People should talk about Yaad and Thistle more. Weird granduncle that killed your dad in a petty impulsive punitive act, leaving you very scared of him as you live under his control for centuries. Imagine growing up hearing stories of the King’s brother, the kind, clever, collected and calm advisor and right hand man. But only knowing him by how warped he’s become, violent and erratic. He punishes you, too, robbing you of any agency by putting you inside of a doll. And then despite, he becomes catatonic and you’re left to take care of him in his brother’s body while he thinks you’re him.
And then you see those slivers of that nice caring person you heard so much about in your childhood a millenium ago, and as he babbles about Delgal thinking he’s you, recalling memories and old habits, you wonder about how things must have used to be, before, and how they’ve changed irreparably. Today is melancholic again.
Yaad being like, Thistle’s sort of great-nephew who’s lived most of his life seeing him as being out of his mind and only a mirage of the noble attentive person he once was, now having to take care of him, someone who was an older familial figure to him… Seeing him gentle, soft and unhurried after all this time spent in an emotional anxious paranoid frenzy... Yaad and Thistle post-canon is so special
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Do you have any headcanons or thoughts about Falin having a crush on Marcille pre-canon? Especially during her later years at the school/the years she was with Laios.
Just full on "awkward and slightly gnc teenage lesbian has a massive crush on the touchy-feely girly girl straight best friend" tropes everywhere. Even better bc it's the "best friend is also the popular girl while lesbian is the slightly ostracized quiet one" dynamic in school. Falin gets so so so good at not having a heart attack every time Marcille gets in her personal space. But she's so resigned to never saying anything bc why would a girl as blinding as Marcille ever like her back. She also doesn't make an effort to get over it either, she's just content to be trapped in that stable dynamic of silently being in love with Marcille while getting to enjoy CLEARLY being Marcille's favourite person. She gets so used to it that it's almost just background noise most of the time-- it would have to be, unless she wanted to be freaking out 24/7 bc Marcille is so goddamn affectionate.
Her feelings also definitely change throughout the time that they're in school together-- at first it was this "whooaaah pretty older girl" puppy crush that you can clearly see developing in the flashbacks we get (I think she doesn't even like... realize her fixation on Marcille is romantic at all until years after it starts, when she's 12-14 ish and all the other girls around her are talking about crushes). But then they get closer, over the years Marcille starts getting really attached and letting down her guard, and Falin gets to see the ridiculous side of her. She gets to calm her down from her tantrums when experiments don't work out, or help her clean up when something explodes in her face. I feel like the progression of her feelings from "schoolgirl infatuation" to "unrequited love" probably almost exactly corresponds to how slowly Marcille goes from trying to keep Falin at a polite but friendly distance (like she does with everyone else) to her facade completely eroding as she becomes her cheerful and ridiculous self again for the first time since her father died.
That's probably the saddest part: Falin knows that she's clearly Marcille's favourite person on the surface level, but she doesn't quite fully grasp the enormity of what that means to Marcille. She doesn't get that she's the person who made the world colorful again for Marcille, that she is the first person outside of Marcille's family to really and truly make her laugh. She just thinks she's the beloved but dinky little short-lived sidekick, one of many that Marcille has had and will have.
Part of it is that, despite Marcille becoming such a clingy and affectionate best friend, I think her initial demeanour already did its damage. You see Falin being super adventurous and weird at first, bringing Marcille berries and other stuff, only to be rebuffed by Marcille exasperatedly saying she's working or looking kind of put off by it. And by the time you see her a little older, shes already quieter and better at masking -- and I'm not saying that that's entirely Marcille's fault (being the weird girl at an all girls academy for almost the entirety of her teenhood must have been brutal, my god) but she definitely learned that she's a potential nuisance to Marcille if she doesn't tone herself down. She learned that Marcille most likely sees her as a weird little kid following her around bc she has no other friends. And for the most part, she was never given any reason to unlearn any of that.
And that all very very smoothly transitions into Marcille being her "first love that was never meant to be anyway" when she leaves the academy. Chapter closed in her mind: she loved and pined from a distance and that was that. Every now and then she'll see another woman with Marcille's build or her shade of hair and be like ":( I miss her..." But then just kinda move on with her day. Same with when she's going through her own spellbook and finds a note that Marcille left her/correction that she made-- she'll smile fondly and reminisce about how much Marcille doted on her, and then move on.
Sometimes she thinks about contacting Marcille but convinces herself that it's too late (she spent too many months focusing on getting Laios healthy again and didn't mean to go no contact, but ah well). It's only when she has a practical reason to be reaching out that would also benefit Marcille ("Marcille is studying dungeons and we need a trustworthy mage to go with us to the dungeons") that she feels like she's allowed/that it wouldn't just be 100% a nuisance.
I almost think she didn't expect Marcille to reply at all, only to get a telegraph (or some in-universe equivalent of express mail, maybe magical pigeon carrier) that's like. EN ROUTE TO ISLAND. LETTER TO FOLLOW. and she freaks out like AAAA LAIOS SHE SAID YES WE HAVE TO CLEAN UP NOW.
I do think getting a response accidentally sparks a little hope in her, judging by the way she acts in the chp 57 flashback-- she's pouty that Marcille sees her as a kid, gets really worked up about being presentable, and then tries to play it cool when she actually meets Marcille (as if she didn't freak out and force Laios to shave while rambling a mile a minute about Marcille). She's an adult now, really and truly, and she's seen and survived things that her 18 yr old self would have never even imagined-- then all of a sudden, the person she was in love with since she was ten years old appears, and she's so desperate to be seen as mature and competent. She's trying soooo hard to impress Marcille with her newfound combat and dungeoneering experience...
Only to fall right back into their old dynamic. RIP. At least she gets the girl eventually, even if it takes dying twice and being the core catalyst behind an almost-apocalypse.
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Silly idea of the day: Shen Qingqiu grills the System for answers about how to avoid the whole Abyss scenario and save his little cabbage favorite disciple until the System very reluctantly offers up the option to transfer the protagonist halo - and all the trials that come with it - to someone else if he pays literally all his points. It's a risky endeavor, but he doesn't see any other way to save Binghe from his suffering/blackening, so he decides to take the risk. After some deliberation he decides to transfer the protagonist halo to Mobei-jun. Based on his memories of PIDW, Mobei-jun isn't the type to be interested in world domination and Shen Qingqiu figures if any kind of wild plot is going to happen to the ice demon, it will be limited to the demon world + maybe Huan Hua Palace and that's it.
The System checks in with Shang Qinghua about what kind of story he would have written for Mobei-jun if he had the choice (SQH is vary of the System and answers 'found family and slowburn romance, maybe with a touch of a coming of age plot' because there's no way the System can make something horrible from that, right?) and accepts Mobei-jun as an alternative.
The protagonist halo is transferred with the click of a button; Luo Binghe loses that special spark that designated him for greatness, but at the same time, he is free of the weight of his fate as well. He's destined to live a life as ordinary as a half-demon cultivator's ever gets.
However, Shen Qingqiu is not required for the new story and keeping a 'troublesome' transmigrator around is too risky for the System, so it decides to swap Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu back. There is a high chance of Shen Jiu dying of qi deviation when he's shoved unceremoniously back into his body (his soul has been fragmented and damaged when the System replaced him with Shen Yuan) which would be the best outcome, as far as the System is concerned, because it would be a natural-looking death that nobody would bother to investigate. It's pure luck that Liu Qingge is lurking around, looking for a chance to thank Shen Qingqiu for saving his life in the caves, and can step in and stabilize Shen Jiu.
At the same time Mobei-jun, in the first hour of being the new protagonist, stumbles into a patch of very specific magic weeds and passes out.
Shen Jiu now knows of the System and has some vague awareness of the person who, as far as he can tell from the incoherent hints the System gave him, was kidnapped against their will and showed into his body and fate for the sake of raising some prophecised emperor of the three realms to power, a plan that was foiled by Shen Jiu's return. He doesn't know why this person acted so strange while in Shen Qingqiu's role (coddling those brats, especially that brat?! What was the stranger thinking??), but the System's remarks make something clear: the stranger knows something about the prophecy and did his best to avoid it, much to the System's displeasure.
So clearly the best course of action is to get them back and question them, somehow. But first Shen Qingqiu is going to Yue Qingyuan and shakes him until he confesses why he left Shen Jiu behind, because if he has to deal with a demon (?) or being that can erase him from existence at a whim, then he wants to know the reason. He's facing almost certain death here, it's the least he's owed!!
While Shen Qingqiu is grilling his soon-to-be-beloved-again brother and trying to come up with a way to keep being a decent teacher despite himself, just in case, on Qian Cao a young, amnesiac rogue cultivator wakes up. He was found in the borderlands, almost ripped to shreds by a herd of man-eating boars. He doesn't remember his name or his past or even his cultivation, but Mu Qingfang estimates him to be in his twenties. He has a very well-developed fire root and a sunny complexion, but he is haunted by dreams of ice, so they decide to call him Beilun (悖论 - paradox) for the time being. When Beilun recovers he asks to stay in the sect so he can learn proper cultivation again and after some rigorous testing - a balanced nature between physical and spiritual cultivation, not much of a head for arts, but excellent instincts for politics, trade and strategy - Yue Qingyuan snatches him up as a personal, soon-to-be head disciple (also maybe brand new adopted little brother, because Yue Qi can't help himself). Shen Qingqiu is initially unhappy about having to share Yue Qingyuan's brotherly affection with someone new, but soon warms up to Beilun himself when he realizes how ruthless the young man can be. Second big brother acquired!
Time passes. Shang Qinghua privately mourns for Mobei-jun when word gets back to Cang Qiong that the Northern prince has been missing so long that they wrote him off. His mourning is tinted by guilt, because he keeps getting distracted by the handsome new Qiong Ding head disciple. Yue Beilun is tall and suntanned and scarred, even years later still not fully recovered from whatever befall him on the edge of the demon realm, but every time he smiles at Shang Qinghua it feels like the world comes to a standstill.
So for one there's the glacially slow falling in love between Shang Qinghua and definitely-not-Mobei-jun. There's the forming adopted family with the two disasters in charge + still-absolutely-not-Mobei-jun. There are Shen Qingqiu's persistent attempts at being a good teacher and a better martial brother (with inconsistent degrees of success, but Liu Qingge is discovering a lot of new things about himself as the primary audience of Shen Qingqiu's self-improvement). There's the long search for ways to get Shen Yuan back from the System, which leads to a whole, wacky side-adventure when they learn the truth about Tianlang-jun and set him free while they are there to get the mushrooms.
Of course this New Plot can't happen without some drama. Beilun is accompanying the masters to the Immortal Alliance conference when the Endless Abyss opens up. Luo Binghe almost succumbs to a sever qi deviation when his seal breaks and Beilun rushes in to fight off the monsters attacking the disciples and falls into the Abyss - which is just the thing needed to break the curse on him...
So Cang Qiong is in mourning over the loss of Yue Beilun who many of them assumed will be the next sect leader based on Yue Qingyuan's strong attachment. Luo Binghe is confined to Qian Cao, half under treatment and half under house arrest on account of being half-demon until they can figure out what to do with him. At least the System has relinquished Shen Yuan, now that the mushroom body is grown enough, and after learning how young he is, he becomes the new replacement little brother of the sect leader and the (ex) scum villain, which is weird and confusing, but not in a bad way.
Meanwhile in the demon realm Mobei-jun makes his return (as far as people know he was training all these years in the Endless Abyss and he is monstrously stronger for it), takes over as Northern King and starts solidifying his power base with Tianlang-jun's help (rumors have it that he was the one who broke the Junshang out of his prison, a feat everyone thought impossible). After all, only a fool goes courting when their court is in disarray and now that he remembers all the things Qinghua has done for him, he has eyes for nobody else.
All the while the Old Palace Master watches the shifts in the demon realm and plots a new war against the demons. With such a cold and ruthless rising Northern King looming on the horizon, not to mention the vengeful Tianlang-jun, it shouldn't be difficult to whip the cultivators up into preparing for conflict...
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Unexpected Guests Chapter Ten: Page 3
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The man who speaks in hands... speaks. And he has some lingering questions for Frisk as well.
Oh man, so all this time I’d been dreading looking up American Sign Language, but it turns out... ASL is really fun? I did my best to research and draw each sign Gaster uses accurately, and hopefully haven’t committed any egregious errors. and, shout-out to @delusionsofspace for suggesting what I could use for Undertale’s particular take on determination! I really appreciated the input ^^
The next update comes Dec. 1st!
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