#*car with this lady. like yeah there are deer she lives in a rural area but TWO IN ONE MONTH!! not good we don't trust Debbie anymore

[six-of-ravens]

hmmmmmm guess who maybe accidentally volunteered to do a 14 hour road trip by herself?

[dragonmuse]

Somehow in my head I had Eddy and Izzy out in rural nowhere rather than suburbia in YAILY… and now that I got set straight, the idea of them in suburbia is cracking me up.

Could we have them dealing with an HOA?

(HOKAY SO! I think they actually live in the kind of area I do, where it borders between suburbia and rural. I live in a fairly crowded neighborhood, but if you drive a few miles more north, you get these really gorgeous properties where a single, not even particularly large house, will sit on a lot of land. I picture their house as older, like maybe late 19th century kind of farmhouse. Flint and Thomas' house is a little more recent, probably both were originally the same farm before it got sold and split up.

HOAs aren't really a thing where I am unless you live in a gated community or a condo complex as hysterical as that would be to see happen.

But! I bet they do deal with neighbors, who don't have the same appreciation for Eddy's garden which isn't tidy and has bits that run really wild. )

Izzy answered the door after the second series of rapid knocks to a tiny blue-haired lady,

"Yes?"

"My name is Miss Tandy, Mr. Teach and I live-"

"Hands," he corrected. "Mx. Teach is out, if you're looking for her."

"I-no," she huffed. "It's the name on your mailbox."

"Yeah," Izzy stared at her. He'd painted it himself. "I know."

"Well. I just wanted to let you know that it's very careless to leave those tall grasses to run wild. It encourages deer ticks and other sorts of animals to take shelter. I've had a groundhog problem here for you years-"

"I don't do the garden," he bit off. "You want to take it up with them, you can. Good luck to you."

"You live here don't you?" She frowned. "I see your car."

"Yeah."

"And you're her...."

"Partner," Izzy supplied. This is early days still, so there's a word now, but not the one they'll be eventually.

"I see," Miss Tandy said like someone who didn't see at all. "Can't you speak with her about it?"

"I can," Izzy agreed. "But I won't."

"Why not?" She glared at him.

"You live what? Half a mile down the road? What do you care what happens this far down? You just wanted a chance to come over here. I've seen you lurking around."

"I do not lurk! I go for walks!"

"Aces for you lady, get the hell off my stoop," Izzy took a step back and slammed the door in her face.

"I know someone on the town board!" She yelled through the door.

Izzy rolled his eyes and went back to laying tile in the kitchen.

Four days later, Eddy stomped in from outside,

"I just met your new friend."

"Oh yeah?" Izzy tightened a screw, then took a step back to check the hang of the cabinet door.

"She's a fucking piece of work, huh?"

"Yep."

"I'm not cutting back the grass. Why grow it if you're not going to let it do it's thing?"

"Dunno."

"Are you even listening to me?"

"Uh huh." Izzy stepped forward and tightened the screw again. "She's just a bitter old lady, wouldn't worry about it."

"Yeah, you're probably right."

The ticket from the village arrived just a few days after that.

"$330 for property neglect?" Eddy's voice dropped into a low growl. "I'm going to destroy her."

Izzy sighed, "Yeah? How? Cause if you like it here, I don't think the old ways are gonna cut it."

"I'm going to the court, obviously," she hissed. "I'm getting a lawyer."

"We have $330," he pointed out, not because he thought it matter just because someone had to say it.

"My garden is not neglect."

"Yeah, I know," he said as softly as he knew how. If anything, it was probably the most attention Eddy had ever paid to something outside of their work. Sure it was haphazard and half-wild, but it was also beautiful and the fruits of many hours of her labor.

"Okay then."

Izzy made a few phone calls after that. Got a copy of the local rules they were apparently breaking and made a few notes. Normally he hated court, hated anything that smacked of the judicial system, but when they turned up at the village town hall, it was hard to work up much of a lather. The court was a single shabby room with folding chairs. The judge looked sleepy as he heard cases fairly similar to theirs. Work done without a permit, downed trees, and parking violations. It was about as far from a criminal court as you could get and still be related.

"I see you've had a run in with Miss Tandy," the judge said with a slight smile as Eddy and Izzy stood before him. "The village inspector did find some overgrowth."

"None of it was invasive species or poison ivy," Eddy kept their body language loose and the matched the judge's faint amusement. She was excellent at mirroring. Izzy just glowered beside her. "If the inspector had asked, I would've told him it was all local wild grasses."

"I see. Do you have photos of the area? I see they neglected to include them in the report."

Eddy handed them over, glossy shots that Izzy had taken for just such a moment.

"It's entirely on our property," Eddy informed him. "Which we're allowed to cultivate as much as we'd like as far as I'm aware."

"You are," the judge agreed, looking through the photos. "These look particularly healthy. One gardener to another, you do need to trim them back at the end of the season, they'll grow back better next year if you do."

"Oh," Eddy considered that. "All right, I'll keep that in mind."

"I can see where the confusion might've come in, but you've got village rules to rights. There's nothing here that we would count as neglect, considering the rest of the lawn is trimmed. So I'm dismissing the ticket. However, another word of advice?"

"Yes?" Eddy waited, eyes wary.

"Make friends with her, huh? She's lonely."

Eddy frowned, "I'll take that under advisement."

Izzy highly doubted that.

Miss Tandy didn't try the courts again, but she did go on her nosy little walks almost every day. Eddy settled into ignoring her and Izzy would watch from the window sometimes. It was irritating to have that bit of grit in the boot after they'd spent so much time trying to clear all that out.

So one night, when all was very quiet and the moon shrouded in clouds, Izzy slipped outside. He did his work in silence. And he was good at it.

A few days later, Miss Tandy went for her walk, but came up their driveway instead of turning right around at the dead end. Eddy's rose out of the flower bed with care.

"Here," Miss Tandy held out a pie tin. "Picked too many blueberries this year, can hardly keep up with the things."

"Uh, thank you?" Eddy took it warily.

"And thank your...partner. For me." She said stiffly, then turned on her heels and marched away.

Eddy turned to the kitchen window, a question on her face. Izzy shrugged and went back to the dishes. Of course she came inside and set the pie plate down.

"What did you do?" she demanded.

"I took care of the groundhogs," he admitted. "Tranqued and relocated them to a field too far away from them to come home again. Left her note saying I got a friend in pest control who did it."

"Iz," Eddy laughed. "You didn't."

"I did," he had to laugh with her. "She's just an old lady, you know?"

"Yeah," Eddy uncovered the pie. "You definitely shouldn't eat this."

"Yeah, no shit. Enjoy though."

Food from a stranger who had recently taken them to court would never have crossed their lips just a year or so ago. But things had changed and she really was just a little old lady. Izzy had checked. So Eddy ate the pie. After that, Miss Tandy would sometimes stop in the drive and they'd make small talk about the garden. At the end of the summer, Eddy even gave her a basket of squash.

Years later, Thomas would ask through the trees,

"How'd you get her to stop glaring?"

"Eh," Izzy said casually, "she's just lonely. Eddy can charm the wings off a fly. It worked out."

"Huh," Thomas watched Eddy and Miss Tandy chat. "She tried to sue us for paving our driveway."

"She needs help with the snow in the winter," Izzy offered. "Just shovel her out once, you'll be golden. Spare me from doing it every time."

"I can do that. Or Flint can," Thomas grinned. "Thanks."

"Sure."

[ziracona]

What happens in Far Cry 5? I literally only know about it through your posts

Uhhh, okay so this is gonna be a little long but here goes. So, Far Cry games are always you (some PC, changes per game) vs some dictator/cult leader/mass gang leader type sitch. Apparently 4 also ends with an unhappy ending no matter what, but no other game ends remotely like 5 does, and 5 also is the only one to take place in the US or vs Americans.

So, Far Cry 5 takes place in Montana. Basically, there’s a doomstay offshoot-‘Christian’ extremist cult calling themselves Project at Eden’s Gate, following a white dude named Joseph Seed and his siblings (biological brothers Jacob and John, and adopted [kind of – more like recruited to fill a cult role] sister Faith). You play as a rookie deputy from rural Montana, going on this assignment with Deputies Pratt and Hudson, Sherriff Whitehorse, and US Marshal Burke. You begin the game headed to the cult’s center to arrest their leader, Joseph, because a guy in the cult livestreamed a little of a service secretly to try and expose them, was caught, and had his eyes ripped out by Joseph and then was killed on the stream, so you’re there to arrest him. Mostly law enforcement are afraid to go in because it’s several thousand radical insane Americans with SMGS in a cult in the middle of fuckall nowhere Montana, so yeah. Anyway. You show up and arrest Joseph, but a bunch of his followers (PEGies for project at eden’s gate) swarm the helicopter and you crash and the correspondent at the sheriff’s office is working with the cult, so all of you get grabbed initially, except the PC, who gets grabbed not by the cult but by a stranger. You wake up tied to a bedpost and confronted by the stranger who debates a second then decides to let you go and try to fight the cult instead of turning you in, and introduces himself as Dutch. He gives you a breakdown of what stuff is like here, which is, uhhhh, bad. Basically, the people here are trapped because they’ll get kidnapped trying to leave, but the cult comes for everyone eventually. John physically abuses/tortures people into accepting the whole cult “power of Yes” thing and confessing their ‘sins,’ which he then tattoos on their body, then cuts the slab of skin off their chest to staple to his wall, which is part of their initiation into the cult, as is the torture, forced baptism, and implied sexual assault by him as well. Joseph has given your coworkers to a sibling each, respectively, sans the Sheriff, who was sent to one but escaped like you did. John has Hudson, the only female deputy (unless the PC is playing as woman as well). Faith has the Marshall and was supposed to get the Sheriff, and Jacob has Pratt. You want to save your friends and Dutch wants to help, but also asks you to help the people in the community, so you do.

Basically, the cult has many ways of converting people, but also kill a fuck ton of civilians. There’s a lot of times you’ll be driving down a road and see a civilian tied up with their hands behind their back on their knees and two cultists about to execute them (usually someone who tried to flee whose car they ran off the road), and you have a very failable but potential chance to save them. A lot of these people can become your NPC companions as well and help you fight the cult if you do. I’ve gotten very good at sniping, because if a cultist sees you coming, they’ll execute any prisoners so you have no chance to save them. Definitely saved hundreds of people at this point, but it wasn’t easy. Anyway. Also you’ll see vans of prisoners being carted off (usually one or two from a house at a time), and you can shoot the driver and save them if you’re careful. But a lot of the time you show up to try to help people to find them already murdered, or hung up like a scarecrow in a field with flowers stuffed into their emptied stomach, being used for target practice. On an alter, or hung from a ceiling with deer horns tied to them. Staked through on the side of the road with a cult cross. Starved or shot to death in cages. It’s pretty grim.

Anyway, so you go around answering calls for help, doing your best to slowly track down your friends, but also help all the poor suffering people being murdered and abused by this awful cult. There are random NPCs who can be companions, plus specialists, who are more quest-designed-to-be-met characters. These include Jess, Dutch’s niece, who you find in a cage to be shipped to Jacob for psychological torture and brainwashing (I’ll get to him), a puma I loved named Peaches, a pilot named Nick who is just trying to get his family out of town and resist the cult’s attempts to steal his property or buy it out (they stole or bought land and stuff from /everyone/ and took advantage of/ransacked the whole community), but will stay to help you, and a puppy named Boomer whose family called for help that came to late and were shot to death in front of him. You find him in a cage being kicked at by cultists and save him, and watch him go cry over his dead family, then take in as your own.  

Stuff goes better, though, and you make progress. There’s a lot of strongholds you can help protect, like a little town where the resident preacher and the bar owner lady are trying to keep the whole place from being overrun by the cult, and a jail up east where the sheriff and a bunch of survivors/rebels are holed up trying to survive Faith. Basically the area is broken up into three districts, and whichever you complete missions in, you get closer to a fight with that Seed sibling (also you get kidnapped and have to listen to them monologue so much. Kill me).

So John will kidnap you and force baptize you, tie you to a chair and tell you how he’s going to torture (and implied assault) you until you scream out your sins, then you escape but he does all that to Hudson, who you can’t save for another chunk of time, and he punishes brutally and is super fucked up by the time you finally rescue her. She tells you that Joseph (the leader—thinks he is God’s chosen prophet and calls himself “the Father”) would come and watch her and the others be tortured and they’d beg for mercy and he’d just stand there and watch. She’s super messed up but alive, and you’re able to get her out and kill John, but not before he kidnaps you and the preacher, bar lady, and Nick the family man, then forces Nick to confess his sins (under threat of awful shit happening to his wife and infant daughter if he does not), and then be held down and have his chest flesh cut off by John and stapled to a wall. You get forcibly tattooed with a sin but escape before suffering the same bc the preacher keeps a gun in his bible. Anyway. Digressing. You eventually kill John and rescue Hudson.

Over in Jacob’s territory, people are inducted into the cult by being kidnapped, psychologically and physically tortured, and straight up mind-controlled to go into fits of rage at a specific song being played. They are pitted against each other in some eugenicist “only the strong survive, sacrifice the weak” bullshit. There’s a militia called the Whitetails there, fighting back. Before you meet them, though, you’re kidnapped by Jacob and strapped to a chair, then subjected to psychological torture to try to condition you to kill the weak. You wake up days later, barely alive, left for dead having seemed to resist/fail his trials, still strapped to a chair. Among a ton of other dead bodies. Some of the Whitetails show up, looking for survivors, expecting none, and find you. Though everyone else protests it is too big a risk and you might be brainwashed, one guy, Eli, orders the others to take you anyway and says he won’t leave you to die. You pass out and wake up again on a couch in a bunker, and a lady screams about you being a risk and needing to go, but Eli defends you again, then gives you something to drink and takes care of you/nurses you back to health and defends you from the more paranoid members. When you’re up again, he introduces you to the militia fighting Jacob’s people, and asks for your help rescuing some people in the same situation you were in. You then start to work with the Whitetails.

Periodically, your PC gets kidnapped by Jacob again and tortured each time/brainwashed. You escape with help from the militia and from Pratt, later, who was kidnapped and broken by Jacob, but isn’t gone, just terrified and fucked up. Deputy Pratt risks his life to rescue you when you’re in trouble and you try to escape together, but the brainwash song plays and he shoves you onto a convoy so you can escape, but doesn’t make it himself before snapping into a rage, and is recaptured, brutally punished and tortured by Jacob, and then left tied to a chair to starve to death in a cell for what he did. The player is captured again, and railroaded into, in one of the brainwashed fits of rage, killing Eli himself. : (  They then snap out of it, and infuriated and anguished, go to kill Jacob and save Pratt. Pratt is still alive, but super psychologically scarred. You kill Jacob.

I should note here that you can do the sibs in any order—for example, I did Faith’s first—but I am listing them in their kind of ‘suggested’ order. John, Jacob, Faith.

So, Faith. The way she gets people is drugs. She uses a compound she calls “Bliss” to drug people out of their minds. After you are drugged up enough, you suffer irreparable brain damage and cannot be cured. She does this to hundreds of people so that the cult can have “happy little slaves” to do all the hard work and meat-shield shit they need without ever fighting back or questioning it. You are kidnapped by her as well, multiple times. Or something??? With Faith you always hallucinate, so it’s really unclear and kinda bullshit. Anyway. You help the Sheriff and everyone holed up in the jail fight off a wave of cultists, keep doing your rescue poor civilians from awful deaths or lives as drugged up vegetable slaves. Faith keeps trying to win you over and get you to do her awful pilgrimage where people climb up a giant statue of Joseph and trust-fall jump off his bible to their deaths. This whole game and cult is really horrific. Eventually, you find the Marshal and save him, but he is really far gone. He’s hospitalized in the jail for a while after. Faith gets pissed at you after that and quits trying to win you over. Just drugs you and shows you how she’s mind controlling the Marshal, who is still under too much of her brain damage and control, into murdering one of his friends, then opening the gates to the jail so her people can get in, and then shooting himself in the head. The Marshal always does so and dies, as does one of his/your friends. And a ton of people at the jail. You run to try to save the Sheriff after helping the survivors at the jail, and fight Faith, who whines about how none of this is her fault the whole time after making the Marshal murder your friend and himself with her own hands while giggling at you about how it’s all your fault five minutes ago, and tries to get you not to kill her. You do, though, and she monologues about Joseph being the real deal, then dies. You find the sheriff almost drugged to the point of no return in a cell, going to hang himself to death while singing Amazing Grace while you can’t do shit to get into the room to stop him, but awake and himself enough inside to plead with you to shut off the gas pumps for the drugs before he hangs himself, before going back to smiling and singing and pulling up a chair under a noose. You run to shut off the gas, save him, blow up the bunker, and get out.

Joseph then kidnapps all your ally characters and drugs them with Bliss into being on his side and rants at you about how all their torture and death is your fault and you are awful for murdering his siblings, then offers to let people go if you walk away. You can do so, in which case your allies get in a car with you, only for the son that triggers rage and homicide in Pratt and the PC to play, implying before the cut to black that the deputy (and Pratt maybe) kill all your friends/each other.

If you resist Joseph, he shrieks at you about not all problems being solved by a bullet, and you have a boss fight where you save your friends/snap them out of it, then defeat Joseph.

Once he’s in cuffs, a nuclear bomb goes off because apparently in this world North Korea bombs the US just then or some shit, and you try to make it to Dutch’s bunker in time. You’re in a car crash and all the other deputies and the sheriff are instantly killed. You are unconscious and dragged away by Joseph. You wake in the bunker tied to a bed with Dutch’s body on the floor, and Joseph tells you he was a prophet and was right about the collapse and you’re his family now because his old one is dead and the game ends.

 That’s it.

And in the DLC for it, that makes not only that the canon end, but that the Deputy joins Joseph and is converted to a cult follower by him, and Joseph is now an ally character leading the remnants of his cult.

 Needless to say, I am pissed. This is the /only/ Far Cry game where the villain wins regardless, as well as the only one where they suddenly decide to …??? stan??? the torturing abusive brainwashing serial killer? And of course it’s the one in America where the enemy is a hyper-religious Christian-offshoot cultist brainwashing vile serial torture murdering messiah-complex gaslighting abusive white man who thinks he’s God. I am beyond disgusted by that choice in this game and glad I found out before finishing it; wish I had never played any at all. I cannot adequately describe to you how horrific the cult shit is, and how like, gaslit by the company I feel for having played this game and being thrown that. I think this is legitimately the most upset I’ve ever been about a video game’s writing choice. What the actual fuck. Like, I cannot describe to you enough how fucked up this is you’d have to see the shit they do that’s getting pushed in a face-heel turn by the company as somehow justified and sympathetic like. As someone who has firsthand both experienced and seen trauma from an over-religious area of the US, and just a tiny % over-religious-lead-terrible-actions? I cannot emphasize enough how disgusted and enraged I am.