liburutegiaooc | TDM 1 ⬡ The Oval Portrait

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TDM 1 ⬡ The Oval Portrait

Casting Call

The Oval Portrait
Edgar Allan Poe

"Long — long I read — and devoutly, devotedly I gazed."

Name: The Aristocrat
Casting Call: Characters with a Birthday from September through December
Physical Notes: Desperately wounded, to the point of being bedridden, but not losing consciousness.
Personality Notes: Curious, and prone to becoming enraptured by the pursuit of learning about whatever has caught their curiosity. Mildly delirious due to injury.
Compulsions: To learn about their surroundings, whether through study of the portraits in the chateau apartment, conversation with a companion, or ill-advised exploration.

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"We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments."

Name: The Valet
Casting Call: Characters with an Unknown Birthday
Physical Notes: Older than The Aristocrat by ≥ 5 years.
Personality Notes: Willing and able (by force or by cleverness) to break in to a home for the well-being of their employer. A caretaker by nature.
Compulsions: To see that The Aristocrat is comfortable for the night and their wounds are tended to, and to get some rest themselves once their duty is complete. In the absence of The Aristocrat, The Valet is free to act as they please.

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"She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee."

Name: The Maiden
Casting Call: Characters with a birthday from May through August
Physical Notes: Young, aged from 15-20.
Personality Notes: All smiles, loving and cherishing of all things, hating only The Painter's art, for they deprive them of their lover.
Compulsions: To live life to the fullest, to love, to be happy... But also to make their husband, The Painter happy, by being a good and willing subject for his portraiture, should he ask.
⬡ Will slowly waste away and die, should they sit and allow themselves to be painted.

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"And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter."

Name: The Painter
Casting Call: Characters with a birthday from January through April
Physical Notes: Older than the maiden by ≥ 10 years.
Personality Notes: Passionate, studious, austere, wild, moody. More in love with his art than his wife.
Compulsions: To paint. To paint, and paint, and paint some more. To ask their lovely wife to be the subject for their next piece, and to throw themselves into the completion of it.
⬡ Unaware they are doing harm with their painting, until it is complete.

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code @ efryndiel

The Chateau

⬡ Common Cast

Characters most likely to originate in The Chateau are The Aristocrat and The Valet

⬡ Literary Description

"To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque."

⬡ For Your Exploration

Characters may attempt to explore the Chateau, but it will be shrouded in darkness, and every room they enter will bring them back to the apartment chosen by The Valet. What decorations may be seen are dark and victorian in design, and the room and halls may be lit by candlelight.

The Maiden's portrait is on the wall, and will initially be cloaked in shadow for The Aristocrat to find. It appears remarkably lifelike, almost as though it is a window instead of a portrait. The other paintings on the walls will contain figures that are almost familiar to The Aristocrat and The Valet - as though they could be someone they know, but only if they squint.

There is no electricity. Characters will not have access to any powers.

The Artist's Tower

⬡ Common Cast

Characters most likely to originate in The Artist's Tower are The Maiden and The Painter

⬡ Literary Description

"But she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark, high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour, and from day to day."

⬡ For Your Exploration

Should characters leave the Painter's studio, they will immediately be transported outside, to a sprawling field of wildflowers. There won't seem to be anything else around, but there will be a light breeze and the sound of the sea in the distance.

Inside the studio, the air is stale and musty, smelling of oil paints and turpentine. It's dim, lit only by a skylight. There is a stool for the subject and an easel with canvas sitting in the light, but everything else - art materials, more canvases, both empty and with the beginnings of paintings, and props - are all pushed to the sides of the room and cloaked in shadow.

Like The Chateau, there is no electricity, and characters will not have access to their powers.

The Library

⬡ Welcome!

Free from their roles, through either death, completion of the Story, or from not being pulled into the tale in the first place, characters will find themselves in the gardens outside of the Library itself. As always, it will look and feel like a temperate, autumn afternoon.

As this setting is part of the Library itself, characters will have full access to all their powers.

⬡ Grand Opening Coming Soon!

The front door will, unfortunately, be locked, and a sign will be taped on the doors, detailing how the Library will be opening soon, but in the meantime to please enjoy the grounds and the pizza party in the courtyard.

⬡ Pizza party?

Pizza party! In the courtyard, there will be tables set up that will be absolutely covered in stacks of paper plates, 2-liter bottles of any soda one could dream of, and stacks and stacks of pizza boxes, containing any flavor combination that could be desired. Opening a random box will provide a random, but popular, flavor. Opening a box with an Intent and a Desire for something specific will provide exactly that.

Enjoy! It won't run out.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Shen Qingqiu rolls his eyes, irritably tucking his sleeve to the side, but what Shang Qingqhua just said about other people reading it is kind of haunting him.

"... D'you think there is a written version. Of the one we were in."

"That's what I'm curious about," Shang Qinghua says, pausing to lick a bit of pizza sauce from his fingers. "There's gotta be, right? I mean, the System makes it sound like there's an audience, anyway. What would be the point of you changing the story if no one was around to read it?"

He thinks on this for another moment, squinting up at the sky. "But I guess it's still a WIP, so maybe we wouldn't be able to find our version anyway. Unless --" He suddenly sits up straight. "Shit, do you think the System's been posting under my Zhongdian ID?"

Maybe this wouldn't matter to anyone but him, but Shang Qinghua feels he has a certain reputation to uphold! Who knows what shoddy work the System could be uploading in his place! Yes, he's dead in that world, but still! He can care!

"Huh... I don't know, dude," Shen Qingqiu looks uneasy, "I don't think this version would get much of an audience over there if it's still from Luo Binghe's POV..."

"Maybe a different audience," Shang Qinghua says. Does he look...a little bit wistful? Hahaha no of course not. He folds up the pizza crust in his hand and shoves the rest of it into his mouth. Hmmm. "What about if it was from your POV?"

Shen Qingqiu grimaces around his pizza. "Are you kidding? That wouldn't even be interesting, all I do is try not to get killed. There's hardly any action, no gratification, no romance, I don't even have a character arc."

"Yet," Shang Qinghua says helpfully, as though this is supposed to be encouraging. "I don't know, I think it'd make for a pretty funny read so far. There's value in good comedy mixed with drama! The story's not even close to over, at least by original timeline standards. Besides."

He wipes his hands off on a paper napkin and tosses it careless over his shoulder. He's pretty sure there's a trash can behind him somewhere.

"Don't you think finally realizing the nature of Bing-ge's true feelings counts as some kind of character development?"

Shen Qingqiu's grimace intensifies.

"Learning new information isn't character development." He puts his paper plate down, mainly so he can take out his fan. He doesn't want his entire face visible for this conversation, thank you very much! "If anything that makes it less exciting, now the tension of whether or not he's going to kill me is gone, and if it's from my POV then there's no romantic tension either because the reader knows it's one-sided!"

Aww, c'mon, bro, give yourself some credit. Learning to read the room for the first time in your life is totally character development.

"But it's replaced with the tension of 'what will he do next in his quest to make the Resentment of Chunshan canon'!" Shang Qinghua doesn't want to bend to the idea that any version of Proud Immortal Demon Way could be that boring. "Besides, you were at kind of a turning point in the plot, you know? You don't know what might've happened. Maybe Bing-ge was about to get NTR'd or something. That'd be pretty tragic for him."

It's not Airplane if there isn't pointless pathos, right?

"Absolutely not!" says Shen Qingqiu, stiff with outrage. "There is no way I am hooking up with anyone from your stupid novel when it's practically a guarantee the protagonist will murder them! No way! Do you think I'm an idiot?"

He fans himself a little harder. "Anyway this is all irrelevant now unless somebody makes us go back."

"Hey, it's not just my stupid novel anymore," Shang Qinghua says with some serious side-eye. "I'm not the one who raised him to be such a tender-hearted maiden. That's on you! Welcome to the collab life, Cucumber-bro."

He wants to say that it's Shen Qingqiu's fault that Bing-ge turned out to be such a yandere, but he is honest with himself: that was kind of the appeal, okay? But he'd managed to make the yandere angle a point of coolness, whereas with Shen Qingqiu's tampering...well, the result was a little pathetic.

But he flops back onto the ground with an explosive breath. "Yeah, you're right. And while it was cool living in my own novel for a while -- " Even if he had to hustle for every second of it, so calling most of it fun would be a stretch. " -- I think I can deal with living in a universe with pizza again. Free of the System and being a royal punching bag. And we're still cultivators! I'm good here."

"He's your character," Shen Qingiu huffs into his fan. "You're the one who came up with him so ultimately all of this is your fault."

He does take a moment, though, to contemplate how glad he is to be out of there -- only to round on Shang Qinghua again as he remembers exactly why he's so glad about that. "Hey, and speaking of things that are your fault -- you know I just got kidnapped before I wound up here? Again? By your fucking side characters who you never even put in the damn book?"

"It's not all my fault," Shang Qinghua starts to whine, but Shen Qingqiu has his attention, actually. He sits up, keenly interested. He doesn't seem to be, like, concerned though. Obviously Shen Qingqiu is fine now. "Wait, seriously? What happened? Who was it? Where'd they take you?"

Dish, Cucumber-bro!!

"Yeah, dude," says Shen Qingqiu, annoyed, "Why do you think I look like this again? That bastard Zhuzhi-Lang took this body to the Holy Mausoleum to bring it back to life so they could... ugh, I guess to lure Luo Binghe there?" He rolls his eyes. "It's Tianlang-Jun, I'm pretty sure he wants to possess Luo Binghe's body or something because the one he's in is falling apart, and you're lucky this isn't my problem any more because if it was I would knock your head off your idiot shoulders for not bothering! To ever write down what his deal is!"

OK like the thing is he hadn't actually thought super hard about Shen Qingqiu's appearance! He's been kind of focused on the pizza but yeah okay that does make sense.

"Whoa, Tianlang-Jun?" Shang Qinghua looks like he's getting deets on an early episode leak and not the firsthand account of a kidnapping. "Damn, I never thought the plot would go that far off track. And anyway, you can't blame me for everything! There was a lot of stuff I was going to put in, but then I lost my original outline. You can't fault me for not having an encyclopedic memory!"

He stops and frowns thoughtfully.

"...Who's Zhuzhi-Lang?"

"..."

Shen Qingqiu gives him a sharp smack across the forehead, to jog his memory.

"Tianlang-Jun's nephew! The snake demon!"

"Ow!"

Shang Qinghua rolls away, clutching his forehead like he's just been dealt a blow with spiritual energy instead of just a little slap. Betrayal!! He gives Shen Qingqiu a horrible kicked puppy dog look.

"I just told you, I don't remember all of my old notes, okay! Don't hit me!" He rubs his forehead with a little pout. "Zhuzhi-Lang, huh? Yeah, that kinda sounds familiar." No it doesn't. "Man, you get all the interesting plot stuff."

Completely unmoved by the look on Shang Qinghua's face, Shen Qingqiu crumples up his paper plate and throws it at him.

"Interesting? What 'interesting'?! I woke up in a coffin! Bing-ge was about to sexually assault me! We spent how many years waiting for that body to grow and it's dead already!"

"What?" Shang Qinghua looks indignant. "Bing-ge is supposed to be a considerate lover! He never pushes a girl down who isn't willing!"
Sorry Cucumber-bro that one's gotta be on you too!!

He lets out a little sigh though, still rubbing his forehead. "Yeah, pour one out for the Sun and Moon Dew Flower Seed. I mean, I guess it's moot since we're here now, anyway." Except for, you know, Without A Cure. He IS really curious though... "So...how was it? The body, I mean."

Shen Qingqiu smacks him with his fan. "I'm not a girl, you idiot!"

He huffs through his teeth, folding his free arm over his chest. "And it was great, actually, except for the part where you sold me out!"

Before Shang Qinghua can say some stupid shit like harem is a gender neutral term, Shen Qingqiu hits him with the callout and he freezes momentarily. Hahaha oh yeah right! That. But his fight-or-flight reaction simmers down almost instantly. Consequences, what consequences? All the consequences for Shang Qinghua's actions are happening in another universe.

"Yes, sure, that did happen, but that was practically in another lifetime." His smile would seem apologetic if it weren't so fucking shameless. He clasps his hands together. "Besides, I didn't really have a choice, and Bing-ge pretty much already had you figured out anyway. But none of that matters here! Don't you think it'd be better if we just let bygones be bygones, water under the bridge, and link arms to face our new adventure?"

Translation: He'll be hugging your thighs the whole way, so do your best, Immortal Master Shen!

Shen Qingqiu just stares at him.

"Are you fucking kidding me," he spits. "What other lifetime?? It was practically five minutes ago! If I'm unlucky enough that you're here then Luo fucking Binghe is probably going to show up any second to drag me back to his creepy underground replica of my house and it'll still be your damn fault!"

“I didn’t make him totally obsessed with you,” Shang Qinghua points out, but doesn’t look particularly fussed that Shen Qingqiu is bent on blaming him. What else is new. “Besides, how is it unlucky? I’m like, basically your best case scenario, dude.”

Rolling onto his side, he starts ticking points off on his fingers. “Obviously you don’t want Bing-ge to show up. That’s cool, me either. Everyone’s still a mess over the whole staging your own death thing and yeeting your immortal soul into another body thing. I’m pretty sure Liu-shixiong would rather go into qi deviation again than live in a library. And if it was anyone but me, you’d either have to keep pretending to be the original goods, or find a way to explain that you’re really not.”

"I mean, sure," says Shen Qingqiu, rolling his eyes, "if I have to pick one of you, then yes, congratulations, you're the least worst, but that doesn't get you off the hook for any of your bullshit."

Shang Qinghua looks pleased with himself, as though that is some kind of compliment. He will absolutely choose to interpret ‘least worst’ as ‘number one’, thank you!

“You’re still upset, I get it,” he says with a pat on Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder. His breezy tone of voice ruins any sympathetic effect he might be going for. “But you’ve gotta stop taking it so personally. And we’re in a whole new world now! You and me, we get to start fresh! So what am I still on the hook for here, exactly?” He actually lets out a laugh. “Besides, there’s no Huan Hua Palace water prison here. What are you gonna do, put me in the time-out corner in the kiddie section?”

"Why would I want to 'start fresh' with someone with your track record?!" says Shen Qingqiu incredulously. "Isn't that just asking to get thrown under the bus again? How stupid do you think I am??"

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