So.  I super-dooper love the Chinese fantasy drama The Untamed.

The show is set in an ancient kingdom both during and after a great war between the clans, where the main character, who is gifted in black magic, has created a powerful, dark artifact to vanquish his enemies and help his side win the day.  It’s 50 episodes long, but the actual war, from start to finish, comprises only about 10 of those, because who wins a war – and even how – is a subject almost too small in scope to examine the things the show is really interested in.  It’s interested in people and relationships, and in the balance between power and reputation and personal ethics.

The special effects are pretty low budget, but it’s also gorgeously done, with amazing sets and costumes that are visual treats.  The main character is both a dark sorcerer, and basically a class clown.  And though the clowning can be pretty corny at times, overall I find that the acting is superb in conveying how a person could be both goofy and dark, and just how heartbreaking that is (even well before we get to the reveal of all the awful that happened in that big battle shown in the opening scene of episode 1).

It has random bunnies.  It has a central mystery investigation (Why was the main character brought back to life 16 years after (probably) dying?!).  It has allies who are also antagonists and enemies who are allies.  It has something called the Tortoise of Slaughter.  And I ask you: How can you not love something called the Tortoise of Slaughter?  When I first read that phrase in the subtitles I thought it was a mis-translation or something, but it was not.  And it is awesome.

It has people having faith in each other, and the fact that that’s important, even if that’s not always enough to save you.  It has hope.

So.  What does any of that have to do with Disney’s live-action version of Cinderella?

Well, The Untamed has a lot of interesting people dynamics.  A lot of interesting examples of how people can be bafflingly contradictory, how the sources of cruelty and kindness are sometimes straight-forward and sometimes really complex.  So it was while watching The Untamed that I had the aha! moment about what the heck the writers of Cinderella were thinking when they gave Cinderella the paired motto/virtue of being both kind and brave.

I mean, kindness and braveness are both good things.  But they seem, on the surface, as though they are unrelated to each other.

But it turns out that that is not true at all!  That kindness almost cannot exist without bravery, and if we would aspire to be kind ourselves, we must also learn to be brave, to make use of it when we have it, and to strive for it when we realize that we do not.  To be kind means to give something of ourselves for someone else – and that can be really scary.  So we can wish for a better world.  But actually achieving a better world takes work, and courage.

I have three favorite scenes from The Untamed that feature kindness.  They’re all really small moments, but in looking at them again, I realized that they all also feature courage, in several different forms, though in general it’s a quieter, more foundational courage than the flashier grand-gestures that are performed in other parts of the show.  In two of the scenes, the main character, Wei Wuxian, is comforting one or another of his siblings.  And in the other one he’s performing a small act of kindness for a stranger.

I will try not to be spoilery, but I want to talk about these three scenes a little bit (because I love this show so much!).

Scene the first: A smile for a sister who is so relieved he’s come home safely.  This scene gets me every time.  Wei Wuxian is someone who is naturally cheerful, and when times are tough, that cheerfulness is something that his sister needs to be able to lean on.  But when this scene happens, Wei Wuxian really, really needs to be comforted himself.  He’s gone through a lot of rough stuff and has made a lot of sacrifices for others, and now this smile is one more.  It may seem like a small moment, but it really shows how very hard kindness can be sometimes, and how it’s very much a choice, made from a well of strength.

Scene the second: Threading an old woman’s needle.  Except, you see, the old woman is basically a zombie.  Most people, when they realize they’re in a small room with a zombie, would turn around and high-tail it the other way.  But Wei Wuxian is already very familiar with the undead.  That doesn’t mean he thinks they’re not dangerous, because the whole point of them is that they’re dangerous, but it does mean that he doesn’t think of them as things.  His experience allows him to be brave enough to treat her like a person.  And because he’s a kind person himself, that means threading a needle for an old lady whose hands don’t work as well as they used to (because she’s a zombie).  And then, you know, leaving her be.

Scene the third: A tender gesture to comfort a brother who’s treated him like shit (not a spoiler – his brother kills him in that opening scene in episode 1), but who he will never not love anyway.  This is in the second-to-last episode, so it would be spoilery to say why the brother needs comfort.  He definitely has treated Wei Wuxian like shit – and has always had anger management issues, but in making that comforting gesture, Wei Wuxian basically stands up for both of them.  By this point, his brother is in a position of much greater apparent power than him, but Wei Wuxian has chosen not to let that be what’s important to him.  Power is less important than his brother.

So.  Kindness and bravery.  The combined forces of The Untamed and Disney’s live-action Cinderella have helped me to understand a) that kindness and bravery are linked, and b) that it’s important to realize the link goes in both directions.  In one direction, bravery frees us to be kind.  If we want to be kind, we can muster our bravery to do so.  In the other direction, the goal of kindness offers us a path to develop our bravery.  We are all not brave sometimes.  We may all feel the flaw inside ourselves but not know how to push past it.  Kindness offers us one more lure to do so, a counterweight, one more thing to realize what we are missing out on when we are not brave.  Not everyone values kindness, of course, but for those of us who do, it is good to know how to follow that path, how to grow toward our better selves in both bravery and kindness, so that tomorrow we can be a little bit better than today, and the day after that, and the day after that.

This is why stories are important, of course, and why I love them.  Even when you think you’re just watching cool sword fights with a snake-necked giant tortoise, you’re also getting lessons in how to be human.  Also, Wei Wuxian is the best!  And he’d probably have a decent amount of respect for Cinderella.