#Imagine: An Ding is cruel. It is cruel and inefficient and its cruelties only make it more so. Sqh is ‟awarded‟ with the role of Peak Lord

[mediumsizedpidegon]

thinking about Shang Qinghua as a calamity again...

#svsss #shang qinghua #technically counts as tgcf? #just the idea of sqh dying and coming back is so compelling because in canon he literally just going through the motions. he's given up. #he doesn't WANT to die (from mbj's hand– from cang qiong's fall) but that's all he sees. it's the only end he can imagine to his story. #so the act of getting him to the point where he WANTS to stay– where it doesn't matter that death has come to take him he's not DONE YET is #revolutionary to his character (his ‟character‟– his role as well) in of itself and requires some canon divergence to justify it #and it's INTENSELY interesting to imagine him getting there #Imagine: An Ding is cruel. It is cruel and inefficient and its cruelties only make it more so. Sqh is ‟awarded‟ with the role of Peak Lord #of An Ding (this crown of barbed wire). And sqh doesn't MEAN to change the plot but– it's awful here! It's so awful that it's OFFENSIVE #and before sqh knows it two years have passed and An Ding is a mess of growing pains: of infrastructure torn down and rebuilt #but it's... better. It's hard work. It undeniably sucks and makes sqh cry from frustration all the time! Balancing the fixing of all the #shit his shizun left broken while staying on top of his usual duties is a procession of sleepless nights and little pains. (perhaps sqh has #growing pains too. change is hard for all that it's necessary.) #and then– and THEN! He's on his way to a trade meeting or spying for mbj or something else: it's doesn't matter. #And however the stage is set sqh dies and– sqh's life is finally starting to NOT suck! yqy has been asking for his future plans and sqh has #been answering. qqq found a scrap of a picture book he wrote when he was a senior disciple and demanded he finish it because it #‟had potential to increase literacy‟! He has a second command that he trusts won't stab him at the slightest provocation! His life is busy #and more than a little hellish but it's HIS. He's changed things even he didn't mean to. #An Ding's HIS. he got rid of the assholes and poured so much WORK into the people left and then the people who came later. #All of it boils down to this: it's unfair. it's too soon. it wasn't supposed to happen like this. #and so sqh dies for the second time and screams himself back to existence if not life. #the system cracking beneath his teeth– puppeteer turned to power for the puppet to consume. #(So there is a ghost on An Ding for all that only the ghost knows it.)