#SY gender is complicated in this au

[miramelo]

"Does she actually smile?" She looks like a little doll

Nobody knows where she came from but SQQ, a lot of rumors of her being a little noble child that SQQ spirited away floated around the sect during her first year there, especially because SQQ brougth her when the disciple selection and didn't force her to do chores like others did.

She was very clingy and never left his side, SQQ might have never been openly affectionate but SY being allowed to be as clingy as she was said a LOT.

She was free to dress as she liked until she oficially became a disciple.

[secretlypeerless-cucumber]

Tell me about the latest AU you've got rotating around your head 🥺🥺🥺🥺 RIGHT NOW. RIIIIGHT NOW. AGOIRHHGREHORHIW GHOR GHIW 😘

I call it "Twin Souls Au" and it's mostly an exercise.

Chinese mythology has this persons called Wu (巫) which were shamans. By the late Zhou dynasty, Wu referred mostly to female shamans, while Xi refers to male ones. But for this Au I take Wu to mean a gender-neutral Shaman. As it says in the Shang oracular inscriptions:

whether the Wu is a man or a woman is not known;

it could be either the name for a function or the name of a people (or an individual) coming from a definite territory or nation;

the Wu seems to have been in charge of some divinations, (in one instance, divination is linked to a sacrifice of appeasement);

the Wu is seen as offering a sacrifice of appeasement but the inscription and the fact that this kind of sacrifice was offered by other persons (the king included) suggests that the Wu was not the person of choice to conduct all the sacrifices of appeasement;

there is only one inscription where a direct link between the king and the Wu appears. Nevertheless, the nature of the link is not known, because the status of the Wu does not appear clearly;

he follows (being brought, presumably, to Shang territory or court) the orders of other people; he is perhaps offered to the Shang as a tribute.

And yes, I copied that from Wikipedia. Another one:

"men and women possessed by spirits or gods, and consequently acting as seers and soothsayers, exorcists and physicians; invokers or conjurers bringing down gods at sacrifices, and performing other sacerdotal functions, occasionally indulging also in imprecation, and in sorcery with the help of spirits." - The Religious System of China (vol 6) 1910

It's more complicated than that but Wu are basically the jack of all trades of chinese magicians.

What I focused on are two specific Wu:

The sacrifice

They are people, usually women and disabled people, who were burned at the stake to bring about rain. They themselves are an offering to the gods. CofCofShenJiuCofCof. They are also mediums for the spirit world.

Fangxiangshi

He is referred to as "The one that sees in all four directions" and wears a mask of bearskin with four golden eyes, and carried a lance and shield.

His primary duties were orchestrating the seasonal ritual to chase out disease-causing demons from buildings, and leading a funeral procession to exorcize corpse-eating wangliang spirits away from a burial chamber. Which he did by violently getting into buildings, houses included, and energetically thrusting his spear into the air.

He is a seer, and one that can conjure visions only he can see. Like a certain nerd who read the "book of fates for PIDW"

Wu were often a pair of siblings that are referred to as a single entity. Like two souls in a single body.

To the actual story:

The day of the transmigration, just as SY's soul is getting settled into SJ's body, a pair of heavenly officials (unimportant who) comes to get them for some important thing they have to do in heaven (Because more often than not, one is born a Wu), as Wu are also bureaucrats.

Man is Yue Qingyuan confused. He was there taking care of his ailed shidi and suddenly someone comes and takes him away before he can say anything. He naturally calls for a meeting and all peak lord are on the case to get him back (some more reluctantly than others)

The Ku Xing Peak Lord or whoever is in charge of rituals and divination gets them permission to go get SQQ (As they already did the thing they had to do), but only YQY and LQG are allowed. So they go.

In the heavenly realm (Not heaven outright) they see SQQ siting calmly in a gazebo on the garden, reading. More relaxed than anyone has even seen him.

SQQ sees them and, without letting them speak, says: "I'm not dealing with this"

And he separates from the body.

The body (SQQ) is let in a sleep like state while a tiny, tiny, Shen Jiu comes out of it. He looks perhaps 10, wearing ceremonial robes that only reach his knees. Shen Jiu takes his book and screams for "A-Yuan" to come take his turn.

Then, another 10 y.o. comes out of the house the garden belongs to and immediately protest upon seeing the adult cultivators. He is identical to Shen Jiu, dressed the same, but wears short hair (angled bob) and has a mask winkwink hanging from his neck.

This A-Yuan and Shen Jiu proceed to banter for a while, ignoring both YQY and LQG.

What happened was: Time functions differently in the heavenly realm; ergo, Both Shens have spend a lot of years together and already consider the other their sibling. And their dynamic is to fight and banter... so normal siblings.

Long story short; The Shens are send back to the mortal realm to work and solve mysteries because the heavenly officials were tired of them, and fight over who uses the body.

No one want to use it. They have to be responsible when they are SQQ and it's bothersome. Also CQM keeps trying to make them come back and be a peak lord but solving mysteries is more fun.

[tossawary]

Wow! Sounds like a bad situation you have with your computer there! I hope it gets fixed soon! Stay safe! Please no "We die like Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky"! Also, thanks to your Shen Qingqiu MILF/DILF rant I am now thinking of Silver Fox Shen Qingqiu! ...Now I want fanart, what have you done????? XD

Unfortunately, it’s not really something that can be fixed! I’m forcing my computer to render heavy (complicated) video files, which it can do, just... with effort. So, there’s like 10-15 minutes in which my computer becomes very, very slow because it is doing its best. Kind of makes me feel spoiled, honestly, like, “What do you mean I can’t render video in the background AND stream movies on my other screen AND browse the internet while loading many images?!” 

Honestly, I don’t even understand some of the things I’m making my computer do. I can only poke the screen like, “Do the magic faster and better.” Usually, I just get up and leave my computer alone for a while. 

Haha, yeah, that rant... look... if someone had called Wei Wuxian a MILF as a joke, I wouldn’t have blinked. Because, like: A-Yuan + “I birthed this child myself” + Wangxian’s related kinks = yeah, sure, I get that joke. 

But Shen Yuan?! Shen “if I so much as look at my own sexuality, I’ll die” Yuan?! Shen “I can only behave and dress the way I do because I’m pretending to be someone else and the concept of examining my relationship to gender doesn’t even exist in my brain” Yuan?! Outside of very specific AUs and/or kink fic determined to make stuff happen, this man would be a DILF, except he’s not even a parent and ykw, thank goodness he’s not. 

(You can argue that “Luo Binghe has a MILF kink” but imo that’s not grounds for generally calling SQQ a MILF. It’s Luo Binghe. Luo Binghe has all the kinks and all the fantasies. This man is down for pretty much anything.)

Anyway, silver foxes! SY complains about being an “old man” and he doesn’t even have greying hair or wrinkles? I know these types of novels and especially the bullshit Airplane was writing has everyone being young and beautiful forever, but there are plenty of opportunities to give SQQ’s body some scars or signs of age, especially given his self-destruction and resurrection. Luo Binghe and Liu Qingge are not cowards. They’d be into it.