#important tragic days that influenced our forest management

[thatrandombystander]

Look I love me a sale and I understand businesses wanting to cash in on the hype we’ve imported from the US, but every time I see an Australian retailer use the term “Black Friday” it really annoys me. Can we call it something else her? Give it a name that we aren’t already using as a bushfire tragedy name?

[nikcosterwaldaus]

DON’T GO DOWN TO THE WOODS TODAY

you’re sure for a quick demise

the town of exile has always been full of strange goings on, a safe haven for all that is unexplained and unnerving, but no one quite believed that there were bodies buried beneath the earth until the summer of 1993. seven teens went on a camping trip to the woods and all hell broke loose.

what started as a simple prank between a couple of them, setting traps around the trees, bushes and stumps to scare the rest of their friends, led them straight to ezekiel sutton - a leader of a very unsavoury cult, called the church of the all seeing eye, from the next town over - burying a mangled body in the damp earth. the air seemed to still, the wind blow ice cold, and the two pranksters ran back to their hideout to tell their friends exactly what they’d seen.

the problem was, ezekiel followed them back too.

in the dark of the night, the seven teens were stalked through the woods, tripped up by idiotic pranks and traps set by their friends. ezekiel got to them, one by one, taking them down and trying to make it so none of them would see the light of day. but, through the power of team work, they managed to outwit the killer; string him up, tie him down, wait until dawn to get help and escape from this forest of madness.

it’s been 27 years since the incident and it affected each of the group deeply. still living with the trauma of not knowing if they’d see another morning, they went their separate ways, trying to forget about that night and get on with what life they could salvage. now, however, things are about to change; ezekiel sutton has been released from prison and the teens - now adults - are all brought back to exile on a lie: their friend, mike, is dead.

but, when they all turned up at the church in their mourning clothes to pay their respects, who came out to greet them but mike themself. it was all a rouse to get them back, here, to exile. they needed help. ezekiel sutton was put away for one murder, but mike is convinced they’ve committed countless more. the only way they can prove it is by finding the bodies, and they can’t do that alone.

the characters listed below are based on archetypes from the it movies (and book), as well as the until dawn video game. please bear in mind you don’t need to have watched, read or played any of these to be involved in the plot. while they’re based on the characters from these franchises, they’re not identical and do not have any of the same relationship plots; we don’t expect anyone to adhere to gender or ethnicity when creating them apart from mike who we will want to keep bipoc; however, it would be fantastic if the rest of the group was diverse (characters of colour, disabilities, gender and sexuality), though it’s not mandatory - just something to think about!

all of the characters will be between the ages of forty-four and forty-five, so please make sure you follow the site’s play-by rules when choosing someone for the group! the request will include themes of murder, horror, death and stalking (serial killer > the kids). we’ll be trigger warning everything within the plot, but if you’re sensitive to any of these themes, please let us know and we’ll do our best to help you feel safe.

please note: we are more than happy to discuss any of these blurbs and they are completely open, we just wanted to give you something to go off if you’re creating a character from scratch. if you have anyone else that you might want to bring to this plot, let myself or pomona know and we’d be happy to chat with you!!!

main characters

bev / mike → prickly, confident, aggressive, independent

with a bad home life and bullied at school, bev struggled to fit in; that was until they found the rest of the group. being an outcast didn’t seem so bad when they were friends with a bunch of other outcasts and they became somewhat protective over the others - not that they let any of the group know that. they stayed in exile for a while after the events, slowly watching their friends leave until they realised there was no point; there was nothing to fight anymore. everyone had gone. now they’re back, bev is wary. they don’t want things to go back to the way they were because, last time, everyone left. they’re keeping the others at arm’s length until they can really work out where everyone’s priorities lie.

reserved for: lana

ben / ashley → shy, sweet, lonely, intelligent

the softest and kindest member of the group, ben took the incident in the woods the hardest and has suffered greatly since. barely able to keep their life on track, they’ve hopped from one thing to the next, never quite able to settle down. it’s a shame, for someone with so much heart, that they’ve had it broken and damaged in so many ways; yet they never let themselves become jaded. needless to say, they’re trying to keep the group in exile to help mike find more bodies, not only feeling some semblance of loyalty to them (and the others), but finally feeling whole again after so many years of turmoil and strife. 

reserved for: mc

bill / sam → haunted, honest, reckless , brave

they always thought they were the leader of the group, but at the end of the day they were the first to leave town after the incident. their seat at the police station barely cold, they disappeared from exile almost a week after the group came out of the woods and no one ever saw them again. that is, until now. bill’s surprisingly straight and quiet about what’s happened in the intervening years - something about finding out who they really are and learning to forgive themself - but one thing’s for sure, they’re fitting back into that leadership role like no time’s passed at all. it’s just whether the rest of the group really wants them “in charge” after bailing out the first time around.

reserved for: pandora

eddie / emily → neurotic, loyal, obsessive, genuine

having lived a half shut-in, medically induced hell of a life as a kid along with their sibling, eddie was both ecstatic and terrified at the thought of moving away from exile. their mother made them believe (truly believe) they had a plethora of illnesses and it was only at the age of twenty-three, when their mother finally passed away, that they could go and leave the horrors of their childhood behind. they moved to another small town, settled down into a quiet little life and they were happy and dandy until mike’s letter came through. now, more than anything, even more than before, they want out of exile. but something is keeping them there, and they can’t quite pinpoint what. whatever it is, it’s fucking annoying.

played by: anais (miriam chomsky - rachel weisz)

mike / josh → intense, caring, introverted, observant

after the tragic, violent deaths of their parents, mike was raised under the stern but firm eye of their aunt and uncle. mike was something of an outcast at their school but in the summer of 1993, after a run in with the infamous bully henry, mike’s bond with the rest of the group was forged in the fires of joint misfithood. a grounding presence and the self appointed guardian of the group, mike was the one who remained in exile - literally and figuratively - to ensure that the influence of ezekiel sutton would be forever stamped out. yet, life rarely goes the way we want it to, and since the release of sutton, mike has been desperate to get the old crew back together to see sutton punished for the monster he truly is - desperate enough to even fake their own death.

reserved for: yenna

richie / chris → joker, insensitive, determined, brash

the nerdy clever clogs that forged themself a suit of armour out of terrible jokes and snide remarks, richie was desperate to cut loose of their past in exile and forge a new path in the bright lights of tinsel town. best buddies with stanley since their kindergarten days, but cementing themself in the ranks of the group with his corny humour, richie has always been happy to play the clown. yet, as with all clowns, the smile is little more than a mask, and beneath the mask and the armour is a soul wracked with guilt and self loathing. no amount of gallows humour will keep these old demons at bay, and richie is a hair’s breadth away from high tailing it back to beverly hills as fast as their porsche convertible can carry them.

played by: pomona (seth spector - joaquin phoenix)

stan / matt → weak, trusting, wise, sceptical

though stan has always been a key part of the group, they’ve never exactly felt like an integral part. they’re kind, generous and trustworthy, but always seem to be in the background. always seem to be the weakest link. not much has changed over the years. the initial pranks were stan’s idea and they’ve never let themself forget it, believing that if they hadn’t decided to trick everyone with stupid games, then they wouldn’t have all almost died. their bravery and strength haven’t improved and they still can’t quite find a foothole to grab onto. their life has been an undulating mess since they left exile and it doesn’t look like coming back’s going to make that any better.

reserved for: michelle

additional characters

henry / beth

a lost and twisted soul, henry was never destined for a life of bucolic bliss or carefree contentment. raised under the iron thumb of a domineering parent, henry vented their frustrations and rage upon their school peers with infernal ferocity. the infamous bully of their school, henry perhaps would have burnt themselves out with their own banal forms of sadism if it weren’t for ezekiel sutton. meeting sutton was like henry’s eureka moment, and while his connection to sutton’s foul deeds was never revealed back in the 1990s, it is henry who has been keeping the church of the all seeing eye alive and well. now with the return of their idol and mentor, henry is keen to prove themself as sutton’s most devoted follower.

pennywise / hannah

ezekiel sutton is a man of great importance. no one in exile knew who he was up until the events of summer, 1993; now everyone wishes they didn’t know his name. dubbed the executioner of exile, he’s been in prison for the past 27 years on one charge of murder. the police could never pinpoint the location of any of the other bodies he so clearly buried in the woods, and ezekiel never let on to having done anything but put the man he did bury out of his misery. the kids? well, he never meant to scare them. and you know how teenagers can be; so dramatic!

now he’s out on good behaviour and has no clue (yet) that the kids he never meant to scare at working to find his very real skeletons in his metaphorical closet and expose him for the serial killing ass he is. still, his old cult are welcoming him back with open arms, delighted he’s managed to maintain his innocence throughout his arduous trials.

ezekiel is a npc thus unplayable.

[hocats-blog]

7 Lord of the Rings Fan Theories to Rule Them All

As you probably remember, Gollum wasn't always Gollum. For a time he was Smeagol, a Hobbit quickly corrupted by the power of the One Ring. It was his "precious" that afforded him an extraordinarily long life, and warped him into the scrappy half-naked mangoblin that becomes the bane of Frodo and Sam. Though he's been Gollum far longer than he was Smeagol, at times there seems to be a war of identities going on within the sad creature. We assume that the centuries he's spent under the ring's influence has created this rift within the character, but that might not be the case at all. One intriguing fan theory claims that Gollum is actually a personality inside the ring, an entity that can possess anyone. The identity isn't unique to Smeagol, meaning that if someone like Aragorn held it long enough, he'd turn into a pasty diaper-wearing wretch just the same as you would. Think about those we know who have held the ring for an extended period of time. Right off the bat, there's Bilbo Baggins. He seemed relatively chill about the ring and managed to hold onto it for years without going nanners, but we definitely saw some cracks forming in his psyche when Gandalf came to town. Bilbo was less than thrilled about having his "precious" taken away. That, right there -- Bilbo unconsciously "gollum'd." That's the "Gollum personality" breaking through, its infection spreading within Bilbo. The possession gets a bit more overt later on during a conversation with Frodo, at which point Bilbo's face makes a hellish transformation. Looks a lot like Gollum, doesn't it? Bilbo doesn't just call the ring his "precious" just because he heard Gollum say that -- that's actually Gollum talking through Bilbo. For more proof, we have to look no further than Isildur. Remember Isildur is the one who lopped Sauron's fingers off and took the ring? Isildur is also the same shitbrick who, given the chance, didn't toss the ring into the fires of Mount Doom. Instead, he wore it around his neck, which is more or less the Middle-earth equivalent of treating a nuclear warhead like a piece of bling. The corrosive power eventually killed Isildur, but not before he wrote about the ring in a series of creepy journals. Gandalf discovered these writings, and found one particularly disturbing passage. Could it really be a coincidence that a dude who lived thousands of years before Smeagol would used the same word to describe the One Ring? Probably not. It seems a lot more likely that Gollum is a personality inside the ring that infects its host and possesses them to protect the ring and do Sauron's bidding. If Isildur's hubris hadn't ended him, it may well have been his wispy form that Bilbo came across on his initial adventure in The Hobbit. Now, the name "Gollum" is merely the name given to Smeagol after his neighors kept seeing him hacking up a lung every day, so it's probably not the actual title of the deity inside the ring. But the name "Gollum" has significance, in that it's pretty close to "golem," the mythological creature which is made of inanimate materials, but given life from an outside force. It's a compelling theory not because it dramatically changes the story, but because it gives you a new perspective on what the ringbearers must have been going through. That, and it's fun imagining a crazed Viggo Mortensen wearing a diaper.

This is a stupid idea. No one's going to actually come out and say that J.R.R. Tolkien created Albus Dumbledore and the world of Harry Potter. But it's a testament to the strength of fan theories that some beautiful bastard could come up with a convincing explanation that links Hogwarts and Middle-earth. It all relies on the fact that there are five Istari -- better known as "wizards" to people who have seen the sun in the last two weeks -- in the realm of this fiction. You probably already know three of them: Gandalf the Grey, Saruman the White and Radagast "That Forest Hippie Who Refuses to Clean the Birdshit Out of His Beard" the Brown. The missing pieces of this magical grandpa pie are the two "Blue Wizards," which Tolkien glossed over briefly but never really followed up on. Last we heard, they were sent into Mordor to quell the threat of Sauron. They weren't seen again, but there's also no explicit mention of their deaths. The two blue wizards could be anyone, which is why it's entirely possible that they are in fact Albus Dumbledore and his nemesis/boytoy Gellen Grindelwald. All it would take is a temporal or multidimensional mishap, and they'd be in the modern world of muggles. How they got to Earth from Middle-earth isn't as important as the thematical connections. Dumbledore says that "It is important to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then can evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated." Meaning that he wasn't going to give up once Sauron was down for the count. Though Grindelwald fell to the "dark side" like Saruman before him, Dumbledore kept up the fight and was eventually upgraded from "Dumbledore the Blue" to "Dumbledore the White." It fits, especially because in Latin, "Albus" literally translates to "white." It makes sense that Dumbledore took the job at Hogwarts, as that was the place he could best mount his defense of the world. Once there, he builds an army of wizards to do just that. And yet, he still remembers where he came from, which explains why there's a portrait of Gandalf the Grey hanging in Dumbledore's office. Dumbledore had already assembled his wizard defense force, so he passed off into the undying lands in the most fantastical way possible. The entire theory sheds new light on Dumbledore's words: "Ah, music. A magic far beyond all we do here!" As it so happens, the world of Middle-earth was created via song by the Illuvatar. Did J.K. Rowling write Dumbledore with Tolkien's lost wizards in mind? It's not impossible, but it's probably unlikely. It doesn't matter, because veracity isn't the point of this fan theory. The real strength of this tangled yarn is just how creative it is in weaving two disparate but similar fictions together. These two worlds don't exist anyway, so why can't they they exist in the same place?

Though it's not featured in a big way in the films, the books go into a little more detail about the death of Frodo's parents. Drogo and Primula Baggins drowning during a freak boating accident is tragic, but storywise, it gives Frodo less of a reason to be tied down to the Shire. But one fan theory suggests there's a darker undercurrent to this story, that Frodo's parents were in fact murdered. The culprit: Gollum. We all know that creepazoid is capable of murder. It's arguably the first thing Smeagol ever did as Gollum. After the events of the Hobbit, Gollum set about finding the his precious stolen ring. Problem was, Gollum really only had two things to go on when it came to finding the ring: "Baggins" and "Shire." It's not out of the question that he might come across the Brandywine River on his quest, and he would certainly kill any Bagginses he found there. The theory is propped up by the questionable circumstances of the deaths. There seems to be a question among the Hobbits as to just how Frodo's parents passed. Whatever the case, both Drogo and Primula were pretty experienced boaters, so it's more than a little surprising that they would just fall in the water and die. No, it makes more sense that an angry Gollum murdered them straight out, giving up on his mission once he found nothing on their person. The only real damper on this theory is Gandalf, who claims that Gollum never made it to the Brandywine. That would seem to put an end to this theory, but put yourself in Gandalf's old man shoes for a minute. You're talking to Frodo, the guy who is going to lug the world's most dangerous weapon across a continent, and he's pretty fragile as it is. Now imagine if Gandalf decided to tell Frodo that the same guy who guides him through Mordor is the one that deprived him of his parents -- he'd undoubtedly lose himself to rage at some point, and as a result succumb to the power of the ring itself. If Gandalf hadn't pulled off an Obi-Wan-tier lie, our story would be over before it began. To be fair, at least that one ending is preferable to like seventy.

This almost feels like cheating. This "fan theory" is so perfect, fits so well into the mythos of the series that it's basically canon. But that's exactly the reason it can't be ignored. Just after the Fellowship is formed, the angelic Lady Galadriel offers each member of the group a special gift. Legolas got a rad new bow, Pippin and Merry each received sweet daggers, and Boromir was bestowed with a tacky gold belt that did not go with his bracers. The most interesting gift was that given to Gimli, the dwarf. While most others just took what was handed to them, Galadriel actually asked Gimli what he wanted from the elves. After a bit of stammering, Gimli gave in and requested his greatest desire. Others were naturally curious about this mystery gift. Asking for (and actually GETTING) a strand of Galadriel's hair might sound creepy, but it's really a huge deal. To explain why, we have to rewind a few thousand years. Several millennia before the War of the Ring, there was this shitbird named Feanor. Now, Feanor is a grade-A dickweed, but even he can see how lovely Galadriel is. As the legend has it, Feanor too asked for a single strand of Galadriel's hair, but he was denied. Twice more Feanor made the same request, and twice more he was shut down. Dude wasn't worthy of Galadriel's crusty toenail clippings, much less her luscious locks. Flash forward to the Fellowship, and Gimli's wish for a strand of Galadriel's flawless hair is granted threefold. Though Gimli is likely oblivious to the significance of the gesture, Legolas' smile tells us he understands. Up to this point, dwarves and elves had an uneasy relationship, like co-workers that hate each other but stay cool because they have to be in close proximity every day. But Galadriel saw the innate goodness in Gimli, and rewarded him thrice over. You can almost hear Feanor grumbling "It still only counts as one."