OH MY GOD OTHER PEOPLE DO THIS???
I HAD NO UDEA OTHER PEOPLE ALSO DID THAT. THATS LITERALLY HOW MOST OF MY IDEAS ARE INVENTED, I TALK DIALAUGE TO MYSELF AND MAKE STORIES AROUND THE DIALAUGE
"How do you write such realistic dialogue-" I TALK TO MYSELF. I TALK TO MYSELF AND I PRETEND I AM THE ONE SAYING THE LINE. LIKE SANITY IS SLOWLY SLIPPING FROM BETWEEN MY FINGERS WITH EVERY MEASLY WORD THEY TYPE OUT. THAT IS HOW.
I'm trying to prove something.
What the!
Bi queens
HC—Luo Binghe looks almost identical to Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky. (basically Airplane is hot but doesn’t realize it.)
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Shen Yuan woke up back in modern China after spending sixty years in PIDW, so, of course, the first thing he did was message Airplane.
(That’s actually the second… third?…thing he did. The first was trying reach out to the system. The second was crying.) ((But if Shen Yuan were asked why he was crying he’d scoff. Tears? No way! His eyes were just dry.))
Anyway, he reached out to Shang Qinghua—who, by the grace of God, came back with him—and found out that they both lived in Hong Kong. And not only that, but in the same neighborhood! Which was insane, but also very lucky. Maybe even too lucky? The universe never usually helped them out. Maybe this kindness of them being so near each other was an apology from The System? Whatever it was, it was best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
The two agreed to meet on a Saturday, when Shen Yuan didn’t have school (being back as a senior in high school sucked).
Here’s the thing, Shang Qinghua sent a long winded text as a warning about how he looked very different. Which…fair. Everyone in PIDW was gorgeous, and people in the real world were not like that.
They agreed to meet at a café. Shen Yuan had sent Shang Qinghua a selfie so the man knew who to look for. It was a decent selfie, one Shen Yuan may have spent too much time on. It was a mirror selfie, showing off a nice outfit and Shen Yuan throwing up a peace sign. The photo showed an older teenager, with black hair that fell to his shoulders, large black eyes, and a silly smile. (He sent the picture to his mom too.) ((Seeing his family again was a whole other story better never to be told. There were a lot of tears and hugs on Shen Yuan’s part. It was a little embarrassing.))
Shen Yuan had gotten to the café early, snagging a corner table and waited with two iced lattes. He watched people out of the window. The streets were busy with both pedestrians and cars, there were delivery bicyclists and people carrying shopping bags. It was crowded. And loud. And dirty.
Being back was weird.
But, having indoor air conditioning was nice. And the internet! Oh God, he’d sell his kidney for the internet back home.
He blinked his eyes, his contacts felt harsh against them. Years without needing them made him forget what they were like. He should’ve worn his glasses, but had honestly forgotten where he put them. Maybe he should buy another pair? It wasn’t like he lacked the funds and he wasn’t sure how long he’d be in the modern world.
It was the chair across from him scrapping across the wooden floor that startled Shen Yuan back into focus.
His phone told him that Airplane was five minutes late.
“About time you showed u—Binghe?” Shen Yuan gapped.
“Close-ish?” Shang Qinghua flushed and adjusted his black framed glasses. His curly hair was kept in an undercut, he had pierced ears and a lip piercing and a sleeve tattoo on his right arm. He had freckles, dimples, and a 5 o’clock shadow too. Which. What? Okay. “Hi.”
That was Shen Yuan’s husbands face looking back at him! Sure, the eyes were black and there was no demon mark, but he intimately knew that face.
“Qinghua?!” Shen Yuan wheezed his name, his heart doing weird things in his chest at the fucking shock. “You look…you’re nearly identical to…”
“Yeah,” Shang Qinghua sighed, “imagine how surprised I was the first time I saw Binghe. The system stole my face!”
The voice was the same as Luo Binghe’s, even though the pitch was a little different.
And the body. Because…Shang Qinghua was tall? And muscular? And he was mother fucking LUO BINGHE.
“What the fuck?” Shen Yuan stared.
Shang Qinghua sighed as he grabbed his iced latte. His nails were painted black.
“My brain can’t—” comprehend this. Shen Yuan’s mind was static. Error 404 bounced around in his brain.
Was this some sick joke? Did The System do this? Was he really back in the bamboo house resting in bed and having a weird as fuck dream?!
“Wanna take this somewhere else?” Shang Qinghua asked, his eyes darted around the establishment uncomfortably. People were staring. At him. Because he was fucking gorgeous.
Shen Yuan had So. Many. Questions.
“Is it as bad as your office at An Ding?” Shen Yuan asked, his lips curled disdain.
Shang Qinghua huffed a soft sound of amusement. “Where do you think Binghe gets his clean freak mentality from?”
“Wait,” Shen Yuan stood up when Shang Qinghua did. “When you said you wrote a self-insert, you didn’t mean Shang Qinghua??? You meant Luo Binghe?!”
“Well, yeah, bro.” It was surreal to hear the word ‘bro’ come out of that mouth. “Binghe is all the good, bad and ugly of me, amped up to eleven. Well…with bad at a fifteen.”
“Wait, what?” The hamster in Shen Yuan’s wheel of a brain began to run faster as thoughts began to practically explode. But there was one that was louder than any of the other:
Did this mean that Shen Yuan basically married Shang Qinghua?!
Sometimes it feels like a little bit of ego mania is inherent to human nature, par for the course- other times it feels like im drowning in the doubt of whether im actually smart or just a narcissist. I always thought it was a problem that everyone had, but then i realized that the struggle to confirm to the self that you are who you say you are - whether you said who you were aloud to others or not - is not actually normal. Imposter syndrome is a finicky bitch that needs to pick a lane, are you sticking around or leaving me the hell alone- chop chop i wanna know. At the same time, i know that for people struggling with imposter syndrome (myself included) it can be really difficult to accept facts about yourself as true or untrue- especially when your an avid consumer of books and movies and shit, because every time you feel the imposter syndrome popping up your like “uhm, why do i sound like a book character- ew no, that is cringe i do not want to fall into tropes”
RAHHH UR ART IS SO EDIBLE.. i wanna colour it so bad 😭
twitter absolutely ate these up so heres some moshang sketchies
Rage. In my heart. All-consuming. FUCK AI.
STANFORD COULD NEVERRRR!!!!!