#the airplane plot devices

[deikshen]

The married Bingqiu goes on a hunt/exploration in search of rare monsters, when they meet Liu Qingge. Well, he is on the same way, they can hunt the monster together!!

Except for the fact that Liu Qingge and Luo Binghe accidentally end up in one of those weird flower pollens that are clearly a plot device. Shen Qingqiu quickly tries to go after his husband, helping him to his feet to get him out of the little flower meadow - he is usually the one who ends up with papapa flowers! He knows that legs tend to be fragile afterwards!!

He feels a little sorry for his Liu-shidi, vanished in a pile of flowers, but ah, he will call for reinforcements to take him back. Speaking of which, what kind of flower are these, actually? With a pearly sheen and pollen as clear as powdered sugar...

Luo Binghe barely spoke at his side. When Shen Qingqiu examines him, his husband's face is flushed, his ears are red, and he seems to be trembling. Ah, poor thing! He must be very upset. Shen Qingqiu sighs and moans about his butt for the next few hours.

However, when he tries to take his husband's hand, he seems to almost implode. He walks away with widened strides, pupils dilated, completely red. He seems to be breathing heavily, but still... Is he embarrassed? Shen Qingqiu barely held his hand!! What the fuck?

“Husband?” Shen Qingqiu asked in a small voice. What effect do those damn flowers have?

Luo Binghe made a strangled sound in his throat. He is really embarrassed, and Shen Qingqiu finds him adorable.

His world tilts when he hears the voice behind him.

Honestly, Liu Qingge is a man of few words and much action. That's why, when Shen Qingqiu hears this, he turns to look at him in amazement.

Liu Qingge sat down amidst the crushed flowers, his hair disheveled, his gaze almost lazy, his expression a mixture of bewilderment and clear annoyance.

"Husband, husband. Of course, won't you help your shidi, Shen Qingqiu? Does one have to marry you to be helped as well? This shidi is no longer important to you?"

If the expression on his face wasn't enough, Shen Qingqiu having to restrain his husband from jumping on Liu Qingge's neck with his sword in hand really was enough.

Fuck it. Of all the plot devices, THEY JUST got the personality swap?!

[disgracefulthings]

Dumb fucking SVSSS AU where due to some plot device, Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua become pregnant... with each other's child

And then they have to try to explain the situation to their husbands and the sect

[sunderwight]

Scenario where PIDW Bingge had something like the fucked up baby dimension from Fire Emblem: Fates for handling his kids.

For those who haven't played enough Fire Emblem games: in Fates you can hook up various characters who will, once they've bonded sufficiently, get married and have children. Because there is a dangerous war on and nobody has time for childcare, these babies get sent to various pocket dimensions where time moves differently, where they are raised by servants. They then reappear in the story as adults (mostly) who are also just like, barely younger than their own parents. This is of course hilariously fucked up, for even more reasons than what a simple overview can convey, and it's also just kind of shrugged off by the narrative despite the many, many bewildering implications involved.

So I'm imagining Airplane stealing this whole concept and sitting down to write about Bingge sending all of his children away in order to protect them from his enemies or whatever other excuse, creating special nursery dimensions with Xin Mo only to not really spend any time with his offspring at all, resulting in a lot of them growing up extra fast and reentering the story as adults at wildly unpredictable intervals (i.e. whenever Airplane feels like it without having to remember the timelines involved because *waves hand* time passes differently in the different dimensions too). For the daughters, this just gets them married off into alliances (if they're even mentioned at all, because Airplane doesn't want to write incest and there's basically only one reason female characters get mentioned in this story), but for the sons, this usually has them showing up as upstart challengers to their father's throne. With a conclusion, generally, of them getting their asses kicked and then being sent back to their pocket dimensions with their tails between their legs (Binghe killing his own kids would be too reprehensible, after all). Sometimes (rarely) they become loyal generals. One or two have died to fuel revenge arcs. The protagonist halo extends only limited benefits to his kids.

Anyway, Shen Yuan of course reads all of this and absolutely hates it. What do you mean Binghe doesn't even raise his own kids?! What do you mean even their mothers don't?! Shen Yuan understands that Luo Binghe is an important guy with important things to do, but handling it this way makes it impossible to even consistently visit his children on their birthdays! They'd be having birthdays every day because they're all on freaking Narnia time! And of course his sons keep growing up and trying to overthrow him, surely Binghe himself should appreciate that under these conditions, his children are going to see the servants raising them as parents more than some distant emperor they've never met...? Not to mention, if time moves quickly in these dimensions, theoretically Binghe could just stay there with his kids himself and not have to worry too much about things changing in his realm, because only a few months would pass there! He could have it both -- spend plenty of time with his kids and not worry about neglecting his responsibilities! So why doesn't he do that?!

The answer (never actually provided by Airplane) is that Bingge doesn't really feel a strong connection to his children, and because of his reverence for his adoptive mother, he thinks that giving them peaceful lives with simple people to raise and love them is the kindest thing he can do for them. If he could have had an idyllic childhood with his mother in a place where nothing could harm him, he would have never sought power at all.

But of course, Binghe's kids aren't thinking "oh gosh yeah my humble childhood in a magic dimension was much better than starving on the streets!" because that wasn't ever going to be their fate in the first place. Instead they all develop varying complexes about being sent away by their impossibly remote father and his giant harem.

Possible fic ideas involving this setup:

-Bingyuan where Shen Yuan transmigrates into the intended tutor of one Luo Binghe's most troublesome sons. SY arrives in the baby dimension and immediately bonds with the little Luo, gets really mad about the whole situation all over again, and when Bingge shows up for a rare visit, rips him a new asshole about it. Romcom shenanigans ensue.

-Scenario where SV's Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe decide they're ready to adopt, and SQQ figures out a back door into PIDW Binghe's baby dimensions and just sort of, ehm, borrows some of the children he knows had really bad times in the novel (not all of the idyllic upbringings worked out, there were instances of the dimensions being attacked and the servants there being killed and etc). Bingge eventually finds out. Dramatics ensue.

-When PIDW Binghe tries to summon a Shen Yuan of his own to the PIDW world using Xin Mo, it accidentally creates some stability issues with the baby dimensions. Shen Yuan get teleported in and out of these dimensions instead, bonding with the kids there to various degrees, only to be swept away every time Bingge tries to use Xin Mo to find him again. A handful of years later, a bunch of new Heavenly Demon scions emerge as adults with the Luo family's Shizun Complex in full swing, right around the same time that Bingge finally captures Shen Yuan. Hijinks ensue.

[ace-shenanigans]

Thank you to @levemetal and @m0owu for helping me traumatize this bastard with a silly homebrew svsss plant

[horsegirlwarcrimes]

For drabble ideas: MQF and SQH feat. rare medicinal plants.

(I feel like SQH doesn't know it but on MQF's side they're totally friends)

Hope you like this one, thank you for your hard work! ^-^

I LOVE THIS. and i liked it so much that i didnt answer for like 3 weeks im s o so r r y. HOWEVER it is also twice as long as my usual prompt fills so i hope you enjoy pt 1

—

As the Lord of Qian Cao Peak, there are few things which cause Mu Qingfang to make anything like a ‘walk of shame’ across his peak. He is an esteemed scholar, a competent fighter, and a doctor who is considered by many to work miracles. People come to him to solve their problems, and when he must consult his sect siblings, it is with the self-assured confidence of an expert in one field seeking the wisdom of an expert in another.

It is with a heavy heart that he is forced to trudge across Qian Cao, over the rainbow bridge, through Ku Xing Peak, around Xian Xu Peak, and up to An Ding to knock at the Peak Lord’s door in the middle of the night. 

Shang Qinghua answers on the second knock. He appears in the doorway, backlit by the lanterns behind him, accompanied by a wave of cool air and an anxious smile. The man is still fully dressed, guan in place and ink turning his fingers black and smudging darkly across his jaw. No—a bruise, blooming purple. Mu Qingfang’s hands itch to check it, but instead he folds his hands in a shallow bow as Shang Qinghua’s eyebrows go up at the sight of him. 

“Shang-shixiong, this one apologized for disturbing you so late.” 

“Mu-shidi! A pleasant surprise. Don’t worry about it, there’s no way I would be asleep at this time. I thought you were gonna be one of my disciples telling me something was unexpectedly on fire, so really, this is an improvement. What can I do for you?” 

Mu Qingfang sighs. He really hates doing this.

“I’m afraid I must ask your expertise on a sensitive matter.” 

“Oh—? Ooooh. One of those nights, huh? Come on in.” 

Shang Qinghua steps aside, waving lazily over his shoulder for Mu Qingfang to follow him. He calls out, facing his sitting room, 

“Make yourself at home, Shidi. Sorry about the mess, you can push some scrolls over if you need to.” 

Mu Qingfang steps into the front room, taking in the familiar papers, scrolls, and cushions scattered around the floor, the desk, the shelves… he sees one booklet poking out of a plant pot. A Snow Lion Bush, red berries gleaming and viny tendrils swaying as if in an invisible breeze—maybe that is what’s responsible for the unusually cool temperatures Shang Qinghua always seems to keep his rooms at. Mu Qingfang almost wishes he’d worn an extra layer. 

Shang Qinghua starts making tea, and Mu Qingfang moves to take the kettle from his hands.

“Please, allow me. I’m the one who is disturbing you so late.” Best to step in before they both end up sipping bitter tea. 

Shang Qinghua chuckles and raises his hands in defeat, stepping away to ease himself down at his overflowing desk. Mu Qingfang makes a note—stiff, moving gingerly. Fatigue, muscle strain, or an injury he’s avoiding aggravating? He roots around Shang Qinghua’s cabinets until he locates slightly stale dried danshen and curcumin, makes a note to bring more by later as a thank you. 

“So… who’s the lucky victim?” Shang Qinghua asks. 

Mu Qingfang nudges some scrolls aside with his foot and sits in front of the man’s desk, pushing more paperwork aside to set down the pot and two cups of tea with Shang Qinghua’s consenting hand-wave. 

“You know I can’t tell you that, Shixiong.” 

“Ah I know, I know. Can’t blame me for asking. I really want it to be that one guy from Qiong Ding who keeps denying my funding requests for—anyways, it doesn’t matter. What are you looking for, exactly?” 

Mu Qingfang knocks his tea back like downing a cup of wine. “I have two victims of a spring plant. Contact based—their clothes were coated in an opalescent pink powder, fine grained. I spoke with them both individually. One described it as ‘vine like,’ the other ‘bush like.’ Both said the flowers were white and pink, with green stems and leaves and a darker pink tear drop shaped metal emerging from a soft, fur-like white bud.”

“Ahh, ‘Drawstring pulled tight upon sweet fragrance pent within’1?” Shang Qinghua asks, quoting something Mu Qingfang doesn’t recognize. He tilts his head, and Shang Qinghua waves him off. “Don’t worry about it. Those sound familiar! Should I assume the sect members in question are, ah, feeling some effect?” 

“They have refused the… ordinary methods of relief from a trained service worker, myself, each other, and any other member of the sect who might be asked. One of them has a fever that’s making them hallucinate, and the other has developed an unusual rash.” 

TBC...

1王文英 (Wáng Wényīng) Poems of a Hundred Flowers: number 70 - Purse Peony

玲珑奇巧涎欲滴

[waitineedaname]

the experience of writing fic for svsss has been absolutely insane so far. I posted a fic less than 24 hours ago and it already has twenty comments. I have been in so many fandoms where you have to BEG to get comments, where you'd be lucky to get more than ten comments and the ratio between hits and kudos/comments/bookmarks was vast, but so far the scum villain fandom has been super responsive! The hits/kudos/comments/bookmarks ratios have been super tight, even on my fics which have all been oneshots under 10k!

And it's not just me! I regularly see fanart for svsss fics, which was a rare sight in a lot of other fandoms I've been in. People reblog minifics that get posts to tumblr and leave tags and replies on them. I've written for a lot of fandoms in my time, and this a shocking amount of fic engagement compared to many other fandoms I've been in!!

I can't help but wonder if it's because of the nature of scum villain itself? Other people have talked about how the story uniquely appeals to writers, and it ultimately is about the relationship between a writer and reader, especially in a fan space. I can't help but wonder if the combination of this being a fandom with a high density of writers and it being a story about engaging with writing encourages a fandom culture that is super engaged with fanfiction!

[gaywarcriminals]

Fish write a fic without a cliche plot device as the inciting incident challenge (impossible)

[theboredhooman]

enemies to lovers modern au bingqiu where lbh loves pidw and valiantly defends it against cucumber in the comments anyone?

people tend to forget the fact that bingqiu has a lot in common with each other, and something that I think we would all benefit to remember is that binghe also canonically reads shitty porn for fun.

[tanadrin]

@grimogretricks

For people saying that airport security is wholly theatre and that it doesn't do any good- certainly it seems they've gone overboard on certain things, but what is your explanation as to why hijackings and terrorist attacks involving planes are MUCH less common than they used to be?

Sorry that this is mostly off the dome, and has less references than I would like. We argued this stuff to death in the aughts, though ultimately the political incentives in favor of security theater were just too great. Everyone is terrified of the potential backlash of not being seen to do enough in advance of the next big terrorist attack, I guess. And to be clear, we are talking mostly about post-9/11 airport security measures as being security theater. Some degree of airport security has been necessary since people started getting on airplanes with guns and informing the pilot that, hey, guess what, we're going to Cuba instead of Miami today.

But the big reduction in airplane hijackings came with the institution of metal detectors to keep guns off airplanes after a couple high-profile hijackings in the 1970s. But remember that these incidents were of a very different character than what we now think of as the risk to airplanes: they were certainly a problem, but the modus operandi of hijackers in this era was to force the plane to fly to a non-extradition country and land safely. 9/11-style hijackings, that used the plane as a bomb and killed everyone aboard, were on nobody's radar--when the goal was blowing up the plane and killing passengers, bombers generally used bombs planted in checked baggage, which requires different security measures from passenger screening.

Two security changes occurred after 9/11 that made future such hijackings basically impossible: one, probably most importantly, was that passengers understood they no longer could count on hijackers having an interest in surviving the hijacking. This change in passenger behavior was immediate: later that same year when a guy tried to bomb an airplane (using a really ineffective device hidden in his shoe) passengers immediately acted to restrain him. The second important change was reinforcing cockpit doors and keeping them locked: this makes hijacking airplanes with knives (the only major modality left to most would-be hijackers) functionally impossible.

All the other intense passenger screening and security measures implemented after 9/11 has been repeatedly shown by security researchers to be pretty ineffective, not even very reliable at stuff like keeping knives off airplanes. For years after 9/11 there were endless news stories about law enforcement running drills at airports and weapons making their way through security. A lot of later security measures, like liquid limits in carry-on baggage, came from terrorist plots that didn't even make it off the drawing board (and are unlikely to have ever worked anyway), and seem mostly to be overzealous ass-covering by transportation security officials.

And, finally, we should note that the real security threats to airplanes in the post-9/11 era seem to have come come from two sources that are basically impossible to protect against using traditional security methods, and for which passenger-based security screening is useless: anti-aircraft missiles and suicidal pilots (plus an honorable mention to aircraft companies trying to skirt certain regulatory requirements).

Despite what decades of American media would have you believe, elaborate plots targeting transportation infrastructure and involving like a dozen people are actually not at the top of the list of terrorist methodologies--why time and money training members of your organization to fly planes into buildings, when you can just use social media to convince a guy to drive a car into a crowd of bystanders, or stab somebody on the street? It's much cheaper, and much, much harder to guard against. Random lone-wolf terrorism is, unlike the kind of elaborate plots portrayed on TV, and one-off real-life examples like 9/11, basically impossible for security services to guard against in advance. But in order to justify the war on terror, and large budgets for security services on anti-terrorism grounds, it was necessary to play up the threat of such plots, even if by its very nature 9/11 was impossible to repeat. For similar reasons, the post-9/11 era also played up the threat of Islamic extremism and large overseas terrorist networks, even though far-right extremists acting in small groups also have managed to kill huge numbers of people in spectacular ways.

So for all these reasons, and those noted at the top, the political incentives around transportation security means that passenger screening measures in airports are almost guaranteed to be a one-way ratchet, even if they don't work. It's a bit like the fabled anti-tiger amulet--it's easy to say the lack of tigers is proof it's working! Even if the real reason there are no tigers about is that you live in Ohio. The media environment post-War on Terror helped create a public appetite for and approval of such anti-tiger amulets, too, of course. This was not by any means a purely top-down phenomenon.

[azzandra]

I'm convinced that if Shang Qinghua decided to start writing and publishing after transmigrating, he would be like an invasive species. Like that cat that killed all the birds on that one island.

Airplane was a maniac who banged out 10k chapters while competing with millions of other writers on the attention market. This is a guy who had to know how to game the algo for attention if he wanted to have enough money for food.

And PIDW's world has what, maybe a few hundred people both literate and willing to write fiction? Airplane would eat these people for lunch. While they were poetically crafting new metaphors and delicately staging each scene, SQH would be creating the most id-stroking lowest common denominator trash imaginable.

He would not only smoke the competition, but introduce to this world every terrible, cheap trick of the hack writer. Everything ends in cliffhangers. Stakes constantly rising. Bullshit plot devices to contrive as much masturbatory emotional catharsis as possible. And he'd be selling like gangbusters.

[milktrician]

(what the. who threw a wife plot device in the middle of a peak lord meeting)

i thought about this bit at the end of the airplane extras the other day. bro why are you looking at your coworkers like that rn

[tk-duveraun]

Imagine Shen Yuan's original world, everything is normal except people can just shape shift into 1 animal form. And pidw doesn't have that.

(Airplane was constantly made to stay in animal form by his parents so they didn't have to deal with him)

So SY as SQQ is DESPERATE to have cat time. I've the ooc lock is gone, all bets are off He finds himself climbing trees and furniture. If he walks into a Sunbeam he'll just stop mid sentence and stand there baking until something snaps him out of it

And he is always desperately searching for some plot device that will let him be a cat again. Unfortunately, since airplane hated being an animal so much, there are only 2 in the whole world bc he was paid a LOT of money for that specific kink and hated it the whole time.

The other peak lords really think SQQ has lost it and that this is either grief bc of without a cure or a direct side effect of it.

LBH loves Catzun and completely and shamelessly indulges SQQ when he flips over to cat brain. (He hides bird feeders near the bamboo house, he grows small patches of cat nip and mixes it into sqq 's regular incense)

SQH witnesses SQQ notice a bird and all but kkkkkkkk at it and goes "wtf" and they have their transmigrator reveal early.

LBH is jealous both because SQH speaks the same dialect as Shizun, but is also nonplussed by cat mode, which seems to deter even the likes of LQG.

Clearly he has to find some means to let Shizun be a cat in order to win his heart.

[sunderwight]

Shen Qingqiu gets hit by a rare wife plot.

And it actually is a rare one because Airplane didn't even write this one down! He toyed with the idea before ultimately dismissing it as being too controversial for the tastes of his readers, and adapting only a few of the same elements for a subsequent chapter of PIDW.

But apparently the System can pull inspiration even from the author's thoughts, especially when there's nothing to contradict the concept and even a few threads of it still to be found in the original, and somehow Shen Qingqiu runs afoul of this previously-unwritten plot bunny.

The core concept was a cuck scenario, of all things. One of the Luo Binghe's wives gets afflicted by a poison that can only be cured by dual cultivation, but specifically can't be cured by by dual cultivation with anyone who has mastery over demonic qi. Something something conflicting energies, something bullshit something. Peerless Cucumber would have ripped the chapter to shreds if it had actually made it to publication, not just for the insult of implying that Luo Binghe should let one of his wives sleep with someone else, but also because why would Luo Binghe -- able to use both kinds of cultivation -- somehow not be able to keep his demonic energies from influencing the situation just in this one case?

Well it turns out that in his specific case it's because sex gets him too worked up to keep things strictly separate, and the degree of control required to treat the affliction whilst dual cultivating is extensive enough that even a little slip-up would be fatal.

Of course, in the actual chapter of PIDW, this same plot device was altered and used to create a harem orgy where Luo Binghe oversaw several of his wives "treating" one another's "afflictions", but Shen Qingqiu just had to go and get a fatal of dose of the more severe version (he didn't realize the risk, because again, this version didn't even make it into the novel).

Anyway, of course this ends up with Shen Qingqiu trying to figure out another way to cheat death, while Luo Binghe goes through the five stages of grief before accepting that he's just going to have to let someone else fuck his husband. This leads to an argument because of course Shen Qingqiu's not going to cheat on Luo Binghe, and he's especially not going to force one of his martial siblings to sleep with him, come on now, and Luo Binghe trying not to cry tears of blood while bringing himself to explain that a fair few of Shen Qingqiu's sect siblings would be happy volunteers for this task.

Shen Qingqiu's just like, well of course you think that, for some bizarre reason you think everyone wants to sleep with me. Bias is what it is. Really it's flattering Binghe but obviously every other person we know is straight, that's just statistics, and everyone in the entire cultivation world knows that Qi Qingqi would sooner chew glass than have sex with a man!

Luo Binghe, weeping now: Shizun please. This is serious. I need you speak words that make sense in the order you're saying them.

They argue, they reach an impasse, the clock is ticking. So Luo Binghe reluctantly turns to the most reliable source of information (outside of himself) on Manipulating Shen Qingqiu to Do Things That Are in His Own Best Interests -- Shang Qinghua.

At first Shang Qinghua is like, well I'm flattered Junshang but I don't think I could shoulder the baggage of fucking Cucumber-bro for you. But then Luo Binghe is like no I need someone who is way hotter and more capable than you, if Shizun is going to fuck someone else at my behest they're going to be TOP TIER so that when I fuck him better afterwards he's really impressed with me. Liu Qingge, obviously.

Not Yue Qingyuan, Shang Qinghua asks? (He'd take the insult a little more personally but honestly he's just relieved that he's not being asked to navigate this social minefield.)

No, Luo Binghe says. He's not 100% sure he could beat Yue Qingyuan in a fight even to this day, which in his mind also translates to not being 100% sure he could do sex better than him either, so Yue Qingyuan is an emergency last resort. He's way more likely to cry on Shizun too and Shen Qingqiu is into that shit, it's too risky.

Alright, says Shang Qinghua, and he thinks about it, and then he comes up with the beautifully simple solution:

Luo Binghe has to fuck Liu Qingge first.

Because of course the crux of the issue is that even with permission, Shen Qingqiu doesn't want to cheat on Luo Binghe. But in the twisted annals of his mind, Luo Binghe himself is still entitled to a harem, even if Luo Binghe is also happily monogamous in this life. So if he shacks up with Liu Qingge first then Liu Qingge essentially joins Luo Binghe's harem, at which point if Shen Qingqiu sleeps with him it's not an affair, it's the gay version of those fanservice-y 3P scenes that the wives in PIDW did. Shang Qinghua translates the concept as best as he can to Luo Binghe, who -- though slightly dubious -- must accept that so far Shang Qinghua's wisdom hasn't steered him wrong with regards to his shizun's eccentricities.

Luo Binghe's mission: seduce Liu Qingge, or at least convince him to have sex, or possibly to lie and (convincingly!) tell Shen Qingqiu that they had sex. That last one is the longest shot so he's probably going to have to just fuck him (Luo Binghe still underestimates how willing his husband is to believe that just about anyone would have sex with him).

Shang Qinghua's mission: convince Shen Qingqiu that he owes his husband steamy threeway gay sex or something so that this plan he pulled out of his ass doesn't backfire and get him killed.

[ribblemcscribble]

Love when SVSSS fanfic writers write the most nonsensical, horny, bullshit plot device and blame it on Airplane

[mikkeneko]

Disclaimer that by saying this I by no means mean to insult or exclude non-writers, but: Scum Villain really is a story for storytellers, huh

It's so incredibly meta - so much of it is about the way stories are told, the structures of plot and narrative logic, the way that plot drives character and character drives plot, examination of story devices that make sense in-world and how strange they look when divorced from narrative context, exploring the limits of the suspension of disbelief and the backlash when readers hit those limits and recoil, even without getting into the meditation on external pressures and the warping effect of deadlines and money on a storyteller's craft.

in scum villain the story tools (tropes, framing, character arcs, licensing) are the plot, and the plot is a tool in the story, and the author's problems are Airplane's problems and his problems are the author's problems and the main character is the reader and he brings the reader's eye into the story and his meta-knowledge becomes his greatest asset and also his greatest blindness, just the way that a self-aware reader can get more out of a story but can also by their very cynical meta-awareness block themselves from unabashed enjoyment of it

I think it's not a coincidence that so many people who have spent years writing get so hung up on this series.

[tossawary]

I think it would be fun to do a "character swaps with older version of themselves" fic with Moshang. A post-canon Mobei-Jun who has been happily married for a while (probably at least 50 years old) accidentally touches some plot device artifact and time travels, swapping places with his 20ish-year-old self. Older MBJ wakes up in head disciple Shang Qinghua's bed where his younger self had been napping.

Younger MBJ lands in his own palace, where he is quickly found and fawned over by Older SQH, who can't help but think this MBJ is so cute. The System quickly confirms for Shang Qinghua that this situation has been sorted into a "multiple timelines" thing, so SQH doesn't have to worry about "protecting the timeline" by doing anything like hiding the fact that he's MBJ's husband. (So, there's an alternate timeline younger version of Airplane Bro now? He's just going to... ignore having an existential crisis about it. Yeah.)

Which is great because Older MBJ would not have thought about this at all as a potential issue. Older MBJ also thinks Younger SQH (Younger Airplane Bro) is incredibly cute and has no problem informing him that they're married in the future. Younger Airplane Bro is trying to figure what the fuck is happening, but he's having trouble thinking over the sound of how MBJ only became hotter: MBJ didn't get much taller, but he did get wider, heavier, more muscular, and hairier. Holy shit. Older MBJ doesn't even have any problems passionately kissing Younger SQH just to prove that they're married. And he smiles! He's so gentle and communicative! Comparatively!

("Luo Binghe is the Demon Emperor in my time," Older MBJ says. "Ah? Who's Luo Binghe?" Younger Airplane Bro lies very badly. "Hmmm, so you did know," Older MBJ says, and then makes some comment about LBH's husband that makes Younger SQH go, "HIS WHAT NOW?!")

Younger MBJ is trying to be cool, not really confused or scared, and Older SQH spoils him rotten by showing off the home that they're made together and how well the palace works to serve and defend MBJ. Linguang-Jun can't show up here because SQH will light him on fire if he shows his face. Younger MBJ doesn't even really like his SQH yet and is also struggling with how good Older SQH looks: a little taller, broader, relaxed and easygoing, answering all of his questions and explaining important things to him, dressed like a beloved demon lord's spouse, efficiently ordering everyone around. "Call me Gege," Older Shang Qinghua said with a wink, and it went straight to Younger MBJ's defenseless heart; he is developing new kinks immediately. Help him.

In the end, after a few days at most, they manage to switch Older and Younger MBJ back without too much issue. Older SQH is a little annoyed that his husband kissed an alternate timeline version of himself, but mostly because he sure would have liked that experience when he was only a disciple! Okay, SQH may have pet Younger MBJ's head and pinched his cheeks and hugged him and brushed his hair a little and shamelessly lavished him with good examples of human affection, but it's not the same!!!

Younger MBJ and Younger SQH in the alternate timeline are left in SQH's tiny head disciple house, completely flustered, sitting next to each other and barely able to look at each other. What. The. Fuck. Eventually, Shang Qinghua manages to say, "Uh, do you want to make out?" at the same time that Mobei-Jun says, "We should get married as soon as possible. Tomorrow."