breadbasket

writing and art blog for catbread!

[wholegraincatloaf]

ouuugh I really want to make a Shen Jiu animatic or something to this

Am I royal or vain? I'm loyal to pain And I can't seem to help myself Long may he reign As the anchor and chain That's dragging it all to hell I rule with an iron fist I exist only to suffer I never miss Born for this Won't be another Don't kiss the ring, no, it don't mean a thing I'm the king King of nothing

[liusumeowhua]

false guanyin

[evercelle]

[wholegraincatloaf]

I love writing Shen Qingqiu (Jiu edition), he's so terrible and yet I can't help but adore him; something about the wretched tragedy of his life and story really grips me, all the bitterly ironic near-misses of fate, the dedicated slog towards misery and death, the self-fulfilling belief in his own innate wretchedness and failure to understand that "naturally pure" doesn't actually exist, that nobody else innately knows what it means to be "good" either and that they also often make horrible mistakes and harm people, and are merely doing their best in spite of it.

I've thought about it a lot, and he seems to believe that since he doesn't innately know how to be kind and gentle-- that because cruelty comes easily while kindness is difficult and unpleasant and feels frightening and therefore enraging, that because he's jealous of his own adult self and the children under him, that because he has the desire to hurt others-- that he's INHERENTLY bad, and therefore there's no reason to bother trying to change or resist it, because people are either born good (like Yue Qi) or wicked (like Shen Jiu) and that's all there is to it. He NEEDS to believe that, on some level.

He has an extremely black-and-white view of the world, just one aspect of which is his absolute intolerance for demons, even greater than Liu Qingge's. I believe it's just one more effort to reject himself, ultimately. He's so convinced of his immutable other-ness, his worse-ness than everyone else, his ugly corruption in comparison to his idealized notion of Yue Qi's shining purity, that it becomes a bottomless swamp he can't escape on his own but that also threatens to pull in unwary bystanders and would-be helpers.

I enjoy a good Jiumei fic as much as the next Shen Jiu-enjoyer, but they're ultimately a different flavor of what-if wish fulfillment than the type I typically go for in my own fics. I know my boy is the kind of warped that would make last-century psychologists burrow back up out of the ground to study him. He tried to drive that little boy to his death, and he tried with others before him, and he should never have been entrusted with guiding and protecting children.

I think that's probably another aspect of it-- he has the desire to punish and harm and humiliate children, and he knows that's a wretched thing to want, and it makes him hate himself, which obviously means he HAS to act on it. That's certainly not his only motivation for hurting kids, but I believe it's one of them! This is very much just my interpretation, but I think one of the biggest reasons might be this: he has to be evil and unworthy of salvation, because Yue Qi has to be good. He has to. Alternatively: because Yue Qi is Unquestionably and Immutably Good, and didn't come back for Shen Jiu, and Shen Jiu did all those horrible things to survive and feels so many horrible ugly things towards others, Shen Jiu must be evil. And yet, I agree with fics that depict him taking a wretched, terrible pleasure and relief in forming a new belief (for various reasons) that Yue Qi is ALSO tainted, because that means they can be together in whatever way, and makes it "okay" for him to form a regulating social bond. Very realistic Qijiu good end imo, highly satisfying.

[buff-shizun]

Svsss AU

Shen Yuan has thrown Binghe into the Abyss. He's deep in his Widow Era, being very visibly sad and depressed, having entire episodes of disassociation that last days; and after one night too many of Mu Qingfang having to go over and force his Shixiong into bedrest, he snaps. He ropes LQG, SQH, and QQQ into a secret meeting and *plots.*

A month later, YQY is presented with a plan he cannot refuse. No, literally, he can't. Ho boy does he want to, though. What's the plan? Get SQQ a wife.

That's right! Arraigned marriage! It's kind of an open secret by now that Luo Binghe wasn't just a disciple to SQQ (and no one saw anything wrong with it because Luo Binghe was obviously very willing), but! The loss of a wife, unofficial as it was, is a hard thing to accept for any man, let alone an Immortal Peak Lord so obviously in love with centuries now ahead of him without his beloved wife! So, Mu Qingfang prescribes a new life companion for his dear depressed Shixiong!

(YQY wants to cry.)

Shen Yuan is not told anything about this until its too late, but he does notice when certain disciples go missing for a day and return with an odd glint in their eyes. Yingying is the worst, prodding around certain subjects and outright jumping on others. He realizes she's up to something but can't quite figure out what- especially after she asks him if he has a preferred gender. He tries to find sense in his head disciple, but Ming Fan isn't much better. He just keeps glowering into space and muttering about "another person stealing shifu's time."

Very odd.

There's a whole year or so of this before, suddenly, things start moving very fast and Shen Yuan finds himself in a whirlwind of way too much. He's barely been told he's getting married when suddenly he's standing beside a young woman, both of them decked in red, surrounded in a very, very overwhelming amount of wedding decorations, and being told that it's time to bow three times.

What.

----

His new wife (?!?!?!?!) is a very sweet woman. She's also very beautiful. She cooks for him, cleans for him, helps him with his hair, and- and-

She has to be part of the Harem. She has to be. How come he can't remember her, he doesn't know, but if he had any chance of a swift death before, he's definitely going in the pickle pot now!!

----

She's kind to him. She listens. He doesn't say much these days, but when he speaks, she hears, and when he doesn't speak, she hears that too. She once sat beside him the whole day, murmuring quiet words, urging him to drink some tea or eat some snacks. He doesn't remember a whole lot about that, but then, he does seem to lose a lot of time when he sits before Zheng Yang.

He does remember the moment she laid her head on his shoulder. She seemed truly very tired, and he wasn't so awful a husband that he'd wake her just because of a little discomfort; so instead he picked her up and took her back to the bamboo house.

---

By technicality, they share a bed. In truth, he hasn't used it since the moment they both walked through the front doors married.

His wife is a sweet woman. She understood when he hesitated to consumate their marriage, and even now, she doesn't insist when he denies sharing a bed. However, she is also very clever. If a bed wasn't an option, then any other surface was good enough as long as it was clean, soft, and wasn't the floor.

Shen Yuan was...admittedly becoming a bit fond of her. On the same hand, she often confused him. Wasn't it strange to have a wife who insisted on exercising her every right as the Xiu Ya's Sword's spouse, only to almost never use it for herself? He could count on one hand the number of times she'd used it frivolously, and he was almost sure she'd only done it because he'd insisted on it- and even then, he wasn't entirely sure she'd done it purely for herself. In fact, wasn't it strange that her "frivolous moment" benefitted him too?

...though, she did like to remind others of her title frequently. He's ashamed to say he didn't understand at first, but now he's quite sure; his wife feels insecure in her position! He needs to figure out how to fix that.

---

After two years of this, Shen Yuan's listlessness never truly eased, but he found whenever his mind began to drift or spiral, he'd glance to his side and find his wife right beside him, offering tea, snacks, idle chatter, or just a listening ear when he decided to tentatively explain himself.

She was really, very good to him.

Shen Yuan dreaded the day Binghe came for him.

Wasn't it strange? Before, he'd feared quite a bit. For his life. For his home. He'd feared the pickle pot, yes, but most often he'd feared the pain of looking his favorite disciple- his favorite person- in the eyes and seeing a man who he didn't know.

But now?

His wife loved Qing Jing. His wife was *loved* on Qing Jing. She hasn't said much about her past, but he understood enough subtext to understand an unhappy situation when he heard one; and now, here in this simple bamboo house, she'd found contentment. Happiness.

And it was all going to be taken from her by a man who wouldn't love her like she should be. Like she *deserved* to be.

(That was, of course, assuming Binghe would even consider taking her into his harem. He only ever took the willing, and...well...Shen Yuan wasn't entirely sure she would be. There was also just the chance that Binghe would take one look at her current status as Shen Yuan's wife and kill her outright. It was a small chance, but Shen Yuan feared it all the same.)

Wasn't it odd? Shen Yuan had gone into this marriage with the goal to be a good husband and not getting attached. And yet, something about her was so...it was easy for him. It was like taking hold of a hand that had always been at his side, and finding it warm and happy to grasp back.

He didn't want to give her up. He didn't want to see her be taken in by another man; not even Luo Binghe. She was better than that. Worth more than that. She was- She was-

She's His *Wife.*

Fueled with a new fire, Shen Yuan started planning. He couldn't change Binghe's fate, and he can't change his, but by the gods, he would make sure his wife’s was nothing short of the best life she could possibly have.

[buff-shizun]

@supernini235 you. You get it. Binghe's in it too deep now!

[neo--queen--serenity]

Watching Bing-ge do mental gymnastics over why his alternate universe self would be sleeping with Shen Qingqiu is so funny to me no matter how I look at it.

You get to witness him talking himself into it in real time, going from, “look at him, that evil bitch, he's the worst person alive, so depraved, I have no compassion for such a heartless wretch," to, "well, I mean he’s never been ugly—but like how gross of AU me, like why would I jump into bed with—well, no okay I can see it. Yeah, okay I won’t lie, I definitely see the sex appeal. I’m just gonna…fake seduce him just to fuck with him a little bit. Yeah. That’ll show him. He’ll be so humiliated..." before immediately jumping to, "you know, I bet I could fuck him way better than AU me could.”

Like we don't even have evidence he's slept with a single dude before, but after like 12 hours with new Shizun he's already progressed to "so here's how I'll get my first male wife into the harem,"

[wholegraincatloaf]

... I can't tell if I'm actually interested in this or not, but like. Can you imagine a PIDW AU that has Bingge running on "100 Girlfriends" software. I personally haven't watched it but I find the core concept entertaining in theory

If you're not familiar, "The 100 Girlfriends Who Really Really Really Really REALLY Love You" is a VERY horny VERY lovey-dovey comedy harem anime about a dude in a soulmate universe who accidentally gets assigned 100 soulmates.

Unfortunately, this is the type of universe where failing to get with your soulmate incurs divine punishment, and furthermore, although soulmates recognize each other upon making eye contact, it is fully possible to fumble your soulmate and end up alone.

Fortunately, the main character is the penultimate wifeguy, and (from what I hear) does what Bingge fundamentally failed to do, with is be mutually obsessed with every single one of his girlfriends and spend a great deal of time with them indulging their interests and helping them through their character arcs. It's committed enough to the concept that his rate of girlfriend acquisition has been slowing throughout the series, because as the number of girlfriends increases, the time he needs to spend with them all does, too. You can't just be chasing down new girlfriends and neglecting the ones you already have!

Anyway I don't think I could make a convincing fic set in that universe, but a Bingge vs Bingmei type crossover... that could be interesting

[moonlightobsessions]

It is late night but alas the inspiration hit and i create short fancomic

INSPIRED BY POST BY @willowfl0w3r

[ningyingyingwithagun]

I think that even if Yue Qingyuan had managed to explain what happened to Shen Jiu when they first reunited, they would simply self-blame and miscommunicate in a entirely different way.

SJ: It's because of me that YQY's soul is bound to his sword. It's all my fault for asking him to come back for me. I ruined YQY's life, his cultivation. I can never ask him for anything ever again and never let him try to protect me, he might actually die for me next time. I'm poison to all that I touch.

YQY: SJ is upset about my sword because it represents my failure. He never asks me for anything and rejects my protection because he thinks I'm incapable. But I'm thankful that even if SJ thinks I'm unreliable he lets me stay by his side. I'm worthless to SJ and need to make up for that in any way I can.

[sunderwight]

Do you think in pokemon ancient times when capturing and training pokemon was a rare and expert process, that young princes and princesses and the like would be presented with the finest, youngest pokemon that their vassals could catch as they came of age, to select one to be their personal companion? As like a reflection of their power & authority & ability to tame the nation, even things so unruly and frightening as pokemon? And if you were the vassal who presented the chosen pokemon it was a feather in your cap?

Do you think that's where the idea of the starter pokemon came from? Over time, as taming pokemon became more commonplace and accessible, more of the lower ranking nobility and merchant class wanted to show off their station by invoking similar rituals, until eventually it became a coming-of-age ritual that was standard for most families?

And whereas once the pokemon for royalty would be vetted by the scholars and wisemen and court wizards of the era, these were eventually replaced by actual pokemon experts, until every community had at least one such local expert whose job included preparing and/or approving starter pokemon for the kids?

Cause like. Now I can't stop thinking about it. Emperors trying to acquire exotic pokemon from foreign lands for their heirs. A queen scouring the land for pokemon experts after her ten-year-old chooses a particularly hard-to-tame companion. Murmurings about this or that ambitious lord who skirted the edges of propriety by awarding a rejected starer to his own son, instead of passing it along to the military as would be custom. Princesses showing favor to their chosen knights by sending their pokemon over with a token for the jousts. Rumblings over the succession because the new King never did manage to train his starter pokemon, but his younger, more charismatic brother rides his into battle. Assassins targeting pokemon companions to discredit and punish the political rivals of their employers, because kinslaying might be taboo but there are no divine laws against shooting your cousin's kangaskhan.

[sunderwight]

#dude holy shit. Im going to be thinking about this all night now#pokemon#i could also see this leading into the canon 'starter' pokemon because theyre easier to train but become incredibly powerful.#could also explain why those pokemon arn't so commonplace in the modern day - they were sort of obsessed over and so their numbers declined#like pokemon are in the churches they're on the battlefield of COURSE noblilty would get weird about them#dragon types are incredibly difficult to train but the status of having a Salamence to soar over your lands and your troups with? unmatched#The rich hiring the best pokeball craftsmen they can find to make the ball both aesthetically pleasing and have a better catch rate#also even having a more common pokemon thats TRAINED well than its still better to have a rare exotic pokemon that hates you#Young children would know that their parents are going select their options. Would they make requests?#Would it be considered gauche to only allow them to choose between three of the same type because it would be beneficial to their future?#POKEMON DRESSED UP FOR COURT?!#Would it be an honor or a disgrace for one's starter to be an egg from their parents pokemon?#A lord is deeply distraught that his daughter didn't show for her selection of a gothita#a nidoran#or a shinx because#she found a weird colored feebas the kitchens rejected for soup and now its her best friend#a decade later and she and her shiny milotic are the talk of upper society#BRO (@thesadisticsiren peer reviewed damn these are good thoughts)

[artsarasp]

Commission for @primtheamazing <3

A scene from her fic "Time Capsule"

[hehearse]

And he asked: "Forget what?"

a commission of a scene from this fic ! ^^

[red-garden]

Wonder what Bingge would do if he found out the man who handcrafted his suffering didn’t even like him the best.

[crushedmarigolden]

It's even funnier because the character created specifically to torture him doesn't even hate him the worst aswell

[sunderwight]

And the villain who is most obsessed with him is mostly projecting his prior obsession with Binghe's mother onto him, so that isn't really about him either.

[red-garden]

I just keep thinking about this. All of the people who ruined Bingge’s life never gave a fuck about him. He sits and he stews in obsessive hatred, but they literally do. Not. Care. The wealthy people employing the washer woman didn’t care they worked her to death. Shen Qingqiu didn’t care that Binghe’s life was a living hell. Mobei Jun didn’t care that revealing his demonic origins got him tossed into hell. “Destroying your village was the worst day of your life. For me it was Tuesday.” That’s such an impotent rage to feel, and I think relatable to a lot of people who grew up with shit parents. They never gave a fuck.

[bytedykes]

#genuinely so fucking upsetting #especially since binghe's whole thing is he wants to be cared about #like he wants to matter to someone on a personal level #like bingmei's 'you can hate me just don't leave me' thing #even if he's hated he still wants to matter to these people. to have some kind of personal importance about him as an individual #but the people who torture him most don't even give him that #he's always a placeholder for something or someone else to them #never allowed importance on his own. always an outline for someone else to fill in (@waitineedaname)

[shaxxophone]

I don’t like it when people love Shen Jiu but talk shit about Yue Qingyuan.

Were they not both abused in the same place? Were they not both quite literally slaves? Did they not both suffer immensely?

People talk about how much Shen Jiu has suffered, how he is a perfect example of someone who was unable to break the cycle of abuse, how he deserves to get healing. But in the next breath will talk shit about Yue Qingyuan for enabling and covering up the abuse that Shen Jiu inflicted.

It isn’t just because of his guilt. Yue Qingyuan is not just some corrupt authority figure. He is a perfect example of how fawn is just as much of a fear response as fight/flight/freeze. His entire personality is shaped around not rocking the boat, around treating people with kindness, around avoidance. The person he feels the most indebted to displays so much of the same behaviors as the man who abused them both. Can you imagine how painful that feels? How terrifying that feels?

Of course he would do everything he can to appease him. He loves Shen Jiu, and wants him to heal. He feels guilty that he could not save him from the abuse they both endured. He also probably cannot handle Shen Jiu’s behavior without feeling some sort of fear response. And thus he does what he learned could save himself: Treat the person as good as you can as to try and soften the blow you’re bound to get.

[jayktoralldaylong]

I feel like Yue Qingyuan is one character that never escaped the bonds of slavery. He's still chained by the invisible shackles that urge him to never step outside the lines. He's still bound by an inanimate object that claims mastery over his soul. There's so many things that he goes on suffering with that's very on par with Shen Jiu's. Yue Qingyuan was a slave too. He finds it hard to be assertive, he struggles with explaining himself, he struggles with asking for forgiveness, he holds himself to a ridiculously high standard because he was an exemplary slave, he doesn't forgive his mistakes.

There is just so much he endures in the plot and just like Shen Jiu, Yue Qingyuan is a boy in chains searching desperately for his happy ending but he's fucked by the narrative and will never find it. I guess people who hate on Yue Qingyuan are fixed on what looked like an easy problem to solve but of course it was difficult for someone with slave trauma just as great as what Shen Jiu was struggling with. A trauma that sealed his lips and made it hard for him to explain his failure because it felt like an excuse, and Yue Qingyuan did not believe he deserved to be forgiven.

[zykamiliah]

the fact that they ended up reenacting the past, with yqy as the "big brother" mediating conflict between all the other "children"/peak lords and sj... they fact that they can't escape the past, can't grow beyond it and end up repeating it.

excuse me

[baixue-temple]

#and i think they both used to be each other's shoring support for their weaknesses#when they were young #sj being the one who was the backbone or knife that protected them from being stepped on #and yqy being the defender who kept them secure #but once the perceived betrayal happened they weren't on the same wavelength anymore #but still trying to fill the same roles without the understanding and trust

@thebeingofeverything appreciation cause yessss

[nebulations]

[ID: Art of a person lying down in a puddle of their own tears. End ID]

[ningyingyingwithagun]

Ning Yingying loves her Shizun. She has the privilege of being the person who spends the most time with him, and she takes pride in being able to understand him better than anyone else!

That's why she notices Shizun is lashing out from his own pain.

The pieces of a puzzle came together and formed a picture Ning Yingying didn't like. Shizun often had qi deviations and it was somehow related to his childhood. Shizun didn't just dislike men, he was afraid of men. It's said that Shizun and the Sect Leader had known each other before they had even joined the sect. Shizun was more likely to have qi deviations after the Sect Leader visits him. The Sect Leader liked to send gifts that Shizun called empty apologies.

If a Sect Leader commits a crime, who is it supposed to be reported to? The other Peak Lords did not like Shen Qingqiu. The differences in reputation between Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu made it clear who would be believed.

Ning Yingying couldn't think of any other option.

Shen Qingqiu is woken up one night to the urgent message that Ning Yingying, his thirteen-year-old disciple, had attempted to murder the Sect Leader. Ning Yingying is refusing to take a truth potion unless Yue Qingyuan takes it too.

[ito-itonomen]

So Sy transmigrates and he's excited about being in this super cool flawless cultivation master body-

Except apparently it's not so perfect at all because the original good, EVIDENTLY, was just as near sighted as Sy was in his original life.

This absolutely pisses him off for multiple reasons, not least of all because "the villain was actually glaring menacingly all the time because he can't see anything" is a STUPID overdone trope, honestly, so sickening, yet another idiotic move from that HACK author-

Secondly, though, because if he wants to live his life free of eye strain headaches and to actually be able to tell where he's going on this already unfamiliar stupidly complicated xianxa magic mountain, he needs to figure out a way to get MQF to diagnose and prescribe him glasses without setting off the systems ooc lock, which forbids him from simply asking or "alluding to weakness" which the original sqq would never do, hence this situation he's stuck in the first place

(the secret third issue is how the entire mountain falls apart should he succeed after many weeks of frustration and scheming, as the glasses turn his milf energy powered wifebeam up to hazardous levels)

[knightsickness]

there’s absolutely something to be said about ‘booktok’ books being largely wattpad quality written erotica i’m certainly not reading them however having seen a guy on tiktok make a video like ‘all the women in your life are READING PORN’ about a book he picked up and read in his FEMALE FRIEND’S HOUSE in a tone of scandalised horror and disgust i actually don’t think men should be making those criticisms. he said he picked it up expecting a romance and was horrified it was GOONER SHIT he said specifically like ‘who are you getting your pussy wet FOR??’ in a tone of revulsion. idk man im not sure shes the weird one. i kind of wish you were dead

[darlingofdots]

"a lot of books that are successful on booktok are not very good" and "people can read what they want and we need to stop being so fucking weird about women enjoying erotica" are both correct statements

[exaltedrevenge]