#hey not to sound thirsty but these posts are cropped for length not bc I don't want ppl to reblog them👀

[ben-wisehart]

1/? Thank you so much for your detailed and fast meta-response! You’re truly amazing and gave me more answers than I expected. The thing I’m getting at is, MXTX presumably writes her ships the way that they’re supposed to be the one and only for each other. She even makes them stay virgins till they can be with their partners. And while I absolutely do believe in making soulmates I also believe that there are people who are much more compatible than others.

Following on from this. More Bingqiu ramblings under the cut

2/? Hualian and Wangxian are very compatible personality-wise and their whole relationship isn’t based only on acts of kindness. Or take Mo Ran. CWN reminds him of a past kindness and his mother so he chooses him as his Shizun. That choice is Mo Ran’s. One part why he likes him is that he’s reminded of a kind home but the other is that he genuinely likes and appreciates his personality. You won’t get this with other people or Shizuns he migh have otherwise chosen.

3/? The same goes for Wangxian and Hualian—they see their partner and appreciate what they see. You say that LWJ might fall in love with another troublemaker but that’s some personal characteristics he might find attractive personally but in comparison LBH seems just like a blind man desperately reaching for any kindness from a father figure. That’s what I don’t like about this ship. And it hurts me because I actually like it so much. Yeah, maybe I am a hopeless romantic but look

4/? Wangxian got infatuated with eo because of their personal qualities, remained by eo’s side because of their choices and stayed together because of their compatibility and appreciation for eo. Same goes for Ranwan. With Bingqiu if you think about it, LBH only saw hero worship, which turned into desperate yearning for love from said father figure but you could literally replace SQQ with whomever else no matter what personality or how (in)compatible & I guess that’s why I find this frustrating.

5/? I genuinely think that you couldn’t just replace one partner from other aforementioned ships and they’d just another partner the same way. From SQQ’s part the choice to stay by LBH’s side is because he genuinely sees who LBH is but LBH doesn’t see him, not because of identity reveal but because he just needs someone-anyone to cling onto and I find that sad, mainly for SQQ. It’s something like a puppy

7/? 7/? You take it home and give it shelter and it loves you unconditionally and would love anyone else who’d do the same for it. And I think that in any relationship the most important part is that: "I see you and I appreciate you," which Bingqiu one-sidedly lacks.

8/END Sorry about my terribly long rant and thank you for letting me air my grievances in your askbox. Idk if you’re on twitter as well but ever since my friend introduced me to your meta and fics I come and check out if you’ve posted something new from time to time as I don’t have an account here. So thanks for being awesome!

9/REAL END I forgot to say thank you for your reddit meta links, I'll look forward to checking them out 😊!

Lmao anon you’re killing me, I read these asks at like half past midnight when I was unable to sleep from a caffeine high, spent the next half hour thinking about it and then finally took out my laptop again to start writing a reply at 1am

Okay, so. I don’t know that there’s gonna be some...singular thing I can point out that will make you suddenly like Bingqiu as much as the other ships you’ve mentioned? We all have our preferences and that’s fine. But I also don’t think that’s what you’re asking me to do anyway, so I’m just gonna reply with my thoughts.

I think I understand where you’re coming from a bit better now, and I do understand how MXTX writes relationships in the “one true love” sense. To be honest, I think she probably wouldn’t agree with me saying that her other MLs could just as easily have fallen in love with other people, but ultimately, I disagree with the notion that there is one person out there who is the “right” person for us to be with. I don’t want to rehash any point I’ve already made, so I’ll leave it at that. I don’t think you’re wrong, however, in saying that of course some people can be more suited for us than others.

I think the reason Bingqiu suffers more from this perception you’ve mentioned, that SQQ could be interchangeable with another person without really changing Binghe’s dynamic on his end, is probably due to a couple of factors. Firstly, even though all three MXTX pairings meet when at least one of them is a child, Binghe is unique in that he was both a child and was practically raised by SQQ during his formative years. (The whole parental dynamic and age gap is something for another essay I don’t feel like writing, so I’ll just leave it at that.) Binghe is kind of fucked up due to his trauma and has pretty much built his entire identity around loving Shen Qingqiu. Everything he does in this novel, he does because of him in one way or another. We can argue about the fact that it’s unhealthy but it is what it is.

Secondly, Scum Villain is a shorter novel. It’s also MXTX’s first novel, and it’s largely a parody of danmei, transmigration and stallion novels. MDZS, TGCF and 2HA have a lot of conflict in them that isn’t directly related to the main couple, whereas in Scum Villain, almost all the conflict is specifically about SQQ and LBH in some way. It has fewer chapters and the characters have less room to breathe and develop, I think. Thirdly, but also following on from this, SQQ and LBH have an outside force meddling with their relationship at every turn. SQQ isn’t perfect by any means, but I maintain that he is at his core a good person who just wants a comfortable life for himself and Binghe. However, due to factors outside his control, he’s literally being held at a proverbial gunpoint to act a certain way. Even with the OOC lock disabled, he can’t be his truest, authentic self when his survival is contingent on pleasing the System. Of course he works around it when he can, but like, when he reunites with Binghe after the Abyss, he’s literally presented with a multiple choice question on how he should answer Binghe’s question about regrets! He holds onto Binghe’s jade token for years not because he’s a sociopath that likes withholding a precious possession, but because he knows it might literally save his life if he saves it for the right moment. He’s at the mercy of the System and could get killed or tortured at any moment.

So all of this is to say that Luo Binghe doesn’t really seem to have much of a personality outside of loving Shen Qingqiu, and Shen Qingqiu has an incredibly hard time letting his personality shine through the limitations that are placed on him. Stuff for them to work out post-canon, etc. etc. etc.

But even so…it’s not like they have no personality. To use my own example that you mentioned in your ask, why is Wei Wuxian being a troublemaker a personality trait that his husband can be attracted to, but Shen Qingqiu being kind isn’t? I kind of glossed over the fact that you called kindness interchangeable in my first reply, but I strongly disagree with that sentiment. There are a million ways to be kind. Luo Binghe loves Shen Qingqiu in a way that was unfortunately influenced by his trauma and the way the System interfered in their lives, but the things he loves about him are his own. Two people can be kind, but it’s not a universal human trait. Shen Qingqiu is kind, and he’s also intelligent and bashful and a bit ridiculous. And Luo Binghe knows all of this. He is twenty-five at the end of the novel; he’s got some pretty messed up ideas about ideal relationships, but I still think we need to give him more credit than assuming he’s not capable of recognising that SQQ is a complex person with multiple personality traits. It might have started out as hero worship, but he gets to see plenty of SQQ’s true self throughout the novel even in spite of all the limitations imposed by the System. If Shen Jiu had shared all these traits, Luo Binghe might have loved him instead, but you could say that about any character in any relationship at all. If a different reader had transmigrated in SY’s place, I’m not convinced that they would have made the same choices Shen Yuan did. There are plenty of readers that would have been perfectly kind to Binghe but wouldn’t have thought to give him a new cultivation manual so he could improve his cultivation techniques in time for the Endless Abyss. There are plenty of readers that would have been perfectly kind to Binghe, but knowing he would be fine wouldn’t have thrown themselves in front of poison for him or taken a hit for him in the dream world. SQQ readily admits that doing things like this was unnecessary, but SQQ is the sort of person that when you give him a split second to make a decision, he’ll put Binghe’s safety first. Always. Even knowing that Binghe was never in any real danger. These are not the actions of a person who is only motivated by their own survival, no matter what SQQ tries to tell the audience. That’s kindness, and it’s a rare quality that shouldn’t be discounted on the basis that if someone else had done it the same way, it would have had the same effect on Binghe’s affections. You could say that about any personality trait under the sun. Maybe Binghe would have loved someone else just as badly if they’d done all this for him, but we’ll never know, because they didn’t, and Shen Qingqiu is the one Binghe loves. He has no interest in changing that. The puppy doesn’t care about all the other possibilities, and neither does the one who took it in. Their relationship is no less special for it.

Okay I’ve already fucked up my sleep schedule for the entire weekend so I’m gonna call it here. I am on twitter though! My handle is bobby_speeds. Thanks again for your questions!!