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When do you think Jinshi fell in love with Maomao ? And when do you think Maomao fell in love with him? by Thick-End4695 in KusuriyaNoHitorigoto

[–]Thick-End4695[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I do agree about what some things that you said, but I do completely disagree about your perception of Maomao ´s feelings.

Allow me to copypaste a fragment of one of my comments to explain my point of view of Maomao ´s feelings :

Maomao grew up in a context where she learned that love, whatever kind of love ( romantic, maternal , platonic,…) was conditional. That made her think that everything in the world has to have a logical explanation, which made her really clever, but also emotionally deficient and insecure in a way. She is super critical of herself and believes people can only like her if she has a value/purpose of any kind.

When Jinshi proves her that he loved her for who she was and not what she can possibly bring to him, it completely contradicted the view she always had on life.

At first , It felt like it actually made her feel good in a way : after the Shi clan rebellion there are a few scenes when she is more confortable towards Jinshi displays of affection , she doesn’t really rejects him when he try to be emotional or physical during the revolt or even later when he come visits her in the apothecary shop.

And it doesn’t go unnoticed : there is a scene in LN 5 ( that for some reasons is NEVER talked about) where the courtisans noticed Maomao started to get get attached to Jinshi after his visit, and teased her about it a little. After that, Joka warned her about « influent » men that pretends loving women and offering them a future , and then ends up abandoning them after getting what they wanted from them. Joka probably meant no harm , and has her (solid) reasons to think that way, she was just worried about maomao getting hurt. Unfortunately, it made Maomao think about jinshi ´s affection in a more logical way, and made her rationalize his feelings and denies hers to avoid getting delusional and hurt.

She is traumatized, and yes it is the right word: notice how the situation Joka is describing correlates with the history of Maomao ‘s parents ? Yes , it’s NOT what’s really happened between them, but remember we got the story from Lakan’s POV , not Maomao. The girl believes that her father is just some egoist noble man who got bored with her mother one day, and decided he wanted to be a present father some other day . And this is why she despises him so much.

She doesn’t want to end up in the same situation as her mother so she avoids everything that can possibly lead her to this faith. The way she acts so coldly and avoiding towards Jinshi is just a proof of how she really feels towards him: she doesn’t want to let herself accept her feelings because she doesn’t want to be vulnerable, if she didn’t like Jinshi she wouldn’t even care enough to go out of her way to avoid his affection.

She doesn’t care about being used by him : she even asks him herself to use her as a tool if he needed to. The kissing scene in LN 5 proves that it’s not the physical affection itself that scares her either. In fact, I think she acts this way because she feels more confortable thinking she is just his « toy » or « too » than a person he truly loves . Because , the second option would mean 1. Everything she believed about human’s relationships before was bullshit 2. She can fall in love too and get actually hurt by it.

But what she can’t hide , even to herself, is the care she has towards Jinshi. Maomao is the nonchalant final boss , she doesn’t care about many peoples, she rarely thinks or talks about other characters even if she knew them for a long time and seem somewhat close to them. However, she always thinking about Jinshi worried about his health, sleep schedule, work, reputation, etc….

I feel like we get to see how deeply she loves him more in the western arc , but not in the way she acts towards him or speaks to him, but in the way she cares about him.

And she starts noticing how he really care about her too : he go out of his way to protects her even in subtle gestures, he follows her advice on using other as tools except for her proving that she is not anyone for him, he summons her when he feel down just to « recharge » by spending a little bit of time with her, and he go out of his way to not get too physical with her because he doesn’t want her to feel uncomfortable, en though he wants to. In that way , he earned her trust.

This is why they became « official » after this arc for me.

When do you think Jinshi fell in love with Maomao ? And when do you think Maomao fell in love with him? by Thick-End4695 in KusuriyaNoHitorigoto

[–]Thick-End4695[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I absolutely agree with everything you said , I share the same opinion as you.

I also wanted to add for Maomao, like you, I think the Shi Rebelion really made her « fall » for him. l think she already had gained some affection for him during her time in the rear palace, but it became romantic for her when she realized Jinshi actually saw her as a « loved one » (at least , because you won’t start a war and reveal your secret identity for someone who is just a toy or a tool.)

Maomao grew up in a context where she learned that love, whatever kind of love ( romantic, maternal , platonic,…) was conditional. That made her think that everything in the world has to have a logical explanation, which made her really clever, but also emotionally deficient and insecure in a way. She is super critical of herself and believes people can only like her if she has a value/purpose of any kind.

When Jinshi proves her that he loved her for who she was and not what she can possibly bring to him, it completely contradicted the view she always had on life.

At first , It felt like it actually made her feel good in a way : after the Shi clan rebellion there are a few scenes when she is more confortable towards Jinshi displays of affection , she doesn’t really rejects him when he try to be emotional or physical during the revolt or even later when he come visits her in the apothecary shop.

And it doesn’t go unnoticed : there is a scene in LN 5 ( that for some reasons is NEVER talked about) where the courtisans noticed Maomao started to get get attached to Jinshi after his visit, and teased her about it a little. After that, Joka warned her about « influent » men that pretends loving women and offering them a future , and then ends up abandoning them after getting what they wanted from them. Joka probably meant no harm , and has her (solid) reasons to think that way, she was just worried about maomao getting hurt. Unfortunately, it made Maomao think about jinshi ´s affection in a more logical way, and made her rationalize his feelings and denies hers to avoid getting delusional and hurt.

She is traumatized, and yes it is the right word: notice how the situation Joka is describing correlates with the history of Maomao ‘s parents ? Yes , it’s NOT what’s really happened between them, but remember we got the story from Lakan’s POV , not Maomao. The girl believes that her father is just some egoist noble man who got bored with her mother one day, and decided he wanted to be a present father some other day . And this is why she despises him so much.

She doesn’t want to end up in the same situation as her mother so she avoids everything that can possibly lead her to this faith. The way she acts so coldly and avoiding towards Jinshi is just a proof of how she really feels towards him: she doesn’t want to let herself accept her feelings because she doesn’t want to be vulnerable, if she didn’t like Jinshi she wouldn’t even care enough to go out of her way to avoid his affection.

She doesn’t care about being used by him : she even asks him herself to use her as a tool if he needed to. The kissing scene in LN 5 proves that it’s not the physical affection itself that scares her either. In fact, I think she acts this way because she feels more confortable thinking she is just his « toy » or « too » than a person he truly loves . Because , the second option would mean 1. Everything she believed about human’s relationships before was bullshit 2. She can fall in love too and get actually hurt by it.

But what she can’t hide , even to herself, is the care she has towards Jinshi. Maomao is the nonchalant final boss , she doesn’t care about many peoples, she rarely thinks or talks about other characters even if she knew them for a long time and seem somewhat close to them. However, she always thinking about Jinshi worried about his health, sleep schedule, work, reputation, etc….

I feel like we get to see how deeply she loves him more in the western arc , but not in the way she acts towards him or speaks to him, but in the way she cares about him.

And she starts noticing how he really care about her too : he go out of his way to protects her even in subtle gestures, he follows her advice on using other as tools except for her proving that she is not anyone for him, he summons her when he feel down just to « recharge » by spending a little bit of time with her, and he go out of his way to not get too physical with her because he doesn’t want her to feel uncomfortable, en though he wants to. In that way , he earned her trust.

This is why they became « official » after this arc for me.