#meanwhile bingmei (especially post canon when things calm down) definitely gains some weight

[waitineedaname]

I was thinking about the trope of characters gaining weight to indicate healing/character growth, and I realized how well that would fit Shen Qingqiu

Qing Jing Peak's food is apparently bland, and I doubt Shen Jiu was eating for the joy of it. He probably only ate enough to keep himself alive and supplemented it with inedia, so the guy was probably pretty gaunt under all those layers of robes. Then Shen Yuan shows up and in very quick succession gets a fantasy chronic illness and access to The Protagonist's Cooking™️ and gets to live a pretty spoiled life for several years. He probably keeps himself relatively fit to retain the peak lord image, but he definitely gains some weight in the years following his transmigration. His face filling out probably worked wonders when it comes to softening his image compared to Shen Jiu's rather severe presence. Luo Binghe, with his trauma with regards to food insecurity, probably thrived getting to see his Shizun looking well fed and healthy

And then the Immortal Alliance Conference and everything that came after it. As much as he'd like to deny it, he is fucking Depressed™️ after all that. What's the point of eating Qing Jing's bland food when he doesn't have the protagonist's cooking anymore? So he returns to Shen Jiu's pattern of inedia

Can you imagine how Luo Binghe felt seeing how skinny his Shizun became in his absence? And of course, that gaunt version of Shen Qingqiu is the one whose corpse he preserved for five years, stuck in that hungry state. It doesn't escape me that he was always bringing a meal to corpsezun's bedside so on the off chance that he came back, the first thing he could do was eat Binghe's cooking

Basically what I'm saying is if you compare post-canon bingqiu to their PIDW counterparts, the most striking difference on first glance is that Bingge and Shen Jiu are skinny and rangy and miserable, and Bingmei and Shen Yuan are happy and healthy and well fed