#mvtml spoilers

[wildflowercleaver]

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ChenFengggg 😭😭😭

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Wooooow even in ChenFeng's route my mans GouJian is still not over AhYu and wants to find her again. That is some highly appreciated dedication right there.

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Big spoilers ahead for MVtML;

I find it incredibly difficult to move on from GouJian's tragic endings, particularly the one where he mourns the death of AhYu for an agonizing 60 years until his death. The price for AhJiu’s thirst for vengeance is so tremendously high and the remorse he carries for killing AhYu weighs heavily on his heart, haunting him until the very end. Even at 80 or so years old, AhJiu continues to dream of their cherished meeting place at Crane Lake, where he catches glimpses of AhYu's spirit, beckoning him towards the very waters where their fateful first encounter took place. In an act of profound longing, he cries out for AhYu, dashes into the water, and on his deathbed utters his last words, "Wait for me ... " 🥺🥺🥺

And you expect me to remain calm after witnessing this tragedy? 😭😢

[tiger-tally]

Just realized something--the three years of Fuchai’s reign before the start of the game plus the ten years into the future of the epilogue to Wu Zixu’s HE is 13 years. 13 years into Fuchai’s historical reign was the meeting at Huangchi and the assault by Yue that killed Fuchai’s son. But in this alternate timeline, Wu Zixu is still alive, and we see Fuchai’s daughter. That’s a really heartwarming parallel.

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Thinking about how on the routes where Wu Zixu dies early on, Tengyu loses it so badly at his death that she nearly kills the actual love interests for those routes.

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Thinking about a soulmate-identifying mark AU where Tengyu has Yiguang’s mark...but it disappears around the time of the failed attempt to kill the dragon god. She thinks it’s because Yiguang died, but really, it’s because she's becoming Fuchai.

(It seems right that Fuchai has no mark, which adds to her general sense of grim resignation, but I could use suggestions.)

And then:

Wu Zixu, who’s gone 30+ years without a soulmate mark and accepts it just fine, his life has no room for anything but vengeance anyway, starts developing a soulmate mark for Tengyu-as-Fuchai, who did not exist until he created her. Naturally he plans to take this fact to the grave.

Goujian’s mark is innocuously about Ah-Yu and gives him no end of grief. The one-sidedness of the mark sends his paranoia into overdrive.

Yiguang’s mark also disappears after Tengyu becomes Fuchai, which adds to his fears that she’s truly become someone else, but it returns after she kills off “Fuchai” and starts living as Tengyu again.

Chenfeng has no mark and therefore expected nothing, but in a way this makes him match her?

[tiger-tally]

I feel like the most interesting way to look at Goujian’s romance isn’t love-hate like you might expect for enemies to lovers, but fear-faith. For all his bold words about fighting fate, he’s deeply insecure about his relationship to the MC. He fears the power she holds over him and his kingdom, but more than that, he fears that she sees him as her dog.

Goujian never got over her first and only deception, regarding her identity, because he remembers what she’d originally said to him. She's only good to him because she thinks she’s tamed the wolf. She’ll feed him and take care of him and play with him as long as she thinks he’s ignorant and harmless, but she won’t allow him to be anything more. She’ll put him down the moment he bares (his long, sharp) teeth.

He cannot be content with this. So it terrifies him how much he craves her affection anyway, how much he wishes he could just forget about his kingdom and his revenge and stay with her forever. He plays her because he’s afraid he’s her plaything.

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There’s something about the game’s use of flashbacks that I find really interesting. I haven’t played a ton of dating sims, but I feel it’s fairly unusual that the MC has known all four LIs for years before the start of the game, and that they’ve all been important to her at various, different phases of her life. Her backstory is always the same. But in each route, the flashbacks revolving around that LI come to that forefront. Combined with the MC’s struggles with identity, it feels like each time--she’s selectively writing her own history of herself.

Each time she decides which facts are relevant and which to leave out. Compare her wedding night in the Chenfeng and Wu Zixu routes. Her own trauma is central in both, but whether she also remembers it for the pain she caused her childhood friend and his inability to save her, or for her minister saving her by stabbing her and “killing off” her past, says a lot about her conception of herself as well as her relationships with the character in question. And the very fact of whether her memories of/connection with an LI mostly come from her Tengyu phase or her Fuchai phase affects who she ultimately chooses to live as. A friend said that they were impressed that they really could see the MC ending up with any of the LIs--the branches are all there and it just depends on which are nurtured and which are pruned. That aspect of retroactively constructing her past as well as her future is just really intriguing in a historical game. It’s an effect that wouldn’t be possible in a different storytelling medium.

(Along those themes, I have this meta on the parallels between Yiguang and Wu Zixu I have been meaning! to finish! for ages! It’s just that I need to replay the former’s route to get my facts straight but the horniness that gives me all my motivation comes from the latter.)

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[big spoilers ahead]

I find it really funny that I’ve now seen multiple people who’ve played My Vow To My Liege in English say that they have trouble getting over Wu Zixu going behind the MC’s back to try to shank Goujian...when in the Chinese fandom, I see quite a few people who can’t forgive Goujian for his manipulation and betrayal of the MC, and I don’t think I’ve seen even the most hardcore Chinese Goujian fans say Wu Zixu was wrong for what he does.

I guess at least part of it is that most English language players don’t know the material the game riffs on--how nasty and infamous Goujian’s betrayal was historically. (His agent helped orchestrate Wu Zixu’s fall from grace and violent death; he pulls some war crime level maneuvers against Wu; he kills Fuchai’s child and drives Fuchai to suicide.) So that’s certainly going to color people’s initial impressions of his character, and the moral balance between him and the other characters.

As for me, I think both Goujian and Wu Zixu were justified in the game! I don’t think Goujian owes anything to his captor, even if his methods were very douchey, and I hardly think Wu Zixu owes anything to the dude who already killed his previous liege. Honestly, I just have trouble seeing how someone could forgive Goujian’s breach of trust more easily than Wu Zixu’s! I guess...

...Oh. Wait. Fuck.

Translation: “Goujian was in the dark about everything that has happened and he was not in the know of what the demons were planning.”

Original: “Goujian worked in the shadows, and was truly hard to detect.”

Fuck. That’s an unfortunate translation error.

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Dream Sequences

Okay, I will say--Goujian has my favorite dream sequence in the game. It was emotionally impactful, it made me sympathize despite myself, and it added the most to my understanding of that character.

I also really liked Chenfeng’s--it was the highlight of his route, and some of the choices you’re presented with are really interesting upon further thought.

My least favorite is probably Yiguang’s sort-of dream sequence, not because it’s bad or anything, just because it doesn’t add much. Like, yeah, the MC is surrounded by ghosts of her past and present and Yiguang sweeps in and frees her. It’s a good literalized metaphor of their dynamic, and it seems like missing the point to ask for more of a spark to it when you’re in the route with the only LI with any chill, but still.

I actually have really mixed feelings about Wu Zixu’s dream sequence. On the one hand, I love the use of the reeds poem: going up through the river of the time, the way through his life and the choices is long and tortuous, but the one you seek has been before your eyes the entire time. The VA is incredible here portraying Wu Zixu through different age stages.

But also the budget limitations really show through in this sequence, with the lack of additional sprites. Plz I just want to see smol wide-eyed nearly unrecognizable teen Wu Zixu. And also--it feels a little too easy. Why is Wu Zixu being so trusting and nice?? I know it’s a dream but it feels unnatural!

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Thoughts on a theoretical Shao Jiang route

Team Would Rather Date Shao Jiang Than Zheng Dan 4 Lyfe

I’ve always felt like a Shao Jiang romance would be kind of like the MC/Wu Zixu dynamic but with the roles reversed. Wu Zixu is an older, more world-wise guiding figure for the MC whom the MC outlives in most routes; the MC is that older, more world-wise guiding figure for Shao Jiang, whom Shao Jiang outlives in all the BEs. Wu Zixu stabbed the MC to make her realize her will to live; the MC stabs Shao Jiang to make her realize her will to live.  The MC appreciates Wu Zixu’s chest; Shao Jiang appreciates the MC’s chest.

So I think a Shao Jiang route could similarly have her use the lessons the MC taught her to save the MC from despair. This is likely a route where Wu Zixu dies, then, but I can also see him just in a situation where he needs saving, and the ladies have to pull off a 2x beloved older found family rescue chain combo? In the former case, I can see a “they run away into the woods” HE like the other ones where Wu Zixu dies...or one where the MC returns to Qi with Shao Jiang to help protect the last remnant of her family, so that one doomed princess can keep her family. In the latter, I wanna see Shao Jiang marrying the king of Wu after all, and them being a power couple.

But that’s getting ahead of myself! I’d want to see Shao Jiang maturing and giving the MC emotional support in turn. One potentially interesting angle is Shao Jiang coming of age as in a precarious political situation, but as a princess instead of a king. Maybe the solution to the MC’s Fuchai-versus-Tengyu struggles in this route involves understanding through Shao Jiang that she would have had to leave behind the innocence of her childhood even if she hadn’t been made heir. And maybe Shao Jiang’s secureness in her own femininity can help the MC with hers.

Anyway! Sigh! May the devs make lots of money so they can make DLCs!

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Vaguely on the subject of my last thing, I’ve been thinking about how the LIs can be split into two groups of two along different lines.

Chenfeng and Yiguang, the childhood friend options who know the MC foremost as Tengyu, vs. Wu Zixu and Goujian, the court options who know the MC foremost as Fuchai.

Yiguang and Wu Zixu, the loyal protectors, vs. Chenfeng and Goujian, the defectors who struggle to accept all of her.

(The above fits perfectly with a looks like/actually, cinnamon roll/can kill you quadrant meme, btw.)

So now I’m wondering if you can make a third meaningful division, Chenfeng and Wu Zixu vs. Yiguang and Goujian. I guess the latter are the...spicy Romantic options. The dudes she runs off to rendezvous with. The ones that appeal to the MC’s idealism and desire for escape. Whereas the former are the dudes who’ve stuck with her in the palace this entire time. The unglamorous options with great bods that she has subtler more storge-inflected feelings for.

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Okay, before I forget, I had this screenshot and associated interesting detail that I don’t think I ever worked into my other posts.

This is the convo shortly after Fuchai comes back to the capital with Yiguang, where he remarks on how well Wu Zixu has kept her protected and Fuchai goes “lol yeah right.” The noteworthy bit is that Yiguang uses the word 保护 (to protect), but when she refutes him, she unthinkingly says 爱护 (to cherish, literally “to love and protect”). Yiguang smiles and doesn’t say anything.

I rather suspect Yiguang knows what’s up. XD

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 So while writing my last post I realized that the big argument with Wu Zixu reads much differently than the way I initially read it if you go in with the assumption that he’s already in love with the MC and fairly aware of his feelings, and I wanted to make a more detailed post focusing on this interpretation of the scene. I may also do their night conversation at the waterfall at some point. Anyway, this is going to be screenshot-heavy, self-indulgent, and written in the place of all the other things I should be writing. :’D

TL;DR: wow it’s even angstier.

I glossed over this bit the first time around, but it’s significant that he opens the conversation by asking the MC if she trusts him, in an unusual show of uncertainty/discomfort. (I believe the technical term is 心虚, wink wonk.) He’s likely thinking of Fugai here--this is another reason he doesn’t want her to know his feelings. She’s already been betrayed and assaulted by an older man she saw as family; how triggering would it be knowing he has unplatonic feelings for her? (Also, at this point in the story, we don’t know about Fugai, so I think this bit is supposed to come off as less suggestive the first time around.)

He smiles in relief at her answer. He seems to be genuinely worried that the MC would take this as trying to get with her, given the way he stresses that he’s saying this for impersonal reasons. I initially assumed that telling the MC to find some stranger to get knocked up by while he himself is right there was him being obliviously paternal, but now I think he’s purposefully eliding himself out of conflict of interest. Very professional. Very masochistic.

Anyway Fuchai starts ripping into him. Seriously, she gets vicious toward him, more than she gets with any of her other LIs. (A digression: I think on some level she dreads the idea of becoming like him, embittered, cynical and alone--which adds another interesting layer to their parallels and their mentor/student relationship. And romancing him involves seeing that he wasn’t always this way, and doesn’t have to be this way, and forging a new path together.)

But from Wu Zixu’s POV...he thinks the only person he’s ever fallen for can’t and shouldn’t reciprocate his feelings, and he’s resolved to take them to the grave rather than hurt her. He’s telling her to go have sex with someone else, because he thinks it’s the responsible advice to give, shoving aside his own personal feelings and being definitely in a lot of pain himself. And she...accuses him of getting off on making her suffer, takes him to be in contempt of her, and mocks his misery.

Oh, also, a fun wording detail:

The Chinese word is stronger than “insult”, btw; I’d personally translate it as “degradation”. But, in both the English and the original, she uses the same word when talking about what Fugai did and what he’s doing.

So. Anyway. He loses it.

I...actually wonder how close he was to admitting his feelings there.

...Yeah, falling for your benefactor’s teenage daughter has got to be awkward. I thought the “I’m doing this out of duty/debt” aspect was a bit cold the first time around, but really it’s “I’m doing this in spite of my own feelings out of duty/debt.” The way he doesn’t let her touch him, juxtaposed with his talk of how deeply he feels his duty and how hard he’s trying to do the right thing, is...oof.

And so this conversation ends with both parties feeling thoroughly eviscerated! Good game, guys!

Anyway, a stray thought for a post-script: he really arguably does do the right thing by hiding his feelings outside his route. Imagine the MC trying not to go berserk with vengeance in Yiguang route or trying not to stab Chenfeng in his route if she’d known.

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Angsty Wu Zixu thought: everyone important to Wu Zixu died violently while he wasn’t there for them--that includes both his family and Helu. No wonder he’s that hovery and overprotective of the MC.

...And then in his BE she dies while he isn’t there anyway.