If-apples-were-way-better - Haiii :333 - Tumblr Blog

Superstar Luo Binghe au. All the directors beg him to be in their movies because his fame will immediately assure success for anything they make. He’s handsome, charming, dedicated, and most of all, extremely talented. He even does his own stunts!! Women love him, and men who say they hate him will still watch his movies so they can figure out how to be more like him. 

The only weird thing about Binghe as an actor is that he refuses to star in romantic films. He won’t kiss anyone, won’t pretend to date someone on screen, won’t even let another actor take over his role for the scenes he doesn’t want to do. His reason? He’s completely loyal to his husband.

Everyone thinks it’s stupid, obviously. You aren’t “cheating” by pretending to love someone else, it’s literally your job! Luo Binghe still refuses and says even he’s not good enough an actor to make anyone believe he could ever love someone other than Yuan-ge.

His fans hate this mysterious Yuan-ge. Because of his (probably insecure and jealous) spouse, all of Binghe’s fangirls cant see him sweep some y/n character off their feet. It’s even worse because they don’t know anything about this guy. Whenever someone asks to see or learn about Binghe’s husband, the star says he’ll never reveal Yuan-ge to the public, because he’s too beautiful and he doesn’t want everyone falling in love with him. 

People kind of run with the idea that obviously this guy must be a total weirdo who Binghe is embarrassed to be seen with. That has to be the explanation, because no matter how perfect someone is, how can they have such a chokehold on THE LUO BINGHE??

Then, one day, years after Luo Binghe’s initial rise to fame…. He goes on a talkshow. With his husband Shen Yuan. 

Obviously EVERYONE tunes in. No one uses TVs anymore bc of the internet, but just for this show, viewer ratings are the highest theyve ever been. Everyone wants to know what the fuss is all about with this guy to have Luo Binghe so down horrible. 

And Shen Yuan isn’t a weirdo. He’s also not some pretty yesman. He makes jokes that make the audience burst into laughter. He’s opinionated, which is really refreshing when every other celebrity stays neutral on every topic to avoid losing fans. He’s polite, but he’s not a pushover. He’s likeable, but he’s not a try-hard about it. Referencing memes makes him an instant hit with the younger generations, and the calm gentle way he talks makes him a hit with the older ones. All of a sudden everyone is going, okay we see why Luo Binghe is obsessed with him. 

Except… while shen yuan was making jokes and charming everyone, Luo Binghe was at his side, pathetically pawing at his husband for attention. The actor keeps whining every two minutes to be reassured yuan-ge still likes him. Whenever Shen Yuan compliments the host, Binghe looks like he’s about to cry. Whenever Luo Binghe jealously wraps his arms around shen Yuan everyone watching just rolls their eyes. Seeing them together people realize… shen yuan is the one that’s out of Luo Binghe’s league.

In just one hour public opinion goes from ‘no one can be worth binghe acting like that for’ to ‘luo binghe is so annoying, let shen yuan talk!!’ 

The next day someone finds shen yuan’s twitter and it blows up. He has his own fan pages now. There’s no pictures of him online other than the footage from the talkshow, so the fan accounts just post that over and over again. Shen yuan retweets a post about him with the caption “i never realized she was holding a plate of corn in this scene” and everyone loses their mind. Everything he says immediately goes viral bc that’s luo binghe’s attic wife.

People start nagging Binghe to post about Shen Yuan bc theyre so attached after his one and only publicized appearance. Binghe is super possessive, but yuan-ge tells him not to worry, so he relents and posts pictures of him and shen yuan on vacation. They’re together, holding hands… but shen yuan’s face and body are blurred out. It’s HORRIFYING. He looks like an eldritch monster bc luo binghe refuses to let anyone look at his yuan-ge in a swim suit, go away you perverts!! His instragram is now just full of pics of shen yuan where his eyes are blacked out so noone else can see how pretty they are. It’s nightmare fuel

Shen Yuan is unfortunately too unbothered to post pictures of himself. Everyone’s tired of Luo Binghe for “hogging shen yuan all to himself” when Shen Yuan is practically an internet celebrity now. 

People go to watch movies and their theatre conversations sound like this:

“Oh, Luo Binghe’s in this one!”

“Who?”

“You know Shen Yuan’s annoying husband?”

“OH THAT GUY..”

Shen Qingqiu, who had the most terrible,no good,very bad day possible in the holy mausoleum, described as "nothing but a heap of wounds and blood" by Binghe: start to cry when Binghe yells at him.

Also Shen Qingqiu: How unsightly.

The thing you have to understand about shen yuan as a person is that he's not an idiot but he's also too kind for his own good. He's the type of person who will see a violent monster imprisoned because it killed hundreds of people and think, "aww it's locked up how sad :("

He's the type of person who will free the monster, but think "I'm not stupid enough to try to pet it and end up dying myself, though!" not realizing the monster has sworn its life to protecting him for his kindness.

He's the kind of person who always changes others lives for the better and never expects anything in return. He's the kind of person who will expect his kindness to come back to bite him in the ass, but choose to be a loving person anyway

Idea: Shen Jiu wanders by the camp of children waiting for the entrance exam one night and comes across a small child beating Shang Qinghua with a stick shouting about his terrible writing and stupid ideas

It's very amusing even as Shang Qinghua is clearly not hurt he still looks cowed. And Shen Jiu is thoughtful, leaving his Shidi to get beaten by a small child

The next day the kids barely break soil before Shen Jiu is like: "That one" pointing at Shen Yuan

Everyone is surprised and pleased with his decision he leaves and in a frantic bit of panic Shang Qinghua nabs Luo Binghe

Which leads to Shen Yuan repeatedly stealing Luo Binghe and when questioned he says "he belongs on Qing Jing, not with that man"

Shen Qingqiu is delighted by the spite and joins Shen Yuan in trying to get Luo Binghe to switch to Qing Jing but Luo Binghe actually quite likes An Ding and Shang Qinghua who ruffles his hair and personally taught him to read.

(Shang Qinghua just wants to not die)

Anyway Shen Qingqiu secretly delights in Shen's sassy and snarky ways but he's also bad with children so he's like "fascinating." *pokes Shen Yuan with a long stick*

Ming Fan tries to bully Shen Yuan and gets called a "forgettable cannon fodder" and "ant boy" and immediately deflates and cries

Remember Shen Yuan was a bored rich kid internet weirdo. He's not dealing with bullshit if he can get away with it

i’m sorry are you telling me that after everything he said about his family supposedly being close— doting on his little sister and having a warm older brother whom yue qingyuan reminds him of— shen yuan was never once properly hugged before he died???

like i know he immediately tries to cover it with an uncomfy aside about how it wasn’t a pretty young woman hugging him or w/e, but he clearly isn’t talking about a first romantic hug specifically, because the context is being tackled by a crying 15-year-old whom he calls a huge baby for it.

so this is literally his first real, tight hug in his 20ish years of life and it happens in a ‘fictional’ world with a child he thinks might grow up to brutally-yet-justifiably (to his mind) torture him after he died alone and had his soul transplanted into someone else’s body.

babe??? i really don’t think your life was nearly as idyllic as you implied and i would love to know what the fuck is up with that

AU where Shen Jiu takes one look at tiny prospective disciple Shen Yuan who looks so much like him but so fucking soft and immediately goes “I must destroy it” but when he tells Yue Qingyuan he wants the boy for Qing Jing Peak, YQY unexpectedly puts his foot down— reason being that he thinks the Shens must be long-lost brothers and he’s afraid that if SJ badly hurts SY and then finds out the truth he’ll regret it. So instead SY becomes a disciple of Qiong Ding Peak.

The thing is, though, that SY knows why YQY took him in. So even though he sees YQY as an older brother figure, he privately believes that the only reason the sect leader is affectionate towards him is that he’s (possibly) related to SJ. Meanwhile, YQY is going around the whole Twelve Peaks like “omg have you met my beloved new disciple?? he’s so cute and smart and he’ll probably inherit the sect some day.” SJ is immensely jealous and furious at himself for it.

Cut forward several years and SY is head disciple of Qiong Ding. SJ manages to corner him after a meeting of the peak lords and is harassing him about something or other until SY finally blindsides him by blurting out the “fact” that YQY still thinks they’re siblings and is really only soft on him for SJ’s sake…. SJ is so incredulous he nearly has a qi deviation.

Afterwards, he tries very hard not to let his feelings towards SY be affected by the most absurd bit of self deprecation he has heard in his entire life, but a week later he breaks and storms into YQY’s study like “ZHANGMEN-SHIXIONG ARE YOU AWARE THAT YOUR PRECIOUS FAVORITE DISCIPLE BELIEVES YOU DON’T ACTUALLY LIKE HIM???”

cumplanes from twt

Ik he gossips w/ airplane but he needs to gossip more with his husband. binghe would get so worked up about it too if he could stop staring at his beautiful ranting wife for long enough to absorb any information

also im sorry for my terrible phone camera i really haven't gotten the hang of taking pictures of my traditional art yet lmao. if anybody has tips id appreciate them ^^ //

Bonus Binghe before his man came back for him:

I'll be honest here, i just think it's really funny to imagine that Shen Qingqiu in Liu Qingge's pov is like one of those action movies' protagonist's wives, y'all know the ones i'm talking about, right? The always smilling, laughing under the sheets while the camera records them, loves animals, kind hearted ones that get brutally murdered like 20 minutes into the movie which then drives their husbands into a revenge fueled murder spree

I don't think i'll ever be able to get over how coquetish Shen Qingqiu is, like, bro is supposed to be a repressed nerd inside a villain's body so why is he acting like the type of man wars are fought over? That head tilt with his voice drawing out the word "Shidi" would make ME fight a deranged half-demon over his corpse for 5 yrs straight, Liu Qingge was victim

Headcanon that Shen Yuan was hotter than Shen Qingqiu, actually.

Like yeah SQQ being a cultivator gave him a boost to enough attributes + being in a stallion novel where everyone is either unrealistic hot or dog's butt ugly got the Shen Qingqiu body extra points, and he wasn't bad looking to begin with. Plus not being ill is vastly more important to the new Shen Qingqiu than those extra hotness points (Without a Cure notwithstanding). But part of the reason why he's kind of like, meh, at least I'm not hideous or anything, is because Shen Yuan's original body was a knock out.

I also like him as chronically ill, and, as many people know, beauty standards and sustained suffering are not as incompatible as they should be. Shen Yuan was conventionally attractive in part because conventional beauty standards seem to want everyone slowly dying all the time. But even setting that aside, the man had flawless bone structure, an appealing figure, captivating eyes, and the kind of voice that stopped people in their tracks.

All of which was a contributing factor to his antisocial lifestyle, actually. Despite the fact that Shen Yuan does enjoy company and requires a certain baseline of social enrichment for his enclosure, his internalized homophobia and closeting did not play well with overtures from interested parties (regardless of gender). The only way to minimize the odds of him being asked out on dates was to essentially become a shut-in, especially since even Shen Yuan can only make so many excuses before he himself starts to notice that he's going to a lot of effort to avoid specifically that avenue of socialization. Far better to just remove himself from any risk of it, and then vocally lament that oh no he's just too much of a nerd to get anywhere with women!

Anyway this largely doesn't matter much outside of sheer comedy potential for any situation where SY gets his old body/life back. Like imagine a reveal scenario where the System is going to transport them back to their old lives.

Shang Qinghua: well bro I guess this is gonna be the ultimate test of love, right?

Shen Yuan: what do you mean?

Shang Qinghua: our husbands are gonna see what we looked like back before we were glorious cultivators! they're going to have to track us down in our mundane, kinda shitty pre-transmigration lives! it's gonna be at least a little embarrassing, right?

Shen Yuan: *gets his old body back*

Shang Qinghua, normal human with average looks: ...

Shen Yuan, exemplary 11/10: ?

Shang Qinghua: what. the fuck?? bro what the fuck why are you hot???

Shen Yuan: don't make it weird

Shang Qinghua: make it weird??? why were you sitting at home reading my shitty novel when you could have been out there building your own harem???

Shen Yuan: stop exaggerating

Shang Qinghua: oh my god you've always been like this. this is it, isn't it? it wasn't even brain damage from the transmigration or something--

Shen Yuan: hey

Shang Qinghua: --you've just always been completely unaware, haven't you? every time I wrote a beautiful woman who didn't know her own appeal you'd be jumping down my throat--

Shen Yuan: because that's a stupid trope--!

Shang Qinghua: --JUMPING DOWN MY THROAT EXACTLY LIKE THAT but this whole time THIS WHOLE TIME it wasn't even a glow-up issue, you've just been that, personified, yourself--

Shen Yuan: look I know I'm not ugly but I'm not I'm hardly that good-looking

Shang Qinghua: YOU ARE NEVER ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE THAT TROPE AGAIN! oh my god. how many broken hearts did you leave behind when you died?!

Shen Yuan: none, I wasn't even seeing anyone--

Shang Qinghua: yeah full offense but I am nottt taking your word for that. I bet you had a harem you didn't know about in this lifetime too. I bet you had a fan club, like an anime prince

Shen Yuan: *mumbling*

Shang Qinghua: what was that?

Shen Yuan: I said... only in high school...

Shang Qinghua: oh my god

Shen Yuan: it wasn't a big deal!

Shang Qinghua: *frantically trying to see if he can find any trace of it on the internet now*

Btw i once again need y'all's opinions

do you guys think yue qingyuan might have fallen for shen yuan too, in the end?

my headcanon is that shen jiu's 'charming personality' has pretty much eroded most of yue qingyuan's affection over the years. he'd still offer back up to his 'xiao jiu' in all things, but it's mostly guilt and nostalgia by the time shen yuan appears. and stubbornness, yqy simply refusing to face the facts tbh.

i wonder if he didn't find 'post-qi deviation' shen qingqiu just that much more lovable, cute and everything he wished his xiao jiu would be. in the end, it was shen yuan that yqy opened up to and to whom he finally gave an explanation. only after shen yuan showed him he 'still' cared about his 'qi-ge'.

it's a shame that shen yuan is now the one that carries the 'guilt' for replacing the original scum villain and taking his place. 'inheriting' yqy's affection even if 95% of said affection at that point is towards shen yuan rather than shen jiu.

i really wish to see yue qingyuan/shen yuan in a happy relationship since i think they could have great chemistry, i just can't see how it could be achieved without 1.000.000+ words full of guilt, impostor syndrome and heartbreak 😔

come on! they could be so soft and happy together!

Still thinking about how Shen Qingqiu was really thinking "I can easily fake my death by actually dying and rebooting in a spare body because everyone will be glad I'm gone and not miss me at all" and is shocked that all the people he spent years building close relationships with, relationships that he valued and cared about deeply, were actually really really fucking traumatised and upset by his death

My dude is not okay in the slightest

Can we talk about how amazing Shen Qingqiu actually is?? He wakes up in an unfamiliar room to an unfamiliar person talking like he knows him, and his first instinct is to play along to buy himself time to figure out the situation without endangering himself. He quickly puts it together and manages to outwardly keep his cool and assess the situation. At multiple times in the story he's forced to think quickly on his feet and he's GOOD at it, he realizes things fast, memorizes things easily, he's extremely studious and read through the entire Qing Jing library as soon as he realized where and who he was. He's quick witted and flexible with his thinking, great at problem solving, a great actor... Sure, he couldn't fool people into thinking he was the exact same as someone they had known for years, but he's great at keeping his thoughts and feelings on the inside while showing a cool, controlled, *confident* face to everyone else. Actually he's really good at genuinely taking control of situations in general, even when he IS internally screaming. Fake it til you make it WORKS for him, because even when he feels like he's faking, he is doing amazing work and showing great competense. On top of that he's very compassionate even when he doesn't necessarily want to be, and while he was given a body that had already become an immortal cultivator, he still put in a LOT of work to practice, refine and master that cultivation until it was completely natural and second nature for him to use it. And that's fucking AMAZING.

The only times his abilities fail him, really, is when he believes he already knows how something is supposed to go and thinking it's set in stone. He believes Luo Binghe must hate him, must want a harem, and that he himself isn't that important or desirable, and he believes it SO STRONGLY that he can't see past it until it's shoved directly in his face. That's the only times he truly acts like an oblivious idiot, and honestly can you blame him? Like I said, he believes those are facts set in stone, no matter how much the evidence contradicts it. The pitfall of having detailed future information of an alternate timeline, I suppose.

TL;DR: SQQ is a brilliant, quick witted, creative, intelligent and hard working man and I fucking LOVE that for him. He was the perfect candidate for filling the role of the academic peak's leader and the sect's strategist, because he shares all those same qualities with his predecessor (I'm assuming, I haven't actually read the SJ extras yet oops). The main thing setting them apart, really, is just that SY was raised to be *kind* where SJ was unfortunately raised to be cruel.

Chef's kiss, truly.

When your multiple jobs take away your wifey time...💔

the many faces of immortal master shen qingqiu

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?

quick art of my wife >_<

[ID: Scum Villain fanart of Shen Qingqiu covering his mouth with a fan and blushing, expression thoughtful. End ID]

ID by @princess-of-purple-prose

ok but bunny suits r so cute

[ID: Scum Villain fanart of Shen Qingqiu in a bunny suit. He's first shown sitting down with a confused expression and light blush. Then he's shown with an unnerving angry expression, planting a heel on Shang Qinghua's forehead. Shang Qinghua, bleeding, looks outraged. End ID]

ID by @princess-of-purple-prose

save me from class liushen save me

i have 32 mental illnesses, this is the 33rd

that 1 fucking cars meme

[ID: Scum Villain fanart. Shen Qingqiu smiles and says, "Hey, Liu-shidi. It's nice to be back in Cang Qiong Mountain." Liu Qingge, intense and flustered, replies, "I want you."

Shen Qingqiu sweats, looking confused. He's labeled "Most desired straight man by men". In the background is an ominous-looking Luo Binghe, labeled "Most desired gay man by women." End ID]

ID by @princess-of-purple-prose

Tonight, I feel like…I like you a great deal.