#but the story is going to be a little spooky

[cherubscherry]

Jayvik nation I need opinions for my most beloved and babygirl AU I am cursed with visions of.... The Hex-Files AU.

I'm plagued by it constantly I mean LISTEN LISTEN, it's perfect!!! Jayce "Spooky" Talis, laughing stock of the FBI for his eccentric and esoteric interests!! Left down in the basement with a bunch of unsolvable cases that he lovingly keeps trying to solve case he KNOWS that shit is Magic/Paranormal!! He's completely OBSESSED, and also has not a lot of people skills given, well, his obsession.

Viktor having annoyed enough higher ups with his desire to actually be in the field for FBI work and the higher ups condescendingly taking one look at his leg and cane then going "No <3" before sending him down to the Hex-Files unit to "reign in" their little """rouge""" agent. Thinking so smugly they are 2 birds 1 stoning it. He's sooooo mad, he's smart, and capable, and if SOMEONE would just let him actually HELP PEOPLE he'd be SO GOOD AT IT Actually, OBVIOUSLY. The hubris <3.

Mulder and Scully's first meeting IS so Jayvik coded I'm right and I will NOT accept criticism.

Their first meeting starting off on the wrong foot??? With Jayce on the defensive but when they both are like, genuinely invested in their unit Actually??? Whoops wrong move Head Office these two are Insufferable now actually and will enable each others most Unhinged tendencies. In 1 case (more like in just their first meeting) they became ride or die and joined at the hip. I love them, they are haunting my dreams.

Also the name Hex Files??? It's perfect!!! Don't trust your government (Council)??? It was meant to be!!! It's doomed me in the narrative!!! Now I have to like.... plan stuff and figure out long term story lines, I'm ruined!!! I'm in shambles!!! I'm overcome with love and excitement!!! My head is in my hands I am sick!!!

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Graveyard Shift

short spooky novella

5 people who all take smoke breaks in the cemetery near their university in the middle of the night come across a fresh hole in the ground - and wonder who dug it, and why

they each start investigating, and quickly find out they are closer to the answers than expected

[ghostieblotts]

So many projects I want to work on, so much planning to do for fun trips, so much holiday fun imminent, and not enough time

[gu6chan]

saw a post on twitter that reminded me about the existence of that whole scp thing and i, knowing literally nothing about it and had never even seen a thing of it before now thought "you know what? i always said id take a peek at it but never did, maybe i should do that now" and the first story i read was,,, okay (REALLY fell apart at the end but the first half was alright) but had a REALLY cool concept and the second one was actually pretty funny but i saw someone mention one and i read it and it started out kinda??? ??? But very quickly became the most INTRIGUING story ever until like it started kinda having too many threads to where i was like "okay, this is getting a little absurd" but pressed on bc even if i was kinda growing skeptical as to the QUALITY of the payoff just thinking about how it could all come together at all had me so curious like i HAD to see how they would pull this off so i got to the last chapter and it turns out the whole fucking point of the story was to lure you in and string you along with several barely-related horror threads so you would trigger the thing at the end to "kill" you (AKA get jumpscared) and ladies and gentlemen ive just been sitting here seething for the past 20 minutes. there was no payoff. there's nothing. all of that was for nothing. my excitement, gone instantly like the last time i felt disappointment like this was when i played nier 😭

[residentialsinyomakai]

Im gonna be honest i don't exactly know what to do for today's yo tober. I'm not great with character design or adaptations of preexisting things TwT

[askfatesguardian]

Somewhat curiously the Vibrava gazed up at the beautiful 'mon, tilting her head a bit before pointing up. " What happened to your horn? "

"Well... I don't really know," Kreilanna replied. her hand resting upon her hornless chest. "I have a scar there from an attack when I was a child, but I'd never had horns then either. So maybe I was never meant to have them. Or maybe some of the damage from that day remains."

"A pack of Houndoom hunted me as a Ralts. I would have died that day if not for my Surrogate Father, Xelthalon. He's the reason I awoke to the ancient blood my family carries so that I could take his place when he passed on."

The Gardevoir gives a faint smile to the Vibrava beside her, though there is a sadness hidden deep within her gaze. "I hope that answers your question well enough. Thank you for visiting me."

[ominous-faechild]

I was just looking through some of my old notes and I came across something that's hilarious (or so I think).

So, obviously I have faeries in my stories. Daleira, Valyarus, and Soren are all noted faeries in Sun and Shadow.

But did you know that the Arcane Rifts has faeries, too? And, in fact, that they're even more important there? (Like faeries as a "species", not just the faerie characters, haha.)

Introducing: Vysio and Rhys! They're respectively faeries of Glavnran's forests and nature in general (with a special propensity toward storms (aka water/electricity/wind/blizzards))!

Anyway, for those without context, my faeries are kinda... conceptual beings of pure magic that create forms for themselves! They're shapeshifters that can be who- and whatever they want.

The SaS faeries are all "gendered"--Soren and Daleira are male/female respectively, but actually! Valyarus wouldn't mind "they/them"! He's just gone by "he" for as long as he's interacted with humans, so it's just what he knows! So feel free to use they/them for him, if it makes you guys happy, haha.

TAR's faeries, however... well, they're not! (Actually, tragically, Rhys has lived their whole life with male pronouns. I can't really get into it without spoiling stuff, but suffice to say that they're not in a position where they can be themselves.)

Rhys is, well... an absolute gremlin who you shouldn't trust with any degree of authority (and yet they have a LOT of it--).

They'd probably prefer they/it pronouns tbh, but I'd have to get to a point with their character where they'd be able/willing to think of that sort of thing, so. (And let's just say Rhys doesn't appear until book 3, so they're def not getting that any time soon, OOPS!)

And then there's Vysio. My boy Vysio, the entire reason I wrote out everything I have here.

He's kinda just "whatever" with his pronouns. He's an entity of pure chaos (technically, not literally, but he is chaos-leaning!!! 👀) and is as close to your typical fae as my faeries get! He's a major trickster entity who just wants to cause every single problem possible, and gets so, incredibly angry that nobody recognizes him as the terrifying faerie he is! (My poor baby boy, you'll get them next time. 😂)

But, when I was going through my notes, I found the most wonderful thing.

A silly little "joke" that was 100% true.

Vysio would choose the pronouns "cryptid / bitch".

[cruentu-s]

|| ghost stories

there's a ghost on the mountain who counts to twenty three

legend says, that he can only be found when the moon is at it's dimmest

waning and waning

he accepts challengers with a nod of his head and little else

and when you lose, he's gone again

he doesn't howl, there is little mourning unlike others of his kind

just a silence that even quiets the wind of the summits, to know he is near.

the ghost on the mountain who counts to twenty three used to be a champion

he still is, by rights

he has been for a hundred years

if you win, and no one has won, it's said that he'll vanish forever

isn't that what he'd want?

in school houses they still speak of him, frightened children in bathrooms wishing it'd be as easy as summons through a mirror

"red? red? red?"

on victory road, they look for him, as if such a thing could be transient

in halls of fame, they remember him, not so ghoulish, but quiet and camera shy

he still is, skittish and vacant from capture

what anchors him here? wondered allowed, by challengers still scaling to catch a glimpse of the ghost

they say he used to have eyes on fire, furious, driven, and if you catch a glimpse of them now, misfortune will befall you

that if he agrees to a challenge, sickness will plague you

could something so frightening really just be a boy?

anchored here by burnt, lipped cigarettes and discarded wrappers on a dirty cave floor?

twenty three ticks of the clock, loud and unforgiving

all that he'd been given

vengeful and selfish

the boy on the mountain is just a ghost, after all. not a god. nothing so benevolent.

[corvikae]

WIP :’))

[marquisecubey]

An illustration I made in 2020, inspired by the early daguerreotype photographs that weren't so well preserved.

Daguerreotyping is just such an interesting and meticulous process, and the detail they capture is almost unbelievable for such early technology, far beyond the scope of even many modern cameras. However, they’re also incredibly fragile. When an otherwise perfectly captured face becomes obscured by surface scratches or humidity seeps behind the glass, there's a particular kind of tragedy to it.

I was drawn to this idea of a woman whose portrait was left in an attic to rot, found in some dusty box 200 years later while cleaning out an old country home. It would have been decades since her physical body had left this world, generations coming and going, all unbothered by knowledge of her thoughts, her hopes, her fears, her passions.

Even an abandoned and broken artifact tells a story, though. Some say that if you were to look at her photograph for long enough, you could swear you saw someone's face in the clouds of chemical fog. An incorporeal, imprecise apparition that didn't show up on any modern x-ray analysis, but was unearthed and revealed by the very same decay that swallowed up the last earthly remains of her image.

Surely it was a trick of the eyes.

[cassioppenny]

cheren is "im so evil and fucked up" in a cartoon villain way

dawn is "im so evil and fucked up" in a weird little girl in a horror movie way

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[bagog]

Nightmare Walk

Ryan could hear the crack of the flail in the next room, Patrick's mournful groans and austere sounds of agony. There was a syrupy tendril of false blood that was beginning to drip from Ryan's false beard, about to fall and join the puddle of red-dyed cornstarch at the foot of the cross.

Ryan wore a long brown wig and a false beard and little else besides a blood-stained cloth around his boxers: in the semi-dark of the haunted attraction, he was the spitting image of the crucified Christ. His arms were strapped into the cross-beam of a large cross which held him high above the extras in Bible-clothing who were milling around waiting to be jeering onlookers. He was covered in fake blood, and occasionally as it trickled down over an eyebrow and he would waggle his head, unable to free his arms to brush it away.

The things you did for the Kingdom.

"Every 'hit' you take, every person you defile yourself with outside of marriage, every Sunday you slept in: each of those is another crack of the whip onto Jesus' flesh."

Ryan could hear the guide narrating through the scene right before they were supposed to enter this room and see that Jesus on the cross, dying for their sins. The attendees had been through the drugs room, the suicide room, the school shooting room, and were proper scared and ready to see some Biblical violence.

And so, next door, Patrick, dressed almost identically to Ryan, was being 'whipped' by a costumed Roman soldier: tortured. Then, with their trespasses still rising in their throats, they'd walk through the door and BAM: cross.

He was sweating beneath the fake blood and cold everywhere else, but it didn't matter too much to him. It was a big honor, he'd been doing Nightmare Walk all through high-school, and finally he was allowed to play Jesus. Still, as he hung there, Ryan thought that he was glad this would be his last year. It had turned out that, since meeting Patrick especially, he more looked forward to hitting the local Denny's with the other actors once the night was over.

"AGH!"

Ryan shook himself from his reverie, tried to stretch his arms which were quickly becoming numb. He heard it again, another shout. This one wasn't austere and Biblical, it was Patrick, and he was actually screaming.

"The fornicators, the idolators, the thieves, and the homosexuals will not be permitted to enter the kingdom of heaven!"

The narrator was 'preaching' at a fever pitch now, and Ryan didn't recognize the voice or the script they seemed to be using. His stomach sank.

"Oww! Hey, time-out, stop! STOP! Davis--AUGH!--stop!" Patrick was sounding panicked now.

"This one is guilty of lying with another man. He is abomination. Play-acting as our Savior with this unrepented sin still upon him!"

Ryan began to struggle with the bindings that held him fast to the cross, but they wouldn't budge. Patrick's cries had grown softer, broken, pleading. The door opened, and a crowd of people in fall-coats and scarves sidled in, led by a woman Ryan did not recognize.

"And here's the other one, the other homosexual. Dressed up like the Son of God, mocking the almighty with his iniquity." The woman proclaimed. Ryan couldn't make out the faces of the crowd in the darkness, but when the woman stepped forward, he saw she was carrying a brick. Maybe everyone in the crowd was.

Ryan pulled at his bonds, tried to twist out of them and off the cross. The sounds of a whip splitting flesh continued in the next room, and the woman raised her brick, eyes fiery and grin alive. The extras jeered and booed. The dark crowd stepped forward, arms raised.

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

.

[bam-stroker]

That art of the welded on rope tie anchors on a robot is going to plague my thots forever

Can't wait to write SB getting to live his best life getting tied up like that 3 years from now when I finally finish all I have planned for bumper 2 bumper :')

[penny-anna]

honestly kinda unfortunate that the only spooky library aesthetic is the victorian fancy bookshelves dark academia one bcos like. ok here's some library stories.

while i was at the university the library was undergoing a major refurbishment so for a little while the print journals were being stored temporarily down in the basement.

basically nobody ever consulted the print journals bcos 99% of stuff undergrads would be looking up is online these days so every time i went down there it was dead fucking silent & empty. you had to walk through what felt like several miles of empty basement to reach the collection, which was in a room w a photocopier shoved in the corner and a bunch of these:

u turn the handles to move these around (saves space) and every time you had to go and check the aisles first on the offchance that someone was in there so they wouldn't get u know. Compacted.

many years ago i did a week's work experience with the National Library of Scotland. here it is:

but that's just the tip of the iceberg. it keeps going down the side of the bridge, like so:

i got a tour of the stacks while i was there. it's floor after floor of this:

the bookshelves are made of metal & i was treated to the 'fun fact' that the shelves are, bizarrely, load bearing. for this reason they have to be constantly vigilant about fire hazards because even a relatively small fire could cause a bookcase to buckle from the heat, which in turn could cause the whole building to collapse in on itself like a house of cards.

this has haunted me ever since!! thank you.