jinlan time loop sounds very interesting yes yes ^w^
(from the wip game here)
this is actually an au idea that was generated on tumblr ages ago! and another one i got multiple asks about, so i'm flattered by the excitement even if i don't have much new to share about it 🙈
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sqq finds himself looping after he self destructs in jinlan city. he's genre savvy about it and pays attention to what he might have to “fix” to break the loop - generally focusing on “i have to self destruct in a way that preserves lbh’s human disguise better”
as the loops continue, though, several things become clear:
the loops are getting shorter. whatever is powering them has a finite energy source, and it seems to be destabilizing with every loop
lbh... seems to be aware of the loops, though he doesn't want to speak about them. he's the only other person who acts differently from loop to loop, and he's weird about it, too - skittish and increasingly Intense about sqq's own attempts to escape the loop and -
oh, fuck. lbh is the source of the loop, and he's doing it on purpose.
where basically, lbh is looping to try and find a way out of jinlan city with sqq alive, and sqq is convinced that he HAS to die here but in a Special way to end the loop. by the time sqq has reached the point of just giving up and doing whatever lbh wants, lbh isn't in the headspace to accept that. all lbh can do is keep the loop running.
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in terms of real progress, this wip is... not so great. the loops have all been defined and outlined, but i stall out every time i try to make progress on actually writing them out 😔
it's a wip i open up to try and make progress on frequently compared to the others, but the pace of progress is still quite slow... i just don't care for rewriting an existing thing with small differences, and a time loop fic is... a lot of rewriting with small differences 😂
this isn’t an ask I just want to share the blurb in my brain that I love the hc that og!luo Binghe has forcibly straightened hair and bingmei has curly hair
says so much about their past lived experiences with such a little detail… the power of Shen yuan’s love can be seen in bingmei’s perfect, well moisturized, bouncy curls
i've always loved this idea 🙂↕️ AND i raise you:
as a combination of not having the means or knowledge to care for curly hair in his youth, and being in conditions (abuse, living in a woodshed, etc) that would make anyone's hair difficult to care for, bingge's hair was likely already horribly damaged before he was even pushed into the abyss. if he then tried to constantly force if to look "respectable" by using heat to keep it straight, he'd only damage it further.
when your hair gets damaged enough, there's no chance for it to look good as-is, you really just need to chop off the most damaged parts and start over. but since doing so would have negative social connotations, emperor bingge naturally could never do such a thing.
and then he goes to the modern world to chase after a nice shizun of his own, and decides to cut all his hair off in order to blend in better; for one reason or another, he's aware of sy's personality prior to this, so he knows he has to go about this as if boiling a frog and decides a disguise and subtlety would be the best approach. his plan is to let the hair grow back as he gets to know sy, so by the time sy is ready to be bridenapped back to PIDW world, bingge's hair is once more at a respectable length.
what bingge doesn't see coming is that his hair grows back undamaged. he of course is still keeping it straight, but maybe the first time he stays the night at sy's place, or if they caught in the rain together, sy would gasp, delighted at how cute bingge's curly hair is, and the rest is history 😌😌
the idea of bingge's hair suddenly poofing out into a beautiful curly mane during a defining moment of bingmeification is very funny too of course but i think this more realistic method would fit well also hehe
hmmm... i want to preface this by saying that i love seeing the fandom excited and energized by getting new content, and i don't want to detract from that excitement! however, i don't personally share that same sentiment, and am feeling hesitant to read the new extra(s) once it's available to me 😅
i'll put my thoughts on it below the break, as they'll include both spoilers for the extra content and also me just generally being a party pooper lmao.
mxtx wrote svsss when she was in high school a full decade ago. personally, i find that my writing style and tastes changes by some amount year-to-year, and even thinking about writing an extra for something i wrote five years ago feels... odd, let alone ten years. especially if that original piece was done all the way back in high school, when i was still very actively learning and receiving an education in literature and writing.
even if i were to attempt to write something that continued the universe of a story i'd written that long ago, i know with great certainty that it wouldn't quite fit. it would be shaped by my present tastes rather than the ones i had that long ago... to be blunt, i actively dislike the stuff i wrote that long ago, and so i think that any "extra" content i'd write for stories that old might even be somewhat antithetical to how i intended the original story to be read.
i'm sure that this isn't the case for everyone. however, based on what i've learned about the new svsss extra(s?), i think it is the case for mxtx.
let me disclaimer this next part by saying that i think it's very possible that there's been a game of fandom telephone, and my understanding of the extra content is not accurate to its reality. how i understand the extra, though, is "lbh knew sqq was a different person all along, including when he was a child / pre-abyss."
i think this is a very good example of an edit being made that goes against (how i saw) mxtx's original intent of svsss, but that fits (how i see) mxtx's more recent tastes.
lbh not knowing that sy!sqq was a different person is a source of very interesting conflict. rather than "sj doesn't like me, sy does," it's a game of "sqq didn't like me, now he does, what did i personally do that changed his mind? was i being tested? will it happen again?"
lbh choosing to eventually trust sqq despite not fully understanding the change in sqq's behavior is very compelling and interesting to me, especially when that trust gets betrayed at the edge of the abyss. sy!sqq's own internal struggle as he's forced to stand in the role of lbh's abuser is also interesting, especially when he chooses to act out the abyss scene seemingly as sj!sqq would have in PIDW rather than trying to find a more gentle method to send lbh down.
it's also a level of conflict between bingqiu that didn't really seem to make an appearance between any other main couple in mxtx's following books - to me personally, it felt like the conflict between wangxian was less than that of bingqiu, and the conflict between hualian is much less than wangxian. this reads to me as mxtx's own tastes growing to prefer a more harmonious main pairing with most of the conflict driving the plot externally rather than internally.
this isn't a bad thing, of course! but it does feel like - based on my personal reading of mxtx's works - putting out an extra a decade later saying "actually, lbh knew all along" is an attempt to re-contextualize svsss to fit that more recent preference of hers.
i do think that lbh is clever and sharpminded enough to eventually figure out that sy!sqq is not the same guy that sj!sqq was. personally, i think this is a realization he's most likely to have after jinlan city, while he's looking into methods to try and resurrect sy!sqq (aka, trying to find a way to call a soul back into a body). i also think that it's important closure for lbh (and sy!sqq, tbh) to have as they enter a proper relationship together post canon.
i just think that putting that realization when lbh is so young removes a lot of interesting conflict between them, and re-contextualizes the rest of the novel in a way that doesn't seem to fit quite as well to me.
...not to mention the implications that lbh, a child, figured out the whole soul-swap thing but that not a single other person in that book was able to realize it the entire time. that's a different essay rant, but i think it's disrespectful to the characters of the peak lords to make such an implication.
i've also seen some rumblings that part of the extras is "sy wakes up in the hospital, and lbh and mbj reverse transmigrate to find sy/sqh and live their new lives out in the modern world." again, i don't know how much of that is accurate VS fandom telephone, but i'm more or less ambivalent to this one. i think it's good for lbh's character but bad for sqq's, if that makes sense... i think with time they'd both overall be happier in the modern world, though good fucking luck to lbh now that he'll have to deal with sy!sqq getting a reinforcing dose of societal expectations and homophobia, lmao. i do also roll my eyes at "and then they all woke up and were back in the Real World" endings because they take away some of the magic for me, but i am a fan of getting canon names for sqh and sqq's little sister!
i won't speak much on the "sj chose to start fresh in a new world" part of the extra spoilers - i don't personally feel like i have as strong an opinion on his character as i do lbh's. i'm not sure i personally think sj was the sort of person to choose a new life for himself, but it is interesting for mxtx to step in and give a very strong canon confirmation that he hated himself.
anyway, that's all quite rambly, but i guess the TLDR is that i have a lot of mixed feelings about what i've heard about the extra content and how it fits with my understanding of and interest in bingqiu's characters. i don't know if i'll ever read the new extra content, but i think that if i ever do, it's unlikely that i'll internalize it as canon... or else i think that i'll end up less interested bingqiu's overall dynamic 😅
ALL THAT SAID i hope that you 🫵 enjoy the extras - or, if you have mixed feelings like i do, at least enjoy all the energy and excitement within fandom about them. i'm enjoying all the art of lbh with cute little pigtails for sure <33
For the WIP game: more about the binggeyuan daemon au please!
(from the wip game here)
this was instantly the au that i got multiple asks about, i'm glad to see y'all are into the idea >:3c
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in PIDW, bingge's daemon never settled. this was always framed as an OP quirk, with his daemon always able to shift to best fit the current difficulty (claws when claws are needed, wings when wings are needed, etc) or into something that suits a particular wife (in a sleazy bar pickup line "oh my, it seems my daemon is in the shape of your favorite animal, what a coincidence!" type of way).
somewhere post canon, bingge meets (transmigrator npc) sy. sy sticks out as unique because he seems capable of recognizing bingge's daemon no matter which form it takes - something very difficult or impossible for other people bingge has known, but that sy thinks is a very normal thing to be able to do based on pidw descriptions like "one time bingge's daemon was a white tiger" or whatever. other than that, though, things seem to be following the same usual formula for him. his daemon takes on the form of some cute little puppy that sy likes, sy gets appropriately wooed, and then...
... and then bingge gets into a situation where it would be better for his daemon to shift to something else and. he can't . his daemon has finally settled. and that would be the oh fuck moment for bingge 😌
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outside of the full outline, this fic only has a small amount written! i've tried a couple different approaches and am still not quite sure how best to convey what i want in this fic 🤔 the current iteration is more of a 'small snippets across time' structure than a full on multichapter with natural progression, which i'm not sure i like...
puts on a mustache so that i'm a stranger. hi do you have tips for writing LBH? Particularly his manipulative side and his POV in general, since those are quite tricky
rips ur mustache off. get back in orv channel and i'll show u some manipulation first hand <3
jkjk... mostly.... but i don't actually have much advice to give here. i do have some tips on writing bingmei pov here and bingge here, so i figured i'd just reply to this ask by focusing on how i personally write characters being manipulative, but then i stared blankly at my screen for a bit and realized i don't know what i do either djfgkdj
emotional manipulation is the sort of thing that if i think too hard about how to write it well, it'll end up feeling very clunky / unnatural. the only things i really keep in mind while writing it are:
let a single manipulation be made of a set of things that, on their own, just seem like innocent coincidences, but that slowly escalate in stakes/intensity until it's very clear that none of them were coincidences from the very start. boil the frog etc
if the POV character is not the one doing the manipulating, they should either catch the manipulation and acknowledge it in some way, or the manipulation should be /extremely/ obvious to the reader. otherwise i end up w ppl in the comments that don't realize what happened lol
otherwise, this is the sort of thing that i would skip fully outlining until it "just comes to me" or however it happens 😅
i'm writing in as a general fan of your svsss work - i've read everything on your ao3! it's fantastic fic, i love your voice and pacing - but specifically my hands around yours fucking destroyed me. devastating lesbingqiu. the setup of the themes of domesticity and all the gender associated the absolute emotional frag grenade of angst. the hand symbolism… the hand symbolism…… hard to believe it's not canon, my mind backfilled it as such. thank you for peak 🙏
me making this meme like i'm not part of the problem with only 1.5/30 published ao3 fics being lesbingqiu: 😃
dfjgh anyway thank you so much!! it always makes my day to receive messages like this, i'm so happy to hear you enjoy my stuff enough to come tell me about it <3 i'm going to be doing my best to write more this year than last, so hopefully there will be many more svsss fics on the horizon here!! 💪
