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Liu Qingge and Shen Jiu
May. 2nd, 2021 05:32 amI read SVSSS's Shen Jiu extras yesterday (the last ones I hadn't read), and I found myself oddly annoyed by the way Liu Qingge gets this whole do-over relationship with a 'Shen Qingqiu' who no longer knows to resent his screaming privilege and what a thoughtless dick he was as a teen. Shen Jiu was also, obviously, a huge dick, but less Public School in it.
The mechanics of Binghe's similar do-over are really different. He's Jiu's apprentice, not a peer. As a child, Binghe isn't at all in the wrong, and the toxicity of that relationship is entirely on Shen Jiu. With the Qingge-Qingqiu bad blood, they're both at fault. For Qingge, then, part of the 'charm' of Shen 'secure attachment style' Yuan is his somewhat-unwitting violation of Shen Jiu's reasonable boundaries and distaste: 'all along 'Shen Jiu' was Actually Soft; now he Admits he likes me.' How annoyed would you be if you got swapped out of your body, and someone you had legit beef with (you'd been a dick too, but they just suuuucked) made moves on new-you, thinking they'd Overcome your Resistance, and part of their idea of new-you and the attraction was predicated on real-you? Like your posh, dumbass, most-hated office colleague? There's a forgiveness and reconciliation here; Yuan is able to start fresh. But in itself, that insubstantive or misdirected amelioration is really unsatisfying in terms of past wounds (MXTX yet again pointing out the irreducible quality of lingering trauma and how hard it makes meaningful repair, I guess).
I feel like a lot of these social dynamics Hit Different if, for a second, you entertain a reading of xianxia settings as academia and apply that knowledge. To Shen Yuan, it's fresh, unexpected and even a bit cute or whatever that Qingge is a big manbaby at 30something. Shen Yuan doesn't have to deal with him that much, and he's too busy to think much about it. But imagine how annoying that must be for Jiu, who's always had to know what sex was as a threat. When we meet him at twelve, another kid in the gang he's scrapping with suggests Shen Jiu will get picked up as a brothel worker. Qi ge laughs it off, asking where he heard that kind of talk. The kid... obviously heard it because it's ambient, a real threat? (And that is kind of what happens to Jiu, who gets sold as a slave to someone who, if he doesn't sexually torture him, at least physically tortures him, and who feels very confident just assigning Jiu's sexuality to his sister like a present. The gender-age dynamics between those two make that not clearly legible as assault, but the 'marriage' itself kind of is structured as assault.) Shen Jiu is an awful teacher in part because he feels he's scrabbling at his place. Man-child Qingge has eeeeverything and he's also! an absolutely shit teacher! just very, very bad at most parts of the job he tripped and fell into by being Super Good at Stabbing! Considered as a colleague, who wouldn't want to shank him?
The mechanics of Binghe's similar do-over are really different. He's Jiu's apprentice, not a peer. As a child, Binghe isn't at all in the wrong, and the toxicity of that relationship is entirely on Shen Jiu. With the Qingge-Qingqiu bad blood, they're both at fault. For Qingge, then, part of the 'charm' of Shen 'secure attachment style' Yuan is his somewhat-unwitting violation of Shen Jiu's reasonable boundaries and distaste: 'all along 'Shen Jiu' was Actually Soft; now he Admits he likes me.' How annoyed would you be if you got swapped out of your body, and someone you had legit beef with (you'd been a dick too, but they just suuuucked) made moves on new-you, thinking they'd Overcome your Resistance, and part of their idea of new-you and the attraction was predicated on real-you? Like your posh, dumbass, most-hated office colleague? There's a forgiveness and reconciliation here; Yuan is able to start fresh. But in itself, that insubstantive or misdirected amelioration is really unsatisfying in terms of past wounds (MXTX yet again pointing out the irreducible quality of lingering trauma and how hard it makes meaningful repair, I guess).
I feel like a lot of these social dynamics Hit Different if, for a second, you entertain a reading of xianxia settings as academia and apply that knowledge. To Shen Yuan, it's fresh, unexpected and even a bit cute or whatever that Qingge is a big manbaby at 30something. Shen Yuan doesn't have to deal with him that much, and he's too busy to think much about it. But imagine how annoying that must be for Jiu, who's always had to know what sex was as a threat. When we meet him at twelve, another kid in the gang he's scrapping with suggests Shen Jiu will get picked up as a brothel worker. Qi ge laughs it off, asking where he heard that kind of talk. The kid... obviously heard it because it's ambient, a real threat? (And that is kind of what happens to Jiu, who gets sold as a slave to someone who, if he doesn't sexually torture him, at least physically tortures him, and who feels very confident just assigning Jiu's sexuality to his sister like a present. The gender-age dynamics between those two make that not clearly legible as assault, but the 'marriage' itself kind of is structured as assault.) Shen Jiu is an awful teacher in part because he feels he's scrabbling at his place. Man-child Qingge has eeeeverything and he's also! an absolutely shit teacher! just very, very bad at most parts of the job he tripped and fell into by being Super Good at Stabbing! Considered as a colleague, who wouldn't want to shank him?
