Luo Binghe: Original Drafts Edition! Who and why?
“[…] in fact, in his original outline, Bing-gē hadn’t even had a romance plotline; he had been doomed to fade away, alone and unaging forever.”
— The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, Vol. 4 (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu)
The drafts version of Binghe! Not Bing-gē, nor Bing-mei, but a secret, third thing! (I’m partial to Bing-xióng (兄) myself, just for thematic cohesion. Bing-mei remains as he is: Shizun’s special glass-heart maiden.)
So! Who is this elusive, mythical Binghe we never got the chance to meet? What is he? How do I get to pick this one’s brains?
Why is he haunting me! What does he want! So much to think about.
Listen: I love my trash sons, both the racoon and wet dog variations, but I am curious about this handsome demon lord who did not bed thousands, and did not steal his shizun to lovingly coax him into a loving and respectful marriage. Alas, Airplane-bro, as is custom, has left me hanging.
The solitary quote above has been floating around my brainspace for months. Intermittently, I would look up at the sky and sigh a big sad dog sigh, and think of this lonely demon-man emperor who seems to be both perfectly representative of No-Shizunitis Suffering Binghe, and on the exact opposite end of the line. I have spent many a night trying to rearrange the blocks of both SVSSS and PIDW like a sad toddler with no plan but plenty of amorphous longing.
Thus, Bing-xiong. My beloved new toy.
We know he is left alone and unaging. This means that:
He does not marry even once. (Sorry, Other Bing Variants. This one came broken.)
He is not defeated, killed, or left to suffer his not-father’s fate of sulking under a mountain.
From 1) we can assume two more things! Xin Mo either gets fixed/doesn’t influence this Binghe the same way, or: Xin Mo is completely written off à la Airplane Retconning, making Binghe potentially even more individually powerful than his younger counterparts.
(Or he just. Takes people’s cultivation ad-infinitum. Interesting thought, but too straight-forward for my tastes. Airplane’s thoughts? Unknowable.)
From 2) we can also assume Binghe cannot die, is under the influence of the Protagonist Halo unto infinity, and will only be put out of his misery once the heat death of the universe deems it a worthwhile endeavour. Either that or the story ends, but. It tickles a miserable part of my brain pink to think Binghe will not be let off even then.
Anyway. Bing-xiong, of course, has the same source material to work off of. Up until the Abyss, and including it, the plotline should be if not the same, adjacent enough to be indistinguishable.
However. This means:
Bing-xiong never got coerced into sex by Qin Wanyue, thus not starting him on the path of sex-dependency/addiction, avoiding Bing-gē’s fate by virtue of the Butterfly Effect. (Read this post because it explains Bing-ge's whole thing better than a lot of things I've seen.)
Again, Xin Mo implications.
Alternate Universe Shenanigans make an appearance. (Shen Jiu’s fever and death was actually meant to happen, Bing-ge just got very, very unlucky and his Universe’s Yue Qingyuan very, very lucky. For a few years. Either that or there is a Shen Yuan for every Binghe! Again: sorry, Bing-ge. You need to find your own. Middle child issues…)
Once the drafts/original outline got lost, all bets are off and now the characters become real people, without narrative influence. This also has the very fucked up implication that Bing-ge is actually a result of exclusively external forces and would have never gone down that path if not forced onto it by Airplane’s unwitting hands. I do and do not love this version. Very Mo Ran-esque, if looked at from afar and squinting.
Other options I’m either too not-high to think, or too high to put together. (Cold medicine is insane?)
I am fascinated by this… Schrödinger’s Binghe. A jaded, lonely emperor left in the ashes of his world, gazing upon his own history and finding fucking nothing and no one. Metaphorically and, like, practically, if I’m understanding Airplane’s musings correctly. Isolated, cursed by his own blood in a completely new and fucked up way!
I need Airplane to speak with me for like, half an hour. This is paramount to my mental health, I’m losing my braincells by the hour.
What happened to this impervious, cocky, badass demon bastard lord to become so alone? How did it happen? Why did it not happen to the other two, or at least Bing-ge, who has had every horrible and shitty thing possible and impossible piled onto his head? What the fuck is up with Xin Mo? Why isn’t it eating away at Big Bro Luo? Or, worse: why is it eating away at him in such a way that instead of turning into a violent yet charismatic, horror-creature of a man, it turns him into the existential terror-fate I’ve contemplated and abhorred since I was seven?
Tianlang-jun as the final boss. Discovering Huan Hua Palace Master’s crimes, deceit and… stuff. Perhaps even uncovering Shen Jiu’s backstory.
Ooh! Worse! Or better? What if he finds out everything, after having followed Bing-gē’s path, and simply… gives up? A grown up Bing-ge, minus the marriage and surrogate-lover part(s).
(More unlikely than other options, but still there, I guess.)
Fucking insane of MXTX to do this to me, personally and specifically.
I can only speculate forever, I guess! Left… alone and pondering forever.
So. Not a Bing-ge, and not a Bing-mei. A Bing-xiong, if you will.
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Can I request Rudy (maybe AleRudy poly??? You decide lolz) x a female ( you can choose not to write this as I know you write mostly gender neutral) reader who proves The Whole toxic masculinity thing wrong as a strong (physically and mentally) independent woman? Like she is strong and can defend herself and she does things that most men thinks she can’t do? (Like carrying heavy things, etc.)
Thank you!!
Hello! This is more Rodolfo centric, which I hope you don't mind! But Alejandro is there too, of course :>
AleRudy with a Strong!Independent!Fem!S/O
Alejandro would have a field day with you, Rodolfo would still be a little bit concerned. Though, that is not to say he wouldn’t like it. I think you’d be a certain kind of awakening for him, especially if you’re pretty muscular too. Rodolfo would have never thought he’d find a muscular woman this hot, but here we are. Both Alejandro and Rodolfo would sometimes have conversations about you when you’re at work. Alejandro would know just how capable you are and would allow you to do just about anything, even if he would offer you his help. Nothing wrong with helping your lovely girlfriend lift some heavy things as it gets done a bit faster that way. Rodolfo wouldn’t believe you to be weak, not in the slightest. Especially not with your kind of personality and body, but he’d still insist on him doing some of the things at first, such as carrying heavy things or scaring away some sleazebags. He’ll tell you a little bit about how he views the world, how he’s supposed to be the one protecting you, but when you just laugh and tell him that you can handle yourself, he actually gets kind of embarrassed. At some point he’ll realize that yes, indeed you can handle yourself in just about any situation life throws at you, but that doesn’t mean he won’t voice his concerns. Picking him up is actually kind of fun, he’ll go completely quiet and hold onto your shoulders for dear life. At first he’d feel kind of bad, he’s the one who’s supposed to pick you up. But, as mentioned previously, you being this strong actually does things to him. It would take a while, but he’d come to trust you more and more with some things that he thought women shouldn’t really be doing. If you work a men dominated job too, then Rodolfo will just shut up, actually. You’re a mechanic? He doesn’t know jack shit about cars. You’re an IT-technician? Computers hate this man, he always needs help since some error comes up. Once the initial embarrassment is over, he won’t hesitate to come to you for help. It’s for the best you work on this since he has no clue what he’s doing in those fields anyway.
Alejandro is super chill with you being strong and independent. Sure, sometimes he’d love to just watch a scary movie with you and have you cling to him in fear, but you carrying those big tires is also pretty nice. He always thought he’d be more into a shy and timid girl, but you’re actually pretty nice too. He wouldn’t fuss over you as much as Rodolfo, he’d just let you do your thing. If you need help, he’ll help, but he won’t be overbearing. Besides, he could probably learn a lot of things from you. You’re an electrician? Awesome, amor! The GFCI just turned off again, could you do something about it? He’ll sometimes talk to Rodolfo about how he should put more trust into you. Just because you’re a girl doesn’t mean you can’t be a total badass and strong like them. Alejandro will also egg you on to pick Rodolfo up since he wants to see him flustered beyond comparison. He loves you both, but there’s just something so fun about a flustered Rodolfo.
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sits up in bed. so lana and ema definitely thought they were responsible for edgeworth "choosing death", right?
(the rest of this post was supposed to go in the tags, because it's not very well organised or written, but it got too long so. here are the slightly edited tags for your reading pleasure (or otherwise)):
i was going to make this solely about ema because she's the obvious one with her open adoration of edgeworth, but the thing about rfta is that it goes to great lengths to emphasise the connection between lana and edgeworth as well.
the sl-9 incident showed that lana grows attached to people deeply, hence angel starr's comment on how, when neil marshall died, 'she (lana) felt like her own brother had died.' with edgeworth, i think it was similar but worse. because he's not just a coworker or subordinate who's dear to her. he saved her life. and it cost him his own.
at the beginning of the case, edgeworth says he was mistaken for thinking that lana was always looking out for him post sl-9 (a statement interesting on its own because that's when everyone else says she grew distant), and, later on, he brings ema fingerprinting powder because lana asked him to. then, of course, there's the 'lady luck' comment he makes.
similarly, on lana's side, you obviously have the end of the trial when she says he did well, but there's also that additional moment post-trial where she's the only one to notice — in a group comprising her, ema, phoenix and gumshoe — that he's 'hiding', listening to their conversation. point is, there's enough to suggest that she might have been the nearest thing edgeworth had to a mia; his 'chief prosecutor' to phoenix's plain 'chief'. they're as close as two people can be in a relationship where one of them is constantly lying and the other is von karma's star pupil.
rfta is pretty straightforwardly depicted as the case which solidified edgeworth's resolve to do what he did; i don't think i have to prove that. rumours about him have reached new heights, his car and knife were involved in goodman's murder, he makes an unprecedented mistake in court by failing to connect the evidence room and carpark incidents, thus forcing the chief of police to enter the trial to do so himself, and he's publicly revealed to have relied on falsified evidence to secure a conviction in the sl-9 case, all of which only happened because of lana. jake marshall even claims that from the beginning — that if you trace edgeworth's rumours back to their source, you end up meeting one person: lana skye.
and it gets worse because at the end of rfta, she thinks he's fine!! she literally says, 'i was afraid the pressure would break you, but you rose above it,' and reminds him he's nothing like gant because he's not alone. she leaves the case thinking he will be okay. and then, what, like a week passes, and she finds out that he wasn't, and that he's gone, and it's her fault. even after she was freed from gant's control, even after she had finally stopped lying, she couldn't prevent herself from claiming another life. so much for 'lady luck', i suppose.
and the game reiterates this multiple times. gumshoe states at the start that edgeworth's ties to those higher up in the department have made him the subject of constant rumours, and phoenix says (in front of ema) that he shouldn't be held responsible for the forged evidence because that was all lana's doing, which then leads to edgeworth commenting (again in front of ema) that he feels as though 'something inside him has died.' it all goes back to lana. we can argue and say that it was technically gant's doing that caused all of this, but lana still took actions that led to it. even her complicated friendship with edgeworth isn't spared; it's that closeness between them that exacerbated those rumours. how could she not feel responsible in some way?
and with ema, it's rather obvious, isn't it? if she hadn't gone poking her nose into things, none of this would have happened or come to light. and, of course, she'd never choose anyone over her sister, not for anything in the world — it's simply not a question, but that's the problem, isn't it? it's not a question. it's not some hypothetical moral dilemma. it just is. she may not have killed neil marshall, but she still has one king of prosecutor's blood on her hands. and now she has to live with that. she just. has. to live with it. no matter if he chose otherwise.
moving on from that a little, i think it's actually wild how much of ema's journey to becoming a forensics investigator is paved with bad memories. neil marshall's death and her subsequent inability to testify are what drives her to begin pursuing it, her first proper investigation results in her idol's "death" and when she finally graduates, the person who saved her sister has been disbarred, and she can't even help because she isn't allowed to. all that pain and constant pursuit of her goals, and she's still the same ema skye, still that girl shrouded in darkness, always one step behind the truth, one step a little too late. no wonder she was angry in aa:aj. i would be furious.
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