The Golden Orchid
joined Jan 19, 2017
My personal favorite of the works in this anthology. It's beautifully layered, with blends of multiple different timepoints, many different thematic interpretations, and one of the types of yuri that I love the best: an unstated but undeniable longing that drives one to take formerly unimaginable actions.
A few thoughts I've had on the more murky aspects of this chapter, without having read the novella that it was adapted from. Speculation abound.
- The line "I dreamed of petals landing in the pond" in the context of its original poem has a second part that goes (vulgarly) something like "alas, spring half past, yet [I am] far from home". The line as a whole has the connotations of time passing as well as either missing home or missing someone who has yet to come home. In the context of this chapter, using a poem line that's about "dreaming" could also imply that it's from Mari's perspective, as the soil god says that everything which happened may feel like a dream to her.
- The sambar deer spirit, a "water deer", represents clean water, pure, unsullied water. There's a sense that this is what Mari is trying to hold onto, to the point that she becomes water herself.
- She can't stop change from happening though, as is alluded to throughout. Their city alone has gone through multiple rounds of restructuring, the sambar deer gets closer to the city than it should (as all animals do when their natural habitats are destroyed. the Formosan sambar deer, coincidentally, was once near extinction due to habitat loss and hunting), and even the local Taiwanese gods have become displaced by the foreign Shinto gods.
- Mari's deepest wish is purposefully not stated, though of course, I would believe that her wish was to stay with Hezhou forever, in an unchanging bubble. The fact that this can't happen, as her wish was reversed with the antler's return to the deer, potentially means two main things. One, she just has to suck up leaving Hezhou and marrying the guy her parents probably betrothed her to. Or two, even if the world isn't perfect and she can't remain "pure", there must still be a way to adapt as the rest of their world has, and as Hezhou clearly wishes for her too.
last edited at May 2, 2024 1:08PM