there is but one difference between us

to desire, but not acknowledge it. to desire, but not allow yourself to feel it. to desire, but to ignore it. to desire, but to avoid it. to desire, but prioritize other’s desires above your own. to desire, but forgetting what desire even looks like. to desire, but remembering what your impulsivity has already wrought. to desire, but above all else: to deny.

desires are meant to be denied, after all. it’s the most quintessential teaching from your shizun. if you deny your desires, you will gain strength. power. control.

(you will stop looking at yourself in reflections, unable to acknowledge the living weapon that you’ve become. the xuan su sword does not feel regret that it is powerful. it’s sole purpose is to be useful. to be used—

—used, like you always have been. used, like you always will be. used, and yet never useful when you most need to be. you still remember how your vision blurred when you looked upon the charred remains of the qiu estate. how wooden splinters embedded into your fingers as you mindlessly dug amongst the rubble, desperate to find any clue that he was still alive. head spinning, hands shaking, and then suddenly your shizun is gripping your shoulders and forcing your meridians— if something more reminiscent of a corpse than a man, a mere wooden doll that is rotting away, can even have meridians— to quiet.)

hollow. empty. distant. barren. you stop being able to feel anything at all. this, you decide, is fine. the xuan su sword does not need to feel. it only needs to protect. to stand alone in the midst of the battlefield. it needs to be strong. it does not need to grieve.

the xuan su sword has no past.

(you can’t grieve your past.)

it has no future.

(you can’t envision your future.)

it only acts in the now.

(you can only focus on what you can do now, but your hands don’t feel like yours anymore. they haven’t felt like yours in a long time.)

you were alone, once. solitude once again welcomes you.

you can’t forget how his tiny hand felt in the palm of your hand as he snuck you a handful of scraps when he noticed you had given up your meal again. so clever, so observant, so spiteful— and yet so kind, despite all his jagged edges. you missed this kindness that stung yet soothed your heart (yes, you had a heart, once) in equal parts.

my beloved fic writers, when you write characters in fics who are trans, please consider:

1. do they have gender dysphoria?

—> if they don’t— do they feel safe enough in their environment to actually present themself in a way that aligns with their gender identity? (not having gender dysphoria ≠ comfortable with being misgendered!!!)

—> how does gender dysphoria impact their gender presentation? their interactions with others? their relationships? the way they have sex? their ability to be emotionally vulnerable with others? how safe do they feel to express their true authentic self?

2. have they, or do they plan on, physically transitioning? (surgery, hormones, etc!)

—> how does (or can) physical transitioning affirm their gender? think about it more than just top and/or bottom surgery— the development of secondary sex characteristics (breast tissue growth, muscle mass, body hair, fat distribution, and more!) are equally (if not sometimes more) important!!!

—> if they don’t want to physically transition, why not? Is it due to lack of gender dysphoria, or are there other reasons (fear of being involuntarily outed, medical trauma, financial difficulties, lack of resources, unsupportive environments, etc).

—> IF THEY ARE NONBINARY. consider what gender affirming physical transition might look like! hormones + bottom surgery only, facial feminization surgery and voice training, top surgery and wearing a packer, or something else entirely!

—> how does their physical transition (or lack thereof) affect their relationships, the way they present themself, their self confidence, the way they have sex, their sense of safety? (specifically re: sex, remember that hormones especially can affect libido, and that trans people might not want to have sex the same way cis people do! how can your character have sex in a way that affirms their gender?)

—> final note here: if they are intersex and you are not, please please please do extensive research here. especially in the context of sex and physical transition! most importantly, look for perspectives coming from intersex folks themselves!

3. how does the language that others use (particularly gendered language) while referring to your character affect them? think: safety, comfort, dysphoria, euphoria!

—> how does their language that they use to refer to themself and their body affect them? do they refer to themself differently in their mind vs out loud?

4. how long have they known that they are trans?how did they figure this out?

—> how comfortable are they with their identity? are they still figuring things out?

—> what are the biggest triggers for gender dysphoria? (misgendering, clothing, voice, etc)

—> what brings them the most gender euphoria? (pronouns, haircuts, clothing, activities, etc!)

REMEMBER: at the end of the day, trans characters (like any other character!) are so much more than just their genitalia!

hello hello!

I will admit, I have never put much thought into this ship myself hm🤔. However, I do quite enjoy the quiet tragedy side of it. Being knowingly in love with somebody whose sense of self is inextricably interwoven with somebody else already. And the knowledge/assumption that you will never even get to see them properly happy, because the person that their soul is tied to doesn't even exist anymore. Because MQF and everyone else is aware that be it amnesia/or whatever the hell else took place, the new Shen Qingqiu (even delightful as he is) is but a remnant and uncanny memory of the man that used to stand in his place.

I like MQF fighting losing battles against his better judgement 👍 jgkhfd

And seeing this thoroughly broken man, of course he would try to do everything in his might to try to help, despite knowing that he cannot offer a fix to what truly causes YQY his misery.

okay but enough of angst 💥lets say that YQY eventually breaks out of his funk (good for him) and starts seeing MQF properly for all the care and work that he puts in and falls for him back! cute :)) doting YQY on overworked MQF who doesnt expect to suddenly be getting any attention back would be verrry cute 💜

The problem is that, due also to being a professional hater, whenever he encounters something he doesn't understand, he has a tendency to simply immediately denounce it as 'absurd' or 'stupid', or simply 'incomprehensible', without updating his mental model or trying to figure out if there's something he's missing.

He's the guy who thinks he already knows better than anyone else - the one who doesn't hesitate for a second to call a character's actions 'OOC' even when the author himself says otherwise. Who doesn't hesitate to declare that he understands a character better than even the author does. And he's not entirely wrong (at least, when it comes to Luo Binghe and PIDW as a whole), but he's also unbelievably stubborn and has shut off his brain to any possibility of new development. He's also the guy who says that a character is acting 'OOC' after an extended period of thematic improvement and growth, because he doesn't like the fact that the story has gone in this direction but only knows how to express his opinions as objective fact.

He's intelligent, and loves to learn when it comes to certain subjects of interest (mainly monsters), but when it comes to other people, he's destructively incurious. If someone acts in a way he didn't expect from them - such as Luo Binghe openly flirting with him, or Liu Qingge acting protective, or either expressing anger when he gets too close to the other - he picks up on it immediately, and remarks on in inwardly, and then... immediately dismisses it. It's just 'strange behaviour', that's all. People behaving 'against their interests'. It's all just part of this ridiculous world Shen Yuan has been unceremoniously shoved into, and he can't possibly be expected to understand it all, right? It was all merely badly-written lowest-common-denominator porn, anyway. It is simply Not That Deep.

(And well: obviously this is all also a very good way to avoid confronting anything he might ever not wish to acknowledge. In the broad sense, that thing is 'I might sometimes be wrong about PIDW'. But more specifically... it is much easier simply to complain that Luo Binghe is messing things up for no reason than to acknowledge that he might be a little less straight than Shen Yuan believes him to be, or that Shen Yuan might not entirely mind when he makes these 'mistakes'.)

through the years…