saintone - Tumblr blog

[saintone]

I love sj, don't get me wrong, but his abuse was never justified, bc in the extras sj directly expresses that he wanted to KILL luo binghe. He wanted the kid gone. And the fake manual is the best example.

Also i wouldn't call Lbh an unrealiable narrator. You can't call everyone unreliable narrators simply for being emotional about things. His view on sj is biased because he is a literal victim. Everything he lived at the hands of shen qingqiu was real. It's his perspective.

Sy IS an unrealiable narrator bc he lies to himself and sees the reality through a lens.

 PIDW is sus in regards to what was actually going on, because by MXTX standards from the other novel that did cultivation sect stuff in detail, the things that happened to Luo Binghe at Qing Jing were... actually pretty light? By in-universe standard?

As for the thing at the end regarding punishments and what not: PIDW is told from Luo Binghe's POV, it's going to be biased. We know from other MTXT novels that beating Disciples for the slightest of infractions is not uncommon. How many times did both Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian get hit with wooden paddles just for being out past curfew? By modern standards a lot of what would happen to Disciples on a cultivation peak are horrific. What Shen Jiu does to Luo Binghe is also pretty bad, but still in keeping with that 'reasonable' standard for the worldsetting. It's only framed as unreasonable because its coming from Binghe's POV. Kind of like how he viewed Shen Jiu as lecherous and pedophilic despite the fact that the extras revealed he was just awkwardly trying to show parental affection to Ning Yingying but not knowing how because he never had a parent, or frequenting brothels purely to hang out with a bunch of aunties and get a good night's sleep. The novels state that Binghe's physical punishments were kneeling and getting beaten by other disciples, and manual labour at this point. I don't remember if the punishments escalate though but I'm pretty sure the 'whipping' in the woodshed thing was a fanon invention - a bit like how Qiu Jianluo was incestuous for his sister. He didn't want her to leave the household but I don't remember there being anything sexual said regarding it, and there's nothing on the wikia about it either.

Just to be clear, I'm not condoning anything, I'm just saying: LBH's POV is biased and flawed as fuck.

.

[saintone]

Svsss fans LOVE to talk. They cant shut up which is why this blog is simply full of them Lol.

Though as much as i have seen they are less harmfull than the other fandom people.

They are annoying perhaps will curse at you but wont go and harrass you or anything unlike SOME fandoms. They are nerds. True nerds. They are intresting. Also very stubborn. I think their stubbornnes is what they share in common with other fandoms. Heck yk what i find the most intresting about most of them is their passive agressive posts when they get reaaaallly angry like- (conts to talk about them as if they are some rare wild animal)

Also it kind of fits them since most of the characters in svsss are either stubborn or nerds. It is a nerd book in a way if you want to stick in it for very long. Also it is a simple book which can get more fun for the overanalizer. There is lots of holes in the story stuff went unexplained or unresolved.

.

[saintone]

What is this about the tumblr staff wanting to sell art data to midjourney?

An ex-colleague of mine mentioned yesterday that there may be contacts between Automattic and midjourney in that direction, but nothing is public yet and I don't have any more info. They probably won't have anything specific to share either, since they left the company weeks ago too. That being said:

I have no reason to doubt my ex-coworker word, they are a trustworthy person.

Tumblr's CEO has been absurdly enthusiastic (comically, even) about AI, and is a big fan of LLMs and 'AI' companies.

A deal with midjourney could solve tumblr financial issues (not the same company, but openAi is paying up to 5 million/year to news companies to use their content as training data... tumblr generates several orders of magnitude more content than any newspaper or any media company and it only would need a 20 to 30 million per year deal to be profitable)

So I don't have any extra info yet, but I'm keeping my ears open.

[saintone]

Whether you ship them romantically or platonically, Shen Jiu x Yue Qi has to be one of the most tragic couples I have ever come across, not just because of their circumstances, but who they are as people.

Shen Jiu shields himself in cruelty and refuses to allow himself to be vulnerable to anyone, even to those he has cared about. He convinces everyone he is a monster, he was able to convince me he was a monster with a single line in the story (we'll get back to that)

Yue Qi refuses to tell Shen Jiu the truth of why he never came for him. He is afraid of confronting his failure because, even if Shen Jiu hates him, he is still there, and Yue Qi rather be hated than to lose his Xiao-Jiu again.

In two timelines they failed to find happiness. In one, they both die horribly, in the other, one dies while the other is unaware of what he lost.

I love MXTX's writing, and there is a part of the Yue Qi and Shen Jiu extra that I absolutely loved. After Shen Jiu reunites with Yue Qi and believes the man had abandoned him, he wishes that he found him dead on the side of the road instead. This line made me hate Shen Jiu a bit, and it's probably his cruelest line in the book, but it's also a lie, something you don't realize until the end of the extra. Luo Binghe tortures his master for who knows how long, but he isn't able to get him to break until he reveals that Yue Qingyuan was dead. I do believe that the break is partly caused by the fact that Yue Qi came for him, something he thought would never happen, but I believe this scene is supposed to show the truth, that Shen Jiu never wanted his Qi-ge dead, even at his angriest, because no matter what he thinks, seeing him dead on the side of the road would break him more than the abandonment ever did.

[saintone]

Okay I take it back the actual funniest thing about how many people performatively hate on scum villain because they think it’s bad and trashy and irredeemable and Problematic is that they are unwittingly re-enacting an almost perfect impression of the main character, a young terminally online guy who hate read a trashy porn novel and got in so many internet fights about how bad and irredeemable and garbage it was that he died choking on his rage and was transported to suffer the role of expendable backstory villain in the world of this trashy porn novel he hated so much.

And that’s fucking hilarious.

[saintone]

i just wanna hug Shen Jiu, and i think he would let me because i’m a woman

[saintone]

Shen Jiu inspired moodboard

X X X + X X X +X X X

[saintone]

i've been thinking that one of the most tragical things about pidw is that it was going to end the way it ended no matter what

like, let's pretend shen jiu didn't exist for a moment.

luo binghe was a poor kid in a peak filled with nobles. even if he got into qing jing, or was smart enough to fight his way into bai zhan, he wouldn't have been satisfied.

luo binghe was said to be a white lotus, that is a white, innocent flower from the outside but his roots are filled with dirt. he was a demon, and even in svsss, being bingmei, he is obsessive, authoritarian and selfish sometimes.

even without shen jiu, luo binghe would have been bullied in speak for being a commoner, and the youngest shidi so his older martian sibling had the right to make his work harder. and even if he wasn't, his obssesive, ruthless side would have him left wanting for more, to be recognized, to be respected, to be powerful.

an important thing about pidw is that lbh was a demon, and demons take revenge tenfold bc they hold grundges.

i think that even if sj wasn't his shizun, lbg would have razed cang qiong for not giving him the recognition he thought he deserved, or for being thrown at the abyss bc he would have been murdered (or attempted to) either way once it was discovered he was a demon.

like in many ways, other cultivators weren't much better than when qingqiu (exhibit a: picking old palace master), and his values and traditions weren't that much righteous and better either. the laws were designed to defend themselves and that's it.

and this doesn't eliminate the fact that shen qingqiu truly went out of his was to make luo binghe's life a living hell. like yeah lbg would have been bullied, but sqq quite literally tortured him.

but it's kinda sad that luo binghe was going to be mistreated either way, bc as he himself says it life was unfair to someone like him, poor, orphan and half demon, abandoned by his own mother.

just like life was unfair to shen jiu.

and so the two characters that had the worst chances overall ended up destroying each other with all their might, and kinda destroying the world in that process.

like they could've been their saviours but they chose to be their doom.

[saintone]

One of the reasons I have very little investment in Shen Jiu discourse is the fact that we just straight up just don’t know much about him? And most of what we do know comes from Shen ‘unreliable narrator’ Yuan, with only the extras to show us how he was outside of the narrow perspective of PIDW. Even with the fake manual thing, there are conflicting statements within canon over if that was Ming Fan or Shen Jiu. Most of the time, people don’t seem to be arguing over the actual character, but over their own conflicting interpretations of him, despite the fact that he’s so open to interpretation that you could easily write him your tragically misunderstood meow meow or an unrepentant villain, and neither would contradict canon all that much.

[saintone]

Saying Sy is a better sqq is a horrible mistake... i kinda agree on what you say that they kinda were two sides of sqq and got two kinds of sqq life. Sj got the challenging, fighting and struggling one where you needed resolution and ruthlessness, while sy got the one where emotional strenght and kindness was nedded.

But he isnt a better sqq than the original goods. First of all without the original goods, there wouldn't be any sqq to start with. Shen yuan wouldn't have protected the sect if Yue Qingyuan didnt exist bc sj hadnt saved his fucking life...

Sj did failed at the later part, but if sy transmigrated when sj was a slave we don't know if he would have succeded either. I think they both got different parts if the sqq life and they did best in the one they were best at.

And this taking into consideration that shen yuan fucking knew how the future would go! If he had to walk aimlessly like sj did we wouldnt know what happened.

So no, sy isnt a better shen qingqiu. He isnt even a good sqq if you consider that he did a full flip of the charavters personality. He simply was the sqq readers wanted, and thats kinda the whole point of the story.

shen yuan is not shen qingqiu. shen jiu earned that title, not shen yuan. shen jiu earned the accolades of peak lord and all else. shen yuan is like the guy who steals your console halfway through the game you’re playing — when you’ve already set yourself up in a good place and made yourself a name — and finishes the game pretending to be you. if shen yuan had transmigrated into shen jiu when he was still at the qiu’s (or even when he was with that yu wanzi) and worked his way up to peak lord then he would have earned the name of shen qingqiu. but he didn’t, so he doesn’t.

[saintone]

More medieval dyes for y'all!

[saintone]

soulmates but not in a soft romantic way soulmates in a destined to change each other for better or for worse, cannot be who they are without each other, unstoppable together but they’re also the only ones who can defeat each other, equals, existences undeniably tied to each other way

[saintone]

once again, to the people charging money for fanfiction: be more freaking careful before you get us all taken down?!?!?!?! you shouldn't be doing that at all because you don't have any right to make money off someone else's copyright, but making noise about it risks legal repercussions even for people who don't charge! STOP THAT.

and DEFINITELY don't be advertising it on AO3

[saintone]

obsessed with characters being saved against their will. being knocked unconscious and carried away from a danger they won't stop trying to fight. being shoved through a portal somewhere far away and safe right before it closes. trying to self-sacrifice only to have the exact person they're trying to save swap their places at the last second. getting the only cure to the disease or curse bc the person administering it loves them too much to give it to anyone else, including themselves. being thrown to safety right as they had accepted dying. someone else they thought had gotten to safety running back to drag them out of danger. it's so fucking tasty

[saintone]

Why is it that LBH gets forgiven for mass murder, SA, excessive torture + mutilation, and even multiple cases of rape in OG!LBH's case, all because SJ abused him which traumatised him.

But SJ, who got abused on much worse ways, had been a full on child slave, and probably got SAed as a child on top, isn't allowed to gain forgiveness for his act child abuse born out of his trauma.

SJ had a way worse history of trauma and yet did less bad crimes than LBH did. In fact LBH committed every single crime SJ got falsely prosecuted for. Yet only LBH is allowed to be forgiven by the fanbase for his way worse crimes.

The hypocrisy in this fandom makes me angry.

.

[saintone]

This is crazy cuz, i love fanfiction bc of that. Like how you're reading a bunch of fics and you see how the fandom changes and you see when someone launches that fic that changes the way the whole fandom writes and then every work is just a sum up of others.

And the fact that u just decide to go from the begining to experience that is crazy to me.

When you immediately fall inlove with a pairing but the show is from 10 years ago and you don't wanna get spoil so you gotta start from the oldest fanfics and work your way up cause you you can't risk it and it is an experience. Just like all the little choices people made and how the fandom evolve its like seeing an ant colony building up there fandom from above all these little experiences it's so fun.

[saintone]

Hi,

It’s you friendly neighbor fanfic author here. In the light of this apparent new trend of people feeding unfinished fics to AI to get an “ending,” and some people even talking about “blanket permissions,” let me just say this:

I EXPLICITLY FORBID ANYONE TO FEED MY FICS TO AI. DUDE, THAT IS ABOUT THE LEAST RESPECTFUL THING YOU CAN DO. IF YOU DO IT, SHALL YOU BE EXCOMMUNICATED FROM YOUR FANDOM AND WALK ON LEGOS BAREFOOT TILL THE END OF DAYS.

That is my anti-permission.

Thank you for your attention.