Just call me Wendy, or Wen. Mostly a tumblr for whenever I feel like posting things, which is umm... hardly ever! I spend most of my days reading fanfiction. If you wanna get in touch, toss me message. Don't send an ask, I never check that :P Previous translations can be found here. Sidebar image by Aki
My friend's kid gave me pinkeye and I have been on a particularly fuckt up sleep schedule about it and dreamed an entire Italian Opera on the themes of heaven and hell and the power of love and recognition of the self in other and the tragedy of loving the idea of something rather than the thing itself and the dream ended with the phrase "-And then it was banned EVERYWHERE."
The plot starts off with a hybrid of Cinderella and the Taming Of The Shrew where a woman with her own daughter marries a Duke who has an older daughter, and then the Duke dies under "Mysterious circumstances".
But he leaves in his will that his fortune won't be disbursed until his daughter (the elder one) marries.
The elder daughter (like, 20ish?) is refusing to get married because her step-mother is trying to set her step-sister (age 12) with IDK A Medieval Italian supreme court judge?? (Age 65) , but the marriage can't go through until the Duke's fortune disburses and the mother can pay the dowry.
Other thing about the Eldest Daughter: She Always Speaks The Truth. Not only does she refuse to lie, but kind of like a retroactive Cassandra, everything she says is True. As you can imagine, this is not terribly popular In Fantasy Medieval Italian High Society.
The mother, big mad about being stuck with this stubborn, awkward girl, gets a Lawyer and a Bishop and a bunch of other authority figures to modify the will so that "Should the plague take my eldest, we will not be bereft *wink*" AKA if the eldest just dies or disappears without getting married, the mother will get the money anyway.
(They all know she's going to kill the girl, but they're getting a cut.)
The Step-Mother then, in true operatic fashion of Going Way Too Hard tortures the Elder daughter, and locks her in the basement to bleed out and die.
There, in the darkness, abandoned by God and the Law and Family etc. the daughter turns to the last thing she has left.
BLACK MAGIC
(Come on, it's Opera. Everybody knows Black Magic)
So she summons a Demon
As One Does.
He appears to her in the darkness- And is immediately terrified and transfixed because even though it's totally dark, she's looking right at, and through him, and Can See Him Exactly As He Is.
Which is Spooky, because he's been having some serious self-esteem issues lately- Demon has his own problems, you see- He's a Prince of Hell and thus he's the victim of Hellish Politics and beset by all his fellow demons. And he's Terrible at machinations and scheming because he too feels an attachment to The Truth and it's making him feel Demonically Inadequate, even if he's got the Wrath and Violence part down pat.
...So He's been lurking on the material plane to get away from it all and been watching her suffering, because he too feels the kinship of being betrayed and hunted by all that ought love him and telling The Truth no matter how easy it would be to lie.
So now, here he is in the darkness, and his crush is looking RIGHT AT HIM and he's genuinely frightened because he's never cared about someone's opinion of him before.
His aria about this is pretty great, but THEN:
She reaches out to him and says
"There is something wrong with you
There is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me
What is this kinship I feel with you? The affliction grants you Grace and Beauty, and leaves me a Hobbling wretch
Yet I believe we share some kinship- I know the fear in your eyes, for I see it in every mirror"
(I know the first two lines are from a poem in Mirror Traps by Hera Lindsay Bird, but this is what my eye-pain-delerium brain supplied me with)
He goes down on one knee in front of her and promises to do anything she wishes- He's seen how she suffers and If he cannot have his own recompense, he will have hers-
-For what price?
You are wise, and I am weary- I am a Demon and there is but one currency we trade in. Give me your soul, and I will give you everything you desire.
She thinks about it for a bit, and he makes every offer he can- I will torture your stepmother as she tortured you! The Judge lusting after your sister? I'll make his dick explode! That bishop that has his head up his ass- I'll make him shove it up there so far he turns inside-out!
-Love me. She says. The suffering of others will do nothing to ease my own, though some bitter part of my would thrill to see it. Love me, Truly love me as neither of us have been but deserved, and my soul will be yours.
ā¦If I were to Truly Love you, then my soul would be yours.
-Would that be such a terrible thing?
ā¦It would not. He says, and promptly spirits her off to his palace in hell, and explains his situation as he tends to her.
[At this point my brain extensively hallucinated some real smutty hurt/comfort, because I am hurting and need the comfort]
Once they understand each other, they decide to do a strangers on a train-
He goes to Earth where the mother is planning to marry the younger daughter off to the creepy old judge and tricks everyone into betraying everyone else in disguise as a simple manservant, and spirits the younger daughter away back to Hell to play with Hellhound puppies all while making sure he Never Tells A Single Lie, because it's not a sin for a demon to be honest- it's a demonstration of his Mastery that he doesn't NEED to.
Meanwhile, She goes to the royal court of Hell and goes around to all the Demons and tells them The Truth about themselves, which they can't stand as all their power is based on a sense of self-importance and secret rules that don't actually have anything to do with reality. After losing most of their power to The Divine Wrath Of Autsim, they scamper off to Earth to get more power from their humans, who are all in a tizzy because there's some kind of political thing going on, and the Elder Daughter and the Demon play off each other's work to get everyone ready to fuck up each other's shit.
(This part of the dream got muddy because Actual Plot is something I have to do while conscious and I'm not doing more than I have to until my eye stops trying to to persuade me to gouge it out with a spoon)
ANYWAY, The Final Act is the Big Wedding where all the Humans are plotting to murder each other and the Demons are all shriveled up little creatures and The Daughter and The Demon Prince turn up and reveal it was them all along and that ALL of you suck and have also ruined each other- the Judge has gotten the lawyer disbarred, the Lawyer had gotten the Bishop caught committing fraud, the Bishop has gotten the judge excommunicated and ALL the mother's friends and allies are broke and their careers are dead and now that they have no social agency, they can't hurt anyone anymore.
And then the caterer steps forward and reveals that He's Actual For Real God, and he is SO PROUD of the daughter and the demon for stopping this corrupt fracas without violence or lying! The shriveled demons are Human Souls that had been cast into hell to atone but weren't learning the lesson, and the humans are headed that way unless they really get their shit together.
The demon prince remarks that it's odd that God would be pleased with the work of a demon.
What Demon? Says the Daughter, who always says the truth.
Yeah what Demon? Laughs God. You're one of my Best Angels, who oversees the rehabilitation of the wicked. You looked like you were getting overwhelmed though, so I found this Paragon of Truth for you. And you Paragon looked like you were in need of help so I found this Angel for you! Now, is someone getting married today or are we just gonna let this cake go to waste?
God marries them, there's a big party and The All Live Happily Ever After as the King and Queen of Hell, and her sister gets big into Demonic Dog Breeding.
and then I explicitly dreamed the voice of some art historian saying "-And then it got banned EVERYWHERE."
i really need a svsss au where shen yuan transmigrates as a wandering cultivator and he becomes so well known as being the embodiment of Local Florida Man
he dwells on the outskirts of Cang Qiong so the Sect recieves a bunch of alarmed notices from local citizens about a man who isā not a danger to anyone aside from himself.
āLocal Wandering Cultivator attacked by squirrel demon after trying to draw the pattern on its hornsā
āLocal Wandering Cultivator seen wrestling swivelling crocodile hellborns, lives to tell the taleā
āLocal Wandering Cultivayor argues heās done nothing wrong after accidentally setting a flock of dual-headed rabbit snarls on local villageā
the sect are VERY concerned, they keep sending first disciples then peak lords down the mountain to deal with shen yuan, who could not give less of a shit until they send shen qingqiu to try and scare him into compliance and he realises exactly just where he is
Shen Jiu was forced to play accomplish to a number of Wu Yanziās scams, playing lookout or distraction and occasionally the retrieval of the treasure as well. But the weirdest and most embarrassing one he had to do was that time he had to take the place of some woman getting married into a noble family. He wasnāt sure how Wu Yanzi learned the route of the bridal procession nor how exactly the switcharoo was pulled off with no one the wiser - the poor bride to be was dumped in the middle of the forest unconscious since even Wu Yanzi didnāt want to take the risk of having her rich family gunning after him for murder - but he was forced into her red wedding gown and veil, did the three bows with the groom, and was promptly sent to the bridal chambers while the groom went off for the feast. In that time of being unattended, Shen Jiu snapped up all the treasures that Wu Yanzi instructed and anything that looked expensive - which was near everything encrusted with gems and made of gold - and ran out of the manor before the groom came back to lift the veil. Wu Yanzi was pleased and needless to say, Shen Jiu tried to forget about that terrible memory immediately.
So imagine his shock and horror when one day, a noble lord comes to Cang Qiong asking for his runaway wife to please return home and not stay anger at him anymore and the man is staring directly at him, the Qing Jing peak lord, making it clear for all just who heās referring to.
Shen Jiu scoffs and plays off this noble as a scammer trying to gain some influence or money via this lie. He successfully gaslights the rest of the peak lords and they all forget about this incident. Although the noble lord protests and claims otherwise, he's not able to prove anything - there's no paperwork nor does he own any memento or any of Shen Jiu's old items. Even the personal details he knows of Shen Qingqiu are facts that everyone knows of the Xiu Ya wielder - of course he likes tea and sometimes throws a hissy fit by throwing tea over people's heads!
Of course, this isn't the first noble lord to come up to plead their case... Because naturally if this marriage scam worked once, Wu Yanzi pulls it off again. And again. And when the noble circle hears about how one lord found their runaway bride in Qing Jing peak lord, a few more try their luck. (Plenty lords have had runaway brides and concubines; not all of them were Shen Jiu ahem.)
Shen Jiu is sweating bullets when he manages to convince the second man to appear is another scam. It helps that this is an elderly man whose aging looks rival that of the Old Palace Master and no one likes that mental image. The third one is chase away by an annoyed Qi Qingqi who's annoyed that there's so many of these arrogant noble scum men daring to claim that the Qing Jing peak lord could be merely a concubine and not first wife. The 4th one, uhhh, accidentally gets injured by an out of control disciple learning how to fly a sword and loses all his memories in the accident.
The 5th lord however? He proves to be a problem. A major problem. The peak lords are all beyond annoyed with Shen Qingqiu. "There's no smoke without a fire," one peak lord says. "These accusations may not be without merit."
Another scoffs. "No person gets married off again and again. Brides are not something that can be regifted like some trinket."
"Ah, but Shen Qingqiu being a runaway wife may be true."
"Hm."
Now the 5th lord to come up is some deputy minister of the Ministry of Justice. He's a rising star in the imperial bureaucracy and worse? He knows a little too much. He starts off with not a petition but shares that over their nuptial wine, his wife had shared how his older brother was missing and possible dead after setting out to join a sect. He continues sharing a couple more facts such as how his wife wanted to become a cultivator and find his brother's bones for a proper burial as they grew up destitute with no one to depend on but each other on the streets and -
Which was all but declaring that this man was truly his husband else how would this unrelated man know such private details of the prickly peak lord?
(Shen Jiu can't even recall if this man was indeed some of the men he "married" with the three bows or not. Towards the end where he started getting too used to being used as a bride slash distraction, he may had used the groom as a bit of a sounding board that he could rant to.)
Deputy Minister Shang Feiji (Feiji meaning Airplane) smiles. He knows his creations the best.
Yet how can he expect that first noble lord "NPC" to come back and try to steal Shen Jiu out from his grasp?
(That first noble, one transmigrated Shen Yuan, is desperate to save this NPC from the evil scum villain's hands.)
And suddenly the Cang Qiong sect is hit with the realization that yes, their Qing Jing peak lord somehow got married off to multiple (filthy rich or extremely powerful) men and before the previous husband died, he went and married another man. He was a scumbag, just of a different kind than they thought.
When Qiu Haitang comes out with her accusation, Cang Qiong is only surprised by her gender.
#OP i'm howling clawing at my walls right now#i'm being completely normal about this#imagine the expression on YQY's face tho @holy--milk
Yue Qingyuan: I should had known A-Jiu would have leveled up from crying fake tears to milk out more coins from nobles on the streets to fake becoming a bride to sleep in comfortable beds and eat tasty foods.
Yue Qingyuan knows exactly what kind of sly trickster of a gremlin Shen Jiu is under that haughty Shen Qingqiu mask.
#jiuyuan flavor: shen yuan transmigrated into the rando lord and is doing this to interfere with the plot#he figured out who the original goods got scam married to thanks to the wu yanzi connection#fate of the world and the future mental health of his blorbo are at stake unless he can wife. that. man.#the system says nothing because this is inarguable peak entertainment#pidw is a telenovela now#bonus at some point qiu haitang still shows up and everyone is like damn shen jiu how many times have you done this @sunderwight
Shen Yuan comes bumbling in not knowing about Shen Qingqiu's backstory and all his assumptions about the scum villain (i.e. rich, privilege background and all that) paint an ugly undertone of presumed moral superiority and arrogance that immediately puts Shen Jiu off on him...
And into Airplane's arms.
Insert scenes of Airplane and Shen Yuan fighting over Shen Jiu in some weird Twilight-esque love triangle and Shen Jiu is annoyed, delighted, and amused in equal measures. Plus he now has two attack dogs he gets to aim at any new noble popping up to claim him as their missing bride.
Qiu Haitang gets ripped a new one in record time.
(Wait, does that make Luo Binghe the kind of evil 2nd FL who's trying to steal away one of the ML's?)
#i have this image in my head of airplane and cucumber fighting it out in like. the equivalent of shen jiu's lawn.#over who gets to wife the scum villain and one of them slips and says 'waifu' and that's how they find out#meanwhile shen jiu is (as always) simultaneously irritated and pleased at how his oh-so-noble 'husbands' debase themselves for his sake#and binghe is hiding out in the bamboo goin 'The Kind Lord fighting the Weird Lord over mean shizun again :( why cant he fight for meeeeeee#also also: consider the absolutely wretched circumstance that the Palace Master really WAS one of the abandoned husbands#man comes over to cang qiong like: hmmm ): i would not ask lord shen to abandon his sect. but my daughter does miss her mother such#little palace mistress: *has no idea what's going on* did mother leave because of me?#i wonder what the opinion is on the ning yingying situation here#cuz the other lords are surprised by qiu haitang's gender so that means no one expects shen jiu of bein the lecherous shizun by this point#nyy = child from previous marriage says peak lord number eleventy-seven#hmmmm#i love how we're all just putting this man into the most contrived situations#truly#this is the life @discount-brain-matter
Shen Yuan and Airplane at first: Here to save the world and that NPC lord from the scum villain!
Shen Yuan and Airplane now: I'm not losing this competition!
---
The timing in between all those noble lords coming in isn't too long - maybe a week or two apart? So the sect doesn't get to think or wonder too much about the Ning Yingying situation for any too crazy conspiracies to start up.
It's just mild things like maybe Shen Qingqiu training her how to spot red flags in potential husbands (lol) or maybe looking for a safe concubine for his lord husband to take (since males normally don't have pregnancies.) Yeah, these are pretty mild, right? /s
If you aren't a coward this all can be solved with a big harem and just make them kiss each other.
Maybe one of those comedy with multiple couples in the same house but here sometimes LB kisses SJ cause he's REALLY pretty and Airplane looks at SY and says (after making out): no homo bro
SY, being a rich second son all his life, now married to the sexiest man alive: it's just for the plot *sit watching LB cleaning the pool (the tiniest clothes he could have. There were few clothes used) he made just for this moment* if we don't hold hands we're just bros living together *sips wine as LB bends*
(YQ is there, crying cause he wants so much to be part of them and at the same time he wishes to never know anything about them and their kinky sex)
And cause SJ can't have good things without a lot of drama, he has to convince SY he's the real victim here (he really is, but SY is dense as concrete so you had to make a strong point)
SJ: I didn't want to marry anyone! I just wanted to be free! And when I was in peace with my fate being the scum lord YOU have to come and eradicate my hard work! I'm more than just a bride! No the little bride that ran away and you have to chase to show how powerful you are and force me to be a slave with the name of wife! But now everything I did is nothing against your show
Airplane-bro is there trying to stop the Greek tragedy that is his character's back story, wants to save SJ and takes him far away from CQM would surely solve at least 90% of the problems.
Sometimes he goes to the demon world and fucks with MBJ but only when he's tired of everyone bullshit (twice a week at least)
LB can be a lord demon but here's the sugar baby, manwhoring his way to SY's bed and worrying that if he isn't his hottest version we would be removed and SJ takes his place.
So he walks basically nude and poses when SY is looking at him.
titsay
stormborns
gummygunk
