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."

[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]

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

[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."

[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.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan relaxes, a little, though he feels a stab of guilt for doing so. "Well," he says, truthfully. "Her name in it is Nala, and she and Simba--that's lion Hamlet--end up together. She helps him defeat Scar--that's Claudius, who's the villain of the piece." He carves the curve of Laertes' brow in light and shadow and jokes, lightly, "You know, having spoken with him here, I'm beginning to think maybe the children's movie version of the story loses some of the complexity and nuance of the original. But he does get all the best songs."

[timebethine]

"He would," says Laertes, with a fond roll of his eyes. It eases his heart, to know that his suspicion was correct: the play does indeed feature the courtship of his sister and Prince Hamlet. He doesn't particularly like it--the prince is a scholar more than a warrior, but still given to his father's volatile moods and sudden outbursts of violence--but at least it's a comprehensibly unpleasant fate. "Do I feature in it? I suspect not; had I not been whisked away from mine own world, I would have swiftly returned to France, and left the scene of the play entirely."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan shakes his head. "You're not," he says. "But I do think you're in the play, though maybe just to give the romantic advice we talked about your sister disliking so much, earlier." If he weren't, he couldn't be here, either—arguably, he wouldn't exist.

[timebethine]

"That's likely," says Laertes wryly--and then he remembers that there had been a topic of conversation before they'd diverted to talking about sisters. "Why shouldst thou want advice on keeping a courtship slow?"

[peaklordshen]

"Well—I'm—Luo Binghe and I are dating. Um, like, courting, kind of? Except that we've already slept together, once, but that was—" He sighs. "Let me see if I can lay this out plainly like I did the whole being dead thing: Luo Binghe was the protagonist of a book I was reading when I died. I ended up in that book, after death, but that's actually not the important part, here. The important part is—his relationship with women, in that book, it—it wasn't good." Understatement of the fucking century. "It was, to be blunt, badly written erotica, and he was basically forced by the author's hand into marrying endless women, sometimes only hours or days after meeting them, and then losing interest immediately and meeting someone new." He carefully lines Laertes' eyelid with light. "Once he came here, he realized he's gay—that he doesn't even really desire women at all, only men. It's—fucked up."

[timebethine]

Laertes's expression shades toward horrified. "This explains much," he murmurs. "Thou hast told me he'd suffered, in his world. Nina said the same. How much worse must it have been, to seek surcease of suffering with woman after woman, and to find no ease or pleasure in their company."

[peaklordshen]

"Right? It sounds so awful," says Shen Yuan, enormously relieved that finally someone understands. "I didn't really get it, at first," he admits. "I didn't know he was gay, just that he was... exploring things with men, and I thought he would approach them—approach me—the way he had with women. Quick, and passionate, and then—" he waves a hand. "Ultimately meaningless. And I was being very stupid about my own sexuality, as I'm sure you remember." He means their extremely circuitous conversation in the greenhouse.

[timebethine]

Laertes snorts. "I do. Thou hast a far less wild look now than thou didst, then--it seems the knowledge has eased some frenzy in thee, and I welcome it."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan winces at himself. "Frenzy is—a good way to put it," he says, ruefully. "I'd worked myself into such a state, thinking I had to take advantage of what I thought of as a passing interest in me, from Luo Binghe. It—wasn't, at least not as quickly passing as I first thought, and now I kind of regret rushing us both into, um, the physical aspect of our relationship." He frowns down at his palette, trying to get a shade of golden to mix right for one of the many tones in Laertes' eyes. "I don't want it to feel anything like what he was forced into before," he says, quietly, "but—I really have no idea what I'm doing."

[timebethine]

"Forgive me if this advice is unwelcome--but art thou not setting another path for him, with no better understanding of whether it will be to his health and his liking?"

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan blinks. "No—I mean, I don't think so," he says. "We talked about it—we fought, actually, and he said he understood why I drew the conclusions I did about his patterns of attraction. I think—I think it's what he wants, not something I'm imposing on him." He's less sure of this than he was when they started the conversation, though.

[timebethine]

"Didst ask him what he wants?" Laertes asks--not accusatory, but confirming; he has gathered the impression, over their last few meetings, that Shen Yuan is the sort of man who makes presumptions about the world and then retroactively justifies to himself why no other conclusion could be possible.

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan flushes. "If you listen to him he wants nothing but me, all the time, and would scorn the Mansion and all residents of every world to have me," he say, tone a mixture of disbelieving, exasperated, and desperately fond. "But—he said the same to his wives. I know he has no other language with which to speak, but..." he trails off.