So, I just read this webcomic called Lavender Legend. It’s about the very serious maid of a bubbly but lonely princess who’s forbidden to ever even lay eyes on a man. She likes to hear about the maids’ love lives, give them cute uniforms, etc, while serious maid just wants to seriously do her job, isn’t interested in romance and hates the frilly stuff.
It quickly becomes obvious that serious maid is her very favorite maid.
And there is tension! Serious maid secretly hates the ruling king for his war that’s wiping out the male half of the country and was only a maid to spy on the princess and possibly kidnap/kill her. But serious maid even more secretly cares about the princess! Meanwhile, the princess is super jealous to hear the guard is hitting on serious maid, how dare he serious maid deserves better!
THEN THEY KISS.
…
Turns out serious maid was actually a boy. That’s when we take a hard left turn into gender essentialism and discover that for a country where all the men are at war, there sure are a lot of men.
Serious maid was raised as a girl to protect him from the draft, but within a few more pages he clarifies that to be more precise his mom just went crazy and thought he was a girl. Women, am I right? And that’s why he hated the fact the guard was flirting with him, and the frilly dresses, and why he was so serious. All women are bubbly, find the guard cute, and love frills everywhere while they’re trying to make supper. Also, all women are short (and generally blonde and light clothed) and men tall.
At this point they run away with him intending to die in an attempt to kill the king. They leave the other maids behind and it’s guys guys guys thereon out. They meet up with the guard again, who secures them transportation with another guy driving a wagon, and then a male farmer friend of that guy lets them sleep in the barn. Also, the leader of the anti-king resistence group he worked for is a guy. When they finally reach the king and he demands a duel by using the princess as a hostage, it’s time for endless comments about how he’s so harmless because he’s just a girl, wait he hits stronger than any girl a character’s met before because see, he’s actually a boy!
The girl’s brother appears because god, we needed more boys. The king also has two more people in his court. One is male and one female. The woman either covers herself completely or wears a black catsuit and is evil and in love with the king and hates his wife. His wife is good and powerless to fight her husband (and getting raped by him) and in cahoots with the male vision guy who’s also good. She also has a magic staff to handle her fighting because only evil women are actual combatants. She directs the princess to try to find her other daughter….by finding a male author who she thinks knows about it.
Later, the wife is threatened to try to coerce vision guy into talking, which he does almost immediately despite her saying not to.
So that’s what it turns into – the princess is sheltered and naive, so the guy is the one in complete control, then we’re surrounded by more guys doing everything else. At one point they come across some dead bodies. Boyfriend guy tells her not to help them move the bodies. She says she wants to. He says no you don’t. She goes back to the wagon. Shortly after, soldiers from the other country meet up with them. The other country lets women into the army, so two of the three are women.
The leader is a guy and the two women don’t speak the same language as the rest, so only he talks. Also, he’s dressed as a knight, they’re dressed as bar wenches. That’s the point I finally quit.
-That’s when we take a hard left turn into gender essentialism-
More like a hard right turn.
“THEN THEY KISS.”
Ah, a love story about a princess and a maid! Interesting.
“Turns out serious maid was actually a boy”
Interest greatly lessened. Well, a story about gender identity, maybe even a transgender character?
“but within a few more pages he clarifies that to be more precise his mom just went crazy and thought he was a girl”
Interest rapidly fading.
“They leave the other maids behind and it’s guys guys guys thereon out”
There is no god
The author’s apparently on record as saying the character has absolutely nothing and nada to do with trans* anything. Not even a bit of confusion from being raised as a girl with almost all adult role models being female! Because we really need to stamp out any shred of possibility this was other than boy meets girl standard het romance.
Well. That’s highly disappointing.
When I started reading, I though wow, you’d probably really like this. Then I kept reading and realized you’d probably have killed me if I’d sent you the link.
Haha, oh my God. A narrow escape for both of us!
Twists aren’t supposed to use your expectation of novelty to surprise you by being totally rote and conventional. I thought that anyone who liked twists would understand how horrible that idea is.
But this way it’s actually two twists! First there’s the wait the twist is it’s more boring? Then there’s the second twist when you keep reading sure there has got to be more to it, and there isn’t.
Well, that’s underwhelming. I’m not sure if I could have continued reading this if it were just about a lonely princess talking to her maids about their love lives, but at least that sounds a bit different than “standard hero on a quest w/ female tag-along.”
Ah, but the plot is actually revealed before the gender bit! The main character’s original motivation is hating the king for getting half the population killed and being involved in some rebel group with is considering murdering the princess. Then it turns out his real motivation is that he, personally, is impacted by the king’s mass draft since he’ll get a beard soon and be found out and killed, which again is the most boring possible motivation.
As far as I can tell, literally the only point to the crossdressing is there’s some sort of prophesy about the princess causing trouble if she ever meets a guy, otherwise he could’ve just been a male-presenting servant she runs off with. And that’s just another failed aspect because having all men banned because the prophesy being that there’d be trouble if she fell in love with someone would make falling in love with her female maid would be an actual twist on the prophesy.
“Then it turns out his real motivation is that he, personally, is impacted
by the king’s mass draft since he’ll get a beard soon and be found out
and killed”
…is he aware that men can shave?
Really, if his motive is self-preservation, continuing to try to pass as a woman somewhere relatively out-of-the-way seems a lot less risky than going undercover at the palace any way you slice it.
Ah but see having accepted he’ll inevitably die because he refuses to shave off his incoming manliness (also his voice will deepen and that’s also impossible to hide), he’s taking the job to try to get leverage against the king before then. When plan something something princess the dad doesn’t give a fuck about profit!!! turns out to be a no-go he figures his only option left is to suicide run the king and at least die with pants on.
Once the princess makes it clear she will totally fuck him because he is super hot/she is so heterosexual and he’s the only guy she’s seen ever, about half his suicidal tendencies are fixed and he’s willing to keep wearing the dress while on his suicide run
because it’s the comic’s fetish?for vague tactical advantage that turns out to be super misogynist.I think it interesting that you have willfully misinterpereted the intention of the book by merely skimming the pages and not actually trying to understand the thing. If your judgements are based on surface value alone then I can’t possibly take your opinion seriously.
And I think it’s interesting you fail to actually say what the actual situation is that I got so very wrong.
Unless you what you mean by “intention” is the author didn’t intend to write something terrible, in which case no shit they didn’t. It’s sort of like you don’t have to hate women to write a story where all the women are sidelined, helpless, and/or evil.
Ah, yes. I remember this comic, it was such a disappointment when I found out it wasn’t about lesbians. The gender essentialism was pretty much vomit-inducing for me.