#this is gonna send me spiraling into writing a Ling Wen appreciation post (not attached to this post)

[tea-cat-arts]

Sorry, I know you said you're just ranting, but what you said about Madam Yu literally comes from in-universe propaganda about her that Wang Lingjiao (who probably wasn't even alive when Madam Yu and Jiang Fengmian got married) made the fuck up and also a massive generalization about how mxtx writes women.

(7 Seas English translation, book 3):

Her actual motivations are never made explicit, but here's some facts about her:

-she was considered one of the strongest, most prominent cultivators of her generation before she got married, and was one of the few characters to have a unique title (and the only female one). Now, she is mostly known as the Madam of the Jiang house

-she does not like her role has house Madam and instead mostly goes on night hunts

-she refuses to use what would normally be her title (Madam Jiang) and instead has always insisted on using her own family name. Additionally, she's always refused to share a living space with Jiang Fengmian

-she is angry at her husband for treating wwx with more affection than he treats his own kids (and going off Jiang Cheng's accounts, Jiang Fengmian outright neglects his bio kids because of their similarity to their mother). A particular sore spot being he made no effort to get Jiang Cheng out of the Wen's training. She can't lash out at him, so she takes her anger out on wwx

-the entire time we know her in the novel, she is on edge because the cultivation world is on the verge of a war and despite being the person in the room with the most political power, her husband is doing nothing to ease her worries

-she played the wens like idiots and got them to monolog their entire plan to her before she decided what lotus pier was going to do

More quotes:

So ya: it's not spelled out the same way Shen Jiu's backstory is, but it is very easy to extrapolate that Madam Yu acts the way she does because she didn't really want to get married in the first place, pulled back on her carrier and gained extra duties she didn't really want inorder to fulfill societal expectations, and loves her kids despite not really loving her husband and is stuck advocating for them as her husband neglects them in favor of a kid that is not his own. She lashes out at wwx because he's kinda the only person she actually can lash out at (which like- usual disclaimer but of course none of this is a justification for her actions. I'm just here to explain that her motivations were way more complex than just jealousy)

And no- Mianmian wasn't the only woman alive by the end of the novel. Sisi and Bicao were fine.

Also, if we're talking women in her novels in general- what about Ling Wen, Yushi Huang, Banyue, and sometimes Shi Qingxuan? They're all alive (or at least conscious and aware) by the end of the novels and play major roles within the world and story.

My random confession for scum villian is that I thought women would be more prevalent. Then uh I also thought devil venerable would have less women.

I just love women.

I LOOOVE the women in devil venerable also I think baili Qingmiao and Qiu Congxue should fuck like crazy

And dont get me wrong... I love mxtx from the bottom of my heart but oh my God the women in her novels are criminally irrelevant 😭 it was so painful to read mdzs after svsss because like

Mxtx writing men: this is shen jiu, he abuses an orphan because he has a hidden past full of trauma and slavery and seeing young children with the opportunity to learn and cultivate themselves is a slap in the face to someone who lost his potential due to circumstances outside his control and he's so full of rage he can only repeat the cycle of abuse

Mxtx writing women: this is madame yu she abuses an orphan because she's jealous her husband likes his dead mother more than her

This isn't even going into the fact that Mianmian is the only female character in mdzs that doesn't die and the only reason we know she's alive is because we see her for like two pages in the extras

Mxtx... Ma'am... I love you but please.. its painful watching you write men so perplex and full of depth and then get one dimensional women 😭