I'm Unni and there'll be Greek mythology, Star Wars (mostly Luke and his dad, but a little of everything), FFVII (mostly CC-era and Cloud + my ships), and TF around here! Zeus positive, Paris apologist. Don't bring up Dionysos, please. And if you think bullying, harassment or suicide baiting is ever justified or use freak negatively (or degenerate at all), leave.
I'm Unni, very much an adult and as such there will sometimes be +18 content created or reblogged here.
I'm several years deep into Greek mythology, especially the Trojan war side of things (but not only; the divine side of things and Zeus/Ganymede is my other love in this fandom), but there will also be SVSSS, The Murderbot Diaries, Star Wars, with a focus on Luke & Vader, some Transformers and sometimes Carmilla here. Other things may be posted/reblogged whenever I feel like it.
I'm a Trojan girl, so what I make or reblog will definitely reflect that, and my favourite character is Paris. Even if/when I discuss his flaws/what he's done wrong, I am a Paris apologist. This is your only warning. I ship both Helen/Paris, Menelaos/Paris, and Helen/Menelaos/Paris, so, again, this is going to be a lot of what gets posted.
Some specific tags
Creative tag (fic and art): lightart
Luke & Vader: awkward elevator music
Helen/Paris: helen and paris
Menelaos/Paris: for troy and sparta
Helen/Menelaos/Paris: no war ot3
Stuff focusing on the Trojan royal family: trojan family
Zeus/Ganymede has no shiptag at the moment, just check ganymede
My meta for Greek myth are all under greek myth thoughts
But specific ones are: slaves in greek myth, effeminacy in greek myth, archery in greek myth, epithet talk
Under the cut - the list of 'canonical' reading order for my Greek myth ficverse, and some info if you'd like to RP with me! (Greek Myth + SVSSS)
RP-info; Please be +25 at the least, regardless if you're interested in smut or not. No one-liners; I'm flexible about length but a couple paragraphs at least, and only 3rd person POV (I don't care about tense). We can RP on discord, DW, or for Paris, also on Tumblr, as I do have an RP blog that includes him in the muselist. If you'd like to talk about any of the below, hit me up in my IMs!
Greek Myth: I play Paris, and while I'm open to basically any character Trojan War-wise, I'd deeply love getting to play against Hektor, or, for shipping, Helen or Menelaos. More here.
SVSSS: I play Shen (Yuan) Qingqiu and would love Binghe RPers! Original or Bingmei. More here.
State of the fic-verse; I'll try to periodically keep this updated, but it should at least give some idea of reading order, if you want a guide to follow.
Zeus/Ganymede focused:
And the Trojan war-focused storyline (though some of the Zeus/Ganymede focused ones obviously overlap with the 'purely mortal' side of the Trojan war focused list here:
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(edit: for the sake of clarity, I changed "Shen Qingqiu" to "Shen Jiu" cause the relationship between transmigrated Shen Yuan and YQY is different, and on a back read I found it confusing)
A take I keep seeing is that Yue Qingyuan never ever doubts that Shen Jiu is in the wrong, and only wants to enable whatever he's up to when... I don't think that's true in the slightest!
And that the tragedy lies in that he knows he's in the wrong!
I believe what we see instead, and what personally makes their whole (vague hand waving) Deal all the more interesting, is that he actively knows that what Shen Jiu is doing is harmful for him, himself, and others around them.
But his nature is ultimately to be the calm mediator at best and self-appointed whipping boy at worst, and it slowly grinds him down until at the very end of PIDW he is left questioning if he can even do it anymore -- and then comes back anyway.
We see that pretty early in everyone's favorite scene where Shen Jiu threatens to brick a kid in the face (affectionate)!
Yue Qi tells Shiwu "oh he's just joking" but it's pretty obvious that he's just trying to defuse the situation before it gets worse. He absolutely knows that Shen Jiu can and will beat the shit out of this kid, so he puts himself in between them physically and verbally before that can happen, even when Shen Jiu kicks and steps on him in the process.
(I see you, foreshadowing)
It's interesting how in the intro to this, Yue Qi definitely had a more authoritative tone with Shen Jiu that slowly degrades over the course of the Extra.
The next time we see him so openly forceful is at the Pavilion:
This is a side of Yue Qingyuan that I have seen referenced in fanworks probably only enough times to count on my hands: a Yue Qingyuan who's openly mad and frustrated at this bullshit.
And honestly for good reason! He doesn't know Shen Qinqiu's issues with the dorms -- his only context is that a head disciple was found at a brothel where he's presumably having sex, severely injured a martial sibling, and nearly got into another fight with another head disciple. It's, uhhhhhhhhhhh not a good look for anyone involved, and Yue Qingyuan knows who's primarily at fault even as he tries to cover for him:
Once again, he is does not think Shen Qinqiu is being victimized here. He directly thinks and tries to persuade him that if he didn't pull this shit, he could maybe even be friends with Liu Qingge, if he bothered to try.
I personally felt like there's also an undercurrent of "why are you behaving so recklessly" because at the time, they are still disciples. Shen Qinqiu even notes directly later that "luckily" the Qing Jing peak lord likes him. What would it mean if the lord didn't like him? Would he still be a head disciple? Would he even be allowed to remain in the sect?
Yue Qingyuan seems to be taking this into consideration too; he worries about Shen Jiu not having any social support:
He has a lot of anxiety about Shen Jiu being happy in the sect! Even when Shen Qinqiu is all but guaranteed to be the next peak lord and probably not at risk of any of these things being an issue, Yue Qingyuan wants to be reassured that he's getting fed and housed properly.
But this is not to say that the state of their relationship isn't wearing on him.
An interesting note later on in this scene is that he sighs in the caves while Shen Qinqiu is talking to him in Everyone's Favorite Trauma Caves. ™. Compare to the Water Prison scene where it's noted that Yue Qingyuan is not one to sigh like this very often. It's an indication that he's starting to hit his emotional limits:
These two scenes where Yue Qingyuan is increasingly upset and quiet is an interesting comparison to the very first part of the extra where he has to tamper down a smile, where he's telling Shiwu that he's just joking, where he's talkative and promises to take Shen Jiu somewhere fun instead. The energy of that early section feels so much more light-hearted, much more "ahhh I know he's misbehaving but it's okay I can handle it :)", a feeling of affection for this scraggly stray cat that he loves.
But then that loving energy begins to slowly drain from each following scene until we come to this:
Rock bottom. Yue Qingyuan has hit the point where he doesn't know if he can defend him anymore.
He's considering that Shen Jiu really did murder Liu Qingge. I think he genuinely doesn't want to believe it -- but Shen Jiu's spiral of self-destruction has gotten to the point where he doesn't know if he would or not, and if he can defend his actions either way.
Phew!
This is Yue Qingyuan at his absolute lowest. It sucks man, it hurts! Facing off against the person he loves the most, trying to get some reassurance that he didn't kill their martial sibling in cold blood, that he feels some remorse over what he's done all these years, and getting nothing.
Once again, Yue Qingyuan is not thinking that Shen Jiu deserves to do these things, or that others are misinterpreting him.
This is bleeding heart, big brother vibes, earnest Qi-ge coming to terms with the idea that all his years of loyalty may ultimately have been for nothing and gotten people under his leadership, some that he cared about, killed or abused along the way.
But even then.
EVEN THEN!
He wants Shen Jiu to prove him wrong!
There's a really great meta from @chuckduckling about how contradictory Shen Jiu's words tend to be, and probably nobody knows this better than Yue Qingyuan when his guilt isn't clouding his judgement.
I've seen other folks take this Xuan Su convo as Yue Qingyuan saying earnestly "I deserve to let you kill me".
But I think it's a test.
He's just heard Shen Jiu say all these horrible things, that nothing could've gone different, and that especially he can only be happy when others around him are unhappy-- Hey wait a minute
He didn't take that jab seriously back then, and he doesn't want to now. So he offers Xuan Su to Shen Jiu and says, "Prove it. Prove to me right now that all you want is to hurt others, kill me since you hate me so much".
And when Shen Jiu doesn't do it, that's enough for Yue Qingyuan to decide that he's not entirely lost. He's still heartbroken for sure. But he still tries to alleviate his pain, to help him live a little longer. He's not giving up on him yet.
As he leaves, Shen Jiu thinks that he's finally driven the man away -- when in reality all he did was give him one more thread of hope to hold onto.
All in all... this is a long-winded way of saying that for me Yue Qingyuan gets a big disservice when he's flattened down to "he's always down to clown for Shen Qinqiu's crimes, he never questions his Xiao-Jiu!" when the text shows us that in actuality Yue Qingyuan knows from day one of their reunion that Shen Jiu is increasingly harmful to himself and others. But his guilt and love won't allow him to just sever the cord and walk away like others might.
That's the big irony of it all: Shen Jiu thinks Yue Qi forgot about him and abandoned him, while Yue Qi is silently trailing behind him trying to pick up the pieces because to him this silent loyalty is his penance.
By the end, it's become an ouroboros of self-blame and guilt for Yue Qingyuan. For every action he perceives himself as allowing Shen Jiu to do, he has an extra obligation to stay by his side, each one getting bigger and bigger in scope until finally he's at the point where he realizes it's out of control.
Shen Jiu gives him the out from that cycle.
Yue Qingyuan chooses to come back again.
I find a Yue Qingyuan who sees all his flaws but chooses him anyway, out of love or guilt or whatever combination of both, is so much more interesting and complicated than a Yue Qingyuan who doesn't see anything wrong at all.
It means he saw the trap being set a long time ago and stepped into it anyway.
Was thinking about this again and having some rambling thoughts while hopped up on cold meds
I'm wondering now if a lot of this perception actually comes from YQY's relationship with Shen Yuan's version of Shen Qingqiu, which would make sense to be honest! (Five thousand spirit stones scene, I love you so much.) We do get a mountain of evidence for that version of Shen Qingqiu. Shen Yuan thinks as much by the end of the book:
Shen Qingqiu was searching for a way to answer when Yue Qingyuan said, “Shidi, Cang Qiong Mountain will forever be a place to which you can return whenever you tire of wandering the outside world.”
These words were said with utmost sincerity and solemnity.
Yue Qingyuan had always been this way. Whatever he promised, he would definitely deliver. And what he couldn’t deliver, he would endeavor to make up for, no matter the cost.
Buuuuuuut I do think it's important to me at least to stress the difference between SY and SJ's relationship to YQY, because it really changes the dynamic of what he's doing and why.
The former's change in persona allows their relationship to stabilize and improve to a point where it's not just this loop of guilt and self-blame, until finally you get a Yue Qingyuan who is arguably at his best: the guy that Shen Yuan always sees as his stable place in this world, who's always going to have his back and that he looks to as a leader. (do check out @zykamiliah's post on SY's feelings on YQY it's great). By the end of the book, Yue Qingyuan feels confident enough to let Shen Qingqiu leave with Binghe, simply saying he'll be here if he needs him. It's a bittersweet ending but imo one that's better for him in the long run.
Meanwhile, the latter's spiral of self-prophetic villainy has just created a negative feedback loop on each other until we get a Yue Qingyuan asking him earnestly if he can feel any remorse, if he killed Liu Qingge, and to Shen Jiu's own words is "shattered". Polar opposite opposite of SV's ending, his guilt and pain are his primary motivators -- and this YQY can't let go.
This is never to say that Yue Qingyuan ever stopped loving Shen Jiu, to whatever degree is up to you, don't get me wrong. The devotion is baked in, baby. But it definitely transforms one way or the other, and the emotions behind them change as well.
I'm getting off track -- but mostly I just wanted to blab in that viewing Yue Qingyuan's motivations and actions, good or bad, hinge so hard on the who and why and when of it all, and that he's a more interesting character to me when that's explored than getting boiled down to The Simp ™.
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someone should study the phenomenon of homer fandom enthusiasts treating every non-homeric mythological source or tradition not only as "non-canonical," but as an actual affront to the story they know, regardless of whether the narratives are in competition. but not me because i'm too easy to ragebait.
After I was scolded for working (drawing trees) when I was supposed to be relaxing, I painted a Shen Qingqiu (yes my friends did point out that there is a tree still, but as I told them it’s the wrong type of pine to be in my book and therefore doesn’t count.)
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