Except something goes wrong and he gets put in a cat body (close enough to shen jiu lets be real)
He has no idea what's going on or where he is and the system is less helpful than in canon.
It tells him the main mission is locked, and all other functions are under maintenance due to an error.
Before he can even start adjusting to cat life he's swooped up by some monster. It's strangely familiar but he's too busy freaking out over potentially being eaten to put the pieces together
Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your perspective) the beast doesn't eat him right away. You see it's a mom, and she's taking this morsel back to her den to feed it to her young.
But before the ravenous little babies can tear him into little bite sized pieces, a very handsome powerful cultivator arrives to clear out the monster den.
His intention was to rid the country side of another dangerous monster, saving a cat was accidental if anything.
But now there's a bruised and somewhat bloody cat in his arms as he flies back to Cang Qiong Mountain
So he plans on taking it to mu qingfan. He knows medicine. He can probably help a cat right?
Mu Qingfang is not a vet. But he is brilliant and loves animals, so he can treat the cats minor injuries just fine.
Mostly he's just thrown by lqg bringing back something that's *alive*
He's trying so hard not to make a big deal of it, and starts giving lqg lots of tips on keeping cats and caring for them
Lqg was *not* planning on keeping this thing. But he also just didn't have a plan in general. He's still not quite sure why he saved it.
But now it looks like the cat is his responsibility. So he takes the cat and goes back to his peak.
Shen yuan wakes up in a quiet room. Sparcely decorated. He's lying on a pile of comfortable bedding (blankets from lqg's bed, they smell like him, they smell safe and comforting to cat-yuan), his wounds have been tended to.
Its new and confusing and all still so strange to be in a cats body. But he has a feeling that he's finally found someplace safe
Especially once the door opens and the mysterious beautiful man who saved him comes into the room with a dish of water and a plate of food.
Over the course of a few days Shen Yuan gets to know his hero. While also adjusting to being a cat.
The beautiful man doesn't talk much. He's very gentle with sy. Definitely more than he needs to be, like he's scared of hurting the cat (because he is. He has no frame of reference for this sort of thing)
Really aside from changing the bandages he tries not to touch the cat at all.
This is unfortunate. Because the system has rebooted.
The main quest is still locked, but he started earning points when the cultivator picked him up.
He learns that if he earns enough points he'll be able to turn back into a human for good.
So now the cat is on a mission.
He can earn points by completing missions (the main quests and side missions are still locked and the system refuses to give him so much as a hint as to how to unlock those features.)
Or he can earn affection points
Seeing as that's his only option his goal is to get this man to adore him. Should be easy. People love cats right? Shen Yuan never had a cat but he had the internet and cat videos are now his cheat codes
He starts acting cute, following lqg around, initiating contact.
And slowly it starts working.
Lqg will pet him, at first he was far too gentle, but eventually he's able to adjust.
He greets the cat when he returns home. And tells him he'll be back soon when he leaves.
One night shen yuan dares to hop onto lqg's bed and try to curl up next to him
He gets launched across the room (damn those warrior instincts)
But when lqg rushes over to scoop him up and check him over for injuries while apologizing, sy gets a tidal wave of points
Along the way Cat-Yuan insists to himself that he's doing this for the points, just for the points. Not at all because he actually enjoys the affection and attention.
Meanwhile lqg is in a similar state of denial. He thinks he's just keeping the cat until it's healed up. Then he'll take it back to the village he found it at.... but then it could get attacked again. Ok so thats out.
Maybe he'll give it to Mingyuan, she's young but she'd doubtlessly be able to care for the cat more than lqg can. And she's always liked animals more than him anyway.
Except she says she can't have cats in her room. Claims one of the other disciples is allergic. (Is she telling the truth? Who knows. Lqg certainly won't fact check her.)
So that's out.
And by then he's too attached to trust anyone else to take care of the little furball.
Next thing you know the war god has a little white cat sticking it's face out of his sleeve at the next peak lord meeting.
Once Cat Yuan gets the hang of this system and the missions he starts unlocking abilities and upgrades with his points
He eventually gets the ability to temporarily turn into a human
And he mostly uses it to help binghe once the kid gets to the sect, because he took one look at that kid and decided he definitely isn't going to let this sweet white lotus suffer like he did in pidw.
But he does have run ins with lqg as a human obviously
And lqg is initially pretty suspicious of this unknown pretty boy that keeps appearing and disappearing all over
(Definitely thinks sy kidnapped his cat at some point because that's hilarious)
But the turning point happens when lqg is fighting a demon, with his pet cat (lqg didn't want to leave his cat alone to go night hunting. And obviously he can keep the cat safe so what's the problem?)
(Luckily cat yuan got some physical buffs and some attacks from the system. So he really has been fine going out fighting monsters with lqg, and it's fun enrichment for the both of them)
But this demon is cunning, it's weaker than lqg by a significant margin, but it uses a trick to get the upperhand. Weakens lqg with a poison, and whisks him away before the animal companion can attempt to stop it.
Lqg is in varrying phases of consciousness but he vaugely recalls being in some sort of damp den. The villian leaves him alone for a moment. Confident that the poison and the immortal binding cables will keep him in place.
But then liu qingge feels a soft touch on his wrists. Nimble fingers try to untie the cable, and when that doesn't work he hears the sound of chen luan leaving it's sheath, and the cables are cut shortly after.
The stranger quietly tries to get liu qingge to stand and when that isn't happening (he can hardly feel his legs) the stranger helps him to his feet.
But before he can get lqg out of there the demon comes back and the fight is back on
Only this time it's the nameless cultivator against the demon. Hes clearly untrained, even with a powerful sword like chen luan he's barely doing damage. But what he lacks in skill he makes up for in pure determination. He's throwing himself into the fight like it's his own life on the line. And lqg can't quite wrap his head around it.
He finds himself back in his own bed on bai zhan peak hours later, going through everything again trying to make sense of it.
Then it hits him
The mystery man was able to draw chen luan, and the sword allowed him to fight with it.
The sword would only yield to someone liu qingge trusted absolutely
So who was this man?
And what was he to liu qingge?
He tries to figure it out while he is recovering. While his cat sits on his chest purring.
As some of you might recall from this essay, I spent the latter half of 2025 working on a comic for the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum in Savannah, Georgia. Tania Sammons, a curator at the museum who had previously licensed my guide to sailors’ tattoos for a show, wrote to me with an irresistible pitch: four cartoonists would be hired, assigned a vessel from the museum's extensive collection of models, then given six months to produce a short comic for publication in an anthology alongside an accompanying museum display.
How could I say no?
My original brief was to research the Anne, the ship that brought the first colonists to Georgia, but in the aftermath of my dad's death the story took off in directions I couldn't have foreseen.
I'm releasing the whole comic online to coincide with the opening of Drawn to the Sea, the exhibition in Savannah. If you're in the area this week (or anytime over the next nine months!) you can stop in and see all the amazing work that came from myself and fellow artists Avery Hick, Rich King, and Sharon Norwood. Details about the museum show are here.
In the meantime, here's a very personal comic.
Content Warning: this piece deals with suicide and parental mortality. Readers with trypophobia may want to skip pages 14 and 15.
qi-ge, do you think we’re together in every universe?
of course we are!
[ID: In panel 1, peak lord shen jiu hugs a ghost yue qi, who glows gold, in the ling xi caves. Yue qi’s skeleton reaching for the entrance to the caves is in the background. In panel 2, shen jiu lays facing away, limbless and bleeding, in the water prison. A few shards of something lay close to him. In panel 3, peak lord yue qingyuan kneels facing a ghost shen jiu, who glows gold, in the ruins of the Qiu household. His skeleton can be seen close to the foreground. In panel 4, yue qingyuan kneels beside a sleeping shen qingqiu’s bed; light filters through the windows into the bedroom. END ID]
Danmei Gotcha for Gaza: Still in need of pinch hitters
Hello everyone. This is mod Stilton back once again in search of pinch hitters for the Danmei Gotcha (fill out the pinch hitter sign-up form here if you would like to join). But in this post, I'd also like to explain why we're having such a hard time getting leftover prompts filled.
When we started accepting prompts, we had a spreadsheet that allowed potential prompters to see how many creators were available for a certain novel/fanwork type. This meant that if a prompter wanted a S/FW piece of art made for Married Thrice to Salted Fish, for example, they could check how many artists were available and decide whether they wanted to order an MTSF fanwork or not.
If the spreadsheet showed that only a single artist was available, they could choose to pick something for a fandom with 5+ creators on the roster instead; and as more prompts were assigned, and creators decided they had reached their limits regarding the number of prompts they had accepted, the spreadsheet was changed to reflect this. Once all the creators for a particular fandom indicated that they wanted to stop accepting prompts, we stopped taking prompts for that fandom.
However, this put us in a bind when creators were forced to drop out later on due to unforeseen life circumstances or went no-contact with the moderator team. We were left with a number of prompts that we could not find creators for, since every contributor to the project signed up for a different set of fandoms.
We currently have 112 out of 434 prompts left to fill. 24 of these are unclaimed, meaning that we have been unable to assign a creator for them so far. All details for the S/FW prompts have been listed below, in the hope that a fan artist or writer in one of the relevant fandoms finds this post and might decide to claim them:
8: Fic, Guardian | Zhen Hun. Prompt: Zhao Yunlan showing Shen Wei all his favourite spots in Dragon City.
31: Fic, Guide on How to Fail at Onling Dating. Prompt: A fic where Jing Huan and Lu Wenhao really like to prank call and happen to prank call XIang Huaizhi at his job in the pizza place.
52: Art or fic, Kaleidoscope of Death. Prompt: Cheng Qianli and Cheng Yixie in a door world inspired by Little Red Riding Hood (or other fairytale of your choice). Light/funny, dark/angst, and everything in between is great.
144: Art, Drink, Drank, Drunk or City of Angels. Prompt: A B/W artwork/sketch of the artist's favorite scene out of either novel, that's all!
145: Art, Drink, Drank, Drunk or City of Angels. Prompt: A B/W artwork/sketch of the artist's favorite scene out of either novel, that's all!
151: Art or fic, Lord Seventh | Qi Ye. Prompt: The sable has stolen something important. What is it? (Can be as serious or as silly as you'd like!)
161: Art or fic, Peerless. Prompt: Cui Buqu and Feng Xiao but Cui Buqu is the powerful cultivator and Feng Xiao is a peerless, sickly beauty. Feng Xiao falling for (in his own way) his pit digging not quite suitor who continues to show up in his life even though Cui Buqu says it has nothing to do with Feng Xiao (it does).
193: Fic, Faraway Wanderers | Tian Ya Ke. Prompt: Ye Baiyi angst (introspection on canon mourning? the horrors of immortality? go wild)
195: Art, Golden Stage. Prompt: "I just wanted to kiss you. Stop crying." Fu Shen kissing Yan Xiaohan's hand from Ch 78.
199: Fic, Global Examination. Prompt: Gamer AU - maybe Qin Jiu as game dev who used to own the Top 2 scoreboard with You Huo who abandoned his high-profile account to live a farming life with his burner account?
Alternate prompt: Modern AU with Qin Jiu & You Huo playing video games together with excessive PDA.
212: Art, The Submissive Emperor. Prompt: Lou Jing with his arms wrapped around his husband's waist from behind and nuzzling his hair.
230: Fic, Stars of Chaos | Sha Po Lang. Prompt: Pick a moment in the novel to explore a canon divergence (fix-it, make it worse, or just make it different, whatever fits the story you want to tell!)
288: Fic, Faraway Wanderers | Tian Ya Ke. Prompt: Bodyswap chaos!
(Preferably canon-verse, what point in time is up to you). Due to reasons, ZZS and JBY swap bodies/consciousness (ZZS wakes up in JBY’s body and vice versa). Why this happens and how it gets resolved is up to you! I’d just like to see WKX suffering having to be with JBY, and Wuxi being Worried.
328: Fic, Guardian | Zhen Hun. Prompt: The novel-verse SID + Shen Wei gets roped into helping out at a haunted house (or similar event).
Yue Qingyuan is a fun character because depending on what angle you look at him from, he is either surprisingly well-adjusted or surprisingly unhinged.
If you're looking at Yue Qingyuan, the composed, reasonable, ever-polite sect leader, you will probably be taken aback by how much of that is just smoke and mirrors. And not just like one layer, either, it's not simple like "beneath that smiling facade he's actually an ambitious asshole" or something, no, beneath the first layer of smoke and mirrors there is another one, and then another one, all piled up and twisted together over a core that is a terrified and starving child. He's like one of those old English pubs where the wood rot is so thorough that it's actually what's keeping the roof from collapsing.
But if you're looking at the former slave child who had to be the biggest, most responsible of a gang of neglected and traumatized urchins, who ran away to become a cultivator only to make a wrong choice that got his entire body and spirit taken apart and put back together again, only to lose the one relationship that mattered to him, then the fact that he's anything other than a weeping mess on the floor is genuinely impressive.
The third card in the series <3 Yue Qingyuan this time!
[ID: Scum Villain fanart stylized as a king of spades playing card featuring Yue Qingyuan holding Xuan Su. The upright Yue Qingyuan has a distant expression and is holding Xuan Su by the blade, making his hand bleed. The reversed Yue Qingyuan has his eyes closed peacefully, and the upright Yue Qingyuan's blade is slashing his neck. End ID]
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