The thing is, Shen Qingqiu knows Tress is right. Or—she would be right, if they'd been in the real world, and half the people Shen Qingqiu had met here hadn't been from Hamlet, or weird alternate universe fantasy novels, or Arthurian myth, or apparently the Bible(??). But they are, and Shen Qingqiu himself is here by way of fiction, as well, and in fiction, people aren't people, they're characters. Puppets for an unseen author. He's used to blaming that author for the things Tress is outlining: inconsistencies, contradictions. He's used to dismissing all of that as hopelessly, depressingly OOC.
But—even before he'd left Proud Immortal Demon Way, that had been changing. Luo Binghe hadn't been spending nearly enough time with his future wives. People at the Immortal Alliance conference had died, and Shen Qingqiu had known they would, had been expecting it, had enjoyed this arc, the first time around, and he'd still felt...the hurt he'd caused Binghe, as inevitable as it had been, had still felt...
He'd attributed it to being overly sensitive on his part, sentimental toward these automatons he was surrounded by. But then he'd found out Airplane was there, in PIDW with him, no longer controlling it from the outside. He'd still written them all, they were still composed of the building blocks he'd cooked up in his feverish, perverted little brain, but now they were just—acting and reacting, bouncing off one another like tops that had been spun and released.
And the same was true, here. Everyone here had been spun up in some other world and released into this one, and in the wake of their release they were... changing. He'd been hyper-focused on the big changes1 but they were changing in smaller ways, too. Luo Binghe had released Claudius from his blood parasites with only slight coaxing, and was making platonic friendships with women. Lan Wangji was making friends with ruthless bitches and Christian demons. People were learning from one another - skills, life lessons. Hell—he glances down at himself, barely decently dressed, no guan, his fan nowhere to be seen. Transport him back to Qing Jing right now and he'd be nigh unrecognizable.
"People," he says slowly, "are people. You're right."
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But—even before he'd left Proud Immortal Demon Way, that had been changing. Luo Binghe hadn't been spending nearly enough time with his future wives. People at the Immortal Alliance conference had died, and Shen Qingqiu had known they would, had been expecting it, had enjoyed this arc, the first time around, and he'd still felt...the hurt he'd caused Binghe, as inevitable as it had been, had still felt...
He'd attributed it to being overly sensitive on his part, sentimental toward these automatons he was surrounded by. But then he'd found out Airplane was there, in PIDW with him, no longer controlling it from the outside. He'd still written them all, they were still composed of the building blocks he'd cooked up in his feverish, perverted little brain, but now they were just—acting and reacting, bouncing off one another like tops that had been spun and released.
And the same was true, here. Everyone here had been spun up in some other world and released into this one, and in the wake of their release they were... changing. He'd been hyper-focused on the big changes1 but they were changing in smaller ways, too. Luo Binghe had released Claudius from his blood parasites with only slight coaxing, and was making platonic friendships with women. Lan Wangji was making friends with ruthless bitches and Christian demons. People were learning from one another - skills, life lessons. Hell—he glances down at himself, barely decently dressed, no guan, his fan nowhere to be seen. Transport him back to Qing Jing right now and he'd be nigh unrecognizable.
"People," he says slowly, "are people. You're right."
1 He means becoming gay.