#Broken Whole

[scribe-of-stories]

10 Songs, 10 People

Was tagged by the pleasant @mrbexwrites whom graced us with her songs

Rules: Put your music on shuffle and list the first 10 songs that come up. Then go about describing how they relate to your WIP and or worldbuilding.

In truth I do not have a designated Lexical playlist, but what I do have is one massive playlist of songs that I can easily relate to characters/worldbuilding. I will admit to cheating and skipping a few songs due to irreverence or for being clown core.

Soft tagging: @rewritingrosie @squarebracket-trick @artcoffeecats @vicstmichael @sam-glade and whomever else wishes to join in.

Hero - 11vx

Wonderfully upbeat and woefully short. I always have seen this song as the theme that would play around the protagonist's "turning point" in Lexical. When they make a connection with their Inscription that lets them overcome something, or finding a weakness or solution to a situation. The title really says it all.

The Stains of Time - Kit Walters

It's video game music, it's MGRR, it's fight music. Specifically I'd say it's villain centric fighting music. I've got this character in my head who connects the concepts of water and time whom I could easily see this song fully being about. Where Hero is about the protag winning, Stains of Time is about Villains hamming it up.

Little Lion Man - Mumford and Sons

Ken, Host of Fangs, Lord of Hearts. No Inscribed has had an easy life. This one's life is full of regret, broken relationships, and estranged family. Like several Lexical characters he began his existence as the protagonist of his own story and has gone through several iterations; he has landed as a semi-significant side story of the Stage City campaign I'm running. "I really fucked it up this time, didn't I my dear?" perfectly fits him.

Gunman/Blotter - sageiskami

Hey it's more fight music! Specifically fight music that samples a literal fighting game. It's violence turned into entertainment for the ones doing it; and that doesn't describe any character better than it does Model Tom. She's a Shape of Flesh, a shapeshifter, a sociopath, and absolutely having such a fun time being a villain. He's extremely fun to roleplay as in Staged City, which is a slightly worrying statement.

Children of the Omnisiah - Guillam Davis

A haunting church choir with a back drop of electronic noise. I've come to associate electronic elements in songs with the Wyrd side of Lexical; and with it, this song goes with the Angels of Heaven. Invasive creatures from the edge of human imagination come to reap the souls of humanity and remind them of the gods they used to worship.

Bright Shadow - Hydelic

A comparatively (mostly) calmer piece. Wind, gears, windmills, nature, and the connective rhythm that ties them together. I find this song ties closely to the magic practitioners of Lexical, especially to one specific one: Richard Dahlmann. He comes from a long family of magicians, will workers who tame the Wyrd without ever fully giving one's self to it. A proud Old Warden. Fully human but able to play a song and have the world listen.

Numb - Freya Cathine, Jack Victor

There is a certain amount of humor and irony to this song I can't ignore, but read straight this song could easily be sung by Joshua of Broken Whole. Most of his life is inescapably about his relationship with his father. At first all his actions as a way to escape from under his father's influence; then during the story itself facing the same life his father had and attempting to do different. "To be more like me, and less like you" Joshua says into a mirror.

Fire Fire - Steam Power Giraffe

A song about a burning disaster and the affect it has on the survivor. The Wardens, Old and New, have attempted to keep Earth and humanity from itself for as long as recorded history. Whether it's the secret society of wyrdlings and wizards of the Old or the Inscribed costumed heroes of the New, history rhymes with itself. Disaster comes regardless of anyone's attempt to stop it, and those that manage to live through it can never fully walk away from the memories. Despite their good deeds and their heroism the history of the Wardens is full of failure and an inability to meaningfully save the world.

Hajnal - Venetian Snares

I love this, easily one of my favorite songs. In the context of Lexical it describes the First Wave, the several thousand first Inscribed. Those troubled individuals who woke up to a world carefully playing along to an old tune strung by those in power, and shattering it with drums and electronics. The First Wave marked the end of many things: mainly the Old Wardens, the Wyrd masquerade, and most world governments. It's hard to maintain a functional civilization when a politically charged maniac who can manifest explosions targets effectively any head of state. The First Wave turned Lexical into the Earth it now is, forever changing it's music.

No one is Flying the Plane - Panzerballett

Another favorite of mine. Organized discordant chaos held together by an underlying beat. This is the theme of the Staged City, the story of New Maine buckling underneath the unrelenting crises that plague it. Of course it's also specifically about one character, the BBEG of the campaign, one underlying beat of the song: (spoilers ahead for Staged City) The Baron. Nothing is actually happening naturally, everything is a stage being prepared for this one villain.

[regonold]

Danny's flight or fight response has quite the hair trigger for a few select phrases most being things vlad would say

One such being his full name a bit odd but there's a reason he always asks to be called danny

So really it's not his fault after joining the school in gotham he had been introduced to his class and he'd told them to call him danny

And he hadn't heard him all he'd heard was someone calling him danial and putting a hand on his shoulder

So really he can't be blamed for how he reacted he told everyone not to call him Daniel and he snuck up and called him daniel

How can he be blamed for breaking Damien waynes nose

[sunderwight]

Thinking about a crack SV AU where Shen Yuan transmigrates into a horse.

Luckily he is not a normal horse, no! He is a spiritual stallion, a character that was mainly a joke about the novel's genre in PIDW, originally bred on Cang Qiong's beast tamer peak but not actually encountered until Luo Binghe's "raze cultivation society to the ground" phase. At which point there was a subplot about him finding the stallion and letting it loose to run free, as like, an allegorical reference. Occasionally Binghe would find other horses across the years that were obviously descended from that one, as more jokes, until Airplane forgot about the reference and never brought it up again.

Shen Yuan, of course, was always Big Mad that Binghe never got to actually ride this super magical mystical horse, and never got the horsegirl arc he deserved! Where is the man's companion animal? How can someone with nine billion wives and even more nameless underlings be fated for a life of perpetual loneliness??

Naturally, the first thing Shen Yuan does upon figuring out that he's this magic horse is break out of the beast peak and make for Qing Jing. He's not necessarily planning to go bond with the protagonist or anything, but he's not particularly keen to live out his fate as some feral horse that fucks other horses either, and he's extremely valuable so it's unlikely anyone will kill him even if they catch him again. So, might as well take the opportunity to clap eyes on his favorite character before he's doomed to a life of eating hay and whatever, right?

Horse SY manages to arrive on Qing Jing Peak right before the start of the skinner mission, though, just as Ming Fan is telling Luo Binghe that there aren't enough horses. Ning Yingying points out SY and is all oh look, one of the stable hands must have realized the error and brought another, and everyone else is kind of like "uh that is... not a normal horse...?" but then Shen Qingqiu gets impatient and snaps at them to get a move on, and fear of their mercurial shizun overrides everything else to the point where Binghe just clambers desperately onto this mystical saddle-free horse.

Airplane borrowed kelpies for his demon beasts at some point and they are pretty common, so it occurs to Luo Binghe only after he's climbed onto the strange and definitely not normal Horse SY that he might be on the verge of getting carried off and drowned. But SY just kind of rolls with it, and falls into line with the other horses.

Hey, it's an excuse to leave the sect! And practice doing horse stuff! And also, he's not going to buck Luo Binghe off of his back!

Of course as it happens, the specific kind of magical horse that Shen Yuan is comes with a specially bred-for trait where they only bond to one rider. They're usually bred for like, kings and emperors and other highly important figures as status symbols, like magical companion animals but ones with perfectly mundane utilities. He's also got Shadowfax-like stamina and speed, meaning that Airplane can treat this kind of horse as interchangeable with a motorbike, and of course the capacity to cultivate. Which means that when the party finally arrives at their destination, everyone suddenly realizes that Luo Binghe has unwittingly bonded with a horse that's worth a fortune and won't ever let anyone else ride it now.

Shen Qingqiu flips his shit, Shen Yuan bites Shen Qingqiu, Luo Binghe hyperventilates, Ning Yingying gets kidnapped, and the situation basically resolves with Shen Yuan kicking the shit out of the skinner demon in defense of his new BFF the baby protagonist.

Well if he's going to end up letting anyone ride him for the rest of his life, Luo Binghe would be his first choice.

Anyway they get back and Shen Qingqiu is still spitting mad and offers Luo Binghe's head on a platter to the lord of the beast peak, but Beast Peak's people are actually kind of pleased. Like sure it's a little inconvenient, because Luo Binghe is a Qing Jing disciple and not one of theirs, but they were honestly beginning to worry that this stallion wouldn't bond with anyone! It's really hard to manage them when they don't! And SY in particular comes from a long and illustrious lineage that has nearly died out a few times, so they were never planning to sell him off even for a high price anyway. With a rider chosen, the odds of them getting him to cooperate for breeding purposes are a lot higher, plus it will be much easier to take care of him now! Though they will be taking Shen Qingqiu up on his offer of Luo Binghe's time, since "punishment" for this transgression will involve splitting his time between the peaks in order to help take care of SY (all the beast peak disciples are super relieved, apparently before Shen Yuan transmigrated, the horsey original goods was extremely prone to biting and kicking...)

Shen Qingqiu basically tells Luo Binghe not to bother coming back, which fills Binghe with despair, but he gets over it eventually. The beast peak is nice! They give him a cultivation manual as well, in order to help him understand what they do, and it seems that Binghe can understand it a lot better than his QJP one. The peak lord gives him permission to use the dorms as well, since there will probably be times when he has to stay overnight, and no one says much about it when Binghe basically moves in full time. On the books he's still a Qing Jing disciple, but functionally he's a transfer student now. He even sits in on classes and lectures, and a lot of the peak are just under the impression that he was transferred over to their peak in full.

Shen Yuan considers this a big improvement, and expects Luo Binghe to enjoy running around with all the pretty girls on the peak. But Binghe mostly seems to spend his time with him, in fact, asking questions upon questions not only about Shen Yuan's breed, but about his specific background and lineage. The beast peak is overall pretty nice, although sadly it's not full of cool monsters and companion animals as Shen Yuan would have hoped. Mostly the peak specializes in the cultivation world's equivalent of livestock and work animals, training beasts like spirit eagles and horses like himself, and raising animals prized for their meat, organs, bones, or other parts for medicinal, alchemical, or culinary ingredients, or sometimes components for weapons or other spiritual tools. They work the most closely with Qian Cao, Wan Jian, and An Ding.

Being a horse is honestly kind of boring for Shen Yuan, although running is fun, and he at least gets plenty of time to work on his cultivation.

By the time Sha Hualing's invasion happens, he's gotten pretty comfortable in his new state of affairs. Binghe has even figured out that he likes being read to, and has started reading aloud to him from various texts in the evenings! So far no good novels, or even bad trashy novels, but it's better than nothing!

Binghe also takes him for a lot of rides around the peaks (not Qing Jing) which is how they end up caught on Qiong Ding when the rainbow bridge goes down. When Shen Qingqiu tells Luo Binghe to fight, Binghe doesn't even have a weapon at hand.

Actually, he doesn't have a sword at hand.

Turns out having your magical horse kick a demon to death is still pretty effective!

Shen Yuan even manages to avoid getting poisoned too. Rather, Elder Hammer threatens to poison him and Luo Binghe charges at him shouting "stay away from my horse! I'll kill you!" and etc, and does get nicked by the thorns, but only Binghe and Shen Yuan notice and of course the poison doesn't work on Binghe, congrats for unlocking a new hint as to Luo Binghe's mysterious origins!

Yes, Horse SY shows up to help Binghe in the Dream Demon event. He still looks like a horse for it, but it also marks the first time he's able to speak to Luo Binghe, which successfully distracts Luo Binghe from a lot of the tormenting visions of his past because talking magic horse friend has a way of doing that.

So the Dream Demon is like, that's not a normal horse, and Luo Binghe is all "stay away from my horse! I'll kill you!" and Shen Yuan gets knocked out of the dream as usual. Wakes up to Luo Binghe rushing to his stall to check on him and prepare him some nice warm congee and double-check that he can't talk for reals (only in dreams for now, alas).

Anyway Luo Binghe has no reason to hide his demonic cultivation practice from his horse, so Shen Yuan gets to sit in on it as Binghe tries to put Meng Mo's teachings into practice, which he finds super cool. Binghe's normal cultivation also progresses quite a bit, but he's still very much disadvantaged there because the beat peak is only giving him like, half-assed guest disciple status lessons, no personal one-and-one tutelage, and he's unofficially banned from Qing Jing and wouldn't get any help there anyway (apart from Ning Yingying). The beast peak lord isn't really his shizun and Shen Qingqiu isn't going to take Binghe to do things like claim a sword from Wan Jian, either.

Luckily, Binghe can now confer with his horse in his dreams! Shen Yuan has such helpful ideas as compelling various hall masters and combat teachers to dream about their lessons, so that Binghe can insert himself into the form of their students and supplement his tutelage with nighttime training from all around the sect. And also stealing some blank documents from An Ding and forging paperwork to turn over to Wan Jian to make it look like Binghe has permission to claim a spiritual sword without Shen Qingqiu's approval.

What a way to pass the time before the Immortal Alliance Conference!

Horse Shen Yuan would like very much to just carry Luo Binghe away in the opposite direction, thank you, but he does have a system and it is still holding a metaphorical gun to his head about this. Still, there's no force in the world that could keep Shen Yuan in his stable when shit starts to go down, or that could stop him from kicking the snot out of Shen Qingqiu when he tries to throw Binghe into the Abyss. (Binghe's thoughts on the fight: "stay away from my horse! I'll kill you!")

However, Binghe does still get thrown down, and Horse SY runs off whilst weeping crystalline tears of dismay as his mane whips in the wind, imagining a future where a blackened Luo Binghe returns for his revenge arc and symbolically sends his beloved horsie companion away forever to go frolic or some shit, which Shen Yuan is not interested in!

But what can he do? By the time Binghe gets out of the Abyss, his need for a horse will be decidedly minimal. It already went down a bunch when he finally got Zheng Yang (that Binghe somehow almost never flew anywhere on, surely for reasons unrelated to his bond with SY), and with Xin Mo and all his OP talents, even if he did keep Shen Yuan, wouldn't he become as much of a useless background character as countless auxiliary wives in his harem?

No! He won't stand for it! There has to be a way for him to convince even blackened Binghe that Shen Yuan is still the best ride in town!

Luckily, Shen Yuan knows where there are some power-ups that might be able to help him. While he won't touch anything that would be vital for the protagonist, he's more flexible on screwing over random future harem members or side characters, especially when it wouldn't even really harm them all that much. So while Binghe is going through his gauntlet of horrors in the Abyss, Shen Yuan embarks on his own level-up quest to dramatically increase his cultivation, and become more capable of keeping up with Binghe.

When this leads to Shen Yuan being able to take on a human form, he gets really excited, but that's mostly for personal comfort reasons. He can finally hold books again! And talk to people! Who cares if he looks like someone's ponysona gijinka, he can walk over to a stall and order meat buns!

Unicorn form is next, and it's... meh? Mostly it's a boost in his cultivation. The horn looks fun but doesn't really do much.

When he upgrades to being able to take on a pegasus form, now that's really cool. He can fly now! Not only is it crazy good fun, but it also increases his mobility exponentially. Surely riding a flying horse would be more comfortable than balancing on a sword, too?

But that's not enough for his actual goal, he needs to keep going until he finally finds the right bullshit mythical item that will do what he hopes:

Turn him into a dragon!

Unfortunately said bullshit item is in the demon realms, which are a fairly difficult place to navigate as either a horse or a human. Beefing up for the trip takes Shen Yuan just about two years, and requires all of his other upgrades. But he does it, he gets to the demon realms, eats the creatively named Dragon Fruit Plant, and... gets... stuck???

In his new dragon form???

WTF this didn't happen to the random ox that Luo Binghe fed the fruit to in order to create a suitable beast of burden to impress the husband of Wife No.666! Although, thinking about it, maybe it did because it wasn't like the ox ever turned back into an ox afterwards. But Shen Yuan just figured that was because it was a simple beast of burden and saw becoming a dragon as an overall upgrade, why go back? He honestly hadn't really thought about it!

Cue Luo Binghe getting out of the Abyss only to shortly find that a random dragon is following him around. Maybe that just happens here? It doesn't attack him, at least, and he has no time to deal with it (or to sleep) because his first order of business is establishing enough of a foothold in the demon realms to regain access to the human ones, and find out what happened to his horse. And then kill Shen Qingqiu. In that order.

[spearxwind]

STRATOSPHERE CHASE

[cronchy-baguette]

i've caved yall... the way i am so normal about laezel and shadowheart (stay tuned....)

[nicolloyd]

ok part 2 is here!!!!!

special special thanks to @witchyy-kittyy @poppitron360 and @moominvalley-state-of-mind for inspiring 😭

i plan to make nicos entire slideshow lmk if yall want other characters tho

link to part 1 part 3

[ohtendril]

The column began because I felt powerless in my own home.

[collophora]

More minibatch adventure I need a full show maybe too XD

[theelvishfiddler]

Glass (pt.1?)

next >>

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

It’s disability pride month, you know what that means, you are now legally obligated to make all of your favorite characters disabled

[bakudekublogblog]

the contrast between kacchan not caring about the irreversible damage to his body verses his entire life flashing before his eyes, his heart shattering, brokenly sobbing about the future he’d dreamed of sharing with Izuku after it’s revealed he’s quirkless is fucking STAGGERING

[scribe-of-stories]

Happy STS! I hope you’ve had a good week :D your OCs all go to the beach together, how do each of them spend the day?

Hey! Happy extremely late STS!

Considering the amount of character Lexical has, I'll do a couple groups rather than them as individuals.

Smith and Lang PI inc: Going to the beach was all Ashley's idea, and she is actually having fun with it. Sam is attempting to brood, but as he gets progressively more drunk he starts to actually enjoy himself and wades in the water. Richard is having an existential crisis from his beach related trauma and is manically trying to hide it by faking having a great time.

The Ethical Cult TM : Assuming post story- they are vibing as a group singing and drinking. They would end up making an extremely impressive sand castle via their collective Wyrd powers. Joshua switching between fretting over everyone and being reminded to relax.

Civil Disobedience: Accidental/on purpose shit-stirrers of the beach. Riffles is off bothering people and doing magic tricks for attention. Gearshift would industrialize the process of making a sandcastle and would turn into heavy machinery to do it; Aejion would give moral support/try to be useful. Siren would sunbath with her thrupple and use her mind control to keep the group out of trouble.

[dykealloy]

ripple effect legacy // my tears are becoming a sea, M83

[itsonlypolite]

This comic is word for word based off of @pareidolla's post about broken so go check it out!!! One particular paragraph was written so poetically I couldn't get it out of my head so here's a comic inspired from it:

Transcript: A dog will fight you, naturally, but you are stronger, and if it is wise, it will realize resistance is pointless. You can harm a dog as much as you'd like until it learns to do whatever it takes to satisfy and stay your hand. Only then will you reward it, and only then will the dog merely flinch between caresses.

[yardsards]

i love you, media without romance

i especially love you, character-centric media that explores the bonds between characters but still has no romance

[sandflakedraws]

some contextless flickory & one hickory drawing that my partner said looked like he was posing for a perfume ad