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

[summerdude]

"It doesn't work like that," Magnus says, a little sadly. He leans his head against Shen Yuan's shoulder. "But enough about that dude."

[peaklordshen]

"Right," says Shen Yuan, his hand coming up automatically to pet Magnus' head. "...What were we talking about before him?"

[summerdude]

"Zombies, destiny, Luo Binghe's erotica world," Magnus says, promptly. "Hey, do you think I'm the age I was when I died or age of the number of years I've existed?"

[peaklordshen]

"Number of years you've existed, definitely," says Shen Yuan immediately, because that's what he is, and he doesn't know why it should be different for Magnus just because he got to keep his own body.

[summerdude]

So far the only consistency Magnus has been getting is that he's not sixteen. "How old are you?"

[peaklordshen]

"Twenty...six?" says Shen Yuan. "Twenty-seven? One of those. I was, like, in the process of turning twenty-two when I died, and then I was in Proud Immortal Demon Way for like five years. So yeah, twenty-seven. Although it's fall now, so maybe I'm twenty-eight?" He looks down at himself. "My body's—actually, I have no fucking idea how old my body is. Piece of shit cultivated to immortality, so he could've been anywhere from thirty to like, four hundred."<sup>1

1</sup> He was 35.

[summerdude]

"You died on your birthday? I died on my birthday!"

[peaklordshen]

"Oh, shit, really??" Shen Yuan shakes his head. He supposes it is pretty dramatic, so he shouldn't be surprised that what was a coincidence for him was like, a plot choice for whoever wrote Magnus' canon. "Can we make shirts for that, too?"

[summerdude]

"Dudes who died on their birthdays in 2015 and then later figured out they were into dudes," Magnus says, spreading his hands wide for effect. "The most exclusive club that I've ever been in." He grins. "That makes me twenty-four, by the way."

[peaklordshen]

"Nice," says Shen Yuan. "That does make me feel better about talking to you about romantic baths and erotica world." He cocks his head. "Does it suck? To look sixteen when you're not?"

[summerdude]

Magnus shakes his head. "Age is weird in Valhalla," he says. "The floors are divided by age at time of death, so me and all the other sixteen to nineteen year olds feast together or whatever, and everyone on my floor also died at sixteen. But Mallory died in the 1970s, and her boyfriend Halfborn died in the 800s, and TJ died in the Civil War. Alex died the year after me. But once you're there, everything is mostly so same-y? You wake up, you die, you eat, you fight, you die, you eat, you dick around... And some of the people around you look older but are younger than you, and some of them look younger but are centuries older. So I didn't really think about it till I got here. I guess really the most annoying part back home was that it was hard to do stuff on my own for the Chase Space, because people thought I was just another kid staying there, and not the guy who organized it all. Other than that, it can be nice to be underestimated?" He shrugs. "Here is different, though. I'm the only einherji. So I've been thinking about it differently."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan nods. "That makes sense," he says. "I guess I didn't really think about it much either, when I was on Cang Qiong, because everyone there is either a teenager or agelessly and eternally beautiful." He hesitates, and does some quick math. "Oh, shit," he says. "I'm older than Bingge. That's wild."

[summerdude]

The magnitude of this observation escapes Magnus. "Yeah, exactly," he says.

[peaklordshen]

"No, like," says Shen Yuan. "I was older than Binghe, obviously, the one I knew back in the world I just came from? But that's because he was fifteen, because I entered that world really early on in his story. But the Bingge here?? I thought he was like, 200, when I first got here. But he's only 25. And Emperor, and already married a hundred and seven times. I'm 27 and have never had a job and have been on exactly two dates, ever, and both of them were with him!"

[summerdude]

"Oh hey, that means me and Luo Binghe are practically the same age," Magnus says. It's -- actually extremely weird to think about. He can't imagine being married once, let alone hundreds of times. "If it helps, the only job I've ever really had is dying a lot?" It counts, because sometimes quests pay. "And I've only dated Alex." He pauses. "Jackie Molotov kissed me once, before I died the first time, I guess, but that doesn't count."

[peaklordshen]

"Yeah, someone kissed me before I died the first time, too, but I don't count that either," agrees Shen Yuan. "Who's Jackie Molotov?"

[summerdude]

Magnus shrugs. "Just some girl at the seventh-grade school dance."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan snorts. "That's the most American thing you've ever said."

[summerdude]

Magnus laughs, branch underneath them shaking with it. "I can do you one better," he says. "Did you know that Boston is literally the center of the world?"

[peaklordshen]

"Boston?" Shen Yuan asks, in disbelief. "I mean--I guess points for it not being New York or Los Angeles?" The only think he knows about Boston is that one of the big important American colleges is there. Yale, maybe?? "Wait, if the Mansion wasn't translating you into Mandarin right now, would you have one of those ridiculous accents?"

[summerdude]

"It's where the World Tree grows!" Magnus says, a little defensive but mostly amused. "Boston is the heart of Midgard and the place where all the other worlds connect. It's why the Vikings kept ending up in the area, pre-Columbus. And -- no. I can do the accent, but it's not, like, naturally-occuring."

[peaklordshen]

Vikings?? Oh, right, Magnus' whole thing is, like, Norse. Shen Yuan doesn't know shit about Norse Mythology. "That's wild," he says. "I think I knew some people doing like, study abroad at whatever the big university is there. Not in your world, obviously, but like, in the Boston of mine."

[summerdude]

"Harvard?" Magnus says, and then: "Aren't we, like, from the same world? Originally?"

[peaklordshen]

"I--no," says Shen Yuan. "I'm like, pretty sure there isn't a giant World Tree in the Boston in my world. I don't think there's anything supernatural in my world at all, I just ended up in a different world when I died." This is a kind way of saying, no, I'm real and you're fictional.

[summerdude]

"I mean, it's not visible," Magnus says. "Even to me, outside of, like, Valhalla. That's the point, right? There's a veil. The mist. Ginnungagap. It keeps people from seeing the truth so that they don't go literally insane. Hell, I've never seen a Greek god or creature, but my cousin Annabeth, who's the daughter of Athena, has them up the wazoo, so I know they're out there. Just not, like, for me to notice I guess." He pauses. "She's seen some Norse stuff, though. Alex shapeshifting, Jack, Blitzen and Hearthstone, Samirah in full valkyrie garb... stuff like that." He hesitates for a moment, because they haven't directly talked about it, really, at any length, but: "Anyway, that's why I kinda thought you might be a demigod too, at first. The vibes. Plus, if there was truly nothing supernatural in our original world, it would be impossible for you to travel to a different one, right?"