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]

"To be fair," says Shen Yuan, "I don't think it's very good Hamlet. Laertes isn't even in it."<sup>1

1</sup> Which, again—queer erasure??

[summerdude]

"I don't know that much about Hamlet," Magnus admits. "My mom really liked it, so I do know it's about Ophelia, but that's about it." He grins. "It doesn't surprise me that it's a bad adaptation. Scar was really scary when I was a kid, and Claudius is just really cool."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan is pretty sure the play is more about Hamlet than it is about Ophelia, because otherwise it would be called Ophelia, but he's already accidentally said enough about her for one lifetime, so he lets this pass. "Yeah, Claudius clearly had way more nuanced and justified reasons for killing his brother. Though I do think it would be fun to try and get him to sing some of Scar's songs. Or even just recite them. Be Prepared, but like, with thee's and thou's in there."

[summerdude]

Magnus tries to picture this. It's been an easy fifteen years since he's seen anything but Alex's adaptation of the Lion King, but she likes to do an overly dramatic version of the song in lion form -- which he can understand now, since he can speak animal -- and so it's not that hard to picture Claudius, like, declaiming it like some skald in Valhalla. "That would be very good," he decides. "You know those dueling cello guys? What I'd really like to see, in a perfect world, is Claudius doing a total recitation of Be Prepared while Alex is there, shapeshifted into Scar, doing the same thing but in, like, lion."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan laughs. "I'd pay to see that," he says, and squeezes Magnus' hand. "Not least because Alex would be here."

[summerdude]

"Yeah..." Magnus says, wistfully. He's still thinking about that double date he proposed to Galahad. He really does think Alex and Claudius would be a force to be reckoned with if they met. "That would be nice." He smiles over at Shen Yuan. "So. Truthed-up date with Luo Binghe."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan ducks his head, smiling a little. "Yeah," he says. "It—you know." He makes a face. "He told me he'd already met an alternate version of me months before we both ended up here, I told him I pushed an alternate version of him into the Endless Abyss. Standard first date stuff."

[summerdude]

"Oh, sure," Magnus says, easily, taking this all in. "Dude, I think your life might be even weirder than mine?"

[peaklordshen]

"Possible," says Shen Yuan. "I've never met any giants, though, or gods." Unless you count Airplane, which he doesn't, because he's mad at him.

[summerdude]

"I've never met an alternate self," Magnus counters. "Of me or any of my, um, friends."

[peaklordshen]

"I've never met myself," Shen Yuan clarifies. "That would be too weird. Though if I ever do meet the one Binghe met, I'm going to give hm a piece of my mind. He was very cruel to my boyfriend."<sup>1

1</sup> Did not shower him in love and affection in favor of showering a different Binghe in love and affection.

[summerdude]

"Oooooooh," Magnus teases, hip-checking Shen Yuan -- carefully; he doesn't want him to drop all his painting stuff. "Boyfriend."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan flushes. "Yeah," he says. "Shut—shut up."

[summerdude]

"Hey, all of my good friends here get to have boyfriends in-house now, but some of us left our boyfriends in Midgard," Magnus says, laughing. "So we have to make do. Vicariously, through teasing, or whatever."

[peaklordshen]

"I'm sorry," says Shen Yuan. "We don't have to talk about it, I don't mean to like, rub it in or whatever."

[summerdude]

"No!" This comes out a little more emphatically than Magnus intends. He makes a face at himself, then tries for a grin. It comes out softer, fond. "Dude, I'm fine. My point is I'm happy for you. You're my friend, man." He still has the note from Shen Yuan to prove it!! "I wanna know about your stuff. And celebrate it with you."

[peaklordshen]

"Okay, if you're sure." Honestly, it's a little weird to have so many friends interested in his romantic life. Not because he hasn't always had friends, but because he's never had a romantic life before, so most of his personal updates to them were about PIDW or whatever other fiction he was most mad about recently, or whatever inter-peak gossip he'd overheard, depending on which life you're talking about. "Well. We are definitely boyfriends."

[summerdude]

"Watch your step dude, there's some roots coming up," Magnus warns, as they draw closer to the clearing. Teasing again: "And good! One hundred wives and one boyfriend, huh?"

[peaklordshen]

"One hundred and seven wives," Shen Yuan corrects absently, stepping lightly over the root. "And--yeah. Did I tell you I know some of them? The wives? Not the versions of them he married, different versions, but still. I, um, I told him if--" he remembers how much Magnus misses Alex, and amends, "when we get out of here, I'd go with him back to his world, and then I'd get to meet his versions of them too."

[summerdude]

"One hundred and seven, my bad," Magnus says, and pauses at the edge of the clearing. That -- was a weird flare of an emotion. He can't quite identify which one, but it's not a fun one. "You're planning to leave? If you can?"

[peaklordshen]

"Sure," says Shen Yuan, surprised. "Aren't you? I figured you'd be raring to get back to Alex and your big important destiny."

He realizes he doesn't actually know much about what Magnus' big important destiny is-- they haven't, actually, talked about it. He just showed up with his talking sword and inability to be killed and Shen Yuan had filed him away alongside Galahad and Binghe as Protagonist. The destiny went without saying. Only now he's trying to unfile people, as much as possible, and it strikes him as unfair that he's never asked. Maybe Magnus will tell him about it once they're set up for the portraiture.

[summerdude]

Magnus hesitates. He thinks about Galahad saying he wants to stay where Claudius, Magnus, and Shen Yuan are; he thinks about how much fighting the zombies sucked; he thinks about Ragnarok brought about at the edge of Jack's blade. He likes being Friendship Guy. He doesn't want a different destiny. It's weird to think that other people might have different perspectives. "It's, um. Complicated."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan wrinkles his nose. "I mean, ideally, whatever portals or whatever lets us leave stay open, and we'd have something like the world tree you told me about," he says, "where everyone could come and go as they please, and we meet everyone else's friends. I'd love to meet Alex." He nods at the dress in Magnus' hands. "I'd love to see him see my portrait of you in that."

[summerdude]

"Here," Magnus says, gesturing at the clearing. To buy time while he thinks -- if people can go back, that means someone who came here could leave; that means that even staying here with Jack doesn't necessarily mean Ragnarok won't start. If someone from the Nine Worlds (like Surt) could come here and then leave, then there's really no point in trying to figure out a different --

He shakes his head to clear it, sharply, and shucks his robe, carefully putting the dress on and smoothing it over his body. He'd wanted to do something with his hair, but he doesn't really remember what.

[peaklordshen]

"Do you want braids, again?" Shen Yuan asks. "Or something fancier?"

Something he said clearly made Magnus think hard about something, but he'll wait until they're set up to press. Portraiture, he's learning, involves having a captive conversational partner.