Those Who Venture Into the Unknown

I spent the past two days going more-or-less all out for Go Fest, and honestly I had a blast. I did a bunch of raids, got two shiny Zamazenta (one with the special background) and five shiny Zacian (no special backgrounds on any of these, alas), and am honestly pretty pleased with my shiny hoard overall. In addition to those, I got one of my longtime shiny wants: A shiny Pachirisu!

It's also been as hot and humid as a frog's armpit the past week or so, which made all that walking around... interesting. I did my best to stay hydrated and cool off as needed, and chugged more Gatorade than I initially anticipated, but I've come out the other side more-or-less fine. I did end up with more chafing than I expected, most of it in the usual places (only some of which I thought to apply preventative measures to, alas), and at least one surprise new place (my right underarm, just a little past my armpit region). I expect I'll need to keep those in mind for next year, alas. On the plus side, none of the chafing spots have blisters, which I am tentatively crediting my anti-sweat medication for.

Anyway, all that out of the way, I would like to announce that I've come up with the perfect nicknames for shiny versions of this weekend's legendaries:

Zamagenta and Zacyan.

Currently amusing myself with the notion of a System Failure AU, in which Shen Yuan still gets transmigrated into SQQ as usual, and has access to and can argue with the System, but someone else also has access to his System logs, and they're the one that gets to call the shots.

So it'd be a closer experience to a video game or visual novel for the other person, just that SY!SQQ has a bit more agency when it comes to getting the System to do what he wants than a player character might have.

Amusing options for which character gets control:

Ning Yingying; she gets a wakeup call about her own social fuckups, especially regarding Luo Binghe, but also gets an insight into what happened to SJ!SQQ, what he was doing to and planning for LBH, etc

Shang Qinghua; he hates dealing with his own System, and now he has a second one to contend with?! And it's somehow nicer than his own?! WTF is this bullshit! (Early Airplane reveal for extra shenanigans)

Liu Qingge; just for the sheer WTF factor involved. He would have no idea what was going on, and figuring it out, as well as everything else involved, would be... very interesting, IMO.

Yue Qingyuan; there would have to be some way of rigging it so he'd get Shen Jiu back if he managed to "help" Shen Yuan "fix" PIDW, or he'd probably find a way to be self-destructive about it and/or kill SY!SQQ or something

Luo Binghe; honestly, probably the least interesting option of the ones I listed so far. He would be better with just System chat log access, not decision making access, IMO. Still, he is an option!

Ming Fan, probably; I've already got NYY on the list, so why not? He can start learning about the consequences of bullying LBH and maybe start thinking about what it means to be a righteous cultivator

Gongyi Xiao; I mean, if I put Ming Fan on there, I may as well. He has no idea what's going on for most of this, except for a passing familiarity with the Xiu Ya sword, and is now going to get an inside look at how dysfunctional all the cultivation sects are, HHP included

Of these, I think that NYY and/or YQY are the two I'm most likely to actually write (GYX is tempting, but I've got the start of a fix-it AU thing already kinda planned for Sot69), but even then I can't imagine doing more than an outline at the moment. Still, very amusing to think about!