#Water margin

[artistmitchy]

THE WATER MARGIN

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

the absurdity of the plot of the Chinese Classic is in inverse proportion to how boring the title is.

-magical monkey takes a monk to india to pick up his library books, fighting demons along the way : Journey to the West - 108 demons reincarnated as bandits find brotherhood and redemption through the power of Extraordinary Violence: The Water Margin

-fanfic author writes a historical RPF that becomes so popular it ruins a politician's reputation for the next 700 years: Romance of the Three Kingdoms

-at this point the fandom is cooler than the actual canon, i need at least two more degrees to explain what the plot is: Dream of the Red Chamber

[lionofchaeronea]

Lei Heng, the "Winged Tiger," Kuniyoshi, between 1845 and 1850

[judgeitbyitscover]

The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang

Cover art by Feifei Ruan

Rebellion, August 2023

In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.

Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.

Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.

[ryin-silverfish]

Keisei Suikoden: Genderbent Water Margins

This is probably Part 2 of the "Obscure Vernacular Novels Spotlight" series. Dunno if there's gonna be a Part 3, because most obscure novels stay obscure for a reason. Which is often formulaic boredom. And I'm only picking out the fun ones.

(Also, my main interest is still Ming-Qing vernacular novels, but since I'm doing a final project about Keisei Suikoden for this semester's class, I may as well use the post as Draft 0.)

...

"Is this the Edo Japan equivalent of FGO making historical figures and deities into anime girls?" I thought, when I first came across a Chinese summary of the novel several years ago. 

Then I learned that the author, Kyokutei Bakin, has indeed appeared in FGO as an anime girl. 

As the title suggests, this fan novel of Water Margins has made all the male 108 heroes into heroines, and the female characters into guys...but the changes go further.

Specifically, Bakin has localized the entire setting, rewriting the storyline so that it took place in Kamakura Japan instead. (Hey, it's even contemporary to Northern Song!) Kinda like how Konami's first Suikoden game put the 108 heroes into a medieval fantasy setting.

Which means: 

All the 108 characters got their unique Japanese names, sometimes sharing one or two characters with their original inspirations but not always. 

Daoist characters became Shinto priestesses, yamabushi, and onmyoji. 

Beef dishes that appeared in the original novel were replaced with poultry and fish because Edo Japan had a ban on livestock meat.

The Genpei War and other rebellions in its aftermath were featured in the backstory of a bunch of female bandits, who belonged to defeated clans, and many of the 108 heroines were associated with the Minamoto Clan. 

Almost every character got genderbent. Which means the damsels in distress from the original novel become bishonen in distress, female bandits would kidnap men and force them into marriages, etc.

The rough outline of the story goes like this: an arrogant female official, while trying to find the famous priestess Murokai (fem! Heavenly Master Zhang) in the Kumano mountains to dispel a plague, released the 108 vengeful ghosts of unmarried courtesans mentioned in the Manyoshu anthology, who reincarnated into our 108 heroines.

After a timeskip, in the capital, the Shirabyoshi dancer Kamegiku (fem! Gao Qiu) has gained the favor of Emperor Go-Toba, both of whom were real historical figures.

During his reign, women skilled in various martial arts were selected to train in the Female Warrior Training School, and after offending Kamegiku, one of the head trainers, Ayaosa (fem! Wang Jin) was forced to flee with her aging mother.

During their escape, she encountered the spunky tomboy daughter of a village chief, Fusenryu Komorode ("Komorode the Diving Dragon", fem! Shi Jin), and taught her the eighteen martial arts after defeating her in a duel...

We then got to Otatsu of Hanagara (fem! Lu Zhishen), my favorite of the genderbent characters——A plump, dark-skinned lady with a fierce temper and love for sake, able to effortlessly move a 45 kg mortar around.

She became a fugitive after she killed the mean usurer widow and salted fish vendor, Kaina, with a single punch, to save the male courtesan Yasanosuke and his mom.

Then she was made a Buddhist nun and took on the name Myotatsu, but got expelled from her first temple for acting exactly like the original Lu Zhishen: getting drunk and eating meat, fistfighting a Jizo statue outside the temple gate and bringing the entire small shrine down, and beating up the nuns who tried to stop her.

"I'm adept at explaining the nature of cause and effect: Fuck Around and Find Out." ——Myotatsu, right before rescuing the village head's pretty son from a forced marriage to the local bandit queen 

The novel does have a main plot: while Kamegiku was playing the temptress in Kyoto, Hojo Masako ruled as the "Nun Shogun" in Kamakura, and had essentially usurped the Minamoto Clan by placing her son, Yoriie, under house arrest and later assassinating him.

Thus, instead of robbing Cai Jing's birthday present, the 108 heroines were kidnapping Princess Sanze, the youngest daughter of Yoriie, to protect her from the Hojo regents and restore Minamoto control.

Sadly, we don't know how the plot concludes.

Bakin had gone blind in his old age, relying entirely on his daughter-in-law to transcribe his oral accounts, and since he was focused on finishing his most famous epic novel, Chronicle of the Eight Dogs Heroes (Nanso satomi hakken-den), Keisei Suikoden had taken a backstage and is never finished.

Some highlights:

-Sakurado of Torano-o (fem! Lin Chong) got fucked over because Kamegiku wanted to take her husband for herself. Her husband, Nansei, is a pretty twink monk and one of her disciples. He's timid, delicate, and has no interest in women, but loved Sakurado platonically and was in turn supported by her, who never looked down on him.

-Fushishiba (fem! Chai Jin), a.k.a. Oritaki no Sho, is descended from a member of the Taira Clan who owed a debt to Yoritomo, and was granted various honors and titles after the war.

-fem! Chao Gai's name is Kocho, which translates literally to "Little Butterfly". It might be a pun, since Chao and Cho sound kinda similar. And yes, she did lift an entire stone pagoda and carry it to her village to protect the villagers from the local yokai.

-Fittingly enough, "Sasuno Miko Medogi" (fem! Gongsun Sheng) is an onmyoji of the Abe lineage, who can manipulate Shikigami to summon winds and clouds.

-Oohako (fem! Song Jiang) murdering male! Yan Poxi is...surprisingly cathartic, not gonna lie. For context, Yan Po was not genderbent, but she abused Oohako's generosity to try to set her up with her son, a Joruri actor named Gidakichi, in an attempt to leech off her money.

-And while she's unwittingly offering patronage to their performances out of social obligation, Gidakichi was having an affair with her assistant, Adako (fem! Zhang Wenyuan), and being a stain on her reputation.

-After a very awkward and uncomfortable night at their house and Gidakichi being a creep to her, she accidentally left a pouch containing Kocho's letter of gratitude (because she alerted them to an incoming arrest) in their bedroom.

-Gidakichi found the letter and tried to use it to blackmail her into not only approving his marriage to Adako and covering the full expense, but also giving him the 300 gold mentioned in Kocho's letter (a gift she rejected).

-At which point she finally had enough and stabbed the guy to death. As you can see, the plot beats are mostly the same, but I like it better than the original.

-Why? Because 1) Yan Po's intent to leech off their patron is made a lot more obvious, and 2) instead of Yan Poxi (understandably) having no intention of sleeping with Song Jiang due to his cold neglect, and Song Jiang getting pissed at her for that?

-The dynamic is reversed. Gidakichi had no love for Oohako, and the feeling was mutual. Yet when she was pressured into spending the night in the same room by his mom, she was the one who kept a polite distance while he tried to force himself on her.

-Takeyo (fem! Wusong) is said to be 6 ft tall, with a dignified appearance that resembled the famous Tomoe Gozen from the Tale of Heike. Before she met Oohako, though, she was also short-tempered and prone to violence.

-Because Japan doesn't have tigers, the tiger Takeyo killed was a tiger cub gifted to the local lord by emissaries from Joseon Korea, which had escaped captivity upon reaching adulthood.

-Just like Wu Song, she avenged her sister, Butayo's murder at the hands of Kiresuke (male! Pan Jinlian) the abusive freeloader husband and his mistress, Okei of Seimonya (fem! Ximen Qin).

-Not gonna lie, the original Pan Jinlian and her Plum in the Golden Vase incarnation are both fascinatingly terrible people. But, just like Gidakichi, Kiresuke managed to outdone her through sheer creep factor during his failed attempt at seducing Takeyo and pinning the blame on her.

-Bakin generally tried to tune down the gore and cannibalism in Water Margins, as well as the slaughter of innocents and random passersby. Even Rikiju (fem! Li Kui) is slighty less of a indiscriminate murderhobo, and the targets of her killing spree were limited to samurai guards.

-That said, they still killed the corrupt official Ikken (Huang Wenbing)'s entire family by setting fire to his mansion, and preserved his head in a jar of sake after Rikiju killed him.

-Instead of receiving the three divine scrolls from the Mystic Lady of the Nine Heavens, Oohako received a single scroll from Benzaiten.

-Because of the aforementioned lack of tigers in Japan, Rikiju killed 4 giant "mountain dogs", a.k.a. Japanese wolves with unusual stripe patterns on their fur, after they devoured her elderly mom.

Final Thoughts

I'm not a fan of most genderbent AUs because oftentimes, it doesn't add anything meaningful to the original premise, or alter the character personality too much to the point of losing all resemblance to their counterpart.

Keisei Suikoden, however, is a pre-modern example of a genderbent adaptation done well.

The heroines are as badass, colorful, and violent as their male counterparts, the entire premise has been localized in a manner that's both funny and interesting, and the rewrite + deletion of certain story beats have actually removed many elements of Water Margins that do not sit well with a modern audience.

Also, I'll totally play a Keisei Suikoden RPG game, if the heroine designs stay true to the novel and they aren't all made into pretty anime girls. 

A two -volume English translation can be found on Amazon, together with the Chronicle of the Eight Dog Heroes. There's also a free digital scan of the original Japanese print by the Harvard-Yenching Library.

[vgprintads]

'Shuǐhǔzhuàn: Liángshān Yīngxióng'

[DOS / PC] [SOUTH KOREA] [MAGAZINE] [1997]

"Classical Chinese literature comes to life in this game (the title can be translated as The Liangshan Heroes of Water Margin), following the dramatic tale of deceit, exile, and vengeance for protagonist Lin Chong, in side-scrolling, beat-em-up gameplay. With support for up to three players, companions Lu Zhishen, Jin, and Yang Zhi are ready to assist in the fight against the villainous Gao Qiu." ~MobyGames

Source: Game Champ, October 1997 || RetroCDN; Asagoth

[hadescavedish]

There was a Chinese version of Black Sails vibe literature if anyone was curious about it (be warned, it had misogynistic elements, it is ancient folklore, it also has a very tragic ending, their leader sold out the rebellion in the end):

There was a monk character called Lu Zhishen often reminded me of Vane in BS interpretation.

[darkfalcon-z]

by all account Jin Guanyao did some pretty deplorable things, but if you compare him to the heroes from classic Chinese literature, like of Song Jiang (from Water Margin) he comes off as pretty nice, reasonable guy - see Song Jiang's modus operandi is framing people for crimes (he has his guys commit those crimes, including child murder and mass slaughter), often getting the families of whoever he wants wants to join him killed (executed by authorities) or at least losing their homes. And yet everyone is like "yeah, Song Jiang, the Timely Rain, now that I have nowhere to go I'll join you, let me suck your dick" (as opposed to all the time people captured and almost killed him before they learned who he is and went "why didn't you say you are Song Jiang the Timely Rain, we've almost eaten you, let us suck your dick" - drugging people and using their meat as a filling for buns to sell to and drug more people is surprising common business model in Water Margin). So if Song Jiang gets to be a hero, why can't Jin Guangyao fans make him into one (without changing his character).

On the other hand how would Jin Guangyao measure up if Song Jiang was his opponent?

[journeytothewestresearch]

I wanted to ask, is it quite likely that Sun Wukong killed heavenly soldiers or is it more pure speculation? I sent this ask before, but my old account is having problems with the messages and asks I send. If not, then I hope my question doesn't come across as me being impatient.

To my knowledge, the novel doesn't mention Monkey killing any gods, only demons, spirits, animals, and humans. Any divine figures, be they deities-turned-spirits or holy mounts, are usually reintegrated into the celestial hierarchy and not killed. Also, I don't recall the novel describing Wukong fighting the regular rank-and-file soldiers. The 100,000 soldiers mainly man the heavenly nets creating the cordon around Flower-Fruit Mountain. Monkey only fights high-ranking officers. It's like that in a lot of Chinese fiction. A common trope in Romance of the Three Kingdoms (c. 14th-century) and the Water Margin (c. 1400) is that the appearance, scream, and/or fighting ability of a great warrior is enough to hold hundreds or even thousands of foot soldiers at bay while he battles an opposing officer.

But realistically speaking, the Great Sage would have mowed through the regular soldiers like a sith lord through younglings.

[digitalagepulao]

Sweeney Todd?? In my Chinese classical novel??

[giraffemolerats]

Me: Man, Dragon Ball plays pretty fast and loose with its inspiration, but once you know the source material you notice some cool parallels!

Guy from an alternate dimension where Dragon Ball is based off of "Water Margin" instead of "Journey to the West": Hey man I'm gonna be grilling some burgers for us, can I use the cheese you've got in the fridge?

Me: Sure

[killingdoll]

Some Yan Qing trivia I’ve managed to find:

• As a Chinese, Yan Qing’s name is presented as ‘Surname + first name’, so ‘Yan’ (燕), which means ‘swallow’ (a kind of bird) is his surname and ‘Qing’, meaning ‘blue’ or ‘green’ is his first name. Swallows are very fast and Yan Qing is known to be very agile.

• Yan Qing’s tattoos were his master’s idea. His master, Lu Junyi adopted Yan Qing when he was very young and taught him most of his martial arts skills. One day, Lu looked at Yan and thought the young man had such fair and beautiful skin, so he called a tattoo artist to do Yan’s tattoos.

• Yan has the character ‘義’ on his back. While this character means ‘righteous’, it’s also part of his master’s name: 盧俊義 in Traditional Chinese or 卢俊义 in Simplified Chinese.

• Yan shared a deep bond with his master prior to his leave. Not long after that, Lu Junyi got poisoned and died.

• Yan Qing was portrayed by Chinese actor Yan Kuan/Yan Yikuan in the TV show Water Margin (2010).

(Kinda bummed they didn’t keep his wavy hair and went with the traditional topknot)

• In the TV show, Yan had the characters ‘忠义’ (loyal and righteous) tattooed on his back by the famed courtesan Li Sisi.

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

lu zhishen beats a man to death in the first chapter he’s introduced and he is uncontested the kindest, most morally upstanding person in this entire book.

[suikomizunosoko]

COMITIA１５１の新刊ができました！

お品書きはまた後日……

[koyarisk]

Ximen Qing(西門慶) ーThe Plum in the Golden Vase(金瓶梅) from my imagine

[ladyzerodark]

Yessssssssssss I cannot wait to start reading.