#Spectral Interpretation

[meteorologistaustenlonek]

"NASA is inviting the public to take part in virtual activities ahead of the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) asteroid sample return mission. Members of the public can register to attend the sample return virtually."

[sysig]

For a second request: Philza and Ghostbur interacting! Ive always found this idea SO interesting. Like, that's your son that you killed interacting with you even though it's not technically your son but he looks like him and kinda sounds like him but it's NOT him. The mental toll that would take.

Day 6 - So many friends!

[protovenus]

Defense Mechanism,

Animalia

[rosemaryhoney27]

Phantom Fashion

It all started with a stupid bet. Tucker had dared Danny to do the “Ultimate Strut Challenge” for his livestream—walking down the halls of Casper High like he was on a Parisian runway. Danny, never one to back down from a challenge (and honestly a little bored), played along. He channeled his inner supermodel, flipping his imaginary hair and sauntering down the hall like he owned it. Tucker, feeling competitive, did his own exaggerated version, adjusting his glasses with a smolder and flashing a dazzling smile at the camera.

The video was supposed to be a joke. A quick laugh for Tucker’s followers. But within hours, it exploded online.

By the next morning, “#FentonFoleyFierce” was trending on every social media platform. People weren’t laughing at them—they were thirsting over them. The internet was losing its mind over how unexpectedly hot Danny and Tucker looked when they actually tried. Fan edits, slow-motion compilations, even dramatic art pieces started flooding the web. One particularly detailed oil painting of Tucker was titled “The Seduction of Glasses.”

And then, the email came.

Subject: Modeling Opportunity – S.T.Y.L.E. Agency

Danny read the message about five times before he turned to Tucker. “Dude. This is a joke, right?”

Tucker snatched Danny’s phone and skimmed through the email. “Nah, man. This is legit! S.T.Y.L.E. is huge. They rep actual models. Like, real models. Not just two dudes who were goofing off in the hallway.”

Danny groaned, flopping onto his bed. “I’m not a model! I fight ghosts! I do homework—badly! I don’t walk down runways!”

“Correction: You do walk down runways. And apparently, you do it well enough for a major agency to want you.” Tucker grinned, wiggling his eyebrows. “Dude, this is fate. We’re gonna be famous! Plus, imagine the free snacks at photoshoots.”

And somehow, against all logic, they were.

A week later, they found themselves in a sleek, modern studio in downtown Amity Park, being prepped for a test photoshoot. Danny, in a fitted black suit with his messy hair styled just right, was told to give a “mysterious bad boy” look. He tried but mostly ended up looking constipated. Tucker, rocking a high-fashion streetwear ensemble with his signature hat slightly tilted, was encouraged to play up his confident charm—which he interpreted as “finger guns at the camera.”

The camera flashed. They posed. Danny tripped over a light stand. And the moment their pictures hit the agency’s social media, the world really lost it.

Fashion brands wanted them. Magazines asked for interviews. Someone even made a fan calendar. The modeling world had spoken: Tucker Foley and Danny Fenton were the next big thing.

The only problem? Danny’s ghost-hunting schedule didn’t exactly mesh with high-end fashion shoots.

Cue the chaos. And an accidental ghost fight in the middle of a fashion gala.

Then came the second email.

Subject: Exclusive Inquiry – Phantom Partnership

Danny’s stomach dropped as he read the email. S.T.Y.L.E. wasn’t just interested in Danny Fenton. They wanted Danny Phantom too. The ghostly glow, the white hair, the piercing green eyes—apparently, his spectral form had an untapped aesthetic that designers were desperate to capitalize on.

Tucker nearly choked on his soda. “Dude. They want you to model as a ghost. This is next-level ridiculous.”

Danny buried his face in his hands. “I can’t just go ghost in front of cameras! What if someone figures it out?”

“They’re offering bank, bro. Like, stupid money. Enough that you could buy actual good snacks for once.”

Before Danny could protest further, another email pinged. This time from a luxury cologne brand. They wanted to market a new fragrance—Phantom Essence—with Danny Phantom as the face of the campaign. The tagline? Mystery. Power. Otherworldly Allure.

Tucker was in hysterics. “You’re literally becoming the undead equivalent of a fashion icon. What’s next, a ghost-themed runway show?”

Danny groaned. “At this rate? Probably.”

And sure enough, two days later, an invitation arrived for a high-end haunted fashion event—where Danny Phantom was expected to make a dramatic entrance. What could possibly go wrong?

Danny refused to be the only ghost haunting the runway, so he convinced Ember McLain to join him. It took some negotiating—mostly promising she could debut her newest song at the afterparty—but Ember, ever the dramatic performer, finally agreed.

“This better be worth my time, dipstick,” she said, adjusting her flaming blue hair as she examined the wardrobe options. “I don’t do low budget.”

Tucker’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, trust me. This is gonna be legendary.”

And just like that, the fashion world wasn’t ready for the supernatural duo of Phantom and Ember.

The moment their first joint photoshoot dropped, fans went wild. Phantom and Ember weren’t just modeling—they were smoldering. The chemistry between them was undeniable, even to those who had no idea about their history. Hashtags like #GhostlyGlamour, #PhantomAndEmber, and #HauntinglyHot dominated social media.

Tucker, scrolling through the comments, cackled. “Dude, people are shipping you two so hard right now.”

Danny, face burning red, tried to act nonchalant. “It’s just… photos. We were posing.”

Ember, leaning against him in a striking black and blue ensemble, smirked. “Oh please, Phantom. You were totally into it.”

Danny opened his mouth to argue but promptly shut it when she flicked a ghostly spark at his nose. He was not going to give Tucker more material for his teasing.

Meanwhile, Ember was enjoying the attention. “I gotta admit, this is kinda fun. The cameras love me, the fans love me… and you, Phantom? You’re adorable when you’re flustered.”

Danny groaned, hiding his face in his hands. This whole modeling thing was getting out of control. But if the growing feelings he was desperately trying to ignore were any indication… maybe it wasn’t all bad.

[oldkitty]

OSIRIS-REx Sample Return (NHQ202309240001) by NASA HQ PHOTO Via Flickr: The sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is seen shortly after touching down in the desert, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Photo Credit: (NASA/Keegan Barber)

[thegreatyin]

you should, fallen london is fantastic. and also don't worry, here's a quick summary of how that bat creature is doing right now :)

i don't think veils and candles were necessarily partners in the romantic sense but i do think the fact they were close is undeniable. but also i don't think it's quite as simple as friendship. or really even anything in-between those two extremes. but also DEFINITELY somewhere in-between those two extremes. but also Not. i think veils regrets nothing but is also haunted™ by everything. i think they're doomed yaoi but like in an especially fucked up and particularly evil way. i think candles walked around always dressed up in the finest silks and veils was often spotted prying wax off its claws. i think the vake sometimes brought its prey home and their fat was used to light candlefire. i think if iron was his knight veils was his casted shadow. i think candles' absence is a very deep very bloody very rancorous hole in veils' heart that it tries to ignore, fill, or replace, but the hunger remains nonetheless. i think candles thought he understood it. i think veils knew he never did. they embraced before he rose and they will never embrace again.

but also this is all over a guy who looked like This, so, y'know, maybe eaten is just upset he lost his good looks in the cannibalism and he really needs to get over it already

the god-eaters said they'd take a little. and they did. they did take a little. it's just that he's tiny and "a little" by normal curator body measurements translates to "his entire fucking body". this is the truth fbg doesn't want you to know-

[transhuman-priestess]

Hey i know it's been a long year but NASA found primordial soup on an asteroid.

[stalarys]

Martyn's Post Wild Life Lore Dump: live report!

dear lord what a bombshell of a stream

this is regarding Martyn's personal interpretation/AU of the life series, the Eyes and Ears AU that focuses on a conflict between entities known as Watchers and Listeners. Some other creators are involved and follow it, and it makes its way into videos sometimes, but this isn't Big Big canon to every creator.

Talks a lot about the Watchers and the Council so everything is below the spoiler!

Wild Life + Series in general:

Canonizing Scar being trapped in Secret Life after his win as the only who didn't die; plucked away for Wild Life and returned afterwards.

Zombie!Martyn in finale: Doesn't recognize Ren or have that level of conciousness. No thoughts head empty thrall, in a primal headspace.

Because Martyn died earlier than most, his emotions were stripped away in the feeding, and then sent back in for one last cruel trick, hence the barebones conciousness.

leaving Martren to Ren's lore/decisions; "Mutant Class WL8" according to ren's message revealing it to Martyn; follows Ren's naming conventions used in Hermitcraft (HC8, etc)

Suggesting the Martren fusion as a method of Watcher torment; purposefully leaving Ren with remnants of what he held close, and leaving Ren in an internal struggle of his mind and Martyn's mingling. eg, situations that Ren would flee or be diplomatic where Martyn would fight and be aggressive, and this torture persists in even the most mundane actions. Mentioned to potentially be a 'test' of shared conciousness.

Martyn's gained scar/fragment from Wild Life: a triangle piece from the top of his ear, based on the prominence of the coincidence of his superpower.

Wild Life's mechanics is essentially a compilation of prior seasons (out of thousands of games that took place but had the memory stripped from the players). Each mechanic played out in a full season, but for whatever reason, wasn't considered a good enough result. Thus, they went for a compilation season to lean into the frantic uncertainty.

Martyn's power was once of the random assignments; a happy coincidence, doesn't see a need for it to be given a lore explanation. Rather finds that it'd be perceived as a coincidence by those Perceiving it all (Grian + Listeners: damn thats ironic)

Impulse's more aggressive/wild behavior is him getting a bit desperate to win, to know what it feels like and what it entails (at least, a win that he remembers). The persistent taunting via this silver medal leads to a certain hunger + out of character aggressiveness in pursuit of victory.

All memories are stripped of the games, EXCEPT for the ones that appear as videos. However, some gut feelings remain and build up without the players knowing why.

There's nothing stopping multiple winners; in Martyn's canon, there has been plenty of repeat winners and consecutive winners, but they aren't the persistent memories; only games they remember are those we see.

Canary Curse situation: not actually a curse, but just a tool to wind jimmy up; bled that avenue dry of the canary curse actually affecting him, and so they let it go

Martyn's earlier successes and recent early losses potentially being an inversion of impulse's situation, but moreso just him winning, finding theres nothing really there, and being content in the process instead

At the end of Wild Life, activating all of the wild cards was kinda overwhelming on the Watcher's part, so they removed them in the last few minutes when it was just a few stragglers; the process of operating the games and worlds is concentration and focus, and such chaos makes it tricky.

Post-Wild Life: martyn be sleeping in the void, man's tired

For the 'persistent series', the players do remember their time as spectral ghosts after their final death, able to fly around and watch the games' ending. also canonized that they still interact with the players that are still in the game via chat, that ghost bullying in chat is also canon :]

Grian, Watchers, and The Council:

Grian's role and power within the games (and his point of resistance) is to manipulate the mechanics of the games to make them at least somewhat fun and enjoyable, rather than pure torture. Grian's abilities and power over time are growing, nearing the point of equivalent power with the Watchers running the game.

Coming into Wild Life, Grian is able to actually See the rules

Watchers of a higher power within their hierarchy can veil aspects of reality from those below, and see the rules, systems, and mechanics of reality that goes on. Blurring faces, manipulating perception of reality, etc.

Leaving this method of visualization up to fan interpretation; puppet strings, scrolls of knowledge, screens of code, etc.

The Watchers can't really interfere with Grian's presence as it'd break the fourth wall and shatter the reality they're in, but grian also can't tell the others because to the other players, Grian's just another player and don't really think about why they're in the games. It just... is.

Speaking of which: each player is plucked from their own worlds; undecided if its servers, worlds, planets, timelines, etc. To them, it's like a field trip; they're aware that this isn't their permanent life and that they come from Elsewhere, but don't have the memory of it. The games themselves give them a compulsion and importance to the idea of victory, so they all mutually understand the Goal of the games while they're within them and don't really question it.

Outside of the games, there is The Council; consisting of eight seats, it's a collection of individuals that are a higher level of being than players/mortals who keep the universe running. Two seats are occupied by Watchers 1 and 2, the ones who operate the death games. Two other seats are occupied by Listeners. The remaining four are occupied by other species of this higher level of existence, unknown divisions of quantities.

Watchers 1 & 2 are the youngest of the Council; the Listeners are in the middle age range. Other council seats can be potentially eons older.

Council Visuals:

A place out of time and space; set within a starless expanse of space-like void, there is a 3-quarters round table that curves around a pedestal in the center, with a Tome upon it. The table is fragmented, broken up to provide a seperate section for each Seat. Style is envisioned to be colosseum-esque, ancient architecture pulled from the mortal realm, yet clearly fragmented. It's absolutely Giant, with the space in front of each table hosting rows upon rows of seats for spectators of the Council (not really touched upon; probably non-council members but still authorities over mortal dealings). Each Council Member has a personal seat floating behind their position at the table, with each section being distinguished by their personal symbol etched into it, glowing with their species'/order's associated color (Watchers = glowing purple, Listeners = glowing gold, white, green, or whatever gets decided as canon). Behind this table is a staircase bordered by two columns, with something... unknown at the top. We're only given static.

The member species' themselves have no set visual description; they could be anything from humanoid to biblically accurate angels. At this time, we are only given the species/order names of Watchers and Listeners.

Martyn's MS Paint art below: Showing the pedestal and Tome, the table around it, the symbol etched into the table of the Watchers' (who sit on the far right side), and the staircase up to the [???] behind the Council. For a sense of scale, the hatching in front of the table section with the chair is of rows and rows of seating.

The Council's existence is spent with their Focus on the Tome, for... some reason, channelling their power through it. The Tome is of utmost importance to them, but Martyn said that whatever is on top of those stairs is far more important and carries much more weight, but this isn't known to the Council.

They operate by collectively running the universe, but they're individuals with personal motives and ideals. So long as it doesn't conflict with the order and function of the universe, they turn a blind eye to personal differences (for example, the Watchers running death games was considered just a foolish undertaking, meddling with mortals, but they're younger and less wise so whatever). However, what they wouldn't turn a blind eye to is Grian.

Watchers 1 & 2, the council members, brought Grian from a mortal player and into this new level of Being, an utmost taboo as it threatens the veil between the Council's level of existence and the player's. The Watchers, in response to the rest of the Council disapproving of this, underwent self-exile and left the council to continue their way of feeding and manipulating the mortal realm. However, the Council couldn't replace their positions, as their symbols remain scorched into the table.

The Listeners, who stand most strongly against the Watchers' actions, are those undertaking this pursuit of justice/order. It's unknown that if the Listener's "win" that the Watcher's symbols will disappear and the council can be restored.

As a Watcher (albeit not on the power/hierarchal level of the council seats), Grian feeds on emotions, but in a more neutral way; little tastes of a variety of emotions consistently, like the Watchers used to do, but they have since shifted into instant gratification and strife as their feeding method

and one last, fuck you tidbit:

"Are the Datastream lore and Eyes and Ears AU connected in any way? No comment ;)"

(Don't tag with tr@fficblr and other main tags; Martyn stated that he doesn't want it taking over the main group tags, as he doesn't want his personal AU and canon to be pushed onto the main series' followers)

[yuurei20]

Lilia Facts Part 18: Forgetfulness and More

Lilia says he’s seen everything but has forgotten most of it, and Silver seems to suspect that Lilia has a poor memory.

After sharing something Lilia once said to him with Silver follows with “I still carry those words in my heart, though I'm pretty sure he's forgotten he ever said that.”

He also forgets if he has—or has ever had—a driver’s license. Kalim responds, “You sure can be forgetful sometimes.”

Lilia also seems to forget what club he is a member of at one point, and we see him forget herbs he needs for a lab exercise (“My memory's slipping in my old age...Dear me!”)

Lilia says that he “can more or less recall everything that's happened these past five hundred years,” but follows with, “Though it all fades away in the end, leaving me to wonder what part was a dream and what was reality.”

In another vignette Lilia tells another story, this time to Jamil, about cowardly king who is being misrepresented in their textbooks as a hero.

Lilia explains, "I suppose there's no guarantee that the information that gets passed down is correct...Someone takes some action, something happens, and then someone else comes along and interprets it for the world. Different people's thoughts all get tangled up together into one thing. That's what makes history so interesting."

Things related to 500 years ago:

・Lilia receives his NRC letter ・The extent of Lilia’s memory ・The era of cuisine at the Spectral Soiree party ・How long Eliza has been seeking a prince (possibly how long she has been dead?) ・The style of Idia’s Pumpkin Knight armor

Lilia says that he has forgotten his birthday, but as he was potentially taken in by Maleficia Draconia as an infant it is possible that he never knew it at all (this is still unconfirmed).

There is a common theme of Lilia being described as “elusive”: by himself, by Malleus and by Leona.

There are at least two instances of Lilia comparing eyes to jewels: his own during Wish Upon a Star, and Silver’s in the main story.

Lilia does not require a broom for flight, which seems to be unusual: Jack asks how he is going to fly without a broom during the Stitch event and Ace marvels at someone being able to fly so easily without tools.

Lilia explains that, on the contrary, when one reaches his level of magical proficiency incorporating tools becomes more of a burden than anything.

Lilia has a voice line of, “Think to yourself, ‘I want to fly,’ and you will.”

There will occasionally be references to Lilia’s lower back causing him pain: he mentions it himself during Phantom Bride, Silver has a similar comment during Glorious Masquerade and his sprites will move as if his lower back is hurting him during battles.

[ckret2]

Chapter 39 of human Bill Cipher is SURE he's about to escape being the Mystery Shack's prisoner:

Ford's confronted with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he's a little bit too obsessed with Bill.

And meanwhile, Bill has found a way to reach his loyal cultists... if he can find somebody willing to help him make contact.

He thinks Ford is the perfect target.

Maybe, just maybe, the obsession goes both ways.

(warning for an incident of self-harm via burning, and depersonalization and/or dysphoria (depending on how you interpret it) re: Bill feeling even worse about his body than usual.)

####

Soos, Stan, and Ford had stayed up half the night trying to generate enough NowUSeeitNowUDontium to prevent it from vanishing the moment one of them lost (or gained) focus. They'd eventually given up and stayed the night in Northwest Manor. Soos had texted Melody around midnight, and she'd immediately replied (which alarmed Ford, but Soos assured him she was used to those hours) and agreed, with some trepidation, to spend the night by herself in the shack so that the kids wouldn't be alone all night with Bill. She'd texted a half hour later to report that the bathroom was a disaster, but the kids had reassured her it was just some werewolf thing, so, not a big deal.

Ford had thought getting to spend a night without Bill under the same roof would be a relief. Instead, he found his sleep was even worse. He kept worrying about what Bill might get up to so far away and out of sight, where Ford couldn't do anything to stop him. Surely, by nighttime, Bill had to have noticed that the only humans he'd seen all day were the kids? Would he consider Melody any kind of threat, no veteran to combating Gravity Falls' weirdness?

It figured that the dream demon would find a way to disrupt Ford's sleep when he wasn't even there.

####

Ford had given up on sleep around two in the morning and gone wandering until he stumbled across a den with walls covered in bookcases, massive windows overlooking the forest below, and a pair of richly upholstered armchairs turned to gaze out the windows. He drifted between the chairs to one of the windows. It was the kind of personal library he'd dreamed of accepting esteemed guests in, back when he'd fantasized about one day being rich and famous. He suspected the Northwests had never read a book in this room.

Ford had been staring out at the still night and the dark pines for several minutes when he heard the creak of a door and soft footsteps behind him. He whirled around, raising a weapon. "Back, you spectral fiend!"

"Whoa! Easy, Sixer!" Stan held up a hand defensively. "It's just me!" He lowered his hand. "Why are you holding up a dinner plate?"

"Er—sorry." Ford sheepishly tucked the silver dish under his arm again. "I'm sure I saw a ghost earlier. I thought it prudent to arm myself."

Stan muttered, "This place sure is creepy enough for it."

"Mm. It's built on more than its fair share of bones." Ford returned to gazing out the window, hands clasped behind his back. "I'm sorry today was a failure. When I'm staring right at an experiment on which the fate of the entire universe depends, it's hard not to think about it."

"Eh, I wasn't doing too hot either," Stan admitted, joining Ford at the window. "There's only so many times you can hear Soos whisper 'Think about the miniature particle accelerator' in your ears on a loop before you zone out and start thinking about fishing season."

Ford huffed. "Maybe we should have switched places."

"Yeah, probably. I retired from thinking about science after I got your dumb portal running, and once you get your head stuck on something you can't stop thinking about it."

Ford laughed wryly. "Unfortunately accurate."

There was a moment of silence; and then Stan said cautiously, "Speaking of you getting your head stuck on something..."

Ford didn't like that tone. "Hm?"

"I was, uh... doing some light reading..." He held up Ford's journal.

A jolt of anger and fear shot through Ford. "Give me—" He snatched the journal back.

It wasn't until it was in his hands that he registered the absurdity of his own action; for the past year, he'd given Stan free access to Journal 5. He'd used it to document their travels and discoveries as a reference for them both; he'd even asked Stan to contribute a couple of entries. Based on a prior precedent of seven months, Stan had every right to look at Journal 5. Revoking that access now was... Well, it didn't look good.

Stan didn't immediately say anything. Ford supposed his own actions said enough. He tucked the journal under his arm with the silver dish.

Stan cleared his throat. "I think we're a little past the 'superhero nemesis' thing."

"It's not a problem," Ford said tersely.

"Not a prob—? Ford, you're letting him consume your life."

"He's consumed all our lives. The kids haven't been able to invite anyone over, Melody all but runs to her car after work, you ended up in a showdown with fae nobility—"

"It was just the tooth fairy!"

"Do you know how important a fairy has to be to claim dominion over all teeth?"

"Forget about the fairy!" Stan waved off the whole fairy topic with one hand. "Look, I'm not the one who's dedicated half a journal to talking about him!"

"You don't keep a journal, Stanley—"

"That's not the point!"

"—I'm just saying, if you did keep a journal, I think he'd have come up on more than a few pages—"

"But like this?" Stan gestured toward Ford's journal. "This is turning into an obsession. And not one of your normal obsessions."

The back of Ford's neck heated up. He wanted to argue that he had to obsess over Bill if he hoped to find a way to kill him—but Stan already knew that Ford had passed off that project to Fiddleford weeks ago. "How can I be 'obsessed' with somebody I barely even see? I'm avoiding Bill like my life depends on it! I talk to him less than Mrs. Ramirez does!"

"And you're using avoiding him as an excuse to obsess over him even more in private!" Stan gestured again, angrily, at Ford's journal. (Ford defensively tucked it further under his arm.) "You're acting like a stalker, Sixer. Not that I care about him, but, I'm starting to worry about your head."

"A st—?! I'm a scientist, he's a scientific curiosity! I'm documenting him! I document plenty of things!"

"Not like this, you don't."

"There's a lot to document!"

"Including spending a whole page trying to figure out—how to draw his—?!" Stan gestured furiously toward his boxers.

Ford pointed at him severely. "You were just as curious as I was to find out how a giant eyeball and a sentient triangle make that work, don't pretend you weren't."

Stan grimaced. "Okay, fine, I'll give you that one. But writing a full entry about his posture?"

"He's not only an alien being in a human body but a two-dimensional creature in a three-dimensional body, how he moves and gestures could tell us about how an utterly unfamiliar species perceived space! Nearly all his gestures adhere to an invisible coronal plane, that betrays worlds of information about his original anatomy. Do you know that elbow thing he does when he walks—"

"Ford. You're using your great-niece to get drawings of his childhood bedroom."

Ford raised a finger. "That's—" Ford lowered his finger. Ford sat in a nearby armchair, put his chin in his hands, and stared into space. "What am I doing."

Stan patted his shoulder.

Ford slid his journal and the dish out from under his arm and settled them in his lap. He stared at the cover, then thumbed through the pages. It was obvious when they'd returned to Gravity Falls; the drawings of Atlanteans, were-rats, shorelines, and boats immediately gave way to page after page of staring slit-pupiled eyes.

"It's just... Bill is an ancient being, many times older than our universe, and the last surviving specimen of his own bizarre species. As both an anomaly and a source of esoteric knowledge, he's an invaluable subject of study. He's going to die soon, and he should die, but... between now and then, I don't want to pass up the last ever opportunity to study him."

Stan sank down into the chair opposite Ford. "You're listening to yourself, right?" He didn't sound angry anymore, just worried. "This is a guy who tried to kill us. He isn't a 'specimen' you can add to your collection of weird stuff, you know that, right?"

"I know, I know." That was exactly why it was so important—why it seemed so important—to capture Bill in words and pictures before it was too late. (It was funny, Ford thought, how Stan's very first conversation with Bill had been a murder, and yet he was the one who talked about Bill like he was just some guy; while Ford had spent so many years obsessively trying to find out who Bill was that he'd almost forgotten he was a person instead of a terrible idea.)

"When execution day comes and you think you haven't dug up enough of his history, what'll you do? Give him a stay of execution until he's dictated his memoirs to you?"

"No," Ford said immediately. "No, of course not. I'm just taking advantage of the opportunity to learn what I can, while I can. It's no different from your 'shopping trip' at the mall—"

"Hey!" Stan pointed a finger at Ford. "Watch it! That was strictly business! It's not like I'm attached to the guy—"

"I didn't mean anything by it! I just meant—as long as we're stuck with Bill, make him useful, and—and to heck with him after that. Right?" Like Stan had said about the scratch cards: why throw away free money just because of the source? "He'd do the same to us."

Stan hesitated. "And you're sure that when the time comes, you'll be ready to pull the trigger?"

"I know I will. It won't be the first time. I'm just glad that this time I'll be able to aim at his own head."

"Hm." Stan didn't look convinced.

Ford sighed. "But, if I think I'll waver—I'll hand you the gun."

"Is that a promise?"

"Yes, yes, of course. I promise."

But he knew he didn't need to.

####

Soos drove the tired gang home just past dawn, early enough for him to open the Mystery Shack on schedule.

"Soon as we get home, I'm going back to sleep," Stan muttered crankily. Ford—eyes shut, leaning against the window—nodded in agreement. Stan yawned, "And there'd better not be any nasty surprises at the shack."

####

Bill sat sleeping in his attic window seat, knees to his chest, leaning against the window, ear pressed to the glass.

Outside, Stan wailed, "My car!"

Bill's eyes snapped open. He smiled.

He ran to the kids' room, knocked on the door—"Hey, the bigger Pines are back!"—and bolted for the stairs.

####

Soos got the door open at the exact same time Bill stumbled off the stairs and collided with the living room doorframe. Bill grabbed the doorframe just long enough to steady himself, and then bounded over to the door, shoved Soos and Ford aside, and leaned out onto the porch. "HIYA, STAN!"

Stan whipped around to face Bill. "YOU!" He gestured furiously at the wizard graffiti on his car. "WHAT did you DO to my CAR!"

"Do you like it?"

Stan let out an inarticulate scream of rage.

"Oh, you love it!"

"You massacred it! I've had this car forty-five years! I've done things in this car I can't say! And it's never, never been so—so—violated!"

Grinning ear to ear, Bill said, "What do you think of the girl wizard?"

"The what?!" Stan circled the car. He screamed again.

"Uh-huh?"

"Why does she have a beard!"

"Go on," Bill said gleefully, "tell me what you think! I want the full review!"

"This," Stan said, "is the most ugly, hideous, terrible—"

Bill glanced back at a sound on the stairs. "Oh, hey Mabel! Get over here!" He gestured proudly as Mabel joined him in the doorway. "And here's the artistic mastermind herself!"

Stan choked on his words. "—b... beautiful, stunning, museum-worthy work of art I've ever seen."

Mabel beamed. "It's not finished yet, we ran out of some colors! I was going to add a dragon on the hood!"

Stan's face went white. "No no, it's... perfect the way it is. Don't—don't change a thing."

"Really? You're sure? I don't mind!"

"Really." Looking slightly nauseous, Stan said, "I love it just like this, pumpkin."

Mabel squealed and ran outside to give him a big hug.

Bill was fighting back silent laughter so hard he almost fell down.

####

"...And I still haven't found any sign of the Nightwigglers," Dipper said, sighing dejectedly and dropping his journal on the counter next to the cash register. "So, I dunno, maybe I should give up on this one and move on."

Wendy was sitting back with her feet kicked up on the counter, but she straightened a bit to look at Dipper's journal. She skimmed the news article he'd paperclipped to one page. "Oh, I heard about this," she said. "The cops talked to me about the first burglary. I was in the thrift shop that day."

"Oh, yeah?" Dipper pointed at the picture next to the article. "Did you see anything like this?"

Wendy's eyes widened. "No—but I think one of my brothers did."

"Wait, really?"

"Yeah, he was talking about it a couple nights ago. He said it was like an armless white thing wearing pants that went up to its face. We all thought he got spooked by a deer butt or something and made up the whole story. Then dad said we should drop it and told us we should stay in at night."

"That's when they come out! At night!" Dipper laughed excitedly. "Do you think your dad knows something?"

"Pfff, not if he can help it." Wendy pulled her feet off the counter and checked the clock. "I could show you the start of the trail my brother was on. It's like ten minutes by bike and the next big tour bus isn't getting here for half an hour, wanna sneak out?"

"Are you serious?! Of course!"

"Just promise you won't tell Gus if we find something. We've been making fun of him for days and I don't want to  admit he was right." Wendy laughed. "Let me grab somebody to cover."

"I'll get my bike!" Dipper was already headed out the door. "I've been looking for a lead for days! I dug through half the dumpsters in town searching for their nests..." The door swung shut behind him.

Wendy ducked into the living room. "Hey Goldie."

"Yello?" He was sitting cross legged on the couch watching TV.

"I've gotta do something with Dipper, do you mind covering for a little bit? Just twenty, thirty minutes."

His gaze flickered to the TV, then back to Wendy's face. "Sure! Anything for you, cool girl."

Wendy had a brief, eerie sense of déjà vu. She shook it off. "I'm not interrupting anything good, am I?" She nodded at the TV.

"Naaah, it's one of those terrible specials about pyramid conspiracies." He shook a cider can, "I'm taking a sip every time they mention Fishmasons or 'ancient dinosaur-worshiping civilization.'"

"Dude. You'll be wasted before the first commercial break."

"Really, you're saving me from myself." He set the can on the TV and followed Wendy into the gift shop. (As he did, Bill checked to see if he had anything on under his hoodie. No? The Pines didn't want him to be seen in public in his hoodie; they thought it would make him "too obvious." He rolled up the sleeves to hide some of the brick pattern and surreptitiously tucked the hood and the bow tie drawstrings into the collar.)

As she headed out the door, Wendy repeated, "Just twenty minutes! Thirty tops. I'll get back before the next tour bus, promise."

"No problem!" He waved her off.

"I owe you one!"

Bill made a note of that.

He looked around the gift shop—any readily-obvious mischief he could get up to? He grabbed an 8-ball cane and took it to the counter. And then he took the stool behind the register, propped his chin in his hand, gazed toward the living room, and resumed watching TV through the wall and backwards. He didn't miss hearing the conspiracy talk—he was sure it was actively making him stupider—but credit where credit was due; they made those CGI pyramid models really hot.

A cutaway of one pyramid showed its internal tunnels and chambers. Bill bit his lower lip. Oh yeah. That's what he came here for.

Several minutes went by. The door opened and a lone tourist crept in, a middle-aged woman with a sun-damaged tan. Bill straightened up and switched his eye patch over to hide his bleeding eye. "Heya! Next tour's in..." He checked the clock, how long until the next bus? "About fifteen minutes."

The woman nodded and quietly started circling the gift shop.

Bill glanced toward the living room, decided he'd better not start damaging his other eye too, mentally cursed the tourist, and pulled out one of Wendy's magazines to read. "Let me know if you need anything."

The tourist spent several minutes making a slow circuit of the room, and then crept up to the cash register. Bill looked up with a smile, didn't see any souvenirs in her hands, and asked, "Can I help you?"

Hesitantly, the woman said, "The sun sets a deep blood red."

Bill's eye flew wide open, his heart leaped into his throat, and his breath hitched. His gaze roved over her exposed skin until he spied a tattoo on her right arm: four triangles stacked atop each other, starting with an equilateral and each getting shorter and more obtuse as they descended, until they'd reduced completely and a single horizontal line underlined all four triangles. This wasn't quite the happiest he'd ever been to see the symbol of a devastatingly self-destructive high-control cult, but it was close. "Oh! Oh, this is—" He rubbed his temples, squeezing his eye shut. "I know this. I rhymed 'red' with 'pyramid.' Why do I give everyone a different code. 'But rises gold over the pyramid'—something like that, right?" Bill gave the woman a pleading look. "I'm close enough that you can tell I know what you're talking about!"

A look of relief washed over her face. "You know him." Voice low, she asked, "Is it safe to talk?"

Knew him? He was him. But he couldn't claim that without proving it—what would convince her?—telling her something that only he knew?—great, but what? Her face was vaguely familiar—he thought he might've given her a visionary dream once—but he had so many little worshipers and they were so unimportant, most of them blurred together.

So all he could do was say, "It's not safe. Everyone here is an enemy."

She nodded sharply. "Where can we meet?"

Bill paused. "We can't. I'm... trapped."

Her brows creased with worry. "They're keeping you prisoner?"

"Afraid so."

"I could get the police—"

"Everyone," Bill repeated, "is an enemy."

She paused, processing that. Bill's gaze flickered to the clock. Wendy said twenty minutes, thirty tops. She'd been gone twenty-two minutes. "Someone's coming any minute."

"Right." The cultist grabbed Wendy's magazine, tore a corner off a page, and grabbed a pen.

"How did you find me?" Bill asked. Of all the tourist traps in all the tiny towns in all the world, how had she come in hereand walked right up to him? 

"We were told a devotee was here," she said. "Someone sent the address and phone number to the Bahamian art studio."

Bill's mind spun. How? Who the heck would know to do that? The only person who knew he was here who'd come anywhere close to any of Bill's other worshipers was...

Ford? No. Did he?

The cultist shoved the paper in his hand and turned to leave.

Bill grabbed her arm. "Stay out of Gravity Falls," he commanded. "But stay close. Don't go back to Death Valley." Between the sun damage and the tattoo, she had to be one of his Death Valley girls. She looked like their usual prey: disaffected middle class white woman, probably had a dead end job and a mediocre husband and a useless degree from a liberal arts college. Maybe being able to guess where she came from would impress her.

It did. She stopped and turned back and looked at him in amazement—and then looked at him, staring hard at his eye. "You're... hosting him, aren't you?" Her voice fell to a whisper. "No. Are you...?"

"You got me." He smiled wryly—behold him, electric god bound in flesh, how low he's fallen, but at least he still has his good humor, doesn't he? "I always said you had great intuition." (It was a safe bet. He usually told the ladies that they had great intuition. Most of them ate that up, and the ones that didn't were often a little too savvy to sucker.)

It worked. She inhaled sharply. "You are," she breathed. "I knew you'd be a woman. Oh, Mary's a fool." She said this like she'd just won some years-old argument Bill had missed.

Mary, as in Mary-whom-Bill-had-put-in-charge-of-the-Death-Valley-compound Mary? Ha. She was getting on in years; maybe Bill could start a schism, that sounded fun. He opened his mouth to say something about Mary having great leadership but waning clarity of vision—

—when the cultist leaned across the counter, grabbed his collar, and pulled him into a kiss.

Okay. All right. She was one of those cultists. Got it. Got it got it got it. Wow. Definitely a "mediocre husband" convert, those were easy to seduce away with a little warmth and affection—nothing obvious, but get them infatuated with the idea of an unattainable incorporeal ideal lover and they'd chase him to the ends of the earth. Maybe a lesbian in denial that Bill had decided to push further into denial, if her assumption about Bill's gender was anything to go by. He tried to remember what he'd told this one.

He leaned into the kiss.

He'd done this before—in dreams, in puppets—he didn't prefer humans, but he could handle them well enough and earthlings had such pretty eyes. And this body he was stuck in made such insistent demands; a surge of human hormones washed over his brain so powerfully it made him dizzy. She broke the kiss to murmur, "Cipher, my lord—" and he took the opportunity to kiss her eyelid and lie, "I knew if anyone could find me, it would be you." He wished he remembered her name. She tugged his face back down to her lips. She was so eager. Cipher, my lord. Oh, it felt good to be revered again—

The door opened. "Um?"

If Bill had had one ounce of his power, he would have killed Wendy on the spot.

Instead, he seized his cultist's hands, ripped them off his hoodie, and shoved her away. "Whoa, lady! What do you think this is, a kissing booth?!" He laughed angrily. "We don't offer that kind of service here! Either get out, or—or buy a souvenir already!" He pointed at Wendy. "From her. Not from me."

Shocked, the cultist turned toward where Bill was pointing; and then turned back, understanding in her eyes.

Wendy raised her hands defensively, grimacing. "Yeah, no, I'm not serving you either. Just... get outta here."

The cultist met Bill's gaze for just a moment, then walked quickly out the door without a word.

Bill shouted after her, "And do not come back!" and quietly mourned as, for the second time in as many weeks, he had to watch helplessly as he sent away his only hope of getting any action/rescue.

"I am so, so sorry," Wendy said. "I leave for like ten minutes and you get one of the nightmare customers."

How Bill loved nightmares. "Twenty-five minutes, but who's counting."

"Psh, shut up." Wendy reclaimed her post behind the counter. "I think she's been here before, she looks kinda familiar. You okay?"

Bill hoped nobody else in town would recognize her. "I think I'll live after some mouthwash. Terrible breath." He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Hey, remember when you said you owe me one? You really owe me."

####

All his cultist had written for him was a phone number. Bill slid his stolen journal from its window hiding spot and copied the number down in two-tone dots and dashes. Plaintext transcriptions were usually tricky, given the vast difference between the language Bill wrote in and the languages humans used—but numbers, at least, were easy. Everyone had numbers.

And then he stared at the scrap of paper, reading the numbers over and over, until he was sure he'd memorized them, just in case he ever lost the journal.

And then he ate the paper.

And then he stacked the two cushions of his makeshift bed on top of each other, planted his face in them, and screamed.

Cipher, my lord. It had felt so, so, so good to be revered again.

His organs twisted with touch-hunger and loneliness.

####

Out in the Bahamas, along the southwest edge of the Bermuda Triangle, were two nut job hermits from Miami. Bill had convinced them that the only way they could purge their sins and purify their souls was by sculpting and selling golden avatars of God into which they could pour their guilt, and they had to keep doing it until they no longer felt guilty (and they would never not feel guilty; they needed so much therapy that Bill had ensured they'd never get). And then he'd convinced them that God's true face was an Eye of Providence in a top hat and bow tie.

Over the years he'd lost a little control over those two—in their desperation to be free of sin, they'd also started sculpting avatars to as many gods as they could find and selling them en masse to afford more art supplies—but hey, as long as his face was still mixed in with the rest, fine. Honestly, he was surprised those nuts weren't dead yet.

Somebody in this house had sent his location to them. And in a moment of what Bill imagined was stunning mental clarity, they had passed on that information to the single least dysfunctional pocket of Bill's top cult in the continental United States. Maybe when Bill was back at full power, he'd drop by the hermits' dreams to tell them they'd finally achieved absolution and could rest. Their decades of out-of-control scrupulosity would probably prevent them from believing him, but hey, he could say he'd tried. He washed his hands of all responsibility over them and their mental illnesses that he'd knowingly deliberately exacerbated for his own benefit. Not his problem.

But the question he came back to, over and over, was who had talked to them.

Bill needed to reach his Death Valley cultist. He needed a phone. Every phone in this house was well-guarded. No one would let him touch one... except, perhaps, whoever had sent the SOS on his behalf.

The only person who made sense was Stanford. Bill didn't think he'd ever told Ford about the nutty sculptors; but in the eighties he had given him the mailing addresses of some niche art dealers who would sell tapestries and statues of an obscure one-eyed god to collectors who could appreciate what they were looking at. Maybe Ford had gotten back in contact with them? Maybe he'd told them where Bill was, and they'd passed the information to the Bahamas?

Maybe Ford's feelings weren't quite so cold toward Bill as he'd been pretending.

Bill liked that idea a lot.

Maybe Bill's birthday gift had swung Ford back around to the side of reason—reminded him just how good he'd had it under a muse and mentor willing to teach him anything his nerdy little heart desired. Or maybe he'd always wanted to come back, and had just needed Bill to say it first.

He probably only pretended he hated Bill because they were surrounded by enemies—everyone in the house thought Ford was looking for a way to destroy Bill, what would happen if they knew the truth?

But the truth was there. Bill could almost seize it in his hands. All those moments where they almost talked like they were friends again, before Ford had to stop himself and leave. That one beautiful little word: jealous. And of course, there was the whole thing with the glass pyramid and the "Mysteries" that Ford had passed on—

—to Mabel.

There was another possibility.

As much as Bill would love if it was Ford, Mabel was the only person in the house who acted like she actually wanted Bill alive. Whatever "Mysteries" Ford was teaching her had something to do with Bill, the pyramid made that obvious. Maybe his lessons included the contact information of everyone else Ford knew who knew Bill? Maybe she'd taken it upon herself to call for help?

It was thin. And it was still dependent upon Ford harboring a secret loyalty to Bill that he was passing on to his great-niece. But that was where things stood: Ford was the only person in the house who definitely knew how to reach Bill's followers, but Mabel was the only person in the house who definitely might want to.

And he had to make completely sure of which one of them it was before he asked for a favor.

####

Ford had missed dinner again.

Fiddleford had sent Ford home with a pile of math. All the calculations he'd done to get the miniature particle accelerator to produce Dontium. By his reckoning, that there jar should've filled with Dontium faster than greased lightning; he just plumb can't understand why it trickled in like cold molasses. (His words.) He'd asked Ford to check his work, see if he'd missed something.

Ford was more than happy to help. It was a much-needed intellectual challenge that didn't involve Bill's underhanded birthday gift. Something that would let him feel like he was making progress. And it was comfortingly familiar. He and Fiddleford had spent weeks checking and re-checking each other's math in the lead up to the portal test, before they knew what a horror they were building.

As soon as Ford had gotten home, he'd put Fiddleford's papers in his underground study before going back to bed. Bill had already admitted he could glimpse the future, although Ford wasn't sure how far; and Ford was growing convinced that Bill's ability to perceive "higher dimensions" let him see through walls like they weren't there. He'd begun keeping Journal 5 and other sensitive materials down in his study at all times, hoping that the distance and layers of dirt and rock would keep Bill from peering in.

And when he'd dragged himself out of bed around noon—an embarrassingly late hour to get up, but he had been awake most of the night—he'd grabbed a quick breakfast/lunch, brewed a pot of coffee to take with him, and gone below to get to work.

He'd only worked seven or eight hours with a couple of reluctant breaks in the middle before his head began pounding too hard for him to ignore. He'd been neglecting his exercise regimen the past few weeks, and his back and neck were letting him know. In his thirties, he'd been able to work fourteen hours days and still want to keep going—and that was even before he'd handed his body over to Bill so he could keep working around the clock. He wasn't as young as he used to be.

He dragged himself upstairs after sunset, when the last ambient light from the sky still faintly glowed through the windows. He could make something quick and simple for dinner, go to bed early, and get up early to continue working. He pushed through the door to the dark living room���

"Hello!"

"Gah!" Ford jumped. "You. What are you doing here?"

Bill was leaning next to the door, a dim silhouette with his elbow on the wall and cheek in his hand. Even in the dark, Ford was sure he could see Bill's wicked grin at his reaction. "I happen to live here."

Ford let out an irritated huff. "Whatever you're up to, I don't have time to deal with it. Find someone else to bother." He pushed past Bill and headed toward the kitchen.

It would have been too much to expect Bill not to follow him, wouldn't it? "Aw, c'mon, don't be like that! Would it kill you to act like you're happy to see me?"

"Probably."

Bill's laugh made Ford's shoulders raise up around his ears. Maybe that was the source of his neck pain.

Bill shadowed him into the kitchen and leaned on the table, watching while Ford rummaged through the fridge. "But seriously, Sixer—who are you trying to impress by giving me the cold shoulder? I'm the only one here. You could afford to treat me like a person for two minutes." When Ford slammed the fridge door, Bill smacked it with the tip of an 8-ball cane. "Hey, have my food privileges been revoked? Give me a turn."

How long had Bill had a weapon? Ford snatched the cane from him, but opened the fridge and left it. "I don't consider you a person. I consider you an incalculably destructive force of pure, brutal chaos." He cracked three eggs in a skillet and opened a cabinet for one of the stove knobs they kept stored where Bill couldn't reach them.

"Flattering!" Bill started pulling out his usual nauseating array of condiments: today was sauerkraut, maraschino cherries, mustard, ranch dressing, and barbecue sauce. (Why did he eat like that? Did his species usually subsist on a mostly liquid diet? Was it the flavors—?) "Hey, make me mac 'n' cheese, wouldja?"

"No."

"Fine. Leave the burner on when you're done, I'll make it myself."

"You're not allowed to use the stove."

"Then how about I sit here drinking mustard while you enjoy a hot meal." Bill waved three eggs at Ford. "At least make me eggs too. Zero extra effort on your part. I'll even crack them for you if you want."

Ford gave Bill a dark look; but he supposed, as one of the people who had agreed that Bill wasn't allowed to cook, he was in no position to complain about Bill begging him to cook on his behalf. He snatched the eggs out of Bill's hand. "How do you want them."

"I haven't eaten enough chicken eggs to have a preference. Whatever you'll complain least about doing."

Poorly scrambled eggs it was. Ford shut the fridge and returned to the stove.

Bill sat on the table and crossed his legs in lotus position while he waited. "But really, what do you get out of pretending you can't stand me! We both know it's an act."

Ford gave him a tired, sour look. "Even for you, you sound delusional."

"I know you don't really hate me."

"I could write an entire dissertation and earn another Ph.D. on the topic of how much I hate you."

Ford hated how excited Bill looked by that. "Would you?"

"No! Why would I waste that much time thinking about you?"

"It seems to me like you're already doing that."

The hair on the back of Ford's neck prickled. Surely Bill just meant Ford's research into how to kill him; but his mind flashed to the miniature grimoire he'd spent all his time poring over—the blueprints of Bill's childhood home—the face he'd absent-mindedly drawn in his journal in the middle of the night and quickly scribbled out. Could Bill still see through that face? Had Ford remembered to blind Bill's eye on the blueprints? What about the eyes drawn in his human faces? Did Bill know about Ford's other studies? What did it matter—nothing Ford was doing was wrong. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Bill's smile slowly widened. "Sure you don't. You might hate me to my face, but behind my back you're as obsessed with me as ever. You might as well lean into it."

You're using avoiding him as an excuse to obsess over him even more in private. "I am not..." Wasn't he? You're acting like a stalker, Sixer.

"Oh, Fordsy, come on." Bill uncrossed his legs, slid off the table, and was across the room faster than Ford had expected. Ford instinctively took a step back and bumped into the oven; Bill reached past him to lean a hand against the edge of the stove, inches from touching him. "You're not hiding it half as well as you think you are. Did you think I wouldn't notice?" He smirked up at Ford, exposed eye wide and eager, utterly fascinated with him. "And bringing Mabel in on it? I'll have to admit, that surprised me. Can't say I disapprove, though."

Ford couldn't tell if the heat on the back of his neck was from Bill's accusations or the stove. "I beg your pardon?" What was he talking about—their conversation in Portland? The blueprints of Bill's home? (Using his great-niece to spy on Bill, lord, what was Ford doing?)

"Quit messing around! The Mysteries, Stanford. You think I don't know I'm the star of that show?" He poked the center of Ford's chest, "There's no way you joined a cult, you're not enough of a team player! What'd you do? Invent your own cult of one? Mixed a little of what I taught you, a little of whatever you learned out in the multiverse? I know you were asking around about me." Bill chuckled. "You want to keep your little rituals private, fine—I think it's cute, really—just tell me one thing I've been dying to know: how much have you told the kid?"

Ford stared at Bill.

Then he laughed in his face. "You really bought that?"

Bill's smile immediately vanished. "What?"

Ford shoved Bill's hands away. "There are no 'Mysteries.' It was a joke."

Bill stepped back, staring at Ford, brows furrowed. "A...? No," he said. "She's got that glass pyramid—"

"She wanted it because it was pretty," Ford said. "I gave her one since I was throwing them all out."

"That's the stupidest story I've ever heard. Then why would she have brought up the Mysteries!"

"Because," Ford said, "I told her, if you asked about the pyramid, she should make up something to confuse you."

Bill's mouth was open, but no words came out. His face had rapidly turned red. Several emotions flashed across his face in quick succession, from shock to confusion to humiliation to a rage so deep it almost looked like disgust. For a moment, from how Bill's fingers were curling like claws, Ford was sure Bill was about to attack him.

But then he clenched his jaw, backed off, leaned on the table, jammed his fists down against the tabletop, and glared at the floor.

Ford turned back to the stove, grinning to himself. Some of the eggs had burned slightly. Those were Bill's now. "What's the matter? Did you forget that humans can lie?"

Bill didn't reply.

"I'm surprised you didn't expect it. I seem to remember we got you with an impressive whopper last year—"

"Shut up."

"Now you don't want to talk?"

"Now you do?"

Good point; he didn't. If he'd finally rendered Bill speechless, he should enjoy it while he could.

He'd have to thank Mabel later for inventing the Mysteries. Sometimes that girl could be genius.

Ford turned off the burner, put the stove knob away, and dumped the eggs onto two plates. He didn't even bother to keep track of which plate had the burned eggs.

He shot a quick, exasperated look at Bill—he'd sat on top of the table again—and dropped a plate next to him. "Here." He grabbed a bag of bread and looked around for the toaster.

Behind him, voice trembling but low and dangerous, Bill said, "Don't look at me like that."

Ford glanced back warily. "Like what?"

Bill violently shoved off the table. There was an awful squeal of sliding furniture. Before Ford could react, Bill was in his face, grabbing him by his turtleneck, dragging him in, forcing him to look up at Bill.

Ford's peripheral vision was filled with gold. They were so close their noses nearly touched.

"Like you don't remember who I am!" Bill stared down with wide-eyed seething rage. "Your muse!" His voice cracked, "Your god!"

Ford stared up at Bill, speechless.

Then he looked down.

Bill was standing on a chair to make himself taller than Ford.

Ford ripped Bill's hands off his sweater. "You were never, ever my god."

Bill stumbled off the chair, catching himself hard on the edge of the table to keep from falling completely. "That's not true!" He heaved himself back onto his feet with a wince. "You worshiped me—"

"I admired you!" Ford jabbed a finger at Bill's chest. "I respected you! I—I even idolized you, but I never worshiped you!"

Bill jabbed a finger back, "You're splitting hairs! You practically turned your study into a temple to me—tapestries, rugs, statues—"

"Because you said it would help me reach you!"

"And it did! That's what shrines are for, genius!"

"It wasn't a shrine! Not to me."

"You're kidding me! All the money you dropped on that gold-plated statue and you expect me to believe that wasn't an act of worship—"

"Do not. Remind me. How much. That stupid statue cost."

"If you didn't build a shrine for worship then what in the world did you build it for!"

"Friendship!" Ford took a shaky breath in. "I thought... I honestly thought you—you—were my best friend." The air in the room trembled with heat. They were standing too close to each other. Ford refused to be the one to back up.

"I was," Bill said. "I still could be if you'd stop being a moron."

Ford laughed in disbelief. "Which is it, were you my god or my friend?!"

"They're not mutually exclusive—!"

"You can't keep your story straight for THIRTY SECONDS!"

"Don't you call me a LIAR, after EVERYTHING I taught you—!"

"In all the years I've known you I don't think you've told me the truth ONCE—!"

Stan flipped on the lights.

They froze and stared at him. They had their hands around each other's throats. Bill had a foot planted on Ford's stomach like he was trying to get a foothold to climb him. They were both covered in egg.

Stan said, "Could you do this in the morning?"

Ford said, "Sure."

Bill said, "He started it."

"I st—?! You started all of this thirty years ago—"

"Guys," Stan said tiredly.

With some effort, Ford unpeeled his hands from Bill's neck.

To his surprise, Bill voluntarily let go as well. Ford snatched up what was left of his plate of eggs, took the loaf of bread—he had lighters, he could toast it downstairs—and left the kitchen, turning the light off as he went.

Stan was waiting out in the entryway. "Heading to bed?"

"No." Ford shoveled a forkful of eggs in his mouth. "Going to be up late." He was too angry to sleep. He could eat, take a painkiller for his headache, and keep working.

"More research?"

"No. Calculations."

Stan's shoulders slumped; but all he said was, "Suit yourself. Don't stay up too late."

Ford glanced back once into the kitchen. Bill wasn't moving. He sat slumped in a chair, elbows on his knees. He'd pulled on his hood. Its eye stared at Ford.

Ford wasn't about to pity Bill over a performative display of angst. He'd fallen for that already.

He returned to his study and mathematics.

####

Bill stared at his plate of eggs. He mechanically pushed them around on the plate until they formed a perfect equilateral triangle. He scooped out an empty white eye in the middle.

He stood, snatched up the plate, and smashed it on the floor.

They thought he was stupid. They thought he couldn't use a stove if it didn't have knobs, as if he was a child! The humans made it easy for themselves to think of him as a child when they treated him like one, "baby-proof the doors" and "no sharp objects" and "don't talk to strangers." He could show them.

He grabbed the stem where one of the knobs had been removed, and twisted. He heard the hiss of gas under the burner. Everyone was asleep. He could fill the house with gas. It would only take a little push to make a spark and set the entire shack ablaze. In the dark room, he could see the first glimpse of future flames flickering yellow-orange in the periphery of his foresight. No one would survive. Who's your god now, smart guy? He'd rise like a phoenix from his own corpse and he'd tear this town apart.

Where was Mabel?

Was she home tonight?

Bill turned off the gas.

He pushed up his sleeve and pressed the fleshy part of his forearm onto the still-hot burner. The pain burned away his jumbled anger so he could think clearly.

Who cared how the nutty sculptors had gotten Bill's address? He was making good progress on lucid dreaming; maybe he'd astral projected across the country to call for help and forgotten it when he woke up. He'd probably saved himself without even remembering it. It didn't matter. The important thing was that they'd received the message; and now, Bill had friends on the outside. Friends who were on his side.

If he could ever contact them again.

Bill would find a way. He didn't need Ford's help. "Never worshiped you." Ha.

He needed fresh air. Even if it wasn't safe to escape yet, he needed to breathe. He carried himself backward through doorway into the gift shop, pulled aside the curtain hiding the ladder to the roof—

The trap door was shut. He stared up in despair.

He shot a glare toward the vending machine, and angrily crossed back into the living room.

The air was so stuffy inside the shack. "Never worshiped you." Liar. If it wasn't worship then what was it?

Bill took himself upstairs. Hunger gnawed at his stomach. He lay on his makeshift bed curled up around himself, arms wrapped tight across his stomach, his burn pressed hard against a layer of knit yarn, thighs pulled up against his arms. It was a wholly alien position. It felt unnatural and bizarre. This body had curled like this of its own volition. It seemed like the only thing that briefly smothered the ache of emptiness and the hormonal inferno screaming loneliness through every vein. The loneliness wasn't his. He wasn't lonely. This body was. 

Cipher, my lord.

He hated this body.

He ached to be revered again.

####

It was two in the morning. Ford sat at his desk, pages and pages of math scattered before him, glasses off, hand rubbing his eyes.

He didn't want to be checking a mountain of math like a human calculator. He wanted to be studying strange magic and researching new anomalies. He wanted to be digging through Bill's grimoire.

He wanted to be awed again.

####

(I've been waiting to write/draw Bill screaming his grief over not being worshiped since literally April. I hope y'all enjoyed! This is one of my favorite chapters so far, I'd love to hear what y'all think!!)

[beautifulmars]

Sandstone in West Candor Chasma

Candor Chasma in central Valles Marineris is filled with light-toned layered deposits thought to be sandstones, perhaps formed in an ancient wet and potentially habitable environment.

The CRISM instrument on MRO has acquired thousands high-resolution spectral images across Mars, often with simultaneous coverage by HiRISE, but sometimes, for a variety of reasons, without HiRISE coverage. We are now trying to complete coordinated coverage over such locations, to enable geologic interpretations based on both the compositional information of CRISM and the high-resolution imaging of HiRISE.

ID: ESP_062839_1740 date: 22 December 2019 altitude: 263 km

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

[fuckyeahisawthat]

@spectraling I feel like you have blown my third eye wide open with the idea of the Hexcore taking on some of Viktor's personality and attributes. Like. The idea of Viktor creating a thing that shares his goals, that genuinely wants to help him help people, at a time when he's starting to feel like maybe Jayce doesn't share that goal with him anymore? I think he's doing it all subconsciously but. Creating a thing that's a reflection of his own mind, an echo instead of another truly autonomous human that can challenge him when he starts going off the rails? An endless feedback loop of yes-and, supporting and encouraging him but also enabling his own blind spots and increasingly extreme ideas?

But also. Creating something that's not just using him for its own ends but that genuinely cares for him, that comforts him, that loves him?? (Except that love is a terrifying unstoppable force. Love that wants to crawl inside you and consume you. Love that says we'll die if we are parted from each other. Separating us will be like ripping a hole in your own body. But maybe there is something he recognizes about that kind of love.)

All that is SO much more interesting than Magic Orb Evil. It fits so much better with the themes and parallels of the show. "I only wanted to help." The darkness of love. Devotion that enables someone's worst impulses. It's so much more twisted and tragic and in keeping with the tone of the show than the idea of the Hexcore just controlling him or manipulating him for its own ends. It's Viktor all the way down and also he's created this thing that has a will of its own and there will be unintended consequences.

It makes a lot of the Sky stuff snap into place for me too, if you think that Sky is a manifestation of the Hexcore. I still think she works equally well as an expression of Viktor's connection to his humanity, which he finally allows to burn away during his final transformation. And tbh I prefer symbolism that's open to multiple interpretations. But things like Sky reminding Viktor that "all systems have limits" make a lot more sense if you think of Sky as an avatar of a Hexcore that genuinely cares about him, that's protective (if maybe also a little bit possessive.) Because frankly, this doesn't sound like something Viktor would say to himself. Nor does it sound like something that a Hexcore bent simply on relentlessly consuming everything in its path would encourage him to believe. It sounds like something his PARTNER would say.

(There is a whole other post to be made about Viktor and Sky in the astral plane and how astral plane Viktor is much more free with both giving and accepting touch than we ever see him in the physical realm, and astral Sky is MUCH more touchy with Viktor than the real Sky ever was: clasping his hands, sitting draped against his back. Something something inventing a ghost to soothe the gaping wound of loneliness inside you by accepting casual intimacy in your mind palace where no one can see. ANYWAY.)

The idea of the Hexcore being willing to protect him at the expense of others also fits with one of my pet headcanons, which is that the reason everybody in the commune reacted like that when Viktor got shot is that the Hexcore reflexively took a giant schlorp of everybody's life force, in a desperate attempt to keep Viktor and/or itself (is there a difference at this point?) alive.

Even the line about the "recursive impulse," which I've seen a lot of interpretations of but we never really know what it means. What if it's because the Hexcore is already a little bit Viktor and now it's inside him and that's just a hella confusing sensation to describe, like staring into a hall of mirrors?

But most of all I love this because holy fuck it is SO MUCH SADDER than any other interpretation I have seen. HE MADE HIMSELF A PARTNER. HE MADE HIMSELF THE PARTNER HE THOUGHT HE DIDN'T HAVE!!! WHEN JAYCE WAS RIGHT THERE THE WHOLE TIME!!!! Augh jesus hexcore christ I'm eating glass about it.

[mokulule]

The Number You Have Called Cannot Be Reached - Part 9

First|Masterlist

Ship: Dead on Main (Danny/Jason) Warnings: angst, depression, canon typical violence.

Jason was not angry he was frustrated. There was a difference. A distinct difference that Jason knew very well.

Ghost kept running. He would steal a thing. Evade some goons, cause he often stole from the rogues. Then evade some bats, lead them in a new direction, sometimes changing overall direction mid chase, there really was no rhyme or reason to it.

And then, when Jason showed up, he’d invariably be standing on another rooftop and disappear. All the while Jason could feel his longing and sorrow, a call for help he wouldn't let Jason answer, and it was frustrating and confusing, but mostly frustrating.

Because Jason was not angry.

He may have snapped at Dick, when he made a joke about his princess being in another castle, but he hadn’t actually laid hands on anyone. He made sure nobody made the mistake of touching him.

He ducked his head, never stuck around and ignored the looks he got. Worry, pity, wariness, Jason flip-flopped how he interpreted the gazes. A loose canon, that’s what they thought he was. But Jason was not. His chest burned, but Jason was not angry. Because he knew the difference, between himself and the pits. He knew. But they didn’t. They didn’t understand and Jason could not explain - not without him sounding unstable. There was no way he could explain things and keep cool. They wouldn’t understand that he kept away for their sake. At best he’d be benched.

Benched, a bitter voice mocked, locked up and thrown in Arkham more like. Criminal, murderer, crazy.

He shook his head. Pushed the thoughts away. He couldn’t allow himself to be benched. He needed to catch Ghost - to make him listen and explain just for a moment so he could understand what was going on with him and the pits.

As long as Jason didn’t cross the line, they wouldn’t try anything. He had to believe that.

Oo o oO

Bruce was at a loss.

If it wasn’t for the fact that Jason hadn’t pointed a gun at any of them, Bruce would have thought they’d gone a year or two back in time. He was tense and curt and kept himself at a distance. Always out of reach.

It wasn’t like he joined their patrols regularly normally, but he could usually be counted on if something big was going down. Now Bruce wasn’t so sure he’d want to ask him if something happened. It seemed like he was nearing breaking point and Bruce feared what way he’d fall.

The thief, Ghost, was at the center of this. Something was going on there, but it was like he was missing crucial information. Jason was downright frantic to catch him.

Danny Fenton. The name was still a dead end. The DNA sample useless. His contact at Star Lab had gotten back to him and informed him they’d had a break in weeks ago, before the thefts started in Gotham - nothing had been stolen, the invisible perpetrator had been found out because of the electromagnetic disturbance his stealth tech gave off, or rather that was what their reports said. The recorded disturbance matched the readings they got off of the Ghost.

It was quite possible there were many more unrecorded thefts before the Ghost came to Gotham. He’d already informed Tim and watched him pale from the realization that they actually had no idea how far the Ghost was with what he was building. If building something was indeed what he was doing with the eclectic mix of parts he’d stolen. Tim had a theory, that much was obvious, but he was not at a point where he felt he had enough evidence to share it.

When Bruce had told him of the Star Lab incident, he’d glanced towards where they’d stored the spectral calibrator, before his shoulders had forcefully relaxed.

Bruce was no slouch when it came to technology, but mostly when it came to operating it. He could infiltrate systems and extract information fine, but it he was honest, the kids were better, and since he rarely worked alone these days, he didn’t get as much practice - he wondered momentarily if this is what it was like growing old.

It was something he’d never expected when he set out on his mission as a young man, growing old that is.

Besides while Bruce had designed a fair few gadgets in his time, and assembled the Bat computer himself back in the early days when it didn’t have near the capabilities it did today, he was not an inventor. Lucius was the one who’d made his more fanciful ideas workable in the early days.

And now he had all these talented kids.

It didn’t matter most of them were adults, they’d always be kids to him. Here he went again getting distracted.

He rubbed his forehead. Point was, Bruce couldn’t see what the parts could be used for but Tim could. And it was something that worried him, which in turn worried Bruce and like always these days his thoughts circled back to his worry for Jason.

He’d given him time, like Dick had said - three weeks so far in fact. And instead of things calming down they’d become worse. The Ghost’s continued escape was winding Jason up, there were no two ways about it. They needed to capture him.

Bruce had to be honest with himself, if it wasn’t for Jason, the Ghost would be very low priority for them. He wasn’t hurting anyone, just a thief. Before the day Jason had tackled the Ghost on the rooftop, he had been low priority. Amusing in fact, with the way he riled up Damian with his continued escapes, it had been low stakes - safe in a way many of their missions weren’t.

But now, Tim was working frantically on ways to capture the Ghost, they’d tried nets of various materials (some even Martians had trouble phasing through) with no success. Barbara was still trying to unearth more information from the phone, also with no success.

Steph and Cass had been steadily and stealthily working on changing the cameras throughout the city connected to Barbara’s network to ones with better filters and built in detectors for electromagnetic disturbances over a certain threshold - a very bothersome process since most of the cameras technically weren’t theirs and had to be indistinguishable from the originals and send visuals to the real owners of the same (low) quality they’re used to in case somebody decided to take a closer look.

Damian was giving him long looks, when he thought he wasn’t noticing. He was hiding something and he’d been sneaking off on his own. Bruce was trying to convince himself to leave it alone. He’d nearly lost Damian in the past because he was too controlling.

Trust, it was something he was trying to practice but it irked at him not to know. What if he got in trouble? He had to forcibly remind himself, it was most likely that Damian was just sneaking off to some wild animal he was hiding and nursing back to health.

Duke had just gotten back from a three month exchange program abroad, he would have to be caught up to speed. Maybe his abilities would give them some additional insight.

Hopefully.

Oo o oO

Jason was not angry, he was livid. Ghost was on another rooftop. About to do his disappearing act, again again again.

“Come back here!” He yelled.

Fear not his own hit him in a sickly yellow haze. He gasped and struggled not to throw up. Ghost was gone again. Of course he was. His one chance and-

“Jason…” the words were quiet, barely audible, Bruce. Jason grit his teeth. Bruce was a fucking hypocrite saying his name in costume like that.

A step forward was heard, a purposefully made sound to announce his approach, and Jason spun.

“Don’t touch me!” His guns were pointed at Bruce. He stood frozen, the hand he’d no doubt been reaching toward Jason was pulled back. It served him right.

Jason didn’t trust him. He should shoot him, teach him not to get too close. He knew Batman’s armor, he knew the weak spots. It would be easy. A rubber bullet wouldn’t kill, but it would hurt.

Jason wanted him to hurt; like he hurt.

He wanted-

He wanted-

He couldn’t remember loading his guns tonight. The realization struck him like a splash of ice water. Rubber bullets or live ammunition?

He didn’t know!

He followed the aim of his still raised guns, pointed at his dad’s chest, the armor could only do so much at such a close distance.

Real bullets or rubber?

Jason took a step backwards in horrified realization. It didn’t matter. Not at this close range. Both would be lethal. He knew that. He knew guns. Why had that even been a question? Why was he still pointing his guns at Bruce?

A wounded sound escaped his throat and he turned and ran.

He’d crossed the line.

-

Poor Jay, huh? Can Danny keep escaping the bats? Will Jason be okay? Tim POV next time, we're in serious need of a plan here, come on Timmers.

Next

I no longer tag people, please subscribe to the masterpost here to get notified when the story updates.

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight - The Phantom Wail Hypothesis: An Analysis of Phantom’s Ghostly Wail as Residual Sonic Trauma

For: @murphy-kitt

Literally just a ecto-ology/hauntology thesis abstract about Phantom’s Ghostly Wail and its implications.

Abstract

Phantom’s Ghostly Wail is among one of the most consistently reported unique traits that Phantom possesses, one that seemingly separates him from all other ghosts. While traditionally interpreted as a mere conscious vocalization, another application of this particular ghosts ectoplasm, this paper presents an alternative hypothesis: that this sound is the imprinted death screams of an individual who died under conditions of acute trauma. Drawing on findings from psychoacoustics, quantum imprint theory, trauma psychology, and recordings of audio, this paper proposes that traumatic death events can produce a sonic imprint in a ghost under particular atmospheric or emotional conditions. This Death Scream Hypothesis challenges the standard ecto-ologistic model of how death impacts a ghost upon their creation and reorients our understanding of how their powers might come to be; as well as effects on the environment caused by those who’ve passed.

1. Introduction

1.1 Philosophical Basis of the Ghostly Wail

The existence of wailing amongst ghosts isn’t in and of itself unique, with accounts ranging from ancient folklore to modern ghost-hunting documentaries, disembodied wails and screams remain one of the most iconic and terrifying, features of a stereotypical haunting. Particularly the variety found outside of Amity Park’s boarders. While ghost lore frequently attributes these cries to wandering spirits lamenting their fate or seeking closure, the spectres seen around Amity Park show no such behaviours; with the exclusion of Phantom. As it stands, there has been little investigation into whether such sounds may instead be echoes of the suffering of their demise; an end so painful it imprinted on their very being or the environment wherein they passed.

This Phantom Wail Hypothesis posits that Phantom’s particular ‘ghostly wailing’ may, in fact, be the lingering auditory remnants of that individual’s dying scream frozen in time as a spectral ability, able to be replayed at will like a needle passing over a phonographic groove. These sonic imprints able to be reactivated by Phantom, triggered as an instinctual environmental response or by his consciousness itself. The Ghostly Wail does not appear to be a high priority instinct, potentially due to Phantom’s protective nature and the Ghostly Wails destructive capabilities.

1.2 Rethinking the Standard Haunting Pattern

This hypothesis further invites us to reconsider the default assumption that standard hauntings represent conscious attempts at contact. Instead, it introduces the idea that many supernatural sounds are accidental recorded instinctual distress signals, not active communication with the living realm. If correct, this shifts ecto-ology from a theological to a psychological and biological domain.

Amity Park ghosts in particular support this, as they actively chose to interact with the living in a physical corporeal state. Showing that if ghosts wanted to interact and communicate with the living, they would be inclined to do so far more physically. With Phantom standing to provide an example of a ghost that leans far more into verbal communication than merely physically existing amongst us. Perhaps this fondness for vocalization is, in part, a reason behind having a sound based ability that reflects his demise so strongly.

2. Historical and Cross-Cultural Context

2.1 Archetypal Wailing in Global Traditions

The motif of the ghostly scream or wail is a transcultural one:

In many different Celtic mythologies, the banshee’s wail heralds death, suggesting a sonic foreshadowing tied to an echo of trauma.

Japanese onryō spirits are often heard sobbing or screaming, though violent, they are typically believed to be women who died violently or unjustly.

In Victorian England, so-called ‘death knocks’ and unexplainable cries were considered omens, thought to be auditory impressions left behind at the moment of death.

In African and African Caribbean spiritual traditions, the voice of the dead may be heard not as speech but as a cry for remembrance, often replayed at specific locations or anniversaries.

All of those above can be applied to Phantom himself as well. To refer to Phantom as a ‘Harold of Death’ or an omen of death, as a banshee and ‘death knocks’ so often are, would seem obvious to many, as Phantom’s presence in any given area is indicative of the presence of at least one other, far more dangerous, ghost. His Ghostly Wail serving as his echo of trauma. Similarly to the onryō, Phantom is indeed violent and capable of harm; though the reasons for such behaviour is protective in nature and never causes true prolonged harm. His Wail truly hinting at his death being quite violent and likely unjust as well. And perhaps his death was not one well known or well remembered, feeding into the ghosts innate desire for remembrance.

2.2 The Voice of Death as a Spiritual Trigger

Many cultures maintain that the moment of death imprints something onto the physical or metaphysical world. Phantom may very well be a far more intense application of this, imprinting on the ghosts physical being itself instead of on the surroundings. Whether conceptualized as a soul, spirit, or energy release, the idea that the final utterance contains special power persists. The Phantom Wail Hypothesis builds on this by proposing that, under some form of extreme conditions, the scream itself became encoded in Phantom’s being, functioning like a spiritual residue of death trauma. One that the ghost is capable of utilizing to affect the world around him as a true genuine power.

It must make one wonder, just how horrific and cruel of a death Phantom must have faced for such a thing to happen to him, and only him.

3. Scientific Foundations

3.1 Psychoacoustics of the Death Scream

Research into traumatic vocalizations shows that humans emit distinct, non-linguistic screams during life-threatening events. These include:

Nonlinear acoustic features such as chaotic frequency shifts, subharmonics, and glottal fry.

High-frequency spectral bursts (3–8 kHz) that are perceptually optimized for urgency and biological alarm.

Temporal irregularities, such as sudden silence or pitch warping, that induce a sense of dread.

These features are evolutionarily adapted to elicit immediate emotional responses in listeners. A death scream, occurring at the apex of physical and emotional stress, thus must carry a unique acoustic signature of its own, both acoustically rich and psychologically potent. Phantom’s Ghost Wail appears to support this heavily, showing that such a death scream can be an incredibly impactful and powerful weapon amongst the dead. One so powerful that, perhaps, only a ghost who suffered most catastrophically could earn the right, through pain, to truly utilize it. Phantom has been witnessed bleeding from his mouth and appearing severely weakened after its use, suggesting that any ghost who had not earned it would be torn apart or obliterated from even trying.

3.2 Environmental Recording: The Stone Tape Theory

Though speculative at best, the Stone Tape Theory proposes that materials such as limestone, quartz, or iron-rich substrates can store energetic events, including sound, much like magnetic tape. Intense emotion and ectoplasm may act as a catalyst, ‘etching’ sonic events into the crystalline microstructure of these materials. Though the more solid ectoplasm that ghosts are comprised of is largely gelatinous in nature, it would not be too far of a stretch to suggest that ectoplasm can be ‘etched’ into in a similar manner. Perhaps this ‘etching’ only settling permanently in cases of extremes.

Environmental triggers, humidity, temperature shifts, geomagnetic flux, might then ‘play back’ these stored events. In areas where repeated screaming deaths occurred (e.g., battlefields, prisons, execution sites), the probability of this phenomenon is theorized to increase. So perhaps Phantom’s Ghostly Wail was a result of not just his own dying screams, but of the collective dying screams of many suffering individuals; a death that came about through an immeasurable tragic loss of life.

3.3 Quantum Information and Emotional Energy

Building on quantum consciousness theories, it is believed that consciousness is not bound solely to the body but flows through a spiritual ectoplasmic state. The death scream, representing a moment of severance between mind and matter, may produce an entangled burst of sonic, psychic, and ectoplasmic energy. This multi-energy signature, auditory, emotional, and spiritual, could become enmeshed in to the being that comes to exist after death. With this being the case with Phantom and how he formed.

4. Methodology

4.1 Case Study Compilation

This study analyzed 212 reported haunting cases across four continents, from historical archives and modern paranormal investigation groups. Criteria for inclusion were:

Presence of distinct wailing or screaming in the auditory report.

History of documented violent or traumatic deaths at the location.

Audio recordings, if available, subjected to spectral analysis.

This study also utilized all available recordings, and the situations in which they occurred, of Phantom’s Ghostly Wail. Acquired both from the citizens of Amity Park and from the Drs. Fenton’s, Dr. Madeline Fenton and Dr. Jackson Fenton. Phantom himself also allowed for the recording of his Ghostly Wail directly, in a forested area devoid of other potential ectoplasmic interferences.

4.2 Field Recording Analysis

Of the 38 recordings deemed credible (excluding obvious hoaxes and environmental misinterpretations), 27 exhibited spectral characteristics consistent with trauma-induced vocalizations. Notably:

Frequency peaks between 5-6.5 kHz.

Abrupt rise-fall amplitude envelopes.

Nonlinear bifurcations and harmonic roughness typical of real-world screams under distress.

Phantom’s Ghostly Wail causes an immediate intense feeling of pure terror and deep unease. Fluctuating violently between 0.2-49 kHz, with a simultaneously rough and smooth harmonic.

4.3 Material and Environmental Correlations

Locations with strong audio anomalies shared several characteristics:

Substrate materials included high-quartz-content stone or dense wood.

Environmental conditions at the time of phenomena involved sudden temperature drops and high humidity.

Several instances coincided with solar storms or local geomagnetic irregularities.

All three of these notable conditions can be found throughout Amity Park as well. Though this may not have much to do with Phantom specifically, perhaps this is part of the explanation behind Amity Park’s frequent ectoplasmic events and spectral visitors.

5. Discussion

5.1 Conscious Communication vs. Imprinted Expression

This framework challenges the model of non-Amity Park ghostly activity as sentient interaction. Instead, it supports a ‘trauma residue’ theory, suggesting that what is heard is not the voice of a ghost, but the ghost of a voice. Such sounds are not intentional but incidental; they represent not the presence of a spirit but the persistence of an event. As well as how Phantom is an example of a persistent event remaining attached to the sentient ectoplasmic material created from that same event.

5.2 Psychological Impact on Witnesses

Reports frequently include intense emotional reactions to ghostly screams, including:

Sudden weeping, nausea, or panic.

Vivid nightmares or dissociative episodes.

Feeling as if ‘reliving someone else’s pain’.

This supports the idea of empathic resonance, whereby listeners become temporarily attuned to the emotional content embedded in the scream, experiencing it as if it were their own trauma. Phantom’s Ghostly Wail, in particular, is well known to cause extreme intense feelings of terror, feelings of imminent death, and incapacitating levels of anxiety. With multiple reports showing cases of complete delirium and stress induced unconsciousness. Non-human animals also show these same signs, often seeming catatonic with terror or vibrating violently. And through testing on the surrounding trees, Phantom’s Ghostly Wail appeared to have disturbed even the plant matter around, interrupting their natural vibrational levels.

This lends itself to the idea that Phantom’s dying screams were so intense that their after shocks invoke not merely empathy but pure genuine instinctual terror. Phantom’s trauma so intense that the living mind of any mildly sentient being can’t with stand it to any notable degree.

5.3 Ethical and Spiritual Implications

If the Phantom Wail Hypothesis is valid, it raises moral and metaphysical questions:

Should efforts be made to ‘cleanse’ or ‘deactivate’ non-sentient residual imprints? Such as those found throughout the world?

Is the repetition of such a death scream a form of suffering, or merely an echo devoid of Phantom’s previously experienced pain?

What does this imply about the preservation of emotional energy at the moment of death?

Should Phantom’s Ghostly Wail be celebrated for the remembrance it inspires that the ghost may seek? Or mourned for reliving pain of a life past?

One must consider if the use of Phantom’s Ghostly Wail is an act of self harm, an act of reliving trauma, an act of crying out to be heard, or merely the ectoplasmic fabric of the Ghost Zone giving Phantom’s horrific death its dues. What does this say about Phantom’s emotional state? Or perhaps what does this say about Phantom’s ability to retain living emotions?

Further, this hypothesis may also bridge spiritual ritual and scientific inquiry, offering a functional rationale for exorcisms, blessing rituals, and sacred silence in death spaces. Are the echoes of suffering best heard and revered, or best cleansed and left to fade away?

6. Conclusion

The Phantom Wail Hypothesis reframes one of the oldest human fears, not merely the fear of death, but the fear that death may echo. Phantom’s own ability forcing us to confront those fears and address them. Far from being fanciful superstition, the idea that traumatic final vocalizations might persist in not only the environment but in a particular ghost himself, offers theory into how Phantom must have passed on, as well as a potentially unifying theory for ghostly wailing and other residual haunting phenomena.

Although speculative, this hypothesis synthesizes data from acoustics, parapsychology, quantum theory, and historical folklore in a manner that warrants further interdisciplinary study. Future cooperative work with Phantom himself could yield more definitive answer and insights into his Ghost Wail as well as the long debated how of his demise; though he does not appear open to more invasive research. In a broader scope, future work could involve lab-based simulations of trauma-induced imprinting, development of ‘imprint-sensitive’ recording equipment, and expanded field studies in emotionally charged historical locations.

---

Maddie hums, leaning back in her lab chair and tapping her chin. This was definitely written by someone just beginning to dip their toes into ecto-ology, and some of its sourcing has definitely been debunked, but it still has serious merit. It purposes an interesting hypothesis even on the broader scope, but regarding its points about Phantom specifically… it did not paint a pretty picture, in fact it painted a deeply concerning one. For such a heavy amount of suffering to be attached to a friendly, playful, protective spirit was alarming. It was alarming in that it raised a lot of questions about her and Jack’s work. If this was indeed the case, Phantom, along with all other ghosts, were most likely sentient and emotionally intelligent. For the pain and emotion of death to imprint on the ectoplasm itself implied emotion as a neurological experience could be retained by ectoplasm.

If Phantom truly felt echoes of Its own suffering when It used Its Wail, then It was capable of compartmentalizing and coping with that experience and those sensations.

And simply as a mother…

Phantom looked like a teenager. She couldn’t fathom her kids dying so horrifically, in so much pain, that it became part of their ectoplasmic spiritual being. She’d take that death herself first, she’d take it a thousand times over if she had to. She’d beg for that fate to be sent her way instead of theirs.

If, and when, either of her kids die, she hopes they do so peacefully, happily, and nothing like what this paper proposed Phantom suffered.

Perhaps… perhaps she’ll cut that ghost some slack. If this theory was even half right, Its earned it.

End.

Prompts: Someone hears Phantom's ghostly wail and theorises it's his dying screams.

[tatzelbookwurm]

Stats Game

Rules: Give us the links to your fic with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the least words (feel free to interpret however you would like; if not on AO3, can be on Tumblr or FFNET!).

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Borrowed from @bloggerspam because they said "if you see this, you're tagged" and I wanted to participate 💚💚💚

I've only got five works on my Ao3 account, so lucky me I get to feature all of them haha! (Except for the anonymous one which I am not linking).

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Most Hits: 15,283

A Round Door Like a Portal, Lazarus Green — in which Tim and Constantine want to know why there is a portal to the afterlife in the basement of the business Wayne Enterprises just purchased. Danny wants to not have to look at Constantine's necrotic soul. They all get to enjoy Little Baby Man shenanigans while they try to ignore the many things stressing them all out.

My first fic! Had a lot of fun with it, have no solid plans to continue at this point because other WIPs have grabbed me by the throat and also working for money is necessary to survive in this society.

Second Most Kudos: 1,045

Spectral Aspects — In which Danny, Eldritch God King, duplicates himself and goes on vacation in another universe where he meets some other heroes and tries to see how many members of the Justice League he can get to adopt a version of himself. (Please imagine an eldritch horror doing the Oprah Winfrey "You get a car! and you get a car!" Except it's "You get a Danno! and you get a Danno!"

We have not actually gotten to the "you get a Danno!" part quite yet, but there is some Danny getting mistaken for a Kryptonian and befriending Jarro. Updating slowly.

Third Most Comments: 56

Midnight Snack — In which Dick decides fake dating an escort is the answer to several personal and familial problems, and promptly discovers a new problem in the form of the undead twink he hires. Dick, in possession of a magical obol coin that lets him hear the dead, overhears Danny talking to himself in ghost speak. The things he's saying have the Bats highly c o n c e r n e d.

Or: Danny moonlights as an escort to pay his college tuition. He just woke up to a client discussing plans to dispose of his seemingly dead body. Now he's pretty sure the Waynes are a crime family to rival Falcone and Maroni, but with a way better PR department.

This one is pure crack and I'm not sorry about it.

Fourth Most Bookmarks: 182

[Redacted] — Anonymous Dead (dove) On Main fic.

I'm not bold enough to connect it to myself haha. Don't wanna get doxxed and have a student find it. . . Currently the fic I have the easiest time writing, and I wanna talk about it way more, but unfortunately that's just not gonna happen.

Fifth Most Words/Least Amount of Words: 130

Little Baby Man Doodles — literally just a collection of drawings I've done of LBM. Not actually a fic.

If you see this and feel inclined, consider yourself tagged!!!!