𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝖺𝗌𝗍 𝗈𝖿 𝗎𝗌 ✰ taehyung (7)
𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝖺𝗌𝗍 𝗈𝖿 𝗎𝗌
kim taehyung / reader
genre: zombie apocalypse au
words: 4228
It felt shit to feel thankful of someone’s screaming. Mostly, Taehyung was happy it was them and not him.
a/n: funny story, i submitted this chapter as part of my creative writing portfolio and the prestige uni i sent it off to loved it and accepted me :D hopefully thats a nice indication on whether or not this is good :S
warnings: extremely graphic content, sexual pain, graphic torture, gore, violence, death, Humans Suck
01. denver ↝ 02. holiday with me ↝ 03. sad forever ↝ 04. surely ↝ 05.scorpion ↝ 06. shakespeare ↝ 07. thrones ↝ 08. moon motel
The group leave the trailer park three days later.
Bundling everything of use into the back of the truck, which seemed darker in colour since the last time it was used, you had found you enjoyed leaving more than you did settling in. Packing everything into correct places had always been such a bore, even at a young age. You remembered when you were eight, and moving in to your grandparents’ home in the outskirts of Denver. Was this really Denver? It was a small town, barely noticeable amongst the cluster of trees and ferns, but nonetheless peaceful, ‘perfect for a new place to start fresh’. Yeah, it only took around an hour and a half to get to school every-day, but don’t worry, it’s a fucking perfect place to live, aged eight, as an orphan. It took you around eleven months to finish emptying each box.
But four years ago, throwing everything into a backpack and into the boot of a car you nicked from down the road, it had been so easy. It was so easy to throw everything out and keep what you really needed. Easy to forget to pack a jacket you had been given for Christmas off an aunt you barely knew, easy to remember to pack all the knives out of the kitchen and the forbidden gun your grandfather used to hunt deer in the winter. It was rather symbolic- pretending people were deers as you shot them between the eyes.
“That everything?”
Namjoon stood, risen off the ground, his hand on the bar of the roof of the truck. Taehyung stepped down the plastic steps from the trailer, not bothering to lock the door, knowing nothing in there was of any value. At one point, the rainbow-glassed fruit bowl might have been of value, sentimental value or something. Now, it was worthless, with a lightning bolt crack down the middle.
“Yeah, good to go,” Taehyung replied, hovering when you climbed into the back to join Kyungmin. He waited, not knowing what for, only mildly embarrassed when you turned to see him staring. “You okay?”
You nodded once with a smile. “Mm. Are you?”
“Yeah. Sorry, I-”
Somehow, he hadn’t realised you shuffle to the open back doors to pull him in for a simple kiss. It was that quick and simple that he almost missed it. His eyes opened to the sight of you in front of him, your hands holding his face, rubbing the stubble around his jaw.
“You’re holding us all up, you know.”
“You’re holding me up,” he muttered, peeling your hands off his face and pressing a kiss to your knuckles, somehow finding the strength to let go and at the same time, make his way to the front of the truck. The whole vehicle shook as you pulled the back doors closed, submerging Kyungmin and yourself in familiar darkness.
“You got a map anywhere?” Taehyung fuddled in the glove compartment as Namjoon started the truck up. He pulled out a worn map, the same one you had used to direct the both of you out of Denver. Namjoon didn’t care for the quality, muttering a hasty thanks and peeling it open, staring at the lines and faded colours. “Keep heading East, as if we’re going to Georgia. Hopefully, we’ll catch Seokjin and his crew of fans on the way there.”
“And if we don’t?” Taehyung asked. When Namjoon fell silent, Taehyung’s lips pulled into a tight frown, “I’m just asking for the future. You’re not coming to Georgia. We’re going. I wanna know what our plan is before we put ourselves in danger in the middle of nowhere.”
Very aware of the compartment slider down, Namjoon found it was difficult to pick a solution that would best suit everybody. Kyungmin wanted to stay with Taehyung and yourself, forgetting Korea entirely and heading straight for the islands off the coast. Namjoon knew you wanted to go to Georgia with everybody, hoping to stick together as a four, but if there was no other option, you’d go to find a plane. Taehyung wanted to get to Georgia with you, but wouldn’t be opposed to finding Seokjin. As for himself, Namjoon wanted to take the jeep to Virginia, leaving Taehyung and yourself on the road.
Everybody made tough calls. Those words echoed in his head. Above all else, Kyungmin was his priority.
“I wanna take the jeep,” Namjoon said slowly, aware of the frowns, “but I can help find a vehicle for you and Y/N to use to get to Georgia. When that happens...we’ll go our separate ways. Half to Virginia. Half to Georgia. Fair, and square.”
Kyungmin fell with a thud and a sigh in the back of the jeep, and Namjoon did his best to ignore it.
“Alright,” Taehyung agreed, believing there was no other way around it. As long as you and him were safe, he didn’t care how it happened. “Whatever you say goes.”
14TH MARCH, 5 YEARS AGO.
Jiyong: i’ll be round at like 7:30ish. lost my weed bag and i’m a junkie and cant leave without it
Y/N: i hope it kills you
Jiyong: watch me actually die
Jiyong: don’t cry at my funeral you fake friend
Y/N: KIDDING!!!!
Y/N: is...seunghyun coming
Jiyong: fuck off
Jiyong: hes banned from seeing you
Jiyong: i cant believe my best friend is fucking my other best friend
Y/N: i like to call it woohooing and we’re being safe
Jiyong: i cant believe this is happening
Jiyong: why seunghyun?????? why not youngbae he treats women nice
Y/N: idk!!! we just hit it off a lot
Jiyong: you’ve known him for like 5 minutes
Y/N: it’s literally been like 5 years but whatever
Y/N: can’t you just be happy for me? i’m living life getting laid being happy n shit
Jiyong: i respect it but i’m not coming to urs expecting to have fun watching goblet of fire for the millionth time only for you to give seunghyun a sweaty bj right in front of me
Y/N: that was one time Let It Go
Jiyong: one day i’m gonna fucking die and you’ll realise how badly you treated me
Y/N: stop you’re my best friend :-(
Y/N: what are you like jealous that im banging him and not you???? wanna join
Jiyong: yeah i’d literally rather fuck the girl from the ring
Y/N: kinky
[03:45am]
Jiyong: woah did you hear about the north korea shit
Y/N: im literally being pounded into Cant this wait
Jiyong: we’re gonna die because kim jongun wants to nuke us and all you care about is seunghyun’s 3 inches
Y/N: it’s just fake news dont worry about it
Y/N: how many times has he threatened nuclear war
Y/N: he should hurry up and do it before exams
Jiyong: just wanted to check up on you because ur nan is fucking mental and she’ll probably collapse tomorrow morning and panic buy loaves of bread
Y/N: stop omg
Jiyong: anyways stay safe love U please bring me my weed tomorrow morning me and Jennie are gonna get high and try anal
Y/N: sweet thanks
SOMETIME LATER.
Leaving the world behind through the back windows of the jeep, you were oddly reminded of the time you left everybody behind during a Summer many years ago. It had been a spur of the moment decision, something you never expected to do, but found yourself doing anyway.
It felt like a lifetime ago; you had almost forgotten about it, until now, until seeing a sign graffitied with a smiley face, reminding you of the “GRIME SIGN” back in your hometown, renowned for being the most graffitied sign in the city. Whether or not that's true, you never really found out. Seunghyun and Jiyong had come along too, for the moral support of being alone on the road. With Jiyong in shotgun and Seunghyun in the backseat, it had felt like something slap-bang out of a teenage coming-of-age movie, titled “3 delinquents on the road to God knows where”, directed by Quentin Tarantino. You didn’t even know how to drive. It was pure bliss.
“Any luck with the radio?”
Kyungmin rattling the small radio that had been picked up from the trailer park startled you, the memory of driving nowhere and everywhere at the same time suddenly gone like the wind. As your vision readjusted to the dark, you noticed that Kyungmin was pressing all the buttons and turning all the dials, a frown on her lips jutted outwards.
“Not yet,” she replied. “Just give me a few more minutes, I can probably get this thing working.”
Namjoon let out a soft curse, swerving the truck slightly to move around a left behind Volvo, the cars open like wings with a dried trail of dragged blood leading into the thick forest. Things like that were common accessories, famed like tourist attractions. Namjoon now thought of what the world was really like- could Paris be any worse than America? What was Iceland like these days?
“Nearly there, now,” Namjoon said vaguely, and Taehyung debated whether or not to reply, if there was even anything to reply with at all. That’s how things went now, short replies or simply none at all. When the world died, so did words. Namjoon thought that was funny, how the collapse of society could mean the collapse of communication and language.
“We’ll need to stop for gas,” Taehyung said, his voice barely above a third volume. From the back of the van, you sat with your face looking out towards the left behind road, your eyelids growing heavy at the sound of Kyungmin pressing buttons, and the hum of the van beneath your thighs. “We’re running on fumes.”
Namjoon grumbled a reply, mentioning something about a gas station a couple miles ahead, near the clearing in the woods, just off the road. It didn’t take long to approach, only around ten minutes if Taehyung were to count. At least three songs had played since then. Taehyung couldn’t believe he was now counting using songs.
The station was large, decaying and it looked unsafe. Taehyung didn’t exactly care about the safety of the building itself, just caring about how safe it would be in the long-run. Safe enough to hide inside? Safe enough to step inside? Safety in architectural design didn’t matter anymore. If it looked rusted, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
Namjoon pulled the truck into the station, immediately noticing a few canisters of fuel that was left for the purpose of using, a sign reading “STAY SAFE” stood up, stuck with black masking tape. The letters were dripping onto the concrete, a small pool of chalky white near the drain where a plant was starting to sprout.
“Are you feeling okay?”
Kyungmin’s voice made you look over from the canisters, a wrinkle between your brows. She smiled, generously, and waited for your reply. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She was talking about the Great Escape the other day. You already knew that.
“Just curious,” she replied, the smile never wavering. “There’s not many people left in the world, you know. Next to Namjoon, you and Taehyung are all I have.”
A silence fell on the two of you, and all you could hear was the sound of Taehyung dragging a barrel across the gas station, dipping his head underneath a broken window and scanning the interior of the gas station.
“I’m here for you,” Kyungmin continued, her voice significantly quieter. “You know that, right?”
“Of course I do,” you replied, and your hand came up to stroke her forearm, a smile on your lips. For a moment, it didn’t feel like the apocalypse. In that moment, it felt like two best friends, reunited after a Summer break, the pine trees isolating them from the world, a Studio Ghibli film, released 2019.
And yet Kyungmin moved away, her gaze lowered as she passed across the gas station to meet Namjoon, already lifting canisters of gas towards the car to refill. Taehyung had emerged once again, his bag refilled with cans and cigarette packets, surprisingly a bottle of liquor in his hands as he stepped back into the bitter wind. Inhaling a breath, Taehyung crossed the width of the station and opened the passenger door to the vehicle, setting down his bag and the bottle, as if they were small children.
“There’s no way we’re making it to Georgia on time.”
Taehyung paused, throwing you a look over his shoulder. “What?”
“Let’s think realistically,” you reasoned, tugging at the cloth over his elbow. Above all, you didn’t want Kyungmin to be upset if she overheard. “It’s been...how long? Since we left the warehouse? I haven’t exactly been keeping up with the dates, but it’s been too long, Tae. Normally, it takes less than 24 hours to get from where we are- wherever we are- to Georgia. And yet, we’re still not near. I’m just-” you sighed, raking your hands through your hair. In the dim light, the grease was visible. “I think we’re out of time.”
“Y/N, they’ll be there,” Taehyung said. He didn’t know what else to say, frowning, “I thought you wanted to remain optimistic?”
“I do, but I can’t afford to hope to get to Georgia and find them there. And what?” you continued. Your voice had raised slightly, not enough to make Kyungmin or Namjoon ask questions, but enough to make Taehyung’s nose cringe at the increase. “We get there, and find them. Is anything gonna be the same? What if we get there and they’re gone and there’s no boats? What if we get there and something happens to any one of us? Tae, I can’t have that on me. I can’t have that on my conscience. Not again.”
Not again. “Yena wasn’t your fault, Y/N, you have to know that-”
“I don’t fancy being out on the road all night.” Namjoon stepped into view from around the front of the van, his hands shoved into the pockets of his distressed jeans. “Thinking we keep driving, turn in when it gets dark to the first place we see.”
“Isn’t that a little risky?” Taehyung asked, mentally making a note to continue your conversation later. “I mean, we have to really check the place before we head in.”
Namjoon frowned. “I know that. But, Kyungmin’s feeling kinda travel sick, and I don’t wanna overdo it, you know? Nights like back at the trailer park...I want more of them.”
Already moving to the back of the van, you pulled open the double doors and slipped inside, keeping them open in time for Kyungmin to crawl in after you. Her skin was a shade of ivory, whiter than earlier, as if the sickness had come suddenly like a simulation glitch. Wasn’t that what you were now? A glitch? An error in coding.
Namjoon shut the drivers door, groaning at the loud sound.
“Hey, man, you okay to drive?” Taehyung asked quietly, looking over from shotgun. “Look, if you’re tired, we can switch the orders around.”
Namjoon looked over weakly- “You’re sure?”
Taehyung unbuckled his seatbelt, dumping his jacket in the footwell with a sniff of stuffy air. “I’d prefer if you slept if you’re tired. ‘Specially when they’re in the back. Don’t wanna hurt them.”
He made a sort of grunt as a reply, switching seats with the younger. When he was sat in the passenger seat instead of the drivers, he let his head lull back onto the windowpane, feeling the chilly glass cool the back of his head. It was as if resting his head had added extra weight to his eyes.
“‘m gonna drive straight-ish,” Taehyung said with his tongue between his lips, backing up the van slowly and carefully. Namjoon opened his eyes slightly, squinting.
“Can you drive?”
Taehyung changed gears. “Yes.”
If Namjoon noticed that Taehyung paused, he didn’t mention it. In-fact, he closed his eyes again with a shrug, a half wriggle, resting his forehead against the glass, pushing towards the cool touch.
Taehyung had been driving for hours, for sure.
The time in the van was unlikely to be reliable, reading 5:19pm when the sky was as black as squid ink, the dim street-lights that somehow worked- probably solar - beckoning the group forward. In honesty, Taehyung had no idea how long it had been since the gas station, just long enough to give him a crick in his neck, the back of his thighs numbed. All things considering, Taehyung thought he was getting better at driving.
He flinched slightly as the divider to the back came sliding down, and your face popped out slightly, peering out the front window with sleepy eyes. If he had a free hand, Taehyung would have wiped the sleep from the corner of your eye, and he turned back to the road, oddly afraid of crashing the car with all four of you inside. Like yourself, he didn’t want that on his conscience. Like yourself, he couldn’t have it on his conscience, not again.
“Are we stopping soon?” you asked quietly. Namjoon shifted, making it known he wasn’t sleeping. He groaned, grinding the heel of his palm into his eyes, unbothered when dust and dirt smudged on his skin when he pulled away. He could look worse, he thinks.
“Nearly,” Taehyung replied. “I don’t know where to go from here. Last road was blocked, so, I’m trying to get out of here.”
Namjoon shifted, cracking his shoulder loudly. “You tried any back-streets?”
Instantly, Taehyung thought of the woman earlier in his trip. The way she screamed at the car, scratching at the rusty paint job, her eyes bloodshot and her skin a lime colour. He gulped the hot lump in his throat, “I’d rather avoid them.”
“It’s safer,” Namjoon continued. “Out of the way-”
Somewhere outside of the van, there was a loud crash, similar to the way you sound when you drop something at midnight when your parents are sleeping. The volume was loud, louder than anticipated, and Taehyung unintentionally stalled the van. Kyungmin jeered forward, hitting the underneath of her chin on the seats opposite, sending out a string of foreign curses to Taehyung in the driver's seat. He avoided the stare of Namjoon, deciding he didn’t want to see the deathly glare.
“What the hell was that?” you asked, cradling a throbbing pain on the side of your face after catching it on the separation between front and back. “Is someone here?”
Namjoon stayed silent for a moment, staring darkly into the outside. Taehyung didn’t know what to do except wait, ready to jump into action when Namjoon made a noise of surprise- or was it shock?- and slapped Taehyung’s hand with great panic, “Fucking pull up somewhere. Turn off those fucking lights. Fuck, fuck, fuck-”
“Jesus,” Taehyung cursed, doing exactly that as you leaned back to switch off the lights, submerging Kyungmin into darkness as the blood pooled in her mouth from earlier. She groaned something between her lips, holding her chin with her left hand as she picked herself up to lean over into the front, staring out at what Namjoon was watching across the small street. With the van now in darkness, away from the streetlight, you were invisible.
It wasn’t hard, locating the source of Namjoon’s panic.
Across the street, a flood of artificial white engulfed the street, barely missing the pull-in that Taehyung had moved into moments earlier. Namjoon slouched out of instinct, keeping his eyes on the road as he noticed three people dashing out into the darkness, the explosive lights following them as if they were automatic. They probably were, turning on as they stepped further and further away from the door they ran from. As they hurried past the hidden van, another noise pulled away your attention.
A large garage door screamed as it opened, in desperate need of oil, chains clattering against the metal interior. The light suddenly changed to an eerie green, something you saw in documentaries about weed farms. As it slid further up into the building, Namjoon hitched a breath as the sight of three sets of human legs came into view, dressed in stunning ebony, large guns by their hips. One of them smoked a cigarette, the smoke rising up like old Native smoke-signals. The middle guy pulled up his mask, covering his nose and lower face, and loaded the large Heckler Koch HK MG4 MG 43, aiming it swiftly at the little piggies running away from the slaughterhouse.
Taehyung knew that gun- the Heckler Koch never missed a target. He barely flinched when the gunman hit the kneepits of the runners, sending them to the ground instantly, their bodies buckling under the loss of legs. The screams were loud. Mama has the bacon, now.
The other two gunmen laughed loudly, approaching the pigs and picking them up to drag them back into the garage, a trail of blood marking the concrete like paint. He said something, the main gunner, and the two spares were taken away, possibly to die, maybe to a waiting room where they would await their death, as casually as they would waiting for a doctor’s appointment. The last runner, a man who looked to be in his mid-thirties, with already greying hair at the top, was pulled to the side of the room where three more men emerged, a woman amongst the pack with her hair sprawled out to her elbows, in mermaid curls. She was gorgeous, nobody could argue against that, with her body in a glamorous dress, something too glamorous for the apocalypse. On her feet, heels that presented her perfectly painted toes, a peachy shade.
“What’s happening?” Kyungmin asked. It was rhetoric. Everybody knew the answer.
The woman dressed in glam approached the slumped body of the runner, crouching to cup his face and stroke a thumb across the bags under his eyes, bleeding out with veins a bright red, the red of a freshly picked apple, the red line under a spelling error. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, putting her thumb over his lips and kissing her nail, before retreating and nodding curtly at the men around her. It was a signal, for they picked up the runner and began to tear off his clothes, leaving him stark naked, covered in purple bruises, tiny flowers on his skin.
Taehyung had seen things like this before- he was no stranger to the way the men beat the man with clubs and their boots, laughing at the way he retreated into his own skin, recoiling at every kick and screaming with every sickening club, until he accepted the fact that his body was their plaything. He watched, in morbid wonder, as they dragged him by his swollen balls to the center of the room, where a sharpened hook hanging from a chain off the ceiling swung threateningly, a bone being wagged in the face of a dog. The man whimpered, his eyes hurting, only barely making out his destination before his body shook violently.
The man picked him up as if he was a sack of sugar, with one hand around his neck, promptly planting him on the hook as if it were a throne. Now Taehyung had to close his eyes.
It was curling upwards, sharply, scraping every wall and nerve and good spot that ached. Yet, the men watched with wonder and satisfaction, clapping when he thrashed like a fish out of water. His legs were immobile, moving inches and with every movement came a grunt of pain, flashed with panic and agony from his rather pointy throne, and then the passing pain of his arm being cracked upwards.
The crack was loud.
From behind him, Taehyung heard Kyungmin make a small wheeze, hurrying into the back of the van, where Taehyung watched you pick her head up off the seats, your thumbs in a pool of vomit around her mouth. You didn’t even care about the sick on her knees, or the smell in your nose. Namjoon looked through the slot, dragging the divider up before the sound of retching made him sick, too.
You stopped listening to the retching, quietly shushing each whimper as Taehyung slowly started the van back up, grateful that he was covered by the sound of someone screaming in fucking agony. It felt so wrong, to be thankful of a tortured man. Cock and all, Taehyung was thankful he was screaming. The tyres of the van slowly rolled along the road, in the shadows, at a sluggish pace. Namjoon wiped away a line of sweat on his forehead, unable to look away from the man, thrashing like a pig, hanging like a sack of meat in a slaughterhouse, blood pooling now at the corner of his mouth, his eyes, his nose, dried blood at his ears.
It felt shit to feel thankful of someone’s screaming. Mostly, Taehyung was happy it was them and not him.
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Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (2018)
[This was originally published on VerticalSliceMedia.com in 2018 and is republished from the latest draft I have]
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a game at odds with itself but also very willing to face uncomfortable truths. Tool tips and mechanics can be rendered useless on difficulty levels beyond, and in some cases even on, the normal difficulty. BJ is presented as an unstoppable Nazi killing machine, but can be cut down in seconds when not in cover. A strong narrative and a presentation of a United States in control by the Nazi regime has enough to say about white complicity under fascism to be worthwhile, and is wonderfully timed.
Beginning Wolfenstein II you are confronted with a difficulty slider that ranges from descriptors of “Can I Play Daddy?” to “I am death incarnate!” This naming is present due to the legacy of Wolfenstein 3D. However, Wolfenstein II is a game that wants you to feel empowered, especially in the latter portion of the campaign, and has tooltips clueing you in on dual wielding and melee executions. Unfortunately, these sorts of mechanics are counterintuitive on the higher difficulties, and even on the default “Bring ‘em on!” health and armor deplete quickly. The lack of a hit indicator when taking damage doesn’t help. The New Colossus wants you to hack up Nazis, yet leaves you open to taking fire when doing so. It wants you to dual wield shotguns as you sprint through soldiers, but will leave you dead within seconds when you depart the safety of cover.
Comparatively, DOOM (2016), the natural companion to Wolfenstein, does not have this problem. DOOM on the easiest and on the hardest difficulty plays the same. Wolfenstein II on the easiest level is the best way to play the game, but it’s condescending at the outset. Wolfenstein II on the hardest will lead you to much slower confrontations and relies heavily on weak stealth. With no mini-map and no ability to see enemy vision measurements, stealth sections frequently devolve into an enemy commander sounding an alarm that will rotate in more enemies to reset your progress. A courtroom scenario midway through the game strips you of your weapons and starts you in the middle of a large arena surrounded by enemies. You begin with a submachine gun and have to slowly reaccumulate your small armory. Trophy data suggests otherwise, but I believe this section to be impossible on the highest difficulty. Surrounded by enemies with breakable cover your only protection, you will die often from cheap angles or just overwhelmed by numbers. This sort of scenario is not a challenge, its punishment.
Even on the easiest level, the gunplay is still the weakest aspect of The New Colossus. The weapons themselves are adequate, with the optional upgrades and satisfying audio feedback. Melee executions are a joy to watch, but it's a shame that there are no perks to give you bonus health or armor for each takedown. A jump and smash mechanic is used once in the introduction and very rarely appears as an option later on. A nuked New York City as at first arresting in its large scale tragedy, but eventually devolves into a muddled mass of grey husks with progression obscured by the confusing layout. New Orleans rotates between interior and exterior spaces, but besides a confrontation and ride-along with a Panzerhound, has nothing unique to offer. Not one level sticks out as memorable, and even Venus lacks a unique scenario or great setting for the shootouts. Instead, when outside the Venus base you need to fuel up on coolant consistently, which just layers on another meter besides health and armor that you must babysit.
The New Colossus’ narrative is its saving factor, as scenarios presented both in and out of cutscenes are wonderful to watch unfold, and character interactions can be very entertaining.
The relationship between children and their parents is a major theme of The New Colossus, evidenced by the introductions focus on BJ’s abusive father, Rip. Throughout the game, characters have to come to terms with either their own upbringing or the newfound responsibility of introducing life into this bleak world. BJ has his abusive father and impending parenthood to twins with Anya, Grace and Super Spesh already have a child, Max Hauss is cared for by the entirety of the Kreisau Circle, and Sigrun is belittled by her mother. BJ and Sigrun are the most interesting of these, as they must decide whether or not they will become mirror images of their respective parent.
BJ is informed early on that Anya is having twins, and he frequently contemplates his death in tandem with regret at not being able to be a father for his children. BJ’s own father did not leave behind a great example to follow. A racist, sexist, anti-semitic, economically anxious white man who is almost a cartoon epitome of everything that was and is wrong with part of the American population. As a child, BJ is berated for not being enough of a man to take care of himself, but Rip blames others for his own deficiencies. Instead of reflecting inward at his own failings, he explodes outwards at whatever is available. This conflict results in abuse towards his wife and pushes him to kill the family dog in a fit of rage. Rip is a good example of how not to be a parent.
Rip doesn’t just represent the worst offerings of what a father can be, but also the worst aspect of the american population. Willing to sell out his family for meager rewards such as property ownership, it was men like him that paved the way for Nazi occupation to sweep through the United States as quickly as it did. People like him gave in to their debase hatred of the Other and went above and beyond betraying their fellow citizens in order to have an easy life. We already allow people of color to be unjustifiably killed at the hands of police, would it be so hard to believe we would go further under threat of violence to willingly give them into the hands of death?
A positive influence on BJ was a young black girl named Billie, who exposes BJ to the discrimination experienced by those whom his father hates. She upends the expectations he has inherited from his father, teaches compassion, and they even share a child crush. She teaches him empathy, something his father never bothered to even attempt. BJ is forced to relive and reflect on these memories when he revisits the family farm. Upon confronting his aged father, BJ kills him upon learning that his mother was sold out by her own husband. By doing so he rejects the teachings of his father about white supremacy and all that it entails.
Mentioned throughout the main narrative and spread throughout collectibles in each level are details that tell the tale of how America fell to the Nazis, and how it was mostly with a resigned sigh. An ex-military student murders scientists working on the “Manhattan Project” resulting in Nazi Germany obtaining the nuclear bomb first and using it on New York City. This attack is framed as a necessity to end a brutal war, much like the United State’s position on the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima which resulted in extraordinary civilian death. History is written by the victor, and since we were not the subject of an atomic bombing in this timeline we are free to justify it. After this forced surrender, America reverted back into what it was a hundred years earlier: devoid of rights for any who weren’t straight or white.
A most damning example of this new America is shown during a brief segment taking place in Roswell, Arizona The townsfolk celebrate “Victory Day” as Nazis parade through the streets. A soldier critiques/mocks Klu Klux Klansmen on their failed attempts at German, a different soldier rebukes a white woman who tries to earn favor by talking shit about Austrians (not knowing Hitler himself was Austrian), and a citizen reminds her family of an upcoming slave auction. Propaganda newspapers talk about replacing the fake news of yesterday and the efficiency of the new regime compared to the “clique of corrupt elites who were never interested in [your] welfare.” Two Nazi soldiers discuss attacks against their rule and how violence is not okay before pondering if they’ll be assigned to the same death squad in New Orleans. A newspaper clipping I am convinced was placed late in development explains our current political situation:
“...then the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre - the man who can most adeptly disperse the bottom that his mind is a virtual vacuum… On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
America in Wolfenstein II is complicit to the racism of the Nazis due to their beliefs being intertwined with our history. Not content to exist only behind us, this inherent discrimination continues to be active given the rise of the so-called “far-right” and blatant racism in figures like our current president. The white man, a majority of the population, has nothing to fear from a Nazi overhead when compared to the black, the queer, the Other, who already had restricted rights underneath a “free” America.
As for those born underneath Nazi rule, we are given Sigrun Engel, daughter of Irene Engel our central antagonist. Having turned on her mother due to Irene’s consistent verbal abuse towards Sigrun’s weight and diary entries, the Kreisau Circle welcomes her but doesn’t accept her. Members frequently call her a Nazi despite her protests. This boils over during BJ’s birthday party in which she confronts Grace over her Nazi labelling and overcomes her emotional connection to Bombate. She represents the hope that even those born under Nazi rule can break free and work against it. We even avoid predictable plot beats as Sigrun is not secretly feeding her mother information or betrays the Circle near the end.
Ultimately, you take revenge on Engel after she has killed Caroline during the introduction, steals a family ring meant for Anya, and mocks you after murdering Super Spesh. After taking over her Ausmerzer fortress in a frustrating shootout, the Circle confronts Engel at a talk show where you hack off her arm before delivering the fatal blow to her head. No matter the timeline, members of the Circle deliver what is meant to be a rousing speech to those watching the television broadcast, but any emotion is swiftly eliminated by the end credits song: a horrible cover of We’re Not Going to Take It.
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