#Scott Preston

[gerardpilled]

smile with your eyes

[justforbooks]

In 2015 James Rebanks published the bestselling The Shepherd’s Life, a seasonal account of a year in the life of a small-scale sheep farmer in Cumbria. He wanted, he said, to put “the working-class nobodies – our people – back into the books”. In one of the most unforgettable sections, he recalls the epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease that ravaged the UK in 2001. A “contiguous cull” required all sheep within three kilometres of a known outbreak to be slaughtered. Rebanks watched as the animals he had bred and raised were shot, one after the other. “When the last wagon had gone, I went into the barn … sat down in the shadows, held my head in my hands and sobbed.”

Foot-and-mouth devastated Cumbria, wiping out the livestock and livelihoods of nearly 900 farms. That devastation sits at the heart of The Borrowed Hills, Scott Preston’s blistering debut novel. Preston was a boy when the epidemic hit. Like Rebanks, he grew up in the Lake District, where his father was a dry stone waller. He too was frustrated that nothing he read told the story of the land and the people he grew up with in a way he recognised. The Borrowed Hills is an explosive bid to right that wrong.

Steve Elliman is the son of a tenant farmer in a fictional fold of the fells called Curdale Valley. When his father falls ill he chucks in his job as a lorry driver and goes home to help. The smallholding is “scarce a thumbprint” on the valley and rapidly falling into disrepair. Their flock of just 200 sheep live wild on the open fells 1,000 feet up, “higher than where the flycatchers and doves roosted in cragfolds, and higher than where falcons nested watching their dinner below”. When rumours of foot-and-mouth start to spread, Steve isolates the sheep but he cannot save them. The sickness has taken hold at a neighbouring farm and orders are clear. Every animal must be eliminated.

The massacre that follows is unsparing in its matter-of-fact violence. Steve’s first-person narrative is written in his distinctive Cumbrian voice, a vernacular stripped to its bones that encompasses stark prose and sudden startling flashes of poetry. Rifle muzzles are “placed between [the sheep’s] ears and the bullets lined along their backs so each bang stayed inside their heads”. The sheep panic. The squaddies sent to dispatch them panic in their turn. The result is half Tarantino and half pitch-black northern realism, an absurdist horror that slides under the skin and lodges deep.

Later Steve fetches up on his neighbour William Herne’s farm, where the outbreak is rumoured to have started. The sheep that William tried to hide out in the fells have been seen from a police helicopter and gunned down from the sky. The fires incinerating the dead animals burn day and night for a week. “We had burned through everything, even what we’d no right to, rubbed out the stars and hid the moon, and if the night sky wasn’t already black we’d have had a good go at making it.” When the job is finished Steve leaves the valley and goes back to driving lorries, but something in him has changed. He can’t stay away. When he finally returns, William has a plan to get back on his feet, a plan that will push both men into a spiralling nightmare of violence and bloodshed.

Despite the wild beauty of the landscape, there is something claustrophobic about Preston’s novel: the tyranny of a place that demands relentless back-breaking labour and will never pay back what is given. Steve and William’s increasingly feverish venture is not a quest for new frontiers but a frantic struggle to claw back a life that was already falling apart. “That’s what I like about you farm lads,” a man tells Steve. “Know what it is to raise something to be killed.” But like the slaughter of foot-and-mouth, the violence that enmeshes the two men is not heroic. It is ugly and senseless and it destroys lives. It offers no redemption. The best one can hope for is the restoration of a precarious equilibrium, a return to the harsh hardscrabble of before.

This is a sucker-punch of a novel, a viscerally vivid portrait of desperation, edged with knife-sharp black humour and shot through with moments of startling beauty, but there is little hope in it. Angry as it was, Rebanks’s book was a love letter to Cumbria. The connection to the land goes just as deep here, but, bound to a place that demands so much in return for so little, it is a more dysfunctional relationship.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[ramtowncos]

solider - dex poet - scott king - preston

i rest my case.

@theencountertableofficial

[hellsite-hungergames]

THE FIRST WAVE OF TRIBUTES

All tributes (With the exception of hellsite-hall-of-fame, God, Jesus, Tarlton, and Wallace) were chosen randomly, as were the pairs (Again, with the exception of 1, 18, and 32)

Information about the polls will be out a little bit before the polls themselves

Polls will open February 14th in the afternoon/evening (EST)

Second Wave will be announced sometime around 6pm EST

Tribute List under cut

@hellsite-hungergames vs. @hellsite-hall-of-fame

Vace (I Was a Teenage Exocolonist) vs. Herobrine (Minecraft)

Regulus Black (Harry Potter) vs. Edward Cullen (Twilight)

Merlin (Merlin) vs. Florida Man (American Mythology)

Gary the Gadget Guy (Club Penguin) vs. Sunny (Omori)

Benoit Blanc (Knives Out) vs. Ridley (Metroid)

Animal (Muppets) vs. Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson (Hamilton)

Clint (Stardew Valley) vs. Data (Star Trek)

Skunk Ape (Florida) vs. Daniel the Manager (Anon's manager)

Waluigi (Mario) vs. Timmy Turner (The Fairly OddParents)

Meta Knight (Kirby) vs. Castiel (Supernatural)

Death (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish) vs. Prince Caspian (The Chronicles of Narnia)

Katsuya Suou (Persona 2: Eternal Punishment) vs. King Arthur (Monty Python's The Holy Grail)

Squidward's Hopes and Dreams (Spongebob Squarepants) vs. Spiders Georg (Tumblr)

Anya Forger (Spy x Family) vs. Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games)

Hannibal Lecter (Hannibal) vs. Campbell Bain (Takin' Over the Asylum)

Jasper (Steven Universe) vs. Star Butterfly (Star vs. The Forces of Evil)

Tarlton (A completely real fandom) vs. Wallace (Wallace the Living Wall)

Mikhailo "Mickey" Aleksandr Milkovich (Shameless) vs. Dimitri Blaiddyd (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

Duck (Don't Hug Me I'm Scared) vs. Everyone from Cats the Musical (Cats the Musical)

Jay Walker (Ninjago) vs. Miles Vorkosigan (Vorkosigan Saga)

Illyria (Angel: The Series) vs. Evan "Buck" Buckley (9-1-1)

Haymitch Abernathy (The Hunger Games) vs. Richard Gansey III (The Raven Cycle)

Ronald McDonald (McDonald's) vs. Amelia Bedelia (Amelia Bedelia)

Matt (Wii Sports) vs. Oswald Cobblepot (Gotham)

Edward Nygma (Gotham) vs. Tumblr Anon Icon (Tumblr)

Gillion Tidestrider (Just Roll With It) vs. Jedediah (Night at the Museum)

Reigen Arataka (Mob Psycho 100) vs. Willow Rosenberg (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Alex Fierro (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard) vs. Puss in Boots (Puss in Boots/Shrek)

Jessie Prescott (Jessie) vs. George Costanza (Seinfeld)

Leon Scott Kennedy (The Resident Evil Franchise) vs. Han Solo (Star Wars)

God (Universe fandom/Deadbeat dads fandom) vs. Jesus (Christianity fandom)

[dcsnextgaycharacter]

[anthonylovesyou]

back months later with more Scott travis art (I can’t stop drawring him please save me please help please)

What a guy what a fellow (I’m going insane)

@theencountertableofficial

[awnrii]

I fear the encounter table brainrot might be getting to me

[m0thl0ck]

Scott pride art!!!

He is eating a lifesaver bc I didn’t feel like coloring a tongue and I headcannon that he (like most) snacks a ton when he games. Anyways, love yall!!🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵

@theencountertableofficial

(Yo im back for more🖤)

[artfullwishing]

Despite the freeze frame on my face, this is an the encounter table animatic surrounding Dex's growthspert in episode 30 lol

[pierppasolini]

Secret Admirer (1985) // dir. David Greenwalt

[cryptid-time-bby]

I hate that the TET fanbase is so small cause I wanna consume fanart, fics, and posts for weeks on end but I've seen literally everything in this fanbase like 4x over

Plz plz plz need this show to get more traction for my mental health

[sozzsays]

LETS GOOO

[kintsugi-sun]

time for my annual,,,remember that i have a tumblr account,,, 

this is whats living in my brain rent free now.

that is all.

[theencountertableofficial]

Dude is Luke okay after last episode that sounded ROUGH to do

Luke is okay!

Spoilers for Step-Patricide

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Luke said it was VERY therapeutic to scream like that after everything.

[vinylfoxbooks]

I'm so behind on The Encounter Table (brain said, listen to the same 15 first episodes, then never listen again after more come out). I'm on Episode 22 and I fucking love Nibs. Really hope he doesn't die or betray them, but I also have no faith in DMs to be nice. Also Dex's new little gauntlets are sick af

[oceanfairyy]

SLIGHT ENCOUNTER TABLE SPOILERS FOR NEWER EPS!!!! here's another Encounter Table doodle I posted in the Patron server a couple days ago! I LOVED THIS MOMENT SO MUCH LOL. and here's a bunch more doodles I've done the past few days! Much more to come and I'll definitely be dumping most of them here on tumblr :)) I love these characters and story so much!

Also here's some adventure time au drawovers + doodles!

@theencountertableofficial u guys have the funnest podcasts ever!! 100% recommend, plus the patreon server is SO KIND AND WELCOMING!!! Go listen rn, friends!