You would have thought I had died, but I made it out alive

It's torture for Binghe. Shen Jiu, the white walls and pain are all he knows. Until one day he hears a noise and finds a boy slightly older than him in the lab looking around in shock. The boy, Shen Yuan, looks horrified by the blood on the floor, asking Binghe what he's doing in his basement. Why is he locked up behind glass? He fumbles around the buttons until Binghes door opens and he's finally free.

Binghe: yes.. I have a debt I need to repay to your brother

Binghe: now I have to act pathetic and harmless until shen yuan leads me to shen jiu and I can finally take my revenge

Imagine in a reverse transmigration BingJiu au where Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan have switched places, while Shen Yuan was living his best life in Qing Jing, Shen Jiu has been living his. After all 10 years is a long time. He has recovered somewhat, gone to therapy, managed the overwhelming weight of having a family after living his entire life as an orphan, the concept of unconditional love and being the CEO of a massive company quite efficiently.

So when Bingge goes to find himself a good Shizun he stumbles across this man, that isn't quick to violence, that allegedly doesn't live to spew venom in the lives of those around him, his every waking hour, who has a good reputation and relationship with his peers. Yet he is as cold and impeccable as ever.

Luo Binghe doesn't believe it, he doesn't believe it for a second, this so-called reformed facade of his scum Shizun. So when Luo Binghe crosses worlds and proceeds to make himself Shen Jiu's problem, He introduces himself as the man's boyfriend to his family and colleagues, feeds them a ridiculous little story about how this man has so viciously kicked out after being in a relationship for 7 years since he was fifteen, just to relish in the horrified and indignant look on his shizun's face.

"Baobei did I say something wrong," He hangs onto his arm and blinks up at him all doe eyed and innocent like he has no clue what he just did.

"Uh, so um what do you do for a living," a coworker asks to break the awkward silence. Binghe's Shizun glares at him like he's the stupidest creature that ever had the misfortune of walking this planet. He would have been whipped to an inch of his life if this was Qing Jing, Luo Binghe thinks. He didn't put together such a nice outfit for people to not assume he's their CEO's trophy husband.

"He codes," Shen Jiu finally deadpans to his surprise.

"That's right," Luo Binghe bounces back quickly.

"Gegeee, I'm bored,"he whines in the most obnoxious way possible.

Shen Jiu firmly grabs his arm, hard enough to leave marks His other hand rests on the base of his spine. It sends a shiver up, anticipating a fight, he's not a child anymore he can dish out as good as he gets now.

"You're right, I'm so sorry, let's go home, sweetheart," Shen Jiu grits through his teeth, but the word still makes his stomach swoop, must be the adrenaline after putting on such a good show. him out of the room, under the judgy frowns of the entire office.

He expects violence, cruel words, nasty glare, something, anything to feed his confirmation bias. But days go by but nothing. He was even generous enough to get him a new phone, but Luo Binghe already knows everything that is there to know about this world, he came prepared. There's nothing he could come across that could surprise him as bad as his Shizun acting like he isn't just a hollow wretched man with nothing good to offer. But nothing seems to break the man. The things that would have gotten him strung up and beaten doesn't even get a single reaction out of him.

Luo Binghe ups his game. He knocks off cups off of tables. He happens to be in the background of important meetings half naked in nothing but an oversized shirt of his Shizun. Still nothing, not even a flinch. Even on the rare occasions he looks close to loosing it he just closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths, he's been getting therapy for almost a decade now. His arsenal is full of calming techniques nothing seems to affect him. That's it, couldn't have done this a few decades earlier?

So Binghe gets bolder, climbing into his lap while he's working.

"I'm trying to work over here, you little beast ," Shen Jiu says almost no heat to his words as he mechanically clicks the keys of the keyboard.

"Look at me," he pouts.

"Don't make this any harder than it already is," Luo Binghe only seems to cling harder.

I did this trend on tiktok (yes, finally succumbed to tiktok) because I just wanted to see Shen Jiu being the villain everyone in the novel oh so portrays. Because if he were to actually be an irredeemable villain then imma make sure he looks good terrorizing everyone. Because he is my mother.

... which is funny to think about, right, given the number of characters who probably died holding extremely strong grudges in either PIDW or SVSSS-verse

anyway. AU where luo binghe is killed at the endless abyss and comes back as an extremely powerful ghost for whatever reason (read: airplane-related contrivances). In PIDW, his comeback scene is a glorious tale of revenge. he possesses various people shen qingqiu spends time around, changing targets as convenient. he doesn't leave any trace it's happening, he slowly manipulates things such that shen qingqiu simply seems insane, and he drags out all of this over a looong period of time, leaving shen qingqiu to wonder what is reality and what's in his own mind. and when shen qingqiu is finally at the end of his rope, luo binghe finally deigns to possess him and... it's finally over.

then this AU's version of SVSSS starts.

the endless abyss happens, because it has to. luo binghe returns to haunt shen qingqiu, as the plot dictates. only—even when luo binghe covers every trace of his ghostly tracks, shen qingqiu... always just seems to know. his teacher who killed him with a heartless look in his eyes sees him in every body he possesses, no matter how well he acts, looking not scared, or angry, but... sad. just sad. even as luo binghe makes a wreck of his master's life—he'll do anything to elicit a response, whatever it takes to get answers!—shen qingqiu seems to just let it all happen, even when it seems like it's clearly in his power to fight back.

when luo binghe finally possesses this shen qingqiu, it seems like he has his answers at last. he finds out that shen qingqiu has set his own body to self-destruct with luo binghe's ghost trapped in it. (this facsimile of 'death' won't keep luo binghe away from the living world forever—he's too powerful for that—but it will banish him for a long time.) ah. so shizun.. really does hate me. so much so that he'd destroy himself to get at me.

MAKE YOUR SHOES FOOT-SHAPED YOU IDIOTS

[Source: Pixabay]

Western white woman: Wow, ancient Chinese foot binding for aesthetics was Messed Up, right?

Western white woman:

[Source: Clarks (the "good" brand for people who want healthy feet!), eBay]

Adult who has always made the effort to wear healthy shoes: Anyway, at least my shoes are the same shape as my feet

Their feet:

[Source: left, right]

Their "comfortable" and "functional" shoes:

[Source: Loafers, walking boots, trainers]

Most modern societies: Foot injuries are normal and common, shoes have to be worn in, we all have bad posture for some reason, it's a given that elderly people have problems with their feet, etc.

Adult who has never worn shoes: My feet are big triangles, and my toes are useful

YES!!!!!! We do this to children and then they too are stuck with shoe-shaped feet and it is really, really horrible!!!!!!!! It makes me feel very insane also.

when real people do kink in real life, you gotta do all that good out-of-scene stuff like discuss boundaries, set limits and expectations, check in with each other, do aftercare, et cetera et cetera et cetera... but in fiction, everything can be in-scene!

the people in that fanfic don't exist any more than, like, the make-believe sexy football star and make-believe sexy cheerleader in a couple's roleplay exist. that couple doesn't need to get into character and then pretend to be a sexy football star having an important consent conversation with a sexy cheerleader, because that's a conversation that's already happened out-of-scene and out-of-character. (i mean, if you're into in-character negotiations, chase your bliss.) when they're in that scene, they can just pretend to be a sexy football star having sex with a sexy cheerleader. that's okay.

when i say in fiction, everything is in-scene, i mean that the fiction IS the scene.

if someone went up to their partner and said "hey, wouldn't it be sexy if we pretended you were manipulating and controlling me in an unethical way for sex reasons?", and then they talked through all the good and necessary consent and risk-awareness things, and then they played that scene out - that's a made-up scenario where pretend bad things happen, but no real-world people come to real-world harm, right?

now, if someone writes a story where one character manipulates and controls another in an unethical way for sex reasons... that, too, is a made-up scenario where pretend bad things happen, but no real-world people come to real-world harm.

Maybe your parents and your grandparents and great-grandparents were among those people - or maybe they weren't, personally. Some people admittedly aren't.

But every human alive is part of an uninterrupted line of hundreds of thousands of years of descent (and that's only since we became Homo sapiens).

We, as humans, have created and built and invented and learned and treated and cured so, so much. Because we kept looking around us, and looking at the people around us, and saying, "I want a better world for the people I love. I want a better world for the people who will come next."

Or perhaps think about it this way:

Would you want your great-grandchildren (or the great-grandchildren of your loved ones / family / chosen family, if you'd rather) to be miserable?

The pit token (and locker key) was something my grandad had when he worked in a coal mine. Every day he would have it over and receive his safety lamp, and go down the pit to mine coal. At the end of the day if there were any tokens left on the board then they'd know that there was still someone in the pit.

My grandad was an intelligent man. He was politically motivated, wrote letters to the local MP, read countless books about many subjects, listened to a wide variety of music, etc. But he worked down that pit for years to pay for a house and home for three kids. He broke his back down that pit. When his best friend died he locked himself in his shed with a bottle of rum cause obviously Men Don't Cry and he couldn't be seen. He fought in world war 2 and killed men in battle, and he never spoke about it unless asked.

So every time I go to look for him, I see this:

Lesbian doves ❤️🧡🤍🩷💜