Some random PIDW Mobing ship thoughts:
-This was definitely the priority M/M pairing in the fandom, although overall the novel probably didn't have a huge slash shipper readership. For one thing, in the world of light novels there's way less of a need to approach the nearest wretched hive of toxic masculinity and dig through it for the queer subtext in order to get fed, so most of the people interested it were probably closeted guys trying to use hypermasculine interests like a kind of smokescreen. For another thing, if PIDW had scored a thriving readership of slash shippers, Airplane would have been on top of that shit. The same way he recycled plots for a million wives to appease the stallion novel fans, he probably would have at least left more male side characters alive to have just-barely-deniable chemistry with Luo Binghe if he thought it could help get him an even bigger audience.
-I kind of imagine that Airplane was aware of the mobing shippers, but they weren't a big enough demographic of his audience to alter the course of the story. But it's also fun to think that he was resistant to the ship for other reasons. Particularly, after Luo Binghe's character graduated from his personal pyrrhic victory revenge fantasy self-insert slash personal commentary on the misery of his own existence to the audience proxy pandering power fantasy character that served the tastes of a readership he kind of looked down on as ravenous tools, the prospect of entangling him with a character who was still mostly Airplane's own territory might have been intolerable. Like he's already ceded the central crux of his story to capitalism and pandering, now they want his king too? Fuck off.
-For me at least that might translate to an intriguing concept where in the PIDW universe, part of Luo Binghe is drawn to Mobei Jun on several levels that he simply cannot acknowledge even to himself, while Mobei Jun simultaneously embodies the loyal servant who will never betray his leader, and the quietly resentful vassal who disdains what Luo Binghe has ultimately become, and would sooner die than submit the last corner of himself which he remains sovereign over to that guy.
-The meta layer gets even more interesting if we ignore the assumption in canon that the time Shen Yuan speed-read through PIDW was also his first time reading it, and go with the fanon that he was involved throughout the writing process and his insane devouring of the book in record time was just his final re-read before death. Airplane borrowing character traits for Mobei from this blatantly conflicted fan who simultaneously adores Luo Binghe (and by proxy, Airplane himself) and also can't stand what he's become (and by proxy, what Airplane as an author has become). The mixture of admiration and contempt, fervent devotion and continuous dissatisfaction, leaking into the mobing dynamic possibly even unintentionally, as Cucumber expresses what Airplane can't openly acknowledge about his own frustrations with his work, and it filters into the characters of the ruthless-yet-loyal ice king and the perpetually ravenous, never-to-be-satisfied protagonist.
-PIDW Mobei Jun and Luo Binghe thereby locked in a tragic dance, both alike in their distrust of the world, while that same distrust precludes any true degree of intimacy between them. Part of Luo Binghe longing to fight Mobei again because that's the only form of physical connection they are permitted to make, but there's no reason for him to continuously challenge an underling who he has already bested and who has gracefully conceded. Mobei Jun simultaneously elevating Luo Binghe to the position of untouchable paragon of demonic masculine ideals, and loathing his actual choices, the sprawling chaos that he's made of his empire and his interpersonal relationships. Including the one with Mobei himself.
-Of course, it's an unsustainable dance. Mobei Jun can't remain eternally attached to Luo Binghe's legacy. If he remains perpetually single, the conspicuous lack of heterosexuality will start to unnerve the sensitive readership of men who are fine-tuned to every possible failure of the masculine standard. Mobei Jun cannot be gay or asexual. But he also can't acquire a wife, because any woman sufficiently compelling would naturally end up in Luo Binghe's harem instead. Airplane has, almost accidentally, created an environment where Mobei Jun simply cannot continue to live -- he must either be quietly ushered from the pages and never mentioned again, left in a limbo where ambiguity might bestow him the traits that the readership simultaneously demand of any lackey worthy of serving Luo Binghe, and yet refuse to concede to any character who is not Luo Binghe. Or else he has to be killed off. A mercy killing, by that point, given that everything that might have been Mobei Jun's in a better novel has become simply another tally mark in the protagonist's unwieldy empire in this one.
-When PIDW Bingge returns to his world, thoughts of the bizarre Shen Qingqiu swirling in his head, he finds it nearly impossible even so to reconcile that man with the teacher of his memory. But he doesn't find the image impossible to reconcile with any of his relationships. But he's past the final pages of Airplane's original novel, and there's no one left to even reach for in an effort to understand his own conflicting desires. He's come closer to seeing the truth of what he actually wants in life than he ever has before, closer to recognizing the type of food that might finally sate his incurable hunger, but both of the men he might pursue such things with have long since faded into the shadows of his story.
-Bingge finally realizes that he has been so unhappy for so long in part because even when he was faced with an opportunity to change the course of his life, he couldn't bring himself to pursue it. He couldn't dare abandon the standards imposed on him for the sake of something he actually wanted. To pursue what he truly desired would have revealed and acknowledged those desires, that truth of himself, to a world he did not trust. Even in victory, it would have felt too much like vulnerability.
-Back in Airplane and Cucumber's original world, the one where PIDW is still the novel that Airplane wrote, someone writes a fanfiction where Mobei Jun comes back and finds that Luo Binghe has abandoned the ashes of his empire, and that's the closest either of them get to a happy ending in the PIDW timeline.
