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foxtophat · 4 years

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MERRY CHRISTMAS IN JANUARY EVERYONE yeah i know ~nothing is fixed~ but whatever, fuck you, have some fanfic

so anyway i’ve been planning this for a while, i’m kinda shocked tho b/c i finished writing it in like less than 3 days??? (aside from editing) usually it takes me longer to at least figure out how to wrap things up, but at least this one was easy money. i’m sure none of the other ones will be so kind to me

this one takes place a month or so after the last one; it’s set in spring 2028 (omfg finally on a new year!!!!) and it has a little something to do with carmina finally getting some chickens!!!! one thing about new dawn that i think was really lacking is the explanation of how life... restarted before the highwaymen. i definitely remember a few houses having chicken coops, too, so i know i’m not crazy putting these feathered friends in. to me, chickens are the most sensible post-apocalyptic pet outside of a dog; easy to care for, provide food while alive AND after death, and they can reproduce easily enough if you’ve got a rooster on hand. i can imagine a family making quite a life for themselves as a poultry farm in the apocalypse!

ugh idk what else to say so i’ll just say it: thank you so much for all of your comments and kudos on this series. i am so stoked to know that my self-indulgent trash is delicious to more than just my possum ass! i’ve had a lot of fun worldbuilding in ubisoft’s playground, and i hope to continue doing more fun stuff that other people will enjoy too!!!

with all that said, i hope you enjoy the fic :) i’ll put it below the cut for you if you don’t wanna leave tumblr, but ao3 looks so much better. anyway, thank you and have a great jan 20th!!!!

Winter melts away the same way it does every year, leaving in its path wet dirt and green buds of spring growth. John, nursing what's likely the last cup of coffee they can wring from this batch of grounds, stares out over the back yard and idly marvels at how quickly the snow had disappeared. Montana had been his first experience with white winters; even though he's gotten used to the changing seasons in theory, though, he can't help but be distracted by it year after year.

Across the yard, situated just in sight by the hangar, John can plainly see Carmina's new chickens looking for breakfast. They're the newest addition to the homestead, but so far John has only had to watch from afar as the Ryes worked to adjust them to their new home. He's not sure who's raising chickens out here, but at least they were willing to barter. Fresh eggs are going to mean a lot more than the dwindling supplies out of Jacob's cache.

The misty-gray of early morning has almost evaporated in the rising sunlight, and still the chickens haven't been fed. John watches them from where he stands, their frustration leading to subdued crows as they scratch at the dirt. He doesn't know who's noisier — them, or Nick and Kim arguing at the table behind him. Thank Christ the wet end of winter is over; John doesn't think he can tolerate much more of their married nagging. On some level, he's glad they don't make a habit of yelling at him instead of each other, but Jesus, he can't wait for them to both get some space from one another.

"This is why we said we weren't gonna do pets, remember?" Nick says. "Because if she got a pet, we would end up taking care of it. Remember?"

"Yes, Nick, I remember."

"Yeah, and here we are!"

Kim sighs. John doesn't have to look to see the exasperated eye-roll that comes with it. "It wasn't me who kept her up late last night! Which one of us was egging her on when she should have been asleep?"

This is exactly why John has never owned a pet. They're more trouble than they're worth, and the only thing they seem to be good for is teaching shitty life lessons to kids who don't care enough to learn. The only good thing about the chickens is that they provide something in return other than obnoxious crowing.

Carmina thumps around upstairs. John isn't looking forward to having to listen to Kim lecture her on responsibility, but he's not thrilled to listen to much more of this bickering, either. If his choices are to stay inside and fester or go out into the first nice day of the year — well, that's not much of a choice, is it?

"Fine," John sighs before either of the Ryes can set their sights on him, "I'll do it."

"Nobody's asking you to do it," Kim replies. "It's Carmina's responsibility."

John shakes his head. "Of course it is. Where's the feed?"

Nick points out a white plastic container sitting on the pass-through to the kitchen. "Not gonna wait for us to boss you around?" he asks.

John picks up the container and rattles it to make sure it's full. "I'm streamlining the process," he replies. "Unless you enjoy giving me orders."

Sure enough, implying Nick might like being a bossy piece of shit is enough to get him to shut up. He sighs with a deep frown at John, who ignores him as he heads out to the coop. It's a petty satisfaction to take the rug out from under Nick's feet, but John's not above it. Not by a long shot.

Some of it might be compensating for the disintegrating peace that had come with winter. Before the blizzard set in, they'd had enough on their collective plates as they prepared for the worst of the season. Afterward, the snow had prevented them from doing much more than what was necessary to survive, and the resulting downtime had settled like a comfortable blanket. Even now, with a few weeks of grating interpersonal interactions, John feels more focused, more rested than he can ever remember feeling. Living underground for eight years, he'd naively thought that he'd gotten enough rest to last him a lifetime — but he'd been strung out on Bliss and trying not to suffocate, and he hadn't known what he was doing. He's starting to suspect that the Bliss might've had a worse effect on him than the myriad other drugs he'd ingested. Hell, he's not sure he's clean even now — but he's managing, and that's what matters.

It's only once he's halfway across the yard that John realizes Kim forgot to argue about him going off on his own. Sure, he's only going as far as the hangar, but it's become something of a pleasantry she uses whenever John pretends to have the freedom to go where he pleases. Her irritation at Carmina and Nick probably made her forget. She's gotten so used to trusting John that she's finally found other things to take up her attention.

Weirdly enough, the casual disregard for his potential backslide irritates him. It really shouldn't. He should be thrilled that he can finally disappear from view for an hour without somebody calling out a search party. He's more than earned it, he thinks, but their trust highlights their naivety. Luckily for them, John means it when he says he's changed — but it's a line they're going to hear time and again from people far less genuine than he's been. They're so willing to help everyone and anyone that they don't even realize how much of a target they're making themselves. John's had to hold his tongue whenever Nick gives free supplies to shifty-eyed tweakers who are "just passing through," and while he trusts Kim not to let anyone obviously suspicious into the house, he doesn't trust her to recognize a cunning liar.

The last thing John needs is for the Ryes to put their trust in the wrong reformed psychopath. At least he's capable of picking up their slack. After all, John has his time at law school and years of psychological abuse under his belt — plenty of real-world experience dealing with unrepentant garbage. He'll notice it when somebody cases the hangar or acts too erratically, and hopefully the Ryes will listen to him if he gets the nerve to voice his concerns.

Not for the first time since summer, John is struck with a newfound respect for Jacob and the role he'd inhabited in the Project. It used to be his job to look out for insurrectionists, and he'd taken on that burden even when John and Joseph would openly dismiss his concerns. John can't imagine how many fires Jacob must've put out while the rest of the family was distracted by the Bliss. Looking back on it now, it's honestly a surprise they maintained their operation as long as they did, considering only one of the four of them was ever sober.

The chickens are hopping at his arrival, scuttling around the dirt and crowing as John reaches the pen. They don't notice him so much as the bin he rattles on approach, full of vegetable cuttings and strange white worms that come out whenever it rains. John doesn't mind one lick — he's never been much of an animal person, and he certainly doesn't care if Carmina's so-called pets notice his existence. Of course, knowing Carmina, she's going to use this as an excuse to shift breakfast duty to John full-time, and John won't have much of a say in the matter.

Well, that's not strictly true, but if Carmina asked, he knows he would do it, if only to give his day more structure. Truthfully, he's grown to depend on routine, when before it was impossible to keep to a schedule that didn't involve other people's expectations of him. There's probably a metaphor to be made about trains on and off the tracks, but John has never been particularly interested in locomotives.

John shakes the dead bugs and scraps out into the pen, watching the hens as they race to be the first to eat. They're perfectly happy now that they've been fed, cooing and clucking as they peck the dirt. They certainly seem content with safety and food — not entirely unlike the survivors living day-to-day in the town and beyond. Sure, John might not always be satisfied by bare sustenance, and one day he'll chafe under the grind of surviving week to week, but for now, he might as well be a dumb chicken crowing in the morning sun.

He throws some more feed into the pen, watching the three hens waddle after their meal. One of them lingers by the fence, freezing for a moment as her head swivels back and forth. She pecks at the dirt away from the feed before hustling after her two companions. John watches as she stops again; when he tosses a few worms in her direction, she pecks briefly at them before lifting her head to survey her surroundings.

The primal sensation of something being wrong nearly overtakes John's reasoning, before he manages to remind himself that a chicken's predators aren't exactly his to worry about. Still, he rattles the container to bring the hens scuttling towards him; all three are easily distracted by food now, but John can't shake the feeling that he'd missed something they hadn't. A fox, maybe? A snake? Anything could be lurking in the woods on the other side of the wash. Not a whole lot that could hurt him , of course, but he's not about to be blamed for Carmina's chickens being eaten by a wild dog.

The fence-line is... nebulous past the hangar, sure, but John's positive Kim doesn't consider the rest of the old airport off-limits. Then again, she might be in the mood to lecture him once she gets through with Carmina. It's a risk he's not sure he's willing to take.

Two chickens continue to eat as one keeps watch, their heads bobbing up and down as they switch off. Their unease mirrors his own, and John can imagine Faith giggling at him for being swayed by some dumb birds.

"Very well, ladies," he sighs, shaking the remainder of their breakfast onto the ground. "Don't let them say I don't care."

The chickens don't give three shits about John's motivations, of course; they watch him go, pecking at the food with increasing carelessness as the distance grows. John rolls his eyes at their sudden fearlessness, half-convinced to let whatever animal is lurking eat them out of spite.

There's a wide swath of dirt behind the hangar, separating it from the mostly-overgrown remnants of Rye Aviation that couldn't be saved. John can see the edge of the chicken pen from here, but the hangar is blocking him from the house. Even though he knows the Ryes trust him not to run off, he still feels distinctly uneasy going somewhere where they can't see him. At this point, Nick would probably only tease him for it, but John's not about to linger out here and risk turning Kim's irritation on himself.

To the right of the derelict hangars is a sparse wedge of trees that have grown in uninterrupted. John knows there's a path cut between the trunks, one he'd made himself while hauling the tire-planters for Kim last year, and there's a long stretch of unused runway beyond it. It isn't a great place for anything bigger than a fox to lurk in. That doesn't explain the feeling of being watched that comes over him as he stops halfway across the empty dirt lot; he looks around, but there's no place for anything to hide out here. The overgrowth on the old hangars can't be more than two feet high, and the bushes in the copse are brambly and sparse. The only place anything could hide would be in the trees, which is why John approaches them with more caution than they're worth.

The thinned underbrush is easy to explore, but John goes carefully as he picks through the trees and bushes. He doesn't know exactly what he's looking for — some sign of predators, whatever those might be — but he doesn't find much. There are some hoof-prints clear in the dirt, curving sharply away from the Rye homestead and back out to the airstrip, which tells John that the goddamn deer are back, probably looking to eat their hard-grown crops. Other than that, there's no sign of anything that might be stalking the hen-house. The ground is still somewhat soft from the rain a few nights ago, but it barely takes the imprint of John's boots as he explores the small grove.

That's why it's such a shock to see the tread of a narrow boot in the dirt by the trunk of one of the trees, well off the beaten path. It's an old print, he thinks — but he doesn't remember the last time any one of them had been out this way. Certainly not since the last time it rained.

An electric shock conducts itself down his spine. Somebody had been out here, hiding here in the trees, and it's only been two, three days since the last rain. John turns, and from his vantage point, he can clearly see the coop and the back of the hangar, but not the house. For that, he'd have to move out of the trees, into direct view of the porch.

It has to be Grace's boot. She's the only one he could imagine creeping around the property with good intentions. But even that explanation doesn't settle the anxious flip of his stomach; he tries not to let it show as he marches from the trees, intent on dragging Nick over and proving to him once and for all that they need to be more goddamn careful about who they let around the property. Somebody is going to want the copper fixtures they've salvaged, even if there's nobody to sell the metal to these days.

John gets halfway back to the coop when he catches something in his peripheral vision. Terrible, primal terror grips him as he fixes his gaze on the trick of the light that had scared him, ready to catch Grace peering at him over the abandoned hangars, or maybe a pack of wild dogs. What he sees instead turns his blood to ice, caught like a deer in headlights as the low-hanging shrubbery and thick vines shift and part for a rising mass of dark brown fur. The shape that rises from the underbrush is a tall, dark smudge against the blue sky, and John nearly swallows his tongue when he sees its face — or the horrifying absence of one, replaced with white, flaking skin and two huge, empty eye-sockets that are fixed on John's position.

It doesn't move. Neither does John, frozen to the spot as the chickens begin to crow and fuss. He can't fathom what he's looking at — a bear, a person, a fucking mutant? — but whatever it is, he suspects it's infected with Bliss. Who knows how many angels ended up underground after the Collapse? What might've happened to them in the years since? All John knows about them is that they're dangerous to everybody but Faith, and Faith died a decade ago. If this is an angel — God, there'll be no stopping it. And if it isn't — then what the hell is it ?

There's no way for John to get from here to the house without the thing chasing him. The hangar is blocking his brutal oncoming murder from the two people who might actually be able to do something about it. He doesn't have to look to know the distance from here to the house is insurmountable.

The creature lifts its arm, and the situation that couldn't get any worse takes an even more horrifying turn as it reveals its weapon of choice: a crudely fashioned bow, the same kind of handmade weaponry that Joseph's followers have been seen with.

All at once, Nick's voice is ringing in John's ears, warning him of what's going to happen if this gargoyle takes him away. The things John hadn't considered before — the Ryes' reputation, Carmina's safety, the hard-won trust John's gained from the survivors — it's all in jeopardy. The situation barrels into him all at once — the realization that whatever Joseph did to create this thing , he won't hesitate to turn on John.

He tries to shout a warning, but his breath is caught in his throat. Faith's voice, faint on the breeze, laughs and whispers sing-song into his ear:

They've found you!

The monster barrels down the slope of the hill as if prodded into action by a hot poker. Its gait is wide, bringing it towards John at speeds impossible to outrun. This time, John's shout comes out clear as a bell, panic screaming through him as he turns and bolts for the house. He nearly clips himself on the pen as he hangs a sharp right turn, the porch coming into full sight —

Something snags the back of John's shirt, and his momentum briefly chokes him. A thick arm bears down across his neck before he can rip free, the creature grunting in exertion as it yanks him backward. John feels his boots scrape on the dirt as he's dragged towards the trees, away from the safety that's plain in sight.

Animal instinct kicks in. John gnashes his teeth but there's nothing to bite, so he kicks out his feet instead, first in front of him and then harshly backward until he can hook his shin behind his assailant's and trip them both to the ground. The creature goes down with a surprised grunt; John does his best to roll away, only to be yanked back by his hair. He's distantly aware that he's spitting like a cat in a sack, clawing and biting, the two of them rolling in the dirt as John screams profanities and heresy at the monster trying to pin him down, anything to convince the universe to take mercy on him for once in his fucking life!

The creature manages to grab him by the shoulder, throwing him into the dirt before backhanding him violently across the face. It's enough to daze him; for one horrible second, he's unable to do anything as the monster begins to drag him across the dirt by the legs.

There's a commotion coming from the house. For a split second, the creature looks up, and John realizes his opening at the same time the monster realizes its mistake. It looks down just in time for John to kick it square in its barky, hollow-eyed face, sending a split down the wooden facade.

" John !"

The monster reels backward as if burned, grabbing at the mask as it falls away. John catches sight of a single dark, wild eye behind the broken wood before he kicks out again, sending both boots into his assailant's chest. As soon as the creature staggers back, John bolts, scrambling towards Kim as she races toward him with the rifle drawn. Nick is hot behind her; he grabs John's shoulder and drags him partway back to the house. John doesn't need the escort, and so Nick quickly leaves him to scramble up the porch as he goes after his wife.

John gets all the way to the stairs inside before he realizes there's no safe place to hide. He'd found out this winter just how flimsy the prisoner story had been; if somebody wants to take him, all they have to do is climb onto the roof and jimmy the lock on the nearest window. Whether it's through the broken window in his room or a gap in the roof leading to the attic, the Project will find him. He can't possibly outrun them forever. He'd be stupid to even try. God, he'd been a fool for thinking Joseph wouldn't send someone looking for him, that he wouldn't want to snatch John back from the clutches of apostasy. There's no way Joseph will leave a loose end like him untied.

John sinks to the bottom steps in his mounting despair, only to realize for a second time that he's being watched. The realization is less of a shock as Carmina peers at him around the kitchen archway; she jumps at the distant rapport of gunfire, staring owl-eyed at John as though she expects him to do something.

"Stay down," John hisses, setting an example as he keeps low on his way into the kitchen.

"What happened?" Carmina asks, frantic, "Is mom gonna be okay?"

"Yes," John replies, although he can't possibly know that for sure. He waits a beat, listening for more gunshots, then carefully lifts his head to check out the window when none come. He lets out the breath he'd been holding when he sees Nick standing with his hands on his hips, staring at Kim further down the yard. Whatever the danger had been, it's not pressing enough to warrant immediate action.

"Seriously," Carmina whines, as if that could hide her fear. "What was it? Was it a bear? Grace says there are bears in the woods but I've never seen —"

John sinks to the ground, his mind reeling even as the panic passes, leaving him numb. "It wasn't a bear."

Carmina chews on her lower lip, looking up towards the window as though she might try looking for herself. "Are the chickens okay?" she asks.

"They're fine," he sighs. He pushes his hair from his face, only to realize that his hands have started to tremble with run-off adrenaline.

"Are... you okay?" she asks, frowning as though she can't decide whether or not his wellbeing is her problem to deal with.

Goodwill must be genetic, John laments. "I'm fine," he tells her. She gives his shaking hands a hard look; he sighs and reiterates, "I'll be fine. Don't worry about me."

"I'm not," Carmina huffs. Apparently, Nick's attempts to teach Carmina how to bluff haven't worked out.

John is saved from needing to reassure her as Nick abruptly appears in the kitchen arch, out of breath and red-faced. His shock gives way to relief at the sight of the two of them huddled by the counter. He's out of breath and visibly bewildered.

"Shit, John, you okay?"

"I'm fine," he says, although he doubts Nick will believe it any more than Carmina had. His foot jogs uselessly against the floor. "Kim — did she...?"

Nick shakes his head. "She tried," he says, "But it was too fast. What the fuck was it ?"

"Somebody from the Project."

"No shit. But — look, it wasn't an angel , was it?"

John shakes his head. "I don't know."

Kim storms into view, making her way to the pass-through from the living room side. She sets the rifle down on the counter, catching John's eye with a glare. John hurries to explain himself, as if he could possibly apologize for bringing the cult back to her doorstep.

"I was checking for foxes," he tells her, "I didn't think it — if I'd known what it was, I wouldn't have gone on my own."

Despite the fury in her eyes and the hard edge to her voice, Kim seems to mean it when she replies, "As long as nobody's hurt."

But the damage is done, and John can't help but babble on uselessly. "I wasn't looking in the right place. But I shouted as soon as I saw it. I just — couldn't outrun it. I wasn't fast enough. And I wasn't — it was stronger than I expected, stronger than..." Even he can hear the panic edging into his voice, cutting himself off with one last worried question. "Do you think it's gone?"

"It better be, if it knows what's good for it," Kim replies. "Are you sure you're okay?"

At any other time, John would be irritated to have to reassure every single Rye individually that he isn't in the throes of a panic attack. Right now, he's only grateful to realize that Kim doesn't blame him for the thing's appearance.

"I am," he says. "Thank you."

Nick groans, covering his eyes with one hand as he leans against the counter. "So much for it being safe to go out alone. Damn it, we got too comfortable."

" I got too comfortable," John says. "It wouldn't have cared about either of you."

"What about the chickens?" Carmina asks, "Are they safe there?"

Kim crosses her arms. "What I want to know is what the hell the Project is doing out here."

Her question is the only one John has any insight into, although he doesn't know how realistic his theory is. "They might be hunting deer," he says. "The only thing I saw, other than — than that , were deer tracks."

"All the way out here?" Kim asks skeptically.

"The hunting can't be any good in that swamp they're hiding in," Nick points out, frowning as he considers the idea. "And there are more survivors around the river these days. I'd bet that'd make for slim pickings."

"I doubt we'd even know they come out this far if I hadn't been the one out there. At least we've confirmed they're actively searching for resources beyond their compound — and they're relying on traditional methods to do so. Most likely because the armory was destroyed."

"Thank God for the Deputy," Nick sighs. "Okay. We're just gonna have to... I dunno, be willing to shoot, I guess." He doesn't sound so sure about it, and he quickly softens the intention. "At least a couple more warning shots. Once they remember guns outstrip arrows every way but sustainability, they'll probably keep back."

"We can push the fence-line out, too," Kim says. "It won't necessarily stop them, but at least it'll give them a line to cross. They're not cavemen — they remember property laws and how those get enforced around here."

"We'll have to start checking the traps more often. They might be living like bloodthirsty Mennonites right now, but that doesn't mean they aren't willing to steal to survive."

"They'll justify it one way or another," John sighs.

"So I guess we don't have to move the chickens after all," Nick says, "So long as we establish a perimeter. Sound good, Carmina?"

Carmina must have slipped out at some point during the conversation because she's nowhere to be found in the kitchen. Nick glances over John's head and out the window, swearing loudly.

"What the hell is she doing out there?"

John gets to his feet as Nick and Kim take off. He watches them through the window as they chase after Carmina, who's stopped to look around partway towards the coop. Either she's dumber than she seems, or she's inherited both of her parents' reckless streaks. Either way, she's going to leave herself open the same way John had. She's too confident that nobody wants to hurt her. The only way John knows how to teach that lesson, though, is not one that Kim or Nick would approve of — and so he sidelines his worries in favor of sticking with whoever is more armed than he is.

By the time John comes outside, Kim is knee-deep in the middle of a heated lecture about safety and responsibility. Carmina scowls at her feet, her face turning red as she's scolded. John ignores them, passing them by in favor of catching up with Nick, who's come to a stop a few yards past the coop. He's staring out into the unoccupied land — land that used to be his property, once. Now Nick is as much a stranger here as John is.

"Check it out," Nick says, holding out a thin, white-barked piece of wood. John takes it and recognizes it immediately as part of the mask he'd broken in two. The hole for the eye is a roughly cut gouge in the soft wood, and the bark flakes as he wipes his thumb across it.

"I hadn't even considered a mask," John admits. "I thought it was a monster."

"You and me both," Nick replies. He heaves a sigh. "Still waiting for the mutants to crawl out of the sewers, I guess. But I think we can handle a couple of jackasses with arrows."

John squints across the clearing, as if maybe his assailant has hung around waiting for them to reappear. "Next time, it might be Joseph," he points out grimly. "That hunter recognized me immediately. They'll tell him I'm here, and he'll want to find me."

"Come on. Like Joseph's gonna risk crossing enemy territory on foot. I'd be more worried about those goddamn hunting parties you used to send out."

John unconsciously reaches up to rub his throat. "Yeah," he says. "You're right. One of them clearly wasn't enough, but if Joseph decides I'm worthwhile, they'll come as a pack. If he's still manufacturing Bliss somehow, it would be easy to subdue me. And then..."

He's surprised out of his would-be reverie as Nick slaps his shoulder with a heavy hand. "We're not gonna let that happen," he says. "As long as you put up the same fight you did today, Kim and I are gonna come running."

Despite the reality of hidden archers and surprise ambushes, John allows himself to be reassured by the sentiment. At the very least, he pretends for Nick's sake. "I suppose you two were quick to the rescue," he drawls. "But if they get me to the tree-line, I'd rather you just put me down before I get dragged all the way back to the compound."

Nick chuckles. "We'll try to avoid that for now."

Looking over his shoulder, John catches Kim crouched down in front of Carmina, hands on her shoulders. Whatever she's saying, it's too quiet for John to hear, but Carmina's sniffles are a loud precursor to a lot of tears.

"I guess she believed you when you said the Project wouldn't care about us," Nick sighs. "At this rate, we're gonna have to put a bell on her."

"I could tell her about the child soldiers from the summer camp, if that would prove the gravity of the situation."

Just the mention of it makes Nick look a little queasy, and John immediately regrets bringing it up. "I don't want to scare her that badly," Nick says. "She's a good kid, she means well. She just needs to stop going off half-cocked, is all." He rubs his hand across his forehead and complains, "I thought we taught her to be smarter than this."

"She's still your kid," John says. Nick gives him a sour look, but it's the truth no matter how bitter Nick might feel about it. "You can't expect her to be utterly obedient, given her genetics."

"I guess ." He sighs, shaking his head. "At any rate, it's time we stop sugar-coating the cult for her benefit. She's obviously not taking it seriously."

John looks again and sees Kim embracing Carmina tightly. He can't help but worry about what might happen if the hunters come back. When he'd been with the Project, he'd understood Joseph's motivations — at least superficially — but now he's completely in the dark. They used to fill their ranks with abducted children and their desperate parents. He has no idea if Joseph is in a position to expand his flock, but if he is... John does not doubt that they'll start with the young and impressionable. Carmina, being young but not as impressionable as they'd like, probably wouldn't make it back to the compound before she got herself killed. He can't imagine anyone having enough patience to break her.

"You... uh, think we should be worried?" Nick asks after a brief stretch of silence.

"Not yet," John replies grimly. After all, the Ryes have a bargaining chip like no other, in case their daughter is ever taken. John can see to it that she's left alone, but it will only work once — and after that, who knows which brother will be sending hunters after her.

"Good thing we got ourselves a couple of extra guns," Nick says. "You and her are gonna have to start carrying pretty much everywhere."

"I'm sure people will love that."

"Fuck people, man, did you see the size of that fucking guy?"

John can't help a wry smile. "They weren't so big. If I were a couple of years younger, I would have taken them."

"Yeah, sure. "

The lecture must be over with for now, as Carmina's attention has turned back to her chickens. Kim watches her from a distance; John can't read her expression from here, but her posture is tense and defensive. John can't blame her — he doesn't have a parental bone in his body, but the stress of raising a child in these conditions isn't lost on him. Trying to instill a sense of fear into somebody who lived their formative years without a threat in sight can't be easy. Doubly so, considering Carmina can no doubt outgun the rudimentary weaponry the Project is utilizing. Hell, maybe they really are only a threat to him. Maybe it doesn't matter if Carmina sneaks out of the house.

"She won't leave unnoticed again," John decides, because it's the only promise he can genuinely keep.

"Oh yeah? You're gonna eat those words when she's a teenager."

"I'd hope she would be smart enough to bring back up by then."

"Me too." Nick exhales loudly enough to get Kim's attention, stretching one arm over his chest, then the other. "Well, I guess we better get started if we want to have anything to show for it by nightfall."

Even so, it takes Nick another moment before he brings himself to move. John lingers behind, unable to help himself as he eyes the trees distrustfully. There's nothing saying that hunter isn't still out there, watching them from a safe distance. If Jacob had a hand in training them, it's unlikely that John will ever see them coming again. He's likely lost the one chance at a level playing field, and he hadn't even realized it was something he could lose.

Fuck it. It doesn't matter. John has adapted time and again to every disaster in his life, and there's something to be said for the person who he's become. If this is the next catastrophe that he'll have to weather, then so be it. If he isn't capable of dealing with Joseph by now, then it's likely he never will be — and if that turns out to be the case, he can only hope that Kim is as quick on the trigger as she seemed to be today.

#far cry new dawn #fcnd #john seed #nick rye #kim rye #carmina rye #far cry fanfic #my fic #ugh tagging sucks on this site #mercyverse

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pizza-soup · 4 years

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Things about rural life I’ve had to get used to or have come to love:

- No food delivery. Most places won’t even have your zip code or it’s in a no deliver zone on account of how far/hard to find it is. I haven’t had delivered pizza in years now, we make our own which is actually cheaper, more customisable in size or thickness, and tastes better imo. Rosemary and basil mixed into the dough with spinach, various meats and fresh cheese. All with $8 worth of ingredients that can make at least three more full sized pizzas later. Yes!

- Learning to entertain myself. Don’t have a movie theater, mall or shopping center? A storm knocked out the power and no wifi? Sounds like a drag huh? Doesn’t have to be, I've learned to keep myself from getting bored by being more outside, picking up new hobbies, and working on projects around the house or learning to repair things. Plus, when the time comes I do go to the city, I’m actually excited to go to the bookstores, markets, malls and art stores. Makes you appreciate things more and turns an otherwise mundane thing into an event.

- Everything closes early, either by 6pm or 8pm. Whatever you gotta get from the store better be done in the daytime or you’ll have to make that long long two hour drive to the city on a highway that’s perched on a cliffside, not well lit and remote. If you get in trouble out there, well...you better hope a kind driver well pull over to help because there’s not even a highway patrol out there after dark. On the plus side, when they started doing curfews due to current events, nothing was changed. The only 24 hour places we have are a Pilot gas station, ATM and medical care building.

- Self serve fruit stands. They still run by the honor system which is such a rare thing these days. It comes in handy when I don’t want to go to the store to get groceries, and they usually have what I'm looking for, like squash, corn or carrots. As well as treats like strawberries and fresh pastries.

- Wild produce is a thing. They grow on property that’s left behind when people pass on or move away. Sweet potatoes, onions, asparagus, squash and pumpkins often regrow or resow themselves in abandoned gardens or spread toward the river and canals. Any trees like plums, apples and persimmons also grow on their own, having tapped into the water table. I’ve made it a habit to check on these wild gardens when I'm running low on staples, esp around the summer and fall. The local kids are the ones that pointed this out to me after I asked them where they got their produce.

- Walking at night and early morning. Being a city girl, I was amazed just how safe it is to walk out here, and you’ll see others do the same. Seems to be a social thing too, as neighbors will sometimes talk outside their driveway or walk and talk before parting ways to go back home. Heck I've slept outside on my front porch in a papasan, with no worry of something happening to me.

- Hotsprings! There’s many little hotsprings and bathhouses here with prices ranging from high to free. It’s mostly a colder weather thing for me, but sometimes I don’t mind slipping my feet into one after a long hike. During the winter, my family soaks in the hotsprings often. Nothing like watching the snow fall while half submerged in bubbling hot water.

- No street lamps. This is a double edged sword. It’s so dark out here and sometimes during the rains/snow makes it hard to see where you’re going, but the view of the stars more than makes up for it. Lack of light pollution has made me take up an interest in Astronomy and I have since viewed tons of sky events, as well as attended many star parties.

- The wildlife. While we don’t get bears, elk or bison, those tend to stick to the mountains, we do get mule deer, coyotes, foxes, hawks, raccoons, bobcats, river otters, beavers, snakes, quail, frogs, rabbits, cranes, turtles, coatis, and skunks. Living so rural I've had to get used to seeing my wild neighbors often and deal with them when they get a bit too close to my property. Usually fences and making a lot of noise does the trick.

- Animals in general. I never grew up by a farm. The only time I ever held a chick was during a school field trip. Now I live near a farm with a rooster that I hear every early morning, walking down a dirt path to the creek and seeing horses poke their heads toward me, seeing escaped goats as I drive on a backroad, and biking near beehives. Big bonus is that I get fresh eggs, goat milk for my lactose intolerant bro, honey and beeswax, and old leather scraps from saddlery. In all my life I never pictured myself living this way, but I wouldn’t trade it.

- Closer to my roots. My father was Coytero Apache, they were hunters and ranchers, NM is also native land. My mother’s father is from Aswan, Egypt, they were from a long line of agriculturists, mostly vineyards. I grow my own garden now and grapevines, I don’t hunt but I do wild forage, I'm also a lot closer to gatherings/powwows and native markets. I’m living a life very similar to my ancestors.

- Monsoons and blizzards. Okay so it’s not all sunshine. During the winter, we get snowed in, often for days and must prepare in the Fall accordingly. In the late summer, roads turn into rivers, playgrounds are underwater and rockslides are common on the highway. Good thing about this is just how lush everything gets, we don’t get a whole of mosquitoes due to a ton of dragonflies and the double rainbows are a big treat. Flooding is a headache but it’s tolerated, because wildfires are far more dangerous when it doesn’t rain enough.

- A small friendly community. Growing up I wasn’t used to knowing my neighbors at all, everyone kept to themselves which was dangerous when domestic/child abuse happened, or when someone was struggling with depression or financial issues. They all looked the other way. Here people look out for you, they help and share what they have. When I first moved in, I was still reeling from my trauma, I seriously appreciated having people help me adjust to my new home, move furniture and boxes in, as well as get donated food and items. It left such an impression on me and may have been a big part of my recovery. It’s also why I donate food and help out when I can now. Continuing the cycle.

- Seasonal events. I don’t really celebrate holidays, not because I hate them but because I didn’t grow up with them. My folks weren’t Americanized as much as my friends’ families were. Also they didn’t like how commercialized holidays had become. But we did celebrate seasons! There’s something like this here as well. While people still put up decor, the social pressure to celebrate isn’t strong, it’s there but only if you want to participate. This has lead to me celebrating in my own way, and I've timed a lot of them to the seasonal solstices. One big regional thing I participate in is Bonfire Season, which lasts from October to December. Lighting lanterns, candles and holding bonfire parties is a big cultural thing.

#daily update #rural life

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itsclydebitches · 5 years

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RWBY Recap: “As Above, So Below”

Welcome back, everyone. So. Last Saturday I was actually feeling pretty good about RWBY. Not as a whole, but for that particular episode because, as I explained to a lovely anon, not much happened. Sure, there were some semi-important bits in the form of meeting Willow and Weiss discovering the recording, but compared to everything else we’ve gotten this volume it was all around a tame fifteen minutes. Which meant there wasn’t much space for RWBY to mess things up. There simply weren’t any stakes last episode. You don’t like how the group gets past Whitley or the exact words Ironwood says to Jacques? It’s ultimately whatever in the grand scheme of things. Last episode was mostly details.

“As Above, So Below” is not that kind of episode. So much happens and I’m once again left metaphorically banging my head against the wall, not regarding the writing choices themselves per se, but rather at how they’re used and portrayed. There is so much that I want to enjoy about this episode but Rooster Teeth continually ignores aspects of a situation in order to highlight one very narrow, very biased viewpoint. The scenes throughout demand that we conveniently forget or outright ignore certain things in order to immerse ourselves in whatever emotion the writing has decided we should be feeling right now ... and I simply can’t do that. RWBY is a show based on the claim that it’s a bright sunny day, so pay no mind to the rain clouds hovering above your head. It’s the animated equivalent of a Jedi mind trick. These are not the interpretations you’re looking for.

Secrets are finally revealed, folks, and oh boy. It’s a hot mess.

But let’s start at the beginning.

Undermining my assumption last recap that Watts had dismantled something that was regulating just a portion of Mantle’s temperature---something specific to maintaining rain over snow---we learn that all heating has been lost across the city. Which, if you know anything about temperature and the fragile human body, is really fucking bad. Here RWBY actually did a good job of introducing Weiss’ comment early in the volume about how people can freeze to death within an hour or so. We were still left with a few detail-oriented questions like how useful aura is in combating that, why Ruby was still so cold with her, why no one was showing symptoms back during the walk to the farm... but at least the setup is clear here. Civilians don’t have aura so that’s that. They’re dead if they don’t find some way to keep warm (riot fires help...) or aren’t evacuated somewhere else. It’s a big deal, though how exactly this fits into the rest of Watts’ plan and the other bits of chaos he’s accomplished is still unclear. More on that in a bit.

We see Pietro and Maria, but they don’t actually do anything this episode. They just stand around looking scared as people get violent and the city is covered in ominous red lights. At least the show remembers that they exist, but we don’t get to see the brilliant scientist specializing in creating weaponry and the former Grimm Reaper doing something to help. So... B grade on that one?

There’s no time skip this episode so with Mantle unraveling we segue right back to the dinner at the Schnee’s. Ironwood is still getting called out for having too much power. He pushes back that there are checks and balances in place to keep everyone, including him, from abusing that power. This is countered with a broad and not very persuasive claim that they simply haven’t worked. Ironwood comes back with a line about intentions and the nameless (?) council guy goes, “What people intend and what people do are not always the same thing!” Well no shit. If that were the case everyone’s lives would be staggeringly easier. You intend to find the madman who dismantled your army at Beacon? Boom, done. Intend to find the murderer responsible for attacking Robyn’s supporters? Congratulations, you did it. RWBY now has a habit of throwing out lines to remind us that the evil men in power---notably Ozpin and Ironwood---might intend to do good, but look! They haven’t managed it! Which... yes? Sometimes intentions fail, but that leaves the unanswered question of what these characters (and the writing) want them to do instead. No one has the luxury of changing their situation and everyone continues to ignore the fact that there are only bad options all around. I’d rather have someone with good intentions at the helm than, you know, Jacques. It also speaks volumes that as much as the council and RWBYJNR has been criticizing Ironwood lately, everyone still expects him to make the hard call himself. They don’t want that responsibility; they want a scapegoat if and when things go wrong. Just like the group was happy to scream at Ozpin and then get pissed that he left, leaving them to make the hard decisions themselves for once, everyone is screaming at Ironwood and then two minutes later turn about with, “So what should we do, General? What’s your plan? How are you going to fix this?” Though I don’t think any of it is intentional, RWBY has a lot to say about how only good and lucky leaders get to come out of their role unscathed. No matter what you do someone hates you for it and even choosing to abstain isn’t an option, as we saw clearly with Ozpin.

At this point the meeting is briefly interrupted by a waiter who tells Jacques about the heating issue. He responds with a, “My authorization?” before trying to cover things up, awkwardly agreeing with the conversation he just missed. Robyn announces that she’s not done with Ironwood yet though and accuses him of more failures, ending with, “yet you won’t let your own council help you?” which... honestly? Just hammers home how not useful this “Ironwood should trust everyone!” mindset is. Because is Robyn really that dense? The council is Jacques and two of his lackeys. You know, the guy who is about to be arrested for treason and as an accomplice to murder. Even though that hasn’t been revealed yet, Robyn is very well aware of what a corrupt, dangerous individual he is. Remember that she herself is not the council. She was given a “seat at the table” because Jacques wanted to use her against Ironwood. Robyn is sitting here symbolically pointing to Jacques and the two members he has wrapped around his finger going, “Why aren’t you trusting them?” like that’s in any way a sound suggestion. Sometimes the answer to, “Why are you doing Bad Things like keeping secrets?” is “Because people can be unimaginably stupid.” This is an example of that. Robyn wants to know everything and right now she’s willing to risk that information falling into an enemy’s hands to get it.

(Also, that picture in the background? Says a lot that Jacques has a picture of him, his obedient son, and his terrified wife in the room where he conducts business. No Weiss or Winter in sight.)

Ironwood, of course, tells a straight out lie with an excellent poker face. “I’m not hiding anything.” Which inspires Robyn to use her semblance. Oh no! An insanely convenient ability that would undo every conflict we’ve set up for this season! However will we avoid this? Timing, obviously. Weiss, also conveniently, barges in right when Robyn has put Ironwood on the spot. I said it as soon as Robyn’s semblance was introduced: if you give someone that level of power---something that can too easily solve all the problems you’ve set up---then you have to keep coming up with semi-contrived ways of keeping them from using it.

Also, does she need skin-on-skin contact for her semblance to work? I wonder if that’s why she’s got that one random finger missing on her glove.

Wiess plays the recording of Watts and Jacques, giving us the rest of their conversation. We don’t learn anything new. Watts promised Jacques a seat on the council and he in turn (supposedly) would get the satisfaction of ruining Ironwood’s life. Jacques handed over his login information, including what he gained post-election, and now Watts has access to everything he built and then some. To say that’s bad is an understatement. You might be distracted from your worry though by hearing that cake line again as well as the men’s villainous laughs. RWBY really went full cartoon for that conversation.

A detail I really love though? Ironwood’s rhythmic footsteps as he walks around the table. Super ominous and intimidating. Meanwhile, a hilarious detail is how awkward Jacques gets when he’s finally lost that precious control. This isn’t a confident man capable of denying the accusations against him in anything like a persuasive manner. He doesn’t have Ironwood’s poker face. Jacques is a coward who looks like a schoolboy seated in the principal’s office once caught.

He attempts to escape only to find Weiss’ knight blocking the exit, the one we now know was the possessed armor that belonged to her grandfather. In a thoroughly satisfying moment she declares that Jacques is under arrest... and then turns around to ask Ironwood if she can actually do that. I’m on the fence about this. Normally I don’t mind a bit of humor lightening the mood, but in this case we have three things that I don’t think are improving the situation. The first is the sheer emotional impact that should be accompanying this arrest. This is Weiss’ abuser. The man we’ve known about (incidentally anyway) since Volume 1 and who has driven nearly the entirety of her character development from working to escape him pre-RWBY to coming back as a huntress. Provided that Jacques doesn’t pull a Torchwick and escape himself somehow, this is the culmination of nearly seven volumes worth of heartbreaking struggle. There are some things that I think should be allowed to shoulder their weight without undercutting it with a joke and this is 100% one of them. Just like finding out that a friend you thought had been permanently torn to pieces in front of you should generate heartfelt shock and joy, reaching the moment where you finally arrest one of the show’s biggest personal villains should be treated seriously. Let Weiss have this and put the joke later if you still want it. Weiss could be staring hollow-eyed at her father being put in handcuffs and Ruby could try to cheer her up. “So...” she says. “Can we arrest people?” Weiss blinks, coming out of her stupor, and gives a tentative smile. “Don’t know, actually. But it’s working in this case.” There. Serious moment leading to a bit of comedy-bonding. Humor is a wonderful tool, but it also lessens the other emotions of a scene if not used properly.

Potential issues #2 and #3 are smaller. On a personal note, hearing Weiss’ question simply reminded me, again, that RWBY has failed to establish hard rules for its world, including what a huntsmen’s job entails. A few weeks ago fans were arguing over whether Blake and Yang should feel anything in regards to killing Adam because, according to some, it’s already a part of a huntsmen’s responsibilities to arrest and if necessary kill people. Why would they flinch at something they knew they were signing up for? Others (myself included) pointed out that although we see the students sparing with one another at school, no one says anything about them taking out human and faunus criminals. RWBYJNR’s adventures---from Ruby stopping the robbery in her trailer to tracking down the White Fang---are presented as outliers. This is not the sort of stuff huntsmen are meant to get up to. They fight grimm first and foremost. Everything else is a case-by-case surprise. Note, for example, that Ironwood expects his army to keep the peace and presumably the police when things aren’t quite so dangerous. He’s not sending huntsmen out to track down everyday criminals because that’s not their job. Killing grimm is. Weiss’ comment reinforces that. Can I arrest someone? Is that within my power as a huntress? And Ironwood... doesn’t answer. Because it’s meant to be a joke, not a legitimate bit of world building.

And then the third... is just how Rooster Teeth is using humor throughout the entirety of this episode. AKA not well, which makes me less inclined to give this particular moment the benefit of the doubt. We’ll get to that in just a second though. For now I’ve written way to much on a two second scene.

While Jacques’ plans unravel the rioting in Mantle is getting worse and worse. “Atlas killed the heat on purpose! They’ll do anything to control us!” which is very much a conclusion born of panic. It feels like every other episode Mantle is on the verge of collapse and, by extension, all of these moments feel anti-climactic. We’ve watched Mantle rioting over the embargo, and then Penny, and then the election, and now the heat... none of it feels like it has weight anymore. Rioting is just the way we’re ending most episodes now. It also (again) raises that question of what exactly Watts is trying to accomplish, and not in a “Still to be revealed!” kind of way. We do still have an element of that, but at this point there’s also just a, “Literally what was the point?” aspect too. Why is Mantle rioting most episodes? Shouldn’t that be something to build to? More importantly---as I’ve said before---WHY did they frame Penny? We see in the next scene that Jacques’ guilt likewise reveals Penny’s innocence... even though everyone important knew that two seconds after she was accused. There were no consequences attached to blaming her and, as just established, we clearly didn’t need the loss of a city defender to bring that city to the brink. Mantle has been going over the edge for a variety of reasons and the people were at that point before the group even arrived. When Penny was first framed that seemed like a brilliant setup. Now we see definitively that it led nowhere. Why did Watts bother and why did the writers? It’s another case of RWBY chucking in things they think are “cool” without bothering to follow up on them.

So yeah. The Penny situation is done. We didn’t even get any development out of her from it. That really is disappointing.

With everything Jacques did on the table the situation looks bleaker by the minute. What can Watts do with this control? “With enough time… whatever he wants.” The group finds out that the first thing he did with this power is shut off the heat and Weiss has the most dramatic reaction, which makes sense given that she’s the one who best understands the risks here. And then... then.

Oh dear god.

Ironwood realizes that Watts may eventually have access to the Amity info, if he stumbles across it or actively goes looking for things to uncover. This revelation on its own is good. That’s something Ironwood needs to try and prevent, so it would have been an excellent moment of storytelling to show us Ironwood’s moment of revelation, perhaps with a bit of dramatic music to hammer things home. Except that instead of keeping this issue between the people who know about it---Ironwood and Ruby could have exchanged knowing glances like Blake and Yang did when they first started keeping their secrets---Rooster Teeth has Ironwood talk about loud to himself about the major secret he’s keeping. He literally calls it a secret! “No. The secret is safe for now. But if he learns about Amity…” Hello?? I understand that this episode is all about things coming to light, but that moment was an absolute insult to Ironwood’s character. We just saw this man claim with a perfectly straight face that he had nothing to hide. Five minutes later he’s apparently lost so much intelligence he stands in front of four people he’s keeping secrets from, including Jacques Schnee, and starts soliloquizing about said secrets. That is the most stupid and contrived way to get caught in a lie. Oh no! I totally forgot a bunch of people were standing beside me! Now everyone has heard that I’m keeping a secret since I felt the need to state that out loud...

And in case anyone thought this is a case where I’m reading too much into things, Robyn literally laughs and goes, “Yep! Still here, everyone!” Reminding them that someone who is not supposed to know about this stuff is standing... right there... listening in... The writing draws attention to it.

This trumps all other former stupidity. Like the group loudly announcing their attempts to avoid getting arrested in the city covered with surveillance. This is so stupid I want to turn it into a meme. Cleanse this scene somehow.

Anyway. More rioting. More anger. Shock, surprise, that draws a ton of grimm. Take note of the fact that Ironwood’s army is almost useless against this barrage. The missiles from the airships don’t seem to take the horde out. Nor do the guns. Two other soldiers are forced to cower when some pterodactyl-type grimm flies overhead.

I say this not to bash the army itself (they’re doing their best while up against horrible odds), but rather to re-emphasize how not good telling the whole world about Salem is. Everyone seems to forget that, first and foremost, this is the concern that Ozpin dealt with. Even if he was 100% wrong on every other count---no one would lose hope, no one would ever betray him---it is impossible to hear about Salem and not experience negative emotions and those negative emotions draw grimm that kill everyone. Ironwood’s primary justification was that he’ll use his army to protect the people when that happens and (ignoring that his army can’t possibly be everywhere at once) we see here that it’s all but useless. His soldiers may have been able to handle the grunt grimm seen at the breach and the Battle of Beacon, but they’re helpless in the face of anything stronger, the exact sort of stuff that world-wide panic over an immortal woman would draw. Clover makes it clear when he arrives that only huntsmen stand a real chance and huntsmen are few and far between nowadays. They lost an entire school. Lionheart made sure nearly all the huntsmen in Mistral were killed. They’ve reached a point where teens are given licenses at least two years early, without full training, because they need the help that badly. Ironwood cannot protect the people if their fear grows stronger. That’s not his fault, but it also means he can’t afford to deliberately stoke that fear. Telling the world about Salem, whether she’s immortal or not, is a 100% death wish for lots and lots and lots of people.

That’s why I can’t get behind an idealistic view of, “But they deserve to know.” Maybe they do, but if given the choice I’d rather keep people in the dark and let them live their lives than tell them for the sake of the moral high-ground and risk the very likely possibility that they’ll die a horrible, bloody death.

Then, finally... we come back to the group’s secrets.

As established, Robyn is calling Ironwood out on his own secret keeping because he just admitted aloud to having a secret. 100% dodged her suspicion by Weiss’ timely arrival and Jacques getting outed as a traitor, then went ahead and shot himself in the foot. Sorry. I just really can’t stress that enough. Anyway, she’s homing in like a bloodhound, backing him into another corner, and this is the animation they decide to give us.

This is why I haven’t liked the group since mid-Volume 5. Because they’ve become reckless, hypocritical, often incredibly cruel people. Animation is a drawing. Someone had to decide and design this moment. Nothing is left to chance. So Rooster Teeth made a conscious decision to have Ruby almost-smiling in this moment. Looking pleased and happy at the very least. She’s still keeping her own secrets and is taking pleasure in the fact that Ironwood’s are coming to light. This is the exactly the same behavior we saw with Ozpin and (to a lesser extent) Cordovin. The satisfaction this group derives from either seeing or handing out what they perceive as another’s just desserts while they themselves are committing the same or worse sins. Ruby should not look happy here in the same way that she should not have pushed for Ironwood to sacrifice Mantle in the name of finishing a doomed project. And as we’ll see in a moment, she shouldn’t be giggling with Oscar over the shared damage they’ve caused.

At this point everyone is ganging up on Ironwood. Yes, including Oscar. As a preface to all this, I love my farm boy. Just not how Rooster Teeth has been writing my farm boy. Because this is what I meant at the very start of this recap. Oscar and Ruby’s speeches here are only inspiring if you choose to ignore the fact that, in this moment, they’re still keeping their own secrets. I honestly thought Oscar was going to come clean when he approached Ironwood leaning against the wall. Instead he offers his advice which is, straight up, to just stop keeping secrets. Says the kid who is still keeping secrets. Oscar even goes so far as to say that “You already knew that wasn’t the right course” which is the biggest load of BS I’ve heard on this show so far. No! No one agreed that was the wrong path. You all explicitly decided that keeping secrets was the right thing to do. They’re telling him he was wrong to choose the thing they benefited from and continue to use to their advantage in this scene.“Tell the truth,” Oscar insists, still not telling the truth. “You’re not alone,” Ruby adds when she hasn’t trusted Ironwood once this season. This moment is manipulation because Oscar and Ruby both are trying to convince Ironwood to do something using false personas. Ironwood believes that he should listen to them precisely because he thinks they’ve achieved the very thing they’re demanding of him: sharing all their secrets. He thinks they’re models to look up to. When in fact Ironwood is the only one who has ever managed this demand by sharing his plan with them, completely of his own volition.

The fact that they decide to tell him a few minutes later doesn’t matter. They already got what they wanted and the damage is done. I mean that literally. By manipulating Ironwood into spilling the beans, they’ve created a situation where Ironwood revealed the Salem secret to the council and Robyn but not her immortality. Ironwood himself only learns of that afterward, back in the dining room, and you can see the utter devastation on his face.

Is it still a good idea to tell two highly suspect council members and a woman who has been his semi-enemy about Salem given that she can’t be killed? Who knows. We don’t get to tackle that question because Ironwood wasn’t given a choice. It’s too late. He was pressured and manipulated into a making a huge decision without all the necessary information (which, for the record, is still not the same thing as the group deciding to help people and do the job they signed up for without knowing about Salem). Even if nothing horrible results from these three people now knowing about Salem, Oscar and Ruby have created more problems. We hear the council woman ask fearfully whether Ironwood can defeat Salem. The only thing holding them together is the hope that they can still win with their army... but they can’t. What’s Ironwood going to do with that expectation now? Will he tell them about her immortality too? Risk what they might do in response? Don’t you think this is something he should have known about weeks ago, Ruby? “You should know before you make any… sacrifices” Oscar tells Ironwood, completely ignoring the fact that he already made sacrifices. Mantle was a sacrifice. Those resources were a sacrifice. Telling the council was a sacrifice. Ironwood’s ongoing hope that he could finally end this, stretched out far longer than it had to be, was a sacrifice.

What kills me is the casual nature of it all. There was no catalyst here. Nothing new happened to convince the group that they can suddenly trust Ironwood. If they’re willing to trust him now that means they trusted him before and just didn’t tell him because... they didn’t. The defense of “He’s unstable, who knows what he might do to them and Mantle once he finds out the truth!” was a smokescreen the whole time. Because nothing changed. Ironwood said and did nothing in the last fifteen minutes to suddenly cause the revelation of, “Oh my god. We can trust him. Now we finally know we’re safe to reveal this secret.” They could have done it on day two and avoided so much strife. Like, you know, the situation in Mantle that Nora felt the need to scream at Ironwood about. Maybe if you’d told him his plan was doomed he might not have taken so many resources from the people, given that he’d have known there was no longer a justification for that. You had the power to fix the problems you blamed him for from the get-go.

Combine this with Oscar and Ruby’s horrible conversation. Sure, the rosegarden shippers are thrilled, but beyond the fact that I’m personally not shipping Ruby with a boy housing her 1,000 year old headmaster, that (once again) was not the correct emotion to apply to this moment. They both come across as horrendously callous by laughing and giggling through the decision to finally tell Ironwood. It’s not like these secrets have driven this entire volume and are about to absolutely devastate him or anything. Why would you have a serious conversation about this? Why express even an ounce of sympathy and regret for what you’ve done? Nah, better to jump around and give each other thumbs up. Act so proud that you’ve randomly decided to come clean, like you deserve praise for this. Kids, am I right, Marrow?

Seriously. This is how these two treat the situation vs. what the situation actually is.

Which in a horrible way is fitting because there are zero consequences for all this. (Cue my shock...) Ironwood isn’t mad about any of this. He jokes with Oscar! “No more surprises, alright?” Given that RWBY releases weekly and thus there’s plenty of time between episodes, I feel like people forget the expectations they developed months back. The more optimistic side of the fandom (god bless you all, you’ve got more hope than me) keeps insisting that eventually the group’s new behavior will lead to repercussions, but time and time again Rooster Teeth tells us they won’t. Not for putting Argus in danger. Not for stealing an airship. Not for keeping the secrets Ozpin was crucified over a whole volume for. And that’s still going. Alongside Qrow’s talk with Ruby, Ironwood is given the space to blame Ozpin again---“Why? Why would Oz keep this from us?”---and has no desire to blame the group for doing the exact same thing. Oscar is allowed to go, “Sorry! We just didn’t trust you” but the same justification out of Ozpin’s mouth doesn’t fly, despite the fact that he had a hundred more reasons not to trust a bunch of teens. The level of hypocrisy in this episode is just staggering. We all watched Ruby tell Ozpin’s lies and went, “Oh yeah. This is going to come back to bite them” and it didn’t.

There is nothing the group can do to get in trouble, or even a reprimand for. Anything and everything is twisted to praise them:

Destroyed precious military equipment (which this episode’s attack shows that the world desperately needs) and nearly get people killed by attacking an ally? You get a free ride to Atlas.

Broke Atlas’ laws by stealing their property and then avoiding the police? You get hugs from your sister and early huntsmen licenses.

You tell the exact same lies you demonized your headmaster for? You’re so much better than he is and I’m so proud of you.

Keep secrets from Ironwood, making a horrible situation even worse? Haha no more surprises in the future please!

And yes, this also includes: Going behind everyone’s back to spill information to Robyn? No one will even find out you did that. I’ve seen a post going around with people expressing how pleased they are that Robyn didn’t rat Blake and Yang out. That’s the level of bias the fandom and the writers are working under. The group gets away with everything because they’re the protagonists. Everyone adores them unconditionally. At this point I think they could join with Salem and people would insist that it’s the smartest and most badass move they could possibly make. Fans and the writing would praise them for that too.

Ugh. Sorry for the level of salt in this recap. For the record I am glad that others are able to enjoy all of these moments. I just can’t. Oh boy I can’t.

Alright. Close to wrapping up now. A series of smaller things: Oscar has another moment where he draws on Ozpin’s memories of Atlas being built. “You say that like you were there---” Ironwood says. We’ve spent a lot of time theorizing about the merge but in light of this episode... are we really expecting an explanation? RWBY hasn’t adequately explained dust vs. magic, or Qrow’s semblance, or why we should be rooting for heroes who do everything their perceived opponents do. Why would we expect them to explain something as complicated as this merge either? I think we should just expect a continually wishy-washy situation that changes based on the whims of the plot.

Ren and Nora have a moment on the airship that sparks another charged look between Blake and Yang. Are we ever going to tackle the huge concerns Ren had a few episodes back before they were silenced with a kiss? Does he or anyone else know that Oscar spilled the beans? For that matter, did Oscar admit that there’s still a question left in the relic? Does Ironwood actually want to lock it up now like they should have from the start? Did he explain precisely why Ozpin ran off? These answers remain lost to the void.

Jaune looks like he’s going to be sick after the airship is attacked. Nice throwback to episode one.

Whitley is devastated by his father’s arrest, truly alone now. He slinks off with Willow watching him go. Hopefully with Jacques out of the way she and Weiss (and possibly Winter) can start helping him. Show him how to connect with others in ways besides cruelty.

The group then jumps out of the destroyed ship... but not before Elm and Harriet tease each other a bit. In a kind way. One might almost say... a friendly way...

Yeah these people aren’t friends. No way. What an absurd assumption. Will the show ever come back to that assertion, or will it remain another illogical way of insisting that the group is intrinsically better than everyone else they come into contact with? I’m betting on the latter.

Finally, we catch glimpses of a disguised Neo infiltrating the Schnee manor. After everyone leaves she returns to Cinder who says, “Oh, you’re back early. Tell me you’ve found what we’ve been looking for” and Neo gives an affirmative gesture. To which I respond with no emotion whatsoever because this episode has scorched me from the inside out.

1/10 with the 1 given because yay arresting Jacques. Everything else I’d happily put through a paper shredded. I’m gonna go cleanse my mind with more Witcher 3 now.

Until next week! Everyone start praying...

#rwby #rwby volume 7 #rwby volume 7 spoilers #rwby recaps #mymetas

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fluorescentpipedream · 4 years

Text

Been learning some things about Dayton the last few days

It’s a little long so I don’t want to clog up anyone’s feeds

Details:

Age: 43

Family:

Parents - Abigail and Ethan Foster. Sibling: Charlotte,Lottie (25)

His parents are still alive though they don’t really acknowledge him much.

His little sister, Lottie, comes to visit him sometimes. She makes jewelry out of recycled materials and gave her brother an earring she made of a broken beer bottle, repurposed as a diamond. He wears it on the right side, though when asked why he only has one, he says “she knows I’ll lose the other one, so this way it’s more special”

He has said he’s a little jealous of his younger sister because “she gets to be normal, and our parents hate that there’s nothing of hers that can capitalize on. Her jewelry business is a fun thing to put her through college, they can’t steal her fortunes and lie to her that it’s in her best interest. I’m envious of her because of her normalcy. How stupid is that?”

Relationships:

Dayton was married when he had his seizure, his husband divorced him shortly after the incident, not being willing to take care of him.

He’s had a few girlfriends but he seems to prefer the company of men

About:

Dayton is highly dependent on drugs and/or alcohol to get by on the outside world because he just can’t seem to function without them when he’s trying to live on his own. He’s lived at the Center in the French Quarter off and on for 4 years, before that taking a stint in jail for public urination and intoxication. He also spit on the arresting officer. Writing about the incident later by saying “he finds it odd that Mardi Gras is legal public drunkenness for the amusement of all but only a few days after, in the stench of Bourbon Street’s parties where trickles of human depravity are being washed from the street, suddenly it’s deplorable and must be cleansed from sight. Though they might have gone easier on me if I hadn’t spit in the cop’s face. Oh well.”

Dayton’s initial slip into this strange state was after a seizure caused by his excessive drinking. The world was easier to handle if he was drunk or high all the time, he didn’t feel like he had to be as smart as he is, when he was riding a drug high. He collapsed at a Mensa event when he was 32, and during the grand mal seizure caused brain damage and for his IQ to slip from the 200s and down into a more average number. He still seems to be very intelligent, though he doesn’t really draw attention to it anymore. After his husband left him, he had apparently only shrugged, taking his ring off and handed it to his little sister, telling her “unconditional love is a joke”

The relationship with his parents finally came to light as well, and he outright told the first social worker when they had suggested he could recover in his parent’s care that they wouldn’t actually care for him anymore. Their free ride now had strings attached and he doubted that they could stand to care for him, since he was pushed to always provide for himself, since he was “smart enough”

He has the potential to live on his own, he just doesn’t have much of a drive to do so. When he’s left on his own he gets distracted and forgets to do even the most basic tasks. He means he forgets to eat, sleep, etc. At the Center, “I’m safe from myself”

Personality:

Self-loathing and tends to put himself down a lot

Suicidal although Lottie seems to be the only reason he won’t go through with killing himself, he loves her too much to leave her with that stigma of “genius brother takes his own life following years of drug and alcohol abuse

A very dark and, at times, unsettling sense of humor. It makes people uncomfortable and his general disinterest in people’s reactions make it worse

“Former” sex addict...he puts it in quotes. As long as he’s not drinking or using drugs he tends to abstain from dangerous sexual liaisons but once he’s under the influence it’s whatever, with whoever and however they choose. “I’m surprised I’m not infected yet”

He’s been with both men and woman and has no preference towards either. “It would be nice to have someone love me...I’m not in a position where I could be the one providing care to another, sadly dealing with me may be a full time job and not one most people are equipped for. I won’t “get better” over time, and crave companionship sometimes even over the obsessive desire to fade from this world”

Interests:

Serial killers. He absently makes profiles for those he reads about or watches reports on TV. He frequents websites that have details on true crime and likes to try to figure out cold cases, for fun. He’s actually figured out several, calling in anonymous tips to hotlines.

-Seriously- considering typing up his profile for the serial killer in San Francisco (Paul) and sending it to Theo deWinter, the agent on the case. He’d learned about the case online and after reading what he could find about the murders and the way the bodies are discovered, he really does want to help. He is concerned they wouldn’t take much consideration in the profile though because of his current mental state. It might hurt his credibility. Still, he says “better not eat anything you buy from Rascal Butcher shop on Main”

Piano, originally it was something he was forced into learning but now that he’s older he enjoys it quite a bit more. He sometimes sits in the grand entrance of the Center and plays on nice days

Writing. Kind of like a cross between Dean Koontz and Stephen King with some Lovecraft like monsters in there. He posts some of his shorter pieces on his blog

Has a tumblr blog called A Damaged Beautiful Mind. Most of the time he answers questions but a few years ago he wrote a rather long post about the inability for criminals, drug addicts and generally anyone who has been arrested to vote in national elections explains a lot about how the entire system is set up so only the elite are allowed to partake (excerpt at the end)

He loves watching psychological thrillers, horror movies and true crime documentaries

He used to want to be a federal profiler and even has degrees in forensic psychology and criminal law

Connections:

Arthur Powell sometimes invites him over for dinner in his room at the center.

He told Arthur he really liked his sister, Frankie once, promising it was “nothing creepy” he just thought she had a beautiful soul and her amazing talent was going to take her places. Arthur has her make him a mirror glaze birthday cake this year that was too beautiful to eat (he did though, only when Lottie came to spend the day with him and she cut into it after taking a picture of it with his phone.)

One of the orderlies brings him coffee and beignets on Saturdays and they talk. Dayton generally believes they’re just checking up on him to make sure he’s had a shower or eaten something recently.

Doctor Snow is his therapist, though lately he feels like he has to search for things to discuss with her. She’s expecting her first child, so the visits are brief and involves how he’s feeling, if he’s still having suicidal thoughts...etc.

He used to be a bit of a lech, being Mike Tomlin’s first foray into gay sex, pinning him to a wall at the Mensa event, the same night as his seizure.

Excerpt from his latest blog entry about election and voting rights, or rather the lack thereof

Any system which segregates the unmentionables and undesirables from the view of the rest only perpetuates the degeneration we’ve been seeing as a whole in this nation. It’s “progress” that the United States lived in a seemingly “Golden Age” under Barack Obama, but if one were to pull back the veil they need only skim the surface to realize, that was a moment of lapse, before the true waves of deceit, corruption and greed rushed back in again.

The years that Obama served in the White House only appear now as the receding of water before the inevitable tsunami. As a nation, we will always boil back down to the nagging truth of George Orwell in Animal Farm; “all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others” Those that are detestable, or deemed unworthy by social standards, like any number of the “criminals” locked away for crimes enumeration, have been stripped of their ability to stand up for their beliefs.

Their voices are silenced, because by daring to stand against the societal norm, to lash out at the Thomas Moore, Utopian falsehood of America, they proclaimed loudly that the world is not only unfair, but stacked against us from the moment we take our first breaths. Were the US to return rights to the seemingly uneducated, drains on society, they would see real change. But that, in the essence of the truly corrupt leading the imbecilic masses, will never be the case. These commanding forces, like Nero the pig, would rather lead the masses into decisions that have been made for them all the while claiming that it is the people who lead themselves to this. And he can fix it all.

#character #details #skeet ulrich

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darkangeldesignstudio · 5 years

Text

Dark Horse

Warnings: Angst, Violence, Death, Attempted Rape, Strong Language, Mentions of Animal Abuse, and Eventual Smut and Fluff

Setting: Post Civil War era USA. Marvel Cowboy AU.

Song: You Can’t Take Me by Bryan Adams

Previous / Next

Chapter One: A Death in the Family

A violent shaking woke you in the night. Rubbing your eyes, you looked up to see your brother’s wide eyes and a sense of foreboding washed over you.

“What’s wro-”

John shushed you with a finger to his lips, his eyes begging you not to speak. “Men outside. Not sure how many.” His whispered voice trembled with nerves. People in the mountains, this late at night, was never a good thing.

You nodded to him in understanding and crept slowly from your bed to grab your gun belt and the two Colt Revolvers that rested there. Pulling on your pants, you fastened the belt around your waist just as you started to hear the voices approach.

You left your bedroom to join your brother in the kitchen. Taking cover behind the table, you could just see a shadow pass by on your porch and you gripped your guns in both hands, prepared to defend your home.

“We know you’re in there.” The voice was gruff and a bit slurred. It wasn’t uncommon for a man to drink to keep the chill at bay in winter; maybe it was just a drunk that lost his way. It was wishful thinking, but in your gut, you knew that was not the case here.

“I don’t want any trouble.” John shouted back through the door, trying to reason with the men. “If you need supplies, I will gladly help you out, but I need you to stow your weapons first.”

Laughter was their counter, and if your ears weren’t deceiving you, there was someone posted by the rear of the house and another on the side towards the barn.

So, at least five hostile, armed men and no way to know what they want. They could just be looking for shelter… “Why don’t you come on out here and surrender. We won’t hurt you, much.” Or a fight.

You nodded to your brother as he approached the door. You made a plan for cases like this; you just hoped it would work while severely outnumbered.

“Okay, I’m coming out.” John reached for the handle, prepared to open fire as soon as he cleared the entryway, but he never got the chance to open the door.

A deafening shot rang out as the wood of the front door splintered inwards. Your brother clutched his chest as he turned to you. Time slowed as you watched blood seep out between his fingers. His eyes were wide with pain, he gasped for air and a wash of red bubbled from between his pale lips. He collapsed to his knees as his eyes rolled back, body crumbling to the floor in a heap.

You could hear laughter and cheering from the men outside as tears blurred your vision. The front door began to open as an inhuman scream tore its way out of your throat. Raising your guns, you peppered the door with bullets.

_______________________________________________________________________

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky called out, riding back into camp just as the sun started to set over the horizon.

Steve exited the abandoned house, barely containing the yawn that wanted to escape his exhausted form. They had been traveling for days on little to no sleep, but Bucky looked refreshed after his short ride with Sergeant. “What’s got you so excited, Buck? Don’t you ever get tired?”

Bucky rolled his eyes, taking Steve’s light teasing for what it was. Of course he was tired, but there were more important things to do right now. Like finding supplies, which he did.

“There’s a farm a few minutes west of here, looks like a man and woman live there. Maybe they will be willing to aid us, or at least give us directions into town.” Bucky looked to his best friend with pleading eyes. “Come on Steve, we need help. Not everyone is a bad guy.”

Sighing, Steve nodded. Bucky was right, and they couldn’t be so unlucky as to run into a Shield Agent out in the middle of Nowhere, Colorado.

Plus, their luck seemed to have turned a few days back when they had lost the gang of Hydra thugs that had been chasing them and then they found this abandoned farm house. It was fully stocked with canned food and a large barn for their exhausted horses. They had just gotten their first full night - and most of the day - of sleep in ages when Bucky decided to scout the area for game and supplies.

“Sure, Buck. Just let me wake up the others and get saddled up and we can check it out.” Turning towards the door, Steve looked back over his shoulder to his best friend’s disappointed expression. “The last thing we need is to turn up and be outnumbered by hostiles.”

With a sigh, Bucky nodded his agreement as Steve left him out front to wait. It was unfortunate that they could never find a moment alone anymore, but at least they had a chance to gain more supplies for the long road ahead of them. All-in-all, Steve was right about being cautious.

You never know when those Hydra bastards will show up and, from the looks of it, there’s a winter storm coming that could snow us in for weeks. Good thing the cold never bothered me.

Smiling happily again, Bucky ran to the barn to fetch everyone’s horses. The sooner they left, the sooner they could get back and hunker down before the storm hit.

_______________________________________________________________________

You ducked behind the table as shots rang out from the guys outside, shattering the window at your rear. Glass rained down on your head as you waited out the barage of bullets. Anger and sorrow warred within you as you caught another glimpse of your brother’s body, a pool of blood growing around him.

Wiping tears from your eyes, you clenched your teeth as the last rounds of gunfire died. Crawling on all fours, you moved towards the bedroom, hoping to escape and flank your attackers. If all else failed, maybe you could reach the barn and run with the horses.

Donning your jacket, you opened the window and crawled through as swiftly and quietly as possible. The wind was icy. There wasn’t any snow yet, but if the clouds on the horizon were any indication, it was not far off and would fall for a while. You snuck through the wintry night, towards the lumber pile. You could hear the men as they entered your house, there were definitely more than you first thought.

Ducking behind the wood that you had stockpiled for winter, you could see horses tied to the small lean-to a few yards away. If you could just get there and release them, the men would be too distracted by their escaped mounts to notice as you escaped into the barn.

With a solid sounding plan in mind, you approached the horses calmly, trying not to spook them and give away your position. Unfortunately, it seemed your luck had run out. The click of a pistol cocking froze you in your tracks.

“Hello there pretty lady.” The man chuckled, holding the barrel of his gun to your head. “Hands up, there won’t be no trouble.”

You raised your hands casually, guns resting lightly in each hand, breathing as evenly as possible.

“That’s it honey.” You felt his gun lower from the back of your head as he began to reach for your pistol.

Turning rapidly, you slammed the butt of your gun into the side of his nose. A sickening crunch, followed by a yelp of pain, was all the sound he made before you unsheathed your blade and drove it into his neck. Blood sprayed, splattering your cheek as you looked into the man’s dying eyes.

“That was for my brother.” Shoving his body away from you, you turned just in time to see another man rounding the corner of the house. You stowed your knife hastily, pulling the second pistol out of its holster and opened fire.

A single shot sounded and a bead of blood ran from between the man’s eyes. He collapsed to the ground as shouts from the men inside rose in volume. You sprinted back to the wood pile, diving over it as a bullet hit the logs, barely missing you. A firefight ensued and you managed to take out three more of their men before you ran out of rounds.

“Shit.” Pulling your knife from its sheath again, you prepared to run for the barn.

_______________________________________________________________________

The starry night sky was fully in place as Steve and the group rode out towards the farm Bucky had found.

Natasha and her gorgeously wild Nakota mare, Krasavitsa, were alert and ready for anything, riding ahead of the group as their lookouts.

Bucky, on his red roan Appaloosa, rode next to Steve and his filly. Star was the frisky counterpart to Sergeant’s stoic and commanding presence. She was an elegant chestnut Thoroughbred that loved to race over the land at a full sprint, much to the older stud’s annoyance.

Tony with his penchant for explosives and destructive things took up the rear. His exquisitely grumpy, gold Andalusian stud, Mark II, had been very displeased with being pulled from the barn in the dead of night. Not unlike his owner who continued to grumble and complain as they rode.

“Why are we out here again?” Tony whined, his horse grunting in agreement, ambling along behind the group.

Steve, turning in his saddle, glared at Tony in exasperation. “For the tenth time, Bucky found a farm that could have supplies. We need supplies if we are going to make the long trip east. Now, eyes up and stop your whining, we’re close.”

Bucky tried not to laugh as Steve rolled his eyes, Tony was a pain, but he was great back up in a pinch. The three of them halted at the base of the hill, sending Natasha ahead to take a look on foot. Much to Krasavitsa’s annoyance as she paced and pawed at the ground. She hated being separated from her human, but she wouldn’t put Nat in danger by giving away their position.

A few moments passed in silence, until the noise of distant gunshots reached them. Natasha ran back to the group as another flurry of shots and a shout echoed through the surrounding mountains.

“What’s going on, Nat?” Steve was visibly shaken, the distinctly female scream made his hair stand on end and kicked his protective instincts into high gear.

“Someone is attacking the farm. Appears to be around ten men in total, there were a few dead outside the door.” She shook her head at Bucky’s silent question. “She’s alone out there. Not clear how much longer she will last.”

With that, Natasha mounted up and they crested the hill together to take in the scene at the ranch below. It was pure carnage.

Men’s bodies fell unmoving onto the ground around her as the woman fought them off, equipped with only a knife. She must have run out of bullets with that last round of gunfire. She ran for the barn, trying to escape unseen, but they cut her off at the wood shed.

Tony took the horses, leaving them in the adjacent trees as Steve, Bucky, and Natasha began to creep along the tree line, towards the homestead.

They watched as the brave woman grabbed a nearby hatchet and chucked it at the man in her path. He fell dead, the hatchet firmly embedded in his skull. A sense of relief flooded Steve’s system as she reached the corner of the barn, but it was short lived as a scream tore through the air.

Drawing his revolver from its holster, Steve picked up his pace, Bucky trailing close behind him as they traversed the back of the property. Tony and Nat split from them, heading to the front as a giant man was seen dragging the woman into the house by her hair. He was followed by the rest of his men who hooped and hollered, sick grins plastered on their faces.

Looking to his partner, Steve and Bucky were in agreement. They needed to save the woman quickly. Hydra wasn’t a merciful gang and they would soon be out of time.

_______________________________________________________________________

The firm grip on your hair was painful. Strands popped from your scalp with every step as the hulking man pulled you across the floor of your home, past the body of your brother. His men jeered and touched your legs with their dirty, blood-stained hands. You tried not to panic, but your attempts were in vain as it dawned on you what they were about to do.

The leader - you assumed as he was the one barking orders as he dragged you along - took you towards the overturned dining table and hurled you into it. Your vision darkened as the breath was knocked from your lungs. “Flip the table and tie her down.”

Agonizing pain radiated through your back as you struggled to clear your vision enough to fight. Two men grabbed your wrists hard enough to bruise as two others worked to flip the heavy table right side up. The two men holding you forced you, face-down, onto the dinner table. They tied your arms above your head, tying it around one of the table legs at the opposite end. This left you on your tiptoes, your hips perched at the edge. Your cheek brushed the rough surface of the wood grain as you tried to observe the men’s locations around you.

When the first touches came, you began to panic. You couldn’t see the hands and that was the most excruciating part of it all, they brushed you in your most feminine places. Their rough palms and debauched words made you feel sick and tainted. You wished the world would just swallow you up, take you away from this horrible place that had been so recently full of love and happiness.

Tears streaked your face as they began to peel the clothes from your body. You kicked and screamed as best you could in your compromising position. Your head whipped back forcefully as a massive fist connected with your cheek, you felt the bones in your jaw crack as your vision blurred.

“Be still, bitch!” The man at your back bellowed as he gripped your hair, wrenching your head back.

Screaming as severe pain travelled the length of your spine, another wave of tears erupted from your eyes. Feeling helpless and alone, you did the only thing you could think of; never having been much of a believer in the almighty, you were out of practice, but you would do anything at this point. Closing your eyes, you begged for someone, anyone to save you.

Please, if you truly are there, listening to me. I need your help, anybody’s help. Somebody, please save me. I’ll do anything, just SAVE ME!!

#Dark Horse #Reader Fic #Marvel MCU #cowboy au #western au

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intoxicatiing · 5 years

Photo

𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄.

▌real name: Izolda Alais Larksynne, often called Iza by friends and family. Now known as Ruby Alouette.

▌single or taken: Complicated. As a courtesan, she’s in many long-term business arrangements, and often her sponsors have an emotional tie to her, but her relationship status as it is, is verse-dependent.

▌abilities or powers: Thrall, via eye contact, and, in some verses, shadow manipulation.

▌eye colour: Vibrant blue.

▌hair colour: Golden blonde.

▌family members: Her parents, Adelaide and Perseval (Deceased), her brothers Ashwick and Jean (twins, deceased), her sister Penelope (deceased) and her grandmother Helene (verse-dependent, usually deceased).

▌pets: verse-dependent. She usually has some horses, though she doesn’t consider them pets, and would love a dog.

▌something they don’t like: She loathes having to brush and detangle her own hair, even if she loves the result. She also dislikes her own habit of feeling two opposing feelings at once, and limes. She really doesn’t like limes.

▌hobbies/activities: She’s an avid reader, chess player, and student, always thirsty to learn more, especially when it comes to mathematics and language. Dancing is one of the few things Ruby adores doing with other people, though she doesn’t mind dressing up and shopping, as well as gossiping and judging others from afar.

▌ever hurt anyone before: As a child, she often got into physical fights and yelling matches, as she was easily provoked to lashing out in anger especially by the boys that worked her family’s farm. In her teenage and adult years, it’s verse dependent, though she considers standing by and allowing people to be tortured and killed by Luken’s men to be hurting them as well.

▌ever killed anyone before: Verse dependent, but not in her main verse.

▌animal that represents them: Visually, Ruby can be considered somewhat wofish, with sharp features and clever eyes. To be cliche, one might say a wild bird that’s been caged and broken, but a fighting dog might be a better comparison, as she’s been “trained” through violence to mistrust and protect herself in any way she can.

▌worst habits: Her complete inability and often refusal to trust others, even when she has no reason to be suspicious, which damages her relationship with them, as well as her own mental health. She expects the worst from people, and is only satisfied when she’s proven right. She can also be incredibly self-centered and judgmental, and often takes things personally that have nothing to do with her. She also tends to hold grudges and lie about even the smallest things, unable to simply relax around even people she’s gotten used to at times.

▌sexual orientation: Demisexual and demiromantic, though beyond that she is attracted to all genders.

▌thoughts on marriage/kids: This is incredibly complicated, and something Ruby tries to avoid thinking of as much as possible. As a child, she wanted to marry someone who loved her for who she was, not for who she ought to be, but it seemed like nothing more than a distant fantasy, something she said because “all little girls want to marry” and not because she truly wanted that. Make no mistake, she did want to marry, but she told herself she didn’t at the heart of things to make it easier to bear the idea that she likely never would. Nowadays, however, the idea of marriage seems even more impossible, and she refuses to think of it at all. It’s such a small thing to lose compared to everything else she’s gone through, and she focuses on doing what she can for Luken to ensure the safety of the only family she has left.

As for children -- originally she liked to imagine herself as a mother who made her children laugh often and let them run wild as much as they wanted -- something her own mother didn’t let her do, especially when there were chores to be done. It was something she gave little serious thought to ultimately, until she first became pregnant, and lost the baby due to being far too unhealthy to carry it to term. More information here on her history with children. But this has warped her view on children, and she focusses wholly on Jane, without so much as imagining that she might have another child, nor wanting one either with all the pain she��s suffered so far related to pregnancy and childbirth.

Beyond her own children, however, she likes the idea of kids in theory. She has little contact with them with the sort of lifestyle she leads, but has a soft spot for them all the time. Occasionally, she’ll toss an extra coin to beggar children, or smile more sweetly at them, but otherwise mostly avoids them in the end, for fear of thinking too much about Jane.

▌fears: On a surface level, she has a phobia of spiders and loud noises. On a deeper level, she is terrified of fire, and dislikes being surprised by sudden heat. She is also absolutely terrified of people in her heart of hearts, though it’s a subconscious fear bred from the abuse heaped upon her in her formative teenage years. She’s plagued by anxiety and mistrusts even the simplest of gestures at times, which only makes it worse. She does also fear pain, even just a papercut, though it’s something she’s mostly desensitized to by now, and cannot be vulnerable in front of others in a way that isn’t carefully crafted to suit their needs as a client. Her deepest fear, however, is losing her daughter Jane -- someone Ruby views as the last shred of goodness in her world, and someone constantly threatened by Luken when she fails to do a satisfactory job. There’s a separate post about her fears here.

▌style preferences: it depends on what he’s doing and who he’s with. for a client, he’ll get dressed up and put on makeup and so on. if he’s by himself, a tank top and loose shorts will do. he tends toward plainer clothes when he’s not working, and likes to hide his scars, so he tends to be the person wearing long sleeves and pants in the middle of the summer. he’d love to wear floral patterns and colors, but isn’t brave enough to do it himself.

▌someone they love: Her daughter. At this point, she all but clings to the idea of Jane to keep her going.

▌approach to friendships: Most of her “Friendships” are carefully cultivated to further Luken’s own schemes, either directly or indirectly. Much like her patrons, Ruby adjusts her attitude and airs to something that she thinks will most easily endear her to the person she’s pursuing. Real friendships, however, are few and far between.

These friendships are often sprouted out of a shared love of literature or chess, with conversations remaining easy and light, and often humorous. Slowly, she begins to loosen up around them, occasionally forgetting to check herself even for something as small and simple as a chuckle or smile. She doesn’t recgonise them for what they are until it’s grown far beyond what she expected, and then she ends up becoming fearful and often sabotages them unwillingly through her own paranoia and fear of emotional vulnerability.

▌thoughts on pie: Fruit pies and tarts are nice, meat pies are too filling for her liking sometimes, and just right at others. Ruby overall has no great passion for most food.

▌favourite drink: Mulled wine is always nice, and spiced cider.

▌favourite place to spend time at: Her favorite place would always be a cushioned windowsill or soft armchair by a wide, west-facing window in a library. Ideally, with a book in hand and the snow falling outside.

▌swim in the lake or in the ocean: Lake, if she absolutely must swim. Ruby isn’t a strong swimmer as it is, and she gets seasick too easily to enjoy the ocean.

▌their type: While she does enjoy taller people with sharper features, she ultimately doesn’t have a distinct type aesthetically (though she does go weak for someone puzzling over their work at a desk). Personality-wise, she prefers people with genuine warmth and kindness, and often finds herself preferring artists or bookworms, someone quieter and respectful, though she does find herself drawn towards people who make jokes and laugh easily as well, as it’s not something she sees much of in herself.

▌camping or indoors: Indoors, full stop. While she will tolerate camping when necessary, Ruby is used to luxuriating in fine beds and frequent baths and perfumes. In some verses she may enjoy camping at times, and she does enjoy being outside, but simply being outside is a far cry from living outside for even a day.

tagged by : @dubovoye and @dechagnys

tagging : everyone because I used up all my brain power filling this out

#fact #answered meme

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enigmaticjblake · 5 years

Text

We have failed humanity

If you are reading this, chances of you being an intelligent and a self-aware human being just escalated.

Although I would admit that a bleak possibility of a hyper advanced alien race capable of travelling across time and space has discovered us already and has deciphered all possible forms of human communication only to come to the conclusion that we are among the most stupid races of all and are just not ready to join the ranks of the universal union. I guess that explains why aliens do not want to talk to us. We aren’t ready for an introduction yet.

We humans, on countless number of occasions we have exhibited our immaturity, selfishness and ruthlessness towards humanity.

We have educated ourselves to the tooth, invented newer technologies but we have lost the vision of protecting our planet. We have abused our oceans, our forests and our resources. Our planet is 4.543 billion years and humans are approximately 300-200,000 years old. If you mathematically condense the age of the planet earth into 24 hours, we humans have inhabited it only for a mere 3 seconds and look at what we have achieved.

Countless number of wars have ravaged our civilization over the years, ever since mankind emerged but there are two wars in particular that have changed the world forever. World War 1 and World War 2.

While WW1 lasted for approximately 4 years and lasted between Jul 1914 to Nov 1918 , it lead to the mobilization of more than 70 million troops and stands among the darkest phases in human history. Ironically it was supposed to be a war to end all wars, as the perpetrators claimed.

More than 15 million human lives were lost in the war.

It is shameful because there was another World War.

WW2 took place on a global scale and lasted between 1939 to 1945, that’s approximately 6 years of endless mindless destruction of humanity as a whole. As much as 30 nations participated in the war, which eventually turned into a battle of 2 factions; the Allies and the Axis. The major players in the war disposed off their entire economic, industrial and scientific capabilities to fuel the war and as a result, there were 90 million deaths all across the planet.

While that wasn’t enough, the world witnessed an unimaginable horror, imagine the world’s most excellent minds capable of thinking outside the box working with the express purpose of creating something that can wipe off humanity.

The atomic bomb was made in order to put an end to the war but it was more of showing the world who is the big daddy.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki saw something no one in this world should see. When the bombs dropped, the whole world changed that day. Both cities were burnt to crisp and the whole region was plunged into radiation. The effects of the same are evident till this day.

It was a demonstration to the prowess of the super power as we know it.

To be honest, not much has changed ever since.

As humans we were supposed to be on but we have divided ourselves.

Our egos have become so fragile that we jump into conflict too fast. Apes did that, pre historic man was no different and intelligent homo sapiens are also no exception.

If you are well aware of your surroundings, chances are you must have heard or read about World Wars. If you have not, you are probably too young or never got the chance to educate yourself.

On the third day of a fresh new decade humanity woke up to memes of World War 3.

There was this sudden discomfort, confusion and realization that we have damaged ourselves beyond repair now.

Whatever the reasons maybe, I see two ignorant world leaders trying to justify their fragile ego and are ready to take down the world along with them.

The possibility of the world engulfing into a third world war has never been so real, let us dive into the consequences humanity will have to face if a third world war erupts because the chances of it have never been this real.

1. There will be black rainfall

Soon as the bombs drop, the skies will go dark and there will be black rain. The rain wont clear the sky and the drops won’t be water. These will be oily drops which will possess harm if come in direct contact with any life form.

In Hiroshima, the black rain started 20 minutes after the impact, the rain covered a rough area of about 20 miles. The whole region was drenched with this black gooey substance which was highly radioactive.

The skies were burning and oxygen levels were dropping, people were struggling through the flames and dying of thirst. Out of desperation most started consuming the mysterious black liquid only to later succumb to a radioactive demise.

The substance was so radioactive, it altered the blood of the people it came in contact with, there is no doubt that if we witness such weapons of mass destruction, we will definitely see this black rain.

2. An electromagnetic shock wave will disrupt electricity causing a massive black out.

Any nuclear explosion will be followed by an electromagnetic shockwave that can potentially fry electric grids and circuits on a nationwide scale. Nuclear tests in the past were capable of doing so on a 1000 miles radius and this was discovered by accident. Ever since, or so called scientific minds have designed nuclear bombs in a way they emit these shockwaves. So not only it will turn off your Xbox or Playstation, the data on your computer will be erased, the food in your refrigerator will become inconsumable and water treatment facilities in the area will shut down eventually granted access to contaminated water.

For a long time, we will be living without electricity and contaminated water.

3. The skies will become so dark, the sun will black out.

Wherever the bombs fall, there will be an unfathomable amount of energy in that area will consume the surrounding area and will create a dense mushroom cloud almost 15 kms above ground level. This mushroom cloud will spread out into the sky which will cover up the entirety of the sky leading to a long lasting darkness. Survivors of this event will only see a black sky for almost a period of 30 years. Only after 30 years there will be chances of seeing the blue sky and a clear sun.

4. The planet will become too cold for food cultivation.

Dropping temperatures will be a direct consequence of blocking of sunlight by the dark clouds. The dark skies cause a nuclear winter on the planet, there won’t be any summer. It is possible for the animals to starve to death and all the flora, fauna and vegetation that exists at that point will wither away and die.

It will take approximately 25 years for the planet to recover from this climate change.

5. The Ozone layer will be damaged badly.

As we all know, pollution and carbon emissions are slowly damaging the ozone layer, in case of a nuclear holocaust the ozone layer is estimated to take a damage of 50%, this will allow the suns radiation to enter our atmosphere and will be lethal for all kinds of life forms. Life will just not be the same again.

Surviving life forms will go through extensive mutations, crops will become smaller and weaker and will even stop reproducing, humans will suffer from skin cancer and will die a painful death.

6.Billions will die of starvation.

It is estimated that even with continual efforts of harvesting any kind of crops or even if we adopt modern scientific farming techniques, it will take at least 5 years for us to get the first post war yield.

Low temperatures, high amounts of radiation in the soil and water will make it immensely difficult to harvest any kind of crops.

We just won’t be able to feed everyone. Those who will learn to survive will somehow manage to find food and people living beside coastal regions might find it a little easier but again, as there will be a black sky, most of the plankton in the sea will wither away which will kill our oceans. Anything fished out of the oceans for consumption will be dangerous; the first five years will be harsh and challenging and most of us won’t be able to survive.

7. Packed foods will be safe for consumption.

Sealed food is what will keep us alive for the first five years, bottled and canned food come with preservatives, granting them longer shelf life and it has been proven through experimentation that they can protect the contents from radiation. Stuff found on ground zero will contain smaller tracer of radiation but will still be consumable, just don’t expect them to taste good. The challenge will be to stock them as everyone will scavenge the wastelands for them. Just like how we see in most post apocalyptic sci-fi tales.

8. Radioactive bones.

Surviving humans will suffer from cancer, as earth will be bathed in radiation in the initial days of fallout. Strontium-90 is one chemical that tricks our body into believing its calcium and easily accepts it. The body sends this chemical directly into our bone marrow and teeth and thus leads the victim into bone cancer.

The only way to survive is finding out a solid enclosure and stay put till a few weeks have gone, two weeks is the safe period for radiation to reduce a 1000 folds. Birth defects, genetic mutation and deaths will be common. Same were observed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

9. There will be massive storms all around the globe

The first month will witness a crazy pattern in the weather, the nuclear debris wont just block out the sun, it will enter the stratosphere and there will be massive storms, heavy destructive rainfall, blizzards of radioactive snow and cold darkness. It will be a push back into the dark ages where the cave man used to struggle for basic necessities of life.

Things beside water bodies will be worse as temperatures will plummet into a dark nuclear winter.

10. Power vacuum

There will come a time when people will emerge from their shelters, bunkers and eventually try to re-establish civilization. This is will a very dangerous phase, imagine a shift of power into the wrong hands, imagine the world going back into a much darker age. All the efforts humanity took to establish social, economical and ethical systems will have to be redone. Again there can be misuse of power.

11. People will survive.

It is not secret that billions of people will die the moment a bomb goes off, billions more will die a slow and a painful death, be it starvation, freezing in the cold or radioactive poisoning. There are just too many ways to get consumed by the harshness of the post apocalyptic world while handful of us will make it. The handful of us will adapt, be stronger than ever, have the will to survive against all odds.

Those who survive the first 30 years of this apocalypse will be the one to see a new earth. An earth where plants will start growing back, the skies will be clear and the sun will shine like it used to.

The new world will look something like Chernobyl where nature has reclaimed everything.

Life will go on and people will start rebuilding everything and I hope that they do their best to learn from the mistakes their past foolish and selfish leaders have made.

Hopefully they will evolve into a much mature race and finally have the aliens talk to them some day.

#nuclearwar #fallout #notowar #worldwar3 #humanity

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bettercalllacho · 6 years

Text

Analysis about HENRY BOWERS/PATRICK HOCKSTETTER in IT by STEPHEN KING

Introduction: I want to do an analysis about Henry Bowers and Patrick Hockstetter since long time. I will be focus on the source material, so the masterpiece of Stephen King. I will give lines for each global ideas. I want to work on the madness they both shared but in different states. Henry and Patrick are so different and alike at the same time and I want to underline this fact. First, there is a french psychiatrist concept of «Folie à deux» it means «Madness of two» or «shared psychosis» and that applies perfectly to them.

PART 1= FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP, SCHOLARITY.

FAMILY:

→ Henry Bowers born in 1946 , son of Oscar Bowers (Butch) and Mrs Bowers, his mother in law is Rena Davenport.

He killed his father in 1958 when he was 12 years old, under the influence of Pennywise. In 1956, Mrs Bowers ran away from the farm because she was beaten nearly to death by her husband, she left the home without her son. Contrary to Patrick, Henry is more close to his father than his mother, he is in a complex relationship with his father, he loves and hates him at the same time. His father was an ex-marine who fought in the Normandy beach during WW2 (a reference to “Stand by Me” an another novel of Stephen King in which an abusive father is accused of madness but his son is the only one who defends him because he is an hero to him even if his own father burns his ear).

WHEREAS

→ Patrick Hockstetter born in 1946, son of Arthur Hockstetter and Mrs Hockstetter, big brother of Avery Hockstetter.

In 1951, at only 5 years old he killed Avery while her mother was sleeping. His dad a seller of painting, has some doubts about his older son Patrick because of snow footprints in Avery bedroom but he never asks him nor tells his suspicion to his wife. Patrick likes to have the attention of his mother (he occasionaly cooks with her, show her his draws) but doesn’t react to her cries when she saw that her second child stopped breathing because of him. Just like Mrs Denbrough she is totally under the shock at the death of Avery.

So Henry and Patrick shared the murder of a relative but Henry was a beaten child and killed his father mainly because of all the bad treatments and under Pennywise influence. Patrick is the one responsible for the death of his brother and his parents seems to be normal parents, his mother is a devoted catholic who died of a breast Cancer in 1962. The biggest mistake of Mr Hockstetter is to have hide his suspicious about his son, he could have bring Patrick to a psychiatrist to “cure” his solipsist view and his murderous desires (at least try to stop that).

FRIENDSHIP:

→ Henry began to have friends at 6 years old (1952 in the novel) and they all became members of the Bowers Gang.

There are 7 members of the BOWERS GANG just like the Losers Club. 7 is a lucky number in many cultures but the irony of fate is that many of them are tragic figures. Patrick is killed in the Junkyard, Belch and Vic are murdered in the sewers by Pennywise, Henry is accused of all the murders of kids in Derry and is locked in the Jupiner Hill asylum from 1958 to 1985 until Pennywise free him to kill all the adults Losers. Henry meets his death by the hand of Eddie Kaspbrak. Eddie implies that all the friends of Henry are dead that summer so perhaps Peter, Steve and Gard are also dead. It’s not clear without putting them in the victims list of Pennywise or perhaps they are not real friends for Henry. They are more like minions to him, especially because Peter is a rich kid who leaves in first along with Moose the ROCK WAR against the Losers Club. They both prefer Belch and Vic and they fear Henry.

-Henry Bowers “Hank” (nickname of Henry Freeman James in 1922 novel by Stephen King)

-Reginald Huggins “Belch” (because of his ability to burps)

-Victor Criss “Vic”

-Patrick Hockstetter “Pat” (only in the 2017 movie by Henry at the kissing bridge)

-Peter Gordon

-Steve Sadler “Moose”

-Gard Jagermeyer

Henry Bowers best friends are Reginald Huggins and Victor Criss.They are always together until the end in the sewers. Henry deeply regrets to have abandon them when he talks with a “ghostly” Belch.

→ Henry is the leader of the Bowers Gang and must be the one who chose Patrick to be part of the gang, Patrick appears after the Rock War and the disappearance of Peter Gordon in the gang. But it could be possible that Patrick knows Henry before and it’s not established if he is a replacement of Peter. Anyways because of the psycho side Patrick must be feared by the other members of the gang. Henry is the only one who doesn’t fear him, the same goes for Patrick who doesn’t fear Henry.

→ Patrick has no friends, his asocial side (solipsist view and psychopathy) puts him aside from society. They fear him, especially the girls in the classroom. Patrick hang with the Bowers Gang to be with Henry Bowers.

SCHOLARITY:

→ Henry and Patrick have repeated classes. Henry isn’t anymore with Victor and Reginald, they are in 6th grade, Henry is in the 7th grade.

→ Patrick might turn in test papers that were utterly blank or blank except for a large, decorative question-mark

→ His report cards showed Patrick as being an apathetic student.

→ In classroom Henry, Belch and Vic are most noticed by Mrs Douglas for their bad behaviour than Patrick.

→ They both have Mrs Douglas teacher and she doesn’t see the how much dangerous and psychothic is Patrick and nor does she see the violence of Oscar «Butch» Bowers against Henry.

VIOLENCE:

Toward animals=

→ Patrick kills insects and animals, he brings them in his school stuffs or in the Amana Fridge in the Junkyard. He sometimes shows dead insects to pupils at school.

→ Henry kills at 8 years old «Mr Chips» Mike Hanlon's dog in order to pleased his father Oscar Bowers «Butch» who hates William Hanlon and always blames him for his failure on the farm.

So about hurting animals Henry does it for his father and Patrick does it for himself BUT at the same time we need to UNDERLINE that Patrick find the Amana fridge the day George Denbrough died so when Pennywise is awake, moreover «perhaps some other force did that», so yes Patrick is a puppet just like all the Derry habitants and that's one of the reason why he is a “victim” of Pennywise.

Toward humans=

( Summer 1958)

→ Henry torments the Losers with several acts of violence, such as partially carving his name onto Ben Hanscom’s belly, killing, breaking Eddie Kaspbrak's arm, and white washing Stan Uris' face in the snow until it bleeds.

→ During Chapter 16 «Eddie's bad break»: Patrick Hockstetter appears for the first real time (before his name was mentionned as one of the missing kids). During this chapter Henry breaks the arm of Eddie, and Henry and Patrick are the most violent members of the gang and the only ones who don't fear Mr Gedeau, they even face him.

REASONS OF MURDERS:

→ For Patrick killing is a need, his Psychopathology brings him a God complex. There’s irony because he was raised in a catholic family.

→ Henry does it for having his father attention: “he had finally found the key to his father’s attention” “it was the first beer Henry had ever had, and for the rest of his years he would associate that taste with positive emotions: victory and love”. When it’s not for attention it’s for jealousy/vengeance against the Losers Club. But Henry become crazier and crazier through the story, even Victor Criss one of his most loyal friend become worried about his mental state.

VIEW OF THE WORLD:

→ Henry hears voices from the moon because of Pennywise. It's often the dead voices of his cherish friends or the Losers Club who tortures him.

→ Patrick sees a black and white world, he even draws only in dark colors (black and brown) looping scribbles and tell that's different things.

MADNESS:

THE JUNKYARD HENRY AND PATRICK:

→ Henry doesn't leave the Junkyard when Belch and Vic does. He accepts to be alone with Hockstetter knowing what he is capable of, because he reveals that he knows the dirty secret of Patrick for the Amana fridge.

→ Henry is capable of doing blackmail, if Patrick said something about the handjob in the junkyard he would reveal the truth behind the missing animals.

→ HOMOPHOBIA:

→ Irony of fate: Jupiner Hill for Butch but it's Henry who truely goes there. Henry said to Patrick that he can't go with the loonies so the asylum if they know his secrets but Patrick died before and Hen goes to the asylum.

→ Hockstetter POINT OF VIEWS: Bill Bev Henry Stephen King

IN THE MOVIE (2017 version):

→Pat's lighter must be the Hen's lighter

→ Surname Pat «Just hold him Pat»

→ The red baloon I love Derry

→ Pat is totally fond of Hen during violent acts

→ He goes with Belch to chase Ben Hanscom, and like in the book that's because of Hen orders that he died.

→ Henry is aiming a cat it remind the murder of Mister Chips but also show that Henry could hurt animals just like Patrick.

#henry bowers #patrick hockstetter #belch huggins #victor criss #stephen king #bowersgang #bowers gang #pennywise

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nerdy-bookworm-1998 · 6 years

Text

Masterlist

Last updated 23/03/19

Marvel

Gretchen's 200 Follower Writing Challenge Masterlist

Takeout Night - Reader introduces the boys to a new cuisine

A Gift-Wrapped Christmas -(Bucky Barnes x reader) Reader helps Bucky with some wrapping

Big brother - (platonic!Steve Rogers x reader) Steve helps reader after a breakup

Christmas Angel - (Bucky Barnes x reader) Reader takes Bucky Chrismtas shopping

Christmas in the Woods - (Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes) The boys pick up their Christmas tree

Happy Birthday - The team throw a surprise birthday party for reader

Christmas Fever - (Steve Rogers x Reader x Bucky Barnes) The boys find reader crying in the middle of the night

Snowed In - (Bucky Barnes x Reader) Bucky and the reader get stuck in a snow storm

Christmas Claustrophobia - (Steve Rogers x Reader x Bucky Barnes) Reader has a panic attack when she gets stuck in the attic

The Gryffindor and the Hufflepuff - Reader helps the boys find their Hogwarts Houses

Mistletoe Kisses - (Loki Odinson x Reader) What happens under the mistletoe, stays under the mistletoe

Belonging - (Bucky Barnes x Reader) Bucky comes home to find reader locked up in her room

Teacher’s Pet - (Student!Steve Rogers x Professor!Reader) Steve Rogers is a teacher’s pet

Lost - After a terrible accident, reader ends up in the Marvel universe

Widow's Bite - Imagine Natasha beating the shit out of your abusive ex

Puppy Eyes - What happens when the boys use their puppy eyes to drag reader into an animal shelter

I’ll always catch you when you fall - (Peter Parker x Stark!reader) Peter’s first mission with the team after the dusting doesn’t go to plan, reader cheers him up

Trust Me - (Bucky Barnes x reader) Bucky takes reader on a ride

Confident - (Stucky x reader) What’s wrong with being confident?

Birthday Surprise - (Stucky x reader) It’s your birthday

Welcome to the jungle - Tony turns the team into animals

A Father’s Fear - (Steve Rogers x Reader) What happens when you tell Steve you’re pregnant

Sickday - (Steve Rogers x Reader) Steve takes care of a sick reader

Concussion - (Stucky x Reader) Reader has a concussion

Thunderstorm - (Skinny!Steve Rogers x Reader) College AU where Steve and the Reader spend time together in the library while it rains outside

Full Throttel - Biker AU! What happens when a bar owner gets caught in a war between two rival MC’s

One Call Away - (Steve Rogers x Reader) Steve is always one call away

Scorpia - What happens when the Barton sister no one knew about shows up at the Avengers Compound littered with injuries?

Jazz Girl - (Stucky x Reader) Reader takes the boys dancing

Heart of the Ocean - (Stucky x Reader) Mer! AU Steve is a selkie who is mated with merman Bucky. What happens when they discover a group of merpeople hunting a human woman?

Sparring Time - (Stucky x Reader) Steve and Bucky decide it’s time for the reader to learn hand to hand combat, but she has a few tricks up her sleave

The Bet - (Stucky x Reader) Tony, Sam, Nat and Wanda take a bet on how fast the reader will show her hand (companion piece to Sparring Time)

Love Machine - (Bucky Barnes x Reader) Reader gets a big surprise when meeting Bucky's furbaby for the first time

The Arranged Marriage - (Prince!Steve Roger x Princess!Reader) Victorian era au where Steve and the reader are betrothed but cannot stand one another, will the sparks fly or will everything go down in flames?

Baby Blues - (Stucky x Reader) The boys come home to find the reader near tears because she can’t calm down their daughter

Puppy Love - (Bucky Barnes x Reader) Bucky and the reader find a box of puppies for sale and decide to take them home

Beg for Mercy - (Hades!Bucky Barnes x Persephone!Reader) Even the king of hell bows to his queen

The Distraction - (Steve Rogers x Reader) Steve is shocked to learn it’s his turn to play the distraction

Yes, Alpha - (Alpha!Bucky Barnes x Omega!Reader) Reader is being stubborn about staying in bed until her alpha steps in

Home - (Stucky x Reader) After a rough day at the compound Steve and Bucky find out what home means to them.

The Howling Commando - (Stucky x Reader) tony organises a Halloween party and fem!reader goes dressed in a howling commandos uniform and Steve and Bucky are just: 'error. Supersoldier.exe has stopped working'

Occupational Hazard - (Steve Rogers x Natasha Romanoff) Steve learns the hard way that Natasha always carries a blade wherever she goes.

Super Soldiers and Panic Attacks - Steve and Bucky help the reader with a panic attack in the happiest place on earth.

Christmas in July - The team wake up to find the compound full of the smell of Christmas

The Necromancer - Necromancer Bucky is encouraged by deceased reader to find Steve

Festive Spirit - The reader loves Christmas and Bucky is a bit of a Grinch

Snowballs and Hot Cocoa - Day 1 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. It’s the first heavy snowfall of winter and the team spends it playing in the snow before snuggling up with some hot cocoa.

The Annual Cookie Baking Bonanza - Day 2 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. The reader wakes up early to bake Christmas cookies, only to be sent back to bed once Bucky, Steve and Sam arrive back from a mission

Operation: Deck the Halls - Day 3 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. The reader is on a mission; to decorate the Avengers Tower living spaces before the team wakes. Will she succeed or will she fall asleep before the task is complete?

Carols and Cuddles - Day 4 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Steve, Bucky and the reader are enjoying a quiet evening at home when they get a very, not so very unexpected surprise.

Girls’ Night In - Day 5 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. The girls spend the night relaxing after a long week of missions.

December Date Night - Day 6 of my 25 Days of Chrismtas Celebration Calendar. It’s date night for Steve and Y/N. Steve plans on making it absolutly magical

The Christmas Tree Lighting - Day 7 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. The town closest to the compound is holding their annual tree lighting ceremony and have invited the Avengers to attend but not everything goes smoothly, luckily Steve and Bucky are there to save the day.

The Annual Stark Christmas Gala - Day 8 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. It’s time for the annual Stark Christmas Gala, but Y/N isn’t really in the mood. Maybe a new friend can turn that around.

Online Shopping - Day 9 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. All Bucky wants to do is go home, curl up with his best and do some online shopping, but she has other plans

Signed, Sealed and Delivered - Day 10 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Y/N gets Fury an early Christmas present. Fury is not very jolly, or so they think.

The Annual Avengers’ Family Christmas Card - Day 11 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. It’s time for the annual avengers family Christmas card and Steve gets a little more than just a photo out of the deal.

The Mystery of the Secret Santa - Day 12 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. The Secret Santa strikes and Clint knows exactly which lab tech with their own secret and a supersoldier boyfriend is responsible.

Crafts for Christmas - Day 13 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Peter helps y/n make some Christmas baubles.

Snowstorm - Day 14 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Y/N is stuck in a snowstorm on her way home, but not everything is as bad as it seems.

Going Home - Day 15 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Y/N is on her way home for Christmas when Steve drops a bomb on her.

Turkey Sandwich with a side of Vomit - Day 16 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Y/N gets food poisoning from a turkey sandwich. Luckily Doctor Barnes is there to make it all better.

Snowy Slopes and Broken Bones - Day 17 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Y/N, Steve, and Bucky go on vacation and Steve wants to go snowboarding.

A Disney Christmas - Day 18 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. When Tony announces a Christmas vacation Y/N is the personification of the energizer bunny, but not everything is as it seems.

Avengers Pajama Party - Day 19 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. It’s time for the avengers family holiday pajama party and y/n has a little surprise for Bucky.

A Snowy Engagement - Day 20 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Bucky and y/n go for a snowy walk in Central Park.

The Winter Wedding - Day 21 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Bucky and y/n get married in a Christmas Eve wedding. Part of my Lost universe.

A MC Christmas - Day 22 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. It’s Christmas time at the Howling Commandos MC. Part of my Full Throttle universe.

Flannel Shirts and Reindeer Skirts - Day 23 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Y/N takes Bucky home for a family Christmas at the Barton farm. Part of my Scorpia universe.

The Festive Education of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes - Day 24 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Y/N teaches Steve and Bucky about Christmas.

The Yule Feast - Day 25 of my 25 Days of Christmas Celebration Calendar. Y/N and Steve have their own private yule feast with their children. Part of my Arranged Marriage universe.

The Ice Queen’s Secret - When Bucky and Y/N get stuck together in a dingy cabin during a snowstorm secrets are revealed

Steven’s Secret - Y/N has been very busy lately with juggling her job, studies and spending time with Steve Rogers, her boyfriend of two years, causing Steve to distance himself from her. What will happen when she hears him talking to Sharon about telling his girlfriend where he’s been for the last three weeks?

A Pep Talk From The Past - Bucky gives himself a pep talk before asking y/n a very important question.

Solving the Mystery of the Secret Valentine - Two months after Bucky finds out y/n is keeping secrets from him it all comes to a head when the compound is attacked, or is it?

The Misunderstanding - Bucky thinks y/n is cheating on him with Steve, but everything is not as it seems.

A Dinner to Die For - No one goes after y/n family and gets away with it, no one.

Audiobook of Love - Steve and Bucky are missing their best girl while on a mission, but she has a special surprise for them.

Migraines and Movies - Tony drops everything when his daughter needs him.

Scrapes and IHOP Pancakes - Nat and y/n have a post-mission breakfast

Trick or Treat - It is Brooklyn and Sarah’s first time going trick or treating, and their Avengers aunties and uncles love their costumes

Tolkien

The Royal Artist - (Thranduil x elf!reader) Thranduil meets the reader on a beach and is so entranced by her that he invites her to stay at the palace, but she has her own past that she is running from, will it finally catch up with her?

The Bookelf - (Thranduil x Elf!Reader) Thranduil finds a distraught reader in the forest and takes her under his wing

#master list #nerdy-bookworm-1998 #marvel #avengers #tolkien

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artofthero · 5 years

Text

i made a post about this a while ago, but it got lost when i accidentally deleted the blog and i don’t think anyone reblogged it (that i could find at least)

so! i wanted to share the backstories for my hetalia/DnD au that i have so far, as well as a bit of their time as party. it’s not a complete story and some parts are lifted from other DnD shows bc i haven’t actually played much myself and don’t really have any other inspiration lmao, but i remember it being a well-received au so hopefully someone will enjoy this!

e.stonia/eduard – high elf bard

the heir to a long-standing family of elven military officers who offered their servitude to their king. the alliance had lasted so long, the position was practically hereditary. eduard studied military tactics and strategy dutifully, along with his music, but when it came to practice, he froze in the face of battle. raivis’s quick-thinking saved him and his soldiers, but he surrendered the position, ashamed of his failure and filled with dread at the thought of getting soldiers killed by his poor command. his family was equally shamed and shunned him. he left for the life of a bard, cutting his hair to signify his exile. he grew up privileged but not spoiled and adapted quickly to the lifestyle of a traveling musician. he is a studious reader and skilled with the kannel, with which he casts his spells. as a caster, he is rarely in the midst of a battle, and has proved himself a brilliant tactician from this distance

l.atvia/raivis – halfling trickster rogue

one of many street urchins who grew up in a large city. he scraped a living together through a combination of thievery and deception, using his small stature to gain sympathy, posing as a human child even as an adult. he never stole for the sake of stealing, just for survival, but became quite adept at slipping authorities by navigating through tight, small spaces. despite his skill, the life of a thief made him anxious and paranoid, and he is often quite fearful. he generally covers this with bluster and snark but can break if pushed. his greatest vice is his drinking, but his biggest virtue is his loyalty. though he struggles to make friends due to his paranoia, once he makes them, he will fiercely stand by them in the face of danger

l.ithuania/toris – tiefling sorcerer

his family’s demonic bloodline had remained dormant for several generations, so when he was born with demonic features, it was a horrifying surprise and he was abandoned, perceived as a bad omen. he was found by a traveling family and adopted, raised by the eldest sister, a cleric named katya, alongside her younger siblings, ivan and natalia. they helped him train and hone his inherent demonic magic, eventually finding he could channel it safely through amber. he grew up cared for, but his presence often created trouble for his adopted family. the guilt eventually drove him to leave, thinking they were better off without him, and he became a mercenary sorcerer, facing a lot of hardships on the battle field. having seen some of the worst of life, he aims to be kind and peaceful when possible, but will fight when needed

a.merica/alfred – human champion fighter

a native resident of a small village that bordered on two rival principalities, along with his twin brother matthew. as part of a farming family, he grew up doing significant physical labor and became very strong and durable. frustrated at the abuse his friends and neighbors suffered at the hands of both principalities’ armies, he began standing up to the soldiers, picking fights and often ending up beaten, bloody, and lying in the dust. however, he remained determined to defend his home and neighbors, training and continuing to fight until both armies went from seeing him as a pest to a threat. along with his brother, he drove the soldiers out of the town, even facing off against the armies’ officers. together, they chased the armies out and warned the princes to leave their home out of their petty fighting, lest there be consequences. incredibly brave, bordering on foolishness, he will rush headlong into battle, especially if someone needs to be defended. he has a strong sense of justice and makes friends easily. his fighting style is as loud and boisterous as he is, swinging his fists wildly and wielding massive weapons with ease

c.anada/matthew – human druid

a native resident of a small village that bordered on two rival principalities, along with his twin brother alfred. as part of a farming family, he grew up close to nature and animals, finding a deep respect for the natural world. frustrated at the abuse his friends and neighbors suffered at the hands of both principalities’ armies, he slipped into the surrounding forests to learn magic from the local fae, mastering the druidic arts. he grew powerful, especially after finding his familiar – a massive white bear being dragged around by one of the armies as a living weapon, which matthew freed and befriended. along with alfred, he drove the soldiers from their town, and made clear to the princes that their home would no longer be a part of their fight. generally quiet and reserved, he tends to be calm and logical, but has a sharp sense of humor. his magic tends to manifest through trees and ice

u.kraine/katya – human cleric

a traveling healer, she fled a destructive fire in her hometown with her two younger siblings, only to return to find they had no home to go back to. softhearted and strong, she prefers not to fight but will stand firm when needed. she worries often for her family, and sometimes fails to take proper care of herself because of it. ultimately, all she wants is a happy and safe life for the people she cares for

r.ussia/ivan – human caster (warlock? wizard? unsure)

fleeing his burning home with his sisters as a child, ivan grew up without much, and became very protective of what he did have. after he and his siblings took in toris, he began to quietly resent the tiefling for his inherent skills in magic. when toris left, he became determined to keep his sisters safe, seeking magical artifacts to use as weapons. though usually amicable and friendly, something dark lurks under the surface, something a more malicious artifact seems to be taking advantage of

b.elarus/natalia - human rogue

forced to flee her home due to a devastating fire when she was very young, natalia has grown up going from place to place with her older brother and sister, never quite knowing what “home” was. she has difficulty forming attachments outside her family and can come across as distant and forceful. though not an assassin by trade, she certainly wields the knife and stealth skills of one. she cares deeply for her siblings, especially her brother, who she fears is going down a dark path

eduard and eaivis met first, while eduard was still living with his family. raivis attempted to pickpocket him but was caught by family guards and quite violently roughed up. eduard stepped in, saying he was just a street urchin who didn’t know better (which raivis didn’t appreciate but he did appreciate eduard getting the guards to stop). the family demanded some form of penance though, and raivis was “appointed” as eduard’s attendant (it was either that or a dungeon…). though he was bitter at first, eduard proved to be kind and sensible, and raivis grew fond of him. he was the one to snap eduard out of his shock in his first battle, keeping his senses about him so he could call a retreat

as a mercenary, toris was hired to fight in the same battle as eduard’s failed debut and consoled him at the camp after the retreat. following his exile, raivis chose to stay with eduard, much to the latter’s surprise, saying he had no idea how to live out in the world and he needed some street smarts to survive. they sought out Toris, still staying nearby, and the three set out to adventure

on their travels they came across alfred and matthew’s village, under siege from the two rival principalities who aimed to starve out the pests who kept interrupting their fight. they slipped through the blockades and helped the two brothers fight their way out from the inside, dealing significant damage to both armies. assured that the princes were gone for good, alfred and matthew joined up with them

the party met up with toris’ adopted family by chance in what was a relatively happy reunion, but toris noticed something was off. ivan had gotten a hold of an artifact called the ring of winter, which gave him elemental power over ice and snow but subtly manipulated him, and it was already making katya and natalia uneasy. before long, ivan’s paranoia and jealousy, exacerbated by the ring, got the better of him and he turned on the rest of the party, only breaking its grip when natalia managed to sever the finger on which he wore the ring

from here on, the story is still unknown. but, i may be adding to this in the future!

#hetalia #aph estonia #aph latvia #aph lithuania #aph america #aph canada #aph ukraine #aph russia #aph belarus #aph baltics #aph na bros #aph kieven rus siblings #dungeons and dragons #nations and dragons #not art

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loretranscripts · 5 years

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Lore Episode 27: On the Farm (Transcript) - 8th February 2016

tw: murder, incest, abuse, gore

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

In 1943, Abraham Maslow gifted the world with his list of five core essentials that every human being has in common. Today, we call that chart “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”, and it’s still a framework for how we understand and study much of human behaviour today. That list includes a few obvious entries, such as our psychological needs and our desires for love and affection. There are deeper concepts, too, like self-actualisation and esteem. They’re just as important, but a bit harder for many people to understand at first glance. But it’s the last item on the list that I want to focus on. It almost seems too obvious to be there, but at the same time, it has a bit of everything. It’s basic yet complex; it straddles the line, and maybe that’s why it’s so important to all of us. What is it? Safety. Humans like to feel safe. Our pursuit of safety is core to who we are as people. It’s not unique to humans, for sure – animals are very good at finding and building homes wherever they can, but it’s undeniable that safety drives a lot of our decisions, and rightly so. We deserve to feel safe – one could argue that it’s a subset of freedom. When we are fully in control of our own lives, a portion of that control will always be diverted towards safety. We find safety in many different places, though. We find it in a group of friends because, as every horror movie has taught us, there’s safety in numbers. We find it in places like our work or schools and religious buildings, although those are admittedly much less safe today than they were a generation ago. But it’s in our homes that we find the most safety. We nest there, in a sense – we build a cocoon around ourselves that protects us from the weather, from outsiders, and from harm. But tragically, sometimes that’s not enough. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

No one liked Andreas Gruber. They thought the old farmer was greedy, and the public perception of the man was that he was rude and cranky. He was an old, crusty farmer, and no one around him appreciated that very much. Gruber was 63 and his wife, Cäzilia, was 72. They lived on their farm, about 40 miles north of Munich, between the small, German towns of Ingolstadt and Schrobenhausen. It wasn’t their farm, though. No, it belonged to their daughter, 35-year-old Viktoria, who lived there on the farm with them, along with her two young children. Her daughter, Cäzilia, was seven, and Josef was two, and it was Josef’s birth that really got the neighbours talking. Viktoria’s husband, Karl, had left to serve in the First World War in 1914 while she was pregnant with their daughter. According to all reports, he died there in the trenches and never returned – so who fathered Josef? Local gossip, fuelled by a dislike of Andreas Gruber, claimed the boy was a product of incest between Viktoria and her father. The birth certificate, though, simply listed the initials “L.S.”, leaving the boy’s paternity a mystery to wonder and whisper over. The farm provided ample privacy from the gossip, though. It sat in a large clearing in the thick, German forest, close enough to nearby Kaifeck to be part of the village, yet far enough away to be outside the normal flow of life there – hinter, as the Germans would say. The farm was hinter, or behind the village of Kaifeck, so most called it Hinterkaifeck. They still interacted with the village, though. Young Cäzilia attended school six days a week there, the postman delivered mail to the farm regularly, and a local woman even lived with the Grubers as their maid. From everything I’ve read about the family, the seemed to be nothing more than ordinary. Sure, they were broken in certain ways – Viktoria’s lost husband, Andreas’ reputation as a greedy crank were hard to miss – but overall, they were just one more German farm family, doing their best to get by.

In the Autumn of 1921, the Gruber’s maid quit her job there on the farm. She claimed, of all things, that the farm was haunted. She’d heard noises when no one else should have been around; she noticed items that had been moved, items that no one else would admit to; she never felt alone. It took a while to find a replacement, and in the meantime, winter arrived. Life on the farm became more insular. There were no crops to tend to, so the Grubers cared for their animals and stayed warm. But little things were beginning to happen that caught their attention, things that shouldn’t be happening, and it made them wonder if maybe, just maybe, their old maid had been right. They began to hear those same noises in the attic. Andreas even found a newspaper in the house that he had no memory of buying. When he asked his wife and daughter, they were just as baffled. And then, one of the house keys went missing. It was unsettling to say the least. In late March of 1922, though, Andreas noticed the most unusual thing of all. He’d been outside the house to fetch something, perhaps firewood, or to check on the exterior of the house. The night before had given them another fresh layer of snow on the ground, so perhaps he needed to inspect the roof – we don’t really know. But as he walked from the house to the barn, Andreas claimed he saw footprints in the snow. They started at the edge of the forest and covered the distance between the trees and the house, ending there. Perhaps a traveller passed through in the night, maybe a local had been walking through the snow and gotten lost – it happened from time to time. But what was odd about the tracks was that they didn’t go back, they just… ended there. We know all of this because Gruber himself told some of the locals while he was in town that next day. He was clearly disturbed by the things he had seen, but none of his neighbours had experienced anything similar. And that was the last time anyone saw the old farmer alive.

The first clue that anything odd was going on, at least to the people of Kaifeck, was when little Cäzilia failed to show up for school on Saturday, April 1st. The next day, the entire family was absent from church where they attended – pardon the pun – religiously. Cäzilia missed school on Monday as well. Finally, when the postman arrived on Tuesday, he found Monday’s mail still on the porch where he left it. This drew his suspicion, and he mentioned it back in the village. The people there put the pieces together and decided that something had to be amiss, so later that day, a group of neighbours gathered together, and they quickly set off to visit the farm. You know how muffled and quiet it can get outside when there’s been a lot of snow, as if the sounds of the world around you have been muted and hushed? I imagine that those men were keenly aware of that unnatural silence, standing there outside the Gruber farmhouse that day. One of the men shouted out for Andreas, or anyone else in the house, to come out and speak with them. They just wanted to make sure everyone was safe and well, but no one answered – just more of that muted, snow-covered silence. Not giving up, one of the neighbours – a local man named Lorenz Schlittenbauer – led the group to the barn. It was daylight, so perhaps Andreas could be found working in there with the animals, but when they opened the door they were greeted by a grizzly sight. There, on the straw-covered flaw, lay the bloody bodies of Andreas, his wife and daughter, and young Cäzilia. It was clear that something horrible had happened to the family, and Schlittenbauer quickly walked from the barn to the house, which were connected by a door. Inside, he found more bloodshed. Maria Baumgartner, the new maid who had started work on the farm just the previous day, lay dead in her own bedroom. Little Josef, last to be found, had met the same fate. It was a scene of devastation and gore, and it left the men stunned. Within a matter of hours, investigators from Munich arrived to go over the scene and gather evidence. They wanted to piece together what had happened, to discover the story, to find clues that might point to the person, or people, responsible. What they did uncover, though, was far more disturbing than answers.

It appeared that each of the adults in the barn had been led there, one at a time. Whoever the killer had been, they had appeared to call each person into the barn alone, where they executed them with a farm tool known as a mattock, a sort of pickaxe used for cutting. Each blow to the head was powerful and deadly, and each victim most likely died instantly. The bodies inside the house had the same type of wounds: Maria and Josef were found in pools of their own blood, their skulls crushed by their attacker. As far as the police were concerned, whoever wielded the weapon knew how to use it, and they did so without hesitation. This was cold-blooded murder, without a doubt. The trouble was, the weapon seemed to be missing, it was just gone. Other aspects of the crime didn’t seem to line up with logic. For one, there seemed to be no motive behind the actions of the killer. It was known to a few in the village that, just weeks before, Viktoria had withdrawn all of her savings, borrowed more from her dead husband’s sister, and brought the cash home. She told people that she planned to invest in the farm. She even made a large 700-mark donation to the village church. All of the remaining money was still there in the house – the killer hadn’t taken it, nor had they taken any of the other valuables that filled the farmhouse. Nothing was stolen. Whoever had called the Grubers into the barn, whoever had swung the pickaxe and ended all of their lives, they weren’t interested in money. Another detail that seemed odd was the condition of the house and the farm. In most instances, a killer will flee the scene after the crime has been committed, but here, there were signs to the contrary. The animals in the barn appeared to have been fed and watered throughout the weekend, and not by an amateur, either. Whoever had tended them knew his way around a farm. Most disturbing of all, though, were the reports from neighbours that smoke had been seen rising from the chimney of the farmhouse all through the weekend. Food had been eaten, and one of the beds had even been slept in. It was hard to believe, but the facts didn’t lie. The Gruber family’s killer didn’t run; instead, he stayed in the house long after the bodies had turned cold, as if nothing had happened at all.

The question, of course, was a simple one: who could do such a thing? But this was 1922, CSI wasn’t a thing that existed yet, there was no DNA analysis available to the investigators. Even fingerprint identification was too young to have reached the farmlands of German Bavaria, but even if there had been better tools, there were other obstacles to uncovering the truth. The local men who initially stumbled across the bodies, led by Lorenz Schlittenbauer, had disturbed much of the crime scene. While the maid and young Josef had each been covered with cloth by the killer, the bodies in the barn had actually been stacked like lumber. On top of this macabre pile, the killer had placed an old door and then hay had been scattered over it in an attempt to hide it. So, when Schlittenbauer entered the barn with the others, he actually lifted the door and began to move the bodies, making a full and accurate investigation impossible. According to those who watched him, Schlittenbauer lifted and moved the corpses with no emotion or hesitation, as if the sight of it didn’t bother him at all – or, maybe, wasn’t new to him. And it was that, along with some other, subtle clues, that quickly moved him to the top of the list of suspects. Why would he do this, though? Well, he told one of the men that he moved the bodies because he was looking for his son. Think back for a moment. Remember the questionable parentage of young Josef, whose birth certificate simply listed one “L.S.” as the father? Numerous neighbour testimonies made it clear that Lorenz Schlittenbauer was L.S., and that went a long way to explaining why he led the men from the barn, into the house – he’d been looking for his son, Josef. But according to some of the men with him that day, the door between the barn and the kitchen had been locked. They knew that because Schlittenbauer pulled the key from his pocket and unlocked the door, which was more than a little curious, seeing as how Gruber had mentioned in town that one of his house keys had gone missing. And one final bit: the family dog was seen by the postman on the day before, where he had been tied to a corner of the barn outside. When the men arrived on Tuesday, though, they found it in the barn, wounded but alive. When it saw Schlittenbauer, the animal barked uncontrollably.

All of the clues seemed odd and out of place; they make your mind perk up and feel like something deeper was going on, but at face value they prove nothing at all, and that’s the frustrating part. The dog might have just been barking because of the bodies. Schlittenbauer might have had a key simply because he was the Gruber’s closest neighbour. Like I said, these clues were subtle, and that’s why he was never formally charged with the crime. As for motive, some people believe that Viktoria had sued Lorenz for alimony, and the man had refused. Clearly, Viktoria needed money shortly before the murders, as her bank withdrawal suggested, but historians are doubtful. The most likely reality, they believe, is that Josef’s father was none other than his grandfather, Andreas, and the arrangement with Lorenz simply an effort to save face in the village. Alternative theories have been suggested. There are some that believe that Viktoria’s husband Karl did not, in fact, die during World War I. No body was ever recovered or sent home, and a friend of Karl’s even testified later to seeing him alive in the mid-20s. Some people wonder, could Karl have had a hand in the murders, perhaps out of anger toward Viktoria’s relationship with Schlittenbauer while he was away at war? I’ve even read another theory that claims that Andreas had been waiting for an important letter of some kind. I can’t find more than a mention of it, but what if the killer and the letter were connected? That might explain why he stayed in the house for days after the murders – he’d been waiting to intercept whatever the letter contained. One last thought: by all accounts, the killer had been in or around the Gruber home many times before the events of March 31st. The Gruber’s former maid had quit her job because she said she felt the place was haunted. There had been the unrecognised newspaper, the odd noises, missing keys… weeks and weeks of unusual activity that eventually led up to the day of the murders. The day, mind you, that the new maid started working there. Maria Baumgartner had been killed just hours after arriving for her first day on the job. It makes you wonder: did her arrival upset the plans of whoever it was who seemed to be stalking the Gruber family? Did she see him, and pay with her life?

Hinterkaifeck has the feel of a cabin in the woods, the centrepiece of many a horror film and novel – a place of retreat, far from the demands and prying eyes of the outside world, where we could go to get away; a place where we can find safety in the middle of an unsafe wilderness; a home away from home. We want to feel safe, and thankfully most of us do, but there’s just enough risk on the outsides of the bell-curve that we’re always left wondering, what if? And that’s how fear works, it sits in a dark corner at the edge of our minds and watches. We know it’s not going to step out into the light, but we can feel it glaring at us from the dark. I can’t help but wonder if the Grubers ever had that sensation during those last few months, if maybe there had been moments when Andreas just couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him. Did Viktoria have moments where she felt like she wasn’t alone? We’ll never know the answers to those questions, though. And one more tiny mystery: the physician who performed the autopsies on all six victims had their heads removed and sent to Munich for further study. Some reports claim that a clairvoyant was part of that research, but I can’t find proof of that. Their bodies were buried nearby in what is now modern-day Waidhofen, but their skulls remained in Munich and were eventually lost in the chaos of World War II. Today, the farm in the woods is little more than a memory. All that is left today is a small memorial, but over the year that followed the tragedy there, it stood empty like a crypt in the middle of that clearing in the forest – a constant reminder to the neighbours who passed by of all the people they lost and of the violence that had visited their small village, and maybe that’s why they finally tore it down in 1923. Maybe they couldn’t stand to look at it again. Maybe it needed upkeep that required going inside, but no one was willing to do that. Maybe they just wanted to move on and forget. Whatever the true reason was, it was only after the farm was torn down that the murder weapon was finally discovered. One of the men found it among the debris at the top of the pile, mixed in with items that had been in storage. It had been hidden inside the house all along, in the last place that anyone would look: the attic.

[Closing statements]

#lore podcast #podcasts #aaron mahnke #podcast transcripts #hinterkaifeck #germany #true crime #27 #transcripts

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justanoutlawfic · 6 years

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Legends Are Told: 1/10

Summary: S1 AU. Never underestimate a mother’s love. Ruth took on the darkness to keep her family together. When it begins to fall apart again, she’ll do what she has to in order to stop it…including teaming up with a very vulnerable queen.

This is a S1 AU/Canon Divergence, that will span into two fics. The first part is showing the divergence in the Enchanted Forest, the second will take place after the curse is cast. The ships are as follows: Snow/David, Regina/James, Ruth & Regina foetp, Snow Queen enemies, James & David brothers to enemies and there will be other canon ships sprinkled throughout. Most of the deaths are canon compliant, with the exception of the two in this chapter. This story will focus on many people and ships, this first chapter is just world building.

This story also contains canon pasts, which includes past marital rape and abuse. I will properly tag the chapters as they come.

Also on AO3

For the second time that day, Ruth went to go grab two cloth diapers rather than just one. The boys had always needed changes together.

Now there was only one of them left.

Ruth bit her lip, staring down at the bit of cloth between her fingers. She tried to tell herself over and over again that they had made the right choice. There was no way they could afford medicine for two children and soon, they would require more than just her milk to survive. Ruth would starve before she let either of her children go hungry, but that wasn’t going to be enough. The only way to give them both their best chance, was to send one away.

King George and Queen Serafina had sent a lump sum. They weren’t rich by any means, but it’d help keep the farm afloat until the crops came back in and their animals had babies come spring. Things could be a lot easier, and both boys would be well taken care of.

That didn’t stop her from missing James more than anything. Every time she walked to the cradle and saw one baby instead of two, she felt a lump grow in her throat. When she sang David a soft lullaby to get him to sleep, she wondered if James was getting the same. She had never met the king or queen, all she heard were whispers of their rather large age gap. Would they be the ones to raise him, or would it be a nanny?

She shook it off. He would have a good life, he’d get the best of everything. No matter what, he’d be okay. She had to put his needs above her own.

Ruth walked over to the cradle and lifted David out, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Do you need a change, my little one?”

The door to the cottage opened, letting in the cool winter air. Robert stomped in, his boots scraping on the floor. “Honey, I’m home.”

Ruth didn’t even have to turn to smell the alcohol that radiated from her husband. It was harder for him to hide it in the winter, he couldn’t afford to leave his coat at the bar like he might a shirt. “Hello.”

Robert walked to the small woodburning stove in the corner. “What’s for dinner?”

“Stew. I went to market earlier. Speaking of which, winter will be over soon. I’ll need to buy supplies for spring. Where did you put the money sent from the king and queen?”

There was a silence and it was one Ruth knew all too well. Her husband was a terrible liar, he didn’t even attempt to anymore. Whenever he did something wrong, he got very quiet. Ruth turned around, holding David closer to her chest.

“Robert? What did you do?”

“A few pirates came through the bar tonight,” he replied, softly. There was no guilt in his voice, but he sounded like a child that knew he was about to get in trouble. “They brought their dice.”

Ruth’s grip on the baby grew and she knew he was the only thing preventing her from screaming. “How much did you lose?”

“I figured I could double it! We’d be richer in no time, give David just as much as the king and queen are giving James!”

“Robert,” she took a step forward. “How much did you lose?”

He paused. “All of it.”

Ruth felt her knees buckle. They had done this to protect the boys, both of them. It would give them both their best chance. Both would get medicine, food and have a stable place to live. It was only worth it, because it was for both of them. Ruth had done the most painful, selfless thing of her life.

Robert had turned around and destroyed it within a matter of moments.

They owed so much money and this would put a dent into it, while the rest was supposed to go into refurbishing the farm so they could pay off the remainder. They had gone over every piece of silver, it was planned out so carefully. Ruth’s father was a business man, a shoemaker, so she had learned that from him. Robert had insisted that he should be in charge of the money, he was the man after all.

How could she have been so stupid to trust him with it?

Ruth found herself sinking onto the bed and Robert went to take David from her, but she pulled away. She didn’t want him touching the baby, he didn’t deserve to touch him. Not after what he had just done.

Ruth had agreed to marry Robert because of a business deal. Her father had been approached by Nigel, a man that was less successful with great ideas and little funds, or so he said. Nigel had said that if Ruth’s father combined businesses with his own, he would allow his son to marry Ruth. It was no secret that Ruth was getting older and was considered an old maid. Her father wanted her to marry for love, but at the same time, worried about her greatly. Ruth knew that expanding her father’s business would be for the best and Robert was charming, what would it hurt?

Things went wrong almost instantly. They had used some of the money her parents’ had given her to put a down payment on the farm. The rest, Robert instantly gambled and drank away. If Ruth tried to confront him about it, she’d get screamed at or smacked. Later, he’d be a totally different person. He was apologetic, caring and said he’d do anything to make her happy. That was the only reason the twins were even conceived, as a promise for a better life.

Ruth had grown up a lot over the past couple of years. She no longer believed her husband’s promises and was just trying to focus on doing the best for her sons…or son, as was the current situation. Now, she couldn’t even do that.

“You shouldn’t have come home,” she whispered.

“Ruth…”

“I can’t do this without you.” Her voice was hallowed, tired. “I can’t run a farm and raise a child on my own, so I can’t ask you to leave. I have no money to escape on my own. If you had just not come home…that would’ve hurt a hell of a lot less.”

“You’re acting mad.”

Ruth looked up into his eyes. “We gave up one son, to save the other and you made this all for nothing. My pain, my sadness, all I thought was at least James and David would be safe. Now, I can’t do that for him.”

“We’ll find a way…”

“I stopped believing your lies a long time ago.” She rose to her feet. “I’m sleeping up in the loft tonight, with David. Dinner’s on the stove.”

She turned her back on him and carried him up to the tiny loft. Ruth kept it together as she changed David’s diaper and settled down on the tiny bed made of straw that was set up for when David was old enough, if he even lived to childhood.

For the first night she since gave up James, Ruth didn’t cry. There were no more tears left, no more sadness. All she felt, was anger.

News of Queen Serafina’s death spread throughout the kingdom just four weeks after Robert gambled away the last of their money. He had done his best to make up for it, selling the last of the jewelry they had (bar her wedding ring). They didn’t get much, but it’d be enough to not lose the farm at least. James was still too young to understand any of it, but it broke Ruth’s heart.

On a trip to town a few months later, there were whispers that the young prince had bruises at the last outing. The boys were getting old enough to learn to walk, so Ruth didn’t think too much of it. All kids got bumps and bruises. Then there was talk of a handprint on the child’s face. No one dared to say anything to the king, they knew that they’d be executed.

Ruth’s blood boiled at the thought of her baby boy, not even a year old, being abused by the king. She had heard only good things beforehand. How could she have let this happen? No amount of money or food, were going to make up for the bruises he was going through. How could she, as a mother, allow her son to go through something like that? If Robert even laid a hand on David, she’d make sure it was the last thing he ever did. Robert could do whatever he wanted to her, but he was not going to hurt their son.

What could she possibly do to George? Even if she just tried to take James, there would be no possible way that she’d get past the guards. She had a knife, that wouldn’t hold a candle to their swords. She was powerless to change either of their situations.

Her days began to blur together. She cared for David, tended to the crops and the animals as winter turned to spring. Ruth returned to her bed with Robert, but they barely looked each other in the eye, let alone talk. He returned to drinking, though his gambling had come to a halt it’d seem. He did little to help with David or the farm, but Ruth couldn’t bring herself to care. She felt as though she was going through the motions of life, like she couldn’t even enjoy her own child.

Then Rumpelstiltskin came to the village. He was meeting with someone to make a deal. Ruth avoided him like the plague, regretting the day he ever came to her. As she stood in line at the fruit stand, trying to balance David while also seeing if she had enough to buy him an orange, two women whispered in front of her.

“I wonder what he’s doing here.”

“I know he’s got magic and yeah, it makes him scary, but he used to be one of us.” The second woman lowered her voice even more. “I heard he was once destitute; his son was almost forced to join the Ogre Wars. He killed the original Dark One.”

“Seriously?”

Ruth looked down at David, who was reaching up to try to take her hair out of her bun. Rumpelstiltskin had started all of this, to protect his son. He had done what was necessary, become a terrible person, in the name of family.

She couldn’t do it, it was going too far...wasn’t it?

It was a three-day trip to the Dark One’s castle. Ruth debated on whether she should bring David with her, but in the end, she trusted a woman on a neighboring farm with him. Robert didn’t even question how she got the money to get new supplies, which she had been counting on. Her hose was loyal and got her there in the dead of night. She was down to her last match to light up her lantern. If this didn’t work, she was screwed on the way home.

It had to work.

Ruth was surprised at how easy it was to get inside the castle. There were no magic booby traps, just a long dark hall. She made her way down, the lantern lighting the way. She poked her head into every room, but came up empty. It wasn’t until she reached the stairs that she realized how stupid this was. This man could kill her.

Suddenly, her lantern blew out and the chandelier was lit. Ruth spun to find Rumpelstiltskin standing there, his eyes glistened with glee. His skin was just as sparkly, even in the dim lighting of the hall.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the shepherdess. Here to make a deal to give away your other son?”

Ruth drew a deep breath, taking a step forward. “Quite the opposite actually. I want James back.”

“You made a deal, Dearie. Once you make one with me, they’re iron clad.”

“George is abusing him.” Ruth took a step forward. “Please, I know you’re a parent.” The Dark One’s eyes widened a tad, though he quickly regained composure. “I need to protect my son.”

“It’s too late for that. Unless you want to make another deal with me.”

Ruth bit her lip, her hand shakily going to her side satchel. Retrieving her knife, she took a step forward and plunged it forward. Rumpelstiltskin looked down at it, then up at her.

“I liked you for your moxie.”

Ruth tilted her head. “I thought…to become the Dark One, you have to kill the Dark One.”

“Dearie, Dark Ones cannot be killed. If they could, I would’ve been murdered a long time ago.”

“But you killed the original Dark One! How?”

“That is for me to know and…well, I’d say for you to find out, but let’s be honest, you’re never going to.”

Rumpelstiltskin put a hand up and Ruth could feel herself losing air. She looked around, gasping for breath, wondering if that was how David and James felt without their medicine. She looked at the man who she had once agreed to make a deal in, taking in his scaly skin, along with his fine clothing. He had something attached to his hip, a blade.

He released his grip and she caught her breath rather quickly, though she put on a great show as he took a step forward, his hand reaching for her chest. Ruth was a bit quicker and she grabbed the blade. Rumpelstiltskin went to grab it, but she held up her free hand, reading his name inscribed on it.

“Stop.”

Ruth’s eyes widened when he obeyed. A slow smile appeared on her face.

“This is it, isn’t it?” She asked. “This is what can take your power?”

“That is a highly dangerous tool…”

“This…this has all the power. You’re nothing but a mirage.”

“Oh trust me, Dearie, you have no idea the powers I have.”

“Freeze!”

Ruth had never enjoyed the pain of others, but suddenly, she felt a sick perversion with her new toy. Who was she becoming? How was this happening to her?

Maybe if she hadn’t lost everything before, she would’ve given it a bit more thought.

“I am going to get my son back, I’m going to save them both from a lifetime of pain and poverty alongside with it.”

“Please,” Rumpelstiltskin pleaded, his voice drastically changing. “You have no idea what this does to a person. I lost my son because of this magic. It’s not going to save them, it’s going to destroy them.”

“You have everything.”

“But not my son, do you see him around?”

“A mother’s love can override the darkest of magic.”

“I thought that about a father’s.”

“Well…”

Ruth took a step forward, plunging the dagger into his stomach.

“I guess we’ll have to see which one of us is right.”

Ruth didn’t feel anything different, in fact, she wouldn’t have thought nothing really happened. Until Rumple let out a tiny whimper and the blood poured from his chest. Ruth could hear some twisting and tightening beneath his skin. She slowly removed the dagger from his skin and watched as his name faded away, four smooth cursive letters taking its place.

Ruth

Ruth used her newfound powers to arm herself and poof to King George’s castle. The adrenaline that pumped through her veins was enough to keep her from thinking of what she had just done. With a flick of a wrist, every guard was brought to their knees. She had that power, her.

Robert would never be able to hit her again.

When she made it up to the nursery, she found an older woman rocking her fussing son. “Let his mother take over,” she told her.

The woman looked up in shock, but Ruth was able to get James in her arms with another flick of the wrist. The 1-year-old looked up at her, confused, and she caressed his cheek. He and David were truly identical, but any mother could tell her children apart. She kissed his forehead and cuddled him close.

“Don’t worry, Jamie, Mommy’s here.”

“What the hell is going on in here?” Ruth turned, George staring at her in shock. “And who the hell are you?”

“James’ mother.”

Ruth drew her sword and for the second time that night, she killed a man. It probably should’ve scared her, that it was much easier than the first time. Yet all she could do, was stare down at her son.

“Come on, sweetheart, let’s go home.”

Robert was taken care of with a simple choice. She offered him death or freedom, with the condition that she never show his face again. A true father might have tried to fight, but Robert took off without a question. Ruth watched as James and David stared at each other in a mix of curiousness and amazement. She ran her fingers through their fair blonde curls, cuddling them close in her arms.

“Don’t you worry boys, Mommy is never going to let you go again.”

#legends are told verse #snowing #regal prince #ouat au #ruth charming #ruth nolan #snow white #david charming #prince charming #prince james #james charming #regina mills #blue fairy

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two-are-the-trees · 6 years

Text

Deeper Analysis: “It’s a Good Life” from The Twilight Zone

Ok so I mentioned in my last Twilight Zone episode countdown that I was going to talk further about this particular episode, which happens to be, in my opinion, the scariest episode of the entire series. It’s an episode deviod of outright visual horror, devoid of aliens or robots or voices from the grave, and yet it remains utterly bone-chilling for audiences even today. And perhaps it is especially today’s audience that can really begin to understand the horrible significance of this story.

The episode begins strangely. Rather than showing us a short scene to introduce the characters and setting before Rod Serlin’s introduction, Rod comes out and addresses the audince directly, claiming that this episode of The Twilight Zone is “somewhat unique.” He states that a small town has been cut off from the rest of the world by a “monster” and then goes on to explain how the monster can create and destroy things according to his every whim using only his mind, and that everyone in town lives in fear of his power and cruelty. This opening is jarring and unnerving right of the bat, as Rod Serling’s strange emphasis on the importance of this episode indicates that even the host himself regards this one with a particularly serious air. We are left, too, in suspense about who or what the monster actually is, as Rod Serling saves this bit of information for the very end of his introduction. And rightly so as we learn, much to our surprise, that the monster is merely a child, a child that happens to have psychic abilites. Immediately the uncanny atmosphere with which the episode began increases tenfold as we are left to wonder what terrible events could have unfolded for Rod Serling to unflinchingly call this child a monster.

Well as it turns out, a child with psychic powers is actually the perfect recipe for a monster. Anthony, the monster in question, being a child with a limited sense of how the adult world operates and with no sense of responsibility, abuses his complete control over this town. Characters mention that they are running low on certain supplies like soap and alcohol, specifically because Anthony, being a child, sees no need for these things and therefore doesn’t allow them into his closed-off town.

It’s also clear that Anthony has had his powers from an early age, as it appears he has been raised with this power in mind. He has no compassion, empathy, or consideration for others, an indication that he has never been disciplined or extensively educated in these matters for fear of his powers. Because of this, he uses these powers however he wants, which usually involves torture and violence. He creates horrible creatures like three-headed gophers, mutates farm animals, and kills any animal he doesn’t like. When he “makes TV” for all his neighbors, he creates a violent program of one dinosaur brutally killing another.

But the most terrible part of this episode is Anthony’s violence against other humans in town. All of the adults are petrified by Anthony, and force themselves to smile all the time all constantly repeat that anything Anthony does is a “real good thing” no matter how horrible. The reason for this is because Anthony can read peoples’ minds and if he hears any “bad thoughts” in anyone’s head, he will do unspeakable things to them. In one scene, Anthony recalls a time when someone had a bad thought about him and had to “make him go on fire.” He also dulled his own aunt’s mind and severly limited her mental capabilities for the same reason. Therefore, all the townspeople have essentially brainwashed themselves into behaving in a cheery manner all the time to avoid accidently thinking a bad thought. The images of some of these people forcing themselves to smile and say “It’s a real good thing!” even through their tears of anguish is devestating to watch and creates an escalating feeling of tension and fear. This all comes to a head when one man finally snaps, hoping that someone will finally work up the nerve to kill Anthony, but alas no one does and Anthony turns him into a nightmarish jack-in-the-box, which still retains the man’s lifeless head.

Anthony’s power and violence is entirely dependent on his whim and is impossible to predict, hence the reason why he has so thoroughly enslaved everyone in his town. He claims, “I hate anyone who doesn’t like me!” and doesn’t hesitate a moment to punish or exclude those who don’t line up in accordance to his every petty desire. At the end of the episode, he decides to make it snow simply because he wants to, not understanding, or not caring, that it will ruin half of the town’s crops, dooming everyone to possible starvation.

Rod Serling ends this episode by simply saying “no comment.” A wise move, perhaps, as it encourages the audience to do a little more thinking if they want to find a meaning in this episode for themselves. And while there are a lot of different people, places, and periods in history we can draw comparisons to, I think the scariest notion of all is how many comparisons we can draw between the monstrous Anthony and one Donald Trump.

Firstly their upbringing or “privilege.” It’s no surprise that Donald Trump clearly did not recieve an education on tact or compassion during his childhood. Growing up wanting for nothing in a wealthy family (with a 1 million dollar from his dad I might add) Trump obviously has tremendous amounts of power and privilege over others inherently, in the same way that Anthony has had his ability to control others from an early age. Trump and Anthony use this power and privilege in a similar way; bullying and intimidation. Trump has been known to show cruelty toward disadvantaged groups (the poor, the disabled, refugees, the list goes on and on) and has no compassion where it is required of him (mass shootings, the California fires, ect.) much like how Anthony shows cruelty toward animals. They seemingly lack any sort of empathy. Obviously there are those in positions of power that do have empathy and compassion, however, those who were raised with unhindered power with no discipline or instruction on how to behave will exhibit behavior like that of Trump and Anthony.

Secondly is their threatening and manipulative nature. Seeing as how I am writing this post during the third longest government shutdown in U.S. history, a shutdown caused entirely by Trump’s unfounded desire to build a border wall that no one else approves of, I already have a pretty solid comparison. Trump’s tendancy to gravitate toward drastic measures, much like how Anthony constantly threatens violence, has everyone in a constant panic that he will upset the delicate balance of government. Trump has caused foreign relations scares in the past with his feuding with North Korea and he threatens that he will continue the government shutdown indefinitely, leaving thousands of government employees without pay and sending the economy into a spiral. Much like Anthony’s drastic displays of power, Trump’s constant threats leave the public in a constant state of unease.

Lastly, and this was the comparison that first led me to think more about this episode in the first place, is the very clear way in which these two figures cannot or choose not to understand anything that lies outside their selfish desires. Trump’s arrogance is plain; his giant gold towers and planes with his name in bold lettering on the side, his engaging with people personally on twitter when they insult him, his outrage at the many many unflattering pictures of him in circulation. His self-obsession is exactly comprable to this spoiled child in The Twilight Zone, as Anthony outright states that he hates people who don’t like him and gets incredibly angry whenever something doesn’t go his way (again, Trump’s government shutdown *cough*). They both ignore the needs of those around them, as Anthony does not provide things like soap and Trump does not provide things like healthcare or comprehesive rights for underprivileged groups. And no comparison can be clearer than the terrible effect these two have on the environment. The fear in the townspeople’s eyes as Anthony ruins all of their crops with his desire for snow reminds us all of the impending disasters that will come with climate change and Trump’s lack of environmental protection policies.

So perhaps I should end this discussion as Rod Serling did, by simply stating “no comment,” but I do have to note that I find it more than a little distressing that there are several notable and significant comparisons that one can draw between Anthony “the monster,” a dangerously spoiled and selfish child with no understanding of how the world works and a tendency for cruelty and destruction, and Donald Trump, the current president of the United States. And clear too are the comparisons between the townspeople who back down at the opportunity to finally stand up to Anthony and the conservatives who refuse to call out Trump for his irresponsible and reprehensible actions.

Perhaps, for our own peace of mind, these speculations are best left in The Twilight Zone.

#Gothic #The Twilight Zone #analysis #sci fi #my thoughts

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