#something is...strange...

[curlygrant44]

You look delicious as hell, can’t blame the Jim man for takin a taste.

Flashes of red. Red outside, red inside. The burning, the itching, the ache, the gnawing inside him. All red. Red like the glimmer on the knife, red like his screaming, like his bitten tongue, like the hot wet thing slipping past his teeth oh god- All at once the half-remembered memories of his nightmares of another life hit and Curly doubles over, retching, clinging to the arm of his seat in the cockpit to avoid falling into the mess he makes of the floor as he chokes on bile. Dimly, he can hear @cptjimmy asking what's wrong with him...but he can't do anything but hold on for dear life as the words sear themselves into his brain. Can't blame the Jim man for having a taste...

[solarwreathe]

in another universe they could have been playing at the beach

[soaked-doors]

when it rains, it pours

[fairsweetlonging]

truth serum / system reveal au where shen qingqiu gets hit with an uncloaking spell that reveals the system in the reflection of his eyes every time it pops up.

during one of his missions, in the treasure hoard of some dragon-like creature, he finds a golden, oval shaped hand mirror, its gaudy style more victorian based than anything (airplane you hack!), that doesn't seem to do anything when he looks into it. but when he does, it reveals the system's screen in his eyes.

he doesn't notice this, of course, because he can't see it, and the system, surprisingly, stays quiet.

the peak lords think he's cursed.

maybe mu qingfang is the first to notice, during the mandatory post mission check-up, when shen qingqiu is scrolling through his most recently accumulated points and mu qingfang can see the strange vividly-blue lines reflected in his pupils. it's gone when shen qingqiu blinks, like it was nothing but a trick of the light.

it comes out when yue qingyuan is visiting and, just as he's done laying out the plans for a new mission, shen qingqiu's eyes glaze over and a bright blue box takes over the whole of his iris. shen qingqiu goes quiet; the thing in his eyes moves, shifts, pulses for a second, like static worms crawling all over his pupils. then he blinks, and it's gone, and shen qingqiu accepts the mission that yue qingyuan was almost sure he would decline.

maybe there is an intervention, when the peak lords corner shen qingqiu at qian cao peak and try to figure out what's wrong, subjecting him to all kinds of treatments and curse-finding spells that turn up empty, they can't find anything.

of course, the silencing threat is still very much up and running. at first shen qingqiu was kind of confused by the whole ordeal, but when the peak lords start describing a "strange blue box", he realizes, with sickening suddenty, that they're describing the system. and he can't say anything.

this only makes everything worse, because their fellow peak lord now keeps evading every question and acts like he doesn't understand. liu qingge points right at his face and asks, "that blue box, what is it?" and shen qingqiu laughs nervously and starts talking about how bright the weather is and surely it's the sky and nothing to worry about!

even worse, during the intervention the system thought it was a good idea to start talking to him, so now even the peak lords who hadn't seen it and who might have been persuaded by light tricks and reflections, get a first row view that no, that definitely isn't a trick of the light.

they try to do the whole thing of "are you in danger, blink twice" but shen qingqiu can't even do that because it's still a direct admittance!

maybe eventually he starts saying vague confirmations that don't actually confirm anything, like "this master hears what you're saying", or maybe he goes with a classic "this master can neither confirm nor deny that." but the system starts warning him for that too and eventually he stops saying anything, which worries the others more.

luckily mu qingfang catches on that every time they ask a direct question about the box or shen qingqiu says anything vaguely confirming, it appears. it doesn't appear when they ask about curses or demons, so it must not see that as a threat.

for a little extra angst: maybe the peak lords keep pressuring him for answers, and at some point shen qingqiu gets fed up and snaps out something like, "why don't you understand that i'm not allowed to answer that!" the system counts this as a direct admittance, threatening it's existence. so it punishes. shen qingqiu has a qi deviation so bad it lasts two weeks and takes two people every day to cleanse his meridians. the system doesn't appear in that time. it doesn't appear for a long while after that, either. the peak lords stop asking, mainly because shen qingqiu will instantly leave the room if they do. they don't stop searching for a cure, though.

shang qinghua returns from a business trip and catches on the second someone mentions a blue box and forced silencing.

[periodcostumefantasylover]

Guinevere's wedding dress and chainmail veil in Excalibur 1981

[eggsdrawings]

breakup was so bad it was broadcasted on national television

[brw]

My least favourite type of internet person is the person who claims fanfic is over thousands of years old or whatever. I understand we like to joke but fanfiction is fundamentally tied to fandom culture and is a very specific way of engaging with media. Religious texts based off other religious texts is not fanfiction and it is worrying the only way you can justify your interest is by comparing the two. I promise you you don't have to reinvent the wheel to write fanfic you can just do that but we don't have to say "Shakespeare wrote fanfiction about Richard III", there was not a Richard III fandom in 1592, that was called the divine right of kings.

[aerequets]

hahaha... ok gn

[crafteeauthor]

Edwin's ghostly double-age is so important to me. He's 16 and spent 70 years in hell. He's 124 and navigating the issues in his first real friendship. He's 16 and he helps ghosts move on to the afterlife like a mystery solving psychopomp. He's 124 and coming to terms with liking boys. He's 16 his hellfire-forged soul was used as a living battery. He's 124 and he's wearing his stupid little schoolboy uniform collecting trinkets with his bestie. He's 16 and he died over a century ago

[cherrywithastar]

Me and bae

inspired by this thing on twitter

[curlygrant44]

Jimmy slams into the door, not bothering to even wait for it to open. He steps in to the cockpit expecting to see Curly in his chair working away.

"Curls, why is everyone and their mothers trying to tell me that you and that boy Jon hooked up...."

No one was there. Curly isn't where he said he would be, and Jimmy suddenly didn't know what to do.

He wouldn't lie to him, right?

(Of course he would.)

Jimmy swears he can feel something shattering within him.

(Did I really mean nothing to him?)

Jimmy slowly sits on the floor, knees pulled up tightly to his chest. The tears and sobs come quickly.

He should've known better.... why would Curly ever want anything to do with him?

And that's where Jimmy sits and waits, like a dog who's lost his master.

- @cptjimmy

There's no on in the cockpit because Curly had stepped out for a short break -- with the circuitous paths of the Tulpar's twisted, nonsensical form since the collision of so many different worlds, it's easy to wander in to subtly different spaces without meaning to. If his own quarters weren't relatively close to the cockpit, Curly is fairly sure even he, having memorized every schematic they have, would have trouble. As it stands, he wonders if anyone besides Swansea is doing okay... What that means, though, is that the break he thought would take two or three minutes takes...longer, when he has to backtrack twice. Twelve minutes and fifty-three seconds, in fact, which he finds out as he steps into the cockpit and reflexively swipes his card, the computer chiming its acknowledgement that he returned before his allotted time was up. There's a soft sound; for a second it sounds almost like the vent's exhaust fan isn't working right again, a strange, low whining noise punctuated with a sort of semi-rhythmic hissing... He turns. It's sniffling. Very, very nearly dropping the coffee cup, he scrambles to set it on top of the printer before rushing the few steps to Jimmy's side, kneeling by him and starting to check him over for injuries. He can count the number of times he saw Jim curling in on himself crying like this on one hand, and the last time he'd been shot- "Jim, what happened? Are you okay?"

[art-of-pluton]

Reachin' out for something to hold!

Looking for a love when the climate is cold!

[radiance1]

Gotham was home to many strange things.

Dangerous things more often than not, yes, but still in the line of strange to those outside of Gotham.

Of course, their strange has become their normal.

But sometimes, things that happen in Gotham just makes them stare. Sometimes.

Watching a man walk through the streets, chatting amicably and smiling like everything is right in the word while holding none other than Killer Croc in his arms, who is clinging onto his neck and carefully trying not to fall off while nodding to show he's listening while also pitching in here and there with a question or statement or whatever.

It's just.

Odd.

Even by their standards.

(Meanwhile, Jack is very, very happy to finally reconnect with his older brother who he was, until just a few days prior, under the impression was dead.)

[emerynn-art]

was feeling kinda down this morning so i drew max six times and that seemed to do the trick

[captainharlock]

"something strange in pavalon meadow", a survival horror game where you play as an elf who lives in a trailer park.