kernsing

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yanqing & being a child soldier.

So. Yanqing. When we first meet him, he's a sword-obsessed, semi-cocky kid who's got an appetite for victory and a sizeable ego - for good reason. When first encountered, he hasn't tasted real defeat before - there's been only victories in battle. He's been heralded as a sword genius from the moment he picked it up.

There is so much more to his character than simply 'a guy who got his ass handed to him and couldn't take the defeat,' and this is why.

Yanqing is prideful. And he's got a reason to be - he's grown up with his peers always telling him that he's a genius at swords. Growing up, being a swordmaster was not something only that he wanted for himself, but was something that others wanted for him, too. It's true that swords are his passion, but due to his inherent talent, the expectations set for Yanqing have always been high.

What happens when you've got high expectations from others, and even higher expectations from yourself?

Expectations are healthy, of course. You can't stay stagnant. And Yanqing loves what he does - I fully believe that wielding the sword is a passion - his first love. However, you can still love something and feel pressured by it.

I just simply can't look at a prodigy and say that they haven't been under stress. Yanqing has put himself under stress - he's set these goals for himself, these lofty dreams that he thinks he'll be able to achieve relatively soon. He's based his entire identity, his entire ego, his self-esteem - all of it, on how well he can wield the sword.

To Yanqing, the sword is an extension of himself. Victory in battle is what determines if he is worthy or not.

You have to understand that Yanqing's life literally revolves around swords, in a way. He doesn't have many friends, he has trouble connecting with his peers due to his talent and how others perceive him. His soul and anchor is his passion for swordplay, and his adeptness at it.

So, his first defeat at the hands of a swordmaster who was much greater at wielding it was like having his soul shattered in half. Meeting Jingliu and Blade and tasting bitter defeat two times in a row would've left him more than simply 'defeated' - it would have left him broken, in a way. Yanqing was so attached to the sword that he let it define him, and therefore, with only one such thing as his anchor to his self-worth, one true, utter defeat was enough to set him into a spiral.

I think even though, in later updates, he's seemingly gotten back on his feet, this spiral, this train of thought in the back of his mind isn't truly gone.

Okay, we've all seen the heliobus scene, and I think in there, Yanqing was genuinely tempted to take its offer. Before, he felt like he could take his time in getting better and improving, but after seeing how powerful jingliu really is, I think he would've been discouraged, but then encouraged to do more. However, it's not a healthy kind of encouragement - it's a desire to be better born of bitterness and anger, dissatisfaction and self-hatred.

Jing Yuan mentions that he needs time to be able to curb his strength and harness it properly. Shortcuts cannot be taken in learning something like the sword, and that is a lesson that he learns. However, I think that scene where Jing Yuan puts faith in Yanqing, and then Yanqing comes back to his senses is genuinely an important one. It shows that Yanqing has a lot of trust in Jing Yuan, but also that one of his greatest insecurities is letting the General down.

Although Yanqing's ego almost entirely relies on how good he is with the sword, he also relies on Jing Yuan's perception of him in order to have self-esteem.

Jing Yuan is Yanqing's father figure. Let's not beat around the bush - Yanqing is like a little bird taking refuge on a lion's back. Jing Yuan is the one consistent adult in his life that gives im guidance and that helps him grow - how wouldn't he see Jing Yuan as his dad? And, as all children do, we seek attention, and praise from our parents - which is a perfectly normal and healthy thing to do.

However, their relationship... isn't that linear. Yanqing may see him as his father, but Jing Yuan is also his mentor - and as a mentor's job, you cannot just praise your apprentices, but you also must train them and criticize them.

Unfortunately, I think the way Yanqing was raised - for the battlefield, seeking praise and validation from Jing Yuan, who could not only see him as a son, but also as a mentee - would've permanently impacted the way that he sees himself, and the way his self-esteem image was created.

What I mean to say is - Yanqing's self-esteem is fragile. All of this is just leading to say that Yanqing doesn't have a stable sense of self, and this was the first time that it was truly broken for him. And that's hard. It's really hard to pick yourself back up after being put down like that, especially because Yanqing thinks that he's failed the one thing that he was supposed to do.

So, we enter another arc. After the Heliobus, we come back to the Xianzhou, and Yanqing and Yunli meet. His ego's still bruised, and her telling him that he's unworthy of the sword was literally one of the worst insults she could have ever done, because, as I've mentioned before, his identity revolves around swords.

Of course, they bicker back and forth, and then, they have a conversation. Yanqing admits that after his defeats, he started to question himself, and he admits that it was so hard to find his confidence again and to continue on.

However, he also states something important - he wields the sword because he loves the feeling of giving it all.

This is incredibly important, because this basically states that Yanqing loves not just to fight, not just to win or to lose - but to really put himself out there. He loves to challenge himself, he loves to get better, and he just loves his swords. He loves what he does, even despite all the expectations.

Yanqing's sword is an extension of himself, and by loving the sword and what he does, I think, he loves himself. This puts into light the idea that when he lost, he hated himself. But he's learned that loss does not mean loss forever - it just means that he had to find a purpose, do some self-reflection, and to try and understand.

So, that's on how Yanqing sees himself with the sword, and how it impacted his self-esteem, his ego, and his self-perception - but there's still something else I have to tackle.

His age. Because that impacts everything I just mentioned.

Haha, did you think I was done? No. No, I'm not. I'll also be doing another post on Yanqing and PTSD. Because I'm a genetic freak, and I'm not normal.

Yanqing, canonically, is a teenager - a young teenager, which is why I choose to portray him from 13-15, so maybe around 14 years old. The thing is - Yanqing is very good at acting much older than he is, which I think is part of the reason why there was so much debate over whether he was an adult or not at first. This just goes to show that he is incredibly good at putting on a mature face. There's no doubt that Jing Yuan has trained him in the realm of politics and has taught him how to handle people much older than he is.

Despite Yanqing's position mainly involving battle, which he is good at, with power comes diplomacy. So, Yanqing had to learn to be diplomatic from a young age due to his increased level of skill.

This leads to a skewed vision or approach to how he should present himself. Jing Yuan even explicitly says that if you treat him like a child, he'll act like an adult - but if you treat him like an adult, he'll act like a child. This is all due to perception.

Yanqing thinks that acting childish is weak, but if someone treats him like an adult - mature, he will gain the feeling that people aren't underestimating him, and will allow himself to act more like hismelf. However, if you were to treat him directly like a child, it would make him defensive and it would raise his emotional walls towards whoever was treating him like so.

Yanqing, generally, just... doesn't really feel like he can act like a kid. He's always been alienated from his peers due to his talent, so he never had any real friendships or connections, which probably fucked him over socially. This just leads to him alienating himself from the idea of being a child - people people are expecting him to not be childish and mature due to his position.

Yanqing sees his age as a barrier. It's preventing Jing Yuan from putting his full faith and trust into Yanqing, and due to how young he is, it can sometimes make him feel like he's more of a burden to the General more than anything else, which isn't good. Yanqing owes Jing Yuan his life, and he knows this, so to let down the man who trained him would be - as mentioned earlier, due to it being a heavy insecurity of his - terrible.

This leads to an almost sort of bitterness when it comes to the topic of his age, so that's why he probably reacts in a way that makes him seem like a 'true adult' when he's treated like the age that he is.

Yanqing views his age as a hindrance. Nothing more, nothing less.

I think I covered basically everything that I wanted to in terms of Yanqing's self-perception and self-esteem, as well as how his age and his connection with swords create that development between him. Next post will be about PTSD. Thanks for reading! :)

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WHO WAS GOING TO TELL ME THE PROJECT HAIL MARY TRAILER IS OUT

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some of you have never had your notp be the most popular ship in the fandom and it shows

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The Divine Foresight.

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worst feeling in the world: post a chapter only to realize you’ve made a major continuity error

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first person to use the aroace jing yuan tag on ao3 has got to be one of my top three life achievements for real

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YOU SEE THE VISION.

You make a good point about Silver, although I’d imagine Lilia to be somewhat different as a character anyway if the war was still going on. If I don’t look at Jing Yuan’s death flags they don’t exist. Trust.

Oh Jing Yuan totally tries to get his kid to have fun and socialize…I see it re Aetherium Wars.

STOP Lilia during the Halloween event was crazy. Crazy old man. Emotional competence of a peanut (I mean me too).

I do love how Lilia & Jing Yuan both have masks of whimsy. Could a depressed old man be this whimsical??

some day we need Yanqing & Silver to hit their dads point blank with the "WE KNOW YOU'RE NOT PERFECT PARENTS BUT ITS OKAY BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU ANYWAYS" at the same time Jing Yuan & Lilia shoot them with the "YOU DON'T NEED TO EARN OUR LOVE BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU ANYWAYS"

We can only pray 🤧

Fae Yanqing & Jing Yuan is such a concept. I like it. On the flipside, we could also have Xianzhou Diasomnia. Malleus is a Vidyadhara High Elder, obviously. Lilia and Sebek could be either Vidyadhara or Xianzhou natives. Silver still the regular human of the bunch (or he could be sorta like Moze, a transformed short-life species).

Because the AO3 author’s notes character limit hates me, I am posting this to Tumblr. Please enjoy me rambling on about fictional fathers, ft. HSR Jing Yuan & TWST Lilia Vanrouge (I refer to TWST chapter 7 dynamics below but without detailed spoilers).

I love it when a narrative is like, “Woe. Unconditional love of a child be upon thee,” to a depressed fictional man. Gotta be one of my favorite dynamics for real.

Jing Yuan reminds me a lot of Lilia Vanrouge from Twisted Wonderland. Like yeah the long-life species army general single parent things are the obvious connections but also I think they both share the same parenting flaws (physical and/or emotional distance out of not wanting to burden their child(ren) with their own pain; discounting their child(ren)’s love for them because they see themselves as fundamentally unloveable—which is more of a headcanon on JY’s part, but it’s real to me; letting their underage child be in the military and/or giving them intensive military training). Also Yanqing’s dynamic re Jing Yuan is like a mashup of both Malleus (weird political/formal distance in an obviously parental relationship) & Silver’s (wanting to repay an adoptive parent for their love, through military service even, when the parent doesn’t see a need for it; secret past his dad told him nothing about) dynamics re Lilia. Oh god, this is why I think Jing Yuan sucks at cooking; it’s the Lilia associations (plus Jing Yuan giving Yanqing money for food/eating takeout in “Taking It Easy”: there’s no way this man can cook). Also no wonder why I like Diasomnia so much. Sometimes a family dorm can be a single father, his two children, and their screaming pet crocodile. If you know you know.

Disclaimer I’m not saying I think Lilia or Jing Yuan are necessarily “bad dads,” in fact I have said and will say again Lilia Vanrouge is literally the father of the millennium (if you know you know) & I don’t really like categorizing people as “bad” or “good” (vs. action/intent/consequence). Every parent has their flaws, some are better and some are worse (in action/intent/consequence), re Jing Yuan and Lilia their kids love/respect them and want to be around them so they’re on the better side of things in my book.

Plus, I do think Yanqing picking up the sword was something he wanted to do himself at the very beginning, c.f. Jingliu’s Myriad Celestia Trailer where he talks about his reasons for doing so—and attributes his original desire to Jing Yuan telling him stories about Jingliu, before saying anything about expectations (and where he talks about repaying Jing Yuan’s teachings at the same time, so presumably after he’s started learning). So I do see a difference in parenting quality between Jing Yuan and say, Crepus from Genshin Impact, whose expectations for Diluc seem more heavy-handed/originating from Crepus himself. Yanqing’s pressures I think actually stem a lot from political/societal circumstances external to the Jing household, although Jing Yuan’s reticence does contribute to them.

There is that line in the kitty text message conversation about how in Yanqing’s earliest memories, he’s already being taught something by Jing Yuan. I think you can interpret that something as anything from reading to (if the previous paragraph is unconvincing) swordplay, but in my heart of hearts it is playing the flute.

Jing Yuan and Crepus both get failing grades in the “don’t let your kids be child soldiers” action/consequence column though. Lilia is on thin ice because it seems like Silver is only Malleus’s retainer/bodyguard and not like, on active combat duty or whatever, but there was still the childhood intensive training era until Lilia chilled out. I still have to catch up on TWST chapter 7 though.

[kernsing]

Because the AO3 author’s notes character limit hates me, I am posting this to Tumblr. Please enjoy me rambling on about fictional fathers, ft. HSR Jing Yuan & TWST Lilia Vanrouge (I refer to TWST chapter 7 dynamics below but without detailed spoilers).

I love it when a narrative is like, “Woe. Unconditional love of a child be upon thee,” to a depressed fictional man. Gotta be one of my favorite dynamics for real.

Jing Yuan reminds me a lot of Lilia Vanrouge from Twisted Wonderland. Like yeah the long-life species army general single parent things are the obvious connections but also I think they both share the same parenting flaws (physical and/or emotional distance out of not wanting to burden their child(ren) with their own pain; discounting their child(ren)’s love for them because they see themselves as fundamentally unloveable—which is more of a headcanon on JY’s part, but it’s real to me; letting their underage child be in the military and/or giving them intensive military training). Also Yanqing’s dynamic re Jing Yuan is like a mashup of both Malleus (weird political/formal distance in an obviously parental relationship) & Silver’s (wanting to repay an adoptive parent for their love, through military service even, when the parent doesn’t see a need for it; secret past his dad told him nothing about) dynamics re Lilia. Oh god, this is why I think Jing Yuan sucks at cooking; it’s the Lilia associations (plus Jing Yuan giving Yanqing money for food/eating takeout in “Taking It Easy”: there’s no way this man can cook). Also no wonder why I like Diasomnia so much. Sometimes a family dorm can be a single father, his two children, and their screaming pet crocodile. If you know you know.

Disclaimer I’m not saying I think Lilia or Jing Yuan are necessarily “bad dads,” in fact I have said and will say again Lilia Vanrouge is literally the father of the millennium (if you know you know) & I don’t really like categorizing people as “bad” or “good” (vs. action/intent/consequence). Every parent has their flaws, some are better and some are worse (in action/intent/consequence), re Jing Yuan and Lilia their kids love/respect them and want to be around them so they’re on the better side of things in my book.

Plus, I do think Yanqing picking up the sword was something he wanted to do himself at the very beginning, c.f. Jingliu’s Myriad Celestia Trailer where he talks about his reasons for doing so—and attributes his original desire to Jing Yuan telling him stories about Jingliu, before saying anything about expectations (and where he talks about repaying Jing Yuan’s teachings at the same time, so presumably after he’s started learning). So I do see a difference in parenting quality between Jing Yuan and say, Crepus from Genshin Impact, whose expectations for Diluc seem more heavy-handed/originating from Crepus himself. Yanqing’s pressures I think actually stem a lot from political/societal circumstances external to the Jing household, although Jing Yuan’s reticence does contribute to them.

There is that line in the kitty text message conversation about how in Yanqing’s earliest memories, he’s already being taught something by Jing Yuan. I think you can interpret that something as anything from reading to (if the previous paragraph is unconvincing) swordplay, but in my heart of hearts it is playing the flute.

Jing Yuan and Crepus both get failing grades in the “don’t let your kids be child soldiers” action/consequence column though. Lilia is on thin ice because it seems like Silver is only Malleus’s retainer/bodyguard and not like, on active combat duty or whatever, but there was still the childhood intensive training era until Lilia chilled out. I still have to catch up on TWST chapter 7 though.

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every so often I get hit in the face w the reminder that blade's shard sword weights 1.5 tonnes and jing yuan's starfall reverie weights almost 7 tonnes, and yanqing parried the first and regularly spars against the second. Then again, apparently the force of a hit from starfall reverie would realistically be several times the force of the strongest atomic bomb ever detonated, so I'm guessing it's more of a shorthand to say These Characters Are Super StrongTM than genuinely taking into account the physics of it 🤔

hello!! yeah i remember coming across the word 斤 without the 公 in front somewhere outside of the game like a few months ago, looking it up, and going “oh! so that’s what they mean by catties in hsr!” then two seconds later i thought about the numbers the game uses and was like, wait, Those Things Weigh How Much. famously, sci-fi writers have no sense of scale. although in this case it might be more accurate to say xianxia writers. force of an atomic bomb is crazy though. i kind of want to know how much yanqing’s sword collection collectively weighs now lol.

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i need to press that man like a flower. get in the book boy

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Generals and their little light

I love them very much

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Don’t forget.

(Click on images under cut for higher resolution.)

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reading the shattered swords vn as an hsr yanqing fan is crazy because when they start mentioning him it’s just like, oh my god, that’s my boy (he’s a grown ass man), how dare the narrator talk shit about him (i mean apparently he goes around beating people up…but like that’s my boy), wait. What The Fuck do you mean his wife is 20+ years older than him. Hello.

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leave the front line to the cavalry

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aromantic hanahaki disease that's cured by rejecting the one who has unrequited feelings for you

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who gave this man wine in jail

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playing through the shattered sword vn and i was not prepared for how much it would remind me of the luofu trailblaze mission. like i really should have expected it, sushang + otto and his freaky casket are on the cover but like what do you mean they literally call otto a ‘luocha’ person.