#that make SY acknowledge that even if he really is a different soul than SJ could he truly say he'd have made different choices?

[silver-spider-art]

Also! Also! Why the heck to ppl end these unhealthy bingqius with set ups that leave them just utterly isolated? They've alienated all the rest of the Sect, LBH chases everyone else away from jealousy, but it's okay cuz SQQ is sooooo happy with his new life as a spoiled husband. T-T do ppl even realize how horrible that sort of life would really be? Like again, write it if it makes you happy, buy don't tag it happy ending. It's can be an unreliable narrator but if those are actually good the narration at some point will disagree with the character's POV. Will somehow state that the author doesn't believe what the character does. If the narration says this is great and everyone is happy, and the characters go yes we're happy, but the actual story depicted is one where one person sacrifices for another while the other just takes and further isolates them.... Yeah... Look I'm not a purity person. I'm not trying to yuck your yum. I just think you should be truthful about how you look at your ships. When you lust after fictional serial killers or genocidal tyrants in your fiction, please just, grain of salt. Don't act like it's goals or happy endings. T-T don't tag it happy ending when a character ends in an abusive manipulative relationship. If someone writes these messed up dynamics and actually acknowledges them as messed up and unhealthy i actually have ended up *enjoying* them. There is nothing wrong with messed up stories.

It's just, ugh, it's the bane of the Internet, because what I want is nuisance. It's the difference between (I wish I could come up with a perfect example rn but I can't) like Lolita vs any of the many stories with teenages love interests paired with adult men. Lolita is from the perspective of the groomer but it begins with a blurb telling the reader that he's on trial for crimes and trying to defend himself. The author made sure the reader knows that this is unreliable narration. Or a serial killer show that makes sure you understand that the killer is messed up and wrong while also letting you get invested in them vs one that excuses and justifies their behavior through the narration to the point people sympathize more with the killer than the victims. It's that sort of shit. I read a fic where after countless murders and tortures and destruction, including torturing SY himself, LBH was utterly forgiven and SY married him. Treated as oh, it's just water under the bridge, all that horror (worse torture and more deaths that SVSSS canon). Like could SY forgive it? He's a very unhealthy man, he actually might. My problem was all the other characters and the narration treating his choice as not just correct but overdue or expected. That any character that did decent was just doing it out of jealousy cuz they didn't get to fuck SQQ. That's the difference! When a character has complete justification to complain about the POV character's choices, the story should treat those complaints seriously even if the POV character doesn't. If for instance LQG or YQY complain about LBH but SQQ ignores it and then the story just goes on and everything is just fine and the complaints are forgotten about by the story, then the author is reinforcing that SQQ was correct to ignore them. That their complaints were worthless.

I just. Ugh. SVSSS is a master class of unreliable narrator. I like that about it though I wish even the story itself actually did more to reveal just how unreliable SY was. He was always lying to himself and us about everything. His emotions, his feels, his desires. Everything he did was through such a lense. It's actually rather fun, peeling back the layers, trying to see the truth under it, and asking what it would take to actually make a man like that be truthful to himself. You only get a few glimpses of that at the end of the story and even then SY is still pulling the wool over his eyes even when SQH is trying to make him face things.

Yet so many authors just want to lie SY told about himself to be real. The uncomplicated man who's just so kind and oblivious and just a little bun to be protected. I want the messy man with horrible flaws and self destructive tendencies who is too in his own head to realize the consequences of his actions. Who is both thoughtlessly passive and manipulatively kind. So caught up in the story that he died obsessing over that he still refuses to live his life.

I’m trying really hard not to be Peerless Cucumber so I’m ranting here rather than in the comments of the fic. But sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who hates SY being a overly kind suicidally self sacrificing idiot. Like everyone forgets he only nearly killed himself when it was faking his death or because he feared fates worse than death. That his obsession with LBH’s happiness above all was a sign of a deeply mentally disturbed man and not relationship goals. Like you can write unhealthy BingQiu. Knock yourself out, but please, for the love of god, don’t treat that behavior like its a happy ending or healthy. What the narration treats as good vs what the characters treat as good matter. It just annoys me so much. Part of what I like about SY is how much of a two faced mess of a hypocrite he is. He’s cruelly kind. Not some precious disney princess with only a sassy mouth. He had no regard for himself, living vicariously through his fav character, like many a chronically online youth. Its messed up and messy. A good ending for him is LQG and learning how to be a proper teach and take care of himself. That doesn’t mean I don’t like BingQiu, it can be so fun, but the canon end for them is messy and so many fan fics just make it worse. T-T I take comfort in the few who’ve done deep dives on SY vs SJ and where they are similar and different. Cuz they aren’t polar opposites.