#you know I was actually thinking about the other day#I was trying to imagine a scenario where lbh would be hysterically clingy towards nonSY!Love interest#And then I realized it wouldn't make sense for Binghe to be so clingy because said love interest didn't send him to hell#And then I realized that shen Qingqiu really went and fucked up Luo Binghe 😭😭#Like he gave him SO much issues#About being wanted about his demonic side about fate about world about himself#I guess it's good that they are immortals because it will take A LOT of time for sqq to undo all the damage he done to lbh @luobinghehasbpd
RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT!!!!! like this is what GETS me when people depict Luo Binghe as some like delusional yandere who imagines a relationship that never existed between them and can't take no for an answer: the hysterical clinginess is overwhelmingly a result of Shen Qingqiu's specific actions!!!
I see it often joked that Luo Binghe would fall for anyone who is basically kind to him, but that's really not what we see in canon! (If it were true, Ning Yingying would have been his only love!) Shen Qingqiu - for reasons but entirely understandable and not so much - went out of his way to try to get Luo Binghe to care about him, and treated him all-around as the most important person in the entire universe. Of course we know why as readers, but for a kid who'd felt useless and small and disgraceful almost his whole life?
The long and short of it is: Shen Qingqiu made it weird first!!!!
He was the one who started off intensely invested in Luo Binghe - obsessed with him, even. He was the one who constantly singled him out and thought about him and treated differently to everyone else. He was the one who blurred the lines between an ordinary teacher/student relationship and something much more emotionally involved.
And then, he was the one to detonate things as if to cause the greatest degree of emotional damage and cruelty.
In every AU fic I've come across that isn't presented as a comedy, Shen Qingqiu is presented as a basically ordinary, compassionate guy, who maybe at best strikes up a friendship with Luo Binghe but never actually implies any greater level of feeling - it's always Luo Binghe who cares more, to an uneven and unrequited extent.
But even if you don't think Shen Qingqiu was capable of romantic feelings for Luo Binghe yet while he was still underage, he arguably cares even more about Luo Binghe than vice versa!! Because Binghe is the protagonist of his (least) favourite webnovel, and because he thinks his future bodily wellbeing resides in his hands, and because the System outright tells him that Luo Binghe is The Most Important Person In The World. Binghe could never have been just another student to him! The canon dynamic is that Luo Binghe's obsession came about as a result of Shen Qingqiu's pre-existing obsession.
So, we really just do not know how Bingmei would react to genuine rejection from Shen Qingqiu - a Shen Qingqiu who sincerely did not want a romantic, or any, relationship with him. Because that just does not ever come up in canon! Even in Jin Lan City, Shen Qingqiu never actually outright states what his feelings are on the subject (despite Luo Binghe asking multiple times for clarification), and we know that deep down he does want to be with Binghe and doesn't want to admit it and secretly wishes Binghe would just kinda pursue him regardless of what he says out loud. All of this is important context for Luo Binghe's behaviour!
It's a really fascinating case study, honestly: so, sooo much of Luo Binghe's personality is directly formed by actions taken within canon. We literally watch in real time as he grows up and reacts to trauma and changes himself and defines his personality! Some of it deliberately: I also often seen authors having Binghe do the crocodile tears 'uwu I'm just a lil baby' routine while a White Lotus, but unless it comes up in the Extras, he really doesn't? Back then, he wanted desperately for Shen Qingqiu to see him as a strong, capable Real Man, and was more likely to flirt with him cockily and show off than downplay his abilities! No, that particular trait comes about after Shen Qingqiu throws him into the Abyss for being dangerous and then reacts with horrific fear at his mere presence. And we see exactly how it comes about: he asks his advisors for help and Airplane tells him to act cute and he does so and it works.
All of that is also a trauma thing: he tries desperately to remake himself into the sort of person who Shen Qingqiu won't abandon or try to hurt again. The very nature of his changeable personality is a response to canon events!!!
That's why I think BingQiu is a surprisingly hard relationship to truly recreate in an AU. The intense relationship begins from Shen Qingqiu having a driving obsession with Binghe that... does not really translate well to more serious AU fics, hahah. And I've never seen an AU fic where the harm done to Binghe was anywhere near the harm SQQ does in canon, because without the System there, he wouldn't have done it. And yet Binghe is nevertheless written with as much or even greater levels of possessiveness and delusion than he's depicted in canon, exaggerating those personality traits while removing the canonical reasons for them.
And, to be clear: sometimes it's just fun to read about yanderes hahahaha I'm not calling an indictment on to this sort of fanfic!! I enjoy them too, sometimes! But SVSSS is an older fandom now and a lot of people in it haven't really checked in with canon for several years... which makes it easy to lose sight of what the actual canon characterisations are, you know? And it doesn't help that extremely new readers might be too tempted to trust in Shen Qingqiu's biased narration and not know or understand what Binghe's perspective is through many scenes...
MY POINT IS. Shen Qingqiu made it weird first. Give credit where credit is due. <3 Neither of them would ever have been the same to someone else as they were to one another, and I think that that is beautiful... :)
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