#sj targeted his students to kill because he was jealous of their cultivation potential

[mxtxfanatic]

Hello fav MDZS meta blogger! I come with a question about SV. I'm writing a fic about Yue Qingyuan and Shen Jiu, and I've been having some trouble handling the whole "SJ never knew that YQY went back for him and got nerfed by Xuan Su" thing. Do you have any thoughts about how Shen Jiu would react/if his choices would change if he found out fairly late in PIDW canon vs a little earlier (say, post-SJ throwing LBH into the abyss vs around the time they became peak lords)? Most discussions/metas I've seen go the "if only SJ knew, he wouldn't have been an abusive teacher/ruined his students' cultivation/tried to kill LBH etc" route, and then end up going down the "so everything SJ ever did wrong is YQY's fault actually" route, which I don't agree with, so...I feel like I need to hear someone else's thoughts about this!

Aww, hello anon! 💖

So, I've actually mused on this before, here! I think the only crucial time for the confession to have an effect on Shen Jiu is actually right when he and Yue Qingyuan reunite as teens, however, I don't think that the timing actually matters at all. I also had a good back-and-forth with @/zykamilah on this post about it, if you want to get another perspective on it. In short, I, personally, do not think that Shen Jiu would have a wholly and unambiguously positive reaction to the confession no matter when it happens, and I also believe that were Yue Qingyuan to be forced to give it, that would be the complete end of their farce of a friendship.

Now, onto how the confession would affect how Shen Jiu treats others: at best, he would remain the same, at worst, he would become a more horrible abuser. People who think that the confession is supposed to be a cure-all for Shen Jiu's shit personality must have forgotten that Shen Jiu was a jealous, cruel, and violent child before he was enslaved. The enslavement exacerbated those terrible traits but it did not create them, and Shen Jiu, himself, did not consider those traits unsavory enough to work on them. He is perfectly alright with being a little shit, and the confession would change absolutely nothing about that, especially given that it is an entirely separate issue from Shen Jiu's asshole personality.