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rallamajoop · 1 year

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Genres of horror, and some rampant speculations about Resident Evil 9

At time of writing, all we really know about Resident Evil 9 is there’s inevitably going to be one, because RE8 made bank. There are some supposed ‘leaks’ about their plans, but not much to suggest they’re genuine. Naturally, there’s no end of speculation online: will we be moving on from the Winters family? Will we see a returning protagonist like Jill Valentine? Will we be moving back to third-person viewpoint? Will we be continuing the trend of hiding the roman numerals somewhere in the title? Etc.

All well and good, but what’s got me wondering is whether we’ll be continuing the trend set by those last two titles, and jump into a whole new genre of horror for RE9.

See, as everyone already knows, Resident Evil 7 is basically one big love letter to the slasher horror genre. Using Cabin in the Woods conventions, we can narrow that right down to the classic Zombie Redneck Torture Family genre – not that the game lacks for other influences and references. You’ve got some found footage/analogue horror in the old video tapes, those creepy phone calls coming-from-inside-the-house, and a whole lotta Saw-style murder-escape-room shenanigans with Lucas. You’ve got some demonic possession, a creepy little girl, the list goes on – heck, I’m sure someone more familiar with slashers could list influences all day.

But rather than continue in the same vein for RE8, instead we take a big leap sideways over into gothic horror – and here I am qualified to tell you all about the wildlife. You’ve got your isolated Romanian village with creepy castle, your vampires, your werewolves, and a huge extra helping of Frankenstein. Moreau alone is like a one-man monster mash: Igor and Frankenstein’s monster smushed into one, with a bit of Monster from the Black Lagoon for flavour, named in honour of The Island of Doctor Moreau, and even a bit of The Hunchback of Notre Dame too.

The Dimitrescu family is dense with the Dracula references: the writers cite the Order of Dracul (ie. Order of the Dragon) as inspiration for her mutated form, and the her daughters with their fly swarms ape Stoker’s descriptions of Dracula and his brides coalescing from mist beautifully (with just a little bit of Renfield thrown in for added squick). The whole game is saturated in twisted fairy tale vibes too (cackling old hags and all!) with a little steampunk, and then there’s that haunted house full of creepy dolls – the list goes on and on. It’s all glorious stuff.

Which only raises the inevitable question: where could we possibly go from here? What other horror genres could work for Resident Evil, if (and this is admittedly a big if) the development team wants go for something as different again?

There’s no definitive horror-genre-list of we can refer to: categories overlap and bleed into each other at the best of times, and a google search for ‘horror genres’ doesn’t produce much consensus. A lot of ‘categories’ you will see listed are territory RE has already done to death: zombies are absolutely a valid genre, but is pretty much just another day at the office for RE. Psychological horror probably isn’t the kind of thing RE could hope to base a whole game around either: there are already psychological elements all through 7-8, but it’s more of a vibe than a real setting – and at some point in any RE, you’re going to expect to shoot something, or people won’t have got their money’s worth.

Lovecraftian horror may have more potential, but tends to come with more lore than will necessarily gel with the existing RE universe, and most other space or cosmic horror possibilities would run into similar problems. I mean, you certainly could tell us that the mould dates back to the Great Old Ones or that the progenitor virus actually came to earth on a meteor, but I’m not sure that’s the kind of ‘twist’ the series needs. Just because we want new territory doesn’t mean we’re ready to leave the planet.

That said, I do think there are places RE could go in the broader sci-fi horror genre, and that was when it hit me: imagine what Resident Evil could do with The Thing.

No aliens needed: just a small group of besieged survivors after some outbreak or lab accident, dealing with the fact that one of them (if not MORE) isn’t entirely human anymore. Whether RE frames that as an infection, a shape-shifter, a mind-controlling parasite, a chest-burster, or some horrible combination of the lot, you’ve got the perfect recipe for confusion and paranoia: A+ horror material.

Obviously, you’re going to need something for players to shoot at between big reveals, so naturally your monster can bud, or infect corpses or lab animals or whatever – all very doable. Throw in some influences from the likes of Alien or The Blob (how much scarier would the monster be if it can crawl up through your sink?) or maybe even Venom for good measure. Think of the possibilities!

Now, obviously, the inevitable twist of this kind of set-up is that You Are The Monster (or at least, you are a monster) – and this is where the possibilities of doing You Are The Monster in a first-person perspective hit me, because damn. You thought seeing Ethan’s hands go through the blender was freaky? Imagine continually catching glimpses of your own hands transforming in tense moments, and not knowing if it was a hallucination. You Are The Monster with the ambiguity of first person perspective could be intense.

Cliché as video-game-protag-with-monster-transformation can be, mostly it’s done as pure power-fantasy: rarely do we really get into the horror potential. Like the possibility of having control of your own player character wrenched away from you if the invisible-rage-meter gets too high, or of finding a body and having to wonder if the killer was you during a blackout period. If you can’t find a Resident Evil-worthy horror story in that, you’re not even trying.

I still don’t think RE needs actual aliens, or to send its next protag to explore a laboratory floating in orbit or anything, but taking some inspiration from the broader alien-horror genre could go some brilliant places.

Is that likely to be where Capcom is going with the series? Not a clue! It’s all speculation down here. And if it was really up to me, RE9 would be the Mia Winters story, covering all the backstory we never got about her involvement with The Connections, and pushing on into post-Village territory too (look, they said Ethan’s story is over, they never told us they’re done with the rest of the family!) But I doubt I’ll get that lucky.

With all that Village draws from RE4, we should probably be happy if they can just avoid another follow-up like 5 or 6, which leans so heavily into action and chasing increasingly wider audiences that everything that ever gave the franchise its own identity gets lost in the shuffle.

But while I’m speculating, we may as well go over the actual hints the game leaves us about where things might be headed next.

The big sequel hook RE8 ends on is the implication that the BSAA (the big international org responsible for preventing bio-terror outbreaks) has itself been creating bioweapons. But as hooks go, this is a little underwhelming for a few reasons.

For one, the BSAA exists in RE8 only as a sequel hook. That final scene where Chris is told the BSAA was sending bioweapons (!!!) comes virtually out of nowhere. The BSAA is mentioned in passing in one document you may well miss in the Winters’ home, and then not again until very near the end, when Chris watches a BSAA chopper crashing in the village. There were apparently plans for Chris’ section to involve a big three-way battle between his team, the lycans, and the BSAA, but in the final game, this has been cut all the way down the aforementioned cutscene, and to a single dead BSAA soldier you may not even find. Right up until that final ‘they’re making bioweapons!’ reveal, long-time fans are probably assuming Chris is still working for the BSAA himself. New fans probably haven’t caught on to who the BSAA are supposed to be at all.

Arguably, the implication that someone responsible for Ethan and Mia’s safety was working with Miranda all along is a lot stronger: someone tipped her off about Rose, and the couple weren’t moved right to Miranda’s doorstep by accident. That’s only reinforced by the game ending on Chris insisting ‘someone’s gotta pay’ (implied: for Ethan’s death). Trouble is, ‘the BSAA is working with Miranda’ really doesn’t tally with why they’d be sending choppers full of bio-engineered soldiers into the village at her moment of triumph. So is the problem that they’ve been working with her, or that they’re doing wildly unethical things while working against her? It’s all a bit incoherent.

The other reason I find it a pretty weak sequel hook is that, well, that’s pretty much how RE7 ended too ‒ only there, the company-that-may-actually-be-dodgy was a new incarnation of Umbrella, not the BSAA. The choppers that swoop in at the end are Umbrella-branded, and Chris spends a lot of his DLC being suspicious that the folks funding the clean-up aren’t trustworthy. But nothing comes of it – and RE8 drops that plot point so hard that the new-blue-Umbrella isn’t even mentioned. Maybe we’re supposed to take it they were always working with the BSAA, but it feels more like we’ve retconned Umbrella out of ever being involved in the first place. There’s even a whole ‘Incident Report’ file you can get with one of RE8’s DLCs which mostly exists to cast the BSAA’s actions post RE7 in the worst light possible.

Now, there may be some narrative sense in corrupting the BSAA, at least in that it’s much easier to tell horror stories about characters who can’t just call in a reliable, well-funded, multi-national org for backup. And ‘the BSAA is making bioweapons!’ is admittedly a more shocking reveal than ‘Umbrella is making bioweapons!’ could be. Honestly, the more shocking reveal would be that new-blue-Umbrella aren’t secretly making bioweapons, with Chris having to team up with them to take down the evil!BSAA in RE9 – though I’m less sure how far the novelty would go in practice. But ultimately, if Capcom were so quick to drop the big ‘new Umbrella!’ teaser from the end of RE7, why should we have any more faith they’re going to follow up on the ‘evil BSAA!’ teaser from RE8? It’s just not that compelling as a hook.

The Shadows of Rose DLC may or may not be any kind of clue. It tells us that Chris is still around and working with his dog-dog squad far into the future, and that people working with him are still researching the megamycete, but it seems more than likely RE9 won’t be set that many years ahead of the present day. Or maybe it wasn’t actually that far in the future at all, and Rose just ages supernaturally fast – I don’t think there’s a hard date on it, but no-one’s really expecting her to be the star of RE9, and I’d tend to agree.

For all that Chris ends RE8 promising “someone’s gotta pay!” I’d be amazed if he’s to be our next playable-protagonist either. There are plenty of other perspectives you could do that story from, even if he’s involved – and nothing about his post RE8 status quo suggests he’d work any better as a horror protag now than he did back in 5 and 6. Other old series regulars are likely to present similar problems.

There are other dangling plot threads they could always pick up on, like the question of who Lucas Baker was selling research data to in that one RE7 DLC. You could dig into the truly ancient history of the mould and those four huge statues, as hinted in that one really old document lying in the stronghold, or dig even deeper into that whole consciousness-storing mechanic. Or we could just drop all that and ignore the mould altogether.

Anything’s possible – including a bland re-tread of Village that takes no interesting risks, or an epic game-changing masterpiece that I don’t ever play because it’s even less my thing than RE7 was. And just to emphasise, none of these possible dangling plot threads are inherently incompatible with leaping into wild, new horror territory: The Thing could come busting out of one of the BSAA’s own labs, if need be. It’s all about the angle.

But if I can say one thing for the current state of the series, it’s they’ve left me incredibly curious about where they might take things next. I don’t know we’ll get something as different from RE8 as it was as RE7, but I might be just a little disappointed if we don’t.

#Resident Evil 9 #Resident Evil Village #Resident Evil 7 #Resident Evil #Horror #horror genres #The Thing

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edoro · 2 years

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🥺, 🤡, 🎯, 🤗

🥺 - Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels? - ohhhh yes. so many but i think special shoutout to

abuse disclosure, i have written, what, four of those by now? i absolutely love getting someone to tell someone else what's happened to them, especially when they have trouble sharing, or when it's difficult and messy and weird. most of the ones i've written have been more soft, willing (if nervous) disclosures, but i honestly really love the one i wrote in A Deeper Understanding where Hunter just hurls it at Darius in the middle of an argument to try and hurt him, i love it when people use their own trauma as a weapon, i could read that all day.

very similar vein, but, the genre of fic where it's "people observing someone else and realizing slowly exactly how fucked up they are", which i've so far spent 80k words doing in PTB and am not tired of yet.

actually have not written nearly as much of this as i would LIKE but sex scenes where one or both people have Trauma(TM) and they end up finding a way to be intimate with each other that doesn't work like Normal Average Regular Sex. i get so emotional over the concept of Therapeutic Kink.

🤡 - What’s a line, scene, or exchange you’ve written that made you laugh? - okay pretty much every interaction that Hunter and Luz have in every human touch before Philip shows up to make everything so much worse is very funny to me.

What is his name, again? It’s on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t think around her thwarted panic at being dragged away when she’s so close. It was sort of funny, she remembers that, kind of redneck vibes… Tanner? Skeeter? No, she would remember if she met a Skeeter.

🎯 - Have any of your readers accurately guessed major plot points? Care to share which? - someone in the comments on Paint The Blood got me dead to fucking rights about what's going on in the fic and figuring out how to respond to them (bc i respond to most comments, so ignoring that one would have looked suspicious) while neither confirming nor denying was probably the hardest thing i've ever done.

(under a cut bc the answer to the last question is long)

🤗 - What advice would you give to new fanfic writers that are just getting started? - oooh. hmm. hmmm...

i think one of the biggest things for me is having people who i can workshop ideas with. everyone has their own process but i find that i generally figure out how a story is going to go by talking through it, and rubber duck debugging (basically just problem-solving by explaining the problem out loud to someone or something else) is incredibly effective.

ALSO, having people who are invested in your stories and get hype about them and who you can talk to about the sick plot twists coming up and stuff is really effective in motivating me to write; i have a person who has read SO many handwritten pages of the first draft of PTB and those pages absolutely would not exist without them.

it is important imo to not link up like, your sense of self/accomplishment/worthiness with how much or what kind of feedback your fic gets, though. like, yes, getting feedback and engagement and interaction feels GREAT, not getting it sucks, and getting it vs not getting it can often be the difference between feeling motivated to finish a project and not, and that's fine, but you CANNOT let yourself fall into the trap of letting the popularity of your works dictate your self-esteem, because that will destroy your urge to create.

don't be afraid to just be shitty! if you're stuck on something, play a game i like to call Lower! Those! Standards! and just write it in a basic, boring, crappy way. you can come back to fix it later, or you might find out that actually what you think of as the 'shitty' way is fine, but either way, an imperfect thing that exists is better than the perfect version that exists only in your head. also, nobody else knows what it was supposed to look like in your head, so they only have the existing version to go by.

also, experimenting with different like, organization/outline/drafting methods is fun. you don't have to have one or have any kind of System, it definitely doesn't need to be elaborate, but if you find yourself often getting stuck, it's worth it to sit down and try to figure out where, exactly, you're getting stuck AT in the writing process, what's tripping you up, and see if there's something you can tweak about how you're coming up with, writing, or organizing your stories to try to fix that problem.

(i myself have several different processes - i tend to do a thorough outline broken down scene by scene that will inevitably change a lot as i go so i don't end up going "okay now what?", bc outlining at that level of detail helps me find where i have plotholes.

i ALSO have done a lot of handwriting, bc this frees me up from blank page anxiety and allows me to just jot stuff down without worrying too much about the quality, and it's also very satisfying in a tactile way that typing isn't, so it feels more like having DONE something, and then i already did the hard work of coming up with the ideas so my typed second draft goes way faster.

i also ALSO have written pretty much all my recent fics in scrivener - you don't NEED fancy software to write, but sometimes playing around with different available word processors can help! the ability to break a work down into scenes and add individual notes per scene that i can refer to as i'm writing is immensely helpful for me.)

and, hmm... i also think... try to have fun with it! remember that you're doing this because it's fun, it's a hobby, and you should focus on the things that make YOU happy. if you want to write the same type of scene or interaction over and over again, go for it! if you want to write stuff that doesn't have a 'point' other than that it makes you happy to do so, go for it!

and honestly, don't be afraid to post WIPs. i'm bad about this, tbh, but MOST multi-chapter fics end up unfinished. getting to see a glimpse of the idea someone had and get interested in the world and imagine what it would be like and play with the idea in your own head is a lot of fun, and if you post your wip and don't end up finishing it, then someone still gets to do that with what you posted! i don't think there's really such a thing as 'wasted' writing - it sucks to have to scrap a huge chunk that took a lot of time and effort and start over, it's frustrating, but writing something you don't finish or end up changing/editing/whatever still 'counts' as having written, and imo it's still good practice. if nothing else, you figured out how you DON'T want the scene to go.

if you want to materially improve your writing significantly (which is not a requirement at all, because you can just write your stories for fun and not worry about that, but if you ARE wanting to improve):

1) write a whole fucking bunch

2) read a whole bunch

3) read critically - which doesn't mean with an eye towards criticizing, but rather, when you read, look at how the author uses things like metaphor, imagery, the rhythm of language itself, foreshadowing, exposition, etc. figure out what you like about how they describe scenes, or do dialogue, or communicate stuff about characters, or develop their world, look at how they link the parts of the plot together and how and why various emotional or plot developments work (or don't work!), look at how the characters relate to each other, look at the tricks the author pulls in the narrative in order to get you to think or feel certain ways about certain characters/events - you can do this with fanfiction, published novels, movies, games, tv shows, etc - and honestly, starting to read reviews and analysis will help you get into the mindset of thinking about things this way too.

uh... gosh... there's probably more i could say but i think that's all i can think of for now!

#asks #ask game

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laudofthedeep · 4 months

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4, 14 and 17! :)

Oh my god, apparently I somehow saved this as a draft instead of posting it? Unintentional, but also this is so long I refuse to proofread it before posting. Sorry to the brave anon who sent this. I saw it, I’m just also an idiot.

4. Oh okay no I see what happened, I forgot what this question was and saved as a draft to go get the actual question but then I got distracted. I think the question was like…bucket list aquariums or something?

The Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta! It’s one of the biggest in the world, and one of a small number to keep whale sharks! Also the Aquarium of Western Australia in Perth for reasons I’ll explain while answering 14.

Honorable mentions to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which seems neat and heavily involved in conservation, and the Osaka Aquarium, which is both convenient and another of the few places to keep whale sharks but which I’m more cautious about due to Japan’s…lax perspective on animal ethics.

Incidentally, I’m not a particular fan of whale sharks (at least not any more than any other aquatic animal; they’re still neat) but an aquarium being able to keep them for several years indicates both an understanding of and a budget for keeping other aquatic life well.

14. What was an important, defining moment you’ve had with fish/aquatic animals?

I don’t feel like I had a specific important moment; rather, a lot of specific media gradually built together into an abiding passion for aquatic life.

There was something in the water in the early 2010s. There were four things that really stoked my passion for Fish.

The thing that really catalyzed it was Endless Ocean: Blue World, which is pretty much Fish: The Game. It was gorgeous (for its time) and did a good job introducing me to fish that weren’t typical aquarium fish (too bright, too same) or sharks (cool, I guess, but too sensational). As it turns out, there are all kinds of fish and they do all kinds of things. I particularly liked learning about deep sea stuff and still do because I like The Unknown.

Around the same time, I started watching River Monsters. I caught a bit of it on TV and fell in love. It had fish I recognized from Endless Ocean and it was (mostly) about being informational and scientific while still being narratively entertaining. At that time around me, fish were considered a hobby of rednecks (there was a lot of television about fishing that was very redneck, and I lived in an area that was decidedly Not Redneck) or the rich (who would go out on yachts and fish for billfish; these are who I lived around), and it was nice to see a television show that felt like it was for me and my interests.

Not too long after, Animal Crossing: New Leaf came out. Animal Crossing is many things, but to me it is a collector’s game. In that I use it almost exclusively as a fishing simulator, because that game is charming and it has Cool Fish and you can decorate your house with Cool Fish. This is self-explanatory.

But the most important one. The foundation. The godfather. Zoo Tycoon 2. I was just talking about that game with a friend the other night, and it was truly a boon for animal nerds everywhere. That game had a community that simply couldn’t exist these days. Both online and gaming culture have changed too much. Let me explain. Zoo Tycoon 2 was a pretty good game. Nothing groundbreaking. But. It had a format and source code that made it PRIME for modding. And so mod the world did. There were several forums in its glory days, and mods ranged in ability from “I took the base aardvark and made it red” to “I have lovingly rendered the world’s largest sauropod, adding several unique animations and behaviors and several hundred polygons”. And in these days, the internet would support you either way. Or at least the ZT2 community would. I can’t remember seeing a single disparaging post about something someone had created. There was one creator in particular (well, two, they were a team), Zeta Designs, who consistently made great stuff. Although I can’t find it anymore, they at one point embarked on a 1:1 recreation of the Perth Aquarium, creating new designs as necessary to reconstruct it. This right here is why I started getting interested in aquariums, and that’s what led me into the rest.

17. Do you keep an aquarium or an outside pond? If so, what animals (or lack thereof) do you keep?

I no longer do! I had to leave my aquarium behind when I moved to Japan, and that was very sad. I’d keep an aquarium now but my apartment won’t allow anything over five gallons. With that said, the aquarium I had was a 29 gallon with a pair of pearl gourami, a pair of ropefish, and some oto cats. I’d have wanted some more ropefish (they like friends) but I couldn’t afford a bigger tanks, so that was the best I could do. Actually, one of my proudest moments in fishkeeping was when I went to buy a new ropefish (one of them died during a terrible winter storm where my house lost power for a week, but it actually died in the fish daycare I sent it to because they have a nasty habit of jumping out of tanks and disappearing) and the fish store owner was like “I dunno kid, these guys are real hard to take care of and I’d hate to see see you coming back a week from now looking for another. How can I trust that you’ll be able to keep it alive?” And I was like. Uh. Well. I’ve kept a couple of them for three years now so I hope I’m good enough at keeping them alive. And the guy goes “Damn, three years? Arright buddy you’re golden, you’re better at keeping fish than 90% of my customers.” Dude got MUCH more talkative after that, I’m pretty sure I’d have been there for hours if my dad wasn’t waiting in the car.

#that fish store guy lived like an hour away and that the thickest new jersey accent ive ever heard #i got my oto cats at the same place and he was like ‘ill give you seven for the price of three because #it’s gonna take four before your ropefish realize they don’t like eating em’

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steveskafte · 7 months

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DIVISIONS OF DISTANCE Back in the 90s, there existed a certain tension between the town and country kids. If you lived anywhere over the mountains, either south to West Dalhousie or north in Mount Rose, you were likely to be labelled a redneck. I found myself somewhere in the middle, literally, in the foothills on Clarence Road. That left my mailing address as Bridgetown itself, so maybe I'd be mistaken as belonging. There was a certain hierarchy among the country kids, fighting not to be tagged "redneck", "hillbilly", or worse yet, "Goler". The latter was the greatest insult, borrowed from the surname of a notorious clan up the Valley. It's funny thinking how so many little fights went on in working out individual identities, because to outsiders, we were pretty much all the same. Just country, no matter what. By the time most kids graduated, they were pretty well locked into one camp or the other. For the ones who stayed with the woods, there was always hard work to be done. Logging or building, strong backs in demand. For those who left to the city, it was mostly opportunity calling – and some saw it as a permanent escape. But that old class structure has long since lost it meaning. Modern communication had a lot to do with it, access to the internet, becoming more aware of different sorts of people everywhere. We've lost our little quirks of accents, divisions of distance. Now, it's easier to say you're just from Nova Scotia as a whole, your place in the world – without every tiny town blowing its own bubble. Now my town has about as many newcomers as locals, unfamiliar faces as ones I've known all my life. I like it a lot better this way. It feels more welcoming, homelike, not as heavily structured and divided, losing the classic social borders. I'm a firm believer that people are better with a nomadic nature. We're reminded that the earth is older than any of our bloodlines can go in one town, and our roots are shallow after all. A certain singularity of species that makes our town and country games seem silly. All we have left is our love of the land, and no worries of not belonging. October 9, 2023 Port Lorne, Nova Scotia Year 16, Day 5811 of my daily journal.

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beaversatemygrandma · 11 months

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Thoughts about the FL thing, sans money now.

So that one friend who moved to Cali FINALLY texted me. I can't blame her at all for taking that time. It was hectic. Basically suddenly finding your existence illegal and the fact that she was in an accepting household could risk her mom losing her youngest kid. Like FL is fucked up and I'm glad she's safe now. And then me saying that I'm moving back to FL soon and she's just instant panic. Instantly worried about me. Telling me that if i go, i shouldn't come out. I shouldn't continue with that at all. Put the gender fuckery on hold. I think she even offered to help me out to Cali also once she's got her own place out there. Honestly, sounds pretty nice. I mean, the guy I've been talking with for all this time and basically have a long distance, soon to be short distance, relationship with has been listening to everything I've been saying about FL and iirc, Cali is actually a state where his insulin might come cheaper and easier. We've literally been talking about taking our time in town, getting money, saving money, and leaving the state, perhaps even the country. Like, he needs a place with socialized healthcare so he doesn't have a pricetag on his life and i need a place where i can literally be myself. And that place sure isn't FL.

Jeez, going back to FL in this political climate is so damn terrifying but i can't stay here. I'm losing my mind here. I'm stuck in a tiny ass place with too much stuff to fit into my damn 6x8 ft room that has 0 air flow, with a 14yo who acts like she's 7 (she's mentally okay, she's just immature and won't grow. like you give her advice and she starts guilting you about how she's not perfect). I've got my dad who i haven't been with for longer than a month since i was 8, who can't get anything done without at least a month of procrastination. We're all broke. There's planes and trains and trucks that shake the whole trailer every hour 24/7. It's not walkable. Hell, it's hardly drivable with all those axle-breaking potholes and blind intersections. There are even air quality warnings like once a week. And that's not about the smokescreen over the northeast. That's just what it's Like Here. Our water is brown like once a month. I swear like three water mains leading to our area burst since January. There are even shootings basically once a week within five miles of here. I hear guns firing constantly at like 2am like clockwork. I'm broke. I can't deal with it here. The payments needed to keep a car legal are higher in this state than most others. (including mandatory inspections? That YOU pay for??) What the fuck even is this city?

At least in FL, i know the town well. I know the people. I know the roads. It's kept nice because it's a damn tourist trap. Not some still-segregated urban sprawl. Sure, there's annoying rednecks there and snowbirds who act like they own the place, but you're less likely to get shot going to the gas station or break your car's entire front axle after not swerving around the wrong pothole so you don't get hit head-on by a tanker. Sure, I'm going to be terrified to be as gnc as i am. But what's another couple years in the closet, right? right? 🙃 Just have to keep my job, keep that guy close so I seem straight/cis passing, and hold my tongue in public. And maybe not look queer to an emt if something bad happens. Suck up dysphoria for a while and actually wear form-fitting clothes so nobody will try anything.

Holy fuck the entire southeast is so fucked up. Why do i have to be stuck here?

#taks speaks #*screams into the void*#my choices are basically tanker town where you can't breathe the air or drink the water once a month #or the state of embodied transphobia #fucking southeast. why is it so awful

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neonbitemarks · 1 year

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Lex x Ryland - Archived Thread

“Judas’s on a warpath, Scout’s stirrin’ drama with Dainn, Leora and Roman are bein’ all weird again, and Genesis just showed up. Way I’m seein’ it, we should probably take a small campin’ trip before we get dragged into the not so fun chaos.”

“Uh-oh, what’d I miss, or is Mercury in gatorade again? Either way, you know I’m never gonna say no to a little roadtrip just me and you. Besides, we still got some makin’ up to do from me being away from here for a bit, and it’s the perfect time of year for sleepin’ under the stars.”

“Not that he needs a reason, honestly, but I think him and Leora got into it and your sister fights dirty. Remind me not to piss that one off because I was not expectin’ her to go that low.” It had been impressive and more than a little terrifying and he never wanted to be on the receiving end of that girl’s ire. “It really is. Figured we can head up north, look for a lake to camp out by and ignore the rest of the world for a couple of days.”

“Okay, spill. I need all the gory details,” Lex laughed, knowing pretty well what Leora was capable of, but he always enjoyed hearing all the gossip when he hadn’t been there to personally witness what went down.

“I hear Montana’s pretty all year round, but especially in the summer. I mean, they do call it Big Sky Country, right? I’m sure we can find a spot to camp where there aren’t any rednecks within spittin’ distance who might object to us being there.”

“I don’t know all the details, but I did hear her callin’ him a ”bottom feeding, low life coke head with a shrimp dick.“ and throwing in his face that Chayton was the only one that actually liked his sorry ass. I don’t want to know what for shit she would say about me if I was on her bad side.” And he had no intentions of finding out if he could help it.

“Montana? Yeah, I think we can manage that. Lay out under the stars like we used to on the good nights. Just us, the sky, and a campfire. Can’t think of nothin’ better.”

“God damn, right for the jugular, huh,” Lex whistled, grinning broadly as he tried to picture the look on Jude’s face when Leora called him that, Lex figuring there would have been the smallest moment of shocked offense before Judas got angry and said something stupid in retaliation.

“Kinda feels like it’s been a long time since we last did that. Gotta admit I’ve been missing life on the open road, to be honest. Not that I don’t love having a real roof over my head, but there’s not a whole lot to do or see in a ghost town in the middle of the desert.”

“Like I said, remind me not to piss that one off.” He was honestly surprised the argument between Leora and Judas hadn’t come to blows, but he would have easily put his money on Leora. He had a feeling she fought dirty no matter what kind of fight she was in.

“I don’t think we’ve gone camping, really camping, since we got here. Never thought I’d miss sleeping in the back of the truck as much I do,” he admitted, but it had been his home since he was nineteen. “Pretty sure I still have most of the on the road gear together so packing everything up shouldn’t take long?”

“Yeah, things have been kinda busy, haven’t they?”

Between everything that had happened in staying off the radar of Ryland’s family and Lex finding out he not only had a bunch of family he didn’t even know about, but that he wasn’t nearly as human as he was raised to believe, it had been difficult to make plans to go traveling anywhere for a while.

“How long do you wanna go for?”

“Just a little bit.”

It had been challenging, uprooting his entire existence and learning to adjust to being around the kind of people he had been trained to, well, murder since he had been a child, but he was doing his best. Lex was one thing, the others, well, he was still trying to figure all of that out.

“I was thinking at least a three-day weekend, maybe a little longer if the weather holds up. Unless you have something else in mind?”

“I was thinkin’ more along the lines of a week? Maybe more?” Lex answered, figuring that they might as well make the most of it if they were going to drive all the way out to Montana, since, depending on where in Montana they ended up, it was a minimum of a thirteen hour drive straight through just to get across state lines.

“I mean, we could even stop off at Yellowstone on the way there? Break up the drive time a little with some sight seeing?”

“We’re definitely going to need to bring the trailer if we’re going to be out that long so we can bring extra gas for the truck and firewood. Your mom said we were free to use that any time we wanted to, might as well take advantage of it and not need to see any other people on our trip,” he suggested, wanting to have Lex completely to himself for as much of the time as they could manage.

“We’ll be timing it for the Perseid’s meteor shower too. Can’t think of a better time to be camping out.”

“Yeah, sounds good to me,” Lex agreed, more than happy to make the trip more of a proper road trip vacation than just a weekend campout.

It wasn’t just the sleeping out under the stars and the scenery aspect that Lex was looking forward to. Getting some time alone with Ryland without any interruptions, and a proper chance to catch up on other things also drove the appeal of staying out a while longer.

“Just you and me, the open road and hopefully nobody else around for miles.”

Ryland wrapped an arm around Lex’s waist and pulled him close, stealing a soft, slow kiss. The solace of their bedroom was fine, soundproofed even, but it didn’t beat the solitude that being on the road gave them, ensconced in the cab of the truck while the rest of the world passed from the window.

“I did get a new mattress for the back of the truck. No more waiting for the air one to fill up. And it’s more comfortable.” He had bought it while Lex had been away and his bet had clearly paid off.

Lex hummed against Ry’s lips, melting into the kiss with a sigh.

Oh how he’d missed this while he’d been away, and being reminded just how much made him ache all the more for the attention and affection as he dove his fingers into Ryland’s hair on the back of his head.

“Oh? Well then I guess we’re definitely going to have to give that a good breakin’ in, aren’t we?” he purred with a teasing smirk.

The feeling of Lex’s fingers in his hair was enough to pull a soft groan from Ryland’s lips as he pressed against him more firmly. He hated when Lex was away, but he understood why he had to go. There were just some things that he was better off learning from his family and fae could always teach fae better than anything else could.

“Guess it’s a good thing we’re going campin’ then, ain’t it? Really add onto the plan to make it memorable.”

“Mm, can’t wait…”

That wasn’t an understatement. The more Lex thought about the idea, the sooner he wanted to make it a reality, and he was more than willing to pack up and go that same day if necessary.

“When are we goin’?” he asked, stealing another kiss. “Because I don’t know how long my self control is gonna hold out ‘til I can get you all to myself with no interruptions.”

Ry understoond the imatience because he felt it too. The need to be back on the road, even if just for a week or so, was definitely something he hadn’t been able to shake. Hell, if he had it his way, if it were safe, he’d probably still live out of his truck.

“I’d say how quick do you think we can pack but I know the answer to that. How soon do you think you’re mom’ll be fine about you dipping again since you, ya know, sort of just got back?”

“Honestly, so long as I stick around long enough for dinner tonight, it probably wouldn’t take much more than talkin’ all too casually about making up for lost time for her to be wavin’ me out the door again,” Lex grinned, figuring the last anyone wanted to hear about was how badly he wanted to get his back blown out by his boyfriend.

“I mean, if Leora can gross people out like that, gotta be worth a shot, right?”

“Well that just sounds like a very awkward family dinner,” he laughed, not at all surprised by Lex’s plan. “It’ll probably work though. I mean, everyone tries to push Leora out of the entire bar when she starts. Not that I blame them. I swear she has two modes and they’re both terrifying.”

“So, we can get everything packed before dinner and then take off after if your plan works?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Lex nodded, grinning broadly at the plan.

He wouldn’t go too overboard with grossing everyone out, since he was confident he could just speak directly to Cord anyway and avoid getting too far into that kind of conversation anyway.

“If we head straight up into Idaho and over, we can probably find a nice spot along Snake River to camp tonight, then go on the Yellowstone from there.”

“Okay, was this my idea or yours because that makes it sound like you’ve been wantin’ to bring up hittin’ the road for a bit now too,” he teased, more than happy to follow through with Lex’s suggestion. It would definitely make for a good run and let them get in as much as possible.

“I’ll check in with Del and Peri to make sure there’s no hunters in the areas we’re hittin’. Don’t want to run into any complications.”

It was still weird to be so far out of the network that he actually had to call someone else for intel, but he wasn’t complaining.

“Yeah, I kinda have. Guess it’s ‘cause I missed you so much while I was away and I just want you all to myself again for a bit to make up for it,” Lex admitted, not even remotely hesitant at confessing that he’d been itching for a road trip for at least a couple of months.

“Hopefully there’ll be nobody even the next states over so we’ll be clear of any unexpected issues.”

Sure, Lex knew that it was still risky heading out away from the bar, but staying put in one place for too long always seemed to make him go a little stir-crazy after too long.

“Sounds like we cope with being parted the same way,” he mused, tracing a finger along the edge of Lex’s jaw just to have an excuse to touch him more. “You know all you ever have to do is ask. The odds of me ever saying no to you are slim to none.”

Lex was the center of Ryland’s universe and he would do and give anything just to make him smile for even a second. If he wanted to slip off into the night like they used to, who was he to say no?

“I’ll call Peri and Del on the road and see if there’s anyone between us and our stops so we can make changes if we need to. Promise.”

“Well I’m asking right now,” Lex purred teasingly with a smirk, chasing the physical affection and nuzzling into Ryland’s hand like a cat demanding scritches.

In response, Lex danced his own fingertips lightly over the back of Ry’s neck, tracing little circles there.

“Fingers crossed we’re all clear…”

“Pretty sure I asked first this time,” he countered, a chuckle chasing the words before he was kissing Lex again.

That small, gentle touch was enough to make Ryland shiver and he considered, for a moment, asking to skip dinner entirely just to have an excuse to fall into bed for a few hours. But he knew it would be much better with the kind of privacy that came with how they did camping.

“I don’t know of any issues between here and our destination, so it should be fine.”

The kiss had Lex feeling all the more impatient, and he was sure that Ryland felt the same after them having been apart for so long, so Lex was also considering how much he’d love to skip dinner to get Ry alone and have him all to himself in every way possible.

“I hope it stays that way,” he murmured softly, a little seriousness drifting into his tone at acknowledging how quickly things had gone from bad to worse the last time they hit trouble, but at least they could both be safe in the knowledge that Atticus wouldn’t be a problem for them or anyone else ever again.

#lex:thread #lex:ryland:001

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starlessea · 3 years

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𝙎𝙩𝙚𝙥 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙂𝙖𝙨 - Prologue 0. Closing Time

Series Masterlist: Step on the Gas

Summary: A dishonourable discharge from the military results in you being hauled off to live with your grandparents in the boonies, otherwise known as the middle of nowhere Georgia. After running over a nail on the road, and pushing your grandpa's vintage Camaro to the nearest auto-shop, you meet Daryl Dixon - the local mechanic. At some point, the world ends, but that stubborn man never gives you a chance to slow down. His smile gives you whiplash, but he still insists that you to step on the gas.

Words: 6286

Chapter Warnings: Language, Injury

The sky was empty — save for one bird.

Daryl watched it fly above him, so close to the ground that he could make out the beating of its wings and swore he saw individual feathers flutter in the breeze.

His fingers itched over his crossbow, as he contemplated shooting it down from the sky and plucking it clean. He'd have something to eat then, at least. Though, for some reason, Daryl Dixon couldn't bring himself to let loose his arrow, watching as the bird soared overhead — and disappeared beyond the trees.

The man sighed as he kicked up some loose stones with the toe of his boot. What a waste, he thought, before trudging through the field once again.

The sky remained cloudless for the rest of the day, existing as a pale, washed-out grey that made Daryl feel uncomfortable as he hunted. The game must have felt the same, since the deer he'd been tracking made itself scarce, and the string of squirrels hanging from his belt seemed no heavier than it had done when the sun rose that morning.

Still, he trekked onwards over the thick, winding grass and through damp forest overgrowth. He was nearly back at the quarry already, but he hardly had anything to show for it. A few measly rodents and a sprained ankle were barely worth his trip in the first place; they sure as hell wouldn't be enough for all of the mouths he now had to feed.

Daryl cursed at himself for hesitating to shoot that bird straight out of the sky, and clip its wings. It wasn't much, but maybe it would have lasted a day if he was lucky. Still, there was no use wondering now, since it had swooped so close to him that he almost felt the downward draft on his cheek — and then he let it fly away.

He thought that it had been a jaeger; it definitely looked like a seabird that had veered too far from the shore. It was a gull with a white breast and dark, blackish feathers — and a wingspan that made sure you couldn't miss it.

He remembered you pointing one out to him, at 3am, parked up on that deserted beach as the two of you stared out into the rocking ocean.

"Ya thinkin' 'bout 'er again, baby brother?"

Daryl could hear Merle's voice taunt, in the deepest, darkest corners of his thoughts.

"Tha' lil' birdie of yours?"

He quickly shook his head — even though it was the truth.

It had been Daryl's own mind that conjured up those words, after all. Merle wasn't actually here. He was probably back at the campsite, lazing about and leering after women far too good for a beaten-up redneck like him.

Though, funnily enough, Merle had said the exact same thing to Daryl when he noticed his gaze settling over the new bar server, who swiped away the froth spilling over from their draught beers. Merle had given him even more of an earful when he realised that his younger brother was waiting for her shift to end.

Daryl took a deep breath, before rolling his neck to try and relieve the tension that had built up there. Once his mind drifted into thoughts of you — even if only for a split second — it often sank to the point of no return.

You were all consuming; you had been from the first time he laid eyes on you in that old, country auto-repair shop.

He remembered the way your voice chirped like a bird's, despite the curses that often fell from your lips.

You even made those sound sweet.

And he could also recall the way you yelled over the rumble of his bike engine, and competed with the screeching that came from his tyres losing their grip on the worn-out tarmac.

You'd told him that it felt like you were flying — and that was probably the reason why Daryl Dixon couldn't shoot that jaeger.

Then, the man heard something louder than he had done since the world ended — and suddenly, the sky was no longer empty.

There was an explosion, and that dull greyness was set alight with brilliant hues of red and orange. It made fire start to rain down upon Daryl, who could only stand and watch below. Debris fell out of the sky like a meteor shower, landing beyond the trees in the distance — to a place that Daryl couldn't quite make out, no matter how much he squinted.

The air became full with the sounds of scraping metal and flickering flames that caught the leaves and made them burn up like the end of a cigarette. Daryl felt his heart race as the adrenaline pumped its way through his veins, and made him flinch each time something crashed heavily to the ground.

There was often a moment in a person's life where their brain got kick-started into gear — and they awoke from whatever auto-pilot they'd been functioning on until that point.

For most, it was probably a mundane milestone like marriage or parenthood.

For others, it might have been a life or death situation that made them re-evaluate their perspective.

For some, it had only happened when the world actually ended, and the apocalypse began.

And perhaps, if Daryl had been a smarter man, it would have been this instant — as he gazed up at the sky and watched it burn above him. Maybe this was his second life-changing realisation; maybe he was lucky enough to get two.

But, for Daryl, the first had just been a regular Tuesday.

The garage was sticky hot that day. It was the kind of heat that made you sweat no matter how many fans you had blowing — since Old man Dean was too cheap to install air conditioning. His boss was a bit of a stickler for paying his bills, and nit picky with his nickles, but he'd always been kind to Daryl.

That being said, working as a mechanic wasn't exactly where Daryl had pictured himself at his age; but then again, he couldn't really picture himself anywhere at all. He felt like that last piece of the jigsaw puzzle, which didn't quite fit in with the others — the one that you had to bend into shape just to make it work.

Sure, he enjoyed seeing the different bikes roll in and out of the shop — those models he would never be able to afford — and Daryl appreciated having a few extra dollars in his pocket for when Merle raided his savings to score some pot.

Besides, there wasn't much else to do in the boonies. Daryl's old man once told him that the only interesting thing to rear its ugly head out of Georgia's backyard in the last fifty years was Dean's Auto Shop. That's probably why Daryl started working there in the first place, as a summer job when he was teenager — and had never really left since.

As much as he didn't want to admit it, his old man had been right about one thing — despite the bastard never catching on to the role of father. He'd been right about the shop being the only interesting thing around.

Because it was the place where he met her.

And then she became the only thing in that small town even worth being interested in.

Daryl didn't hear a car pull up into the shop, but he heard the mumbling outside from where he sat in the breakroom — chewing on some of Dean's leftover pizza that was bordering on stale.

"Dixon, get your ass out here for a second, would you?" the old man yelled, banging on the thin wall that separated them with his fist.

Daryl cursed below his breath, throwing the rest of his food into the trash and dusting off his hands over his jeans. He stepped out into the shop, and was met by an unfamiliar face — looking over at him curiously.

He suddenly felt unexplainably nervous, and dropped his head down to his feet as though it were a reflex he didn't know he had.

"This is your guy," he heard Dean say, before letting out one of his usual chesty coughs.

The man smoked a pack a day too much — and that was coming from Daryl.

"Owner of that bike you've been eyeing, too," he went on.

That caught Daryl's attention, and he instantly glanced up at the woman in question. She was breath-taking, but she also looked very much out of breath. She seemed as though she had run here, despite the Georgia heat.

"You ride?" he asked, but his gruff voice made it sound like more of a demand.

He grimaced at his own tone, but the woman didn't seem bothered by it in the slightest.

She laughed, and it sounded like nothing he'd ever heard before. "I wish," she said, running her palm along the polished metal and tracing her finger over that shiny logo.

Usually, Daryl would bark at anyone who touched his bike, and Dean seemed as though he expected him to do just that — from the way he raised an eyebrow at the daring woman, too oblivious for her own good.

Except, Daryl stayed quiet.

"Was never allowed within a mile radius of one," she went on, before turning back around to grin at Daryl like it was easy. "My folks were scared I'd take off into the sunset, never to be seen again."

He could relate to that. After all, it was exactly what he and Merle had done as soon as they'd gotten the chance.

"Mhm," he hummed back, before glancing over at the car parked in the middle of the shop. "She's pretty."

It was a steel blue colour — would definitely benefit from a lick of paint, but still pretty nonetheless. The tread looked good on the tyres, and Daryl couldn't see any signs of the rusting those models were prone to. Someone had taken good care of it.

"Excuse me?" the woman asked, and suddenly Daryl was reminded of just how bad he was with words.

He cleared his throat, and ran his hand over the hood.

"Yer car," he explained, "'69 Chevy Camaro?"

Daryl asked, but he already knew the answer.

"Oh yeah, that," she replied, sending him an apologetic look. "It's my grandpa's, so we're going to have to be real discreet about this situation over here."

Daryl raised an eyebrow as she beckoned him to the other side of the car, crouching down near the wheel arch.

"Some bastard left a nail in the road, and I ran straight through the thing like it was a stop sign," she grumbled, pointing out the puncture.

Daryl almost laughed at that — but he was still much too jaded from being caught in the middle of his break.

The woman stood back up and toed the deflated tyre with her boot, scowling at the sight of it.

"I know you're closing soon, but I had to push it half a mile just to get here," she said, and wiped her brow with the back of her hand.

Suddenly, her appearance made sense. Since he'd first laid eyes on her, all she'd done was tug at the collar of her vest, and try to stand in front of one of those poor excuses for a fan. But even then, Daryl couldn't quite believe her story.

"Ain't no way ya pushed that thing 'ere by yerself." The words left his mouth before he could consider them twice.

And the look she shot Daryl in return made him want to take them straight back.

But then, she smiled.

"I'm stronger than I look," she protested, leaning against the hot car. "You can ask the dozen assholes who catcalled me on the way but never offered their help."

This time, Daryl did let out a chuckle.

"Damn lucky y'ain't pass out," he quipped back, "heat's no joke."

She grinned again, and Daryl wondered whether she had an endless supply — or if she'd saved them just for him.

"Tell me about it," the woman teased. "Never liked visiting Georgia because of it."

Then, it all made sense to Daryl — the reason why she intrigued him so much.

"Y'ain't from 'round here, are ya?" he asked, surprising himself.

Usually, he couldn't give a 'rat's ass', as Dean called it, about anyone who stumbled into their shop. Never did they get more than a half-hearted greeting from Daryl, or a grunt as he told them to mind their head on that low door frame (she didn't have that problem). Though today, he seemed oddly talkative.

"Haven't seen ya before," he added.

The woman folded her arms over her chest.

"Would you recognise me if you had?" she asked.

"E'erybody knows e'erybody in this place," he answered. "I'd remember if I saw ya cross the street."

It was partially the truth. Daryl knew most people — but he only bothered to remember a select few.

"Moved here last week," she caved, proving him right. "I'm keeping my grandparents company watching daytime cable and doing grocery runs."

Daryl smirked. "An' runnin' over nails with their car, apparently."

"That, too," she confessed.

It was silent for a few seconds, and Daryl realised that he should probably give her a quote for the job. Though, she interrupted him before he could.

"Listen, your new neighbour would be really grateful if you could cut her a break," she said, eyeing the Camaro like she was considering whether it was even worth the hassle. "The old man's going to kill me if I come home on foot tonight."

Daryl knew what she was asking. The notice in the shop window made it clear that they'd be closing in half an hour; Daryl had been all but ready to flip the sign himself. Before she'd arrived, he'd even dared to think that he could shut early — and possibly get to crack open a cold beer and enjoy the breeze of his porch.

He sighed.

"I'll see what I can do," Daryl mumbled, "but I ain't makin' no promises," he warned — as he caught the way her eyes lit up at his words.

But that was a lie. Daryl knew he wouldn't let himself go home until it was finished.

The woman was utterly gleeful. He watched her smile much too widely for her face, and for a moment Daryl thought that she might even jump at him. But she seemed to catch herself at the last second, and abruptly stopped.

She didn't falter long, though. "Thank you, thank you so much!" she said, excitedly, before pausing to tap at her jean pockets. "I don't have any cash on me for a deposit, but I'm heading to work now."

She looked sheepish as she explained herself.

"I'll come straight back and pay in full," she added, trying her best to convince him.

Daryl narrowed his eyes like he didn't quite understand. Then he did, and he laughed properly.

"Deposit?" he asked, shaking his head. "City girl, here we jus' keep yer vehicle if ya can't pay."

The woman's expression was priceless. She looked as though she couldn't figure out whether he was joking or not, and stared at Daryl with her mouth slightly agape as she debated which it was.

He couldn't watch any longer.

"Where ya workin'?" he asked.

Then, he cursed himself for doing so. Time was ticking on, and he already had to stay overtime because of his inability to say no. Well, usually he had no problem with the word; it just seemed like it was stuck in his throat today.

"Joe's bar," she replied. "It's a few blocks over and-"

"I know Joe's bar," Daryl interrupted.

Everybody knew Joe's. It was the only place around that sold a decent draught beer. He'd been going there since he was a teenager — younger than he should have been, but old enough to know better.

"Me an' my brother go there a lot, but I ain't seen you 'round."

She nodded.

"Only started a few days ago. Hopefully they don't fire me for being late."

Daryl glanced at the clock. It was approaching his closing time and her opening one.

"Ya better get runnin', Camaro," he noted, tapping at his watch that didn't even work. "Rush hour soon."

The woman narrowed her eyes at the nickname. Daryl didn't know her real one yet, and felt like it was too late to ask for it. He'd have to catch a glimpse of Dean's log book later to find out.

"Will do," she replied with a smile. "Thanks again, Dixon."

Though Daryl couldn't quite work out how she knew his name, either.

He watched her scurry about collecting her things, and walked her to the entrance. The sun was starting to set — leaving the sky a pinkish orange that only made him squint the more he looked at it. He held the door open for the woman, and heard Dean snort from the back of the shop. But the way she thanked him made it worth the teasing.

"Take care of that sixties Honda," she winked, "she's a real beauty."

Daryl was surprised that she knew the model of his bike, considering she'd never even ridden one.

"If only ya knew," he mumbled back as he saw her off. "Will take ya for a ride one time if yer willin'."

She stopped in place. Daryl didn't know why he said that. It had just slipped from his mouth like oil from a can.

The woman laughed and rolled her eyes like she didn't believe him.

"That's what they all say."

Then, she started to jog down the street — just like she said she would — and Daryl thought her crazy for even attempting it in this midsummer Georgia weather. That woman had entered the shop like a whirlwind, and when she left Daryl couldn't remember what he'd even been doing before.

Dean cleared his throat and threw a rag at him that he barely managed to catch.

"Keep it in your pants, boy."

Daryl scowled at the man; he knew him better than that. So, he didn't give him the satisfaction of a reply, and instead got started on setting the Camaro up on a jack.

"She's a beauty, I get it," Dean went on, despite his silence. "Her type don't belong in a place like this, that's for damn sure."

Daryl had to agree with him there. He'd gotten a glimpse of his reflection in the wing mirror of her car and grimaced. He had grease on his face, and part of him cursed Dean for not telling him before he'd left the breakroom.

"But you know Mike and Doreen?" the old man asked, and Daryl nodded. "That's their granddaughter."

Daryl furrowed his brow — not realising he'd done it until he caught himself in the glass once again. Mike was a hard man, the type to straighten out any kinks in a person with brute force and that baby boomer spite.

"She may be real pretty, kid, but that one's trouble," Dean noted, confirming his suspicions.

He ignored the way he called him 'kid'. The old man still hadn't grown out of the habit — despite Daryl being well beyond his teenage years now.

"Trouble?" he repeated, like he couldn't quite comprehend the word being associated with someone like that.

Dean chuckled — but it turned into one of those coughs that made Daryl wince.

"Maybe more so than you," he said. "Got kicked out of the military, I heard."

Daryl spat at the floor, and Dean laughed again. They both hated those military dogs who often paraded through their town, looking at them as though they were trash beneath their government-issued boots.

But, if she'd been kicked out then maybe they could find some common ground.

Old man Dean wagged his finger at him, recognising Daryl's no-good expression; he'd become familiar with it by now, from all the times he'd worn it throughout the years.

"So don't go losing your head over her, Dixon," he cautioned, pretending not to know how good Daryl was at throwing caution to the wind.

"And remember to close up before you leave."

But it was too late.

Daryl had already lost his head, and his heart — but he wouldn't know that the latter was missing for a very long time.

You ran the cloth along the oak bar surface, wiping away any sticky beer rings that had been left there.

This is why we have coasters, you sighed.

It had been a slow Tuesday night, but you'd somehow still been roped into working the close. You tried to tell your boss that you were having car troubles, and had plans to stop by the garage on your way home — but he seemed to prioritise his own date over yours.

Well, you wouldn't exactly call giving the local mechanic his cheque a date; usually, you didn't have to pay for those. But you couldn't deny how it had made you feel when he smiled that smile your way — so small that you'd almost missed it — before you took off running out the door.

It gave you whiplash.

Perhaps he was just being friendly. But, then again, he didn't seem like the naturally friendly type. You shook your head, throwing the beer-soaked rag into the sink. You didn't trust that man in the slightest.

That wasn't a new development, really; you didn't trust most men. And, you often found that the ones who made your heart race like that were the worst of them all. He was trouble, that one, and you'd had enough of that to last a lifetime.

You untied the double knot of your apron, and folded it up neatly. There were a few whiskey stains on it — you'd caught a whiff of that top-shelf scent a few times now — but you were already too late to even consider putting it in the wash. Instead, you left it at the end of the bar, and swapped it out for the ring of keys lying there.

It was closing time, and you prepared yourself to run three blocks in the dark. You stepped out into the night, feeling the cool breeze on your cheek as opposed to the midday heat that had been there when your shift started. You flipped the latch and turned the key in the lock until you heard it click.

Then, you held them between your knuckles so that the jagged edge poked out.

"Ya done for the night?" a voice came from the shadows, and your heart dropped.

That brief second lasted a lifetime as the blood rushed to your ears like a strong current through running water, and your grip tightened over those keys. But then, you noticed the reflection in the glass panels of the door — and relaxed.

"Jesus, you scared the shit out of me," you scolded the man, "thought you were a dejected patron tryna jump me or something."

Perhaps he was; you still didn't know any better.

Dixon was leaning against that dingy brick wall, opposite the back door of Joe's Bar. You didn't even know what that other building was — but some sketchy figures usually loomed about it, so you tried to stay clear.

Maybe he didn't get the memo, you thought.

"Tha' happen before?" the man asked back, casually.

Though, the dim street lights overhead illuminated his face, and you caught a glimpse of his serious expression before he let it drop. He held a lit cigarette between his fingers — almost smoked down to the butt already — and it made you wonder just how long he'd been waiting for you.

"Maybe once or twice," you laughed, but it didn't sound as natural as you had intended.

You noticed the man's eyes flicker down towards the keys held between your knuckles, and you quickly slipped them into your jean pocket — hoping that he wouldn't pry. Luckily, he didn't seem like the type to unnecessarily butt into other people's business.

The smoke trailed from his lips and caught the stark light of the street lamp. He almost looked cold — bathed in that bluish tint which made those cigarette fumes seem nearly luminescent.

"You here to make sure I don't run off with your paycheck?" you teased, fishing out the wad of bills from your back pocket.

You waved them at him, and considered how precarious the situation may seem to an onlooker if they happened to pass by. The man looked as though he felt the same, since he quickly glanced over his shoulder down the alleyway — checking to make sure you were alone.

"Don't worry, Dixon, I busted my ass tonight just so I could leave you a nice tip," you said with a smile, handing the money to him.

He took it, slowly, as though he had to remind himself what it was even for.

Then, he let that cigarette butt fall to the floor, and stamped it out with his boot — before dragging it along the concrete until it was nothing but embers.

The man shook his head at you. "'M here on behalf of the welcome committee."

You snorted as you processed his words, and followed him out of that narrow alleyway into the main street.

"Bullshit," you called, "as if-"

You rounded the corner after him, and stopped. He was there, leaning against that pristine sixties Honda bike — spare helmet in hand.

It was parked up on the sidewalk, polished metal glinting in all its glory under those neon lamps. Dixon was almost camouflaged against it — his black leather jacket also speckled with white light. He held out that helmet, as if it were an invitation he was waiting for you to accept.

But he seemed shy — as though acutely aware that it was only an invite, and nothing more. So, you took it, and shook your head as you realised that it wasn't his spare helmet he had offered you; it was his only helmet.

"Said I'd take ya," he murmured, fastening the strap gently under your chin.

It was too big, so the man compensated by tying it tighter until you felt like your jaw was wired shut. But, you just smiled.

"An' I ain't no liar," he said when he was done, and kicked his leg over the bike.

Then, you sped off into the night.

You yelled over the sound of the engine for him to go faster, and laughed as you had to spit out the stray hairs that had blown into your mouth. Your clothes whipped in the wind, too, and you clung to the man in front of you as though you were afraid they might catch the draft, and make you fly away. It was electrifying; your whole body felt like pure static as you rode past shop displays and windows that made your reflections look like hazed blurs.

That whole trip felt like a hazed blur, really, because suddenly you were there.

"Where are we?" you asked, unsure of where 'there' even was. "Why'd we stop?"

You pulled the helmet from your head and cocked your leg over the bike. The man let out a chuckle at the sight of your hair, sticking up from the static — as though lightning might strike at any moment.

"Smoke break," Dixon grumbled, before coaxing out the squashed cardboard packet from his jeans. "You want one?" he asked, offering it to you.

You shook your head; you didn't smoke.

He shrugged in response, cupping his hands to his face to get a flame from his lighter. You left him to it, and turned away from the bike to catch the view.

And what a view it was, indeed.

You hadn't even noticed the sounds of the lapping ocean waves before you saw them. The cliff overlooked the beach below, desolate, with a high tide that drew the shore into you. Your grandmother had told you about this place once, on the phone a few months back as she tried to sell rural Georgia to you.

It wasn't like you were given much of a choice, anyway.

But now that you'd been shipped out here — against your will, no doubt — you had to admit that she'd been partly right. It was breath-taking. Back in the city, a place like this would be littered with beer cans and tacky, disposable barbeques within a week of someone posting about it online. Here, however, it looked untouched.

It was as though the two of you were the first to ever set foot here, on this particular crag that overlooked the waves — leaving your footprints alongside tyre treads for the next pioneers to discover.

You glanced back at Dixon over your shoulder — who was busy trying to look as though he wasn't already looking at you — and smiled.

He was one hell of a welcome committee.

Daryl almost choked on the fumes of his cigarette — letting out a cough that reminded him of the way old man Dean spluttered in the mornings. He really needed to kick that habit, he thought, and snubbed out his cigarette on the ground.

Then, you scowled at him, so he picked the butt back up and stuffed it into his pocket, grimacing at the thought of having to clean it up later.

He had been lying about the smoke break, really, but then he needed to carry out his excuse. Initially, he'd only thought about picking you up from the bar and offering you a ride back to the shop. He hadn't the slightest clue of how that plan had become this.

Somewhere along the way, Daryl might have accidentally taken a wrong turn, and ended up in the most scenic place he would think of. Stupid damn street signs, he cursed, as though he hadn't driven those roads a hundred times before.

Camaro seemed to call him out on his bluff, too, since she turned to face him and immediately shook her head.

"You're lying," she said, as though she were certain, "but the view is extraordinary, so I'll forgive you just this once."

Daryl swallowed thickly, tasting the tobacco that had made his throat so dry. For someone who claimed himself not to be a liar, that was all he seemed to be doing today.

Then, he watched you make your way towards the edge of that cliff, like you couldn't even hear him warning you to be careful. It was like you weren't paying him the slightest attention. Daryl was used to that from women — but somehow, this was different.

You didn't look down on him, nor at him with any hint of prejudice for wearing jeans still coated in oil, and boots he'd had to tape the soles of just to keep them together. In fact, you weren't looking at him at all. You seemed far more concerned with the stars that flickered in the night sky above you, but at the same time grateful towards the man for having brought you to them.

"You treat all your customers like this, Dixon?" you asked him.

He watched you turn around and look at him like you'd only just remembered that he was there. But, then you beamed a smile at him so bright that it put the stars to shame — and made all of your other ones look dim in comparison.

"Y'ain't special," he grumbled, shaking his head. "Jus' given' ya a lift home 'cos Dean told me to."

Though, Dean had left the shop hours ago.

Daryl watched you laugh like you'd caught him out one more time.

"There you go again," you said, teasingly. "Do you ever tell the truth?"

No, he didn't. He always tried to, but oftentimes it never did him any good. The people of this town had already made the assumption that he was a natural born liar. You were the first person to ever make the distinction between his white lies and those other types.

All his life, Daryl had been pigeon-holed into the role of good for nothing redneck, and had only recently graduated to the slightly less stereotyped town mechanic. But that night it was as if someone, for the first time, tried to get a peek at whatever was underneath.

Old man Dean was right. You were trouble — but not for the reason he had said. You were trouble because you seemed entirely unaware of your place in the world, and it made Daryl start to question his own. You seemed nice — perhaps even lovely — but Daryl never trusted those types. He knew you were far too good to be wasting away the early hours of the morning with the likes of him — and it left him wondering what exactly you wanted.

You'd already paid for his services, after all.

"Thank you for letting me see the stars again," you breathed, stretching your neck which ached from staring at the sky. "It's been a while."

Back then, Daryl didn't quite understand what that meant. He'd thought perhaps that you'd been talking about city pollution.

On the way back, Daryl felt you cling onto him tightly as he drove through empty roads, and passed the old, flickering street lights that blinked like camera flashes. But, when his fingers accidentally brushed up against yours, as you both reached for the shop door, you pulled your hand away.

It had only been a random Tuesday — that had eventually rolled into a Wednesday by the time he'd gotten you back into your repaired Camaro — but that was the moment in his life where Daryl felt like he had finally woken up.

But even awake, he often found himself lost in daydreams of the woman who crash landed into his life, and disappeared from it just as quickly as she came.

Daryl followed the trail of debris that had fallen from the sky, as though he were tracking some giant, metal bird. He didn't want to stick around too long, given that the noise had probably attracted every damn walker in the area; he just hoped that he was still far enough away from camp that they wouldn't be drawn there.

He stepped over the hunks of hot wreckage, some of it still ablaze, until he eventually came across something soft and not made of metal.

It was that jaeger. It was dead.

It looked as though it had been struck straight out of the sky. Its feathers lay scattered around it — the white breast now red with blood — and its wing was bent at a crooked angle, broken.

Daryl scowled. If he'd known that it was going to have such a meaningless death, then he would have shot it himself. Though, he still didn't add the bird to his string of dead animals; he thought that it had suffered enough.

He continued onwards through the brush until he stumbled across what he'd been looking for. But even as he saw it with his own eyes, Daryl couldn't quite believe it. Before him was the husk of a downed helicopter, burning in the middle of the forest.

Immediately, he ran to it, tripping over the wreckage as it got thicker and harder to navigate.

Though, there was no pilot inside — only radios and machinery parts that Daryl didn't know the names of. They screeched high frequency sounds as they caught on fire, and it made his ears ring the longer he listened.

So, he turned back.

That was when he saw it — them — a few meters away. His stomach dropped. Guess that's the pilot, he thought, looking up at the body tangled in the trees.

He'd never seen a parachute in real life before — only ever in the movies. He'd also never understood how that flimsy material could stop someone from plummeting to their death.

Well, in this case it hadn't.

The pilot was dangling from one of the branches, all caught up in those wire cables like a fish on a line. The limbs were contorted awkwardly, and Daryl swallowed thickly at the sight of their arm which had definitely been broken — reminding him of that miserable jaeger's wing.

He'd been all but ready to turn around and leave. The smell of burning rubber and the white noise from those radios would probably keep him up for the next few nights, but there was nothing he could do about that.

He'd been all but ready to turn around and leave, but then the body spoke to him.

"Dixon?" he heard it gasp.

And Daryl wondered just how many impossible things he might encounter today.

The voice startled him, and he almost stumbled over his own foot in return. Walkers couldn't speak, and they surely wouldn't know his name, either. Then, he caught the slightest movement, and recognised a jacket much too familiar. It had been his, after all, before he'd given it to you.

The pilot groaned, and Daryl recognised that tone of voice, too. He quickly fumbled about for his pocket knife, not even stopping to consider how the hell he'd be able to cut you down.

He couldn't even comprehend how you were alive-

"How's it hanging?" the voice spluttered.

-and how you'd kept that same god awful sense of humour.

Let me know if you want to be added/removed from the tags!

Feedback is always welcomed; I love hearing what you all think - so feel free to comment, send in an ask, or just message me if you want to chat!

Also, here is my buy me a coffee! If you enjoy my writing, tips are always appreciated. Thank you for reading!

A/N I’ve tried so hard to post this, sorry for all the technical difficulties...

#daryl dixon #daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon x you #daryl dixon x y/n #twd #twd fanfiction #twd imagines #twd fanfic #the walking dead #the walking dead imagines #the walking dead fanfiction #twd daryl #daryl x reader #daryl x you #daryl x oc #daryl dixon x oc

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galadrieljones · 3 years

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The Walking Dead: Episode 4.12, “Still” Rewatch

So I rewatched “Still” in honor of the Stilliversary tonight. My thoughts are not related much to Team Delusional stuff, more so just thoughts and idle analysis, but I had fun and definitely did not cry.

Here we go!

Beth is already feeling it, right away, after the trunk scene, ie: what he must think of her. She’s just another “dead girl” who needs to be protected. It is both insulting and embarrassing at the same time.

Daryl misses that squirrel and breaks an arrow! Dammit, Daryl. This is just another trial, but it’s interesting in how we see Daryl in like rote provider mode, and yet he makes a mistake.

The suck-ass camp begins with some Garden of Eden imagery: While Daryl skins and cooks the snake, Beth is admiring the beauty of a ladybug crawling on a leaf. The music is actually full of wonder. Beth sees the beauty in the natural world while Daryl sees it only for what he can use. It is an essential masculine vs. feminine moment, in terms of their individual themes, and what propels them and their actions. Their masculine and feminine energies will be subverted later though, and well-complicated, because the writing is good.

Beth brings up Hershel’s death early: “He’s not exactly around anymore so...” She wants to have a drink, maybe to rebel against her father, maybe to honor his memory, maybe to seal her own fate. It is a complicated choice for Beth. It’s not just some “dumb college bitch” moment. She knows this, but how is she supposed to communicate it to Daryl?

Daryl is like an animal eating that snake while Beth tries to talk to him. Literally, out of body. I imagine being her and just like, Ugh. Gross, dude. Then, when she leaves, Beth totally expects him to come after her. When she doesn’t see him right away, she mutters, “Jerk.” She called him a jerk in season 3, too, after he takes off with Merle. I think Beth is used to being treated nicely by boys. Ofc, Daryl, while he may not be an overt gentleman in his scarfing of that disgusting snake, was there watching her the whole time.

“You wanna spend the rest of our lives staring into a fire and eating mud snakes? Screw that. We might as well do something.”

I sort of missed this before, the mention of “the rest of our lives.” It is a small acknowledgement that they are now “stuck together.” Ofc, Beth’s idea is to “make the most of it,” to go out into and DO something! Embrace the future! Daryl sees only the here, the now, and the past. He would prefer to stay still.

Unrelated but: God, Daryl is peak hot in this episode.

Anyway, so, the state of Pine Vista, and what happened there. Jfc. It’s very ugly and very sad. The Dogtrot seems a reference to a dogtrot house, which is an old Appalachian style home. Basically like two shacks connected via a breezeway. I see some sort of backcountry types having moved in here and tortured the rich folk. There is evidence that “fun” was had. “Rich bitch,” etc. Maybe it’s the same psychopaths who tormented the OG Terminus crew, ultimately turning them into crazy cannibals.

Beth finds the Washington D.C. spoon. Why?? It’s such an odd, pointed shot, with a slow zoom. Is that where we’ll find her? Does anybody else know anything about this?? Anyway maybe this is a TD post lol.

Beth finds that bottle of wine and it’s a shame she has to break it! I remember feeling so bad about that the first time I watched this episode. Like NO BETH YOUR BOOZE!! She uses it to stab the shit out of that walker though, and to defend herself. She’s kind of pissed at Daryl for not helping her, again used to only the kindest of attention from boys. But Daryl isn’t like other boys (lol). He was there the whole time, once again, but he let it play out, because he knew she could do it. I like that her first (almost) drink here sort of has to become a weapon instead. Nothing is ever easy! And sometimes, the environment IS best observed, not in terms of its beauty or promise, but in terms of how its use can best be served to survive.

Tempus Fugit - Time flies! Oh, yes. Yes it does lol.

Daryl and Beth both need to escape their old selves here. Beth with her pretty cloths and Daryl stealing the cash and the jewels. They need to shake that shit off. Burn it all down, if you will. I think this episode we mostly associate with Daryl changing and having his epiphany, but Beth changes, too. She is just quieter at it.

It is 3 o’clock! The grandfather clock is this interesting motif that puts pressure on the situation literally while also bringing the symbolic pressure of time passing, running out, etc. It makes us feel detached from reality, like this is a purgatory episode. I like when The Walking Dead does this, like when they take us to a new place in which we become critically aware that this thing we’re watching is fiction, and by the rules of fiction, anything (ANYTHING) can happen.

“I know you think this is stupid, and it probably is, but I don’t care.” She just is who she is. She doesn’t give a shit what he thinks. I think that attracts Daryl to her in this moment and emboldens him. I think Daryl actually really cares what other people think of him, that he is keenly self-aware in this way. We see this fear manifest as Merle in Chupacabra, ie: that the rest of the group thinks he’s a “freak,” a piece of “redneck trash,” and that they’re all “laughing behind [his] back.” Meanwhile, Beth is just like, “You probably think I’m just some dumb bitch. But guess what, Daryl? I DON’T CARE.”

Beth sitting at that bar trying to clean out glasses: “Who needs a glass?” She clutches the bottle longingly and then cries. I would argue she is thinking of Hershel and the line of questioning that arises in this moment. Should she do this? Is she betraying him? This moment also contradicts what she tells Daryl in 4.1. “I don’t cry anymore Daryl.” This is the moment that breaks him.

Beth keeps trying to make him feel normal, while they’re walking to the shine shack. She thinks he used to be a motorcycle mechanic. But Daryl’s normal is not hers, and he doesn’t really do small talk. In these little moments, we see him being who he is. Daryl is really good at being who he is when who he is revolves around passivity and silence.

They go from country club to moonshine shack. What we see is how a class divide might differ in longevity. A country club full of walkers, made out of humans who turned against each other, every bottle dry in the house vs. an empty shine shack, no death in sight, absolutely full of booze. When societal protections collapse around us, it is the ruthless and the bereft who will know how best to survive. It’s like Beth sad about Daryl, being “made for this world.”

They are trapped! Tropes. So many romantic tropes! Lol at people who would like to ignore that any of this happened or that Bethyl was never canon.

This:

Anyway, I think Daryl is actually pretty mean to Beth toward the end here, out on the porch, like the way he treats her, kind of tugs her around physically. He doesn’t hurt her, but he is not gentle. This puts things into harsh perspective for Beth, as I do think that, while he is not right in how he handles her here, he is right in some ways about who she is. She is not naive but she is used to protection and safety and relying on others, the same way he is used to the opposite of those things. Both of them need to learn how to exist from the other side.

Beth also sees what’s going on, however. I think she also might be used to this sort of quasi-violent, performative, drunken behavior. Her dad was a drunk. I think it’s interesting that so much of this episode hinges on alcohol in Hershel’s wake. I always thought this might be one reason Beth is drawn to and accepting of Daryl. We only really see Hershel while sober (I mean, mostly). We never saw him in his deep element of alcoholism, but Beth did. She is not innocent to vices or men spinning out of control. It’s why Beth responds to Daryl’s whole insane story about the tweaker and Merle with, “You miss him, don’t you?” She doesn’t care that Merle was a degenerate drug addict. He was Daryl’s brother who died. She has loved and lost an addict, too.

Before, Daryl was just “drifting.” In this episode, Beth gives him a quest. I think that’s very important. She also gives him something to look forward to:

“You got away from it.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“Maybe you gotta keep on reminding me of it sometimes.”

The hint at their future: “You gotta keep on reminding me,” he says, counting on them staying together. Beth is so kind to him here, too, even doting as she talks about him being the “last man standing.” I can’t imagine a girl has ever treated Daryl like this. I think she scares the living shit out of him.

Daryl suggests they go back into the shine shack, but Beth says they should burn the place down instead. Again, stillness vs. action. See their complimentary traits: Daryl is passive. He needs someone to tell him this is okay. Beth is active. She does what she wants. It is uniquely antithetical to their gender roles and subverts the power dynamic we might otherwise expect from a relationship like this: Daryl is older and a man. Ofc he should be the more aggressive, assertive one. The actor. But he’s not. It’s Beth who makes their choices in this episode. Daryl follows her and protects her along the way.

The ending is so happy. Oh my god. Anyway.

Thank you for humoring me. Happy Stilliversary!! 😭🥺❤️

#the walking dead #bethyl #daryl dixon #beth greene #daryl x beth #4.12 #still #stilliversary #❤️❤️❤️

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introvertguide · 3 years

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Pulp Fiction (1994); AFI #94

The most recent movie for review was the Quentin Tarantino crime thriller comedy (probably more things) Pulp Fiction (1994). It is a very complicated story that is told out of chronological order and focuses on scenes of meaningful character interaction. This confusion meant it lost out to movies with a more straight forward time line at the Oscars, since the move was nominated for seven awards but only took home one. The single win for best screenplay was well deserved and I still believe it is one of the most creatively written films of all time. I want to go over the plot to show what I mean, but let me do my standard due diligence:

SPOILER WARNING!!! I AM ABOUT TO GIVE THE BASIC DETAILS OF ONE OF THE MOST COMPLEX STORY LINES IN MOVIE HISTORY!!! IT WILL NOT LIKELY SPOIL MUCH OF ANYTHING, BUT I AM STICKING THIS WARNING ON JUST IN CASE SOMEBODY FINDS SOMETHING!!!

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The film begins with what is pretty much a prologue but what turns out to be about the middle of the film chronologically. A couple is at a diner and they are talking about robbing banks. They only refer to each other as Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer). They discuss the best kind of places to rob and they decide that a diner would be a good change of pace. Impulsively, they pull out guns and hold up the diner and...title card with awesome spaghetti western music!

Two hitmen are talking about Europe as they go to do a job. Vincent Vega (Jon Travolta) talks about his adventures with Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) as they pull up at an Los Angeles apartment complex. The two discuss their boss Marsellus Wallace and how touchy he is about his wife. The boss has apparently sent them to get something from a bunch of guys. Jules and Vincent call on an apartment with 3 college age men and intimidate them into giving over a briefcase with something glowing inside. The case is what they came for, so the hitmen take it and kill two of the men at the apartment...

Flash to a new scene in which Vincent is going to get some drugs from his dealer (Eric Stoltz). Vincent is a heroine user despite cocaine being the popular drug. It turns out Vincent was asked by his boss to take out his wife...the one he is very protective of. He just needs to hang out with her so she is not bored and not get into trouble. To accomplish this, he shoots up some heroine and goes to meet the wife named Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman). They seem to get along and he drives her to a restaurant called Jack Rabbit Slims. The place is fantastic, all the waiters are dressed up like American movie icons and the booths are repurposed cars from the 50s (if this place actually existed, you can be sure I would search it out and go there at least once). The two bond over dinner and then volunteer for a twist dance contest.

Mia and Vincent go back to her house and Vincent goes to the restroom to talk himself out of trying to score with Mia. She is pretty cool, but not worth dying for. While he is away, Mia finds some heroine in the pocket of Vincent’s jacket and thinks it is cocaine. She snorts it and immediately starts to overdose. Vincent panics and decides to drive her to the dealer’s house. The dealer has a nurse kit that comes with a giant needle full of adrenaline which Vincent stabs her with. She wakes up and Vincent takes her back home and is glad that he will live another day...

We jump to a flashback of a young boy who is has lost his father in Vietnam. An officer is visiting that has a gift. Apparently, there is a family watch that belonged to the boys great grandfather and had been passed down through the generations. His father had it when he was captured and gave it to the officer before the father died in the POW camp. The officer escaped and found the boy to give him the watch...

A boxer named Butch (Bruce Willis) wakes up from a dream. He is the boy all grown up. He is about to throw a fight for Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), the same boss that everyone is afraid of. Butch does not throw the fight and accidently kills the other boxer. It turns out that he bet on himself and now he needs to get out of town before Marsellus Wallace catches him. He goes to a hotel where his rather dumb girlfriend is waiting for him. They go to bed and then are about to leave the next morning when it turns out that she forgot his watch. Butch freaks out and goes back to their old apartment to get the watch (note the very long take following Bruce Willis as he takes a back way to get to the apartment). Vincent is there waiting for him, but Vincent is in the bathroom and Butch is able to get a gun and kill Vincent as he is coming out of the bathroom. Things seem good so Butch drives off...

As Butch drives home, he sees Marsellus crossing the street in front of him so Butch hits the gas and runs down the boss but also hits an oncoming car. Both men are injured but Marsellus gains his senses and chases Butch into a shop where both are captured by a weird redneck with a shotgun. Butch and Marsellus are tied up in the basement of the shop and a man named Zed shows up. The shop owner has a gimp in a box (all leathered up and everything) and other fetish things downstairs. After a quick game to pick who goes first, they take Marcellus into another room to rape him. Butch manages to escape and is running away...but he decides can’t leave somebody to be assaulted like that. He grabs a weapon from the shop and kills the shop owner and frees Marsellus from Zed. Marsellus is not happy and says he will go “medieval” on Zed and allows Butch to leave town. Butch collects his girlfriend and leaves immediately...

Flash back in time (we know this because Vincent is alive) to right after Vincent and Jules shoot the guys with the case. Another guy in the other room jumps out and unloads six rounds at the two and misses every shot. The hitman kill that man, but Jules is shaken and decides to give up the business. They take a fourth gut with them in the car to go back to see Marsellus. On the drive over, Vincent accidently shoots the passenger while going over a pothole. The inside of the car is absolutely covered in blood and brains, so the two have to find a safe house. They go to the home of Jimmie (Quentin Tarantino) who will help them but says they have to get out in a couple of hours before his wife gets home. They call Marsellus, who sends over a cleaner named Wolf (Harvey Keitel). They are able to get everything cleaned up in time and leave with the car and the body. Jules and Vincent have to change out of their bloody clothes and decide to take a cab out to a diner for some food before seeing Wallace.

The two are at a familiar looking diner discussing whether their survival was a miracle and whether Jules should quit. Vincent goes off to the bathroom and, while he is gone, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny from the beginning declare it a robbery and it is evident that we have circled in time back around to the beginning. The couple hold up the diner, but, when they get to Jules, he takes Pumpkin hostage and devises a plan for everybody to leave. Jules allows the couple to leave alive with all the wallets, then the two hitmen follow quickly behind them before any police can show up.

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I put a spoiler warning at the top, but there is so much to this film that there is no way you could spoil everything. I find new things to enjoy about this movie each time that I watch it and the watch count has to be at least two dozen times at this point. This film is so rich with allusion and homage to movies of the past that you might never see everything. Tarantino is truly a lover of old films and he worked every reference he could into this film. This is truly like candy for a cinephile.

I have, however, had a love hate relationship with this movie: I love this movie and I hate it when people tell me it is too violent. There was a lot of negative response to the films toxic masculinity, romancing crime culture, incredible amount of swearing, drug use, extreme gun violence, and very adult themes. There is a very famous interview between Quentin Tarantino and Jan Wahl in which she accuses him of using excessive violence and he tells her it is because it is a lot of fun to watch. His stylistically gory violence stems from exploitation films of the past and there is an established audience that enjoys it. He makes his movies for himself and this group of people.

Kind of like the comedy of Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin, you have to wade through a sea of swearing to find the comedic banter. The things that Jules and Vincent say to each other are some of the funniest stuff I have ever heard, but you really have to pay attention. Their attempts to express their feelings while maintaining their hard exterior persona is ridiculous. This is probably why many people enjoy the scenes with Vincent and Mia: there is a lot more courtesy which reduces the tirade of cursing.

The violence is very very over the top, but it is no where near the level of gore that Tarantino has become known for over the years. I must admit that he likes his torture scenes and this film is no exception. I would like to note how clever the torture scene with Butch and Marsellus is because they are both tied up and facing camera so only the audience can see the mischief that is being prepared behind them.

The soundtrack for the film is well worth mentioning as it also pays homage to 50s, 60s, and 70s exploitations films. There is a lot of silence in the film with sudden bursts of fast paced music that help with transitions. Most famous is the intro music after diner prologue, a surf rock classic by Dick Dale and The Del Tones called Misirlou. It is pure speed guitar riff along the lines of Wipeout and transitions the scene perfectly. Take a listen for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIU0RMV_II8

Maybe the biggest thing about this film and Tarantino in general is the inspiration of the slick gangster dialogue. There had been a push for more melodramatic dialogue or the complete absence of much talking. Tarantino added in this slick, fast moving comedic dialogue that is said over extreme violence and adult situations. Marsellus Wallace talks about having some crack heads torture a man to death immediately after being raped in a basement. The hitmen talk about appropriate manners while cleaning out brains from the back of a car. Jules talks about the meaning of the bible during a robbery. Everything seems out of place in the real world but perfectly acceptable in Tarantino’s world. This is probably why I have no problem with the violence in the film.

So should this film be on the AFI top 100? Absolutely. It is an homage to film history while simultaneously introducing a sub genre that mixes current dialogue and exploitation touches to grindhouse action. It is fascinating and fun. Would I recommend this movie? If you are old enough. I can’t emphasize enough how fun I find this film, but I cannot deny that it is filled with adult situations like drug usage followed by driving, secret dungeon rape, and cold blooded murder with no consequences. If you can differentiate between Tarantino’s world and the real world, then this is great. If you can’t, then maybe try something else with slick dialogue like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

#miserlou #pulp fiction #samuel l jackson #Quentin Tarantino #john travolta #violence #action #90s movies #academy award winner #dialogue #cinematography #introvert #introverts

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 3 years

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Being in an evangelical family is bizarre.

My sister and I went out for dinner tonight to celebrate our stimulus checks, and we got into a big argument. She told me she was applying for a job at a Christian school she wants her son to go to, and I told her I had qualms against it because it will be a conservative education. My sister is a Democrat, but she’s married to a redneck trump supporter, and they’re both hardcore Christians; she has been slipping further to the right since they got married. I fear she’s becoming a Stepford wife because she used to be so strong willed and independent, and now she just parrots whatever he husband says.

I didn’t say any of this, I just said it will be a conservative education. She looked at me confused and said that it’s not conservative if it’s true, saying that evolution and physics are bad and fake. She used to be a straight A student, she loved science, always asked questions, and now she looked me straight in the eyes and said that she wants her son to be a young earth creationist. She is staunchly anti-intellectual because it disagrees with her religion, and her husband never went to college because he thought it would poison his mind with liberals propaganda. I will bet you $100 that she votes for trump in 2024 because her husband convinces her that Democrats have been lying for years and that he’s actually a great guy and a model Christian.

My entire family thinks I’m some godless heathen because I don’t just accept “God did it” as the answer to every question I have about the universe. I’m not even an atheist! I believe in God, I like Jesus’ style, I just don’t buy into the right-wing bullshit of the modern church. The best way to describe my views on religion would be Deism; I believe God exists, but that he doesn’t interfere in our day-to-day lives. He set the ball rolling 14 billion years ago, and has been pretty hands off since. It’s more nuanced than that, but my point is that I have reasons for what I believe, but I don’t think it’s my duty to shove it down anybody else’s throat like my family members do.

My mom is a hardcore southern Baptist evangelical, and a diehard Hillary Clinton worshipper; she is pro-choice and believes in marriage equality, but thinks abortion and being gay are sins. She hates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders equally, and thinks Joe Biden should resign so Kamala Harris can be president. My sister has no political opinions whatsoever. She doesn’t care about anything, she’s totally unengaged, she just parroted my mom growing up and now she parrots her husband and his family

I feel like they’re all acting ignorant on purpose. They’re doubling down on their ignorance because they’ve decided that knowledge is evil. If they don’t already know something, then they never need to know it. It’s the Republican MO; they misunderstand stuff on purpose so they don’t have to think about refuting it. My sister thought she had the final word in our argument by saying “if we came from monkeys, why are their still monkeys? Checkmate.” When I started explaining that that’s not how it worked, and that the scientific explanation is internally consistent, she rolled her eyes and told me to stop talking because I sounded defensive. In her mind, if it takes more than one sentence to get your point across, it’s wrong and you’re just tying to save face by making stuff up. Because she doesn’t understand evolution, it must be non-understandable.

“Evolution is just a theory,” she says.

“Theories are not hypotheses,” I counter, “you don’t know what the word theory means.”

“Yeah, but it’s still just a theory,” she repeats, “you don’t know for sure.”

I believe the Bible is fallible. I believe it is just a book, written by biased humans trying to push political agendas throughout history. Why else would they keep translating and changing it? Christians are loosey goosey with translations, making the Bible say whatever they want it to say, they don’t think about historical context or metaphor. I don’t believe the universe was created in seven days, I don’t believe man was made of mud and woman from man’s rib, I don’t believe there was a global flood and an ark. I don’t believe the Old Testament is a literal history book, and for this my family thinks I’m going to hell.

I hate the south. I hate this culture. I hate how stubborn everyone down here is, how purposefully obtuse they are, how much pride they take in not knowing things. How can they be proud of being stupid? Why do they only care about what their book club tells them to care about? Why is this behavior rewarded?

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cool-ghoul · 3 years

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Darklanders: Inuit with Whale-Oil Guns

First bit takes place in the extreme northern border, closer to Alaska than Skyrim. These guys are Fantasy Canadians, with a Redneck’s verve for zero-waste DIY, derived from Inuit culture without being 1:1. They’re here because I think I’m onto something and Inuk angles add to the narrative.

Book I’m reading right now for insp is by recommendation, from an inuk perspective around the chronological time I’m drawing from for the game (Top of the World, by Hans Ruesch). It is, well, woke for the 70s. It’s explicitly post-Colonial, and don’t let the “Eskimo” fool you, Ruesch has disposed of it by the end of the front matter. I’m researching around it now, and it seems to scratch the right itch.

So, I’m still looking for primary sources and fiction, especially historical. ATLA Water Tribe’s the initial framework, but it’s materially more Dishonored. Whalers and shit.

The angle hoping to come from here is as a white girl who’s a little confused, but who has got the spirit. Stories are tools to Inuit culture, so lifting something and missing intent, or worse, ripping off an allegorical story as Aesthetique would make me complicit. This is a take that comes from a book and a half and a couple games right now, so it’s rough.

My take? Inuit are fucking Punk and this is a Punk Game.

Consider this me checking with the internet before I snip the red or blue wire. That’s a major spirit in which Inuit tell stories and have fun, so that’s how these guys are conceived, and they’re a designed to be a natural part of the thematic tapestry and one lens among several.

I’m looking for the go-ahead from a couple Inuk outreach orgs once I’ve got a clearer picture. It would be disrespectful of me to and waste an already-stressed org’s time by coming completely ignorant and asking them to do the creative work for me.

I have been told before, and I should know better, you could say.

Here’s the concept at it’s roughest:

The Darklanders [Working Name], are Inuk with a tech advantage. They derive their epithet from the Northern Darkness, a permanent supercell around Planet’s north pole. This is the water nightmares swim upstream to fuck in, and the Darklanders are the only ones who can reliably sail it.

They brought the guns.

Everything aughta be explicitly “how this tribe does it”, but there’s major pressure to conform out of necessity. Tribe’s a ship, we’re the crew, and the ideal Darklander finds the joy in work and ensures everyone picks up the slack. Generosity without reciprocation is tantamount to insult. Tribes get more flexible the more there is to go around (generally, more southern), but there’s obviously never a whole lot of slack to work with. They’re working through The Duties of Gender, but they’re historically pretty binary about it (Inuk binary, not Europe binary). It’s explicitly A Problem.

These guys are the most maritime of several communities that operate in some of the same general ecology. The biggest icebergs are big enough to support a tribe and sustainable animal traffic at the same time, and some hardy plant life can be grown via hydroponics for teas, medicine, and some dangerous fucking moonshine. Bergs float, though, so everything’s built to move on a dime if the weather or game turns. Permanent installations are regularly lost and rediscovered. Whaler, salvager, hunter and hawker are just the same job with different priorities.

Intertribe conflict exists, but it’s understood to be taken with high likelihood of mutually assured destruction. There are pirates.

Almost everyone is taught to be very good with tools, and there’s a high average cultural knowledge base. If the Darklanders don’t work with you, you fucking starve up here, and the seas are carpeted with the bones of proud sailors who didn’t take good advice. The joyless and proud Catharate (evil empire), often forgets that as they built the first railroads to the northern coast.

These aren’t a miserable or sullen people, though, but the sense of humor gets more morbid the further north you go. Their Dwarf-cognates are pranksterous and Seal-y.

Tribes don’t always fracture on species lines, but there’s plenty of Horrible Little Men and sinister crones in the snowy warrens and sea caves, but nobody gets kicked out without good reason. Teamwork is the default, and they have a system of social Face.

There’s a lot of Demiurge salvage up there, as well as wares from Zu (Implied to be flourishing Fantasy China in the middle of an Inward Perfection policy. It’s closer to here than the Europe analogue, “Elf Rome”, and it shows). That’s where the metal comes from. Dis is a metal-rich place in general.

Metal and machinery blends with scrimshaw, and hide. They work off of a Dishonored-style Whale Oil system, but there’s a continual struggle between whether it’s safer to innovate or conform at all times, and there’s a tendency to view ancient salvage as much as a perfect product as the whale, moon, or sea, with their tech being a blend of that. That’s a Big Problem.

This is a game of fighting with tools and, part of an ecosystem, and remembering fun. Inuit’s probably the way to go.

Companion concept’s a Goth Bullet Witch, and a recurring NPC as a male, disabled, masterful engineer, responsible for the party’s crunchy, Bloodborne-inspired weaponry.

#GRAVEN #It's not a wendigo and never will be a wendigo

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rrickgrrimes8 · 3 years

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Normality is Death

Chapter Seven ~ One of The Infected

masterlist

For Jacey, it felt as if the camp was at 10x speed. She couldn't tell if that was the norm for them but either way, it threw her into a state of discomfort. She watched as a small group of the adults assembled close to where the blonde woman still cried over her sister.

Her parents had pushed her away every time she attempted to go over, which she understood but it still hurt, she just got her family back and they won't even stay around her for longer than a second except for Carl of course.

Carl had yet to withdraw his hand from his older sisters, which Jacey didn't mind at all. She knew that she missed her brother while separated but not to the extent she felt right now.

Another thing she knew as well is that she'd have to leave soon. It pained her to say but she already had a home and that just wasn't with her parents, not anymore, it was with Addie and Mitchell. Now she just had to summon the strength inside her to tell her family.

Jacey could hardly breathe due to the rotting flesh of the dead, it seemed she was the only one affected by it or rather the only one who couldn't hide it. Earlier, she had heard a commotion from the Korean that saved her and Addie a day earlier about the importance of burying the dead and to not treat them like those things. She couldn't agree more with what he was saying but it still hurt her thinking about it. No, she didn't know any of the people that died or if they deserved it or not but she couldn't stop her mind from wandering to the idea that if she hadn't shown up when she did her father would have the bury her mother and brother as well. For that reason alone she wanted to stay, just to protect them but she knew she had other people to protect, people that didn't abandon her.

"What you thinking about, Jacey?" Her brother asked interrupting her guilty thought stream.

"Nothin' kiddo," she smiled down to him, hand still intertwined, "What about you?"

"About you," he admitted curtly to which Jacey furrowed her eyebrows at, "You were dead. Y-you were gone... but you weren't. We left you Jacey, why don't you hate me?"

Jacey could see the tears beginning to form in the younger boys eyes and dropped down to his level brushing away the already fallen ones, "I could never hate you, squirt. Don't ever think I could. And besides, I did say I'd always find my way back to you"

"B-but I was such a bad brother I didn't protect you, I didn't talk to you. I was just so upset about dad a-and I took it out on you. I didn't know you were gonna leave me but you promised you wouldn't," He choked out.

"I know squirt. I'm so sorry but I'm here now, okay? And I'm okay and you are too."

"Promise you won't leave me again?" Carl said, unlacing their hands so he could hold out his pinky finger for her. Jacey looked at it guiltily, trying to blink away the tears, "I can't promise that, Carl."

Carl looked back to the girl his young mind attempting to comprehend her words, she was going to leave again, she was going to leave me again.

Carl grabbed her small hands which were still bigger than his own and hooked their pinkies together, "Now you can't. You already promised a-and you can't go back on that." Jacey removed her hand and stood up.

"Jacey please."

"I'm sorry." She brushed herself off and picked up her gun placing it back into her belt and started to walk in the direction of her parents.

"Dad? Mom? Can I talk to you?" She asked in her thick southern accent. Rick looked to his daughter the wrinkles on his forehead creased telling Jacey he was stressed.

Lori, however, kept her eyes trained elsewhere and said, "Nows, not the time, Jacey. We're busy." the child muttered an 'oh' before moving back towards, stopping when a panicked voice called out, "A walker got him. A walker bit Jim." Jacey turned around eyes meeting the concerned ones of her fathers as he went over to the woman she learned to be called Jacqui. Jacqui was stood with the tall man from before, he looked paler than he did earlier and there was a small patch of blood seeping through his shirt - definitely signs of a bite Jacey thought to herself remembering when a member of her team, earlier at the beginning, had been bitten.

The group crowded around Jim as he spoke, "I'm okay. I'm okay." Daryl, the redneck that threatened to shoot Jacey the previous morning, calmly ordered, "Show it to us. Show it to us." Jacey stopped listening for a moment as she met eyes with the dark ones of Jim's. She'd seen that look before and it was certainly something to fear.

Jim picked up a nearby shovel as some of the men grew closer to him. She heard Shane say something to him before a dark-skinned man came behind him, restraining him from moving.

"I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay," He told the group unconvincingly before Daryl lifted his shirt to show the symmetrical mark of a walkers teeth, "I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay."

Sometime later, Jacey found herself watching the debate between the group on what to do with the unforeseen issue at hand. She knew what had to happen but she could tell they didn't or rather they knew but didn't want to say. She wanted to be honest with them, to put him out of his misery before it was too late but had to remind herself that this was their friend and they'd certainly not give up on him that easily even if it was the better thing to do.

"I say we put a pickaxe in his head and the dead girl's and be done with it," Daryl stated his rough exterior not letting an ounce of sympathy out. Although Jacey agreed with him she wouldn't dream of having the balls to put it that way.

Wearing a disgusted expression Shane questioned, "Is that what you'd want if it were you?"

"Yeah, and I'd thank you while you did it."

"I hate to say it… I never thought I would… but maybe Daryl's right," An older gentleman, Dale, admitted.

By that point Rick decided to join in, "Jim's not a monster, Dale, or some rabid dog."

Jacey shook her head ignoring Dales attempts at reasoning with the officer, "No, but he will be soon."

Her father looked to the girl shocked, "He's sick. A sick man. We start down that road, where do we draw the line?"

"He's infected dad, he's as good as one of them." If it was possible Ricks jaw dropped further not recognising the unsympathetic girl as his own daughter.

"The line's pretty clear. Zero tolerance for walkers, or them to be," Daryl agreed with the child, telling the police officer, who was still looking at his daughter for any sign of regret.

"Daryl's right, dad. And there will come a day you'll understand that too."

Ignoring Jacey's words, he looked to his group and said, "What if we can get him help? I heard the C.D.C. was working on a cure."

"I heard that too. Heard a lot of things before the world went to hell," Shane responded.

"What if the C.D.C. is still up and running?" Jacey looked at her dad hopefully, a small part of her still believing that that could be true.

"Man, that is a stretch right there."

"Why? If there's any government left, any structure at all, they'd protect the C.D.C. at all costs, wouldn't they? I think it's our best shot. Shelter, protection…" Rick proposed.

"Okay, Rick, you want those things, alright? I do too, okay? Now if they exist, they're at the army base. Fort Benning," Shane offered, earning the attention and response of Lori, "That's 100 miles in the opposite direction."

"That is right. But it's away from the hot zone. Now listen to me. If that place is operational, it'll be heavily armed. We'd be safe there," Shane suggested.

"If that place was operational wouldn't they have gotten us out of this shithole already?" Jacey sassed, causing both Rick and Shane to roll their eyes.

"Language," Rick warned her, "Besides the military were on the front lines of this thing. They got overrun. We've all seen that. The C.D.C. is our best choice and Jim's only chance."

"You go looking for aspirin, do what you need to do. Someone needs to have some balls to take care of this damn problem!" Daryl's accent getting thicker the angrier he got. Daryl marched over into Jim's direction, pickaxe in hand attempting to swing at Jim's head.

In response, her father draws his gun pointing at the side of the redneck's head, "We don't kill the living." Jacey walked closer to the scene, hand on the top of her gun just in case Daryl decide to risk taking his frustrations out on her father.

"That's funny coming from a man who just put a gun to my head."

"We may disagree on some things, not on this. You put it down. Go on," Shane demanded causing Daryl to drop his weapon and walk off. Shane walked over to the infected man before dragging him off the opposite way Daryl did, for 'safety'.

Rick watched as his best friend walked away with Jim before turning to Jacey anger seeping from every orifice, "What the hell were you thinking? Saying all that stuff back there."

"I was thinking about telling the truth unlike half the people in this damn group," She shot back, hating whenever her and her dad got into arguments.

"The truth?!" He yelled ignoring the stares he got from the other group members, "You think executing Jim is the right thing to do!"

"I never said we were going to execute him! All I said is that sooner or later that man will turn and when he does he won't have any problem with killing every last one of us!"

Rick brought his right hand across his face, his left hand resting on his waist the way he would when he wanted to appear threatening, "I don't even know who you are right now because this," looking over her, "is not my daughter."

Jacey scoffed, scowling at him, "I haven't been your daughter in a very long time, not since you abandoned me."

"I didn't abandon you."

"Yes, you did! You left me. You left me alone with them! I needed you and you left!" She screamed at him ignoring the tears forming in both his and her matching blue eyes, "You all left me! And I hate you! I hate you so much for it!"

"Jacey..." He started but it merely coming out as a whimper.

"No! Don't try and justify it! You don't care about me. You let me think you were dead only for me to come back here to see you okay, w-with the family you always wanted, right? God, I'm so stupid I should've never listened to Shane. You don't need me neither does mom or Carl. I should've never come here," The young girl cried before crumpling to the ground, Rick catching her instantly.

"That's not true, okay? I thought you were dead and God you don't know how hard it was coming back here seeing your mom and Carl and having them telling me you were gone," He held her tighter thinking back to nights before, "It felt like my entire world was collapsing around me because you weren't there. I don't know how you got here nor where you were or what happened but I am so glad you're here with me now. I'm so sorry I left you. I love you so much, angel."

By the time he was finished Jacey had somewhat calmed down and all Rick could hear was small cries buried deep into his chest, "Its okay angel. Everything's okay now," he calmly put ushing her off into a deep, much needed rest.

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