cdrama: Strange Hero Yi Zhi Mei/Vigilantes in Masks eps whatever-23

[meganbmoore]

Where's my GIF of Catelyn Stark bashing Jaime Lannister over the head with a rock?  Because that's how I feel.
 

If the backstory were the main story, I'd ditch this show and never look back.

As it is, while my enjoyment of the main story remains the same and my only complaint with the main story is that, aside from San Niang, the cast is all men (men I like except for the antagonists, but that's a separate matter) there's no way this can ever go on my list of favorites now.
 

 

I knew that I was going to be annoyed by the backstory from the start-it was always clear that Ruyi had been tortured to death, and there was the doublefridging, which along with the "almost all men" thing has always kept me from enjoying it as much as others (no secret there).  I was hoping, though, that she'd at least get her own voice in her story.  Except she never has her own story, but instead is only an objectr of perfection in men's stories.  You can argue that Gexiao and Wuqui are the main characters and so of course the focus is on them and it'sd their story, and the narrative will support that, but it was already the narrative's choice to make her nothing but a figure in their stories, and so the argument is essentially that it's only natural for fiction to be about men.

Anyway, Ruyi is, up until her last few scenes, seen ENTIRELY through the POV of men.  I've seen plenty of flashbacks assume omniscent narrative to give voice to characters beyond the one that's doing the remembering, so it being Gexiao and Wuqui's memories holds no water with me.  And, again, narrative's choice.  While Gexiao at least no doubt saw her as a person at the time (I don't think Wuqui ever really did...he saw her as something he assumed would always be his despite her never giving him any reason to expect anything but gratitude and friendship and was completely honest with him when she knew he expected more) she's now a perfect object in his mind, and no longer an individual person.  So it's all softly lit and she's beautiful and perfect in their eyes and only exists as they see her now, and her entire story except for the end is told almost exclusively in scenes with them, seen through their POV.

When we actually get to see her outside of them, it's first when she is deliberately sacrificing herself and her unborn child to try to save them (and I'd been uneasy in some of the stories with how the role of women outside of San Niang and the women of her mother's order was to be self-sacrificing and suffer for men and make choices based on what's good for men, but it hasn't been a central focus before like it is here) and then confront Yan Song.  In confronting Yan Song, she's allowed her own voice for the first time, and her goals and desires are voiced through her POV for the first time.  She's also in jail and has been tortured, and during the scene, we see her severely beaten again and tortured, and the scene (and the last we see of her life) ends with soldiers closing in on her when Yan Song, after causing her to miscarry, has ordered them to beat her to death.

It's like someone acquired a list of ways to piss me off when it comes to women's stories, and made sure it had everything but rape.