beforetimes

[beforetimes]

Writing Notes & References

Alchemy ⚜ Antidote to Anxiety ⚜ Attachment ⚜ Autopsy

Art: Elements ⚜ Principles ⚜ Photographs ⚜ Watercolour

Bruises ⚜ Caffeine ⚜ Color Blindness ⚜ Cruise Ships

Children ⚜ Children's Dialogue ⚜ Childhood Bilingualism

Dangerousness ⚜ Drowning ⚜ Dystopia ⚜ Dystopian World

Culture ⚜ Culture Shock ⚜ Ethnocentrism & Cultural Relativism

Emotions: Anger ⚜ Fear ⚜ Happiness ⚜ Sadness

Emotional Intelligence ⚜ Genius (Giftedness) ⚜ Quirks

Facial Expressions ⚜ Laughter & Humour ⚜ Swearing & Taboo

Fantasy Creatures ⚜ Fantasy World Building

Generations ⚜ Literary & Character Tropes

Fight Scenes ⚜ Kill Adverbs

Food: Cooking Basics ⚜ Herbs & Spices ⚜ Sauces ⚜ Wine-tasting ⚜ Aphrodisiacs ⚜ List of Aphrodisiacs ⚜ Food History ⚜ Cocktails ⚜ Literary & Hollywood Cocktails ⚜ Liqueurs

Genre: Crime ⚜ Horror ⚜ Fantasy ⚜ Speculative Biology

Hate ⚜ Love ⚜ Kinds of Love ⚜ The Physiology of Love

How to Write: Food ⚜ Colours ⚜ Drunkenness

Jargon ⚜ Logical Fallacies ⚜ Memory ⚜ Memoir

Magic: Magic System ⚜ 10 Uncommon ⚜ How to Choose

Moon: Part 1 2 ⚜ Related Words

Mystical Items & Objects ⚜ Talisman ⚜ Relics ⚜ Poison

Pain ⚜ Pain & Violence ⚜ Poison Ivy & Poison Oak

Realistic Injuries ⚜ Rejection ⚜ Structural Issues ⚜ Villains

Symbolism: Colors ⚜ Food ⚜ Numbers ⚜ Storms

Thinking ⚜ Thinking Styles ⚜ Thought Distortions

Terms of Endearment ⚜ Ways of Saying "No" ⚜ Yoga

Compilations: Plot ⚜ Character ⚜ Worldbuilding ⚜ For Poets ⚜ Tips & Advice

all posts are queued. will update this every few weeks/months. send questions or requests here ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[beforetimes]

mdzs transmigration au where xue yang, vagrant and dubious criminal in the 21st century dies and wakes up in the ditch xiao xingchen finds him in. he has no idea what's going on but rolls with this anyway. all he knows is he should definitely be calling himself chengmei and not xue yang under any circumstances at all ever. song lan comes upon him playing house after three years and xue yang very quickly realizes that like. ohhhh so i'm not just a random guy i'm like. evil. whoops! and goes on the run after song lan and xiao xingchen both try to kill him.

which like! not cool! he thought xiao xingchen and him were tight but it takes one fucking guy to roll in and ruin everything and now all of a sudden three years living together means nothing? but yes. since xue yang transmigrated and doesn't have any knowledge of this insane fixation on xiao xingchen he never has him kill song lan or trick him into killing humans as corpses but he definitely doesn't become, like, a total saint. he roughs people up back in the 21st century too, might as well keep it going in (what he assumes is) ancient fantasy china.

basically the three years he spends in yi city is almost like? the tutorial version of a game. then all of a sudden he's thrown into the deep end and has to learn about demonic cultivation, sect politics, his role in the world, his past with xiao xingchen and song lan and his past in general, all while trying not to die at the hands of the only person he's trusted in this new world for three years.

meanwhile xiao xingchen and song lan are figuring out what exactly xue yang was playing at when he pretended to be an entirely different person for three years and xiao xingchen can't help but keep coming back to how nice everything was before the truth was revealed. and neither of them find anything that xue yang was necessarily doing wrong when he lived with xiao xingchen (besides a few threats of bodily harm at the market).

a-qing is the only one who's seen the expressions on both their faces and is like 100% sure that they both love each other but can not say this because like. blind. duh. so she keeps her mouth shut and watches with slowly mounting frustration and confusion as they settle on finding and killing xue yang themselves, since none of the clans they brought him to took him to justice.

xue yang is having the most confusing fantasy road trip of his life and xiao xingchen is living in a dramatic tragedy and song lan is living in a thriller with a hint of perceived unrequited romance going on.

not sure how any of this would end tbh. maybe the trio link up and xiao xingchen and song lan realize there is something up with xue yang. it would be funny if xue yang pretended he was possessed when he did all his previous crimes and post-transmigration he managed to shake off the demon possessing him. hence the demonic cultivation. or a more tragic case where xiao xingchen kills him and when xue yang realizes there's no getting out of this (sword in his chest and blood actively spilling out his heart) tells him he thinks those three years together were the best of his life.

idk! if someone else wants to chew this over and figure it out go crazy. i just like the idea of a transmigration story where xue yang gets thrown into the body of the worlds second most notorious demonic cultivator in the world but has no idea what's going on so he just. plays house with his sworn enemy for three years.

[beforetimes]

think i gotta start accepting that sometimes it's fun to plot out a fic but i don't have to force myself to write the whole thing and that's okay!!!!!

[beforetimes]

breaking my own heart while i write this fic

[beforetimes]

send one/any combo of these my way with whatever svsss pairing you'd like and i'll write you a short something ^_^

quiet acts of love that make me cry 🫂

prompt list by @novelbear

always giving the other the first bite of their food

^ or the last bite

gently resting their head on their shoulder when taking a picture/peeking at something

kisses. on. the. tip. of. the. nose.

zipping or buttoning their jacket for them

when they follow the sidewalk rule :(

^ like imagine realizing it as they gently take the other's wrist and guide them to the other side...omg

waiting until they safely reach the front of the door or get inside before driving off

"did you eat today?"

softly dusting crumbs from their cheeks when eating

^ or even better: kissing it off

"wear a jacket, it's cold out."

watching a movie or show that they know they're interested in.

^ not because they asked them to, but to be able to engage in more conversation related to it when they adorably ramble on and on.

doing their makeup for them

"i brought you flowers." "for what?" "there has to be a reason?"

keeping a few of their favorite snacks in the house for when they visit.

opening the door for them or pulling their seat out before they sit down

lifting the shorter one up so they can be seen in photos

absentmindedly playing with their hair at all times

fixing their clothes a little for them when noticing something is off

[beforetimes]

FREE FROM EXAMS!!! so much writing will be happening from now on. trust.

[beforetimes]

It seems the dash has been talking about the Lan Xichen - Nie Huaisang post-canon dynamics and it's gotten me thinking about how discussion around post-canon Lan Xichen's absolutely horrendous mental state often center around the question of "who is Lan Xichen angry at and who does he feel guilty about" which, at its worst, seperates into 2 camps where according to one side he feels guilty about not protecting jgy and hates the Nies and, on the other side he has completely flipped on jgy and despises him now while being filled with regret towards both nmj and nhs.

And I dislike both of these takes not just because it often feels like people projecting their own Blorbo opinions onto Lan Xichen which is never a fun time but also because that central question is flawed to begin with. It treats anger and guilt like opposing emotions that can't coexist or, if they do, have to compete until one wins and cancels the other out.

And that's not how that... works.

To be clear, the reason why Lan Xichen is so supremely fucked up at the end of the story is that he believes on some level he fucked over everyone in this situation. And, even more importantly, that even with hindsight he can't actually think of what he should have done instead. Every attempt to do better by one seems to involve fucking over the others even more because these people were in conflict with each other and choosing one would mean standing against another

And none of this would actually stop him from feeling angry at any of them. It's not "who is he angry at and who does he feel guilty about" it's: "he is angry at everyone and feels an immediate and bone deep guilt for daring to think badly of them."

Speaking from personal experience here, but feeling like you're not allowed to be angry at someone because you wronged them really doesn't stop the feeling, it just maks you feel like shit for feeling it. And this is all worsened by the fact that what he's in seclusion for is, at the end of the day, a moral question of what he, Lan Xichen, did wrong and every single emotion serves as further proof of the ways he's failed them.

Is he angry at Jin Guangyao, for killing his oldest friend, using Lan xichen's trust in him to do it, and then lying to him about it and countless other things for a decade when Lan Xichen thought of him as the person he trusted the most in the entire world? Yeah. That's a thing people get angry about! Except Jin Guangyao also saved his life and protected and helped him more times than he can count and never ever hurt him and can Lan Xichen say the same? No. He had to clean A-Yao's blood off Shouyue, he has to be haunted by the fact that if he just hadn't listened to Huaisang- hadn't been just like everyone else, in the end, and believed a lie about Jin Guangyao just to think the worst of him- then Jin Guangyao might still be alive.

Is he angry at Huaisang? For orchestrating the death of his best friend? For making him do it? For knowing what the real cause behind Nie Mingjue's death was and never telling him until he found out in the absolute worst way? Absolutely. But didn't Huaisang hide it from him for a reason? Wasn't it his clan's techniques and his personal faith in Jin Guangyao that cost Huaisang his brother? How dare he demand that Huaisang let him in on the secret of his brother's murderer when Lan Xichen is here wondering about how he should have protected that murderer better!

And I do even think he's angry at Nie Mingjue, sometimes I think it's pretty normal to be angry at your friend for kicking your other friend down the stairs and threatening to kill him, even when you know his mind is being poisoned. And years later the last thing he ever saw of Nie Mingjue was Nie Mingjue's thoughtless corpse coming to kill him before Jin Guangyao pushed him away and then proceeded to graphocally snap Jin Guangyao's neck in front of him. And if what he wants to do is protect Jin Guangyao, shouldn't he be mad at Mingjue? Didn't this whole mess start because Jin Guangyao was afraid Nie Mingjue was going to kill him?

Except holy shit, can you imagine? Lan Xichen feels like he personally has Nie Mingjue's blood on his hands. Your oldest friend is killed in front of you and you happily believe it's an accident for 11 years and now you think you have the right to be mad at him? You watched him get worse as he was being poisoned and attributed it to his illness and not to the techniques stolen from your library with the token you give his murderer. Does he think Nie Mingjue knew who he was in that moment and wanted to kill him? That he blamed Lan Xichen for his death? (For the record, I don't. I don't agree with most of what Lan Xichen thinks about himself, but I've been in a self-blame spiral and I know how it feels)

But what was he supposed to do then? Choose Mingjue's side and let A-Yao die? That's also unacceptable. But so is letting Jin Guangyao get away with it. Every single outcome is unacceptable. And really, if Jin Guangyao felt like he had to kill Nie Mingjue to save himself, when it was Lan Xichen who was supposed to keep the peace between them, isn't that another mark of his failure? That he couldn't protect Jin Guangyao well enough that he felt he had to do something so horrible?

But that's not an answer! He's supposed to know what he should have done different, and all he can come up with is "what you were already doing, but without failing this time" He can't pick a side because that means betrayal, but he's already tried not picking a side and it ended like this! There is no right answer, which can only leave him with the idea that he was simply doomed to hurt the people he loved from the start. No wonder the guy looks like shit when we see him post-canon. They put him in a real life trolley problem and gave him the lever as a souvenir.

[beforetimes]

save me

[beforetimes]

every song can be about qijiu if you are as unwell as i am

[beforetimes]

save me domestic qijiu... wip from my au where yue qi comes back for shen jiu and they steal away from the wider world to live tgt

[beforetimes]

my favourite hobby is adding stupid tags to my fics

[beforetimes]

next fic i'll be posting 👁️

edit: ok ignore the tags on here i will be adding. bit of backstory and that entails some hurt/comfort but! still a happy-ending type of vibe ^_^

[beforetimes]

[continuation of this post]

yuan's transition into qing jing peak is entirely headed by shen jiu and he doesn't care that it looks like favouritism when he brings yuan back months after the official disciple selection day. he brings the child to the peak lord and tells him that he found his brother, thought-dead but thankfully alive, and would he give him a chance to teach him so that they could stay together and not be separated?

which like. i'm sure shen jiu thinks he's being very sneaky for about a moment but i also know that the qing jing peak lord is absolutely aware that this is not entirely altruistic. but they nod and agree and shen jiu starts his slow process of trial by error in teaching yuan.

well, first, at the qing jing peak lord's gently worded suggestion, he gives yuan his last name (the convo went a little like "ah, if this one is your brother, surely you share the same surname?" "...yes. this is shen yuan.")

but after that, the only person who really sees shen yuan on a day-to-day, up close and personal basis is shen jiu, who's taken shen yuan's schooling to be entirely his responsibility. at first its because he needs all the practice he can get in learning to be tolerant of children but after about a year, he realizes that like. he doesn't want these awful teachers on the peak who were so snide to him to get near shen yuan. but thats jumping forward a bit.

shen yuan is a very diligent student. he tries very hard to do everything exactly to shen jiu's liking because he knows the future that is waiting for him if he fails in this endeavour and can't manage to be a cultivator worthy of qing jing peak and shen jiu's disproval is a dangerous thing. he does his best to follow the manual he's given and shadows his 'older brother' in an attempt to pick up some knowledge through osmosis.

shen jiu has barely enough patience for this. every time he sees shen yuan out of the corner of his eyes he can't help but see himself, curled in the corner of an alleyway like a nasty snarling thing. all he sees is desperation that makes him filthy, a will to live thats admirable but irritating, a problem waiting to happen. he looks at shen yuan and sees his mistakes more than anything else because its what he's the best at finding from any prospective disciple.

because he's the only one shen jiu's teaching now, shen yuan bears the brunt of his disapproval and sharp words. slowly getting worn down until everything he does feels like a mistake, he slowly stops progressing, can't get himself to do much.

shen yuan's slipped away on his own time after shen jiu's scolded him for not doing a form properly, feeling the strain on his spiritual energy. he's tired and sore but he knows that he needs to succeed at this—it would just help if he didn't have the worlds worst teacher.

then he hears footsteps behind him and meets yue qingyuan. who is looking at him with wide eyes and immediately asks who he is, what happened, etc. shen yuan answers with the story shen jiu drills him on when they were first on the way back to the sect: he was living with a frail mother who died shortly before shen jiu found him after years of no contact. upon learning the news, shen jiu decided to take him home so he wouldn't be on his own.

yue qingyuan, who knows that shen jiu has no family he has ever known long enough to visit once, let alone over the course of years, knows immediately that this is bullshit, but shen yuan doesn't know that.

either way, he takes this moment to get to know shen yuan. and learns about shen jiu's attempts to learn to teach disciples so he can eventually graduate to the role of head disciple and be next in line to become qing jing's future peak lord. shen yuan gets called away by shen jiu, who doesn't see yue qingyuan talking to the boy while yue qingyuan asks not to mention his name to shen jiu for the time being.

shen yuan agrees, a little awestruck that he's met the future sect leader who seems so kind, and resumes life as normal.

liu qingge is just. an odd outlier. he's the only one who knows the truth of where shen yuan has come from and shen jiu waits and waits and waits for the other foot to drop and nothing happens. he gets frustrated and confronts the man himself just for liu qingge to say he doesn't care where shen yuan came from; on bai zhan peak the only thing that matters is how smart you are. he's never given a fuck about it. shen jiu is—a little surprised. but doesn't show it. just narrows his eyes and threatens and bites before backing away and leaving a fuming but silent liu qingge behind him.

shen yuan and shen jiu eventually get into a rhythm where shen jiu tries to teach shen yuan something and shen yuan, with his knowledge from modern day china with enough experience as a student under much better teachers, starts slowly and slyly offering corrections to shen jiu's way of teaching. which he notices immediately, but shen jiu takes the suggestions in stride either way. shen jiu has convinced himself that shen yuan is trying to get him into the position of head disciple because he wants the protection that the role could bring him through proxy. well, jokes on him, shen jiu thinks. as soon as shen jiu is announced as head disciple he is forgetting about shen yuan entirely because all shen yuan is to him is a tool to make his way up.

shen jiu, after about three years of teaching shen yuan, is announced head disciple. and doesn't immediately abandon shen yuan the way he convinced himself he would three years ago. but he can't find a reason to stay around shen yuan without looking weak and clingy—things he refuses to be, ammo he refuses to give people to manipulate him with—so he starts distancing himself from shen yuan, slowly but surely.

shen yuan, who heard the name shen qingqiu and realized that his brother was the scum villain, feels hopelessness sink into him and concludes that this is just the plot progressing as it normally should, and now there is nothing for him to do but wait for luo binghe to come and kill his brother.

but. and he doesn't know how it happened. he's attached. he loves shen jiu—in the way a dog can love someone who feeds him, a bird loves someone who opens a cage door, a tree can love the spring for breathing new life into it.

shen jiu is mean and abrasive and ambitious. impatient and snappish and doesn't hide these things. he is a schemer and is not afraid to be ruthless to get what he wants. but when shen yuan is scared after waking up from a nightmare, he doesn't say anything when shen yuan kneels by his side late at night, watching him write reports. when shen yuan curls into the space behind shen jiu when a man from another peak comes near on a bad day, shen jiu doesn't push him aside and tell him to stop being weak. when other disciples start pushing shen yuan around, he doesn't stand up for him, but he waits until shen yuan pulls himself up to his feet and brushes dirt off his shoulder before telling him that being strong doesn't mean being kind and letting himself get walked all over for the sake of keeping peace means nothing if he wants to survive. and when shen yuan gets them back, shen jiu turns and leaves to maintain plausible deniability.

which is to say that shen jiu may still be awful, but he's not a villain. and shen yuan doesn't want to see him torn apart.

so comes his new objective, not at all system approved: keep shen jiu alive.

anyway!!! if you have any questions about this au just lmk hahaha i think this is the most i'll write about it on tumblr unless anyone has something really specific they want to know

[beforetimes]

okay i love the aus about shen jiu finding a little shen yuan and bringing him to qing jing peak before slowly warming up to him so here is my take on it! (specifically their first meeting)

shen jiu has been on qing jing peak for about five years at this point. he's vying for the position of head disciple and all things considered, he is a pretty strong contender for the role. there's just one issue his teacher keeps coming back to; how shen jiu will pass down knowledge on qing jing peak.

it's not a stretch to say that shen jiu is a bit. rough around the edges. and sometimes when teaching the younger disciples his own skewed views of how fast or slow they should be progressing leads him to get snappish and cold. trial teaching periods with shen jiu are most of the junior disciples' worst nightmare and the current qing jing peak lord knows well enough that this is something that needs to be rectified.

shen jiu, who knows this is the only real roadblock to becoming a head disciple like he's been trying at for five years, is intensely irritated. and on the verge of losing it, as if he hasn't been on a hair-trigger temper ever since he turned against wu yanzi for yue qingyuan only to not even be granted a reason for him never returning. qi deviations are a begrudginly expected aspect of his life that weaken his warring body in ways that make shen jiu want to scream.

anyway. he goes out on a mission with liu qingge to a far-off town a few months after one of these qi deviations and in the process of chasing away whatever beast or ghost has been bothering this town, they have to walk through the marketplace. it's fairly packed, all things considered, but shen jiu can still tell when his coin bag is lifted off him and the thief snatches away barely a moment later. he's already in a pretty bad mood because of liu qingge being there but he doesn't necessarily want to make a scene and draw the attention of the entire street onto him, so he follows after the child. he keeps an eye on the back of his head to keep track of him while liu qingge whinges on the side about how they need to stay on task and why is shen jiu getting distracted and is he seriously going to a brothel?!

to which shen jiu looks up and realizes that either this child a ) went to this brothel because he felt shen jiu following him and wanted to throw a righteous cultivator off by going into a place he assumed shen jiu wouldn't enter or b ) he lives here and he was just returning 'home.' neither of these options particularly work in the child's favour, considering the fact that shen jiu would just walk in without a care in the world and objectively, a brothel isn't a great place to live.

either way, he clenches his jaw, ignores liu qingge, and walks in to grab the thief and turn him around.

just to come face to face with a child that looks like him.

they both blink. shen jiu thinks this must be some sort of practical joke. the boy looking at him doesn't seem to understand what shen jiu is looking at so intently: the kid has probably never seen his face before, if anything. but he knows that something is up because he starts fidgeting and starts acting a bit scared the longer shen jiu stares without saying anything before finally breaking and shoving the coin bag back into shen jiu's hands.

who takes it. but also doesn't stop staring.

liu qingge, at this point, has recovered enough face and pushed down enough shame to walk into the brothel to drag shen jiu out before he also comes face to face with this child and is suitably confused.

of course there is no silence from liu qingge. the first thing he asks is if the kid if shen jiu's son, to which he snaps no. then he's asked if its a bastard brother or something along those lines. and shen jiu wants to automatically reply no to that as well before very suddenly and startlingly realizing that for as much as he assumed his mother was dead, he never actually remembered her dying. or saw a grave. while very rapidly realizing that he kind of just constructed the idea of her being dead for the sake of coping with the fact that she got rid of him away willingly. which is. wow. okay. shen jiu can't tell if he's feeling white hot rage so overwhelming that its making him blank out or he's so painfully numb that every limb of his prickles like its falling asleep.

either way. he looks around at this brothel and at this child who has bruises on his wrists and arms and peeking out under his robes—robes which look far too much like the ones that the prostitutes around him are wearing and asks what happens to his mom. and learns that she died when he was born and the boy is fifteen years old. which is hilarious because anyone with a working set of eyes can tell he's barely hitting double digits, let alone passing himself off as a teenager.

and then shen jiu feels like laughing hysterically for a whole other reason, watching the kid flinch when a large lumbering man pushes past the three collected at the entrance to walk in. and many realizations are piling up in his head all at once and thinking about this is making him want to throw up. and he wants to walk away and forget this ever happened and pretend that if he flies all the way back to cang qiong mountain immediately then this child will fade to the back of his memory and nothing will matter except for becoming head disciple.

which is when he remembers the only thing that is roadblocking him.

and shen jiu looks down at this child who is shaking slightly but still managing to look him in the eyes. who is covered in bruises but still stole money off of him. who is living in a brothel but hasn't wilted and rotted away like a dying flower. who has an ember of potential in his stomach, the possibility of becoming a cultivator just nearly there.

what better way to prove that he can become a head disciple than teaching his brother (???) how to become a cultivator? someone he can make countless mistakes with who will be indebted to him because of shen jiu saving him from this place. someone he can show to the peak lord as proof that he can work with children, he can teach, he has that slight touch of softness needed for a peak lord who will hand down knowledge to generations after him.

it doesn't even necessarily need to be real softness. he can just practice with this child, who knows nothing better, who is tied to shen jiu and won't leave once he comes to cang qiong because (and shen jiu can't tell if this makes him want to throw up or straighten up, pleased with his cleverness) he knows what is waiting for him when if he ever decided to leave, and shen jiu has garnered enough of a reputation that no one will want to try to be near anyone wearing his face.

which is a very tangential way to say that shen jiu asks for the child's name ("all the women here call me yuan." it is very impersonal) before telling him that this is the only time he will ever get an offer like this and no one else will ever care to look at someone of his standing ever again so it is important to listen to everything he says carefully. he tells yuan that he will take him back to his sect to become a cultivator. but he can never come back here and speak of this or how they met once they leave. any connections to this place will be cut off. he will be under shen jiu's care but fend for himself once they get back. shen jiu leaves him with one of his fans and enough coin for a meal before telling him that they will return in a few days time, by which time yuan will have made his decision. the fan is promised as incentive to come back because shen jiu doesn't need to child's trust broken before they even get there. he does all this before leaving without another word.

liu qingge is spitting blood the whole way back to their inn on the other side of town, questioning what the hell got into shen jiu and what was he talking about and any number of other things before shen jiu starved him out by refusing to say a word.

when they come back a few days later, yuan takes barely a minute to grab a bag of everything he needs before he looks up, handing shen jiu's fan back to him.

let me know if you want a continuation of this or a fic hahaha i will add it to the list

[part two!]

[beforetimes]

Hello,

I hope you’re all doing well. 🌿

I need your help to share my family's story and raise awareness about our struggle. Every voice counts, and your support means the world. 🙏

💬 Please reblog my pinned post or, if you're able, consider donating just $5—it could be life-changing for those facing unimaginable hardship.

Your kindness and solidarity make a real difference. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! 🤍✨

@abedmajeed

link to pinned post!

[beforetimes]

Animal spirits liushen where with SJ it's like that video of the house car and the mountain lion is on the other side of the sliding glass door and the house car is squaring up

But with SY, Sqq is like that cat that is kneading a sheep and it's paws are shoulder deep in the wool

(yqy being a giant protection dog but sqq is no longer interested beyond casual acknowledgement)

So sqq fussing over lqg's robes and hair even when he looks fine because he looks fine but sqq didn't make him look fine so it's not good enough. Lqg trying to bond with SQQ's "cubs" but they're more like kittens and are somewhat worse for wear but it's okay because sqq likes to coddle and dote on them anyway.

SY being completely oblivious that everyone is informed by their partial animal soul and thinking people just act weird in PIDW bc airplane is a bad writer

Airplane watching lqg scent sqq and sweating bullets over when sy is gonna figure it out

CREATURE COMFORTS

“Liu-shidi should care not to show up to this one’s Peak in such a state of impropriety again,” Shen Qingqiu says in that dry manner that always ends up revealing a bit of fondness to his words. “I’m sure that nothing I do will satisfy you until it's scrutinized once more,” Liu Qingge sniffs, far more reminiscent of their usual exchanges. This time, though—there’s an almost teasing nature to it. A hint of amusement in his gray eyes.

hope this satisfies at least one portion of this prompt to a decent extent! i immediately got hooked on the idea of shen qingqiu fussing over liu qingge... so fun to imagine... :^)

[beforetimes]

super obvious in retrospect but i've only just realized that mdzs is a more mature and well-polished look at svsss's theme of being more critical of rumours/hearsay/propaganda in general. not to say that there isn't a lot to be gleaned from svsss nor is this an attempt to put it down but mdzs had a lot more of a focused look at analyzing these things while simultaneously progressing the plot and weaving it into the narrative, i feel.

also an aside but! i didn't really think about it before but there are some aspects of svsss that carried over to mdzs. the idea of our main character possessing a body he didn't own, general obliviousness/sense of denial surrounding his own feelings, the way we slowly realize the details left vague after being led to assume the worst happened, etc. its fun to think about! i guess you could argue svsss laid the groundwork for mdzs' comparatively darker world/story.

i'm sure there was a better way to word my thoughts but this was just a spur of the moment realization that i wanted to write down before my brain lost the thread hahaha