#(surprising no one)
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Iāve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as āShen Yuanā - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of āif only youād been here, things might have been better the first time aroundā of it all.
And I was thinking, itās a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put intoā¦ another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.
What about a version where itās not coincidence at all?
Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. Heās prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe itās a good thing that they end up being friends, because theyāre a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. Theyāre the āweird kidsā in class and theyāre okay with that, because even when they donāt have any words for it, they know theyāre not like their classmates, not really. Thatās okay; they donāt want to be.
Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. Itās not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isnāt the kind to temper his words. Itās passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it canāt be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. Theyāve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuanās practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked āwhat happens next?ā
They come up with a whole world together. Airplaneās going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.
Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.
Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesnāt think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - thatās what he says. He looks okay, and heās a kid, and it doesnāt feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesnāt think to worry. He doesnāt think to say goodbye.
Itās one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. āTellsā is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.
(Itās not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasnāt trying to be mean. Heād lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brotherās friend out of the way so he didnāt have toā¦ see. It isnāt fair, but then, none of it is fair.)
Death feels very real after that.
The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and itās not until Airplaneās moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. Heās written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. Heād promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.
The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how itās still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isnāt there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and itās paying his bills, and sometimes stories donāt go the way theyāre supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesnāt matter.
(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)
Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what heās been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything thatās become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where heās loved, and a death thatās peaceful. What does it say about that world, that heād kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?
(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters donāt get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)
Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself thatās because the written version can never be the version in the writerās head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about āimprovingā his writing and āclosing plot holesā and āachieving his original visionā...
ā¦and heās a child again. Heās a child in his own story, heās Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe heās a little bitter, and a little scared, andā¦
And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.
āYou told it wrong,ā is the first thing he says.
Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how heās here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.
(Shang Qinghua wants to say āI missed youā and āwhy did you leave so soonā but heās here now. Heās right here.)
āI know,ā he says instead. āIām sorry. It all kind ofā¦ spiraled out of control.ā
Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. āThatās okay,ā he relents, grabbing for his hand. āWeāll fix it. Weāll make it what it was supposed to be.ā
#scum villain self saving system#svsss#shang qinghua#shen yuan#airplane shooting towards the sky#this got more into the feelings than i thought it would#surprising no one#anyway just! childhood friends au! as a reason for a shen yuan insert!#obviously he is not going to die as a child in this version#shang qinghua would not have that nope not again#also pls consider poor shen jiu who looks at this child that shen yuan has picked out for a best friend like '...really? that one??'#(it's up to you if he's shen yuan's actual brother from his first life)#(put there's a part of me that likes the idea that shen jiu also gets a second chance to spend more time with his brother)#a second chance for them to grow up together!#THAT SAID#RIP TO SHANG QINGHUA#WHEN SHEN YUAN IS OLD ENOUGH TO LEARN ABOUT ALL THE PAPAPA#the LOOKS shang qinghua is going to get#anyway here have a thing because I CANNOT add another au to my drafts thank you and goodbyyyyye
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I found out some new information recently that is relevant to the famous āhorseplayā scene in Merlin
BBC Merlin: A Family Show
#surprising no one#Merlin#merlin bbc#bbc merlin#bbc#prince arthur#king arthur#merthur#bbc merthur#5x03#horseplay#hanky code#arthur pendragon#merlin emrys#emrys#colin morgan#bradley james#the death song of uther pendragon#british royal family#Merlin bloopers#the once and future fandom#the once and future king#two sides of the same coin#for Camelot
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Adult Language with Hughie | The Boys S04 Promo
#i just wanted to make the cock one#surprising no one#the boys#the boys season 4#the boys 04#hughie campbell#jack quaid#cara gifs
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Enjoy some Blitz angst courtesy of me listening to The Mountain Goats a lot this week. I think these lyrics capture really powerfully the way it feels to want to reach out but have no idea where to start, especially when dealing with trauma and self-hatred.
When I try to open up to you, I get completely lost Houses swallowed by the earth, windows thick with frost And I reach deep down within, but the pathways twist and turn And there's no light anywhere, and nothing left to burn
And I am this great, unstable mass of blood and foam And no emotion that's worth having could call my heart its home My heart's an autoclave (x)
(For anyone who can't access the video, the song is called "Autoclave," by the Mountain Goats)
#stolitz#blitz#blitzo#blitzo buckzo#Sometimes I listen to angsty music and cry#surprising no one#my helluva meta
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Me: Oh hey, the FFVII obsession is returning! Maybe I'll finish 100%ing the og and Rebirth or write more or draw more orā
Cuts to me being chokeslammed by Vinveld (They make me sad)
#evan's bs#help#save me#vinveld has me in a grip again#surprising no one#ff7#ffvii#final fantasy vii#final fantasy 7#vincent valentine#veld of the turks#verdot of the turks
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Putting forward my CV of Wants Kids Will Be Good Dad
I AM SO DAD SHAPED SOMEONE GIVE ME A BABY
#james says things#this post was written by evan buckley#look I just love my nephews so much#considering my line of work is it surprising that i love babies?#and all the dad!buck fics i write?#surprising no one
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Friend me in Arknights for FREE CZERNYS FOR LIFE.
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I can tell ur fond of a lot of characters but mu qing is your ājust a little guyā
Yeah š
This may sound weird, but I actually relate to Mu Qing in a number of ways that i think would make some people in my life confused but makes sense to me- I have a hard time expressing my affection irl, especially physically. Often when Iām speaking genuinely to a friend it can sound flat or even sarcastic. I donāt know how to properly take a compliment and I freeze up when Iām touched without warning. People even close to me might call me reserved or cold in this area. I find it a lot easier to write out my feelings than to say them out loud. So asks like the ones that have been sent here have been a really nice outlet for being able to be open more with these things, and drawing Mu Qing has become a little bit of a therapeutic āif he can do it, you can tooā kind of thing. Iām not nearly as vindictive or as aggressive as he is, but I think at its core the way we show our love is similar, and because of that it almost feels like my job to make him happy and figure out how to make those he loves happy in return.
#ask box#not art#time for over share hour#anyway Mu Qing is my blorbo yeah#surprising no one#my love language is acts of service
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the bass part to medicās theme is so fun to playā¦ i havenāt played bass in a minute but fiddling around and playing medicās theme has been such a good time
YOU CAN PLAY BASS?!?!! THATS SO SICKā¼ļøā¼ļøā¼ļøā¼ļøā¼ļøur epic as fuck
#asks#WHAAAA#oh thatd be so sick to hear....#i love medics theme its my favorite of the meet the themes#surprising no one#bee#<- ur getting a tag now
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I always knew fandom reception to astarion was going to be fucking wild but I was not ready for the way people act about ascended astarion
Like do whatever you want, I don't care, but I'm not sure how you missed the fact that killing 7000 people is the evil option
#bg3 blogging#bg3 spoilers#i guess lmao#my poasts#for tagging purposes#the astarion persephones are insane#surprising no one#i say this as a huge astarion fan#ngl tho. the batstarion shit is so funny
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kenjaku fascinates me
#surprising no one#jjk spoilers#kenjaku#I wonder what kind of regrets they did have in the past#š¤² gege pls tengen backstory#id in alt#every time I post a ton about kenjakuāinternally Iām just āwow this againā#like pls I do have other favorite characters š thereās just so much mystery and underrated qualities to kenjaku
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#my answer isnt raya but im voting raya so he gets a vote bcus none of the rest of u will SCHJSDJSJF#like when lisa gives ralph wiggum the valentines day card bcus she feels sorry for him#my answer is kai#surprising no one#polls#afc
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How does it take you thirty fucking years with a dead name like Owen fuck you even a cis fucking guy would hate that name but you keep it?????? Isabelle you IDIOT
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been getting big into incest lately
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Duo: Weāre about to do the taser challenge, you want in?
Trowa: What is the taser challenge?
Heero: We taser each other then drink.
Trowa: ...How do you win?
Duo: What are you, a lawyer? You want in or not?
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Helluva Boss has the audacity to keep this deranged killer out of the Halloween merchandise??
šš„Whatever, I love Halloween, so I'll just make my own.
Though the other new Merch is definitely solid.
#striker helluva boss#literal serial killer not getting his murder themed merch#shame on you vivziepop#striker deserves love#my crazy baby needs love#wait...#m & m still super cute#surprising no one#moxxie helluva boss#moxxie x millie#millie helluva boss
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