#theres just SOMETHING there whenever wkx and the department's women are put in the same room

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

thinking about how the department of the unfaithful is likely a thematic parallel, almost a foil, to wkx. and im not even talking about luo fumeng or liu qianqiao, im thinking of the many women working there, those that have notably no martial arts or power of their own, who are somehow part of the valley and take care of "women's work", the servants, the invisible threads that keep the machinery running. the machinery being wkx's era of ghost valley; still violent and hostile, but notably more inhabitable, with a clear direction of right and wrong.

alright, im going on a tangent, but what i mean is: everytime wkx has personally to do with these women, he is confronted with their "uselessness", their institutional weakness. they dont have any worth beyond the small acts of service they can provide; they dont have money of their own, they are not established in any way in the jianghu, they dont carry titles or achievements to their names, they are rarely portrayed as anything but unfortunate victims of their circumstances. his reflex reaction is always to send them away--out the valley, back to the human world. and he is puzzled and carefully apathetic when they remind him that they dont have anywhere to go but the valley.

im assuming that he has a hard time understanding this; hes not stupid and hes not unsympathetic to the systemic and institutional struggle women face, so im guessing he very carefully does not think about this too hard, to avoid finding parallels to his own experience. these women are prey as he used to be prey, but he is strong and established and has his martial arts now, he doesnt want anything but jump back into the human world--trying very hard not to think about what he fears is true: that there is no place for a ghost like him, and what the life h envisions with zzs is all but an illusion.

the women of the department of the unfaithful reminding him that even as weak, adorable, pretty, and as far removed from the state of ghost as they are, they are still finding it hard to edge out a life anywhere but in ghost valley and let everything remain exactly as it is, i mean, that must be difficult for him. i feel like a big part of wkx has internalized victim blaming, or that he is terrified of the invitable nature of these women's fates.

i mean, he so often looks back at the times when everything was still good and well, before he went to the valley, and im wondering if he is not thinking that he deserved what he got, and that there was nothing he could have done. he has suppressed the memory of how exactly the murder of his parents comes to pass, and he later reasons that he is the one to blame for it, because he was the one who lead the wolf into the sheep's den. so he might think, even as innocent and blameless as he was as a child, maybe it was inevitable for him to be and stay and die a ghost