#is won by zhu once again assuming the peasant girl role she's spent her entire life running from

[creechur-docx]

Spoilers for hwdtw!

can we talk about zhu's genderfuckery. she's a girl when girl-on-girl violence is thematically relevant, and he's a dude mostly to piss ouyang off and be best bros with xu da. she's a dude because the alternative is a peasant girl, and he makes his final stand as a peasant girl because fate is funny like that. zhu's gender is a giant gleeful raspberry blown at the world, while simultaneously being a vehicle for themes of gendered violence and discrimination and toxic masculinity and girlhood. i am so normal about this duology btw