honeyfoot - you were right as heck about how deeply annoying some Jinshi/Maomao shippers are!

I've been playing blockbutton whack a mole with people who think it's reasonable to characterize people reading Maomao as aspec or sapphic as slander.

no? that is not? a reasonable thing to say? it is not slander to read a character as queer?

how many of these people are there, how am I still finding more to block

I'll do it, I'll keep at it, but how

holy fucking granoly

Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaah

how dare you suggest that this fictional character is (checks notes) a lesbian, the Worst Thing To Be?

sit down assholes

OK to be fair that was two people, I just decided I had enough of the You Have To Ship The Main Hetship Or You're A Bad Fan Who Is Hurting Fandom people too.

A LOT of complaining about "forced asexuality" (I assume interpretation was the intended missing word) and "forced lesbian" (Again, I assume interpretation was the intended missing word), too.

bc if people TALK about their READINGS without hedging around that of course no one would ever ACTUALLY write a QUEER character, you're denying the precious canon heterosexuality of the precious canon m/f pairing!

Anyone who isn't into the story for Jinshi/Maomao is in denial/sad and pathetic/going to have to admit they're wrong/hypocritical about romance because anything other than being into the m/f romantic elements mean you don't understand a romance where two people grow and change, so on and so forth.

ahem.

I weary of fandom

Fandom is often so obnoxious

Like, I even think Maomao's relationship with Jinshi is really truly interesting! It's not cliched or stale! It's not because I'm some sort of partisan against the storyline that this stuff ticks me off.

people are allowed to like more than one ship actually!

Amazing! You mean you don't have to belabor every time you talk about something that isn't ~ obviously the canon ship ~ with "this is just my headcanon lol"???

(I don't ship it, I don't think, but I am willing to ride along with the storyline and explore it)

it's soooooo annoying

they've moved on to straight up calling anyone who dares question Jinmao stupid

honeyfoot - I love the part where people will jump on some poor fan exclaiming "I wasn't expecting the sexual violence! I'm upset!" To tell them they're stupid and clearly too fragile to enjoy media, if they think that was sexual violence.

That's cute.

wtf

Yeah, there's a lot of people who get understandably distressed about the scenes where Jinshi is making sexual advances and Maomao is uncomfortable to straight up afraid and they'll post about it! And then people will hop in their comments and/or barely vague blog about them saying that they're too sheltered to believe.

Because apparently it's "normal" for romance stories to involve forced kissing and touching, so you're unreasonable if you don't like it.

=_=;;;

listen

we can talk about fantasies and shit

and like, reading romance novels basically like a kink scene

but people who are uncomfortable with it still have the right to be so

also they always excuse Jinshi's behavior with Maomao being an ~unreliable narrator and it's like... and? does that make it better?

Yeeeeeeeeeah it's ok to have ravishment fantasies! But that's a) a fantasy about sexual violence, and nobody is doing wrong by saying so and b) not a slam dunk for everyone.

And yeaaaah I. am very confused? about how Maomao being an unreliable narrator would make it better?

It's interesting because there are several points (I don't know which LN they correspond to) where questions of consent and power get talked about pretty openly and which I certainly thought were establishing a tone!

There's the honey incident, where Gyokuyou intervenes and chews Jinshi out for inappropriate behavior.

ohhh... see I don't even fully remember that anymore

There's the bit where Suiren explains to Maomao why they have trouble keeping housemaids, that it's because they have real problems with harassment and they've caught maids trying magic on Jinshi to secure his affections.

OH YEAH

Maomao's laughed to herself about how beautiful Jinshi is and how irresistible he is and how he can have anyone he wants, but her reaction to that is "Yikes. big shudder" and she makes a lot fewer jokes about it from there on out.

There's a ton of smaller stuff too, and moments like Maomao getting called on the carpet when she runs amok in the Rear Palace because she got very involved in exploring her theory about fertility damaging substances and was sniffing everyone - - -

And her extremely sincere apology is "I'm sorry, I'll get consent before sniffing people next time."

alsdjfadjlsf RIGHT that happened

There's just a lot of stuff that makes the ravishment fantasy stuff kind of a surprise, if it IS supposed to be ravishment fantasy at all! Which, is, hard to say, given how scary it is.

So the scolding is extra weird to me

(I really don't get how Maomao being an unreliable narrator would make it more consensual, unless the argument were that she was misrepresenting the entire encounter. And like, sure, Maomao tends to downplay her affection for most people...)

(Like, she calls Xiaolan 'just someone I could get gossip from, and I always paid her back in snacks so there were no debts' way waaaay past the point at which she is acting like they're friends)

(But consent is based on what you actually say and do)

yep, exactly.

"but she really wanted it" is rape culture bullshit

it really really is

and tbh I'm still wondering what exactly the thing between Jinshi and Maomao IS supposed to be

I think he thinks he's in a bodice ripper and she doesn't agree

So I'm always like "so your response to the argument that this narrative is rape culture talking is... to say Let's Make It MORE Rape Culture?"

yeeeeeeah

tbh discussion of rape culture has really died down in recent years, idek if the young'uns know about it

and this may just be my prejudice but I feel like a lot of the more vocally annoying fans are younger people aslfjsajd

Yeah, it's really kind of hard to figure, it's a little weird, honestly! Like, in the back half of season 2 he learns that he looks damn near identical to the Old Emperor, and then has to set that aside to deal with the rebellion but he never picks it up again? This important character thing gets derailled by romance narrative considerations?

yeeeeah

I don't know, I never assume I know someone's age! It could be, there are some ways in which certain kinds of fanspaces skew young

I also think it's not a romance series, even though it does have a romantic subplot...

so I personally find the "if you don't like the romance what are you playing with this story for?" annoying

THAT TOO

the LNs at least are more a historical court mystery with a romance subplot, as you said

the core premise is "what if Sherlock Holmes was a teenage girl in Totally Not Ancient China who really, really, really loves poison"

Yeah!

(It is, of course, also totally reasonable to read a romance novel and have it Not Land At All) (And it's not wrong to say so!)

(But I do find it EXTRA annoying when that's not even the genre)