#tell a Very VERY different kind of story

[malaierba]

Curently thinking about the Kara being adopted fic. Ngl, I kinda wanted to know what his original family was like? Imagine he was supposed to live a life of luxury since his biological parents were rich, but fate intervened, causing Kara to be where he is now, with his brothers??? Idk why, but I some times think of how crazy it would be if Kara's parents would have lived. Not me making another AU somehow 😭

Oh, I never really gave his original family's background much thought beyond "I wonder if he was born before or after the sextuplets, it'd be funny if he was actually older / younger than everyone lol". The thing that had me losing sleep was thinking about him making the effort to know more about his parents, the way he'd mourn them, the way the others would help him through it, bruh I literally daydreamed for days on end about them going to Sapporo and what that'd be like for everyone, if the fact that he was adopted ever came up in a fight and how everyone would react aksfjksdf etc.

That said, I think that wondering about what any of the sextuplets would've been like if they had been raised without siblings is a question that can get pretty, PRETTY meta.

After all, one of the main themes in Osomatsu-san is that the siblings are kind of unhealthily codependent :-/c They're too used to their group dynamic and they're so used to being othered by others on the basis of being sextuplets and not being the best at integrating social groups that aren't their own*, that they simply can't break out of that status quo for good.

(*parenthesis: I've seen people argue that even Todomatsu, for all that he brags about being socially savvy, only really manages to engage people on a superficial level. You have to pay attention to the type of conversations he has with his friends to realise that. Honestly? IDK. Personally, I'd argue that from a writers POV there's not a lot of motivation to hint at him having meaningful conversations with extras, and that's why all his friendships SEEM superficial. It could be that Totty's issue is just that he's not serious-serious about rising in the social pyramid properly. And part of the why could be the point I discuss below)

Expanding on the last point, I think Totty actually exemplifies perfectly how the sextuplets kind of keep each other stuck, wether intentionally or through the power of inertia. And I say this while keeping in mind that Matsunos one through five were actually behaving (as much as they can lol) UNTIL they realised that Totty had lied about being a sextuplet, being a NEET, etc etc, which is hurtful af and these guys are unhinged in a group so ofc they were going to sabotage.

Wo with that in mind, what would it mean for Karamatsu of all people to not be INSIDE that type of group?

I think the one AU were we get to see a glimpse at what everyone would be like had they been raised as only children is Denki Mystery (MY BELOVED), in which Karamatsu actually happens to be raised by Matsuzo and ends up becoming a journalist for a supernatural magazine (love that for him lol, love that he still had Matsuzo's influence and I choose to believe that's how he maintains a vague fixation on the 80s, love that he studied journalism which is not an easy career, love that he ended up working in a spooky magazine, love it).

So! To answer your question! in the context of the Adopted Kara AU, I think an Only Child!Karamatsu would be a lot like Karatsugu, in that he'd be forced to be more down-to-earth. Karatsugu still has some Kara-Kara moments, but for the most part he's independent and unafraid to speak out his mind, and it shows... and it's just a flavour thats ever so slightly different from canon!Karamatsu like, yeah, we Karamatsu wander on his own a lot, we see him say stuff that's unpopular with characters like Totoko and Choromatsu and Totty, but Karatsugu... He just does it different. I wonder if its his journalism training showing through. Like, he still plays the role of mediator and pacifier alot, much like Karamatsu; He tries to keep the group from fighting too seriously, but where Karamatsu sometimes falls to group mentality or is simply too passive, Karatsugu often surprised me with dialogue that felt more assertive, more rational than Kara's, more based on him trying to be objective.

I think an OC!Karamatsu would also feel a bit more absorbed by whatever interests he has. I remember reading an analysis on Ozou (Denki Mystery!Osomatsu) that highlighted how, without siblings and without the role of the eldest, Osomatsu felt even more listless than usual. Unlike Karamatsu, Osomatsu doesn't really have interests that are obvious to us viewers (besides gambling?), let alone hobbies to hyperfixate on to the degree that Kara does. Osomatsu is very comfortable in the place he takes within the sextuplets dynamic. Without it, Ozou gives off the feeling of being nice and caring and chill, but he's distant in a way, it's like something's lacking. It seems that he struggled to make connections that allowed him to explore himself through others, which landed Ozou in the role of a nice taxi driver, a guy that's everyone's good friend but no one's best friend. His is perhaps the saddest story in Denki Mystery.

I started talking about Osomatsu because it is my belief that Choukei were both HEAVILY influenced by their role as eldest siblings. Karamatsu less so than Osomatsu, as he's the second eldest, but still. Karamatsu is also the type of personality that seeks connection, that is gregarious, that likes to maintain good relationships with those he's close to. We've seen in canon that Karamatsu is sensitive to both friends and family's moods, that he'll go along with what they want if it's what they expect of him (even if he doesn't always want to, it took 3 seasons for him to realise that he can opt out of situations if he wants lol), that he can and will act responsibly almost on instinct if he decides that he must.

Without siblings, Karatsugu just gives off this vibe that he really, really fixated on journalism, and everything that involved his father's job. Which makes sense... this is a bit of a headcanon, but I feel like fantasy plays a big role in the way Karamatsu relates to and understands reality. Like, Kara is a biiit of an idealist, he's an empath too, he's introduced to us as an ex-actor. I can't help but see him as the type that relies on stories to (try to?) understand how other people see the world. He's aware that he plays different roles for different people but he also wants to play the lead, and because he sometimes gets too lost in his own fantasy world, the end result is the flamboyant, nonsensical guy we all know and love.

You know what grounds him most effectively? His siblings. Sure, there's many skits where the joke is that his siblings (mainly Choromatsu and Todomatsu) fail at bringing him back to reality, but in other Ososan media we also get plenty of moments where either: 1. Karamatsu gets serious because someone asks him to drop the theatrics seriously enough, or 2. He realises that he's in a situation where HE (no one else!) NEEDS to get serious, so he gets serious.

So, Karamatsu without siblings? This guy who seeks connection so desperately? I think he'd end up looking for it in other people, but also in things like stories, music, things that let him know that what he thinks and feels is something that others also think and feel, hobbies that let him believe that he can connect with others on that level too.

Karatsugu for example, is amazing in that its our dear ditzy Kara-kara, filling out so, so confidently the role you'd expect a journalist to fill. He's interested in others, he quite evidently uses his job as a way to get to know more about the world around him + the people who cross his path, he poses good questions a lot of the time, he suspends disbelief too since, well, he is working for a supernatural magazine. He's just a perfect mix of eagerness to connect with people, tamed by the hat of professionalism and by the fact that he HAS had to learn to be self-reliant.

So with all that said, when I think of OnlyChild!Karamatsu I kind of envision a guy that's going to be soooo into his hobbies, so very extra about them, a musical theatre kid through and through that's just ever so obviously quite lonely. Like... you know all those sad!Karamatsu fics? Where Kara is secretly lonely and whatnot (love them btw, fic writers you are valid idc what people say), when in canon he's happy-go-luck for the most part and his introspective moments mainly show after he's had a reality check?

I think this Karamatsu, heart-on-his-sleeve, wants-to-be-useful, empathetic Karamatsu, would feel somewhat jealous of his 5 cousins. Because see, it's one thing to be a only child on your own, and to have no one to compare yourself to, your reality is the default and that's that. It's quite another to have cousins and to see that they get to always have someone to play with, that they've got each others back for the most part, that they make a group you kind of want to belong to but that you just can't integrate in the way they do.

It'd be interesting because on one hand, I do see Karamatsu as being vulnerable to being taken advantage of in an attempt to "belong", but I also think that deep down and especially as time goes on just KNOW the he can't belong. He'd definitely end up with a sense of individuality that's stronger than what current Karamatsu has... and on the other hand, he'd actually feel as othered as fanon!Karamatsu sometimes is made out to be.

Because lbr, in canon, no matter how eccentric Karamatsu is, part of the reason why he's not self-conscious about it is that in the back of his mind he's comforted by the knowledge that no matter how far he takes his bits, he'll always have a group he belongs to, a group he loves and that he trusts to love him. He wrote them a song for gods sake lol. When you're on your own, being a dissonant note (especially in a society like Japan's) takes a lot more spoons.

I want to trust that, much like Karatsugu, a Karamatsu that feels self-conscious, that's still searching for the confidence to be the way he wants to be, would eventually find it. I just think that, again, like Karatsugu, it'd be a bit more subdued. He's still kind of eccentric and extra for sure, but its below the surface. I think he'd be aware of the fact that his flavour of personality is hard for most people to swallow, unless its a bit diluted.

And much like Karatsugu, I think it'd still be very important for SC!Karamatsu to find a way to be a part of the quintuplets lives. The difference would be that on this AU, they aren't all on similar standing. He's on one side, and they're on another side. I can see Karamatsu, especially as a child, trying hard to be The Cool Cousin, to embrace the role like it makes him especial: The cousin with the big house, the cousin that's always down to enable his other cousins, the cousin that his cousins are all jealous of because he takes english, and guitar, and singing classes, and he gets to keep all his toys for himself, nevermind that he has to play on his own (and not by choice), obviously for the most part.

He's The Cousin, in the same way that Chibita is An Orphan, and Totoko is The Pretty Girl. Because the Matsunos are An Unit, "i am you and you are me", they are a freaky little group and everyone else exists outside of it.

Anyway. Childhood and teenage loneliness aside, it'd probably pay off in the sense that SC!Karamatsu would probably be more of a functional adult than canon!Karamatsu currently is. Totty would be jealous of him and would try to leverage his ridiculous cousin to raise in society (like with Atsushi lol?), Choromatsu would attempt the same thing but through his responsible skit (I think the incredible relationship they have in canon Ososan would be completely gone which is so sad), Jyushimatsu and Osomatsu probably just still appreciate the cousin that's always down to having fun, probably not much of a relationship with Ichimatsu (for better and for worse)... and that'd be it.

The Matsuno siblings together create a dynamic that's too difficult to penetrate. Of all of them the only ones we've seen successfully form relationships with people outside their group are Jyushimatsu (Homura, Eitarou and his mom, essentially all the recurring characters), Totty (Atsushi, Sutabaa friends), Karamatsu himself (Chibita, biker friends), and I'm reluctant to count Osomatsu since Totoko and Chibita he's known all his life.

I can't help but think that Karamatsu would probably end up like Totoko's brother: A cool guy that in the best of cases, finds his path outside of Akatsuka Ward, and forcibly cuts ties with everyone in there as a result. If he remains in Akatsuka, he'd either be like Atsushi or Chibita (mainly called upon when the Matsunos need something from him, and in the best of cases, to tell a melancholic story once per season at best)

And if you ever asked him if he liked being a single child, he'd 100% tell you that it was fine, but he would've loved to have a little sibling.

[katabay]

original thief series basso & garrett :)

ngl, it's about quality over quantity for me. an npc can have a total of three minutes of screen time, but if they have a cool name, they can live rent free in my head and I'll spend several hours trying to decipher drawable features from a blurry screenshot of pixels

there is a vague hint of a story here, and that's because every time I try to play thi4f, I get incredibly frustrated with how Not Fun the game play is. like, is the story good? well. but it has a PLAGUE. that should've given it instant 'I'll replay this once a year' status in my heart, but the game play sucks so bad that I've never finished it. I can't believe Not Fun gameplay beat out my obsession with narrative plagues.

anyway, the idea is basically if the original era had a game with a plague centric narrative and some other stuff I liked out of thi4f thrown into a narrative blender, with a heavy dash of horror thrown in because some parts of the thief games were scarier to me than entire dedicated horror genre games.

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[rinbylin]

friendships as marital ties (and other notes on relational ties) in mlc

this is sort of a third installment in the series of meta on 'mlc as an exemplar of constructing queer narratives out of chinese ideological frameworks' (1. jianghu as queer space and 2. how it manifests in li xiangyi) - focusing on the nature of relationships in it. (which I've briefly mentioned in the first one and finally actually getting to it!!)

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I would like to first call attention to chinese ideological frameworks as a premise of queer reading in mlc. the goal of chinese philosophy is to explore the becoming of human, taking two broad paths of the (mainstream) secular vs. escaping the secular. (these two paths are not a strict dichotomy, and rather, are ever in flux and in conversation with each other.) as said by @markiafc too, chineseness is so much about the rigidity of structures, and in equal part, a desire to break out of them. thus, chinese ideological frameworks can very much offer a rich reading of queerness - that mlc, a story very deliberately structured based on chinese ideologies (more accurately, with good reasons for me to believe that it is as such), has managed to materialise.

if the conceptualisation of queerness is premised on a defiance against mainstream norms, then a reliable way to read queerness in chinese ideological frameworks can be to deconstruct it by the mainstream confucian frameworks.

in mlc, this is implicitly set up with its stage of wulin/martial jianghu. then it is further broken down by asking, hey wulin jianghu is still closely related to the hegemonic values and the mainstream structure of authority (historically, 侠 xia being politically involved says a lot about this), so what is the true meaning of jianghu? what does it then really take for jianghu to be a queer space offering comfort and freedom to those who have escaped to it - to be the space that allow the transcendence of rigid roles and labels? mlc took a step further to resist the proxy to mainstream values that wulin jianghu has become.

this is why there can be a very strong buddhism reading of mlc (suggested here, expounded in the A+++ meta by @markiafc here and here, and also what I've seen discussed by cnet as well), given that buddhism is one of the 'extra-secular' ideologies, alongside (philosophical) taoism. I've also touched on a taoist angle in this meta. both schools are articulated in different sets of languages, but ultimately convey a same ideal of what it means to be human and how to live well - that is, to resist the roles and labels defined by the norms.

so, back to confucian frameworks.

a lot can be discussed about mlc with it. but in the context of this meta about relationships in mlc, it's specifically drawing on how confucianism conceptualises social relationships with familial ties as a cornerstone, and how these relational ties are inextricable from the conceptualisation of the 'self'.

as such, one of the things about mlc that has fascinated me is how deliberately it seems to ignore and reject the conventional familial ties (the kind by blood and marital ties). I've joked about how it is a miracle for me to love mlc as much as I do, as a prime dysfunctional family story enjoyer, despite none of its main characters struggling with any complicated feelings about their (biological) parents. but on closer examination, mlc is also making a comment on the model of familial-based relationships that dominates mainstream society - but through the absence of it.

with this, I want to talk about 1) how mlc rejects the conventional ties; and then 2) how it repurposes these ties in its own ways.

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the five relational ties in confucianism:

father and son 父子有亲 - (natural) affection between father and son

ruler and subject 君臣有义 - righteous relationship between ruler and subject

older and younger brothers 兄弟 (长幼有序) - this is actually about seniority within the family; the order between older vs younger family members

husband and wife 夫妇有别 - differentiation between husband and wife (demarcated by the 内外 spectrum of gendered inner-external spheres)

friends 朋友有信 - trust between friends

logically inferred, all these ties are hierarchical and familial-based except for the last one: friends. ruler-subject is sort of an extension of the natural familial ties, while friendship is the inverse space of 1-4 (ie. you fall back on 5 to define a social relationship outside of the familial sphere that cannot be qualified as 1-4). while all are premised on mutuality, it is only no. 5 that is defined by a sense of choice and equality.

on the surface, 1-4 don't quite exist in mlc in particularly meaningful ways to the narrative or are even outright overlooked, and friendship is the relational tie most valued by mlc. we can tell it's true just by looking at the most meaningful relationships in mlc of difanghua. but at the same time, it is more nuanced. we can take a closer look at how the story plays around with most of the ties as part of a broader queer narrative.

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1) how mlc rejects the conventional ties

mlc's rejection of mainstream relational ties can be best seen in fdb escaping from marriage. and it was not just any engagement with anybody but an engagement with the imperial family. he struggles with the prospect of being married to princess zhaoling, but generally, it's about the idea of complying to mainstream conventions and expectations that includes compulsory heterosexuality. all these point not only to a defiance against amatonormativity - the resistance of the traditional husband-wife tie, but also an irreverence for the ties of ruler-subject (the engagement being an imperial decree) and father-son (matters of marriage being sole decisions made by parents).

of course this is on top of how fdb's own biological father is a p-o-s, and the narrative gives fdb minimal struggles in this aspect, allowing him to sever this tie without looking back (I love it, yeap). along the same line is how lxy is an orphan, who came to gain important relationships that are built on natural compassion among people rather than innate, blood-based ties - even as llh. the sense of defiance from the narrative is especially stark to me considering that he could have a completely different familial-based life - as a son, brother, and ruler, if his biological family was still around. the narrative also deliberately treats his biological brother as a phantom, replaced with an older brother who he was bonded with neither by blood nor marital ties. on dfs's front, absolutely nothing is to be known about his biological family. his childhood history with the toxic patriarch of his life - who is not even his biological father - was afforded a clean break and closure.

we can keep going on, but that's pretty much the point.

ritualisation is one of the most important things of the confucianism school, especially to the honoring of these social relationships (and the officiating of social roles). the one ceremony/ritual we saw in mlc involving the main characters - or more accurately speaking, came closest to seeing - was the imminent wedding ceremony of dfs and jlq. even in that case, it was premised on non-mutuality with dfs being the unwilling, passive party. (fem-coded dfs? 25 marks.)

and that brings us to the next part.

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2) how mlc repurposes these ties

that particular wedding ceremony gets hijacked by dfs and lxy/llh, and gets turned into an important milestone in their relationship. they consummate - what is on text - their friendship after a long time being more enemies and rivals than friends. it is a clear establishment of the trust they have for each other. and here it is where I circle back to the subject of this post: friendships as marital ties.

in this article, as a part of a feminist, egalitarian reframing of confucianism, there is a proposal for spousal relationships to be reframed as a friendship tie. (this aligns with the interrelatedness of the five ties eg. the ruler-subject mirrors father-son dynamic, with the confucian belief that rulers have an obligation to their subjects alike parents to their own children.) by doing so, it removes the functional, gendered differentiation assigned to marital ties, and shifts it to something equal, and independent of gender. you exalt the value of trust between spouses, instead of basing marital relationships on gendered roles. as such, spouses become more like friends, and conversely, friends can also become more like spouses. (romance not a prerequisite. it has never been about romance anyway.)

given that mlc has repeatedly applied marital motifs to llh and dfs's characters in their joint narratives, this opens up a reading friendships as a marital tie. seeing marriage as a bridge for strangers to become family, marriage in mlc becomes a metaphor for the chosen commitment and mutual trust put in by strangers/friends (non-familial ties) into the becoming of family. the blurring of lines between marital ties and friendship encourages a genuine space of queer experience that goes beyond any pressure for strict labels - of sexuality, and relationships as romantic, sexual, etc etc.

(note: despite the borrowing of a feminist concept, I strongly hesitate to call mlc a feminist story. it's a whole discussion - or debate - on its own. nevertheless, it is definitely a gender-conscious story that lays foundation for a strong queer and egalitarian reading.)

-

it is to be noted that it is intended - and also beneficial to take the confucian framework of relational ties beyond face value. the framework offers what it believed to be the most fundamental social relationship dynamics, and sees room for extension and matching to other kinds of relationships (all if not, most). a relationship such as teacher-student, which is outside of the five ties stated, can also mirror the affection of father-son ties, albeit not in a literal and identical way.

speaking of which. fdb and lxy/llh.

indeed they're known by others to be good friends. fdb thinks they're good friends too - insists on it, and puts his best efforts in keeping it that way. but does it really go both ways? if it does not, then can it really still be friendship? my humble take is that, ultimately - weighing in with llh's perspective - this is a relationship that is not so much based on trust, and rather, based on an innate affection that is only unique to family. (in this case, not blood/marital-based but one that was chosen and built aka lxy's relationship with sgd.) in other words, less of a friendship, more of a familial one.

it is a lot clearer considering their relationship from llh's point of view: some brat you never wanted in your life came barging in, and whether he was going to bring any positive effect to your life was secondary to the tranquility - which you have carved for yourself in the past decade - that is so integral to your personhood. no way. but the moment you hear that he's family? well, that changes the game completely. even before learning about fdb being sgd's son (then beginning to take initiative in showing greater acceptance), it is apparent in llh that there was an instinctive resonance with fdb as his shixiong's nephew. (eg. he remarked to his shifu's grave about how alike fdb is to himself.) this is unlike with dfs whom he had taken a much longer time to build trust with. you do not apply trust - aka the quality of friendships - to family. family is something deeper, more instinctive than that. if fdb was never family, I find it hard to imagine given llh's personality, that he would have let some brazen, bratty stranger intrude for that long. (boy invited himself to llh's home, sat himself down eating the owner's dinner and nosing in his cooking abilities!!! ily bb but that was uncalled for 😭)

of course there are many more layers in their relationship. there is a substantial degree of their history as (unwitting) teacher-disciple: fdb is still healthy and alive all thanks to the existence of lxy as a spiritual teacher role model in his life, regardless it being one-sided or not. there is also indeed some part of friendship in it, especially from fdb's point of view. he sees llh as a kindred spirit who he could enjoy a life of freedom with for life. but llh never reciprocates. he knew this was short-lived. and so ultimately, the hierarchical layer of their relationship overpowers the equal one, where llh's treatment of fdb as a nephew/小辈 younger family member and a disciple is the one that sealed the fate of their relationship.

if (blood-based) familial ties are irrelevant in jianghu, then the closest proxy to a father-son relationship in the martial world would be a teacher-disciple relationship. lxy and his shifu are a clear, indisputable example. for fdb and llh, their teacher-disciple tie is murkier and not consistently applied. they were also never ritualised as teacher-disciple, and thus are not teacher-disciple in any official capacity as far as confucian ideas are concerned. yet in crucial moments, it is invoked by llh as a card of authority over fdb to get out of sticky situations with fdb. and there was their final scene together: in a moment of sincerity, llh gives the approval to fdb as his disciple - then entrusting fdb with the secret manual of his techniques, up until his final letter in which fdb was recommended to dfs as a successor to his martial abilities.

in an imperial setting, this would have been the relationship of an emperor and his crown prince that straddles both ruler-subject and father-son ties aka a tag-team of disaster. the teacher has an obligation to nurture his disciple as a successor to himself, and love him like a son too. on the flipside, he holds the final power in their relationship - withholding knowledge and feelings from the younger one. they are only equals in a way a parent-child can be. they are only equals as much as the parent allows. and this is how fdb got left behind in the dust of llh's departure. he was the child treating his parent like a friend, supporting him emotionally and begging to be loved back the same way he loves his parent - but the parent had a lifetime way ahead of him and stayed out of his reach, physically and emotionally.

llh and fdb operate with the trapping of a friendship but have always been family in the core. llh had known that way before fdb did, just like everything else he had known and put out of fdb's reach. because. fdb did not have to know. fdb is different and will forge his own path. and that's a kind of love llh has for him that nobody understands (in fact not even fdb himself) - one that is on a different plane from friendships.

by repurposing the framework of relational ties, mlc showed that the essence of familial relationships aka its intimacy and closeness can be independent from biology and formalised rituals. and it is important to myself for stories to say that people can build close ties and deeply meaningful relationships even without being born or ritualised into any.

-

then back to how these relational ties are inextricable from the conceptualisation of the 'self' in confucian worldview: the roles you play in these relationships are intended to define you. there is no 'self' independent from it. while the concept of a social, relational self is fully rooted in reality, being locked into social roles can be a painful way to live - a way that llh has experienced as lxy the sigu sect leader. so, in order for lxy/llh to realise a sense of self that exists outside the norms, it inevitably points to another way that requires a cut from these relationships. that is then the buddhist (or taoist) answer of looking past attachments to the world such as the confucian idea of relationships defining your being. only with a dissolution of a sense of 'self', can there be true liberation.

[dingodad]

to be fair i think the reasons why i believe quadrants r fake versus why i believe classpects r fake are pretty crucially different. like homestuck kind of goes out of its way to trick you into thinking classpects could be real whereas i genuinely dont think hussie ever expected anyone to read about moirallegience and think wow... so romantic.. i want that in my life ❤ LOL

[local-redhead-bookworm]

Lots of vague thoughts about how Heero and Mikazuki have inverse arcs. Heero’s arc is about learning to live for more than the fight and become a person again, rejecting the call of a machine that would turn him into a killer and not making a deal with a demon. Mikazuki’s arc is about slowly losing himself to the point that he doesn’t see a future for himself in a world without fighting, becoming nothing more than a weapon as he succumbs to the deal with his demon.

[moonstandardtime]

i want to put link in isat. im sure hed do fine. the heros spirit endures

[yeonban]

I have to say my favorite part about Aha's character is how pivotal they are to the story and how subtly they lead the universe to lean into one direction or the other while everyone mainly continues to see them as a hehe xd lol jester cringefail little havoc creating guy intent solely on trolling everyone

[the-busy-ghost]

There are many reasons my interests are more geared towards mediaeval Scotland than mediaeval England, but at least one of them has to be the fact that I am completely incapable of Being Normal about the Lion in Winter and Shakespeare's second tetralogy.

[fictionadventurer]

All the tour groups in Springfield should be very proud of me for how well I refrained from sharing all my fascinating Lincoln facts.

[puhpandas]

Evan Afton is genuinely SO Norman Babcock. like his whole family doesnt understand him and in fact dislike him and actively tell him so and act callous around him (save for Norman's mom)? his family treats him like hes different or weird and excludes him? hes bullied at school and is small for his age? he keeps to himself and has unique interests that everybody ridicules? he actively tries to stay out of peoples way because hes seen as a burden? he spouts on about 'fake' visions he has and people think hes crazy for it (Evan with the nightmares, Norman with the ghosts and prophecies)? he gets dragged into some decades long tragedy and has to deal with it? they share the same role, but Evan is the beginning while Norman is the end? come on man

[coquelicoq]

it's interesting, a few people on my post yesterday about the dandelion dynasty told me they were taking it as a rec for the series, but i didn't actually recommend the series in that post. it's making me think about whether i would rec it to people, a question i hadn't fully considered yet (as it is a very different question from "do i like this book?"). so this is me figuring out the answer to that question. i'll keep it spoiler-free (though i make no promises on brevity).

i just finished book 3 (of 4) and each installment has left me more invested than i was before, but the series started out very slow, and i didn't really get into it until halfway through book 2. i wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people bounce off the first book; i didn't, but only because 1) i almost never give up on a book that i've started (it's a character flaw of mine 😕) and 2) my trust in ken liu is ridiculously high because the other stuff i've read by him is so beloved to me. so my reaction to feeling kind of meh about book 1 was "okay, let's see where he's going with this" rather than "i guess this just isn't my cup of tea."

i should say that the problem might just be my own ignorance/lack of familiarity with the form. i don't read a lot of epic fantasy - in fact, lord of the rings is the one series that i have given up on reading a couple of times because it just left me totally indifferent. so if you like epics, you are starting out way ahead of me and can maybe just ignore the rest of this post lol, but i think i had to adjust to what the form is asking of me and what it's best suited to accomplish before i could get fully on board.

the main thing i struggled with is the writing, like the actual sentence-level mechanics of voice and style. this surprised me, because i usually find his writing very beautiful, or, when not beautiful, i can get a sense of the effect he means to achieve by employing a certain style. but in this series, the writing came across as kind of awkward and one-note to me at first, and i couldn't see a reason for it to be that way.* the dialogue especially - different characters don't really have different ways of speaking, they all feel pretty much the same. this was one of the main things i had to adjust to, but i do get it now. i don't just mean that i got used to the style and it doesn't bother me anymore, though that is true; i mean that i now understand the effect he means to achieve by employing this style, which gives it purpose and inextricably ties it to the story he's telling (this becomes especially clear in book 3, as it's directly related to a major theme of that book). if the style were different, he would be telling a different story; that's the sign of a successful execution, i think.

i said in the tags on yesterday's post that one reason the series doesn't have much of a fandom on here might be that the characters aren't natural blorbos. of course every character is probably the blorbo of somebody somewhere, but i don't know that these characters were designed to be blorbos, if that makes sense. not that they're plot devices either! every single one of them is conflicted and complicated and compelling, and most of them are followed over a period of many years, so we see them develop as people over time. but there is no protagonist, for example. you could also say that every character is a protagonist. the "list of major characters" at the beginning of book 3 is six pages long, and there are stories to be told about each of these characters, and none of them are told in isolation. but in a way, the characters themselves are not the point, or if they are, it's in aggregate - it's in the ways they're all complex, the ways they all have motivations that make sense to them (and that make sense to us, once we get to know them). and it's about power and the roles that the characters play in their society, rather than the roles the characters play in the story. or maybe those are the same thing! because ultimately, the main character of this story is the society. and the plot is the history of this society, rather than the journey or life of a single person or handful of people.**

(sidenote, there will be a period during book 1 when you will think to yourself, "wow, all the women characters are super one-dimensional and the narrative doesn't seem to respect them." this is on purpose. just keep going.)

the plotting is intricate while also feeling very organic. he's got dozens of plates in the air at once, he's maintaining them over a long period (these books are MASSIVE), and he's somehow making it seem like a real history, not like an author pulling strings. i haven't finished it yet, but my guess is that he's going to pull off a very satisfying conclusion that's at the same time very open-ended. definitely looking forward to it.

and the worldbuilding. oh, the worldbuilding. this is some of the most detailed, complex, realistic*** worldbuilding i've ever encountered, and he covers SO much ground. you want linguistic worldbuilding? you got it. philosophy? it's here. psychology of empire? coming right up. the nitty-gritty of everyday governance? buddy, pull up a chair. mechanical engineering? how much time you got?? (it better be enough time to read 3504 physical pages, because that's how long this series is.) and he's drawing on chinese history and cultural narratives rather than slapping lipstick on a tolkien clone (see his comments here, but stop reading at "In this continuation of the series" if you want to avoid spoilers). he WILL go on for a hundred pages about a single invention, but it's SO interesting that he is allowed. this is a story about how technology (including language, and schools of thought, and agriculture, and...) shapes, and is a product of, its time and place and people, so again, this is all to purpose. but it's also just. really cool.

the last thing i'll say, and this is mainly for other ken liu fans, is that one of the things i most love about his short stories is how they tap into emotions i didn't even know i had, as though they're reaching inside of me and drawing to the surface ways of experiencing consciousness and love and mortal life that i had no idea were in there. this series is not causing emotional revelation for me in the way his other stories do, which isn't a bad thing - i don't mean to say the series is not engaging or that it inspires no emotions! i just mean, iykyk. if you've read the paper menagerie and are expecting that experience, you will have a better time here if you leave those expectations at the door. i am invested in this book because it's engaging my intellect, curiosity, sense of wanting to find out what else the characters will learn and what's going to happen next...less because it's turning my heart inside out inside my chest. and like thank goodness, because i don't think i could survive four entire 900-page books' worth of that! but anyway. word to the wise.

tl;dr: yes, i recommend it, especially if you like epic fantasy. if you're a fan of ken liu's other work, this is quite different, so just know that going in!

*this opinion is of course subjective and not universally shared. for instance, see this review of book 3 (full of spoilers, so don't actually read it lol) which says "There's Liu's voice to hold onto, though — beautifully deployed here and fully in command of the language of his imaginary universe." so ymmv. maybe it's an epic fantasy thing.

**this is making me realize that the story is commenting on this very thing through a tension between bureaucracy (founded on interchangeability) and monarchy (informed by a specific personality). dude. that's so meta!

***though sometimes i'm like, "really? you scaled up that invention to use untested on the battlefield in the span of like two weeks? sure, jan." so sometimes he falls down a little on translation of ideas into logistics, but it makes for such a great story that i'll allow it.

[saucetail]

I have a problem - and it is called making my ocs into warrior cats characters.

Basically the run down of their story would be that Sablecurl (Pyotr) is an admittedly kind of socially isolated yet devoted clan cat that meets with a rogue who was trespassing on their territory. However, the rogue is much more friendly and charming than he was taught rogues are supposed to be. He learns that this cat’s name is Dieter, and through several moons they develop a friendship which has Sablecurl begin to question the morality of clan life and the way he was brought up.

I have some other ideas about how the plot progression would go but shhhh that’s a secret for now…

[sweetshire]

So, @silv-paru sent Sherlock Holmes for the character opinion bingo. thanks a bunch for this (and for your patience. my god, i’m answering this a week late. typical me behaviour). you’re a darling :D

Did you know, i used to tell these stories to my friends? they delighted in them AND i got a chance to sort of ramble on and on abt him and watson. it was a win-win, really. ah, those were the days! now i haven’t reblogged much of him this month at all. i miss him. I MISS HIM.

Onto the bingo: well. he’s The quintessence of gender™ to me. and i relate to him so so much. fav character of all time fr. i want to carry him in my pocket at all times & study him. like. do i want to BE him OR am i IN LOVE with him, ykwim? pssh who knows? certainly not me. uh-huh ‘a beast unleashed’ -does this refer to me or him? you choose. oh re: canon, i’m ignoring the part where holmes dies (or y’know, is dead for 3 years). that’s too angsty.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Saint of Bright Doors

a surreal Sri Lankan fantasy about colonialism, revolution, mixing fantasy with the modern world

follows a man raised by his mother to kill his father, a god-like cult leader

but as an adult he puts aside his life of violence and moves to the city for a quiet life

he becomes fascinated with ‘bright doors’ around the city that never open and have no other side, and joins a group studying them to find out more

and a support group for those with divine heritage that becomes increasingly revolutionary, until the task he was made for reemerges and his life upends

[majorshatterandhare]

I’m thinking about how the Mechs use energy, because they do things and live and therefore they *must* use energy, that’s how physics (and biology) work.

I had the idea that they are always absolutely frigid to the touch because they suck in heat from the environment like an endothermic chemical reaction.