my input, if you'd like it, on your musing about where to start with jingshun: i think if you start with li shun's childhood and stay in her pov, it'll be (or feel like) a story about ls primarily and jingshun secondarily, but if you start when they meet, even if you stay in li shun's pov, they might have more equal protagonist status... and you can flashback to li shun's beginnings maybe. not that a li shun protagonist focus would be a bad thing at all! what jingjing doesn't know won't hurt her? she'll always be important!

MEOWWWW HAPPY FRIDAY YAYAYAYAYYYYYY let's run down the checklist

doing well ✅ (i just ended my summer job I'M FREEEEE)

clean air ✅ (in socal so the air's no fresh irish glen but the sky's blue)

reprieve from heat ✅ (still kinda warm but there's a fan looming over me)

tasty things to eat ❓(we'll see round dinner time)

nice tea to drink ✅ (had hot jasmine osmanthus green tea in the morning, hojicha/oat milk/lavender latte at lunch)

etc ❓ (need to ponder stuff 2night)

YAYAYAYAY INPUT YAYYYYYY❣️ and ykw after having a thounk about it before bedtime i did come to that very same conclusion!! LS has a lot more hmmmm how u say Main Character material i mean she's basically like a progression novel Archetypal Protagonist bc she starts out as an underdog (bastard, weak, overlooked etc). meanwhile WJW definitely has more late-game reveal appeal; in other words, keeping her opaque and mysterious rn feels better for the story. that being said, I can't wait for the 50% mark where the two have a Huge Breakup and WJW sends LS to the frontier and we lose LS's POV and switch to WJW losing her Fucking Mind and we finally get a glimpse into what's actually wrong with her, in contrast to her established Opaque Mysterious Mastermind characterization thus far.

as for li shun's backstory, I think I shall employ 80% Pepper It In, 10% Flashback, 10% Imply And Never Speak of It (the secret sauce to any fiction Trust Me bro). jingjing's backstory though is 40% Flashback 30% Imply 30% Pepper In