LAIOS OH NO

best thing abt svsss fandom is the fact we've fully illustrated the headcanon that no matter what form shen yuan takes, binghe will always fall in love with him. ive read fics of shen yuan transmigrating into one of binghes wives, gongyi xiao, a fantasy creature, sha hualing's demon brother. ive seen fics of binghe coming to modern china and loving shen yuan in his original body. that man was put into the body of shen qingqiu - destined to be binghe's most hated person - and clawed his way into being binghe's most beloved. they are SO this audio

I love impregnating Shen Qingqiu, but you know what I find more fun? The pregnant virgin Shen Qingqiu :D

I mean, it's absolutely hilarious no matter who the parent or the situation, like, Shen Qingqiu who exchanges qi with Liu Qingge in a mystical cave and accidentally becomes pregnant?

Or Shen Qingqiu hitting Shang Qinghua with a fan full of pollen, Shang Qinghua touches him skin to skin to return the aggression, and THAT PASSIONATE TOUCH causes a pregnancy.

Or the beautiful moment where disciple Luo Binghe accidentally impregnates his Shizun while brushing his hair with a jade comb that turns out to be a rare amulet who, fueled by Luo Binghe's feelings, impregnates Shen Qingqiu. (Extra angst points if it's like, a month before IAC and Shen Qingqiu notices the pregnancy after. Hehehe.)

Or even Shen Qingqiu sharing a tea with Yue Qingyuan and accidentally drinking from the same cup (from a tea set gifted by another sect, clearly cursed or something) Shen Qingqiu clearly ends up pregnant - and the Sect Leader is very, very full of feelings about it.

Oh BOY, what else do we have here? Accidentally pregnant due to Mu Qingfang's medical error in the cross prescription of some herbs and touching his exposed skin? Accidentally pregnant from Zhuzhi-lang's bite? I mean, he would have to expel some eggs, that would make his pregnancy process shorter like, four and a half months in and four and a half months out? Lmao make me wild, ACCIDENTALLY PREGNANT WITH MOBEI JUN'S BABY, maybe because Shen Qingqiu had some cursed amulet on him or some kind of curse on him at the same time Mobei-jun has to touch him with qi for something (keep him alive on Junshang's orders perhaps?)

I mean, the funny thing is that Shen Qingqiu is a virgin. Very virgin. Virgin in "the only pussy I've ever seen is from porn" and "the only cocks I've ever seen too. Not that I watch gay porn. You just see cocks when you watch porn, it's inevitable". Virgin in an almost spiritual state of silly behavior.

And obviously, it's so funny that in a world of sexual plants, papapa to solve everything, he, JUST HE, has to carry a baby without all the sexy act that leading to a pregnancy.

I mean, it's hilarious. He's such a dumb boy. He will hit Shang Qinghua very hard for all those pregnancies of course.

So You Want to Read More about Chinese Mythos: a rough list of primary sources

"How/Where can I learn more about Chinese mythology?" is a question I saw a lot on other sites, back when I was venturing outside of Shenmo novel booksphere and into IRL folk religions + general mythos, but had rarely found satisfying answers.

As such, this is my attempt at writing something past me will find useful.

(Built into it is the assumption that you can read Chinese, which I only realized after writing the post. I try to amend for it by adding links to existing translations, as well as links to digitalized Chinese versions when there doesn't seem to be one.)

The thing about all mythologies and legends is that they are 1) complicated, and 2) are products of their times. As such, it is very important to specify the "when" and "wheres" and "what are you looking for" when answering a question as broad as this.

-Do you want one or more "books with an overarching story"?

In that case, Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen Yanyi) serve as good starting points, made more accessible for general readers by the fact that they both had English translations——Anthony C. Yu's JTTW translation is very good, Gu Zhizhong's FSYY one, not so much.

Crucially, they are both Ming vernacular novels. Though they are fictional works that are not on the same level of "seriousness" as actual religious scriptures, these books still took inspiration from the popular religion of their times, at a point where the blending of the Three Teachings (Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism) had become truly mainstream.

And for FSYY specifically, the book had a huge influence on subsequent popular worship because of its "pantheon-building" aspect, to the point of some Daoists actually putting characters from the novel into their temples.

(Vernacular novels + operas being a medium for the spread of popular worship and popular fictional characters eventually being worshipped IRL is a thing in Ming-Qing China. Meir Shahar has a paper that goes into detail about the relationship between the two.)

After that, if you want to read other Shenmo novels, works that are much less well-written but may be more reflective of Ming folk religions at the time, check out Journey to the North/South/East (named as such bc of what basically amounted to a Ming print house marketing strategy) too.

-Do you want to know about the priestly Daoist side of things, the "how the deities are organized and worshipped in a somewhat more formal setting" vs "how the stories are told"?

Though I won't recommend diving straight into the entire Daozang or Yunji Qiqian or some other books compiled in the Daoist text collections, I can think of a few "list of gods/immortals" type works, like Liexian Zhuan and Zhenling Weiye Tu.

Also, though it is much closer to the folk religion side than the organized Daoist side, the Yuan-Ming era Grand Compendium of the Three Religions' Deities, aka Sanjiao Soushen Daquan, is invaluable in understanding the origins and evolutions of certain popular deities.

(A quirk of historical Daoist scriptures is that they often come up with giant lists of gods that have never appeared in other prior texts, or enjoy any actual worship in temples.)

(The "organized/folk" divide is itself a dubious one, seeing how both state religion and "priestly" Daoism had channels to incorporate popular deities and practices into their systems. But if you are just looking at written materials, I feel like there is still a noticeable difference.)

Lastly, if you want to know more about Daoist immortal-hood and how to attain it: Ge Hong's Baopuzi (N & S. dynasty) and Zhonglv Chuandao Ji (late Tang/Five Dynasties) are both texts about external and internal alchemy with English translations.

-Do you want something older, more ancient, from Warring States and Qin-Han Era China?

Classics of Mountains and Seas, aka Shanhai Jing, is the way to go. It also reads like a bestiary-slash-fantastical cookbook, full of strange beasts, plants, kingdoms of unusual humanoids, and the occasional half-man, half-beast gods.

A later work, the Han-dynasty Huai Nan Zi, is an even denser read, being a collection of essays, but it's also where a lot of ancient legends like "Nvwa patches the sky" and "Chang'e steals the elixir of immortality" can be first found in bits and pieces.

Shenyi Jing might or might not be a Northern-Southern dynasties work masquerading as a Han one. It was written in a style that emulated the Classics of Mountains and Seas, and had some neat fantastic beasts and additional descriptions of gods/beasts mentioned in the previous 2 works.

-Do you have too much time on your hands, a willingness to get through lot of classical Chinese, and an obsession over yaoguais and ghosts?

Then it's time to flip open the encyclopedic folklore compendiums——Soushen Ji (N/S dynasty), You Yang Za Zu (Tang), Taiping Guangji (early Song), Yijian Zhi (Southern Song)...

Okay, to be honest, you probably can't read all of them from start to finish. I can't either. These aren't purely folklore compendiums, but giant encyclopedias collecting matters ranging from history and biography to medicine and geography, with specific sections on yaoguais, ghosts and "strange things that happened to someone".

As such, I recommend you only check the relevant sections and use the Full Text Search function well.

Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studios, aka Liaozhai Zhiyi, is in a similar vein, but a lot more entertaining and readable. Together with Yuewei Caotang Biji and Zi Buyu, they formed the "Big Three" of Qing dynasty folktale compendiums, all of which featured a lot of stories about fox spirits and ghosts.

Lastly...

The Yuan-Ming Zajus (a sort of folk opera) get an honorable mention. Apart from JTTW Zaju, an early, pre-novel version of the story that has very different characterization of SWK, there are also a few plays centered around Erlang (specifically, Zhao Erlang) and Nezha, such as "Erlang Drunkenly Shot the Demon-locking Mirror". Sadly, none of these had an English translation.

Because of the fragmented nature of Chinese mythos, you can always find some tidbits scattered inside history books like Zuo Zhuan or poetry collections like Qu Yuan's Chuci. Since they aren't really about mythology overall and are too numerous to cite, I do not include them in this post, but if you wanna go down even deeper in this already gigantic rabbit hole, it's a good thing to keep in mind.

There are figures in the mist.

Haven’t you noticed them? They loom at the edges of your vision, perpetually on the edges of sight. They wander as if lost, moaning with their silent mouths, pleading with their wispy hands. But every time you whirl around to get a closer look, they dissolve into the air, only to reappear the second you turn your back.

Do you know what they are?

No one else knows. We know where they come from, we know they’re dangerous, but we don’t know why they follow humans. There are theories of course; some say they’re chasing after the one thing they’ve been given a taste of that was cruelly ripped away from them- a soul; some say they’re hungry and nothing else can satisfy them; some even think they aren’t harmful and their dangerous reputation is simply misunderstandings. I know better.

They come when you look into The Mist. Looking into The Mist is fatal. See, these creatures, they know when someone is looking, and they flock to you the moment they sense the change. Something about them forces you to keep looking - perhaps because there are so many, or because you’ve never seen them in plain sight before - but, nevertheless, you keep looking. And The Mist, it sears itself into the contours of your brain, slinking it’s tendrils inside you through the receptacles of your eyes and through your skull. It wisps and twirls through you as it likes, shifting, shaping itself, and always followed by a soft thickening of the mist inside you. You’re allowed to look away then, because it’s started. The creatures absorb themselves back into the silver shade they came from, and you’re left wondering why they were there in the first place.

You go about your business as normal, but even you can tell you’ve changed. A strange fog rests over your mind, pushing, pressing, but you push back. You can’t be out of action, after all. You have a life with friends and family and a job, and it’s not appropriate to take sick days just because you feel all foggy. The defences of your mind are weakening. The figures don’t follow you any more. Their purpose has been fulfilled. However, it doesn’t stop you from seeing them. You spot them following your children, their friends, their teachers. No longer do they have to hide, but you seem to be the only person they’re not shrinking from. That’s the first symptom.

The second symptom is when you get the urges. This would be once a month or two has passed, and you’ve forgotten about The Mist. It’s made your forget. Nobody can suspect anything, after all. The urges cry into your mind, a constant command for you to return. Return to where? You don’t know. But you want so desperately to return, you feel it echoing within every fibre of your being (or is that the mist within chiming again?). So you start wandering, trying to find your place. You go up to people, hands clasped, telling them you’re lost and you’re trying to get somewhere but you don’t know where. You never find it.

The third symptom is very similar to the second symptom, but it has its differences. For instance, the second symptom hits you in strong, irresistible waves, while the third is like an insidious presence in the foggiest corners of your mind, a susurrus that never pauses for breath. The third symptom tells you to follow, so quietly that your brain takes it as its own and executes this without your noticing it. You start to shadow your coworkers, a strange blankness in your eyes, and when they call your name, you don’t respond. You start to follow your children to school, staring after them without replying when they say they love you. You even follow customers around the shops you frequent, when you should be collecting groceries for the next week. Sometimes, you catch yourself, but you have no memory of what you were doing before. The urge to return is still strong within you, but you don’t realise because it coincides with the need to follow, and so you think your strange feeling has finally disappeared. You call yourself cured, unknowing that the gaps that you are you are growing shorter and shorter.

The fourth symptom is the final step. This is the step that enables The Mist to pull you within its clutches, where you never escape from its strangling embrace. You start to fade. Your coworkers that before would have greeted you every morning, start to ignore you. When you greet them, their eyes slide right over you as if you aren’t there. They see only an empty space. Your children no longer see you, only a monster that used to be their parent. Your eyes mist over, the fog within them finally showing in your physical form through a familiar silver. Your brain becomes yours no more, only belonging to The Mist. Your fingertips fade away, becoming transparent, and your skin turns pasty and grey. Your hair, before a shiny, luscious thing, now has the permanent look of dampness to it. You remember now. You know your true purpose. You serve The Mist. You leave your house, and return to your true home, to become fully incorporeal to those who view you. And you never return.

So, dear reader, beware. There are figures in the mist.

This the image prompt I used!

New species of bat found, Niumbaha superba, and it’s adorable.

me: don’t do it

my brain:

me:

me: d o n ‘ t

my brain:

me:

my brain:

me:

my brain: *does the thing i told it not to do*

me: Goddammit

i love. .. demon houseband and 2 braincells peak lord 

I want to be in whatever alternate universe we get an accurate portrayal of Percy Jackson, HTTYD and Ready Player One tbh

ok but...........NEW AU TIMES!!!!!!!!

AU where Deku's original quirk was the ability to see/talk to/interact with dead people. They found out because a few months after Izuku was diagnosed as being quirkless, the Midoriya and Bakugou households' were having lunch together only for him to greet the Dark-Skinned woman with sharp red eye's just like Auntie Mitzuki standing in the corner smiling at them, with tears slipping down her elderly face.

Not even 30 mins later of Izuku talking to one Jasmine Bakugou, Mitsuki is receiving a phone call and told her mother passed away almost an hour ago.

tears are shed, but the adults know the boy had not been lying for the simple fact he had never seen Mitsuki's mother a day in his life. She had just left not a week ago after her mother had fallen ill, and came back for the sole fact that she knew her mother wanted to be left alone.

this leads to years of Izuku and Katsuki growing up wanting to be the worlds best Detective/Hero duo the world has ever seen, but they never change the fact that Izuku is labled quirkless. this saves his life seeing as he learns the darkest secret he and his best friend will ever know. AU may spit out the best hero's.... but they also train the worlds worst villain's.

Que Dekusquad really being plugs from of the unknown class 1V and Shinso being apart of 1a... Izuku is in GenEd, and finds out after he sees a grape headed boy, and the child tells him he was killed apart of the first exercise from the villains class about 20 years ago, and he's stuck around until his murderers are caught..... Aizawa-Sensei, Midnight-Sensei, Present Mic-Sensei, and a man named Oboro.... or what they WERE known as X-Out, Enchantress, Ear-Splitter, and Thunder-Clap aka Kurogiri