#and i actually rather like it

[kinetic-elaboration]

October 24: Bellamy + Zombies

I wrote this last night but couldn't post it because I had no internet for some reason.

Bellamy-cenric, ~900 words

For the prompt: “Zombie AU” from this list of Autumn/Halloween prompts.

*

These guys are just the straight un-dead. In all the arthouse zombie flicks nowadays, all the re-told classics, all the daring and creative re-imaginings, the zombies are the product of disease, and the metaphor is slapped on thick. A virus, spreading: contagion. Maybe they’re not really dead at all, just decaying, and crazed with some inhuman need, and mindless, and shuffling, and not-too-slow. And the disease spreads and the living decay to living dead things and everyone pretends they’ve never heard this story before.

The monsters that shuffle around the countryside now are real, re-animated corpses crawled up out of shallow graves. They were fully dead, and now they’re something else. Bellamy would not call them alive. He wouldn’t call them diseased, and he doubts they’re contagious. They may or may not eat brains. He’s never gotten close enough to one to tell.

He and his sister still have power in their little farmhouse at the edge of town because the coming of the zombies has not brought on the end times and the basics of life still go on. So he watches the news every night to hear the latest on the creatures. They’re not everywhere, but they’re round and about the country now. He figures several have probably been captured and are in some government lab right about now, being prodded and studied, but no one would ever go on national TV and admit it.

Octavia thinks they should capture one of the zombies and put it to work, not that the farm really functions anymore, and this state of affairs has nothing to do with the apocalypse and everything to do with the Blakes not having been farmers in seventy or eighty years. Bellamy’s a teacher at the elementary school in Arcadia, third grade, and Octavia’s been doing odd jobs while she figures herself out. She has these fantasies about farm life that have about as much basis in reality as the concept of harnessing zombie power for good, but maybe eventually something real will materialize out of all of that imagination of hers. Then he’ll know if he should be placing blame on or giving thanks to her new boyfriend, Lincoln, and his fun facts about the original zombies, the proto-zombies, the reanimated almost-dead who work in the fields.

“We have fields, Bell,” she tells him. He reminds her that they’re meadowland now.

Dark falls earlier now that fall has settled in over Arcadia, not quite seven when he pulls all the blinds and turns on the extra lights. He flips the light on in the kitchen and the long, twin fluorescents buzz to life above his head.

And then, Bellamy pauses.

He senses it before he hears it. He senses it beneath the buzzing of the light, and Octavia’s footsteps on the stairs, and he feels it in the way his hand stops all on its own, hovering there above the light.

The crackling of leaves, shuffling against each other, whispering against each other. Pushed aside to form a path for heavy, slow feet. One step and then another, dragging, and heavy.

He lets his hand fall down from the light switch, thinks again, reaches up to turn it off. With only the haloed edge of the living room light behind him, he sees the room as almost utter inky blackness, stamped with the vague outlines of remembered shapes. He steps where he knows he can step, heavy on his own feet, until he reaches the window above the sink. Then he twitches aside the curtains and squints out into the dark. He can’t see a thing but he can he hear that same shuffling still, that weary dragging. He imagines he hears a moan coming with it, but that’s a sound in his own ears. The rhythm of the steps is so slow, so unfaltering. His breath is held waiting for the pattern to break.

Maybe for the heavy step to suddenly go still. Maybe to look up and see that rotten face looking at him.

Out on the edge of town, he’s seen plenty of them, the zombies, but almost always at a distance: pairs of them against the trees where the farmland gives out, or trains of three or four dragging their heels through the dust on the side of the road, heading toward the setting sun. Like wild animals, they keep their distance and he keeps his. He’s not sure if they can see, what they can smell, how close he’d have to get before they noticed him or what he’d have to do. He’s learned to live with them and around them, as he’s learned to live with so many other things.

Through the window, peering up close to it so he can discern past his own reflection, he watches as the figure enters the round splash of yellow from the back porch light. He sees details of it first, before he can fully grasp the whole: tatters and decay, in a skeletal shape. It drags its own foot behind it like a club. Its skin is picked over and scavenged, rot on its own fingers—this one is old, deep buried in the earth for a long time. A long time. It doesn’t turn to look at him and Bellamy doesn’t let go of his breath. Only after it’s long shuffled out of sight does he realize that he never did look at that old man’s face.

[tawnysoup]

Finally now that the comic is fully public on comicfury, I get to share it with all of you here, too <3

If you enjoyed, please consider supporting by buying a PDF of the comic on itch.io: https://tawnysoup.itch.io/home-in-the-woods

[obsob]

i am a being capable of immeasurable love and whimsy

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[eydilily]

would you bite the hand that feeds you?

[lotus-pear]

i love you royal trio (minus akechi)

[juney-blues]

there is, famously, a huge amount of social pressure on gnc cis people to transition. society just wants more trans people, trans women especially. this is a real and serious problem. there are just too many trans women making egg jokes. we have to protect the poor cis people from being compared to us (which is clearly and self evidently a horrible thing to do clearly)

[uncanny-tranny]

The leftism/anticapitalism leaving people's bodies the zeptosecond you imply that disabled people who aren't "productive" still matter in society and need to be treated like intrinsic equals who have a place in this world:

[swampybogg]

[courfee]

remus is very unimpressed, sirius is very happy :)

based on this post

[boobchuy]

going a bit crazy

[itstimeforstarwars]

Did not find what i wanted on ao3. Did not find what I wanted on ffnet. Clicked on wattpad and then immediately decided I’m not that desperate actually.

[bedforddanes75]

im not american but some of you guys are just fucking stupid ong what do you MEAN youre not gna vote because you disagree with like one part of what youre voting for. like okay me when im fucking thick

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Sublime Equine.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[yaolmao]

simp

[loganswdc]

every day i learn something new about logan sargeant and his racing career, not just about his performance in f1 but in f2 and previous series, too. and every day i end up so sad because he genuinely has so so much potential and can do so much but he keeps being give a poor hand of cards. this guy out qualified his teammate in f2 TEN TO FOUR. and who was his teammate?? liam lawson. liam joined redbull’s driver academy in february of 2019 while logan only got to join an f1 team’s driver academy in october of 2021. that team was williams. which, as we know, hasn't exactly been the best performing team in recent years. oscar piastri got to join an f1 team’s driver academy in january of 2020 (the renault sport academy, later rebranded as the alpine academy). liam and oscar both got the opportunity to do f1 tests for YEARS prior to their f1 debuts in 2023. liam had 4 and a half years of experience in f1 cars before 2023. oscar had 3 years of experience in f1 cars before 2023. even if it was just testing and practice sessions, it's still something.

what did logan get? one measly fp2 session, post-season testing, and then jumped right in to pre-season testing in 2023. he already had a seat in williams then, so with the experience from before the pre-season testing in 2023 he got to do maybe 800km of testing in an f1 car. the others — in this case i mean oscar, liam, and heck even nyck de vris — had opportunities to drive f1 cars and gain experience for YEARS before logan. if you look at nyck de vris: he got signed to the mclaren young driver programme in 2010. he joined the audi sport racing academy in 2016.  granted, he left the mclaren programme in before the 2019 season and left audi after the 2019 season, too. but he then went to mercedes as a reserve driver and tester for 2020 and afterwards. this means he got just about a DECADE AND A HALF of teams putting their time and energy into training him to join f1.

logan got a year. one. single. fucking year. that is entirely incomparable to the other rookies from 2023, who had so much more experience before hand. and yet logan was jumped into f1 and the expectations were so high for a guy who hasn't had the chance to train and learn and gain experience.

and yet when we look at the 2022 f2 season, logan sargeant, a rookie, was 1 point off from his teammate —the one and only liam lawson — scoring p4 in the championship. he outqualified his teammate 10 to 4. he was the first american to win an f2 race (that is, of course, following the rebrand from gp2 to f2, but regardless, that’s still an important thing to note and an achievement of his that should be celebrated).

logan sargeant has so much potential and if only williams would show him a little more faith unlike what they’ve been doing, if only they’d give him the same upgrades as alex, if only they wouldn’t force him to drive a car 15kg overweight from that of his teammate’s car, if only they wouldn’t force him to use outdated rear and front wings from the season prior. then perhaps he would have a chance to show what he can do. perhaps if he wasn’t stuck in a team with a crap car who have shown zero faith (which has been vehemently obvious since the circus in australia) in him and made him absolutely miserable, a shell of himself — which you can clearly see in recent interviews and photos of him — then maybe he’d be able to show how good he really is. and maybe if williams hadn’t been so adamant about taking him out of f2 so quickly and let him develop for one more year, we’d be seeing headlines that say “logan sargeant, first american f1 driver on the podium since michael andretti in 1993.” and perhaps we could even see him winning races.

no matter what someone says about his current f1 performances — though most base that solely off of where he ends up on the grid rather than looking at his actual driving and seeing how good he is as a driver considering the crap circumstances he’s in — logan sargeant is a better driver than what everyone says. he is trying so insanely hard to get a car that is miles off from the rest of the field to place as high as humanly possible. no one can say that if you put another driver in that car that logan is driving they'd be doing better than he is now. the fact is, they wouldn't be. he's been given an absolute tractor and is expected to score points when that car isn't built for getting in the points. and yet logan managed to get p10 in the miami sprint race — which should be recognized and commended. because he was in an awful car and he absolutely shined that day. that was just the start of showing what he could do. but he hasn't been given the same resources as alex, those being the upgrades, so what more can he do compared to what he's doing now?

and i am actually sitting here crying as i type this because this is a driver who is giving it his all even when the entire world is against him, even when his entire TEAM is against him, and he is persevering to the best of his abilities. and i know exactly what it’s like to sit here, wanting to reach for your dreams and show everyone how good you are, but to have only your closest friends and family on your side, rooting for you. what it’s like to look everywhere around you and see everyone calling you crap and saying you should quit and that you aren’t and never will be good enough. to look around and see your closest friends and family cheering for you, yet feeling like crap because you aren't doing as well as you would want, feeling inferior to everyone around you.

news flash: logan sargeant is and will always be good enough. he just needs the opportunity to show it, and williams is ruining that for him.

and yes, i will defend him with my life. people who try to say otherwise can try to do the same hours — the WEEKS — worth of research that i’ve done about logan and his career because he IS a good driver and HE DESERVES BETTER.

any hate comments towards logan will be deleted, because i have neither the time nor the energy to deal with that and argue with logan haters. i've said all of what i know and can remember about him and his career above, and will add what i can as time goes on and i remember something else or learn something new. if you have the time to hate on logan, you have the time to do your research and examine the fact that he has the potential to do well, but is not in a position for that because of the abhorrent circumstances he is currently in.

thank you for coming to my ted talk. edit: i'd also really recommend reading this twitter thread!! it goes into some more depth on logan and his f2 / f1 career, and even a little bit about his f3 career. it's very informative and articulates much of logan's career and why he is a better driver than many believe very well. https://x.com/herrocult/status/1795747913588761027