he yan, no matter how trecherous the situation is, i will always trust you.

...or a girl who is willing to give you better quality stuff from her stash ^.^

Look how we thought Legend of the Female General was going to be the summer CDrama hit and it so is not 🙊

Revenged Love may’ve been the organic romance drama hit of the summer but on the grander scale of major CDrama, a production I thought I’d be enjoying as a niche sub-genre with a few other economic development junkies, This Thriving Land seems about to give us what LOTFG woefully failed to do.

It’s got coherent storytelling for a start, the dramatic tension is tensioning, the feminist politics is subtle yet forward leaning, there is real-time and credible romance, and the Director’s vision and the skills of the star-studded ensemble cast perfectly compliment each other.

The drama is set before the Communist Revolution and China’s One Hundred Years of Humiliation (what the Chinese call the period under which they were colonised) is still ongoing so women’s position under imperialism and feudalism is particularly dire.

China’s war against brutal Japanese imperialism; WW2 - which China was embroiled in earlier and for twice as long as the western allies fought the Nazis in Europe; and the Chinese Civil War of Liberation that ended the Republican Era, are all to come in this epic that spans some of the most turbulent decades in China’ history.

Oh, and I’m learning some new comedic insults too

I was thinking of an episodic review but don’t want to spoil things. Instead I’m going to write down the random things I shout out while watching.

One is that feminism (the idea that women are full human beings) is needed in all ages; consequently there have always been women who stood up against the oppression of other women but the reason patriarchy can continue to work against women is because most women are completely indoctrinated to the extent that even the good women do the ongoing work to uphold it.

This is the reason women “need” men. It will generally be a man who can stand up to other men when the time comes and can occasionally prevail. The problem is these men, men like Dajiao are few and far between, are often motivated by some kind of transaction, the salience of which dramatically declines as sexual interest in that woman inevitably wanes over the life course - even for the good men, and so once again we come back to the feminist need for women to save ourselves and each other. 

Dajiao is a lifesaver in the sense that he saves XiuXui not once not twice but THRICE in the most absolute sense because he is devoted to her maintaining her dignity which is the thing women lose in marriage. In marriage, then as now women, are expected to give up their bodily autonomy, to make their preferences secondary, and to joyfully deprive or harm themselves in ways that would bolster the marriage and family.

That is because most marriages are not about love, but about loving what the possession of a chosen woman provides as she carries out her gender-enforced roles. Women themselves can come to “love” - eroticise and romanticise, it if a man does the same and carries out his gender-enforced roles despite it coming at enormous costs to women themselves.

Dajiao violates the established gender roles for masculinity in his society several times, stepping into the breach to preserve not just XiuXui’s life, but also her safety, happiness, reputation, comfort, dignity and her bodily integrity. Dajiao providing these assurances comes at zero cost or loss to XiuXui because he’s not performing masculinity or transacting gender roles with her. He’s not motivated by what it could mean for him transactionally - because he loves her.

Also no matter the era people can survive without any modern conveniences but not the means (19C roofies) of coercing women into reproductive slavery.

I like how they’re handling the issue of land - confronting Property Relations as Power Relations, with a light narrative touch but still communicating how this profoundly underpins the oppression and precarity the majority faces at the hands of a few.

Under capitalism the masses of workers end up fighting each other instead of their class enemies, the exploitative landlords who live off their labour. By this time China had already had an earlier revolution but because it was a capitalist revolution it doesn’t alter hierarchical relations.

The organic development of the love relationship between XiuXui and Dajaio is just perfection. When you love someone you’re hyper focussed on their needs; not every desire needs articulation. When you’re growing to know someone who loves you it can be sobering to compare their treatment with those who knew you most intimately your entire life.

The part about the peasants understanding their situation and becoming politicised about it makes the connection between the masses being educated in revolutionary theory and being able to enact revolutionary praxis. This is why not just Marx and Engels wrote on this at length but also Communist revolutionaries such as Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh about the actual process, the strategies and tactics for a successful revolution and how to deal with the inherent contradictions of socialist struggle. Otherwise we will all be ensnared in passionate but shambolic muddles like poor TieTou.

My Singing Monsters: Beyond The Seam

This one is my main story project at the moment! I made it as a way to cope with hyperfixating on a rather immature subject matter because I felt really insecure about it. I usually abbreviate this one as MSMBTS or just Beyond The Seam. It’s essentially a reinterpretation of the MSM universe as a more solid fantasy world, akin to that of Lord of the Rings while also retaining some of the silliness from its source material. The Monster World (called Harmonaire now) is now not nearly as utopian as it is in canon but the monsters still find ways to feel hopeful and happy. There’s a whole music-magic system too, where depending on the composition of the song different elements of magic come together in different ways. Each of the monster races has their own ways of living, their own customs and what deities they worship, etc, and it goes pretty in-depth. I’ve been working on this one for about three years—maybe four—and I love working on it, it’s been my primary source of happiness for all that time. I plan to post small (and big) bits of lore occasionally :)

The Land of the Fifth God

LOTFG is my original universe. Most of the main story takes place on an alien planet called Thyraeia that is owned by a divine entity named Hekaara (after the Greek goddess Hecate), and controlled by their subordinates called the Wardens. Hekaara’s blessing upon the lands of Thyraeia allows for the existence of a magic system, which is overseen by the wardens of each of the ten elements. Despite its volatile ecosystems and environments, Thyraeia is considered a refuge for doomed races from other planets because of Hekaara’s promise to defend them. One of these races was humanity, forced to flee from an Earth made inhospitable by climate change. Only a small population of humans made it alive to Thyraeia, but all Therie (demonym for Thyraeia) humans are descended from this small population.