I'm re-reading PINTWILF and was suddenly wondering: considering how dense Shen Yuan is on SVSSS, how long do you think it will take him to realize Binghe has like, feelings, feelings for him?
I think he'll have to have it spelled out bluntly for him. But not necessarily because he's completely oblivious to the fact that he and Binghe are close and affectionate with each other in a "more than friends" way? I think by the end, even when he's still gently, jokingly encouraging Binghe to flirt with women, he'll have suspicions. Or... maybe... "he'll have hopes" is the better word?
See, one of the things I personally really like about MXTX's works is that while the protagonists are a little (or a lot) romantically oblivious sometimes, they're all capable of being very clever and observant, and I get a really strong vibe that their obliviousness is actually partly denial/disbelief that they would actually be allowed to have this thing (this person) that they come to really, really want. They often can't bring themselves to look at the idea directly. They know but also can't even bring themselves to think about it, because the rejection would hurt them too deeply, and rejection feels inevitable, by the world if not by the person they love, so they might as well blind themselves to the possibility of happiness.
It's a remarkably queer element that I vibe with on a personal level. It's also just one interpretation of things. Which is why, for example in MDZS fics, we get the spectrum of Genuinely Completely Oblivious Wei Wuxian to a Wei Wuxian who is so, so in love with Lan Wangji for so long but can't fully believe LWJ would ever like him back and, more importantly, doesn't want to "ruin" LWJ with everything that he is. (I am personally partial to interpretations which lean more towards the latter. I like obliviousness just fine, I like mixes of both, but the angst of love being known deep-down, but feeling unspeakable, being unthinkable, is delicious to me. The pining is so good.)
Now, Shen Yuan is a very different character to Wei Wuxian, just as SY is a very different character to Airplane. My personal interpretation is that each of the MXTX protagonists perform this "defensive obliviousness" in very different ways, to very different degrees, and for very different reasons. (I mean, for some of them, we're dealing with "loving me back would ruin your life and I love you too much to let you do that" and others are dealing with "if I reveal my love/lust to this person and they're not open to it, they might kill me for it".)
I actually went into SVSSS (SPOILERS) feeling really wary of the teacher-student angle, but my impression of their time together as teacher and student was that Shen Yuan's feelings for Luo Binghe were genuinely platonic. And while I make jokes about Shen Yuan being oblivious to LBH's feelings for him, he had a lot of really good reasons for thinking that Luo Binghe wanted to kill him at first upon their reunion. I think any romantic/sexual feelings only started to develop for SY upon their reunion and only became fully realized even later. My personal interpretation of Shen Yuan is that he's asexual (he reads as sooo ace to me), probably gay but possibly bi-romantic, sex-neutral or sex-favorable. (Though I also think that, in SVSSS, even married to Binghe, he still probably personally identifies mostly as "straight with an exception".)
I'm losing the thread of where I'm going with this because I'm desperately trying not to write like five different meta essays here.
In PINTWILF (SPOILERS), Shen Yuan is already in a different situation to SVSSS. Shang Qinghua is SY's mentor-figure and openly queer, openly in a relationship with a demon, and SQH has at least told SY that marrying all those wives in PIDW didn't make LBH happy. I can't remember if SQH ever directly hinted to SY that LBH might be into men, but the other family members aren't exactly 100% discrete or subtle about their teasing. Shen Yuan has a lot more space to get comfortable with his own queerness and LBH's queerness, though he has a lot of internalized homophobia to get through (and misogyny, my goodness, sometimes in SVSSS I really wanted to bop him on the head for his behavior around women even if he's simultaneously mocking the sexist tropes).
But there's still Shen Yuan's self-confidence and self-image to contend against. Even when he's not mentally slotted himself into the role of "teacher" and "betrayer", he's still had the time to mentally slot himself into the role of "older friend" and "confidant". Shen Yuan seems to view himself as a kind of boring person and he likes it that way, so while he would be happy to have Binghe as a partner, he likes him so very much, he can't quite shake the feeling that Binghe could do better and so it's best not to read too much into it. He's honestly happy enough just being friends (or so he tells himself) and doesn't want to "make it weird" unless Binghe takes the first step.
