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For those who think Maomao doesn’t understand love at all, remember that even in the beginning she protected Princess Fuyou and her childhood sweetheart because she knew they had been in love from the start and finally had a chance to be together. She even remarked how love made Fuyou a different person, a beautiful woman. So although Maomao doesn’t grasp what love could mean for her, she understands it just fine and is actually more of a romantic than she often lets on.

la-colette

It’s really not that hard to read between the lines

You don’t even have to read the light novels to be able to grasp the nature or underlying feelings of a character in TAD.

Maomao for instance. Through her socially-constipated yet brilliant quirks, viewers arrived at the conclusion that she’s probably autistic. Now, I’m not versed in that psychological department but I do know that she’s wise enough to understand behavioral cues.

From one interaction, she could tell Basen wasn’t fond of her, she could tell that Lishu was harassed by her ladies-in-waiting, she knew when her words had struck a nerve whenever she tried to taunt people and she was well-aware that she had to do damage control where necessary. However, I also found that she struggled to understand or react to matters of heart.

Gyokuyou gave her a hairpin and somehow, verbally, claimed ownership over her and she practically failed to understand the gravity of that proclamation. We saw how much she struggled to bid Loulan farewell. And the most pressing aspect: Jinshi. After recognizing that he had romantic feelings for her, she acknowledged that she wasn’t someone who knew what to do in that situation. And she mentally blocked herself from acknowledging that Jinshi liked her.

This is why I relate to her character so deeply, especially when it comes to love. Now, I’m not autistic and I’m not as traumatized as Maomao is but her fight or flight response to love and care is really normal in my mind’s eye.

Maomao was someone who grew up surrounded by women and who inevitably dreaded encounters with men, including her own father. She had tried desperately to hide away to the point where bad makeup provided temporary solution. I imagine what little tolerance she might have for men stemmed from her perceived belief that not all of them are bad people, thanks to her adoptive father, Luomen, and maybe even her real father, Lakan.

And this brings me to the most misunderstood character in the series: Jinshi, and his relationship with Maomao.

Jinshi the Eunuch was more or less an anomaly for Maomao. As we’ve seen in the show, most of her conjectures on various investigative matters turned out to be true. However, half the time, it wasn’t the same when it came to Jinshi.

She assumed he was someone who always had his way right from when he was little. He was this young master who curried favor from (more like slept with) the emperor and other high officials because of his immense beauty. He was nothing but a fine face. He was a hierarchy higher than whatever Matron used to be in charge of the laundry servants.

For the most part, her deductions weren’t unfounded. He had a mission to seduce her for intelligence sake and crossed personal boundaries quite a lot. But here’s the part most people tend to overlook: Maomao was not wary of him.

Her discomfort most definitely came from the fact that he was the first man to actually get on a personal level with her. They bickered a lot, conversed a lot and often revealed their sensitive sides to each other. Jinshi was her introduction to interpersonal male relationships (remember I’ve not read the novels so I don’t know if she played with other boys growing up) and this is why she passed through hurdles to come to terms with him and when she eventually did, we got glimpses of her wondering why he seemed younger than his age.

It’s quite unfortunate that some viewers ultimately chalk up his character to “some weird good-looking pedo/predator” without fully trying to understand why he was like that or trying to see other aspects of his behavior that ran contrary to that predatory outlook.

“He’s such a beast” but he never preyed on women in the emperor’s vineyard of servants and concubines.

“He’s a freak” but Maomao herself was fine with him buying her out of the brothel.

“He’s never been told no in his life” but we also see that he’s someone who acknowledges and learns from his mistakes (I call his apology after the waterfall scene)

Jinshi is essentially a flawed character on a journey to personal development. But some viewers can’t seem to see that he doesn’t remain on the island of douchbags as the story progresses.

Sometime back, I saw someone say that Maomao had no choice but to obey him because he could kill her and I wondered if it’s the same show we watched. OP even claimed that he never cared to consider Maomao’s feelings or opinions. I wonder if there’s a pirated version somewhere that these people are watching.

Jinshi doesn’t care about her opinion? Really? Here are some few instances I can remember right from the top of my head.

After being conflicted about whether or not to fire her, he asked for her opinion, and since Maomao wasn’t clear enough, he let her go with compensation. And you know very well that he never wanted to, and went into a depressive episode afterwards.

He sought her advice on ways to boost literacy amongst the servants. In fact, he always wanted her advice on other topics of interest. Maomao was a servant in ancient China. Putting her opinion on a pedestal was unheard of, and it shows you how much Jinshi valued her.

Again, he bought her out of the brothel after she consented to it.

He always tried to make things comfortable for her, even when she was sent on official missions. An example is her task to heal Concubine Lihua and this was way before he genuinely liked her.

Jinshi constantly asks her if she prefers life outside the palace because he wanted to settle for what she preferred.

He hated Lakan’s guts but still didn’t want to interfere in father-daughter business. So, he asked her if she wanted to meet him. After seeing her reaction, he understood how she felt about her old man. Later we saw him react strongly to Lakan’s wish to take her back.

He looks out for Maomao when her habits of self-harm become excessive.

Jinshi is entitled and spoiled but he's not terrible to the point that he would put his needs over others.

Maomao herself isn’t that innocent, damsel-in-distress character that’s constantly violated. She contradicts herself in most cases because her actions don’t match her thoughts. She’s not even a saint. She also has her moments of leading Jinshi on, but it’s always unrecognized.

I can’t even stress further how it’s pretty much in character for Maomao to not flat out reciprocate Jinshi’s feelings. Both of them need room to grow and understand each other’s personalities. Only then will I expect reciprocity on her part.

synth3xanh

I think about them a lot

la-colette

About the Honey Scene

Honestly, when I first saw it, I took it as Jinshi being a tease than him harassing her. This is all the more true because he stopped when he noticed from her expression that she wasn’t reacting to him anymore.

Had it been conscious harassment, he would’ve continued regardless.

As someone who has a lot of male friends, I get teased an insane amount. I also have one friend who likes to carry me because I’m shorter than him. He does this unprovoked, and I’m truly someone who hates being touched. At first, I always complained and ran from the advances and with time, I stopped putting up a fight and simply let it play out. Now, the whole princess carrying behavior just feels like his personality trait, especially for me since he’s not done that with his sister and other female friends.

From an onlooker’s perspective, this could’ve seemed like my friends constantly violate boundaries. But I’ve never felt that way. I don’t like being touched because I’m not used to it. We don’t hug in my family and we’re not touchy feely at all. But that doesn’t mean I would remain the same, esp when there’s socialization. I still go back to that same friend and that should tell anyone that I never pegged him as a bad person.

The same goes for Maomao… if she ever saw Jinshi as a threat to her privacy and bodily autonomy, she wouldn’t have ENCOURAGED him to buy her out of the brothel. That move essentially handed her over to him for a good portion of her life. She could’ve reached out to Lakan (which would’ve been like choosing the lesser evil) or struck a deal with the proprietoress (is that what the old lady is called?) if she still had reservations. And I believe her fear that the granny would sell her was unfounded because inasmuch as the brothel is a business, it’s still filled with loyal people who raised Maomao and took care of a sick old courtesan.

I love exploring morally grey characters because they exist in the real world and are rarely portrayed in literature. Jinshi is far from being morally grey. He’s just a character with his own development arc but he receives hate because Maomao isn’t properly regarded as the non-conventional female character that she is. He lives in a community filled with women and officials who offer him food laced with aphrodisiac. No one points out how awful that is. Imagine if the situation were different.

Imagine the palace was a prison and Jinshi was a female medic. Imagine this female Jinshi constantly receiving these unsettling gifts from other wardens and inmates. Imagine, just like the male Jinshi in the series, this female one brushes off these advances because she’s used to it. Imagine that of all the guards, there was just one she liked and could relate with, to the point that their connection seemed unprofessional considering the setting. Imagine that just like Jinshi, this female version was the one constantly making advances and receiving these semi-cold shoulder. What would the narrative have been? Definitely not the kind this male Jinshi is getting. More grace would be extended to the lady. And the “woman doing the chase” trope is somewhat prevalent in certain romance genres. It would’ve been appreciated in this case.

The long and short of it is that Jinshi isn’t all that bad. He had a weird upbringing that distorted his sense of boundaries and now, he learns from his mistakes and grows as a person.

gatoiberico

rummaged through old folders and found some stuff I never posted 👀

mangomasquerade

I feel like people think Maomao doesn’t need character development because she is a character that’s interesting and compelling right from the beginning. I have a feeling that’s part of the reason why a lot of people think her being in a canon romance is unnecessary to her character. But, there’s a difference between a character being written entertaining and a character being written to fulfill their character arc. Maomao’s character arc involving emotional growth doesn’t center only on romance, but the romance does fit into it and there were hints that Maomao wouldn’t stay the same from season one in the anime, when Maomao says stuff like she is incapable of love. That’s a clue that she isn’t. (Love is more than romance, ofc, but a romantic connection is a kind of love). I’m guessing people worry that she’ll lose her brutal honesty, her nonchalance, her intelligence, etc if she gets into a romance, but spoiler: she doesn’t. I wish people understood that the anime barely covers all the light novel content and that it is an adaptation at the end of the day.

ywnya

Be a flower!

for the flower collab with my dear colleagues artists☺️🪻

#beautiful #the apothecary diaries

sirpollyana

Not sure how this works… btw jinmao art from last year.

#gorgeous #jinmao

yukunka

jinmao

#omg #this is breathtaking #the apothecary diaries #jinmao

gabbyp09

jinkazuiyue

olgasaysso

There is something a bit poetic about the fact that Jinshi, a man who hates his beauty, who has been so repressed emotionally that he is constantly switching between a perfect gentleman and a beast, a man who wants to be seen as brave and "manly", who spents every waking second of his days overworking himself... is viewed as a helpless, lazy and effeminate by majority of the apothecary diaries.

Maybe that's why I don't find the jokes about Maomao getting him pregnant particularly funny. At the surface it's just a joke but at it's core it's spitting at the very core identiy of Jinshis character. Who he is and who he wants to be and how he is treated by other characters within the story.

Same goes for Maomao.

I'm not sure why is it so hard for people in fandoms to comprehend that people are not one way or another. Jinshis empathy and beauty doesn't make him a woman. Maomaos assertiveness and refusal to comply to the norms doesn't make her a man.

They are not characters who have ever aspired to be the opposite gender.