#ask meta

I'm not going to post on Deviantart at all anymore as the site supports way too much Generative AI, among other things.. If I continue the Steven Universe Separated AU it will likely be on here. I would honestly love to, especially since I have a relatively long comic WIP with Spinel still in the works for it (not sure if I ever shared the sketched pages or only the first finished one), but since I'm only making art as a hobby and I'm limited by the whims of my ADHD I can only work on what I genuinely feel like working on the most at any given time (and if you've taken a look at my blog during the past nearly 1 and a half years, you can tell that my current fixation is Hazbin Hotel, more specifically Lucifer) I will gladly continue the AU on here as soon as my interest shifts back to Steven Universe, but I cannot predict or promise when/if that will happen, sorry.

yknow i’m not sure which post you’re referring to because there are so many options but i will ALWAYS TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO TALK ABOUT CUMPLANE MARRYING THE DEMON VERSIONS OF EACH OTHER THANK YOU FOR ENABLING ME

let’s start with this: luo binghe is shang qinghua’s OP male power fantasy self insert. this is, i should think, common knowledge by now. you don’t write something like pidw without having to rely on the familiar to ensure that, if nothing else, your lead’s characterisation is consistent. and what is more familiar to you as an author than your own self, all your worst flaws?

luo binghe is a family-less and beaten-down youth who has suffered and been thrown away time and time again and who wants nothing more than for someone to keep him. luo binghe is manipulative and his go-to method of manipulation is to be pathetic and sticky, to convince everyone around him that he is not as sharp, cunning, or powerful as he actually is—and he was doing well and dandy at this with the entire cultivation world, right up to the point that shen qingqiu self-detonated and everything properly went to hell in a hand basket. his love language is food. his love language is physical affection. his love language is being told, “no, i am not leaving you. no, i am not going to push you away. i am coming home, you are my home, you are my home.”

shang qinghua and luo binghe take the same approach to avoiding the abandonment that they so desperately fear: i will make myself indispensable to the person i love, so that he cannot afford to throw me away again.

but origami, you say, what about shen qingiqu and mobei jun? how are they the same?

i am so glad you asked.

to me, there are two differences between mobei jun and shen qingqiu. one: mobei jun is a demon. two: mobei jun is king of the northern desert, whereas shen qingqiu is a peak lord/lazy second-gen young master who never had to work. that’s about it, and i believe that there are certain overlaps between both of their upbringings re: privilege in particular.

shen qingqiu and mobei jun are both bitchy tsunderes with a penchant for physical rebuke. shen qingqiu and mobei jun both seemingly have an allergy to vocalising any of their innermost thoughts—both of which is somewhat rooted in culture, how they’ve been raised to examine themselves and the ways they interact with others. shen qingqiu and mobei jun are, at their cores, prone to allowing miscommunications to persist because they don’t care for the value of talking it out, because they’ve never tried that option and don’t know that it’s really the only solution that most of their problems require. they are cold and calculating and quiet, big cats lying in wait to catch smaller prey.

it is the preconceived notions that both of them hold that lead to most of the problems in their pre-relationships. and what do these two do, when they realise the depth of their misunderstandings? what do they do, when they realise that the people they love don’t want power, don’t want the world, don’t want status except for to help elevate themselves to a level that these two cold and aloof men may find them worth keeping? what do they do, when they learn that all the other wants is to be held, to be kept. to be wanted for who they are and not for who the world believes them to be.

obviously, they keep them. shen qingqiu and mobei jun’s love language is indulgence—specifically, in indulging the wants and whims of the men that they are married to, because they’re both still learning how to express themselves in ways more compatible to their partners.

“Whispy was pretty heavy but I’m up for the challenge, I put him back after though .”

Sure! I definitely can talk about it.

The metaphor is hardly a perfect parallel, but the coast shelf can be read as a metaphor for purgatory, specifically the Purgatory set out in Dante’s La Comedia (or The Divine Comedy, though Dante himself did not add Divine to the title, that was someone else). 

ASOUE owes quite a lot to Dante. Most obviously, the narrator is a middle aged man who’s going on about Beatrice, a woman who’s dead and didn’t choose him. ASOUE was actually my personal introduction to Dante because of this. 

The Divine Comedy in many ways is self-insert Bible fanfiction about Dante and his midlife crisis. He’s gone astray, and Beatrice up in Paradise decides to intervene by showing him the afterlife and change his ways so he can wind up going to heaven as well. Beatrice, however, can’t guide Dante through Hell, so Dante’s favorite author Virgil (Dante’s a fan boy and we know it) who is in Limbo guides him through Hell. Dante’s tour reaches Mt. Purgatory, and he and Virgil take a hike up the seven deadly sins (again). At the top waiting for him is Beatrice. Beatrice then takes Dante into Paradise, and it’s not as interesting to talk about so I’ll stop the summary.

Purgatory is a place between Heaven and Hell where people who are not damned, but not good enough to get into Heaven yet wait. They’ve got to address their sins. They’re not being punished like those in Hell, but they’ve got to face what they’ve done and the virtue that corresponds to their sin. It’s basically summer school for people who aren’t perfect enough to get into Heaven. The amount of time spent in Purgatory varies case to case, and some people get through quick. Some people completely bypass it. Some people have been chilling there for a thousand years or more, according to Dante. You get out of Purgatory when you address what you need to address.

The Coastal Shelf, in a way, is like Purgatory. Everything comes back, and at the end is Beatrice - the bringer of happiness. That’s what Beatrice means. Purgatory is a temporary holding spot for character development until you are ready to move on. 

The Baudelaire parents were on the shelf for a time, but left - once they had faced what they had to face. We see Olaf and Kit face parts of their past that are “loose ends” and give a lot of insight into their characters - they don’t make it out alive since they never did address their loose ends and neither wanted to, so they become a part of the coastal shelf. The Baudelaire children are forced to reconcile everything that they have learned about their parents, everything they have suffered, and once they’re ready, they make it off the island.

It’s a tenuous metaphor, since there are quite a lot of characters who died who did have loose ends or something to learn. But, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a Purgatory-like aspect to The End. 

The Coastal Shelf, like Purgatory, a liminal place (literally) where characters are forced to face what they have done and learn, and Beatrice is who/what saves the Baudelaires in the end. 

It is one reading of The End or way to look at what happens. I do not think that it’s the only thing Handler was getting at while writing The End, but I do think that he at least had Dante in mind while writing it and it influenced The End. Structurally, The End is separate from ASOUE. The Series of Unfortunate Events is the Inferno, and The End is Purgatory. 

Oh shit. Okay, okay. (Do I need to write a fanfic of my fanfic? Jokes.)

Kunzite:

Has a shit ton of sisters. Like, ten. They all scared him when he was little and still do. And, more importantly, they taught him how to do his hair. His sisters are why Kunzite wears his hair long—partially because he felt left out when they all sat around braiding each other’s, and partially because he liked seeing if he could become invisible to his parents by blending into the mass of them when he was young. Only three of them (including Kunzite) have hair that stayed white into adulthood; the word for this in their culture is “moon-marked” or “moon-kissed.”

Is the youngest child. There was only a short time when a) most of his sisters were still at home and b) he was old enough to appreciate them. They had all scattered to the wind by the time he turned ten—married off or gone off to school or travel or become diplomats.

Was a wild child, despite all his stoic mid-twenties world-weariness. That year of silence in the monastery when he was sixteen? Totally overstated. You better be sure Kunzite snuck out at least a few times a month with the younger monks to gallivant around the town at the base of the mountain the monastery was on. And everyone in town knew where they were from, too, but let them off, because what teenage boy wants to spend a whole year locked up in silence?

Totally got his ass handed to him in a drinking contest when he ran into one of his father’s friends during an aforementioned night on the town. Wound up sleeping with one of the stable boys in a haystack. He has never divulged the complete details of that night to anyone, but no one’s sure if it’s because he doesn’t remember or if he is embarrassed. (Neither: It’s because he knows the power of a secret. Nephrite, Zoisite, and Jadeite would kill to get the story out of him, because he has only ever alluded to it.)

(Okay, okay, one detail of that escapade: The stable boy originally approached Kunzite because he thought Kunzite was a woman. The stable boy decided he didn’t really care when he discovered otherwise.)

Cannot hold his liquor. At. All. 

Has never let Zoisite, Nephrite, and Jadeite discover this.

Pours out his drinks into nearby plants whenever they challenge him to a drinking contest. (They are not terribly observant when surrounded by women in a bar.)

Was an expert in stopping Endymion from sneaking out and totally ruining his public image whenever Kunzite escorted him around the kingdoms because of aforementioned hijinks.

Had to shave his head during the time in monastery. Was not pleased about it one bit. Wrote a passive-aggressive letter home to his mother with the aftermath enclosed.

Knows how to say “take off your pants, please” in at least three ancient languages.

Was totally awful at formal university debate, which involves pacing around an arena and firing off arguments defending or attacking pre-assigned topics in rapid succession, with hand-numbing claps signaling the end of a thought.

Almost drowned, once. His eldest sister rescued him.

Always played the damsel when his sisters wanted to play knights.

Was afraid of horses for the longest time.

Once pranked his university by sneaking into the library and replacing all of the books in the RELIGION section with manuals, treatises, polemics, etc., related to sex… (read them all, too).

Venus:

First came to earth purely out of curiosity. This was like, centuries before Venus was assigned to protect Serenity.

Spent her first night on Earth at a town’s harvest festival. Much beer was drunk. Many dances were had. The next time Venus visited, they had erected a statue of her in the town temple.

Made it her mission to party-hop every time she went down to Earth after that. Southern fire worship ceremony? Check. Desert moon celebration to end the dry season? Check. Western indulgence festival to kick off fasting? Check. Northern drinking marathon on the longest day of the year? Check.

Quickly learned that clothes were a thing she needed to keep on, for the most part. Even if it was damn fucking hot.

Again, every time when Venus returned: Statues. Offerings. Throngs of people asking for her blessings. She helped herself.

Definitely had favorite offerings: Pomegranates. Oysters. That three-day festival that involved a bunch of naked women getting together in the forest.

Was just totally perplexed by underwear. And pants. Why pants?

Didn’t learn a thing about Earth if it wasn’t related to its obsession with her.

Once brought an entire cask of Venusian spirits to a festival.

Was pleased with the myriad spirits humans made in their numerous (if failed) attempts to recreate it.

Had a running contest with a few other adventurous Venusians on how many earthlings they could bed in a night. (Venus usually won; Adonis was her main competitor.)

Fell in love with a human once before; watched them grow old and die without her.

Abruptly stopped visiting Earth after that for a good two centuries. Forgot most everything she had learned of it after that and devoted herself instead to assuming Venus’s throne; the care and feeding of one Princess Serenity after that.

Is the only one of the senshi who indulged her curiosities about Earth.

What's Marcy's reaction when she sees Whitey's transformation? (MMSS AU)

It stresses her out quite a lot, but she tries her best not to freak out in front of Simon or anything to not get him any more worried than he already is. She mainly just tries to stay as calm as she can and do damage control.

For example, when his wind powers began to manifest, he would actually black out whenever they activated and neither Marcy nor Finn or anyone wanted to tell Simon that he may or may not have blown apart a house or some trees while he was unaware so they simply kept him in the dark about it, so much so that he had no idea he even had that power for a while (until some angry townsfolk that lost their houses to his wind eventually yelled at him for it and he eventually stopped blacking out in those moments)

I also have an old roughly sketched comic about the first time Simon's leftover magic began to manifest in him randomly being able to fly again while Marcy, Finn and Ice Thing were with him

(i want so dearly to write an essay on shen jiu visiting brothels just to sleep and have some peace but all i can come up with is just crack, like imagine this baby cultivation student with eyebags supreme going to the downtown brothel carrying like fifty pillows, enters in like "hi jiejie" goes to his own special corner "good night jiejie" and then immediately knocks out cus he hasn't slept a wink in the three days of laying in bed alongside his martial brothers while desperately trying to close his eyes but his trauma and fight or flight instincts will not SHUT UP, and the brothel women don't even blink like yeah that's just a-jiu he's here like three times a week dont worry)

hi anon!! i LOVE this ask thank you

there’s usually something so frustrating to me about characters who intentionally allow themselves to be misunderstood—who let the world develop this opinion of them that lacks a key component of context. oftentimes it feels so needless, and it’s always more irritating instead of tragic—there’s no reason why the character can’t just swallow their pride and be honest, or something. yknow?

shen jiu is an awful person. nothing can justify treating literal children the way that he did, in such a way that a deviation from that behavior literally changes the entire world. when you have the benefit of knowing the whole timeline, and can point out the definitive ripple effects of this singular change, it’s really easy to say, “hey, look what this guy was putting into the world, look what happens when you take him out of it and replace him, clearly none of it was good.”

shen jiu allows the misunderstanding to persist because a) his only regret is not killing binghe before he got this much power and b) the world has never believed him before. he has never had any reason to think his explanations would be believed, let alone accepted. and he’s probably right, because the plot is set up specifically to facilitate luo binghe’s rise to power and his fixation on his vengeance.

shen jiu the adult is a cautionary tale—look what happens when you put misery into the world, look what happens when you’re replaced. shen jiu the disciple, the child, the slave boy is an abject tragedy. binghe absolutely mirrors him in this manner—tragedy to fable. neither of them end up happy—they end up powerful, they end up in positions of influence where they can perpetuate the abuse they faced, but their refusal to examine their trauma and to take any action to heal from it (rather than just taking senseless vengeance against people that they feel threaten them) is a shared vice. they both know who made luo binghe, and are both reaping the consequences of it.

their relationships with women are both clearly skewed. it isn’t that shen jiu loves women—he just hates men, and women have protected him from men, and he believes that he can rely on them for that alone. money for the ability to sleep in a space where men can’t harm him, where he can turn off that part of his brain and rest. it isn’t about affection or care, it’s about safety. luo binghe, however, gets 100% of his physical comfort and affection from women. they can’t provide him safety, he doesn’t rely on them for emotional intimacy. they are tools for him to use to keep xin mo under control and for him to accept physical touch.

they both have very transactional relationships with women and touch. the transaction for one is money for rest/safety, and for the other its sex for physical comfort/maintenance of his fuck-or-die sword.

(i mean the best part of fic and meta to me is that you can have that crack and also have other parts that are just soul-sucking gut-wrenching yknow so lean into it! maybe when you write all the crack the angst will just fill it’s place?

his jiejies waking him for the morning, sweetly: a-jiu come on you gotta get back to your mountain

some guy leaving: what’s this kid doing here? whys he get this special little corner? i didn’t see him pay! let me wake him up i’ll send him on his way i want a special corner! i pay you plenty!

brothel girls, suddenly monstrous: lay a hand on him and you’ll find it no longer attached to your wrist. *back to sweet* a-jiu, come on, time to be awake

shen jiu, snoring away: jiejie nooooo