The Story of Minglan : comments.
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Re: The Story of Minglan
I've watched it to the end now and was disappointed by the finale. I thought the Emperor's plan was exceptionally crappy - SO MUCH could have gone wrong, and so many people died as it was - I thought GYT not telling Minglan was EPICALLY crappy (I'd have accepted it from Yanruo, who is extremely bad at putting himself in other people's shoes, but for GYT to do it is completely out of character and undermines all the things I'd gradually come to like about him), and I was SO disappointed that Minglan didn't finally get to rescue her husband instead of the other way around. We do get a grudging sort of half-admission that he can't keep his promise to always protect her (and therefore, by implication, she'll have to protect herself), but it's really not enough.
One thing I did like, though, was that we get to see other women rising to the occasion, especially General Shen's wife (whose name I forget), but also GYT's nanny, and even the evil m-i-law stops simpering for once and gives extremely clear and sensible instructions for the defence of her manor. There's definitely an implication there that Minglan isn't the only women capable of doing far more than her society normally allows.
Re: The Story of Minglan
I would say it's seen as 'anti-communist' except there are times when I'm watching one of these and I find myself yelling at the screen "what kind of Communists are you?"
I'm so glad they cut out all the violent rape because honestly there's so much structural rape in the book, so many women being bought and sold and stuffed into people's houses as concubines and having to marry men they don't love and who don't love them .
This so much - in a series I've watched and love most of all, The Untamed, the author of the book it was based on (Mó Dào Zǔ Shī) managed to create a fantasy set in ancient China without the system of concubinage, and it's so refreshing. Though there's still the brothel slavery; I guess you can't win them all.
But the concubines: All those women thrown together in the same household and acting like sharks in a feeding frenzy to survive, it really gets depressing. I think I've only seen one example of a c-drama in which a female character has an epiphany about how dire her situation /all women's situation is, and she manages it without being a time-traveller. She tries to explain it to a man, but unfortunately that man is the Emperor, who is kind of incapable of empathy, never having been in a situation where he can't have whatever he wants. The series is called The Story of Yanxi Palace, and I do love it, in spite of the Qing dynasty aesthetics and the last act degenerating into a 'bitches be crazy' denouement - but again, why does this happen? Yup, it's the concubine system again.
Yeah, the Emperor's plan was not good, and I didn't like keeping Ming Lan in the dark either - no idea if this happened in the book, though I might go back to the website I found it on and see if the last chapter has been translated and just read that.
ETA I went back to where I read the first 70 or so chapters, and the whole book is about 200, so it's not finished, lol. I also found out who she used to be - a kind of paralegal for the People's Court called Yao Yiyi.
Re: The Story of Minglan
I'm put off The Untamed because it seems to have solved the problem of not wanting to depict the shittiness of women's lives by just not having women as main characters. Shows that only care about men irritate me. I think ultimately the NiF approach is probably the best that can be achieved - pretend, by omission, that only the Emperor and the Crown Prince have concubines and depict everyone else in monogamous relationships, historical realism be damned. It's not as if the martial arts stuff is remotely realistic either.
Re: The Story of Minglan
Re. the censorship - yup, they're not much for escapism and especially don't want people questioning that there might have been something good about the past, or better than the present.
Re. The Untamed - I get where you're coming from about the scarcity of female characters, and a possible reason for this is that the source material is danmei, the Chinese version of yaoi. You're not going to have a female lead along with the male lead, because the lead character has a male love interest. so yes, you end up with a lot less women, and many of them don't survive till the end of the series (though one does! She is our queen!). But yes, so very few female characters in the story, which is weird as the writer's a woman.
Of course, the censorship authority have an even bigger problem with LGBT than with time travel, so all of a sudden the two are soulmates (no-one tell the censors that's even closer than before) and you find a lot of youtube reactors who've only watched the show and maybe the animated version asking if the boys have a bromance. It's pretty amazing how many hints at their love the director and show runners managed to smuggle past the censors, and one pretty massive anvil of a hint is that a song which one character writes for the other, which he names after a portmanteau of their names, becomes the central love theme of the entire series. But sure, they're just good friends.
I'd love to watch Nirvana in Fire again, to be honest - I've watched a few shows recently which have irritated/infuriated me so much, I need to cleanse my palate. I'm curious, what did you think about the reveal to Jingyan? I expected a bit more discussion between them; and then the reveal that Lin Shu died with the pearl suddenly appearing in the shrine - that was harsh.
Re: The Story of Minglan
Oh dear, I'm going to die laughing!! Chinese fandom, you are so wonderfully fannish!
I totally expected a massively emotional scene between Jingyan and Mei Changsu and was initially very disappointed not to get it (I also felt robbed that I didn't get the scene where Prince Jing convinces Xia Dong to let them into the Xuanjing Bureau). But after much thinking about it I had to admit that it's entirely consistent with his characterisation that MCS basically runs away and hides the moment Jinyang finds out - he really, really didn't want to him to know what Lin Shu had turned into, and he was never able to cope, and everything that happens in the show is consistent with that (I mean, maybe deep, deep down he did want Jingyan to recognise him , but only in a fantasy way in which he could magically go back to being Lin Shu at that moment, but what actually happens when his identity is revealed is that Jingyan says "This person is nothing like Lin Shu, how could you possibly think there was a connection?" And after that MCS never gives Jingyan the opportunity to say "Actually, I did realise it was you, it's just that you and my mother both gaslit me about it so I thought I must be going mad, and then I had to persuade my father that Xia Jiang was lying!"). See, so much to think about! How can I not love it, even if it wasn't what thought I wanted?
Re: The Story of Minglan