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sunderwight · 4 months

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Liushen AU where SY transmigrates into SJ's older brother, and subsequently nopes them right out of the slavery backstory by using his general knowledge of the story and actually being an adult in a kid's body to just leave (basically) with SJ and YQ.

SY carts them both up to Cang Qiong for the next sect trials. It's actually not all that hard, the trickiest part is getting enough to eat and finding safe places to sleep between leaving the slavers and taking the trials (SY manages just barely, with considerable help from his new little brothers.) Nobody bothers to go after them because it's before Qiu Jianluo and this style of human traffickers mostly operate by virtue of their merchandise having nowhere else to go. Chasing down runaways is an expense not worth indulging, given that most of them either come straight back or die of exposure.

Anyway, they take the trials, and as expected YQY gets chosen to become a personal disciple for the sect leader, and SJ gets chosen by the Qing Jing Peak Lord, but also as (kind of) expected (by SY alone) nobody wants SY. He's older the Yue Qi, so too old, and unlike YQ and SJ his cultivation potential isn't striking enough to make any exceptions for him.

SY, however, can't leave it at that. He's spent more than five minutes with the street kid codependency gang, so he's gotten attached to both of them. And he knows what will happen if they're left to their own devices and The Plot proceeds accordingly. (Also, they keep threatening to not stay at the sect if SY doesn't stay too, for some reason.) So with a heavy heart and internal candle lit for himself, SY heads to Bai Zhan Peak. Which is the only peak that accepts disciples by way of them turning up and refusing to leave.

SY's not much of a fighter. He actually really hates the atmosphere on BZP, he's not bad at physical cultivation (his health's pretty good in this life, ironic considering how much worse his situation was) but the random ambushes and survival-of-the-fittest stuff is just not his brand. But that's okay, because it turns out that BZP actually DESPERATELY needs disciples on the actual peak who are interested in things other than fighting and cultivating their own strength. Stuff like, filling out requisition requests for An Ding every time things break, apologizing to An Ding every time things break again, organizing schedules, browbeating senior disciples into actually teaching, educating disciples on virtually any artistic or social skill, hosting lectures on how to beat vicious beasts without just overpowering them, and etc.

Okay so some of this stuff isn't and has never actually been on Bai Zhan's curriculum but Shen Yuan is going to make this place tolerable. And stop these children from needlessly getting acid burns or lyme disease or scurvy or whatever. He keeps internally chewing out Airplane for designing a sect system that means there are a lot of largely unsupervised 12-year-olds running around the wilderness on a mountain picking fights all the time. (When he actually meets Shang Qinghua and figures him out he switches to doing it in person, of course, in twice-monthly bitching sessions that look a lot like budding friendship.)

Of course one of the worst offenders is the Liu kid, who SY would suspect was actually raised by wolves if he didn't know for a fact that Liu Qingge has a younger sister, and also the kinds of nice clothing and letters from home that strongly imply not only does he have a family, but that the family is pretty well-off. Liu Qingge is at first deeply offended by SY being a BZP disciple. He rarely fights anyone, and uses tricks and evasion tactics whenever a fight can't be avoided. And he does other annoying stuff, like pestering him about meals and baths and lecturing him on identifying dangerous plants and the early signs of qi deviation. This is not what their peak is about! He should get with the program already! Just fight stuff until you're too tired to keep fighting stuff!

Also SY's younger brother, SJ, is pure evil (at least according to baby Liu Qingge) even though his other younger brother (?) is cool and nice.

Anyway, Liu Qingge stops complaining about SY after their first mission together, where Liu Qingge doesn't lose a fight but does get into a kind of pyrrhic victory situation where he's really badly hurt, and it's SY who helps him win (correctly identifying the monster and then pointing out its weakness) and takes care of him afterwards and gets him safely back to Cang Qiong. SY expresses surprise at LQG actually being polite to him, and LQG realizes that he's been a colossal ass if people think he wouldn't be grateful to someone who saved his life, so the usual Liushen dynamic proceeds from there. Liu Qingge starts bringing SY fans he leaves behind and hunts down animals that are supposed to be useful for bolstering weak cultivation, SY invites LQG to tea and keeps the critters as pets, etc etc.

SY doesn't get the Head Disciple position, because that's only acquired via beating the current peak lord in combat and lol no. Also he's not interested in stealing it from Liu Qingge, to whom it rightfully belongs (in his mind). But that's fine, because Liu Qingge takes the position when the next generation ascends and then he lets SY exclusively handle all the peak duties SY actually likes (mainly teaching). It's perfect -- Liu Qingge gets to focus on his War God antics and occasional administration/meetings without having to deal with students his has no patience for, but the disciples of BZP don't get neglected because SY is actually teaching and organizing classes and student care. BZP hasn't enjoyed a golden age like this since it was founded!

Things are pretty good overall, but Shen Yuan knows that it's only a matter of time before The Plot shows up, and so he can't rest completely easily.

Meanwhile, the will-they-or-won't-they bets on Liushen have been going strong for a while now. The thing is, most of their martial siblings are convinced that these two are already "together", and just being circumspect about it. Those who know SY well (like SJ, YQY, and SQH) know better but think that SY's romantic obtuseness is to blame, whereas those who know LQG well (LMY, WQW, and MQF) are pretty sure that it's actually LQG's obtuseness that's the problem. Of course it's actually both of them, so efforts to "fix" matters by getting through one of their thick skulls inevitably run afoul of the other's.

An additional complication is of course: SJ doesn't like LQG (mutual), and now that he's the leader of his own peak, he wants to poach SY to come and live there. Not only so he can have one of the 2 people he trusts actually close at hand, but also because SJ also hates actually teaching the atrocious little brats on his peak, and would like to have SY come and do it for him. YQY is still a total pushover for him too, and is also now the sect leader, so YQY agrees that SY can change peaks if SY and LQG both agree to it.

Liu Qingge, of course, is a no, but he's a variable "no". He's not going to hold Shen Yuan against his will or anything.

As for Shen Yuan, it's... complicated. He doesn't really like BZP, but it's gotten a lot better than it was at the start. These days he's actually pretty proud of his accomplishments, and it's more comfortable, but it's still a rough and rowdy place with fewer creature comforts, libraries, or other appealing points than QJP. Also, if he goes to Qing Jing to teach, he can personally ensure that SJ doesn't go around persecuting any of his students!

But... SJ never lived with the Qiu family in this AU, and even though SY's not totally clear on what the PIDW backstory for SJ was, he knows he's a better guy now than the scum villain in the book was. He has a reputation for making cutting remarks, not for being an abusive snake or a lecher. SY's honestly less worried about him doing anything bad at all, and there are other people on QJP who can teach. It might even be good for SJ to promote more people to fill out a social circle he can rely on! That guy needs more friends, seriously.

And QJP really doesn't need more layabout literary intellectual types who get into pointless arguments, which is all SY would be if he went there. Just yet another nerdy scholar for the rich kids with middling cultivation that the peak favors to ignore. At least on BZP he's filling a gap.

SY is clearly torn, and the fact that SY's considering it has LQG upset, and LQG doesn't handle being upset very well, so of course they have an argument about it. SY storms off to cool his head and LQG is like, this is it, he's gone to Qing Jing Peak, I've drive him off by being too aggressive and he's probably remembering all those times I told him he didn't belong here and oh no what have I done maybe if I build him a heated bath and get him books he will come back???

Turns out that SY just went to An Ding to vent at SQH while SQH was like "I think you would have fewer problems if you and Liu Qingge just got married and my disciples could call you Shigu to your face instead of behind your back" and SY threw melon seeds at him and sulked on his fainting couch (which is always cold for some reason...)

Thus begins the Liushen Divorce Arc where SY tries to be anywhere but BZP or QJP, Liu Qingge tries to figure out what thing he can punch to fix this not-punchable problem, SJ is like "I don't see what the big deal is they should break up Liu Qingge is awful and I want my brother to teach my classes for me" like the spoiled youngest sibling he's finally allowed to be, YQY is trying to moderate this Hades vs Demeter situation and is all "well maybe SY could spend half the year on QJP and half on BZP?", and Liu Mingyan is going "I know my brother if this doesn't work out he is going to die single and pining like an idiot" and so keeps conscripting other disciples to y'know, lock SY and LQG into storage closets together (ineffective: LQG can punch through walls) or at least get them in the same room (underestimating SY's willingness to yeet himself out of windows to avoid awkward social interactions.)

By the time Luo Binghe joins the sect (as a Qiong Ding disciple), the drama is in full swing and is the main topic of gossip across most of the peaks.

#svsss #scum villain's self saving system #liushen #long post #sy doesn't even realize lbh has already arrived until someone mentions 'luo-shidi' on qiong ding in passing #he nearly has a heart attack #why isn't this kid on qing jing peak?!#(why would he be on QJP now though? SJ's not gonna want him not even to pathologically torment and he's promising enough for QDP)#SY: well I guess... that settles that? not enough reason to move to QJP if luo binghe isn't even there. everything can stop being weird now #LQG: then we shall have a spring wedding #I like to think the changes to the world are so substantial that the setting just shifts to a less angsty action/adventure story #now the cang qiong crowd are the colorful side characters instead of complicit in lbh's many torments

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leonardcohenofficial · 8 months

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there’s a great write up by someone on here that i will have to search for in which they discuss how the ultimate evil for david lynch is sexual violence against women (even more severe than murder, which is often auxiliary to that type of specific violence); twin peaks is incredibly soapy—on purpose! lynch and frost are playing with form and content on purpose to examine incredibly difficult subject matter through a (for lack of a better word) more palatable format—which most of the time i think works to its advantage and makes those moments of visible horror so much more effective (i use “visible” rather than “true” or other similar adjectives because the horror is always there, it’s embedded in the entire town, shows up in every generation we see in screen and we watch them grapple with it in different ways, but that’s a separate post)

however—and i’ve talked about this before—i find that once you’ve watched fire walk with me it is so much harder to watch the show because the ignorance of nearly every single member of the town (yes, including cooper) pervades the way the action unfolds. twin peaks viewers knew the premise of the show going in and we get to discover details and information alongside the characters. when albert rosenfield comes in as the only voice of reason and reality, it’s set up to be jarring to both the townspeople and to the viewer. why?

sheryl lee said in an interview, “fire walk with me was very difficult for me to watch… and, emotionally it’s a reminder: this is a movie, but this continues to happen every day and how can we stop it? when i watch fire walk with me now, as a mother, i watch it and i think look at all those signs that were being exhibited. this girl was in danger, and look at all these people that were in her life. what would have happened if someone, somewhere, somehow could have helped or stopped it? that’s hard to watch.”

much has been discussed critically about fire walk with me and whether or not it’s exploitative in the ways that it portrays sexual violence against women. while lynch does not shy away from making that violence visible, it is done so in an attempt to make the viewer examine their own relationship to that violence and how it shows up in their own lives. the audience is forced to think about the ways that they are complicit in how and why these violent acts occur and what they can do to stop it, which is why for many it is an uncomfortable watch. for others, it is a painful (and speaking from my own perspective) necessary watch because lynch didn’t make a horror movie, he made a documentary.

fire walk with me is necessary (in my humblest of opinions) to understand why the pieces that lynch and frost put into twin peaks work. there’s so much backstory to how they weren’t originally going to reveal who laura palmer’s killer was until ABC made them, lynch wasn’t around during much of the second season so things got a little off the rails storytelling-wise, etc. etc. but fire walk with me allows them to tie difficult, often horrifying threads (ben horne unknowingly attempting to have sex with his daughter, the townspeople’s distancing of albert, the hands of random townspeople trembling as BOB attempts to claw back into the material world, the list goes on and on) back to the central thesis of “sexual violence is the ultimate evil, it is completely avoidable, and you have a responsibility to recognize the signs and stop being complicit”

#twin peaks #david lynch #fire walk with me #this is a huge essay but i’ve been really thinking about this lately as even though i love—LOVE—twin peaks (i have a twin peaks tattoo!) it #has been getting really hard to engage with lately and for me this is why; the combination of the fact that FWWM is an incredible #examination of horrific real life violence and because of the ways that we see the ignorance of everyone else (purposefully) put on screen #in short i think david lynch is a master for this reason but man if it isn’t hard (and important! but hard!) to engage with!

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