i know this may be a shocker to some of you but sometimes... having a main character with flaws =/= bad main character.
main characters don't have to be Pure Golden Paragons of Your Particular Brand of Puritanical, Black and White Morality to be good characters in terms of writing
sometimes it's nice to have flawed main characters, like shen qingqiu, who have biases and whose narration is unreliable and who, though he develops through the course of the novel, still doesn't completely change everything about who he is.
that does not objective change the fact that his kindness and positive actions changed the fate of the characters in proud immortal demon way
because guess what? if people aren't perfect in real life, it sure as hell follows that characters don't have to be perfect either. people have many layers, and characters can, too. svsss gave us a richness of characters that are complex like that, that are as much capable of "good" and "bad", who are biased and blind and oblivious and react to things in complex ways.
so please.... just because sqq didn't immediately absolved your fav from all his faults because he find out about his past abuse in a "oh so he was a slave!! he was abused!! poor baby!! this explains everything and justifies all his actions and absolves him of his crimes!!!", doesn't mean he didn't feel sympathetic, doesn't mean he didn't acknowledge that shen jiu was a person, doesn't mean he now has an understanding that he didn't have previously. the trauma sj suffered doesn't justify how he hurt others.
THE SAME WAY that because he had the system breathing on his neck doesn't justify sqq for hurting lbh. the same way that the abuse he suffered doesn't justify bingge's cruel and tyrannic actions, nor his overblown revenge.
all of this characters are flawed and complex and carry with them an humanity that makes them compelling and deeply interesting; trying to point fingers and put the blame on everything that happened in One Particular Character takes away their agency about their own fates and the impact and consequences their actions have on others and the world.
hear it from shen jiu himself
and from sy!sqq:
i think that if there's a lesson to learn from svsss, is that you should treat others how you want to be treated; and that the way you go about it will have consequences in your life-- because you are an active agent in your own life, you have agency, and though you are also a product of circumstance, you should definitely use what little amount of agency you have to treat yourself and the people and the world around you with fairness, and if possible, kindness.
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its quite easy to make noises. oouugghhhh. aaaaauuuhhh. uwaaaaaaa. awawaaa. it comes naturally to me
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That feeling when you enter a fandom a few years late and you think it means there will be little to no activity but then realize you’re not too late, there are new people rolling in all the time and people consume media at a different pace and that’s ok (not to mention the bonus: the backlog of fanfic is e x t e n s i v e. Show up late to the party just to reap all the benefits)
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shen qingqiu and shang qinghua are paragons of internet safety. refusing to share their real names with people they met online even after getting transmigrated into another dimension
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(fengqing)
pockets 💖
youve heard of fx who cant keep his hands to himself now get ready for.... mq who cant keep his hands to himself
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everyone had that one guy at their wizard school said edgy shit like "dark magic is just misunderstood, not evil" that ended up wanted in three countries for necromancy
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And then I learned the truth, how everything good in life seems to lead back to you…
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the many faces of immortal master shen qingqiu
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