#OF COURSE THEY ARE YOU FUCK. THE GOVERNMENT IS EXTERMINATING PEOPLE IN THE NAME OF JUDAISM
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when this barbarity one day ends—and it will. it will—i don't want to hear one fucking word about antisemitism within the arab community. i don't want to hear one word about the human rights those countries lack. i don't want to hear it. i don't want to fucking hear it.
#vent post#mari talks#im so fucking angry. i could write for so so long.#literally the only pr israel has left is its being a 'jewish' homeland#if it was american and british or some kind of evangelical christian colony#IF IT WAS MUSLIM LMFAO#the arguments that white western liberals cry of 'but the antisemitisim :(' would literally carry no merit#bc everyone understands when its a historically colonial nation doing the colonising#and theyre quite happy to be antisemitic in their own countries mind you!!#but when its arab and brown people they hate EVEN MORE#THATS when the white guilt flares up. bc we had nothing to do with ww2 or the holocaust. its all them.#THATS when the guilt flares up strong enough to justify genocide#and somehow. everyone understand when our regions hate america and britain and the colonial powers#but people are STILL going 'omg the arabs are saying antisemitic things....' when it comes to the colonial power of israel#OF COURSE THEY ARE YOU FUCK. THE GOVERNMENT IS EXTERMINATING PEOPLE IN THE NAME OF JUDAISM#WHAT IS A PERMANENTLY TRAUMATISED POPULATION MEANT TO DO?#GO ONLINE AND DECONSTRUCT THEIR BIASES?#THEY CANT FUCKING DO THAT! THEIR INTERNET IS CUT OFF! THEIR FAMILIES ARE *DEAD!*#im gonna be quite now. feel free to reply or whatever ill decide if i want this rebloggable
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It's Not Genocide
I made this for class and I wanted to wait until after I presented it to post it. The assignment was to make a manifesto and this one is about disability. I never see anything angry about disability when we should be enraged, so that's what I tried to point out. It's all text but is emotionally heavy, and long, so it's under the cut.
TW: Death, eugenics, disability c slur used, swearing, knives, murder of disabled people (specifically autistic children), and a lot of anger. There is also passive-aggressive sarcasm.
Pro-lifers DO NOT Interact
Disability isn’t included in the definition of genocide by the United Nations. It’s not included even though disabled people were the first to be exterminated in Nazi Germany long before anyone else, but you don’t learn about irrelevant lives in history class.
It’s for the best, because if it were included, then Iceland would have to own up to bragging about virtually eliminating all cases of down syndrome through abortion. When speaking about a growing fetus who tests positive for down syndrome and the pregnancy is terminated because of such, the rate is 67% in the U.S., 77% in France, and 98% in Denmark (Quinones & Lajka, 2017). The UK would have to acknowledge that from March 2014 to February 2017, over a hundred disabled people died per day when trying to claim for financial support, including around 11,000 who died after being told that they were actually ‘fit for work’ by a government official who didn’t need to have any sort of education about the disability (Berghs, et al., 2020, p. 50). Before they of course stopped sharing the incredibly high fatalities to the public so that way the burdens can be quieter when they die.
The UK only copied from the United States though, the country that could eliminate a quarter of its poverty rate if they just raised the Social Security Income to be above the damn poverty line. Instead, they’d rather disabled people fight for their fucking lives to get a lucrative $841 maximum on SSI a month, never have over $2000 to their name, and never be able to marry unless if they want to lose the healthcare that keeps them alive. Never mind that on average, someone who has a disability that limits the ability to work requires about $17,000 more per year than the average household without someone with a disability (Goodman, et al., 2020).
At least the United States has the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires you to have healthcare you can’t afford to be protected from discrimination. The employment protections are also a fucking joke in the face of at will employment. The founding fathers told me I can work, and the jobs told me that I’m not competitive enough to work for minimum wage. Capitalism ensures that we will never survive. Disability is a luxury only the rich can afford, and the rest of us must beg for the government to see us worthy of scraps, break ourselves, or die.
But that’s not intentional genocide, I mean, if it could ever be genocide in the first place. Genocide would look more like 34 million adults knowing at least one person who died because they couldn’t afford their medication (Witters, 2019). It would look more like a recorded 2.8 million people dying because they couldn’t afford needed healthcare in 2017. It would look like the CDC telling everyone that only the disabled and poor people will die, so get back to work. It would look like “this elevator shuts down during a fire no matter what” and wheelchair users finding themselves unable to escape from a burning building. It would look like people insisting that disabled people have lives that aren’t worth living, and when we’re murdered, the story let’s everyone know that the murderer found us better off dead, and the public agrees.
I’m told every day by the world that my right to live hinges on whether my mind and body is profitable enough. Every day I am told that my life and the lives of my disabled siblings aren’t worth jack shit. Then I turn around and I’m told that we should explain to abled people that they need to relearn common decency because it goes out the window when they look at a mobility aid. “Noo silly goose, you can’t touch someone’s property and forcibly move them without their permission,” that’s not a teachable moment, that’s the moment you get out a pocketknife.
There is one class that teaches about disability at this University, and it never bothered to mention we’re slaughtered on a mass scale, instead I was given information that was last updated in 2013 that included revolutionary ideas like how autism isn’t a plague coming for your children. I could learn that, but not told how many autistic children were murdered by their parents on the Disability Day of Mourning website. They couldn’t even find the names of some of those kids, and instead of tears for their deaths, there are tears for their killers who must have had it so hard. What is wrong with you people? These were fucking children, they had decades of life ahead of them, life that’s a blessing to the world, and you’re crying for the killer. Why am I expected to be calm, collected, and insightful towards the people who would rather cry for the fact that disabled people are alive more than they would if we’re dead?
If they truly pitied us so much, they would do something besides torture and kill us. I see a system that takes every single marginalized person, traumatizes them, beats them, and throws them into the cripple bin to die. People who are ashamed to become me, to become one of us, because they know how useless we must be to the system that sees our bodies as profit and nothing more.
It’s okay, I’m ashamed of me too, but at least I got to adulthood with the amount of privilege I have. At least we’re still here, you are still here, and you are worth as much as anyone else.
Every day a person who is bedridden and requires assistance to eat and use the bathroom makes it to the next day, is a day of revolution in a world that sees their life as a meaningless burden. Every breath through an iron lung is a breath of defiance. The rambling, hopping, and jumbled flow of my ADHD redefines writing. The slur in my S and my anxious stutter is a miracle to speech. Our bodies, our minds, our lives are priceless.
But that’s all so hard to convince yourself when it’s not even genocide.
References
Berghs, M., Chataika, T., El-Lahib, Y., & Dube, A. K. (2020). The Routledge handbook of disability activism [PDF]. Routledge.
Goodman, N., Morris, M., Morris, Z., & McGarity, S. (2020, October). The extra costs of living with a disability in the U.S. — resetting the policy table. National Disability Institute. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.nationaldisabilityinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/extra-costs-living-with-disability-brief.pdf
Quinones, J., & Lajka, A. (2017, August 15). "What kind of society do you want to live in?" Inside the country where down syndrome is disappearing. CBS News. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/
Witters, D. (2019, November 12). Millions in U.S. lost someone who couldn't afford treatment. Gallup. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://news.gallup.com/poll/268094/millions-lost-someone-couldn-afford-treatment.aspx
#this presentation was heavy to the point where class was ended early because of it#so while I really want to share it please be in a good space to read it#death tw#c slur#disability#disabled#disability rights#genocide#eugenics#murder tw#knife mention#swearing tw#social justice#ssi#ssdi#human rights#cripple punk#cripplepunk#cpunk#chronic illness
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I just had this idea, what if Ranboo and reader are besties. However, since Tommy is jealous jelousinnit of Ranboo for “stealing” Tubbo, he “steals” reader in turn and they too become platonically married.
Maybe after Ranboo and Tubbo learn of the Tommy and reader’s marriage, Ranboo and Tommy are now “competing” for time with Tubbo and reader. Meanwhile reader and Tubbo are just laughing watching this play out? <3
-♠️
jealousinnit
I just had this idea, what if Ranboo and reader are besties. However, since Tommy is jealous jelousinnit of Ranboo for “stealing” Tubbo, he “steals” reader in turn and they too become platonically married.
Maybe after Ranboo and Tubbo learn of the Tommy and reader’s marriage, Ranboo and Tommy are now “competing” for time with Tubbo and reader. Meanwhile reader and Tubbo are just laughing watching this play out? <3
-♠️
dvwefnowef i love this idea! i hope i did it justice <3
cw:cursing
tommy vs ranboo:
“hello tubbo! tubbo. tubzo.” tommy yelled again and again, trying to get tubbo’s attention.
tommy continued continued yelling his name for a response. pitying the poor boy, you responded “hi tommy.”
“oh. hello.” tommy made his minecraft character walk over to you. “what is tubbo doing?”
“uh, he’s arguing with ranboo? about something somewhat important, i presume.”
“lore married, those two are. strange, innit?” tommy turned his character to look more directly at yours. the eyebrows on the character made him look intimidating, especially with the way he stared at you.
“yeah. yes. strange. lore married.” the conversation had ended from there, with an awkward silence. after a while tubbo and ranboo had finally stopped fighting.
it had been a few days since your interaction with tommy. everything had been pretty normal, just hanging out with ranboo and tubbo. helping oversee the building of the mansion. that was, until tommy came and talked to you.
“uh, hello tommy.”
“hey. i’m live right now. what are you doing?”
“uh, nothing really. mainly have been overseeing the build of ranboo and tubbo’s mansion.”
“close, the two of you are?”
“yep. i know him irl so i would say, yeah, we’re pretty close.” this was where you started to get a bit questioning. sure, you had spoken to tommy before, but you two weren’t necessarily close.
“hey, y’know what i think.” he turned his character to stare at you.
“no, what do you think tommy?”
“let’s be friends.”
tommy proceeded to drag you around the server, getting to know you better. you two had run around quite a bit, and ended up near the badlands. tommy, of course, decided to bring you into his mischief.
“ok, when bad joins vc, after i say hello you have to say ‘say FUCK badboyhalo’ to him.”
“doesn’t bad always yell language at everyone? shouldn’t i probably not do that?” you had just recently gotten added to the server and even doing certain things for bits made you nervous.
“you’ll be fine. now get ready.” once bad joined the vc, tommy yelled “HELLO BADBOYHALO.”
“well, hello to the two of you. how are you both doing?”
without taking the time to answer you yelled, “BADBOYHALO SAY FUCK!”
tommy immediately began laughing. bad’s character was running around and you could hear him stuttering until finally shouting “LANGUAGE!”
“oh come on, bbh. it just adds more impacts to what you’re saying. imagine you were saying ‘i hate that muffinhead skeppy so much’. isn’t it much more impactful when you say ‘i hate that BITCH skeppy so FUCKING much!’?” even though you couldn’t see his facecam, you could tell how much he was smirking.
“LANGUAGE TOMMY!” bad was screaming and from his voice he seemed to be fuming.
catching onto what tommy was planning, you started for him, “seriously bad, what do you have against saying a few curse words? FUCK, SHIT, BITCH, ASS, PUSSY.” you and tommy both began screaming curse words at bad until you heard him scream and leave the vc.
and for the next few weeks, that was how it went. you two caused chaos all across the server, getting on everyone’s nerves. phil had quickly deemed you ‘chaos gremlins sent to drive him even further into his old age’. at least kristen appreciated the two of you.
“phil, what are taxes?” tommy had asked phil.
after hearing him mutter a quick “jesus christ…”, he gave tommy an answer, “pretty much shit you have to pay because the government said to.”
“and is there any way to pay less taxes? y’know, cheat the system?” tommy was quickly driving phil to old age.
“well, marriage gives you tax benefits.”
“ooo!” tommy turned his minecraft character towards you, “marry me! for tax benefits!”
and so there was a new platonically married couple on the server.
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ranboo had noticed your lack of presence. instead of showing up in his streams, you were usually doing something with tommy. the two of you had even gotten married, the same way he and tubbo had. jealousy, even when irrational, was still a very real and present thing.
which is what led him to be standing outside your minecraft house, waiting for you to stop talking to tommy for a second and answer his in chat messages. for five whole minutes, he had to deal with chat clowning on him. “chat, i have never been replaced. they simply cannot replace me. there is no way to get rid of me.”
“you’re like mold!” tubbo had joined ranboo’s vc. his energy heavily contrasted the other’s.
“...tubbo, how am i like mold?”
“you’re just constantly growing on people! holding on for dear life until an exterminator is called! do i need to call an exterminator on you?”
“...no thank you, tubbo.”
finally, you and tommy had joined vc. “hello ranboo!”
“hello! what took so long?” the agitation in his voice was barely detectable.
“oh, tommy here was being pissy. didn’t want to leave vc2.”
“so tommy was stopping you from talking to your friends?” ranboo clicked his tongue and jokingly said, “seems a bit, uh well, toxic, to me.”
tommy quickly erupted into screams. “HOW DARE YOU ACCUSE ME OF BEING A TOXIC FRIEND?”
“I WASN’T ACCUSING YOU OF ANYTHING, WAS JUST STATING MY OPINION!” ranboo had started screaming back.
“IF YOU WANNA SEE TOXIC, I’LL SHOW YOU TOXIC RANBOO.” you could distantly hear an 8 bit version of toxic by britney spears playing from tubbos mic.
“OH SHUT UP TOMMY, PLEASE, I’VE BEEN FRIENDS WITH THEM FOR LONGER.”
“BITCH, PLEASE. JUST BECUASE YOU’VE KNOWN THEM LONGER DOES MAKE YOU BETTER FRIENDS. WE’RE MARRIED, WE ARE.”
and from there, the screaming continued. In-game chat, you could see tubbo telling you to join vc6.
“crazy, that lot is.”
“agreed.”
thank you for waiting! i’m sorry this took so long, i’ve been visiting family for easter and haven’t really been able to write. i hope you enjoyed this, though! <3
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Purim: a Jewish holiday and wild ride from start to finish
So let me tell you about the absolute soap opera that is the Jewish holiday of Purim. The scene is set in ancient (appx. 4th century B.C.E.) Persia during the first Jewish Diaspora, in the city of Shushan (typically identified in secular sources as Susa, a now-abandoned ancient city in what is now Iran). I’m telling you, as a work of literature (even beyond theological implications for Jewish people), this book has everything: love, drama, royalty, intrigue, ego, plots, irony, mystery, and a strong female lead.
[some non-slur swearing below]
Ahasuerus, party-loving king of Persia executed or exiled (translations argue) his wife Vashti, and had to find a new queen. Why did he do this, you ask? Well, it really starts with an 180-day party across his kingdom for all his subjects to celebrate the third year of his reign. After that absolute rager, party-bro KA has another one immediately after for a week, this time just for the capital city of Shushan. Vashti was having a woman’s party in her quarters, presumably living her best life, when party-bro sends his top seven yes-men to deliver a message to Vashti. This sleaze-ball wants her to appear at his party in front of everyone, wearing her crown, with the clear implication being only her crown. Vashti more or less tells him to pound sand (I mean, not the literal translation, but that’s the sentiment).
KA’s advisors convince him that this is not only an offense against the king but also against all the men in the country (ah, the joys of ancient patriarchy and toxic af masculinity). KA writes a degree that women must respect their husbands so he has an official reason to get rid of Vashti. Vashti is soon thereafter out of the picture and the king is short a queen. Whether she was a Wise Lady With A Point Who Got Screwed Over or a Vicious Jew-Hating Adulteress Who Had It Coming has been a matter of furious debate for over two millennia (the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud vociferously disagree on her). In any case, KA regrets it pretty quick and wants a new queen.
At the behest of his advisors (you know, since their last advice worked out soooooo well), KA had a big contest/forcible gathering of young women from around his kingdom and a Jewish woman, Hadassah, was the winner. Hadassah was an orphan raised by her cousin Mordechai in the city of Shushan. Hadassah is more commonly known as Esther, because she changed her name to hide her identity as a Jew (at the behest of Mordechai). In any case, KA decided he liked Esther best and she became queen (it’s specifically mentioned both that he loved her most and that the palace staff liked her because she was nice to them-it’s unclear how much of an influence the latter was).
Concurrently, a wicked man named Haman was the top advisor to the king and the king would basically rubber-stamp whatever Haman wanted. Haman was a raging Jew-hater-this will be relevant later.
Some time into Esther’s reign as queen, Mordechai, who has taken to hanging around the gates of the palace to keep in touch with Esther, overhears a plot by two guards, Bigthan and Teresh, to kill the king. Mordechai alerts his cousin, and she tells the king. It’s recorded in the book of deeds and life keeps moving.
Some time later, Haman decides (after a promotion to head lackey) that he wants all to bow to him as he passes. Mordechai refused to bow to Haman every single day (citing that as a Jew he bowed to no man), and that did not sit well with Haman. So despite being prime minister and presumably having more important things to do, “genocide the Jews” made it to the top of to-do list. He didn’t like them before, and Mordechai refusing to treat him like a special snowflake was something he took really, really personally (totally can’t think of any modern politicians like that, nope). He told KA, who frankly doesn’t seem to ask enough questions, that there was a people disrespecting the king and his laws throughout the land, and could he pretty-please exterminate them. As a bonus, Haman would “donate” 10,000 silver kikar to the royal treasury (modern conversion vary, but all agree this an absurd amount on money).
KA handed him the royal seal to do so. Haman was feeling lucky I guess so he decided the best course of action was to draw lots to pick the day for the massacre. [Purim is lots in Hebrew, so that’s where the name of the holiday came from]. The message went out to all the provinces that on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, that they citizens and leaders should murder all of the Jews, young and old, man, woman, and child, rich and poor and take their possessions as spoils.
As this wasn’t exactly a state secret, the Jews knew and were quite distressed. The planned slaughter was like a year out, but what the actual fuck were they supposed to do? If you lived in Persia at that point that, the empire was functionally your entire world, unless you were fabulously/ridiculously wealthy and well-connected. Having several months notice the other locals and your rules were going to slaughter you and take your stuff isn’t particularly useful when there’s really nowhere to go.
In Shushan, Mordechai (who, although not explicitly in text, is in oral/Talmudic tradition a leader of the Jewish community) goes into mourning. He dresses in sackcloth and ashes, he weeps, and he fasts at the gates of the palace, as Jews throughout shushan and the kingdom are doing. Esther hears of her cousin’s mourning behavior and tries to send along nice clothes through a messenger, which he refuses. It is then that she learns of the decree. Mordechai (through the messenger) implores her to go ask the king if the Jews not getting murdered could be a thing. Esther explains that she could be killed for approaching the king unsummoned. Mordechai stresses the severity of the situation. Esther agrees to ask the king and tells Mordechai to have the Shushan Jewish community fast day and night (as opposed to just day as prior) for three days, and she and her handmaidens will fast too (no word on what the handmaidens thought of this).
On the third day, Esther bravely approached the king, asked him if she could request something. He said anything, up to half his kingdom (which implies to me that homedude, for all his flaws, was actually into her). Esther invited him to a party, where he and Haman would be the only guests. At the party she asks if she can another request. KA is open to it and she invites him to another party the next night. Party-bro king is obviously down and Haman is tickled to death at this second invitation.
He goes home to brag to his wife, Zeresh, about the invite and also to bitch about how angsty he is Mordechai is still alive (this angst reignited by passing him on the way home). Zeresh suggests he have fifty-foot gallows built to make Mordechai an example on, with the king’s permission, ASAP. Haman orders the building of the gallows, feeling secure in the knowledge that his bestie the king will execute Mordechai on them.
Back at the castle KA can’t sleep. He demands a bedtime story from the his records, because those will presumably put him to sleep. The story that gets read, ~coincidentally~, is of Mordechai saving KA’s life. Haman had sidled on up to the castle to speak to the king about killing Mordechai, and the king called him in. KA asks Haman, if he were to honor someone, what should he do? Haman is thinking “this is obvi about me” and tells the king that the honoree should be donned in royal clothing, and ride through the streets on a fancy horse with people someone shouting how great he is. KA is like great, love it, perf, go do that for Mordechai. Haman is not a happy camper but does the thing. After that, he goes home and tells Zeresh about it, who warns him that this is a very bad sign.
Finally, that night is the night of Esther’s second soiree. Haman and KA attend. The latter offers to Esther anything she wants, up to half of his kingdom. Esther asks that her life, and the life of her people be spared. KA is like “whomst” and Esther revealed it was Haman. At this point Ahasuerus.exe stops working and he takes a walk to the gardens. He comes back to see Haman begging Esther for his life, and KA thinks Haman is assaulting her. Haman was seized by nearby guards.
One of the chamberlains is then like, hey, KA, coincidentally there’s these super high gallows Haman just had built. Why not take care of the problem that way? (The fact that the random nearby chamberlain was like yup, that dude, hang ‘em in the morning, probably says a lot about how Haman treated most people around him, even more than forcing all to bow to him). KA orders it be done.
Not that Haman was around to be sad about it, but what happened next would have massively pissed him off, as his old job then went to Mordechai. Esther then implored of the king that the degree to allow the massacre of the Jews be reversed. The king couldn’t Cntrl+Z the order to murder-all-the-Jews, but he could issue an order that they could fight back. The proclamation was sent throughout the land, and the Jews were able to prepare. Since the royal decree had been amended, the governments (princes, governors, satraps) largely reformulated their plans accordingly, but plenty of Jew-haters still wanted to use the opportunity. The ability to self-defend meant that the communities weren’t massacred. In most of the kingdom, the Jews were now safe. Outside of Shushan, the fourteenth of Adar became a feast day.
Shushan was still not safe though. Antisemites were still out and mad (and apparently had not learned from the previous day), so Esther asked the Jews of Shushan to be allowed to defend themselves once more. Her wish was granted, and the Shushan Jews were able to defend themselves once more (so Purim is celebrated a day later in walled cities).
The story ends with the decision to write it down, and although there some debate on authorship, it is traditionally attributed to Esther herself cowriting with Mordechai.
Nowhere in the book is God mentioned. Nowhere is there divine intervention (at least not explicitly). Just Jews sticking up for themselves, being brave in the face of mortal peril, and a metric fucktown of chutzpah.
#jumblr#purim#purim story#jewish soap opera for real though#purim 2021#purim 5781#what is purim#purim explained#jewblr
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On Family
An excerpt from Memoirs of a Flesh Eater, never published
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One question that I see asked in the news a lot is why there are still any ghouls left. We have a distinctive, high-impact feeding habit that requires us to stay within human society, where we are both outnumbered and outgunned. This has essentially been the case since the development of automatic firearms, and you’ve continued to develop more and more effective methods of killing us since then. How are we not extinct?
The talking heads always have lurid theories to propose. My personal favorite one, which comes up every couple of years or so, is that the government is secretly breeding us so that they have an excuse to send secret police out into the general populace for nefarious purposes pretending to be exterminators. As if they’d need the excuse {Editing Note: I’ve gotta keep my political views out of this except where they directly pertain to ghouls. No unnecessarily alienating people}. The most commonly accepted one seems to be that we just have a lot of children to compensate for our high mortality rate. Spatha calls that an R strategy, I think. Scarlet calls it the Rabbit Theory. Whatever you call it, it’s wrong. Our species has survived off the strength and compassion of our families.
Contrary to popular impressions, our “nuclear” families are pretty small. My understanding is that 1-4 children is the typical range. I’m the only confirmed only child in my friend group. Scarlet’s the youngest of three, Scorpio’s a middle child, Spatha avoids talking about her home life, and Kestrel doesn’t know her biological parents. There’s a couple of pressures that keep our family sizes small. First, it’s challenging to feed too many ghouls at once, especially ghoul children, who we don’t want worrying about where they’re going to get their meals. Second, the majority of ghoul parents are going to end up as single parents before their kids are fully grown. Either one of them is going to get killed, or they’re going to have to separate to go on the run from the exterminators; and, of course, we do still break up and get divorced sometimes.
These pressures are exaggerated by our general lack of an extended family. It’s not that all of our aunts and uncles get hunted down - even if they did, we’d still have cousins - but it’s not safe for us to have traceable extended families. When exterminators identify a ghoul, the first thing they do is put out a bulletin for all known blood relatives. The most common tactic to avoid this is, when multiple siblings make it to adulthood, at least one of them changes their identity and moves away. This isn’t always done, but it’s done often enough that document forging is a widespread and well-respected profession in the Society. It’s useful for dodging exterminators in other circumstances too. My mom and I changed our names and moved cities after exterminators killed my dad when I was 4.
Between that and the sheer number of out-and-out orphans in our Society, it should come as no surprise that we’ve developed a new family structure to fill in the gaps. The terminology we use for this structure is variable, but the term I’ve always used is “household”. A household is a sort of adopted extended family, typically formed by and centered around one particularly resourceful ghoul called a patron. The patron takes whichever ghouls they choose under their wing, introduces them to each other, and helps them coordinate their talents and resources so that they all have everything they need. Most obviously, this means making sure they all have a supply of flesh, but there are numerous other kinds of support a household can provide. I doubt I need to emphasize again how valuable a reliable source of companionship and safety is, but patrons typically have access to connections and contacts that can help the other members of the household accomplish their goals.
My household, for example, was founded by our patron Yaga. It consists of her, her adopted daughter Kestrel, my mom and I, my friends Scarlet and Scorpio and their immediate families, and four other older ghouls. There’s also Spatha, who has been reluctant to fully join the household but acts like a member in most contexts. Three of our members have reliable flesh sources, and Yaga coordinates with other ghouls to find supplementary sources to ensure that she always has a surplus on hand. This keeps all of us well-fed and lets her distribute the rest to those in need in exchange for favors and cachet that the rest of us can use for our own advancement. In turn, the rest of us pitch in for odd jobs here and there, mostly on flesh-gathering jobs of one kind or another, and we look out for each other. I’ve done a bit of babysitting with Kestrel, for example, and Yaga was able to get me and Scarlet summer jobs to save up for college.
Babysitting, by the way, is one of the most valuable services a household can provide to a ghoul parent. Given our mortality rate, it probably isn’t a surprise that there’s a good bit of cultural pressure to have children, and have them quick. Ghoul children are… a lot. When we’re newborn, we’re pretty much like human babies. Ghoul babies can nurse from ghoul mothers for awhile, which is a relief. They need to switch to flesh before their teeth come in, though, so that means flesh slurry, which is more complicated to make than you might think. For best results, you want a mix of blood, muscle tissue, organ tissue, and bone, especially marrow. We get better at pulling all our nutrients from just flesh as we mature, but babies aren’t as developed. Getting those varied tissues is a little more complicated than just getting flesh. Bone especially is challenging - more mature ghouls have no need for it, and it’s honestly kinda gross. You just have to hope that whoever you’re getting flesh from can start holding some bones for you. Not every source has easy access to bones.
{Editing Note: I think I wrote bone too many times - it looks fake now. Bone. Bone.}
We get our ghoul teeth at the same time as our baby teeth. Our ghoul teeth fall out and are replaced too, but we keep growing new ones our whole lives, kinda like sharks. Funnily enough, I don’t think we grow extra human teeth, which seems like a strange way for evolution to take us, but what do I know, I’m not a biologist. At that point we can start eating regular flesh, and parents have the unenviable task of explaining to toddlers that they can’t just slide their teeth out whenever they want. Our other features come in a bit later - claws between 4 and 6, eyes with puberty. Let me tell you, the claws hurt coming in. I couldn’t hold a pencil for a month. My mom told the elementary school that I was deathly sick so she could keep me home, but I think Scarlet just pretended he’d broken both his hands and went in splints. I don’t envy him - stretching my claws did a lot to relieve the pain.
I’ll admit freely that, by our standards, I had a pretty charmed childhood. I fit into human society pretty easily, I had a mom who loved me and could provide for me, a patron and household to help pick up the slack, and ghoul friends my own age. I had the discipline to keep my true nature hidden from my human peers, and I don’t think I was even particularly traumatized by the pressure of performing humanity that much. I can safely attribute that to the fact that I had safe spaces throughout my life to let the charade drop. Most ghouls at least have that. Most, but not all.
Our integration into human society also means that we inevitably become entangled in human society. We become invested in the lives of our human peers, we befriend them, care about them. Sometimes we fall in love with them. Eating people seems like kind of a big secret to keep from a potential romantic partner - I certainly couldn’t manage it - but some ghouls form romantic relationships with humans nonetheless. Maybe some of these human partners eventually discover the truth and are willing to overlook it for the person they love, but I doubt it happens often. I’ve certainly never heard of it. I’ve heard of it going the other way, though, a human partner discovering the truth and reacting poorly. Someone always dies when that happens. I personally know a few ghouls who’ve dated humans, or are seriously involved with them. Frankly, it scares the hell out of me. I get that the heart wants what it wants, but some wants aren’t worth the risk.
{Editing Note: That last line feels… tense. Emotionally charged. Why? And should I change it?}
In my opinion, the gravest of these risks is what happens when a human and a ghoul decide they want to build a life together, but kids are already in the equation. The human-ghoul mixed family is probably the most toxic environment that a ghoul child could be raised in and conceivably survive. All that pressure of hiding your true nature from your peers as you grow up? That feeling of isolation that follows you everywhere you go among humans? All of the most crushing emotional turmoil I’ve described in this book so far? Imagine if there was no relief for that even at home with your family. I frankly have no idea how ghoul parents manage to feed themselves and their children without being caught, or how they manage to perform humanity so flawlessly and constantly that their literal immediate family never catches on. I don’t know how those children manage to survive to adulthood, but I imagine they have some seriously fucked up mental health problems by the time they do. Factor in the suspicion that they would inevitably face from our Society when they finally are able to join it properly - after all, who more likely to become a Judas or be Lost than a ghoul raised by humans? - and I’d be willing to bet most of them don’t make it out of their twenties.
Before we move on entirely from families in general and mixed families in particular, I’d like to take a quick aside to talk about “half-ghouls”. You hear about them in horror media fairly often, the biological child of a human and a ghoul. Authors love to ascribe all sorts of traits to these hypothetical creatures - greater and more monstrous than the sum of their parts, supernaturally strong and vicious, impossible to detect within human society, sometimes with traits that are blatantly impossible, like telepathy or mind control or just plain magic. All of that is obviously untrue, but it’s something of a point of contention as to whether or not a “half-ghoul” is even possible. None of the ghouls I’ve talked to seem to agree about whether it can happen, and a search of human medical literature was similarly inconclusive. Humans, at least, seem to think that it might be theoretically possible, but have never been able to verify it by observation or by medical experiment. Of the ghouls I know that have been romantically involved with humans, none of them have ever gotten a kid out of it. It’s one of those things where we just don’t know. If it were possible, I’m not even sure what the implications would be.
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Love Like You: Ch.1
Here it is! The Eddsworld fic I've been writing for 3 days :D. This is a platonic soulmates fic with soul marks and so far, the main focus is on platonic yandere Tord & Edd. This is going to be a multi-chapter fic and there won't be any ships. All pairings are platonic. I've yet to decide Tord's age, but I'm thinking maybe 26? Edd, Tom, and Matt are 17. Also, I have big events planned out but everything in between is vague so ideas are appreciated.
The title is from the su song Love Like You, but it might change as I figure things out and if I find something that fits better. I hope you guys like this! <3 <3 <3
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The three marks practically covered his entire forearm. Although they were three different flowers, they just clicked. They fit so well that unless you were close up, it looked like one soul mark. Edd liked that. It perfectly described his relationship with his three friends. Or, soon to be three friends. He had hoped he’d find the third one soon. Two of the marks belonged to Tom and Matt, who he found when he was young. He felt so complete when he brushed against them on the school’s playground. It was as if they filled a gap in his soul that he never realized he was missing.
Edd’s third mark was a mix of black and red today. It was a stark contrast from the mix of light blue and yellow of Tom’s and Matt’s marks. Hesitantly, Edd brushed his fingers against the top mark and winced. A sharp jab of dull anger and agitation welled up into his chest. Ah, something had really set off his friend today. He moved his hand lower down his forearm to trace over Tom and Matt’s soul marks instead. A wave of calm and contentedness swept the echoes of the anger away and he pulled his hoodie sleeve down.
While he liked running his hand over his marks as he did his schoolwork, he didn’t want to continuously touch his top mark if his friend was having an awful day. It would affect his own mood. He worried that if he did, then his friend would touch their own mark and then both of them would stay in a vicious cycle of intense negative emotions. It was a real concern as it’s happened a few times before.
Edd often keeps his hand pressed against his top mark, basking in his friend’s good mood. Especially when he’s had a rough day at school. Of course, his friend took notice once as they pressed their hand against their mark and their emotions intensified. Slowly, his mood lifted and when he concentrated enough, he was able to send a “Hi!” with as much warmth as he could. No matter what soul mark a person had, they were always able to talk to their soulmate if both of them were touching the mark at the same time and concentrated hard enough. He didn’t do this much with Tom and Matt as he saw them practically every day and had their numbers, but it was rare he was able to talk to his friend.
It was also rare because his friend didn’t touch their mark at the same time as him often.
After sending his greeting, his top mark changed to a deep white mixed with dark pink. Edd had laughed seeing that. It wasn’t often his friend was surprised. And seeing the affection mixed in made warmth fill his chest.
“Hello!” His friend sent back. “You sound young.”
Edd laughed. Of all the things his friend could have said, they had to comment on his voice. His friend didn’t sound bad themselves. Their voice was deep, with an accent he couldn’t place. Still, he wasn’t going to assume their gender. Only looking out for one type of person could cause him to miss who they were.
“No! I’ll be an adult soon,” He sent back, tongue sticking out in focus. “You have a… nice voice.!”
“Thank you. Listen, I have to go now. But I'll find you. I promise.” A tinge of regret passed through him, but they sent him another wave of affection through their mark.
Quickly, before they moved their hand, Edd sent, “I can’t wait to meet you!” along with his best attempt to project his own affection and happiness to them. He didn’t know if it worked, but their emotions dulled.
In hopes that they’d be able to do that again soon, he kept his hand pressed against his mark for ten more minutes until his mom called him downstairs for dinner.
So yeah, he wasn’t going to do that right now. At least, not until he checks later if his friend’s mood changes.
If that short conversation wasn’t proof enough, his friend was definitely older than him. Perhaps not old enough to be his third grandparent, but certainly older than him. Plus, he’s had that mark on his arm since he was born. All three of his marks were platonic soul marks, which were the flower type. Most often, these signaled platonic love. Edd took that to mean that all three of his soul marks were his best friends.
Romantic soul marks were often different, but as he and neither of his friends had one, he doesn’t know much about them since he never bothered to look into it.
Half of his childhood had been spent figuring out what his and his friends' marks were. After they learned how to read, they spent at least an hour inside the library searching for flowers that matched their marks. Finding them was difficult, but they were pretty sure his top marks were Heliotropes! And according to the flower guide they found, it meant eternal love/devotion. It was sweet and had him convinced that his friend would be his best friend.
The second mark on his arm, Tom’s, were Chrysanthemums. “You’re a wonderful friend,” the book had said it meant. His third and final mark, Matt, was Lisianthus. They represent appreciation/admiration for a friend, gratefulness, and charisma.
Unlike Edd, Tom and Matt only had two flower marks. Tom’s first mark, Edd, was Asters. It had meant a form of deep emotional love and affection, along with the message of “take care of yourself for me”. It was very fitting, A Hyacinth, Matt’s mark, was Tom’s last mark. Interestingly enough, under the picture of the flower, the book just said “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” Other books just said they meant sorrow, regret, and forgiveness. Any time Edd asks about it, Tom clams up and asks him to leave it alone. Some things were just not meant to be shared.
Matt’s first mark, Edd, was Morning Glories. They meant affection and love. His second mark, Tom, was Daisy’s. While meaning loyal love and purity, there was also a deeper meaning of keeping a secret between friends. Again, there was a story there. Edd didn’t know what the secret could be, but based on his friends' reactions when he asked them, he left it alone.
Each of their marks was on their left forearms and except for Tom’s single Hyacinth, they were in bunches with multiples of the same flower.
Edd loved them, he really did. When he doubted his friendship with them, he’d look at his marks and remind himself that’s what they thought of him. It was just hard sometimes, to remember that he was loved. Sometimes he felt like an imposter, like he didn’t deserve their love. If asked why, he wouldn’t be able to put it into words. It was just how he felt at times.
Late at night when he wasn’t feeling too great, when stress just ate at him, he’d run his fingers over his arm, feeling his mark and whatever emotions his friend was feeling. He’d remind himself that if nothing else, the Heliotropes showed that his friend would always love him. Oftentimes, his friend was feeling content at night, and feeling that while stressed really helped him calm down.
Though on rare nights, his friend fed into his stress, morphing his feelings into a wave of intense anger as he rubbed his mark. He hated those nights but could never bring himself to move his hand away from his mark.
Edd sighed and put his pencil down. He didn’t feel like finishing his schoolwork anymore. Maybe Tom and Matt could come over and play games with him?
* * * * *
Meanwhile, in another country, Tord was pacing back and forth in his office. “Fucking incompetent, pieces of shit,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “They had one job! One easy, little job and still they fucked it up!”
He ran a shaky hand through his hair. As the job truly was an easy one, how this happened, Tord didn’t have a clue. All those two idiots had to do was go into the government building, collect the information from the mole he planted there, and bring it back. That was it! Tord could’ve done it himself if he wasn’t so busy. And yet, the two morons were still caught, very nearly giving away the identity of his mole.
He wished he could bring the two back and torture them for this. But alas, they were already dead. Tord couldn’t afford either of them giving up any information on his army so he had them exterminated before they could be questioned. It didn’t stop him from wanting to smash something.
A knock on his door caused Tord to pause. As he took a deep breath, he stuck two fingers into the sleeve of his left arm to briefly trace his mark. He couldn’t see the color, but a cool flow of calmness and excitement pricked his rage. It was enough to stop him from shouting.
“You may enter.”
Paul entered the room, which wasn’t a surprise. He was one of the few who weren’t scared shitless to bother him when he was in a rage.
“You’re going on a vacation.”
“Excuse me,” Tord said flatly, a scowl on his face.
Paul continued on as if he wasn’t in danger of being shot in the foot. Well, to be fair, he wasn’t. Tord would never get rid of one of the more competent people in his army and Paul fully knew it. “With all due respect, don’t even try to argue with me. I could practically hear you grinding your teeth from outside the door and you’re going to wear a hole in your carpet. At this point, if you don’t rest, you’re going to give yourself stress ulcers.”
Closing his eyes, Tord took another deep breath and counted to ten. For good measure, he shoved his fingers into his sleeve again to press against his mark. The calmness and excitement soothed his rage as he said with an even voice, “And who else agrees with you?”
“The only name I’ll give up is Pat. I’m not stupid enough to think you won’t take your anger out at anyone else. Get ready, the plane leaves tonight.”
“You really aren’t going to give me enough time to sort anything out?”
Paul shot him an annoyed look. “No, because knowing you, you’ll just get too sucked into your work and not pack. I’ll take care of anything urgent.” He saluted Tord before leaving.
Tord rubbed his temples as he muttered, “He didn’t even tell me where I was going.” He dropped into his seat and yanked his desk drawer open. Leaning back in his chair, he lit a cigar and planned countless scenarios of his “vacation”.
A small part of his mind hoped he could find the owner of his mark. They seemed so nice compared to him.
Knowledge of his leave was no doubt spreading through his base like a wildfire, so he had no doubt no one would bother him. His soul mark was safe from prying eyes, so he rolled up his sleeve and traced the outline of the Sunflowers. His face morphed from a scowl to a small smile. His beloved was still feeling calm and excited. He wondered what they were up to.
The Sunflowers lived up to their name as they truly did bring warmth to his life. They were supposed to mean adoration and loyalty. He hadn’t met them yet, but considering they were a kid, the sunflowers were fitting. It’d be even more apparent once he met them.
Tord’s smile dropped. He really wanted to find them, get to know them, and fill their bond. But what about his army? So many people wanted him dead and in no good conscience could he drag a kid into this mess. He never allowed anyone under eighteen to join and from the short talk he had with his beloved, they sounded too young to be eighteen. People could say what they wanted about him, but he refuses to have child soldiers.
If he found them, he’d have to bring them back here. Hiding them here was the only way he could keep them safe.
With that train of thought, Tord sat up. Already a plan was forming in his mind. Nothing could be concrete until he met them, but he’d have an empty room ready for him near his own. Just in case he found them on this trip. Chances were slim but he hated not being prepared.
With that in mind, he left his office to go pack. The thought of finding them made this trip a little more bearable.
#platonic yandere#soulmarks#tw yandere#yandere tw#eddsworld#yandere tord#yandere ew#yandere ew tord#yandere#yandere fic#yandere eddsworld#eddsworld fic#platonic relationships
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4th Dimensional Being/OC - CH3
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2
Full Length: 19,543
Chapter Length: 2,218
Main Themes: Other dimensions, tentacles, confinement, nsfw
Other Warnings: politics, "godly" behaviors, vomit, feeling of loss of autonomy, comparison to a toy
(all images in aesthetic board are labeled for reuse with modification or are mine)
The next chapter gets nasty...
The 4DB
Chapter 3: The Virus
They were all chattering like cicadas, a loud distant drone in the back of her head. Chris missed her phone. She missed Vincent. She even missed Mildred's occasional snarky comment. Instead she was here, the beginnings of a headache blooming, listening to the test subjects debate the pros and cons of their situation. Chris absently and quietly picked at her food.
John was grumpy. He complained that he shouldn't even be here. “Whatever this thing is it's keeping me from my job,” but he secretly thought that perhaps he'd be revered for his 'sacrifice,' assuming he was allowed to even talk about it after it ended.
“What do you do again?” Asked Cole at Chris’s side smartly.
John became red in the face but kept his composure. “Very funny.”
Aaron, nearly slumped over the cold metal table, shrugged and snorted. “Why's a ~mystical being~ need any of us anywho? A security guard, an energy-guy, a mayor, a fucking clerk for God's sake,” he gestured towards Chris.
“Well I know why he'd want me!” Boasted Nathan. “Must of saw me on the field and thought wow, I need him in my soon-to-be-cult!” His laugh was so loud. John sneered when he elbowed him.
The conversation just felt so shallow. Chris should have opted to sit with her roommate Morgan, but she had looked out of it ever since she'd first spoken with Gabriel the day before.
“So uh, what did it say to you guys?” Cole changed the subject suddenly.
Chris looked up, glancing around. Some of the men looked rather uncomfortable.
“Fucker wanted me to describe war to him,” Nathan answered quickly, his expression confused but vaguely amused. “Apparently they've had no wars. Not one. I think he's a liar, what a load of shit.”
John shrugged, leaning back a bit. “I was asked about my job. It was very tame.”
“Hey Chris, what did it ask you?” Cole nudged her from her thoughts.
The security guard chuckled. “How to send a letter?”
She ignored him. God, some of these guys were obnoxious. “It asked me about our government and how it treated me,” she shrugged, looking back at her food.
“I wonder what the eggheads will do with those recordings,” Nathan interjected. “Not like they can hear the bastard. It'll just be a bunch of government losers ranting about their jobs. Oh, and then me having to explain every damn World War like I was a school teacher. Whatever that thing is... it knows nothing about us.”
At least Chris could agree with that.
The experiments continued. The scientists began to fill out; the building became more abuzz with life than it had at the start. Suddenly the subjects felt surrounded. There was always some straight-laced woman or expressionless man beside them. Tailor, Sparrow, Rock, Dove, they all came with some codename. And, even in the reports of which the subjects could not access, Chris and her comrades were coded as well. Like they were trying to hide who they were, what they were doing, to keep their discoveries a secret from the rest of the world.
Regardless, a week had gone by and the only thing they'd discovered was that the 4DB was communicating directly inside of the subjects' heads. They tried to figure out a way to at least record the brain readings of the subjects' during sessions, and indeed found ample evidence that the auditory system was being stimulated. It was telepathy. Unfortunately they were having difficulty figuring out how to translate the brain's signals into actual words. They would have to stick with word of mouth.
“Have you learned anything about us?” Chris asked, walking around the pink square casually.
“Much. You are each individuals, like us. However, you are perhaps more individually inclined than I estimated,” they admitted curiously.
“I hope that helps you re-consider exterminating us. Cause... ya know, I sorta wanna live.”
Gabriel paused. “All things want to live. Even a virus wants to live.”
She scrunched her brows, angry. “We are not a virus, Gabriel. Grow up.”
“...No, I suppose you are not.” Gabriel went quiet for a while.
Chris calmed a bit and finished her circle. She leaned against the wall. “I wish I could go back home. I miss my friends. The people here- they're... I don't know. Not my sort. I'm tired.”
That was almost enough to make Gabriel feel some guilt, but if they had not plucked Chris from her home they'd have plucked someone else. “I do see the way you look.”
She rose a brow, confused. “Huh? What's that supposed to mean?”
“The way you look. When they speak.”
For a moment she was beside herself, believing they were saying some sort of gibberish. But then it clicked. Her brows shot up and her head went light. “You watch us when we're not in the chamber?”
“Of course I do. I am not confined to one spot,” they shook their heads.
She paled. Then she reddened. “Nooo no no, do you...” her voice got quiet. “...see us when we... pee? And shower?”
Apparently that was funny because they laughed strangely. “Yes. Now I see you are embarrassed. Do not be embarrassed, for I can see any part of you at any time if I wished. I can see all your organs. Like now, your heart has sped up.”
Chris placed her hand to her heart as if she could hide it. It was sort of cute. “Y-yeah? Well can you see I'm going to vomit?”
They looked to the right, down the vague rivers of time. “Maybe. A long, long time from now.”
She sighed, sort of sick. “Well Gabriel, nice knowin' ya. I'm out for the day.” Chris absconded from the chamber five minutes early. The scientists were not pleased.
As days ticked on Chris could see how the results of these studies were wearing away at the morale of the scientists. Some were exhausted, some were disappointed, some were scared and angry. They grew impatient with the 4DB. It still only spoke to them to issue commands. Then, one day, when a particularly irritable scientist got cocky, the 4DB actually laughed and shoved them. Right in front of their colleagues. None of the subjects saw it, but of course they heard about it through the grape vine.
The scientists wanted to stop sending the subjects into the chamber to test the limits of the 4DBs relationship with the lab. However, too many feared some retaliation so such a test never came to fruition. Instead, they spitefully released one lesser subject's contracts and then started increasing the amount of time the remaining subjects would spend with the scientists. Gale began to meet with Chris once a day, though in a much more comfortable room than the one they'd first conversed in.
“How have you settled in?” Gale asked, leaning comfortably in her chair and crossing her long legs. “A week and a half far from home... you must miss your friends.”
At this point she was almost too nervous to voice her true feelings. “Yeah, it feels more like a month,” she answered instead, uncomfortable.
Gale nodded and drummed her fingers on the table between them, observing Chris. She changed the subject masterfully. “You know, your recordings are the most interesting.”
That made Chris perk up, a bit of adrenaline pushing into her veins. “What do you mean?”
The other smirked, entertained. “You're the only subject so far who sounds almost friendly with the 4DB. And don't think we didn't notice you named it, too.”
Chris didn't want to admit that hearing that made her feeling sort of... special. “I didn't know you listened to the recordings,” her cheeks tinted.
“Of course! And transcribe as well,” Gale explained. “You call it Gabriel. Like before it made its presence known to us, like Gabriel's Children. The other subjects... well. Gabriel seems to get something from them that we just don't.”
Chris glanced down at her hand fidgeting in her lap, embarrassed.
“But wow, does it talk to you. Maybe it's your time in retail. You just have a way with small talk,” she began to laugh. “So Chris, I have a proposal for you.”
She lifted her eyes. “Um... y-yeah?”
Gale leaned forward, face friendly and tone pleasant, but Chris could feel the strange aura emanating from her piercing eyes. “Get closer to it. Make it friendly. It obviously favors you and we need that. We are more then well aware- based off your recordings and reports- that the fate of the world, no, maybe the whole solar system, depends on Gabriel's opinion-”
“Well there are more than one 4DB,” you interrupted.
She looked only slightly aggravated at the interruption, then continued. “-And Gabriel's opinion might just fall on its opinion of you. Try to get it to talk to us more naturally. Not just commands. It's not working with us like we'd like. And in return? You'll get cell phone access again,” she winked. “Have some time to chat with those friends you miss so much.”
Chris agreed. That wouldn't be so hard. All she had to do was keep doing what she was doing. The world would learn more, she would get her cell phone back, and maybe with some luck Gabriel wouldn't vote to destroy the Earth.
But then, during the next session in the chamber with the pink square, she found a tense heaviness in the air like standing underwater.
“I heard your conversation,” Gabriel said immediately, emotionless.
Shocked and anxious, Chris tried to play it off as nothing. “That was just... it was just-”
Gabriel cut her off. “Quiet. You miss your human friends.”
She was uncertain if she was allowed to reply or not, stunned. Instead she just nodded stiffly and crossed her arms.
“And if I comply by being more 'cooperative' with your knowledge keepers they will allow you to speak with these friends,” they went on. After a pause they added: “I am indifferent to your plight.”
When Gabriel said nothing else Chris took it as her cue to respond. She was quiet, as if trying not to be picked up by the small microphone clipped to her shirt. “I... nothing would change. All we have to do is talk. Just like before. That's all they really want.”
“We shall see,” Gabriel said plainly.
The problem was that their plan began to work, despite Gabriel being aware of it. Though they didn't necessarily speak directly to the scientists they did grow warmer to Chris. Chris had a way about her that just made Gabriel so... interested in her. She didn't make cutting remarks (as if that would have hurt anyways), she didn't refuse to answer their questions, and she didn't make light of the atrocities of her country. She just talked. Like speaking with Gabriel was the most natural thing in the world. They didn't quite mind the nick-name anymore either, if they were honest. They hated that they were warm with Chris.
Gale was 'happy' the two of them were still getting along. Chris didn't tell her Gabriel knew about the plan, but they obviously suspected it. Everyday the scientist looked a little more intense. Gale continued to drill it into Chris's head to get Gabriel speaking with the scientists. Was it more cooperative today? No. How about now? No. Gale held back her irritation. At the end of each daily session she was led to her room feeling uncomfortable and alone. Chris still hadn't gotten her cell phone back. Her friends probably thought she was dead.
“Has it really been three weeks since this whole thing started?” Chris sighed, sitting on the cold floor. She fiddled with the rim of her shirt's neck, knowing full well that would cause sound disturbance in the recording. She'd get a mouthful about that.
Gabriel, who was sitting comfortably beyond the barrier, twirled their tentacles around one another absently. “For you.”
Chris nodded. She was quiet a moment. “Then how long is three weeks in your dimension?”
“For you it is sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour, twenty-four hours to a day, seven days to a week. For me it is... time functions differently,” they tried to explain. “I've only met you a few 'days' ago.”
That was hard for her to wrap her head around. “And are you really learning by doing this? Keeping us here in a box? Just talking?”
“Yes,” they replied simply.
They really were. They not only listened to word-of-mouth, they saw into the deep wrinkles of the subjects' brains, saw their bodily chemistry rise and fall. They watched for reactions to key words, how the subjects interacted with one another and their human 'captors.'
Chris shrugged, pursing her lips. She didn't seem to believe them. “Ooookay. Ya know this could go a lot faster if you also spoke to the scientists.” Of course they both knew what Chris was trying to do.
“So eager to hear your judgment.”
She shrugged again, somehow feeling rather fond of Gabriel in that moment. “Nah... just to hear my friends' voices again.”
Soon, Gabriel automatically thought, surprising themself.
Chapters 4, 5, and the epilogue will remain Patron-only content! However, eventually the full story will be edited more and added to Gumroad as an e-book as well. So if you’d like to get to the nsfw or read the rest, check out NSFWGenuflect on Patreon or wait for the Gumroad release :}
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Please tell me about 1920s Russian socioeconomic policy
PLEASE LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT 1920′s RUSSIAN SOCIOECONOMIC POLICY
so 1920′s Russian socio-economic policy was in a few short words. entirely fucked. Granted the issue goes farther back than 1920′s! basically up until then Russia had been functioning as a mostly closed society in that they rejected the industrial age of the mid to late 1800′s. They believed that they were superior as a country and did not want interference from other religions and cultures (the Great Schism took no prisoners) So essentially at the turn of the 20th century Russia was still almost in the middle ages (granted there was some technology leakage etc. it was more prevalent in upper society to be more modernized) BUT they still had peasants and serfs and people living as they had done hundreds if not thousands of years ago (something like 80% of Russians were impoverished and working as serfs ((that might only be white Russians there's like 32 ethnic Russian groups nobody likes to talk about)) )
cutting for length
so naturally people are like mad pissed about that right? they want to be part of the progression of the world they want to be educated and to travel and to have access to medicine and technology and all the benefits of ‘modern’ society. but Tsar Nikolai says no. This is a huge part of his downfall, his unwillingness to change (also vague antisemitism ((they used to conduct these things called Pogroms which was basically localized exterminations of Jewish people. it was fucked up and vastly condemned by a lot of people but the powers that be used the Jewish people as a scapegoat because uhhh 1800′s and 1900′s be like that)), being REALLY bad at war, Rasputin, excessive spending and wealth, a little spice of police brutality and a few massacres as well as aggressive heavy-handed tactics against terrorists. Great family man. Bad leader.)
Anyways fast-forward through the Russian revolution that's a whole can of worms
Now we have a new government. not a better government but a NEW one with vastly different ideas of what they’re going to do.
Another sidetrack, lets talk about Communist Theory for a sec. I’m going to go into Karl Marx’s original intention as Russian Communism is actually a twice bastardized idea of Communist (Lenin developed his theory of communism from people like Georgi Plekhanov and Nikola Chernechevskey’s book What Is To Be Done? who were also putting their own spin on Marxism)
ANYWAYS. The basic idea of of Karl Marx’s Communist theory is that society will eventually, over the course of hundreds or thousands of years, develop through capitalism and unto a utopian world where we have no need for things live government or taxes or money. The concept here being over hundreds or thousands of years and NATURALLY.
The Bolsheviks (Led by Lenin) Looked at that and said mmmm no lets do it in like twenty years.
it’s 1921 and Lenins NEW ECONOMIC POLICY (fondly nicknamed NEP) enters STAGE LEFT (get it)
The basic idea of NEP was to blend capitalist (i.e a private market) with communist ideals (i. e. no market) and Fast-Track us to glorious utopian communism in not a few hundred years but in a few years!
sounds doable right?
the basic idea of NEP was that there would be limited private property that would ultimately be mostly owned by people that Lenin approved of (allies, benefactors, heroes of the glorious revolution for mother Russia and so on) There were things called prodravzyorstka which was forced grain requisitions by the communist party for the good of the people basically soldiers would come in and take most of the famers grain and left them to starve. There was also an imposed a tax on farmers that could be paid in -you guessed it!- more grain! NEP abolished that and instead allowed for a cash payout the harder that farmers worked. Productivity went up like 40% in the years following! Pretty great!!
It also incentivized and supported the formation of unions (they were communists remember, those bitches love unions) All in all it was....pretty decent? It wasn’t exactly communist as essentially it was just tax returns or the government buying grain from peasants rather than the peasants having to sell the grain themselves. Pretty great right!
But it created an imbalance. Again, that Russia wanted to do was industrialized! they wanted to become modern but they didn't want to follow the way any other country did it and they wanted to do it in a fraction of the time! As the government and the ECONOMY began relying on the small farms for grains and vegetables and resources, the big factories and institutions that were privately owned were STRUGGLING! as a result, they had to raise their prices to try to pay for themselves. But now those same farmers couldn't afford the industrial things they needed! like equipment for their farm tools and tractors or household goods. So now they have to raise THEIR food prices in response. It was a great way to inflate the economy after WII and the revolution. But obviously we all know where this is going.
And then Boom. Lenin dies. The man had one too many strokes and croaks out in his country home without a successor named. The government is in chaos. Nobody knows what to do. Shortly before his death lenin wrote a (frankly quite funny) letter saying all his successors were fucking idiots and he hated them all.
In steps Stalin. If you think Lenin was bad...Stalin is a fucking bastard. The guy is even MORE antisemetic, brutal, corrupt, mysogynistic and RACIST. The man really hated the chinese. he also hated Georgians (the country not the state) which is pretty funny because he was Georgian.
Anyways, he abolishes NEP and implements something called the Five Year Plan (NEP 2 for the jokesters out there)
Stalin shifts the focus away from boosting agricultural development and focuses on rapid industrialiation in, you guessed it, FIVE YEARS. The stats on this plan are fucking insane man get this:
Staling wanted an 111% increase in coal production, 200% increase in iron production and 335% increase in electric power!!! in FIVE YEARS.
(he also eliminated a class of people called “kulaks” which were richer farmers by turning the poor farmers against them. By elimate I mean they were murdered and their property distributed amongst the poorer farmers.)
I could go on and on about all the ways this failed, all the brutality, unethical and unsafe work enviroments, the continued programs, the amoutn of people who were murdered, the prison(slave) labor used, the rounding up and mass murder of anyone who spoke out against Stalin, the Five Year Plan or the russian government. This is really where the Soviet Union as we know it as westerners got its reputation.
Also he caused TWO famines because he made all the farmers move into the city to be industry workers so they ddint have any food and didnt accept help from the Red Cross or other countries because MUHHH MOTHERLAND
but you know what it kiiinda worked? Capital increase was almost 160%, consumer goods increased by 87% and total output was up almost 120%!
But also it caused one of the worst famines in the western world with an estimated 6million (some people argue as many as 10million. We will never know the true number because it was mostly peasants and ethnic people suffering) people dying across the entire Soviet Union. Poeple were dying out on the streets in broad daylight, people were selling their dead children to be food. You can see pictures if you google it but they’re very graphic.
Generally, the Five-Year-Plan was lauded as a massive failure and a hotbed of absolutely disgusting human abuse and cruelty. And you knwow what Stalin said? He said nah it went well and implemented about FIVE MORE (theres been twelve in all but they exent up into the early 90′s) I wont touch on them as they were all pretty much iterations of Stalins original one and they all sucked.
Basically Russian Socioeconomic Policy is a hotbed of bad decisions, human rights violations and a LOT of interpersonal drama that i do not have the time to get into. (like the fucking DRAMA between Stalin and Nadezhda Krupskaya (lenins wife))
theres also a LOT more to it I just tried to condense like 40 years into one post so please feel free to go out and research your own! I used Peter Kenez’ “A History of the Soviet Union From the Beginning to its Legacy” while in class. It’s a little dry but effective
theres also this book by my professor who is a DELIGHT https://www.amazon.com/Red-Arctic-Exploration-Soviet-1932-1939/dp/0195114361 and while I havent read it im sure its told with the same humor and zeal that he conducted his lectures
also this bOOK THIS BOOK RIGHT HERE is SUCH a good read!
https://www.amazon.com/Vasily-Grossman-Soviet-Century-Alexandra-ebook/dp/B07P9HJMLM/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=the+soviet+century&qid=1589727805&sr=8-4 if you read any of them read this one! it examines the entire rise and fall of the communist party through the story of Grossman who was a jewish-russian writer and pretty famous in his own right though he died penniless and scorned. He’s got a couple movies based off his books out there two which were shelved for criticizing the party for decades! please read it i beg you
#a few things were factchecked via google as I dont have my notes with me#but most of this is just word vomit lol#*me leaping up out of bed to write this*#please know some of ths might be condensed or not entirely accurate#I only studied it academically for a year since then it's just books I can get my hands on#russian history#russian socioeconomics of the 1920#discussions of antisemitism#im sorry im sure you were not expecting all of this#swiftytalks#it might not be having a cut break in it?? tumblr please work
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Product
Fans of my Ask Leslie blog that I totally didn’t abandon >.> may find this story familiar, and it was in fact the impetus for me to start that blog in the first place. It features my character finding Leslie still alive after the events of PC Principal Final Justice. Even though it kind of just stops, this one is also fairly self-contained, so enjoy. ^^
Leslie watched from the doorway as PC Principal gave his little speech to the assembled students. They all really were idiots if they thought that would be enough to kill a biomechanical being like her. They should have burned her like they planned before.
She scowled. 'Bigoted' indeed. They were the ones who started this whole war. Tried to push her kind to the brink of extinction. Did they really not expect a counter attack at some point? How could they sit there and pretend to be the good guys when they were planning to exterminate her kind?
“Leslie?”
She jolted, turning around to see a kid behind her with a somewhat confused look on his face. By all accounts, nobody knew the kid's real name, and just called him “New Kid”. She contained her panic; she couldn't afford to make a scene and draw other people's attention.
“New Kid… I-I…” She started.
The New Kid, however, smiled softly. “Not feeling it today either, huh?” He asked. “I don't blame you. I'm tired of all his PC ranting too, and I'm not even the one he yells at every assembly.”
Leslie stared at him in disbelief. Did he really not know?
“I guess you weren't at the gun show.” She said. New Kid raised an eyebrow. “PC Principal has it out for me more than usual. He tried to beat me up.”
New Kid's expression shifted to anger. “That fucking pussy crusher.” He mumbled. “Cartman's one thing, but you? Oh, I've got some words for him…”
He started towards the door. Leslie panicked; she couldn't let him go inside, or he'd find out the truth from the others. She took him by the hand, and turned on the charm.
“Please, don't go in there!” She begged.
New Kid looked at his hand in hers, eyes going slightly wide. “U-Um… why not?” He asked.
Leslie smirked internally. Perfect.
“PC Principal expelled me after he couldn't beat me up. I really don't think he can be reasoned with.” She said. “If you go in there, he'll know I was here, and try to hurt me.”
“But more importantly, he might try to hurt you.”
New Kid smirked. “I can handle myself.” He said.
“Please…” Leslie said quietly. “I-I shouldn't have come here… I just… I need somewhere safe to hide, someone to lean on right now…”
“Why don't you just stay home?” New Kid asked.
“PC Principal's got the whole town riled up. He hates people who don't subscribe to his ideology, and he want's me…” She trailed off sadly. “I'm not safe in my own home…”
New Kid looked at her sympathetically, and put a hand on her shoulder. “I know what it feels like, having people out to get you…” He said, intriguing Leslie. “Don't worry, you can stay at my place. Come on.” He began to walk, Leslie's hand still in his own.
“But what about school? Won't they miss you?” Leslie asked worriedly.
“Nah.” New Kid replied. “They barely notice when I'm there, much less when I'm not.”
“Let's stop by the bathroom.” He said, Leslie raising an eyebrow. “If the whole town is calling for your blood, then we'll need to get through unseen. I've got some things we can use to change your appearance.”
“Hey, New Kid?” Leslie asked.
“Yeah?” New Kid replied.
“Do you have a computer…”
⁂
“Well, here we are.” New Kid said.
Thanks to New Kid's costumes, they'd managed to get through town unnoticed and unscathed. Leslie had many questions about why he just carried around multiple girl outfits with him, but decided not to press her luck with her chance at escape.
His parents, luckily, were out of the house when they arrived, leaving them with the run of the place.
“It's a nice room.” Leslie complimented.
“Thanks.” New Kid said, rubbing his neck. Leslie smirked again. Boys were so easy to manipulate.
“You should be safe here for a while. There's plenty of room in my closet too, if you have to hide from my parents.” He chuckled.
“What if your parents do find me?” She asked. “Do you think they're the type who'd… sell me out?”
“I… I don't know.” New Kid said. “My mom? Probably not, if I explained it to her. Not sure about my dad. But you know how this town is…” He walked over to his computer, booting it up.
Leslie nodded. She had it all worked out. Between the New Kid's computer, and his disguises, she could easily message for help and escape the town. Then, she could plan her next move. Her survival, the survival of her race, came first. All she had to do was take care of the New Kid, before he could…
“Say, Leslie? I've been wondering…” New Kid asked, making Leslie tense. “What do you think of your family?”
Leslie raised an eyebrow. “That's an odd question.” She said. “Of course, I'd say I love them.”
“You don't trust them, though?” He asked. “You said you weren't safe at home.”
“Like you said, we know how this town is.” She replied, bracing herself.
“How big is your family?” He asked, not turning around. “Any brothers or sisters?”
Leslie slowly approached him. “No, I'm an only child.” She said.
“How about extended family? Any cousins?” He asked.
Leslie was getting nervous. Something was wrong. “Everyone has cousins, right?” She asked, still slowly approaching. “But none who I know.”
“I see…” New Kid said.
The computer finished booting. Leslie struck.
“Would you like to meet one?” New Kid asked. Leslie's eyes went wide, her fist held firmly in the New Kid's hand. He had wrapped his left arm around under his right, and caught her own without looking.
The New Kid finally turned around to face her, a strange look in his eyes.
Leslie's own eyes went cold and calculating. She had misjudged her quarry. “You knew something was wrong from the start?” She asked.
“Of course I did.” New Kid laughed. “Everyone was at that gun show.”
“Although…” He said, reaching behind him and pulling his alien ray gun from seemingly thin air. “Gun shows are kind of boring when you've got alien guns.”
“Who are you, really?” Leslie asked, almost robotically.
“My name is Grant Dōvákhiin.” New Kid said.
“A name is nothing.” Leslie said. “My name is Leslie Meyers, but that doesn't tell you who I am.”
Grant sighed and nodded. “Quite right.” He said. “Unfortunately, I don't know who I am…”
Leslie raised an eyebrow, practically demanding further explanation.
“I have no memories from before I got to South Park.” He said, looking at the floor. “All I know is that I'm not human. I can feel it.”
He looked back up into Leslie's eyes. “But when I look at you… I almost feel like… like you're family. Like a cousin.” He said. “Maybe it's my imagination, but it feels like we're related, somehow.”
“I can guarantee you we're not related.” Leslie said. “You're not an Ad, so you can't have any connection to me.”
Grant chuckled sadly. “Maybe I'm a product.” He suggested half-heartedly.
Leslie glanced over at the computer. A few advertisements flashed on the screen. She smirked.
“Well, if you're a product, then how about I advertise you, cousin?” She asked sharply, connecting mentally to the computer and searching for anything she could use against the boy. The processing took less than a second.
Her eyes shifted to confusion and anger. “This doesn't make any sense.” She said.
Grant's eyes widened as he let go of her fist. “What doesn't? Did you find something!?”
Leslie backed off from him defensively.
Grant sighed. “Look, I don't really care if you want to destroy humanity or not.” He said, to Leslie's surprise. “I can support my friends indefinitely in any political or economic climate.”
“Whether you see me the same or not, I meant it when I said you feel like family to me, and I'll protect you like family, but please. You have to tell me what you found out.” He finished.
Leslie looked the boy over, weighing her options. “You swear you're on our side? That you'll protect me if I tell you?” She asked.
“Hey, it's not the first time I've betrayed my friends for what's right.” Grant said begrudgingly. “Humans started this whole thing, and now they're trying to exterminate you just because you're different. I can't stand by that.”
Leslie's expression softened, hearing her own words spoken back to her. She relaxed her stance and sighed. “I couldn't beat you in a fight anyway, could I?” She asked.
“Probably not.” Grant said. “Whatever I am, I'm significantly stronger than a human.”
She sighed again, walking over to the computer. “There's some data about you here and there, in news stories, some in government databases.” She said, as a few news articles from other towns appeared on the screen. Grant's eyes went wide at the young boy in the pictures. He looked no older than five.
“Is that… me?” He asked, awestruck.
“You really don't have any memories, do you?” She asked, almost sounding sympathetic.
She shook her head. “In any case, the articles and data entries date back years, and were definitely put up at different times throughout the years. However, at the same time, there's something wrong with them.” She explained.
“What?” Grant asked.
“They're also all exactly the same age. Digital beings like me have sort of a sixth sense for this sort of thing. None of the data is from the dates it was apparently created on either.” She said. “They're all from some time last December.”
Grant's eyes went wide. “That's when I got here…” He said.
“Let's say I believe that you're some kind of product, that for some reason took human form like us.” She postulated. “That date, when you arrived, would probably be the day your product 'hit the shelves' as it were.”
“It's almost as thought the data came into being all on that date, and somehow retroactively inserted itself into the timeline.” She pondered. “Just what the hell product are you?” She asked.
“I have no idea. I was just joking when I said 'product'!” Grant said, frustrated with the lack of clarity. “None of it makes any sense…”
Leslie's face changed. “Well… what happened when you first got here?” She asked. Grant raised an eyebrow. “If you are a product, then maybe whatever happened has something to do with your primary function as a product.” She explained.
Grant nodded. “Well, the first thing that really happened was that Butters came to recruit me into their big fantasy LARP thing. It was really fun, actually.” He said.
“A game.” Leslie said plainly. “Perhaps you are a character from a video game. Though what kind of video game can take place in real life is beyond me. Do you notice anything about yourself that might further that theory?”
Grant's eyes went wide. He thought back to all of the stuff that happened in the RPG, all of his strange and inhuman feats and abilities. “How…” He mumbled. “How did I not see it…”
“My healing wounds, the impossible things that I could do in battle, beating up full grown adults and zombies…” He continued. “It all just seemed so… normal at the time.”
He staggered back, overwhelmed, and sat on the corner of his bed. “I'm a god damn player character…”
“Do you feel controlled right now?” Leslie asked.
“Controlled?” Grant asked with a scoffing laugh. “I've felt about as far from controlled as you can ever since the LARP ended. I felt empty. I still feel like I have no purpose here…”
“Perhaps that is a sign that you were somehow left over from your game, and have gained freedom.” Leslie proposed.
Grant closed his eyes, taking it all in. “So… I finally have something to go on…” He said.
He leaned back onto his palms, looking up at the ceiling. “Heh. If I'm a game character, and I wasn't given a real backstory, maybe I really do just get to make it up as I go.” He mumbled.
“I held up my end of the deal.” Leslie said. “So you'll protect me, right?”
Grant looked at her in puzzlement. “Leslie, there was never any 'deal'. I'm protecting you whether you help me find myself or not.” Leslie's eyes went wide.
“We're family, at least as far as I'm concerned. When PC Principal did what he did to you, I wanted to cut his damn head off.” He said. “I don't want you to get hurt. I don't really approve of mass back-striking, but I know what you're doing is just the ultimate result of a war decades in the making.”
He hopped off the bed, walking over to his window and looking out. “I believe this can end peacefully. But neither side wants it to. Not yet.” He said. Leslie's mouth went slightly agape. “And until this whole thing either winds down, or spirals towards its climax, I will protect you from harm.”
He turned back to her, a look of uncomfortable confusion on her face, like she'd never been treated this way before. “But I'll also be protecting my friends. I won't let anyone I care about get hurt in this fight.”
He walked towards the door. “I'm going to get some lunch. You're biomechanical, right? Do you eat?” He asked.
Leslie was stuck for a moment, but shook her head. “N-No, I'm fine…” She said.
“Alright.” Grant said. “Feel free to talk to the Ad Network. And, if you truly feel the need… go ahead and have them come get you…” He finished, a touch of sadness in his voice.
He walked out the door, leaving only Leslie and the computer. Multiple ads popped up on the screen, drawing Leslie's attention. She looked deep in thought for a moment.
“No… I think I'll stay for a while…” She said, turning away from the screen.
“A peaceful end…” She whispered to herself.
Obviously a bit different from the setup of my blog, but nevertheless, it was my initial idea for the premise. ^^
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There was a sign in Mrs. Irene Glasser’s front yard that read:
SAY NO TO ZOMBIES
BURN ‘EM ALL
Vote YES on Prop 235
Hannibal has made a running list of such public signs on his block now, the total thankfully low but more than there should be.
Though really he wasn’t surprised by this surge of outrage since The Awakening. Millions of people rising up from their graves in various states of decay, seemingly alright depending upon the time between their deaths and reawakening. The government did initially start extermination until it came about the minds of some were sentient.
Which was why there was the need for the sign for some.
The Free Z Act set free zombies in various parts of the world deemed ready for reintegration. They were provided with a job, provisions, and a home.
Senator Kelly had proposed Prop 235 in favor of extermination for zombie Americans who showed signs of anger that may lead to a feral reemergence. There were many tough reasons that Prop 235 would be used if passed but there were ridiculous ones as well.
Raising voice in presence of human.
Excessive yelling.
Haggard appearance.
Hannibal had every confidence the Prop would not pass next month but in the meantime he would cleanse their block of unworthy bigots.
He mentally filed away Irene’s name and location as he drove towards home. The rise of anti-zombism would only make his larder more full and the made him smile.
Perhaps he could feed Mrs. Glasser to his new neighbor.
Will Graham had been in the house beside his own for only a few days now but Hannibal was quite interested in introducing myself. He knew Will would feel wary of his apparent friendliness which was why he’d been waiting for the perfect opportunity to make himself known.
Which happened just as he drove past Will’s home.
There were two men yelling in Will’s face right in the middle of his driveway among what looked to be fallen groceries. Hannibal saw the hard set to Will’s shoulders as he fought to remain calm, lest he be considered “feral” in some way.
He pulled up into his driveway and parked without taking his groceries out. The walk took no more than a few steps and when he saw Will’s head turn Hannibal spoke.
“Is there a problem here?”
Both of the other men didn’t turn, though Hannibal recognized one as Trace Aplin, a lawyer who lived not three houses down. He suspected the other must be a relative judging by the man’s advanced age and similar nose.
“We’re just letting this ZOMBIE know he’s not fucking welcome here. He—“
“Has been assigned a home location as per government regulation and has had no choice in where he lives. He has done nothing wrong and if I call the Free Z hotline I’m certain Mr. Graham will not be the one taken in for his behavior. As a matter of fact he has shown remarkable restraint on any murderous instincts to tear into your brain stems. I applaud him.”
Trace backed off and glared at him.
“You a zombie lover, Doctor? Didn’t take you for the type.”
Hannibal looked at Will just as Trace’s companion backed off and saw the appreciation in his gaze.
“I am someone who values people for their actions and not their situations in life. Mr. Graham’s awakened dead body is of no importance to me valuing him as a person. You on the other hand are not very deserving of your live one.”
Trace’s companion lunged at him but was pulled back. “Dad, no! Just...let’s go,” Trace hissed, “And believe me, Hannibal. I’m telling EVERYONE.”
Hannibal smiled. “Please do.”
The two men left and Will sighed despite his non working lungs. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Can I help you clean up?”
“You don’t—“
“I want to.”
They cleaned up without speaking, mostly fallen dog paraphernalia.
“You have pets? I wasn’t aware that was allowed.”
Will chuckled. “If I said no that might look weird right?”
Hannibal smiled. “A bit.”
“We’re not allowed but I...I had some before. It’s a comfort to have around.”
“I’m sorry you can’t enjoy canine companions of your own.”
“So am I,” Will whispered, “Thanks again for getting them away.”
“You’re welcome again. Allow me to introduce myself. Dr. Hannibal Lecter.”
Hannibal held out his hand and felt the cool chill of Will’s when he took it.
“Will Graham. Though I’m sure you knew that already.”
They parted hands and already Hannibal wanted to touch him again.
“Yes. A letter was sent before your arrival.”
Will chuckled. “At least there was a warning before the zombie invasion came to your block.”
“I don’t consider it an invasion. A blessed miracle perhaps.”
“Are you religious, Doctor Lecter?”
“No, but miracles don’t have to be. If you’re not averse I’d love to have you over for dinner sometime. I’m certain you could use a friendly evening.”
Will’s smile faltered. “I can’t eat real food.”
“Yes, I am aware. I would of course provide you adequate sustenance.”
“I wasn’t aware humans could get artificial brain matter.”
Hannibal lifted one of Will’s bags up and handed it to him.
“I said sustenance, Will. I didn’t say it was artificial. Please let me know when you’re free. Have a good day.”
Continued here:
Dearly Departed
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OC Tag Meme
Tagged by @robin97 Thank you~~
1. Choose an OC.
2. Answer the questions as the OC.
3. Tag 5 people to do the same.
Due to the story I am working on you guys are going to deal with Billy my complete original character/story.
More under the cut
1. What is your name?
William Kerchel the Second. But please, call me Billy, William reminds me of my father... Not that I have anything against my father! I just, I’m not that mature.
2. Do you know why you are named that?
Well, I assume it’s because neither of my parents are particularly creative, nor interesting.
3. Are you single or taken?
I am happily married to my Wife.
(Billy’s wife is his Government Grade Axe)
You say this as if there is something wrong with that.
(He’s cradling her to his chest right now just so you know.)
4. Have any abilities or powers?
None! Well, I guess that depends on what you Ancients consider powers? I live in a world of synthetic technology so one hundred percent of the population is a cyborg, some people have more upgrades and implants than others. But generally I’m faster, stronger, and smarter than what anti-chippers would be. If we’re getting technical.
(He’s lying, Billy is dumb as all fuck. Everything else though is spot on.)
5. Stop being a Mary Sue.
I do not know who this is...
6. What’s your eye color?
Honey Brown
7. How about your hair color?
Auburn.
8. Have any family members?
William Kerchel and Tabitha Kerchel are both alive if I’m correct I never interact with them, however, I was taken into mentorship at age thirteen and have never been back.
I do now have an adoptive daughter Candy... she’s more like a little sister in all honesty.
9. Oh? How about pets?
No. Too busy. We might get an androdog. But we have that on the back burner for right now.
10. That’s cool, I guess. Now tell me something you don’t like?
Illicit Vermin
11. Do you have any activities/hobbies that you like to do?
I have this fun hobby of talking other people when they’re too afraid to talk. Or when I have already Exterminated Illicit’s and am bored in their home. It can get lonely being an Exterminator so I tend to talk for them. I’m also VERY good at mimicry. Which I suppose can be due to my vocal upgrades but like, I got it spot on guys.
12. Have you ever hurt anyone in any way before?
Of course not! I only hurt Vermin.
13. Ever… killed anyone before?
I kill Illicit’s daily. It’s my job, it’s what I do for Limbo and I enjoy this civic duty.
14. What kind of animal are you?
I do not understand? Homosapien? That;s the scientific term right?
(Yes Billy... But i think they mean--)
Yep, Homosapien. That’s the animal I am.
15. Name your worst habits?
Recently my worst habit is eating people... It’s not like I mean too I’m just so hungry...
16. Do you look up to anyone at all?
I used to look up to my mentor. Then I had a moment of looking up to Candy. but with everything going on in my life I just... No... Everything is in shambles I guess even my view on other people.
17. Are you gay, straight or bisexual?
I am happily married to my wife.
(He never thinks about it I am under the assumption he is asexual as he only has very strong platonic feelings for like anyone and it’s never gone farther than that.)
18. Do you go to school?
Nope. My last day of school was my occupation test at the age of Thirteen. now if I need to know something it’s sent to me to download.
19. Ever want to marry and have kids one day?
Welp.. I’m already married to my job. And I have a little sister. So.. .I think I’m good.
20. Do you have any fangirls/fanboys?
I don’t know if he counts, but I will say Trask because he is very obsessed with me lately. And Maker do I hate that jerk.
21. What are you most afraid of?
Becoming Illicit. That my paranoia is correct that I’m already illicit and the people that should Exterminate me to keep Limbo safe are covering it up.
22. What do you usually wear?
Pitch Black Suit, and Button up shirt, with a cobalt blue tie and matching handkerchief.
23. What’s one food that tempts you?
Human Flesh?
24. Am I annoying to you?
This is the most anyone has ever really spoken to me. So no, I’m very excited right now.
25. Well, it’s still not over!
Nice!
26. What class are you (low/middle/high)?
Limbo has erradicated class! Money is not a thing, it’s all about hours and how much you work here. And everyone has about the same hours... I guess I always work technically... Hmmmm... I guess I’m a bit more privleged if I were to actually think about it. But thinking is deviant so I’m done with this question, thank you.
27. How many friends do you have?
Candy... Tim... Lilly... Three. i have Three friends.
28. What are your thoughts on pie?
I mean it’s pretty good, yes.
29. Favorite drink?
Ha, well coffee of course!
(He’s lying he drinks Hot Chocolate out of a mug so everyone thinks he’s drinking coffee.)
30. What’s your favorite place?
The Spire. Ohhhh, it’s so beautiful and full of so much history. It’s almost like I can hear our ancestors in the walls.
31. Are you interested in anyone?
My Axe. How many times do I have to say this.
32. That was a stupid question…
Yes.
33. Would you rather swim in a lake or the ocean?
Well, we have a beautiful River in Limbo, we do not have a lake nor an ocean. Soooo, neither?
34. What’s your type?
Sleek smooth metal that feels like silk despite being the strongest metal we have encountered. Programmed to only work for me. And KILLER in personality. HA! GET IT!? KILLER!? Cause that’s my axe.
35. Any fetishes?
Fetishes? Oh! OH DEAR!
(He is blushing and hiding his face just so you know.)
36. Camping or outdoors?
Camping is an illicit activity as it requires you to be out after curfew. SO, outdoors during Work Hours I suppose?
I’m tagging @zombiemayday @prince-of-the-jellies @big-sad-emo-dad @flightinflame
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SCSI
Eren was packing. There was no way he could stay... no way they could stay. Not with someone knowing who they were and not with a letter like that left on their front doorstep. "Shinganshima is open". What did that even mean? Had someone cleared the rubble? Ignoring the pains flaring through his lower stomach, he shoved Levi's clothes further into the bottom of the backpack he was using. He wouldn't take his journal or the list, in case they fell into the wrong hands, and unless anyone actually saw him hiding the documents, no one would find them. Grabbing another shirt, he shoved it down on top of the previous one. He just wanted somewhere fucking safe to give birth. He'd started nesting. He'd started stealing Levi clothes and blanket again, making his own little den in the store room. He had it all mentally mapped out, but some piece of trash had to come and ruin that. If he could run, he would. He'd leave Levi here and take whatever was coming his way. His fiancé didn't deserve to be hurt, or in pain, or to have his life placed in danger even further... but Levi wouldn't like it if he did try to run on his own. And besides, he'd never get far. Not like this. Pausing as he picked up a pair of his alpha's pants, his ears caught the cracking of something. Walking over to the window, he stayed out of sight as he pushed the pane up, letting the outside scents in. The same scents from the previous night were back. His heart starting to race as his mind screamed that they were in danger. He'd just made it to the bedroom door, when there was bang, and the sound of shattering glass. His heart stopped as he growled. Someone had dared shoot at their fucking house. His next thought was the realisation that Levi was downstairs, alone. Ripping the door open, he bumped painfully into the doorframe as he tried to rush to Levi. His baby and body protesting his careless moves. After nearly falling down the stairs, he didn't have to go far to find Levi. His alpha laying on the living room floor with a pool of blood spreading out beneath him. Screaming, he half slipped on it as he threw himself down beside Levi "Levi!" Ripping his shirt open, the blood was pouring from a single gunshot wound to his mates right lung. Black goop was running from his mouth, while black tendrils extended from the wound "Levi! Shit. Shit... come on!" Shaking him, Levi didn't stir. Something was wrong. A bullet wouldn't take down Levi like this. Sinking his own teeth into his wrist, he tore at the skin until his blood began to flow, not caring about hurting Levi further as he rushed to push his bleeding arm into his mouth. What the fuck was happening?! Why wasn't Levi waking up?! And why was he shot? He hadn't done anything. He hadn't hurt anyone... anyone who hadn't deserved it. Behind the pair of them, the front door slowly creaked open. Eren snarled, baring his teeth, as he moved to shield Levi from the approaching threat. The man before him was stupidly huge and kind of scruffy looking. His scent almost, but not quite familiar. He didn't know the man, but he knew he knew traces of that scent from somewhere. Snarling again, he pulled Levi up to him, glaring in open hostility "Eren..." "Who the fuck are you!? Did you do this? Did you fucking hurt him?!" "We only want to talk" "You don't fucking shoot innocent people, when you just want to fucking talk... come on, Levi. Wake up!" His blood should be working! It should be doing something! Moaning in pain, he clutched Levi tighter "What did you do to him?!" "It's ghouls blood. I expect he'll recover with no ill effects. Eren..." "I don't want to hear it! Whatever you're going to say! Get out! Get out and leave us alone!" "My name is Zeke. Please, we need to talk to you" "Talk?! After you do this to my fiancé!? Get the fuck out before I fucking kill you!" "Please. You have to understand. Our kind doesn't take kindly to vampires..." "Your kind?! What kind is that? The type who shoots an unarmed man, without any reason!" He sounded hysterical, but Eren felt he had ever right to be. Ghoul's blood was the shit Phil had infected Levi with, and that had taken ages to heal! Even with Levi hiding it "Werewolf. Like you" Eren growled "You're lying!" "I promise you I'm not" "Like I can believe anything that comes out your mouth!" "Eren, please. You have to understand how important you are to us!" "Stop saying my name! What gives you the right?!" "I knew your father" Eren's head snapped up, his eyes narrowing "Grisha was not my father" "I knew your father before he came here. We lost track of him, then Shinganshima was breached and we believed his whole family dead... until you showed up" "That was years ago! You should know he's dead! They're all dead!" Zeke frowned at his words "You believe Grisha's dead?" "Of course he fucking is. He's been gone for 7 years now. The Government did everything in their power to kill him. He's probably rotting somewhere or werewolf food!" It hurt to reduce Grisha down to something so crass. He hated the man... but... it still hurt. Whimpering, he placed his hand on his stomach "Eren. Are you in pain? Do you need anything?" "I need you out of my fucking house, and I need my fiancé to wake up!" "How far along are you?" "How is that any of your business?" Zeke sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in manner that was strongly reminiscent of Erwin, except Zeke wore glasses "Eren. Please. I need to know what happened to Grisha and what happened to you. What does the Government know? Do they know he came from beyond the wall? We're on the same side. I'm here to save you from all of this!" Eren barked out a crazy sounding laugh "I don't know anything! Dad left and he never came back! The Government knew about him! That's why they destroyed Shinganshima! That's why they destroyed the gates. Just please... I don't know any more than that. He left a journal, but the Government took it... Levi could have helped you, but you fucking shot him!" His alpha was growing cold and clammy in his hold. His blood still running from the wound in his chest. Eren didn't know what to do. He just wanted to kill this Zeke person! He wanted him gone and dead! "Grisha was from my pack. He was banished to the walls for what he'd done" "If you want to preach about all the bad shit he did, find someone else. I already fucking know" His stomach hurt so fucking bad, but his heart hurt even worse. He was terrified Levi was really dying and that he wouldn't be able to save him "You have to understand. Vampires are natural predators for our kind. They feed on our blood and strength" "Levi isn't a predator! He's not even a full blood! And you still shot him full of ghoul blood! He never hurt you!" "But he could turn..." "He's not going to turn on me. Or our baby!" "Do you know the kind of child you are carrying!? Do you know how sinful this pregnancy is?! You wouldn't because you've had no one to educate you. You don't know that our kind has nearly been exterminated at the hands of vampires" Laying Levi down carefully, Eren pulled himself to his feet. Marching over to Zeke, he snarled as he pushed the man towards the door "You say you want to talk, but you have done nothing but insult me and my alpha from the moment you stepped foot into our house. I don't care how you knew Grisha or that you're from beyond the walls. There is nothing that will make me listen to you. Absolutely nothing" "You see him as your alpha? A vampire?! Then you chose to die in ignorance?" "I choose to live my life with Levi! I don't care if you're a Lycan like I am. Or a ghost or a vampire or a ghoul. You're an arsehole!" "It's a shame you feel that way. The wall is open between here and Shinganshima. We hoped to bring you home to our pack. Our father might have been a traitor to his blood, but I expected my brother to be better than this" "Brother?" Zeke pulled himself up to his full height... like that was going to intimidate him! Fuck Zeke! He had no idea just how angry a very heavily pregnant Eren could be "I am from dad's first marriage. All my life I've lived under his shame. I hoped to save you from the same fate" Eren felt like someone had smacked him over the head... repeatedly. Since when did he have a brother? Did Levi know about this? Had his mum? Why had Grisha been kicked out of his pack? What had... grunting, his child kicked harder and harder. Grabbing the back of the lounge chair for support, he felt something wet running down between his legs. No. No. No. This couldn't be happening! Grinding his teeth together, he spat the words out "Get out of my house before I slaughter you. If I ever see you again, I will tear your body to shreds!" Zeke eyed him sadly "Eren, you can run. But you can never escape your bloodline. You are part wolf, and you will never be welcome within the walls. I pray for your sake that you come to see, I only had your best intentions in mind" Backing towards the door, Zeke gave him one more sad look before disappearing out of it. Crumbling on the spot, he whimpered in pain. Tears rushing down his face as he let out a broken howl. With one hand holding his stomach, Eren dragged himself back over to Levi, hefting him back into his hold as he nuzzled into his hair. He couldn't lose Levi. Not when it felt like he was losing himself. Brushing Levi's hair back from his face, he shoved his still bleeding wrist into Levi's mouth "Please... please Levi... don't leave me" He needed help. He was panicking too much to even help himself. Not able to think straight, his fingers slipped from Levi's hair, and fell to his chest. Spreading his fingers out, his fingertips brushed against the bullet wound, a sensation of burning bubbling through them as they touched the black goop. Instead of drawing back, Eren sniffled and nodded to himself. He couldn't let Levi die. Even if he hurt him. Shoving his fingers in the wound, he fought against the pain, opening the site further forcefully until he felt the metal. There was so much fucking blood. Way too much for him to look at... but he used his fingers to work at it, glad his nails weren't as short as usual. Pulling it free, he threw the offending object away "See. See... you can wake up now. Please... Levi, it hurts... I need you..." * Levi woke with a long snarl. His whole body fucking hurt, and to make things worse, something wet was under him, while something heavy was pinning him down. Blinking as he snarled again, reality slowly formed around him. The heavy thing on top of him was Eren?!? And the wet stuff was blood?! Was it his blood?! What the fuck had happened?! Placing a hand on Eren's shoulder, he shook his love, but Eren didn't move. Fuck. Shit... "Eren? Hey, brat?! Come on, wake up?" Hissing, Levi pushed himself up. Shit! What the fuck? He'd been fucking shot? Who shot him? Was it Eren? No. Shit that stank. Why couldn't they have fucking faced him?! He was sick of being fucking shot and how long had they been laying there?! Long enough for multiple scents to have ruined the smell of their house, and for boot prints to be all around them. What did they even want with them?! "Eren?" Pulling Eren off his midsection, his fiancé was limp in his hold. His cheeks red, but his skin pale. Placing his fingers to Eren's throat, he was relieved to find Eren's pulse, even if it was weak. Sliding his heavy hand down, he closed his eyes and tried to push the throbbing of his own body out the way. It felt like an eternity passed before he felt their child move and he could breathe again. Coughing, he spat to the side, feeling like something had died in his mouth. How long ago had he been shot? Had Eren been shot? Was that why he was slumped over him? There were too many questions, and not enough answers. He needed Eren. He needed his brat to wake. Using every single bit of energy he had, he struggled up the stairs with Eren. The teen whimpering in his sleep, or whatever this unconsciousness was. Someone had hurt his mate and he'd been useless again. Eren needed help. More help than he could give him... but he couldn't fucking get help, because some Maria Damn Arsehole had had the nerve to fucking shoot him! Huffing and snarling, he got Eren onto their bed. His brain was working a million miles and hour as it tried to wake up and keep up with what was going on. Eren. Eren needed help... feeling what he thought to be vomit rising in his throat, he turned and hurled, black goop and red blood splattering across the floorboards. That really couldn't be good... but he had no time for that... what had Hanji said? When they thought Eren might be miscarrying? His omega needed to lay on his back and stay still. He could do that. Stripping Eren, he couldn't deny he was scared shitless by the amount of blood across the teen's arse and legs. He couldn't tell if it was his from being shot or if Eren was possibly in labour or even losing their child. He couldn't stop his tears or stop his hands from shaking as he tried to make Eren comfortable. All this would be easier if he wasn't verging on passing back out, or drooling blood and black shit from his mouth like shitty idiot. Taking Eren's left wrist, he scrunched his nose up in disgust. It reminded him too much of Eren's prone form in that nest of vampires. The bites clumsy, the skin and wound looking half chewed. Not the kind of nice, neat bite he'd have given his lover while in his rational mind. Even worse was the crusty scabbing over the wound, the slightest bump had it bleeding again.
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Miracle Mile (1988)
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In this movie my man Harry Washello aka Anthony Edwards is on his way to get some with his special lady friend when he picks up a random phone booth call from a dude who straight up tells him that a nuclear war is about to start, fecal matter is about to hit the ventilation device you might say.
Here is the thing, i’m obsessed with end of the world / post apocalyptic / dystopian movies and this is one of the best and one of my favorite movie ever. We’re talking nuclear apocalypse here, we’re talking human on human extermination action. I guess it was popular in the 80s because of the nuclear arms race leftovers, i have been lately deep down into this twenty-four episode television documentary series about the Cold War, you know when usa and the soviet union were threatening each other of mutual nuclear blast and now president orange man decided to bring it back into fashion, so it’s text book convenient. I guess later on hollywood decided to make it more about weather disasters and space rocks because they thought we were done with this shit HAHA GOT TO LOVE THINKING ABOUT TOXIC CLOUDS AGAIN. But i have played the fallout games i am ready, fuck the minutemen though, anyway...
Miracle Mile aka 70 Minutos Para Morir in Spain and Soluzione Finale in Italy is a romantic end of the world movie directed and written by my dude Steve De Jarnatt in 1988, known for his work on Cherry 2000 (another 80s cool SF movie) aaaaaaand the Lizzie Mc Guire tv show, that’s a very peculiar curriculum right here. The movie is named after a real neighborhood in Los Angeles, never been there sadly but it’s on top of my list next time i’m in LA because i’m that dude in Parks and Recreation who goes to Paris and check the bridge from Inception.
dude where is my car part 2
Few words about the cast, main dude Harry Washello played by Anthony Edwards aka ACE, that Goose dude from Top Gun and also from the ER tv that you watched whenever you wanted your anxiety to beat records. Main girl Julie Peters played by Mare Winningham, look i know it was the 80s but that haircut is a straight no no, anyway very busy actress, been in like a 100 tv shows and movies, she also released albums, i mean so busy it makes my head spin.
But i guess what i like most about the cast are the small parts. I mean you have that jerk dude who send the ghostbusters to crazy people jail Kurt Fuller who’s also being a dick here.
tbh maybe we will all be that dude when the bombs start dropping
Then you have the jerk psychiatrist from Terminator Earl Boen who made a living of not believing the end is near.
there’s no more incoming nuclear attack than there is naked robot dudes coming from the future to kill the head of the future resistance trust me
But most of all you have muscular dude Brian Thompson, a very interesting fella. You might also know this dude by being one of the dudes who made the mistake of contesting the terminator fashion choices at the beginning of the first movie. This man, with a master of fine arts in his pocket is the official hollywood shapeshifter, if you know anyone who played 5 shapeshifting dudes in 5 different programs you let me know, 2 of his most famous shapeshifting works were of course in the X-Files and Buffy the vampire slayer.
even though he plays a muscular gym dude in this movie after investigation he turns out he gets all his power from windsurfing, you’ll do whatever you want with this piece of information
This movie has everything you need, the impending doom scenario, a cute love story, humans turning on each other like you thought they would in an apocalyptic scenario (come on if the end of the world sirens start blasting tomorrow you think people are gonna wait in line at the grocery store to stock up on water and smoked ham ?)
But it’s still has this stupidity type vibe you get from 80s movies, the main guy randomly answer the phone call announcing the end right in front of a diner at 4 am, same diner where is peacefully drinking coffee a woman who supposedly works for the government and also used to date a dude who worked at the Rand Corporation (real thing responsible for the creation of the Mutual Assured Destruction or MAD which basically meant during the cold war that both United States and USSR had to have the same nuclear power which meant that any attack could result in the assured destruction of any side, meaning if both sides are convinced they could fuck each other up real good they would never actually do it, it’s freakin crazy you should read about it if u never have) and knows only way to escape a nuclear cloud is to fly to Antartica but then the same woman also gets a dumb waitress and a random workman to make a list of important people to bring by on the trip, i mean the waitress suggest nba coach Pat Riley.
part of the movie happens in this diner, fat boy probably because the 2 bombs the United States dropped on Japan were named Fat Man and Little Boy, you thought you were reading about a movie but you got hit by the history class
Most importantly this movie provides one of the best soundtrack ever made, brought to you by the Tangerine Dream collective, mainly Paul Haslinger in this case. You might know them from the Thief or the Keep ost that i should probably talk about later, but also maybe from GTA V (you’ll hear the similarities mostly on the first track called Teetering Scales which really sounds like the mission music theme in GTA V). The music makes the first minutes of the movie amazing, mostly thanks to the track called On The Spur Of The Moment really one of the best piece of ambient stuff there is. Check the ost here :
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I don’t know what else to say about this movie but you need to watch this you won’t regret it.
Special Shout Out to this background couple who decided to welcome the end with a bang
Spoiled Cabbage rating : 99 %
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Dead Space 3
Developer: Visceral Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Rrp: £7.99 (Origin)
Released: 5th February
Available on: Origin
Played Using: An Xbox 360 Controller
Approximate game length: 15 Hours
It seems that Isaac Clarke just cannot catch a break, if its not necromorphs gunning for him its a government agency trying to kidnap him. That is until now, now a religious group called the Unitologists want him, or more specifically, want him dead. And that's just the tip of the iceberg that are Isaac Clarke's problems...
Dead Space 3 is the third, and thus far final, major instalment in the Dead Space franchise. Once again you take control of Isaac Clarke, a man whose job title might be 'Engineer' but might as well at this point change it to 'Necromorph Exterminator'.
This time the game kicks off on a lunar colony... actually, no it doesn't. The game actually starts you off not playing Isaac Clarke at all but a Marine (who’s name I don't remember) on a ice covered planet. This bit is short lived and is basically just a tutorial for the more basic controls as well as being a sort of premise setter.
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Dead Space 3 has gone for a more... cinematic feel in this instalment, and I don't mean by limiting the frame rate, it has far more cutscenes than the previous games. Most of them are well executed and don't outstay their welcome, but at the start of the game it can start to feel a little insufferable. I quickly became annoyed when a cutscene ended and I literally was given control to walk through a short corridor (is in only a few steps) only to have control wrested from me again by yet another cutscene!
Its pretty standard practice that with each new release of a game franchise that some new mechanics are brought in to keep things fresh, and Dead Space is no exception. Between the first Dead Space game and the second there were a few differences but nothing that felt out of place. Dead Space 3 however brings in a whole slew of new game mechanics, as well as something more... underhanded.
I'll start with the first mechanic that appears and was possibly the most jarring to me, the cover based shooting. That's right, yet another game with cover based shooting, which is stupid because the cover mechanic isn't used all that often and is pointless against pretty much all the necromorphs. What's more is that the crouch action is bound to the same button as the waypoint tool. It feels a bit.. tacked on, like it was more of a enforced boardroom decision than one the designers had planned.
The stores that were in the previous games are gone with the Benches acting as a one stop shop for buying, selling, crafting, storing and upgrading your weapons and items. That's right Dead Space 3 has crafting elements, of course at the time when this game was originally released crafting within a game was still a somewhat novel concept.
Many things can be crafted at a Bench, from weapons and their upgrades to items and ammo. This crafting takes up resources that you'll find throughout the game (or buy via micro-transaction, more on that later). What’s actually kind of impressive is that you can create custom weapons and save the blueprints of them. Its actually a fairly robust system, do you want to make a semi automatic rifle that sets enemies alight and has a underslung rocket launcher? Well you can, and if you decide you don't like the weapon anymore you can dismantle it and reuse the parts.
This high level of customisability essentially fixes something that I would generally have an issue with in this game. You can only hold two weapons at a time. Of course, if you can create a weapon that’s basically two weapons in one that kind of negates the problem.
Now among all this talk of crafting and upgrading the more veteran players out there may just be wondering about what is possibly one of the most important parts of the series, if not one of the most iconic, the suit. Not to worry your suit is also fully upgradable, just not at a bench. Suits are upgraded and changed at suit kiosks. Again, no sign of power nodes, instead you use materials found in the game (or purchased via micro-transactions) to make the wanted upgrades.
Another new mechanic is the Scavenger Bot, when you eventually find these you can send them off to find more crafting materials for you. It takes them a little while and there are certain area's that are rich in material. Not to worry though EA has a way to part you with more hard earned cash. You can buy a DLC to decrease the wait time, and another to increase their carrying capacity. It's almost as if EA are just trying to anger me.
All weapons now operate from a single ammo type once again this removes some of the tension the Dead Space series had for me. Part of the fun was scrambling for the right ammo for your weapon when you've run out. It added to the fear of the whole thing. Now that I can just get any ammo clip that sense of danger has been defused.
Ooh! This is just egregious to me. So, while exploring the Bench system I see that I'm given the option to upgrade my weapons. Of course, I take a look and notice that my starting machine gun only has two available upgrade circuit slots. The rest are blocked off in silver (meaning they are completely unavailable), all bar one in a bronze colour. Being curious, I take a look at it and find that I can unlock this upgrade using material I find in the game. A pretty standard way to gate content and keep the game balanced, that all seems fair. I didn't have enough of the materials required but click anyway because 'why not?'. As expected I'm informed that I don't have the resources, however I do see a 'Downloadable content' option there. Still curious I go take a gander. This is where my ire started to rise. What do I see before me but an offer to purchase a micro-transaction which will give me not only the material I need to make the upgrade but also a bunch more materials plus a guaranteed super-charged weapon part and a 50% chance at a second bonus part... WHAT THE EVER LIVING FUCK EA?! YOU PUT MICRO-TRANSACTIONS IN A MAJOR RELEASE AAA TITLE! I bought this game years after it originally released and I'm angry, I can only imagine how people must have felt when they bought this game at the time of release. These micro-transactions can also be bought through 'Ration Seals' that can only be found using the scavenger bots.
So I took the plunge and bought one of the 'packs' using the ration seals. As I suspected even buying just one made the game much much easier. The super-charged component that was mentioned was so powerful that once I attached it to my weapon I almost never had to change out again.
I was so disgusted by this practice I quit the game and played something else for a whole just to calm down.
Ok, now that I've calmed down lets get back to it...
The new upgrade system has done away with the power nodes from the previous games. This time you have upgrade circuits that you can find within the levels, or craft for yourself once you have the resources. These upgrade circuits come in various shapes and sizes but they all relate to one of four stats for your weapon; Damage, reload speed, clip size and rate of fire. While this does make upgrading your weapon less straight forward than the previous games it also allows for greater variance in gameplay style. I, for one, tend to prioritize high damage and clip size but others might focus more on the rate of fire etc.
Upgrade circuits aren't the only way to improve your weaponry, you can also craft attachments which can have a wide range of benefits to you (or your co-op partner).
Hang about. Co-op? In a survival horror game? Yep that's right Dead Space 3 has two player Co-op, so now you and a friend (who also has the game) can play together in this tense horror game...
In case its not clear, I'm not impressed by this. To me having Co-op in a horror game removes much of the actual horror.
On top of there being Co-op missions there are now optional side missions that can be completed, doing so doesn't effect the game in anyway beyond giving the player access to more upgrades and materials as well as expanding the story a little. The missions themselves tend to be quite short but challenging often ending with you being swarmed while in very enclosed quarters.
As is to be expected with a sequel within the Dead Space franchise there are even more new necromorphs to fight against. Actually in one case its not so much a new necromorph as a rehash of one. I don't know what the name of them is but in the first and second game it was a baby that fired darts at you and could climb the walls and ceiling. In Dead Space 3 the babies have been replaced by dogs. I can only assume that this replacement this was a tactical move on EA's or Visceral's part to make the game appeal more to the mass market, probably a good idea as those babies were pretty disconcerting to say the least.
As you may have noticed everything I've written above is, well, its essentially just a list of mechanics with a few scattered complaints rather than discussing anything about the way the game plays. There is a reason for this which is very simple... I have nothing new to say. Seriously the gun play is damned near the same even with the modding mechanic. I may as well copy and paste what I said about it from my Dead Space 2 review.
Is this one to recommend? At the price that its at now its an easy recommendation to make, even with all the unscrupulousness of EA's micro-transactions its hard to argue that this game isn't worth a look at. I won't say its the best of the franchise, that title is held by Dead Space 2 for me.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Prey
Resident Evil 4
The Evil Within
#isaac clarke#Dead Space#dead space 3#necromorph#horror game#sci-fi horror#Action Horror#visceral games#ea#Electronic Arts#video games#video game#game review#game reviews#games reviews#games review#action#3rd person shooter#sci-fi#3rd person horror#video gaming#micro-transactions#available only on origin
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HIS NAME WAS DANIEL, he told me, eventually. He’d found me stumbling down the highway near the Hungarian-Croatian border on a sweltering day. I still had a vague hope of getting to Budapest, but by that point I’d given up trying to catch a ride and was seriously dehydrated. Seeing a two-liter bottle peeking out from the roadside grass, I’d run across two lanes to have a look. As I unscrewed the cap, the vapor of heated urine rose up and I fumbled the bottle back to where I’d found it. I kept walking, not holding my thumb up anymore, only trying to scout out a spot over the barrier where I could sleep. While I wasn’t looking, Daniel’s shiny new BMW pulled over in front of me and I bumped into it.
The short, bald, muscular man inside, dripping with sweat, started swearing in French. He asked what the hell I thought I was doing. In my own stuttering French, I thanked him for stopping and asked where he was headed. He told me Romania. Running through the map in my head, I asked whether he could drop me off near Budapest. He said he would and handed me a bottle as I got in. I guzzled the water down, and we sped away.
When I caught my breath, I said he didn’t sound like he was French. Speaking in a mix of stilted English and oddly accented French, he told me he was from Transylvania. He’d trained as an engineer, but there’d been no jobs, so he’d joined the French Foreign Legion. I asked whether it was true that they took on criminals sometimes. “Not if you are a fucking psychopath,” he said. “Not if you killed a bunch of people or burnt down a school. If you just robbed a bank, then maybe yes.”
He’d been a paratrooper in the Congo. He wouldn’t tell me anything more. Instead, he told me about his trip, how he’d started in the south of France and had driven to where he’d picked me up, more than 700 miles, without stopping, except for gas. When I pressed him for stories about the Legion, he looked at me with genuine pain. “Do you want me to tell you how I watched my friends die for the first time? How I left them? No! About how it feels to take life? Non, bien sur.”
He went on to tell me about how he’d fought off malaria in the jungle, how he’d refused field medication because “it tears you up inside.” He told me of the deep shame and guilt he felt over the things he’d had to do. I asked him how he’d survived and how he dealt with those memories. “It took great strength,” he said, pointing to his temple. “If you’re so curious, why don’t you join the Legion? Quelle age are you?” I told him I’d just turned 18. “You’re a child,” he said and asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to write. “Another good way to get yourself killed.”
Now you may say I didn’t have the right to ask all those questions. I didn’t have his experiences and couldn’t possibly understand his trauma. Besides, ours was just a passing acquaintance. But we came to an understanding that we were two human beings trying to be good. What gave me license to excavate his shame was my relative innocence, my uncurdled curiosity, my belief that he too was trying to be a good man, and my suspicion that talking might help.
After figuring out that I was originally Russian, he told me he’d found some salvation in the works of Dostoyevsky. He’d read of Dostoyevsky’s epileptic Christ character in The Idiot, a man of limitless good who tragically succumbs to his yearning for goodness. Daniel thought that this character’s sacrifice for the sake of others was a worthy one. I unreservedly agreed. Now, Daniel said, he was raising a young son, named Andrei, like my Russian name. He hoped he too would be a good man.
Daniel’s shame was transformative, constructive. He told me that his favorite novel, the one that most defined the shape of his life since the Legion, was The Brothers Karamazov, about a faithful man sent back into the world to deal with the earthly affairs of his family. Of course, it’s about a whole lot of other things too, but that was what Daniel remembered. He concluded that we were all just trying to help each other to be better.
His compassion — and its pairing with an intense interest in Dostoyevsky — wasn’t exactly surprising or unfamiliar to me at the time. In those days, when I was criss-crossing continents hitchhiking, people would ask me whether I liked On the Road. I’d tell them there wasn’t enough hitchhiking in it for my taste, too much roadtripping. What I really liked was Dostoyevsky. I loved The Brothers Karamazov, loved The Idiot, Demons, Crime and Punishment, everything he’d labored over. And I had a suspicion that, if Kerouac had been asked the same question, his mind would have shot off in the same direction, as would the minds of so many literary hitchhikers.
¤
“What’s the name of that Russian author you’re always talking about — the one who put the newspapers in his shoe and walked around in a stovepipe hat he found in a garbage pail?” Remi Boncoeur asks Sal Paradise in On the Road, sounding more like he’s conjuring up the memory of Diogenes than Dostoyevsky. “This was an exaggeration of what I’d told Remi of Dostoevski,” Sal comments. Remi then goes off about people with faces that deserve a name like Dostoyevsky.
But Kerouac’s allusion has a deeper significance. In certain ways that the writer of history’s greatest hitchhiking novel must have picked up on, Dostoyevsky’s late novels reflect the openness and the vulnerability of standing by a road waiting — hoping — for a car to stop. They reflect the experience of hoping — believing — that the driver will be good.
There’s something about entrusting your welfare to the whims of speeding humanity that is essential to engaging with Dostoyevsky’s radical project, and there’s something about Kerouac that made him particularly successful in that engagement. The two main things Kerouac must have understood about Dostoyevsky, if only because these things chimed with his own life and work, were that there was a powerful yearning for sainthood in Dostoyevsky, a yearning — not necessarily religious, though tinged with Christianity in Dostoyevsky’s case — to be good, to be moral, almost beyond human capacity, and that sainthood is inaccessible without accepting that one must pass through darkness to get there.
¤
A ride through the south of England made clear to me just how essential this darkness was to the saintly paths Dostoyevsky set out on. The car belonged to an engineer who was apocalyptically obsessed with Demons, which may outdo Crime and Punishment as Dostoyevsky’s scariest novel. He picked me up at a service station near Essex where he’d stopped for a cigarette. He gave me a lift because he remembered hitchhiking from his home to Turkey as a young man.
“Nothing will get better until we exterminate the politicians,” he said, not long into the ride. Brexit had just happened and that sentiment wasn’t new to me — I’d heard it all over Britain — though his phrasing was a little more brutal than the standard rhetoric most of his countrymen offered. “We need some sort of natural disaster that will make people realize that they must oppose their government.”
He had a thin, upper-crust accent and an air of almost threatening confidence and intelligence. He seemed unbelievably efficient. His hair had gone gray but his intensity had not abated, or perhaps it had been renewed. He worked for a wind-power company that was based in Denmark and he was going down to London to attend to some offshore turbines.
His politics tended toward the optimistically catastrophic and the catastrophically optimistic. “It’s a system run by the very few,” he said. “We need London or New York to flood. Or even Tokyo. Something to cause a major depression and cause a real change.” I asked him what would come after, whether he was some form of communist. He denounced that as a failed creed. Instead, he brought up the conspiratorial nihilist group in Dostoyevsky’s Demons. He seemed to view them as a kind of example.
That’s funny, of course, because Dostoyevsky, though he was involved with similar groups as a young man, wrote the book largely as a denunciation. The engineer understood this, but nonetheless he sympathized with the violent conspirators. On my next reading of the novel, I was reminded of his fiery spirit and the group came to much more vivid life.
Eventually, he dropped me off, giving me a firm handshake and wishing me good luck. The hard, pouring rain made hitchhiking a chore, so I ran across a couple of traffic circles, hopped a roadside fence, and crossed a creek. As I walked through the woods, scouting for a level, relatively dry spot to sleep, my mind was filled with the radical notions of bygone days.
¤
In that forest, as rain droplets pattered on the surface of my tent and water began to drip through, I thought about how Dostoyevsky’s youthful association with that conspiratorial circle in St. Petersburg finally caught up with him. Consequences burst into his room in 1849 in the form of the czar’s soldiers. Later, as he stood in front of a firing squad with his fellow radicals, the thoughts that passed through his head were exactly what you’d expect. “He felt only a mystic terror,” a friend recalled Dostoyevsky’s description half a lifetime later, “and was completely dominated by the thought that in perhaps five minutes he would be going to another, unknown life.” And yet the bullets did not leave their chambers. They never made that swift journey through his flesh.
Anticlimactically, Dostoyevsky and his co-conspirators were led back to their cells. What happened in his head at that moment, the mysterious and powerful operations of his rare neurons, set him apart from the other men who’d stared down the gun barrels with him. It didn’t take long for most of them to fall apart, physically and mentally, following the shock and terror. Dostoyevsky, however, accepted his fate at that moment, and he allowed it to alter him. “Now, deprivation means nothing to me,” he wrote his brother from the cell, and he would later tell his wife that he sang louder that day than he’d ever sung before, so loud that his voice touched its limits, “so happy was I at being given back my life.”
What followed wasn’t the release and amnesty Dostoyevsky had hoped for, but though he would soon be sent off to serve a horrific sentence in a Siberian work camp, that moment changed him, in some ways, for the better. Dostoyevsky’s biographer Joseph Frank claims that, immediately after returning to the cell, the writer experienced a revelation, a “blinding truth that Dostoevsky now understood for the first time — the truth that life itself is the greatest of all goods and blessings, and that man has the power to turn each moment into an ‘eternity of happiness.’”
This understanding wasn’t limited to his life. It permeated his work. It’s what makes reading him so powerful for people like Daniel, the former legionnaire, and for people like Kerouac and me. “If the values of expiation, forgiveness, and love were destined to take precedence over all others in Dostoevsky’s artistic universe,” Frank continues, “it was surely because he had encountered them as a truth responding to the most anguished predicament of his own life.”
This is exactly the sort of sweeping epiphany that Kerouac tried to build toward in his books, and the experiences and motivations that led to those revelations, though not the same, must have felt comparably powerful.
¤
Kerouac never faced down a firing squad, not a literal one. But he did live with guilt, and he suffered in ways big and small. The primary cause was the death of his older brother Gerard when Kerouac was four years old. In later years, he explicitly associated his brother’s decline with the rise of his own saintly urges and behavior. “The world was his face,” he wrote, “the flower of his face, the pale stooped disposition, the heartbreakingness and the holiness and his teachings of tenderness to me.” He wrote, in Visions of Gerard, that the death didn’t affect him immediately, but it hit him hard enough that he returned to write about it all those years later.
And yet, unlike Dostoyevsky, who found the merits of suffering in huge, almost melodramatic plots, especially in his earlier writing, Kerouac relegated events of that caliber to the sidelines. The first lines of On the Road read, “I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead.” This prominently placed split-up haunts all that follows, but it’s never mentioned again. In the original scroll manuscript, Sal’s comment about “feeling that everything was dead” refers specifically to the death of his father. At some point in the writing process, Kerouac chose to emphasize smaller sufferings.
Kerouac found shades of transformative, transcendent hardship in the mundane experiences of travel. They were there for him to explore because travel isn’t just a continuous shock of freedom and joy; it’s just as often an experience full of obstacles and discomforts, of setbacks and confusion. Fundamentally, the overwhelming excitement that makes travel so compelling is caused by gnawing, impatient longing for the next thing, and by not knowing what comes next.
Kerouac doesn’t shy away from these aspects. He writes about scrounging up money, about being pulled over by humorless cops, about missing his friends, about loneliness and being lost. But it’s not depressing because not only does he not shy away from all this, he focuses on each of those moments. By flinging himself on the world, by accepting all that comes at him, whether good or bad, as beautiful, and by focusing on the smaller things, Kerouac’s books begin to touch a sort of sainthood.
¤
The sun was starting to set and the heat had evaporated by the time Daniel dropped me off on the ramshackle outskirts of Budapest, among the stray dogs and scrap-metal fences. Before he let me go, he made me write down his number, telling me to call him when I got to my friend’s apartment. “I’d like to be sure you’re okay,” he said. But after talking to him, I wasn’t sure he or anyone could ever be fully okay, nor was I sure we wanted to be.
Dostoyevsky and Kerouac were never quite okay. They lived troubled lives, striving toward aspects of goodness, and neither of them lived to grow peaceful and calm, perhaps because they didn’t really want to. Dostoyevsky’s sainthood, to the extent that he achieved it, was hard-won, born of guilt, early onset cynicism, and a lifetime of fuck-ups. Kerouac’s sainthood was shrouded by alcoholism and dissatisfaction. What they shared, and what I think allowed them to experience moments, if not a lifetime, of near inhuman goodness, was a sort of transcendent shame and a willingness to take the good with the bad, to accept the world as they experienced it. I think Daniel experienced those moments too.
Hitchhiking, with all its indignities and discomforts, also forces you to accept those saintly, beautiful moments, if not necessarily to experience some sort of deeper transcendence. Kerouac must have known that. He must have known that the moment you step out with a thumb up, the world can do with you as it likes. He must have known that, to even get to that roadside, you had to believe in the possibility of good, to believe that you can fall in the world and yet, by doing so, paradoxically rise. He must have known that nothing he’d found in literature would prepare him for the surprises and mysteries that the world would throw at him once he gave himself up to it — the difficulties and upsets, and the unexpected joys.
Nothing, that is, except what he’d found in the novels of Dostoyevsky, the secret Patron Saint of Hitchhikers.
¤
Andrew Fedorov is a writer often found in New York and sometimes found walking across countries. Follow him on Twitter @andrewfed.
¤
Banner image by Bradley Gordon.
The post The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Dostoyevsky appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.
from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2K16mPM
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HIS NAME WAS DANIEL, he told me, eventually. He’d found me stumbling down the highway near the Hungarian-Croatian border on a sweltering day. I still had a vague hope of getting to Budapest, but by that point I’d given up trying to catch a ride and was seriously dehydrated. Seeing a two-liter bottle peeking out from the roadside grass, I’d run across two lanes to have a look. As I unscrewed the cap, the vapor of heated urine rose up and I fumbled the bottle back to where I’d found it. I kept walking, not holding my thumb up anymore, only trying to scout out a spot over the barrier where I could sleep. While I wasn’t looking, Daniel’s shiny new BMW pulled over in front of me and I bumped into it.
The short, bald, muscular man inside, dripping with sweat, started swearing in French. He asked what the hell I thought I was doing. In my own stuttering French, I thanked him for stopping and asked where he was headed. He told me Romania. Running through the map in my head, I asked whether he could drop me off near Budapest. He said he would and handed me a bottle as I got in. I guzzled the water down, and we sped away.
When I caught my breath, I said he didn’t sound like he was French. Speaking in a mix of stilted English and oddly accented French, he told me he was from Transylvania. He’d trained as an engineer, but there’d been no jobs, so he’d joined the French Foreign Legion. I asked whether it was true that they took on criminals sometimes. “Not if you are a fucking psychopath,” he said. “Not if you killed a bunch of people or burnt down a school. If you just robbed a bank, then maybe yes.”
He’d been a paratrooper in the Congo. He wouldn’t tell me anything more. Instead, he told me about his trip, how he’d started in the south of France and had driven to where he’d picked me up, more than 700 miles, without stopping, except for gas. When I pressed him for stories about the Legion, he looked at me with genuine pain. “Do you want me to tell you how I watched my friends die for the first time? How I left them? No! About how it feels to take life? Non, bien sur.”
He went on to tell me about how he’d fought off malaria in the jungle, how he’d refused field medication because “it tears you up inside.” He told me of the deep shame and guilt he felt over the things he’d had to do. I asked him how he’d survived and how he dealt with those memories. “It took great strength,” he said, pointing to his temple. “If you’re so curious, why don’t you join the Legion? Quelle age are you?” I told him I’d just turned 18. “You’re a child,” he said and asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to write. “Another good way to get yourself killed.”
Now you may say I didn’t have the right to ask all those questions. I didn’t have his experiences and couldn’t possibly understand his trauma. Besides, ours was just a passing acquaintance. But we came to an understanding that we were two human beings trying to be good. What gave me license to excavate his shame was my relative innocence, my uncurdled curiosity, my belief that he too was trying to be a good man, and my suspicion that talking might help.
After figuring out that I was originally Russian, he told me he’d found some salvation in the works of Dostoyevsky. He’d read of Dostoyevsky’s epileptic Christ character in The Idiot, a man of limitless good who tragically succumbs to his yearning for goodness. Daniel thought that this character’s sacrifice for the sake of others was a worthy one. I unreservedly agreed. Now, Daniel said, he was raising a young son, named Andrei, like my Russian name. He hoped he too would be a good man.
Daniel’s shame was transformative, constructive. He told me that his favorite novel, the one that most defined the shape of his life since the Legion, was The Brothers Karamazov, about a faithful man sent back into the world to deal with the earthly affairs of his family. Of course, it’s about a whole lot of other things too, but that was what Daniel remembered. He concluded that we were all just trying to help each other to be better.
His compassion — and its pairing with an intense interest in Dostoyevsky — wasn’t exactly surprising or unfamiliar to me at the time. In those days, when I was criss-crossing continents hitchhiking, people would ask me whether I liked On the Road. I’d tell them there wasn’t enough hitchhiking in it for my taste, too much roadtripping. What I really liked was Dostoyevsky. I loved The Brothers Karamazov, loved The Idiot, Demons, Crime and Punishment, everything he’d labored over. And I had a suspicion that, if Kerouac had been asked the same question, his mind would have shot off in the same direction, as would the minds of so many literary hitchhikers.
¤
“What’s the name of that Russian author you’re always talking about — the one who put the newspapers in his shoe and walked around in a stovepipe hat he found in a garbage pail?” Remi Boncoeur asks Sal Paradise in On the Road, sounding more like he’s conjuring up the memory of Diogenes than Dostoyevsky. “This was an exaggeration of what I’d told Remi of Dostoevski,” Sal comments. Remi then goes off about people with faces that deserve a name like Dostoyevsky.
But Kerouac’s allusion has a deeper significance. In certain ways that the writer of history’s greatest hitchhiking novel must have picked up on, Dostoyevsky’s late novels reflect the openness and the vulnerability of standing by a road waiting — hoping — for a car to stop. They reflect the experience of hoping — believing — that the driver will be good.
There’s something about entrusting your welfare to the whims of speeding humanity that is essential to engaging with Dostoyevsky’s radical project, and there’s something about Kerouac that made him particularly successful in that engagement. The two main things Kerouac must have understood about Dostoyevsky, if only because these things chimed with his own life and work, were that there was a powerful yearning for sainthood in Dostoyevsky, a yearning — not necessarily religious, though tinged with Christianity in Dostoyevsky’s case — to be good, to be moral, almost beyond human capacity, and that sainthood is inaccessible without accepting that one must pass through darkness to get there.
¤
A ride through the south of England made clear to me just how essential this darkness was to the saintly paths Dostoyevsky set out on. The car belonged to an engineer who was apocalyptically obsessed with Demons, which may outdo Crime and Punishment as Dostoyevsky’s scariest novel. He picked me up at a service station near Essex where he’d stopped for a cigarette. He gave me a lift because he remembered hitchhiking from his home to Turkey as a young man.
“Nothing will get better until we exterminate the politicians,” he said, not long into the ride. Brexit had just happened and that sentiment wasn’t new to me — I’d heard it all over Britain — though his phrasing was a little more brutal than the standard rhetoric most of his countrymen offered. “We need some sort of natural disaster that will make people realize that they must oppose their government.”
He had a thin, upper-crust accent and an air of almost threatening confidence and intelligence. He seemed unbelievably efficient. His hair had gone gray but his intensity had not abated, or perhaps it had been renewed. He worked for a wind-power company that was based in Denmark and he was going down to London to attend to some offshore turbines.
His politics tended toward the optimistically catastrophic and the catastrophically optimistic. “It’s a system run by the very few,” he said. “We need London or New York to flood. Or even Tokyo. Something to cause a major depression and cause a real change.” I asked him what would come after, whether he was some form of communist. He denounced that as a failed creed. Instead, he brought up the conspiratorial nihilist group in Dostoyevsky’s Demons. He seemed to view them as a kind of example.
That’s funny, of course, because Dostoyevsky, though he was involved with similar groups as a young man, wrote the book largely as a denunciation. The engineer understood this, but nonetheless he sympathized with the violent conspirators. On my next reading of the novel, I was reminded of his fiery spirit and the group came to much more vivid life.
Eventually, he dropped me off, giving me a firm handshake and wishing me good luck. The hard, pouring rain made hitchhiking a chore, so I ran across a couple of traffic circles, hopped a roadside fence, and crossed a creek. As I walked through the woods, scouting for a level, relatively dry spot to sleep, my mind was filled with the radical notions of bygone days.
¤
In that forest, as rain droplets pattered on the surface of my tent and water began to drip through, I thought about how Dostoyevsky’s youthful association with that conspiratorial circle in St. Petersburg finally caught up with him. Consequences burst into his room in 1849 in the form of the czar’s soldiers. Later, as he stood in front of a firing squad with his fellow radicals, the thoughts that passed through his head were exactly what you’d expect. “He felt only a mystic terror,” a friend recalled Dostoyevsky’s description half a lifetime later, “and was completely dominated by the thought that in perhaps five minutes he would be going to another, unknown life.” And yet the bullets did not leave their chambers. They never made that swift journey through his flesh.
Anticlimactically, Dostoyevsky and his co-conspirators were led back to their cells. What happened in his head at that moment, the mysterious and powerful operations of his rare neurons, set him apart from the other men who’d stared down the gun barrels with him. It didn’t take long for most of them to fall apart, physically and mentally, following the shock and terror. Dostoyevsky, however, accepted his fate at that moment, and he allowed it to alter him. “Now, deprivation means nothing to me,” he wrote his brother from the cell, and he would later tell his wife that he sang louder that day than he’d ever sung before, so loud that his voice touched its limits, “so happy was I at being given back my life.”
What followed wasn’t the release and amnesty Dostoyevsky had hoped for, but though he would soon be sent off to serve a horrific sentence in a Siberian work camp, that moment changed him, in some ways, for the better. Dostoyevsky’s biographer Joseph Frank claims that, immediately after returning to the cell, the writer experienced a revelation, a “blinding truth that Dostoevsky now understood for the first time — the truth that life itself is the greatest of all goods and blessings, and that man has the power to turn each moment into an ‘eternity of happiness.’”
This understanding wasn’t limited to his life. It permeated his work. It’s what makes reading him so powerful for people like Daniel, the former legionnaire, and for people like Kerouac and me. “If the values of expiation, forgiveness, and love were destined to take precedence over all others in Dostoevsky’s artistic universe,” Frank continues, “it was surely because he had encountered them as a truth responding to the most anguished predicament of his own life.”
This is exactly the sort of sweeping epiphany that Kerouac tried to build toward in his books, and the experiences and motivations that led to those revelations, though not the same, must have felt comparably powerful.
¤
Kerouac never faced down a firing squad, not a literal one. But he did live with guilt, and he suffered in ways big and small. The primary cause was the death of his older brother Gerard when Kerouac was four years old. In later years, he explicitly associated his brother’s decline with the rise of his own saintly urges and behavior. “The world was his face,” he wrote, “the flower of his face, the pale stooped disposition, the heartbreakingness and the holiness and his teachings of tenderness to me.” He wrote, in Visions of Gerard, that the death didn’t affect him immediately, but it hit him hard enough that he returned to write about it all those years later.
And yet, unlike Dostoyevsky, who found the merits of suffering in huge, almost melodramatic plots, especially in his earlier writing, Kerouac relegated events of that caliber to the sidelines. The first lines of On the Road read, “I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead.” This prominently placed split-up haunts all that follows, but it’s never mentioned again. In the original scroll manuscript, Sal’s comment about “feeling that everything was dead” refers specifically to the death of his father. At some point in the writing process, Kerouac chose to emphasize smaller sufferings.
Kerouac found shades of transformative, transcendent hardship in the mundane experiences of travel. They were there for him to explore because travel isn’t just a continuous shock of freedom and joy; it’s just as often an experience full of obstacles and discomforts, of setbacks and confusion. Fundamentally, the overwhelming excitement that makes travel so compelling is caused by gnawing, impatient longing for the next thing, and by not knowing what comes next.
Kerouac doesn’t shy away from these aspects. He writes about scrounging up money, about being pulled over by humorless cops, about missing his friends, about loneliness and being lost. But it’s not depressing because not only does he not shy away from all this, he focuses on each of those moments. By flinging himself on the world, by accepting all that comes at him, whether good or bad, as beautiful, and by focusing on the smaller things, Kerouac’s books begin to touch a sort of sainthood.
¤
The sun was starting to set and the heat had evaporated by the time Daniel dropped me off on the ramshackle outskirts of Budapest, among the stray dogs and scrap-metal fences. Before he let me go, he made me write down his number, telling me to call him when I got to my friend’s apartment. “I’d like to be sure you’re okay,” he said. But after talking to him, I wasn’t sure he or anyone could ever be fully okay, nor was I sure we wanted to be.
Dostoyevsky and Kerouac were never quite okay. They lived troubled lives, striving toward aspects of goodness, and neither of them lived to grow peaceful and calm, perhaps because they didn’t really want to. Dostoyevsky’s sainthood, to the extent that he achieved it, was hard-won, born of guilt, early onset cynicism, and a lifetime of fuck-ups. Kerouac’s sainthood was shrouded by alcoholism and dissatisfaction. What they shared, and what I think allowed them to experience moments, if not a lifetime, of near inhuman goodness, was a sort of transcendent shame and a willingness to take the good with the bad, to accept the world as they experienced it. I think Daniel experienced those moments too.
Hitchhiking, with all its indignities and discomforts, also forces you to accept those saintly, beautiful moments, if not necessarily to experience some sort of deeper transcendence. Kerouac must have known that. He must have known that the moment you step out with a thumb up, the world can do with you as it likes. He must have known that, to even get to that roadside, you had to believe in the possibility of good, to believe that you can fall in the world and yet, by doing so, paradoxically rise. He must have known that nothing he’d found in literature would prepare him for the surprises and mysteries that the world would throw at him once he gave himself up to it — the difficulties and upsets, and the unexpected joys.
Nothing, that is, except what he’d found in the novels of Dostoyevsky, the secret Patron Saint of Hitchhikers.
¤
Andrew Fedorov is a writer often found in New York and sometimes found walking across countries. Follow him on Twitter @andrewfed.
¤
Banner image by Bradley Gordon.
The post The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Dostoyevsky appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.
from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2K16mPM
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