Yo I feel like the idea that the only historical women who counted are the ones who defied society and took on the traditionally male roles is… not actually that feminist. It IS important that women throughout history were warriors and strategists and politicians and businesswomen, but so many of us were “lowly” weavers and bakers and wives and mothers and I feel like dismissing THOSE roles dismisses so many of our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers and the shit they did to support our civilization with so little thanks or recognition.
YES. This is such an important point. Those 'girly' girls doing their embroidery and quilting bees and grass braiding were vital parts of every domestic economy that has ever existed.
This is precisely what chaps my hide so badly about the misuse of the quote "Well-behaved women seldom make history," because this is precisely what the author was actually trying to say.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a domestic historian who developed new methodologies to study well-behaved women because they were
1) so vital, and
2) their lives were rarely recorded in the usual old sources.
"Hoping for an eternal crown, they never asked to be remembered on earth. And they haven't been. Well-behaved women seldom make history; against Antinomians and witches, these pious matrons have had little chance at all. Most historians, considering the domestic by definition irrelevant, have simply assumed the pervasiveness of similar attitudes in the seventeenth century."
Original article: "Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial
Literature, 1668-1735" (pdf download from Harvard)
This comic is a little different than my usual stuff, I thought maybe you needed a break from the tears. (Unless you still find it sad, then I apologize.)
First You Make a Plan (Genma, Raidou, Ryouma, Kakashi, Sadayo) — Back at the embassy, Kakashi struggles to formulate a solution to the Ichibi’s decaying seal.
Hello, did you delete the Bad guys fic?? I really can't find it ! I got the app just to read it . Please , do you still posting it??? I'm brazilian so my english is not that good, but im trying soo hard read it ! I was looking for Bad guys fic for a real long time (cuz i was really in love with all that charismatic actors ) and finally i find yours fic. Could you link me to the fic , please???
Bad Guys is such a compelling show, isn’t it?
I don’t know what happened to the tumblr version of the fic, but fortunately I put it up on AO3 a while ago! You can read it here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/19363543
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
One of the reasons why I find so interesting villains as Xue Yang or Meng Yao is that they are the terrible shadow cast by an equally terrible social order: they are the consequence of classism, social inequality, the oppression of tyrants. Their actions have no revolutionary intention, they are opportunistic, but understandable at that level. The thing is: in episodes where their background and motivations come to light, there is this reaction from others like "all for a finger?", or (1/2)
boy oh boy, Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang are such fascinating characters, which is probably why I love them as antagonists while being totally uninterested in trying to redeem them as people
So I actually had the opposite reaction that first anon had -- I didn’t actually feel that either Jin Guangyao or Xue Yang’s psychopathy were prioritized over their background. At least to me, it was pretty clear that Jin Guangyao, Xue Yang, and Wei Wuxian were all intended to be foils to each other, since so much of their characters revolve around the difficulties of hailing from a lower-class background in a highly elitist world. They all handle it in different ways: Jin Guangyao, as we all know, will do anything to escape the shadow of his shameful birth but never can, whereas Xue Yang owns it, deploys his unofficial status as a 流氓 liumang (rogue, scoundrel) as both defense and explanation for why he’s literally the worst. Wei Wuxian, in contrast to both Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang, doesn’t let his birth station define him; in fact, he’s the only one to refuse the stigma that comes with a lower-class origin. So what if he’s the son of a servant? He can still drink you under the table, or take you in a fight. Wei Wuxian refuses to be ashamed of his parents, unlike Jin Guangyao, and Wei Wuxian refuses to let his lack of status determine the limits of what he can do.
(of course, this is glossing over the fact that all of them had very, very different childhood situations, in which Wei Wuxian somehow manages to be the luckiest of the three and given the greatest opportunity to rise in rank)
CQL as a whole is actually profoundly pessimistic about the way society runs -- the world of CQL is elitist, fickle, irrational, unjust. It lets people like Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan fall through the cracks; there’s very little accountability for the crimes done by people in positions of power (Jin Guangshan, Wen Ruohan); and society often eats its own, uses people up and casts them aside with little gratitude or appreciation for their sacrifice (Wei Wuxian, and I would argue Nie Mingjue as well as Lan Xichen). I think it’s pretty telling that what the show suggests is the happiest resolution for Wei Wuxian is a departure from the world that caused him so much pain. Of course, Wei Wuxian comes back for Lan Wangji, but I still find the leaving, the renouncing of worldly affairs (for however long we interpret it being) a crucial component of CQL’s narrative.
This kind of ‘happy ending’ -- one in which the hero sets down their burden, puts aside their responsibility of giving and giving and giving to a society that will continue to take and take and take with little to no thanks -- is something that... well, I hesitate to characterize it as ‘inherently Chinese’ in any way, but it’s something I’ve seen much more in Chinese media than I have in Western media. The joyful resolution for a character isn’t necessarily found in the wholesale reforming of society in response to the hero’s actions, but rather, the ability to retreat from the world, to live one’s own life in peace and tranquil joy.
In a way, it echoes what Xue Yang says to Xiao Xingchen, moments before the latter opens his throat:
Xue Yang: 你的师尊抱山散人多聪明啊，你为什么不听她的，好好在山上修仙问道？搞不懂这世上的事，那你就不要入世! / Your esteemed teacher, Baoshan-sanren, was so smart! Why didn’t you listen to her and stay on the mountain, cultivating immortality and studying the Dao? If you can’t understand the affairs of the world, then don’t enter it!
Crucially, Xue Yang says 入世 rushi / to enter the world, which is a concept often linked with the Ruist school of thought (入世有为 vs. the vaguely Daoist 出世无为) -- the idea that it’s the right, responsible, and moral thing to do to enter into society/the world and to do good, as opposed to exiting the world/society and larking off to become a hermit somewhere, to farm and cultivate your own morals and be good. Entering the world, especially with the intent to do good and enact reform, is the noble thing to do -- it’s what Xiao Xingchen chose, what Lan Wangji ends up choosing at the end of CQL. Exiting the world is the path of self-preservation, because the world will unapologetically consume you if you aren’t careful.
All of which is to say that -- I personally thought that CQL was pretty clear on how shitty society is, especially considering that Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang are villains produced by circumstance. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but I believe that Jin Guangyao could’ve turned out to be a perfectly nice young man if more people treated him as like, a decent human being. Xue Yang is a little more complicated, because his whole ‘my-finger-is-worth-more-than-your-life’ business is a tricky moral perspective to recalibrate, but I think a Xue Yang who grew up without being consumed by his own vengeance and victimhood would have been vastly different from the Xue Yang we know (and love, and hate) in CQL.
That being said, just because Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang’s villainy are in part produced by societal circumstance does not excuse or justify their villainy.
Because in the end, it’s all about choice, isn’t it? second anon up there (sorry, it took me forever to get to your point, which is an excellent one!) points out that Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang lack a certain degree of empathy that would allow them to perceive the pain of others as equal to or greater than their own. They spend so long stewing in their own resentment and victimhood and dreams of vengeance that they struggle to take the feelings of others into account -- I’m sure Jin Guangyao was perfectly kind and courteous to Qin Su, but the moment her emotions spiraled out of the parameters of her usefulness, he eliminated her, never mind that she, too, was reeling from the incest reveal, never mind that she, too, is a living and breathing human being who feels pain and distress. Likewise, Xue Yang vastly misestimates Xiao Xingchen and his response to pain -- he drives Xiao Xingchen to and past his breaking point, and never for a moment guesses that Xiao Xingchen might choose death over continued existence, because the thought of killing himself has never crossed Xue Yang’s mind (how could he? He still needs to get revenge on everyone who’s ever wronged him).
And this is probably the biggest difference between Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao, Wei Wuxian and Xue Yang -- Wei Wuxian is so goddamn empathetic that one of his signature cultivation moves revolves around his ability to listen to other people’s lives and feel what they feel. Or, to borrow a line from Doctor Who:
All that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made [him] kind.
Wei Wuxian goes through so much shit, has to put up with all sorts of terrible, undeserved misery and agony, and instead of becoming bitter or vengeful, he remains kind, loving, forgiving, generous.
Every single person, when they’ve been wronged, has a choice -- what do you do with all of this hatred and resentment and frustration when someone insults your heritage, belittles your achievements, impugns your moral character? Do you turn it inwards and let it fester and ferment into vengeance? Or do you unleash it outwards, spewing virulence and viciousness at the people around you? Do you internalize it, bury it deep down inside yourself until it becomes part and parcel of your personality, a deep and abiding self-hatred that often comes hand-in-hand with lack of self-worth? Or do you externalize it, let it drive you in your purpose and reforms?
Madam Yu internalizes her resentment until it boils over into toxicity and abuse, inflicted upon her own family; Su She externalizes his resentment by simultaneously imitating and slandering the person who (he perceives) did him wrong. Jin Guangyao lets the ugly comments get to him, and uses his long-simmering resentment as fuel for his machinations and manipulations. Xue Yang is so wholly consumed by his victimhood that he goes off the deep end into psychopathy.
Wei Wuxian has the astounding ability to take all the shit the world throws at him, and rather than lashing out with it, accepts the hurt for whatever it is -- and then forgets it. Erases it. Lets go of it. This isn’t to say that he won’t fight back or stand up for himself -- most of the time he gives as good as he gets -- but he won’t linger on the resentment, won’t let it consume him, control him completely. He understands pain, and misery, and suffering in a way that few other characters in the show can compare with, and if someone is hurting, he’ll take their side, regardless of what crimes their sect may have committed in the past.
If, however, you’re hurting, and you use your own hurt as an excuse to hurt others, that’s where Wei Wuxian’s vast reservoirs of empathy run dry. Inflicting pain upon others is always an active decision, and where there is choice, there is moral responsibility.
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