Thread now updated with an important correction from @tonyglowheart to my bad Chinese, along with a picture of the real-life cultivar that the Jin have and more into about peonies in the book canon! https://twitter.com/quigonejinn/status/1243883852172582912

Picking up with the promised thread on gentians, which got delayed because life became BUSY this week. Mute #qgjp (quigonejinn pendantry) to take this nonsense off your TL, and as always

I’m second-gen, and since my father failed to go full Lan Qiren and lime up third parties to beat me, he failed to actually get much written Chinese into my head. So if you see any errors esp about Chinese language or cultural understanding, shout out! #qgjp

So! The house where the Lan boys’ mom is kept in semi-forced confinement is called Gentian House. The color is definitely super Lan —they’ve been bred to be pink and white, but the classic gentian color is a deep, pure, remarkable blue. #qgjp

This is what they look like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentiana  #qgjp

And I say the blue is remarkable because it’s exactly that — there are very few flowers with that deep, true blue. Most “blue” flowers are actually purple-blue. Think hydrangeas, right? Or cornflowers. Or grape hyacinths.

Pure blue is just not a common color in the natural plant world. There are only a handful of plants in the garden trade that will produce it #qgjp

Delphiniums are one — and they’re poisonous as hell. Like, every single part of the plant will fuck you the fuck up. Larkspur in pastures will murder thousand-pound animals dead, sometimes in hours. #qgjp

Morning glories are another. They’re toxic to dogs, toxic to cats, toxic to horses, toxic to cows, even fucking goats!! And if you’re a human, eating the seeds will give you bad, bad hallucinations #qgjp

So essentially, a plant having deep, true blue flowers is a warning, a danger sign. A thou-shalt-not-fuck-with-me-herbivore-or-I-will-make-you-sorry-you-were-ever-corn. #qgjp

And in the case of gentians — you’re gonna regret it almost fucking IMMEDIATELY, because the thing about gentians is beavsue they deeply, indescribably, unbelievably bitter. Some bitterest compounds on earth, gram for gram, are distilled from gentians. #qgjp

And this quality of them is fucking legendary in Chinese herbal lore — their Chinese name is “long dan” or “dragon’s gall,” and tbh as somebody who was dosed with traditional medicine as a kid, when Chinese medicine recognizes something tastes nasty???!? #qgjp

Hold onto your cute little Western amoxicillin that tastes like strawberries and BUCKLE THE FUCK UP. #qgjp

And so to loop back from this to untamed — that’s the name of the house where Madame Lan was kept for the rest of her life, never permitted to leave, only allowed to see her children once a month. When LXC is telling WWX the story, he says that when he and his brother were born

They were “quickly” or “immediately” taken from their mother to be raised by their uncle. And like, i think about how the house was almost certainly not named for Madame Lan’s perspective on this — it was undoubtedly meant to reflect the #qgjp

Profound disappointment of the Lan family in general and Qiren in particular that the sect leader had voluntarily tied himself not only to a criminal, but somebody who had MURDERED HIS TEACHER, an unnatural crime that is a small version #qgjp

Of full-blown patricide, a sin in any culture but an unthinkable and unnatural deviation in Confucian China — he used his position to save her, then fucked off into seclusion because she didn’t love him and he had given up any moral authority to lead #qgjp

LXC’s version of the story suggests that as a kid, she show any bitterness or anger towards him and was tender to at least LWJ, but as a mother, I keep looping back to the idea that she had two children. #qgjp

How many times did she have to fuck a man she didn’t love, so that there could be heirs for his clan? #qgjp

What was her pregnancy like — a full-term pregnancy is 37 weeks from the date of your last period. Was she alone? Was she attended throughout, or only during labor? Was she allowed to have her mother or any family with her (almost certainly not)? #qgjp

Was she even allowed to hold A-Huan or A-Yuan after they were born? Given the circumstances of their conception and her pregnancy, did she even want to? #qgjp

Part of the typical birth process for cis women is that after you give birth, especially after a vaginal one, your milk comes in. If you don’t breastfeed, it’ll dry up eventually, but it can take months. And until then, it HURTS. Like, stabbing pains in the tit hurts. #qgjp

Your breasts fill up, and if you aren’t feeding a kid or pumping, you’re just supposed to let them sit there and get the stabbing pains and ignore them and ignore them and ignore them #qgjp

And that’s ignoring the kind of massive physical trauma that vaginal delivery can be #qgjp

And just think — you get through that, somehow you hold your sanity together, somehow you keep hold of your will to live and survive and not give in to these self-righteous Lan fucks whose problems would ALL GO AWAY if only you’d conveniently drop dead

But you’re somehow now supposed to see these kids you didn’t have a choice about bringing into the world. They’re hungry for affection. They’ee desperate for it. It’s clear that the one day a month that they see you is the one break they get from

This rigid, caste-based system of power that has buried you alive, forced you into a marriage with a man you didn’t love, required you to carry two pregnancies to term and an unknown number of others to less than that #qgjp

Those two boys are now being raised to be the pride of the Lan, the embodiment of not just the mechanism of your imprisonment, but its actual soul. And all you can do about it is — to be gentle to them. For one day a month. #qgjp

It gives a brand-new dimension to the idea of something being as bitter as dragon’s gall. #qgjp

To me, the remarkable part about Madame Lan is that she lasted long enough under this system for LXC to be born, let alone for LWJ to be old enough to mourn her when she dies. #qgjp

In conclusion: JUSTICE FOR MADAME LAN WHOSE NAME WE DON’T EVEN FUCKING KNOW, BURN DOWN GENTIAN HOUSE, THAT FUCKING TEACHER HAD IT FUCKING COMING #qgjp

Oh! Two things I forgot to mention as I was spiraling the fuck out into Madame Lan sads! First, a lot of gentians grow up in rocky, mountain terrain (alpine in horticulture speak) so them being at Cloud Recesses makes sense

Also, most gentians usually have deep tap roots, so you can’t transplant them once established. You propagate by seed IRRC. All fitting with the theme of eternal horrible blue-themed bitterness!

Never reread twitter threads composed on the phone, kids, because you will see all the fucking typos. A-Huan and A-Zhan ffs