Y'know I'm not going to go and argue with people but I'm. kinda weirded out by the "Shen Yuan's family was actually neglectful/awful/abusive" takes? Because we have a story where:

And like... how does one look at those two points, then at Shen Yuan saying he had a loving family, and forgoes the obvious conclusion - that growing up in a stable home is what sets him apart in the world of PIDW (including from literal author of the world who is a lonely and embittered child of the divorce!) and allows him to change it with the power of love & kindness & bonding with people - in favor of deciding that his family was ~actually~ horrible?..

In that case, what makes him capable of breaking the cycle? Some kind of innate goodness or kindness? That, for some reason, no other character happened to possess? Right. Nice going completely devaluing Shen Jiu's tragedy.

To explain the last point: we get a lot of backstory for Shen Jiu, and the obvious takeaway from it is that he was not born a scum villain. That he did have a desire to do (and be) good, but it just couldn't flourish - because of a combination of terrible circumstances of his youth, his personal flaws, and the demands of the meta-narrative.

Thing is... two of those problems, he shares with Shen Yuan. Shen Yuan has his own personal flaws aplenty, even if they differ from Shen Jiu's, and a literal manifestation of the meta-narrative haunting him. But, unlike Shen Jiu, he happened to have a good family. That is their fundamental difference.

If one argues that Shen Yuan's family situation actually wasn't good, then what allows him to be so different from Shen Jiu? Isn't that saying that Shen Yuan was just a good person from the start... and Shen Jiu was just a bad person from the start? you know, the exact sentiment that made Shen Jiu give up on himself? And isn't it flattening Shen Jiu's story from a tragedy of a person who was broken out of his desire to do good by his terrible circumstances, into just 'a bad guy doing bad things because he's bad'? like, exactly what Airplane did to him in PIDW...

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But, some of you may ask, don't we have evidence that Shen Yuan wasn't actually very happy in his past life?

Thing is, I don't disagree with that! I just think it didn't necessarily have anything to do with the quality of his home life.

For starters, having a loving family is not everything. Like, even if you just look at Maslow's pyramid, "love and belonging" is actually in the middle of the thing. Shen Yuan could have a perfectly fine, caring family and still be unfulfilled on "esteem" (recognition and respect from other ppl + personal feelings of accomplishment) and "self-actualization" (becoming the best possible version of himself) levels.

And that's before we factor in that he's a(n obviously if you read between the lines) queer dude who grew up in a country that criminalizes queerness which is something I don't see brought up a lot in discussions of the strength of his internalized homophobia, and the possibility that he is an undiagnosed neurodivergent person (i personally hc him as having adhd-I, i know there are also ppl with autistic headcanons, could be both, etc etc), and the influence of his social circle outside his family (cishet dudes on the forums, from what he know, so not the most positive and uplifting bunch)...

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Lastly, while I think the thematic evidence from the first half of this meta is more telling, there are also a few small in-text details that prove Shen Yuan's words about how close-knit his family was.

First, the way he compares Yue Qingyuan to his older brothers in the very beginning, at the time he is still finding his footing and YQY is the one person looking out for him. (On the subject of SY!SQQ and YQY, just read this post, I won't be able to put it better.) Shen Yuan is explicitly "feeling at home in the atmosphere of brotherly love".

Second, the fact that we know he read his younger sister's danmei novels. On Shen Yuan's side, literally how committed he had to be to supporting his sister's interests, when we know from being in his head how determined he is about playing ostrich with anything and everything gay. No shit he spoiled her, I believe that one hundred percent. And on his sister's side, the level of trust she has towards her brother? Having full confidence that she could make him read gay bdsm and he wouldnt love her any less?..

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So yeah, I think all signs point to Shen family being as close-knit and loving as Shen Yuan says.

why did 7 kiss 9? …because there was no h8 between them 🥹

+ a doodle of ladyfied!QiJiu

“I came back. I promised” 七九

shen shixiong shrunk in the wash😔😔

shen jiu is out here doing it like no one else

very important doodles

hi. im back with more shen jiu-isms.

maidjiu

The only person Littlefinger loves is Littlefinger. // You have a gentle heart. You would not only be respected and feared, you would be loved.

you: *eats 100 ears of corn in two hours* I am the corn king! I cannot be outcorned

me: *eats 101 ears of corn in ten minutes* just another day in the corn fields

what?

I don’t know. i woke up at 6am, wrote this, and went back to sleep

You: *wakes up at 6 am, makes one shitpost* I am the meme king! I cannot be outmemed

Me: *wakes up at 5:59 am, makes 2 shitposts* just another day in the meme factory

*tamp tamp*

ah i see youve noticed me tamping down the soft earth

i respectfully request that we bring this meme back because i think it came before its time. we werent ready in 2013. i think were ready now

back in my day we didn’t call it “shitposting”, we called it “nightblogging” and blamed the australians

I’ve been on this god forsaken website for too long.

ok there is a difference between nightblogging and shitposting nightblogging is like “what if apples screamed when we bit them?” shitposting is like “a crisp one donger bill”. nightblogging has more of a focus on theoreticals, especially in stating absurd thoughts in normal ways. shit posting is more often the opposite, stating normal things in ways that make them absurd. “a crisp one dollar bill” isn’t funny or unusual, but replacing “dollar” with the absurdist internet word “donger” is what makes it funny & thus a shitpost. it’s not necessarily that one is more coherent, but that they’re differentiated both by form and by lexicon. nightblogging is surrealism, shitposting is dada

that makes so much sense, i understood all of it, completely and totally changed my views of thinking