IC inbox

[nocannobb]

texts, video messages, rude audio recordings, thank you cards, etc etc

Comments

2/2

[nocannobb]

wait did YOU check it out??

[youcanyouup]

Yes obviously I checked it out, what do you think! Otherwise anyone could have read it!

Look. Maybe it'd be OK if no one FROM the book was going to show up here but you know who's here already? The original goods! Kid version original goods! He's eleven! You think I want him to find out I took his body? Hell, you want him to find out what kind of future you wrote for him?? Never mind what kind of backstory you gave him and then NEVER POSTED, you hack.

1/2

[nocannobb]

LOL

2/2

[nocannobb]

wait youre not serious like he's not actually really here. like that was a joke right

[youcanyouup]

NO I AM NOT JOKING, WHY WOULD I BE JOKING ABOUT THIS

[nocannobb]

[ alright ok shang qinghua does have to spend a minute or two hyperventilating into a soft pillow to let that sink in ]

how was i supposed to know fictional characters could transmigrate out of their own works????? i thought it was just us FUCK

ok ok hold up. let's take a second here. if the original goods is just a kid and hasn't started cultivating yet...then he wouldn't know it was him in the book unless someone told him! right? because i never posted that backstory (which i lost with my original outline so you can stop being mad at me about that any day its not my fault!!) there's no way he would figure it out. also, can he even read?

[youcanyouup]

You idiot, Qiu Haitang uses his original name when he's put on trial, TRY to remember ANY of the words you LITERALLY WROTE.

Shouldn't you know if he can read or not when he's your OC?? He can't, by the way, but I'm teaching him, and that doesn't matter anyway because he doesn't need to read it himself for someone else to read it and put it together and tell him!

[nocannobb]

OK, look, there are so many of them you can't expect me to remember all of them without any notes!! or, for that matter, a copy of the book to look at! and you know the system likes to make stuff up sometimes! cut me some slack, bro. at any rate i'm not 100% sure of his canon point & what he was up to when he was that age! like i told you, that stuff didn't make it into the final draft because i forgot and i only just remembered a few things recently! but i'm PRETTY sure that was before he was sold to the qiu family, right?

also, if this is such a big concern, why are you teaching him to read?? wouldn't we both be safer if he stayed a dumb illiterate child

[youcanyouup]

We're in a library, he'd learn eventually, one way or another! And if he can't read he can't order food here so somebody had to do it, I don't want him to just starve.

Anyway yes, I think he's from before any of that, or if he isn't he hasn't said anything about it. He mentioned a brother, does that mean anything to you?

[nocannobb]

don't you though? i mean.......... wouldn't it be easier for both of us if he was, ahem, not here anymore

[ avoiding the question??? haha never ]

[youcanyouup]

What the fuck, dude

[nocannobb]

i'm just thinking of our survival here bro you're the one who said it was a problem!!!

[ ok ok but if child murder neglect is off the table...... sigh ]

yeah ok we should probably talk about his brother

[youcanyouup]

Oh, should we.

[nocannobb]

yeah, actually, this is what i wanted to talk to you about when i saw you in the demon realm but then i didn't have a chance! so! now that we're here and we have some leisure time, this master can finally tell you 🙏🏼

[ he didn't "have a chance" the time they met after that because shang qinghua was too busy throwing him under the bus but whatever! ]

ok, so, remember when i said i originally had more plans for shen jiu's backstory, to make him into a more interesting, 3d villain?

[youcanyouup]

Hmm. Yes.

[nocannobb]

right! so, as you know, the quickest route to interesting character development is a tragic backstory, right? that part with qiu haitang showing up, she was the foreshadowing hook. we're supposed to think at first that this is just confirmation of shen qingqiu's scumminess through and through, but what she said isnt actually the whole truth! so we have this xiao jiu, this pitiful little orphan slave with almost nothing in the world. now if you're trying to build a hero, this is where you give him something -- like bing-ge with the fake guanyin pendant, right? but if you're trying to craft a villain, here's where you take something away from him.

[ shen qingqiu didn't ask for an amateur webinar on writing 101 but here we are ]

[youcanyouup]

OK, so what, you killed off his brother for angst points and that's why he sucks so much? Come on, dude, get to the point.

[nocannobb]

no no no!! it's way more interesting than that. just having someone die on you, even a blood brother, isn't enough to make you a villain. shen jiu & his qi-ge suffered, but they suffered together! they promised they would find a way out of their miserable lives! so one day, qi-ge tells his little bro that he's going to try and join a cultivation sect so he can become powerful enough to rescue xiao jiu. really heartwarming, right? only, after that day, qi-ge never came back, so shen jiu had to get himself out of his predicament in his own way. those details, i'm still kind of fuzzy on, i rewrote that part of the outline several times so i can't really remember what i ultimately landed on, before losing it all...............

[youcanyouup]

Huh, OK, so he betrayed him? That IS more interesting... or at least it would be if you'd actually written it. Is that it? Did you have any plans to resolve this or were you just going to leave it hanging like every other dangling plot thread?

[nocannobb]

oh shen jiu thinks he was betrayed for SURE. but i did actually have plans to resolve it, at a moment of critical emotion...or i would have if i'd remembered this part. because shen jiu wasn't actually betrayed, because the name of his brother was.... 

🥁🥁🥁

~*~ yue qi ~*~

[youcanyouup]

...

.....

Are you fucking kidding me! You expect me to applaud this plot twist when you just admitted yourself that you forgot to put it in??

[nocannobb]

bro can't we move past that? aren't you just repeating yourself dozens of times by now? its not my fault i lost the outline and i'm only one man, lets just accept the circumstances and imagine what it could have been! you wouldn't have seen that coming! it would have been totally gut wrenching!! admit it!!!!

[youcanyouup]

Maybe if you also remembered how to write affecting prose 🙄

So, okay. Let me get this straight. Yue Qi, Yue Qingyuan, was supposed to come back for him and then he didn't? How is that not betraying him? So what if he feels bad and wants to be bros again afterwards, isn't it a bit late for him to change his mind about it?

[nocannobb]

oh, forgetting implies i knew it in the first place. cucumber-bro, you really know how to give a compliment 

and, ok, this is one of the parts i don't remember as well, but it wasn't actually supposed to be a betrayal! there was a reason yue qingyuan didn't go back for him. some kind of circumstances that prevented him from going, or cultivating took too much time, something like that...and by then, resentment had already taken root in shen jiu's heart! the tragedy of shen jiu never acknowledging yue qingyuan as his old qi-ge, even after they finally reunited, was supposed to be part of the gut-wrenching effect!

[youcanyouup]

Well, my gut would probably be feeling more wrenched if you were less vague about it.

[ He is actually feeling SOMETHING about it, but it's kind of an annoyed-guilty-frustrated combo that he doesn't feel any inclination to examine in detail right now, let alone to talk about it with Shang Qinghua of all people. ]

OK. This would have been more useful to know back in PIDW but I guess it explains some things. How was everything back there anyway? What happened since I left?