#bingqiu week 2022 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ben-wisehart · 1 year

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I posted 1,400 times in 2022

35 posts created (3%)

1,365 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@thedoggoesed-ward

@cactus-juice-for-sale

@aquietquixotic

@seaflying-fliptuna

@peachdoxie

I tagged 392 of my posts in 2022

#svsss - 65 posts

#bingqiu - 46 posts

#svsss meta - 14 posts

#shen qingqiu - 13 posts

#luo binghe - 9 posts

#tiktok - 9 posts

#mdzs - 9 posts

#meta - 5 posts

#wangxian - 5 posts

#shen yuan - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#just in case anyone starts to think i have interesting and thought provoking opinions…my inner monologue is 90% ‘haha bingqiu soulmates🥰’

My Top Posts in 2022:

1/2) Regarding the bingqiu-bingjiu thing on twitter today, I don't know how to put this but such discussions seem to prompt a downplaying of sy's worth re the svsss world. I'm not saying that was the op's intention and indeed you and many other commenters had brought up such interesting points, but I saw takes from certain character stans as well that rubbed me the wrong way- bingqiu (or any ship with sy) won't happen without sj, sy has no separate identity of his own from sj. ..

2/2) ...he is just seen as an extension of sj by other characters, he is just a privileged young man who got handed sj's hard earned life and is kind only cuz he didn't go through shit like sj... Maybe it's just my sy|sqq bias speaking but such discourse bothers me fsr..

the twitter threads in question:

https://twitter.com/ShanBlackRX_alt/status/1506618891556077570

https://twitter.com/bobby_speeds/status/1506984146794528773

https://twitter.com/bobby_speeds/status/1507009062135005185

sorry I put off answering this! It's been a busy week, etc. etc. anyway

Yeah, I know what you mean. Like.

Listen. I'm obviously a very outspoken SY fan, and I will readily admit that I can't be unbiased when forming opinions about him. He's my favourite character and I utterly adore him, so seeing people ignore him or outright drag him down to elevate SJ annoys me a lot. but. I'll try to break down exactly what bothers me about people saying SY "got handed SJ's hard-earned life and is kind only because he didn't go through the same hardships"

Firstly, Shen Yuan was literally ripped away from his family and the only life he'd ever known!! Just because he plays it cool and tries to make the most of his situation doesn't mean he's happy about dying! Most transmigration or isekai stories (the ones that I've read, at least) explicitly have the MC either come from a life where they didn't have much in the way of family or close attachments, so the loss of their original life isn't as big of a deal, OR their feelings about losing their old life is a source of tension in the story that gets brought up and focused on.

In Shen Yuan's case, he explicitly comes from a nice family who was very close. SY himself might have been unambitious and felt like he was wasting his life, and sure, we'll never know the exact nuances of his relationships with each of his family members, but there's nothing to suggest he didn't love them. His sister in particular he's described as having doted on.

And yet, they're almost never mentioned again. SQQ finds out he's died and just goes "Well, I've been granted a second chance here, I might as well make the most of it" and just...goes on. This straight up never gets explicitly addressed in canon, and it's not because he doesn't care. It's because he can't. He doesn't have anyone with whom he can talk about this loss. He died and was thrown straight into a world that was constantly reminding him that if he didn't satisfy the System, it would KILL him, and if he DID satisfy the System, there was a very good chance he would get horrifically mutilated by the person he was rapidly growing to care for more and more each day. I've talked about this a bit more on twitter here if anyone is interested.

I probably sound like a broken record at this point but I have to keep saying it: SHEN YUAN SPENT SIX YEARS (excluding the 5 he wasn't conscious for) WITH THE CONSTANT THREAT OF EITHER DEATH OR MUTILATION HANGING OVER HIS HEAD. And that IS a traumatising event. So was losing his old life and not getting a chance to process or mourn it. So was being forced to push Binghe into the Abyss (yes, it was traumatising for SQQ specifically, as well as Binghe!!). So was being forced to send Binghe to fight Elder Sky Hammer and all the million other tiny things that he would never have had to do if he'd had complete control over the new life he'd been given.

Like, look at his treatment of Binghe when he comes out of the Abyss. He's terrified. He's spent so much time afraid of Bingge, afraid of what his return will mean for him, that he can't even bring himself to look at the real man who is before him and see the very real differences he has made. He can't afford to, because he's been living with his fear for so long and he knows that one wrong move could be the end of him.

That time Meng Mo puts him into a deep dream where he experiences Shen Jiu's fate, SQQ is so shaken that he can't even look at Binghe afterwards! Compare that with later, after the punishment program, when he literally HAS experienced the fate that he's been threatened with for years, but instead when he gets out all he wants is to see his own Binghe again to make himself feel better, because he desperately wants to forget the image of the man he loves taking pleasure in torturing him. God. FUCK. I CANNOT be normal about this.

Shen Yuan was a VICTIM. That's what it comes down to. Saying he was privileged and was only kind because he never had to suffer like Shen Jiu did is SUCH a bad faith take. Did Shen Jiu have it worse? I mean...sure, yeah. Certainly, he was traumatised during his formative years when the trauma it would have a bigger impact in shaping his personality. But do we really have to do the "oppression olympics" speech in a novel aimed at adults?

And like. Okay. "He got handed SJ's hard earned life". Let's unpack that, because it's not like "Shen Yuan didn't ask for Shen Jiu's life" and "Shen Yuan benefitted from Shen Jiu's death" are statements that can't coexist. Shen Yuan didn't just get pulled into PIDW because he badmouthed the author, he got pulled in because he died and if he hadn't transmigrated he would have simply stayed dead. Even if you ignore all the trauma he faced in his new life, and all the legwork he himself had to do to get the happy ending he eventually gets with Binghe, I can hardly deny that he was better off in the long run than if he hadn't been given SJ's life.

But here's the thing. Shen Yuan wasn't really "given" SJ's hard-earned life. He wasn't given that life at all. If Shen Yuan had woken up in Shen Jiu's body with no System and complete free-reign over his new life, I would agree with this sentiment, but he wasn't. He was being used by the System with no regard to his own wellbeing.

Seriously, ALL the bad things that SY does as SQQ are the result of the System, either by having his hand directly forced on fear of death, or because he's under extreme pressure and in a position he would never have been in if he'd been in control from the beginning. If Shen Yuan had simply transmigrated into SQQ with total free will, he would have lived a happy, peaceful life of spoiling his disciples rotten and that would have been that. Maybe something would have come up later with regards to Binghe's heritage, maybe there would have been some other conflict from TLJ or the OPM, but the main thing is that SQQ would would have never betrayed Binghe and therefore wouldn't do any of the things he did in canon to push him away out of fear. However their lives would have ended up, I think most of us can agree that they would have only faced a fraction of the trauma they did in canon, if any.

That's why it's impossible to compare SY and SJ on equal footing. It's true that some of the things SJ did (killing LQG and making a move on NYY) were misunderstandings, but ultimately, SJ abused Binghe because he chose to. All of his actions were done of his own volition. Nobody forced him to pour tea on an innocent boy who'd just lost his mother and was desperate to please him. Nobody forced him to make a 15 year old fight a demon. Nobody forced him to give Binghe a fake cultivation manual that would have led a normal person to a dangerous qi deviation. Nobody forced him to push Binghe into the Endless Abyss.

The reason it's unfair to say SY "stole" SJ's life is because we've seen the life that SY stole. We already know* how it would have ended. It's not open to interpretation. PIDW explicitly ends with Bingge taking everything from SJ; his home, the life he'd built, his freedom, his childhood friend, and finally his limbs. The world was broken, with countless people dead or otherwise hurt who weren't so in the SV timeline. If SY's presence was what prevented all of that, then...I'm sorry, but I do think SY deserved that life more.

*One person in the comments of the above twitter threads did make an interesting point that SQQ wasn't the only variable that changed in SVSSS compared to PIDW, and that SQH's warning to be careful when saving LQG might have led to a different outcome for SQQ even if SY hadn't transmigrated. I think this is worth bringing up, and I'd honestly love to know exactly how PIDW would have played out if LQG had still been alive, but ultimately, even if SJ had succeeded in saving LQG, I'm just not convinced his ending would have been that different. I think SJ would have been too proud to admit he was the one who saved him and LQG would never have known. They wouldn't have become friends like LQG and SY did, and LBH's personal resolve for vengeance (the main driver in SJ's eventual fate) would not have been affected by this change.

Anyway yeah TL;DR SY's presence improved almost every aspect of the PIDW world for the better (RIP Qin Wanrong, Gongyi Xiao and Zhuzhi-Lang) despite the fact that he never asked to be there and had a force far more powerful than himself trying its damnedest to make him hurt someone he cared about. Sometimes he failed to find the best possible solution to the problems he was faced with, but he still tried his best to work around the limitations placed on him and in the end, I would say he did a pretty good job of it! Maybe even a Better job than the man who was in the exact same position as him but WITHOUT an omnipotent being monitoring his every move and threatening to kill him if he didn't Try To Kill A Child?? who can say for sure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And to be fair, I think a lot of Shen Jiu fans would agree with this? Like I don't think it's really a debate that Shen Yuan is an objectively better person than Shen Jiu, it's just that some fans find Shen Jiu a more interesting character to read and write about, which is not my own experience but to each their own! I might prefer SY but I still agree that SJ is a compelling character and I can for sure see why he's a popular character to blorbofy. It only annoys me when people try to drag SY down to his level, or downplay the fact that Shen Jiu is still very much a child abuser who showed absolutely no remorse when asked if he thought his abuse might have been the reason Binghe grew up to be a tyrant.

Thanks for the questions and sorry about the length!! I just hear a question about SQQ and my brain goes brrrr

156 notes - Posted April 3, 2022

Hi! I LOVE your SVSSS meta, it's always so well thought out<3 At the very bottom of your BingQiu meta post you mention that LBH is gay. I had interpreted his sexuality in SV as like, he could be attracted to anyone (evidenced by his huge harem in PIDW) but after falling for SQQ, he wasn't interested in anyone else. What leads you to believe that LBH is gay and not bi or pan? (I don't have a strong opinion either way, I'm just interested in hearing your take if you feel like talking about it!)

the post anon is referring to

Oh man I've had this one stewing in my brain for days. I DEFINITELY feel like talking about it.

So here's my obligatory disclaimer that media should be enjoyable first and foremost, and if someone reading this enjoys seeing Binghe as bi or pan, I think you should continue to do so regardless of whether or not it's supported by canon.

To be honest, while I don't read either Luo Binghe or Shen Qingqiu as mspec, I'd probably have an easier time believing it of Binghe than SQQ. SQQ's feelings and attitudes toward women come across very much like your pretty stock-standard compulsory heterosexuality; he talks a lot about how he's straight and wants a girlfriend, but try to name one single woman he's actually attracted to and you come up short. In practice, he's constantly making excuses why any given woman who crosses his mind isn't suitable for him: usually it's "they belong to the protagonist" or maybe "she's too intimidating", and he never seems to realise that these things...don't actually preclude him from finding them attractive.

To Shen Qingqiu, simply not being attracted to a woman is very easy and he genuinely doesn't realise that that isn't normal for straight guys. It's why he finds it so confusing why so many people like PIDW despite all the terrible sex scenes. Even when Madam Meiyin (a woman whose predictions he's just described as infallible) is describing his literal destined partner, he tries to picture a woman who fits that description and immediately dismisses the prediction out of hand because she's unrealistic and would obviously go to Binghe anyway.

I think it's really telling that his favourite female lead in PIDW was Liu Mingyan—the only one who never got sex scenes with the character he was actually attracted to. Like. Seriously. His favourite wife was the one he never had to read having straight sex with Binghe. The lack of sex scenes gave her room to breathe and grow as her own character; Shen Yuan talks about how he thinks she should get "pushed down" but I'm willing to bet that if that had actually happened and she'd ended up in the same ridiculous sex scenarios as the other wives, his fondness for her as a character would have mysteriously dried up.

I don't think I have a specific moment I can refer to for this, but you also just...get the impression that even though Binghe is obviously the person SQQ finds most attractive, he's still capable of finding other guys hot. With Liu Qingge in particular Shen Qingqiu spends a hilarious amount of time fixating on what a Pretty Boy(TM) he is compared to how the PIDW fandom liked to portray him. Tianlang-Jun, Gongyi Xiao...even Shang Qinghua he describes as "handsome with an air of sleaziness" in his first appearance. I'm not saying SQQ wants to bone each of these guys, but it does make you kind of feel like a man's general attractiveness is something he takes note of. He does also describe female characters as pretty, so there's an element of it that's just...the POV character relaying the other characters' appearances to the audience, but with the female characters he's usually describing them as they appeared in PIDW, and I sincerely doubt PIDW ever took much time to establish that any given male character was nice to look at.

Anyway. I'm digressing.

As for Binghe...

God, even when I'm trying to talk about Binghe I'm talking about Shen Qingqiu, aren't I??😔

The problem with Binghe, I think, is that he fixates so heavily on Shen Qingqiu to the point of obsession. Like, sure, it's hard to imagine Binghe (as we know him in SVSSS) being attracted to a woman, but it's equally hard to imagine him being attracted to a man that isn't Shen Qingqiu. He just has such singular focus on the person he's fallen for that you might just as well label him "shizunsexual" as anything else.

So if you heard that he married a man in one timeline and a bunch of women in another, and took this information in isolation, you probably could conclude that Binghe is a bi/pan dude who just got really invested in one specific person to an extent that it permanently blinded him to anyone else he might have otherwise shown an interest in, and that this one specific person just happened to be a man.

However, I do think it was MXTX's intention for Binghe to be specifically read as gay, and not just because she's a BL author with a fondness for making her romantic leads only ever have feelings for one single person (and by extension, one gender) in their lives. The Bing-ge extra just doesn't make sense to me if Bing-ge was genuinely attracted to women. And the story overall, I think, makes more sense when that's not the case as well.

Firstly, I want to emphasise that Airplane didn't originally plan for Binghe to be gay. This is a common misconception that I think stems from his teasing remarks to SQQ in the last chapter. In truth, his original plan was for Binghe to not have a love interest. Binghe was supposed to be a tragic protagonist destined to die alone and unloved. Airplane might have added all the wives in for fanservice, and it's obvious that he thinks he's been writing a straight character since he seems genuinely shocked and even upset(??) when he finds out Binghe is gay in real life, but...at the story's core, Binghe having a loving, positive relationship with someone who meets his emotional needs was not part of the plan at any point.

I want to pull up a quote that I think is incredibly telling. This is how Shen Qingqiu describes the scene in PIDW in which Binghe loses his virginity:

The girl thought, "Since I'm about to die, I must leave behind some memories to ensure that my life won't have been in vain. I don't have many days left, after all, so I won't suppress my feelings anymore."

Then, using her weak and fragile body, she pushed Luo Binghe down.

Luo Binghe put up a brief show of resistance before telling himself "She did it all for my sake. I don't have the heart to reject her final wish." He yielded, still half-reluctant, and went along with it...

(Vol 1 Page 143 of the official translation)

Which is just...utterly tragic. I do want to be clear that it's perfectly normal for men to not actually want sex all the time, even with the gender that they're attracted to. Even if Binghe were totally straight it wouldn't be weird that he didn't want to have sex with Qin Wanyue in a life-or-death scenario like the one above. This scene on its own isn't proof that Binghe doesn't like women, but I think it does show that Bing-ge didn't start out chasing women indiscriminately; his very first time was being pressured into it.

Here's the thing. Bing-ge had no positive male figures in his life, especially when he was young. All the men he encountered were indifferent to him at best or outright cruel at worst. He spent his formative years alone with no permanent caregiver. The Meng Mo arc suggests he was on his own until the age of four or five, and that he was regularly beaten on the streets, usually by men. Once his mother took him in, she became his safety and his shelter; it was the two of them against the world. When he loses her, he resolves to join a cultivation clan to get stronger, and is immediately chosen by a graceful and talented immortal—his dream! For the first time, little Luo Binghe allows himself to believe there's going to be somebody else in his life who will protect and mentor him—but then the harsh reality is dumped on his head and he's alone again. His new Shizun punishes him harshly and encourages others to bully him. His shixiongs are only too happy to oblige. His sect leader turns a blind eye to his abuse.

But Ning Yingying...Ning Yingying is naive and a bit tactless and sometimes her interference causes him more problems than it solves, but she's well meaning, she seems to like having him around, and she's the only person who will stand up for him despite everyone telling her not to. In PIDW, she was the person he trusted the most during his time at Qing Jing Peak. Admittedly not a very high bar, but he has a friend. And then the others. Liu Mingyan, Sha Hualing, Qin Wanyue, the Little Palace Mistress...these are people who make him feel wanted. Needed.

It's a really interesting and frankly tragic mirror to Shen Jiu, who was also abused by men and for whom women became his safety. It's also interesting in the ways that they differ. He goes to brothels to sleep so he won't be around men, but there's nothing to suggest Shen Jiu actually turned to having sex with women for comfort in the way that Binghe did. Shen Jiu closes himself off completely from forming relationships with other people, even superficial ones, while Binghe can't seem to stop forming new connections, even if they never manage to satisfy him in the way he really wants.

I think the members of the harem have varying levels of genuine care and love for Binghe. Unfortunately we don’t have the benefit of their POV and we only have brief allusions to what their individual relationships with Binghe were like in PIDW. Breaking down my exact thoughts on each wife would make this essay even more bloated than it already is and wouldn’t add much overall, but in general, I do think most of them were at least physically attracted to him. Some may have married him for political or social advantages, especially once he started to amass power and…eliminate their other options. Some might have wanted the safety and protection that came with being the Saintly Ruler’s wife. I think a good chunk of them were, consciously or not, using him in some way—but Bing-ge is so desperate for human connection (or at least a parody of it) that he doesn’t really care, especially as he spends more and more time using Xin Mo. If he's being taken advantage of, it’s not like he doesn’t have the resources to support it.

But there must have been women in the harem who genuinely loved him, who wished they could be more to him than just an interchangeable face in the crowd. There must have been women whose personalities meshed well with his. Women who earned his trust and his loyalty. Women whom, if Binghe were somebody with the capacity to have romantic feelings towards women, he would have fallen in love with.

And yet, all it took was a few days with Shen Qingqiu to change everything.

Now, I don’t think Bing-ge in the extra was gearing up to give up his harem unprompted. He wanted SQQ to come back with him. I do think that if Bingmei had simply never returned and provided a way back, Bing-ge wouldn’t have regretted the loss, and I also think that if SQQ had gone back with him to join the harem, Bing-ge would have never looked at another woman in his life, but these things aren’t outright stated in canon so I can’t in good conscience present them as indisputable fact. The fandom is pretty consistent on the belief that Bing-ge goes home with his worldview shaken and develops an obsession with SY, and I think that too, but the fact remains that we will never really know for sure how he moves on from that experience. I'm pointing all this out because I really do want to give mspec Binghe as much benefit of the doubt as I possibly can.

But god…I really just don’t see how it’s possible to read the Bingge vs Bingmei extras without coming to the conclusion that Bing-ge is a gay man who is experiencing a genuine positive connection with another man for the first time in his life. He’s hostile and standoffish when he doesn’t know what’s going on, but as soon as he understands the situation, he melts. He looks at Shen Qingqiu like he’s seeing him for the first time. He starts calling his name just because he can, because he likes hearing SQQ respond to him. He becomes drunk on it, unable to stop. He offers to cuddle him to sleep. For somebody who has never had intimate relations with a man before, he doesn’t even hesitate to start seducing him once he understands the situation. Everything is just perfect—right up until SQQ sees through his deception and the facade crumbles.

I don’t think Bing-ge knew he was gay before this point. How would he? Who could possibly have been a focal point for these feelings? The only male friendship we know he had was with Mobei-Jun, and even though Mobei-Jun is also a MLM, he’s not exactly Binghe’s type and they just don’t have the kind of dynamic Binghe needs in a relationship. He’s spent his entire life being the strong one, the one who saves the maiden, the one who carries the weight of the world on his back. So the relationship he truly craves, even if he doesn’t realise it, is one where he gets to be doted on and cared for. Where he gets his hair braided.

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226 notes - Posted April 6, 2022

im finally reading tgcf

381 notes - Posted January 29, 2022

518 notes - Posted January 10, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Lowkey amused when fic writers make lwj complain about or otherwise express discomfort over eating wwx’s spicy food as if wwx didn’t fully believe right up until the fucking yi city arc that lwj loved spice. that motherfucker would have gone to his grave without ever letting wwx know that their palates were completely incompatible. In an AU where the juniors never got corpse poisoning Wwx surprises his husband one night when he gets home from training like “Lan Zhan, I made you some spicy pork and noodles 🥰🥰🥰 you’re always doing the cooking so tonight I wanted to treat you🥰🥰🥰have as much as you like!🥰🥰🥰are you excited?!” and lan wangji just gives him the sweetest smile ever to grace the face of a mortal man and goes “mn” and sits down and proceeds to eat what is essentially just a bowl of straight chilli oil without losing his composure once

842 notes - Posted April 8, 2022

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