the way this is written definitely seems biographical to me so I'm not sure if there's supposed to be some special moral to it.

And no I don't think we need an armchair historian to describe how this tragic lesbian story is supposed to be some takedown of "le evil red china" either.

I personally thought this was an incredible work, it really captures the mundane violence and tragedy of marriage/family under patriarchy and the art style is just gorgeous.

Agree with both of the above. ^

Probably would've been better in a longer format series, however at the end it falls flat in trying to convey a lot of deep things in a character that isn't really fleshed out at all. Nice art for an overall hollow story

And no I don't think we need an armchair historian to describe how this tragic lesbian story is supposed to be some takedown of "le evil red china" either.

Yeah that person posts an essay about the Chinese revolution and how the story symbolizes how awful things are there now on every single story that involves China in any way these days.

Personally, I suspect they have some weird trauma relating to that and are using the Dynasty forums as a method of writing therapy.

It's odd, but as long as it doesn't derail the comments too much it usually doesn't bother me.

The "I should let you get married" panel was incredible

This was absolutely perfect for what it was: a cathartic snarl directed at heteronormativity. That "I should let you get married" page, holy shit!
Also lmfao @ the people going "if this were a man blah blah blah" this story is about a queer woman in a patriarchal heteronormative society (which, contrary to what that political weirdo kept claiming, is not remotely unique to China). The story would have gone massively different with any other combo of gender: if M/M a gay man has no compulsion to seek the shelter of a patriarchal family and even if he did gay men married to straight women tend to keep a partner on the side, and if M/F the F wouldn't need to leave to get that patriarchal family she wanted for her child, she would have just married the mc.
This isn't just a standard story about a jilted lover or a scam artist, it's about raging against the abuse of queer women. The plot didn't NEED to happen, if the other woman wasn't a coward brainwashed by heteronormativity. They were living well on just a single income, if she went to work too they absolutely could have afforded to send that kid to school and give her a good life without needing to live in a miserable frozen little town. They could have been happy. But social expectations, social programming, closed the door on that happiness before it could even be proposed.

last edited at Sep 11, 2024 11:04PM

Probably would've been better in a longer format series, however at the end it falls flat in trying to convey a lot of deep things in a character that isn't really fleshed out at all. Nice art for an overall hollow story

Hollow? This story is less hollow than most yuri plotlines

last edited at Oct 20, 2024 9:51AM

I loved the art but god damn the protag sucks

the way this is written definitely seems biographical to me so I'm not sure if there's supposed to be some special moral to it.

I thought the same thing

What is "Special Pregnancy Privilege"? Is it "if you give birth to a girl in first time pregnancy you can give birth to a second child"? Can you show me the original Chinese text?

Context:
For a long time there was a forced birth control policy called "One Child Policy" ("forced", meaning if you don't follow the policy you can be fined or, at worst, forced to go through abortion process) that restrict birth to having only one child per family.
Sexism is rampant in China at that time (it still thrives btw) and basically everyone wants a male children because of ideas like "only male offspring can pass over the family lineage, female offspring would be gone after getting married". Afraid of causing riots in some places, government in some areas adjusted the policy to include an additional line "if you give birth to a girl in first time pregnancy you can give birth to a second child".
It was a part of the brutal dark history of the Chinese government, which it constantly tried to sweep under the rug.

last edited at Nov 25, 2024 6:27AM

Also I don't know what exatly time does this happened, but until the revoke of "crime of hooliganism" (idk what the commonly accepted translation of "流氓罪" is, sorry) in 1997, homosexual sexual activity [1] is criminalized in China. The situation of homosexuality has improved somewhat after that [2], but the mass society is still pretty homophobic and anti-LGBT in China. In a social env. like this it's quite easy to develop internalized homophobia, and/or think something like "homo couples won't last", "we'll be pressured to break up anyway".

Also same-sex marriage is not legitimate in China even now. Same-sex couple can't legally adopt or parent children, too. That woman is right in page 10 of latter part, not only she have no ability to marry the MC, they can't marry legally speaking, and it would be a headache to deal with her daughter's documents (I guess it means legal documents like ID cards and Hukou), if she has no Hukou she can't even be admitted to public elementary schools (private schools are EXPENSIVE).

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/frostbite_latter_part#10

Given the existence of Alipay (支付宝) I guess this story won't be older than ∼15 years. Alipay was founded in 2004 but its used was not really popularized until the introduction of Yu'e Bao (余额宝, a money market funds with support for use as a real-time payment option) in 2013.

(In case someone accuse me of red herring, if just describing the situation of LGBT+ and people in general in China counts as red herring then I can only infer we can't have actual conversation.)

[1] And polyamorous relationship as well. There has been case of poly people being sentenced to capital punishment for "crime of hooliganism".

[2] Though last 4-8 years shows a stedy decline in aceptance socially again, due to national propaganda machine framing LGBT as "foreign culture influence", not unlike Russia under Putin, though they have not criminalize it, yet.

last edited at Nov 25, 2024 9:10AM

BTW, I googled the exchange rate, and apparently the amount that she stole is equivalent to about US$14,000. So she didn't exactly get rich off of this.

First, simply compute how many money it is by currency exchange rate ignores the purchase power parity of different currencies. As a more accurate reference, Big Mac in local McD is ∼25 CNY.
Second, the average monthly income in today(2024)'s China is way less than 5k, so that means it would take a person with above average income 1 year and 8 months to earn what roughly equals to 14k USD in current currency exchange rate, while paying ¥0 in rent, morgage, food, clothes, etc. And judging by the factory the author draw, it would not suprise me if their salary is less than 5k.
That women didn't get rich (and given the description of her household it's probably fair to say it didn't change a lot of her situation, though if part of what she did is to be blamed is not known), but MC can easily be put into poverty because of it.

The "I should let you get married" panel was incredible

ikr, that page was absolutely gold (;_;)

last edited at Nov 25, 2024 8:30AM