maybe i'll learn my lesson

[vishakanya]

THE APOTHECARY

NAME

Maomao

CANON

The Apothecary Diaries

AGE

17

GENDER

F

HEIGHT

5'0" / 153cm

code by vigils.

information. WARNING Maomao's canon contains references to sex work, non-con, pedophilia, self-harm, drug use, murder, and suicide. I would nevertheless describe it as a historical mystery-of-the-week romance that is respectful in its treatment of its characters, but if any of the content bothers you in principle, please do not read further or feel pressured to interact with this character. BIO A young girl who grew up in a pleasure district with an adoptive father who acted as the physician to a gaggle of brothel workers who were like older sisters to her. There's quite a lot more to her family history — Maomao's father is a military tactician of great importance to her country, and her mother was formerly one of the brothel's most high-ranking courtesans before a ruinous fall from grace — but Maomao herself is trained as an apothecary, and is absolutely obsessed with poisons and medicine. Maomao's devotion to poison is so intense that she has experimented with various forms of poison on herself and has various unsightly scars and sores on her left arm to show for it. After being kidnapped and sold to the imperial harem for use as a laundry maid, Maomao eventually becomes the lady-in-waiting and poison tester to the emperor's high consort, and becomes quite well-known within the inner court due to her habit of solving various mysteries with her chemical knowledge and sharp intellect. She is generally possessed of an extremely eccentric, aloof, and prickly personality, quite like that of your stereotypical cat. Ferociously caring, under the right circumstances. APPEARANCE Dark green hair. Blue eyes. Petite and plain, at least on the surface. Maomao learned from a very early age that being pretty made her a target for kidnapping, sexual assault, and worse in the pleasure district, so she purposely dresses herself down and often applies makeup to make herself less attractive to others. When she actually wears her makeup to be flattering to her features, she is beautiful enough to attract a great deal of attention from others around her. ic permissions. PLATONIC CONTACT Totally fine with me OOCly, but Maomao is quite likely to try and squirm out of being touched unless you're one of her sisters. SHIPPING & SMUT Open to shipping and smut, canon or cross-canon, M/F and F/F both welcome, chemistry-dependent. ICly, Maomao is intensely difficult to ship with, and almost anything with her is guaranteed to be slowburn — her canon romantic subplot basically takes like 300 years to go anywhere and is still ongoing. I wouldn't say that she is necessarily asexual, but she leans that way on account of being romance-avoidant and sex-desensitized. OOCly, I'm fine with leaning into romantic tension if that is where you would like things to go with her. I would absolutely love Jinshi to explore her relationship with him in canon-divergent ways (I don't think anyone has really RPed him on Dreamwidth, so please let me know if I can assist in the procurement of icons or anything like that). I can also ship her with just about anyone in her canon, within reason. She's really got a thing for women who look like men and men who look like women. PHYSICAL VIOLENCE Yes, totally fine, even to fairly serious degrees. Obviously, you'll have to check in with me before killing her, but broken bones and the like are perfectly acceptable. MINDREADING Yes, mindreading is totally fine. Just tell me if you'd like running commentary on what she'd be thinking. ooc permissions. BACKTAGGING No problem. I tend to drop threads whenever I think the conversation is winding down, though — always feel free to poke me into continuing a thread again if you had something planned. THREADJACKING Always cool with me. FOURTHWALLING I really don't care. OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS None in particular. Maomao is essentially a detective, coroner, and forensics specialist all in one, and nearly all of her family members are sex workers. There is really not much that can faze her. She does, however, come from a country that is essentially inspired by ancient China (though the canon is not interested in being historically accurate), so she isn't likely to know much about modern political and social mores unless we AU her into the modern era. PREFERRED THREADS At the moment, I'm open to anything! I will probably get more specific about this in the future, but right now I just want to voicetest, toss her around, and explore pretty much any dynamic. I'd actually be happy to play out Maomao solving mysteries, but that's not super conducive to great RP as she's usually the monologuing detective in such matters, so we can just see where things go in various scenarios. She makes an excellent healer and will always be perfectly happy to treat your character's hurts as long as they don't mind her being a bit brusque about it. She also works well with other characters from ancient Chinese or otherwise historical settings, but I'm happy to AU her into the modern era if your character would simply die without a refrigerator. CANON POINT I am fully caught up with the manga and anime and prefer to RP within those versions of the canon. I do know some spoilers from the light novel and web novel, but do not feel confident RPing from it. I will usually play Maomao from around chapter 70 of the manga, but if you are familiar with the anime only, let me know and I'll be sure not to spoil you on things. OTHER I am generally a slow RPer, as a word of warning. Expect me to take anywhere between 2-3 weeks for a tag. I prefer longer tags as a result.