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TL;CR MEME
1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.
1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.
gu yun
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okay so im ngl mineo was like one of the funniest people to bully at first for gy, especially that first week. you know him!! he loves a good target, especially a reactive one. i knew pretty much from... idk, the first week? whenever we did our very first thread though that cr with these two was gonna be something b/c i could see mineo's authority issues from a mile away
and then memshare happened and i was like Oh Sweet Jesus Christ Here We Fucking Go
so i think that memshare was kind of the galvanizing moment of cr where he started to actually take mineo a little bit seriously? because he really didnt before that lmao. much like white, he saw mineo as sort of a foot soldier at best and a greenhorn newbie child at worst. they're the SAME AGE but gy's experience + general life made him pretty much immediately slap that label onto mineo and it wasn't until memshare that he was like "oh, this kid does have some beef to him, huh". it was part of why he was always willing to go on investigations with him (even if ours always ended up stupid and at the last 30 minutes of trial why are we like this... clown shoes and BOOB)
i was really happy that we got to do a couple of stupid threads in the middle (even if the timing of it was so hilariously bad) too because it felt like it was sooo necessary to get anywhere with cr. talking about stuff not related to the business of it all was really helpful. even if the little punk doxxed him to molly i SAW that thread dana I SAW IT!!!!!!! week 4 and the beginning of week 5 were both kind of positive threads towards like, normal interaction and so their cr started to change a little bit there.
i think he never really got over that like weird in between place of "i'm a commander" and "we're both just normal people" and i don't think he would have totally either just because of the nature of a murdergame... can't shed that duty bound life pretty much ever but it was nice the few times that they did.
he never took mineo out of the Kid Zone but i think by the end of the game he respected him a lot more! he even said so. he like really kept in mind some of mineo's like... the stuff he was really dedicated to? and the reason he ended up saying something nice to him of his own volition at the end there was partially because of that. he did feel like he needed to tell mineo that he killed mahito bc he defended him SO hard - and he and harrow had a conversation right after the week 5 trial where she was like "don't you know we would've chosen you anyway even if you hadn't lied" and gu yun was like
Oh
Shit People Care About Me, Huh
and so therefore he tried to be a little more forthright about it. i don't think he could ever really understand mineo's struggle with justice - or, rather, he could, but to him it always felt pretty like. immature, i think which is so mean sounding JKLGH BUT ITS TRUE he just?? i can't say he agreed with the ideas that mineo had about justice really, but he did always respect his conviction, which came out a bit in our threads.
especially when it came to dealing with childe. this thread is one of our strongest ones even if it's short, i think, b/c it showed a lot of their relationship and mindsets and!! some cr growth too, honestly. ultimately, the idea of "this is a thing that has to be done, so do it" that came out in this thread was gy's own way of saying "i know you can handle this, even if it feels like you cant" - putting trust in him to take the necessary action, which is something he wouldn't have done at the beginning of the game. childe knew that he killed mahito so him being alive was a liability, so trusting mineo with getting the job done was a big thing! too bad he'd never say it. LOL.
it was also cute that he tried to lie to gy about killing childe afterwards he was just like okay mineo of course yeah ... definitely mysterious.... sure... in that thread FJDSHJ thats why he asked him "well, if we catch The Mysterious Person Who Killed Childe, what are you going to do about it?" because he was trying to suss out how he was feeling. LMAO. like i know why he did it (and gy found out why too) but he just let it go because he wasnt gonna accuse him 1:1 of it and wanted to let mineo do his own thing. look at that. cr growth, wao.
also like sort of related but not really, you know this from frac too but pixi and i talked a lot about how gu yun and childe are like WILDLY similar and i think both of their relationships with mineo do a really good job of showing the key places where they are really, really different. mainly, mineo being like FUCK childe and then being like "haha gu yun you're bossy but you're a normal person under there" - it makes sense to me that he and mineo would, ultimately, get along bc they both have big protagonist hearts. u_u gy talks a big game about not giving a shit but in reality he gives a shit so much and thats why our cr trended positive. HAHA.
he was still extremely fun to tease the entire game though 10/10. (gu yun voice) did you bite back
RUNS BACK IN HERE ALSO the mineo and gy doodles were some of my favorite little one off doodles i did over this game i liked this stupid fucking face so much so i put it back here in tlcr to share with the world LOL
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by which i mean the feeling with endorsi was like respect the drip, if that makes sense? he recognized her capability as a fighter and likes her sense of humor/sarcasm because same hat, but also thinks she's got pretty garbage taste in murder friends!! NOT SURPRISING
but there was nothing personal about murdering mahito at all, it was literally just cold logic lmao... both for selfish and unselfish reasons. he was pretty immediately sure that childe was going to doxx him to endorsi too because he knew they were buds (just not MURDER buds) so i had even set up a counterproposal if she did KL;AKGSHJGSK
he told endorsi actually the closest version of the truth re: self defense that he told literally anyone else! the glass part wasn't true because he was like im going to save my own ass here but she was the only one he admitted targeting mahito to on his own. it's because he respected endorsi a lot that he decided to come clean with her and let her know what happened. gy's genuinely not a super dishonest guy (more of a truth avoider than a liar) so! he definitely wasnt going after empathy or sympathy with her but rather was just like "i respect you and i don't want you making assumptions about me so i'll give you the details. it just be that way so im not apologizing for it. also your friend is a weirdo."
and then it came out that she did a murder too and he was just like yeup that's how i read it glad we're both like this LOL. That's Just How It Be Sometimes you gotta get ahead somehow!
she has great taste in girls though medb is amazing 10/10
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'We, the counterfeit heirs to the wide and weeping edge of the world, we're long past the day where we stood in the light.' whew!!
god jesus i dont even know where to start
i'm gonna say first i definitely definitely did NOT expect to have such good cr with harrow, especially because i didnt know anything about her at all besides "bone girl all over my twitter feed"! i was like she's probably gonna be too serious and ig gy can bully her a little bit lmao
and i wasn't like entirely wrong on that last part but the rest? boy howdy!! in our very first thread they bonded like a little tiny bit over both having sensitive baby palates? which was funny at the time, i was like "aw cute they have something in common"... and then week 1 happened
so first off gy started getting a little fond of harrow when she was super stubborn about learning how to ride a horse in the simulation room? it reminded him SO much of chang geng like literally immediately, and he's coming off of a canon point where he was just reunited with him for the first time in a while so it was already a soft spot. so he was already like "haha aw cute" and then... you know, one of my favorite surprises of this game was just how much gu yun and harrow had in common, and it started that week. harrow was the ONLY person to get a lore drop out of gu yun before memshare because he just resonated so deeply with the lore harrow gave him in return. you know how stubbornly unbelievably private about this kind of shit he is so the fact that he was willing to give it over immediately said A LOT.
there was just so much in that little conversation that pretty much ensured that he was going to be ride or die team harrow for the rest of the fucking game. their parents died when they were 9 and 10. they both had to carry the entire weight of their family on their backs - and not just their family, but the legacy of said family, too. he understands so intimately what it means to be a symbol before being yourself and it was so hard to hear that out of harrow, because he had long since accepted it for himself but wouldn't put it on anyone else in a heartbeat. it's also something he just doesn't have in common with ANYONE so to hear it here was doin the MOST. especially once they got to the part about how their parents treated them because of it? just hinting at it?? it was great!! fantastic!!! me, screaming, gu yun, internally screaming
at this point i was still hanging onto the blind/deaf lore so when she said "Never once was I in danger of discovery" i was just sitting there like
it was at this exact moment that he became arlo meme if anything ever happens to harrow i will kill everyone in this room and then myself. WEEK ONE. he just never vibed with someone SO hard on past stuff and as someone who is inherently reticent about those kinds of things it was a huge deal.
speaking of lore! so fun fact, at the beginning of that first week when we had skill loss i was like "okay, i'm gonna pick one random person to get the blind/deaf lore" and it was initially literally just gonna be rng? i think i was gonna give it to yuri (sorry becks) but as we started working on this thread i was like "no it HAS to go to harrow". and she handled it so perfectly. this was one of those conversations that could have like S ranked CR or failed it immediately and harrow passed it with FLYING colors - i didn't expect anything less after the thread before but she just handled it so fucking well. and the return lore drop surprised me, too!!! i wrote "...Someone who sees too much, and someone who doesn't see at all. What a pair we make." in that tag and i like can't explain to you how much it means that he was willing to make a kind of bitter joke about it because he was willing to acknowledge the fact that he was blind to someone out loud. harrow had his complete and utter trust from the first week, and gu yun does not trust easily.
so then of course naturally he was officially bonded to this girl for life and then SHE WENT ON TRAUMA VORE BABY CYOA. AAAAAA. so like it was hard to tell in the thread necessarily i think because it was so early in the game and he was still really, really guarded but gy was so fucking worried about her while she was gone and when she came back. he's not soft enough to immediately admit so and hug her or anything but i think coming from that same sense of "i understand you", he also tried to keep the interaction businesslike and not push too hard on details, because if it was him, he would've wanted to focus on the duty at hand and pretend he was fine so he let harrow do so if she wanted to, too. but he was so so so so SOOO fucking worried about her LMAO, and he just had to kind of show it in the way he knows how to show it best. it's why he immediately checked in re: curfew hallucinations also. (pensive)
its only week 1 i want to die
LAUGHS IN MEMSHARE GOD uhhh finding out they had the same child abuse motifs? AWFUL? oh my god, when i got the first memory from you and saw the hanging stuff i just started like running across the room to find my SPL notes so i could go get the "if you cant stand up go hang yourself" line memory because that was not the one i was gonna give originally and i was LOSING MY ASS over the similarities. it was just! more vibes! more horrible, awful vibes!! if he wasn't already fucking attached to harrow this was like the nail in the coffin!!! the two of them both just being Like That and not talking about it much was interesting, too, because he like railroaded the conversation back to talking about harrow really quickly and he appreciated it that she was willing to let him do that. men are so stupid. i also just looked and saw i didnt tag back about the wish and hate myself but it was CYOA week and i was dying. LOL
which... CYOA 2! Wow! ok when he came back and harrow was so worried about him it took him super off guard (men are idiots)! gu yun gets hurt All The Fucking Time in canon, this is just a thing - so to him losing a hand and knowing he could get it back he was extra like "meh, whatever". but it touched him a lot to see harrow care so much about his well being? fond... gross... also she was the literal first person he talked to about his bone hand. well, ok, he texted molly to be like "im alive" and then immediately after was like "hey harrow come check out my outside bones." i LOVED this little part of this thread i was kicky feeting over getting her to smile.. and gy was too. big brother feelings. you can tell he was really happy about it too bc he immediately ruined it with a joke. LMAO
i do still think its funny that the cyoas went harrow - gu yun - molly? our braincell family all just progressively more wrecked. (molly wins!) harrow was one of the first people gy sought out when molly got back too because he knew she would understand (because she? always? understands?? closes eyes) and boy he wasnt wrong. the space between the two cyoas was really the like "these are the two people i care the absolute most about in this place" moment and i think from then on they were the two-gay-brothers-and-little-bone-sister trio they ended up being for the rest of the game. LOL. i think them both bonding over being incapable of doing regular emotion started here, too. he called her his friend which like... for as much as he plays at being really socially great and is a good conversationalist and all of that it was so nice to have some like. REAL cr where it was clear that all of that is bullshit? and i think it made their bond a lot tighter, because from the beginning, harrow (much like molly) knew gu yun, and not the Marquis of Order, for all the good parts and the shitty parts. it was another week of them vibing in ways you would just never expect them to vibe over at first glance.
he was SOOO proud of her over the trap, also. oh my god. he was SO proud. like, big big brother feelings. big [ LOUDLY WILL SMITH POSES ] feelings. he trusted harrow over so many things and knew she was super clever, and teased about not getting to know about the story beforehand too - there was some little part of him that was like "wow i wanted to be in on it" but then the minute she told him the reason she didnt tell him before he was like "oh yeah nevermind that checks out."
THIS WAS ALSO THE STUPID CONFESSION THREAD? GODJDKFH jesus christ if he didnt think about harrow as a little sister before that why are you so MEAN to him, harrow!!! this tied in nicely to her being like "hey are you. ok" in week 4 and gy being like "please never ask me anything about this ever again" in terms of Romance l;dlksh god week 4 was such a mess
both of them like mission impossible trying to find the love arrow person bc they were both worried about molly was also kind of funny - he really did appreciate that harrow just let him focus on business (more vibes!) and not anything else unlike SOME people. beyond that was a lot of fussing over harrow with the curse and also the whole execution, but,
the most important thing in week 4 was him officially telling harrow and molly about losing his eyesight and hearing and needing his medicine.
so on an ooc level i had set up a timeline for this to happen and was kind of watching my cr wondering if anything was going to be said about it on gy's end. up until week 3/4 he'd been working with childe (so associating with the murder mafia) and continued to after this point but it was a little different. i think that he really could've gone either way towards laying his allegiances at the very beginning - he very easily could've had a completely different (and very bad) character arc in this game, but his super close bond with molly and harrow meant he was firmly in the good person/team protagonist/good arc camp.
he spent most of week 4 thinking about if he was going to tell them, and ultimately decided to, and i like. this was such a huge deal and sort of the crux moment of his character development in game. the reason i even matched him to pride was because of his "i can do it myself/i cant rely on anyone". because he is basically an inhuman symbol for great liang and has always had to be! so!!! it was wild, that he was able to completely rely on harrow and molly, and... that was sort of terrifying for him too? i don't think he had ANY idea of how this conversation was going to go (because he didnt even have this conversation with the only other person who found out in canon it just was like a known fact) so to actually make the move to address it was a really big deal. and.
... harrow's reaction surprised him so much. both of them, really but the last thing he was expecting was like both how fiercely defensive harrow was over him and also how angry she was about the idea of him failing and getting killed?? stupid dumb idiot again but like wow he sure experienced a lot of real human emotions over this convo!! wow he just didnt know how to deal with it at all!!! at this point he was so touched and also so like. terrified! both of being like "wow i let someone else know about this and its gonna be okay (?)" and also "wow i'm trusting someone else? what if they stab me in the back." and also "wow i am going to do it anyway whats going to happen" and also "wow im attached to these two holy shit"
and like ultimately, he still wasnt strong enough to just 100% say "okay im gonna let them help and not do it". rip.
side note here, molly and gy talked about this that week too, and molly told him no matter what, not to tell harrow until after because she couldn't have the blood on her hands and he was worried, and gy was worried, too, so he immediately agreed - it was why he continued the self defense lie, because he was SO WORRIED about putting that on harrow! he didnt need to be but he was!!! so he knew it wouldnt hold up (esp the second they started figuring shit out at trial) but he had to keep lying about it. lmao...
sO THEN WE GET TO MURDER WEEK
harrow helping cover him in a million ways this week and doing so in ways that were subtle meant a lot to him. both with taking his glass and with her being extra rude/mean all week and like, giving him those nonverbal/movement cues that he desperately needed in order to function all week long. however it did not stop him from killin mahito. LMAO.
the slap/hug reversal came out of this week - harrow hugging him surprised the hell out of him too, i cannot explain to you how much every time she showed that she cared about him he was like ?? ???? ??!!! this is why he was so attached.
so when it came out that he lied and she was furious with him gy like really, genuinely felt remorseful? like he stuck to the lie bc of what molly told him, but also because genuinely he didnt want either of them to think any different of him LMAO... god what a new emotion for gu yun! new emotion...2! he didnt want to disappoint them bc he knows what kind of a person he is and isnt really apologetic for it but also holy shit he had such a bond with harrow, the kind he has NEVER had before and so he awkwardly and stupidly was fumbling through the entire convo. and the one after it, actually! he just kept being like "yes you are so much smarter than me" because she is but also he was willin to admit so. LMAO. harrow cowed him and he was completely like. shamed. he actually listened. he wouldn't have taken this kind of talk from literally anyone else but her and molly. i think the line that got him the most was when harrow said
"Don't you understand that both of us would have chosen you, if you'd told us?" like holy SHIT
this was such a fucking wake up call line and it ended up pushing a lot of my other cr in a more positive direction (see: mineo) and influencing a lot of decisions gy made after that? bc that remark just totally floored him. like he will always show weakness when it comes to having his medicine and it was the reason why he was like completely willing to just let her go off on him and actually listen to all the things she was saying... and i think the fact that it didnt completely destroy their cr meant the absolute fucking world to him too, if only because he really, really, really fucking didnt want it to!!! he was scared! big bad gu yun! very scared! what a bunch of new and scary feelings!!! but the fact that they both were like "you fucking idiot" and were bonded anyway... clenches fist...
her speech really did get at him right at his core and i really dont think anyone else besides harrow + molly could've gotten him to learn that lesson. so like. you didnt even s rank cr you like triple S ranked it. 100% completion. harrow (and molly) were the reason his character arc moved forward. periodt.
im moving on because ill spend forever on this weekend jesus
I BROKE THE FUCKING CHARACTER LIMIT AAAAA JESUS CHRIST
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week 6 time!! i really loved our stupid text thread w/ molly where she was like "im gonna go take care of it" and both molly nad gy flipped the fuck out over it. on gy's end he was just recalling that "don't let her get the blood on her hands" conversation and was just like AAAAAAA OH GOD IF YOU NEED SOMEONE TO KILL HIM JUST ASK ME JFC
he was so worried. there was no reason to be that worried. but also. AAAAAA HIS BONE SISTER
that was just funny but i think it also spoke a lot of that bond lmao. gu yun will now die for you. . .
it was also because of how tight they were that he was willing to admit to harrow that he was thinking of changing his wish. i really thought the conversation they had about daydreams was really poignant, just because it came back to them both being so similar and bad at those sort of things and wanting happiness for each other because of it. by the end of the game he wasn't ready to be 100% vulnerable with harrow because they like... didnt have to be... but he was at his most vulnerable in several of their threads and that just means the world. he was even willing to openly admit how fond he was of harrow in that thread too gross.
(also rereading these and LAUGHING over "something in harrow wants his approval? what?" now that i know THE LORE im crying)
anyway to kind of wrap everything up here, i won't go into endgame piece by piece because it was the same kind of feeling - fiercely protective over harrow and her brain, ready to defend her however possible and make sure they all made it back. once molly mentioned taking harrow along on the satellite trip i thin he would've been so ANTSY if he didnt get to go along so i was so glad it worked out that way too.
knowing what i know now about the series i think it's kind of poetic that he ended up sort of bodyguarding for her there at the end. cavalier-ing if you will. esp with gideon's sword, it really. touches hand to heart. good shit.
and then in terms of being poetic... in canon gy really did get the "wow i'm responsible for this water bottle?" end of the stick with chang geng. he doesn't have any family of his own left - even the emperor who took him in when his parents died was a weird situation (waves hands in canon) and he just died fairly recently. he's never learned to rely on anyone and never really had any familial bonds. ever. with cg he didnt get to choose it, either, it was just kind of forced upon him, so of course he was bad at it! and when he did choose familial like feelings here towards harrow.. he was still bad at it! but it worked out okay anyway, and that family feeling didnt go away because of it. gy's got some deep seated abandonment issues and i think if he'd ended up smashing their cr it would've fucked him up really badly. similarly, if something bad happened to harrow/she died it would've fucked him up beyond repair and he really might've killed everyone in this game deadass.
so. i think the familial feelings he had towards harrow turned out to be the most important cr he had in this entire game. when the third emperor dies in canon, gu yun has his first like real moment of vulnerability in the novel, and tells him at his bedside, "your majesty is the only family this zixi has left", so it's such a huge, tender spot for him - because even that family he had was fucked up! and he still cared so much about it, he still wanted it to be a good bond, but it was complicated and messy and terrible like every other familial bond he's ever had!
so the fact that harrow wormed in there and stayed and the fact that the game ended with him feeling like she was his family just meant so fucking much to him. there are no words. ;u;
tl;dr gu yun started the game being like "wow haha weird bone girl" and ended with "i chose to adopt this girl as my younger sibling and now we're going to go wander worlds together with our emotional support tiefling who we'd both die for free of our duties and i'd basically do anything to ensure her happiness". in the little hunger games simulator jan named our little trio the "braincell fam' and thats like really what they ended up being. clutches chest.
AS A LAST SIDE NOTE grips your hands siz i was so happy to get good cr with you!!! we've never really had a chance to get anything super in depth before and it just knocked me on my ass all game long. it was so so so SO fun, just a 10/10 experience and i'm really happy and can't wait to do lots of silly psl threads with these two. ;u; ♥
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Honestly, Vlad hates all of the living on principle, thinks they're all selfish while patting themselves on the back for it with a veneer of righteousness. But of the living, gu yun was probably one of his favorites. Vlad respects him as a leader from their memshare, and also like he killed mahito so that's always a good note in his book. Also, he could hold a conversation with gu yun without it instantly turning to insults or fighting, so that's nice too.
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i wish i could be like "psych he actually liked vlad" BUT I CAN'T I'M SO SORRY gu yun also thought vlad was annoying jsFKLDSJH but not in the same way that some of the others did, i feel like?? how to explain this. it was like... he could tell that vlad was really smart. and he could tell that he clearly had some capabilities and every reason to be here. that first trial when he wouldn't leave gy alone about doxxing his power he was like :unamused: ugh but it's what i would do, i was gonna lie too you dumb shit!!! so he was like ok, ok, you're here for a reason
and then he just kept
running his mouth
and it was kind of funny, honestly? also him getting 2nd place vote every week was kind of funny, too?? like. gy felt like it had to be obvious that there was a reason for that. he had his own petty grudgewank towards vlad (see: lup stan) but it wasn't anything really like negative-cr causing? if that makes sense. he just found him kind of amusing in a "haha wow man are you blind or just that stubborn" kind of way. we had that one pc where they were hanging at the bar and he was trying to give it to him straight, like "my dude, if you keep running your mouth like that, you're going to get killed".
and then he died the next week... lol.... TWICE, EVEN, he died in the cyoa too. rip.
but gy was trying to sort of help!!! he's a good person, generally, and could see the writing on the wall when it came to vlad and the kind of person he was... but he wasn't trying to help enough to stop bad things from happening either. oh well. he was also a really fun target to mess with LMAO he just kept setting himself up for it. once again!!! you run your mouth too much! gy loves bullying but he also loves being right pops collar
anyway if vlad came to him and was like "you're selfish" he'd be like "yeah? so are you?" and that would be the end of it. LMAO GJKLH yea wouldn't go seek him out or anything but! feelings weren't super negative beyond a "ugh this guy". SO THERE'S THAT I GUESS.
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aight let me start off by saying i definitely was not expecting to end up where we ended up AT ALL lol. at first i just kind of figured yay purple bastards! i only really knew about molly from dash osmosis and the little things you'd mentioned in chat but even from that i was super excited about it lol.
and from their first thread… gy and molly totally vibed!! i went back to find it and couldn't help but laugh at molly saying - "You are already my favorite person here, you know?" because wow… that was within like five comments worth of threading. by the end of weekend 0 gy was already like "this funky little purple man is hilarious where has he been all my life??" and that just carried on. i've mentioned this before but gy is really unique in his home canon because pretty much EVERYONE he knows is really, really straight laced. he's never met anyone who thinks even remotely like he does, so to show up and pretty much immediately start vibing with someone that easily was such a new experience! gy also really doesn't make real friends??? so coming in and being able to do that right off the bat was a great way to kick off their cr. he just genuinely thought molly was the most interesting person in the entire indulgence center and he still thinks he is by endgame and probably will forever. gross? gross.
So fun purple bastard vibing (and so much flirting) aside the first thread that really comes to mind that's important is when he let molly read his fortune out of an impulse decision - two things he like NEVER does. that was really a moment that could've broken our cr entirely - if molly told it in a way similar to the monks at home he would've dismissed him right off and pretty much stopped talking to him LOL. fortunes are such a Thing for him because the monks at hu guo basically are the ones that have kept him from forming any sort of relationship in his life AND fed some bad information into the ears of the emperor through super insidious gossip, about the fact that he was born under unlucky stars/the unluckiest day of the year? so the story was that he was going to bring calamity to his whole family's name, and then like, right as that happened his parents both died. lmao. it's why he hates the monks so much and thinks they're obnoxious. but luckily that didn't happen because molly's good! he really liked that when gy called him on it and said it was a fake/a grift and molly was just like "yeah! take what you want from it." it helped to solidify his opinion that the center itself was somewhere completely different and also helped start that like - "you know me" conversation instead of "you know this image that is projected of me" which is his whole big thing. so. at that point he decided that molly was the kind of weird that he vibed with and therefore he wanted to spend time with him. and. continue to spend time with him. he would not have accepted a weed from molly if he hadn't already kinda put himself in the "fuck it live a little" mindset from spending time with him either so.
THIS IS WHERE THE JELLY DONUT THING HAPPENED TOO god, he wouldn't have harped on it so much if it wasn't so funny. i think because for him he didn't even have the concept of "stuff your face with as many (metaphorical) pastries as possible" first??? he just has never indulged in a goddamn thing besides booze and practical jokes in his life so it was funny when molly started talking around it like that, and being able to tease him for it made it easier to hide the fact that he's a HUGE BABY and has never done a single weed or kissed someone or anything at all. he definitely caught onto the metaphor and the flirting alike and was like oh. Oh I See, but the lightheartedness to it all made it easier to keep joking and goofing off with him and to fall into that new pattern of ~*indulging*~
and then. beau happened! haha wow
so watching all the events unfold during the trial was. it was a lot!! whew!! gy had already pretty much accepted that something Bad Was Going To Happen so when there was a murder he was 0% surprised, but like… after that big conversation they had about molly being dead he was extra sour about it. because he'd been nothing but fun and kind and light on the surface but like clearly there was more under there, so to see him have to go through that kind of pain was really shitty?? them being completely wrong made him really pissed, too, and like. gu yun's very much the "there is a problem and i'm going to solve it" kind of guy, so for him the lateral step to molly saying "well i'm probably gonna die anyway" was "no the fuck you aren't?" and he decided RIGHT THEN that they were both getting out of there. he didn't think bringing beau back was possible then so when molly was like "you gotta bring beau back too" he was like you know what? sure i'll do it i've done more impossible shit before
that mantra of "the mighty nein don't leave each other behind" resonated with him a lot, too. beyond his own mentality of his troops, which is pretty similar, it also kind of hit in his abandonment issues LOL. gy's got a whole complex about people leaving him and he's literally dragged himself off of death's door to make sure that he didn't leave CG behind when he was a kid so! yeah!! it stuck right in his stubbornness and stayed. and when molly mentioned that he hated being alone at the beginning of that thread - it just really, really resonated, and that was why he ended up telling molly his wish.
and like, molly is the only person gy told his wish to until… the last week? he just lied about it to anyone else who asked. but it came up in that moment bc he just basically made a huge promise and needed him to understand that he was going to follow through on it. later on he told harrow he had absolutely no clue why he told molly so quickly (but the truth is that he was just already really attached to molly and he just didn't know it yet. stupid) at this point he was like aight that's it this is my ride or die here we fucking go
this is already 1200 words i fucking hate myself
ANYHOO MOVING ON week 1!! week 1 was the week they actually smooched?? wow. jelly donuts! it's funny at that point gy had definitely figured out the whole point of the Indulgence Center and had smooched lup and had his first absolutely unsexy business bang (thank you childe) but molly's was a lot different. they just hadn't crossed that line yet, and that was fine bc gy was never going to be the one to cross it first, but even he could tell there was something there. it was a little more than any connection he'd had with anyone else, too, and they'd toed the line of it a couple times up until that point -- but when the smooch actually happened it really surprised him! gy spent a lot of time the first couple weeks trying to keep up his "oh yeah i'm DEFINITELY a playboy i've DEFINITELY done this before" facade and so he just kind of went along with it when things started getting spicy, internally screaming the whole time. he's sort of used to the flirt with no payoff so it was like wow! surprise! it's payoff!!! and it's payoff with someone he really likes! so he ended up becoming a monsterfucker. wow sometimes you learn things about yourself in the indulgence center. gy was a big gay baby and i know we faded to black on that thread but rest assured he was internally dying the entire time during and after. after that they were banging regularly! sorry pride but not sorry (đź””)
also when grell died there was a part of him that was ready to like Go To Bat if anyone accused molly of it because first of all who cared it was grell, second of all, how dare you? god he was already so protective of him bc of that little promise they made lmao but luckily that didnt come up much.
i think the end of trial/pc after that was a little more important, anyway. i thought the end of this thread was really sweet - wow, hand holding, but also reaching out to others is something he never does so when molly just?? did it for him it was surprising. gy's character arc was based on accepting help/things from others and i think molly just being so tactile and affectionate with him was so new it helped keep him from being totally skittish and running from it, because it also seemed to help molly a lot? it was why he offered his company then and on sunday, too, which became sort of a routine by the end of things. molly eased him into affection in ways that i don't think anyone else would've been completely successful at doing, so great job molly.
deeply sighs in memshare. week two!!
so I knew immediately that I was going to give you the blind/deaf memory because I knew that I had to be SUPER careful about who i was going to give it to bc it. Like. if i'd given it to childe childe would've been dead that friday. ja feel.
but molly was the perfect choice because gy already trusted him to an extent and so he didn't absolutely hate giving it over to him. molly handled it with flying colors, and i think one thing that just came up in their cr over and over was basically them both being able to let go of information and trust each other with it on their own terms. like, gy didn't get to decide if molly saw his blind/deaf lore but molly immediately being like "i can just forget that' and then them talking about it/joking about it really helped solidify that it maybe was going to be okay that someone else knew his lore. and that's a really, really big deal for gu yun because he is so unbelievably protective of that secret bc of his pride and his family issues and also the whole people want him dead all the time thing, but molly handling that memory the way he did was a huge positive in their cr.
and then… at the beginning of that thread i had been like "he already had a migraine" but i changed my mind and retconned bc i did want to thread it out and i was so glad i did. gy usually runs off to hide when he gets his migraines so no one sees him showing an ounce of weakness and there was a moment where he tried to run and molly just responded by basically fussing over him and taking care of him. and that threw him off guard so much?? when molly didn't buy his stupid excuse and immediately started to worry over him he just? let it happen because he was so surprised by it, and so touched by it lmao. the entire situation! this was the point where feelings were starting to develop, even if he wasn't super cognizant of it yet. he just let molly see him at his absolute most vulnerable and putting his trust in his hands was rewarded. by the end of memshare he trusted molly 100%, because that was suuuuch a huge deal. character checkpoint cleared baby
OH ALSO A TINY THING - i didn't ever mention this but in canon gu yun sometimes has trouble sleeping/doesn't sleep very often, and one of the ways that he's pretty easily comforted to sleep in canon is bc chang geng takes a like. herbal tranquilizer mix burnt like incense and carries some of it around in a pouch? and that smell is really comforting and helps gy fall asleep in late canon. so, when you mentioned molly's room smelled like all these things i was like aw wow this is gonna be the Comfort isn't it and it sure fucking was all game long.
so there was that. AND THEN ALSO, seeing molly's memory he didnt remember definitely freaked gy out LOL but he was like "ok just another thing to add to my get-this-fixed-before-we-get-out-of-here" list and followed molly's lead on it. and after spilling his own lore spaghetti everywhere when molly's came out and he wanted a chance to tell it for himself, like, gu yun respected that so much because he felt the same way about his own?? and so of course he wasn't going to press but man did he want to know LOL. i think this is just him vibing with being similar to molly, in that he also hates the idea of people prying into his shit, and he was willing to give molly the chance to tell it himself. he respected that molly was willing to back off of his stuff and so he backed off too. i think they both just had their not-quite truths that memshare cracked open and it said a lot about their cr that they were both willing to give forward a little more information on their own in time.
and then he disappeared and went off on a cyoa!!! so gu yun gets hurt All The Time. like, it's part of his job to be infallible so when he gets injured he tends to just hide it from other people or brush it off like nothing. he's used to licking his wounds in private! so, for the second time that week, molly's genuine worry over him surprised gy so much. he's the marquis of order, no one's ever worried about the marquis of order! and molly wasn't, he was just worried about gu yun. when he apologized to him it was because he was thrown off by it, and seeing that what happened earlier in the week wasn't just a fluke, but that this was just genuinely the kind of person molly is? wow. Dokis. he was pretty much immediately cowed into behaving himself because he didn't want to disrespect that, and because he just… really didn't like seeing him so angry and upset, especially because it was over him?? he's also just never had anyone to worry over him when he's injured literally ever, both because he never allowed it and because he just didn't have it (we love having no friends and dead family because who is gu yun etc) so it was such a new thing…. and it happened twice!! after molly left he likely just sat there like "what the fuck? what the fuc k" yea. that was why he remembered to text him first thing in the morning to say he was alive and also why he remembered his flowers and jewelry promise, too.
onwards through week two, the other big thing was after they fucked up accusing fukuda (whoops) when they shared the Name Lore. molly hadn't really used gy's name that many times in pcs that had gone on that week? so when he called him gu yun it was like a little jarring because at that point, he didn't feel like he needed that layer of separation anymore between the two of them. it was a piece of lore he was willing to offer up without memshare (although looking back on it, i think i should've done another mem during that thread LOL but thats okay) and it also signified a big change for him in their relationship. i think it's kind of cute how molly introduces himself as "mollymauk, molly to my friends" immediately but it takes gu yun a long time to get to the same "gu yun, but zixi to people close to me". zixi isn't just a name that's personal, it also signifies "we are equals" and that was a big step for him, too - he wasn't going to admit to it out loud, but offering up his own story and letting molly call him zixi was him saying "i trust you and feel really close to you" so. he really appreciated getting that little bit of lore back, too! it was a reminder of the sort of relationship that they'd carved out so far, and of the promise of telling the story earlier in the week.
i just think they were pretty much always on even ground, and even ground can be really hard to get with gu yun. he's never had anyone to be his equal in...any way in his entire life so it just meant a lot to him that they seemed to really understand each other, and that molly also just gave a shit about him in ways that no one had ever really given a shit about him in particular (compared to his title) before. what's it like to be emotionally competent or have emotionally competent friends? apparently it's really great!
do you see jan's giant essay up there
that's gonna be me i'm already almost at character limit and its week fucking two. please hold i will continue working on this probably on and off
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let's talk about week 3!! lots of things went on in week 3. jesus. so! we started off the week with some truly terrible flirting because of the extra sins week but more importantly... The Lore Exchange. so obviously gy wasn't like, surprised that molly was willing to tell him the story behind the memories but he was surprised that he told him so quickly? it didn't occur to him that "wow you almost died" could be a reason why but you know whatever. one of the things that gy really likes about molly is how fascinating he is and how exciting and interesting he is, and this was one of those times where his lack of knowledge about something from molly's world (specifically, magic stuff) wasn't like "ooh shiny" interesting, it was like "i wish i actually knew how to do something about this" kind of interesting. he can't even begin to really understand the lucien situation which was why his ultimate response was "fuck that guy and eighteen generations that came before him" LMAO. in a way i think it's kind of a refreshing contrast between the two of them - the demon mystical tiefling with all kinds of wild magical mysteries and the pragmatic human who refuses to believe in his local religion let alone magic. he didn't necessarily see molly any differently upon learning that story, either - mostly just learned that he really hated?? the idea of someone else showing up in molly's body and wreaking havoc what the fuck its molly's lucien can fuck right off! it all helped sort of solidify his "we're getting out of here" promise from the beginning, too, because he was not going to let molly go back only to be dead and then possessed by Being Evil Makes You Cis Fucko over there, especially after getting to know him and knowing how much the nein mean to him, too. he's terribly protective over the things that matter to him (see: great liang, see: chang geng, etc) and molly fell right into that category from day one, so this was just another problem to add to his list of things to help with and fix! yeah! fuck lucien!!!!
so he left that feeling super protective still and then it was molly's turn to CYOA closes eyes.
when the first people in that cyoa group came back i had already figured out molly was on one oocly because you were like "medbay curfew!" and i was like there is NO WAY molly isnt gone THERE IS NO WAY but icly gy found out right here. and haha. it's great! sometimes you just decide you re going to do everything in your power to get someone out of here safe and keep them away from harm and then that person vanishes the same way you did! he was in full battle crisis mode by the time the others came back and you can see a little in that thread/some of the responses that both yuri and law reached out to him and he was conflicted a bit between his usual business mode and also trying not to freak the fuck out. when molly did show up with his NINE IRON (which by the way, it being a nine iron made me laugh when it happened later... you ever think about how that could be a ship name for these two) he was. Mad and worried and freaked out and anxious and like 500 other emotions all at once haha man
i mentioned it in my meta for our pc thread that week but gu yun is always the One Who Gets Hurt. this sort of situation gets mirrored in canon and it is a hugely galvanizing emotional moment, and it was no different here. just in general, gu yun doesn't really have many attachments - shen yi, chang geng, and that's really it - because he's just already lost every personal attachment he's ever had. can't get hurt if you don't get attached to people! (fingerguns) his abandonment issues are buried but they're super real. and so seeing molly come back that hurt really fucked his thought process up in a lot of ways! for one, it was fucking terrifying to think about losing him (and gu yun does NOT get scared easily). for another, it made him crazy that there wasn't any way he could have done anything about it. for yet another thing, it also made him realize like oh. oh, this is how molly felt last week. oh. i'm such a fucking moron. it was a taste of his own medicine of Normal Human Emotions that he was feeling, and also the moment when he realized how easy it is to lose someone in the indulgence center and how close it can come to him? because no one he really cared a lot about died lol so... this was scary as shit!!! it was such a moment of realization for gu yun.
it was also horrifying and made him REALLY angry to hear that the cyoa used a fake version of him?? like holy shit talk about a situation being out of his control and also!! adding insult to injury!!! i wish i could've been a fly on the wall to see your guys' discord chat with it because i sisi was losing my SHIT when that little piece of information came out. (also crystal being like "i know your ship crimes" was hysterical) in the IC level, that anger couldn't go anywhere so gy just kind of stewed in it and spent that whole day/the next day Thinking About It, and thinking about a whole lot of emotions for one tiny marquis!!! it led him to being fussy because he wanted to try and fix it and didn't know how and wanted to make molly feel better!! and this is why he got so spoiled.
it also eventually led to
confession attempt #1
because I don't think he would've said anything if the situation hadn't lined up as perfectly as it did. molly was the one who kind of took a leap first, and gu yun had spent that the 48 hours leading up to that moment like coping with a completely fatal amount of emotion relating to molly so when he just gave him that one off about kissing him the most gy was like you know what? fuck it! fuck it!! yolo! and that was exactly why he said something back.
... except he's terrible at it!!! gu yun went into basically everything relating to Having Feelings Towards Molly with ZERO plan because he's always been good at improvising and also if he thought it through he likely wouldn't have done anything?? but that meant that he's used to talking out of his ass about some things... but completely inexperienced at talking out of his ass about others and there was no amount of being silver tongued that could've made a confession of Feelings easy. so that was why all he could say was "I'd buy up your whole bakery" which I think is honestly very reflective of the fact that they're both stupid as hell and very IC of us to completely botch this. gu yun panicked. and. so did molly, so. molly's reaction got him very flustered and just very ????? because he wasn't sure what he was trying to say either? or what molly was trying to say? so it was just a lot of screaming. basically just
this, if you will.
when it was done and molly did his fingerguns and flee gy had absolutely NO idea where they stood and just tried to forget about it! haha! in canon he gets called "great liang's greatest garlic" which is related to an old saying, and it basically means "the absolute best person at faking it and lying over something he doesn't want to acknowledge" so that was his plan for this too. just act like nothing happened! what a fucking stupid plan.
trial that week was a lot of gay drama that wasn't related to him thank fucking god. gy was very impressed with his + harrow's plan and was more than happy to help out with it. he also thought molly's joke was hysterical exactly like harrow thought he was going to. shocking no one. it was nice to get a victory! nice to have a distraction!!! trial was fine and normal and then after trial we had..... confession attempt #2!
they did slightly better talking about it in the second one but really not much better at all. god. gu yun was absolutely not going to bring it back up and had no intentions of doing so/found it much easier to keep pretending it didn't happen but molly brought it back up on accident and then. yeah. at that point, he didn't have anything to say, because he'd already backtracked into his "What That Didn't Happen I'm Deaf Suddenly" act but he did feel like. "man i shouldn't have said anything" kind of but not really?? and he didn't want their relationship to be fucked over by it so he attempted to fix it, AND THEN MOLLY SAID HE LIKED! WHAT HE SAID!! WHAT!!! that entire conversation was just him with ihs hands off of the wheel, screaming!!! it ended with like 5% more understanding of what was going on between them. on gy's end, molly gave him the out of having to attempt to explain anything more or say anything else and he took it like it was a goddamn lifesaver because he is just COMICALLY bad at talking about this kind of thing. he canonically never told CG he loved him in direct words until like MONTHS after their initial "confession" and that's
basically what happened here? he just kind of decided ok so there are feelings (?) of some kind (?) out there (?) and that's great that's that. he decided right after this thread he was gonna make good on his flowers and jewelry promise and that's where that stupid thread with mineo came in. mineo actually....... helped him sort through some of his Emotions TM in a way that made them feel more tangible? gy in his own way kind of admitted that he did have Some Feelings which is a lot for him!!! and i think it said a lot about how much he rly did like molly too and where their relationship had gone so far - just that opening the door into affection and all of the mutual trust and story sharing and intimacy that had led up to this point on top of the near loss of molly because of the CYOA made it a little easier to admit to. plus gy also knew he was about to lose his hearing/sight and he had no way to fix it yet.
he had plans to go ahead and do his apology/try again at clearing up the confession week 4 but
love arrows sure happened
whew. week four was gu yun's probable worst week in the entire game i think and he murdered someone week 5. LMAO. it wasn't just molly related but i'll focus on those parts!! first of all he was PISSED that someone did this to molly bc the two of them had literally just talked about the love arrows and how fucked up they were on sunday. (even relating to white which was funny). he was pissed bc he was worried to hell that someone was going to use it against molly, and he was pissed because someone messed with molly's feelings and also he was pissed because he himself had showed this tiny little bit of vulnerability and was starting to feel okay with showing it and even confessing it, and it took a lot of work to kind of work up to being able to do that and he knew his sight/hearing was gonna be kaput in a week and then someone love arrowed molly and it was just
bad
the timing was so bad. he said this ic but i'll reiterate here that gy's not really a super jealous or possessive person? he just isn't used to Having Things and has long since been okay with that. he wasn't really jealous, either. it wasn't "i want what they have", it was "the lion the witch and the audacity of this (unknown curse casting) bitch" LOL. he was just mad and hated seeing it for lots of reasons but his own Actual Real Dokis for molly were a part of that, too. not only that but it was fucking kindness week - i genuinely think he wouldn't have been as pissy if he could've just picked on white the entire time. LOL. he did reach out to try and get it fixed and ran into a brick wall and that irritated the shit out of him, he couldn't interrogate the answer out of the person he was pretty sure did it (and then found out his guess was right later AND SHE FORGOT EVEN DOING IT) and like. he was just mad and that being Mad is what drove the emotional butt bite thread.
aka... confession attempt #3! this one was like the closest to actually working which is funny because there was just so much shit going on. gy was actually kind of avoiding seeing anyone that week and was just gonna pull the "i have a bad migraine" to avoid seeing molly, too, but ultimately he's weak and couldn't do that and that was why he cracked in that thread. it was good for him, i think, because it also was something he couldn't ignore, because it was going to keep making him mad, and he didn't want that to color his relationship with molly later or god forbid ruin it, so he chose to confront it instead. and it was messy! and terrible! there was a moment when he almost backed out of it but when he asked molly do you trust me? and molly didn't even HESITATE and was like "of course i do, zixi" he pretty much committed to shoving his boot in it and saying something about the curse and also about Feelings kind of. trust is such a huge thing for gu yun - he literally only trusts shen yi, miss chen (his doctor) and eventually chang geng and that is IT - but since molly had long since earned his trust it was kind of a leap for him to say something like that. so to have it immediately returned back with "of course I do" really just solidified his plan of "just gonna tell him straight to his face". and he definitely took his frustration on the whole thing out on molly but not like, on him? (just on him physically ayyy) and it was good for them both in the way that messy things can be really good. it cleared gy's head a little on the issue and he was still pretty cranky about it all week but ultimately didn't really feel any guilt for stealing molly from his True Love White because... the mess was real and he knew it was real from the past like, week of them trying to wade through it. molly choosing to stay even at the end also helped to solidify the "this is real and that's fake" too, so he was mostly just trying to figure out who the fuck did it and/or find a way to break the curse after that.
it also helped a lot when he got hit with the capricorn curse on wednesday and he was so MAD but he had such a nice time with molly still. this was one of my personal favorites of all of our threads. i think the fact that he got through both the kindness compulsion and the capricorn curse and the love arrows and they still had a really good time meant a lot to GY, even if he didn't say it, especially once he figured out that he was cursed the next day. it was a really sweet moment of levity and helped to smooth things out even further. it ultimately comes back to what he really likes the most about molly - that they always have fun together - and was a good reminder of that. also he got to like throw him in the air and catch him which was admittedly good for being frustrated. LMAOO. trial week 4 was shitty, and he wasn't super thrilled about the result - he was worried about harrow and worried about misa! his angry tiny girls!!!! but it wasn't anything completely world ending.
the biggest thing week 4 was admitting finally that his sight and hearing were basically gone and that he was going to have to murder someone if he wanted to get his medicine. obviously this was a big deal and it said a lot about his relationship with molly AND harrow that he was willing to admit this weakness to them both, just because he's always been ready for someone to take advantage of that and stab him in the back because of it, and that sure as fuck isn't what happened.
i'M RUNNING OUT OF FUCKING CHARACTERS, AGAIN, JESUS, this was Essay Part Two: The Really Gay Edition. join us next time for the murder i guess
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i kind of sped over trial in the last comment because the big senses conversation happened before it and i wanted to group all of the murder related things together!!! and this was definitely murder related. timelines are for quitters
so like i said at the beginning, gu yun's big character arc was about learning to accept help from other people. gu yun would generally rather die than ask for help from anyone or admit to any sort of weakness, especially w/ his eyesight/hearing issue. it's a whole thing! and it really delighted me that the lore came out so early for molly because i was looking at my timer gleefully like It's Time. i was pretty much vibrating all friday waiting for the body announcement to make sure that molly and harrow (and also mahito since i had settled on that plan) were alive so i could come running to do this thread.
and i think the biggest thing about him telling molly and harrow was like - he gave over this huge weakness in that "well, jsyk, i'm gonna have to kill someone this week probably, just a heads up"! and the decision to tell them all about this came with a few expected reasons (+results he thought he was going to get). one, they both knew about his senses already. two, he trusted both harrow and molly more than anyone else in this game. three, being without his medicine is just an impossibility for him - in canon, there's a point where he is given the chance to take it and get an hour of clarity before he gets the debilitating pain in the middle of a GIGANTIC battle, and he goes through this mental gymnastic of how long the battle is gonna take, realizes he'll be fucked over in the middle... and still goes "fuck it" and takes the medicine anyway. he cannot resist the chance to not be down his senses no matter the consequences, and this chance just happened to involve murdering someone. so he'd already committed to this plan at this point, unless lup was able to find another method. (i'll say he was hoping that would be the case, but, yeah. he really wasn't that mad about having to kill a guy for it. you do what you gotta do.) so, by telling the two of them, he was basically saying "hey, look, i'm probably gonna do this thing. do with that information what you will" ... so if the two of them wanted to throw him under the bus, they could. idt he really ever thought they would, but like - siz brought it up in relation to childe, that that's the kind of person he's always worked with, so i think there's a part of him that accepted that that could happen? he's an idiot is what im saying
... and he was pretty much immediately proven an idiot because molly and harrow both were like "Uh? No?" and doing everything to stop/help. like, that threw him for the BIGGEST LOOP in the world. that was the last thing he was expecting!!! that they just offered help and kindness instead of taking advantage of his senses really helped like solidify his trust in the two of them. that trust was still kind of a new feeling, though, and it was really easy to be tentative over it instead of like, jump in head first. like a newborn baby deer ya feel. it touched him a little that molly was like "what do i have to trade to make it happen" too but he also wasn't going to let him do that even if it was an option. molly's really fierce reaction to him possibly dying kind of threw him off too, so by the end of this whole conversation he was like ?? ???? ??? friends? trust?? hello??? but even that wasn't going to stop him from doing it.
i still think it is INSANELY funny that they had the exact same murder plan. so did gu yun, honestly. it helped to kind of cement his general affection for molly in the "i can't believe we're both the same kind of idiot" kind of way, but also in the way that molly just seems to like, get it? he just got what kind of person gu yun was and that's something rarely afforded to him in canon. it was why when they talked about it in private that he was a little more willing to admit to the details of it, and also why he agreed that harrow didn't need to know that it likely wasn't going to be self defense. (even though she knew.) molly asked him to promise to survive, so he did. gy's the kind of person with a lot of resolve, and those lil promises of surviving/not failing at it really just added onto that. every time he made molly a promise he did his damndest to follow through on it.
in that same little post-trial thread, molly also got TWO huge gestures of trust out of gy. the first was after they had that emotional conversation, molly asked him to stay the night, and normally, in a situation where he was going to be blind the next day, he would've fucking booked it or found literally any other excuse to stay back in his room alone. waking up blind and deaf in a location that isn't completely familiar, with another person, is a HUGE deal - that's the kind of shit he's usually so protective over. but, because it was molly, he agreed to stay, falling into that whole newborn-deer-learning-how-to-stand-but-like-emotionally thing and putting his well being in molly's hands. they ended up not staying in molly's room anyway so it didn't matter, but it was really the principle of the thing that was a big deal, and sort of following up on the conversations they'd had about managing his senses with harrow, too, willingly putting his trust down. and they ended up having a really good night after that, too.... despite love arrows still being a thing!!
the second gesture of trust was the tattoo thing. listen. man. this is sillier but gu yun? he knows he's hot shit and he's very vain about being pretty and wants to stay that way. it's also not normal for people from great liang to do like ANY kind of body mod (that's barbarian shit!) but he trusted molly to do it WHEN HE COULDN'T EVEN SEE IT!!!! we didn't get to thread it out because what was time but rest assured he was pleased when he could actually see it again haha. but he was the one to bring it up because it would be helpful, and because he trusted molly to make it look good. yea.
wow we did a lot of important shit in this one pc thread this was also the first time they talked about the "what are you doing after this" thing. molly was the first person to ask GY this question so he got to see his existential crisis live and in color which i thought was really perfect. it was the first time he ever actually thought about the fact that he didn't have much of an identity outside of being ~*The Marquis of Order*~ like ever? and that shook him a little bit, even if he didn't show it much then. one of the things i really enjoyed about this game was getting to play with gy's sense of identity and i think that molly had a huge impact on it - he just asked the right questions, or said the right things, or, you know, was just totally lovable. this got him thinking about his "fuck now what" which will come up later.
also i guess he almost died at the end of week 4 but whatever a little lava never killed nobody (except beau). he wasn't really worried about it but he did stick good on that promise of staying alive. when gy first started getting the forced to walk to the execution thing going that sunday morning the first thing he thought was "oh god dammit CROW MOUTH" but then the second was "ok gotta do this, can't die." he promised not to! so. he didn't want to give molly anything else to worry about!!
moving on to week 5!!!!
ok so by sunday night of week 4 gy knew he was going to lose his hearing/sight entirely. (i was really committed to this plan until about halfway through the day and then i was like "oh god mods i cant do this" so luckily he got to keep a teeny bit of it)!! so with the love arrow curse wrapping up plus the lack of his senses plus the whole im gonna have to kill somebody this week thing… it was the PERFECT time to flowerbomb molly and get his promise in. heh
i was setting that up on sunday like low key running around asking for favors (smash cut to me running into becks' dms and going "hey gy needs to get into the room at like 5 am what dont worry about it is that cool ok thanks". idt becks unlocked the molly pc or you didnt OR SOMEONE DIDNT but i hope there was a thread about just flowers everywhere cause the sleepover one cracked me up). gy was gonna originally go with the flowers plan the week before but it wasn't gonna be quite like this, he was just gona give them to him. but, gu yun's middle name should be yolo and therefore he just? decided to do this instead. he loves his romantic gestures and he loves being showy and dramatic and i think the week before had him feeling some kind of way so it all culminated in this pigtail pulling romance. flurry and i handwaved getting flower petals/jewelry but wrath was the one who helped him get the jewelry and the fake flowers and then any real ones were from pride c: so they were in on it too!!! but gy was like "i need something absolutely ridiculous looking" and lup gave him the dragon necklace first and then after that they picked out something serious and pretty. LOL. he was one hundred percent like hanging out waiting for molly to come visit after he did it since he couldn't hear the door, like a great big nerd. AND WOW, TOTAL SUCCESS!!!!! gu yun does absolutely nothing in small measures including spoiling/romancing a tiefling. in terms of little gay shit it made him very sappy to see him wearing the nice piece like all the time forever which is very gross.
too bad he couldn't see that well! ha
anyway, dokis happened and it was great! that was his version of a "ok i like you romantically but idk how to say it so im just gonna act like it", really. our threads started off really light and positive and flirty at the beginning of the week, kind of on purpose? at least on gys end bc he knew what was coming. (they talked plot a bit week 5 too which phew :stressedbunny:). but he was trying to put it all out there. you know. just in case. so things got more anxiety ridden of course as the week went on and then gy did in fact kill the flea, shocking absolutely no one!!!
he was lying obviously about it being self defense but he was lying for harrow at least in their first convo after it. the hug slap still absolutely kills me i think its the funniest thing ever, gy was absolutely not expecting molly to smack him AND HE KNEW WHY HE DID IT so he just took it which is even funnier. he like knew his lie extra wouldn't stand up to molly so there was something kind of relieving about molly choosing to accept it, i think? just another level where they Vibed on his end, looking out for harrow. i feel like week five was like peak big brothers and little sister, both with horrible flirting over curfew and also when they were covering her ears during the talk stupid as hell.
before the trial this two comment pc took me the FUCK out i remember i just screamed when i got it AUUGH. it was good over text, because gy was able to say it back, and helped solidify that resolve of surviving the trial and not getting caught. throughout this whole thing he just coming back to that "no one left behind" he promised that first weekend. it wasn't just for great liang either at that point, he had to survive for molly (and lup and harrow), too.
during the trial itself he didn't have any doubt that they were going to be okay, but ultimately, it was molly who saved his ass. stepping back from that trial, one of the biggest meta things that I pulled from it was like. the narrative joy of the relationship b/t gy and childe and the type of people they are - and how childe had his Murder Club but ultimately didnt really trust others, and gu yun put his entire faith and trust in molly and harrow - an absolute leap of faith - and it was that willingness that got him safely through the trial itself. (side note: i really thought it was great that he had his claw mark mixed in and the excuse was "These are from molly (waggles eyebrows)" and the entire game was like "yup that checks out". like thank god they been fckin.)
anyway the actual trial was sort of a culminating moment for the relationship between molly and gy on gy's end if only because it did a good job showing how much build up had to go through for this to happen. i mentioned in the last comment but trust is HUGE for gu yun, and this trial did a great job of showing him why molly (and harrow too) wasn't like the people he was used to working with (ie: childe), and that he wasn't only just worthy of his trust a little, but he was fullheartedly. i ended up making this asw after week 5 ended. touches heart. molly was already ride or die by this point but this did so much for him in terms of being a little less terrified of Feelings because there's nothing more terrifying than putting your entire life in someone else's hands?? and having it work out so perfectly just did so much for that.
also he cried on him saturday night for hug/slap combo 2! there was a lot going on in that thread (to say the least) but gy is so just absolutely fatally bad with tears that he would've done LITERALLY ANYTHING to comfort him and make him feel better. i think by the end of it he was pretty wrung out too, between the actual trial itself (and like having the mistakes and the not mistakes kinda shoved into his face for nine hours) and lup being freaked out and harrow being upset and having to stick to his lie so when molly broke down on him he was Going Through It, too? it's why he grabbed onto him and was holding on really tight, bc harrow got to him real good and then molly crying on him was also freaking him out and sometimes you are just one stupid man who does not know how to feel emotions and he was feeling SO MANY EMOTIONS.
i think it was dokis in terms of like "i have feelings for you/ i really care about you" up until the end of week 5, after the trial. after that it was something way deeper. that big l word. even molly joking like "i dont even want to bang i just want to cuddle" he was like man
me too???
wild. this is wild. gu yun like... there's a line in canon that talks about how when he's held by another person, he sleeps like an absolute fucking baby because he's never really been loved? in his entire life? so i think molly's emotions and his willingness to help him no matter what and just his reactions before/during/after all of week five were just the last piece. by the end of week 5 he just felt. loved. and like, i know you said gy took molly out at the knees in terms of a ship but it was completely mutual! every time he needed help, even when he didn't reach out for it or ask (and when he did) and even when he didn't deserve it (see: allying with childe) molly still gave it to him and that is just so. its SO much. gy didn't stand a chance either. wow amazing. he just felt loved!!! so he really meant his "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you" and he wouldn't have said that if he wasn't feeling a certain kind of way.
sighs heavily anyway childe's stupid ass REVIVED and he was super worried about getting retaliated against but molly was one of the reasons why he chilled out just a little - though, admittedly, he was more on harrow's side of paranoia than molly's in this case. one of those things where he and harrow are super similar in that they're both suspicious as hell and molly was like "endorsi's great!" and gy was like "endorsi is absolutely going to try and kill me." LMAO. AND SHE ALMOST DID!!! POINTS!!! SOMETIMES PARANOIA IS OK
anyway sometimes you fall in the Big Love with someone because they understand you and also help cover for your murder and then have lots of emotions on you about it afterwards
im out of characters again sighs deeply
no subject
we’re on WEEK SIX now jesus. ok. so week six started with the mods (it was definitely flurry) thinking they’re very funny and getting gy and mineo high so we got to play with that first. i think that molly was the first person gu yun thought of when he figured out what the fuck was going on A) because he knew he had you know. Experience With Being All Kinds of High, B) because he trusts him implicitly by week 6 and C) because he just like wanted to see him really bad? and as soon as he got there and figured out something was wrong it was frustrating to not be able to do stuff about it as well as he wanted to! but i think that emotionsharing actually was a huge boon in week six for a lot of reasons and this was one of those threads. he was able to pick up on molly’s sadness re: remembering what happened to beau and didn’t have any real sort of inhibitions in helping him feel better about it so they cuddled. generally being bad with emotions and stuff means that sometimes he is a lot better with actions, so molly’s want for company was something that stuck with him, i think? generally outside of our threaded pcs he likely just spent a lot of time with him in handwaved cr so he wasn’t alone with his own thoughts. it’s one of those places where they differ a lot, i think - gy has sooo much control over every aspect of his life, and that includes general Bad Feelings, so he’s able to provide a really steady form of support no matter what the fuck is going on. his love language is definitely his quality time, so the fact that molly needed that to help him made them a pretty good match.
which “If it helps, I don't really know you as the Marquis of Order at all. And I still like you plenty.” meant a lot to him, and was something he thought about outside of this situation/remembered from it. coming back to that whole “ you know me, and you still like me and not my job” thing that had been going on through their whole arc. having loosened inhibitions and stuff made it easier to say that he wanted molly to come back with him, too. that stuck with him long after this thread, too. in his thread with harrow where they talked around it, he mentioned that it just seemed like a daydream, and that he’d never really had time for daydreams, but i think over week six he was starting to come to terms with the idea that if they got out of there, that he really, really wanted that.
as a side note i think it’s hilarious that we got slapped with plot before they ever actually talked about going out and traveling together/world hopping beyond this thread. i thought it might have come up in our last thread but then i fell asleep at like 9pm that day and then it was endgame LMAO so i just assume they really awkwardly and stupidly talked about it because harrow would’ve knocked their heads together if they didn’t. terrible.
anyway moving on! childe’s death was super not a big deal (lol) but the plot reveal sure as fuck was. when lup gave gy a Very Concerning Conversation things got super real and then it all just super spiraled from there. over the end of week 6 and the beginning of week 7/endgame I think in general gy was trying to keep a watchful eye out for molly over this time, esp when he was like “please stop giving him bad news for five fucking minutes”. seeing him learn about jester was a lot and he was just. really fucking worried and also trying to solve plot and worried about lup and there was just a LOT happening. i brought up him being steady in meta text and in this tl;cr a lot but i think he was definitely trying to continue to be that for molly as the game continued to just beat him up with a greatsword. it was why he slipped out with him when beau didn’t go out with the dead, bc he knew like even if he was just getting away from everybody that he probably didn’t want to be alone? which was why i came running for a thread. LOL.
there are a couple big meta things i wanna talk about with endgame but i’m gonna start with the post deda coming back thread bc it was really important. gu yun’s got this like intrinsic sense of duty, and one of the cool things about getting to come to horrible garbage murder station was the chance to get to be free. like, yeah, he had stuff to do (solving murders! also endgame plot!) but it was a lot different than being mister big important military commander, and he got to not only indulge and experience things and spend time with people, but also got to discover this like whole new universe and world of things wildly different than his that shook up his worldview like crazy, and molly was a HUGE part of that. over the course of the game he kept running into people who were wishing to be brought back to life, basically, and that’s just not the kind of thing he’d ever think of happening at home in Great Liang because it was impossible. but here it wasn’t!
and in terms of his wish, like. gu yun’s wish wasn’t ever any different than his like daily wish - he’s always wanted great liang to be at peace. he’d fight for it even if it wasn’t going to be granted magically, and i think watching molly just suffer and suffer over and over he fell right into that sense of duty and immediately decided he’d give up his wish to revive beau and the rest of the people who came before them instead. its good selfless protag shit, very sisi brand, but also like -- it really culminated his whole character arc and so much of it was tied directly to molly. bc he did so much for him in terms of getting to experience all these great joyful moments of freedom that he didn’t want molly who just got his life back to not have those things, or to feel sorrow or misery or like he got to come back to life at the cost of his friends. molly’s the kind of person who deserves to be really fucking happy and if he could do anything to make that happen, gy was gonna do it. it all comes back to that we’re all going to get out of here promise, and so he was willing to give up his own wish to make that happen. (also because his wish was going to get granted! maybe it wasn’t gonna be by him, but there would always be people fighting for peace and people like mollymauk who are so important to everyone don’t really get second chances at life that aren’t. you know. Lucien.) he can’t just hard work people back to life. so. yeah. gross. it tied up really nicely with the “well i really would like to travel all over worlds with you” conversation they sort of had at the beginning of the week, too - because like, of course he’d love that, but that duty bound nature of his meant that he’d be willing to give up his own kinda newly achieved freedom in exchange to make sure molly could be happy.
so there was that. and then the other thing was confession...3! the ACTUAL confession which came before the above conversation but didnt flow nicely into my narrative so im putting it here. and! truthfully i did a bunch of research before we started this thread - the minute the idea of a “day off” popped up after the jester reveal i was like oh gu yun is going to plan a big gay date. so i started poking around looking at festivals and found the qixi festival and immediately was like fuck YES lets go. this was probably the biggest of the big gay romantic gestures (rip to royce for having to hear the furby alarm one last time) but he was rly determined to make sure molly totally forgot about everything else for a bit! that and he wanted him to get to see great liang. i think that stuck with him from their conversation on monday of week 6 too, and it was also him taking the moment to show molly something EXTREMELY important to him on his own terms. his home! quietly will smith poses please love his home ok he loves it so so much!!! so i’d definitely planned for that but otherwise didn’t have any other plans going into the thread itself. i knew i wanted to use the cowherd weaver story bc of the moonweaver comparison hehe but otherwise!! i was just like we will see where this goes!!! (oh also the joke in there about him not being a cow is that one of the celebrations of qixi is that they put flower garlands on bulls horns to celebrate the ox that became the cloak for the farmer to fly with. didn’t get a chance to explain that one IC too distracted by gay shit)
so when you brought up the courtesy name in the thread i like SCREAM YELLED and went flying off at 100mph to go try and come up with one. alli i did so much research. i did SO much. LMAO. i wanted to try and find something really perfect, so i like stuck my face in a mandarin dictionary and - actually, it’s funny because I came up with hanxing first? BC i liked the poetry comparison very much and i wanted to find something super meaningful and then i was like hm maybe i can make it “full of moonlight” instead bc of the moonweaver! so i searched “full moon” in my little mandarin dictionary thing and that was when i came across MĂyuè. i like could not BELIEVE how perfect it was when i looked into the actual lore of it - the “second month of life” like hello? HELLO? the lore behind it was perfect and i was really hoping you were gonna pick that one too. LOL. and i tried to build that into the actual tag itself, the idea that the second one was a little more off the cuff - not a perfect and poetic name but kind of a joke on him being a toddler.
oh man did it make him happy when molly liked it - and honestly, like, when he brought it up again, too? because i think he had forgotten about it up until that point. so molly wanting to take on a name like that was a little piece of great liang culture and that just warms his patriotic heart to death. i also didn’t notice that they matched so that was a really cute surprise too… our sun and moon theme clenches fist tenderly
i had to get him to say something sort of half romantic in response on accident bc otherwise it never would’ve happened so i’m glad we were able to work that out, too. it was - like, this confession thread was just perfect. holds it tenderly in my arms. every part of it i think was super representative of our cr up to that point and very them and it was just perfect. third time was the charm for them both to actually say the correct words instead of stupid metaphors too. ugh. UGH!!!! god. fellas is it gay to have a matching sun and moon theme for your name and want to hold hands with someone all the time and want to do anything to make sure that person is happy and gets to live a good life? just wondering
jesus fuck okay. moving on. after the dead came back gy got even more aggressively defensive of molly because he was tired of people just sort of dumping garbage in his general direction, whether it was on purpose or on accident. he was ready to take fukuda’s fucking head off during their team meeting at LEAST twice and one of those times was directly related to molly because he wouldn’t stop talking about it being hopeless to bring back beau. he’d been dedicated to that mission since day one and wouldn’t take some hole man trying to rain on his parade that was going to be successful AND making molly who was already having to deal with more shit more upset. :T congrats on your temporary (?) attack dog ig
when he got the healing power he definitely wanted to go up to the satellite with the others when they said they were going. it made me really happy that molly + harrow + gy (+ steven, we stan steven) got to go up to the satellite together because it was such a nice culmination of our little group cr. i talked abt that a lot in my tl;cr for siz but i’ll just say here that he really trusted the two of them a lot and also - he wasn’t sure what exactly they were going to see up there, and he wanted to be there to continue to be that support, just in case. plus i think he thought if he needed to he could use his healing on beau and/or jester if either one of htem was super badly injured somehow just in case, so it was extra good.
and i think he was extra glad he was there when they saw jester in the bubble tube thingy. being able to write the tag of like grabbing his hand and pulling him over to scan their little bracelet things so they didnt fucking die was one of my favorite Little Poignant Moments ™ and i just thought it worked out really nicely that they got to continue supporting each other all the way to the end. and that they got to get beau’s friend juice together! again he was getting them all (beau + jester + everyone else) included out of here at this point and refusing anything but success, so.
and thankfully we were successful!! the millions of angry lesbians wer esoothed and brought back to safety, beau included. i really liked our little endgame thread, even though it was short - the “I want more than an hour is the thing.” “What, two hours, three?” conversation was so silly and lighthearted and warm that it just was really nice. I like to think they probably spent that last night together because it makes my heart really warm to imagine. GY knew he was going to get his wish probably (?) at that point bc they didnt have to worry about saving beau and the others since they were fine, so it brought him right back to that point about traveling again and seeing each other. i like to think maybe they would’ve successfully had that conversation, if not then, then maybe when they did the tarot reading on the endgame log. “tell me if i have any travels in my future” kind of stuff. and now they’re going world hopping and visiting each other and meeting each other’s friends and its really just fantastic and gross and im proud of them thank you, beau, for enabling this shit to happen
anyway to wrap this up i want to try and just describe sort of the general ship stuff here which is this - for gu yun, molly was everything interesting and exciting and wonderful about life that he never got to experience. growing up the way he did, he never had a chance for indulgent behavior, for doing things just for the sake of doing them. he never had the chance to experience a freaking tiefling let alone the idea of magic and magical worlds where that thing is normal. he never had a chance to really have a friend that was like him - in sense of humor but also in their heart of hearts they’re both really good people who want to, as molly would put it, leave things better than they found it. gu yun never really had the chance to experience affection, either - actually, he never had the chance to just be loved by someone, period, and molly came around and changed that. i think molly is just in every way shape and form an adventure - they always had fun together no matter what was happening and I don’t think that would change even past endgame. still gotta level that tiefling up in a baby bjorn, though.
and then on a last note - i knew from the beginning this cr was going to be really nice but i don’t think i could have even begun to predict how wonderful it ended up. it was such a fun time to get to develop out this ship with you, alli! you are such a joy to write with and i loved every second of it... i can’t believe we hit 1000 comments in our pc log still its wild. WILD. i really, really enjoyed it, and if you ever want to psl these idiots more than we already have i am always down to clown. c:
also
sets this down gently.
SLAMS DOWN THIS ENTIRE TLCR LESS GENTLY
HA
also i may have more doodles floating around but im really embarrassed so i cant share them or ill die but u can have this one and now im leaving goodbye.