Aug 26, 2023
Tianze 2019
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Tianze 2019
Tianze 2017
Happy Birthday for yesterday
Tianze 2016
Tianze 2018
This is so fucking funny. Its really so fucking funny big spoilers for a story that may never be written but my character is a 'good king' archetype the Zhou empire is the Evil Empire and the whole point of this character and the Empire's princess meeting is that they're super blatant foils, in every single way, and the question is what is a good king? Someone who rallies the people, and fights against the yoke of the oppressor and wins the war and frees and benefits the people? And then? And what did it take? It's the fantasy archetype it's freaking Aragorn, but the enemy isn't some kind of pure evil and the war won't end all wars. And this girl in this webnovel story is a good lord the best in the world and she has somebody tortured to death and everybody in his service murdered and launches a war as revenge AND in my story it all ends when our main character finally GETS her revenge - she conquers the capital (she IS the barbarian hordes) and she rescues her brother and she murders every last member of the family who killed her father.
And she looks at all these heads rolling and all the blood flowing and she does NOT feel righteous. A 'good' king wins wars. A good king kills only out of necessity. A good king....
Unfortunately the Chinese webnovel apart from being vaguely homophobic (effeminate men being undesirable and no homosexual relationships unmarred by violence on screen) has turned a character which championed the cause 'abolish slavery' and 'every human life should be cherished' into a warmongering vengeful and hypocritical king expanding her state just for the sake of expanding her state at the cost of tens of thousands of lives and somehow convinced the 'barbarian' people are fundamentally worse than what the hell she's up to with all that. Also she hasn't yet abolished slavery. Instead she keeps buying slaves and allowing the practice because it makes expanding the population easier. (????? After describing the horrible treatment of these people repeatedly) And making them fight her wars so they have a chance of earning rights. Just BAN THE FUCKING PRACTICE. Oh no we can't because slave drivers are so good at displacing people against their will !!! LOL!!!
And now she's all angry because a general friend of hers got killed. What about all the people that got killed during your victories? Writer where is your head.
That is to say I enjoyed that the writer was depicting the court proceedings seemingly exactly the same as the Han proceedings for the Quanrong. But then you get these prejudices in the narrative where they don't have etiquette to receive international guests. Be real with me for one moment. Or the main character who is a MODERN WOMAN is convinced that all the violence her people exact is fine and their violence is bad. YOUR PEOPLE DO SLAVERY!!!! RAPE AND MURDERING!!!!! The writer literally saying that before the Quanrong conquered the Han Chinese cities they were only good at herding animals - oh I guess all this armour and cavalry just popped up out of nowhere? A couple of hundred soldiers will just 'melt away into the grasslands'? Right. Why can't those pesky foreigners just fuck off into their wilderness. They don't have preexisting relationships with their families and clans ? They don't have a production system which supports their armies and institutions? Yeah they do but no deep research to represent that.
In fact this is making me want to go *scroll back in time* go to before the Eastern Zhou / warring states era because that's fucking funny isn't it - they never really go back so far these Chinese stories written by Han Chinese people, because then they'd have to contend with how the people of the plains WEREN'T THERE FIRST - NO!! - (literally the argument given by our modern king for why it was ok to take the city) they invaded these lands in the first place.
Anyway WHAT A SURPRISE, even when the Chinese writer espouses a super clear view on valuing human lives - and slavery being bad - still there is this relentless imperialism that coats the whole thing. There isn't even a QUESTION that perhaps contending for power with all the other states might be stupid. It's this inherent assumption that this self-aggrandizement is GOOD and existential to a state and therefore justified. And that makes sense because everything written about that time evinces that concept. The problem is that is still the attitude and there isn't even a question mark about that leading us into endless war.
THIS MAKES ME WANT TO WRITE MY SILK FANTASY STORY WHICH LOOKS EXACTLY AT THIS SHIT FROM THE 'BARBARIAN' PERSPECTIVE
Well just spent hours on reading this genuinely good web novel which combines a crossdressing (!) benevolent leader (!) with a freed slave love interest (!) and employs awesome actual historical Chinese policy changes (!) and war strategy & tactics (!!) and clear moral vision (!)
Only complaint I've got is that there are two other women in the main characters collection and the narrative basically ignores them. Oh. Right my fake wife / best female friend set up a school for girls? Let's just throw that in as an aside because apparently that could never feature as a place to draw talent or officials from?
Even when a writer tries so hard and writes such an awesome lord/general relationship with kingdom building and a very smart female lead - they can't help their sexism apparently. New talented slave acquired and it's another dude. Maybe we can have a woman thats actually relevant other than the lead?
Just read the most incredible tuvan story in which a girl and her brother are super rich both go a-herdin and they're amazing at everything and then girls brother dies so she being a woman divines what to do shapechanges into her brother beats every other suitor in competition in archery and wrestling and riding and gains a super even more magically powerful wife leads her back with all her riches, lays her brother on his bed, hides, and her new sister in law uses her magic to bring him back to life and then sister also gets some kahns son as a lover suddenly and they're all four together and happy forever