#and if that isn’t Martyn rn idk what is

[wooshofficial]

Martyn makes his way back to Baxter after the end of the session, only for there to be ghosts at his house.

Not the good ghosts, either- he saw Jimmy and Lizzie chasing each other around the Secret Keeper earlier, and Mumbo hovering around Grian as he called time. No, these are the wrong ghosts.

Three people sit on Baxter, staring down at him with glances ranging from pity to mania. Martyn holds a staring contest with the three before someone speaks up:

“Oh man, the lone wolf makes it back home, everyone! How do you guys think he’s feeling right now?” The voice that pipes up comes from the ghost on the right. They’re not human—a mouse, maybe a rat?—and they’re wearing a maid dress, which isn’t the weirdest part of this whole situation.

“I don’t know,” says the left ghost, lounging on Baxter’s ear and jingling bells on their jester outfit with the movement, “probably…alone. Angry.”

Martyn scowls at the clown and rat, building his way up to be level with the ghosts. “Who the hell are you?! What are you doing at my house?”

He gets no direct response, because of course he doesn’t. Because of course the Watchers would try to drive him insane with ghosts commenting on his current mental state and him unable to give his two cents. Instead, the right ghost looks at the left, who has continued to spread out on Baxter and make some very annoying jingling sounds.

“Angry is a definite. Guilty, probably. Hating himself, absolutely.”

What? No. This is a death game, people are going to die. Martyn knows this. He doesn’t blame or hate himself, thank you very much! He opens his mouth to debate, but-

“Oh, be nice to him, Rat. He just lost his buddies!” The middle ghost finally speaks up, swinging her legs and staring directly at him. She’s got orange skin and what looks like an anchor strapped across her back, which Martyn is confused at- both the fact that it’s there and the fact that he knows what it is. “Remember how I felt up until what, two months ago? Because of you, might I add.”

“I told you Lux, I didn’t know he would get permakilled!”

“Still-“

“I apologized!”

“Would you please get back to talking about me while you’re sitting on my goddamn house?”Martyn says, still at eye level with the three frankly absurd ghosts arguing in front of him, once again to no response. Anchor ghost—Lux—leans over and slaps the right ghost—Rat—straight across the face, and this is where Martyn would stop paying attention to the nonsense, except Rat just pulled out a monstrous looking scythe; and Jester Ghost is scrambling across Baxter’s head to be at their side with a similar weapon in their hand, jingling the whole way there; and Martyn is now checking his wrist tattoo to make sure his between-session immunity is working so he doesn’t die from this.

“Rat!” Lux ghost shouts, looking over towards Martyn, pity still in their eyes, “you’re scaring him!”

“You slapped me!” They follow Lux’s gaze to double the amount of staring in Martyn’s general direction, and Jester Ghost follows suit, with a manic smile on top. Rat ghost puts the scythe away with a sigh. “We’re getting off track. Lone wolf over there is exactly what it says on the tin. Lux gets that feeling, and I don’t because I am basically god.”

Martyn chooses to ignore that. Lux ghost just rolls their eyes.

“But,” Rat says, and Martyn is now sure that these ghosts are simply choosing to ignore him because he’s suddenly locked in another stare off, “what I know-“

“We all know,” adds the clown-

“-is payback. Sweet, beautiful, over the top payback.”

Lux nods. “And he knows it too, doesn’t he?”

“Everyone on this server knows payback,” Martyn mutters, mostly to himself. “Even Scar knows payback. Damn good at it too.”

The jester makes a tsk sound towards him, and that’s when he knows that the ghosts are definitely pretending he’s not there, besides the whole all-three-of-them-are-staring-directly-at-him thing. “Ah-ah, but there’s a difference between how they do it and we do it. When they do it, it’s very…”

“Vanilla?” Lux ghost supplies.

“Boring?” Rat ghost drawls.

The jester ghost ponders a moment, that manic grin still on their painted face, before answering: “Simple. This server only knows simple payback. Us, on the other hand, we’re grand. Dramatic!”

Sure, like Martyn could be more dramatic than spawning three withers, or blowing himself up to kill someone else, or breaking a truce to go on a murder spree and win the game entirely. Like that’s even possible. Like the Watchers would allow that sort of thing on top of all the curses.

“So?” Martyn chides, about two seconds away from leaving and just moving bases entirely. “What do any of you have to do with this?!”

“So,” Rat says, and they have finally stopped ignoring him, “be like us, Martyn. Don’t just go to war, be the war.”

“Fight like nothing else matters.”

“And revel in the catharsis when it’s done.”

And then all three of them start laughing, filling the air with the sounds of bells and chaos and violence before disappearing in the blink of an eye. In their place, a single stick of TnT, with a note tied to it:

A pipe bomb for your troubles :)

Martyn throws it across the mesa, and promptly goes to sleep, deciding that even if lonely, he’s damn glad that he’s not whoever the hell those ghosts were.

[lusi-raul]

Idk but the potential of this season being the backstory of limited life has been in my head since the first episodes came out. At the very least the Clockers and TIES origin story.

Like how Cleo was with Skizz and Tango at the start but decided to live with Etho instead because she can’t deal with the team names the other two spits out. Skizz and Tango plotting to recruit Etho next session to spite Cleo for abandoning them which if Etho accepts it next session will be 3/4 of TIES forming. Tango being insistent on having 4 people in the alliance. If next session, Etho joins Tango and Skizz, i don’t care what anyone says. This season is the prequel to Limited Life. It’s a Canon event because this explains why Cleo and Etho got “divorced”. If somehow Bdubs and Scar gets “adopted/taken care of/kept alive by” Cleo and/or Etho my delusions will be solidified and there is no telling me otherwise.

Anyways I am enjoying this season so far. I love how I am very frustrated that episode 2 isn’t here because it means I am looking forward to more.

For next session, I wonder if Bdubs will embrace being a mounder or abandon them for other allies. For now I think the Gem and the Scotts are the most powerful imo purely because they are the most careful in protecting the hearts that they have. They are also the group that are most loyal to each other as of now. I look forward to the Heart Foundation and in their endeavor to steal hearts throughout the server. I think Martyn will reroll for a harder task next session. The dude is a prime candidate rn to overthrow Jimmy from being the first to die this season.

Winner prediction: someone from the Gem and Scotts (imagine Gem wins on her first ever life series lol)

[betweenlands]

zedaph or martyn inthelittlewood!!

both again

zedaph:

First impression: oh yoooo it’s the other guy that was in minecraft toy box alongside simplysarc! i didn’t know he was a hermit, i wonder what he’s up to?

Impression now: SCIENCE GUY OF ALL TIME. severely underrated hermit. i love him a lot and he deserves to go apeshit. incredibly brilliant redstoner

Favorite moment: idk man like all of s8. The Chamber was brilliant

Unpopular opinion: whoooboy. okay. potential Hot Take: i really, really feel like people tend to infantilize him and/or heavily diminish the role he has in team ZIT, to the point where it feels like some people don’t even really care about him as a character compared to impulse and tango? like for some reason there’s been a big uptick in zedaph content that literally could not be further apart from the way zedaph actually works as a person and hm. don’t like that!

Favorite relationship: uh i’ll be honest i don’t have a favorite dynamic of his rn. they’re all roughly equal in my mind. would love to put him in the same room as grian for longer than just a base swap and shake them a little bit. also obviously the dynamic i have wholesale invented between him and sarc Owns, but that’s because i made it up for myself

Favorite headcanon: @autisticlalna‘s alpha-z au, baybee! i really love the added layer of depth that comes with the implications of “zed is a clone of The Original Original Lalna That Worked At Yoglabs” and i think it adds a fun addition to his sciencey thing. it’s just really unique and also it means he can be little a sinister. as a treat

Idea for a story: uhhhhhh idk what if zedaph invented a new weapon called a gun i’d like to write a sequel to stormwatching the sandbox someday! of course, that relies on simplysarc uploading enough for me to squeeze more lore out of him, but. yeah

martyn:

First impression: oh yooo there’s a yog in this grian series? i didn’t know grian knew any yogscast members! i don’t know much about martyn but i’m excited to see where this goes!

Impression now: i rattle him gently and his one mcc coin falls out of his pocket. every time i watch his teams in mcc they do absolutely awfully and the one time i didn’t watch his team, he won. i’m very sorry martyn. also his lore is alright i guess

Favorite moment: i honestly think his double life series through cleo is hilarious in every possible way and it kinda owns

Unpopular opinion: ...yeah i’m still not a fan of the watchers lol. i tend to justify it with “this is some kind of entity pretending to be the watchers” but i just do not vibe with watcher lore. i feel bad because i know his lore isn’t intentionally the exact same as the fanon watchers i have disliked for so long, but it’s way too close coincidentally for me to be comfortable with it

Favorite relationship: just like with 3rd life ren. its renchanting duo. how could it ever be anything else. however also like i’ve mentioned in previous asks i would go absolutely insane over the thematic implications of a true impulse-martyn day one alliance in a traffic game, you would never get me to shut up

Favorite headcanon: anything bridging third life and yogscast i am SUPER down for. i think @strifesolution is the person i’m thinking of who likes drawing explicit parallels between the sacrifice at black heart altar and whatever the hell parvis and strife are doing in blood and chaos? and i think that OWNS.

Idea for a story: ohhh i dunno this is a hard one. maybe something with hopperhawk martyn, like he gets trapped in the breaker world that is trafficseries and then when he busts out he promptly decides he wants to dimension dive into other dangerous realities? yeah. maybe that

[dvp95]

quiet on widow’s peak (3)

pairing: dan howell/phil lester, pj liguori/sophie newton/chris kendall rating: teen & up tags: paranormal investigator, youtuber phil lester, dan howell is not a youtuber, online friendship, slow burn, strangers to lovers, nonbinary character, trans character, background poly, phil does some buzzfeed unsolved shit and dan is a fan word count: 3.1k (this chapter), 9.5k (total) summary: Phil’s got a list of paranormal experiences a mile long that he likes to share with the world. Abandoned buildings, cemeteries, and ghost stories have always called his name, and a particular fan of his has a really, really good ghost story.

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

Interviews used to be Phil's least favourite part of this job. The research was always captivating, the filming was always fun, the editing was always challenging, but talking? To people? About things? Absolutely not.

He still doesn't love doing it, but he's long past the point of begging Martyn or Ian to pretend to be him on the phone.

The curtains in Phil's room are open for once, letting natural light in so he doesn't look as dark on the Skype screen. His eyes keep drifting to himself, distracting him as he tries to fix his hair or laments not getting out of his pyjamas. This is his fourth interview of the day, and he's starting to hate the process with a renewed fervour.

"Okay, thank you," he says, clicking out of the screen record window. "Can I message you here if I have any further questions, or would you prefer this to be your final statement?"

"Oh, um," the girl says, her eyes round with some kind of emotion that Phil can't be bothered to parse. "No, no, that's... that's all I saw. I don't have anything else. But you can still... message me, if you like."

Ah. Phil makes a face that he hopes reads as apologetic and not panicked. "No, I - sorry. Gay. Just interested in your ghost."

"Oh!" she says again, looking more puzzled than Phil thinks she has any right to after a forty minute conversation where he mostly just asked her clarifying questions that she kept dodging. She tucks some of her long hair behind her ear and shakes her head. "Sorry, that's just - you haven't said that online."

Phil isn't very good at knowing when people are lying to him, but now he's definitely suspicious of the half-assed testimony he'd gotten from this girl. He sighs. "Okay, you know who I am, then?"

"I mean, I looked you up when you messaged me about a video and all," she says. "Wanted to know if you were a creep or, like, legit."

Okay, that's fair enough. Phil supposes that if he were a girl in uni and a stranger asked to video chat, he'd also do a little digging first. He still doesn't quite believe her story, though - most of it matches what she'd written on Facebook, word for word, and she didn't go into detail on anything she claimed happened.

"Right, of course," says Phil, feeling awkward and exposed.

Her eyes are wide and blue and she can see into his room, into his life, and she's giving him this look like she thinks she knows something about him. He hates this feeling.

"That a secret, then?" she asks.

"No," Phil says. "It's just not relevant to my job. I don't have a lot of ghouls asking me out."

She doesn't laugh. Phil is getting more and more uncomfortable by the second, and he's wondering if it's worth it to hang up on a potential lead - no matter how dubious her claims - when she says, "Well, alright. I won't tell anyone anyway."

"Thanks," Phil says automatically. He doesn't particularly care if she does or not, but he does want this call to end as soon as possible. "And thanks for your time. Message me if you think of anything else you forgot to mention about the Wilkins place or if you know of someone who's seen something."

Before she can even respond, Phil hits end on the call and groans, resting his forehead on his thumbs for a moment.

Unsurprisingly, this is giving him a migraine. It doesn't take much to make the twinge of a headache turn to insistent throbbing, because Phil's body hates him and overreacts to everything.

Phil takes a couple of deep breaths before he comes out of hiding. He attaches the final screen recording to the email he's already got open and ready to send to Martyn. After a moment's thought, he CCs PJ and Sophie in and adds, Nobody sounds credible except the second person to me, so... it's not looking good lol, before hitting send.

He takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes for a moment. Interviews are still draining for him, especially when they don't go as planned, and Phil's starting to get the impression that there's nothing to even find at the Wilkins place.

But. Phil pauses, considers his options. He hasn't interviewed everyone, has he.

Before he can talk himself out of it, Phil shoves his glasses unceremoniously back onto his face and opens Tumblr. Winnie hasn't said anything to him so far today, so Phil feels only a little like he's bothering them when he shoots off a quick, Hey! I just finished interviewing the sources you gave me and most of them aren't very promising. Would you consider letting me ask you some questions to round out the video?

me?????, Winnie replies almost immediately. i didnt even see anything?? like im happy to answer questions but idk how much use ill b in an INTERVIEW

I know! And you don't have to lmao so don't feel pressured or anything but you know so much more about the place than they do. Everyone claimed that they didn't know other people were having paranormal experiences.

oh bullshit, Winnie says. Phil is surprised into a huff of laughter.

There's a part of Phil, fuelled by anxiety and uncertainty, that worries Winnie is just pulling an elaborate joke on him. That part of him feels a little more at ease every time he actually talks to Winnie. They just seem... genuine. And maybe Martyn would disagree, would blame Phil's desperation to see the best in people, but there's a reason Phil doesn't tell Martyn everything.

Before Phil can agree with Winnie's colourful derision, his laptop beeps again. i look like an ogre rn but i can voice chat if you rly think itll help

It would!!, Phil assures them. The tender spot behind his eyes twinges again, serving as a reminder. Can I call in like an hour? I've got a headache from the screen lol

sure i really have nothing else going on today

--

So it's later in the day, late afternoon light still streaking through Phil's window, when Phil sits back down at his computer and adds the Skype username Winnie gave him. His head still hurts a bit, but it isn't all-consuming now that he's had another coffee and some painkillers. The padded headphones feel good to put over his ears, blocking out most of the typical noises from such a full house and a busy street, and Phil just sits in the blissful quiet for a moment before he sends a voice call request.

It gets picked up almost immediately, and Phil presses a smile into his palm before he says, "Hi! Can you hear me alright?"

There's a beat. Phil waits, in case Skype is lagging as usual, but he's opening his mouth to repeat himself by the time he gets a response.

"Yeah," says Winnie. "I can hear you."

Phil isn't really proud of himself for being surprised by Winnie's voice. It's just. He knows his viewer demographics, okay, and he has a rough grasp on Tumblr demographics, and the name - alright. It isn't his proudest moment, is his point, because he's expecting a much higher pitch for absolutely no good reason.

In addition to that, his brain automatically tries to classify Winnie's voice as very obviously masculine, and Phil has to push back against that.

"I can hear you, too," Phil says cheerfully, not allowing his anxieties to spill over into the conversation.

"That's good, probably," Winnie says. There's another beat of silence, and then a huff that might be laughter or a sigh comes through Phil's headphones. "Sorry, I - I'm not trying to be fucking weird, this is just surreal."

"Is it?" Phil hums. "But I haven't even asked you about ghosts yet."

A snort - definitely laughter, this time - follows, and Phil is so glad that he's able to put Winnie at ease even if his brain is betraying him. "That's true. I guess it's gotta get weirder from here."

"That's kind of, like, the subtitle of my whole channel," says Phil. After a moment, he frowns. "Subtitle? No. What's the thing, on the poster -"

"Tagline," says Winnie. They sound so amused and warm and, okay, they've got a nice voice. That's not gendered. Phil can think that. "You're thinking of a tagline, you buffoon."

"Tagline," Phil echoes gratefully.

"Don't you," Winnie starts, then stops abruptly. They don't finish the sentence, but Phil can kind of guess what they were going to say. There's the sound of some rustling, like Winnie is getting comfortable, before they change tacks. "Again, I didn't see any of this alleged ghostly activity with my own eyes, but I know the hot goss."

Phil opens the recording program out of habit, nodding even though Winnie can't see him. "That's still really useful at this point," he says encouragingly. He clicks a couple of buttons. "And, yes, I do have an English degree. Thank you for not asking."

Winnie laughs, the sound of it filling Phil's headphones and making it feel like they're in the room with him. It's warm, like everything else about their voice, and absolutely contagious.

"I didn't want you to think I was, like, a big stalker," Winnie says, and Phil can hear the grin in their voice.

"Eh, I know you watch my videos," says Phil. "So I figure you know some stuff about me. You probably know that I'm going to ask this, too, but - is it okay if I record our conversation? I don't need to include it in the video if you don't want me to, but it's still useful for me if I don't so I can, like, actually remember the things you told me."

"Yeah, sure," Winnie agrees easily. They hesitate, for a moment, and Phil waits for whatever the caveat will be. "Uh, can I still swear?"

The question surprises Phil into laughing. "Yeah, you're fine. I can bleep them out."

"Then I am all for it. Ask me the ghost questions, ghost man."

Phil presses record and glances down at his notebook, where he's scrawled some disjointed questions alongside his usual doodling. "Uh, okay. Yes. I am totally a professional."

"If you say so, mate," says Winnie.

"Hush. Okay." Phil finally gets his brain back on track and taps his pen against a question near the end of his list. "So, Winnie, you did all this research into the Wilkins place on your own downtime, but you mentioned that you've been hearing murmurs about it for a while, right?"

"Not that long, actually, I've only been hearing about it since term started," Winnie says, and Phil is struck by how comfortable they suddenly are now that there's a guideline. Or, maybe, now that there's a non-Phil audience. "Which I thought was pretty weird, since I'd been there a couple times since I moved here, and it's a spooky fucking place but nothing to write home about."

That's more or less exactly how Phil feels about the situation, except that he doesn't remember the Wilkins place to be scary at all. Maybe it's gotten worse in the years since, or maybe he's just got a higher threshold for empty, decrepit homes than Winnie does. Either way, he's not sure if he should be relieved or suspicious that their thoughts on it mirror his own so well. He starts a spiral in the corner of his page as he considers the answer.

"So, you never got the impression that it was haunted before?"

"I - can I be perfectly honest?" Winnie asks, and then doesn't wait for a response. "I don't get the impression that it's haunted now. I dunno if people are just making shit up or if they're doing too many drugs, but we all know that ghosts don't actually exist."

Phil snorts. He does have a fairly large number of skeptics who watch his videos to argue in the comments about logical explanations for his findings or to just enjoy watching him fail so much, but he hadn't really expected that from someone who sent him a sourced essay on the topic of ghosts.

He's recording right now, so he's not about to give away the fact that, yeah, he kind of does agree with Winnie on this one. Instead, he keeps his tone neutral and says, "You don't believe in ghosts."

"I don't believe in most things that can't be explained by science," Winnie says, so matter-of-fact that Phil has to smile.

"I don't really believe in science," Phil says, mild.

A beat. "Excuse me?"

"I said I don't believe in science," Phil repeats, doubling down on the joke so he can hear that incredulous pitch of Winnie's nice voice again. "I mean, isn't it all just as made-up as anything else? People just tell us stuff exists and we have to believe them?"

"We believe them," Winnie says slowly, "because it's a fact."

"How do I know that?" Phil asks. He knows how off track he's already gotten, and he decides to cut this part out before he sends the file to Martyn or his friends.

"Because you can. See it. With your eyes." The genuine bewilderment in Winnie's voice is very funny. "Like. What the fuck, Phil. If someone drops an apple and it hits the ground and they're like, 'oh that's gravity', how are you supposed to say, 'uh, no it ain't'?"

Phil leans back in his chair a bit, his spiral turning into an apple. "Because, what if that's just what the apple wanted to do? It's not like we know any of this for sure, Winnie."

"You're fucking with me," Winnie says, but they don't sound very certain.

"I am," Phil admits happily. "Do you remember the first incident that kicked off the Wilkins place rumours?"

"You," Winnie says, and then cackles. They lean away from their mic as they do, but the sound of it still makes Phil feel some secondhand giddiness. He wonders if their laugh has a volume limit, or if it's just going to keep getting louder the funnier Phil is. He is so tempted to put that to the test. "Fuck. You little fucker."

Phil hides his own giggle in the palm of his hand and clears his throat, trying to get back into the professional mindset he'd forced himself to be in for the four earlier interviews.

"Do you need me to repeat the question?" Phil asks. He can't resist teasing, just a bit.

"No, fuck off," Winnie chuckles. They take a deep breath and let it out on a hum, low and thoughtful. "So, there was this shindig during fresher's, which I obviously didn't go to because I'm not a fresher and I'm too old to go to shindigs, but people were talking about how the house was making weird noises. A girl I know - I linked you to her Reddit post - said she saw someone just standing outside the window watching them, but, like, is that really a supernatural occurrence in Rusholme?"

"It's not. And she hit on me as well, so I'm not sure her judgement is trustworthy."

"Sounds like her. Sorry. Anyway, nobody really thought 'ghosts' as much as they thought 'rats in the walls and a pervert on the street', but then - this one didn't get spoken about online. I don't even know how valid it is."

"Word of mouth is how most ghost stories get passed," says Phil. "I'm not going to hold you to citations on rumours."

Winnie huffs a laugh. It's soft, quiet, and Phil almost wishes he could say something ridiculous to make them cackle again. Unfortunately, he has a job to do.

"Fair enough. Well, some idiots spent the night there to see if anything weird would happen," Winnie says, and Phil feels a bit attacked, "and three separate dudes had sleep paralysis."

Phil hums and jots some messy notes down. "In the same night?"

"At the same time," Winnie corrects him. "The other idiots were trying to wake them up for a long time, apparently. They're convinced that the guys who fell asleep were just pulling a prank on them, and maybe they were, but that's when the ball really got rolling."

Out of everything Phil has heard today, this is the most compelling story so far. Maybe that's a good indicator of the Manchester students being full of it - maybe there truly is nothing to find in the Wilkins place - but it piques Phil's interest anyway.

"For someone who only believes in cold, hard science, you're good at telling ghost stories," Phil says.

"Thanks," Winnie says, sounding pleased with themselves. "Learned from the best."

Phil is suddenly very, very glad that this isn't a video call, because he can't stop himself from smiling like an idiot. "Oh, is that what they're calling me?"

Another cackle. Phil doesn't remember the last time he made someone laugh so much without tripping over his own clown feet.

"I never said I was talking about you."

"Uh huh."

"Oh, shut up," says Winnie, and Phil can still hear the laughter in their voice. "Don't you have a bunch of questions to ask or something?"

Phil does. He has a whole list of questions that he should be following. He chews on his pen and looks at the doodle-covered list of things he's meant to ask Winnie. His head still hurts - maybe the extra caffeine didn't help after all - and all he really wants to do is take a nap.

"Yeah," Phil says, reluctant. "I've just got, like, a migraine. Can I call you back another time? This was a really great start."

"Oh, yeah, sure," says Winnie. They've dropped their voice down to something soft, like they're worried that they'll make Phil's headache worse.

"I'm actually going up to check the place out this weekend." Phil isn't sure what makes him say that. He meets up with sources in person, sometimes, but usually only if they've seen something with their own eyes. He just feels comfortable talking to Winnie, far more than he'd felt talking to the other students he'd interviewed today.

Phil doesn't actually extend the invitation, and Winnie either doesn't pick up the hint or doesn't care to.

"That'll be good," they say, still soft. "Get some rest, Phil, you can call me back when your brain stops trying to drill a hole through your temple."

After Phil says goodbye and hangs up, he sits at his desk for a long moment. It feels too quiet, all of a sudden, his padded headphones blocking out all the ambient noise around him. It's good for his head, but Phil is still weirdly disappointed.