word of honor is dear to me in many ways, but a big, serious one is that it spells out multiple times very explicitly that a man looking to fuck someone much younger than himself is bad fucking news

i am not fun about this topic irl. i will rain on the parade.

"i met this guy, he's perfect and cute and funny and i really like him, the only problem is i found out he's X years old but --"

"don't date him."

over and over, the reason that man goes after someone younger is because he doesn't want a relationship with an equal. he wants a partner where treating them as a full person is optional. when they agree with him, they're human. when they're inconvenient, they're an object

i am filled with dark, ugly anger about this. and in word of honor, wkx has that anger. zzs is angry. xie'er is angry. luo-yi is angry.

but the other thing that gets me is the despair

because you can know the story, you can warn the man's target, and it won't help

smart, beautiful people get trapped by this man. there is nothing that will guarantee their protection. there's nothing i can say to my friend, nothing qianqiao or luo-yi can say to xie'er, that will make it easy to break free of this man's grip.

and word of honor gets that. it understands what it's like to see what's happening to someone else given only a single detail because the pattern is so familiar. it's always the same, but it doesn't fucking matter that you know. you'll helplessly watch the pattern unfold again.

but in woh, unlike in real life, he doesn't get away with it. the damage is still done, but wkx gets to skin the valley master alive. zzs gets to destroy jin-wang. xie'er...does his thing.

irl person i loved gets permanent scars; the fucker who did it to them gets off scot-free

i needed that. i still need that.

as shakespeare wrote for beatrice: "oh god, that i were a man! i would eat his heart in the marketplace."