#but he wouldn't have the same trauma induced paranoia for example

[waitineedaname]

can I say something controversial. shen jiu and shen yuan are both characters who are very much shaped by the environments in which they were raised, and those environments are fundamentally opposites. shen jiu is the way he is because he grew up as an orphan on the streets and suffered horrific abuse as a slave. shen yuan is the way he is because he was raised in relative comfort and privilege, with all the benefits that come with being the third son of a wealthy family in the modern era. I say this because in aus where they're brothers, one of them inevitably is going to end up in a fundamentally different upbringing, which is going to drastically change how they behave

this is not to discourage aus but rather to encourage using them as a way to analyze what changing something like this does to these characters. if you take out shen jiu's tragic backstory and give him a wealthy, privileged family, how does he act? how much of what we associate with shen jiu is inherent to his personality, and how much of it is because of his trauma? if you take shen yuan out of his comfortable life and make him an abused slave child, what will that do to him? will his kindness still be second nature? will he find new ways to act like a complete lunatic?