#corvidscrap

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Zones location idea: A car wash where music always rings out, ominously at all hours, but never anything but daft punk echoing through the stagnant desert. A neon sign proclaims what the structure is but some of the letters are shorted out so at night all you can see is RASH. The building is illuminated with flickering orange streetlamps and a generator ever-churns out back but no one knows what it runs on, just like how the car wash isn’t self-serve but no one knows who works it. The concrete is potholed with soapy, oil-slick technicolor-colored puddles that boil come the noon heat and evaporate leaving a sticky residue in their wake. The curb is littered with cigarette butts, firecracker skeletons, tempered glass rhinestones and candy wrappers. There’s no use for a car wash in the zones, your ride’ll be dusty within five minutes, maybe no one goes there at all, maybe no one’s ever been, but there’s stories about it all the same. Like the one that says when you go through the wash isn’t your zones that you roll back out into, but a different desert entirely.

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Thinking about killjoy jackets having meaning, which like, obviously, they're personalized, they're one of the things thats always on you, like your mask or your boots. But the thing is, even if you don't have a crew or anyone to watch your back, you have your jacket to. To quote something I read on here a long time ago that has stuck with me: "They say the Phoenix Witch can’t find you if you die without your mask on. But don’t worry, she knows your boots too. Maybe all that will be left of you is boots and a mask. That’s okay. A mask means that you were someone, a pair of boots means that you went somewhere." A mask shows you were someone, boots mean you went somewhere, and adding to that, a jacket means you stood for something.

I think a killjoy's jacket can tell a story. Look for the wear and tear, the laser burns, the patched-over holes, the parts that have started to fray. That alone can be a life story. Your jacket is wearing your interests and personality literally on your sleeve and being proud to show it, that you're there and you're alive and unique in spite of the world you live in. You wear your heart stretched proudly across your back, your destiny a mantel on your shoulders, and all your friends and all your enemies can see who you are and what you stand for, what you believe in.

There's so many different ways your jacket could come to be Yours. You find one one, make one, personalize it, but I think you could take it a step further, donning a dusted friend's or crew member's jacket is a vow, saying I will avenge you and honor your memory, and that memory, that legacy, that jacket becomes yours over time as your blood and sweat stains it instead, and the holes in it get patched with your colours now. Or maybe your jacket didn't used to belong to a friend, but an enemy. Maybe some killjoys take the jacket of the first scarecrow they stand against, fight and win, as a trophy, as proof to yourself that you're a survivor, you're a killjoy. Its a Fuck You to Better Living, its telling them my legacy with the grave of yours, its taking their sterile white and butchering it, tearing the city down in the form of personalizing your new jacket. Nobody in the desert wears white, but if you see a killjoy that is you'll know instantly its because they've fought and survived, and they're only wearing that white because they haven't had the opportunity to go buy some paint yet.

And then there's making a jacket for someone. A show of trust or devotion or pride above anything else. Its a love letter, a graduation certificate, a medal of honor. If someone's wearing a jacket that was made for them, then they've earned it somehow. It means you're worthy as a killjoy, as a friend. Wearing a jacket that was gifted to you, probably by an older 'joy, or a mentor, a friend, means they're dear to you in some way. You would die with their work, their name on you. It's wearing their heart on your sleeve right beside your own. Gifting a jacket to someone means you want that. It recognizes them as a killjoy, as a part of your story, and you of theirs, now.

A killjoy's jacket is a book, its both your shield and sword, its a legacy, and it can be a gravestone, or a curse, or a promise. Its you.

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I am constantly thinking about food in the zones and going INSANE at the missed opportunities in like 90% of fanfics where they're surviving solely on power pup like. NO. do even five minutes of research I beg you there is SO much food stuff in the desert. I guarantee you no killjoy is eating power pup daily that shit is kept in the cabinet for emergencies and the friendly coyotes that come by every once in a while!! If anything they use it like we use spam.

Realistically killjoys would be out roasting crickets and scorpions and collecting bugs for these super protein rich skillets and catching lizards and snakes and rabbits and birds and rodents and shit! They'd set up traps and go like hunting sometimes. They'd go foraging!! Theres so many edible plants actually cacti is edible! And you can do so much with it!! Theyre gonna be out there grilling it and making soups and salads in shitty old pots and throwing in natural herbs and spices! THEYD TAILGATE!!!! They'd have a shelf dedicated to jars of things you can make tea out of!! At least one member of every crew is practically a five star chef! You can literally make a gourmet meal out of materials found within fifty feet of your home base!

Not to mention there'd definitely be greenhouses scattered around with actual fruits and vegetables and some people would bake bread like even if there isnt power and you dont have like a stove or oven like. its not hard to just make your own. Out of rocks and shit and light a fire under it. And there'd be like a farmers market for all that kind of greenhouse grown stuff.

I just want to see killjoys enjoying zone life and culture and not starving!! Becuase they wouldn't be!! They would not fucking eat the dog food!! The desert provides!!!

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what if the Phoenix Witch but... horror. horror of the loss of self. body horror. you know how i do all my Creature Witch art? That. but what if she wasn't always inhuman? no, at some point in war and radiation and prayers to make it out alive feathers started sprouting, her bones started shifting and soon she became something completely unrecognizable- and then somehow the creature she turned into became something to be worshipped. and if she remembers who she was at all, if she's mourning that- how do you deal with the malformed Thing you've become being known and loved more than the Person you were?? how can you possibly cope with being forgotten and reinvented against your will? And how do you follow through with it? okay, so you're seen as holy, now how can you possibly become that? since you can't go back. since you cant be what you want to be anymore, since you're not even human anymore, well, you might as well become what everyone sees. but even if you've sprouted wings and are the definition of an angel, how can you be happy as that, when in your extra eyes, you're the most unholy, wretched thing to ever exist? you could try to pretend that you're not a monster, but you can only pretend for so long. you're not human anymore but you are. you've lost your body and your smile but at your core you're still a person even if you don't think that anymore. you're not human but just as miserable. and you're mourning. you're mourning yourself and the world and the life you lived, the life you should still be living. you're a monster but you still have a human heart beating somewhere inside you and you want to become what they all see but you cant do that without shedding your humanity, without becoming the abstraction, the all-knowing, selfless god they see. and how can you do that when even if you don't think so, your humanity is all you have left. and how can you distance yourself from your inherent personhood when you're so scared still?

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Girl help im crying over androids in the city again and their concept of souls and how they love and exist and fight or not fight and the graffiti bible and destroya and their belief in gods and soul and thought versus programming and having bodies that are only meant to last for a couple years and being so temporary but also eternal living on in the energy grid and destroya and your best friends coding your essence etched into their very mainframe a bit of your code downloaded so you live on forever and ever and how they dream of freedom and of the world and yet remain so loyal to the city they were made in, not to their masters not to who runs the city, but to the bones of the city itself from ancient bursting pipes and cracked streets to neon highrises and power lines and subway tunnels and and and how in our dreams we can be complete AAH

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Currently thinking some thoughts about the Jet Star and the Kobra Kid traffic report and how ‘killjoys never die’ and how there’s canonical powers. The killjoy’s different powers in national anthem, the girls power, the energy in the desert that Cherri does his weird focus thing with to never miss a shot that he tells her about. If they all have powers, why can’t the Fab Four? Maybe their power is that they never die.

They don’t know it yet, though. Maybe Doctor D does, maybe that’s why he drilled that phrase into their brains, maybe that’s why he always tells them that they can end this war, maybe that’s why he entrusted the girl to them, because he knows that they all have something magical in common.

But they don’t know it yet, if he knows he hasn’t told them, none of them have figured it out despite the weird close calls they all seem to have had, like when Fun Ghoul was young in battery city and woke up fine from an overdose that should’ve killed him or when Jet Star was bitten by that rattlesnake when she was a pup and got really sick and swore they couldn’t breathe. She says she must have passed out, because when Doctor D found her out back she was just waking back up and healthy as could be.

And then it happens. Kobra and Jet went on a supply run and didn't come back. Back in the diner, the radio was playing. Party was drawing lazily and Ghoul was fiddling with Kobra’s power glove that had been a bit on the fritz lately while they waited for the pair to return. Instead the song on the radio fizzes out, replaced by static and then Doctor Death’s pebbly voice.

Bad news from the zones, tumbleweeds…

They're frozen in shock but they quickly scramble to their feet, terrified and in denial. Poison makes a beeline for Kobra’s bike and Ghoul can’t make himself speak, a lump of horror lodged in his throat. It’s a silent, terrified ride down route guano for the two of them, keeping their eyes peeled for signs of a fight.

It isn’t hard to spot the bodybags.

They’re a startling black and white contrasting to the orange-brown tones of the desert sand. And there’s two of them.

When they’re unzipped, two familiar faces are revealed, their skin off-coloured, pale and lifeless. Poison shatters and Ghoul tries hard to keep it together for the one friend he has left

They take the bodies up to that one vista that Kobra loved because he could see all around for miles and keep watch over the desert and that Jet loved because it was the best spot to stargaze. The sun is nearing the horizon when they start digging. They work in silence and it isn’t hard to hear when the movement starts.

At first it’s a shifting of fabric that goes unnoticed, then it’s perplexed mumbles and then it’s a zipper sliding open. Poison and Ghoul have both stopped digging to stare at the body bag thats now open and the person that’s sitting up.

“What the fuck.” Jet Star says, looking from the two of them armed with their shovels and then down at themself. She looks at her hands and then at her stomach, where her shirt is matted with dried blood. Her hands press at where she can remember there being a wound but where there’s now no pain, no fresh blood, no nothing.

The other body bag wiggles, muffled curses sounding. All the killjoys turn to stare at it. Poison rushes over, unzipping it and pulling their somehow alive brother up into their arms.

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Okay so I had an idea. A zones daycare. A zones kindergarten. No way there ain’t one. A school in the zones in general thats open to anyone not just kids because we all know most killjoys didn’t get any advanced schooling. And the Fab Four are have been like trying to teach the girl some stuff but at some point they’re like okay out of the four of us only one of us can read and write(poison) one can read and not write(Jet) and one can’t read or write(ghoul) and one has shit vision in general and no glasses and is also dyslexic(Kobra) also none of us know how to do long division. Or ever graduated high school. Actually we don’t know what a ‘high school’ is. So instead of dragging the girl to every clap they’re in(dangerous.) and having her blow shit up(dude she’s like six do not give her a rocket launcher Jesus Christ), well she still does just not as much because they start dropping her off at daycare.

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Writing something in which i give Destroya the lovecraftian god treatment again anyway what do you think of an echo of something once great, now a splotch in the distance, a lumbering shape in the radiation beyond the zones where its running on fumes, moving oh so gradually, at a snails pace as it quite literally drags itself in circles, pulling itself forward with rusty arms and corroded claws scored deep into the sand. Every movement of its ancient gears fills the dead space with creaks and the scream of scraping metal and theres wires and cables like spilled guts that trail for miles behind it.

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Poison seeing kobra and ghoul kiss and being like. Oh no. I need to give Kobra the Talk dont i. Bc they sure as hell dont teach sex ed in Battery city and they haven't been in the zones That long and like thats his little brother Surely he still doesn't know anything.... meanwhile kobra has gone through puberty twice and is not innocent like party thinks in the slightest and party like calls him out to talk and they sit down and party goes okay. theres a few things you need to know. So when you're a teenager your body changes and when two people love eachother very much they- and kobra just. Stricken with horror goes WOAH. BRO. I KNOW WHAT SEX IS. EWW I CANT BELIEVE YOU WERE ABOUT TO EXPLAIN PUBERTY AND FUCKING TO ME and Poisons just sitting there like. World flipped upside-down going you do???? And maybe someone overheard this maybe ghoul and speaks up like really?? Dude kobra gets around you dont know that?? And now poisons the one horrified like choking out you. You what. And kobras just like yeah man. Mr gone through puberty twice here. Im not a virgin. And poison just fucking like dies.

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Just remembered my au where Fun Ghoul like sells his soul to the witch/makes a deal with her and so he can’t die but there’s a catch. He comes back but has to serve her and be a vessel for her for some time first, and that time gets longer each time he would have died. The first time he dies he makes the deal and she’s like okay but you must serve me for a week first and he’s like okay so fun ghoul who like just died is sighted wandering the desert and visiting battle sites and new graves and the mailbox in a gas mask looking ghostly and being followed by crows and then after the week passes he shows up at the diner just. Good as new and he’s like yeah don’t worry about it. And the next time he dies it’s like a month then a few months then several months then a year and so on. Maybe he’s been like this long before he even met the Fab Four so by the time he dies for the first time as one of them he’s gone for like three years as the witch’s vessel before he comes back or after spending so long and being her vessel a couple times the deal is changed and instead of a you must serve me when you die and I will allow you to go back they like are sorta friends?? And he’s like what if it’s is just always a mutual thing like. I’m out as me and if there’s a battlefield you can hop in the drivers seat and sort stuff out or like he just gets some of her powers and is like I’ll do this for you or like during the day he’s a killjoy during the night he works with the witch and they’re just.. soulmates. It’s a much deeper and emotional story then this post makes it seem but basically it’s like his role as her vessel was fate and he channels her through him and they’re lovers but not in a sexual way. It’s like. Their souls and minds combine like in an all their molecules and atoms intertwining way and they know eachother on this deeply personal spiritual and physical level that’s beyond words and human comprehension. And he serves the desert and spends so long as her vessel that he kinda forgets he’s human but then he meets the Fab Four and starts being a person again and falls in love and like he’s in love with the witch in some sort of way but it’s more like they’re one in the same so in the physical world when he truly falls in love for the first time that’s like an actual physical love he’s never had before, it’s grounding and real like the sunlight and so once he’s with the Fab Four his physical and spiritual side are balanced for the first time in a long time.

Meanwhile Poison is The Witchfucker lmao Fun Ghoul was like btw like touching me is touching the Phoenix Witch. I am her and she is me. and Poison was like fucking BET

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Kobras the cook of the fab four and I will die on this hill. Because Poison dragged them out of that city and they are NOT a cook, they were making Kobra fucking rawdog power pup because they didnt know you can just like. walk into the desert and harvest cacti or fucking make traps and stuff. and Kobras autism said no sir and so learned how to cook with what he could find out of spite he was let outside for an hour and already making cricket skewers and building a hare trap and like scrambling an egg he stole from some nest in the sun. He met someone that taught him how to harvest prickly pear stuff and he like starts whipping up a little skillet with power pup basically as spam and chopped up cacti and wild herbs and then like jet and ghoul come along and he learns their recipes also just. cooking is so satisfying he'd be the cook because its a special interest

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The fabulous four were dusted years ago, but they still haunt the zones. Their names are spoken in reverence, like the Witch's, but sometimes in spite too, because nobody likes heroes anymore. To most zonedwellers, at this point martyrdom is nothing but suicide, an easy way out. You can say you died for your cause all you want but at the end of the day theres four less pawns on the board and if they were still here maybe they'd be overthrowing the king instead. It's different, running to Battery City instead of from it, many still think the faulous four were insane for it. Sure, they had a reason, but many argue it wasn't good enough. You don't just trade four lives for one like that, not in war. It's bad strategy. 

Whatever. In reality, most zonedwellers just don't care anymore, those legends are legends now, all thats left of them are their names, heavier in some places than others.

Like here, at the crash track, everyone knows of the Kobra Kid. His name is traded like a dietys among the racers, as if hes some god that can grant you luck in a race if you leave the right offering by the starting banner or whisper the right words under your breath. More than the rest of the fabulous four, Kobra Kid carved out a place for himself here, a trench of a legacy through zone four that everyone that races or watches them knows, the fastest 'joy to ever grace the tracks, they say, and even dead, the Kobra Kid remains such, standing tall as reigning champ in what remains, the records that no racers yet to beat. 

It seems that out of respect, no one even tries. It's become a superstition, that if you try to break one of Kobra's records, it's bad luck, like shattering a mirror or walking under a ladder, they say that on your next race you'll spin out or pop a tire or break a leg for real, that you'll be luckier than usual if you don't break your neck. 

Hardly anyone that hangs around the crash track anymore actually knew him, but everyone still knows his story, its whispered in the stands like gossip, killjoys discussing the kid that came along and grew up fast, watching races first, then one day showing up with his own bike he had saved up carbons for, then he made a name for himself quick, because the kid was a damn natural. He could race the track like an ospery flies, cutting through the sand with a grace unlike any other. Eventually he didn't just master the track, he became it. Older joys say you had to see him racing to believe it, the jumps he could make, the turns he could spin, the times he could set. They say that after he was ghosted with the fab four, the crash track, a place so full of life all day and night, was empty for a week. 

Barren. Nobody raced, crews didn't hang out, for a week there was no life, no music. It felt more like a graveyard. Some sat in the stands and watched the tumbleweeds blow across the track, waiting for a race that never started. It was a long moment of silence, and by the end of the week, apparently candles lined the track, the whole track, one big altar to the lost racer. 

Then, everyone came back, as if they had all unspokenly agreed to, and people raced again, seeing that red motorbike in the corner of their eye, keeping speed with them, they say, until a bend, then it will dissappear, and they know that if they turn to look, it will disappear too. Maybe its actually him, haunting the track, maybe its just a mirage, because he may be gone but the desert remembers, the crash track remembers. Nobody knows, but those older joys, the ones that knew Kobra, that raced with him, hardly any of them race anymore, they're fully able to, there’s just no fun in crossing the finish line and being neck to neck with a ghost.

Ao3

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Something something um Ghouls scar being made by Kobra because they fucking hated eachother for a while not for any particular reason. and one day no one was around to stop them from going too far and one of their fights evolved and they hated eachother but theyre crew so despite it all, they know eacother, and they both say some horrible things that hit where it hurts, and theres a knife, and then ghouls on the floor, cheek slashed open, and kobras probably concussed and his nose is broken, the break that made it so crooked, the one he could never set right, and it hits them both at once, that theyve taken this too far. And they hate eachother but again, they're fucking crew, so Kobra runs inside for the first aid kid and stitches up the wound he made, and they talk, for the first time, and theyve both left marks on eachothers faces that will stay with them for the rest of their lives and theres something kind of meaningful in that. And thats the day they stop hating eachother.

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Tommy Chow Mein is a flordia man i just know it. He talks like one acts like one does crazy shit like one he was definitely in the news for chasing crocodiles and blowing up a waffle house or something. Hes not homophobic though actually he was probably a gay porn star or something. He was totally a doomsday prepper and had a bunker in his basement he would have been so ready for danger days everything except the dude probably ended up a joy cause he went to vegas for a week and the helium wars started and he had to crash with his weird cousin(dr d) in la when all flights grounded and shit and he probably shot himself in the foot to avoid the draft but ended up having to fight anyway and reluctantly became a joy. He always believed in aliens and still wears tinfoil hats on the regular also hes never not high and he grows his own weed in a big ol greenhouse beind his shop but its no secret. hes the zones #1 dealer. Local gay old conspiracy theorist with a mullet he hasn't cut since the seventies that somehow still manages to commit felonies despite the fact there are literally no laws in the zones.

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Cursed t-shirts and the killjoys that would wear them:

Bonus!!!! Doctor Death Defying

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Okay so you know how the trans am and dd stuff was/is(not sure if it still is) all on display at that one hard rock cafe? Well I'm having thoughts rn. Bc the trans am was left in Bat city after the events of SING and BLI undoubtedly took it into custody and it would be sooo evil corporation of them to put it and the fab fours guns or whatever on display as an example of what happens to killjoys. So the trans am is in the lobby of some fancy building or bli history museum and maybe someone gets in and steals it at some point, but I just think it'd be really cool if this is in a the fab four are alive au and theyve been brainwashed or stuck in the city, and they wake up and realize their car is just sitting around like begging be be stolen and they're the ones to get to the trans am and steal it back from under blis noses and escape the city in it, busting out the same way they busted in back in 2019.