Now with the inclusion of Crowely to the Ramshackle roster with Grim,Rollo, and (maybe Fellow) , it seems that the theme for Ramshackle is "It's a fucking yuu problem".
Canon facts about Shang Qinghua:
1. He is competent both as a peak lord and a spy. He was not suspected. Not even by Shen Jiu. And he was generally respected enough in his field and his duties. I don't get the impression anyone was close to him as he was often away for work but he was friendly and not disliked
2. He didn't work after exposed as a spy. Mobei just let him be idle and follow him around. He wasn't running Mobei's court or acting a servant he's just hanging out and being allowed even in spaces he wasn't supposed to be by virtue of Mobei wanting him there.
3. He doesn't fight but he's not expected to and no one really cares except Cucumber
4. Liu Qingge was going to execute him when he showed up at Binghe's palace looking for Plant Shen but the Mobei fought him to protect Shang Qinghua and destroyed half the palace in the process
5. Shen Qingqiu for all he complains and pokes at Shang Qinghua also says they're friends at least once (even though he denies it later) and goes to protect Shang Qinghua from Zhuzhi Lang but Mobei beats him too the punch
6. It is is said that Shang Qinghua is getting beaten 3 times a day but Mu Qingfang is not at all suspicious or worried about Shang Qinghua and the only time anyone notes him being roughed up is Shen Qingqiu noting that his mouth is a little swollen on the corner in one of the extras and puts it down to Mobei hitting him again. Therefore we have no evidence that these are vicious serious beatings with broken limbs. They probably at most left a bruise that was easily healed
7. Shang Qinghua cultivated his golden core before Shen Jiu
9. Linguang-Jun's spies though Mobei was treating Shang Qinghua very well and favoured
10. Luo Binghe does not hate or have bad feelings towards Shang Qinghua. He lets him follow Mobei everywhere, Shang Qinghua revealed Shen Qingqiu's identity as Plant Shen, and Shang Qinghua gave him good advice for nabbing Shen Qingqiu. Further evidence is even if he's annoyed by Shang Qinghua dropping in on him and Shen Qingqiu during their honeymoon he allows Shang Qinghua to eat the extra food in the pot. He let someone else eat some of the food he makes for his Shizun. (Personal headcanon here: Shang Qinghua is his favourite Martial Uncle and the only one he willingly calls Shishu)
Alice in Wonderland but with more crimes I guess (one of which is like, 0.1 second away)
GRIMMMMM
If he tried harder, would you stay? If he was better, would you stay?
Imagine Grim's overblot.
He's scared, confused. Why does his henchman need to leave?
What's so wrong with their life here? They've got lots of friends. Look how popular the Great Grim is, so Yuu must be popular by association! Lots of tasty food to try. They even got a dorm all their own!
Grim's gonna be a great mage one day and he's gonna be the best mage ever and have as many cans of tuna as he wants for being number one!
Would Yuu stay if he shared his tuna? He'll give them lots! If he's #1 that means he can just get money easily, so he'll be able to pay his henchman lots of money and have a nice place to live. The nicest house they can imagine, it'll make even Leona jealous!
Because he's the Great Grim right?
If his henchman is leaving, so who's gonna cuddle with him now if they come back from yet another overblot fight? Who's gonna patch him up and cheer him up as they help clean up his scrapes. Mind you he had less from the last fight they were in, that means he must be getting better right?
Yuu, who loved him even if he was snarky brat, who would always help him with his homework, not that he needed help mind you, but Grim's such a great boss, that of course his henchman wants him to succeed.
He really picked a great henchman! They're were great! They were pretty smart. Maybe not as smart as Grim, but they had better grades then Deuce at least, and they could cook! Sure they burnt the Mac and cheese once or twice, but he thought the burnt bits were still tasty.
But his henchman and even the great grim himself learned how to cook! He was such a a great boss he even warmed up a can of soup for his henchman who was sick in bed. He remembers hearing soup was good for when you're sick from Trey.
Would they come back if he tried harder? He'll try extra hard not to fall asleep in Trien's class. He'll try not to wiggle so much on the broom during Vargas' class. He's sure he'll get their combined grades up. Because even without magic they're like, the best option for a henchman here in this place. Nobody quiet like them here.
What if they get hurt? Yuu said his purring always made them feel better. Does he need to purr more? Purr harder? He'll try harder so they get sick less. He'll listen better so he gets in less fights and Yuu's not stuck apologizing for his behavior. Yuu could be a little mean sometimes. Okay, Yuu wasn't really mean they were… Um what was the word? Firm? Strict? Oh, they were firm. But they were nice.
Nobody here was as nice as Yuu was. Look how many things they did because they cared about everybody here so much! Because they cared about him so much they almost died and fought the almost end of the world just to bring him HOME.
Home. NRC was his home. Yuu was his home.
Yuu was, no matter how mean he got. No matter when he scratched them and acted nasty. He… He even hurt his henchman. Yuu's arm was injured because of him.
But no matter how bad things got, Yuu was always there to make sure he had a home to go home to.
Ramshackle's home because Yuu is there.
If Yuu's gone. Then where does Grim go? What's the point of being a great mage if the one person who stuck by you this whole time just goes away? Please don't leave him.
Please.
I just want to remind everyone that the Sargasso Sea is an ocean gyre in the Atlantic, off the coast of North America, that is a crystal-clear blue lake topped with seaweed forests. That is IN the ocean. There's no land around it. It's just a distinct giant saltwater sea in the middle of the ocean, because of the weird way ocean currents work.
And all the eels from North America and Europe leave their freshwater habitats and swim out there to breed and lay eggs and die. These weird snake fish swim a THOUSAND MILES to come here, to do this.
And the European ones rely on the gradual ocean current to slowly carry their larvae back to Europe, which takes 300 days, and their development cycle is synched to this.
And no matter where they end up, they immediately go up a fresh water source and live there. Until it's time to breed, then they just know to go a thousand miles back to this one weird patch of ocean.
This isn't made up! This isn't an Ancient Greek zoological theory! They do this! This is how they live! And our stupid river dams are blocking them from going from inland waterways in Pennsylvania and Britain, out into this one sea way off the coast of the Carolinas.
Nature is stranger than fiction.
Also like 200 years ago, these fish were so thick in the water that you could just go down on your luchbreak and grab one and cook it up on the beach. Eel was so ubiquitous that they made pies and jellies out of it.
What toxic pink slime did you pay $12 to eat for lunch today, Future Guy?
Absolutely frothing at this fanfic idea, thank you.
PIDW but it's a game.
You play as Luo Binghe, the lowliest disciple of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect's Qing Jing Peak. The first part of the game proceeds more or less like a semi-normal fantasy dating sim -- Luo Binghe is bullied and downtrodden, but can seek help and opportunities to build relationships with various female characters, like Ning Yingying and Liu Mingyan. The game's interface implies a truly staggering number of potential romance candidates to unlock, however, so it makes sense that the first part in your disciple years doesn't get you very far in any of the routes.
But then for the second part, things start to shift. You get an option that seems to amount to asking whether you want to make things better for Luo Binghe or not. When you click the obvious choice, that you do, your previously cold and ruthless shizun seems to go through an inexplicable change of heart. You get a weird kind of fanservice-y scene featuring him during the Skinner Demon Mission. Then he features extremely heavily in the Demon Invasion Mission, only to turn up as your companion in the Dream Demon Mission.
After that, it seems like you've gotten onto his route, somehow? Why does the scummy male teacher even have a route in a game like this, though? You try to check for player guides but you can't seem to find any. You try reloading older saves and making other selections, but no matter what you choose, you end up finishing the Dream Demon Mission by moving into Shen Qingqiu's house, and the routes for Liu Mingyan and Ning Yingying and the briefly-encountered Sha Hualing are all greyed out.
But maybe that just means they're inaccessible for advancement for now, or something. And a lot of games have plot points that are on rails, and you can see where Luo Binghe actually getting a place to live would be one of those things. The format of the game changes as well, going from a relatively loose sequence of scenes and interactions to a daily management style, where you have tasks to complete (make shizun breakfast, go to morning lessons, cultivate, do chores, etc) and only a set number of hours in which to complete them. You have affection points, but any time you try to spend them on anyone other than Shen Qingqiu you get an error message. There are dialogue options for flirting with other characters, but they're always greyed out and impossible to select.
Still, you can unlock scenes. A lot of them are just long slow shots of Shen Qingqiu doing things, like reading, or lecturing, or eating. You get missions, and sometimes you meet female characters who seem to unlock new possible romance paths, even though they're still constantly greyed out. Maybe this part of the game's just especially on rails? Waiting for the actual harem-building segment? You kind of like a lot of aspects of it anyway, though. Luo Binghe is an especially compelling character, not at all like the usual sort of non-entity placeholder main guys in games like this. He definitely has personality.
But then you get to the third part. The Abyss. Shen Qingqiu pushes Luo Binghe in, and suddenly you're wondering if you've somehow reached a bad end. You were saving up some of those affection points for later, maybe you should have spent them all on him? Was there something you did wrong to make this happen? You're not even sure why he's thrown poor Binghe away, he was cold and cryptic about it, and now you're wondering if all the time you spent distracted by other things was time you should have spent farming a better relationship with him. You can't help but wonder where you went astray, because Luo Binghe will not stop wondering about it, and wondering about it in ways that make you feel oddly like he is accusing you, the player, of making the wrong choices... but in a way that could still plausibly be aimed at himself, as a character. You feel bad. You kind of want to restart, but you also can't bring yourself to abandon Luo Binghe. You have to see this through, to help him make it to the other side.
Regardless, the Endless Abyss seems like it must be an inevitable plot development. A lot of the game shifts to account for it. There's even an option to essentially select this "thought" from Luo Binghe's internal diatribe, that this is inevitable, and it seems to turn off the litany of recriminations for a while, although sometimes it also results in Luo Binghe... glaring at the screen?
At you?
Anyway the daily management system goes out of the window, and instead there's an energy bar now. Encounters with monsters or the occasional demon woman will lower the energy bar, how much depends on what you choose and how the encounters proceed. Sometimes there are romantic/sexy responses for interacting with the demon women you meet, and they aren't greyed out, but if you try and select them the cursor will jump to another option. You think there might be something wrong with your mouse? Sometimes you get Luo Binghe glaring at the screen scenes afterwards. When Binghe's energy bar hits zero, you're offered two choices -- "sleep" or "think of shizun". Sometimes even if you pick "sleep" the cursor will still jump to "think of shizun", and you'll be treated to another one of those slow lingering scenes of Shen Qingqiu. Except they are becoming increasingly strange, obviously warped by the exhaustion and trauma of the situation, so that aspects are eerie or even disturbing. For example, sometimes Shen Qingqiu seems to be missing limbs, or eyes. Sometimes there's blood on his hands. Sometimes the food he's eating is rotted, or the bamboo house background looks like the Qing Jing Peak wood shed. That kind of thing. You don't mind the idea of harm coming to the man. He deserves it, really, for pushing Luo Binghe into the Abyss. But the few times you try and select options along those lines, the UI glitches again.
Also the "think of shizun" option only restores a quarter of the energy bar, whereas resting restores all of it. But if you try to go for too long without doing it, it will lock you into choosing it successively for a long time.
In addition to the energy bar, there's a calendar. It's not all that sophisticated or even consistent, and it's clearly meant to reflect the fact that Luo Binghe has troubles accurately judging the passage of time in the Abyss. However, the longer you spend in the Abyss, the more violent and unhinged things start to become, and the more the UI starts glitching to reveal disturbing messages, and the more often Luo Binghe "glaring" scenes happen. So you decide to do your best to get Binghe out of here as quickly as possible. This part of the game must be broken, but hopefully if you can make to the next segment, it will work properly again.
Eventually you get to the Xin Mo Mission, which is the last part of the Abyss section, and Luo Binghe escapes.
But the weirdness continues. Worsens, even. You still get missions to like, take over the demon realms and infiltrate Huan Hua Palace, all cool stuff, and you still meet girls who seem to unlock possibly romance paths. But most of the time everything is greyed out. There will be 5 dialogue options but maybe only 1 or 2 of them will be selectable. Parts of the menu are inaccessible. You don't have an energy bar anymore, you have a Xin Mo corruption bar, and it just keeps steadily rising. Sometimes you're presented the option of propositioning a character to "mitigate corruption", but if you try and click it the game glitches or the cursor freaks out and it fails. Sometimes the game crashes outright, and when you reload your last save, it starts with Luo Binghe glaring at you through the screen. You still get the "rest" and "think of shizun" options at times, but neither one helps the corruption bar.
Then. Jinlan City. You reunite with Shen Qingqiu. There seem to be a lot of options for acting vengefully towards him, but they're all greyed out, except for a few which let you chase him down or manhandle him a bit. The whole segment is frustrating, full of weird fanservice-y moments but also mired in how little Shen Qingqiu will say, how often he insists on evading or running away, and how Luo Binghe doesn't seem to have the right prompts to actually get him to explain himself. At times it seems like the "think of shizun" mechanic is bleeding over into the real interactions with the character, so that you can't tell what's really going on vs what are the manifestation of Luo Binghe's trauma or even hallucinations. The Xin Mo bar has maxed out. You have to catch Shen Qinqiu. Catch Shen Qingqiu. Catch Shen Qingqiu--
Then suddenly the bar is at 0, and you're watching Shen Qingqiu's lifeless body fall towards the ground, his energy expended in the effort to push back the corruption. Like, all of his energy.
You catch Shen Qingqiu. Or at least, you stop his corpse from hitting the dirt.
Now the game art is crisp and clean again. All the weird UI artifacts and blocked-off menus are either gone altogether or else working properly. The sound, which had been very gradually deteriorating with low-pitched ringing and muffled portions, is normal. You can hear characters gasping and distantly shouting, and birds chirping somewhere, the ragged cadence of Luo Binghe's breaths, while the camera focuses on Shen Qingqiu's body.
Huh, you think. That's a sort of dramatic resolution to that plot arc, and it raised more questions about Shen Qingqiu than it answered, really. But at least it's over with now? Does this mean Luo Binghe can finally start to recover, or advance other plots?
Then everything blacks out. You get booted to the main menu, or something that looks like it, except the only option you can select now is the New Game+ one.
When you click it, it seems like you've started the whole game over again. Except that there is a Xin Mo corruption bar, greyed out, already waiting for in a corner of the screen. And instead of starting out with a view of Qing Jing Peak, you start out with the young Luo Binghe looking directly towards you. Like he's staring through the screen. It's the basic starting point character, except he already has his demon mark on his forehead, and his expression is way more cold and calculating than anything the junior protagonist would have worn.
"Don't get in my way," he warns.
Then the game proceeds like a visual novel with extremely limited choices. The old selections and the menu for various romance routes don't even appear, the menus have all changed again, this time oriented entirely around hiding Luo Binghe's demonic cultivation (while building it) and managing daily choices and Shen Qingqiu's relationship status. A romance game with only one romance route, and it's the treacherous crusty old teacher? Wtf? But otherwise it seems almost normal, except for the special faint-lettered red options that sometimes appear in weird places on the screen, suggesting things like preventing the Skinner demon from catching you unawares, or saving Shen Qingqiu from Without a Cure poisoning, or keeping out of the Endless Abyss.
Those options seem like they should create different outcomes, and you click them whenever they show up, but they consistently fail. As if there's some other force in the game pushing things back onto the rails no matter what you do...
Anyway, eventually you get through the main plot again, and Shen Qingqiu dies once more. This time the game keeps going from that point, however, with quests to try and find ways to resurrect him. You're starting to wonder why you're still playing -- after all, you signed up for a harem game, not this tragic gay love story? You're not even gay! It's just that Luo Binghe is such a compelling character. You decide it's time to take a break, though, so you get up, do some stretches, go to the bathroom, etc.
It feels like someone's watching you.
You've definitely been playing that game for too long. Sometimes you think you catch sight of Luo Binghe's face out of the corner of your eye, in the bathroom mirror or on the black surface of your phone's screen, just before you turn it on. But when you look twice or turn your phone off again, nothing's there. You call your little sister, to apologize for dropping off the face of the earth for a bit, and you joke about getting too invested in this weird game that might be broken? She hasn't heard of it, but she sounds a little worried as she suggests maybe coming over and taking you out to lunch, or something.
You decline -- she's got a lot on her plate, and she mentioned already having plans earlier -- but then you promise to get some fresh air anyway. But when you go to head out, somehow you find yourself turning away at the last minute. You try again, and yet it's like you just keep getting distracted before you can open the door. After a few tries you give up, swallowing down your growing unease. You take off your shoes and coat. When it comes to it, you really do want to find out what happens to Luo Binghe next.
The game is running.
You don't remember turning it back on...?
The screen is focused on the familiar image of Shen Qingqiu's preserved corpse. You can see Luo Binghe's hand in the frame as well, transferring qi in yet another familiar sequence, the one that seems to run at the end of every in-game day. There's some text.
Is it you? the red letters ask, scrawling and flickering, as if someone is attempting to write directly onto the screen. Are you the one behind all this? Thwarting me at every turn?
Yes/No options appear in the game's usual font and position. You try to click "no", even though you're unsure and feel like you must have missed a scene somehow. But the interface warps and when you hit "no" it changes to Stay Silent.
I can't figure out. Are you here to help me, or get in my way?
Help/Harm. You click "help" but again it changes to "stay silent" afterwards.
What do you want from me?
This time there's no option to select at first. Then, as if being shoved onto the screen by some alternative function, a text box opens up. Like the kind that some games have for implementing cheats or selecting character names. This particular game has never shown such a function before, Luo Binghe's name was locked in and you don't even know if it has cheats. The cursor blinks, and somehow it feels as if you have only one chance, and if you don't take it now, it will be gone forever.
You type in "help" and barely manage to hit enter before the interface blinks out. No list of prompts or possible options appear.
Shizun? the red text scrawls, shakily.
Then the whole game crashes.
You wait, but it doesn't start up again. You try to run it again, but you can't find it on your system, somehow. Really weird. Even if it had crashed, it shouldn't have gotten deleted? But you still can't find it. You start to feel genuinely alarmed. Not only can you not find the game on your system, but when you try and search for it absolutely nothing comes up. You try and go to the online shop page for it, but you can't remember where you actually got it from in the first place, now that you're thinking about it.
What bullshit is this?
What, was the game actually some kind of virus? It couldn't have been. Also who would make a virus like that? You get up and pace, trying to make sense of it.
It's gotta be some kind of mistake. Maybe you've just missed too much sleep, you're not thinking right. You'll take a break and when you come back you'll realize that you were just looking in all the wrong places, somehow.
You head over to the fridge to grab something to eat.
You can't remember the last time you went shopping, but the food in there is probably still fine. Right?
shang qinghua my muse.... i just wanted to draw him with a ponytail hahahaha
notes and breakdown of a design for a royal advisor shang qinghua
HERE COMES THE BOY!
Hello boy~
How are you~
Here he is~
The bestest of boys!!!!
Very cute!!!
Best way to start the new year is to draw Grimjinka.... Junos baby brotherr...
For his design i tried to emulate things like his white fur by giving him a scarf...(also I think under his shoes soles there are pawprints..
You want to call your House rep now and tell them Trump needs to be impeached immediately for defying a Supreme Court order (re: Kilmar Abrego Garcia), which functionally voids our constitution and means no one in America has rights anymore.
I am not exaggerating.
As of now, anybody can be disappeared, no due process, no recourse. Trump is openly disregarding a Supreme Court order and says he’ll send US citizens to El Salvador.
This is not a drill.
Call your House rep and tell them they must impeach. Tell them if they cannot bring themselves to impeach, they must resign. A more open and shut case to impeach is not possible. Trump and his administration are saying openly, in public, that anybody can be kidnapped by ICE, even in error, and disappeared permanently.
Call your senators, too, and tell them to support impeachment (it goes to them once it passes a majority House vote).
HEARTSLABYUL
SAVANACLAW
OCTAVINELLE
SCARABIA
POMEFIORE
IGNIHYDE
DIASOMNIA
OTHER
YUU SHI OPENING OC SUBMISSIONS SOON!
FOR ANYTHING TERRITORY AU RELATED
@lowcallyfruity @kitwasnothere @justm3di0cr3 @cecilebutcher @skriblee-ksk @techno-danger @scint1llat3 @prince-kallisto @twsted-canvas @qsoap @kathxrat-01 @twstinginthewind @sillyslipperybananapeel @tixdixl @nemisisnemi @jadelover69 @the-trinket-witch @thehollowwriter @distant-velleity @beneathsakurashade @twistedwonderlandshenanigans @lumdays @waitlexist @croshelee @axel-the-goat-guy-and-gal @hunita812 @yuu-twisted
LINKS: CLOTHING INSPO, AESTHETIC, PLAYLIST
DIVIDERS: HERE FULL POWERPOINT(WIP): HERE