semi-open post: portraiture

[peaklordshen]

After shifting his way through oil pastels, watercolors, house paint, colored pencils, and an endless variety of paint markers, Shen Yuan has finally managed to get the Mansion to produce a decent set of oil paints, and—wonder of wonders—an easel. He's set up in a spacious, well-lit hall, probably for dancing or salons or whatever, where he's arranged a bunch of furniture in various configurations—wooden screens that he's draped cloth¹ over for backdrops; armchairs stolen from the lounge, wooden stools and high-backed dining chairs from the kitchens; even a lovely chaise lounge in a deep purple that he wistfully thinks he won't actually use, because it would definitely be for Aleksander, and he doubts he'll be doing that entry in his protagonists of the Mansion series after all. He has one of the stools pulled up next to the easel to hold his paints, and is wearing a wide-necked sweater over a black turtleneck and some loose, worn jeans that already have a few flecks of paint on them from when he was doing his color tests.² He's pulled his hair back in a practical bun, and he's currently laying down a layer of gesso on his canvas.

¹ Look, he has to do something with all of those robes he accidentally conjured in his last post.
² After days of feeling very lost and confused about how he's not required to LARP anymore, he's pretty much decided that it actually means he can just change who he's LARPing as at will, and the main way to do this is through fashion. Today he is An Artist.

[Primarily for those Shen Yuan has offered to paint, but anyone else is also welcome to come bother him while he works.]

Comments

[peaklordshen]

At the mention of Ophelia Shen Yuan feels a stab of guilt, which is totally unfair—it's not like he wrote Hamlet. He wishes he'd managed to avoid telling Claudius about that, but at least it seems like Claudius has avoided telling Laertes. He casts around for something to say that isn't I'm sorry; for an indiscretion Laertes doesn't know about and a loss that hasn't even happened.

"I have a younger sister, too," he says, after a slightly too long pause. "I can't imagine giving her any kind of relationship advice—firstly because that would mean admitting she's old enough to have relationships, when clearly she's ten years old and will be ten years old forever."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods, and does his best to relax, to hold himself more the way he would if Magnus or Shen Yuan were cuddled against him -- he tries to remember the ease he felt when Shen Yuan gave him the herbal remedy, how everything was light and he couldn't stop smiling and laughing. He does, at least, look less imposing.

[timebethine]

"Exactly! Thou seest perfectly; in a brother's eyes, a younger sister is always at least half a child." Laertes's expression turns rueful. "I think I would guard her less jealously, here. She's a fine, honest, sensible woman. In this place, where all are of equal station, she would more than hold her own."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan finishes packing up his stuff and leaves it by the side door, then leaps lightly up through Magnus' broken window—dispelling the charm he'd left to seal it—to find the dress. He folds it over one arm and hops back down just in time to meet Magnus. "Hey," he says, and hands him the dress. He swings his easel and kind of enormous amount of painting supplies over one shoulder and holds out his other hand for Magnus to take, the way Galahad would. "Lead the way."

[peaklordshen]

"Only those I've strong-armed into sitting for me, so far, but yes, all are welcome," he says. "The only rule is you have to dress in what makes you feel beautiful." He hadn't actually communicated this rule to Laertes, necessarily, but that portrait's for a different purpose, and he thinks his little accidental blunder into the world of kink there had served approximately the same purpose.

[sagramore]

"I don't think I can manage that today, but I'll consider it, if the offer is a standing one. How many hast thou got so far?"

[summerdude]

Magnus adds the dress to his bundle and threads his fingers through Shen Yuan's, privately marveling -- once again -- about how touchy he's gotten since arriving here. "This way," he says. The pace he sets is faster than one he would take with Galahad -- since there's a specific destination they're aiming for, and a time limit in which to get there. He's already more relaxed the second he's outside of the Mansion. "How've you been by the way, my dude? How was your date with Luo Binghe?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan smiles to himself, not really about anything, just reflexive. "Really good," he says. "Despite the fact that there was a truth curse involved, which is wild, because if you'd told me a truth curse was going to be involved in my first date with Luo Binghe I would have thought you were describing my nightmare."

[peaklordshen]

"I hope she does show up here," says Shen Yuan, fervently. For Laertes' sake, and her own. "She sounds great."

[summerdude]

"You know, a couple of people have mentioned the truth... thing to me," Magnus says, musingly. "I guess I missed all that. I'm glad it worked out for you though, dude. That's good. You deserve it."

[timebethine]

"Tell me more of thy sister?"

[peaklordshen]

"Ah, I wish I had more up to date information to share," Shen Yuan says, with a little wince. "I hadn't seen her in five years even before I came here. She, um, thinks I'm dead, and I haven't really been in a position to correct that impression. But last I knew she was eighteen, and way smarter and more interesting than I've ever been, and she wanted to go to college for fashion design."

[peaklordshen]

Galahad, once he's settled, is kind of an ideal portrait model. He just sits, perfectly still; he doesn't fidget, or ask questions, or even really look bored. He just—is. Usually what Shen Yuan likes about painting verses photography is the sense of gesture; you're not, necessarily, painting all of what someone looks like down to the last detail, but you're capturing something, a moment, or a composite of several, in a line of moments, as someone moves between poses or emotions. But he finds himself wishing he had a camera, rather than a brush, for this; he wants every detail of this stillness, not least because it's so different from Galahad's usual stillness—it's not wary, or reserved; he's waiting, and waiting, specifically, to be touched. He wants to capture that; the implication, caught somewhere in Galahad's gaze, that as the viewer your touch has the power to make him move, and breathe, and laugh, and sigh.

He's so still and silent for so long that Shen Yuan gets a little concerned, actually. "You okay?" He calls over to him from the easel. "Do you need, like, a snack? Something to drink?"

[peaklordshen]

"Of course it is," says Shen Yuan. "Any time. And just Galahad and Magnus, right now, but I'm not as far along with Magnus' as with this one." Magnus' portrait is actually up in his room, right now, because he'd brought it with him back to his room from outside, but Sagramore doesn't need to know that. Let him think that's the covered canvas he'd been working on when he came in. "I—invited Al—Yuri to sit for me as well, but I'm not sure he'll accept. Things are... somewhat awkward with us after the day everyone was truth-spelled." He hopes Sagramore will accept that as full enough explanation—he's friends with Binghe, and while he knows his discretion is legendary or whatever, that doesn't mean Shen Yuan should just take advantage and burden him with all his stupid little secrets.

[peaklordshen]

"You didn't get truth-spelled at all?" Shen Yuan asks, surprised. "But that was before the zombie attack, I assume you were still inside? I couldn't go two steps without it happening to me, what the hell."

[onthewillowsthere]

He blinks, looking a little like a sleeper come awake. "I'm all right." And then, because he's comfortable with Shen Yuan and he thinks Shen Yuan likes it when he explains his thoughts a bit more, he adds, "It's like a vigil. I'm good at vigils."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan frowns, a little. "Isn't that sad, though? I thought vigils were for when someone has died." Like waiting with mourners and burning money for the dead.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Some are. All vigils are prayers. When I became a knight I stayed up all night in the chapel."

[timebethine]

"Say for me again how thou camest to be thought dead," says Laertes. "If thou didst tell me before, I was in no frame of mind to hear it. I think I'd understand thee better now."

[peaklordshen]

"I'm not sure I ever really tried to tell you, before. Not in a way where I expected to be understood," admits Shen Yuan. "I came to be thought dead because I am dead. I think if we're being very technical about it, I'm a ghost inhabiting the body you see now, though I didn't choose to be." He pauses. "Not that I would prefer to just have reincarnated back on earth, not after everything I've gained in my second chance at living, but I wouldn't have chosen this body, from the world it is from."

[timebethine]

Laertes inhales. He's conscious that, two months ago, that would have been an impossible thing to hear--but he's summoned light into his hand, and fought the shambling dead, and suddenly there are more things in Heaven and Earth than he could have imagined. "Then Luo Binghe is from thy second world, and not thy first?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan nods, then remembers Laertes can't see him without turning his head, which Shen Yuan has forbidden him from doing. "Yeah," he says instead. "He used to be fictional, to me. The protagonist of a novel I was reading when I died.¹ Actually—" this, apologetically, "—most people here used to be fictional, to me. Including you. I wasn't sure what Shakespeare play you were from, when I arrived; I only figured it out once I placed Claudius, and then realized the two of you were from the same world." Even now he's not really sure what Laertes does, in Hamlet (probably because he's not in either the Lion King or any famous paintings). He reworks the shape of Laertes' jaw and hopes it's more than 'be sad about his sister'.

¹ Wow, not even specifying hate-reading. This IS personal growth.

[timebethine]

"Thou knowest the play," says Laertes slowly. Despite himself, he sits further forward in his chair. "Forgive me--I'm afire to know how my sister fares in it."

[peaklordshen]

Ah. Fuck. "I don't know it well," Shen Yuan says, quickly. "It's just quite famous, in—my original world? The future?" He doesn't know if Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's historical plays or not. He doesn't think so, but if it helps Laertes to think of it as being based on his life rather than he himself being written, like Binghe believes about Proud Immortal Demon Way, that's fine. "I told Claudius this, but I primarily know it from very loose adaptation—a children's movie, with songs, where the primary players are all rendered as lions." He's avoiding the question, hoping to distract, but he feels bad about it. Would it be better to tell him? He's probably going to find out eventually, especially now that Claudius knows, but—maybe someone else can deliver that particular news?

[timebethine]

"Well--how fares my sister, the lioness?" Laertes asks. It's something. It's more than he had before.