Maomao in Apothecary Diaries is asexual and I will die on this hill
I just did so many takes trying to make a video on this that my spit literally went frothy so SHORT VERSION
A few months ago I saw a video essay on the series and it was going well until they got to the characterization of Maomao and took the stance that she was the way she was because she sees herself unworthy of love. I did my best to hear the video out but like.
Did we even watch the same series??? (explanation below the cut)
TL;DR the vast majority of her behaviour depicts someone who is uninterested by sexual attraction, grossed out when it's directed at her, and someone who isn't questioning her self worth. Even if she's not ace, none of her behaviours or thoughts are self depricating and the one instance that could argue that's the case is in episode one when she's explaining the social hierarchy of the rear palace.
It's pretty obvious to me that they're trying to set up a relationship between Maomao and Jinshi, I'm not disregarding this, but I would like to discuss her behaviour when they first met. Jinshi is incredibly conventionally attractive and everyone is head over heels for him. Whenever he gives Maomao attention, she shudders. She's disgusted by it. Jinshi describes her expression as looking at him as though he were a venomous caterpillar snd the captions describe it as a 'death glare'.
She grew up in a brothel - the Virdigris house - so she's understandably desensitized to things that are sexual in nature, as shown when she's giving advice to the concubines and Lihaku, but whenever the Madam of the house suggests she becomes a concubine and takes on clients of her own, Maomao sprints out of the building. She also paints freckles on her face in attempt to make herself less conventionally attractive. You don't do that unless you don't want that attention on you.
There was one post I found on reddit from a year ago asking if Maomao was asexual and the general response was that no, she's just emotionally repressed, but attraction isn't an emotion, you can be emotionally repressed and asexual, AND we do see Maomao express emotion. It's usually subdued, but we see her euphoric/ecstatic over medicines and poisons, we see her angry, we see her content, amused, relieved, mischievous, desperate, worried/panicked, so many emotions and usually tied to the thing she is interested in - her work as an apothecary. As someone who is in a very similar boat of learning to subdue emotions while also being aroace, I can absolutely confirm that my orientation and trauma have minimal if anything to do with each other. I am not saying all cases are like this, but I'm living proof that this CAN be the case.
I would also like to mention that there IS a term for someone who became asexual due to trauma. It's caedsexual. What her exact orientation is, I am unsure, but my claim isn't on a specific orientation, just that she's somewhere on the ace spectrum.
Let's say for example all the other evidence gets thrown out for whatever reason. Fine. We can still confirm that it's NOT a matter of just not thinking she's worthy because we can hear her thoughts. When she's alone, especially after interacting with early-series Jinshi, her reaction isn't 'why was he flirting with me of all people?' it's not 'he'd be better off with his attention elsewhere' or comments about her appearance or anything. Her reaction to him flirting is disgust. She says it's gross and just generally isn't a fan of his behaviour. Yes, she tries to keep things professional which later end up causing major miscommunication that gets her fired, but that's external communication. We're talking about her thoughts when she's alone.
If nothing else, circling back to Lihaku for a bit, her interactions both with and about him are pretty clearcut to me. As someone who's ace, she'd maintain an indifferent demeanor when having him strip to examine if he has a body type Pairin would like, and it's pretty well-known that if you're ace, odds are you make very unexpectedly lewd jokes. The only time we see Maomao react positively to the idea of her having sexual experiences is when she's being intentionally vague to mess with Jinshi because she finds his reaction funny.
As the objective detective-like character, if she was sex positive/favourable, I suspect she would have no trouble being put to work as a courtesan or subtly striving to become a concubine, but she isn't. She wears freckles and avoids those sort of situations.
BUT EVEN IF SHE DID, PLOT TWIST BABY, THERE'S SUCH THINGS AS SERVICE ACES AND BEING ASEXUAL DOESN'T AUTOMATICALLY MEAN YOU DON'T LIKE SEX, IT'S JUST ABOUT YOUR FREQUENCY OF SEXUAL ATTRACTION
*A service ace, aka placiosexual, is someone who enjoys/wants to perform sexual acts on others but does not wish to be on the receiving end of those acts.
At the end of the day, I'm just happy to see a character that acts a lot like me and a plotline that doesn't place priority on sexual/romantic relations. To my knowledge, Maomao's orientation isn't confirmed and I don't know if it ever will be. These are just my thoughts and I had to say something because I've been going bonkers over how obvious her orientation appeared to me yet it wasn't being mentioned anywhere.
