hello my name is adam u can also call me cleanpearlteeth or any nickname derived from that. examples include clean, pearl/pearly, and teeth/toothy (feel free to go wild with it)!
i’m 18, but i’m pretty new to being a legal adult.
i use he/they pronouns. i’m a mulitfandom blog through and through, but i’m particularly into heated rivalry rn <3 i’ve watched the show and i've finished all the books! we like rachel reid on this blog so i do not tolerate any slander of her character or her work.
i plan on going back and tagging all my posts for ease of perusal <3
#adamtxtpost (as the title states this is for my text posts)
#adamdiary (things that i should have probably wrote in a diary that i instead decided to post on tumblr.com: tldr vent posts)
#freakadam ( now that im 18 i’ve unlocked being horny mode. i jest i jest but if anything a lil racy offends yr sensibilities block this tag)
#adamartful ( the rare times where I make art <3)
and all other posts will be tagged with the fandoms that they are from
anywho i’m really open to making friends on here and my dms and asks are always open.
i was sexually harassed at work today and i didnt realize how bad it was until i told other people
i was finishing up this table closing out their check when they one guy asked me if i had a best friend and i said yes i do
then he asked if i had a baby
and i said no
and he said do you need help making one (implying that he wanted to fuck me)
oh brother. i told people bc that was wild and people were like you should tell a manager which i didnt even think of doing
i told my section partner and he told my manager and the manager came up to me and was like was your table inappropriate and i was like yes and he was slike next time come directly to me i dont care if they are eating i will escort them out
and while i think a lot of this job is fuck ass. i really appreciated that.
(also i put in my two weeks yesterday!!! so i'm excited for that <3 august 21 i'm free!!!!)
have 2 believe that ilya hanging out at her house all the time leads to at least a few times where shes in a robe and straight out of the shower w wet hair and her face is a little pink and damp from the steam and she beelines for the couch bc she CANNOT miss shane's face off and ilya is sitting there wrapped in three blankets with a pint of cookies n cream trying to not look at her directly and Yuna is literally smelling soooooo good and Ilya is texting Shane furiously WHERE IS YOUR DAD?? and Shane's like "I'm about to blow up Scott Hunter's walker and this is what ur texting me?? Ugh" and then ilya swipes to his thread with svetlana and says "as a belated half birthday present to you I will tell you one true thing about jane" and sveta immediately responds "ok yay let me think" and Ilya says "no this is not a fucking q&a session I am telling you his mom is so hot and I am alone with her and I am panicking" and sveta says "ILYUSHA!!!!!!!!! PICK UP PICK UP PICK UP" and Ilya blocks her for the evening
The main reason I can't get 100% on board with skip divorce is Scott is so very sad in canon. So very very sad. I just feel like he should get at least one good thing
The Apothecary Diaries is extremely good at making a point that fandom is notoriously bad at noticing, since it conflicts with how the fan-brain interprets the world. The historical setting of the story isn't just set-dressing. It's thematically necessary. And this is never more obvious to me than when I see people hemming and hawing about whether or not certain elements of the central romance count as 'consensual'.
Because the answer to that question is 'the concept of consent does not exist in this setting, and that's a large part of the point of the story'.
(light plot spoilers up to most recent light novel under cut)
The idea of consent in the context of sex requires that the two people involved are, well, people. People who can enter into agreements with each other willingly and freely. That's why the age of consent exists in our society - to make sure that the parties entering into the agreement both have equal-ish standing and rights before the law.
From the first second of the Apothecary Diaries, it is clear that this is simply not the case in the world in which Maomao lives. She has no recourse to the law at all. She has no rights. Things can just be done to her, and there is no higher authority to which she has a right of appeal. Part of this is being a woman, part of it is being a commoner without money. Both roles objectify her, turn her into a thing to be bought and sold and disposed of. Maomao is rendered quite honestly and perceptively here as someone who was raised in this society and internalized its values. Part of her low opinion of herself comes from the circumstances in which she was raised, but most of it is a simple reaction to what she knows to be true.
And then we come to Jinshi, who is also not really a person, but in a different way. Jinshi is not a person before the law because no law could bind him. There's exactly one other being to whom he has any accountability whatsoever. For all intents and purposes, he is the law. Now, unlike Maomao, Jinshi has the blindness of privilege, so he can't see the power difference between himself and everyone else so clearly at the start (over the course of the story, he comes to understand it better).
There's no sense in which an object and the law itself can enter into a consensual relationship. And that's the root of the majority of the story's tension. The reason they haven't yet got together is that it is impossible for them to do so as equals. Maomao is still only barely capable of seeing herself as a subject of desire and agency, and Jinshi has become keenly aware of the fact that she isn't capable of refusing him. I don't know how this story will end, but that's the key problem that the resolution of the story must solve. This world can't support a romance between these two people.
The most recent light novel makes this point extremely clear. Ah-Duo represents the best possible outcome for a romance between monarch and subject in this setting. She's well-treated, she gets along well with the Emperor, and she's allowed to basically do her own thing (her own thing = collecting a house worth of assorted gender weirdos to hang out with, good for her). But she doesn't see the Emperor as a person, and he doesn't truly see her as a person either. They're not people with respect to one another. That's the fate that Jinshi and Maomao must avoid, and it can only be avoided by fundamentally changing their roles in society, or by changing society itself. They have to invent consent.
A lot of historical romance uses the fact that consent isn't a well-developed thing in most historical societies in order to enable certain fantasy scenarios to occur. Giving the heroine 'no choice' is a good way to allow the reader who empathizes with her to vicariously live out desires they would never allow themselves to choose in real life. I'm not here to critique or praise that. It clearly appeals to a lot of people, let a thousand flowers bloom, et cetera. But it's demonstrably not what The Apothecary Diaries is doing. The Apothecary Diaries is about consent.
This is one of the ways that fandom-brain can really impair reading comprehension. If you're slotting this work into the historical-romance-dubcon-fantasy thing, it's natural to look at this story and wonder if it's doing that. But if you were taking the story on its own terms without that baggage, you would never even frame the question that way. I don't think this is a subtle theme! It's just one that a huge proportion of the readerbase is primed to miss. And I wish that were not so.
YES!!!!!!!! this is part of what makes the story so GOOD and INTERESTING. Also because true consent doesn't exist in this setting, it forces everyone to examine "what IS meaningful here? What do people value, desire, or see as good treatment of their partners? What can love look like? Love is different than happiness or satisfaction or power." It's just so....yes. the setting deeply matters!!
The Apothecary Diaries is a story deeply beloved to me for many reasons, including its intricacies, the skillful and delicate crafting of the characters, their dynamics/interactions, and yes, the historical setting in which most of the story plays out (Li, a fictional country inspired by Tang dynasty-era China). The above post explains why a true romantic partnership between Maomao and Jinshi is impossible, unless they manage to move heaven and earth (or what seems like it). I enjoy profoundly the depth and intelligence of the storytelling by novelist Hyūganatsu (pseudonym).
