I’m Stabby and
I live in spayce
Yu brot me to
Cleen up the playce
But wen u think
Mi task’s comleet,
I haf a knyffe,I stabs ur feet
Tag: stories
Humans are from a Death World – They drink acid
The tap on the outer door was hesitant, but Captain Thrajj heard it. “Come,” he said, his deep voice carrying into the anteroom outside his office.
The door slid open, and Megis Mon, the Thrill Deputy Chief Engineer, sidled into the room. “Captain.”
Thrajj was a Bifroni, and knew that he looked intimidating to a small species like the Thrills. He stayed seated behind his desk and tilted his head to one side. “Deputy Engineer, what can I do for you?”
“It’s the Chief,” said Mon, holding xir first set of hands clasped together, nervously. “I confess to be worried about his mental state and general health.”
Thrills were known to be a race of healers and carers, coming from their evolutionary line of hive-based societies. The Chief Medical Officer on the Endeavour was a Thrill. “Why are you worried?”
“His behaviour has been… erratic, the last three shifts. His voice became faint, then disappeared altogether. Chief Medic Doran signed him off for one week, and he has remained in his quarters with his pet feline ever since. His card has not been logged through the commissary, but he has been seen using food dispensers near his quarters at odd hours of the ship’s cycle. I pulled the last three records of his usage.” Mon carefully placed a data chip on the Captain’s desk.
He picked it up and fed it into the reader on the desk. “Liquid foods.”
“We know how much he likes a solid meal, even more so than the other Humans on the ship. No, I am more concerned with the last item on the list.”
“Why is that? It looks like the standard checmical composition for water.”
“He asked for water at boiling point. I checked the chemical makeup of that last additive. It’s an acid.”
Thrajj frowned. “Acid?”
“He’s requested a gallon of boiling acid then went back to his room, and now he’s not answering his comm line!” said Mon, agitated now.
“Mon, calm down,” said Thrajj, lowering his big, horned head. “How many times have you shipped out with Humans?”
“This is my second cruise, Captain.”
“I was a young ensign when the Human Federation first took to the stars and made contact,” said Thrajj. “This is my fifty-second year of having Humans on my ships. Now, I’ll let you in on a secret.” He leaned forward, and a smile formed on his lips. “With the Humans, there is always an explanation. They are a hardy species, they come from a homeworld that will kill you or I, but not only did they survive it, they tamed it. Then they went into space, and they tamed a lot of other worlds as well. And with Humans, there is always a reasonable explanation. Come, we shall go and see what the Chief Medic has to say, and then we shall go and see Chief MacDonald.”
===
“I signed him off for one ship week, that is correct,” said the CMO, another Thrill who went by Doran Dom. “He has a mild viral infection, but one I have had experience in dealing with in the past. it is not transmissible to any of the other crew except other Humans, so it appears as if he has quarantined himself to avoid infecting others.”
“Have you any idea why he would request a gallon of boiling acid?” asked Thrajj.
“As to that, I have no idea,”said Dom. “His mental state when he left here was fine.”
===
“Cap’n”, said the broad voice of Chief MacDonald. “I’d offer to let you in, but I don’t want the crew catching what I have.”
He sounded… hoarser that he normally did, as though his voice hadn’t been used in a few days and he was trying to remember how to use it. The tiny viewscreen on the panel outside his room showed the Chief’s face, as much of it as could be seen behind the flaming red beard.
“That’s fine, Chief, we can talk like this. Your deputy is very worried about you.”
“Ach, I’m fine. Or I will be in another few days. I have the dispenser down the hall and Pancake here to keep me company.” He hoisted the calico cat into the camera’s view. Pancake miaowed.
“Can you explain the boiling acid you requested from the dispenser?” asked Mon, fretfully.
“Boiling acid?” repeated MacDonald, a look of puzzlement on his face.
“Your last three requests from the dspenser were two heplings of a hot liquid meal, and a gallon of boiling acid. We’’d like to know what that’s for,” said Thrajj.
The Chief stared for a second, before bursting out laughing.
“Oh, stars, oh my, that’s…” he broke off, tears of mirth running down his face. “I requested hot water with lemon, so I could add honey to it for my sore throat. It’s an old method of getting fluids and electrolytes into a sick person. Did you think I would do something stupid with it?”
“Thrills have a duty of care to their comrades,” said Mon stiffly.
“Mon, my friend, you could have asked and I would have told you. Look, when you say boiling acid, it makes it sound so much worse than it is. It’s citric acid, from fruits grown on Earth. We take the fruit and slice it up, we add honey from bees, and we pour hot water on top and mix it all up.”
“You weren’t answering your comm!” xe shouted.
“I apologise,” said the Chief gravely. “I was probably asleep. I took a pill last night to help me sleep.”
“How soon will you be back to work?” asked Thrajj.
“If Chief Dom will sign me off, I can be back the day after tomorrow. I feel much better, but I’d rather wait and make sure I’m completely clean before I rejoin the crew.”
“Very well, Chief. Thank you for your time.”
“Thank you, Captain, Deputy.”
“See?” said Thrajj, once the screen had gone dark. “Always a reasonable explanation.”
“Boiling. Acid.”
Thrajj snorted. “This is nothing. Come, we shall have a drink and I will tell you of the time a bunch of Humans taped a knife to a cleaning robot…”
city monsters tend to be harder to find, and for good reason. city ppl are so used to weird shit happening on the daily, that sometimes monsters dont really have to come up w/ an elaborate excuse for existing. they hide in plain sight.
like lamp posts? you think those are government-issued street lights? get real.
A single mom moves into a new apartment with her young son, only to find out it’s inhabited by a poltergeist. At first she’s spooked, but comes to realize that the poltergeist is helping to raise her son.
I’d watch it.
It’s like ‘The Others’, except that everyone just kind of… gets used to seeing each other. There are two families sharing one house, and okay, one family is a bit dead, but they’re all figuring things out as they go and it’s super handy to have a spare parent or two around.
*
“Mom, I’m home!”
“She’s out shopping, go do your homework.”
“Aunt Ingrid, they didn’t even HAVE homework when you were alive, why are you BUGGING me – “
“When I was alive we churned butter instead of our mother going to the store to buy it, do you want to learn how to churn butter?”
“Fine, okay, homework it is.”
*
“David, don’t walk through the walls.”
“Opening the door is too hard.”
“Then walk through the DOOR like your sister. Respect the conventions at least.”
“Fiiiiiinnne…”
*
“Mom, what are you doing?”
“Fixing the fence.”
“Uncle Roger, are you possessing my mom?”
“We tried just having me tell her how to do it, but it was taking too long and she got frustrated.”
“It’s WEIRD, though.”
“Do you want to do this?”
“No, I – “
“Too late. Come and learn how to fix this. You’re the man of the house now.”
“NOBODY SAYS THAT ANY MORE, UNCLE ROGER.”
*
“Did you have a fight with David?”
“No.”
“Then why are you both making that face?”
“There’s no FACE.”
“That’s what he said.”
“We didn’t have a FIGHT, okay…”
“Aunt Ingrid is worried, she says he’s been moping all morning. He’s barely visible half the time.”
“Look, we didn’t have a fight, I just asked him how he died and then it got weird.”
“STEVE YOU DO NOT ASK PEOPLE HOW THEY DIED THAT IS SO RUDE.”
“Mom, it came up, okay, it wasn’t just out of nowhere!”
“YOU APOLOGIZE RIGHT NOW.”
*
“Steve! David! Isobel! Who broke this vase?”
“Meteor did it.”
“It was not the dog! Which one of you was throwing things in the house?”
“No, really, Mom, it was Meteor.”
“And how did the dog get up on the mantlepiece?”
“Uh…”
“ISOBEL WERE YOU LEVITATING THE DOG AGAIN?”
*
“This is completely inaccurate.”
“Roger…”
“I mean, look at those clothes. I’ve never seen *anyone* dressed like that.”
“They weren’t very careful about accurate costuming in these old movies.”
“I read ALL the Sherlock Holmes stories when they were first published and I ASSURE you he was a GENTLEMAN, not like – “
“Roger, will you just let us watch the moving pictures in peace?”
“But they’re WRONG.”
“We don’t care. Shush.”
*Roger mutters about bossy women and levitates popcorn*
*
“Steve, what happened to your face?”
“I got into a fight.”
“I would surmise from your bruises that you lost.”
“I always lose.”
“Oh, we can’t have that! Come, I will teach you the manly art of fisticuffs.”
“ROGER NO.”
*
“Aunt Ingrid, can you teach me how to make pie?”
“Of course I can… why? I know boys do a lot of things now that girls used to, I understand that, but why pie?”
“I like pie.”
“I can make you a pie if you just want to eat pie.”
“… Ava likes pie too.”
“That girl who lives down the street?”
“Yeah…”
“Then I’ll help you make the pie. What kind?”
“She likes cherry.”
This is basically what happened by the end of Beetlejuice.
tell me a weird story
You want a true story?
Pick between “the time i killed a rat and tried to summon Satan to make me get better grades when i was 11” and “the time there were ‘hands’ in the walls” story
You want an untrue story? I have a million just lmk
RED WHAT THE EVERLOVING HECKITY HECK IS THE WALL HAND STORY
So: the year is 2010, me and my two siblings are sleeping in one 6 x 8 room together, and my brother is like five or six.
One night he gets up and he’s like “there are hands in the walls!”
Naturally all of us went “tf does that mean???” and kinda ignored it as normal kid nightmares.
The next night he did the same thing. And the night after that. And the night after that. And then i also started hearing this….tapping and scraping noise from inside the wall.
(i assumed it was from the heater. Go figure.)
So the bathroom in that house was right next to our bedroom, right? And i’m me, meaning i read a lot and don’t like curfews, which ultimately meant that I used to sit in thr bathroom reading until my parents figured out what i was doing and took my books and kicked me out for however long they managed to get me to stay out. And iirc that was before we started redoing the bathroom so there was this like kinda nasty tile and kinda nasty bathtub and, well, yeah.
So i get into my book and I start focusing and i wind up hyperfocused, no surprise there.
And then a rat crawled out of the bathtub drain and ran under the sink, and on its way there it got close enough to actively distract me. I stg i nearly had a heart attack.
Turns out the “hands” in the walls ware a whole bunch of mice and rats we didn’t know were there LMFAO
….okay, you can’t just not tell the trying to summon Satan story now, how can it even compete?
I fucked up my hands today, so i’ll do it tomorrow, but, if you want a v rough overview: 11 year old steals power tools, kills rat For The Summoning™, lights fire with aforementioned stolen power tools, falls in pond, sneaks back inside, goes to sleep, pretends innocence in the morning
omg
Your church-going, God-worshipping sister adopted a small child and you’re excited to see them. But when you do, the child is a menace. They’re throwing things everywhere, setting furniture on fire with seemingly nothing, chanting in Latin to summon demons, but the weirdest thing is that your sister doesn’t seem to mind.
“You literally adopted the antichrist, Anne. What the fuck.”
“Yeah, I knew when I saw him at the orphanage. I figured if the kid had some decent fucking parenting that we could avoid the whole ‘Revelations’ shite. Nasty business, that.”
George, who’s name has been kindly changed from Damien, approaches his new mother with a huge spider in his hands. It promptly bursts into flames.
“Good job, love. Now go find the rest.” George’s face makes no expression, but his eyes shine when he recieves a pat on the head for his efforts.
As the months go by, George seems to settle down. He adjusts to school, friends, and the positive reinforcement Anne gives him. She encourages the good he does, even though the powers he uses aren’t “good”. When she gets calls from the school, it’s about a rambunctious boy that won’t sit still. Not a destroyer of the world and innocence.
It’s at Christmas dinner, that you let slip your amazement to your mother. How good Anne is for him and how he’s improved a lot. Still summoning hellhounds for games of fetch, though.
“Oh, he’ll forget how to do that when he falls in love the first time,” Your mother laughs, smiling wide.
“How do you know that,” you ask bewildered.
“Because, you did.”
okay so someone please write the story of the family of super-low-key holy warriors who have made it their mission to locate the antichrist in every generation (because when one gets spoiled they try AGAIN) and adopt them and love them into not being the antichrist anymore, thus perpetually delaying the apocalypse
delaying the apocalypse via good parenting I love this
an incomplete list of unsettling short stories I read in textbooks
- the scarlet ibis
- marigolds
- the diamond necklace
- the monkey’s paw
- the open boat
- the lady and the tiger
- the minister’s black veil
- an occurrence at owl creek bridge
- a rose for emily
- (I found that one by googling “short story corpse in the house,” first result)
- the cask of amontillado
- the yellow wallpaper
- the most dangerous game
- a good man is hard to find
some are well-known, some obscure, some I enjoy as an adult, all made me uncomfortable between the ages of 11-15
add your own weird shit, I wanna be literary and disturbed
The Tell-Tale Heart, The Gift of the Magi, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County, Thank You Ma’am
the box social by james reaney. i remember we all had to silently read it in class, and you would hear the moment everyone reached the Part because some people would audibly go “what”
wHat did I just put my eyes on
“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury
Not quite a short story, but read in class: “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” from The Twilight Zone
Harrison Bergeron, Cat and the Coffee Drinkers
“Where are you going and where have you been” by Joyce carol oates
“The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury
the lottery by shirley jackson
i can’t believe Roald Dahl’s “The Landlady” wasn’t already mentioned
and also it’s not so much unsettling as more absurdist but “The Leader” by Eugene Ionesco definitely made me go wtf
Ett halvt ark papper.
I cried so much.Ночь у мазара, А. Шалимов
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury
Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby, by Donald Barthelme
I read Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer In A Day” in seventh grade (it wasn’t assigned, I was just going through my textbook for new stuff to read) and as a bullied kid with SAD, it Fucked Me Up.
An Ordinary Day with Peanuts, by Shirley Jackson
Eh, this was more like community college, but The Star by Arthur C. Clarke
Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
and this story that I can’t remember the name of and can’t find, though it might be by O. Henry? it’s about a bunch of demons who want to stop Santa Claus from going through with Christmas, and he must travel through the mountains they inhabit to escape their vices? (good christ I can’t remember the name for the life of me)
Ok but the laughing man and a good day for bananafish but j.d. Salinger
The City (195) Ray Bradbury. An intense commentary on colonialism and space exploration. I read it for a sci fi survey class.
Another short story I read in that sci fi class was Vaster than Empires and More Slow (1971) by Ursula K. Le Guin. A commentary on humanity and how human we believe ourselves to be. Also, an interesting commentary on mental health.
In the Woods Beneath the Cherry Blossoms in Full Bloom, written in 1947 by Ango Sakaguchi. It made my skin crawl the first time I read it.
Also going to recommend For A Breath I Tarry by Roger Zelazny, a commentary on whether AI can become human in a future without humans: http://www.kulichki.com/moshkow/ZELQZNY/forbreat.txt
whoever posted “The Laughing Man” and “A Good Day For Bananafish” is Correct
- the scarlet ibis
- marigolds
- the diamond necklace
- the monkey’s paw
- the open boat
- the lady and the tiger (I assume you meant Stockton’s The lady or the tiger?)
- the minister’s black veil
- an occurrence at owl creek bridge
- a rose for emily
- the cask of amontillado
- the yellow wallpaper
- the most dangerous game
- a good man is hard to find
- The Tell-Tale Heart
- The Gift of the Magi
- The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County
- Thank You Ma’am
- The box social
- The Veldt
- The Monsters are Due on Maple Street
- Harrison Bergeron
- Cat and the Coffee Drinkers
- Where are you going and where have you been
- The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury
- The lottery by shirley jackson
- The Landlady
- The Leader
- Ett halvt ark papper.
- Ночь у мазара, А. Шалимов
- A Sound of Thunder
- I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream
- All Summer in a Day
- Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby
- An Ordinary Day with Peanuts
- The Star
- Lamb to the Slaughter
- The laughing man
- A perfect day for bananafish
- The City (link goes to compendium of short stories)
- Vaster than Empires and More Slow (1971) by Ursula K. Le Guin.
- In the Woods Beneath the Cherry Blossoms in Full Bloom
- For A Breath I Tarry
All of Flannery O’Connor’s shorts.
I didn’t read it in a text book, but “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” haunted me for life.
I read most of Ray Bradbury’s stuff as a kid, and I remember being deeply horrified by almost all of it. “All Summer in a Day” was probably the worst, though, because holy shit I could relate to that girl. Could never remember the title, though, so thank you guys for the list!
Also of note: Harlan Ellison wrote one of the best episode of TOS Trek, “The City on the Edge of Forever”. The original screenplay is haunting.
there’s always that jerk named kevin that shows up in cartoons
it’s a bitch name
anyone remember the kevin story
What is the Kevin story?
someone once made a legendary post on reddit, asking who is the dumbest person youve ever met. Kevin wasn’t special needs or anything, but he sure was one interesting character. the gist of it can be found in these bullet points:
“
It was by some incredible fluke that his family hadn’t been wiped off
the face of the Earth years ago. Odds are his entire heritage was based
on blind luck and some type of sick divine intervention that saves his
family every time a threat presents itself. Kevin was the genetic
pinnacle of this null achievement….So here’s a list of events that made it abundantly clear that god exists and he’s laughing uncontrollably:”
- Kevin
ate an entire 24 pack of crayons, puked, and then did it again the next
day. This is 9th grade. I have no idea where he got crayons.- Kevin’s
dad wrote tuition checks and mailed them to me…his English teacher.
This was a public school. When I gave it back to Kevin, voided, to give
to his dad with a brief note explaining that this is a public school,
Kevin got in trouble for trying to spend it at 711 after school.- Kevin was removed from the culinary arts program after leaving a cutting board on the gas stove and starting a fire….twice
- Kevin threw his lunch at the School Resource Officer and tried to run away. He ran into a door and insisted it wasn’t him.
- Kevin
stole my phone during class. I called it. It rang. He denied that it
was ringing. (Not that it wasn’t his, not that he did it…..no, he
denied that the phone was actually ringing). He tried it three times
before the end of the year.- Kevin
called the basketball coach a “Motherfucking Bitch” during gym.
Basketball tryouts were that afternoon. Kevin tried out. It didn’t go
well.- Kevin’s
mom could never remember which school he went to. She missed several
meetings because she drove to other schools (none of which he ever went
to)- Kevin tazed himself in the neck before a football game
- Kevin
kept a bottle of orange koolaide in his backpack for about 4 months. He
thought it would turn into alcohol. He drank it during homeroom and
threw up.- Kevin said the N-word a lot. Kevin was white. The highschool was 84% black. Kevin got beat up a lot.
- Kevin stole another student’s Iphone….and tried to sell it back to them.
- Kevin
didn’t understand that his grade was dependent on tests, quizzes,
homework, classwork, and participation. Kevin finished his first
semester with a 3% average. He tried to bribe me with $11.- Kevin spit on a girl and said “You should get out of those wet clothes”. The girl was the Spanish Student Teacher.
- Kevin tried to download porn onto a computer in the library…..at the circulation desk….while he was logged on.
- Kevin
asked a girl to prom (he was in 9th grade and freshmen don’t go to
prom) by asking for her phone number and then texting her his address- Kevin got gum in his hair, constantly.
- Kevin
regularly tried to cheat on assignments by knocking the pile over,
grabbing one before I had picked them all up, and then writing it name
on it wherever there was room.- Kevin
had several allergies, but neither his parents nor he could remember
what they were. They were very concerned that “the holiday party” would have peanuts. When they finally
got a doctor’s note….he was allergic to amoxicillin- Kevin
and his parents took a trip to Nassau and forgot all their luggage at home. I didn’t believe
him when he told me until I talked to him mom, who told me 1st thing
when I saw her at the bi-weekly meeting.- Kevin’s grandfather apparently died in a chainsaw accident. I can only assume God was looking the other way that day.
tell me a weird story
You want a true story?
Pick between “the time i killed a rat and tried to summon Satan to make me get better grades when i was 11” and “the time there were ‘hands’ in the walls” story
You want an untrue story? I have a million just lmk
RED WHAT THE EVERLOVING HECKITY HECK IS THE WALL HAND STORY
So: the year is 2010, me and my two siblings are sleeping in one 6 x 8 room together, and my brother is like five or six.
One night he gets up and he’s like “there are hands in the walls!”
Naturally all of us went “tf does that mean???” and kinda ignored it as normal kid nightmares.
The next night he did the same thing. And the night after that. And the night after that. And then i also started hearing this….tapping and scraping noise from inside the wall.
(i assumed it was from the heater. Go figure.)
So the bathroom in that house was right next to our bedroom, right? And i’m me, meaning i read a lot and don’t like curfews, which ultimately meant that I used to sit in thr bathroom reading until my parents figured out what i was doing and took my books and kicked me out for however long they managed to get me to stay out. And iirc that was before we started redoing the bathroom so there was this like kinda nasty tile and kinda nasty bathtub and, well, yeah.
So i get into my book and I start focusing and i wind up hyperfocused, no surprise there.
And then a rat crawled out of the bathtub drain and ran under the sink, and on its way there it got close enough to actively distract me. I stg i nearly had a heart attack.
Turns out the “hands” in the walls ware a whole bunch of mice and rats we didn’t know were there LMFAO
….okay, you can’t just not tell the trying to summon Satan story now, how can it even compete?
Filch has a doctorate in art conservation and has definitely read Hogwarts A History
Actaully speaking of PoA, can we fuckin talk about Filch and his art credentials?
The portrait of the fat lady gets slashed and Dumbledore hands her off to Filch to get restored?
AND FILCH DOES IT, AND DOES IT WELL?
The next time we see her there is NO mention of anything like, oh she’s back but you can kinda see where she was cut… NO. She comes back in PEAK CONDITION.
Restored by Filch, who *has no magic.*
He restored this however many hundreds of year old painting *by hand.*
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH SKILL MUST HAVE BEEN INVOLVED HERE?
This 100% changes the character of Filch. Like I’ve only ever seen him portrayed as this kind of head janitor kind of character, movies style, but like. Why? Why would Hogwarts need that if it’s full of house elves? According to Harry Oblivious Potter, probably cause Dumbledore felt bad and gave him a shitty job but one he could at least do and still be in the wizarding world.
WRONG. It’s cause that’s not his actual job.
Listen.
Dung bomb goes off in a classroom? Long night for the house elves.
Dung bomb goes off in a 300 year old suit of armor? Long six to eight weeks for Argus Filch.
Fanged frisbee tears up an irreplaceable tapestry?
Filch.
Peeves draws dicks on a portrait of the founders?
Filch.
All these damn kids in and out of here every day acting like dumbasses and blowing stuff up when it’s already bad enough they keep tracking dirt and *breathing* all over everything?
Filch.
Now how about, how does Filch know all the secret passages? A combination of things. Probably paintings told him about some. You spend weeks restoring a portrait of someone who helped build the place which lives and moves and speaks in their voice and you’re bound to at least talk a bit, if not learn a few things. But many he probably found on his own, either by wit or by study- he’s gotta be entrenched in tr history of this place. If Binns hadn’t come back as a ghost Filch could probably teach history of magic in his place.
He keeps the place in order such that generations next will still have it, and said generations next show him no god damn respect for that. He’s bitter for a lot of excellent reasons.
This post just made my morning.
@wizardlogic @poplitealqueen curse and bless you for this post because I – I never noticed that detail. I NEVER NOTICED THAT DETAIL BUT NOW THAT YOU POINTED IT OUT
“DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH SKILL MUST HAVE BEEN INVOLVED HERE?
“
YES, OP. YES I DO, BECAUSE MY MOM LITERALLY RESTORES PAINTINGS FOR A LIVING! Oil paintings are one of her specialties and this kind of repair is absolutely possible but it takes YEARS of skill and a SUPER steady hand and a GOOD EYE to do holy shit my ENTIRE VIEW OF FILCH IS UPTURNED TOPSY TURVY DERVY UPSIDEFUCKINGDOWN NOW
From what I recall:
– Slashed, you say? okay, so, if it was a “clean” cut with nothing actually missing, he would likely carefully line it back up but you have to PATCH THE BACK – which takes care and skill and KNOWLEDGE of how to do it right. Also, longer slashes (as might happen with a knife, which I think was the case here) are obviously trickier to line up, requiring more dexterity
– You patch it (if you’re doing it properly) from behind, with another piece of canvas, because canvas is good and sturdy there’s a reason we paint on it but doesn’t that mean he has scraps of the stuff just?? lying around?? or at least somebody got him some asap
– I don’t know what adhesive is used for this if it’s a SMALL slash, but depending on the size, it might be easier to “line the canvas” which means LITERALLY adhering it the original, delicate canvas to a new one with HOT MELTED WAX, which has to be melted ~just so~ so that you’re not damaging the paint (I think it might be a special wax, too, idk, I might be seeing mom tomorrow and ask?? I’ll ask about whether this is also used for the smaller patches if I can remember)
– okay but here’s the tricky part. You’ve gotten it lined up. You’ve patched it. But in order to really and truly HIDE the former tear……..you need to likely do a tiny bit of INPAINTING
– fun fact: this is what it sounds like. You’re painting in the missing parts or messed up parts.
-This means Filch has to have a GOOD eye for color and pattern, and STEADY hand with a brush, because the tear is NOT noticeable.
– he likely also has a good knowledge of the ingredients of oil paint and how to mix/thin/thicken them properly!! FILCH HAS ART TRAINING. LITERALLY. HE’S BEEN TRAINED IN THIS. HE HAS TO BE.
– SIDEBAR: We know (thanks to Colin Creevey’s babbling in Book 2) that Wizarding Photographs move because during the development process, you use some sort of potion to magic it. I would lay good money that there’s something similar that gets added to oil paints, possibly enchanted linseed oil or something, something that would be in the BASE of the paint, since it’s found in all the colors of the magical paintings. He knows how to mix this in, he’s gotta, otherwise this poor woman would have like, a glitch in her painting, right? That’s my headcanon there.
– OH OH I FORGOT!! you never ever EVER want to “match the dirt” on an antique painting you want to match the actual original colors as best you can, so HE HAS TO STRIP THE ORIGINAL VARNISH AND ANY DIRT ON OR UNDER IT BEFORE HE INPAINTS
– THIS IS AN EXTREMELY LONG, DELICATE PROCESS USING OFTEN-NASTY CHEMICAL SOLVENTS. You do it goddamn inch by inch!! with like, Q-tops and cotton balls!! Alternatively, you can use your own spit with Q-tips and Cotton Balls, because spit is the most gentle solvent of all (there’s your Gross Handy Art Restoration Fact of the Day), but either way, jesus, this is a LONG process, it’s EXTREMELY tedious and a lot of really REALLY careful work. Like. My mom, and any decent restorer, will tend to charge HUNDREDS for most restorations, or thousands of dollars for particularly large ones. She charges by one of several Difficulty levels, plus by the square inch because, yeah….that’s a lot of labor. how fucking. big is this painting again???
– then there’s the revarnishing step, because you gotta PROTECT the future painting. or rather, there’s TWO varnishing steps, IIRC because you don’t really want your retouch work to directly lay on the original if you can help it, apaprently? you want it to be removable if you fuck it up or need to redo the repair at any point, apparently?? or something like that. My mom, at least, always does a layer of varnish (tedious in its own right, brushed on carefully to avoid bubbles or streaks) lets it dry for I want to say a day or two it could be longer (I’ll try to remember to ask) and THEN only THEN does she do the inpainting. which you ALSO varnish over. and let dry.
so uh, this might be another case of Jo REALLY getting her timelines awful messy because there’s no fucking way that think took under a few days to fix?? I think we’re looking at over a week MINIMUM, if Filch was really going at it, and that is my not-quite-professional opinion, it might actually be longer
I’m not saying the only way we can reconcile this is by Filch using a time turner to take the painting back in time and start work on it before the fucking school year even starts, but I AM saying that’s one of the only plausible ways I can see that painting getting repaired WITHOUT MAGIC that quickly
but my god, that man must have a really good artistic eye. and like.
it just occurred to me. he’s a squib. he couldn’t get a proper magical education at someplace like Hogwarts, since he cant’ do Charms or Transfigurations or the like, so like?? did he?? go to like a muggle college or something?? did he go to literal art school?? how did that mesh with the magical components of the paintings and other art he might be working on??
DO WIZARDS HAVE AN ART SCHOOL???
ARE ALL WIZARD ARTISTS SELF-TAUGHT??
WAS LEONARDO A WIZARD?? WAS HE SQUIB??? IS THAT WHY HE INVENTED FLYING MACHINE CONCEPTS, BECAUSE HE COULDN”T USE A BROOM?????????I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE BEEN OBSESSING OVER HOW THERE CANNOT POSSIBLY BE ONLY ONE AMERICAN WIZARDING SCHOOL WHEN I COULD HAVE QUESTIONED HOW THEY FUCK THEY HAVE MAGNIFICENT ENCHANTED ART AND TAPESTRIES WITHOUT HAVING WIZARD ART SCHOOLS
and
……….fffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck now i want to fic this??? a little??
@vorpalgirl You made an already brilliant post even more brilliant.
DarkestElemental616 