SVSSS FICS II

 When I started using this DW again I made a post on the four SVSSS fics I’d written so far, and so I thought I’d do it again now that I have eight more (and two additional quasi-fics). I’ll do half today, and the rest tomorrow. I might to the same for my MDZS stuff, later on. 

 

5. Without a Clue 

 

E; 16k; “Immediately before the Immortal Alliance Conference, Luo Binghe learns (via the magic of library science) that he alone can cure Shen Qingqiu's debilitating condition. When Binghe properly understands what that remedy will actually entail, he is even keener to be of use to his shizun.”

 

I did cross-post this one on here, but none of the subsequent fics. 

 

My Luo Binghe PoV agenda in action! We know from their conversation in and about the Holy Mausoleum that both Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu read the hell out of Qing Jing Peak’s library. In this fic I wanted that labour, referenced off-hand (like much of the information we get about these characters’ actual work), to have a kind of follow-through and payoff.

 

From fic to fic, I don’t consistently consider Luo Binghe’s demonic heritage to be something he could carefully play off, as he does here. In this story, though, I like the mechanics of his revealing it to the Peak Lords in a way precisely calculated to engineer their acceptance of the fact. (And ‘calculated’ is the word for it—this is a White Lotus BingMei with the same skill at manipulating people and situations as BingGe.) Showing a plausible scenario where this plot point is managed in a way that doesn’t necessitate Luo Binghe’s expulsion from cultivational society opens up interesting narrative possibilities. 

 

6. NIGHTMARE, attacked by Southern Succubi!! - Ming Fan Qing Jing Mission Road Trip (collab feat. Luo Binghe)

 

E; 9k; “Ming Fan thought that Luo Binghe had taken everything from him—but then Ming Fan never had been very imaginative.”

 

A post-canon fuck-or-die with Luo Binghe and Ming Fan. This one’s very niche—there are only four fics in English that touch Míng Fān/Luò Bīnghé (though this is fundamentally and conceptually still a BingQiu fic). I’m not surprised this one is comparatively unpopular, but I felt like a lot of the stuff herein needed said.

 

The outsider PoV lets Leo Binghe be simultaneously the character we know and are sympathetic towards and a truly unnerving figure Ming Fan resents and doesn’t understand. SVSSS gives Luo Binghe all kinds of restitution and closure with Shen Qingqiu, but very little with his peers, including Ming Fan (who, in another life, Luo Binghe took brutal and baroque revenge on, and still has good reasons to despise in revised second timeline). I think fandom could do more with how legitimately scary Luo Binghe can be. 

 

There could also be more fic about the unreconciled questions and comingled obligation, sincere admiration and betrayal that arise from Shen Yuan’s transmigration, which disrupts the original canon’s fated death-spiral. This isn’t just reducible to Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe’s psychodrama, it’s a bigger social issue for the people around them. I’d love fic about Luo Binghe during the years Shen Qingqiu is dead, dedicatedly attempting to resurrect his shizun while consolidating an empire, and the weird parallel arc of Ning Yingying and Ming Fan trying to manage their shared, deceased master’s Peak. (But not, hopefully, written in that kind of odd ‘chastising’ tone fic takes up sometimes, which seems to think blame canon for telling one story in a given emotional register at the expense of others, when that’s often a very sensible narrative choice.) 

 

What failsafes did Shen Yuan have time to leave his disciples with before he killed himself ahead of schedule? To what extent have Ning Yingying and Ming Fan been picking up Luo Binghe’s slack in his absence, during Shen Qingqiu’s incapacitating mourning period? I’m not interested personally in a pure gen fic treatment of this, but I feel like you could get rich pairing fic out of it, and that it’s an odd lacunae in the fandom.

 

7. Wrong Genre Savvy 

 

PG; 5k; “Shen Yuan does not enter the Hunger Games with any expectation whatever of surviving them.”

 

This was a quite quick idea, based on some observations I made on Twitter (Phnelt had a different and interesting take on it), that got out of hand. It’s not beta’d and polished; if I’d properly written it I might have leaned more into the period when Shen Qingqiu is back in the Capitol as a Victor and the weird tension between he and Luo Binghe in that space (to a degree, the fic rests on the sex work implications of being a Victor, which Finnick lightly touches on in the original books).

 

This canon is a great mesh with Scum Villain because they both circle questions of genre, being observed, not knowing your own feelings due to external circumstances involving stress and performativity, class and the militarisation of childhood (a big, recurring motif in xianxia and YA both). I like the way this set-up enables a quite conditional but meaningful betrayal between the lead couple, which isn’t a failure of love or of nerve but an awful situational necessity. 

 

I didn’t flesh this story out enough to milk the conceit’s full emotional impact, but then I also don’t know that I can see much more being conceptually done with a fusion between these specific canons. (Though of course I’m open to being proved wrong!)

 

8. The Favourite 

 

E; 13k; “Demonic Emperor Luo Binghe's reputation precedes him. It's just not very accurate.”

 

In this fic, Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe have been married for about the length of time the book itself spanned. They’ve grown into the relationship and are a joyful adult couple, comfortable with one another and talking about having kids in the next few years. 

 

I never quite buy fics wherein Shen Qingqiu, who’s obsessed with Luo Binghe and, as Shen Yuan, read about his political and martial adventures with avid dedication and attention, hangs back, totally disinterested in what his husband gets up to. There’s a fair amount go fic where Shen Qingqiu is just sort of an accessory, there to experience jealousy while people try to Wife Plot up his husband. Shen Qingqiu is a fairly active character, though? He can’t even be idle while nursing Luo Binghe through a qi deviation in an Extra; he also takes on a job teaching school in a village for the duration. No one sane gets a teaching job for fun? Like his husband, Shen Qingqiu only looks normal (rather than Terminally Caremad) from quite specific, limited angles. Thus this post-canon story is lightly case-ficish, which I want more of for the two of them. 

 

It was built around the ‘chief consort’ role-play, because that felt sexy and fun. I do think Shen Qingqiu has built up an erotic fascination with this aspect of his husband (and is simultaneously somewhat anxious about it). 

Quasi-Fic:

 

- SVSSS Meta

R; 12k

 

The collected meta from this DW, cleaned up a bit.