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There are things Jing Yi expects when he flies through the window to his rooms.
Like his rooms. Like the floor being where he expects. Like all the furniture being out of the way of anyone flying through a window.
He finds none of those things.
There may or may not be a crashing noise. Or a very undignified yelp.
And then the interview is concluded!
His agent has a look of relief on her face.
"Well, I'm glad I've managed to last longer than a day before turning the whole public against me."
"You're a natural."
in my defense it was up till now *classified*
(Not technically a lie!)
though I will apologise for depriving you of your gilead sex volcano by being from a more functional, if poxy, country
tang dynasty china is super repressed tho right
like you gotta be a virgin until you get married to someone your parents want you to marry + being gay is a sin
right?????
being gay was a foible but not like a particularly bad foible
unfortunately we were very sexist and the virginity thing was more for women
I think it's better if SOME people get to be exempt from virginity policing
wait
who are you fucking if the women are supposed to be virgins and you're not supposed to be gay??????
also don't expect to see me for the next six weeks, they just declassified the time travel papers and I am PSYCHED
there are courtesans? also you can just be gay. it really wasn't seen as particularly bad.
if you do read them, please tell me how time travel works. people keep asking *me*. i just fell here with an inexplicable knowledge of english, i know *nothing*
Various people have opinions about the time traveler!
The Queen of Hawaii gives a speech immediately after the press conference to welcome Jing Yi to Cascadia and encourage him to make a state visit to Hawaii. It is a very good speech; her charisma is obvious.
The Cascadian government had privately informed every government except Gilead about the existence of time travel, and so various other political figures can make speeches about how time travel exists and that's kind of neat and they should fund scientific research more and mumble mumble. For something that fundamentally disrupts their understanding of how the universe works it seems to have remarkably few... implications.
Gilead manages to get it together to have a slightly late and obviously slapdash speech about the subject.
The Pope and various Protestant and Orthodox religious leaders announce that Jing Yi's presence is a miracle. Most of them keep it kind of vague why God would have performed such a miracle, but some of the Protestants think it was performed to save Jing Yi's soul specifically.
The social media reaction includes:
-People who think Jing Yi is hot, expressed with varying amounts of pornography and/or body horror.
-People who think it is racist that the journalists didn't know that there wasn't footbinding in the Tang dynasty.
-People who think that the Cascadian government made up time travel for various reasons, a surprising number of which involve Satanism, secret pedophile cabals, or lizard people.
-People who think that God definitely performed a miracle to save Jing Yi's soul, and it is bad that he's in Cascadia where he is going to be corrupted.
-Long explanations of how time travel works that are wrong in every particular.
-References to many, many time travel movies that Jing Yi hasn't watched.
-So many memes.
He learns to be careful about googling himself. Though the drawings of his getting fucked by tenta-clocks are at least amusing, if startling when he first encountered them.
He is also very well behaved and makes no public comments about why his soul, specifically, out of all the souls available? (And also, if he is a miracle, surely God could have put him in Gilead.)
Lev does get a text of:
good thing to know the monotheist god decided to save my soul by sending me to a cabal of satanist lizard people with too many triangles.
the gileadites think we have triangles with eyes in them, but if we do, I haven't seen them.
you've been keeping them classified, haven't you
The country of China thinks that Jing Yi was born in China, and therefore he is a Chinese citizen, and he did not receive any sort of permission to emigrate to Cascadia, so Cascadia should deport its illegal emigrant back to China where he belongs.
Cascadia thinks that the country of China should go eat a dick but, like, politely and diplomatically.
Oh, is it still the Tang Dynasty? He was a citizen of that, but Wikipedia seemed to think some regime changes have happened over the intervening centuries. But you know, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone! Very unreliable, like that.
A week later, he has a meeting with his agent, who presents the following projects as things people seem to want:
-Interviews with various historians
-MCing at assorted nightclubs
-Giving inspirational speeches at corporations and college campuses about what he's learned about Resilience and Coping With Adversity from being a time traveler
-Appearances at fundraisers for various worthy causes
-His memoir
-A book about daily life in the Tang dynasty
-A TV show about his life (documentary)
-A TV show about his life (fictionalized)
-His cultural consultation on various movies, some of which involve the Tang dynasty and some of which involve giant robots that run on qi
-The above, but also he gets to play a character in it
-A TV show where there are twenty people he might want to date and he does various activities with each of them and rejects one of them each week and eventually has to date the one he chooses
-A TV show where he has to answer trivia questions and if he gets them right he earns money
-A TV show where people compete to make the best Chinese food and he is one of three judges who gets to pick who goes on to the next round
-The above, but it's weird avant-garde food
-A TV show where they just follow him around with cameras all the time and film all of his conversations with everyone
-The above, but he's trapped in a house with nineteen other people selected for Maximum Drama
-Cameos in literally every TV show and movie set in China and a bunch which aren't
-Tasteful nudes (still pictures)
-Tasteful nudes (stripping)
-Hardcore pornography
Also, the Queen of Hawaii would like to officially welcome him to Cascadia.
He would love to be interviewed by historians, please let him be interviewed. (The nice thing about historians is he can ask 'hey, did any of these names show up in the historical record? Please tell me if they do.')
...how do the inspirational speech people feel about speeches that involve "and then I spent a lot of time crying on bed while watching superhero movies?" Because any inspirational speech that is true is going to involve that. (Though Lev's advice of 'do the terrifying tempting thing' is maybe more inspirational speech appropriate.) Also happy to be a prop at a fundraiser. Are there any fundraisers for childhood vaccines? He could be a walking cautionary tale.
He'd be very interested in a memoir or a tv show of some sort. (He would like his friends and family to be remembered.) He could do the book of daily life, but he was very rich and he's not sure how... useful... it would be.
PLEASE LET HIM HELP WITH THE GIANT ROBOTS THAT RUN ON QI MOVIE. HE WANTS THAT MOVIE TO EXIST. He doesn't care if he gets a part in it, he just wants to make it happen.
...he is not dating anyone on screen, or being followed around by cameras, thank you.
Him trying to answer trivia questions just sounds like a very awkward time for all involved. He only knows a year worth of trivia here.
He's happy to judge food, with the caveat that he probably has deeply weird food opinions, and they probably want some judges with... normal taste, here.
He can cameo in things, sure.
...okay, so "do whatever will annoy Gilead the most" is not the best guiding life principle, but he very much wants to annoy Gilead. This probably means he should do the tasteful still nudes? And maybe the other things if it doesn't blow up in his face.
He appreciates the Queen of Hawai'i wanting to officially welcome him. Look, a functioning monarchy! With a queen, but it looks like Hawai'i is making it work. If it would be possible to arrange an official welcome, he would like that.
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