#tmr: thomas&randall

[thefevercodepdf]

thinking about Thomas and Randall. maybe im crazy but i always interpreted it as a story of CSA. like, R torturing & taking Thomas's name as an allegory for SA....

"He had a hard time speaking ever since the incident with Randall. He had a hard time sleeping, eating, and just about everything else, too."

Two Full Years Later, "Thomas was just as happy to forget Randall forever, though he still couldn't help that spike of panic whenever a man in green scrubs turned a corner. Always, for just an instant, he thought it might be Randall again."

Thomas had nightmares and flashbacks abt him but can't talk to anyone about it. when he gets close to talking abt that trauma, all he can say is "some people could be nicer. like randall." he pretends like nothing happened, but in his head, "he thought back to when randall had taken away his name—it had felt like losing part of his soul." it's hard to tell if teresa even knows, because she cracks a joke about sending R after him, and he laughs???

but he is so terrified of R that among everyone around him, he's the one rushing to get away from R when he's infected and chasing them.

when he runs into R again, as a full blown crank, R pursues him saying "I miss the tasty treats." This passage is so nasty: "'Tasty,' Randall's voice whispered directly into his ear. Thomas screamed, twisting his body, struggling to get out from under the monster pinning him down." And when Thomas bashes his skull in he spends a long while just staring at R's dead body.

it's just a very fascinating aspect of the story, because he just Never talks to anyone about Randall, despite the lifelong trauma it caused. and then he gets to kill his abuser with his own hands, and instead all he thinks is that no one deserves to die that way.

[bluebirds-stuff]

Tmr book ( the fever code) spoilers!!!!

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Was ANYONE going to warn me or was I supposed to find out from THE FEVER CODE that Thomas got TORTURED at the age of F##king FIVE to forget his own da#n name

(*please if anyone has a fic that discusses that or is willing to make one tell me about it, Kay?)

[shuckiestshuckfacedshank]

The Flare

this is just a list of causes, symptoms and effects on people of the flare, either as fun facts or if you have a flare-infected character in your fanfic!

(note: the majority of this information comes from the tmr wiki or the kill order, so you could just check that instead, but i’m doing this anyway!)

Summary

- the flare is sometimes known amongst scientists as ‘virus VC321xb47′ (although that’s really drawn out, so no wonder it was nicknamed)

- it is a man-made virus released by a group known as the Post-Flares Coalition, who made it to reduce overpopulation

- the PFC thought the virus would humanely kill its victims, however it mutated out of control to cause a full on pandemic (not unlike the one now), with millions of people going mad and dying due to it

- those infected with the flare are colloquially known as cranks, and every remaining city in the world has a special holding place for cranks that are known as ‘crank palaces’

Related Important People

- Chancellor John Michael: former chancellor of both the PFC and WICKED. it was with his approval that the flare was released. he was not immune, and he makes a brief appearance in the fever code to thomas, teresa, minho and alby, where he begs them to find a cure. he is shot by randall spilker

- Katie McVoy: former member of the PFC and the founding member of WICKED. she was the one who invented/found the flare in the first place. she told john michael that it would be a brilliant idea to release it, but later committed suicide as a result of guilt and infection

- Randall Spilker: former member of PFC and a member of WICKED. he protested against the release of the flare, saying it was madness. he has multiple appearances in the fever code, all of which involve harming the gladers, but he eventually contracts the flare and gets killed by thomas

- there are others but these are the main three

Symptoms

- when it was first spread, it caused a lot of painful headaches and a lot of painful deaths

- then it mutated, and the symptoms became much more severe

- early stages: sudden mood swings, paranoia, poor balance, irrational anger, slight aggression, and headaches that get worse as time passes

- usually, these symptoms last around two to four months, but if the infected is constantly stressed it works faster

- later stages: as the virus infects the cerebral cortex of the brain (the part responsible for thought, perception, memory, advanced motor function and language), the infected will experience dementia, temporary memory loss, and symptoms much like alzheimers.

- since the brain is decaying, it also causes the infected to experience psychotic mental disorders, as well as hallucinations, homicidal rage and cannibalistic tendencies

- here’s a photo of a poster that james dasher made (it explains it better than me)

- any infected individual who has gotten to the point of complete loss of sanity is referred to as being past the ‘Gone’. those past this stage often have brutal and horrifying injuries, as a result of fighting with other cranks or self-mutilation

Transmission

- the most common form of transmission is through direct contact with someone infected, if they have been bitten/scratched

- however, towards the end of the series, it mentions it becoming airborne

Treatment

- the Bliss: this is a drug created to sedate a person’s senses and neural activity, which in turn slows down the virus. however, it’s extremely expensive and only delays the inevitable, so it’s not a cure. it makes the taker seem hella relaxed, so it’s fairly easy to tell if someone’s taken it

- a widespread cure is not known or being given out, but it was revealed in the last book that thomas’ blood contains antibodies that destroy the flare virus completely

Related Organisations

- Post-Flares Coalition: an organisation originally formed to find solutions to the problems caused by the sun flares scorching the earth. they spread the flare virus as a method of population control. however, once it mutated, many of its members went to WICKED to find a cure

- WICKED (or WCKD): it stands for World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department. it’s an organisation originally formed to find a cure for the flare. to do so, they tested Immunes and non-Immunes as control subjects and put them through many trials, like the Maze and the Scorch. they were investigating the killzone (a nickname the cerebral cortex got after the virus started infecting people)

- FIRE: it stands for Flare Information Recovery Endeavor. it’s an organisation formed to figure out the full effects of the sun flares. since they only tried to identify the cause and the effects, it later led to the formation of the PFC, who tried to fix the problems.

- PCC: it stands for the Population Control Committee. this isn’t so much an organisation as it is a sub-section of the PFC. it’s a project that katie mcvoy was a part of, and it first introduced the flare virus

- if you’ve read this far, i hope this has been useful! :D

[hottytoddynews]

Thacker Mountain Radio Host Jim Dees: shirts from Hawaii, voice from Mississippi

Two-hour show celebrates with smorgasbord of literature, music and food for thought.

By Tad Wilkes, Nightlife & Lifestyles Editor

tad.wilkes@hottytoddy.com

Thacker Mountain Radio fans and newcomers alike will come away stuffed to the gills from a veritable buffet of words and music. This week brings a special two-hour Thacker Mountain Radio show, celebrating the show’s fifteenth anniversary.

Since its beginnings among the peanut shells at Blind Jim’s bar (now the Burgundy Room) as the “Words and Music” show, Thacker Mountain Radio has come a long way. The brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Bryan Ledford and then-budding folk song craftsman Caroline Herring, and friends, Square Books’ TMR, usually hosted at Off Square Books, celebrates its birthday on the air this Thursday, October 18, at 6 p.m. at the Lyric Theatre. TMR sets a fine table, with guests including Sharde Thomas and the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band and authors John Dufresne, Randall Kenan and Monique Truong along with musician, James Barrier of the Pine Hill Haints.

Doors open at 5 p.m., and admission is free. A cash bar will be available. The show will be broadcast on Rebel Radio (92.1 FM) and online: www.myrebelradio.com.

After Thacker, at 7 p.m., the audience is encouraged to stick around for the film premier of Pride & Joy, a one-hour documentary film directed by Joe York that celebrates the culture of barbecue in the South.

Constant Celebration

“We’re continuously improving our content and accessibility,” says TMR Producer Kathryn McGaw about the weekly Thursday show that for years was broadcast live on Oxford’s Bullseye 95.5 and now on Rebel Radio 92.1, rebroadcast on Saturdays on Mississippi Public Radio at 7 p.m. This week’s two-hour show intends, as TMR has for 15 years, to celebrate “the talent and history of talent that we have not only in Oxford but in Mississippi in general,” McGaw says.

The show presses on in the wake of the very recent passing of Duff Dorrough, guitarist in the Thacker house band, the Yalobushwackers. “Obviously that is a sad part of our history right now,” McGaw says. “But at our show on October 4, which was the show immediately after his death, instead of offering a moment of silence, we offered a round of applause. That’s how we’re going to be—remembering his legacy through that constant celebration.”

That rejoicing continues for two straight hours this week.

“What we were lucky with this time around,” she adds, “is that our fifteenth anniversary coincides with the Southern Foodways Symposium. In thinking about how we would set up a really great show, I talked with (Southern Foodways Alliance Director) John T. Edge at the beginning of the year. John T. got me in touch with David Morgan at the Mississippi Humanities Council, which has a year-long initative called Food for Thought, For Life, and they are really highlighting our need to tie together all the great cultural things we have going on—art, music and literature, with some of the pressing issues of nutrition and food in our state … It all dovetails nicely with Thacker. What we were able to do is to partner with both SFA and MHC to pull in some really great authors, who will also appear at the symposium.

“Lastly, John T. and I were talking about what music would really highlight all of those different aspects; the symposium this year is centered around barbecue, and Joe York’s film is going to premiere right after Thacker, and that focuses on food traditions across the region.” Fife and drum music is associated with Southern barbecue events, and the Pine Hill Haints provided music for Pride & Joy, to help tie everything together, with funding assistance from the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council.

Words and Music

Wallace Lester, drummer of the Thacker Mountain Radio house band The Yalobushwackers

Host Jim Dees and the Thacker house band the Yalobushwackers hold it together, as usual, this week, welcoming authors and musicians.

Sharde Thomas is the granddaughter of the late Othar Turner, a leading practitioner of the North Mississippi fife and drum tradition. She began playing music at the age of seven with her grandfather’s group, the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band. She started writing songs when she was 13, and in 2010, at age 20, she released her first CD, What Do I Do? The CD is a mix of the old fife and drum traditions, mixed with smooth soul and hip hop. Thomas, who has been called the last living link to fife and drum music, is a student at Delta State’s Delta Music Institute.

John Dufresne is the author of the short story collections, The Way That Water Enters Stone and Johnny Too Bad and the novels, Louisiana Power & Light, Love Warps the Mind a Little, (both named New York Times Notable Books), Deep in the Shade of Paradise, and his latest, Requiem, Mass. He is also the author of two fiction writing guides, The Lie That Tells a Truth: a Guide to Writing Fiction and Is Life Like This: a Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months, as well as two screenplays and a play. He lives in Dania Beach, Florida, and teaches creative writing at Florida International University. Earlier this year, Dufresne was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Randall Kenan is author of the novel A Visitation of Spirits and a collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, which was among The New York Times Notable Books of 1992. Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century was published in 1999 and was nominated for the Southern Book Award. His latest book, The Fire This Time, was published in May 2007. Kenan was the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi from 1997 to 1998. He is currently associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Born in Saigon, South Vietnam, in 1968, Monique Truong is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Bitter in the Mouth and The Book of Salt and was a bestseller and named a New York Times Notable Fiction Book, a Chicago Tribune Favorite Fiction Book, one of The Village Voice‘s 25 Favorite Books, and one of The Miami Herald‘s Top 10 Books, among other citations. Truong writes a monthly online food column, Ravenous, for The New York Times’ T Magazine. She was a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow.

Originally from Alabama, The Pine Hill Haints formed in the late 1990s and have since released several CDs, including Split, Welcome to the Midnight Opry (recorded in Water Valley) and their latest, Tales of Crime. Lead singer and main songwriter, James Barrier, sings the group’s “snazzed up, working-class rockabilly” behind his homemade wooden microphone stand.

    The post Feast at Fifteen: Thacker Mountain's Anniversary appeared first on HottyToddy.com.