saintone

[saintone]

You know that quote "I'm gentle in the same way herding dogs are gentle to the sheep that they kill wolves for" or something like that.

That's Yue Qingyuan to me

[saintone]

Lately, I've been thinking a fic idea, but I don't think I'll carry it to life cause I don't have the time. But here it is.

Warning: it's sad. And it's Bingjiu.

What if, by some chance, Shen Jiu fell in the Abyss while he was Wu Yanzi's disciple. And, in thid Au, Shen Yuan also exists. So Luo Binghe falls into the abyss, and runs into his Shizun's look-alike, only considerably jumpy and much mire bitchy. And Shen Jiu runs into the first human-like creature in years. So, they decide to get together and try and leave the hell hole.

Luo Binghe is not as cruel as Bingge, but he just got betrayed by Shen Yuan, his dear Shizun, and he feels he can no longer trust cultivator sects and their righterous path. Shen Jiu is Shen Jiu, so he was never much righterous to begin with. Cue to Shen Jiu and Luo Binghe, both betrayed by the ones they loved and deeply flawed, grow close.

Even before finding Xin Mo, he's often doing, well, Luo Binghe shit and satiatying his need with demonesses. Shen Jiu blatantly refuses every advance: he'll only sleep with the man he marries. An issue arises, though, when Lbg gets cursed with a sex pollen like plant. Shen Jiu saves his life, only after forcing Lbg to promise him that he'll never leave his side. And Lbg, who's grown increadibly fond with this man who's as beautiful as his Shizun, but as wretched as he himself is, accepts.

Lbg and Shen Jiu escape the Abyss, and Binghe becomes demon emperor, making Shen Jiu his wife.

Once they leave the abyss, Lbg gets Shen Jiu to a hostel room, and sets him in a bed. Then, he places a pair of shoes in his battered up feet. Shen Jiu, orphan, then slave, then rogue demon cultivator, had never in his life worn shoes before.

Shen Jiu never cultivated in this life, so he's extreamely weak, almost human like, and his nasty actitude makes it easy for others to hate him. This was never an issue for them-until Lbg has a court, and an empire tu rule, and a pissy empress to protect.

Shit hits the fan when the sects hear about the new emperor, and invite him for a meeting. Luo Binghe is wierdly eager, Shen Jiu notices.

He is, of course, eager to see his Shizun. But he also wishes for Shen Jiu to reunite with, who probably is, his only lasting family member, maybe a long lost brother.

However an unexpected party appears at the meeting, ans that is Qiu Haitang. The woman accuses the Demon Empress for having murdered her entire family. And Shen Jiu, poor street kid with no education, doesn't react properly.

And if that were not enough, Sect Leader Yue Qingyuan was no other than his long lost childhood best friend.

Meanwhile, Luo Binghe seems distracted and distant, much more focused on the relationship with the sects than if what's happening inside his court.

The one who doesn't miss the chance if visiting, though, is Yue Qingyuan. It is from him that Sj learns about Shen Yuan, his he's probably his brother, and that he was Lbg's máster. Yqy tries to convide Xiao Jiu that Lbg isn't a good guy, that he wasn't good while he was in rhe sect, and that he has an eerie obsession with his máster, Shen Yuan.

However, Shen Jiu isn't willing to listen.

The sects demand that only giving Qiu Haitang her family back will serve as compensation, and that Lbg must take her as concubine. This is a plot from Hua Huan Palace to gain power. Qiu Haitang enters the palace, even if she isn't married yet.

Shen Jiu doesn't like it one bit. With the help of Ling Guan Jun, he plotes the murder of Qiu Haitang. The attempt fails, though, and Luo Binghe is furious: all his efforts in protecting Sj go down the drain.

He places Sj in house arrest, as he tries to appase the cultivation world. Sj is furious.

Why is Lbg treating him as if he was in the wrong? Why was what he had been doing all the time they were in the Abyss suddenly useless?

It is then that Shen Yuan comes to visit. Lbg allowed him to enter, and his former Shizun takes the ocassion for finally talking with his long lost brother. Sj won't deny he's curious.

But, as he makes tea, Shen Yuan falls immediately after drinking it. And Luo Binghe enters, just to find his Shizun convulsing due to poison in front of his wife.

Luo Binghe takes Sy, and orders guards to trap Sj, and not let anyone in.

He couldn't let his Shizun die, bc he gave him so much, but also bc he was Shen Jiu's only family.

Shen Jiu didn't know better, but he would. He would stop his sketchy ways one day, and become a better person. Luo Binghe was sure of that. But for it to happen, Shen Yuan needed to be there, too. He knew Sj, and he knew that, once the rage subsided, he'd never get over having poisoned his own brother. Bc Sj was much more sensible than he showed.

So he uses his blood parasites to cure Sy, even if he ends uo having to use too many.

The poison was increadibly strong, and leaves him almost unable to sence his mites.

That's he doesn't realize that Shen Jiu had drunk the poison, too.

It had been placed in his favorite tea, Shen Jiu realices, and his error had been deciding to share something precious to him with his long lost brother.

Shen Jiu would never harm his own brother, even if he envied him. Ever since they'd come to the castle, it seemed that Shen Jiu only commited mistakes. Shen Yuan wasn't like thag. He walked with pose and elegant, and smiled freely to others while Shen Jiu only knew how to throw nasty words. Maybe that's why Luo Binghe loved him.

After all, Shen Jiu was only a nasty slave that had tricked him into marrying him. Luo Binghe had never taken him seriously until his life had been in danger, and after that he'd never touched him again.

Maybe it was true what everyone said, that the Emperor's crazy wife made his the Demon's life miserable. Maybe it was truth what Yue Qingyuan implied, that he was only a Shen Yuan look alike Luo Binghe had recurred to when he believed he'd never leave the Abyss alive.

So Shen Jiu served himself a cup of tea, and drank it as he reminisced the day Luo Binghe bought him his first pair of shoes.

And he hoped that, from now on, Luo Binghe could be happy without a slave kid dragging him down.

[saintone]

Now I love Shen Qingqiu even more 🥲🩷

At first I wanted to do it all to one person, but no one was quite right. Then I drew parallels where SQQ denies everything, but in fact he loves, he cares, he will wait...

I suffer with him and you suffer with me

[saintone]

Bingyuan fans are so pissy cause they just come to bing jiu tag to throw shit. If you don't like a ship maybe don't read it??? Do you think just bc you say "Luo Binghe would never love Shen Jiu!" We're just going to be like "Omg dude you're right, I never realized it! Let me delete all the fics I've written".

That's not going to happen mate so keep on walking.

[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.

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[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.

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[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