quickie Romance of Red Dust

[meganbmoore]

 

Think wuxia's are amazingly reserved about touching and showing uncomfortable things?  Think Xiao Long Nu's rape in ROCH is about as explicit as it gets?

Think again.

One of my favorite wuxia character types is the flighty, petty, but also very sweet, if foolish girl in love with the hero who tries to win him at first but eventually caves to the power of OTP and ends up a supporter.  Usually, it seems that, aside from not getting the guy, they only have death or aloneness happen to them, but nothing bad or traumatic(barring the death itself, of course.  Not here.

Because Ping Yang, our token cute, flighty, but sweet and loyal girl was just tricked into going out with a supposed ally, who then literally threw her on the ground, ripped her clothes off and raped her admid quite a bit of crying and screaming, with lots of wandering lost and crying afterwards.

They also filmed it so that more than once, it looked like someone was stumbling across the scene and would save her, by switching the perspective and moving in closer to make it look like someone getting closer.

The clincher?  He has apparently discussed marriage with her with her father(now the emperor) and 2 of her three brothers, and it was decided that she needed "encouragement" to agree to the match(what with her openly disliking him and all...)

The poor thing ended up wandering almost catatonic to the fortres where her only decent brother, Shi Min(who utterly dotes on her) and Li Jing were being held captive, hoping they'd throw her in a cell with them, as they're all she has left.

The upside is the Shi Min is obviously now plotting very painful and permanent justice, with Li Jing just barely behind him.

I have, of course, both seen and read far worse, but I'm not used to wuxia inflicting that kind of trauma on characters, or giving such a horribly realistic reaction(I mean, lets face it, iit was borderline non-issue in ROCH...she was huffy when she thought it was Yang Guo not asking permission, then hunted down and killed the actual rapist when she learned the truth, but was largely unaffected on a personal level...mostly because she thought it was Yang Guo.)

ETA:  I really want to kill those 3, happily sitting around, cheerfully talking about how they'll be family soon.  OTOH, Zhang Lie is made of awesome.  Not only can he kill people just by squeezing their shoulders really hard and take on entire fortresses to save his friends, but he also can use his kung fu to bring his dead wife back to life long enough for a tearful goodbye(don't worry, she'd only been dead for about 5 minutes after saving him from a sword with her own chest.)  

Also?  It seems proper wuxia rebel heroes do not swear allegiance to prospective rebel emperors without first consulting their wives.  This is likely wise, as no matter how good his kung fu has gotten, Hong Bi can still kick Li Jing's butt.

Comments

[calixa.livejournal.com]

Poor Ping Yang ;_;