konpoko konpoko

i cannot believe that a kindly word, a quiet taking by the hand, a friendly look, could not have got me to do anything that was wanted of me.

not every child has the endurance and fearlessness to go on searching until it comes to the kindliness that lies beneath the surface

i felt a miserable specimen, and what’s more, not only in your eyes but in the eyes of the whole world, for you were for me the measure of all things.

i could enjoy what you gave, but only in humiliation, weariness, weakness, and with a sense of guilt. that was why i could be grateful to you for everything only as a beggar is, and could never show it by doing the right things.

i repeat for the tenth time: even in other circumstances i should probably have become a shy and nervous person, but it is a long dark road from there to where i have really come.

in keeping with my sluggishness and pedantry countless worries are involved in all this, but they are not decisive; they do, like worms, complete the work on the corpse

it is as if a person were a prisoner, and he had not only the intention to escape, which would perhaps be attainable, but also, and indeed simultaneously, the intention to rebuild the prison as a pleasure dome for himself.

Gilbert Baker added a 9th stripe shortly before his death, with the new stripe representing diversity. He added this stripe in reaction to the 2016 US election. It’s unfortunately not as well known as the 8 and 6 striped versions.

Here’s an image of him sewing together the 9 striped rainbow flag.

MaoMao and Jinshi are both intelligent in a lot of ways, including deductive reasoning. So one might expect their repeated misunderstandings or continued blindness toward certain revelations to feel contrived. But they never do, in part because of how brilliantly their characterization was established.

From the first installment, Maomao ponders how "knowing too much" could get her into trouble.

At first her main concern is her own literacy. The ability to read is not a skill most young women of her station possess, and would doubtlessly draw attention. Attention threatens her ability to lay low and wait out her service contract. So she keeps this skill hidden.

And indeed, her concerns are validated by the narrative, because she catches the attention of Jinshi and Gyokuyou—two of the highest authority figures of the rear palace—immediately upon employing her literacy in her effort to warn the concubines of the poisonous effects of the makeup.

This instantly alters the course of her life, a consequence that at first seems positive; after all, personal attendant to a concubine is certainly several steps above the average palace launderess. But these elevated steps bring more attention onto her, and it isn't long at all before the emperor himself is ordering her to perform medical miracles.

Knowledge is power. And as Maomao explains to Jinshi: it's not always about what someone will do with power; it's about what they can do.

So Maomao uses the powerlessness of her station as a shield, and hides behind it by pretending not to know things.

And the way she does this is interesting, in part because she is so good at deduction. Often it comes down to her simply choosing not to pursue a line of thinking, forcefully redirecting her attention elsewhere the moment she realizes that certain lines may connect to form a bigger picture than someone of her station should see.

Maomao is an apothecary. Effectively, throughout the story, she's an herbalist, pharmacist, chemist, physician, dietician, and forensic detective.

At the same time, her primary survival mechanism is avoidance. And this is established very early in her characterization, even before her actual titular passion.

When Maomao, solver of mysterious deaths, worker of medical miracles, foiler of assassination plots, repeatedly fails to connect the increasingly-obvious dots pointing to Jinshi's true identity, it doesn't feel contrived at all; because by the time those dots begin to come to light, the story has already established that it's firmly in-character for Maomao to simply refuse to pick up the pencil if she already knows what picture those dots will form. As long as she doesn't draw those connections herself, she can remain safe in denial.

Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who was murdered on the first day of Pride month as well as Indigenous History Month. He died protecting his trans husband. Homophobia and racism aren’t marks of the past, and this is a heart breaking reminder of that.