iconstasher

Latest Posts by iconstasher

An Ding, International

Back when I did the Airplane Extras analysis I commented on how Shang Qinghua was away from CQMS for months when the Shens switched because he was on a business trip.

I talked about how An Ding must - despite us all saying it would collapse in minutes without him - be such a well oiled machine that Shang Qinghua can just leave it to go on a sales trip for months at a time, and do that regularly.

I also talked about how fucking weird it is that the PEAK LORD is the one going on these trips and posited that it must be visiting the emperor himself because who the heck else is important enough for the peak lord to go in person?

And then it hit me: what if these sales trips are Airplane taking advantage of his modern and creator knowledge to absolutely curb stomp the silk road?

Of course he would have to go in person! He's the one who knows where Rome should be! He's the only one who knows how the world is actually shaped! He has to go on the first contact missions! Ancient maps of the world had some pretty silly ideas about how the world was shaped!

He's also the one who has some general grasp of what other ancient cultures were like! He's used to short hair from the modern world and wouldn't think Rome was full of disgraced villains! Etc.

Anyway, I just really like the idea that Shang Qinghua's "melon seed sales trip" was really him sailing and driving across a huge amount of the world, doing stuff that would terrify and amaze everyone back home but which doesn't register to Airplane as brave because it's just another fucking storm and big fucking whale, dudes, secure the sails and the goods and let's get this annoyance over with.

GM tip: when describing food, it is tempting to go full George RR Martin and make the food sound as good as possible. However, consider the alternative: there is nothing more evocative about a fictional place, culture, or character than the specific way their food kinda sucks.

Emotional Walls Your Character Has Built (And What Might Finally Break Them)

(How your character defends their soft core and what could shatter it) Because protection becomes prison real fast.

✶ Sarcasm as armor. (Break it with someone who laughs gently, not mockingly.) ✶ Hyper-independence. (Break it with someone who shows up even when they’re told not to.) ✶ Stoicism. (Break it with a safe space to fall apart.) ✶ Flirting to avoid intimacy. (Break it with real vulnerability they didn’t see coming.) ✶ Ghosting everyone. (Break it with someone who won’t take silence as an answer.) ✶ Lying for convenience. (Break it with someone who sees through them but stays anyway.) ✶ Avoiding touch. (Break it with accidental, gentle contact that feels like home.) ✶ Oversharing meaningless things to hide real depth. (Break it with someone who asks the second question.) ✶ Overworking. (Break it with forced stillness and the terrifying sound of their own thoughts.) ✶ Pretending not to care. (Break it with a loss they can’t fake their way through.) ✶ Avoiding mirrors. (Break it with a quiet compliment that hits too hard.) ✶ Turning every conversation into a joke. (Break it with someone who doesn’t laugh.) ✶ Being everyone’s helper. (Break it when someone asks what they need, and waits for an answer.) ✶ Constantly saying “I’m fine.” (Break it when they finally scream that they’re not.) ✶ Running. Always running. (Break it with someone who doesn’t chase, but doesn’t leave, either.) ✶ Intellectualizing every feeling. (Break it with raw, messy emotion they can’t logic away.) ✶ Trying to be the strong one. (Break it when someone sees the weight they’re carrying, and offers to help.) ✶ Hiding behind success. (Break it when they succeed and still feel empty.) ✶ Avoiding conflict at all costs. (Break it when silence causes more pain than the truth.) ✶ Focusing on everyone else’s healing but their own. (Break it when they hit emotional burnout.)

First Post!

I deleted my old tumblr because... man idk why it was covid-times and the prefrontal cortex was not in the room with us!! Anyways, I was reminded by my lovely friend @repecca that tumblr exists, and that some of my work has been going around on here, so I decided to post some of my work up officially! Starting off with my most notable (?) work to date, here's my LOTR: The Middle Kingdom Project. Now, it's been over a year since I posted this, and at the time I was... really searchingfor myself artistically, and I decided to go all in on something that I'd been ruminating on for a long time.

So, hello, again. I'm Leia. I do visual development/BG design, and I'm also a writer of things. I love fantasy and transformative work. It's nice to meet you.

Sorry, sorry, but manipulative hurt/comfort is fucking cocaine to me. The predatory aspect of it. The vulnerability—500% better if the hurt party knows they're being manipulated and is past the point of caring. The juxtaposition of sweet and sharp flavours. Barkbarkbark

He's finally warm! Hamster

Imagine you got bullied as a kid so to make up for that insecurity you became a super successful alpha male grindset influencer and then one day you got pushed into a portal and found yourself in an alternate universe where you're a malewife who married your old bully. That happened to Luo Bingge

Not to be a technical writer on main, but I've been bumping into the idea lately that the only reason explaining yourself in more detail never seems to work is because neurotypical people are misunderstanding you on purpose, or because they have short attention spans, or because they just hate listening to you talk – and sure, occasionally that's even true, but most of the time the problem you're running into is more fundamental.

Every time you add more detail, you're running the risk of tripping over a bad assumption on your part about the listener's prior knowledge, or hitting the tipping point where they become overwhelmed with new information (and remember that you don't know which parts of what you're saying will be new information for them), or making a leap of logic that isn't as self-evident as you think it is, or any of a dozen other potential snags which, by definition, you will not see coming until it's too late to correct course.

Basically, every piece of information you add multiplies the odds of you getting blindsided by some vector of misunderstanding you didn't anticipate, even as it addresses the ones you did anticipate. The point of diminishing returns where continuing to elaborate increases the odds of unexpected miscommunication more than it decreases the odds of expected miscommunication is much nearer than you'd like.

The most effective act of communication is not the one which contains the most possible information, but the one which contains the smallest amount of information it possibly can while still getting its point across. It sucks, but it's the reality of the situation. People far more autistic than you have been trying for hundreds of years to invent a way of communicating which doesn't work this way, without success.

All of which is to say that "getting to the damn point" is legitimately a communication skill, not just an accommodation for people who aren't paying attention. If it's any consolation, it's something neurotypical people struggle with just as much as anyone else – if it was easy, technical writers wouldn't have jobs!

[Hanfu · 漢服]Chinese Ming Dynasty (1368–1644)Traditional Crown & Hanfu In Cdrama 【雁归时/The Glory】

【Historical Artifacts Reference 】:

▶Portraits of Chinese Women from the Late Ming Dynasty

▶China Ming Dynasty Blue Damask Gauze Women's Long Garment – Collection of the Confucius Museum

▶China Ming Dynasty White Gauze Long Garment with Subtle Cloud Patterns – Collection of the Confucius Museum

▶Portraits of Chinese Women from the Early Qing Dynasty

【Types of Hanfu – Stand Collar Long Shan / 竖领长衫 or 立领长衫】

In the late Ming dynasty, the use of the upright collar (竖领, also known as the standing collar) became widespread. This collar style was a distinctive development during the Ming period and was generally used in women’s clothing. Based on both portraits and surviving garments, it appears to have evolved from overlapping (jiaoling) and straight collars with fastened buttons.

The upright collar stood up and wrapped closely around the neck, offering both a refined appearance and added warmth. It was typically secured with one or two pairs of zimu kou (子母扣)—interlocking buttons often made from metal. If these fasteners were crafted from gold, silver, or even gemstones, they served not only a functional purpose but also became focal decorative elements. Placed at the neckline and front opening—where attention naturally falls—these buttons added a touch of brilliance and conveyed status and elegance.

Some scholars suggest that the popularity of this enclosed collar style may also have been influenced by climatic factors. The late Ming period coincided with the onset of the Little Ice Age, prompting a shift from more open collars to styles that provided better insulation against the cold.

The design of the stand collar long shan proved to be enduring. Even after the fall of the Ming dynasty, it continued into the early and mid-Qing period. Its legacy can be seen lingering into the late Qing, especially in stage costumes worn by opera performers, where echoes of the original structure still remained visible.

PLEASE do yourself a favour and check out this wikipedia-styled template for google drive, made by @ Rukidut on twitter

I decided to try to sort my ideas and whats canon regarding my ocs with this and ITS PERFECT. IT ALL FEELS SO CONRETE. and i sure as hell AM Going to continue to use this with every single OC I have until google drives is set ablaze- Just!!!!!!!!

Also; link directly to the doc, just copy the file and you have your own lil template!!!!

Today my professor picked up a garter snake, said “Ow!” five times as it bit him, set it back down, and said, “Okay. That’s one defense mechanism snakes have.”

no one is doing it like bingqiu (svsss tpmeme 3/?)

"Aro/Ace person gets given a love potion" story but instead of them being immune or whatever, it DOES work, and they realize IMMEDIATELY that they've been fed a love potion because this feeling is so wrong and foreign but everyone keeps laughing off the idea of it being a love potion because "they were probably just a late bloomer" or "no, you just finally found the right person!" and it's just a horror story about how no one believes them even though they know, they KNOW this isn't right and they can't stand it.

You know, something that never sat quite right with me is the defense of Bells Hells constantly having the same argument as "realistic" not just because "realistic" doesn't mean "compelling to watch"...but also because this isn't actually realistic in like, functional groups.

I was involved in a number of clubs in college and was on the board of several; I am on an alumni board for a university club I was in as an undergrad. I've been in a leadership role in an independent congregation and a member of several political interest groups in adulthood. I've also been an indirect manager (think team lead for a specific project but not the person people report to regularly) in a professional setting - and those are just formalized settings and not just hanging out with friends or smaller group projects.

The idea that it's normal and relatable to have a group of people who just endlessly and repeatedly provide their perspective and argument without any sort of resolution is one of those "wait, you live like this?" moments. During debates, such as for board elections or in one case, a very emotionally heightened decision to eject a member who had been credibly accused of wrongdoing against another, the phrase that got used once everyone had had a chance to talk and address any questions was, essentially, "will further discussion change anyone's mind." Because that is ultimately the purpose of discussion - to make sure everyone has all the information, and to allow everyone an opportunity to speak their piece in the service of ultimately coming to a decision. Discussion about a course of action is not an end point in itself, and there comes a time where you have to say "your feelings are valid but your talking isn't going to change anyone's mind at this point and we need to move forward in some manner."

Romanticizing endless tiresome indecision feels no different to me than romanticizing some other utterly unnecessary behavior like, I don't know, hustle culture. If your friends can't decide on a restaurant for 2 hours (or 2 months) then either do a rotating schedule, decide to meet for coffee/drinks/a bring-your-own-stuff picnic, or if this is food as part of a longer outing, don't be afraid to split up for a small part of it. If you can't decide what to do in a group project, assign a leader or take it to a vote and provide a clear tie-break condition. Flip a coin, if nothing else can be done. But you do not have to live like this; really, it just takes one person to speak up and say "we've been talking in circles for two hours and I'm exhausted; does anyone have new information or a concern that wasn't brought up or is it time to call it?" And your life will be immeasurably better the day you decide to be that person whenever relevant.

In light of The Situation happening right now in the USA, I highly recommend retreating from social media as much as possible and immersing in real life to clean out the gunk of social media type activism

Try as best as you can to track down some old retired folks who have been doing the activism thing for decades. And just old retired folks who care about anything, anything at all.

This crap with labeling the generations and talking like "boomers" are this way and "gen Z" is that way, it's silly to the point of being dangerous.

Younger generations in USA kind of reject the whole thing about respecting and valuing your elders but the truth is, all different kinds of cultures have these values and they're right. Elders have more knowledge and understanding than you can ever find written down anywhere.

And they WANT and NEED young people to connect with them. Elders are suffering more from our society of isolation than anybody else. And they are energized and invigorated by having young people to share their knowledge, information, and stories with.

So often I have been in a room of people majority over 65, wondering where all the "politically aware" gen Z are. And the answer is, they're on social media, arguing with strangers and stressing themselves out, while the "boomers" are getting shit done.

Social media isolates young activists from the most experienced and knowledgeable of all. And it's a dangerous trap for people of all ages who feel lonely and afraid. Either radicalizing them into hateful ideology and cult-style groups, or convincing them of apathy and pointlessness.

go outside, find the elders that know everything, get shit done. This is my advice

What if there's already nothing left to save? There's microplastics in the clouds and soil and our blood and brains. Climate disasters and warming are happening faster than scientists thought it would and all the governments in the whole world are just protecting the corporations and billionaires that are causing this. We're not safe, too much irriversable damage has been done already and its getting worse even more and I'm so scared. We could hit so many tipping points that will kill everyone very soon if things dont change completely from how it is now. I'm only in high school I just want a future. Please tell me I have a future

Hi Anon,

I received a bunch of asks similar to this one over the last several days, and I’m not sure if they are all from you or just a lot of people feeling similarly—but I’m going to try to cover them all here.

First, you still have a future. Full stop. And if you don’t want to take it from me, take it from actual NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel, who said “I unequivocally reject, scientifically and personally, that children are somehow doomed to an unhappy life”.

The future may be harder and more complicated than we would have envisioned without the obstacle of climate impacts—it will certainly be different. But it can absolutely still be full of joy and fulfillment and happiness.

Climate change is not a switch that gets flipped when we reach a certain threshold and then almost everyone dies or lives in a post apocalyptic disaster-movie reality. Climate impacts mean a gradual increase in the difficulty of meeting everyone’s needs, mitigating increasing natural disasters, preserving vital ecosystems, etc. as the climate gets warmer. Tipping points may accelerate that change, but it's still not a matter of a "human society kill switch".

Second, I’m so sorry you are feeling this way. I’m sorry that you feel like your future has been taken from you before it’s even started, I’m sorry that you feel betrayed by the generations that came before you. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to be a high schooler right now, entering into adulthood at a time when the world is in such turmoil without the years of adult life experience to give some buffering perspective.

I know that looking at all the progress we still need to make it seems impossible that we will get anywhere close to where we need to be—but when I was in high school the idea that we would make as much progress as we have right now seemed laughably impossible. In my high school reality carbon capture was a sci-fi idea, electric cars were basically nonexistent, clean energy was such a negligible drop in the bucket that no one really believed could ever meet a significant portion of our energy needs, and climate change was generally considered a low-priority, "tree-hugger" issue if people even believed it was real.

The idea that we would have this much popular support, this much worldwide government action, this much investment and progress in clean energy and other climate solutions would have made my high school self cry with disbelieving happiness.

Every tenth of a degree of warming that we avoid will make life in the future measurably easier. We’ve already shifted that needle from 4 degrees to 2.7 in just a couple of decades. We need to keep pushing, but we are making progress and we have already steered the world away from the worst and most apocalyptic climate impacts.

Just getting this far is incredible, heroic work. That is millions of real humans that have been saved from death and poverty, that is an entire planet of people whose lives will be better than they would have been otherwise.

There is still a beautiful, vibrant, complex, life-giving world out there to save. Things will be different, the world will be different, but there is still a future to look forward to. And I would bet that when you've been out of high school for a couple of decades, the future you'll look back from will have seen a lot more progress than you're expecting right now.

(PS Just as a final side note, if you're feeling spiraling climate anxiety all the time, I would really encourage you to reach out to friends, family, or a therapist for support. Any kind of anxiety--climate related or not--can have a really awful impact on your mental health and we all need extra help sometimes (speaking as a very anxious person myself))

astringent

Look I love unconditional devotion love stories as much as the next person, but there's really something so deliciously raw about conditional devotion.

I have served you and I have loved you for decades, but I will not give up my principles for you. You cut out part of my heart and took it with you down that path that you insist on walking, but you walk it alone. Even when the bleeding, gaping hole you left in my chest kills me, I will not follow you.

redemption arcs 🔥

fuck discussing this subject atp but ig what i dont think ive expressed before specifically is that “redemption” being conflated with removing a character’s personality and complexity is so annoying to me. u can have a deeply selfish and evil person reform themselves without turning them into a conventional good guy slate with no moral grayness and significant flaws anymore. i hate when the character feels like they disappear after an arc such as this. i want heroes to be complicated and flawed y wouldnt i want a reformed person to still be a complex and multidimensional being? i hate when writers do this and i hate when fans expect this and have this as a standard

qijiu thoughts: complicated codependence

after reading a few more shen jiu fics i figured maybe the diverging point when it comes to fan-interpretation is understanding how codependent qijiu is. like, it's not just qi-ge who won't let go of shen jiu, shen jiu 100% spitefully, unwillingly yet helplessly refuses to let go of qi-ge either. the obvious author answer to this is for sj to remove himself from qi-ge because of toxic codependence (see my rant on anti-qijiu pro-sj fics), except i don't think it's in-character for him to ever do so??

the man literally died twice because he couldn't let go of qi-ge until the very, very end. he'll never give up on him as easily as he does in fic, this man is a canonical stubborn asshole who can't let go of anything. that's his entire problem lol

(first time was obviously after lbh gave him xuan su's shards. sj, who had spent the entire time being tortured refusing to bend, cracks at the realization that qi-ge came this time and died. i forgot if him eating xuan su's shards is canon in the qijiu extras or if it's a fanon theory, but i 100% find this in-character of sj to do as a final f*** you to the universe.)

(second time was the qi deviation that caused shen yuan to take over his life. i'll go over this later, but i believe sqh, who transmigrated decades before, likely tried to nudge qijiu into reconciling and instead made it worse. so while in the og!pidw universe, sj never deviated hard enough to die; in this svsss universe, sqh trying to get sj to face his own heart demons literally caused him to die. oops. system got pretty mad because lbh MUST go into the abyss, and so had to scramble to find a sj replacement lol)

preface

much of this is my own interpretation of things btw. i haven't read the qijiu extras in a while so it's very possible some of these things don't follow canon. especially the whole cognitive dissonance part. i've always leaned towards the 'shen jiu is an unreliable, in-denial narrator of his own story, he can't admit anything to himself until he's literally at death's door' interpretation of sj's tsundereness, so that's 100% my own bias peeking through here.

how qing ding peak made everything worse

this a fanon theory i like that has merit given how long qijiu had problems: things would've been so much different if yue qi wasn't chosen by qing ding. like, literally any other peak, qijiu would've had 75% chance of having a happy ending. i feel like any peak with a halfway decent lord with basic empathy skills would have thought 'hmm yes, if we rescue the friend of this little prodigy we can ensure his loyalty to us for life' instead of 'let's dangle the chance of rescuing his friend as a way to get this kid to work as hard as he can until it's too late, then allow the failure to break him down completely so we can reshape him into the perfect successor.' though to be honest the former sect leader probably didn't expect yue qi to literally be broken down.

my thought is that the sect leader kept putting off the rescue over and over, hoping to drag things out until the inevitable happened. but yue qi, naturally wary of adults, panicked once he realized what his shizun was doing. he tried to pull xuan su without permission to force the leader into acknowledging his strength and letting him go... which then led to the entire soul-binding fiasco we see in canon. sure, the former sect leader could've lost his newest experiment, but throwing him into the caves had the bonus of making him late anyway. so a success all around everyone!

we can further theorize the character of the previous sect leader (and how his grooming of yue qi possibly led to his guilt complex and inability to communicate his honest feelings) but ultimately it was qing ding peak's teachings itself that led to yqy's inability to reconcile with sj. because qing ding is the diplomat's peak. the politics peak. the peak where people often cannot say exactly what they mean, must never overtly show favor to anyone, must control every single thing they do or say else the political fallout ruins their sect's reputation.

so it really didn't help that their reunion happened in the middle of sj committing pretty bad crimes like murdering and looting disciples. yue qi went immediately into political clean-up mode, sj misunderstood yue qi's silence as 'i will never tell you' instead of 'not now sj we need to bury these bodies in the bushes', and then later sj was so scornful yue qi's guilt-complex kicked in and he figured 'sj will never forgive me, obviously he doesn't want to hear excuses.' and as yue qi's political position grew, the less he could overtly support and protect shen jiu. the more careful he was of his words and actions, so far removed from the qi-ge sj once knew that sj can't help but lash out. by the time yqy was mentally well enough to talk about the lingxi cave fiasco (if ever), sj had already built up a protective wall of 'this qi-ge is an imposter, the real qi-ge would not have left me.' and yqy didn't know how to tell him the truth without sj's psyche collapsing in on itself. so... he just continued not to tell him.

in which qi-ge is alive but also dead, as declared by shen jiu

sj barely recognized qi-ge once they reunited. yue qi has always been the peacemaker amongst the rowdy slaves, sure, but he'd always been on sj's side. he told sj everything, things he never told the other slaves, and only really clammed up when they were facing beatings by adults in a true us-versus-them scenario. now, however, he's clamming up with shen jiu. he hates it, this intrinsically qi-ge thing that this fake qi-ge doesn't realize he's doing. more than the shiny clothes and well-fed appearance, this is what makes the chasm between them feel real. qi-ge never came back for him, because qi-ge was dead. cang qiong killed qi-ge and all that's left is this qi-ge puppet going through motions of caring for sj it obviously doesn't understand.

(this is easier for him to accept, because if yue qi wasn't mentally dead than he really did willingly abandon shen jiu in the dirt, and accepting that would make shen jiu lose his mind.)

now what to do when qi-ge is dead and he doesn't need sj to protect him anymore? logically, sj should've stayed long enough to fix his cultivation, save up funds, and then leave to become a rogue cultivator before his past had the chance to catch up to him. but sj is not logical. he's spiteful and angry and contrary. he claws his way up the disciple hierarchy on qing jing and spits in the face of yue qi's awkward overtures. he hates the other qing jing disciples, his own shizun, lqg and a bunch of the other head disciples; in fact, he hates cang qiong as a whole because they were the ones that took qi-ge away from him. but at the end of the day, a dead qi-ge puppet is still kind of qi-ge and even if qi-ge threw sj away that didn't mean the reverse was true. sj will not give even a dead puppet qi-ge up; he belongs to him whether he likes it or not (/spitefully).

so as it becomes clearer and clearer that yue qi will indeed become the next sect leader, sj begrudgingly finds himself stuck in cang qiong. one would think things would get better after the former peak lords ascend, since that meant the evil brainwashing sect leader and the resentful qiu-naming qing jing peak lord would've finally fucked off. but no, things actually get worse.

because now that the former sect leader isn't actively sabotaging qijiu's relationship (sure, he didn't mean to break yue qi's mind that bad, but even the worst broken eggs can be turned into a decent obedient successor, except shen jiu's continued existence is threatening to undo all his hard work) yue qi is more able to try and make overt amends. the problem is, by acting more like the real qi-ge, he's threatening sj's mental defense of 'qi-ge is dead, this qi-ge is a fake.'

when cognitive dissonance gives you qi deviations

the more qi-ge acts like he's honestly sorry, the more shen jiu must accept that qi-ge isn't dead. that he either chose to leave sj behind (devastating given sj's abandonment issues) or was forced to leave sj behind and refused to tell him why (more abandonment issues; does he not trust sj anymore??) worse for peak morale, the more overtly sj rejects yqy, the more annoyed the other peak lords get. doesn't sj know how bad it looks for their sect, to have their top two lords fighting like this?? why is yqy not shutting it down, isn't he a politician?

well yes, but as sect leader he now has the freedom to pick and choose when to put his politicking hat on. lqg follows sqq to a brothel and causes a ruckus in the middle of the street? scold sqq for being so overt, because they both know the best way into the brothel is through the back via code word! they learned how to sneak into brothels as street kids ages ago and sqq could have totally done so discreetly! argue with lqg but refuse to explain himself? sqq please, he can't take your side for no reason, especially in front of all these peak lords who already knows he favors you!!

and because shen jiu is facing the cognitive dissonance of qi-ge's... qi-ge-ness, he sets up tests rigged to fail no matter how yqy responds. this way he is always right! if yqy sides with sj, sj's annoyed because he's clearly trying to placate him like a child. if yqy sides against sj, he's obviously choosing to abandon sj again!!

yqy is fully aware of the trap because yqy is a trained politician capable of reading social cues (and sj hasn't changed all that much from when they were kids, he still has that same spiteful edge to him yqy is so fond of). he intentionally falls for them because (1) he deserves to be hated by sj and (2) being hated by sj keeps him from lashing out too much at the other peak lords. yqy is very used to sj's temper tantrums, it's when he lashes out at other people that things become unmanageable.

(during the latter half of their rule over cang qiong, i feel that yqy learned to stop actively chasing reconciliation. he came around for tea and present-giving, kept things civil, and still let sj get away with all kinds of terrible things. he fell for all of sj's traps with his eyes wide open and it infuriates sj, everything about this drives him mad. he doesn't want this soft, unspoken affection, because this was how qi-ge used to handle sj's tsundereness back when they were on the streets. it's another sign that qi-ge is still qi-ge, and this fact brings sj both selfish comfort and undeniable agony.)

it's an awkward balancing act that continues to sour sj's reputation with the other peak lords, but it's mostly manageable until sqh sticks his nose into their business and pushes sj over the edge.

how transmigrators ruin everything

"maybe yqy did something impulsive, did you think of that? why can't you forgive him, he tried so hard? aren't you tired of being angry all the time?" bitch no, sj has been keeping the worst of the qi deviations away for years by performing mental gymnastics around his walls of denial stOP KNOCKING THEM DOWN. Even worse, lbh arrives on the peak and shen jiu hates him. not just because he's got all the potential shen jiu had stolen away from him, but he's so glad to be here. he's making his mother proud. all while shen jiu was dragged here essentially against his will, trapped himself in this bamboo prison out of spite, and then realized the dead thing he's been looking after for decades isn't dead after all. that qi-ge actually did, for realsies, leave him at the qius. that all these overtures, the silent acceptance of his faults, everything could just be out of guilt (qi-ge is ashamed of him) and not out of a ghost reenacting its former lingering affection (the real qi-ge would've still loved him.)

the dissonance, abandonment issues, frustration and everything culminates in a devastating qi deviation. ironically, now that yqy's rule is mostly secure and sj's reputation has soured enough to start negatively affecting the sect, sj finally feels safe enough to let go. in this moment of emotional clarity, sj finally releases qi-ge from his grasp and decides to die.

that was not supposed to happen.

qi-ge's no good, very bad sacrifice

in another universe where og!sqh was too busy plotting to betray cang qiong mountain, the frosty and emotionally charged stand-off between yqy and sj continues for years. then, lqg dies. i'm torn between yqy believing sj killed lqg or not. either way, i don't think he'd be 'disappointed' in sj as portrayed in some fics. i also don't think it would infuriate sj that yqy thinks he's capable of killing lqg, because if anyone knows how much of a murder kitten shen jiu is, it's yqy. maybe he's offended yqy thinks him dumb enough to kill him in such a sloppy way. maybe he's even more offended that this turns the other peak lords against him and yqy just lets it happen.

or maybe (through my qijiu-tinted glasses) it pisses him off that yqy does tell the peak lords that they should all stand together, and the other peak lords ignore him and hate sj anyway. they're disrespecting yqy because they think he is compromised, and sj worked too goddamn hard to solidify yqy's position to have it undone by a murder he didn't even do.

(ironically, if lqg was alive he'd tell the other peak lords to f*** off for disobeying yqy. lqg's canon respect for yqy is something i feel needs more acknowledgement, likely because i feel half the reason they don't get along is because of sj's utter disrespect of their sect leader. who cares if sj is a street rat or the son of a wealthy family, no one disrespects yue-shixiong!)

now the story of sj's road to becoming lbh's plaything is a well-worn track that everyone knows. i do subscribe to the idea that sj took one look at huan hua's eagerness, lbh's vendetta, and yqy's recklessness and made the same decision he did in the svsss verse: he'd rather qi-ge be free (happy) than dead. this is a battle he cannot win, and he'll be damned if he lets lbh drag cang qiong down with him. when yqy promises him he'll save him from the water prison, sj spits in his face and tells him for the final time that xiao jiu and qi-ge are both dead. he let sj go decades ago, and now sj is letting qi-ge go in return.

sj faces the torture with the tenacious spirit of someone who'd withstood worse torture for years. in fact, he's a bit impressed by lbh taking revenge on him the same way sj took revenge on qiu jianluo. either way, even with more than 50% of his body missing, sj faces his fate in utter defiance. and then lbh shows up with xuan su.

the reveal of qi-ge's failed rescue and demise was devastating for a lot of reasons. most obviously, sj's sacrifice to keep cang qiong safe from the fallout was a failure. everything he'd done and sacrificed to keep qi-ge safe, all the scorn he'd borne as the hated qing jing peak lord was thrown away because qi-ge wanted to be a moron.

the other reason why sj broke was because qi-ge did come for him. he simply failed. and the tiny part of him that always suspected qi-ge was still qi-ge now has confirmation that all those years ago, qi-ge likely did the same. he came for him at the qius, but he failed. the only difference now is lbh's willingness to tell him the truth vs. yqy's decades-long silence. the only difference now is that yqy is actually, physically dead.

sj has been living on borrowed time ever since he looked the new yqy (fake qi-ge) in the eyes and allowed himself to be brought to cang qiong mountain. everything he did was to elevate himself into a position where no one could hurt him (and qi-ge) anymore, the same way he'd acted back when they were on the streets. now that he was in this state and qi-ge was dead, his time was clearly up. and sj refuses to let lbh have the last laugh. as much as he respected lbh for his ruthlessness, it's not enough to stave off sj's spite. he didn't let qjl control him in the end, and he won't let lbh do so either.

final thoughts

some last, disorganized thoughts on qijiu's relationship

rather than yqy telling sj what happened, i think showing him the scars all over his body would be much more impactful. sj knows how worthless words can be; he's likely prefer being able to touch each scar and check the meridians for himself. yqy doesn't need to say a word, his entire body is a testament to the torture he'd endured.

ironically, sj fixing up cang qiong as a tactician and his personal refusal to put himself in weak situations made yqy incapable of showing his care through action. all of his crises were political/reputation-based/etc. all things qing ding's teachings guaranteed yqy to fail all his speech-checks. and yqy is definitely not the type of person to engineer a false crisis just to swoop in to save sj... not because of any moral reasons, but because risking sj in any way would be absolutely unacceptable. in yqy's world, it's sj > the sect > good morals. he does have good morals, yes, but he's also pragmatic and self-aware enough to know when to put the things he cares about first.

there was a theory i read before about yqy and sj's trauma responses being to shut down and say nothing in the face of accusations, and i agree with this. saying nothing often netted less punishment than 'making excuses.' even without this coping mechanism, the mental trauma of having his mind and body broken could've easily stopped yqy from being able to even speak around the topic for years. if he doesn't talk about it and no one sees his scars, he can pretend it never happened. sj's scorn of him is forever a sign that it did happen, but that's fine, he's always made exceptions for shen jiu.

i don't really know where the uncomfortably-creepy-no-boundaries yqy towards sy came from? in the original novel sy clearly like yqy and views him in a positive, big-brother-shape light. even towards the end of the novel when yqy confesses, sy feels more guilty for being an imposter than angry that yqy failed sj. yqy even steps aside for lbh thinking 'well, at least sqq is happy now' because that's what he wanted for sj for so, so long. for him to be happy, even if that meant forgetting qi-ge.

(the no-boundaries thing is something i disagree with in general, because i think yqy's political and social training would make that very unlikely. he doesn't call sqq xiao-jiu as often as he does in fics, i think he did so in canon because he was delirious and exhausted post-drawing-xuan-su. i figured qijiu's latter years cooled off a bit as yqy realized direct overtures weren't working and went the coaxing-stray-cat route to everyone else's befuddlement.)

does qi-ge know sy is not sj? i can go either way with this. the theory that he does know but he's repressing it out of his own mental wellbeing is intriguing; but so is him assuming sj losing his memories means sy is a different person. which means he's always been happier without qi-ge. either way, i do believe yqy no longer views sqq-y the same as sqq-j. after the first few years post-qi-deviation, i think yqy is emotionally mature enough to realize sy is here to stay and that the sj he once knew (either because of his lost memories or whole-soul transplantation) is gone.

i am a qijiu shipper, but i do also like platonic qijiu. my only prerequisite for any other-ship-jiu fic is some kind of qijiu reconciliation. i honestly don't think either of them would have good romantic relationships unless they fix their own relationship first. qi-ge can't marry someone, that would remove sj from being the most important person on qi-ge's list. despite scorning him, sj being number one is one of the only things holding sj together throughout their divorce era. sj cannot marry anyone because that would give qi-ge the false impression that sj is happy and qi-ge is now free. and qi-ge is not allowed to be free. he will belong to sj for as long as sj wants and nothing is allowed to interfere with that impression. lol both of these are sj-based, but sj's always been the dominant party in this relationship. whether or not qi-ge is jealous of sj's new lover is irrelevant; as long as sj is happy, the og!sj-simp qi-ge is also happy.

i have too many qijiu thoughts and not enough time to write a fic about them, alas. i find their relationship fascinating and very integral to their personalities no matter the au or ship.

Can’t wait to meet Caldarus sooonnn!!

Dog doodle

and therein lies the real horror of bullying, of abuse, of oppression: you stop being yourself. you begin to chip away at everything that makes you you in order to create what's least likely to get you hit. you begin to view life as a series of mitigating choices - how much can you take away before you just become a corpse?

sy trying to create a pidw au would be so funny

i feel like he'd actually commit to it to spite airplane. at first, it garnered attention bc it was from the peerless cucumber, notorious critic and biggest pidw hater, so ofc they're all curious how pidw would look like in his eyes. it was surprisingly (well not really, considering the tens of paragraphs peerless cucumber wrote during his rants, all of which have immaculate grammar and spelling— bc ofc he can't let anyone find something to nitpick on his review so they're forced to see the point!) well-written and definitely more plot-focused.

majority of the readers disappeared after the first few chapters, mainly because of the lack of smutty scenes, but those that do remain are very engaged. one of them is airplane's burner account, when he needs to separate himself from his airplane persona. he's really, really curious as to what his hater is doing to his work.

he... he actually likes it. it's not really the novel he envisioned when he was first working on pidw, nor does it contain all the elements of his original draft, but it was good. he likes it a lot better than what pidw turned out to be.

airplane spent so much time contemplating and considering before finally saying fuck it, and dms peerless cucumber to see if he can work as a co-author with him and they can rewrite pidw together. he even sends parts of the original draft (what was left of it, anyway) as incentive!

it takes a long week before even peerless cucumber replies, and by then he has written a novella detailing how much better the original draft was and him screaming very informally at why airplane had to cast it aside.

lol i need money bro im broke af and porn sells, airplane answers.

it takes another week before peerless cucumber finally answers. then live with me, his message reads. no rent. i'll pay for whatever food you want. and whatever bills you have. just write a good fucking novel, i swear to god.

airplane thinks it's a joke, until he receives the address. an actual penthouse. in the richest streets of guangzhou. there is also a request to meet up (seeing as they don't actually know each other, and sy's brothers are very intent on not getting him murdered in his sleep) and airplane, after much, much thinking, accepts.

airplane does not really know what to feel when he finally meets and talks to shen yuan— pampered third son of a very wealthy family, with two protective older brothers and an even more protective little sister— and sy is just. well. he's exactly airplane's type. the beautiful, ice prince who apparently has only shown this much emotion around airplane. sy's meimei had told him cheerfully and then threatened to gut him if he so much as steps a foot out of line. airplane is starting to feel like he's just met a mafia family.

shen yuan's family aside, airplane is actually living his best life. he no longer has to worry about money. he lives in a luxurious (gods he has never seen such a large bedroom before wtf) penthouse without needing to pay rent (!!!) and utilities (!!!) and even food (!!!). he can write as much as he wants. this must be what artists felt like when they're taken care of noble families in exchange for their art.

he does... well. he and peerless cucumber are friends now. they work on the rewrite together. airplane keeps finding out many things, like how shen yuan likes his tea with a lot of honey, dislikes milk chocolate, and prefers drawing over writing. he also runs hot during the night, when he sleeps.

how does airplane know that? well. bros gotta do what bros gotta do. it's a good thing they both like to cuddle.

Shen Yuan stared up at the man, disbelief clear on his face.

The man before him huffed a laugh, brown eyes becoming crescent shaped with amusement. He was a little taller than Shen Yuan, a little broader, with a sleeve tattoo covering his right arm to his wrist. His dark brown hair was softly curled, more wavy, and a little shaggy, falling to his shoulders. His face reminding Shen Yuan of Binghe. Not a lot, but just enough if he were to tilt his head and squint.

“You’re just a kid.” When the man finally spoke his voice was as smooth as velvet. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen.” Shen Yuan automatically responded as he gawked.

The man had round wire glasses, a piercing on the left side of his lower lip, both ears were pierced, and he had cheekbones that belonged on a magazine cover. He was a little older than Shen Yuan expected. Somewhere in his late-twenties compared to Shen Yuans late teens.

“Cucumber-Bro, come on, I’m not that different.” Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky offered a smile, showing off dimples underneath a days worth of scruff.

“How old are you?” Shen Yuan demanded, still blocking the doorway into the dorm.

“Thirty.”

What the fuck?

“What the fuck?” Shen Yuan asked aloud.

Seriously, this was the caffeine addicted crack-writer?!

When Shen Yuan had woken up back in his dorm room instead of in bed with his husband in the bamboo house, he immediately contacted Airplane—it was a gamble, but it paid off. The relief Shen Yuan felt when Airplane responded was like a weight lifted off his shoulders. He gave the other man his phone number and address, then waited an excruciating five days until the two could meet. (Because Shen Yuan lived in Beijing, but Airplane apparently lived in Chengdu, and last minute flights weren’t cheap.)

Shen Yuan knew that his friend would look different. Hell, Shen Yuan looked different! A little shorter, a little rounder, way younger. With pitch black eyes, short inky black hair, and an ear piercing. He was pretty rather than handsome, softer than Shen Qingqiu.

And it wasn’t that Shang Qinghua wasn’t handsome—he was! Like everyone else in PIDW. But Airplane?

“Can I come in?” Airplane asked while shoving his hands into his back pockets. He wasn’t dressed fashionably. His beat up backpack was slung carelessly over a shoulder, jeans were ripped due to wear and tear, his faded band shirt was due to too many washes, his sneakers were scuffed. And yet…

Shen Yuan dressed in the latest fashion. He tried his best to look good, he had standards for himself! He looked like a C-Pop star.

Airplane wasn’t even trying to be hot. (WHY WAS HE SO HOT?!)

It shook something inside of Shen Yuan. All of his past theories of Airplane being a troll flew out the window.

“Well?” Airplane looked like he wasn’t above shoving past his friend to get in.

Shen Yuan allowed his friend inside, still shook.

“Shang Qinghua.”

“What?”

“My name, bro.”

“Wait…you used your actual name for the character closest to Mobei!? Fucking Mary-Sue!”

“Ah, there we go, there’s the Peerless Cucumber I know. Although it’s weird to hear such vitriol from a face so cute.”

Shen Yuan felt the blood rush to his face and wished he had a fan in his hands to use as a weapon when Airplane chuckled.

“Come on, let’s try to figure out how to get back home,” Shang Qinghua said as he moseyed to the desk in the room.

Shen Yuan sighed as he closed and locked the door.

BONUS:

SY: I thought you said you were a broke university student who wrote to make sure food was on the table.

SQH: Yeah, dude. I’m working on my dissertation. Writing pays the bills.

SY: YOU’RE GETTING YOUR DOCTORATES?????

SQH: Yeah, in Topology.

SY: YOU’RE GETTING YOUR DOCTORATES IN MATHS?????

See I don't necessarily disagree with what seems to be the primary reading that Yue Qingyuan's shifu fucked him over, caring nothing for his needs or preferences and only for whether he was useful. That makes sense, it ties into plenty of the generational and societal themes of the story. It fits.

But iirc we don't actually get enough information to know that's what happened.

And the thing is it would be so in-character and also thematically appropriate if Yue Qingyuan absolutely did not explain his goals or why he was working so hard, because it was private and shameful and he didn't expect any sympathy, and there was a high risk of losing everything if he blabbed.

And also if he engaged with the existing ruleset with which he was presented, i.e. 'can't go off on your own on personal business until you've mastered your sword,' in the most negative and controlling manner possible, as absolute commandments.

He's a different kind of guy but he comes from the same background as Shen Jiu! It fucked him up also!

He is very very very not a guy who trusts the system to make allowances for him--even once he has all the power he 'does what he wants' and 'makes selfish choices' as a conscious transgression; not something he has a right to do, just something he can get away with so he's gonna. (And ofc he spends almost all the latitude he grants himself on sqq.)

And even less is he a guy who opens up easily.

He isn't too proud to ask for help or pity, so much as he just doesn't expect to get any.

So in this interpretation, he understood that rule as a non-negotiable barrier in his path, the target to overcome, and focused all his considerable will and talent on overcoming it through the sphere of action he felt he had control over.

And fucked himself up bad.

Whereupon his teacher, possessing absolutely no context for this dumb shit their star pupil pulled, did the only thing they thought might work to save his life, paying in the process no attention to the raving of someone deep in a psychotic break.

Like, I feel like there should have been a better, kinder medical option, but I don't know for sure that there was, so I can't say with certainty this was the kind of cruelty that derives from not caring enough.

And it really would be kind of elegant and so typical of Yue Qingyuan's fundamental tragedy if the real mistake was 'not confiding in anybody' the whole time.

And he was just so deeply sunk into the understanding that explaining and asking were useless that, even looking back, it never really occurred to him that maybe his mistake wasn't 'fucking it up when trying too hard to solve everything on his own' but 'assuming there was no help to be had, and that he had to do it all on his own.'

Like. What if this really could all have been avoided if he'd just trusted and communicated with the adult in charge of him? But of course, of course his history of trauma (neglect, child abuse, exploitation, being the One Responsible for the younger kids whom he could not keep safe) meant he was absolutely not going to do that.

It was basically impossible. For the person he was, the person the world had made of him. And that's always been the core tragedy the whole novel circles back upon.

People can only ever be themselves, and so very often the elements of self that let them survive until now are that which dooms them, that means they need someone else to intervene if they're ever going to be saved. Because your personal doom is always the thing from which you can't save yourself.

There’s something about Shen Jiu that really sticks with me in a way that not many characters do. And I can’t stop prodding at that and trying to figure out what it is! And today, what I’ve shaken out of the story is that Shen Jiu embodies a lot of pretty visceral fears.

There is… a lot that goes wrong in his life. And given the role he has in the story, there’s no kind of miracle fix that comes in to solve his problems at any point. It’s much more likely that whatever breaking point someone else pushes him to (killing qiu jianluo) or whatever partial resolution he manages to claw out for himself (entering cang qiong, even if it’s much older than usual) will be weaponized against him in some way. Even in the happier timeline, it’s only happier for him in that he doesn’t have to be tortured or learn that yue qingyuan is dead. Instead, he dies, very young, and the few people who would have mourned him don’t do so, because they don’t know that he’s gone (which is another wrenching fear, the idea of disappearing and nobody around you even noticing). His life is a worst-case scenario, and originally it’s something that happens to a deeply unsympathetic character, so hey, whatever, right? Yes, except for everything the rest of the story reveals.

So, I will go ahead and assume that most people reading this book have not been purchased by a young master and mistreated and forcibly engaged to his sister. Probably not not the most common backstory. But a lot of people have Been Through something, whether that was thanks to outside forces, bad luck with brain chemistry, or hell, just the stress of something like living through a long pandemic. It’s not that rare to live through an experience that leaves you wondering if what has happened to you left you…. damaged, or broken. It’s not usually a good idea to linger on, and humans are capable of a lot of recovery, but–

Shen Jiu gets to find out that yes, absolutely, it did damage him, in practical and emotional ways that he failed to recover from, external and internal. When Liu Qingge wants to upset him later, all he has to do is make a dig that ‘even if talent doesn’t guarantee high achievement, it’s still better than starting to learn at age sixteen, lmao.’ And Shen Jiu refuses to admit that he’s going to the brothel just to sleep, because ‘seeing women and saviors and huddling in their arms for comfort’ is shameful. I don’t expect to ever fret about how I started cultivating too late in life, but the idea of receiving that confirmation that something was measurably, observably lost in me, that sinks a nasty hook deep into my stomach.

And I don’t want to get distracted with a whole rant about this, but Qi-ge “abandoning” him at this same time is an absolutely brutal thing to throw into the mix. It tears both of them up so badly that they can’t even begin resolving it before they die, but as far as Shen Jiu knows, someone he adored and trusted just… forgot about him. It was too much trouble to come back for him. Against the odds, Yue Qi found a spot in a cultivation sect, had connections and power, and either forgot to come back for Shen Jiu or decided it wasn’t worth doing. The end of extra thirteen, slightly rephrased, would be ‘it would have hurt shen jiu less to learn that yue qi was dead than to learn he chose not to come back for him.’ Again, confirmation of a fear that you want to believe is irrational. No, the people you care about aren’t just waiting for an excuse to get away from you. Except for Shen Jiu… mm.

But what really, really got to me was the whole Binghe situation. The discourse scene is uhhh spicy right now, so let’s be real explicit that the way he treated Binghe was inexcusable. But what put the nail in my emotional coffin was realizing, again, that it’s about the fear that your experiences have damaged you. Not just the fear that they’ve damaged you, the fear that they’ve poisoned you, that they’ve affected you in more ways than you’ve already noticed, and that no matter how you try to leave your mark on the world, you’re doomed to ruin everything you touch. The last few 79 extras are very hard for me to read, because Shen Jiu’s conversation with Yue Qingyuan is so much about his awareness of how he’s responsible for shaping Luo Binghe, and then his conversation with Luo Binghe is about his realization that simple proximity to him was enough to doom Yue Qingyuan to a terrible death. It’s absolutely suffocating, the idea that you yourself are a poison in other people’s lives, in ways that you’re completely unaware of.

There we go, that’s enough being sad about Shen Jiu for the day. I kid, there are not enough hours in the day for being sad about Shen Jiu. But it’s time to go accomplish other things while being sad, because my mind has been circling around these ideas all day.

(non-exhaustive) list of things luo binghe has gotten jealous over in increasing order of absurdity:

liu qingge

yue qingyuan

gongyi xiao

zhuzhi-lang

shang qinghua

himself (alternate universe)

the ladies that try to set him up while binghe is de-aged

madam meiyin

liu mingyan

the three nuns

tianlang-jun

ning yingying

ming fan

stair sweeper

himself (younger version - dream)

himself (younger version - past self)

himself (younger version - temporarily de-aged self)

all of qing jing mountain peak

all of cang qiong mountain sect

the entire cultivation world

the entire human race

himself (literally just himself)

happy year of the 🐍

hare hare hare hare hare hare HAWK

(available as an 8x8 print from my store)