#and as with plenty of mxtx villains he could've been saved with kindness and timely intervention

[heterophobiclanwangji]

y’know, you can like...treat Shen Jiu with nuance without pretending he wasn’t cruel to Luo Binghe...like he wasn’t the one who gave Luo Binghe the faulty cultivation manual, he might not have been the one to prevent Luo Binghe from being assigned a dorm room, he didn’t order disciples to bully him, and physical punishments were definitely a part of the setting, but that doesn’t change the fact that he poured a hot cup of tea on his own disciple during their first meeting, gave him disproportionate punishments, knew that he was living in a woodshed and didn’t do anything to help him (and even locked him in there on occasion), refused to interfere when Luo Binghe was being bullied, refused to refer to him by name in favor of insulting epithets, hoped that Luo Binghe’s improper cultivation would push him into a (potentially fatal) qi deviation, volunteered him to fight the Sky Hammer Elder demon without Shen Yuan’s certainty that he could win (or even survive), and very much tried to kill him at the Immortal Alliance Conference. yes the Qiu Estate was horrible and PIDW Shen Jiu probably killed Liu Qingge accidentally or in self-defense rather than purposefully murdering him, and yes there were things involving Luo Binghe that were misunderstood or exaggerated, but pretending he didn’t hate or abuse Luo Binghe at all feels disingenuous. not only does it come across as victim blaming, but it also devalues a narrative about cycles of abuse vs. the value of a little well-timed kindness in changing the course of a person’s life, and there is so much more potential in having characters acknowledge their mistakes and grow from them rather than pretending those mistakes didn’t occur in the first place

#scum villain #svsss #svss #shen jiu #original shen qingqiu #child abuse tw #abuse tw #by all means go ham in your original shen qingqiu fics and character exploration but it feels insulting to pretend that he was innocent #the whole point. the whole point!!! is how having a kinder mentor figure restructured luo binghe's character and narrative arc #and how yue qingyuan's silence and his and shen jiu's inability to communicate led to growing tragedies #as a parallel for how shen yuan's refusal to have an honest conversation with luo binghe nearly led to the literal end of the world #none of which matters if you decide that shen jiu wasn't that bad and that luo binghe was a thinskinned little crybaby #shen jiu wasn't complete scum but he was still a villain #and as with plenty of mxtx villains he could've been saved with kindness and timely intervention #but he wasn't #i know people are going to ignore this post and i'm going to feel bad for getting so emotional but it always makes me feel cheated #pidw flattened his character by treating him as irredeemable scum but fics flatten his and luo binghe's characters #if they don't acknowledge the things shen jiu is actually guilty of #and you can feel sympathy for a character without excusing all of their actions #my posts