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]

"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?"

[peaklordshen]

"Well, no, because the System stole me from my original world," says Shen Yuan. "It's like—okay. Obviously a multiverse, like, exists, because we're in some kind of crossroads inside it right now, and we're all from different hubs on it. But I think, if there were doors out to everybody's worlds, yours and mine would be right next to each other, but they wouldn't be the same door." And my world's real, and yours is fictional, so maybe there'd be a long hallway to my door, or— Anyway. <sup>1

1</sup> Enjoy this while it lasts - Sadmas is going to convince him there's no door to his world at all, just to his version of PIDW.

[summerdude]

Magnus is almost positive they're from the same world, but it's not worth arguing about. "Okay, dude."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan is very familiar with that tone, and he subsides, a little embarrassed. Twitching his fingers, he calls Xiu Ya back up so he can hop back onto it. "Right," he says. "Enough—talking nonsense, I have a portrait to paint."

[summerdude]

"Oh right," Magnus says. He shakes himself a little, trying to get his head back into the game. He jokes: "Paint me like one of your French girls, Shen Yuan."

[peaklordshen]

Shen Yuan laughs, sword-surfing back over to his easel. "No French girls to paint, here," he says, "though I guess we'll see if one wanders in after Enjolras and Grantaire." He remembers his single very self-pitying drink with the latter. "Though that might disrupt whatever homoerotic pining situation they have going on."

[summerdude]

"Dude," says Magnus, leaning forward eagerly. "They're so homoerotic? Oh my gods. Can I tell you a secret?"

[peaklordshen]

"Obviously, yes, please," says Shen Yuan, starting to sketch in his pose.

[summerdude]

"So when I heal people I see their memories," Magnus says. Usually he doesn't share people's memories with anyone else but he's already told Claudius about this one when everyone at the Mansion except Magnus got truth-spelled, so it's probably fine, right? "I can't not. That's not the secret, everybody knows that. But when Enjolras got here, he was like, full of bullet holes? So obviously I healed him, so obviously I saw his most important memories at the time. And the biggest, shiniest, most important one? Was of Grantaire holding his hand."

[peaklordshen]

"Holy shit," says Shen Yuan. "I talked to Grantaire when he first arrived, and he spent like the whole time drunkenly comparing Enjolras to the sun and telling me how before he died Enjolras smiled at him, like it was the most amazing that had ever happened to him. I think he thought he wouldn't show up here and he'd never see him again."

[summerdude]

Magnus nods. "Obviously they're in love," he says, and pauses. "Do you think they know they're in love?"

[peaklordshen]

"I think Grantaire knows he loves Enjolras, but I don't think he knows it's mutual," says Shen Yuan, shaking his head. "He was really talking like Enjolras was totally beyond his reach, and not just because he was supposed to be in heaven or whatever. That's so sad, when people can't even imagine themselves being loved back."<sup>1

1</sup> No comment.

[summerdude]

"Agreed," says Magnus, emphatically and without one whiff of irony.