And so it was that possums far and wide, from all clans in every land, came to commune with their great king.
Digital painting: Wei Wuxian, King of Possums.
Wow, this took…ages. I was planning even more with it, but I decided after ~35 working hours on it that enough was enough! It was originally intended as WWX’s birthday piece, but I have another idea brewing that I will try to have finished by then!
From the Private Journals of Dr. J.H. Watson. Not For Publication.
I've started a Johnlock fic, so for my BBC Sherlock moots, please go give this some love <3. A snippet under the cut. I've gone with the narration style of the books, and it's all Watson POV. Set in the Doyle era of 1880s.
No major archive warnings
tags: period typical everything, internalized homophobia, drug addiction, mental illness
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
At this point I was beginning to fume. He had leaned back at last, allowing me some space whilst his forgotten cigarette smouldered to a stub in the tray. His eyes glittered with a most unseemly delight, and that is when I lost my temper and yelled at him and called him a machine, for I had been taken aback, as I often am when his utter lack of qualms overmasters the good manners he has half-learned in our years together (a failing, I confess, more frequent than I care to record). Though my anger never retained its jagged edges for long, for I knew it was an inherent part of his nature, and it was often as absurd to scold him for such want of feeling as it would be to chastise a cat for toying with its food. I have also neglected to comment thus far on the pure, unadulterated anger he can rouse in me at times, for I do try to keep a cool head and think only of things that make me fond of him. But in those times when he so callously disregards human suffering, my temper will out.
He, of course, ignored my outburst and continued on, leaning back into my space and rested his hands upon my legs. “Finally something interesting, Watson. By the notes in this ledger, it seems that our little lighthouse scheme is indeed farther reaching than it first appeared and branches out in so many directions, from simple arms shipments to diplomatic letters! What vile elegance! I cannot wait to see where this takes us. Wight to London to the Continent, perhaps beyond… I would stake my life that it doesn’t end there, for this is no provincial affair!”
I wish I could have shared in his excitement, but if it were true that this smuggling operation we had just foiled was only the smallest speck of sand in a vast hourglass of atrocities, well – it did nothing to tickle my good humours.
I told him then, “I find nothing pleasing about any of this, Sherlock! And the thought of what those poor individuals must suffer as they are bought and sold puts a sick twist to my guts. I cannot share in your wicked giddiness!”
To which he replied:
“Your sentimentality is boring me, dear Watson. Please, leave.”
And so I did.
I pushed him away from me, grabbed my coat, and quitted the flat. But I had not been gone for more than half the hour when a young urchin boy came barreling into the public house where I opted for several fingers of brandy, and thrust a letter into my hand. I knew immediately by the stationery that it was a missive from Holmes and recognized the lad, the unassuming courier, as one of his network. With a sigh to myself (for was I never allowed ten minutes to my bloody self? I asked the page that very question under my breath), I opened the letter and read:
Please return to 221b Baker Street at your earliest convenience. If it is not convenient, please return regardless. Your presence is required for an urgent matter. -SH
He must have penned the letter and called for his lad within moments of my departure. This was typical of him, though, so changeable and unpredictable his moods were. He could tell me curtly to leave, and in the next breath demand to know whither I went, with genuine astonishment, as I donned my cap.
I beckoned the aproner for another finger, which he poured, then I downed them in quick succession. I am certain Holmes had not expected me to leave without a word, and I was fair certain he was panicked that I might not return. However, when I came back to the flat a short while later, he was sat in his chair, reading the ledger, and did not so much as look up at me.
“I am here,” I announced.
“Yes, so you are.”
I was the very manifestation of vexation (an urgent matter indeed! This was so very like him!), though instead of yelling at him again, I did let out a long, bellyful laugh that bubbled up and around my irateness. This startled Sherlock into looking up at me with his strange, intense eyes, he who was perfectly happy to ignore me so long as I was in his presence as requested, and I told him as I reined in my laughter, “I am going to sleep. It has been a long night.” He just sat there watching me, looking somewhat betrayed, as I stalked to my room and closed the door behind me. The thing that rankled me most just then was that he looked so refreshed, as if he hadn’t spent the last thirty and six hours awake and behaving as a wild beast for most of it! He was blessedly quiet as I drifted to sleep, save for a few short minutes when I could hear him pacing outside my door before he retired to his room and shut his own door with a soft click. I’m not sure if I was more relieved or disappointed that he didn’t come in, and I’m also not sure where the disappointment came from, for I quite like having my bed to myself. But then, I knew that peace for only a short time.
Summary: John goes on a date, Sherlock meets a new friend at a molly house, and John reflects on Sherlock's madness.
snippet under the cut
“Affection, dear Watson,” he had declared, prodding the bloated cheek of the specimen with his scalpel, “is not unlike this process here. It begins fresh, seemingly full of promise and vigor, and yet at once is attacked by invisible forces, like the damp of circumstance. It is gnawed upon by vermin; it is corrupted by the very air. It puffs and bloats and sours and grows unstable until at last it bursts of its own access. And then maggots! Tiny, insatiable, ceaseless, reducing, reducing, reducing what was once beautiful to the barest scaffolding of bone. And yet,” he then leaned back and breathed deep, then turned his eyes to me and looked at me with terrible, dreadful admiration, “it is nothing more than the final state, stripped away of all false ornament. It is here that we see what lies beneath, the internal architecture and essential truth. Love, like decay, dear Watson, is nothing more than a study of underlying structure. What lies within your bones, I wonder?” He looked crazed, severed head grasped in one hand and a scalpel in the other, and the unpredictability of him was remarkable to behold. He was not, in nature, a violent individual, but I think he did like to sometimes make people think he was.
And this was that moral retardation I spoke of peeking through, his utter lack of qualms that overtook him at times. I don’t think he understood just how frightening he was to people when he got like that, but for some reason, I did not shy away from him or the scalpel he pointed my way, for what else was Sherlock Holmes but a study of the underlying structure of madness? And he was also my dear friend whom, while I did not trust not to drug me unawares (surely a story for another time!), I did trust with the very mortality flowing under my skin.
I, of course, did not agree with this little rant on the decay of love in the least, yet he spoke with the greatest of conviction, like a mad prophet unveiling the truth about that great cosmic entity we call God. Sure, the reek of the severed head and the gore upon his hands robbed the moment of any dignity it might have claimed, but he was a vision that I didn’t care to look away from. I wasn’t entirely certain if his tirade was directed at my inclination (and obvious failed affections) towards the fairer sex or if he spoke of his own warped manner of loving me. Either way, he enraptured me, and I was unable to look away from his frenetic form. In truth, I wished he would put the head away and focus that attention entirely on me, even though, in some way, I already knew I was the center of it all. I did not interrupt him once as he continued to pace and rant, for it was perilous to break his strange music. I simply sat, for hours, observing this creature, enthralled by his brilliance and peculiarities (as I have always been since the very first).
The CasDean Crossover Bang is open and we're still looking for more artists! Last year we had so many beautiful art pieces from you guys and hopefully we can get a lot of awesomeness this year as well!
I can already tell you that the writers are busy bees and selected some pretty cool crossover universe, so don't miss out and join us!
Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, intolerance, threats of lynching, threats of non-sexual sodomy with an inanimate object, attempted murder, kidnapping,
Tags: 1950s, Coming of Age, Eventual Happy Ending, inadvertently coming out, John and Mary are supportive, basketball star Dean Winchester, Sheriff John Winchester, non-explicit sex,
Summary: Dean Winchester has a perfect life: his parents are great, he's the star of the basketball team, and he is the most popular boy in school. So the nagging voice in the back of his head that tells him things could be better seems out of place, makes him feel ungrateful.
This is a story about coming to terms with one's self, one's sexuality, and the way in which outsiders view those who step outside their neat, tidy little boxes—written through the lens of books and films of the Beat Generation.
Tags: 1950s, carnival, horror, teen destiel, inspired by Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, maggots, panic, demonic pacts, spoilers in the next tags, bad ending, drag me to hell style ending, nobody dies per se, but the boys don't fare too well in the end, no HEA
Summary: Bartholomew's Bend is a quiet, ordinary place where ordinary people live their ordinary lives. Nothing of note ever happens, and all of the citizens are content to keep it that way. However, their tranquility is shattered when a series of disappearances startles the town's denizens, coinciding with the arrival of the Carnivale Obscurum and its proprietors, Asmodeus and Sands.
Inspired by Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes
Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, period typical homophobia
Tags: 1950s, coming of age, eventual HEA, Beat literature
Posting Date: November 6, 2023
Summary: Set during the 1950s in the small town of Hays, Kansas, Dean's got it all: great family, friends aplenty, and he's star of the basketball team, a real popular fella. But something's missing, he feels like he's sleepwalking, like nothing's ever enough, so he dreams of a life of adventure outside the confines of his hometown. Then one day, in strides Cas, this blue-eyed bohemian from NYC, and things start changing quick like a jackrabbit. They set out to explore their true selves and identities—Cas becoming a catalyst for the change Dean would like to see in himself—all while wanting nothing better than to make it through their final year of school.
Excerpt: Dean stands on the dock panting, out of breath from fear and rage and he screams. He screams at the water and listens to it bounce back, echoing and mocking, his voice but not his own. When he can't scream any longer, he takes another breath and lets it all out again, hysterical. Dad finally catches up, pulling Dean close, embracing him with his giant arms. Dean sobs into his perfectly starched and pressed uniform, the hand-stitched Sheriff's badge soaking up his salty tears and blood. He feels like a small child again, engulfed in that embrace after a night of bad dreams, rocking gently and soothed with a tender hand through his hair. "I fucked up, Dad." John strokes his hair again and kisses his head, replying, "I know." It's not an accusation, just acknowledgment of truths that need to be spoken, things that could destroy them if they weren't true to themselves. A simple understanding that none of them are perfect. "I know, kid. So did I."
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Dean steps foot off the platform and makes his way through the winding tunnels of the dingy terminal and up through the beautifully tiled main concourse and out the wide, gaping doors of grand central station. The streets of Manhattan are dirty and packed and filled up with cars. Horns honk and the air smells stale, nothing like the fresh small-town air he is so used to. He’s never smelled anything so liberating. He closes his eyes and tips his head up to the sky, letting the sun soak into his skin as ladies in ermine stoles and gentlemen in fine fedoras skirt past him, rushing to get back to their hectic city lives. He stands there for what must be mere moments, but to him an eternity of perfect harmony within his soul. He floats above the city and stares down from the heavens. His whole life, his dreams, his hopes, never had any of these things prepared him for the absolute sense of bittersweet finality, a family left behind—and of the pure joy at the thought of a new family about to begin. A future yet lived, a future with Cas. It is there with the chill breeze of springtime on his cheeks that his old life ends, where life truly begins, and it all begins with one simple phrase in a lemon whiskey voice: “Hello, Dean.”
Warnings: ambiguous/bad ending, consumption of maggots, hallucinations, threats of torture, missing people turned into carnival attractions
Summary: In the small town of Bartholomew's Bend, the strange and unearthly Carnival Obscurum reappears after a long 17-year absence, which coincides with a wave of unexplained disappearances. While exploring the carnival, life-long friends Dean and Cas stumble upon a dark and horrible truth that everything might not be all it seems, revealing a long-buried family secret. The two work to undo the dark dealings of the carnival and send the demons running the place back to Hell—saving the souls of their friends and families is a task they must undertake at any cost.
As they trudged along the path, the boys huddled together against the biting cold. As Dean began to theorize, his voice quivered, mind racing with the grim tales that had been passed down through generations.
"Wasn't there that old carnival back in the day,” Dean drawled, “the one that used to kidnap people and do all sorts of crazy experiments on them?" He paused, stealing a glance at Cas, whose wide eyes had glossed over in rumination. Dean continued, "They would snatch folks right off the fairgrounds, hide 'em away in secret rooms, and turn 'em into sideshow freaks! What if it's like that? I hope Uncle Bobby managed to escape! And poor ol' Mr. H. That ditch sure is sounding good."
Cas, shivering both from the cold and the thought of such horrors, nodded in agreement. "Boy howdy, I bet you're right," he replied in a low murmur. "I heard those tales too. Sick stuff, they say. Pulling out teeth, cutting off body parts." He paused, his words trailing off into the autumnal air. "But what if it ain't like that? What if it's some sort of mind control, and nobody actually got cut up at all? You know they got them hypnotists, right? They could've put the whammy on everyone and made 'em go wandering off somewhere."
Dean furrowed his brow as he considered Cas's words. "You might be onto somethin', Cas,” he admitted. "I sure hope you're right. 'Cause I don't rightly know what Dad'll do if he finds out his friends got all cut up. Either way, we better pick up the pace, and quick."
Coming to the @deancashorrorfest collection this October
Hello tumblr. This user is fine and was definitely NOT murdered. Nope. No murder. On a completely unrelated note, how much bleach can you buy before it looks suspicious. Asking for a friend 😇
Exactly. It wasn’t murder or anything.. bleach fixes the bug problem. Another unrelated question, would bleach deter flies and other pests from fresh meat.?
Probably. It's used to eliminate odors so flies probably would have a hard time finding the meat, but you really don't want to use bleach if you're going to save the meat for later.
Oh yes, good point, I think having bleach poisoning would be rather unfortunate. I think getting rid of this copious amount of meat quickly is crucial. How does one dispose of, uh, meat. Without eating it. I am vegetarian(?)
I guess you could always feed it to a pig farm or toss it in the ocean and let the fish have it. Otherwise, you could bury it. You'll want to make sure you're burying it a few feet deep so predators don't dig it up. Chopping the meat into smaller chunks and burying it near a tree will greatly accelerate decomposition.
Oh poor sargent hobbles. I won’t feed him meat, especially since now that I think of it it would be best not to have a bloodthirsty ginuea pig. I don’t have trees would a rose bush work?
Calcium is great for plants. I'd recommend grinding them into a bone meal that you can periodically sprinkle into the soil. You don't want to put too much at once because it could affect the soil's pH levels.
Meanwhile, I'd say 3 or 4 feet is good to reduce predators from digging it up.
Not initially. You have to invest extra perk points to recognize tone, emotion, and sarcasm. The sarcasm detection perk is really expensive and honestly, the run is more amusing if you don't invest in it.
A series of original portraits of characters from the series Game of Thrones.
A graduate of the Pratt Institute and a multiple award-winning artist, Greg Ruth has been working in comics since 1993 and has published work for The New York Times, DC Comics, Paradox Press, Fantagraphics Books, Caliber Comics, Dark Horse Comics and The Matrix, Harper Collins, Hyperion, Macmillan and Simon and Schuster.
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Subji artists and writers, prepare yourselves! The Subji Minibang will be opening for sign-ups on Sep 27 💦Check out our carrd for more details on the schedule and event rules!