Zel. They/them. Chronically ill artist, writer, and fandom old. Catch me binge-watching too many shows, reblogging fanart, and occasionally making things. 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
Still never gonna be over the fact that it took Maes Hughes one night to figure out the truth about Amestris when it took the rest of the cast half the series
Something I have been thinking about lately is. So I like whump. I am one of many people who enjoys reading about bad things happening to my favorite fictional characters, as the long and storied history of fandom will attest. We love it when people get hurt.
But one thing I also love, that I feel like I don't see very often in whump fic, is people writing about the recovery process, the unglamorous, difficult, after-the-fact details of having sustained serious injuries and living to tell the tale. Sometimes there will be a brief scene at the end of the fic where we are assured that, yes, the character made it to the hospital and survived, and is now surrounded by concerned friends-- particularly when the story veers more into hurt/comfort territory--but that's not really what I'm talking about. What I want is stories where the treatment and recovery are front and center, the medical details are realistic and the injuries are treated with the appropriate gravity, where the process is long and hard and has pitfalls and obstacles and above all takes time.
I think a large part of my desire for fics where the recovery is more centered than the actual moment of "hurt" stems from being aromantic and asexual and preferring gen stories, but still craving moments of intimacy in fiction and thus looking for it in less conventional places. Caretaking--or being taken care of--can be great sources of intimacy in stories where sex is off the table, for one reason or another. Needless to say, it's been an obvious lacuna. People do still write it, but not as often as I'd like to see, and that's always struck me as strange.
On the other hand, my wife has never been as into whump as me. She never hated it, but didn't seek it out or write it very often and had to be in the right mood for it (and to some degree still does). But lately she's been getting much more into exploring it in her writing because it offers her an opportunity to write characters experiencing similar things to her as she's dealt with the challenges of becoming disabled and largely housebound and reliant on me for certain caretaking tasks. And as a result we've sort of gravitated towards some similar kinds of stories, where recovery and caretaking are just as if not more important than fucking that character up in the first place.
Anyway. It's lead me to think more actively about that gap I've noticed as a life-long whump reader, where the recovery doesn't really matter and the stories are mostly just about the moment of "hurt" and maybe a dramatic rescue at the end. And I won't pretend it's all ableism, but I really do think that some of the reason fandom is allergic to writing true, messy, real caretaking and recovery is rooted in liking the aesthetics of disability (the angst! the drama!) without really caring much about the reality of it. It's the same reason action heroes get knocked unconscious all the time without concussions, why sci-fi and fantasy prosthetics so often seamlessly replace lost limbs, and why everyone in fiction eventually recovers from injuries and illness (except for when they die). There's no room for the unglamorous in-between, where someone ends up permanently affected by what happened to them and where "hurt" has life-long consequences.
I guess that's all to say--I wish fandom were as enthusiastic about the disability narrative potential in whump. Even in instances where people do make incredible recoveries from horrible injuries (which I've seen firsthand with friends!), a brush with serious injury is at the very least a brush with short-term disability, and more likely than not will have effects for the rest of someone's life. That can be interesting, and even intimate if you want it to be, too.
So yes, please do fuck that character up--it's a cornerstone of fandom for a reason. But consider, maybe, telling the sort of story where what happens afterwards matters, too.
[ID: Scum Villain doodle. Shen Qingqiu walks with a flat expression, while Luo Binghe lays face down on the floor clutching at the hems of his robes. /end ID]
Painfully sad to see stuff with Yue Qingyuan as willfully refusing or even purposefully lying to Shen Jiu about why he didn't return, thus having the entire miscommunication be his fault alone and that he's aware on some level that he's misleading SJ, which bums me out. Mainly cause I don't think it lets him work as well in the bigger picture of Bingqiu, especially in regards to Shen Yuan's own growth.
Daily dose of unhinged rambling beneath.
For one thing... he does admit (almost) immediately to what Shen Jiu had already been working up towards in his own mind and tone, and that they both believe increasingly to be "true" and to some degree is: that Yue Qi's choices left Shen Jiu in the hands of a sadist for years.
(blue for emphasis on YQY's reactions, green for SJ's)
Always gonna wonder what was Yue Qingyuan going to say before Shen Jiu "opened fire". That he was happy to see him? That he'd really tried to save him, only to find a burned down manor, maybe something that would have led to an actual admission of Xuan Su's whole deal? Maybe! We'll never know. :'] weheheh~
But unfortunately for everyone, Shen Jiu's in defense mode. To shield his feelings, he'd already decided that Yue Qi is gone -- and SJ's first reaction to people who aren't Qi-ge is pro-active hostility in order to keep himself safe, an instinct has been turned up to eleven thanks to Qiu Jianluo.
SJ does deserve an answer of course -- but I also think the conversation is set up in this sequence in order to have YQY to "realize" (big air quotes here) that no matter how he explains it, he's not going to be forgiven. So he says the raw truth: Qi-ge let you down.
From there, SJ doesn't want to hear any more apologies because to him they're just guilty words with no substance. But what YQY seems to take away from it is that his apology has been rejected. For him to try and further explain himself would be, in his own eyes and in his view of the angry boy before him, guilt-tripping excuses.
I think in the same moment that SJ was "realizing" that he is poisonous scum, YQY is "realizing" that he is an unreliable failure.
What really gets me is how in his vol 3 confession, there's an implication that he maybe did try to explain himself later on -- and then got rebuffed by SJ in some fashion? It wasn't like SJ interrupted him the first time, he definitely did wait for YQY's response. So what else could "let me finish speaking" mean...
So now he's not just explaining himself but begging Shen Qingqiu to listen. It's not a case of him just refusing to give an explanation or leaving SJ waiting for one, but also believing that he won't be heard even if he does.
Which, if some previous things he says are anything to go off of, probably had some hefty weight of evidence in his mind. 🙃
The fact that he confesses to SY because otherwise "it'll be too late" implies to me at least that he did really want SJ to know what happened to him, maybe that he even did attempt it in the years in-between, but either wasn't given the chance or didn't do it in such a way that SJ would let him finish? But now YQY thinks he's dying, so he has to seize the chance to speak up.
But the readers and Shen Yuan know it's already too late.
That's why it becomes so obvious to Shen Yuan in that moment that the truths he'd believed have led him into the exact same situation, and that he has to turn back now lest he suffer the same fate as qijiu.
If Luo Binghe's foil is his original abuser, Shen Jiu, with both of them working off of assumptions tainted by self-esteem issues and fears of abandonment...
...Then Shen Yuan's foil has to be Yue Qingyuan, where both of them fully believe that they can't and won't be forgiven for the harm they've done to someone they promised to care for, and that anything they say will only make the situation worse.
It takes becoming the outsider to someone else's perspective for Shen Yuan to realize that he has to put a stop to it.
Wait sorry but I also can't believe I forgot the cave scene so I'm tacking it on:
Really interesting how Yue Qingyuan definitively states that he's been here before, just not why. Did he intentionally say it, with an impulsive urge to have that deeper conversation? Or maybe it just slipped out?
Either way, Shen Jiu doesn't take the narrative bait, reacts predictably snappy given that he was about to qi deviate a few seconds ago, and YQY drops the topic in favor of keeping him calm. One of those moments that make you wanna pull at your hair, aaaaaaa-- It's almost the perfect intro to talking about The Everything. But just like every time before it, YQY's words/behavior hints, SJ snaps, and YQY retreats without defense or explanation. Aaa...
(Side note: it's mentioned way later in the chapter that "Yue Qingyuan wasn't the type to sigh much, but Shen Qingqiu was inevitably capable of wearing him to the bone". So I personally read this as him already emotionally exhausted even though they just started talking. Presumably because of where they are.)
But then you get to SJ commenting on the blood-stained cave around them, and then:
This was, imo, probably the closest they ever got to anything about why YQY didn't come back getting revealed. And I wonder if that tiny convo about YQY being annoying hints was included purposefully to hint at why it didn't happen.
The particular part of the chapter makes great pains to point out that YQY didn't get to see SJ very often as disciples, and that when he did he "chattered nonstop", and that other disciples were watching in apparent surprise/amusement at seeing him act like this. So we get told that YQY was actively seeking out SJ, even when he knows he's being rebuffed. He wants to talk to him about everything going on, something that a YQY who is purposefully lying to him probably wouldn't do imo.
So why the flip to sudden "Oh" from YQY. Besides the obvious Ling Xi Caves PTSD going on. 🙃
I get the feeling that MXTX added the previous mentions and then outright discussion of YQY annoying SJ to lay out the irony in how SJ reacts. A lot of SJ's character arc sets up how he's very much the guy who can't help but press on his own bruises and then get mad that it hurts -- and I think this is another example of it.
The chapter starts with descriptions of YQY talking to SJ as much as possible, then the "I don't care if you've been here before" convo followed by "I find it annoying when you talk to me", before it ends with YQY ending the scene in silence.
Maybe on a good day like a tournament, YQY can handle getting shot down because hey at least SJ is talking to him, right? But here, with SJ describing essentially exactly what happened to him, is setting off an intense trauma response in YQY, sooo I think he just does what he did when he first mentioned the caves: he pulls back and says nothing rather than defend or explain himself.
And the craziest part of all, is that Shen Jiu knows something's wrong too! If we're supposed to wonder why Yue Qingyuan won't talk, then we've gotta also wonder why Shen Jiu doesn't press further? He didn't want to sit in the silence before, he was perfectly willing to keep talking just to fill the silence. He is smart, so I really wish I knew exactly what conclusions he was drawing from YQY's sudden quiet reactions to what he'd been describing, YQY mentions of being in the caves before, and the noticable tremors.
Maybe Shen Jiu doesn't ask because some part of him doesn't want to hear the answer, echoing back on YQY's confession where he begs Shen Yuan!SQQ to listen to him and let him finish.
In this case though, it's not out of anger (though I bet YQY probably assumes as such) but because he doesn't want to consider the horrible implications of what's in front of him.
since @theuntamedzine has now been sent out i can finally post the art i made for it! didn't i say i had some fun secret works to share :)))
sometimes i just start thinking about the long long post-xxc stasis time in yi city, and then i have to stop. i was originally going to make another song lan-focused version that's been in my head since i got into this story, but since i ended up doing another piece featuring song lan, a-qing gets a turn instead :')
this has alt text. extended image description under the cut.
A-Qing, blood dried on her face and robes, sits on the ground in the coffin home courtyard in the shadow of a motionless Song Lan, seen from the chest down and poised with sword and whisk in hand. Her white eyes stare dully ahead. The bamboo pole in her hand visually crosses with Fuxue. The colours are washed-out and dusty.
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