Shen Wei's angsty backstory does intrigue me, but I don't really care for exploring it in the context of pure angst...
Fair enough, of course, but I meant more like: there's always plenty of references to what Zhao Yunlan had to go through after losing his mum and having a distant father, or even - more and more frequently as of late - what Ye Zun might have suffered at the hands of the rebels, but barely any mention of Shen Wei's childhood, like it's a given that he had a great time as an exalted hero or something. Whereas I see his inherent lack of self-worth and natural tendency to maintain absolute control over all his actions and emotions as originating from a pretty harsh childhood/young adulthood where nobody ever cared about anything but how powerful he was and how good he was at fighting, protecting others, and tolerating pain. Being the die-hard Shen Wei fan that I am, I'd love to see that being acknowledged more, on its own. Using it as a reason for ZYL to assure him of his worth, or merely as a plot point to be stepped over, takes the focus away from Shen Wei himself and puts it back on ZYL's feelings and actions, which is something that canon did quite enough of already, imo. (Heck, even Chu Shuzhi and Zhu Hong's backstories got more "emotional" focus in-show than Shen Wei's, which, weird!)
But then again, I suppose I should just write this myself instead of complaining, but time is definitely my worst enemy, there ^_^
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Fair enough, of course, but I meant more like: there's always plenty of references to what Zhao Yunlan had to go through after losing his mum and having a distant father, or even - more and more frequently as of late - what Ye Zun might have suffered at the hands of the rebels, but barely any mention of Shen Wei's childhood, like it's a given that he had a great time as an exalted hero or something. Whereas I see his inherent lack of self-worth and natural tendency to maintain absolute control over all his actions and emotions as originating from a pretty harsh childhood/young adulthood where nobody ever cared about anything but how powerful he was and how good he was at fighting, protecting others, and tolerating pain. Being the die-hard Shen Wei fan that I am, I'd love to see that being acknowledged more, on its own. Using it as a reason for ZYL to assure him of his worth, or merely as a plot point to be stepped over, takes the focus away from Shen Wei himself and puts it back on ZYL's feelings and actions, which is something that canon did quite enough of already, imo. (Heck, even Chu Shuzhi and Zhu Hong's backstories got more "emotional" focus in-show than Shen Wei's, which, weird!)
But then again, I suppose I should just write this myself instead of complaining, but time is definitely my worst enemy, there ^_^