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themagicmistress · 4 months

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There is something wrong with Shen Qingqiu.

There has been as long as Liu Qingge’s known him, but it used to be that he spoke with the too-sharp syllables of a young master and liked to smack his fan in his palm like he was thinking of stabbing you with it. Now, the genre of ‘wrong’ Liu Qingge associates with Shen Qingqiu has more to do with the way he takes his youngest disciples for rides on Xiu Ya and keeps a specific teacup for Liu Qingge’s visits.

Can a qi deviation change one’s entire personality? Down to the way they speak?

“See, shidi?” Shen Qingqiu tilts up the scale of their latest catch with his blade. Underneath glitters a hard, reflective surface. “They’ve got two hides! Ah, only complete noobs scrape it off without clipping it from the skeleton.”

Liu Qingge doesn’t know what a noob is.

“Is it more valuable that way?” He says.

With a flick of his sword, Shen Qingqiu snatches out the top scale.

“It’s about pride! Are you cultivator or an idiot with a sharp object, hacking down everything in your path?” Shen Qingqiu grumbles. “This is good loot.

Shen Qingqiu is much more serene in viscera up to his forearms than at the Peak Meetings, Liu Qingge notes. He thinks doing this–the complaining as much as finding the creature itself–might be where Shen Qingqiu is at his most content. This is the man who grins behind his fan when Shang Qinghua spills tea in his own lap.

He raises an eyebrow at Liu Qingge. A curved, silver carapace balances in his one hand, a stack of silver scales piled inside. All finished, then. Liu Qingge offers him a hand, but Shen Qingqiu’s already risen to his feet.

Liu Qingge lowers it, but Shen Qingqiu’s already taken it with a mildly amused look on his face.

“I think we’ve moved past these sorts of formality by now,” Shen Qingqiu… wiggles Liu Qingge’s hand? He rattles it up and down and Liu Qingge doesn’t really know what’s happening. “But sure! Good job to both of us today.”

He lets go after a few seconds. Liu Qingge puts his hand down, his skin faintly tingling. Internally, he notes that in certain situations, if he gives Shen Qingqiu his hand, Shen Qingqiu will clasp it in his own.

He’ll have to pay attention to what times it would be appropriate to do it again.

“We were efficient,” Liu Qingge says in what he hopes is a normal voice. He’s fine. He clears Shen Qingqiu’s meridians all the time. “Your knowledge of the Five Mouth Mountain Pangolin is impressive.”

“Please,” Shen Qingqiu waves a hand dismissively. “If you don’t know about their three acid stomachs, you’re hardly a scholar.”

“Don’t forget the second hide,” Liu Qingge says.

Liu Qingge drops his sword for them to ride and Shen Qingqiu grins.

“Don’t quote my words to me!” Shen Qingqiu bats his shoulder with a hand, stepping onto Cheng Luan, “Eventually I’ll run out of things to tell you. Shidi, you don’t have to listen to me rambling so closely. I’ll get self-conscious.”

“I’ll make sure to forget everything you said by next time,” Liu Qingge says.

Cheng Luan sprints into the sky and Shen Qingqiu laughs. It sounds nothing like his laugh. It sounds beautiful.

Yes, there is something wrong with Shen Qingqiu. Deeply. Intrinsically. But Liu Qingge doesn’t mind so much. The parts that are wrong are his friend. And someday, more than.

#svsss #scum villian self saving system #liu qingge #shen qingqiu #shen yuan #svsss fanfiction #svsss fic #mxtx fanfic #scumbag self saving system #my fic #love lqg i feel like he's the one who'd have the easiest time with transmigrator sy #he only cares if peoples lives are in Immediate Danger Right Now everything else is cool #'You have all your blood? Okay. We're fine' he is the guy. lqg ilu your only braincell is named after shen qingqiu #mxtx

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pi-creates · 3 years

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What do you think is the best storyline/conflict that the game has ever given us, and what do you think was the worse? (in terms of how entertaining and well done it was)

I’ve been thinking on this one for a while, and I’m still struggling, so forgive me if this is just a ramble. A lot of the conflicts just don’t feel as consistent as our “goals”, ya know? Like, I find it hard to differentiate between what would be considered a storyline conflict, and what would be just another hurdle considering how quickly the drama can be moved on from. Semantics, maybe, but it makes things fuzzy for me.

When I think of the best storyline, the one that jumps out at me is still the entirety of season 1 episode 2 - Starved for Help. It is a complete arc that delivers a multitude of moral quandaries before ending on a note that the repercussions of what happened aren’t so easily forgotten. Lilly’s mental state is destroyed, Kenny’s connection to the rest of the group is either shattered or reinforced with an iron grip, and your humanity is in question after how you dealt with your allies, enemies, and an unseen other who’s ill fortune can be your gain. Everything here is heavy, ominous, and still satisfying when the conflict passes.

And so much happens, some of which is easily forgotten but it all comes back around to make the bigger picture more complete. That bear trap at the start could just seem like an excuse to add more to the cast, but then we see it’s a sign of how far the St John’s reach actually stretches. Clem’s missing hat and Jolene start as a weird tangent of a stranger being too close for comfort, which works well enough as foreshadowing to the progress of the season, but it also gives us more seeds of doubt when she too seems involved in this conflict between the St John’s and the bandits. And then the final choice - are you bigger than that? Are you going to be the random person in the woods prepared to take something meant for someone else’s child for your own? Because we should remember how that looks, to see something that belongs to someone we are meant to protect in the hands of someone else - someone who has their own bigger story that we won’t ever know.

I like all of that. The one negative would be that Mark is introduced as a character we are meant to at least be mildly familiar with, but also not so familiar that he can die. I don’t like that part - I kinda feel like it would have been more interesting if Travis survived the intro and they used him in Mark’s place... but ya know, flesh him out more. I don’t feel like greater familiarity (though a false familiarity) with Mark actually made his end any more horrifying - it’s still horrifying even if that person is new to the group.

As for worst... I think the big problem here is that I think the worst conflict the game could present would be one I don’t remember. That would be the ultimate failure of a storyline. So I feel like whatever I say here is still not that bad since it clearly still left enough of an impact for me to remember it.

I’m literally trying to think of what storyline has left me wondering “why did that even matter?” the most. And I think for me that’s the entirety of the time spent at Howe’s Hardware in season 2. I don’t feel like anything I did there mattered... at all.

It is a plot point, but it doesn’t feel like an interactive one like it should in this particular game series. And the conflict itself doesn’t feel all that fun to me. Maybe it’s a pacing issue, I’m not sure, but it didn’t feel desperate enough to me to be satisfied when a problem is overcome. Also, a lot of the additional hurdles in this part of the story occur because people behave stupidly. Mistakes or miscalculations are good hurdles to prolong the escape plan, but instead it feels like someone did something stupid for the sole purpose of adding more drama. That’s not fun, that’s tedious and adds an element of frustration because an 11 year old has more sense than any of them.

Though this is another one of those issues where I think a big part of me feeling that way is because I expected so much from this location. My own imagination saw so many ways we could deal with being held captive, and all the pitfalls of either being too cooperative or combative to the force keeping us there. But there wasn’t deviations, so I was left underwhelmed and wondering why this entire section wasn’t just a cutscene with QTEs and no illusion of choice. Like... the only choice here that I feel makes any impact is the one where you can choose to watch Carver die - and that isn’t story impact so much as a theoretical impact on Clem’s psyche that is on the player’s shoulders to interpret.

So while I don’t necessarily think this storyline is completely awful (it does serve a purpose for the plot), it is still unsatisfying to me in terms of the way it’s told and how it plays.

#twdg talk #i really did struggle with this one #i don't usually think of things as best or worst #more just 'like' and 'dislike' without tiers #so it's hard to make distinctions

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ashethehedgehog · 6 years

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Saw your fic recs! Did you see that Halves of a Whole FINALLY updated! What are your thoughts on a fem! Yugi? I admit I'm curious about how they'll portray tue character.

Yeah I did!!! I hope it was a relief for the author and that they’re doing okay! Long breaks from fics often means life is hard and motivation is low, which sucks : ( Hopefully its lookin’ up for them tho! Now, I haven’t been current with the chapters of that fic for a while now tho, I think I read up to chapter three or four before I dropped off for a bit, and then just never remembered to come back to it. To be fair, I read a lot of fic, and I also have several I write at the same time, so getting time to slot everything in is phew, a mess, lemme tell ya.

SO not sure how well I could give my thoughts on the fic, since not much actually happened in what I had read, but I’ll be going back to it soon to check out the progress on the story!

As a general sense, I’d say I’m not really a fan of fem!Yugi, mainly because some of the portrayals of it I’ve seen give off some bad vibes (to me at least). I guess I don’t understand why he needs to be changed into a girl for some stories? Like is it important to how the plot goes down that he needs to be a girl? I feel like with a convincing reason I could get behind it (I’ve read a few, and some have had pleasant stories!). Also sometimes I get that vibe that its done to slot Yugi into the ‘innocent super femme’ stereotype (which also makes me upset because innocent and ‘cant do anything without relying on someone else’ tropes of girls need to die too augh), where he already gets quite a lot of of ‘innocent virgin doe eyed boy’ as it is. Noooooot that there is anything wrong with someone wanting to portray that, if they wished to, I should clarify. I’m all for ppl writing what they love, and if people really love the ‘innocent Yugi and possessive/arrogant Atem’ tropes, then like go for it. I’m not a fan, but then I have my own representations I know a lot of people wouldn’t agree with, and I don’t care cause that’s how I, personally, like to portray the characters. So each to their own u know, do what makes u happy!

BUT, that said, fem!Yugi can most certainly be done in a convincing and nice way, but the thing I think is it needs a lot more work put in to make it so, since it deviates from the norm, and to shake off the bad stereotypes that come with it. There is a lot of baggage there sadly, but people have the power to spin amazing stuff even with content that has such set ways to it! (think about how cool some versions of fairytales get and how they go away from the Disnye-esque versions!!!) That’s how I’d view it at least, but then I sit in my AU sandbox all day worldbuilding away and don’t really get into the tropes ygo often favours, so I’m not sure how much of a shared opinion that would be.

in terms of how Halves of a Whole tackles it, I would have no idea! I’ve only read a few scenes with Yugi in it, and she barely interacted with anyone (to my memory, this was like over a year ago tho so its a bit choppy), so I couldn’t get a good idea of how she’d be around Atem, whether she stands up for herself and doesnt back down, or if she’s more meek Season Zero style Yugi (I think Halves of a Whole was a bit of a rewrite for S0/ the ygo story so maybe the later possibly? Don’t hold me to that tho I COULD be mixing it up with something else) Either way, I can’t really say my opinion on the matter since I havent read enough to form an understanding for how the author chose to portray Yugi in their fic, and commenting otherwise now would be a disservice to the story. I’ll be reading it soon tho, so feel free to come back if you really did want my extended, rambly opinion on it, although if I ended up not liking the representation as much, I don’t like being negative about other ppl’s works, so I won’t be writing anything if that’s the case! If I don’t like something in a fic, I just ignore it and move on. Hopefully that answers ur question! If not shoot me another ask and I’ll clarify more ahaha :’’’D

#Id like to hear reasoning from authors who have written fem Yugi for why they wrote it #because its the one detail im rly missing and im curious #it would help shed light on why ppl like to explore this kind of thing #does the author of HoaW have tumblr I wonder or have they stated somewhere their thoughts on it #anyways I tried my best to condense and be nice about it because i dont want to accidentally sound like im hating on shit #but also my opinion was asked for so here it is //jazz hands #I so rarely talk about fic stuff like this publicly this ask surprised me lmao #ashes ramblings #anon

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