Having a good reason still doesn’t change the fact that Loulan did a lot of terrible shi...

I know loulan *just* declared her hatred for sws, but I feel like we're heading towards a twist where it's revealed that Loulan knew the emperor had heard of mc's reputation and was intrigued. He may have only want to bang the most beautiful women, but he might still get his jollies from torturing an interesting/naive girl. From that perspective loulan would have been trying to save her from the old pervert

So what didn't change the fact that loulan was ready to kill fl when she accused her (╯°Д °)╯╧╧

┐('～`)┌ didnt say i was pro-loulan, i was just making a prediction based on vibes

She technically got juju to plead for a lesser sentence so she didn’t get killed. What Loulan did was bad, but she was just as much of a victim. It doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be punished, but it explains her mindset, since she was cornered. Also, we got Loulan calling out everyone, and even the crown prince for branding her, so I kinda like her more for that lol.

All in all, I think this story just made me think that the men in power were the true villains and the system they created are what made women like Loulan feel like they had to be cruel to survive. Loulan wasn’t the true villain. It was the patriarchy.(just like in actual history lol)

Holy moly bro i freaking forget the plot alrdy and i aint going to read it back but u right ig

LOL XD

I don’t mind Loulan not being a total moustache twirling villain, but I dislike the way mangaka chose to portray it. As a writer it bothers me when one suffering of an innocent character is lessened to make another character more interesting or likeable. Happens a lot in writing, one of the most common „crimes”. Aka using other characters as stepping stones for writing other characters. It’s the best observed in works where one character is a morally grey love interest. Because the writer wants the love interest to be a this certain trope yet still wants their baby to be liked, so they introduce other characters that do even worse to make a comparison in which the love interest doesn’t look so bad anymore.
Same with making villains redeemable or at least more „understandable” where all of the bad things that happened to the main characters that drove us to dislike them suddenly have 10-20 justifications and sad context added while the main character is practically forced to no longer be angry with them because of those things. (Feelings and suffering they went thru won’t vanish just because a good reason for it was given, in fact most writers unknowingly use the main character’s forgivness as an indicator for the audience to forgive them too, because „since x forgave them then I don’t need to be angry on their behalf.”)
The best example of this I can give is Otto from honkai impact 3rd. A total villain who laughed as he made the Kaslana clones fight to the death suddenly looked sad in his cinematic when he watched them fight. One of the main character girls was kidnapped by him, had her memories removed and told she was an orphan. But then when she learns it she instantly, like INSTANTLY forgives her because he raised her and apparently was a good father? (There was no foreshadowing of this prior, It always looked like she was his employee.) In notes one can get as collectibles we can read about his past where he fought an even worse villain which was his sister. He was the good guy in comparison to her. And last but not least, he sped up the honkai disaster for a woman that didn’t even like him back yet the characters instantly forgave him because thanks to his research on how to speed it up they also gained a lot of knowledge (vague and never explained in depth) about the disaster. Mind you he experimented on children too and is responsible for tons of deaths. But no, let’s give him a cool cinematic and a noble death. Writers legit used every character like a plot device, stepping stone, just to redeem him into a gray character and not black. Instead of actually making him interesting.

Yeah I understand of course, and I’m not saying Loulan was 100% redeemable. I felt like this story really did a good job portraying that it isn’t the other women in the story that’s at fault or the true villain(I think I just love women too much sorry haha). And, the mc doesn’t truly forgive Loulan either, and Rio literally tells her what Loulan went through doesn’t excuse what Loulan did. So, the author isn’t expecting you to forgive Loulan outright either.

I guess the fact that the most heinous thing Loulan did was frame juju and almost get her killed. However, by the end of the story, it seemed she even did that in a way where juju wouldn’t actually be executed and would have her life spared.(I wouldn’t be surprised if the grand eunuch wanted juju to be kicked out or killed already, since she was bringing peace to the harem, which he didn’t like. So it might’ve just been a matter of time. But what Loulan said got Mc to get a more lenient sentence by pleading for her life like she told her to.)

I guess what I’m saying is that the difference with the one from honkai is that she didn’t do anything that she completely cannot come back from(like experimenting on children cause that’s wild.) the bad things she did were bad and the author has other characters that don’t excuse what she did. And juju even says she isn’t forgiving her. They just gave her a more bittersweet ending which I really appreciate, since she doesn’t deserve the same punishment as the true villains of the story.

(Like for example, weirdest comparison I’m gonna make btw: in mean girls, the mc does horrible shit but by the end she redeems herself. That’s great and all, since what she did wasn’t too bad other than being kind of an asshole. Nobody ended up getting too harmed because of her actions(juju never died and there was no implications that Loulan got anybody else to be permanently or extremely harmed. She was just a two faced bitch that tried to get people eliminated in a competition. The losers won’t have anything too bad happen to them, but if she lost she would be stuck with the abusive previous emperor forever.) in comparison, in heathers the musical(I only watched the musical), the mc literally killed people and faked their suicides. However, because her boyfriend was more crazy and ended up taking the blame by killing himself, we’re supposed to think the mc was redeemed and okay? Like, that’s an example of bad villain writing by introducing a “bigger villain” imo. Like, there are certain actions where it’s past the point where you can shove what they did under the rug.)

(Sorry that was a weird comparison. First thing that came to my head lol)

Anyway, I agree with what you said but I don’t think Loulan is past the point where she doesn’t deserve her only bittersweet ending.(emphasis on bittersweet. She doesn’t need a happy ending, just one that isn’t immediate death. She probably can’t visit her family now that she’s in the brothel. However, she’s also free from being used by men now.)


(Anyway, I think again, I just love women supporting women too much lol)