#more platonic than romantic now actually

[starclast]

Because I care (Part 2)

(Note: the following comic takes place in the movie *Scooby Doo and the legend of the Phantosaur*. Its a little messy and it contains light mentions of suggestive themes, so please, take that into account before reading. Also, please read the first part before this one if you haven't done it yet. Now, without anything left to say, hope you enjoy it!)

[starry-bi-sky]

Okay so this is almost a direct copy-paste of my earlier reblog but only the Xin Yuan parts, because its long enough to be its own post and i want to share it! It deserves it's own post <3 typical starry stuff to write a 2k word long reblog, unfortunately.

I say almost because I went through to proof read and ended up adding more stuff.

I've been cooking on this idea for the last two days since I saw the Xin Mo!Shen Yuan post but??? I can't find anything on Xin Mo's backstory or how it came to be -- which means that's free fucking plot right there baby. That's a sandbox and im making LIFE SIZED CASTLES. I'm so excited.

The idea of Shen Yuan transmigrating centuries before the events of PIDW as Xin Mo -- but when he wakes up, he's not the sword. He wakes up in the body of a young boy named Xin Yuan. Now it makes sense for this boy to be a demon, but the drama, the intrigue, the spice of Xin Yuan being a human child.

SY wakes up as a boy below the age of ten, and the System tells him where he is, and SY is excited to meet his favorite protagonist -- only to gradually realize that he's like, a thousand years or so before the events of the novel. The rant he gives the system is legendary.

Bc what's the point of getting dropped into PIDW if he's never going to meet his favorite character??? This is a scam! BUT he settles into his new life, he's like, some orphan street rat or some other tragic airplane-esq backstory.

The system gives Shen Yuan his first mandatory quest: become a righteous cultivator. Which was like, kinda his plan/hopes anyways, except! There's like?? No official cultivator sects anywhere? The Cang Qiong Mountain Sect hasn't even been established yet, and there are pockets of cultivators running around, maybe some groups or schools popping up and then sinking back down, but nothing's really taken root!

If he asks someone how to become a cultivator, there's no straight answer. No "oh you can go to X to do that". He's pissed! How can he become a cultivator if there aren't any schools around to teach him? Deus ex machina, that's how.

Out of sheer luck, SY manages to help save a rogue cultivator, and promptly gets adopted by said rogue cultivator, who gives SY the name 'Xin Yuan'. He is ecstatic. And you know what? It's actually pretty fun!

He's getting to travel the world of PIDW in its early stages, and gets to see the building blocks for the eventual main story. He's discovering all this local flora and fauna that are foreign to his old world and unmentioned in the book, and he's learning cultivation! Granted, its unsafe, newly(ish) discovered cultivation, but it counts!

Wistfully, he thinks about perhaps he'll do something grand and get his name carved into legend. Something that would eventually help the protagonist later down the line in his quest for revenge.

The system remains silent to his thoughts.

But Xin Yuan doesn't take much stock in that daydream anyways. It's nothing more than fantasy to him; wish-fulfillment. He does discover however, that he is positively brimming with spiritual energy. Overwhelmingly so.

It's both a blessing and a curse, as it puts a strain on his meridians if he's not careful, and leaves him prone to qi deviations for the exact same reasons. He already has a heart demon or two from a few traumatic experiences in the past.

(bc hey! angst a day keeps the writer sadism at bay, and all that)

I'll say he's about... eight when he gets picked up by the rogue cultivator, who I'm calling Lin Kai bc he deserves a name. They travel around PIDW up until Xin Yuan is twelve, where he goes through a traumatic experience that results in a heart demon.

It's after that that Lin Kai decides to put a stop to his wandering, and find a place to settle down to raise Xin Yuan in. Coincidentally! They settle down in a nice mountain region that's thriving with spiritual energy. The mountains at the time were called something different, but they will be eventually known as the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect

Coincidentally, the mountain Lin Kai and Xin Yuan end up on is Qing Jing Peak. XY does not realize that the mountain he's on is Qing Jing. The System does not tell him. But he likes it there, more than he was expecting. And as much as he's traveled around, he really does enjoy being in one place.

He has a tendency to go down the mountain and help the village setting up down there, and when he's a teenager he starts venturing out more and more.

Xin Yuan forgets sometimes that he's in a novel, especially after settling down on Qing Jing peak. The system becomes remarkably quiet since there's no quests for him to do and not a ton of opportunities to get B-Points. He cultivates with Lin Kai, helps tend to the garden they're growing, goes down to the village to play with the other kids.

There's one boy he's best friends with, a boy whose not all that good with words, named Liu Zhihao. He's got potential for cultivation though, so Xin Yuan drags him up the mountain when he can so that Liu Zhihao can sit in on lessons with Lin Kai. He drags him all over the forest at the foot of the mountain to go look at bugs and animals.

(One time, when they're fourteen and Liu Zhihao has been learning cultivation for a few years now, Xin Yuan drags him out of bed late one night to go look at the stars. Xin Yuan tells Liu Zhihao about ascension -- something that still feels like a far off dream to many in this time -- that night, while they're sitting on the wet grass.)

("We should ascend together." Xin Yuan tells Liu Zhihao, jade eyes gleaming. Never let it be said that Xin Yuan doesn't love deeply, no matter what kind of love it is. He was always so lonely as Shen Yuan, Liu Zhihao is his best friend. "We'll become immortals, and then we won't ascend until the other is able to.")

(Liu Zhihao stares at him silently, his face unreadable. Then, quietly, he asks; "Promise?")

("Promise.")

When he starts adventuring outwards, further away from the mountain and the village, Liu Zhihao sticks to him like rice. Not that Xin Yuan's complaining, that's his best friend after all, and Liu Zhihao has become a formidable cultivator. He deserves to show off his skills.

He starts making something of a name for himself by the time he's, like, 18 -- although that name is in its baby steps, along with Liu Zhihao. They're slowly growing renown.

Perhaps XY uses his knowledge of PIDW and cultivation in general to help make advancements in the cultivation field. Although the system prevents him from sharing too much, it doesn't mean he can't practice it himself. Perhaps he's one of the first cultivators to develop a golden core. One of the first known immortal cultivators. One of the first to have a spirit sword.

(Although I don't know the logistics of any of this since my knowledge on xanxia/cultivation stuff in general is all still pretty new and google wasn't all that helpful lol.)

Either way, its my excuse to eventually make Xin Yuan come across as ethereal to other people. Peerless beauty SY for the win. Hs wifebeam is too strong, Xin Yuan has a line of suitors following after him and he's completely unaware of it. The rest of history is not.

Demon realm stuff has been stirring up since Xin Yuan was a kid, but at the time it was rare and in the beginning stages. Its been steadily ramping up and the system is sending him on more and more treacherous quests -- some of them mandatory, some optional. SY doesn't often take the optional ones unless it comes with a sufficient B-point reward.

for all intents and purposes though, he's a wandering rogue cultivator with Liu Zhihao, going from place to place to either help a town or village, or to discover more creatures or artifacts (although there aren't that many). Just all around living his life. He participates in a few major quest lines that are sure to get him mentioned in legend, even if it's a background character way.

(Unbeknownst to him, rather than being a side character in these legends, he's named directly. You can't become one of the first immortal cultivators and NOT get name dropped for clout.)

He has a spirit sword named Shā Mó, (杀 shā - to kill/weaken/counteract/reduce) (魔 mó - evil spirit, demon, possession). He routinely goes back to QJP to see Lin Kai, or to rest when traveling has worn down on him and he wants nothing more than to sleep somewhere he knows he'll be safe in. It becomes more frequent as Xin Yuan becomes more famous. Liu Zhihao often comes with him.

it all comes to a head though when the rifts between the demonic realm and the human realm become too great, and the balance between both realms becomes unstable. A demonic emperor's influence, wanting to merge the two realms so he could conquer both to satiate his own greed.

Typical evil king stuff. This comes to a climatic head in a great battle between every cultivator available and the demon emperor's army. Xin Yuan was one of the many who helped lead the charge.

In the end, it was Xin Yuan who ends up defeating the demonic emperor, but the rift that the emperor used to cross between worlds is destabilizing as well. Except instead of trying to close, it's getting bigger and bigger, threatening to swallow the heavens and earth and demonic realm whole.

You know how Yue Qingyuan's soul is bonded to his sword due to a qi deviation? Let's take it a step further >:)

Xin Yuan uses himself and Shā Mó to close the rift. However, it takes all of his spiritual energy to do so, as well as him filtering the demonic qi into his body to redirect it back to the demon realm.

In the end, Xin Yuan and his beloved sword Shā Mó fuse. Xin Yuan's soul becomes trapped in the sword. His physical body is unable to handle the immense amount of power it takes to close the rift, and is destroyed. He is immortalized in legend by his grieving cultivators.

(Liu Zhihao ends up ascending alone. He ascends with the hope that one day he'll see Xin Yuan again, even if it's in the face of someone else. Lin Kai does not ascend, too weighed down by the grief of losing his son.)

Xin Yuan, now Xin Mo, falls into a stasis. He's very confused and disorientated when he regains 'consciousness'. The system has been silent for most of his life, only popping up to give him mandatory quests, hints, points, or to answer any questions.

But once he wakes up, it cheerfully pops up again, congratulating him on completing the origin story of Xin Mo. SY freaks the fuck out. he'd shake the system screen if he could, but he doesn't have arms. or legs. or eyes for that matter.

He can sense his surroundings, but its all like imprints to him. He can sense the energies, but he can't see anything. It's all very disorientating and horrifying after years of being human. Like a sensory deprivation chamber.

The closing of the rift and the cycling demonic qi tainted both Sha Mo and Xin Yuan irreparably, and it did some kind of damage that resulted in SY needing to feed in order to use the spiritual powers. Kinda like how Xuan Su uses YQY's life force for it's spiritual energy, but instead of feeding on his own lifeforce, Xin Mo feeds on others.

The rest is history. Xin Mo is originally tied to the story of Xin Yuan -- believed to be all that remained of the man after he sacrificed himself to keep the realms separate. It's believed that the force of the realms closing permanently infused Sha Mo with demonic energy, turning it into Xin Mo.

But, like many stories do when faced against the tide of time, things get lost; chipped off; changed. Xin Mo is steadily separated from Xin Yuan, especially once it becomes clear how parasitic the sword really is, until they are all but separate entities themselves and the origin of Xin Mo's creation all but forgotten.

The years blur together when Xin Mo is not being wielded, and at first Xin Yuan was agonized by the fact that he stole the lives of all his wielders. He knows it's only a novel, but his decades spent in this life have softened him, and he's grown attached to the world around him.

But time erodes the mind like water erodes stone, and he becomes numb to it, then eventually anticipating of it. He forces himself to remember what he knows of PIDW's plot, and kinda fixates back on his old obsession on Luo Binghe. But while PIDW stays in his mind, his memories as Xin Yuan fall to the wayside.

Not forgotten, per se, but... tucked away. The system prevents him from forgetting fully.

Xin Mo isn't fully a demonic sword either i think, but instead harbors an ugly cocktail of both spiritual and demonic qi. Special circumstances and all that. Everyone just assumes he's a fully demonic sword because that's usually at the forefront, his spiritual qi weakened from the initial fusion and from years of not being fed spiritual qi. It's part of the reason his wielders always end up destroyed by him, other than the whole, yk, 'overwhelming qi' thing.

Nobody would recognize Xin Mo's human form as Xin Yuan other than some truly ancient demons. Of which Meng Mo might. But even that's iffy because there's a lack of surviving paintings of Xin Yuan, but also because of XM's demonic appearance and supposed lack of connection to XY.

Xin Mo has never spoken to his wielders before, not in the same way he does Luo Binghe. He tells Luo Binghe this, and he also tells Luo Binghe down the line that he is both spiritual and demonic -- something he also never told his wielders because there was no point to it.

okay okay i've got to end it here because its already gotten ridiculously long -- of which im both apologetic and unapologetic for -- but i DO think the Shang Qinghua and Shen Yuan meeting (and reveal) would be fucking hilarious. Especially if SY has learned how to pop between sword form and human form by then -- although i guess it doesnt matter either way because SQH's reaction is still the same.

And that reaction is internally screaming and going "hey what the FUCK?? WHY DOES XIN MO HAVE A HUMAN FORM??? WHAT IS THIS??? SYSTEM??? EXPLAIN???"

meanwhile from his place on the sword hilt xin mo is squinting at Shang Qinghua in bewilderment and going "aren't you supposed to be dead" but doesn't pay too much mind to it because its not like its going to change anything.

...up until he catches shang qinghua going "WTF" silently from his little corner while all eyes are off him. One moment SQH is standing beside his king, and the next he's been tackled to the ground by one wild-eyed, human-shaped Xin Mo.

everyone, including SQH, thinks Xin Mo is going to kill him. It is a surprise to everyone when he does not, and instead dissolves into deranged, uncontrollable laughter after spitting out some phrase in some ancient tongue and watching SQH's eyes grow wide in recognition.

[vaggieslefteye]

MORE THAN ANYTHING - REPRISE ↳ from Hazbin Hotel Season One (2024): 1x08 - "The Show Must Go On"

[thepollyjustice]

If you get sick, who do you contact to take care of you? What is the usual procedure if you take care of yourself. Also take the day off at least.~ Guardian anon

"I mean... I usually take care of myself. Mr. Gavin used to insist on helping me and, weirdly, now Prosecutor Gavin has started to do the same thing."

(Heh.. Must be a family thing.)

[eosofspades]

also love aroaceness love being aroacespec but i need to vent for a sec, realizing im on the aro spectrum and queering my ideas about how relationships can be has fucking eviscerated my ability to write romance. nearly every one i try to write ends up being more queerplatonic and suuuper not traditionally romantic (in most cases you can't even really call it that), and even when it doesn't, i get totally lost trying to write the attraction bc - i can't describe it as "wanting to be more," bc romance isn't inherently better/more fulfilling than platonic relationships, i think an actual romantic relationship is already just a best friend with different intimacy, but you can't boil it down to JUST that, bc then that's physical/sexual attraction which is a whole third thing, and anyway friends can kiss and sleep together perfectly platonically, and what even IS the difference between platonic and romantic anyway? like yeah my romance writing when i was 12 was a little more shallow but at least it was ROMANCE. please its so dark in here

[vaguely-concerned]

hysterical actually that in the macbeth references I keep making in my veilguard playthrough because of who I am as a person I would apologize but we all know I'm going to be like this again, the parallel I'm primarily setting up seems to be for solas to be the lady macbeth to rye's macbeth. I mean. not entirely inaccurate in some essential ways I suppose fdsjahf. geez. you push on a man a teeny tiny bit for your own purposes, and suddenly when you turn your back on him for a second he's in in blood stepped in so far that, should he wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er. oopsie. you Unleashed something there and you can't stuff it back in its cage now the tiger is free.

(solas' whole 'aren't you proud of what you've achieved? did you think you would gain everything while losing nothing? implicit: you ignorant child who hasn't realized how the world works, like I've had to' spiel when he stuffs you into the regret prison does have big lady m 'my hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white *proceeds to go mad from guilt and kill herself while macbeth becomes a specter of ruthless violence*' hubris energy.)

[hirokiyuu]

look at my alternate yuu concept boy

[dallonwrites]

okay actually looked at the lover boy wip intro again and this has me crazy because the grief in this was meant to all be about bobby but "remember that his favourite fruit was peaches and try not to cry over it" got me because felix's favourite fruit being peaches is like. a recent but definitive part of his character. and i can't remember if i just used peaches as a placeholder for bobby's favourite fruit (he does not give peach to me) and if i first wrote this before or after i decided peaches were felix's BUT now i'm like. what if this passage is him grieving bobby but it spirals around his grief for his relationship with felix??? find a lover the way you found felix and don't lose him this time but also find a lover because you're trying to find a connection as deep as the one you had with your best friend even though you know it can never be replicated. you can never find a lover that will love you like bobby (platonic, to be clear) loved you. find a lover in the fact you are alive even though it makes you nauseous because it just reminds you that your best friend isn't. how do you grieve someone who's still alive whilst simultaneously grieve someone who isnt? trying to grieve two people in two different ways and you feel guilty at the way they blend and blur because it feels like you lose your separate grips on both of them and you don't feel like you have space in you to accommodate all this ache. and like what if i edited all this to make that parallel more clear?? that his primary grief is bobby because he's the one who's dead but he's also grieving felix and probably doesn't even realise it?? and then the two become blurred?? and if he realised this he would actually feel fucking awful about it and like a bad friend?? haha just kidding unless??

[milfbrainrot]

have always been a bit more neutral to timebomb but it has rly surprisingly grown on me so much ;-; i think i do see it more from the tragedy angle and maybe more one-sided. i'm not sure jinx has ever been in a place to reciprocate the feelings i'm sure ekko has, but it is nice to think about for years down the line and in terms of what could have been.

[omni-scient-pan-da]

I swear to god, if me and Michelle end up in an honest to god relationship I'm selling the fucking rights (to myself) and getting it made into a million dollar blockbuster movie (forcing my otp at the time to live through the 400k word slowburn I fear I may be trapped in)

[nellasbookplanet]

I'm so sorry but I'm going to talk about supernatural in the year of our lord 2023, because I just finished good omens season 2 and the way these shows occupy a very similar space in fandom attitudes is driving me insane.

In so many ways, good omens feels like what supernatural could have been, had they actually committed and not flailed around with like 15 seasons of queerbaiting and the most unintentionally funny ending imaginable. You have the demons and the angels, armageddon, team free will vs god's master plan, years of pining and repression and no personal space and small declarations of love. But good omens does it with genuine vulnerability and comittment, not as bait or comic relief or last minute bury you gays. But, because it’s big and well-known and allows itself time and nuance to get where it’s going, so many people really treated it horribly before the drop of season 2 for not immediatelyand explicitly giving them what they wanted.

Like, after the end of season 1 you could really feel the way spn damaged viewers treated them as the same thing. It’s like people were so prepared to be tricked that they came in highly on guard and defensive. Thing is, this manifested as taking anything other than the most bland, on the nose and immediate gay rep as the creators queerbaiting and trying to worm their way out of committing to 'real' queer rep. Gaiman refuses to confirm your 'they are gay men' headcanons? Clearly him being a coward and not the characters, explicitly, being neither gay nor men. Characters have a very close relationship but no kiss? Clearly queerbaiting and not an affirmation of ace/aro relationships, queerplatonic relationships, or even plain old platonic relationships.

There is so much hurt from years of stereotypes and queerbaiting and bury your gays that any attempt to tell a complex queer story - one where relationships take time, or where they don’t always happen, or where horror or tragedy strikes, become nigh on impossible. It becomes hard to distinguish subtext used to be genuine and subtle and queer-friendly from subtext used to queerbait and make fun, and rather than making the effort to tell them apart and giving stories a chance (and taking the risk of getting hurt) all rep must be distilled into the epitome of 'gay' before it’s accepted as good, because that way you cannot be tricked. Hell, just the way it’s referred to as 'rep' rather than 'characters' is telling.

This is noticeable in the way spn fan spaces talk about Cas, too; he’s always 'the gay angel', never the bisexual angel (despite having had female love interests) or the asexual angel (despite being largely uninterested in sex) or the nonbinary angel (despite not being human and on occassion using female vessels as well as male). Does Meg Masters mean nothing to you. Just. Please allow stories their nuance and their time and their right to not always cater to your ship in the exact way you want (or at all) without declaring them bait. It makes you look very silly when you come crawling back the moment a kiss happens.

[the-outlande-r]

hearing my friend talk about her roster sounds so outlandish to me. like im glad for you bbg and it's so interesting but i don't think i can even imagine being in that same headspace. i can maybe like someone like once a year

[surreal-duck]

hi!! i just wanted to say that ive liked midoyuzu since i was like 14 and its been a few years since then (obviously) but seeing your midoyuzu art now is so!!! its so fulfilling to my past self who had like NO art to go off of, i guess? anyway! your art is super good and i love it so much <3

im glad omg? extremely late to the party but by god i am bringing snacks in here or die trying o7 was pretty baffled the first time finding out more abt their dynamic and looking them up on here to find maybe like two more recent posts and the rest from no sooner than 2017 or so askjdghsjkgdhjks but really THANK YOU!!!!!!!! happy to be of service to your inner 14yo somewhat ;v;

yknow what though the really funny thing is that i wasnt even that into them initially. just remembered that cute interaction at the end of xmas live and thought "huh these two r kinda sweet actually" and that curiosity is always a slippery slope into genuine investment and by god is tripping into it a favorite pastime of mine

[kanene-yaaay]

Thinking about,,,, them,,,,,

Kel and Sunny,,,,

[everythingsinred]

it is so sad to me that people find it difficult to see a meaningful and emotional relationship with two people without making it romantic. that you watch two people connect and immediately say “people dont do THAT for friends--” like maybe YOU dont. but platonic and familial relationships can hit so hard, so profoundly, so deeply, if you just let them. ppl ship incest so much bc they cant imagine a strong connection that isnt sexual or romantic. they cant fathom that a person might do ANYTHING for their child or their sibling or their parent, that they’d cross heaven and hell for a friend. romantic relationships are awesome but fandom sucks the enjoyment out of all non-romantic relationships by MAKING them romantic, by forcing romance and sex in places where they dont belong or arent needed. you arent elevating the relationship. you arent making it deeper. youre just adding sex. these two people love each other, but theres more than one way to love. so many of you exhaust me

[angeltism]

KeiJiro my beloved tragic yuri