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civetfish · 1 year ago

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Nerd-to-nerd communication

Something super pointless and self-indulgent I've had on the backburner for a while. I love trying to make the pieces they gave us fit together!

Al-AN and Robin would absolutely bond over learning about each other's biology. I could talk about this forever but I'll get into all of the headcanons I have for these two in another post eventually

Below the cut is another version with some extra bits and pieces and the transcription

Transcript :

Architect Anatomy A. Architect "Brain" - Doesn't "store" information so much as allow for easy communication with the network B. Brainstem - connects the information received to the central nervous/circulatory system C. "Heart" - Circulatory system pumps the bioluminescent fluid to other organ systems and surface veins. Each node connects to a vast vasculature network D. "Kidneys" - Organs that filter the bioluminescent "blood" and other bodily fluids, absorbing and distributing collected material E. Nerve Center - Receives raw sensory data and filters it. Filtering can be unconscious or intentional

F. "Respiratory" Tract - Intakes gases or liquids and filters out material for use. Disposes of waste on exhale. Provides cooling to internal systems

The respiratory tract functions less like a set of lungs and more akin to a computer's cooling system, with the ability to absorb material from the environment to use in other parts of the body. It also would likely help the architect's body analyze the environment it is currently exposed to on a molecular level. It is also truly unidirectional, with the intake vents near the "collarbone" and the exhaust vents on both sides of the abdomen

The architect organ cache in-game felt like it was definitely not a complete model of the internal organs, so I wanted to come up with something to fill some more space. I also just really liked the idea of Al-An being capable of something similar to breathing, without having a respiratory system in the traditional sense. Feel free to use any of this in your own headcanons if you would like :)

BONUS - a gif of all the layers!

#EDIT - UPDATE IN THE REBLOGS #The skeletal structure of the architects cause me so much anguish #Ily al-an but your HIPS don't have JOINTS #This was so fun #I mention this in the keep reading but feel free to use this anatomy speculation stuff in your own work!#I want to get into more of my headcanons for how his body works but I might do that through writing. Ill link my ao3 if I do lol #subnautica below zero #subnautica #sbz #al an subnautica #al an #robin ayou #subnautica below 0 #al-an #spec bio #<< technically I guess #Do you think he sounds like an overheating pc when he's embarrassed #SMALL EDIT : HELLO?? I didnt realise Aci had made a video analyzing al-an's body and AUGH I WISH I HAD SEEN IT!!#He brings up some really good points and ideas abt his physiologyyyyy

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nevertheless-moving · 2 months ago

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The Demon of Yunmeng: Part Five

Part One — Part Four

Wei Wuxian looked up at Wen Qing, bewildered.

"Well, that's settled then," she said, standing up. "I'll leave you two to discuss things — there's a few quick errands I need to run. I would ask that you please not leave before I return, I have parting words for you both."

She gave a perfunctory bow, then swept out the door, ignoring Wei Wuxian's protests. She didn't even tell him to get back in his chair.

There was really no other choice but to look back at Lan Zhan, who's ears were red, but face was set.

"You do realize my plan involves lying, right?" Wei Wuxian finally said.

"Not lying to say I was with you that night."

"Yeah but —" he made a frustrated noise. "Lan Zhan, that is actually incredibly helpful, but my whole idea was to create doubt that I even liked women at all! That I was always a cutsleeve. You know that it's not just Yu Guniang's accusations, they're bringing in women from everywhere I've ever been, from the campaign, I can't say you happened to be there every time!"

"...Was usually on the same front as you. Stayed in the same camps."

He gaped at Lan Zhan, who was completely failing to mention the reason that was true was because Hunguang-Jun had persistently shadowed him to keep an eye on his demonic cultivation. Far more bizarre, he also appeared to be suggesting that they build an elaborate lie around that fact.

"You want to go in front of the cultivation world and say we were sneaking around together the entire sunshot campaign?" Wei Wuxian asked in disbelief. "That I couldn't have possibly been raping women indiscriminately because I was too busy taking your dick up my ass?"

Lan Wangji made a choked noise, red crawling up his neck, hands tightening over his knees as he looked away.

"Yeah, Wen Qing suggested I say that I was the 'receiving partner,'" Wei Wuxian said, viciously twisting the knife, tugging at the hem of Lan Zhan's robes to get his attention.

"If... it increases the chance for Yu Guniang to get justice..." Lan Wanjii said, still not meeting his eyes. "If it would protect Wei Ying..."

Wei Wuxian gaped once again in baffled disbelief. "You're going to lie. In front of everyone. About years of our lives. About sex. You're going to lie about having sex with me in front of a crowd."

"...Between the two of us, no one would expect me to do the speaking."

That was actually a pretty good point, and he paused for a moment to consider it. "So what, I would say all the crazy stuff and you would stand next to me, occasionally interjecting about something that actually did happen?"

"Mn."

"Like I'd say 'I couldn't possibly have been with your daughter that night, I was too busy sucking Lan Zhan's dick, and you would stand there, not arguing, not saying lying is forbidden?"

"Mn." The red of Lan Zhans neck and ears had crept around to his cheekbones.

"Fuck, that could actually work," he muttered.

"Wei Ying."

"What?"

"...Please get off the ground."

He laughed somewhat maniacally. "What," he cooed. "Is this too provocative a position, considering the subject matter?" He leered, batting his eyes and pulling himself closer.

"Wei Ying," Lan Wangji hissed, face twisting towards anger.

"This is exactly what I mean!" Wei Wuxian put his hands on top of Lan Zhan's, who pulled back as if burnt, which only meant Wei Wuxian was able to grab his knees instead, which he leaned heavily on to half pull himself up. "How are you going to pull off being my cultivation partner when you don't even like being near me?" he asked, not without humor. "I would at least have to touch you, Lan Zhan! You hate being touched." He squeezed Lan Zhan's knees for emphasis.

Lan Wangii set his jaw, hands visibly tightening where they were clutched to his chest. "I can do it." he grit out.

Wei Wuxian snorted, then stood.

Lan Zhan's moment of relief quickly faded as Wei Wuxian dropped into the man's lap. "Wei Ying!" His hands shot forward quick as lightning, grabbing the demonic cultivator's hips and holding him so far away he practically fell off, preventing him from sliding inappropriately closer.

He leaned in, grabbing at the front of Lan Zhan's robes. "Just give it up," he said, exacerbated. "There's absolutely no way anyone will believe the two of us are cultivation partner's — look, you are literally holding me at arm's length right now!" He shifted, trying to get up, but Lan Wangji's grip on his waist was a bit too firm.

"Alright, so you want to contribute to justice," Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes. "You can still say you brought me to my room and I was too drunk for anything! I think it will really help. Between that, this blood test I invented, and maybe an unrelated cutsleeve thing — I don't know, I still have to talk to Wen Ning —"

Suddenly he was yanked forward, not all the way flush with Lan Wangji, but close enough to certain look intimate to outsiders. "I. will. do. it." Hunguang-Jun growled.

Once again, all he could do was stare in confused amazement at the uncharacteristic behavior. "Say, Lan Zhan," he said, growing suspicious. "You're not cursed or something right? You didn't hit your head?"

"No."

"Then why are you insisting on this?"

"..."

"Look, I admit, maybe you could pull it off, you've got a thicker face than I give you credit for — but why? Why do you even want to?"

"Wei Ying."

"What?"

"..."

"What? What, I'm listening, why do you want to do this?"

"...Yu Xiang. Cheng Cai —"

"Cheng Cai?" Wei Wuxaian asked, bewildered. He focused, but couldn't sense any curses at all. "Who's that?"

"Jin Guangshun sent out a list of women who will be attending the conference to accuse you."

He groaned. "Of course he did."

"You all deserve justice."

Wei Wuxian groaned again, letting his head fall forward onto Lan Zhan's shoulder, who had no choice but to bear it or give up. "I get it, you're too righteous for this world. You're willing to sacrifice your dignity for the greater good but Lan Zhan — I really don't think you've thought this through."

"Thought enough."

"Come on! It's not going to just be one day, you realize?" he said hysterically. "You're going to have to live with the lie for the rest of your life! No one will let you forget it! At best, you'll be a laughingstock. At worst, they'll lump you in with the worst of my crimes!"

"...Don't care."

"You don't care."

"Mn."

Wei Wuxian squinted at him. Lan Wangji stared back, face placid, is still lightly flushed at the uncomfortably prolonged physical contact. To be fair, the second jade of Lan was one of a handful of people he could believe genuinely didn't care about the opinions of others. He gave off an aura of unshakeable confidence in himself that could be mistaken for the arrogance Wei Ying actually did possess.

Despite himself, Wei Wuxian found himself genuinely considering the idea. "You're really serious about this aren't you?" he asked slowly.

"Mn."

"What about marriage? What if you want to get married to a beautiful woman one day? Your reputation will matter then!"

"Not interested," Lan Wangji said firmly.

That was... also believable. The matchmakers that were circling Jiang Cheng could be pretty terrifying, and it was easy enough to imagine the solitary Lan Zhan desperately seeking a way out of sharing his life with someone. It's not like Lan Sect would approve a marriage with him, so this would be a fairly effective, if explosively dramatic way to escape that particular fate.

The idea that Lan Wangji might get something personal out of this made the insane idea seem more plausible.

"I guess even if you blush the whole way through the trial," Wei Wuxian mused, "Everyone might assume it's normal embarrassment at being so publicly exposed, rather than unfamiliarity or discomfort."

"Don't blush," Lan Wangji grit out.

"Ha!" Wei Wuxian laughed. "Practicing your lying skills early, huh Lan Zhan?" He reached forward, boldly grabbing Lan Zhan's red ear and tweaking it.

Again, to Lan Zhan's credit, he didn't push Wei Wuxian away or protest the excessive contact. Even if all he did was stand there like a jade statue while Wei Ying shamelessly draped himself against his body, well. Like the talking, it wasn't that far removed from how people would imagine a relationship between them would work, if one were crazy enough to imagine such a thing.

A knock came at the door, and the two tensed.

"It's me," Wen Qing called.

Wei Wuxian relaxed. "It's your office, open the door yourself."

She stepped inside, raising an eyebrow at the position the two of them were in. "That was faster than I thought," she said dryly.

Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes, squirming to get comfortable. Lan Zhan's grip tightened almost painfully, pushing him back to maintain a slightly respectable distance between their torsos.

"Just making sure Lan er-Gongzi knows what he's getting into," Wei Wuxian said smugly.

Wen Qing snorted. "Right, about that — I've got something for you two." She placed a tightly sealed jar on the table.

"What is it?" Wei Wuxian asked, craning his head over his shoulder. Lan Zhan obligingly turned to the side, seeming too afraid of what Wei Wuxian might do if he let him go to risk it.

"Red Seaweed Oil," she said, settling across the table. "It's good for internal use."

It took a second for that to sink in, then Wei Wuxian felt heat crawl up his face. "Haha," he laughed nervously. "That's very...thorough of you, Wen Qing, but I don't think anyone will be searching our belongings, or um...asking for a demonstration."

Wei Wuxian didn't have a lot of practice sitting on other people's laps, so it was an interesting experience feeling Lan Zhan's legs turn to literal jade beneath him as he presumably tightened every muscle in his body in distress. The flush and slight widening of eyes was practically a scream of alarm by anyone else's standards.

"Okay," he said, deciding to take pity on the poor repressed monk. He reached down, prying Lan Wangii's fingers off his hips. "I think this point has been made." Lan Zhan finally let go, and he swung himself back to the other seat.

He turned, facing Wen Qing. "Why are you giving us this," he asked, exacerbated.

She stared at him with a level gaze. "I like to think I know you fairly well at this point, Wei Wuxian."

He snorted "I'd say you're in the top five of people who know me, Wen Qing."

"I know what you're like."

"Yes?"

Wen Qing glanced for a long moment at him, then at Lan Zhan, then sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "If you actually were a cutsleeve, and the secret was finally out in the open, when would you start shamelessly cracking jokes about it to make people uncomfortable?"

"Immediately and then forever," Wei Wuxian said promptly.

"Do you think you would be able to resist digging through your belongings, leaving an object out, and then pounce viciously on whoever was foolish enough to ask?"

He picked up the jar, considering. "Say," he said, possibilities of a whole new realm of pranks opening before his eyes. "Do you happen to have any of those replica phalluses in town?"

A very faint choking noise came from the chair to his side.

"Buy your own," Wen Qing said curtly. "We don't have many specialty merchants come through here."

"Hmph," he leaned back in his chair, finding he lacked the desire to look Lan Zhan in the face. He glanced over anyway. The flush had faded completely, leaving the man's blank face utterly devoid of color.

Wei Wuxian grinned. "You know," he said innocently. "Along that line of thought — it would really help the credibility of my words if you could finish explaining what we were talking about earlier."

"My thoughts exactly," she said, pulling a sheet of parchment and a quill to the center of her desk and beginning to draw a series of curved lines with swift elegant movements.

"This," she said, after a moment. "Is the median raphe. It is sometimes considered an erogenous zone. In addition to being highly painful, abrasions or other injuries that break the skin here come with an increased likelihood of infection."

"I thought we were going to talk about stretching," Wei Wuxian complained.

"I'm getting to that." She pointed with the quill to another wrinkled line. "This is the anal fold. It is sometimes considered an erogenous zone. In addition to being highly painful, abrasions or other injuries that break the skin here come with an increased likelihood of infection."

"I'm noticing a theme."

"Good." She pointed again. "This is the rectum. "It is sometimes considered..."

He glanced to the side. Lan Wangji, who had never avoided listening to a lecture in his life, was staring at the drawing with absolute focus, white knuckled hands on his knees the only give away to his distress. At some point after Wei Wuxian had moved he had crossed one leg over the over, and his ears were once again bright red.

Wei Wuxian sighed, then smiled, unable to help himself. It wasn't the first time he had to...dissuade Lan Zhan away from a stupidly single-minded determination to do what he had unilaterally decided was the 'right' course of action.

Lan Zhan might have gotten even more stubborn over the years, but that wasn't any reason the process of breaking him couldn't be as fun as when they were fifteen.

Prev Chapter (Four) Next Chapter (Six) MDZS AU Masterlist

[Note: This is for almost for sure gonna get rated E later on (if it's not already idk) so don't commit unless you're cool with sex comedy/ porn interwoven with plot.]

#Mdzs #Mo dao zu shi #Wangxian #My au #mdzs au no 1 #The demon of yunmeng #mdzs fanfiction #90% of Lan Zhan's brain power during that conversation was dedicated to his hard-on and Wei Ying's EXACT location in proximity to it #i feel like he managed really well considering #look i know everyone writes only lan zhan's ears blushing and i support you #but that's a 13 years later thing! teen lan zhan turned fully red! wei wuxian was annoyed by how much harder he was to embarrass!#cw: rape references #i outlined this whole fic and its 70 chapters long with 4 extras #the odds of me writing every chapter are slim to none but who knows. if somehow I do I guess i'll move to an everyday update schedule idk #more likely i end up posting random chapters at a certain point #anyway if anyone is interested in beta-ing I would really appreciate it #I've rewritten the first chapter and have several on deck and have some structural second guesses in terms of where to split scenes #if you prefer committing to beta a chapter at at time that's also cool

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