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not totally apt but i'd even say that one of jinshi's problems is that he thinks he's in a romance story but he's actually in a detective story
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Jan 9, 2024 03:05
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and given Jinshi's secret agent status, he probably isn't a real eunuch, but Mao doesn't know that
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Jan 9, 2024 03:29
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GateOfD posted:and given Jinshi's secret agent status, he probably isn't a real eunuch, but Mao doesn't know that It was a frog
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Jan 9, 2024 04:18
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gwrtheyrn posted:It was a frog A very big frog, must be a healthy one.
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Jan 9, 2024 12:41
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Nihilarian posted:Maomao is vey clearly, and deliberately, Not Interested in Jinshi, in a way i don't think i've seen in a romance(?) story before. It's clear that any and all romantic feelings she might develop will be developed reluctantly and without her consent. She may also continue to stonewall him without missing a beat even once she recognizes her feelings because she has an acute sense of the power structure in her society I don't think this is really true. she's thinking about what a hottie he his, how much of a shame it is he's a eunuch, and fantasizing about him getting felt up by faceless dudes like, all the time. she's disinterested in pursuing a relationship obviously but otherwise shes kind of obsessed with him
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Jan 11, 2024 00:48
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YES bread posted:I don't think this is really true. she's thinking about what a hottie he his, how much of a shame it is he's a eunuch, and fantasizing about him getting felt up by faceless dudes like, all the time. she's disinterested in pursuing a relationship obviously but otherwise shes kind of obsessed with him I feel this is a more accurate portrait. She is deliberately stopping herself from developing an interest in him for several reasons, 1: power imbalance in that he is a high ranking official/she a commoner. 2: He is at least as far as she knows, an Eunuch and thus well... no action there which I guess is a deal breaker for her. 3: Other women would murder her if she got into any form a relationship with him because he is in fact... THAT hot.
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Jan 11, 2024 00:51
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Other women and some men as eunuchs are obligate bottoms.
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Jan 11, 2024 00:57
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Maomao's also just incredibly jaded. She comes from a background where women are literally bought and sold under a convenient legal fiction to declare it "not slavery." Pursuing a partner she wants for herself has never been in the cards and she grew up knowing this. And then she ended up in one of the highest places in the realm... where women are still treated functionally the same way even if people are too refined to talk about prices in silver. The story tends to skim over this fact but Jinshi outright bought her to bring her back to the palace after she was dismissed. She obviously does think he's hot, she muses on it a lot, but god drat there's no way she's going to be remotely willing to so much as entertain a personal thought on that any time soon.
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Jan 11, 2024 01:01
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AtomikKrab posted:I feel this is a more accurate portrait. She is deliberately stopping herself from developing an interest in him for several reasons, 1: power imbalance in that he is a high ranking official/she a commoner. 2: He is at least as far as she knows, an Eunuch and thus well... no action there which I guess is a deal breaker for her. 3: Other women would murder her if she got into any form a relationship with him because he is in fact... THAT hot. yeah I think it's just easy for people to take her outward disinterest at face value when its more like, part of a deliberately cultivated defense mechanism. thinking about it more I really like how Maomao and Jinshi are like an inverse of the "scheming eunuch" and "manipulative beauty" type characters, Maomao with her extreme cleverness and romantic disinterest, and Jinshi's little internal monologue about weaponizing his looks that may as well be straight out of a court drama
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Jan 11, 2024 01:27
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disposablewords posted:Maomao's also just incredibly jaded. She comes from a background where women are literally bought and sold under a convenient legal fiction to declare it "not slavery." Pursuing a partner she wants for herself has never been in the cards and she grew up knowing this. And then she ended up in one of the highest places in the realm... where women are still treated functionally the same way even if people are too refined to talk about prices in silver. The story tends to skim over this fact but Jinshi outright bought her to bring her back to the palace after she was dismissed. Yeah, she thinks he's hot, but that's basically just.... an observation. She has no interest in any kind of relationship, both in an inclination sense and in a practical sense. She absolutely does not appreciate his advances at the moment and wishes he would stop, which is really the more important aspect of her opinion rather than whether she finds him attractive in a physical sense
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Jan 11, 2024 01:37
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Man, I don't know in world y'all are living in where Maomao is desperately holding herself back from jumping Jinshi just because he's got too much baggage. She's creeped out by him and shivers in disgust every time he gets handsy or close. She can recognize he's physically attractive without wanting to jump his bones in secret.
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Jan 11, 2024 01:41
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"maomao is ace" is not totally correct. i would maintain that maomao is a "toxosexual"
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Jan 11, 2024 01:45
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Nitrousoxide posted:Man, I don't know in world y'all are living in where Maomao is desperately holding herself back from jumping Jinshi just because he's got too much baggage. She's creeped out by him and shivers in disgust every time he gets handsy or close. She can recognize he's physically attractive without wanting to jump his bones in secret. I think if things were (very) different she'd be inclined to give it a shot. She does muse about his beauty a lot and never really does about anyone else. But as far as baggage goes, it's way more her own than anyone else's. The baggage of their respective stations just adds more dimensions to the trouble. Basically there are seeds of potential there and it's fun to speculate about the environment in which they may grow.
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Jan 11, 2024 01:59
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While I can understand people's discomfort with Maomao's discomfort, I do have to wonder if they'd prefer a story where she successfully kept her head down and worked as a fifth-string servant girl for the duration of her contract Jinshi's interest in Maomao is the axis upon which this story turns. If you want him to back off it's basically asking for a version of Dragonball where Bulma doesn't wrangle a weird feral kung fu child into being her personal muscle. Then again, I do hear that fishing manga are popular...
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Jan 11, 2024 02:00
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OnimaruXLR posted:While I can understand people's discomfort with Maomao's discomfort, I do have to wonder if they'd prefer a story where she successfully kept her head down and worked as a fifth-string servant girl for the duration of her contract It seems weird to present 'maomao has to deal with jinshi being a creep' or 'nothing happens in the story' as the only two options. She could easily have ended up as the inner palace's unofficial detective without her boss constantly trying to get handsy with her That said, this isn't a dealbreaker or anything, at least currently. The story seems aware that jinshi is acting creepy and not thinking things through so it's not unreasonable to give it the benefit of the doubt on this
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Jan 11, 2024 02:17
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yeah i mean "how do we get the reluctant detective to actually start solving the crime" is such a common problem in fiction that i can't imagine "let's explore power dynamics and consent!" is gonna be the only option there. rex stout wrote ways to coerce nero wolfe to solve crimes that he doesn't initially want to solve, sometimes multiple times a book, and wolfe just sits in a chair and drinks beer. maomao at least has hobbies.
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Jan 11, 2024 02:27
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Nitrousoxide posted:Man, I don't know in world y'all are living in where Maomao is desperately holding herself back from jumping Jinshi just because he's got too much baggage. She's creeped out by him and shivers in disgust every time he gets handsy or close. She can recognize he's physically attractive without wanting to jump his bones in secret. if this is in response to my posts it's not what I'm saying at all. her cautious attitude isnt "baggage" its just the way she navigates the world and I don't think having vague/restrained interest in someone is the same as wanting to jump them. I just think there's more to her feelings and the way she thinks about the guy and don't get the takes about there being nothing going on on her end, and the complicated way she navigates it is interesting.
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Jan 11, 2024 02:57
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Tree Goat posted:yeah i mean "how do we get the reluctant detective to actually start solving the crime" is such a common problem in fiction that i can't imagine "let's explore power dynamics and consent!" is gonna be the only option there. rex stout wrote ways to coerce nero wolfe to solve crimes that he doesn't initially want to solve, sometimes multiple times a book, and wolfe just sits in a chair and drinks beer. maomao at least has hobbies. Hey now Wolfe also had hobbies. He grew Orchids! But you are correct that there were plenty of ways to get Maomao involved in the action without an exploration of power dynamics, power differentials, and the restrictions on and abuses of women in this quasi-historical-but-based-on-a-real-time-period setting. If the story didn't really want to directly engage with those issues it could very well have cut around it or minimized it, but the main plot of the show so far has very expressly been about those very issues. Not for nothing, but all of that stuff was the main motivating factor behind the culprit of the most recent mystery which means it is extremely front and center to the action. If the only concern was finding a way to get Maomao on the case then Jinshi or whoever could've just given her some weird, rare, dubious plant. I mean, that's literally what Jinshi DID, and the show still spent this episode and the last lingering on their relationship and all the reasons why Maomao knows it's problematic. And as for Maomao's feelings regarding Jinshi there is a lot going on. Not for nothing but I agree with basically every single person who chimed in on this page and the last. It's her natural, cautious, justifiably cynical outlook as a result of her upbringing and circumstances, the difference and imbalance in their stations, it's probably because he's a eunuch, it's because he's a high profile guy and there's tons of people who are into him, and it's also her instinctively mistrusting the way he turns on the charm. The last bit is actually the most interesting to me because the first time I remember Maomao's internal narration actually being positive about Jinshi is immediately after the poisoning at the garden party and it comes about because he stops schmoozing and actually engages with her seriously and is emotionally honest. It makes me also consider what Ah-duo mentioned about her relationship with the Emperor, where she laments the two of them eventually couldn't have an honest relationship as friends and confidantes without her taking the role of a concubine. Maomao and Jinshi are in a somewhat similar situation I think. Now that isn't to say that Maomao would for sure be romantically interested in Jinshi even in some parallel setting where he's not a eunuch and they're on a more even keel, but if they were in a more equitable position I do believe they would be closer interpersonally. Ultimately I don't believe Maomao necessarily dislikes Jinshi, but there is a lot of stuff (both consciously and not) that is keeping her from really "liking" him, much less being interested in him romantically. If and when a relationship emerges it is going to be a very slow burn and a slow build starting from "not necessarily disliking him, but…"
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Jan 11, 2024 08:20
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The series is super into how women live in and navigate this world. How you do what you have to do to get by, how some romanticize it, how some learn to manipulate it. How many are exploited, and some become exploiters in turn. And how men, even eunuchs who are looked down upon by other men, do a lot to construct and limit the women's world around them. Even as a eunuch, Jinshi is too well-off and powerful to not be stepping on a lot of the women around him as he moves, especially Maomao. I think it would actually be a worse - or at least less believable - story if he wasn't loving up like this and overstepping with her. He's still too used to not having to recognize most others' boundaries.
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Jan 11, 2024 09:09
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Yeah Maomao isn’t meant to read as ace, at all. She’s meant to read as someone who is pragmatic and defensive as a long long standing survival strategy, and with good reason. It is loving hard to be a woman in this society let alone this scenario in specific. The enormous gulf and realities of class are meant to be a huge challenge and Apothecary Diaries is a rare romance story that takes it very seriously Captain Oblivious fucked around with this message at 10:44 on Jan 11, 2024 |
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Jan 11, 2024 10:42
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YES bread posted:I don't think this is really true. she's thinking about what a hottie he his, how much of a shame it is he's a eunuch, and fantasizing about him getting felt up by faceless dudes like, all the time. she's disinterested in pursuing a relationship obviously but otherwise shes kind of obsessed with him
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Jan 11, 2024 23:54
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Wasn't it the case that the author didn't originally intend Jinshi to be a romantic interest for Maomao? And it only ended up that way because fans or editors demanded it?
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Jan 12, 2024 07:08
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Apothecary Diaries was originally a webnovel do they even have editors
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Jan 12, 2024 08:18
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Oops I said something stupid.
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Jan 12, 2024 08:47
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Nebrilos posted:Wasn't it the case that the author didn't originally intend Jinshi to be a romantic interest for Maomao? And it only ended up that way because fans or editors demanded it? Jinshi naturally develops into a more likable character during the different versions (webnovel, mangas, etc) of the story. The thing is that this development informs further adaptations. So anime Jinshi is instantly more likable than he would normally be if the people making the show didn't know in advance about his future development. Nihilarian posted:Apothecary Diaries was originally a webnovel do they even have editors Worse, they have shippers doing immediate feedback.
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Jan 12, 2024 10:06
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trucutru posted:Worse, they have shippers doing immediate feedback. Hah, as I understand it, it's a literal case of "the shipping is coming from inside the house"
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Jan 12, 2024 17:52
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Maomao x Poison OTP
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Jan 13, 2024 02:27
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Nebrilos posted:Maomao x Poison OTP the "x has two hands" meme template but one of the hands is covered in welts and rashes and is reaching for an angry venomous snake
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Jan 13, 2024 02:53
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Tree Goat posted:the "x has two hands" meme template but one of the hands is covered in welts and rashes and the other is also covered in welts and rashes and is reaching for an angry venomous snake
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Jan 13, 2024 02:55
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it was fearless, and crazier than her. it was her queen, and god help anyone who dared to disrespect her queen. ('it' of course, referring to a pile of mildly toxic weeds)
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Jan 13, 2024 04:13
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quote:Maomao x Poison OTP I was thinking more along the lines of this kind of poison  or maybe this one?  or this one? I don't know 
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Jan 13, 2024 07:28
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All good choices, and the last one would probably solve both of their romantic issues. No way Maomao could resist a handsome lad who concocts his own serum.
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Jan 13, 2024 07:36
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Kwyndig posted:All good choices, and the last one would probably solve both of their romantic issues. No way Maomao could resist a handsome lad who concocts his own serum. How do we know Maomao isn't a distant ancestor of his?
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Jan 13, 2024 23:45
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This week's episode was interesting, from Maomao sharing the secret knowledge to the other event we got a good mix of comedy and intrigue. Still don't know what's the deal with monocle man but at least we know his name now.
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Jan 14, 2024 00:38
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During the pandemic there was a series of information posters from Taiwan that reimagined various diseases as hot anime people and I think that'd be her ideal. Here's Legionnaire's disease and Dengue fever, for example.  
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Jan 14, 2024 01:06
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God, how short is Maomao? She comes up to Lihaku's solar plexus. He's got two full feet on her at least. How old is she, actually?
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Jan 14, 2024 01:23
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:God, how short is Maomao? She comes up to Lihaku's solar plexus. He's got two full feet on her at least. 17. She just smol.
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Jan 14, 2024 01:27
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She's supposed to be 153cm/5'.
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Jan 14, 2024 01:45
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Yeah, she's tiny and Lihaku is a huge dude. She's been near to outright malnourished most of her life.
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Jan 14, 2024 01:45
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teacher mao this episode
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Jan 14, 2024 03:01
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