Thinking about a bingqiu Dreamling AU where Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua are both bored deities, just sort of taking a brief sojourn through the mortal world to shoot the shit and see some interesting monster or other that Shen Yuan has heard about, when they come across a tea house and decide to take a break and do some people-watching instead.

Shen Yuan is well into something of a shut-in phase, which Shang Qinghua doesn't like, mostly because when Shen Yuan is in those phases he doesn't do particularly well either. Shen Yuan's a social butterfly, for however little he cares to actually acknowledge it about himself, and his critique of Shang Qinghua's literary masterpieces gets so much harsher when he's not getting enough enrichment.

So when they overhear one of the kitchen boys solemnly insisting that he is going to do everything in his power to never die, and Shen Yuan laments that the boy would probably regret such a wish if it came true, Shang Qinghua decides to bestow a rare bit of godly power onto this mortal and grant his wish.

He doesn't make him a god, of course, that wouldn't even be in his ability. At least, not without using up more time and effort than he's prepared to expend on this one random kid. But immortality on its own is not that difficult. The boy will still finish growing up, and will still be able to be harmed, to know hunger and pain and illness. It just won't ever kill him.

Shen Yuan sighs that it's a cruel thing to do to a mortal, especially one with such low odds of ever cultivating other skills to mitigate the potential torment of it all. But Shang Qinghua just shrugs and they place bets, that this boy will ask for the immortality to be revoked in a hundred years, or two hundred, or so on, or else he won't. Shen Qingqiu approaches the kitchen boy and flusters and bewilders him by telling him to meet him back here again in a hundred years time.

A hundred years later, the tea house is larger. The boy has grown to be a striking young man, who looks at Shen Yuan with wariness and something else, something almost like awe, as he asks what manner of creature he's made this bargain with. Shen Yuan assures him that he has no nefarious intentions, and instead asks Luo Binghe how the past century of his life has gone.

Horribly, at least at first. Binghe's mother had already died by the time they met, but afterwards he managed to earn enough money to travel to a nearby sect. Working in the tea house's kitchen was just a minor stopover along the way. Shen Yuan was wrong, it seems, about his odds of becoming a cultivator -- Luo Binghe earned entry as a disciple.

Yet, he had no success. The master who took him on was unaccountably cruel and mercurial, and Luo Binghe's attempts to cultivate failed. Looking back he sees now that there were many times when he should have died but didn't, but when it was all happening he just thought himself lucky. At least until an enemy sect attacked a cultivation conference, and he suffered mortal wounds that absolutely should have killed him (or anyone) but still didn't die. (No demon race or abyss in this AU, but there are still demonic and fantastical creatures.)

His cruel master, upon witnessing this, accused him of heretical practices and tried to kill him as well by flinging him off the edge of a gorge. The fall was terrible. Binghe lay at the bottom in a horrifying state, injured beyond reason and yet, still, he didn't die. Eventually his body recovered enough for him to drag himself out, and once he did the only thing on his mind was getting revenge. For the next several decades he managed to ingratiate himself to all manner of potential allies, forging alliances, accumulating blackmail, and convincing people that he had to be some powerful cultivator through his supernatural resilience, lack of visible aging, and a lot of bluffing. He got revenge on his old teacher, drove his first sect into ruin, and rose to prominence as a feared and respected leader of the cultivation world.

Shen Yuan listens with clear interest, asking plenty of questions and seemingly quite taken up with the story. At the conclusion, Luo Binghe admits that his actual cultivation is still mostly a matter of smoke and mirrors, and wonders if -- now that the hundred years have passed -- Shen Yuan means to strip his immortality from him.

Shen Yuan asks if Luo Binghe wants that. When Luo Binghe says no, he accepts the answer, and tells him to meet him back here again in another hundred years. Luo Binghe calls after him, but before he can ask anything more, Shen Yuan has disappeared again.

A hundred years later, Binghe arrives back at the tea house with an entourage befitting of an emperor. The tea house has also expanded. Luo Binghe orders a lavish feast from them, which everyone hastens to provide. He's spent the past several decades consolidating his power, forging alliances with key political players via several marriages, producing heirs, and crushing his enemies. As he brags about the state of his massive harem to Shen Yuan, the deity's eyes begin to glaze over. He doesn't seem impressed. He also doesn't seem to care much for the food, and eventually his attention is stolen away by a conversation at another table. The diners are discussing the exploits of a promising new poet and novelist. Try as he might, Luo Binghe fails to regain Shen Yuan's attention before the evening is done. Shen Yuan doesn't think it's a big deal -- after all, if Binghe is still riding on top of the world, he's probably not going to want his immortality gift revoked just yet!

Another hundred years go by. The tea house has returned to a more modest situation, the next time Shen Yuan sets foot in it. He waits an unusually long while for his guest to arrive, and when he does, he's almost stopped at the door by the tea house's servers. It's only when Shen Yuan bids them let him through that Luo Binghe is able to come to the table, almost collapsing against it and desperately falling onto the arrangement of snacks with obvious hunger.

Shen Yuan wonders if this, now, will be when the boy (no longer a boy) asks for the immortality to be revoked. Surprisingly, he finds himself resistant to the idea, even though it's also clear that the game has run too long. Maybe hundred year check-ins were too short? He doesn't like the implications of what's gone on, even if he's not really surprised about it either.

Between desperate mouthfuls of food, Luo Binghe explains that without mastering inedia, going hungry but never dying is a deeply unpleasant experience. Shen Yuan orders more food. Once Binghe has finally eaten his fill, he begins, haltingly, to explain his situation. His clothes are ragged, he is painfully thin, and his gaze is haunted.

Apparently, several of his wives conspired to assassinate him, despite his reputation as unkillable. Realizing that most poisons and such didn't kill him, but that he could still be incapacitated, they hatched a scheme to dose his food with a powerful sleeping agent, and then walled him up in a famous ancestral tomb. They went to great length to ensure that it was impossible to escape from. It took Binghe decades to do it anyway, digging away at the floors, and when he got out he found that his power base had collapsed. In-fighting and the incursion of his enemies had led to the deaths of all of his children, and what wives had survived had either fled or remarried. Not that he particularly wanted them back at that point, since the ones actually most loyal to him had also been killed early on after his own "death". His face marked him, to the eyes of his enemy, as a surviving descendant of himself. He was hunted down, chased across the continent and back again, until he managed to fall into enough obscurity that his pursuers abandoned the chase. Except that he has nothing, and any time he tries to regain something, he runs the risk of being hounded again. Those who might see some potential in him still remember the collapse of his recent "dynasty" and slam doors in his face, or else try and turn him over to those now in power in pursuit of a reward. Those who don't know that much see only a dirty beggar, and usually run him off on that basis instead.

Shen Yuan, almost hesitant, asks if Luo Binghe would like to have his immortality revoked.

Luo Binghe declines. How will he be able to take revenge on those who wronged him if he is dead? He has a hit list a mile long by now.

Which is definitely not the most noble of reasons to persist, but Shen Yuan finds himself reluctant to ask twice. Instead he orders more food, and then even reserves one of the traveler's rooms above the tea house for several days. By then the sky is turning grey, and Luo Binghe is losing his apparent battle with exhaustion. Shen Yuan presses the key into his hand, thinking it's probably not enough, but there are limits to how much gods are supposed to interfere and Shang Qinghua already stretched them to the breaking point with this entire scenario.

He leaves, not seeing the hand that reaches after him just before he is out of the door and gone.

Another hundred years pass. This time, Shen Yuan arrives to find Luo Binghe already waiting for him. He isn't surprised to see that Binghe's situation has visibly improved -- maybe he was keeping closer tabs on him, just a little bit, for this past while. If only to be sure he wouldn't have to warn the tea house workers to expect an unorthodox visitor again! But no, Binghe has been doing well enough for himself. No more harems or thrones, though. He dresses more like a well-off merchant now, deliberately posing as his own mortal descendant rather than as a great immortal cultivator. The food at the table looks far more delicious than usual too (Binghe commandeered the tea house's kitchen himself this time). As they chat, Shen Yuan is regaled with the exploits of Luo Binghe's travels and adventures, how even though he initially set out to claim revenge on those who overthrew him, by the time he was in a position to actually do so they had already died of the usual causes (time, illness, their own schemes backfiring, etc). Subsequently, only their children and grandchildren were left with the scraps of power they had obtained, and when one of those children employed Luo Binghe as a bodyguard, his initial plan to assassinate them eventually fell by the wayside. After all, the wrongdoings weren't actually theirs. From that point, Binghe was able to restore himself to a more comfortable life, joining his new employer on their travels until he had set aside enough earnings to take his leave before his youthful good-looks earned him suspicion. He then began investing in travel and trade, specifically cargo ships, because never spending too long in the same place or around the same people helped disguise his immortality. He had found that, at least for now, this served him better than playing the part of a cultivator. It also gave him time to try and actually repair his ruined cultivation base somewhat, and fighting pirates proved very diverting.

Binghe is midway through recounting his adventures with a gigantic sea monster, while Shen Yuan hangs on every word, when they're interrupted by the arrival of a brash young mistress, clearly wealthy and trained in cultivation. The young lady declares that there is a rumor that a fallen god and a demon meet in this tea house once a century, that they wield strange powers, etc etc, and she intends to interrogate them both with the assistance of her hired muscle and her own spiritual weapon, and discover the truth of the matter. Then she whips out, well, a whip!

Before Shen Yuan can deal with the matter, Luo Binghe is already on his feet, disarming the goons and breaking a few arms in the process. Shen Yuan is so distracted that he almost misses the whip aimed right for him, but before Binghe can catch the barbed weapon with his bare hand (wtf, Binghe, no) Shen Yuan deflects it with a wave of his fan, and then efficiently knocks the troublesome young lady unconscious. The hired muscle flees, Shen Yuan arranges for their assailant to be placed in a room upstairs until she regains consciousness, and he and Binghe resume their meal and conversation in relative peace.

Even though it's clear that Luo Binghe has not yet reached the end of his tolerance for life, Shen Yuan nevertheless finds himself strangely reluctant to part ways at the end of the night. Still, he does, because that's what is expected of him, gently denying Luo Binghe's suggestions that they find some other establishment to continue their conversation at. He also has to investigate these "rumors" that the young lady mentioned. It's probably nothing (Shang Qinghua has a loose tongue when he's drunk, and a lot of imaginative storytellers have frequented this tea house over the years) but he doesn't like being caught unawares like that. Heavenly politics are... complicated, it's best not to court unwanted attention in any capacity.

Another hundred years go by. This time, when they meet at the tea house, Luo Binghe asks Shen Yuan why he keeps it up. Why did he pick Binghe? What is he really after? When Shen Yuan fails to give any kind of clear answer, Luo Binghe shoots his shot and makes a (very obvious) move on him.

Shen Yuan, flustered, gets up and flees. Ignoring Luo Binghe's calls after him. It just doesn't make any sense! Why would Binghe do that?! He's a man who once had a harem of wives in the triple digits! Clearly he's not gay, so what was that all about? Was he just messing with him?! How dare he! Etc, etc.

Another century passes. Luo Binghe waits at the tea house, which has fallen onto hard times again. With the construction of some new roadways, travelers no longer pass through as often. Binghe listens, worried, to the proprietor's laments that this old place will probably not be around in another hundred years. He listens because he has no one else to speak to, because Shen Yuan has not shown up. Not that morning, not during the day, not come evening, and not now that it is closing time. Binghe nevertheless charms and bribes the proprietor to let him stay even after the place has shuttered.

It seems damning, of course. He pressed too hard and now his mysterious benefactor wants nothing more to do with him. Except, no, he refuses to accept that. He's still immortal. And he has gleaned enough of Shen Yuan's character by now that he thinks that even if he was rejected, he would be let down more clearly and gently than this. The more he thinks about it, the less willing Luo Binghe is to believe that he has been deliberately stood up (also, since the tenor of his confession was different from Hob Gadling's, he never delivered an ultimatum about what it might imply when they met up again).

Over the centuries, Luo Binghe has built up a few contacts with similarly strange and supernatural stories. Cultivators, sure, but also others, fortune tellers and people of strange ancestry, questionable abilities, those who have interacted with powerful beings of mysterious provenance. He makes his way to a certain gambling den, frequented often by such people, and while he flashes around enough money to draw curiosity, he collects information. Shen Yuan wasn't the only person who started paying more attention to the kinds of rumors surrounding the two of them after their confrontation with the young cultivator a couple centuries ago. And in fact, Luo Binghe has been spending many, many years trying to find out more about his mystery man. Though, too many potential deities and immortals fit his description for him to have ever conclusively figured much out.

This is how Binghe gets wind of a rumor that an eccentric occultist has somehow captured a god in his basement...

One of the staff workers in raised spirits DEF thinks dippers at least fucking one of the ciphers ghosts

I'd go so far as to say more than one of the staff members has certain Suspicions, re: Dipper talking to thin air all the time.

me at 8: "When I become a teenager, I'll go out to the mall, talk to boys and be a master at fashion tips!"

me at 17: *Explaining Narancia Ghirga's facial features like a tiktok plastic surgeon to my mother at 8pm.*

good caption here

In Nope, after The Scene and right before Jean Jacket grossly squelches and then goes “Mom I Threw Up” all over the Haywood house, a woman trapped in the digestive tract screams “BURNING ME-” but for all the world I’m sure she says “YOU’RE BURNING ME-,” begging and pleading to something, and I kind’ve can’t help... how many of those people were still coherent and expecting aliens? Processing the nightmarish death around them, still, as an intelligence “beaming them up.” Begging, threatening, sobbing, pleading with the creatures who abducted them “Why are you doing this? What’s happening?” All of it coldly watched, “filmed,” by the camera eye. 

broooo not my ex making posts abt how hard it is to come to terms with being conventionally attractive while having low self-esteem issues and how wild it is to get compliments randomly on their appearance when they go out and how they're worried that their new transmasc boytoy is only into them bc they're hot -_- i'm tired... meanwhile i'm just seen as a gremlin now that i'm not hyperfem... they truly have the biggest issues in the world lol

also they were like "omg turns out i'm not ace i just needed a bf lol" and i'm like yeah. i know. you've been lusting after male characters for years. you were horny as fuck just not for me bc i didn't transition. you only made moves on me when you were bored, lonely or drunk. i always asked if that was the case and you were like no baby it's just your insecurities i don't need you to transition uwu. for 5 years. my trust issues are thru the roof now yayyyyy /dies

Big is older than Kim so now he accidentally has a little brother. Someone send this child to bed and make him eat his vegetables. He’s not concerned, he just needs Kim in top shape for bitching and murder!!

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I don't see that personally? Kim does have ultimate little brother energy. he is THE baby of the family. Porsche sees him and goes "oooh new brother" in 2 seconds flat while Kim sputters confusedly in the back. I have a group of college seniors and peers who adopted the shy lonely angry kid in mind for Kim always, and Tortoise and I once came up with a whole roster of old/older neighbors on Kim's floor who dote on him. he just has that vibe 🤏

but Big doesn't have a caretaker bone in his whole body. not even caretaker cartilage. he's one of the best protectors! but he doesn't read as a caretaker to me.

I do think that of all the bodyguards, Big's the only one who doesn't mind Kim duty (he sat through like two sittings of Kim grilling him on Kinn's security before he realized Kim just wants Kinn safe and hey, he wants that too!). I think he does also want Kim safe, but that's mostly rationalized as wanting Kinn's-little-brother-whom-Kinn-deeply-cares-for safe vs any specific feelings he himself holds for Kim, and it doesn't really come out in the form of Big looking out for Kim's personal or day-to-day well-being, but rather Big helping Kim scheme and snoop. and I think of all the guards, Big is the only one Kim can stand (except for maybe, maybe Arm too, only on account that Khun really likes him and he's a decent enough informant) (Porsche doesn't count as a guard, obvs, which is something Big agrees with him on though their reasonings are different). I think that shoving them together has lots of fun opportunities for them to realize they actually respect and even kinda like the other, I just like even more when they don't have the faintest clue what to do with it. talk to each other? increased interaction? admit it? fuck no.

also it's just really funny to me if these two (emotionally repressed idiots) are in their weird limbo of not being able to label their feelings on That-Guy-I-Definitely-Don't-Care-About-But-Kinda-Respect-And-At-Least-Don't-Want-Dead (a high compliment considering their lifestyle tbh, not that they mean it that way either), then someone (read: Khun) drops the bomb "awww you made a friend!" on Kim.

Kim: what the fuck?! no I didn't! hold on, I'm texting Big this bullshit right now

(Big: what the fuck you are not my friend???

Kim shoving his phone in Khun's face: SEE!!!)

Oh

Oh no

My autism & transness are making me want a blahaj

Oh no

im so grateful for this corner of the internet where i can just get my frustrations out

the last post did so much better than expected! i’m genuinely really surprised, thanks for all the support on my short little shitty comic hsjsksl

Anyway, here’s pt. 2!!

Steve has been worried sick for days thinking his little brother was killed by their resident human meanwhile Dustin has acquired a new big brother

I'll never understand why out of all robins Tim is the one made into a victim the most in fandom. People really think that being rich is the worst thing that can happen to you?? "Oh no my parents didn't hug me enough" it's always the same bullshit. Dick saw his parents being murdered right in front of him, Damian was raised in an assassin cult, made into a killer, never actually had a normal childhood and Jason... *checks notes* right, Jason's mother died from drug overdose, he lived on the streets, got nothing to eat and no roof over his head, then he was tortured and killed by Joker, then his father figure beat him to a pulp and people still think Tim deserves pity the most??? Not to mention Dick and Damian are minority and poc, romani and arabian respectively. I just want to throw my phone out of the window when I'm reading a fic and batfam has to once again comfort this rich white privileged little shit bc his life was sooo horrible. Jesus christ.

Here's the thing bc I've asked about this multiple times before and the answer I keep getting back is "I can't relate to being raised by assassins or a drug addict mum but I can relate to Tim" which if true is totally valid Tim's parents loved him but they weren't the best parents which is a pretty common experience for a lot of people bc parenting is hard, but then some people will turn around in the same breath and villainise Tim's parents to a cartoonish extent making out like his parents were the worst people alive never loved him and didn't care about him in the slightest and like you said act like he had the absolute worst childhood with Cassandra Cain standing right there with her actual childhood of her mother abandoning her her father only seeing her as a weapon not even bothering to teach her how to speak and being forced to kill someone when she was 8 and after living on her own with no one to look after her but sure Tim's parents left him at a boarding school bc they had jobs to do so he's definitely the worst off poor Tim

earlier beliefs had the butterfly symbolizing a departed soul

I figure him and his beloved’s soul might have had a few instances like this

ngl at times I feel like I may be a little too stupid for this game, truth be told, tbph

via @abusivelittlebunny

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y'all wish me luck im writing a (vaguely s4) zam-centric fic which is just entirely coming out of my Brain because i do not have time nor energy enough to watch all of his pov.

Every year all of you rediscover that awards bodies don’t like or respect horror