#picking at drafts again

[toeat]

soon

[blue-mood-blue]

I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - 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 “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.

And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… 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 it’s not coincidence at all?

Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t 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. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s 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 “what happens next?”

They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s 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 doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.

It’s 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. “Tells” 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.

(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)

Death feels very real after that.

The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d 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 it’s 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 isn’t 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 it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t 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 he’s 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 that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d 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 don’t 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 that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s 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 “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...

…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…

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.

“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.

Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s 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 “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)

“I know,” he says instead. “I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”

Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”

[peatchoune]

xiao from my mafia AU!!

[apradonite]

biopaws electric boogaloo

[kinokoshoujoart]

did not expect to find forbidden inaccessible gay autocannibalism variant of rock’s after-marriage line hidden away in the dialogue files for a wonderful life special edition for the ps2 but here we are

context:

[silverfoxstole]

It’s interesting how many images from the Night of the Doctor photoshoot have been used in various places but are yet to turn up in an unedited form.

ETA: I originally made this post in January and didn’t check it before I published it this morning, hence the inclusion of #7 and #8 which I can now see are composites with heads from later photos. That just goes to show that the photoshopping on the earlier Time War sets was superior to that BF is using at the moment!

[cable-salamder]

Lloyd has a weekly crying session to Baby Don’t Hurt Me I’ve just decided

[bookshelf-in-progress]

There's always a danger of caring too much about a story, and then getting paralyzed by the need to do it justice, so it never gets written.

I've solved this problem in the past by writing stories so fast that I don't have time to get too invested, or writing stories that I'm not that attached to.

But maybe the trick is to love the story so much that I want to share it any way I can, even if it's imperfect. To feel that any version of this story is better than the story never getting written at all. To get out of my own way and stop worrying about what other people will think of my writing, or even what I think of my writing, and love the story for its own sake, love the readers enough to want to have the joy of sharing the story with them.

Maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't. But so far it feels like a much better approach.

[puckpocketed]

as promised here is my follow up ask on PLD and the caps!! (this time...as a doctor 😎)

first of all thank you so much for the detailed response you gave my first ask. it confirmed a lot of suspicions i had about his supposed character issues and his usage in LA. obviously he's not a perfect player (few are) (except nicklas backstrom, my beloved), but seems like there's a disconnect between the way the media/fan narrative paints him and what's actually happening on the ice and in the locker room.

second of all!! just some kinda ramble-y thoughts based on some of the things you said in the first ask. this is not organized well and i'm sorry (but hopefully it's helpful info to you as you come over to caps land for a bit this season)

(1) Takings Shifts Off. totally agree with you that pld is and always will be viewed through the lens of The Shift. there are definitely players that regularly take shifts off and don't get dogpiled for it, esp. during the regular season (...see Ovechkin, Alex...especially in his old man era! gotta conserve energy). i am very curious to see if pld is like ovi in that he takes shifts off sometimes during the regular season but never the playoffs. from the little we've seen of pld in the playoffs my impression (esp when he played for CBJ) is that he elevates his game. i'm curious to see if he's really got that second gear...but caps gotta make the playoffs first.

(2) A Driver of One's Own. very interesting that in the answer to the last ask you said pld is not exactly the kind of player who drives his own line. this caught my eye bc it's a bit part of the problem w/ finding a center for ovi with backy gone...nowadays, O can't fully drive his own line anymore. he's just not fast enough, regularly (though he can turn it on in key moments). the legs just aren't there as much anymore, he can't really carry the puck in the way he used to, etc. BUT!!! he still has the best shot in the game (sorry auston), so absolutely ELITE triggerman. i'm wondering if pld could like...meet him halfway, i guess. like if TOGETHER they could drive the line. Hmmmm...

(3) Power Play!! everything you said about pld on the PP is promising. if he thrives most net front, then i genuinely think that position is there for the taking. i'm sure they'll try him in the old backstrom/kuznetsov QB spot on the right halfwall but there is a 0% chance our coach doesn't try a few things with the PP, including putting pld in different spots. i wouldn't be surprised if we started off having a weak PP that found its groove as the season went on.

(4) HCSC. our head coach is going to do literally everything in his power to make pld succeed. very communicative coach. last season he started out with an up-tempo system, and then switched to slower defense-first once he realized his personnel was just too slow/old to really pull all that off. with 1/3 of our roster now turned over and filled with players in their 20s, we're gonna see a VERY different capitals team from last year. i'm sure there will be growing pains but...they mystery is exciting, instead of terrifying, for once!!!

third of all!! just wanted to say thanks again for the detailed response to the third ask, and welcome to caps-land. it's a fun time over here. hope you're really looking forward to seeing what the hell our chaotic gremlins are going to do (as long as it makes penguins fans rage and cry, i am happy!!)!!! :)

okay this reply is getting crowded so ill just stick it all under the cut. here is a fun preview:

the media+fan narrative disconnect is SO real!!! i knowww with the amount of players the league has to cover, the sheer length of a regular season and all that happens during, plus the whole....society-wide erosion of journalism as a field... it can be hard for media to keep up, but it's been pretty startling to see their fallibility so... plainly? don't think i have the One Final Truth about Dubois but i think we're likely closer to it than anything the mainstream narratives are saying. i do get that their profits and clicks per/ are greatly increased via if they have a bent toward sensationalism... podcasters, youtube creators, people tweeting... they kinda have to operate like this because thats what the (gags) market and algorithm and audiences crave. does NOT mean i like it. ugh.

bleak reflections on journalism aside, im sitting here and gorging myself on this ask ouhhh thank uuu (for those playing along at home here are manifesto 1 and manifesto 2) and nodding along SO vigorously to all of these... we're having GALAXY brained discussions on here the likes of which spittin chiclets could never even dream of....................

(1) agreed agreed. he MUST be horse-bonded to his team i truly believe this with my whole heart (as in, he's gotta know his role + be comfy). otherwise, no other comment. I DID make that meme though because i was having a laff about Ovechkin conserving energy lkajsdkljajkl

(2) SUPER inchresting that you mention Ovi's lack of footspeed... i know a failhorse who can provide this 👀 we may be cooking something here... more than the sum of their parts kind of vibe?? Dubois has the youth and speed and muscle... he's just been hamstrung by quality of wingers.... and if as you say Ovi needs a hand carrying the puck; well.... 👀👀👀 don't want to put all my eggs in that basket though, I think it would be unfair of us to demand that of him... BUT if it works... oughhhhh i AM hopeful. SO hopeful.

(3) obsessed with this faith in your power play coaches (<- voice of a guy who watched ducks hockey) and their willingness to change things up is soooo nice to hear. NOT a fan of teams bashing their heads against a wall when their special teams clearly aren't working.

(4) and finally, I'm loving everything I hear about Spencer Carbery. i think Dubois has the allure of an wounded animal in the wild (a horse, even) or perhaps a moody teen girl with a hidden darkness in her heart <3 what im saying is, if he doesn't work it out now he's probably always gonna be one of those players every coach looks at and thinks "I could fix him". Carbs on record saying he could tame this wild creature??

link, archive link

hooting, hollering, etc.

Thank you for such a wonderful, warm welcome!! Everyone in caps land has been so lovely... the vibes.. the VIBES!!! peace and love for pens followers but i did in fact choose a side in your Foreverwar ... (my hockey girlbestie actually likes both teams which i find SO fun. the pens are my babygirl-in-laws!) anyway my heart does not divide.... it only swells.... much like the beaugtiful and noble salary of any 30 y/o RHD going into free agency <3 i have enjoyed chatting to caps fans like yourself immensely, and i look forward to hitting the trenches with everyone during regular season !!!

[trainingdummyrabbit]

ayin. i'm curious

one question in and im already having to pull up the cutscene dialogue. god. ok listen this is the most bullyable man in the whole entire world and he makes it so easy, but also I Do Fucking Love This Guy. i need to study him so bad its unreal.

im always a sucker for characters introduced as a "yeah theyre totally a player stand-in dont worry about it ^_^" and then they kick you in the fucking shins halfway through. and he is no exception. i am Notoriously endeared by characters with any amount of weird identity fuckery going on and Jesus Fucking Christ Dude.

the way that he is so solidly rooted in the core of everything that goes down in lobcorp, and yet how certain bits of his attitude and Personality are Wholly lost. how most of what we know of him is through secondhand accounts and recollections, and yet he refuses to let on anything about himself in his own memory of things. his perception revolves entirely around the people around him to a very, Very stark degree. im not sure if its just a side effect of the genre and execution of this story in particular or if im just making shit up, but.

hes not a loud character. something about that in tangent with how he completely splinters himself over and over in conjunction with the things that happened to them, its all very compelling. the way he tackles problems with this sort of analytical distance, unaware of or perhaps intentionally separating his own mess from what he feels he has to do-- while at the same time having it be so inextricably intertwined with Everything. he feels like the type of character to desperately want to simply point a direction and shoot, yet he gets in his own way time and time again, simultaneously on accident And on purpose. avoidant of And conscious of.

ill be real im just kind of spitballing the vague Idea of him in hopes of reaching something concrete. he's so intent on the straightforward "any means necessary," yet he sabotages himself every step of the way. its fascinating. such a strange form of self-destruction.

i wonder how he really feels about everything. how he felt, and then, what exactly it is that changed in him after the SoL project "completion". what exactly did he come to terms with through the course of ruina? was it something new he hadn't the room to process until then, or was it simply an understanding that he'd had for longer than that, that he'd simply never had the mind to voice it?

and then! the way he feels about the rest of the team-- how little he seems to speak of any particular bond between himself and them, and yet (iirc) he has photos of them all up in his office. how much of him is means to an end, and how much is compartmentalization of what he might actually feel? which does he want to be true?

does that cohere? he's such a messy tangle of things that never get spoken-- on purpose and otherwise-- that it makes him so difficult to Actually Read, and yet... and yet! what im saying is that benjamin saw something in him, and that is something worth studying-- not because of doubt, but because of a desire to truly Understand. something about the metaphor between Sun and Shadow, seeing things in the gaps burned between photos. fascinating specimen. i need to put him into a blender.

also hes one of the few characters capable of making me lose it just by seeing his basic png which has to count for something i guess

[the-physicality]

Toronto certainly had success this season. They had the most favorable draft conditions being gifted Natalie Spooner in the fourth round, and the second overall pick in the draft. But there's been vocal concern among other teams in the league that Toronto has leveraged information that could be considered a conflict of interest in having access to medical records, fitness testing, and scouting reports collected by Hockey Canada for Team Canada. Toronto's staff obviously utilizes this information for the formation of Team Canada, but that knowledge being transferred to Toronto is the concern from other teams. It was noted at the 2023 Draft that Toronto staff were using laptops with Hockey Canada insignia on them. It's a concern making its way around the league among staff.

x

[missinglaterals]

Drag-King Clown named Hank or Hanky (he/him)

[ssruis]

Remembered the magical girl au… that was so funny of me. 4k+ words written and I don’t like most of it. Into the never to be finished draft hell it goes.

[tmae3114]

So I originally wrote this back in August when this release was fresh and then!!! APPARENTLY!!! just COMPLETELY forgot to post it!! so you get it now, three months late.

-

Some of the dialogue from the Guardian Tower has been living rent free in my head and now I want to yell about it because it’s SO GOOD for background lore

Okay, so, on the first floor, Mindi tells us this:

I really like this because it helps illustrate one of the logistical problems of the Rose. Like, even if you took away everything else that makes them bad (which, admittedly, is most of the organisation and its purpose), the fact that they tend to, by default, present themselves as the only option and drive out competition is bad. On paper, a force of people trained in combat against magical threats, with reasonably easy access to that training, which has garrisons stationed across the land, is actually a pretty good solution to the whole Recurring Evil Magical Threats thing. We know this because the guardians and the paladins and the dragonslayers exist! They do this! The Rose seems to make membership easier to access but, frankly, I suspect that is in part because their training is less thorough.

And when the Rose show up and drive those other groups out (like they’ve done with the Guardians), they don’t actually improve anything. Best case scenario, everything is exactly the way it was before. More likely, things would get worse, because the people with active experience defending a particular area have been driven away and now the Rose members have to play catch-up

(A good example of how on paper a group like the Rose could help an area is Book 3 Amityvale. The local Guardians were long gone, so the Rose were able to help without doing that extra damage and made Amityvale a safer place to live....... but that’s specifically for the human inhabitants. Plus, we know they’re affecting the magic of the area - Amaris’s moon has started having phases - and that’s! probably not good! Also see: Raven having to flee for her own safety after getting bitten by a werewolf. Even where they are ostensibly doing the most good, the Rose are still an active danger to many, even their own in the wrong circumstances)

And, meanwhile, on the ground floor...

......further proof that the Rose actively try to drive competition out of the area. Falconreach has repeatedly made it clear that they want nothing to do with the Rose and they keep picking fights with the patrols.

[starlooove]

Hello! What about Duke Thomas made you like him so much??

I've been checking out his tag cause I saw some really cool fanart of him, so now I'm curious on what makes his character so appealing

AWHWHW sorry pls bare with me I’m scatterbrained but like. In a sentence I love that Duke is someone who presses forward despite everything! Like this is draft two bc my first answer was just listing character traits which wasn’t the question; but what I personally adore about him is that he just doesn’t stop moving.

It sounds weird but like. To me he gives refusal to die, refusal to settle, refusal to give up. When riddler took Gotham Duke was certain HE’D be the one to save them if he tried hard enough, when Bruce lost his memories Duke tried to get him back and then pushed forward with his own plans with the certainty that Batman would come back - whether through him or not, when his parents went missing he said fuck the system and went after them anyways and that’s just like. Off the top of my head. Like as corny as it sounds Duke lowkey embodies what I love about Batman - the whole indomitable human spirit or however you say that and it’s by far my favorite trait bc I don’t even think he’s aware of it? Like he actively plays at not caring about the Robin movement and just wanting to find his parents but like 3 hours later he’s texting them going ‘but like what are the details if I joined lol. Like hypothetically.” He actively fights Damian until he agrees with him, becomes a leader within the movement until Bruce is back whilst dodging gcpd, and Bruce literally had to dress up as karma for Duke to admit maybe it did fuck him up a little - all for him to still be like “I’m not good enough :(‘.

And I know that all seems like shit he just did but I promise his mindset during these things is so fascinating to me bc it’s like he simultaneously understands not many others would do this whilst also holding it as bare minimum/base standards. Like I make joke posts about him being a hardass but tbh he doesnt judge anyone half as hard as he judges himself - he understands bad circumstances, plans going left, differing povs - all until he makes a mistake; then he sucks and needs to be better. He’s also just hilarious like I didn’t read him in chrono order so the first thing I saw was him in a fight with some girls brother bc he heard Duke was flirting with her and idk an opening like that just cemented him as cool to me.

ALSO (from the tags!) I ADOREEEEEE HOW MUCH HE LOVES THE ADRENALINE/RUSH OF FIGHTING! Like Duke got in a lot of fights while his parent were missing and besides the obvious acting out bc he’s hurt he also just genuinely loves the rush of it - like not my interpretation he outright says it! And i need to do a reread for him bc I feel like it wasn’t mentioned a lot but if the og fight was the hook, the adrenaline line is what reeled me in and keeping it in mind while reading stories of him going off on his own for the good of Gotham adds another layer to it bc it’s not SOLEY necessity for him! Like things happened to line up where there was always a void that needed to be filled when he got involved in anything but it genuinely feels like duke wouldve been here no matter the circumstances. like even in civilian aus the way duke as a character is set up makes it so that it feels like - to me anyways- theres no world in which hes not doing or striving towards something! duke isnt the type to just be comfortable, bad wording, but hes just a very hungry character to me - if for an adventure or a solution. Its conveniently been both for most of his career but im very interested for what happens internally when those two clash - which. i personally think the nature of his powers and gnomon could bring that out beautifully!

[kyouka-supremacy]

(´･ᴗ･ ` )