The apothecary diaries made me realize something very interesting about how women perceive power...
I can't be the only one who noticed that in stories written by women power is often compared to a prison or a cage meanwhile in the ones written by men it's mostly fun and freedom.
It is that women tend to see power as more of an responsibility and men think of it as the ability to do whatever they want?
The apothecary diaries made me think of it first. I discovered with surprise that I actually like the emperor, which I almost never do. Any guy that has relationship with more than one woman at once tends to disgust me, especially if he's in a position of power but for some reason not him.
Because the emperor is as much a prisoner as the 2000 women in the rear palace. Maybe even more because as long as he doesn't touch them, they're allowed to leave.
Like on one hand, he's the most powerful man in the empire. He calls the shots, right?
But on the other hand, he can't even properly protect Lishu from being sold to some pedofile by her father. The only way he could protect her was to make her his concubine and how f*cked up is that? She's like a daughter to him and the only way he could protect her was by marrying her? And then he couldn't even spend time with her anymore because that would be read wrong.
It's the fact that 3 of his children died because there was no proper medic to save them due to the fact that they don't allow non eunuchs to treat them and forbid women practicing medicine... when he doesn't even care about that. He hasn't blinked once at Maomao running around the inner palace and being a doctor.
At first when I was watching the story I thought of how horrible it was that he didn't even visit Lady Lihua after their son died. But then it made me think of how he's literally not allowed to get attached because of his position and how hard it is for him? The fact that he couldn't even provide enough support for Lady Ah-Duo so she doesn't lose her uterus? The fact that she switched their baby with his brother and he had to watch his son grow up "away" from him?
There's so much more to this, especially with Jinshis approach to power and I could go on an on but I think I made my point.
And when I started comparing the stories written by women to those by men... Women tend to write power as more of a burden than a gift.
After watching TAD I watched solo leveling.
And for those of you who don't know, it's basically a story about a guy who suddenly "discovers" that he's like a character in a game (not exactly but it's be too long to explain) and basically finds out that he has endless potential and over the course of the story he becomes the most powerful being in the entire universe.
And there's a moment where he's talking to his little sisters friend that gets very misread as something inappropriate by another character.
This other character points out, kindly, to Sung Jinwoo that the girl is a minor.
Sun Jinwoo doesn't understand so he just looks at him and asks "so?".
And so the guy immediately gets scared and never mentions it again despite the two of them being friends.
This moment is kind of played for laughs. Nothing actually happened, Sung Jinwoo is a good guy so he wouldn't.
But he could. Nobody could do anything to stop him.
And when I watched that I laughed too. But then I thought of how terrifying that is. To have someone be so above the law, this untouchable. Who can do anything he pleases because no one will ever stop him.
But that's never actually adressed in the show other than to show us how cool this is.
It this was written by Natsu Hyūga there'd probably be a million different situations to show us how fucked up this is and how it weighs on the main character.
In the apothecary diaries Jinshi doesn't even want to ask anything directly of Maomao because he doesn't want her to interpret it as an order.
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