i love the hilarious eunuch ranking system by @welcometothejianghu so i decided to make one based on (mostly) REAL historical chinese enunchs!
in chronological order:
Warring States Period
long story short, the PM is sleeping with the Empress Dowager, and he wants to extracate himself before her son (future Emperor Qin Shi Huang) gets old enough to find out. the PM finds her a suitable replacement, and the replacement is attached to a guy named Lao Ai. They pluck his beard and pass him off as a eunuch so he can sneak into the palace. Bing bang boom everyone's happy. This goes terribly wrong later, since Lao Ai tries to replace the emperor with his own kids and stages a failed coup. rest in pieces buddy...
it's very likely that Lao Ai was a ficticious character invented by Sima Qian, who will be appearing on this list later.
Qin Dynasty
Zhao Gao helped the first emperor of China conquer an empire, and administer it efficiently with his legal knowledge, but he also made the second emperor into a puppet, and weakened the empire for his own political gain. Max points of complexity, but you'd get more loyalty out of a coffee club punch card.
Before launching his soft coup, he decided to test the waters by bring in a deer and gaslighted the emperor by calling it a horse. the officials who were loyal to him called it a horse, and he executed the rest.
Han Dynasty
Jiru, male favourite of Emperor Gaozu (Liu Bang), the peasant scoundrel who became the founder of the Han Dynasty.
look, if the emperor has a harem of hundreds of women and you manage to catch his attention, you max out in style points. simple as. for most of chinese history it was fairly common for high-ranking men, especially eunuchs, to wear make up like powder and rouge, but i decided to give Jiru some women's huadia as well, cause he's a baddie.
Jiru gets a bad rap for alledgely distracting the emperor from his duties, but lets be real, history is written by civil officials who have no shortage of professional jealousy and gender/sexuality related prejudice towards eunuchs, since they were the personal attendants of royalty and could exert a lot of influence. plus Liu Bang was already pissing in the hats of confucian scholars, most of the poor work ethic is on HIM. Jiru should get credit for making him marginally less of a troglodite.
all in all he didn't try any court intrigue so extra points for loyalty and complexity. free my man >:( he's just a Han dynasty Monica Lewinsky who got slutshamed by jealous coworkers >:(
Han Dynasty
meet the father of east asian history, sima qian. half the people on this list can owe their placement here thanks to his extremely though history books "records of the grand historian"
history at this time was mostly "creative writing" and sima qian attempted to give the practise more academic intergrety, he went out and personally interviewed people, tried to get primary sources, and got rid of most of the more fanstastical aspects. however, he was not without his biases and some texts can be seen as allegorical/veiled insults towards the Han Dynasty, especially towards Emperor Wu.
unlike most of the people on this list, sima qian was from the gentry and castated later in life as a punishment for treason. he was implicated after trying to defend a friend, and could not pay the fine to commute his sentence. the gentlemen at the time were expected to die by suicide rather than live with such ignimony, but sima qian chose to live so he could finish writing the history book his father started.
the "giant conspiracy" joke explained: the chinese word for penis is a homophone for "conspiracy".
337 notes
Ā·
View notes
My first therapy appointment in several months went really well! Iām returning to the councilor Iāve had for a couple years now. I updated her on my transition journey because the last time I saw her was a couple weeks before I started on T; I told her about coming out to my dad last night, and how disappointing it was.
The ensuing conversation was both productive, and so fucking validating.
My recent depressive episode? Complicated by an event with a former friend, but set into motion, and dragged out for so long, because of the stress of what was to come. My voice has gotten too low to even PRETEND itās just a holdover from being sick or part of allergies or what have you. Iāve known for the past month that the time to tell my dad was coming. The fear of his reaction and the consequences it could bring since Iām currently in a financially vulnerable place was killing me.
And as we talked, I figured out that the unpredictability is still my only real, big fear: my dad promised me he wouldnāt kick me out, but thereās that lingering fear that he could change his mind, and even if he doesnāt, he could start draining my paychecks ā I told him my GAC, insurance copays and all, has been coming exclusively out of my pocket, so I get the sneaking suspicion heās gonna take advantage of us sharing a bank account and deepen that financial dependency. And above all, Iām afraid of losing our relationship. Iām okay with him not accepting my identity so long as he doesnāt treat me any differently in spite of it. But if he starts pulling away or pushing me away or withholding love as punishment for following down a path he disapproves of, what then?
My counselor told me that, sad as it is, I canāt control how he chooses to react. But I have my mom and brotherās support, my girlfriendās support, and an online community of friends; if I lose my relationship with him, thatās ultimately his decision and his loss, and no matter what he does, I wonāt face it alone.
I had hoped that assuring him I felt Godās peace in my choices and that Iād spent years praying over the situation would at least sorta put him at ease, but all he did was infantilize and illegitimize my entire experience as guided by evil and selfishness. I canāt reason with him or come to a happy medium with him like I did with my mom. The faith heās praised me for sticking close to heās now decided is all lies and self-delusion simply because he doesnāt like the conclusions Iāve come to. Nothing I do will satisfy or convince himā¦ so why waste energy trying?
I just have to live with his disappointment, and as much as it hurts, itās also freeing. Iāve done all I can do. I donāt have to hide anymore. I donāt have to live with the stress of what will happen once he knows, because for better or worse, he knows now. If he doesnāt like it, so be it. Iāve laid my cards down, and how things progress between us is entirely up to him. When I put aside my stress over our relationship, I feel nothing but confidence and happiness and certainty. If he thinks this is a mistakeā¦ well, heās gotta let me make my mistakes. I spent 20+ years not doing anything for fear of what bad might happen, and that left me a suicidal wreck by age 18. I wonāt sit by and let ominous warnings and premonitions hold me back any longer. It COULD be a mistake, or it COULD be the best decision Iāve ever made. How will I know if I freeze up in fear?
My counselor noted several times that I look, sound, and act more confident than sheās ever seen from me. Without the pressure of keeping secrets, Iām able to more easily sort between what thoughts are mind and what thoughts my dad, my trauma, or both have planted in my head. I can say with my whole chest that I feel Iām going in the right direction. I can even say āFuck it, my dadās approval or disapproval is on him, not meā with greater conviction. Iām acting on things Iāve wanted from the moment we first spoke, and she says the positive change itās made radiates off of me. She said sheās extremely proud of the progress Iāve made.
Iāll be seeing her again next week, then dropping down to seeing her every other week. In spite of how relatively poorly last night went, I feel empowered. God Iām so glad to be back.
29 notes
Ā·
View notes
I kind of don't want to compare Wan to Ek cause Wan's love for Pleng is actual love vs. Ek's "love" for Wan being just pure possessive obsession. He doesn't care for Wan in the same way that Wan does for Pleng, but I do feel like both of them have similar levels of obsessive love for their targets of affection and I think in a lot of ways the novel kind of has Ek serve as a foil to Wan.
More spoilery novel thoughts below the cut.
When Ek threatened Wan and Pleng with a gun, Wan was extremely nonchalant about the whole thing ... like disturbingly chill in how she stood against him and did not seem afraid of the gun at all. And that was because that Wan argued that she knew without a doubt that because Ek loved her, that he'd never hurt her like that.
Ek's "love" for Wan is monstrously evil and possessiveāhe married Wan despite knowing that she didn't love him and he raped her when she wouldn't have sex with himābut Wan seems to understand him and his feelings well enough to know that he wouldn't actually kill her. And that instead, he would try to kill himself to hurt her and her relationship in another way.
That's utterly deranged thinking, but it's thinking that Wan understood immediately, which was why she reacted quickly and was able to change the trajectory of the bullet when she intervened.
I really hate to say it, but Wan and Ek are actually extremely similar in a lot of ways. As fucking deranged it is to marry a man in the hopes of seeing your true love who you haven't seen in over ten years at the wedding ... it is also fucking deranged to marry a woman you supposedly love when you know her sole reason for marrying you is so that she can see the person she really loves. I wonder if part of the reason that Wan remained by Ek's side for so long wasn't only because Pleng had picked him, but because a part of her felt a little bit understood by him.
He does constantly dismiss Wan and Pleng's feelings towards each other and their relationship with one another, of course. He is still, after all, a homophobic violent misogynist who views the lesbian relationship between the two as "non-threatening" up until the end of the novel when he realizes that Wan was genuinely incapable of ever loving him.
But he was also probably the only person in Wan's life who could even begin to understand the pain that Wan was going through. In the special chapters, Wan mentions that he offered her comfort and hope about the idea of Pleng returning. He dismisses the relationship because they're both women, but simultaneously, he understands the depth and intensity of it.
And I think Wan was partly able to tolerate his feelings towards her for so long, because she felt understood by him in a sense and because she might have felt she understood him.
She loved Pleng enough to want to remain only a friend for the rest of their lives. She only became emboldened in her feelings and flirting when she realized that Pleng felt the same way towards her. I think maybe, initially, she thought that Ek's feelings towards her were the same. That he loved her enough to be satisfied with a friendship. That he loved her enough to want to care and protect her, but of course that wasn't the case.
Because the similarities between Ek and Wan are fairly surface level when it comes down to it, because while both are obsessive, possessive, and ultimately toxic, Ek cares more about having Wan than he does about Wan's safety and well-being.
Ek tried to kill himself in order to hurt Wan. Which directly contrasts against Pleng and Wan. In the novel, Pleng mentions contemplating suicide in the past but she doesn't act on it for fear that Wan would learn of it and it would hurt her, lead to her own death. And at the end of the novel when it seems like Wan is on the verge of killing herselfāas implied in a note that she left for Pleng to spitefully hurt her (Wan's love is more "pure" than Ek's, but both still have malicious streaks)ābut while she considers it, she ultimately decides to not kill herself because she wouldn't want to hurt Pleng like that.
Ek's love for Wan foils Wan's love for Pleng in this sense, because it demonstrates that while Wan is selfish, obsessive, possessive, and deranged that she is still a caring and loving partner and that ultimately her love for Pleng is fueled by a genuine love for all of Pleng whereas Ek only loved Wan as a possession to be owned and only loved the parts of her that were palpable to him.
15 notes
Ā·
View notes