Freedom is a Length of Rope

quick little drawing to c e l e b r a t e !!!!!!

Naruto: “I can’t believe we waited all afternoon…just for him to not show up…like are you fucking kidding me?”

Shen Yuan in the not-too-distant future plays an immersive virtual reality MMO, a revolutionary one of its kind that offers unprecedented customization options, called YGGDRASIL. While the basic game inclines itself most strongly to western fantasy TTRPG tropes, it's so flexible that players can create a wide range of fantasy archetypes.

Shen Yuan ended up falling in with, and eventually taking over, a guild that was focused on xianxia tropes and workshopping character classes and race types to create them. The guild had pretty strict rules on what players could do racially and aesthetically to fit in -- stuff like secret dragons and demons and aesthetically-swapped paladins were in, elves were allowed as long as the character lore steered more towards nature spirits and less towards tolkien, and undead were taken on a case-by-case basis.

Over the course of several years, the Cang Qiong guild rose to prominence on their server as one of the strongest good-aligned roleplay groups, to the point of even having some dedicated copycats and rivals. The original twelve founding members each built a different segment of the guild's base, styling it as a mountain range with twelve peaks, and a lot of energy was poured into constructing NPCs to defend the peaks from the frequent incursions of rival player factions.

But over time, other games like YGGDRASIL started to appear and pulled players in. Some were more complementary to the eastern fantasy genre, some had better immersive features or superior tech, more hype, and etc. Other plays began to filter out as different aspects of their lives took over and they started families, got too busy with work, found other hobbies, and so on.

Twelve years after its launch, YGGDRASIL announced rather unceremoniously that it would be shutting the game down, with everything on it destined for the deletion bin. By then, the only players left in Cang Qiong guild were Shen Yuan and Xiang Fei, the latter only ever logging on occasionally to goof around and build extra NPCs for his novel ideas, while Shen Yuan kept maintaining the guild out of nostalgia and a firm belief that the game would be getting some kind of renewed interest any day now.

Accordingly, Shen Yuan was pissed to learn it was just going to be shut down, without even any word of a possible YGGDRASIL 2 or if players would get any bonuses for carrying over their accounts.

Shen Yuan decides to stay online until the last possible moment as the server goes dark. Xiang Fei joins him and nearly has to log off to go to sleep and get up in time for work in the morning, but decides to tough it out for his bro. As Shen Yuan laments, the two gather up all the major NPCs in the sect, head for the peak lords hall on Cang Qiong, and arrange the "Peak Lord" NPCs around the table with them. The NPCs can't talk, but each was styled as the lord and defender of a different peak and as brethren of a united sect, deferring only to their ancestral masters and creators, the godlike players of the setting.

Shen Yuan also insists on bringing along Luo Binghe, the secret demon emperor and trump card for the sect's defenses. Binghe was, in Shen Yuan's opinion, the pinnacle of Xiang Fei's creativity. Though with the appearance of a humble (read: ridiculously beautiful) disciple, in reality Binghe was a top level max skill demon lord, who had taken so many resources and quests to bulk out that it was ridiculous. His programming was fussy, to the point where he had once gone on a rampage and wiped out the actual guild players -- sort of the last interesting thing to have happened before another more popular game was released, and their guild activity plummeted.

Xiang Fei had often teased Shen Yuan about liking Binghe so much, especially since, in his opinion, he was a less interesting secret demon than the one defending his home peak of An Ding. As a final gesture, Xiang Fei reprograms Binghe to be a disciple of Qing Jing (Shen Yuan's peak) in specific, and chuckling to himself deletes the line about him being a playboy and replaces it with a line that says he's madly in love with Shen Qingqiu (SY's avatar).

As the players and their NPCs sit around the table, the game servers go dark. Shen Yuan closes his eyes, braces for the forced log-out...

Then feels himself draw a lungful of cool mountain air, instead.

Ensue Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua freaking out as they realize that they've apparently transmigrated into some sort of reality based on their game. At first the other "Peak Lords" (the NPCs who have suddenly come to life) are confused as to why their sect brothers are acting so erratically, but then they go out and discover that their entire mountain range has seemingly been displaced from its geographical location in YGGDRASIL, to some unfamiliar spot in a totally different world.

Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua double freak out because not only have they somehow become real in the context of the game, they've also brought their mountain range wholesale to yet another fantasy world?!

Shang Qinghua takes some of the other peak lords and goes to check on the actual peaks, to confirm if the other NPCs have come to life and that everything from the guild has made the inexplicable transfer. Shen Qingqiu sets out to check the surrounding area, while tentatively agreeing to let Liu Qingge, Yue Qingyuan, and Qi Qingqi go check in other directions. Luo Binghe ends up insisting on accompanying him, much to Shen Qingqiu's bewilderment, but he just ends up going with it. Outside the unfamiliar world is in its night cycle. Most of the exterior wards are still functional, although they've lost some of the alert arrays from the further outposts. Shen Qingqiu flies up for as high of an aerial view as he can get, surveying the situation, and musing that it really does seem that they've been transported to a totally new world. Also, using all his cool cultivator/class abilities is even more exciting in the flesh.

Anyway, Shen Qingqiu warns Luo Binghe that this unknown world could also contain unknowable threats, they don't know how their respective abilities would stack up here, etc etc, and Luo Binghe privately vows to bring this world to heel and lay its treasures safely at his shizun's feet.

Additional thoughts under the cut:

Loving the idea of it being mid-canon. Wei Wuxian is just like hey. Where did. Why's there...? And yet he can't just ask because obviously anyone should know the deal about the Mysterious Mountain of Cultivators that appeared sometime in the years he was dead.

And SY and Airplane do have to stay in their identities, yup! It would probably destabilize too much for the NPC characters who've newly spawned into actually being alive for them to try and add the additional layers to it, and who knows how they might react? They're all now very powerful cultivators, some even more powerful than Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua, so it's safer just to go along.

I think Shen Qingqiu's probably got no actual backstory that he settled on for himself, beyond a few sentences about being the Qing Jing peak lord and being important enough as a strategist and political player that even the sect leader defers to him on many matters. Then when everything becomes Real he somehow finds that he's Shen Jiu's twin brother and Yue Qingyuan defers to him because of trauma reasons, by some alchemy of the system trying to work out the most reasonable explanations.

Overgrown apocalyptic space ring:

As we all know, thanks to the support of the good people of Tumblr, Tylenol has experienced a meteoric rise to second place. Even though her competition is stiff, I believe in Tylenol's ability to go the distance.

But let's take a look at the competition:

Elmer seems to be a lovely boy. I have no qualms with Elmer, and think he would look fantastic on a beer can. But what about Elmer's campaigns? Who is the power behind the throne here, and how have they managed to find such breakout success on this competition?

A handful of wealthy donors are trying to buy this competition.

At the end of the day, all donations are good donations here. This is a charity event so every penny earned is going to help animals in need. But it's not lost on me that Elmer's current ranking is thanks entirely to a few individuals with the financial means to put their thumbs on the scale.

Tylenol's donors, comparatively, are small and numerous, mostly $1-10 donations from many passionate believers in what she stands for (autism and pain relief I think).

Overall, the donations tell a very different story than what the base ranking shows you. Elmer is held aloft by just 24 donors and bolstered by a few wealthy patrons, whereas Tylenol has won the hearts of literally hundreds of people. Even the current third place, Abby, owes her ranking to numerous small contributions rather than one or two large ones.

The process is actually quite sophisticated, and requires the presence of a full-grown goth to trigger it. A pupal-stage proto-goth, at this point completely indistinguishable from any other small human child, only needs to encounter a mature specimen once - and while the initial imprinting that ensues will only take seconds, the incubation period often takes more than a decade, even several.

The first visible step of the transformation is triggered when the dormant goth suddenly gains awareness that they have free will and can do whatever they want with their appearance. While the progress may be gradual, or seem like the transformation happened all at once overnight, the initial seed was planted years ago. And now, in full bloom, a fully-fledged mature adult goth may finally be happy.

And I asked, “Why can’t you?”

I’m pretty sure that was the first time she’d ever realized that she was an adult, with a job, who could make her own decisions about herself.

A few weeks later, at the same store, I overheard one of the employees telling one of the other cashiers that he still didn’t know what happened with her, but she showed up to a shift dressed completely different, had changed her hair and makeup, and just said, “I hate this job, I quit,” and walked out.

Good question, also no that won’t help.

shitty MS Paint 3 minutes doodle, nto entirely accurate: When you have your pinky hooked on the “bottom” edge of the phone for the extra security so it doesn’t slide out of your hand that easily, you’re wreaking damage on your hand, since the pinky is extremely askew from it’s resting position. You might have noticed that when you hold your phone like that for long time it begins to hurt, like when you are gripping a pen too tightly for example.

pt2

it’s “get a kiss from your teacher” day

rocky’s big brain plan to get more smooches backfired spectacularly

dont be too greedy guys

canon is what happens in the text. e.g. merlin tries to poison morgana

a headcanon is a fact that you have personally made up as an elaboration of canon. it is your invention. e.g. i think morgana and gwen had a teenage lesbian situationship before the events of canon. or, i think modern morgana would love evanesence.

an interpretation is how one reads the existing text. it is not an invented fact nor is it a headcanon, it is a reading. e.g. i think merlin tries to poison morgana out of misplaced self-hatred. or, i think that one line was delivered with suppressed malice and shows a nuanced relationship.

fanon is the general fandom’s accepted headcanons and interpretations that elaborate or recontextualize canon. e.g. merlin is a badass waif and morgana is a bitch.