Hi, anon!! Thank you for the prompt, you were the very first one to send one in! 7 was, again, the wildcard, so I randomly generated a different number to land on Yue Qingyuan (from Scum Villain)! I have no choice but to dedicate this to @bytedykes, because I told her about this prompt and she said “yqy pet fish mental health speedrun” and we went, uh, a little insane about it. Enjoy some yuefang, folks!!!!
“Mu-xiong,” Yue Qingyuan says. “I’m sorry to bother you. Are you available?”
“Yue-xiong is never a bother,” Mu Qingfang says warmly. “And I am, actually, yes. Is everything okay, Yue-xiong?”
“I think I need help.” A bit dramatic, perhaps, and Yue Qingyuan hates to trouble Mu Qingfang on a rare day off, but Yue Qingyuan and impulse have never been the best combination, and he would appreciate a second opinion.
Mu Qingfang’s voice turns hard. “Where are you? I'll come right away.”
“What—?” Yue Qingyuan stares at his phone like the blank call screen will tell him why Mu Qingfang suddenly sounds so serious. “I'm at home, but—”
“I'll be right there,” Mu Qingfang says, and hangs up.
Yue Qingyuan stares at his phone for another second, then lifts his gaze to his sparkling new aquarium. His new betta, white and black and resplendent of fin, stares back. Was his crisis of faith about his viability as a fish owner really so deserving of such urgency…?
—
“So,” Mu Qingfang says. “This was your emergency?” He looks about as unimpressed by the betta as it does by the two of them.
Yue Qingyuan feels obscurely like he’s being scolded. Mu Qingfang is one of the nicest men he knows, but that just means that his censure takes the form of a blunt instrument of mass disappointment.
“In my defense,” he points out meekly, “I didn’t say there was an emergency. Mu-xiong just assumed.”
“That’ll teach me,” Mu Qingfang huffs, but at least he looks amused. “Yue-xiong should get used to asking for help more so this gege doesn’t have to panic every time he does ask.”
Yue Qingyuan’s mouth almost drops open. He can only hope his cheeks aren’t as red as they feel. “Er—well, I asked this time, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Mu Qingfang allows, looking something horribly close to fond. Yue Qingyuan swallows and tries to hurry on.
“So—not an emergency, but I do want your opinion,” he coughs out. “I’m having… doubts. About the fish.” Mu Qingfang’s eyebrows contract. Yue Qingyuan rushes it out. “Do you think I should keep it?”
“Yue-xiong…” Mu Qingfang looks politely incredulous. “Why does my opinion matter? The fish is already yours, isn’t it? If you don’t think maintaining its upkeep will be feasible, that’s one thing, but… Surely Yue-xiong did the research before getting it?”
He doesn’t sound judgemental, but Yue Qingyuan feels his cheeks warm. “I did, but I wasn’t planning on getting a fish; I was only admiring the tanks. There was a salesperson who was… very insistent.”
Mu Qingfang regards him doubtfully, which is fair. Yue Qingyuan towers over most people he meets, and his bulk only further adds to the impression of immovability. It’s only when he opens his mouth that it becomes clear how spineless he actually is.
Yue Qingyuan falters. “I had thought… I thought it might be nice.” The bettas had seemed so majestic in their tanks, iridescent monarchs of false grass and plastic coves, and Yue Qingyuan had thought, wildly, that one might be rewarding to keep, might breathe a touch of life into his immaculately sleek living room. The whole affair hadn’t even been expensive by his shiny new standards, forget difficult to physically arrange. It was only when installation and set-up for his new aquarium had finished and he was left to watch that jewel-bright being swim disaffectedly through its new home that doubt had seized him, all-consuming and black. He had, admittedly, panicked a little after that.
(Yue Qingyuan’s apartment is very large, and very clean, and very empty. It holds the barest amount of decoration and muss to qualify as lived-in rather than a snapshot from a magazine ad. The fish may, in fact, be the only thing in the entire place which really qualifies as his. No wonder Yue Qingyuan wanted to jettison it from his life as soon as he got it.)
Mu Qingfang’s expression hovers between concern and simple confusion. “I’m sure Yue-xiong will be a more than adequate caretaker,” he says, more gently than Yue Qingyuan and all his neuroses probably deserve. “What’s this really about, Yue-xiong?”
Ah. There it is. Being the mildest person of Yue Qingyuan’s admittedly sharp-tongued social circle doesn’t preclude Mu Qingfang’s wit from being as keen as the scalpels he works with.
“I don’t…” Yue Qingyuan falters. How to express to Mu Qingfang how manifestly unfit Yue Qingyuan is to care for any living creature at all? He changes tack. “I think he hates me,” he admits dolefully.
Mu Qingfang stares at him for a long time, long enough to imply that he’s reevaluating certain opinions about Yue Qingyuan’s intelligence. “Yue-xiong, with all due respect to your new pet—it’s a fish.”
“Fish have emotions!” Yue Qingyuan argues. He flushes at the volume at which it comes out, and at the way Mu Qingfang’s eyes go wide-eyed in startlement. But the salesperson had been very insistent about that, as well. “Bettas are intelligent animals. They dislike certain colors, apparently, and they’re very sensitive—ah, to environmental disruptions, that is. And—”
Mu Qingfang’s eyebrows are still high, but his face has relaxed into a smile. “It sounds to me like you like it quite a bit already. Isn’t that reason enough to keep it?” His tone curls with sudden mischief. “Have heart, Yue-xiong—you’ve hardly known each other for a day! Give it time to adjust to you, and I’m sure you’ll win it over as surely as you do everyone else.” And he grins, sure and easy in his trust that Yue Qingyuan won’t fumble and shatter something so small and monumental as a life that he could cup in his palms.
While Yue Qingyuan is still dazed by that, Mu Qingfang’s eyes alight with interest. “Ah, Yue-xiong—what have you named it?”
“...”
Mu Qingfang’s face falls as devastatingly as it had lit up. “Yue-xiong…”
“Mu-xiong is aware that I was unsure of whether or not I’d keep him!” Yue Qingyuan is terribly aware that his ears are now heating up to match his cheeks. Mu Qingfang’s ensuing laughter does not help with that matter.
Yue Qingyuan is not very good at holding onto things. More often than not, he makes a mess of whatever he’s set his clumsy hands to, lets it fall right through his scarred fingers. But Mu Qingfang’s words ring through his head: Isn’t that reason enough to keep it? And, well, isn’t it? Surely Yue Qingyuan is adult enough to follow through on this. Maybe happiness can be look like his new betta swimming up to the tank to observe the new colorful form moving in front of it, can come as easy as Mu Qingfang quipping that his knowledge about fish is clearly lacking and vowing casually to read up on bettas to be a better fish uncle.
Yue Qingyuan buries a smile and walks over to let Mu Qingfang know that bettas can be trained to follow fingers around. The betta’s clear preference for Mu Qingfang over Yue Qingyuan is as good a marker of intelligence as any fun fact the pet shop worker could have given him. Yes, Yue Qingyuan thinks with a smile—he thinks he’ll be keeping this after all.
ooh it has been slowly growing into me as of recently. i was indifferent about the ship at first but the more i look into their dynamic, the more i start to see the appeal and enjoy it hyee
also mysteryacid is such a fire ship name when i first heard it and i love that for it hehe
BEHIND THE SCENES STUFF!!! (this will be a long read im so sorry)
IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE VIDEO YET YOU CAN HERE
THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FROM THE VIDEO
First I would like to grab your attention on what all i was thinking while working on the kick scene
Your welcome, made me giggle the whole time
okay you can keep reading lol
Hello! i mainly just wanted to info dump either some fun facts about the video and even some cut content (it wont be much ((i think??)))! this is mainly just for anyone who likes to see any stuff behind the scenes and just some extra fun stuff from projects since i like seeing that kinda stuff myself 🤩
I have already been asked on how long this took me, and i would say probably either 2 months or close to 2 months?? It was somewhere during the beginning of June when I started planning it out. It probably would have taken me longer if I worked on it with the proper amount of time but a LOT of the days I would end up on my tablet for HOURS (like all day type hours like a 9-5 shift) Do not recommend, not fun. PLEASE take breaks if you are doing big projects or any project for that matter.
OKAY FIRST OFF THE PROGRESS:
For the beginning part, I had the whole thing storyboarded out. Later on, I added just a few more scenes since it felt like there weren't any good transition spots in some areas.
Once after the prologue part, I lowkey did not have a foolproof plan on what I wanted in. SO, I scrolled through the ENTIRE Myth blog, screenshotting any panel I thought could work, then put the pictures into Toon Squid, eliminating anything that didn't work, as well as for timing's sake. That probably took me so long i dont want to know 💀
everything else after was just to lineart in out, color it and add background…idk how else to explain the rest 😔 it was more so just the beginning part being so tedious
CUT CONTENT!!!
We'll kinda try to go in chronological order, but no promises
FIRST ONE, we gonna start small. this little reaction of boris and bendy were supposed to be a part of when Felix pops from the front doors. Felt a little out of place on how I did it and i probably could've kept it in there it wasn't that huge of an issue buuuuut its too late now
This one I would've kept in during the whole compilation part towards the end, but I didn't want anybody getting confused since this scenario never even happened lol. This was like one of the early, early ideas I put in during that part, as at the time I wasn't sure if I was going to have enough scenes to place that had good context, so I kinda made up my own scenarios or symbolic scenes. annnd then realised I had way too much and got rid of the made-up scenarios. I would share more of them, but I think I deleted them all. This one is the only one I took a screenshot of :') (I'll see if i can make this a full piece later)
Originally I was going to place a scene where little mugs and cups meet at the front of their house with cups all bloody on top of the scene where mugman is making the big barrel shooting gun (wtf is it called) but decided to scratch it and just have half that scene towards the ending due to there would just be too much going on we already have his inner monologue right behind him it was enough. THIS IS NOT THE ONLY TIME THIS HAPPENED!
THIS SCENE AS WELL (up above) was originally going to have Mugs and Boris' close-ups towards the sides of the screen, as the main event was in the middle. But again, it would've been way too cluttered.
I HAD THIS FULLY COLORED IN AND EVERYTHING UNTIL I REALIZED YOU PROBABLY WOULDN'T EVEN GET TO SEE IT WELL ENOUGH WHERE IT WAS PLACED so i had to completely cut it (at least it looks nice..😒)
A big reason for a lot of things being cut was for timing problems
I still beleive that I put wayyyy too much content in that 1:50(ish) i possibly should have picked a slower song for it lol. but still i have seen so many people enjoy it and love it to death themselves so maybe i really do have nothing to worry about :)
EXTRA STUFF (IDK ANYMORE!!)
NOW I'LL SHOW SOME STILL FRAMES YOU CAN ONLY SEE FOR ONE SECOND bc i know people will want to see them for more than that amount of time (this'll only be for towards the ending stuff)
okay! that should be all! i really hope this isn't too much this is taking me forever
if i have more to share later on (in which im sure i do) i will continue this on in the future :)
honestly as someone who took many years to get over some truly disabling social anxiety, I think one of the best things for it is to lower the stakes in ur mind. like, I remember in my mind the idea of "social interaction going imperfectly" or "getting embarrassed" or "other person thinking you're weird or kinda rude" was just life-endingly horrific. it was unfathomably scary. but like. real life is not the middle school cafeteria! in real life, people treating you like middle school bullies is actually weird of THEM and socially inappropriate of THEM. if people try to pull some mean girls shit on you as an adult it's like wow. that's an incredibly cringe way to behave as an adult human being. yikes. anyway!
and like the reality is that if you fumble a conversation or accidentally say something that the other person takes issue with or do something embarrassing, it actually is not a high stakes situation. it's simply not. it's one of the lowest stakes types of social interactions it is possible to have. and I think probably why it took me a long time to get used to, and why it often takes other people (especially neurodivergent queer ppl!) a long time to get used to, is that you need to build up a number of interactions in your memory database in which either you or someone else fuck up in a minor embarrassing way and NOTHING BAD HAPPENS. that's the fastest and best way to get over this. which is scary! but! crucially ITS NOT AS SCARY AS REMAINING ISOLATED FOREVER AND BEING TERRIFIED OF OTHER HUMAN BEINGS.
the thing I did that helped me with this as a young autistic person was that I gameified interactions in my head. by which I mean I would literally practice having low stakes pleasant Chats with strangers like, at shops I went to etc, and every time the other person was clearly pleased to be having the chat with me or they laughed at something I said or it was just a pleasant interaction, I would play a little Mario Party Coin Get! noise in my head for myself. this worked INCREDIBLY well and I was able to develop pretty strong small talk skills pretty quickly after implementing it. obviously I still fuck up like... regularly and obviously I still remember and often dwell on the negative interactions because at the end of the day I am very neurotic about socializing. but I have also made myself into someone who is largely pleasant for strangers to talk to. and there's a small number of really simple guidelines I follow to do that, like truly really simple things like "asking people low stakes questions about themselves" and "showing interest in what people say" and so on. I have had people who met me at age 23 meet me again a few years later and be like "who the fuck ARE you you straight up DIDN'T SPEAK TO ME before" and I had to be like "yeah sorry. I hadn't developed those skills yet" lol. which was itself an awkward conversation, but also? I was fine. nobody died.
I really like to learn things, so reframing interacting with strangers as Learning Things really helped me also. every person is a rich mine of information and you can discover many interesting things by talking to them! <- extremely autism statement but w/e. you have to customize your approach to how your own brain works and not pressure yourself to do things the way you perceive other people as doing them.
and also! MANY people have struggled with this stuff. people who you see as social butterflies who are really skilled at having conversations with strangers very likely built those skills up over time. it's quite unusual for people to just be good at this stuff right out of the gate. you're not a different species of person than people with good social skills. you're the same species of person who has had much less experience and practice.
