I have been thinking about the blackening (as one does)…
…and it’s so interesting to me, the penalty Shen Qingqiu is faced with should he not decide to yeet his disciple into hell.
Account termination. Instant death. Sent directly home to his already-long-dead body, and that’s it for the villain of the piece who outright refuses his villainy. The protagonist needs a blackening for the story to continue, and Shen Qingqiu is going to provide it or get written out of the narrative. Either way, Luo Binghe is going to lose him. Either way, this is a turning point.
I wouldn’t claim that this is the intent of the penalty, but it fascinates me that the System has, potentially, backed the plotline into a corner - because Binghe still stands to be blackened even if Shen Qingqiu took the other choice.
Think about what that would look like, to him. He’s at the Immortal Alliance Conference, and everything is going wrong. He’s been outed as a demon, and not just a demon - the top tier of demon, as bad as it gets from the perspective of a righteous cultivator. His beloved teacher, the person who has been kindest to him and opened his home and heart to him, is standing there with his sword in hand, deciding what he’s going to do about what must look, to him, like a horrific betrayal. Binghe is apologizing. Binghe is begging for his life.
Shen Qingqiu hears him. Maybe it shows on his face, or in his voice, that he already knew; maybe there’s no hint at all, but Shen Qingqiu is suddenly talking quickly with an abrupt sense of urgency that Luo Binghe is having a hard time keeping up with. Telling him he’ll be wonderful - telling him he’s the best. Telling him the world will be his, with emotions cracking through that aloof mask that Binghe has never seen on Shizun’s face before, and it’s terrifying for reasons that Binghe cannot identify.
(He will, later. When he has time to think, he’ll realize it sounded like a goodbye.)
And then Shen Qingqiu is bleeding. And then Shen Qingqiu is on the ground. And then Shen Qingqiu is dead. There’s no countdown for Binghe - there’s no System, there’s no warning, there’s no answers.
Luo Binghe is a heavenly demon in the middle of a conference sabotaged by demons. Luo Binghe is alone. His fellow competing disciples are scattered, some dead or injured. The Peak Lord of Qing Jing Peak, the second in command of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, maybe the only person he loved and who loved him back, is dead at his feet. No one will believe him if he says it isn’t his fault.
(He can’t believe it isn’t his fault.)
What choice does he have but to run? The last heavenly demon the cultivation world went up against has been sealed under a mountain for years, and one of the people responsible for that is probably looking for Shen Qingqiu already. They’ll be looking for him, too. There isn’t anywhere to hide; there isn’t any time to mourn.
There isn’t even enough time to ask why. Why again.
There is no closure waiting for him, because there is nothing to explain what happened. It just is.
It would be a different kind of blackening, certainly - less intense, probably, less of a warping, desperate thing. But how many times can one person have all the love and safety in their world torn out from under them before it starts to show? Before they just don’t allow things like love and safety to touch them, because that’s the better option?
Interesting to consider that, simply by offering the choices it did, the System rigged the story to guarantee that Luo Binghe would end up in hell (deliberate or not).
Interesting to consider that, even if Shen Qingqiu made what might have seemed like a kinder choice, there was every chance it wouldn’t have been.
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I JUST LOVE LOVE LOOOOVEEEE THE WAY YOU DRAW DAZAIS HAIR!!! 🙏🙏 ,,,so ,,,,fluffy ,,, can u pls tell how u do it 🥹🥹🫶🫶
WAAAH TY I LOVE DRAWING HIS HAIR SM ITS SOOOO FLUFFY DEARVGOD ahem anyway you never heard that from me ok?? anyway as for how i go about doing it...........big huge gigantic disclaimer, i don't think ive ever used an official reference when drawing him so like the way i drew his hair is completely unique to my style and not a good reflection of how it looks in the show/manga. THAT BEING SAID i will offer a few pointers that i have picked up
ok so here's a drawing i did like. uh. Sometime This Week (sorry i gatekeep art from u guys </3)
ok so one thing to note abt dazais hair is that it's rly fluffy and wavy so don't be drawing his hair like he flat ironed it😐 uhm also make sure the part line is in the middle before you start streaking off. OH ALSO DRAW HAIR IN CHUNKS. this is a lot more characteristic of curly/wavy hair where instead of strands you have to try to think of larger sections of hair clumping together. uhm yea that's pretty much it
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I like to think that Leo one day decides to really play around with his portaling and teleportation abilities and see the full extent of them.
Like - continuously throwing one sword and teleporting to it while throwing the next one immediately and repeating this as long as he can to see how far he can keep it up without stopping.
Making little portals in the air that lead right up against the ground so he could potentially just stand on the portal in the middle of the sky.
Ultimate storage system - anything anywhere at any time is available if he knows where to get it (personally my headcanon for why he goes from two satchels to one in the movie.)
Phasing to avoid attacks - like, he could lightly toss a sword a single centimeter and teleport to it, and in that short amount of time he can completely avoid hits.
If they ever do go to space and end up on different planets, with enough training he can just…go there, whenever. Not only would this be great for being well traveled and having more places to go in general, but this also opens up more room for connections and allies that could assist them the next time they need help against a grand foe.
Leo can easily remove injured team members from a fight and get them help without having to account for transportation times.
On that note - Leo’s teleportation in particular acts on a particle level. It’s quite literally breaking him down into particles and remaking him every time he uses it. Both for him and for anyone he uses it on. Who’s to say it can’t be used for healing? At least for basic wounds.
None of this even touches upon the offensive potential of both portals and teleportation. Leo’s abilities flourish more as a support main, but that doesn’t mean those abilities can’t easily be used as weapons - and I don’t think I need to get into how exactly they can be. Portal chopping alone can take on a very different meaning…
Furthermore, I gotta wonder if he’ll always need the swords for this, or if he could one day be able to achieve the same results without them.
My point being - teleportation and portals are super OP. Even with the abilities Leo has in present they are so unbelievably adaptable and so fun to think about in terms of basic mechanics.
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