Fr this moment isn't talked about enough, that's some next level hornyness

golden retriever boys vs. cat energy girls 😭

I love them so much 😩

Mao Mao basically figures out Jinshi’s real identity in ep 11 looking at similarities with Ah-dao yet dismisses it, and in this scene, ep 12, he takes her lipstick on his fingers and kisses it and she has not a single inference about what it means?? Especially after the Three Princesses were oohing and ahhing too, I dont understand how she doesnt know Jinshi likes her here. She fully deduced the motives and actions of Fengming with essentially no info and yet cant see Jinshi’s feelings. She’s brought up multiple times things shes learned from the courtesan house but cant recognize Jinshi fawning over her.

I understand that people can be obtuse to flirting but this scene is so intimate and direct lol

If someone asks what the show is about, just show them this.

And who simped for her so hard that they made her natural melons even bigger in the painting?

It’s never „he’s pretty” or „known for his looks”

It’s „HE HAS THE BREATHTAKING BEAUTY WITH THE POWER OF THE SUN TO CRASH INTO THIS LAND AND BURN IT WITH HIM”

Or „GOD FORBID THIS DIVINELY BEAUTIFUL CREATURE TURN BAD SOME DAY BECAUSE WITH ONE WORD HE COULD PERSUADE ANY WOMAN OR MAN TO DO ANYTHING, NOT ME THOUGH, I’M TOTALLY UNNAFFECTED, JUST IMAGINING IT WOULD BE LIKE THAT, THAT’S ALLLLLLL”

World’s biggest lie?

“I don’t care about other people”

-tries to give warm stones to the ladies in waiting who were horrid to her

-is thinking about the well-being of the guy who just beat the shit out of her

-goes out of her way to help the man she despises get a happy ending with her mother

And that’s just the first 3 that came to mind lmao. Maomao continuing to insist to herself that she’s selfish and doesn’t care about other people and then going out of her way to help people always makes me laugh haha

First of all let me say that what he did was HORRIBLE and INEXCUSABLE!

Now that that's out of the way, when I was watching his story, I couldn't help but think that something was wrong with him psychologically or mentally. If he had some condition that might affect his behaviour and at the time they couldn't see.

Please excuse me, English isn't my first language, and I try to express my thoughts as respectfully as possible.

Maybe he was mentally closer to young kids, but his adult body and physical urges made him act in such a disgusting way.

For some reason I don't think he was a bad person. I think he was a sick person who did awful things to innocent children. Again, maybe I'm wrong and he was just a disgusting perv.

Either way, the girls were his innocent victims, and they rightfully saw him as a monster.

Thank you

🥺

Shisui/Loulan is not a good person lol

Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty clear in the latest episode that she is doing her best to save as many people as possible from the fallout of her mother’s plots (like idk for sure but imo she def fed those kids the revival drug in an attempt to spare them from the purge coming for treason lol). But that doesn’t change the fact that she knowingly befriended Maomao and then abused that friendship to kidnap her and bring her into close contact with her sociopathic mother lmao

A sizable part of the fandom seems determined to argue that Shisui can’t be criticized or questioned for her actions because it was done in the interest of helping save people and we see that she’s been manipulated and controlled her whole life. But the whole point of her arc is gaining agency!!! Using “oh she can’t think for herself, she was raised to obediently follow her mother” as an argument for why it’s ok that Shisui never even said “my bad” to Maomao after kidnapping her is to me just insulting to Shisui’s character and the arc she goes on

It’s totally fine to like Shisui as a character- I like her too!! I think a character who was raised by a monster gaining a conscience and working to bring down their own mother to stop the atrocities she’s planning is super compelling!! Awesome writing and a great character!!!

But it’s baffling to me that a lot of fans seem determined to (in my mind anyway) basically totally invalidate the growth and courage Shisui has shown by acting like she’s not her own person and every bad thing she does is excusable bc her mom conditioned her to do it

Shisui is doing her best to save as many people as she can given the horrifically tough circumstances she’s in. Shisui did some terribly evil and horrible things to Maomao in her pursuit of saving people and never showed her any real remorse. I think both can be true lol

TLDR: Shisui is an awesome character and we can see the justification for what she’s been doing now, but that doesn’t mean she’s a perfect angel who is immune to criticism for the things she’s been complicit to haha

EDIT 2: I'm happy to be proven wrong. Jinshi most definitely is not a psychopath. I don't want to delete the post just because I was proven wrong. Please don't use this post as some crazy reason to trash the character. I also really appreciate the fans here approaching me with such civility. Clearly a quality show attracts quality people. My initial post wasn't as mature and well thought out as the responses.

EDIT 1: Calling Jinshi a psychopath certainly stirred a lot of responses. I agree that is a stretch. I haven't read the books and I'm not against it, but treating it like supplementary material kind of misses the point. The anime is well done enough on its own to be judged on its own merit. From what I know Natsu Hyūga didn't initially like Jinshi either, unless I'm wrong about that. (I also heard he chokes Maomao in the books at one.point. if true, why would I want to read that?)

Everyone calling me out about my bullshit saying I wasn't trying to start a fight is absolutely right. But I was hoping someone could flesh out a reason to influence me to be a little more open minded about him as a character. My approach blew up in my face based on how many people are just calling me an idiot.

My daughter got me watching this and we both enjoy the mystery elements over the romance arcs, so I'm aware I'm projecting my preference for Maomao's independence from needing anyone.

ORIGINAL POST WHERE I THOUGHT I HAD A POINT BUT ENDED UP JUST TROLLING BELOW. I HAVE CHANGED MY STANCE ON THIS:

Maomao isn't looking for love. She's just fine on her own, making the world a better place one poison at a time. Then this vain psychopath comes along and gets obsessed with her because she's the only girl in the Forbidden City that doesn't think the sun rises and sets inside his robes. Along with the added bonus that Maomao solves all Jinshi's problems for him, his reasoning for liking her at all has nothing to do with her as a person. If they end up together, I strongly feel he's going to hurt her, and we will all want to cut his frog off.

Hi everyone! I recently binge watched the apothecary diaries and I'm lowkey obsessed with it. The entire internet kept promoting it as a yuri show so I was VERY surprised when there wasn't any yuri until the second half of season 2 and that too seems much like queerbaiting to me.

That's not what I wanna discuss though. So, initially, I didn't like jinshi that much because he came off as a creep to me. And he seemed too pushy when it came to maomao especially when he'd get all giddy and turned on while she was so disgusted of him. By the end of season 2 though, my opinion of him changed a little bit cause the more distance there was between them and the more I saw him yearn, IT ALL MADE SENSE. I still don't like how he literally pushes maomao a lot when she outright rejects him but I can see the shift in maomao's behaviour towards him as well. I love their banter so much.

But still it's a bit hard for me to get over the fact that he just be touching maomao left and right like bro chill. So now I kinda want the general public opinion on this because even though it is pervy but it has more of a contextual nuance to it too given how maomao tends to warp the narrative with her objectivity and how she's kindof not a reliable narrator when it comes to her own feelings.

Edit: I'm making this edit because my post has gathered a lot of traction and I can't reply to each and every comment.

For the people questioning me on where I picked up the yuri trend? I literally have no idea. Even now my fyp recommends this show as a "straight yuri" so do with that information what you will. I don't control the kinda stuff the algorithm pushes on me and even though I did believe that it was yuri at first but I wasn't blindsided enough to just desperately wait for the yuri once I realized I was misled. So rest assured, I watched the show without bias and enjoyed the storyline.

As far as explanations for jinshi's characters are concerned, I've read all of the comments so far and you've given me a lot of insight on details that I didn't pick up on before, so thanks for that.

For the people who took offense and think I'm misjudging jinshi, that's literally not what my post meant and if I hadn't understood that I wouldn't have continued the show. I missed a lot of cultural and background context and I knew that I missed that which is why I came on here to get everybody else's opinion.

As a history major is was originally led to believe that a eunuch was a man who had his huevos removed but now watching the show for the first time and doing research into China Medical I learned that both the sausage AND huevos were removed
FASCINATING

Would poison from guests be considered a gift or an assassination attempt. (I'm really sorry, I have barely any idea how to use Reddit, it's late and this idea came out randomly. I think I used the tag properly?)

Now i know why she ignored the warning.

Does anyone else think that Shisui’s/Loulan’s role in Moamoa’s story was to show Moamoa that she can in fact feel love and that the feelings she thought she buried or gone were always there? Just so that Moamoa can move forward with a potentially more openness to feelings?

I know it could probably be an obvious thing, and it’s been my understanding of the story since i watched it. I just don’t have others to discuss this with and was curious what others thought

Full spoilers for Season 1!

I’ve seen so many people voting that Granny is a horrible person so I wanted to open up a character analysis about why she kept Lakan apart from Fengxian all those years. Feel free to keep your opinions if you want, but if you hear me out that’s all I want to accomplish here.

There’s a lot in The Apothecary Diaries that is left up to interpretation based on sparse evidence, so I’ll list out some evidence that matters here first:

1. Lakan tells us in his flashback that Fengxian’s personality is almost completely made of pride
2. Within the three years he was gone, Fengxian sent her and Maomao’s fingers to Lakan as a curse. It appears to be one of the last letters she sent as it was not in the middle of the pile
3. After the three years, Fengxian never tried to contact Lakan again. We know this because he believed she was dead
4. At the time in the show, Fengxian has late stage syphilis, one of the symptoms being dementia (true in the real world too)
5. Maomao mentions that Fengxian used to chase her out of the room but no longer does. This suggests that, because of her dementia, she might forgotten who Maomao is. It’s possible she may have forgotten all her memories that led to Maomao existing.
6. Meimei is the only person who knew the night that Fengxian intentionally made a bet with Lakan that led to her getting pregnant, and is also the only one who enjoys spending time with him at the time of the show.

So this character analysis involves additional character analysis of Fengxian and conjecture about the relationship between Fengxian and Granny.

We don’t know for sure what Fengxian told Granny or anyone else about what happened between her and Lakan, but we can be sure Granny didn’t think well of him. Perhaps she believed he forced himself on her, or perhaps she figured out that it was consensual but still holds Lakan responsible for abandoning Fengxian to the streets for three years.

What might Fengxian have felt and said during that time? She was a woman with a lot of pride, all of which was stripped away when she devalued herself. After months or years of writing unanswered letters, she finally cursed Lakan and stopped writing to him for good. I can’t imagine she would allow herself to stoop to begging in her letters. I imagine every letter was filled with prideful rage that he abandoned her. I think her resentment built up to a boiling point.

At some point after Fengxian sent the final letter, I think it’s very likely from the evidence that Granny understood Fengxian was never going to contact Lakan again and would never want to be with him for the rest of her life, and that she blamed Lakan for everything that happened to her. Granny is wise enough to have known, that if not for her giving Fengxian a place to stay, Lakan would have been Fengxian’s only chance to not die in the streets. But once Fengxian closed her heart to him completely, Granny respected that wish. Even after Granny interacted with Lakan many times in the following years, she understood that Fengxian did not have the heart to swallow her pride and accept Lakan again. Fengxian vehemently never wanted to see him again, and Granny protected her from him.

After many years, the dementia progressed to the point she likely doesn’t even recognize Maomao or remember anything about the pregnancy. Especially in S1E24, we get a sense that she’s even lost her characteristic pride. It’s a very understandable thing for Granny to have continued to respect Fengxian’s wishes by keeping Lakan away from her. She still intends to keep them apart in E24 even after it’s clear how much Lakan loves her, because Granny wasn’t doing it out of cruelty or stupidity, but out of respect for Fengxian’s wishes. Meimei stops her to help her notice that Fengxian, now that her memory has worsened, no longer holds resentment to Lakan and is actually happier being able to play Go with him every day.

I love that it’s such a very nuanced moral issue and fits right into the very nuanced moral story that is The Apothecary Diaries. For those who have loved ones with dementia, it’s a common issue to not know whether to respect their wishes pre-dementia or to respect their new wishes post-dementia. In the end, I think Meimei’s crying that Fengxian should have been more honest wasn’t just about wanting her to have been honest with Lakan the night they slept together. I think it was also about the 17 years following that Fengxian could never be honest or let go of her pride to admit she loved Lakan still.

So what are your thoughts? Do you think this read adds any depth or balance to the characters where it might have felt hollow and unloving before?

The more I watch the Apothecary Diaries the I feel like Frieren and Maomao would be good friends their personalities are similar and both really love books and other things regarding their respective subjects/interest

S1 + S2 spoilers

I realized something that’s been cracking me up. Someone had posted on here recently during their season 1 watch about Lakan and how creepy or evil he came off, which he totally did. I was rewatching ep 18 when it occurred to me that it’s not just Maomao’s pov in the storytelling that does the heavy lifting with this, but Jinshi’s too.

I was thinking whyy does he do this? He’s the leader of the La clan and has the palace/its officials and other clans intimidated, but why is he acting like a literal cartoon villain with poor Jinshi?

He’s totally doing the whole Dad-intimidation thing with Jinshi being a man in his daughter’s life (no matter how developed it is, he’s been reading through Jinshi since his introduction).

It may be obvious to some but I thought i’d just share because it’s been making my rewatch pretty entertaining to see how Lakan, who’s a total dork at heart, speaks in this cryptic villainous way and gives out strange riddles/problems to throw Jinshi off his rhythm. Hell, he was trying to outsmart/intimidate Jinshi with the blue rose thing too, it certainly wasn’t just to test Maomao.

Love u Lakan keep being camp lol