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AtomikKrab posted:Her going well overboard to put one over her father and I am all there for the pettiness hold on to your socks
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Mar 10, 2024 05:33
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Is it just me, or is that an awful lot of effort, just to make the emperor say "Oh yes, that looks quite lovely. Let's continue with the schedule then." They mostly did it to do Lakan's quasi-impossible task, for some reason. I really don't get the mechanics and politics at play here and I hope that the next episode will clear something up. I also like how Maomao casually mentions that she showed the trick to the emperor in a private meeting before that. I do wonder how that guy feels about this weirdass food tester. He doesn't really seem to be part of the story, even though he's the most important person in the country. cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Mar 10, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 11:46
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cant cook creole bream posted:Is it just me, or is that an awful lot of effort, just to make the emperor say "Oh yes, that looks quite lovely. Let's continue with the schedule then." I mean, that's kind of how absolute monarchy rolls. Presenting the Emperor with nice things that nobody else can get hold of (and having a reputation being the guy/girl who can do that) is absolutely a route to power and influence.
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Mar 10, 2024 18:44
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cant cook creole bream posted:Is it just me, or is that an awful lot of effort, just to make the emperor say "Oh yes, that looks quite lovely. Let's continue with the schedule then." He has other poo poo going on and his this food taster is not just his brother's currently favorite person, but also she save the life of one of his wives so I'm sure he regards her as someone important, at least to the people he's closest to.
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Mar 10, 2024 18:46
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Her antics are pretty funny if you don't have to deal with them directly. She must be hilarious to him.
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Mar 10, 2024 19:09
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Xelkelvos posted:He has other poo poo going on and his this food taster is not just his brother's currently favorite person, but also she save the life of one of his wives so I'm sure he regards her as someone important, at least to the people he's closest to. Two of his Pyrotoad fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Mar 10, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 19:27
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They aren't his wives. Maybe he will take one or more of them as such at some point if he wants their children as legitimate heirs, but currently they are concubines.
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Mar 10, 2024 20:04
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Yeah, technically they are Concubines and there is a whole ranking system in all of that with the Empress/wife being highest and then the highest ranked Concubines and then other, lower ranking ones with multiple tiers historically depending on the dynasty and emperor. The children of concubines are considered legitimate fwiw (assuming they didn't sleep with someone else), they're just lower ranked than the children of higher ranked wives e.g. the son of the empress would be higher ranked, but if he dies, then the oldest son of the next highest ranked concubine would get the nod for being the heir, even if his mother isn't the actual empress. Whether or not the current empress at the time steps aside because she's not the mother of the current heir, I think depends on her, the Emperor, and court pressures. She'd still be an Empress fwiw, but a Dowager of some title. Xelkelvos fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Mar 10, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 20:39
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Hellbore posted:I did like the bit at the end from Lakan's POV, showing that the only person he currently sees as a person is Maomao. Explains his focus on her, and it looks like we're getting into his whole deal next episode Yeah, same. The next episode should be brilliant. It is amazing how little anything really matters in the imperial court, but how much work is done for all the smokes and mirrors surrounding it. Here, let me nearly kill myself blooming some roses to one up my monster of a dad, and to which the emperor will nod and say "very nice" and proceed to immediately forget it all.
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Mar 10, 2024 22:16
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Xelkelvos posted:Yeah, technically they are Concubines and there is a whole ranking system in all of that with the Empress/wife being highest and then the highest ranked Concubines and then other, lower ranking ones with multiple tiers historically depending on the dynasty and emperor. Yeah, the Empress Dowager is still around and kicking. She actually showed up in the last episode seated to the left of the Emperor (right of the frame) 
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Mar 10, 2024 22:38
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Saoshyant posted:Yeah, same. The next episode should be brilliant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
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Mar 10, 2024 23:10
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or the alternative interpretation here that, since the palace is a place where death, even if one is "following the rules", can come at any moment and from any direction, the seeming anodyne intrigues are deadly serious in the same way that if you were playing that aztec ballgame where the losing team was sacrificed, you'd probably get very persnickety about the aztec equivalents of off sides rules and technical fouls and so on.
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Mar 10, 2024 23:14
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So basically, the emperor saying "yeah, those flowers look fine, let's just continue with the schedule." is equivalent to him saying "You have pleased me. You and your servant's lives will be sparred... For now!" Talk about a toxic work environment. But Maomao should actually like that.  I have no idea what the stakes were, but I assume they weren't quite that high. cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Mar 10, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 23:24
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cant cook creole bream posted:I have no idea what the stakes were, but I assume they weren't quite that high. Honestly, that was probably the worst part of the episode. They imply that it'll be bad if Lakan isn't catered to, but they never even hint at what the consequences of failure are apart from "Maomao won't get one over on her poo poo dad."
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Mar 10, 2024 23:46
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Haystack posted:but they never even hint at what the consequences of failure are "Lakan will remember this."
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Mar 10, 2024 23:50
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cant cook creole bream posted:So basically, the emperor saying "yeah, those flowers look fine, let's just continue with the schedule." is equivalent to him saying "You have pleased me. You and your servant's lives will be sparred... For now!" Kinda, Kinda not, The Emperor is also bound by various laws and customs, which is why he has to act very very neutral in public as displays of emotion could set off stuff, if you notice when he is sitting in private when maomao let's him in on the secret he is a lot more vibrant and joyful. As for just killing people... that is something that can happen if there are no connections at all sure, but there are plenty of people the Emperor cannot afford to kill out of hand due to politics. Maomao is certainly one of them as the Emperor is probably read in on who her father is, and he probably can't really afford to kill his like chief strategist or whatever Lakan's position is. disposablewords posted:"Lakan will remember this." and be really smug and rub it in.
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Mar 11, 2024 00:57
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There was the guy freaking out next to Lakan over the whole thing so presumably there were some stakes that Lakan was privy to, but hasn't revealed. Even if it wasn't with the emperor himself, it probably involved various ministers or bigwigs.
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Mar 11, 2024 01:01
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I feel like if they hadn't done it, all that would have happened is Lakan would've been a bit of a smug git for a while. But actually doing it lets Maomao really gently caress with his head.
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Mar 11, 2024 01:11
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Winning this sort of little game is a good way for people at this level to distinguish themselves and buff up their reputations without getting anyone killed, too. Get a reputation for delivering the impossible or even just showing how to use your subordinates and other resources in clever, flexible ways. Ideally your generals and their men can be good for something other than violence, especially when it's peacetime.
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Mar 11, 2024 01:26
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Xelkelvos posted:There was the guy freaking out next to Lakan over the whole thing so presumably there were some stakes that Lakan was privy to, but hasn't revealed. Even if it wasn't with the emperor himself, it probably involved various ministers or bigwigs.
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Mar 11, 2024 05:22
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The novels borrow from a giant mishmash of chinese dynasties, and they say that this emperor runs things like the Han dynasty, where the three dukes (Sāngōng) are the highest positions in the government. Lakan is one of the three dukes, he is explicitly the Grand Commandant/Grand Marshal. He's basically the head of the war ministry and grand strategist over all the armies.
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Mar 11, 2024 07:35
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blue roses are something lakan did himself a long time ago so it was not technically an impossible task but the reason maomao went so far to make early blooming roses happen and spread the red nail polish trend was return fire at lakan
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Mar 11, 2024 08:57
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Yeah, I got the read the Blue Roses thing was mostly a petty slap fight framed through ongoing court jockeying. I don't know how much would have happened if they hadn't managed to produce Blue Roses for the party, but I got the vague sense this wasn't exactly a make or break moment for anyone involved. Though on the other hand Jinshi was really stressed in a way that isn't typical for him, I don't know what was up with that. As for the Emperor, from the looks of it his primary concern is Loulan and Shishou who are people Jinshi, Maomao, the audience, and apparently him don't have a good read on. Meanwhile with Lakan I liked both seeing the dissociated way he sees the world, and the way he approaches his job. Given that Maomao is the only person he sees as human its no wonder her injury had an effect on him. As for his work philosophy of putting the right people in the right places that is basically what he did for the whole of this arc. He nudged Jinshi to investigate something which got him to send Maomao somewhere which solved a mystery, and then later stepped in to let Maomao get into the ceremony. Right people, right places. It's also close to what Maomao herself usually does in that she usually explains how a thing happened and then disconnects and lets things run their course. During the seaweed mystery her narration makes an explicit point of saying it's nice to work with competent people because she doesn't have to spell everything out, she can just explain enough about what happened and trust Jinshi+Gaoshun will do the rest on their own. I know she'd almost certainly despise hearing it, but great minds do think alike.
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Mar 11, 2024 18:28
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Having this sort of extravagant useless one-upsmanship in the court is a typical way of corralling the nobility to prevent more dangerous forms of one-upsmanship. Nobles who are desperately looking for a better way to impress the emperor aren't spending as much of their time looking for ways to overthrow the emperor or each other. The showy, complex court of Louis XIV, for example, wasn't there to buff his ego, it was there to occupy the nobles. He had a morning ceremony where the nobles would attend his "awakening" with musical accompaniment and grandiose proclamations - but he actually woke up well before that to attend a private mass, even though he attended a public mass later.
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Mar 11, 2024 20:26
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some other rose facts: 1. op1 was also called hana ni natte (become a flower) 2. op2 has a long shot of the blue roses in a vase in an empty room where their blooms fade and decay 3. blue roses do not occur in nature (although there is a long tradition of dying white roses as in the show); even with genetic engineering, the closest we've come is this. in hanakotoba, they seem to symbolically represent the mysterious or the impossible dream.
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Mar 12, 2024 02:15
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Pyrotoad posted:Two of his Not to mention he personally reached out to assign her to a case knowing she could likely solve it when no one else could. And she did. So yeah, between Jinshi and the Emperor, they know how extremely valuable she is. Other than Jinishi's self interest, its part of why he bought her out and tried to get her to pass the court lady test (which she purposefully failed because she didn't want to study).
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Mar 12, 2024 13:13
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I didn't read that as purposeful so much as her lacking the executive function to study something she isn't interested in without sufficient external pressure.
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Mar 12, 2024 18:21
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I think she's also just really bad with the administrative/bureaucratic stuff in general. She's only really good at physical sciences and logic.
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Mar 12, 2024 18:59
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 "Does this look like the face of mercy?" pork never goes bad posted:I didn't read that as purposeful so much as her lacking the executive function to study something she isn't interested in without sufficient external pressure. Agreed, that's what I meant to say. She doesn't care. It doesn't interest her. She's very autistic coded in that way. Any other person at that time and place would go nuts studying to get a leg up; Maomao doesn't give a poo poo because its not something she's interested in even if it would help her position.
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Mar 12, 2024 19:11
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AnoHito posted:I think she's also just really bad with the administrative/bureaucratic stuff in general. She's only really good at physical sciences and logic. Basically if she went to a modern university she'd be the darling of the chemistry, bio, and pre-med departments, on track for early graduation and with different advisors trying to coax her into different doctorate programs... and then founders so hard on her first required gen-ed classes it tanks her average.
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Mar 12, 2024 19:33
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Also, the Imperial state exams were not trivial. The IRLs ones mostly involved knowing a lot about classic Chinese literature. Maomao may have gotten bits and pieces of that when she learned from her dad, but most of the other examinees would have been studying for the test since early childhood.
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Mar 12, 2024 22:50
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Maomao would actually have a pretty decent education in the classics from the Verdigris house girls. The "Three Princesses" there aren't just to provide sex, but to provide companionship for the client. And that means being able to hold interesting conversations or play games, etc. The girl that Lakan was interested in, Maomao's mother, was said to be an amazing Go player by Lakan for instance. The three of them (and the Madam) were major players in her upbringing.
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Mar 12, 2024 23:45
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CommieGIR posted:Not to mention he personally reached out to assign her to a case knowing she could likely solve it when no one else could. And she did. So yeah, between Jinshi and the Emperor, they know how extremely valuable she is. Other than Jinishi's self interest, its part of why he bought her out and tried to get her to pass the court lady test (which she purposefully failed because she didn't want to study). she failed because she kept falling asleep whenever she tried to study book spoilers: she does eventually pass with the madam standing over her while she studies
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Mar 13, 2024 05:47
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Spookydonut posted:she failed because she kept falling asleep whenever she tried to study Yeah, that's my point - Maomao has shown the ability to hyperfocus on things that matter to her. This didnt. She got bored and fell asleep.
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Mar 13, 2024 12:02
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CommieGIR posted:Yeah, that's my point - Maomao has shown the ability to hyperfocus on things that matter to her. This didnt. She got bored and fell asleep. The most mattering thing of all: Not getting bonked
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Mar 13, 2024 15:31
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"Here's five cups of alcohol. Three of them also have a colorless and bitter tasting poison in them that'll drop you dead if you drink three doses worth." "What was the poison?" "Hard liquor."
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Mar 17, 2024 00:09
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Man, that backstory was roughly what I expected, but it was written and presented so well. It felt genuinely emotional. Maomao really knows how to play that guy like a fiddle. Also, it's cool that they offhandedly establish that Maomao's adoptive father is her great-uncle. Now I wonder if these two ever met since then. On the one hand, I'd assume Lakan would stalk her and should be aware of her living situation, on the other hand it seems like she was actively trying to obfuscate her complete existence and everything about her life. She was sold to quasi-slavery for quite some time and he did not avoid that, so I guess he could not have had too much current information about her.
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Mar 17, 2024 08:18
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Yawgmoft posted:Not to get too far in the weeds here, but that is the most uncharitable read of what he said (even if it is the most obvious). It is completely within the realm of possibility that getting her pregnant was a mutual decision, or even that he didn't do anything initially (even though both of these range from unlikely to severely unlikely). Sweet, beautiful context. Dad is just as incapable of understanding social cues as his daughter. I find it very interesting that one event (the death of that infant from honey) ended up ruining so many lives.
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Mar 17, 2024 12:50
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Yawgmoft posted:
Yeah, that one event really shaped most of the backstory to many of the characters. That is pretty incredible when all pieces are lined up like this.
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Mar 17, 2024 16:06
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Lakan is my favorite character in this arc for a reason. I think he really does intentionally present things so as to make Jinshi think he was referring to rape when he first brings up lowering a courtesan's price. Mostly because, when he even cares about how his actions are being received, he seems to like just loving with people and putting them off. We know Jinshi's a person of consequence, so for Lakan it's a power move to screw with him. And for fun, because he can get away with doing it just as easily as screwing with a commoner. Plus, it's probably to his advantage to seem just that ruthless. But then he's still vulnerable, he still has people he cares about and loves, he's just... really bad at it. Terrible, really. He's an awful person but definitely an interesting character.
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Mar 17, 2024 16:17
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