#just all the little 'what the fuck's and 'oh my god's that gideon interjects while harrow is inspecting her jaw
Text
also as a side note i love how gideon is far more disturbed with harrow kissing ianthe than she is with harrow feeding everyone marrow and bursting a construct out from inside g1deon
#she said i can excuse grotesque murder but i draw the line at intimacy with ianthe#just all the little 'what the fuck's and 'oh my god's that gideon interjects while harrow is inspecting her jaw#so fucking funny#the locked tomb#harrow the ninth#tlt
221 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Story
Whumptober Prompt #2 - Explosions
tw for child abuse and kidnapping
~
“Oh, we’re so screwed,” Remus murmurs, his head tipped back to gaze up at the sky.
They were behind the school, the trees stretching up above them, shades of green melting into the dark. The moon hung above them, like some watchful eye gazing down on the earth below.
Sirius just flashes Remus a grin. He reaches out then thinks better of it, letting his hand drop down by his side. He had tried once, tried to sling an arm around Remus shoulders, tried to rest his head on Remus’ lap. Remus had stiffened, his face going pale, and Sirius instantly scooted away.
They all had demons. Hogwarts was full of them.
“Shut up,” Sirius tells him. “It’s not like we’re sneaking booze or anything up here again. And it doesn’t matter if they lock us out - we have you.”
Remus rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but what if I forgot my picks? What would we do then?”
“You’ll think of something. Make a little key out of your fingernails or some shit.”
Remus shoves him. “That only works in movies.”
Sirius laughs, guiding him around the corner and into the small alleyway, between the school and the gym. He can hear them already - James and Lily and Peter and the rest of them, muffled curses and vibrant laughs.
Sirius sniggers, remembering the first day Remus had arrived, all tousled hair and huge eyes. They had all thought he’d be an easy target, someone to scam out of food and money. He had gone right up to Remus, looked him square in the eyes, James and Peter behind him.
“What’d you get in here for?”
Remus didn’t even blink. “Sorry?”
“What landed you in this hellhole?”
Remus only gave him a long, considering glance. “Why should I tell you?”
Peter had snorted, slipped his smuggled laptop out from his bag, pieced together with all the bits and pieces they had found in the dumpster. “Gimme 5. I’ll hack him.”
Remus had merely opened his hands, letting pieces of plastic fall to the ground with a clatter. “Not if you don’t have your keys.”
From the brightness in Remus’ eyes, Sirius knew he was reliving the memory as he stepped into the small clearing. Everyone was there; Lily, the wall behind her covered with Sharpie; Peter, typing away on his laptop furiously; Dorcas smoking a large cigarette while Marlene leaned against her legs. James was poking around behind the dumpster, obsessively flicking his lighter on-and-off; Sirius snatches it from him with a wink.
“You’re going to burn someone!”
James flips him off, grabs the lighter back. “Least I don’t have matches,” he says, then goes back to fidgeting with the mess of paper in his hands. “’Course this whole thing could be better if I just had some gunpowder - “
“Jesus Christ, what do you want now?” Sirius jumps; Fabian and Gideon had snuck up behind him, red cups dangling loosely from their hands. “We already got you your goddamn gasoline - “
“Which got confiscated!” James splutters.
Gideon shakes his head. “Stop hiding shit under your bed.”
James flicks the lighter on; the fire makes his face look waxy. “The last person who told me that ended up having their dorm room burnt down.”
Fabian laughs. “Can’t burn anything without gasoline, can you?”
“Fuck off!” James says, and Sirius leaves them to it.
He rejoins Remus, who’s chatting animatedly with Lily, the brick wall behind her covered with flowers and leaves and various swear words written in cursive.
“ - And I specifically told him that I would beat him up if he so much as looked at me but of course he didn’t listen - “
"So did you beat him up, Lily darling?” Sirius interjects, butting into the conversation. Lily rolls her eyes.
“Of course not. I baked him a fucking brownie instead.”
“Sure, but did you - “
“Alright!” James yells. He’s standing on the metal trash bins, arms flung out wide. “So, like, it’s been 4 years since I was sent to Hogwarts School for tap dancing youth - “
Marlene yells, “Put on a show James!” and James laughs.
“Anyways, I thought it would be cool to be all, like, ‘Fuck the Staff and the World’ and all that, and I decided that I was going to use my pyromanic tendencies and burn down the school!”
Remus’ eyes go wide in the dim light.
James takes a bow, holds his hands out. The lighter lies in his palm, red plastic and black metal, and he flicks it on.
Behind him, there’s a crackle, and then streaks of red and blue and purple fly into the air, explosions of colours and light. Fireworks, looking like diamonds against the night sky, like exploding clouds and galaxies.
“What the hell?” Sirius yells. “The flame wasn't even close to the fuse!”
James laughs, shoots him a mock salute. “I light everything I touch on fire.”
Sirius flips him off, turns to Remus with a chuckle. “What the actual fuck - “
He stops dead. Remus’ face has closed off, his eyes dark. He’s breathing hard, his hands curled into fists by his side and God, Sirius knows, recognizes the symptoms instantly.
Fuck, he thinks, then seizes Remus by the hand and pulls him back, out of the clearing and back around the school. He can still see the fireworks, peeking out from the top of the roof, can still hear the bangs from the rockets going off. “Remus. Remus, listen to me. You’re here. You’re fine. Breathe.”
Remus closes his eyes, then opens them. He’s shaking, hard, his hands clenching and unclenching by his side. Sirius wants to reach for them, wants to cover his body with his own, do anything to help -
“Greyback,” Remus says.
Sirius blinks. “What do you - “
Remus’ voice is hollow, empty. “That’s how I wound up in here. He took me when I was five. Mum and Dad were poor. I hadn’t eaten in days. He offered to buy me a burger. All I needed to do was get in the car.”
Sirius exhales. “God, Re.”
“He used to burn me. Used to touch cigarettes to my hands, burn holes through my skin. Once he made me grab an iron, heated it up in the flames until I was screaming and even then he wouldn’t let me let go. And he’d...he’d...”
Remus shakes his head. He stares at his fingers and Sirius finally understands, finally recognizes what those perfect circles on his hands were. He reaches out, tries to take Remus’ hand; Remus flinches away.
“What can I do?” Sirius breathes, the words near-silent in the cold air. “Remus, please, what can I do to help.”
Remus gives him a bitter smile, lets his hands fall to his side.
“Nothing, Si. There’s nothing you can do.”
#hogwarts school for troubled youth#whumptober#whumptober 2019#whumptober prompt 2#prompt 2#2#whumptober2019#wolfstar#wolfstar angst#wolfstar whump#wolfstar muggle au#sirius black#sirius black angst#sirius black whump#sirius black fanfic#sirius black muggle au#remus lupin fanfic#remus lupin whump#remus lupin angst#remus lupin muggle au#sirius x remus#remus x sirius#tw: abuse#tw: child abuse#tw: kidnapping#tw: flashbacks#tw: gore#tw: burns
115 notes
·
View notes
Text
the catghost post, pt. 1 [intro saga]
i said i was gonna talk about catghost, and then it turned into attempting to explain catghost by summarizing it, and then it turned into multiple posts because there’s a lot of material to cover and i want to do a thorough job. watch the intro saga first because this is a good series and you should check it out for yourself before listening to me ramble about it!
CWs for part 1: murder, images of dead bodies / skeletal remains, other disturbing imagery (including a couple jumpscares), one image depicting animal death (it’s near the very end of the post)
Alright, I’m posting with decent grammar so you know it’s serious. If you’re just here looking for a brief overview of the series, here’s my crack at it: CatGhost is a multimedia ARG comprised primarily of YouTube videos and accompanying minigames. It’s ongoing, and I plan to update this post as the series itself updates. On the surface, the videos resemble other YouTube cartoons, following the tried-and-true formula of two characters comically tormenting a third; however, something else is clearly going on below the surface, and it quickly becomes clear that these three are tied together by very dark circumstances. Much of what’s really going on is still unclear, but enough has been revealed that I can talk about it without constantly resorting to pure guesswork.
This is part one, covering the Intro Saga (first three videos and their associated games). Like I said, I wanted to be thorough and if I didn’t split it up into separate posts this would get way too long. It’s already too long.
CatGhost 1, “Birthday,” opens with flames filling the screen, then a ripple effect playing over the title card, which I mention because that’s gonna make a whole lot more sense in a minute. We then see our main cast, Elon (cat), Naarah (ghost), and Gideon (hedgehog). Gideon is asleep and the girls are making fun of him. From their dynamic, it seems Naarah’s pretty young and Elon is sort of a big sister figure to her, which means they’re probably close in age. Gideon is 48; today is allegedly his birthday, though he seems unaware until the girls tell him so. Gideon seems generally confused about whatever’s going on and just wants to go back to sleep, but the girls want to take him out to someplace called “Party Country,” and eventually they end up threatening to curse him if he doesn’t comply. The threat seems pretty real as the girls’ voices turn demonic and their eyes glow. Gideon gives in, though it’s unclear if he even realized he was in any danger.
Next scene, Gideon is presented with his birthday cake, which is... pretty wonky-looking, to put it gently. Pecking order for the trio gets further established when Naarah intimidates Gideon into saying the cake she made looks fine and seconds later Elon comments that the cake isn’t very good. Naarah defends herself and says that it’s hard to bake a cake without hands, to which Elon sympathizes and says that her paws aren’t much good either. Naarah says “I miss having a body.” The girls were human once, and seem to remember it clearly. Gideon, on the other hand, interjects saying he has no idea what they’re talking about. Whatever circumstances have bound these three together, Gideon seems to be the only one with no awareness of what’s going on.
Party Country turns out to be an arcade cabinet. Gideon is encouraged to play, but he seems completely apathetic about the game (Gideon seems completely apathetic about most things) and dialogue implies he may not even know what a video game is. Naarah calls Gideon “Dad” at one point while she and Elon bully him into playing, a detail which could lead one to guess a major twist way in advance but which I actually never noticed until just now. Gideon gives in and starts playing, declaring that the game (which we can’t see yet) is actually pretty fun, but the girls continue to tell him to play as if they can’t see that he’s already complying. We then cut to the game, which I’ll talk about more below, but suffice it to say that unless your definition of “fun” is all about talking to fucked-up skeleton ladies in some haunted woods, this is not a fun game:
Afterwards, Gideon wakes and assumes he dreamed the whole thing until he sees the ugly birthday cake Naarah baked. He waves goodbye to the viewer, breaking the fourth wall; an odd thing for a character who shows so little awareness of his surroundings to do.
The game associated with this episode is the same game shown in the episode itself. It’s pretty simple; you play as Gideon and can move left or right through a gloomy-looking pixelated forest. There are two NPCs and a small number of objects to be interacted with, all of which can appear randomly. For now, we’ll focus on the two NPCs. Both are skeletons, and both wear simple dresses of the type peasant girls might wear; one is tinted red, the other tinted blue, with the blue skeleton being notably smaller. When interacted with, the red skeleton will say “It burns! I can’t feel my skin,” or “Trapped like a fly in a jar,” or “I have taken on my new form.” The blue skeleton will say “It’s cold here, I can’t breathe,” or “I have to save him, he waited for me,” or “She lured me into this place.” Is the fire/water motif from the episode’s opening starting to seem relevant? Oh, and there’s more. One game object is a sort of upright stone with a hole cut into it near the top; I’ll be calling this object “Key” as that’s how it identifies itself. Key can be interacted with by typing questions, to which it will give an appropriate answer based on words/phrases it recognizes (like Tool in Petscop, incidentally). If we ask Key certain questions about our main cast, we can learn a lot about the story.
Ask “Who is Elon,” and Key tells you, “Temptress.” Asking the same question about Naarah returns “Proselyte,” while Gideon is “Judge.” If you ask what happened to any of the main cast, you’re told “Vanished.” However, asking for death dates yields results; Elon and Naarah both died in 1650, while Gideon died in 1672. Ask where each of the main three are, and you learn Elon is “In a jar,” Naarah is “Immersed,” and Gideon is “In a dark place.” Given all that, I think we can put the basic setting together:
Elon, Naarah, and Gideon were all human once. They lived during the seventeenth century in what is now the northeastern United States. Naarah must have been a preteen or young teen at the time of her death; Elon was likely a young adult in her late teens when she died, and the pair met their respective fates at or around the same time. Gideon lived into his late forties before dying, which speaks to a life of relative comfort for the time and place, befitting a judge. The animosity between the girls and Gideon seems pretty clear: Gideon sentenced both of them to death for witchcraft. Elon, represented in-game by the red skeleton, was burned at the stake, and her ashes were subsequently stored in a jar. Naarah was drowned by being tied to a chair and immersed in a large body of water (this was a common execution method for suspected witches, and the presence of a chair hanging from a rope in the game supports this); her remains are still underwater. Gideon was most likely given a traditional burial after he passed away of, most likely, natural causes. The wrinkle is that Gideon seems to have been right — Elon and Naarah are witches. Elon (the Temptress) taught Naarah (the Proselyte) the craft. Now all three appear to be stuck in the world of the show, which I guess is some sort of weird limbo, and only Elon and Naarah know what’s going on or who they used to be, probably because they are witches.
We can also take some more guesses at what might be going on based off the interactions the main cast have with each other. For instance, Elon’s the leader of the group and generally takes charge, but it’s clear that at least some of that confidence is an act and she doesn’t really seem to be pulling the strings here. The two have plenty of reasons to hate Gideon and could easily use their magic to put him through hell, but instead they don’t go beyond pushing him around and making fun of him — Naarah even bakes him a cake, which she complains about the difficulty of doing. This could imply the three have been trapped in the afterlife with each other ever since dying and the girls have finally gotten tired of exacting less petty revenge. It could also mean that deep down they’re fond of Gideon and don’t really want him to come to harm, which is a strange relationship to have with the man who ordered your torture and execution. Later videos will shed further light on the dynamics between the three, but for now we’ll leave it at that.
One more thing before I move on — asking Key any question containing the word “murder” will trigger a jumpscare. Initially, this was of what appears to be Naarah’s corpse, but it’s since been changed (we’ll talk about that change later). Here’s the original jumpscare showing Naarah:
CatGhost 2, “Knock,” is more straightforward and thus will take me less time to summarize, thank god. Elon and Naarah are telling knock knock jokes. Gideon completely fails to understand the joke, and possibly completely fails to understand the concept of jokes, and the girls get so pissed they put some sort of curse on him and he winds up locked in a dungeon-like room. The door bears a large ornamental mail slot that looks like some sort of gargoyle’s face, with the slot as its mouth. Gideon is instructed to write a knock knock joke that’s actually funny and slide it through the door if he wants to be released. His first attempt is rejected (it doesn’t even have a punchline) and so Gideon tries to think of another. Cut to the words “2 years later” and Gideon’s still trying to write a funny knock knock joke — this series isn’t above the typical cartoon tropes and I love it. He finally comes up with one (Knock knock / Who’s there / Anita / Anita who / Anita get through this door!) and triumphantly slides it into the mail slot, which then grows larger until it takes up nearly the entire door, the “mouth” gaping wide. Gideon stares at it and is seemingly hypnotized. Disturbing images tinted blue and red flash across the screen, before the camera pulls back and Gideon is shown still in a trancelike state as the girls look at him, confused. Naarah says he’s been staring at that door a while, and she and Elon seem mildly concerned, but decide poking him with a stick would be more fun than helping him. Credits roll.
For this episode, much of the worldbuilding is in the form of freeze-frame bonuses and background details, meaning you have to pay close attention to catch everything. When Gideon is teleported to the cell, images flash onscreen showing an inverted cross and the word “EXCRUCIATE,” all tinted red (the color generally associated with Elon), as well as what appear to be human bones and a girl’s face, tinted blue (the color associated with Naarah). In the cell with Gideon is a skeleton, though he seems not to take notice. One wall reads “Wild Partes of the World,” which is a complex reference I won’t attempt to explain in full (the phrase has been quoted and quoted again across multiple books) but in context within the rest of the story refers to early seventeenth-century Virginia, which must be where our main trio lived as humans. Text is shown written in the Theban alphabet, a substitution cipher based on the Latin alphabet and generally associated with witches and occultists. When Gideon is hypnotized by the door, he sees a judge’s podium, a jar (presumably the one containing Elon’s ashes), and a hanging chair (as was used to execute Naarah). Images of graves are shown, inverted and flipped upside down, along with a similarly distorted picture of a row of houses. During the end credits, the background appears to be lava with yellow flashes moving across it; putting all these yellow flashes together results in this image:
Audio during the intro, when reversed, is of a voice saying “I don’t know. I don’t know where it’s at. I think they’ve been looking for it for a long time, but… sometimes it seems like we’re just never going to find it.”
The accompanying minigame features the door from Gideon’s cell, complete with its ornamental mail slot (browsing the wiki, because of course there’s a wiki and of course that’s how I’m getting images for this post as well as checking for stuff I missed, it seems fans call this the “Horrible Beast door”). The door can be interacted with by knocking on it using tap code; if the right words are input, the game will display a corresponding image.
“Megalith” produces an image of Key, the stone you can question in the previous minigame:
“Libation” shows Gideon’s unfortunate-looking birthday cake:
“Trinity” shows the shadows of three people, what appears to be a man and two girls, most likely our main trio:
“Excruciate” shows what is presumably the stake used during Elon’s execution:
“Proselyte” shows what must be Naarah’s skeleton, along with the chair she was bound to, laying at the bottom of a body of water:
CatGhost 3, “Window,” opens by showing that same body of water, although there is no sign of the chair or of Naarah’s remains. We then cut to an outhouse in the show’s typical animated style. Elon is inside, preening, when a noise outside startles her. She checks and discovers a small hand mirror, with Theban writing on it reading “For Elon,” though the text is mirrored and upside down. Elon seems confused and flips the mirror open, whereupon she sees a black-and-white image of a mysterious woman, her face completely in shadow save for her glowing white eyes. When the woman raises her head and makes eye contact with Elon, the cat gets so spooked she drops the mirror and flees. Elon runs back inside, entering via the Horrible Beast door, and is greeted by Naarah, who’s acting suspiciously and asks if Elon saw anything interesting outside. When she’s asked point blank if she’s the one who left the mirror there, Naarah denies it and blames Gideon, and even though it seems obvious that she’s lying, Elon doesn’t question her further. She confronts Gideon, who is chopping wood and seems enthusiastic for once, and tells him — I’m only paraphrasing slightly here — not to use witchcraft to fuck with a witch, or else [colorful threat omitted for brevity’s sake]. At the end of this rant, she briefly shapeshifts into some sort of demonic chimera, with a snakelike body, horns, and quite a lot of teeth. Gideon, who as usual has no idea what she’s on about, is suitably terrified.
Elon, back to her regular form, goes back inside and picks up what appears to be a crayon drawing of a blue girl hugging a taller red girl, accompanied by Theban that reads “From: Naarah, To: bestest best friend.” We can presume Naarah is the blue girl and Elon is the red girl, of course, but of interest is the small form next to the house in the background. It looks like it could be a dog, and, given later events, it almost certainly is a dog.
The drawing had been resting on a large object covered with a cloth, and Elon, curious, pulls the cloth free. Underneath are three mirrors, angled so they all face towards her, and the strange woman from earlier (some fans call her “the Watcher,” which I’ll go with for now) is reflected in each one. Elon is frozen in place as the three Watchers advance towards her, and she begins to cry. The Watcher points a finger (from here on there seems to be only one of her, not three) and Elon begins levitating as the background glitches out. She’s tugged towards the Watcher, and when the outstretched finger touches her forehead, the screen goes white.
Then we’re back to the pixel graphics from the first minigame, in the same dark woods as before, but Elon and Naarah aren’t skeletons — they’re living girls. Elon is pale, with long red hair and blue eyes; Naarah is quite a bit smaller, with brown skin and dark blue-tinged hair in pigtails. Interestingly, Elon wears a blue dress and Naarah’s dress is red, despite their typical color associations. Elon stands over a crying Naarah, her expression sullen. After a few seconds, the credits roll.
This time, the “minigame” just shows a static image of a mirror. Well, almost static — the clock resting on the dresser below the mirror moves in real time, matching the time set on the player’s computer. At exactly three AM system time, the Watcher appears in the mirror, which is then overtaken by static, and the scene changes to Elon and Naarah as we saw them during the end of the last video. Initially, it seems to be the same as before, with Elon standing over Naarah as she cries, but this time there’s dialogue. Here, have a transcript I stole from the wiki because it was easier than typing it up again myself:
After this, the mirror becomes static once more; if you wait three minutes, this image displays for a single frame before the game closes:
So, yeah, I think it’s safe to say that’s a dog in Naarah’s drawing. This also seems to explain why she’s crying in the scene we just saw. Why the dog was killed (sacrificed on an alter, looks like) is a mystery I’ll tackle when we cover the later sagas.
Also, in the interest of equality, this time it’s Elon who jumpscares you if you type “murder.” Typing doesn’t do anything else in this game, though.
That concludes the Intro Saga! This post is already really long and I’m not going to bother giving closing thoughts at this point especially considering the series is still ongoing. Stay tuned for the next installment, coming whenever I get around to it!
2 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
zipart
just one week of cicada days, we’re losing touch
dawnsmp3
this is the hill i've decided to die on
justanother-edits
i edit videos
lovefeelings4u
Follow if u can relate 💓to love feelings.
rubixcubi
Luke’s Lover