A Tale of the Woman by snarky_panda
A Tale of the Woman
AKA the anti-Disney Mulan. Rather than try to write a summary, here's everything the author provided before the start of the story:
Summary: Alternate storyline based on another outcome that could have occurred because Mulan failed the matchmaker's test. Also sort of a crossover fic inspired by Raise the Red Lantern.
A/N: Part 1 up, focusing on pairing 1.
Disclaimer: Mulan and everything from the Disney movie belongs to Disney. Raise the Red Lantern and anything from that book belongs to the author Su Tong.
Warnings: Rated for more mature themes and sexual content. Unorthodox pairings within. This is written for LiveJournal's 5trueloves community, the object being to take a character and pair them up with 5 different characters from the fandom. I've interpreted the concept of love differently for each pairing, so they are not all necessarily romantic.
Now I'm guessing that if I'd had any idea of what Raise the Red Lantern was like (which I still don't officially -- I'm making guesses based on the fanfic), I probably would never have downloaded this fic. However, all I knew going in was that the story had unusual pairings (which I adore), that it was written for a community called 5trueloves (which told me that this was a love story), and that it includes different concepts of love (which I figured meant there would be sections with the love of family and friends).
In short, what I expected was an unusual love story full of friends and family and real life adult challenges. What I did not expect was for Mulan's first love story to be when she was sold into sexual slavery made a rich man's mistress and traded unwanted and unpleasant sexual favors in exchange for a roof over her head.
I didn't quite give up on the fic at that point, because it was extremely well written (among the best written fanfics I'd ever read) and I was really hoping that the story was eventually going to turn into a love story as Mulan found that the rich man had some sort of redeeming quality and grew to have feelings for him. However, once the author started describing the sex between them as making love based entirely on the fact that while Mulan still didn't like the guy or enjoy any moment of the sex, at least she wasn't actively crying the whole way through, I had to stop reading. The fact is, this fic starts off dark and depressing and (based on the reviews and the author's end notes) ends dark and depressing and that is just not my cup of tea.
So why bring up this fic at all? Usually I wouldn't write a rant for a story that I only managed ten pages of and I didn't intend to write this rant when I first gave up on the story a month and a half ago. However, I've thought a lot about it since then because this story is enormously powerful and extremely well written and while it's not my cup of tea there does seem to be a significant audience for fics in the "life sucks but at least you're not dead" genre (Freedom Is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose -- I'm looking at you).
If you love powerful, emotionally affecting, well-written stories and aren't too picky about things like a happy beginning or ending, you might really enjoy this fic. Personally, I found it a bit traumatizing (I would have personally labeled it non-con, even if the sex was technically on the dub side of things) and had to give it a pass.
AKA the anti-Disney Mulan. Rather than try to write a summary, here's everything the author provided before the start of the story:
Summary: Alternate storyline based on another outcome that could have occurred because Mulan failed the matchmaker's test. Also sort of a crossover fic inspired by Raise the Red Lantern.
A/N: Part 1 up, focusing on pairing 1.
Disclaimer: Mulan and everything from the Disney movie belongs to Disney. Raise the Red Lantern and anything from that book belongs to the author Su Tong.
Warnings: Rated for more mature themes and sexual content. Unorthodox pairings within. This is written for LiveJournal's 5trueloves community, the object being to take a character and pair them up with 5 different characters from the fandom. I've interpreted the concept of love differently for each pairing, so they are not all necessarily romantic.
Now I'm guessing that if I'd had any idea of what Raise the Red Lantern was like (which I still don't officially -- I'm making guesses based on the fanfic), I probably would never have downloaded this fic. However, all I knew going in was that the story had unusual pairings (which I adore), that it was written for a community called 5trueloves (which told me that this was a love story), and that it includes different concepts of love (which I figured meant there would be sections with the love of family and friends).
In short, what I expected was an unusual love story full of friends and family and real life adult challenges. What I did not expect was for Mulan's first love story to be when she was sold into sexual slavery made a rich man's mistress and traded unwanted and unpleasant sexual favors in exchange for a roof over her head.
I didn't quite give up on the fic at that point, because it was extremely well written (among the best written fanfics I'd ever read) and I was really hoping that the story was eventually going to turn into a love story as Mulan found that the rich man had some sort of redeeming quality and grew to have feelings for him. However, once the author started describing the sex between them as making love based entirely on the fact that while Mulan still didn't like the guy or enjoy any moment of the sex, at least she wasn't actively crying the whole way through, I had to stop reading. The fact is, this fic starts off dark and depressing and (based on the reviews and the author's end notes) ends dark and depressing and that is just not my cup of tea.
So why bring up this fic at all? Usually I wouldn't write a rant for a story that I only managed ten pages of and I didn't intend to write this rant when I first gave up on the story a month and a half ago. However, I've thought a lot about it since then because this story is enormously powerful and extremely well written and while it's not my cup of tea there does seem to be a significant audience for fics in the "life sucks but at least you're not dead" genre (Freedom Is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose -- I'm looking at you).
If you love powerful, emotionally affecting, well-written stories and aren't too picky about things like a happy beginning or ending, you might really enjoy this fic. Personally, I found it a bit traumatizing (I would have personally labeled it non-con, even if the sex was technically on the dub side of things) and had to give it a pass.