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#like yeah. he didnt. but thats how it was at the time. sorry that pidw was written with modern values and thus sj is villainized
hiemaldesirae Β· 8 months
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one of the major problems i find with online discourse about antagonistic characters and storylines sourcing from novels is that some people cant see past what is said to what is meant- and that other people can, but in their perception of the implied lore, make overdue assumptions of plot and character.
for example: in svsss, it is heavily implied that qiu jianluo s/a'ed the original shen qingqiu, thus shaping his outlook on society in general: females are safe, males are not. this leads to point against him in the form of his favouritism for ning yingying, the only (afaik) female qing jing disciple and his habit of finding comfort in brothels. this is misconstrued by the original protagonist in the novel pidw, leading to a false misconception held by our protagonist, shen yuan, that shen qingqiu is a lecherous paedophile.
as the reader, there are a number of context clues given to tell us how that is not the case-- mostly found in the extras-- and are meant to challenge the worldview, make us realize that like shen yuan, we as the audience only know as much as the author will tell us. did shen jiu hate luo binghe specifically because his name reminded him of qiu jianluo? was he jealous of the potential luo binghe had? or was he merely looking for a target to take his anger out on?
it is not mentioned, therefore we do not know, and should not make assumptions on the canon behaviour of this character towards someone else.
however, this is often not understood by the overall fandom: either they completely look past the context clues that tell us, this character is more than they seem and instead jump straight to demonization without first considering context and setting, or they overcompensate for someone by making excuses to justify behaviour we do not have explanations for.
this is the reason why we have people who constantly demean and bully others in fandom: they cannot read or think for themselves past what is clearly shown to them and refuse to challenge the idea that the author may be deliberately feeding unreliable information to make a more interesting story, and it doesnt help that there are people attempting to justify behaviour that is specifically written to be bad.
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