Shang Qinghua : Are You Gay For Pay?

By now I’m so used to conventions I forget what it was like the first time. I went to J-popcon last weekend with my sister and law, her 11 years old son and his best friend. None of them had ever been to a con before and they all had a great time but also got a culture shock or two.

My sister in law at one point said “It’s amazing how these things you never really see out on the street gets to blossom here. People just being unapologetically themselves, girls dressed as boys, boys dressed as girls, trans people. Everyone is welcome here. I love it!”

And the two boys looked up at her and then at the people around them like it never crossed their minds. It legit never bothered or confused them and it only occurred to them that oh yeah people are indeed dressing however they want here. They just thought of it as a lot of cool costumes.

My very polite nephew had to cross a small comfort zone when he realized the only bathroom available was a women’s bathroom that had been turned into a unisex bathroom for the day (the men’s bathroom had been turned unisex for the staff). He went in and immediately came back out and said “There are girls in there” and his mom had to tell him “That’s okay. That’s how it is here” so I went in with him and showed him that some of the girls were boys cosplaying as girls and pointed out a big tall guy with a full beard who was waiting in line. My nephew got over it real quick after that. Turned out he just didn’t want to be the only boy in there.

My sister in law has already decided on her costume for next year and my brother has dropped some pretty big hints that he wants to come too.

i love every binggeyuan fic where bingge isekais into the modern world and shen yuan gets the pleasure of teaching him how his world works. all the fics that ive seen so far feature shen yuan being very patient and non-judgmental when showing bingge basic things….

but like can you imagine? your favorite little psychotic character suddenly shows up in your apartment one day and now you’re teaching him how the internet works like hes an old man???? and you have to hold in your laughter when he fails to open a prescription bottle because of the child lock???? this man will kill you if you laugh at him. now go explain to him in your most serious voice why hatsune miku isn’t real

"I have... realized," Shen Qingqiu said, "that you technically indirectly killed dozens of teenagers. At the Immortal Alliance Conference." He glanced at his friend from the corner of his eye. The office had been quiet before then, though Shen Qingqiu's thoughts had been heavy with contemplation.

Shang Qinghua lifted his head from his paperwork to look at the other, eyes half-lidded and slightly dull. "It's so kind of Shen-shixiong to have realized this. It only took a few months after the Conference had already ended."

"...don't you feel guilty?"

"What is there to feel guilt about?" Shang Qinghua said nothing else, and when Shen Qingqiu did nothing but frown back at him, he went back to signing various forms. In the silence that followed, he sighed and continued, "Listen, I'm not a necessarily a good person. I'm selfish, and I want to live. If I have to choose between myself and random characters that I don't know, then I'll always choose myself."

Shen Qingqiu stared at him, before looking down at his lap, where one of his friend's written works lay in a scroll. Most of the other's writings that he had gotten to read were far better than the trash his web novel had devolved into, more comparable in quality to the early PIDW chapters. He was excited to read this one, but he hadn't opened it yet. "I wasn't saying it to condemn you. After all, I want to live, too." He shifted. "So, I guess I'm not a good person, either."

The An Ding Peak Lord immediately shook his head. "No, unlike me, you are a good person--"

"If I were a better person, I would've taken the point deduction and allowed myself to die at the edge of that Endless Abyss than do what I did."

Silence permeated the room. Shang Qinghua kept his eyes on his forms, though his hands remained still, while Shen Qingqiu continued to stare down at the scroll in his lap.

Finally, Shang Qinghua let out a dry laugh and put down his paperwork to pinch at the bridge of his nose. "Shen-shixiong, you sometimes irritate me, you know?" His voice was light, but there was something else in it, a barely noticeable tremor that made Shen Qingqiu look up. "You say these things, but you're sitting here, agonizing over the choices you've made to keep yourself alive. What does that say about you?"

What does it say about me, that I don't do the same? Shen Qingqiu sighed, fingers tightening around the edge of the scroll. "It says that I still have to live with it, the choice that I made."

"Then why are we even having this conversation? We both made our choices, and guilt or not, we're both still here, aren't we? Why think about it any further?"

Shen Qingqiu studied his friend, eyes tracing the exhausted droop of his eyes, the way tension clung to his slumped shoulders, despite his upright position. He had spent weeks turning it over in his head, wondering how his friend could stand the stain of blood on his hands, even if it meant that he got to live. But hadn't Shen Qingqiu done the exact same thing?

"Because it bothers you," Shen Qingqiu finally said. "Even if you say it doesn't."

Shang Qinghua scoffed and picked his brush back up, the black ink having already smeared all over his latest form. It would need to be discarded. "Don't make me laugh. I'm not some sort of anti-hero. I just know better than to waste time brooding over something I can't change. If it ever starts bothering me too much, I just tell myself that they were all meant to die, anyway."

"That's a bit cold, shidi."

"Don't try to pretend that you don't do the same mental gymnastics. You're just not as good at it as I am."

Shen Qingqiu couldn't argue with that. Sometimes, the world felt too real, and then not real enough. Shen Qingqiu would hear someone laugh, or taste a brilliantly seasoned dish, and everything felt too much and it all exploded before it turned dim. He would no longer be quite inside his body, and he would notice for the first time, again and again, how nothing was ever quite real.

It was a story. That's all it was. It was all just a story.

Shang Qinghua watched him for a moment, then sighed. "Shen-shixiong, if you ever figure out how to balance staying alive with being a good person, let me know."

"Oh?" Shen Qingqiu finally unrolled the scroll he had been holding for some time now. "And what would that accomplish?"

"Maybe then I’d consider feeling guilty."

Bingqiu and Moshang had crap first times because deep down in their soul Cumplane really wants to fuck but they are so sexually incompatible it not only makes their canon relationships sex life worse but if they did actually fuck it might kill them in the most embarrassing ways possible

Their dicks touch and it summons a full slapstick routine that ends with at least a serious injury and they will still be sexually frustrated

We played “Spot the Sculptures” (at Lee County, Florida) https://www.instagram.com/p/BsHiyHtljUP/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=oubxbzx0ihmk

It takes approximately 12 minutes to empty one side of you flip it. I timed it.

when your art program’s closing message hits you straight in the heart and makes you stop and contemplate the state of it all

"Hello, Binghe," Shen Qingqiu said.

It had taken him a while to begin to speak after settling in front of the sword mound a shichen ago. "It wasn't you but, I guess... I just. I saw your face today. In your shishu, Shang Qinghua." Shen Qingqiu glanced down at his hands.

Shang Qinghua had laughed at something that Shen Qingqiu had said and all of a sudden, all he could see was Binghe, Binghe, Binghe in the wrinkle of Shang Qinghua's nose, in the bouncy curls of his hair, in the shine of his eyes.

"He's not you, of course, nor are you him. I know that. I told myself that." There was a soft rustling of leaves and a whisper of Shizun? into the wind, but when Shen Qingqiu looked up, searching for his lost disciple, there was nothing there but a breeze.

Another grief-induced hallucination, is what Mu Qingfang would call them, though Shen Qingqiu hesitated to say the same. That would meant things about his attachment to this world that he disliked to think about.

He sighed, and got to his feet. His other precious disciples had been hounding him about trying to do something other than stand in front of the sword mound, and he hated to see the looks on their faces when they caught him here again.

Before he left, he brushed a hand over the top of the mound and said, "Still. I can't help it when I see your Shang-shishu. You look so much like the one who created you." He turned and swept away.

Having hidden around the corner upon realizing Shen Qingqiu was lost in thought at A-Luo's grave again, Ning Yingying stared after her Shizun, not knowing what to think.

im doing my best to write angst bc theres two open wounds in my mouth and im bleeding

Do any other american high schoolers have intense survivor’s guilt and trauma with school shootings even though they weren’t at your school?