#so bingqiu and moshang flirting with him

[piosplayhouse]

Yeah, I can see your perspective for sure!

Putting some thoughts under the readmore so this isn't too long:

I think the most common valid complaint I see from even SV mains is that bingqiu isn't really a developed relationship by the end of the main story, and I would definitely agree! But I do think there is some merit in considering that a. The story ends with the note "their story has just begun", so I guess you could argue that the point is that it's sort of open-ended of how you think their relationship continues (in the spirit of svsss's main themes centering around the beauty of fan creation) and b. the svsss extras are a lot more bulky than the other novels' and contain a great deal more development/content for post-canon bingqiu that isn't even awarded to the other couples, like their canon wedding ceremony and complete outsider povs to their relationship in the form of the airplane extra.

I didn't personally think that bingqiu getting together was forced, but that's mostly to do with how I read sqq's character development as having nothing to do with developing new feelings and everything to do with growing into his feelings and being able to accept and see people for what they are (he's always loved binghe, he just wasn't comfortable acknowledging it because he was essentially living on a limited thought fear survival mode for 10 years). I know their actual "getting together" scene is very divisive within the fandom, but I find it really fitting in that it ties a lot of the meta themes regarding the stallion genre together-- sqq foreshadowed it from the very beginning: sex solves everything in stallion novels. And in a surface-level way, this is true. Sex saves the world of svsss, but rather than being romanticized, it's unglamorous, disgusting, uncomfortable. It's forced by a hand of god working much in the same way as airplane and other webnovelists like him-- physicality is the ultimate goal because it gets the most approval from horny readers. But scum villain subverts this because in reality, nearly nothing is solved by the sex. It's only when bingqiu talk about their feelings that they feel secure and begin to heal. (Also I'm not sure if you read the extras but I do have to say that binghe isn't actually that clingy by nature it's all sqh's fault because he directly told binghe that the best way to flirt is to act pathetic and clingy LMFAO . And it worked! SQQ actually talks a lot in the extras about how he likes when binghe pushes him and how sometimes he wished he would push more so he could pretend to "give in"). SQQ is such a good unreliable narrator because he continuously fools himself into thinking ways opposite to how he's feeling, and his relationship with binghe is entirely an example of that.

Ironically, hualian is my least favorite main couple because their feelings really also don't seem to develop but in a totally opposite way. From the very beginning they're sort of "happy ever after" coded and really don't go through any patches where you could doubt that they'll end up happily married. Which is good for some people! But tgcf is, I believe, really the only book of the three that's marketed mostly as a romance novel (as opposed to SV being first and foremost a satirical parody and mdzs being more of an action/mystery novel), so the fact that Hualian are basically married from the very beginning and this never changes is just kind of .. boring to me sahksn

But that's just my opinion! Again I'm not sure if you've read all the extras but if you have I'm curious on how you feel about moshang (who are a canon mxtx couple! A lot of people don't know this but they are confirmed) because they're a Can Of Worms for sure.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!! It was really fun to read and I'm glad we could have a nice discussion about this, it's interesting to get other perspectives! ^^

(putting on my conspiracy theory hat) yunno a lot of people make the argument that TGCF is the best mxtx novel just because it's the last one and she's "learned from her mistakes" but you know... I don't actually agree.

Sorry I have to drag scum villain into everything I post but I do think that there's something to say that mxtx's first book, before she became really popular, was about how popularity can pollute a writer's intentions and prevent them from pursuing what they actually want to write. I do think this applies to tgcf, which does, in my opinion, show a sort of stress that comes with being in the limelight that sv didn't have. I've seen a lot of people comment things like "SV is good but it needs a LOT of editing" and it's perfectly fine to think that way, but I do think you have to take into account that ultimately... SV was not the story that mxtx chose to heavily edit, it was tgcf.

I don't really like to make assumptions about the writing process because you truly don't know what's happening but in my personal opinion SV has a spark that the others don't have quite as much of, the spark that's just "oh, the author had a LOT of fun writing this". And I think that's, though not as quantifiable as some other measures of books, is a very important part of making a piece of writing good!