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groundrules) wrote2021-01-08 03:30 pm
groundrules) wrote2021-01-08 03:30 pm
Entry tags:
applications
Eastbound is primarily an invite-only game — each existing player can currently invite up to one person per month, or get in touch about further invites. Existing players can hold two characters in game. A third character can be applied, if players can prove they have met activity requirements for two consecutive months with their existing two characters and have stayed engaged with the game. If you don't have an invite, somehow stumbled upon this neck of the woods, and you’d like to stay, drop the mod journal a line — we'll try to figure it out.
As of Oct. 1, cast/game caps are off. Please note, as of Dec. 1, Eastbound only has 3-4 months of gameplay left.
WHAT CHARACTERS CAN BE APPLIED?
YES: canon and original characters, if they have a solid and consistent personality and background. Characters brought in after they've died are a-okay. For characters taken from a time point just as they're in the process of dying, please read below on meeting medical requirements.
NO (at this time): real people, original characters set in a canon environment, characters from canons or canon instalments that have been released for less than one month, characters with imported development from other games (CRAU), alternate universe, or gender-swapped versions of canon characters.
Children or characters with very specific medical/magical/environment needs: appable, but please make a note of how your character will ICly meet their requirements and stay alive. Likewise, if you are applying for a character taken just as they're dying, provide a suggestion for how they can be kept alive on arrival (this might be easier in some app cycles than others). You can bend the world a little to make miracles happen (ex: a substitute for the medication your character needs to survive can be found for a high price at certain apothecaries, etc.)
Characters that were dropped or swept by activity checks: yes, but they’ll come back without their previous memories, if they are applied in by a different player.
APPLICATIONS CLOSED
→ NAVIGATION MENU
Shen Yuan | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System
CONTACT: Discord: SilverDrake#1436
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: Referred by CellarSpider#9984/PaleAntiquarian
CHARACTER: Shen Yuan/Qingqiu
CANON: The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
CANON POINT: Halfway through book two, after his death by self-detonation but before his resurrection in the fungal body.
BACKGROUND: Shen Yuan was born in a world like ours, in China at some point between the mid-80s or early 90s. His parents were wealthy enough to afford to have four children despite China’s One Child Policy, and as the third son with two highly motivated and capable older brothers Shen Yuan never felt like he had any reason to struggle or achieve anything in particular, as long as he didn’t embarrass himself or his family. He grew up to be a lonely, disaffected, and deeply closeted adult, who spent all his time binging webnovels alone in his apartment until the day he suddenly died of food poisoning, while raging-posting over the inglorious ending to his latest hyper-fixation.
For the sake of convenience I treat July 2015 as the date of his death, as that was the month his home canon began serialized publication on the internet. However, Shen Yuan’s death was not the end of his story: he woke up in the world of the book he’d just finished reading, Proud Immortal Demon Way, in the body of one of the most important characters. In fact he’d woken up in the body of the protagonist’s immoral and abusive mentor, Shen Qingqiu.
Imagine how scary it would be to fall asleep while watching the prequels and wake up to discover you’d possessed Sheevy P, and now a disembodied voice in your head is telling you that it’s your job to mentor Anakin Skywalker and fix the plot. That’s the burden that was dumped on poor Shen Yuan’s shoulders. Obviously he was terrified of the ignoble demise that eventually awaited him (and Shen Qingqiu’s death was both more final and bloodier than Palpatine’s!) but it took him an entire volume and four long years in-story to come up with a way to escape: he’d die a second time, but with a back-up body waiting to receive his soul just off-screen! And then he’d run away to the far edges of the world map and keep his head down for the rest of forever, living a quiet and peaceful life beneath the protagonist’s notice.
(Obviously it doesn’t work out that way in the book.)
In volume two, an angry and betrayed protagonist confronts Shen Qingqiu (secretly Shen Yuan), and the two of them eventually come to blows. However, protagonist Luo Binghe has taken to carrying around a powerful but extremely cursed sword, which is doing major harm to his body and spirit. Halfway through their fight Shen Yuan realizes that Luo Binghe is on the brink of a complete mental, spiritual, and physical breakdown, and seeing his chance to pull a classic “Villain does a good deed in the 11th hour and redeems themselves before dying” maneuver, embraces Luo Binghe and destroys his own spiritual core, pouring all of his body’s magical energy into Luo Binghe’s body and reversing the breakdown. He dies in Luo Binghe’s arms, content that he has made his escape from the plot and that the protagonist can now forget his grudge against his wicked teacher and achieve a glorious destiny.
(It definitely doesn’t work out like this in the book, either – but that’s not relevant to this application. <3)
ABILITIES | POWERS: - Knowledge of the concept of the multiverse as a basic fact of reality.
Encyclopedic knowledge of the fantasy genre and associated tropes, including real-world media (Shen Yuan has canonically read Harry Potter); ability to draw workable conclusions about his observed reality through comparison to fiction. (I wasn’t able to find any specific rules about 4th-walling in the game info, but my personal policy is to always talk things out with other players and follow their preferences before letting Shen Yuan 4th-wall through in-game dialogue. IC-wise he tends to be extremely cagey about the subject, so as to avoid offending anyone or triggering an existential crisis.)
Basically instead of having Shen Yuan enter the game with a bunch of fancy powers already in place, my interest is in having him gradually empower himself over time by pursuing relationships, collecting special items or equipment, and studying the setting’s magic system.
PERSONALITY: Shen Yuan is his own most unreliable narrator. He would describe himself as lazy, arrogant, overly-particular, and somewhat ridiculous. Of these only the last one has any significant basis in reality. Actually Shen Yuan is extremely intelligent in all matters except emotional awareness, with a strong drive to protect his friends and those weaker than him. He has an enormous capacity for love and affection, but he’s so out of touch with his own feelings that he tends to under-estimate his own importance in other people’s lives, frequently leading to misunderstanding and heartbreak. He is artistic and scholarly, and after living for seven full years in a xianxia world his manners are an odd and frequently jarring mix of “real world internet troll” and “flowery lord of a cultivation sect.” He has a tendency to slip into melancholy when things go badly for people he cares about, and he’s so deep in the closet that he’s besties with Mr. Tumnus.
SAMPLE: 1. https://spiderparlour.dreamwidth.org/5338.html?thread=166106#cmt166106 Crossover PSL with CellarSpider (Kahl’s player) and a mutual friend. “Luguang” is a courtesy name I invented for AUs where Shen Yuan as a xianxia native, rather than occupying the body of Shen Qingqiu, but his personality is the same.
2. https://alloriginalheavenlypillar.dreamwidth.org/421.html?thread=75429#cmt75429 A version of Luo Binghe invades the real world and latches on to Shen Yuan like a very horny limpet. Also features Shen Yuan’s complete inability to notice when someone is hitting on him, even when they’re doing it with a 2x4.
3. https://deercountry.dreamwidth.org/196521.html?thread=35673513#cmt35673513 A thread I did with Peter Graham (from the movie Hereditary) in the deer_country rpg. Dialogue-heavy and features Shen Yuan in a mentorship role, which he always enjoys.
INVENTORY: Pffft, items? He’ll be lucky if he shows up in Akhuras with clothing. The only thing from PIDW that might have had any use to him in-game would have been his sword, Xiu Ya – but it broke when he detonated his core. Oopsie!
NOTES: Shen Yuan comes with a small content warning for internalized homophobia and both transphobic and misogynistic opinions. Although he outwardly treats women no differently from men (indeed, a young woman under his care grew up to be an insightful and reasonably powerful cultivator) his internal monologue may sometimes allude to concepts other players may find upsetting. My personal policy is to avoid using slurs and instead play up the comedic side of his closeted status: he can’t be homophobic if he never realizes people are being gay in his general vicinity, after all! As his CR circle develops I will discuss this further with players interested in pursuing closer relationships with him, and develop a plan from there. It’s never my intention to spoil anyone else’s fun, and I know everyone’s ability to tolerate these issues when they come up in fiction is different.
IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? A plot-heavy intro sounds like a lot of fun, but if there’s nothing available I won’t complain about a plot-light intro instead!
no subject
— do you happen to have any samples that show Shen Qingqiu's current canon point?Afraid the ones you've offered are either AU, don't reflect his canon point, or are a bit short. The other option would be to write one or more samples, in either the canon or Akhuras setting, making sure to please include relevant introspection and not be exclusively action-heavy.
— regarding homophobia/transphobia/misogyny: it's understood that these opinions and views will be held by certain characters, and that they don't reflect player opinions. However, being attitudes that a lot of people face on a daily basis, it'd be great to minimize this as much as possible in a fictional hobby setting. Appreciate that you're already sensitive of that, but, if the application is accepted — if you're also okay to please provide an ooc venue (a post, or whatever you are comfortable with) where people can choose to opt out of tagging with this character if exposure to these views or topics would be triggering to them.
no subject
I'm pretty sure I can bang out a new writing sample related to his canon point, but before I start I'd like to be clear on what kind of minimum and maximum word count you're looking for, and how much divergence from his canon point is okay while still displaying my roleplaying skills. Would showing how I think he would react if a single thing that happened just prior to his canon departure played out differently, for example? I'm reluctant to simply regurgitate canon with extra IC commentary, as I don't think that would be any fun for me to write or for you to read.
I have no problem with making an opt out post if I'm accepted, however. It's always been my intention to be up-front about Shen Yuan's issues and let other players make their own choices about how comfortable they are with interacting with him.
no subject
I'd say not to use a prompt that what-ifs what would have happened if something prior to his canon departure happened differently, as that would still put you in the position of effectively producing a sample for a character that isn't the one you're applying for. But you can explore canon moments, small moments in between canon scenes (ex: Pikachu stubbed his paw-toe-thing that AM, Ash dealt with the emergency, how does he process that in the afternoon?), something of your design, or you're welcome to use one of the props from our latest event.
no subject
Which is fine! I'll try joining a few more threads on the TDM and keep reading in the meantime, and maybe next time applications open I'll have a better understanding of the game. Thank you so much for your time!
no subject