#poor shen jiu…

[touchlikethesun]

i love that when we read from shen yuan’s pov, he seems so concerned with not being too OOC - hiding his reactions to things, responding how he thinks sqq ought too, etc. - and because we’re reading from his pov, and none of the characters ever confront him, we the reader just assume that he must have done an okay job making the transition.

and then we get to airplane’s extra chapters and it turns out the peak leaders called an emergency secret meaning because there’s no way sqq would ever behave like that he must be possessed or an amnesiac like boy you did such a bad job you did not fool a single gd person that knew the old sqq. they just hated the old guy so much they decided to let it be 😭

[diushek]

One day, Shen Qingqiu comes from the city with a little baby in his arms. He says: "His mother died during childbirth and I am taking care of him." He names the child Shen Yuan when he is old enough to give him a name, and the child grows up in Qing Jing.

Everyone, absolutely everyone, believes that Shen Qingqiu is the biological father of that child. Only have to LOOK at them both and see the resemblance: the same eyes, the same hair, the same facial structure, the same lips, even the same angry pout. Rumors - Shen Qingqiu had a child with a prostitute who died and now he is taking care of him!! - are open secrets.

Shen Qingqiu, as usual, ignores them. He cares for his little one, raising him with the closest thing other Peak Lords can call love. Impeccable robes, the best meals, the best early education. Shen Yuan grows up as a polite, gentle, kind-hearted, sweet-faced child. He frees insects before killing them, isn't afraid to dirty his robes if he must go after someone, and has an avid interest in beasts and monsters beyond comprehension. The Peak Lords jokingly think: this child has taken his father's face and surely the good heart of his mother, may she rest in peace.

When he comes of age, he doesn't even have to dig a hole to be chosen for Qing Jing Peak - everyone knows that Shen Qingqiu has already made a place for him there. However, Shen Yuan insists on doing it on his own! He wants to earn his place. The Peak Lords respect him for it, and there are various interests, but he still ends up in Qing Jing Peak.

And Shen Yuan becomes Shen Qingqiu's clear first disciple. He is a skilled scholar, excellent martial artist who is not afraid to tear someone rude with foul words, but with an almost natural disposition to be kind, sweet and gentle with those who deserve and require it.

It is then that Luo Binghe arrives at Qing Jing Peak.

The Peak Lords hear of the rumors and they spread them like pollen in spring: apparently there has been a HUGE discussion between Shen Qingqiu and his spoiled son! Something involving a child with water burns, a beating, and a woodshed. No one understands what happened, but a day later, Shen Yuan completely disappeared from the Cang Qiong Sect.

And he has taken a young disciple with him.

Shen Qingqiu begins to act as if he never had a son - as if his whole life has been all about him, hostile and unpleasant. His mood is worse than ever and his cruelty is undeniable. No one understands what has happened between father and son, but these are rumors that even if whispered, bring the very bad faces of Shen Qingqiu. And no one wants to be behind Shen Qingqiu's wrath when it is unleashed.

(Shen Yuan had transmigrated. Into a baby! Into Shen Qingqiu's son! Yes, indeed his memories had been gradually unlocked, thank god. It would have been so weird to be a baby with the mindset of an adult... And he had believed, for a long time, that perhaps Shen Qingqiu could change. That loving him and caring for him would make him better when Luo Binghe reached Cang Qiong.

Unfortunately, that was not the case.

So, Shen Qingqiu can hate him for this reason if he wants! But Shen Yuan has to leave there and take Luo Binghe with him. He will teach him cultivation and do everything to make him become a powerful cultivator before his demonic seal is unleashed, he will do everything possible to prevent him from the Endless Abyss, and will prevent Shen Qingqiu from being turned into a human stick.

Probably, a single night of punishment and humiliation wasn’t enough for Luo Binghe to want revenge so hard. Actually?? He just would save the lives of all his martial uncles and his father in the process to kindly educate Luo Binghe and make him as powerful yet happy as possible. They should thank him!! He's sacrificing himself, his comforts, and his reputation to save everyone's asses!!!)

...

(Although Shang Qinghua had wanted to give Shen Qingqiu a son - a magical pollen pregnancy between Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu, which Shen Qingqiu would NEVER tell Yue Qingyuan was his child until the very last moment - for the drama and secondary revenge and angst 7/9, that had been a damn draft!!! He didn't even get to develop the background of Yue Qingyuan and Shen Jiu!!! And now that son ran away with his Protagonist!? System, what's going on!? Why do HE make sure the Endless Abyss arc be completed!? He doesn't even fucking know where the protagonist is!!! System have mercy on AND HELP!!!)

[bambooswordwielder]

Au where Shen Jiu wasn't left all alone at the Qiu Household.

Where even if Qi-Ge abandoned him, there was this one younger servant who would always hide him when Qiu Jianluo was hunting him down.

A younger boy who always knew when he was injured and would bandage them despite how many curses came from Shen Jiu's mouth.

A young boy who never left Shen Jiu alone, no matter how sharp his thorns were.

A younger boy who bared a striking resemblance to him, not enough for anyone to believe they were related, but just close enough that it made even Shen Jiu look twice.

A younger boy who seemed to always know what was going to happen, telling Shen Jiu one particularly random night to pack everything he valued and to run into the night away from the Qiu Household.

Shen Jiu agreed and so he took this younger servant by the arm and dragged him away, listening to this boy not to follow the strange rogue cultivator and to instead go to the prestigious sect of Cang Qiong.

Shen Jiu reluctantly agreed and so he went there, showcasing his determination and being accepted in as he showed his prodigal skills. When the peaklord of Qing Jing met him, Shen Jiu made it loud and clear.

"I will not join without him."

The peaklord glanced at the pale and bland looking boy next to the prodigy he had just found. Why would such a prodigy risk not joining Cang Qiong just for such a person? The boy wasn't particularly strong, thin and lanky in ways even concubines wouldn't wish for, and the paleness the boy had made him look sickly than appealing to the eyes.

"Who is he?" The Peaklord asked, an eyebrow raised as he narrowed his gaze.

The prodigy named Shen Jiu narrowed his gaze in return.

"His name is A-Yuan, and he is all I need."

[sereneabyyss]

I see so many things where like SY is the sweet innocent one who shows SJ how to love and be loved and fixes him blah blah blah. But oh come on now, this is Peerless Cucumber we're talking about. Number one hater extraordinaire. He is so bitchy. He would not fix SJ if anything he would make him worse.

I need more content that's just SY and SJ standing with their twin fans unfolded, viciously tearing their opponents (the other peak lords) apart with their barbed insults. I need them casting vicious mockery within every battle, whether it be against demon, peak lord, or random civilian who just happened to spill tea on them.

[nenestansunsthings]

having svsss au ideas beyond my station

thinking. shang qinghua goes on a mission as a young disciple to some town in fuckoff nowhere and finds himself in the qiu household. and there he finds a young shen jiu, undergoing the plot he originally intended for him and hadn't realised had become real and he's so young oh god hes so young why is he so small what do you mean that part was real, he hadn't kept it why is it real—

and he panics and sneaks him the Fuck out of that house

and he's not sure what to do but surely sending him to cang qiong will fuck up something in the plot and he can't come under even more investigation and cang qiong tryouts dont happen for months anyway and his system would probably never allow it (it doesnt. it would interfere with yue qingyuans story) but shen jiu is refusing to stay anywhere near this place and wants to learn cultivating to protect himself make sure nothing like this ever happens again and sqh panics harder and

calls mobei jun.

okay. on second thought, maybe this was a bad idea. but he stumbles over himself and shushes baby shen jiu's very understandable freaking out and asks his king for the first thing hes ever asked for other than his own life.

is there any way this human child could learn cultivation in the demon world?

[archerdepartures116]

[blue-mood-blue]

I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.

And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.

What about a version where it’s not coincidence at all?

Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t want to be.

Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked “what happens next?”

They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.

Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.

Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.

It’s one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. “Tells” is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.

(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)

Death feels very real after that.

The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.

The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how it’s still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isn’t there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t matter.

(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)

Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what he’s been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?

(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters don’t get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)

Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...

…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…

And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.

“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.

Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.

(Shang Qinghua wants to say “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)

“I know,” he says instead. “I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”

Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”

[nibbelraz]

Plot twist: SQQ and YQY both managed to get each other pregnant and are currently hiding it.

They give birth to Shen Yuan and Ning YingYing.

I Desperately need both of them pregnant so badly and still refusing to tell the other except this ones more comedic because you have them both dancing around each other but they're having the same carvings, lashing outs, soreness, morning sickness, they peice it together quickly and Shen Jiu is fuming because of course they'd BOTH be pregnant. He's secretly very happy.

Cannot imagine how absolutely WILD all the other peak lords are like you have one of the most notorious men that glares daggers and makes the most hurtful remarks FULL of pregnancy hormones WITH his ALSO pregnant (soon to be) husband as the strongest guy ever but weak to his significant others that he's now bursting into tears on the daily.

Also YES Shen Jiu has cute baby Shen Yuan and Yue Qingyuan adorable Ning Yingying that they both immediately spoil and fuss over, a very happy family 💕

[yuhua-a]

"does zhangmen shixiong bother all his shidi in their spare time, or is this qingqiu particularly troublesome to need such supervision?"

poor qi-ge just wants to visit xiao jiu 😿 me too yue qi, me too 😹

[emo-nova]

Okay, au where Shen Yuan is the older than Shen Jiu and Yue Qing. And this boy just goes "I'm a single mother of two" mode, he is responsible but is on the fringes of unhealthily independent as to make sure both of these kids get food and water and have a somewhat decent childhood.

Shen Jiu most likely sees Shen Yuan as a reliable adult but with a bad penchant of focusing too much on Shen Jiu and Yue Qi for resources. Yue Qi sees the same but wants to help Shen Yuan in getting more food and water.

Of course when the Qiu House comes knocking, Shen Yuan puts himself in the stead of Shen Jiu and ensures both of them leave. While Shen Yuan tries to both get a better standing in the house and looking to leave over the course of the years, he doesn't hold out much hope for Shen Jiu and Yue Qi to come back.

Last SY saw of them, they were kids, thin and tiny and barely fast enough to outrun adults. But when almost a decade comes, both of them rock up.

SJ is pissed, but looks composed, but still ready to burn the place down. YQ is livid, looking calm as anything, but is talking very nicely with the Young Master of the house in getting one of their slaves.

SY is brought out. He looks slightly healthier, not much, but he has some weight to him, and he is clothed better than rags. He looks presentable. He looks over to the two and has a mini heart attack.

Dawning realisation that "oh fuck, I was raising the scum villain and the head of Cang Qiong Peak" add a light anxiety attack in his head as he just watches everything happen.

They leave, SY in slight shock as he is now free, to Cang Qiong. Now this can go anywhere.

I personally want SY to not be a cultivator but a librarian to the libraries of SJ's peak to help Binghe get the correct manuel but also guide him a teacher-adjacent way to him and others.

Sure, SY would have a shorter life compared to others, but I think with him trying to become a cultivator when he is an adult already would be more difficult and just not worth it.

But anyone can pick this up to something else, possible with a hibernating system until Binghe comes around? Who knows? But enjoy this random, in the moment au :D

[khattikeri]

i will die on the hill that yue qingyuan has a heavily suppressed mean streak. this man is a closeted bitch i just know it. years of pandering and politeness have covered him very well and he certainly is Ancient China's Top Doormat but if he didn't feel obligated to do that i truly believe he'd be slyly snarking it up right there with shen jiu.

[miaoqing]

i really don't know how to feel about fics/aus where it turns out that sj's treatment of lbh is his own fault because he didn't speak up about issues with other disciples, genuinely misbehaved etc and also later (as bingge) lied about how much he actually got punished and in truth it wasn't any more than any other disciple, and that sj didn't know about the fake manual, when all of this is explicitly against canon.

yqy adresses this when sy wakes up, telling sqq to stop being so mean to lbh. in the sj extra, he himself says that lbh should have died a long time ago bleeding from the seven apertures due to the fake manual. sy says that pidw explicitly states that lbh was punished WAAAY more than any other disciple, and in those conditions obviously noone would tell their teacher about being bullied??

idk i understand altering canon for the sake of telling a story but... somehow it feels like a disservice to sj's character to ignore canon and water him down for the sake of making his redemption easier. and villifying lbh, which is what these fics inevitably end up doing, is also messed up - he was around 11 when he joined cqm. that's a CHILD. no matter how you look at it, sqq's "treatment" of lbh is neglect at best, horrible abuse at worst, and in modern times it would put him in jail faster than you could blink. giving him a realistic redemption arc is difficult, if not impossible, but if you truly love him with all his flaws and faults, isn't it worth the effort?

[shizunitis]

SVSSS high school AU

[looking out the window with a thoughtful frown]

I was thinking back on my time in high school and…

Did anyone else have a classmate that was obviously Rich and kinda spoiled, but that was So Nice to everyone? Had the mannerisms and vocabulary of a doted-upon heir but the accepting and excited eyes of a sheltered kid seeking friends and companionship? Not necessarily smiling all the time, but was always present and active when interacting with the others?

Shen Yuan. Vice Class President. Beloved by teachers and classmates alike. Always willing to lend you money, and he won’t even ask for it back. Wouldn’t, even if he remembered!

And then the classmate that was subtly bitter about everything and mostly brushed off everyone? Made kinda’ lame jokes but didn’t really seem to care much when no one laughed, cause they wanted the others to let them be? Conspicuously absent from extracurricular activities, really didn’t give much of a shit as long as they got by?

Airplane. Ends up labelled as the class rebel but he doesn’t do anything, so it’s kind of bewildering that that’s his legacy. He is very unaware of his own vibes.

The clearly smart kid who never studies and still gets perfect or almost-perfect marks on everything, but no one really knows anything about them because they’re so reticent? Dislikes attention if it comes from who they perceive to be looking down on them? Any sort of authority figure is, to them, an opponent they must best without letting them know they’re competing at all? Bratty as fuck?

Binghe. Depending on which one we’re talking about, they’re either stupidly popular and elicit jealousy from their peers or admired (and highkey feared) from afar. Is vying for Class President to impress Shen Yuan. They’re a duo! They need to be a united front!

(It would also be very funny to me if Bing-ge was a year older than Bing-mei but got held back a year. The fights? The seething jealousy? Shen Yuan sandwich? Superb.)

Mobei-Jun is the silent, kind of out-of-his-depth but solemn kid everyone gravitates around and it’s astounding to him that these people are so invested in his opinion. Leave him alone. He does not want to bear witness to any of your pathetic attempts at flattering him! It’s so clearly fake. Very pretentious and doesn’t even realise it. Parents are Stupid Wealthy.

The class president is obviously Yue Qingyuan. Luo Binghe will win, though. It’s just a matter of time.

Liu Qingge is on some sports team, probably captain. Luo Binghe will win against him, too.

(Shen Yuan once mentioned that Liu Qingge’s muscles are very manly and now it’s on sight. This is the only thing the Luo brothers agree on. Neither are happy about it.)

God. Imagine them on a school trip. The poor chaperones.

[alittlelessalone]

Fun Scum Villain fic concept:

So Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua are sent back to their original world temporarily due to system shenanigans and need to wait x number of days until they can go back. They wake up at the times of their deaths and get to use this time to do some final things in the world before returning back.

So Shen Yuan of course wants to spend the time with his family and getting to see them again and say goodbye in a less depressing way. But Shang Qinghua doesn’t have that and he’s just finished PIDW.

Shen Yuan makes sure he has enough money to get him through the timeframe (after learning about Shang Qinghua’s financial situation), so he doesn’t need to work to keep himself alive, so he decides he wants to write something a little more heartfelt as a sort of last hurrah.

He decides in honor of the two lives he and Shen Yuan stole, he’s going to share the backstory of Shen Jiu and write a story about Shang Qinghua.

Shen Jiu comes first and it’s mainly just a tale about him and Yue Qingyuan using his unposted backstory, but in the end he decides to make some minor changes so it’s not as depressing. Namely, that when they died, their souls were both sucked into Xuan Su. The pair ended up trapped there, but they were trapped there together in a world that couldn’t hurt them anymore and allowed them to finally be together.

It’s a poignant and bittersweet story that doesn’t excuse Shen Jiu’s behavior, but it does a lot to explain it and expand his character. And while it of course has its detractors, people generally like it and Peerless Cucumber is there in the comments singing its praises for all to see (and there in Shang Qinghua’s apartment smacking him over the head with a rolled up magazine and scolding him for being by such a good writer and selling out on PIDW).

The Original Shang Qinghua story doesn’t really have any old notes to go off. He was never meant to be a fleshed out character and was always just a plot device villain. But Shang Qinghua feels bad for PIDW’s Mobei-Jun, so he decides to write something for his sake too.

In this story, it’s revealed that Mobei-Jun didn’t actually kill the Original Shang Qinghua, but instead worked with him to fake his death after Lou Binghe ordered him dead. Shang Qinghua reveals that the pair were actually lovers and maintained their secret relationship over the years and that was why Mobei-Jun never seemed interested in romance.

And most readers are like wtf except for the bl fans who love it. And even Peerless Cucumber is a little more hesitant to praise it since it sort of came out of nowhere, but he can admit that it’s clever and well written. And Shen Yuan can tease Shang Qinghua relentlessly for it, even if he also approves and finds it very sweet.

Depending on how much more time they’re stuck there, maybe the pair can also write one more story, giving the original Lou Binghe a happier ending too.

Eventually, it’s time for them to go back. Shen Yuan says goodbye to has family and Shang Qinghua says goodbye to PIDW and hopes that his changes and additions can bring people some peace, even if it’s probably too late for those who need them most.

Shen Yuan realizes that Shang Qinghua was trying to alter the canon in hidden ways so that the system could silently incorporate them into the world without breaking anything. He figures it’s mainly for Bing-ge’s universe that’s still more or less PIDW, but being the mega-fan that he is, he decides to put a theory to the test.

It takes a lot less time with the help of the sect, but he manages to grow another plant body like his own. And then with Yue Qingyuan’s permission, he uses some of Shang Qinghua’s new hand-wavy canon to reach out to Xuan Su. And the next thing he knows, Shen Jiu is waking back up in the plant body after years trapped inside the sword.

And of course there’s a lot of questions and Binghe tears, but Yue Qingyuan gets his Xiao Jiu back and Shang Qinghua realizes that his changes must have taken in the other universe too, now meaning there’s less suffering there as well. He gets to curl back up in his king’s arms that night and rest assured that no matter what universe he’s in, both his king and that universe’s Shang Qinghua are well and truly loved.

[benevadeca]

Ok ramblings that lost the plot but... One of my least favorite SJ tropes is his past abuse leaking and everyone is suddenly soooo sympathetic to his past as a slave. Like it puts so much of the misunderstandings about him on his own shoulders, in a "oh this was a safe space and if you'd just been honest people would've been understanding" way. And i get it's a very modern-ism to be like ofc slavery is bad and the worldbuilding has weird mixes of gayness being fine but slavery is legal.

Like if anything in the original PIDW-verse it just reaffirms them at the end that ofc SJ was an outsider that could never fit in or make nice. They would've been like well that's a mortal social issue that the cultivation world should be above but ofc it makes so much sense for a snake like that to have been lying and hiding even more of his true colors.

And I mean even in SVSSS verse w shen yuan when it gets revealed they're just like well whatever! We don't care abt his past bc he's our guy and stopped being sucks so he like got over it and also we have a monopoly on violence so him doing a little childhood massacre is fine. He's Good (read: one of us) now. Like the hypocrisy and classism and ignorance, not even of social issues or your peers burdens but not even knowing what you don't know, is never something the members of the cultivation world ever worry about until it the consequences of those things actively effects them. SJ was their martial sibling but never One Of Them, but SY integrated well in an entirely different cultural norm bc he still had young master socialization. And unlike SJ he was good at being nice even though it was for equally selfish reasons as SJ's meanness. IE both being their learnt survival methods they used to protect themselves.

Idk it just undermines SJ's entire reasonable paranoia and valid reasons for not being willing to reveal the things he could v much get into legal trouble with, that people would use against him, the tangible discrimination that exists, etc. Like he was literally named qingqiu it kind of shows the trend of the things people do to him when they Know.

Anyway idk let them be ignorant and hypocrites! I like SY as a character bc he's a Nice person that is simultaneously incredibly narrow-minded, privileged, selective in who he gives a shit abt, and resistant to having his preconceptions questioned until his life is literally on the line lol. They are both posers! And for that to be undermined by the well sy wins bc he is Nice and Cares while sj wasnt those things is so like. Reductionist and equally woobifying in my opinion.

Rest of the CQM PL's too! CQM is destroyed in original PIDW-verse not just bc of SJ but bc it's complacent w the system no matter the guise it puts on as being the liberal equitable sect. Like this is the breaking the bones and locking a kid in a cave and then sending him to fight a demon lord sect.

[adragonthatwrites]

Dr. Shen's Log, Pt. 7

Date; 26, 5, 2024

I’m here to write down in proper detail what exactly happened because I know for a fact the incident report will not cover the true beauty of that moment.

So first things first we’ve got Yue Qingyuan coming out of the fishtank and back up beside the boat outside, right? And he’s frankly being a real angel about this whole thing; we’ve hoisted him up with a big crane that almost died under his weight, poked and prodded pretty much every part of him, stuck our hands in his mouth and shined lights in his eyes, the whole thing. Frankly he’s the most patient mer I’ve ever encountered! We didn’t send any divers in with him; Dr. Shen was still too squirrelly about direct contact while in the water, which I will admit, I can respect. He is an apex predator at the end of the day best to keep our wits about us!

So anyway we’re up on the deck as Yue Qingyuan circles back around the side of the boat. Now, I bring out some tuna to give him because frankly I think he deserves something nice for his patience aside from a ‘thanks for this it’s totally gonna help your species!’

So I’ve got some nice big tuna and I try to get Dr. Shen to help me throw it over the side; he’s the other head researcher here and he should really try to form some sort of nice relationship with Yue Qingyuan since he’ll be seeing so much of him you know? He calls me an idiot and turns around to stomp down the deck, and slips on some fish oil.

He screams like a girl as he topples over the side of the boat and straight into the water. A dozen people; including myself; lean over the side in time to watch him bob back up to the surface gasping and flailing, and while that’s happening Yue Qingyuan pauses where he’d been circling the boat and comes right up to have a look at what’s going on.

So Dr. Shen looks up to find himself nose to nose with one of the topmost oceanic predators, and credit where credit is due, he held his cool! Stayed relatively calm and didn’t start flailing or yelling or trying to get away.

The first thing Yue Qingyuan does is a little circle around; what I like to call the Friendly Brush. He swims around Shen Jiu and lets his side brush against him as he goes; it’s kind of a way to say hello while also getting a feel for the size and build of one another. We lose sight of Dr. Shen briefly as he’s pulled under by the current from Yue Qingyuan’s movements.

A few seconds later he bobs back up the surface, and by now he’s starting shivering and floundering a little; to be fair he did just fall in the ocean. So, Yue Qingyuan apparently decides the best course of action is to pick him up, roll over, and put him on his midsection.

So now we’ve got Dr. Shen straddling the waist of this huge mer while like half the research crew is freaking out up on the deck trying to figure out what to do now. Yue Qingyuan meanwhile is very calm about this whole situation; he’s got one hand on Dr. Shen’s thigh while he just floats along very relaxedly. Honestly it kind of reminds of sleeping holds observed in smaller mer species…

Anyway, eventually I manage to get everyone calm enough to actually lower down a latter to send some folks down the side of the boat, and after a lot of waving and gesturing Yue Qingyuan swims over to it and we manage to get Dr. Shen off him and up the latter, to somewhere he can dry and warm up.

The best part, of course, is that this entire thing was all caught on camera; and yes, I will be making Dr. Shen’s scream my new ringtone he can kill me if he wants I don’t care I will die a happy man!

Dr. Shang Qinghua.

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