 🤔 I'm also keeping him a short king

So, what do you guys think? Should i go more bold with the designs? Have any feedback or opinions? Because I'd love to hear it! (≧∇≦)/

I'm prepared for this post to flop so bad omg

me, after clearing my schedule to write:

uhhhh it was raining... and dark (and also night) and um... cold i guess?? anyway, something dramatic~ happened

me, stuck in traffic on my way to work:

Rain tumbled through midnight leaves, casting the forest in liquid moonlight. A low growl shook the horizon. Death had come.

Amen, hallelujah!

The excluded tags filter on Ao3 is such a fucking lifesaver. I love it so much.