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[miaoqing]

Yue Qingyuan is like that guy in canon that always has to die unless he’s suffering more if he lives

[miaoqing]

No, but was Shen Qingqiu really showing up on Bai Zhan Peak at ass-o’clock in the morning to manipulate meathead Liu Qingge into putting his own disciples in the med bay every time they bullied his baby sheep Luo Binghe? Like, that’s not a bingqiu-induced fever dream, that actually happened???

[miaoqing]

guys. imagine the guy she was interested in wasn't a guy at all BUT lesbingqiu........ shen yuan starts frequenting tlj's bookstore at which bingmeimei works ..... mayb the identity confusion comes from a bingmeimei/bingge mixup ....

[miaoqing]

cang qiong mountain sect was onto something i guess

I am once again thinking about digging holes

It's so fucked up that digging a bunch of holes works so well at reversing desertification

I hate that so much discourse into fighting climate change is talking about bioenginerring a special kind of seaweed that removes microplastics or whatever other venture-capital-viable startup idea when we have known for forever about shit like digging crescent shaped holes to catch rainwater and turning barren land hospitable

[miaoqing]

JiuYuan for the soul🤲🏻💖

[miaoqing]

i am honestly this 🤏 close to like. making a plushie of shen jiu just so i have SOMETHING to tuck into bed with a million pillows and the softest blankets and a nightlight and white noise and goodnight tea and a cat

[miaoqing]

I think one of the keys to non-canon and rarepair relationships for me in fanfiction is that you have to respect the relationships that are already there. Not like in a "you have to do the canon relationships and then break them up first" way, because you can definitely make it so that the canon relationship in question never happened OR was never romantic or sexual if you want. But in a basic characterization issue kind of way.

For example, when I wrote a Shang Qinghua / Yue Qingyuan fic, I was looking at the ways to make that work given the Qijiu and Moshang situations. And I ended up making it so that Qijiu either never had or never fully developed any romantic or sexual feelings in this AU, but they're still inseparable as friends / brothers / platonic soulmates of a kind. You CAN'T write a Yue Qingyuan who doesn't care about Shen Jiu. It's just not on the table in terms of characterization.

(I mean, you could, I suppose, but then it's a case of, "Who the fuck even is this guy anymore? You undid his whole backstory and now he's a completely different person." I do think you can write interesting AU stories focused on character development in which Yue Qingyuan learns to move on after post-canon or in which perhaps Shen Jiu's treatment of Luo Binghe becomes an actual breaking point for their relationship, but even if things somehow get REAL BAD between him and Shen Jiu, I don't really think Yue Qingyuan will ever be able to stop caring completely.)

Likewise, I made it so that Moshang never fell into the master-servant situationship, and ended up as cooperative enemies / distant allies of sorts. But Shang Qinghua still thinks Mobei-Jun is sexy. That's his ideal guy! Airplane Bro still being a little weird about his favorite character is not really negotiable to me, even if he's in love with someone else. He has eyes! He can still look at other men disrespectfully! He just doesn't act on his attraction.

Like, you can totally just sidestep any romantic / sexual feelings never existed, in order to pursue your pairing of choice. But you cannot easily deny, in my opinion, the basic fact of a character caring on a basic level about someone important to them. I think it gives weird "you're only allowed to care about your romantic partner / no friends allowed" vibes to just completely cut off all other relationships. There's not a hard line between "love-triangle-fixing polyamory" and "completely isolated from even friendships because maintaining friendships with exes is cheating somehow monogamy" as options here.

[miaoqing]

Isn't it soooo sick and fucking twisted that like...

Sj hated binghe a lot for being similar to himself and yet having all the things he craved the most (meaning a loving mother, starting cultivation at the right age etc), right?

But like. If he saw bingmei, wouldn't he lose his fucking mind??

The same kid, getting spoiled rotten by a version of himself that never faced any troubles, reaping only the benefits that someone else fought and literally died for???? That little beast, coddled into shamelessness and remaining just as feral after spending so many years on his Qing Jing Peak???? And despite how absolutely unbecoming it is, in the end it gets everything it wants: all the power, the world at its feet, and worst of all it gets his obsession reciprocated. The entitled impostor that took over sj's body loves that thing back and keeps giving in and in and in, giving it everything it wants.

And oh, if he ever noticed the parallels between what him and yqy went through vs. how the story unfolded for bingqiu..... Maybe he won't notice. After all, those pampered fools have nothing in common with him and yue qi. But if he ever were to notice how the same story beats repeat. The betrayal, the separation, the misunderstanding, the guilt, the reunion. If he were ever forced to see his body play yqy's role in his own story. Piloted by some clueless young master who never worked a day in his life, using all he has to over indulge some lost, snarling animal. And then get a happy ending. Crushing everything he ever stood for so decisively. Would he not prefer his original fate after all?

Maimed, humiliated, used as a play thing of a man-child god emperor for who knows how long. But in the end he never truly succumbed to him, did he? And yes, yqy's horrible, stupid death did crumble anything human that was left in him at that point. Still going against his wishes, always too late, never listening, same old same old. But perhaps at least in death he repaid his broken promise. Instead of wasting away, faced every day with a stranger he was supposed to know. And oh isn't it all the more horrible that sy got to finally hear yqy's explanation from his own mouth? Another mercy sj never got. Another thing stolen from him.

As horrible and violent as pidw is to sj. Svsss doesn't seem to be any kinder. We as readers get a better perspective on him and can finally understand him and his motives. But he would not want our pity. I know it in my bones that he would spit on our pity. If he wanted his story known, he could have explained and exposed himself at any point in the original storyline, but he did not want the world to pity him and to look down on him. He could have opened up his heart to other people, make some new friends, it shouldn't have been impossible. But he weighed his options and chose to keep his cards close to his chest. And even if that's very much the source of his tragedy, it was his choice to make. And it would be kind for any narrative he's taking part of to honour that choice.

Im afraid that despite it all, sj might just choose to stick to his original fate. Wronged and misunderstood, at least he went out on his own terms, without being perverted into something beyond recognition.

As much as he is willing to bite and scratch and kill and maim, no matter how much mud he drags himself through, i do think that there are some things that he is not willing to compromise on. I think even as a street rat, doing anything to survive, he still had a certain sense of integrity. Even in shamelessness, no matter how bad things got. And the older he became, the more he achieved, this sense only heightened. To the point where when sy takes over, he has a perfect hold on the mask of the lofty immortal, despite all the rumours. Seeing his hard work ripped from his so callously, appropriated casually and then used for the most inane purposes.....

Idk where im going with this but it does break my heart to think about how even in the new and improved version of the original plot, sj (and yqy for that matter) is treated as an acceptable sacrifice, never knowing peace, never getting closure. And we're supposed to just accept that and move on? As if his life doesn't shape the entire story?

In pidw, it was his cruelty that made binghe who he is. He's the main reason for the unification of the three realms under one rule. His petty, personal motivations indirectly shape the entire world. And in svsss, he is actually the titular scum villain. The main character wears him as a suit over the course of 4 books. He refers to himself as shen qingqiu exclusively throughout the novel. He may be dead for the entirety of svsss, but he haunts the narrative tenaciously. He is not one to be ignored.

More specifically, it is his suffering that shapes the world he's in. I think all mxtx novels have worlds that are explicitly unkind. And for svsss, sj is very much the embodiment of that pervasive cruelty. Both victim and abuser, the cycle of violence wearing human skin. Load bearing world building element, rather than chatacter. What am i saying. Take my phone away.

[miaoqing]

you can’t tell me that with airplane’s terrible naming system that he DIDN’T have pop culture references for things in his drafts. like of course he would never actually post them as part of his daily 8k money grabbing porn content but the system doesn’t care about that, so you can imagine the kind of visceral internal reaction that sqq has when he realizes that the wife plot that he just got fucking tranquilized with is a very rough outline of a rickroll

[miaoqing]

(SVSSS Book 2, Page 171, indent 4)

...Well...How do I say this-

[miaoqing]

Something I love about Bingqiu is that you could fit them under any fairy tale! AU imaginable.

Snow White? Shen Yuan objectively knows Binghe is the fairest of them all and sending him to live with a bunch of weird man is almost as bad as pushing him in the abyss and the kissing the unconscious princess is very stranger, thank you very much. He should just eat the poisoned apple himself.

Cinderella? Come on, the stepmother is not mean. It's not her fault that Binghe's ugly sister are useless and can't manage a household like she can. She is going to make stepmother so proud!

Sleeping Beauty? Shen Yuan was just trying to help Binghe and help him meet his one true love!

Rapunzel? Mother does know best. Nothing wrong with spending time with your mother. Nothing interesting to see outside.

Beauty and the Beast? Don't even need to say. Two words: Cool. Monster.

[miaoqing]

Actually, y'know what? Let's talk about character heights!

In a weibo reply a long while back, MXTX gave the offical canon heights of a bunch of characters in SVSSS.

According to a quick search, the average male height in China is 174cm (that's 5ft, 8in for you people who don't use real numbers) and the average female height is 161.4cm (5ft, 3 1/2 in silly numbers).

SO. Here's the list of official canon heights, with commentary:

TALLEST: Luo Binghe and Mobei Jun both at 188cm. 14cm taller than the average Chinese man. Mobei-Jun is not taller than Binghe. They quite literally see eye to eye. I suppose one of them could invest in platform shoes if they felt they needed a height advantage. Airplane probably wrote those in somewhere.

Second tallest: Yue Qingyuan and Zhuzhi-Lang, both at 187cm.

Next we have: Liu Qingge and Tianlang-Jun at 186cm. 12cm taller than the average Chinese man in reality.

Then comes Shen Qingqiu at a mere 184cm - so still 10cm on the average person, but by no means the stand out tall figure amongst CQMS that we tend to see described in fics.

Shortest in the boys' club is Shang Qinghua with 175cm. WHICH IS STILL A WHOLE CENTIMETRE TALLER THAN THE AVERAGE CHINESE MAN. THE HAMSTER MAN IS LITERALLY TALLER THAN AVERAGE. HE IS NOT A SHORT KING. (There are 13cms between Binghe and Mobei jun and SQH, though. But there's significantly more than that between them and the ladies so... still not short, even if MBJ might think so. But he probably thinks everyone is short.)

Shang Qinghua also has the dubious privildge of being the same height as Binghe's mum, as Su Xiyan is also one whole centimetre taller than the average Chinese man in 2022. She's got a full 14.4cms on the average woman. He's average. She's tall.

But you know what? Liu Mingyan comes in at 177cms - meaning that she's got two centimetres on her average height Shibo! She's a tall lady.

Second shortest even though she's still taller than the average modern woman is: Sha Hualing, at 169cm. EIGHT taller than the average in the modern world where most people don't have starvation induced stunted growth. Although we do have caffeine, so...

Shortest of all is Ning Yingying at a whopping... 160cm. 1.4cm shorter than the average woman.

So what have we learned?

Mobei-jun is freaking tall (taller than the average Dutch man and the Dutch of all genders are on average the world's tallest - something that surprised the heck out of me when I found out just now, cause that sure as fuck did not get inherited by yours truly) but he's exactly the same height as Binghe. Which means that if their bodytypes arent't too different you could feasibly write about them switching clothes. You're welcome.

Tianlang-Jun and Su Xiyan only have 11cm separating them, and Binghe's mum is a titan compared to most women. Except Liu Mingyan, who is taller than even average height men.

Binghe and Shen Qingqiu do not have that big of a height difference. A mere 4cm. Another nail in the fanon of Binghe being much bigger and beefier (in canon he is willowy).

Shang Qinghua is not short. He's not. He's literally taller than average. Albeit only just. He probably feels short, walking around amongst all these freaking storks he works with, but he is not short. He's of exceedingly average height, which is perfect for his role as a spy because he blends into the background. Just like how canonically he's described as handsome. He's no war starting beauty like SQQ who is regularly compared to Helen of Troy, but still good looking in a bland forgettable sort of way.

Ning Yingying only seems tiny by comparison to everyone else in her life.

Bingeh is 28cm taller than Ning Yingying. Not quite the length of an entire ruler.

Ning Yingying and Shang Qinghua are the only ones who can go out in public without people noticing their height.

Binghe, Mobei-Jun, Yue Qingyuan, and Zhuzhi probably don't like low doorframes.

Shen Yuan is, of course, Shen Qingqiu sized. No estimate given for his original body.

[miaoqing]

summer 2023 satosugu x my tears ricochet oooohhh i was so unwell .....

[miaoqing]

there's something in my brain that sees "shidi" and for some reason wants to apply latin grammatical rules to it. several shidi one shidus

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Liu Mingyan is wild. She wrote RPF about her brother’s crush getting it on with her brother’s nemesis, made it a multipart series, and started a book club for it. Family is nothing compared to her OTP.

[miaoqing]

look i know i just made a shen jiu one but c'mon

(also, yes, you have your meta svsss knowledge)

[miaoqing]

if you think you'd be able to, feel free to add your method of fixing him (or making him obsessed) (or completely fucking him up) lmao

edit: yes, you have meta knowledge in this situation