Starastray - Untitled

I love soft Sasuke and I believe there should be more of that side of him showcased (my boi's had enough trauma)

I wish we could have seen more of Sasuke's redemption arc and especially the bonds he had to restore (and deepen) with Sakura and Kakashi (not to mention Naruto bc he already has a really deep bond with him).

I still think one of the funniest experiences of my life was watching American Psycho with my sister and afterwards we both went "okay. Lets do something more lighthearted now" and put on the dubbed version of Howl's Moving Castle and we both lost our minds when we heard Howl start talking

Every single day I'm grateful for that time I stumbled on the SVSSS headcanon that while Bingqiu is considered highkey confusing and lowkey cringe in the demon realm, Moshang is known as the Power Couple™. They're the demonic love story. The 'It Couple'.

Just generations of demons sighing over the dramatic and bloody love story of the Northern King and his right hand man plus spymaster, yearning for a love story filled with such glorious violence and betrayal! A classic childhood friends to lovers narrative filled with ups and downs and copious murder and gore! Love at first sight! The story of the loyal spy who rose up the ranks of the brutal Northern Court, culling his competition while providing vital intel to his liege, all the while infiltrating the most powerful cultivation sect in the world and eventually even becoming a Peak Lord! The slow burn of all slow burns! All kinds of spicy complicated power imbalances! Sexy, unexpected age gaps! Years of heavy plot! Decades of passionate courting! The pinnacle of inter-species forbidden romance!The tale of a man who swore eternal loyalty after falling violently in love at the very first meeting, calling a mere Prince His King in his desire and determination to see his beloved's ascension to the throne that was his birthright, and the Demon Prince who was unexpectedly presented with fierce loyalty in a life that had until then been rife with treachery and grabbed it with both hands and never looked back!

...and there's Junshan and the weird human he keeps around. Somewhat interesting if you're into that teacher-student thing I guess. There were very few deaths. Some bland murders. The trial arc and the self destruct thing plus corpse hoarding was interesting but overall very vanilla. Unseasoned. Not even a proper decade of drama. Kinda boring. And Junshan's half human so they're like Walmart version inter-species romance. But whatever the Emperor's into I guess. His dad was kinda weird too but at least his relationship with that human woman had some kick to it. The new generation just doesn't appreciate a long drawn out painful romance tsk tsk...

Like infinitely grateful to whoever first spawned that headcanon. Never fails to make me laugh. Honestly the most hilarious thing I've ever seen in this fandom. Hope your pillow is always cold and you never stub your toe.

I've read like all 4 docs on ao3 about SY and SJ sharing a body, and I'm soooo not normal about this concept oh my God. So, it's time to ramble about my take on the concept, of course.

Most things I have read have SY transmigrate at his usual date, but... What if he didn't? What if he transmigrated when SJ was a child on the streets?

For the purposes of this, the person who has the most control of the body is based around soul strength, willpower, and collaboration between souls.

In the beginning, SY has very low soul strength, since he just straight up died, but being a child, SJ's is not much better. They both have obscene amounts of willpower, see canon. And at the beginning? Oh, SJ does NOT want to collaborate.

SY hasn't really gotten the whole "baby scum villain" thing yet, and thinks his soul has been glued to a particularly annoying street kid, so he tries to be patient with SJ, but it's not easy! Holy shit, this kid is a turbo brat who hates him! He is constantly threatening to exorcize SY! Like, kid, you can't exorcize me, you're eight. But SY does end up being useful at times, pointing out danger, reading signs that SJ can't, using his adult knowledge to help him as best he can. By the time they get to the Qiu manor, SJ grudgingly trusts and is maybe attached to his weird ghost hanger-on.

And then the Qiu manor hits. It's... Bad. Really bad. Qi-Ge is gone, hopefully to come back to them someday, but someday is not now, and they need to survive the day. Shen Yuan can't get over the fact that this is just a kid, that all of this is happening to a child. He is an adult, maybe he's not the most responsible adult, or the best person to handle this situation, but damn it SY has to do something.

The first time Shen Yuan takes over completely, it's during a beating in the first week. Before, even if SY had some control of the body, SJ was usually able to yank it back at least partially when he wanted to. He was aware of what was going on. But this time, Shen Jiu feels the first few strikes hit his back before Shen Yuan bubbles up, wrapping around him and pulling him down into blissful oblivion.

When Shen Jiu wakes up, it's over, and Shen Yuan is using some meager supplies he got from god knows where to tend to their wounds. Shen Jiu is scared, he didn't know Shen Yuan could take over that completely, but he's also... Relieved. And confused.

"Why did you take over then? If you really could steal my body, why didn't you do it earlier?"

"You didn't deserve that, Shen Jiu. I- how could I see that and not try and help? Not try and protect you?"

Shen Jiu froze. And then, slowly, started crying. Almost immediately SY starts fussing, asking if their wounds hurt too badly, if he needs him to dull the pain more. SJ sniffles, wiping his eyes, and asks; "More?"

Shen Yuan never explains that, but as SJ goes through the Qiu manor, he realizes that he is absolutely not in as much pain as he really should be. It's easier to bear when the pain is shared between the two of them.

The first time that Qiu Jianluo realizes something is off is during one of his lessons. As the brush is placed in Shen Jiu's hands, the angry, venomous child behind a mask of fear fades away, and he is instead facing calm indifference. The characters are perfect, every one of them, even the ones which there is no possible way Shen Jiu should have been able to know.

This pattern continues. Shen Jiu knows things he shouldn't. He is abnormally good at talking circles around guards and other servants, confusing and manipulating them enough to evade Qiu Jianluos summons in ways that couldn't possibly be his fault, orchestrating many of their confrontations with Qiu Haitang around as protection.

Shen Jiu is a good actor, he's smart, he's quick, but he isn't a fully grown adult master poser like our Shen Yuan is. Shen Yuan, number one rules lawyer and actor, is incredibly good at driving Qiu Jianluo up the wall without him being able to retaliate, and when he does manage to get in a beating, SJ/SY is not nearly as responsive to the pain as he should be, and heals faster than he should.

This is because the lovely new flowers that Qiu Haitang has planted in the garden at SJs kind suggestion are a PIDW plant that provides accelerated healing.

Eventually, it's too much, and Qiu Jianluo KNOWS something is up. He calls a rogue cultivator by the name of Wu Yanzi in to investigate the problem, and Wu Yanzi finds, and exorcises it. Shen Jiu is terrified and panicked, and Wu Yanzi, who had seen Shen Jiu's high spiritual potential, places Shen Yuan into a spirit trapping pouch and tells Shen Jiu to burn the Qiu manor to the ground and bring him as much money and jewelry as possible if he wants his little ghost back.

So the Qiu Manor burns, and Shen Jiu joins Wu Yanzi, significantly less willingly this time. Qi-Ge is nowhere to be seen, and Shen Yuan isn't there to save him anymore.

Shen Jiu supposes he will have to save himself.

Silly bingqiu idea: Binghe is worried shizun has someone on the side... CLEANING for him

He knows sqq is super loyal (shizun says in his hometown people don't have harems! They marry one person for life! How romantic!) so he will never worry about shizun looking at another person that way.

BUT. He refuses to let anyone else clean or cook for his husband!! BINGHE is the wife! HIM.

Just thinking of a lot of "cheating tropes" but they're turned really silly and ridiculous. Instead of finding lipstick on shizuns collar, he smells the robe and goes "Who washed this!? I don't use this detergent!!"

He'll see food in the kitchen and start crying "shizun ate another man's cooking!? In OUR HOME!?"

He can't accompany shizun on a mission because he has work in the demon realm, and he's stuck on the throne holding his head in his hands wondering if shizun is using this business trip to, gasp, frequent those terrible establishments. (Restaurants)

Meanwhile shen Yuan feels super bad about binghe having to do everything around the house, so he's slowly been trying to help more. He tried washing his own clothes and cooking a bit, but binghe seems to hate it. He must be really awful at chores! Hopefully he'll get better with practice

ok. enough suffering now. i am seeking out delight

SV AU where Shen Yuan is fourteen when he transmigrates.

Nothing else is different. It just turns out that the hate-reader dunking on Airplane's shitty sex scenes and worshiping Luo Binghe like it was his life's calling, and clearly repressing the hell out of some queer inclinations was, in fact, a literal teenager. He still ends up in adult Shen Qingqiu's body as the Qing Jing Peak Lord scum villain who's doomed by the narrative.

In fact the plot goes more or less exactly the same. Nothing significant in the main story changes.

But Luo Binghe and Shang Qinghua both have A Time in a post-canon identity reveal scenario.

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*

AU where, after dying in PIDW, Yue Qingyuan wakes up in the past when Luo Binghe is still just 14… and of course, he immediately goes to kill him.

Unfortunately, he still has his protagonist halo, so something interferes, and YQY ends up being confronted by the other peak lords about why he suddenly decided to try and murder a random Qing Jing disciple. Now, YQY can’t just say that he’s a demon, because he’s not sure what methods will work to reveal that, since he doesn’t know how LBH hid his his heritage the first time around — so he comes up with excuses, ones that he hopes will at least get LBH out of the sect before he becomes too powerful. He’s a poor cultivator, he always gets into fights, the other disciples always accuse him of stealing things and he doesn’t get along with them, so they should just throw him out of the sect —

What he forgets to account for is the fact that Shen Jiu is there, listening to all of this, and hearing YQY list off all the traits he sees LBH as sharing with his younger self as reasons he doesn’t belong at the sect. He knew YQY didn’t care that much about him, not after he’d abandoned him when they were children but… it still hurts to hear it spoken about so explicitly. If YQY didn’t owe him a debt for saving his life, would he be saying the same words about SJ?

So, SJ stands up to defend LBH. Sure, he might have been silently hoping the kid would quit or get himself killed, but SJ is nothing if not spiteful, and YQY? He just made things personal. LBH is his disciple, not YQY’s and by the time SJ is done with him, he’ll be fit to be his successor.

YQY is now faced with an impossible situation — use his authority as sect leader to go against SJs wishes and get rid of his future torturer… or wait and see what happens. Surely he’ll get bored of Luo Binghe eventually and start hating him again… right?

Trying my hand at this one:

Shen Yuan transmigrates into a worm.

It's just a normal garden variety (heh) earthworm, not a special magical worm (yet), so initially he thinks this is gonna be a really short transmigration adventure indeed. But of course that would be boring, so he also manages to end up in the body of a worm who lives under one of those magical immortal fruit-bearing trees.

One of the fruit drops, Worm Yuan chows down, and he significantly upgrades his physical abilities, and senses, and gains a cultivation boost! Hooray!

Unfortunately it's not enough to fix that he's still a worm, but it's enough so that he has less to fear from getting hit by a random shovel or such. In the process of eating the fruit, he sees some disciples (come to gather the fruits, slacking somewhat since they even allowed a few to hit the dirt) and overhears enough of a conversation to figure out that he's transmigrated into a worm that lives in the PIDW setting. Specifically, on Qian Cao Peak!

Wow! How random and wild! Why a worm??? What god did he piss off in his past life for this?

Well anyway, it is what it is, and Shen Yuan decides that if he's gonna live a probably short and uneventful life as a worm, at least he wants to see his favorite character. So he inches his way in what he hopes is the general direction of Qing Jing Peak, course-correcting whenever he gathers that he's guessed wrong, hitching a ride on the occasional shoe or once even gripping the internal part of a wheel from an An Ding Peak carriage, until finally, he's leveled up his meager worm cultivation even more and has reached Qing Jing Peak!

As Worm Yuan continues to inch his way across the peak, he keeps just-barely missing Luo Binghe, until finally he comes across... not Binghe, but a recognizable item: a fake jade pendant!

Though lost initially on a tree branch, it must have fallen at some point, down to the ground where Worm Yuan stumbled upon it.

Mustering his strength, Worm Yuan manages to get the broken string of the fake jade around his little worm body, and then makes the herculean trek to the wood shed. Dodging bird attacks, hiding from other QJP disciples, and further upgrading his Worm Skills such as digging, inching, and oozing, until finally he reaches his destination and squeezes under the door.

Leading to the situation of an incredulous disciple Luo Binghe -- who had previously been tending to his bruises -- watching as a little worm climbs into the shed (normal, usually it's spiders but sometimes other bugs get inside) while dragging his long-lost most treasured item in what can only be described as a deliberate fashion (very not normal).

After ascertaining that Worm Yuan is not some cultivator's tool or shapeshifted creature, Luo Binghe decides to approach this situation in the only reasonable way, and offers the worm some scraps from his leftovers. Worm Yuan happily shares a meal with his favorite character, and things take off from there.

Somehow Luo Binghe finds himself learning more about cultivation by watching Worm Yuan than he has in all his attempts to figure out his manual or listen to his shixiongs on Qing Jing Peak so far. He watches Worm Yuan work up the spiritual energy to crack rocks and scale the wood shed walls, and deduces some methods for applying his own spiritual energy in similar ways. He finds it heartening to think that if even a little worm can learn to cultivate through what seems to be pure determination, then surely Binghe can make his situation work, too. He scrounges around and manages to gather up enough materials for a makeshift terrarium, so Worm Yuan can be safe and cozy by his side at night.

Of course, trials and tribulations never stop. At some point Ming Fan and his cronies find the terrarium and smash it. Binghe is inconsolable until he realizes that Worm Yuan got away (extra durable, after all!) and is wriggling back towards him in a reassuring fashion.

Worm Yuan's hero schedule is quite full, too! At some point he digs his way into a tunnel to the Lingxi caves and saves Liu Qingge, and in the midst of the demon invasion he manages to help Binghe at a vital moment by hardening his body and tripping his opponent. He rides in Binghe's pocket when Binghe goes to claim Zheng Yang, too, developing his cultivation throughout it all.

Unfortunately, kind of, Worm Yuan is also in Luo Binghe's pocket when he gets thrown into the Endless Abyss. Through the hardships of the Abyss, Worm Yuan consumes some unsavory things (the less said about the quality of worm food in the Abyss, the better) but manages to unlock rare worm cultivation upgrades, until finally he achieves his first transformation -- a gigantic Dune-esque mega worm!

The less said about the symbolism of a stallion protagonist accompanied constantly by a literal monster worm, the better, probably. But having the ability to tunnel through basically anything does make a lot of things easier, at least in terms of travel, and cuts years off of the Abyss trip. Binghe and Worm Yuan almost have fun, even, just tearing through the terrain and any foes stupid enough to get in Worm Yuan's path until they retrieve Xin Mo and bust out.

Then they get into the demon realms and that actually is just straight up mostly a good time. Worms like Shen Yuan are not common so at first he nearly always surprises Binghe's foes when he shows up to help with fights, and a lot of the time the demons involved don't even seem to realize, at first, that he's with Luo Binghe and isn't just some hellish calamity that's coincidentally also shown up! But word gets around pretty quick that the new Heavenly Demon on the scene has a giant worm companion (probably leading to some misconceptions of people who think it's Tianlang Jun returned and that someone's mistaken Zhuzhi Lang's snake form for a worm).

Once that happens, unfortunately, some demons start taking precautions. After the first time Worm Yuan gets poisoned and nearly perishes (saved by Binghe's blood in the nick of time), Luo Binghe stops letting him participate in fights. Which is just rude! Worm Yuan's not going to make the same mistake twice, duh! But Binghe just keeps holding him in reserve again and again until the fight with Mobei Jun, and then when Worm Yuan intervenes anyway (is it just him or does Mobei Jun seem to know a lot more about potential heavenly demon weaknesses than he did in PIDW...?) and gets partly frozen, Binghe goes berserk. For a while there Shen Yuan is worried he won't actually LET Mobei Jun surrender!

Thankfully though he does, and then Binghe settles into his properties and starts... building a giant-scale worm garden? What about the harem, Binghe? Like obviously it's nice and all, but shouldn't you be focused on housing for, y'know, your future wives?

Other factions in the demon realms clearly are wondering about the same thing, as the marriage alliance offers naturally start pouring in. The most vocal of these being Sha Hualing. Worm Yuan supposed that his Binghe is probably waiting to officially take his wives so that he can marry Ning Yingying first or something, but still, a little planning wouldn't go amiss. Though eventually Luo Binghe seems to get -- if anything -- fed up enough with the questions about his marriage prospects that he does start setting up for a wedding.

Worm Yuan is surprised and touched when he finds himself being fitted for a monster-worm sized amount of wedding regalia. So he can be included in Binghe's wedding procession? That's so sweet! He's not sure he understands the inclusion of a veil, though...?

Anyway. Yes. Binghe marries the worm.