#middle of nowhere 2008

[00915]

Middle of Nowhere (2008) dir. John Stockwell

[sowhumpful]

[actonesceneone]

who’s drawing again finally WELL it might be me i’ve been so busy with school and away from csp in my dorm…. yukiko wip and yes I know they had smart phones in 2011 but did they have them in middle of nowhere inaba? maybe. the game came out in 2008 so it’s 2008 to me

[kaleidoscopiccc]

ride the cyclone is such an anomaly to me. like both musical and fandom wise.

it has no consistent sound or beginning middle and end. the only musical similar to something like that that’s gotten this popular is six but it’s not even anything like that. cyclone has stories inside stories inside stories, it’s self aware that it’s a musical, like the kids acknowledge multiple times that they’re singing, the fourth wall is broken over and over and over again, the ending is spoiled to you in the first 2 minutes of the show, the main characters are dead 99% of the show, it uses its extreme tonal inconsistency purposefully, it’s extremely character driven there’s no plot past a like 2 sentence summary, it was originally a cabaret, it originated in middle of nowhere (to the broadway view) canada, it’s been changed and adapted every show since 2008 a line could and would be added one night and removed the next no 2 shows were ever the same, in current day different interpretations and designs of the show and characters are celebrated, changing the script to fit your vision of the show is encouraged I have never seen absolutely anything like it, much less get this popular

and the fandom oh my god

there is absolutely no other group of fans for any other show that document and archive and record as religiously as we do, the masterdrive is an absolute anomaly no other musical has anything similar to it, favorite productions are not as big of a question in any other musical fandom, we LOVE our different productions and different interpretations and different staging and different ways to sing the same songs like that and it’s SO bizarre to me

[preseriesdean]

preseries dean-centric/pov fic recs

for @spnficrecfest day one: specific era 🧡

Odysseus, American by coyotesuspect sam/dean, 10.1k words, rated M, published 2010 Dean finds Peter O'Toole's recording of the Odyssey in a bin marked “Audio" in Casa Grande's only used bookstore. The place smells like cigarette smoke and old books, and it reminds him of Sam.

Multitude of Sins by Linden sam/dean, 4.4k words, rated T, outsider POV, published 2015 Every now and again, Jim Murphy would look up from his altar and find the Winchester boys at the back of his church.

We Drank a Thousand Times by glorious_spoon dean/omc, 43.2k words, rated M, published 2010 They meet in a bar fight in North Carolina when Dean is nineteen, broke, and desperate, then again when a hunt brings the Winchesters into town a few years later. Neither one of them ever puts a name to it but every once in a while, through the years, Dean finds his way back.

pack up the moon by deathdreamt sam&dean, 5.9k words, rated T, published 2021 Sam storms back out from their room, his backpack on and his duffel hanging off his shoulder and isn’t it kind of tragic that his whole life fits in two bags. He looks suddenly much younger than he is, eyes shining. John is back at his guns, whiskey at his elbow, and Dean can hardly believe how rapidly his life is cracking down the centre.

lost in yesterday by margaryes aka @christsam sam/dean, 1k words, not rated, john POV, published 2023 John hasn’t seen his youngest son in 18 months.

Inseparable by astolat sam/dean, 6.7k words, rated M, published 2008 It was just plain sense, so Dean didn't understand why something about the way Dad said quietly, "It's time you had your own bed," made him feel guilty and confused.

The Palm Oasis by @fictionallemons sam/dean, 12.3k words, rated E, published 2022, sex work John strands Dean and Sam at a middle-of-nowhere motel while he investigates possible demon omens in Arizona. The place is nothing to write home about, but at least it has a pool. Dean resolves to think of this as a vacation for him and his studious little brother, but when their money runs out sooner than expected, he considers turning tricks at a nearby truck stop so he can feed Sam. Then a creepy guy from the pool makes an offer Dean doesn’t want to take but Sam won’t allow him to refuse—and the brothers edge over a line they’ve both been wanting to cross for a long time.

Summer Blackout by nutkin sam/dean, 11.6k words, rated E, published 2012 When Dean is seventeen, they spend five months being normal.

Poughkeepsie by aeli_kindera sam&dean, 9.7k words, rated T, published 2021 “Sammy,” says Dean again, urgency cracking his voice. “We gotta — we really gotta go. I need you to — just — remember Poughkeepsie? Drop everything, no questions asked, and run? This is a — a Poughkeepsie situation. Please, man, I need you.” Sam remembers Poughkeepsie.

To Repair Broken Men by procrastin8or951 sam/dean, 3.1k words, rated T, published 2015 Dad and Sam keep fighting. Dean can't fix his family, so he fixes things around the crappy apartment they are staying in.

[marimayscarlett]

LIFAD turns 15 years old today 💿🎶

On this day, the 16th of October 2009, the album 'Liebe ist für alle da' was released. The work for this album started the year prior, as the preproduction for the album took place from February to October 2008. The focus of the band in the beginning period of the production lay on learning how to work together again, playing songs together and gather ideas. In Hermannshagen, over the course of about one month, the band came up with up to 90 recordings of little snippets (like choruses and riffs), which they recorded for later.

After this brainstorming period, the band moved to the Beesenstedt castle in Sachsen-Anhalt to rehearse. The process apparently was less than easy due to tension in the band. The individual members seemingly first had to reconnect with each other, since the last production had been some time ago. Richard described the process of working on the album as difficult at times: "Everyone was involved and interested in everything, which meant the decision-making power was practically zero because everyone wanted to go in a different direction. Six people on the boat and everyone playing captain – that's really tough."

After the work period in Germany, the band moved over to the US for recording. Drum recording took place in the Henson Studios located in Los Angeles, and the final destination were the Sonoma Studios in San Francisco. The studio they had booked there fell far short of their expectations – the band felt cramped and not as comfortable as they had hoped for a successful recording of their new album. Paul describes it as follows: "There we ended up in a studio that was in the middle of a retiree resort. We had imagined that differently, because actually the area was quite cool. There were cougars and deer running around, but we were in the middle of nowhere, and when we booked, we couldn't see the barbed wire that fenced off all the paths. We felt cramped, and on top of that, the studio wasn't exactly inviting. The owner had hung unsightly things everywhere that we had to take down first. However, after de-cluttering the rooms, we started to feel better."

In total, about 20 songs were recorded, of which 18 songs were published (15 on the special edition of the album, plus Mein Land and Vergiss uns nicht on the single for Mein Land, and Gib mir deine Augen on the single for Mein Herz brennt.)

The promotion for this album was done by advertising clips, for example an old lady enjoying "Frühling in Paris" and a bodybuilder lifting weights while listening to "Mehr".

Eugenio Recuenco was the artist behind the album aesthetic - he shoot the pictures for the booklet as well as for the cover of the album. Richard mentioned a similarity to the painter Hieronymus Bosch regarding the style and arrangment in the pictures. In the US, the cover was censored - an additional inlay paper on top of the usual cover showed the cover picture, but without the woman on the table

Less than a month after the album's release, it was placed on the German index. The reasons given for this were the song Ich tu dir weh, which was seen as glorifying violence, as well as this particular image of Richard:

Due to these reasons, from November 11, 2009, the original version could only be sold upon request to adult customers and was no longer allowed to be advertised. On the re-release of the CD following the indexing of the album, there is only a several-second pause in place of the song. On the cover, Ich tu dir weh is crossed out in red and marked with the footnote "Removed after censorship by the authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany." The letters of the song lyrics in the booklet were replaced with Xs except for brief excerpts.

After a lengthy legal dispute, the album was finally removed from the index in October 2011 and can once again be distributed with Ich tu dir weh.

Nevertheless: The album, like its predecessors, entered directly at number 1 on the German charts and stayed there for two weeks. In total, it was in the Top 100 for 83 weeks. It also held the number 1 spot for several weeks in Austria and Switzerland, and even reached the Top 20 of the album charts in the USA and the UK. In the ranking of the best-selling albums in Germany in 2009, Liebe ist für alle da ranked 7th.

Some additional facts surrounding the album:

During their tour for the album, Rammstein performed Ich tu dir weh with altered lyrics.

The album was originally supposed to be called Wiener Blut – like the Rammstein song about child abductor Josef Fritzl. However, they decided against it because there was already a Falco album with the same name.

Richard about the album title: '"Liebe ist für alle da" (Love is there for everyone) is a very Christian thought. Of course, one must ask, is love really there for everyone? I would hope that it is. Can we forgive those who have misunderstood love? I often think about that, and I fail, then make some progress, only to go back again.'

The chorus of Frühling in Paris is inspired by Edith Piaf's chanson Non, je ne regrette rien.

Four years after the album's release, Führe mich was used as a soundtrack for Lars Von Trier's controversial film Nymphomaniac.

The song Haifisch is inspired by Mack the Knife from Brecht's The Threepenny Opera.

Sources: rammwiki metalhammer rammstein.de welt.de noz.de

[twopoppies]

When reading origin stories (idk why this topic popped up again but I love to read those stories), I would like to add mine. To be honest, this is not my first time when fandom shipped two bandmates and there are even (smut) fanfics about them. Back in 2006 I was a massive fan of My Chemical Romance and it was the first time when I experienced a ship of two bandmates. Idk why but many MCR fans shipped singer Gerard Way with guitarist Frank Iero aka Frerard. Like back then I found it cute - that´s probably where my love for gays started because I found myself hot when I back in the day I saw photos and videos of two emo boys makingout lol - and I was into it eventho IIRC there wasn´t any real evidence of their supposed romance than when one kissed the second one. I also remember reading few Frerard fics but maybe they were just badly written but they were nowhere near larry fics I am reading now when talking about quality. So I just found this whole ship as a cute part of being a MCR fan and I forgot about it as soon as I stopped being a fan around 2008 and even both Gerard and Frank got married to women and having kids with them. I found it like a silly fan experience when you´re fangirling over two guys who you find hot at that moment but without any real evidence. So when my cousin came to me - former het solo harrie - with words "What do you think about Larry?" I immediatelly dismissed her to tell me anything about it. Because Frerard immediatelly popped in my mind, my whole teenage experience around it and so I went straight to tell her "Please, don´t even start with it, I´ve been there too when I was literally your age, shipping two guys I found hot. I saw on tumblr there are this group of fans who ship H with his bandmate but I don´t want to dive into this ship because I´ve been there once and I find this whole two bandmades shipping bs". BUT THEN... ...few months later Brits happend where drunk H went off stage in the middle of his speech to softly kiss Lewis Capaldi and later literally threw himself on Stanley Tucci looking like he´s obsessed with him and making it everyone´s problem. So I started to think he might not be just straight. And month later the very same cousin made me go to the cinema to see AOTV and eventho while watching it I totally ate the narrative that F is Louis´ son thinking he´s just his oopsie baby, so after we were travelling home I was like "Okay, show me those videos of H and Louis". And then I came here and.... I stayed.

Hahaha! I love reading these journeys—-especially the little things that tipped people over the edge.

[andiv3r]

let me tell you a shorter version of that story we started a world where we were gonna collect resources for a while, fight, and then fuck around for the rest of time. Anyways, here's the story so far:

-We spawn on a small island in the middle of nowhere, (white X on map) surrounded by sea serpents (very dangerous) -we make boats and hightail it. Youngest goes north, (green X) other two go southeast.

-Youngest ends up in a mushroom island (green X) and we end up crawling through a fuckass desert/savanna. -I find two villages. Lots of food. I almost die (bright red X) just before I get to the first. -We both find dragon skeletons, and dragon bones mean we are very stronk now. -youngest is fighting slimes and mining iron in a mushroom island.

-Black X and dark red X show the rest of my path. After this, I teleport everyone to the mushroom island and fight. -I win really good, but thats pretty irrelevant. -afterward, me and older fight sea serpents (for some reason. mostly fun.) and I get my ass kicked by one-shotting big fish several times. -We begin to settle down more. Older picks a spot in the mainland (blue X), and younger stays in the mushroom island. I just wander for a bit.

Now for the really interesting parts.

-I find a "new" continent (which I later discover is connected to the old) and settle my house (evil wizard tower still under construction, black O on map) on a mountain. I soon learned my house spot was so good a dragon had taken up a space ~260 blocks from it lol. Would kill that soon.

-Older followed, settling 400 blocks north of me (Blue O.)

-Younger went wayyy south on the desert for some reason. Not pictured, but farther than my farthest south, I believe. He would soon move to Older's place (built his house at Green O) so its not like it matters anyways lol.

-We begin to explore dimensions, start up on increasingly advanced stuff, and kill dragons. I'm pretty much the only one to have extensively explored the aether, and I plan on being the first to explore multiple less pleasant dimensions too. I kill the first dragon (remember the close by one?) and Older explores the Nether and Twilight Forest first. -Younger grows an enormous tree from a sapling from the Twilight Forest, is building a tree house (I call it a tree complex, there are several platforms strewn about the top.)

-I go into tech mods a bunch. Lately, I've coined a currency. In what, you ask? Well. You know those elements in the periodic table that don't exist in nature, so we create them ourselves? Basically, a mod adds platinum, but doesnt spawn platinum ore, so I found a way to alchemy the fuck out of the stuff (I am an evil wizard, after all,) to produce hundreds of ingots out of trace platinum dusts. I turn most of this into coins, but platinum does produce one alloy that makes the final tier of stuff in the mod that adds it.

-I built a vault defended by about 25 potato cannon turrets. This is the treasury, and it will be where I hold all platinum not yet put in circulation.

This hall leads up to it. And yes, the redstone lamps dramatically turn on one at a time. And yes, the door has a key code, even if it's easily breakable. Professionals have standards. In the back of the vault is the machine that produces coins. I currently have it working right now, it'll take a while to go through all that metal. Anyways, just look at all those potato cannons. Beautiful.

-I built a flying Ford F150. I call it my 2008 Ford F150 Seraph. It has four wings made of aerclouds from the Aether and is utterly majestic. I'll be strapping gun turrets to it soon enough.

Not only does it have 4 seats, a glovebox, and four glorious angelic wings, it has actual engines in the engine! And it actually does fly!

Yeah I can't really top the Ford F150 lmao. feel free to not answer this, I'm just not copying all of this over to discord so please respond about it there lmao

HOLY FUCKING SHIT NO I'M DEFINITELY REPLYING HERE AS WELL. OH MY GODDDD THAT'S REALLY FUCKING COOL I am a huge fan of your potato cannons... although I must ask why potato cannons instead of. Massive death lazers or something. Not questioning your choices but I am curious.

ALSO the 2008 Ford F150 Seraph is wonderful.

[falle-ness]

FAVORITE FIRST WATCHES OF SEPTEMBER

picking up the cordial invite of anyone to do the game by @anyataylorjoys

I tag @thetudorslovers @streatfeild @randomprivateer @ainvege @zizzlekwum @katarinas-redemption @trishvaylar and anyone who wants to

I'm very chaotic when it comes to watching movies - I never know if I'm gonna end up rewatching a movie I've watched 20+ years ago (because I don't remember any of it), watching exclusively someone's filmography, or just pick a random movie.

It's been mostly Jackmantember XD

Paperback Hero (1999) – it's what I'd call a classic romcom. Just look at the premise:a local truck driver secretly pens successful romance novels using his best female friend's name who's a badass pilot. Things got complicated when a publisher gets into his small town in the middle of nowhere with an offer... It's perfect for an evening watch. Light, funny, hilarious, and comforting.

Reminiscence (2021) – a post apocalyptic sci-fi-ish neonoir with a twist. Reviews are mixed, but I'd recommend you watch it yourself. I liked it, and it hit just the right spot at that time, and honestly, made me cry. If you liked the Black Mirror episode about erasing/rewatching memories, you'll probably like this movie, too. Definitely not the kind of a movie to watch if you want to turn your brain off for the evening—there's too much stuff going on, but the pacing is really slow, almost dragging... But, again, I needed something like that.

Swordfish (2001) – wild 00s thriller I can't believe I've never watched before lol. Hot men, hot women (bisexual disaster alert), covert ops, tons of money, spies, hackers, shadow/puppet governments, conspiracies and whatnot... Gimme all, gimme moar. I don't care if some say Hugh Jackman wasn't believable here as a hacker. I actually like his version of a hacker more rather than a glassed-geeky stereotype that keeps popping up everywhere. And yeah, for those who care, it's 00s, so beware of 18+ and dubious consent and whatnot.

Prisoners (2013) – I know the director D. Villeneuve because of Sicario movies, and I can't believe I've never bothered to watch this. Villeneuve's movies are something between a chokehold and smothering. So I knew what I was getting into, but this was before Sicario, so I was curious to see where he started. This is not an easy watch. It starts off a beaten premise—there's two small girls missing, there's a cop who tries to do a right thing, and there's a father who thinks that trying is not good enough. From this point forward, the movie peels off the layers of the seemingly 'decent' neighborhood and its folks. It's a very unsettling movie, with a raw, gut-crushing performance from Hugh Jackman.

The Interpreter (2005) - yay, not a Jackman movie. This is a solid typical for 00s with its style and pace thriller about an interpreter for the UN who hears something she isn't supposed to (something on a very rare African dialect she knows) and becomes a target. Nicole Kidman as an interpreter and Sean Penn as the FBI agent tasked to protect her have quite interesting dynamic.

Australia (2008) - You either like Baz Luhrmann style or you hate it. I'm not his fan, but this epic saga about an Englishwoman who inherits a ranch in northern Australia was a revelation. Jackman here is a drover—the guy who droves cattle, horses, etc., to another location for a small commission. There are too many themes raised—racism, colonialism, the WWII, and the greed and betrayal. And how to stay human where everyone seems to have lost humanity. It's not easy to watch because the pacing is quite slow, and it's almost 3h, I think? But it'll leave its mark, trust me.

[mariacallous]

As all journalists know fear sells better than sex. Readers want be terrified. And here in the UK, there appears to be every reason to frighten them.

A country that was overdependent on financial services has been in decline ever since the banking crash of 2008. Then, from 2010 on, the astonishing Conservative policy failures of austerity, Trussonomics and, above all, Brexit further weakened an enfeebled state.

I was a child in a happy family during the crisis of the 1970s. Like all happy children I just got on with my life. But even I picked up a little of the despair and hopelessness of the time. That feeling that there is no way out is with us again.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher came to power, and with great brutality, set the UK on a new path as she inflicted landslide defeats on Labour.

Obviously, our current Conservative government is heading for a defeat, maybe a landslide defeat.

But there is little sense that Labour will transform the country.  The far-left takeover from 2015-2019 traumatised it. As recently as 2021, everyone expected Boris Johnson to rule the UK for most of the 2020s.  

Johnson’s contempt for the rules he insisted everyone else follow and the great Truss disaster are handing Labour victory. But the centre-left appears to be the beneficiary of scandal and right-wing madness, not an ideological sea change that might inspire it and sustain it in power

Desperate to drop its crank image, battered by the conservative media establishment, fashionable opinion holds that a wee, cowering and timorous Labour party will come into power without radical policies that equal the country’s needs.

Just this once, fashionable opinion may even be right

And yet, and I know I will regret this outbreak of commercially suicidal optimism, there are reasons to believe that the UK’s position is not quite as grim as it appears.

1)    The economy may revive

Although no one has been as wrong recently as the economists and central bankers who predicted that inflation would be a transitory phenomenon, it is finally coming down. Falls in energy prices may even bring it to the 2 per cent target this month. Interest rates will eventually follow suit.

Lower interest rates mean lower government borrowing costs. They will reduce the extraordinary debt bill Labour in power will have to meet.

Chris Giles of the Financial Times calculated this week that lower government borrowing costs improve the public finances five years ahead by almost £15bn (about 0.5 per cent of national income) for every percentage point reduction.

Meanwhile the Conservatives have raised taxes so high (by UK standards) a Labour government may not need to risk unpopularity by raising them further.  Under Conservative plans the tax burden has risen from 33.1 per cent of gross domestic product in 2019-20 to 36.5 per cent in 2024-25 with further rises planned, taking it to 37.1 per cent by 2028-29.

If the 1997-2010 Labour government is any guide, Labour will be reluctant in the extreme to play into its enemies’ hands by raising taxes

It may not need to if economic growth leads to the revenue growth that would take the UK out of the rolling crisis that has afflicted it since 2016.

I wouldn’t be doing my job if I did not add that there are some pretty large caveats to make.

Economists missed the post-covid inflation surge because they forgot about politics. Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine upended the European economy. An extension of the war in Ukraine or the Middle East, or, more terrifyingly, a US-China confrontation, or the return of Donald Trump could all derail a new government.

In any case the IMF predicts growth of 1.5 percent in 2025, which is nowhere near the 3 percent we need to fund the state.

And yet, with a bit of luck there is a fair chance that our fortunes may revive, albeit modestly.

2) Labour is not as scared as it looks

Near where I live in London is the Union Chapel, a vast neo-Gothic hall.

Will Hutton was there recently to launch his new book This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britian. I have interviewed Will for the podcast, which should be out in a couple of days. For now, I’ll just say his book is a classic combination of liberal and left thought, and makes the case for radical reform. Keir Starmer arrived on stage to the cheers of the crowd and endorsed Hutton’s findings.

The fashionable view is that Labour has abandoned difficult policies so as not to alienate frightened voters, and I can see why people think that way.

The grand plan for green job creation has been hacked back after fears the markets would not wear it. The majority of people in this country, and the overwhelming majority of people who vote for opposition parties, now recognise that Brexit was a disastrous error. Year in year out it drags the country down. And yet Starmer, who once argued for a second referendum, is terrified of mentioning the subject in case he upsets a minority in marginal seats.

There was a depressing little vignette a few days ago when the European Commission laid out proposals for open movement to millions of 18- to 30-year-olds from the EU and UK, allowing them to work, study and live in respective states for up to four years. Labour joined the Tories in rejecting the offer.

 It would rather squash the aspirations of young people than lay itself open to the charge that it was taking us back towards EU membership.

Yet Rachel Reeves, Keir Starmer and David Lammy talk about the need for cooperation. “Success will rest on forming new bilateral and multilateral partnerships, and forging a closer relationship with our neighbours in the European Union,” Reeves said as she explained her economic programme.

Meanwhile the UK has been ruled by Conservatives for so long our battered minds can underestimate how much the country will change when they are thrown out.

The new parliament will be filled with politicians who support renters, more home building and the EU. They will at least be interested in a land value tax and a universal basic income. Radical that ideas have been forbidden for years will soon seem normal.

3) The impetus for change

The last Labour government of 1997 to 2010 did not change economic fundamentals for what seemed at the time to be a very good reason.

 When it came to power neo-liberalism worked. Indeed, is easy to forget now how successful the ideology appeared before the crash of 2008. Politicians like Gordon Brown and Tony Blair accepted much of what Margaret Thatcher had done because they thought they had no choice. Everyone knew, or thought they knew, that this was how you ran an economy.

None of that certainty pertains today. The Brexit nationalism that succeeded neo-liberalism has failed. Starmer and Reeves will not be like Blair and Brown: they will have no good reason to cling to discredited ideas.

That does not mean they won’t cling to them for fear of the Tory press or swing voters or because of their own intellectual failings. There is no guarantee that countries will turn themselves round. The UK could go the way of Argentina or Italy.

But the Labour leadership is made of serious politicians, and I keep asking myself why would serious politicians want to preside over decline? I can’t see why they would.

As I said, maybe I will regret writing this piece. But for the moment I think we can enjoy a rare moment of optimism.

[sowhumpful]

[kai-ninjago]

Here is my playlist that I listen to when I’m writing Twisters fic! ^_^

it includes a few songs from the movie, songs that remind me of the fics I’ve worked on, and some that I think the characters would listen to— mostly a lot of country and (as per my own headcanon) classic rock :0

Its also pretty long, so I’ve added little details abt why the song is on the playlist, and you can pick and choose what you want to listen to or skip the ones you already know :P

The fics in question for reference vvv

Getting Over It • Skip to Next Summer • Carry On

🦂Rusty Cage by Johnny Cash

Could apply to any of them— this song reminds me of Scott and Javi’s unhealthy relationship

🌌Skip to Next Summer by Homestyle Dinner Rolls

I’m sure you can tell which one this reminds me of— it even inspired the title! Lowkey I think it’s a must-listen if you’re really liking that fic

🪩Sharp Dressed Man 2008 Remaster by ZZ Top

This one is for Getting Over It lol, makes me think of the scene where Boone and Javi are going through Boone’s old clothes together

🌵Circle K Acoustic by Ricky Chilton

This one’s mostly for Skip to Next Summer bc that’s the fic where they spend the most time out in the middle of nowhere. I think Tyler would like this song lol

💀God’s Gonna Cut You Down by Johnny Cash

Javi listens to this song in Getting Over It :0 it makes him think about his guilt regarding the decisions he made in the past

🌾Arkansas by Chris Stapleton

This is one from the movie :) good for Skip to Next Summer because that fic includes storm chasing scenes with the same positive tone as the movie

⛪️The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie by Colter Wall

For Getting Over It bc it sort of reminds me of Javi’s business dealings in a metaphorical sense.

🍃Feelin’ Country by Thomas Rhett

Also from the movie. Sort of reminds me of the happier moments Boone and Javi have together in both Getting Over It and Skip to Next Summer

🎸Safari Song by Greta Van Fleet

One of the songs they listen to in Getting Over It <3 pretty dang perfect for their stupid situationship

🛤️Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma by Luke Combs

Of course I have to include this one!! I love it sm.

🍻C’mon Down by Poor Man’s Poison

Another one that Javi had on his playlist in Getting Over It

♥️Closer by Nine Inch Nails

Doesn’t really match the genre, but it really matches the way Javi thinks about sex in Skip to Next Summer. It’s sort of a double edged sword; he’s so obsessive about being “good enough” for Boone, he’ll ignore his own interests. Still, it’s not inherently a bad feeling for him, it’s just the way he’s programmed after having been taken advantage of for so long.

🔥Highway to Hell by AC/DC

Just for funsies!! I think Boone would love this song. He and Tyler definitely sing along to all their favorite songs on long roadtrips

🌩️Steal my Thunder by Connor Smith

Another from the movie— any country love song makes me think of them. The exciting new feeling it carries is reminiscent to the second year Javi and Boone have together in Skip to Next Summer

💌I wanna know by tea

Okay this is the odd one out 💀 it’s just really sweet and sad, and perfect for how Javi feels about Boone in Getting Over It. Like, they aren’t quite close yet, but he really wants to be

💋Kiss Me by Homestyle Dinner Rolls

More nonsense about Javi and Boone finding solace in one another regarding their respective unrequited feelings for Kate and Tyler. Every line is perfect as always. Like, “holding on until it breaks me” SHUT UP “I need to know what life is like without you in my head” SHUT THE FUCK UP

💥Dead End Road by Jellyroll

This is literally my favorite part in the whole movie Boone is so cute I love him with all my heart

☠️Come with Me Now by Kongos

This is a song that I think Tyler and the rest of the Wranglers would listen to (and have fun dancing to hehe)

💫Taco Bell by Homestyle Dinner Rolls

This song is perfect for Skip to Next Summer Boone/Javi ^_^ it’s so cute!

🪶Blackbird by The Beatles

Something something recovering from grief and learning to move on— omg Getting Over It what are you doing here??

🐍Greedy Man by Poor Man’s Poison

Another one about Javi being a little bit of a snake when it comes to business

✈️Too Easy by Tanner Adell

Another movie one lol. This one is super fun! The Twisters soundtrack really is my favorite :]

🦴Wanted Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi

Another one for them to listen to in the car— this one especially reminds me of Carry On, because the song was also featured in Supernatural and that show served as good inspiration for that fic

💕You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC

A song they listen to while cooking together in Getting Over It <3 also foreshadowing to when they fucking FUCK like 1 chapter later

☀️Salió El Sol by Don Omar

Just one more song from the movie :P

🦟American Kids by Kenny Chesney

I love this song <3 it doesn’t have a lot to do with the story that each fic tells, but rather it reminds me of the way I think Tyler and Boone grew up together

🌙Go All The Way by Raspberries

This song reminds me of Getting Over It Boone/Javi— tender and a little uncertain, but still very enthusiastic

🐾Sleeping on the Blacktop by Colter Wall

A song that Boone definitely loves. He is obsessed with cowboy stuff and songs like this are his favorite

🌸New Flesh by Current Joys

Okay nvm THIS is the odd one out lmfao— It reminds me of the way Javi feels in Getting Over It; like absolutely no one in the whole world cares about him. Also for the mention of staying awake all night to avoid having nightmares, that’s very Skip to Next Summer Javi

🌪️Ain’t in Kansas Anymore by Miranda Lambert

How could I not. But yeah, it really captures the draw of storm chasing that Boone feels in all my fics— especially Skip to Next Summer. Also, “You’re torn apart like a trailer park, but you still can’t wait ‘til I come back around” is soooo Boone/Javi coded you have no idea

🌺Sink the Pink by AC/DC

This song was mentioned early on in Skip to Next Summer, as one Tyler plays when they’re storm chasing and Boone is showing off for Javi

🐄Ghost Riders in the Sky by Johnny Cash

This song is in the movie ^_^ I love it

🥃Good Times Bad Times by Led Zeppelin

Applicable to all of the stories, but especially Getting Over It

🧨Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC

For the vibes mostly :P

🏜️Highway 61 revised by Dave Alvin

Another just bc I think it would be on Ty’s playlist

🧳Help! By The Beatles

For Getting Over It. Javi just needs help for the first time like ever and it freaks him out

🎣Already Had It by Tucker Westmore

More dumb country love songs from the movie <3

💰Providence by Poor Man’s Poison

A lot of Poor Man’s Poison songs remind me of Javi’s business bullshit

💞Tear Us Apart by Sam Barber

This is a rlly good one for Boone and Javi’s relationship in Skip to Next Summer ^_^

🔪In Hell I’ll Be in Good Company by The Dead South

Some more country music for singing along to in the truck

🚪Never Left Me by Megan Moroney

“Came back a different me, but it’s good to see you’re still you” come onnnn come on come on oh my god. “I bet you knew that I’d be back the day you watched me go” COME ONNNNN “now here you are all open arms” RAAAAHHHH (its giving Skip to Next Summer. Javi feels most at home when he’s with Boone ❤️)

🛞Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash

This one inspired the title for the first chapter of Carry On because it’s upbeat tempo reminds me of Addy, but it also sort of reminds me of the unsure yet playful tone of the first little bit of Skip to Next Summer ^_^

🍒Cherry Pie by Warrant

This is one that I almost included in my chapter titles lineup for Carry On— maybe that’s a little bit of spoilers for the direction that story is headed oops 👀

Anyway that’s all! Tagging @amelia-mariee because you replied to my initial post <3

Also pls lmk if any of the links are mixed up 💀

[blancheludis]

Whumptober 2024 Day 5: "If my pain will stretch that far"

Fandom: Star Wars Characters: Cody, Obi-Wan Kenobi Tags: Minor Character Death, War, Grief, Building Trust

Summary:

Cody finds quickly that no training or simulation could have ever really prepared him for the realities of war. After a battle, he walks the field, walks amongst his fallen brothers, certain he will never get used to the grief.

He is only mildly surprised to find General Kenobi out here, doing his own rounds.

"What are you doing?" he asks when Kenobi kneels down at a dying man's side.

"Taking their pain," Kenobi answers, as if that is supposed to make sense. As if there is nothing strange about a natborn caring whether or not a clone dies in pain.

- Cody, Obi-Wan, and slowly beginning to trust each other.

Real war is different than the simulations. Cody knew that. He knew it before they shipped out from Kamino and has experienced it often enough since then. But he will never get used to it. To the earth going muddy with blood, caking to his boots. To bodies littering his surroundings to the horizon and beyond. To calling out to brothers and never getting an answer back.

Perhaps worse than the dying, however, is the aftermath for the brothers still alive. The reluctance to accept this reality. The pain. The grief.

As Commander, Cody has a thousand things to do. Reports to write and review. Supplies to organize. People to command. Yet, he finds himself walking over the battlefield, stepping carefully between droid parts and bodies too similar to his own. He does not even know all their names. He hopes all of them already had one.

He is tired. Not just the exhaustion that comes from fighting day and night, but something that sits deeper, rattling his bones with every breath he takes. This war has just begun and he is already done with it. Done with the very reason he exists. There will be nothing beyond this for the clones. Privately, Cody thinks that might be all right. This cannot be a good purpose to create life.

"Cody, my dear." a voice rips him out of his dark musings.

General Kenobi appears out of nowhere in the middle of the battlefield. He has not changed his robes, has probably not even sat down since the fighting ended. Of course, Cody has not either.

"General."

Cody's body slips into a salute automatically. He is thankful for these ingrained instincts. General Kenobi has not yet given any sign that he demands strict adherence to protocol at all times, but Cody knows better than to test him. Some natborns have shown their real colours immediately, their disdain for clones and the war palpable in every single interaction. The general, as most Jedi, truly, has not been anything but kind, but that does not mean he will remain so. They are all tired.

Kenobi walks towards him, steady and calm, not untouched by the battlefield around them but moving on anyway. He is, Cody has learned, very good at compartmentalizing. 

"Are you making your rounds?"

"Yes, sir." If that is what the General wants to call his grieved wandering, Cody will take it. "I'll be back in the command centre in a few minutes."

"No need." Kenobi shakes his head, offering a smile that is distinctly sad around the edges. "The battle is won. The stronghold is secured. We can go back to strategizing tomorrow." Softer, he adds, "You should get some sleep."

No matter how short they have been at this, Cody has found out quickly that General Kenobi is a hypocrite. He constantly tells the men to take breaks, to eat, to sleep, yet he never seems to do so himself. He is up at all hours, pouring over datapads in his office, haunting the training rooms, spending hours in calls with the Council or other generals, even mingling with the troops. A few times, Cody has found him meditating, only to jump immediately back into action if he is needed. He spends little time in his quarters and Cory can only hope that he, at least, rests there. The rings under Kenobi's eyes only seem to get darker with every day, and the Jedi robes might hide the rest of his body, but his progressively gaunt cheek are very much visible for anyone with eyes to see. Cody sees.

With anyone else, Cody would command them to go to the mess and then to bed. Everyone else does not hold his life and that of his men in their hands, though.

"Are you going to take a break, too, sir?" he still asks. They were made for the Jedi. Surely that means more than that they are supposed to die for them.

"Don't worry about me, dear," Kenobi replies as expected. "I'll be finishing my round out here and then I'll go to the medics tent."

The tension that has been slowly bleeding out of Cody at finding his General unharmed and exuding calm is back with a vengeance.

"Are you hurt?" he asks, eyes roaming over Kenobi's form. Blood sticks to the robe in a number of places but he holds himself upright and does not look hurt. That does not mean anything, of course. Nobody would know better than Cody, who will always uphold his duty to his men first before taking care of his own pesky needs.

"No," Kenobi reassures him, although, in this matter, his word do not count for much. "I'm going to see if I can help out with the men."

A completely different tension creeps into Cody's muscles at that. "I didn't know you also trained as a healer," Cody says, just barely swallowing his scepticism. Belatedly, he adds, "Sir."

From what he has heard from the other commanders, the Jedi might have ordered an army to fight this war, but have also neglected to train their own people accordingly. A number of the Jedi are fighters and truly an asset to have on the battlefield. But few have more than passing or historical knowledge of warfare. Of troop movements. Of supply needs. Of strategic manoeuvres. The 212th is lucky to have Kenobi who, after a brief adjusting period, has shown himself to have a keen mind - and is willing to listen to Cody, who knows his men and their capabilities much better than any outsider ever could. Other battalions do not fare so well. So, he has come to trust the general's instincts and knowledge when talking strategy and when dealing with the more political side of the war. But this?

"Oh, nothing beyond the basics," the general says, nonchalant as if the admission does not set Cody's heart racing.

No matter how nice it is that General Kenobi wants to be involved with the men, Cody is not sure how to tell him that it would be better to leave the healing to trained professionals. Helping can quickly slide into making things worse when one does not know what they are doing.

Carefully forming each word, like he is navigating a minefield, Cody says, "I don't think the medics are so overwhelmed that you need to sacrifice your rest to help."

"It is not much of a sacrifice," Kenobi says with a smile, making things worse.

"Let me accompany you on your rounds, then, sir," Cody decides more than offers. If he is with Kenobi, then he can try to steer him past the medics when they return. It will not be hard to find some pressing matter they need to discuss. Neither of their desks is ever empty. And with them having been occupied with this battle, the flimsi will have stacked up exponentially.

That, of course, gives Kenobi halt. "Have you rested?"

"I will, after," Cody says and keeps his tone polite, even though his eyes are piercing into the general. Hypocrite, he thinks loudly, still not sure whether the Jedi can read thoughts or not. He definitely deserves to read this one.

Kenobi raises a single eyebrow at him, which could mean anything, really. But then he inclines his head. "Very well."

They walk in silence. Cody looks at every dead brother they pass, takes in the details on their armour. Mentally, he checks them against the casualty report he demanded as soon as they were all back in camp. He does not yet know all their names, but he will. It is the least he can do.

It is a terrible thing, to walk amongst so much death. The sun is beginning to set and the sky is slowly turning blood red, a fitting accompaniment to this tragedy.

The camp is long out of sight, when Kenobi suddenly hastens his steps. He hurries to where a few bodies are thrown over each other. Almost carelessly, he pushes the two upper bodies to the side. Cody's hands ball into fist of their own volition and his mouth opens, chain of command be damned, to stop Kenobi. Never before has he shown such callousness when dealing with the troops, but -

There is a whimper. Low and choked, but undeniably there. Cody's feet are moving before he has fully grasped the implication. Together they unearth a trooper, still clinging to life amongst so many that have already marched on.

He will not make it. Cody can see that immediately. One of his legs is mangled, almost ripped off, and it is still bleeding but only sluggishly. Blaster bolts riddle his torso. And now that he is free, his hands are coming up weakly, grasping for something only he can see.

"It's all right, dear," General Kenobi says, kneeling down in the bloody dirt without a second thought. Everything about him is gentle; voice, face, hands. He mutters quiet reassurances as he makes to unlatch the bucket.

That is what gets Cody moving, having frozen in place at the sight before. Several squads have already gone over the battlefield to recover the hurt and help the dying. It should not surprise him that they have not found everybody. The field is a mess of dead men and broken droids, and everybody is tired. He is choking at the mere thought of dying out here alone, his brothers carried away, only empty bodies remaining, nobody to wait for him for the march ahead.

The bucket comes off, revealing more blood underneath and glassy eyes, tracing invisible things. His lips move, forming words he does not have the strength to actually say.

Kenobi cups the man's jaw with one hand while the other settles down on the mangled remains of his leg. He closes his eyes and suddenly looks peaceful. Cody can only watch, helpless, pouring all his energy into swallowing down the scream building in his chest. All he wants, right now, is to bundle up his brothers and leave for the Wild Space, anywhere that is not here.

Whatever Kenobi is doing, the trooper calms. The whimpers die down, his breathing evens out, his eyes actually settle on the General.

"There, my dear," Kenobi says, voice hoarse but still so very gentle. "That's better."

Cody does not know what is happening, but he uses the chance to take the trooper’s hand. "What's your name?" he asks, feeling inadequate, but he needs to know. Nobody should be left behind.

The trooper looks at Cody, almost certainly does not recognize him. "CT-5-"

"No," Cody interrupts him softly, squeezing his hand. "Your name."

"Tumble," he says, barely a whisper. Then he closes his eyes. "'m tired."

"I know, Tumble." Cody wants to cry but keeps his tone light. "It's all right. You can rest now."

"The fighting -" Tumble asks, cut off by a coughing fit that wracks his entire body. "'s done?"

"Yes," Cody says and can do nothing against the way his eyes burn. "You did good."

Command classes in Kamino prepared Cody for a large-scale war. For directing a vast number of men where they need to go to win the most battles. It prepared him for managing losses from a logistical and strategical standpoint. It did not prepare him for kneeling in the middle of a battlefield, holding the hand of a dying brother.

No clone is a stranger to death, to losing some of their own. There were clean deaths, brothers being called in for meetings with Nala Se and never returning afterwards. And there were less clean deaths. Training accidents, punishments. Priest's battle circle. The clones are a product, made to be used. Made to be expendable. Yet, for all their clinical training and theoretically optimized procedures, the Kaminoans did not manage to breed feelings out of the clones. Right now, Cody almost wishes they had.

They sit there, together, Marshal Commander and General, holding a dying man, waiting until the breathing stops and the eyes go unseeing again. Cody wonders, briefly, whether he should offer to end it. But whatever the General is doing, Tumble does not seem to be in any pain anymore.

"Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum, Tumble" Cody says, quietly, as he closes Tumble's eyes. Since being deployed, the words stopped sounding clumsy on his tongue. Just another terrible thing they are getting used to.

They remain sitting there for a moment longer, exhaustion sinking even deeper into Cody's bones.

"I'm sorry, Commander." General Kenobi then says, voice breaking halfway through.

Cody's head snaps up, staring at Kenobi. What would he apologize for?

"You found him, sir," he says, still haunted by the very thought of suffocating underneath his brothers' dead bodies. "I'm grateful he didn't have to die alone."

But Kenobi shakes his head. "I'm sorry he had to die in the first place," he corrects, none of the sharp edges in his tone directed at Cody. "It is cruel to create an entire people only to send them to war."

Unsure what to say, Cody drops his eyes to Tumble, to any of the bodies around them. He does not want to offer platitudes. Kenobi is a Jedi and the Jedi ordered them. Reality often looks different than dreams or simulations but, as a natborn, Kenobi should know that much better than Cody. During training, the clones did not have time for dreams, nor, really, any comprehension of what those are. There were classes and training and scores. There was survival or decommissioning.

With a small sigh, Kenobi gets to his feet. He does not seem as steady as he did before, but when Cody jumps up and offers an arm, he waves him off with a smile.

Silently, they continue their round. Kenobi finds two more brothers that are barely alive and beyond saving. For each, he kneels down, calms them. For each, Cody asks their name and commits them to memory.

After, Kenobi looks progressively worse. The rings under his eyes seems to get darker, his shoulders are hunched and now he is limping, if only slightly.

"What are you doing to them, sir?" Cody asks, less meant as an accusation but more with growing concern. Kenobi obviously cares about the men, but a well-placed vibroblade will help them just as much and might not injure their singular, very much not expendable Jedi General.

"I'm taking some of their pain," Kenobi says as if that is supposed to make sense. "I am not a healer, but I can do that for them, at least."

As glad as Cody has learned to be for the Force, he still cannot even begin to grasp what it is capable of.

"Take their pain?" he questions, brow furrowed. "As in muffling it?"

Cocking his head to the side, Kenobi looks at him. "More like siphoning it out. Taking it for myself."

That is not - "Sir," Cody protests, entirely out of his depths. "You can't -"

"It's all right, Cody," Kenobi cuts him off, still calm, like he has not just dropped a conversational bomb on Cody. "It's not harming me. It's just a little bit of pain. With a bit of rest, I'll be as good as new."

If he ever allowed himself to lie down and properly rest, perhaps.

Cody cannot help but stare. The very thought that a natborn would willingly take on pain just to ease a clone's death is overwhelming, even with how long he has known Kenobi now. Even with how many of his expectations Kenobi has defied. 

"The medics could take care of them," Cody offers, pushing the words out around the sudden block in his throat.

"They are busy caring for those that can be saved."

This is worse. This is General Kenobi admitting that he actively decided to search for and help the men that will die, no matter what they do. He is sacrificing himself for dead men.

"I'm grateful that you found them, but next time, let me or one of the troops end their suffering." Nausea rolls in Cody's stomach at thinking about a next time. Likely, Cody's entire life will be made up of next times, right up until it is his turn to die. That is what he was made for.

"No, my dear Cody," Kenobi argues with all the stubbornness of a natborn. "You are already doing so much. This is a burden I can take from you. And I see them as my men just like they are yours." Quieter, he adds, "It is the least I can do."

As if he is not doing enough. As if he is not fighting for them in every call with politicians and officials. As if he does not learn the name of every soldier he comes across. As if he does not have a kind word or deed for everybody.

"We need you more than we need them," Cody says, trying to ignore how much these words taste of ash and bile. It is what is demanded of him as commander, however.

"No," Kenobi counters, just like that. "Every life is sacred. Everybody deserves as much comfort and dignity as we can give them, living or dying. Jedi exist to serve life. Already, this is so far from where I expected to end up when I was a child. Let me do my part, Commander."

There is nothing Cody can say to that. He is grateful, even knowing that he should not be, that he should tell Kenobi to stop wasting energy on them. But then Kenobi touches him, just lightly, on the arm, a feeling of serenity layering over his skin that is definitely not his own but needed nonetheless.

"I'll be going to the medics, now," Kenobi says, half an offer, half a dare. "See whether they need a hand."

"Thank you, sir," Cody blurts out.

And, with a smile, Kenobi answers, "Always."

Together, they walk back to camp. Together, they see to the suffering of Cody's people. And, perhaps, he is beginning to believe that General Kenobi truly sees them as his people, too.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Emma Brockes at The Guardian:

There are lots of differences between the presidential candidacies of Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton, but, rhetorically at least, there’s one disparity that stands out. In 2008, when Clinton lost to Obama in the Democratic primaries, she referred to putting “18 million cracks in the glass ceiling”. Accepting the Democratic nomination in 2016, she said: “We just put the biggest crack in the glass ceiling.” And later that year, when she held what would turn out to be her terrible, deflated election night party, it was at the Jacob K Javits Centre, a convention hall in Manhattan that has, er, a glass ceiling. It’s notable, therefore, that several weeks into Harris’s candidacy, she’s not touching Clinton’s ceiling with a 10ft barge pole.

As a piece of imagery, the glass ceiling got very old very quickly, so that even by the time Clinton had it on heavy rotation, it was already emptied of meaning. Even without the phrase’s “all right, Grandma” vibe, it makes basic political sense for Harris to avoid using an image associated with the failed candidacy of the only other woman to be a major-party nominee for president. What’s curious is the decision her team has apparently made not only to eschew that particular phrase, but to handle with slightly more delicacy the nature of her candidacy. If Harris wins, she will, of course, not only be the first female president, but the first Black female president, and the first president, woman or otherwise, of south Asian descent. Pointing out this fact is not a major rhetorical part of the campaign.

Which isn’t to say that Harris is downplaying any aspect of her background. Trump, in an attack that, miraculously, succeeded in actually embarrassing other Republicans, accused her two weeks ago of changing identities when she “became a black person” – further proof that he’s overdue for a cognitive test. In Harris’s speech at the Democratic convention last month, she went in hard on her own biography, introducing to the American electorate her mother, who, at 19, she said, “crossed the world alone, travelling from India to California with an unshakable dream to be the scientist who would cure breast cancer”, and recalling her dad’s Jamaican heritage. But while the speech was steeped in feminist principle around abortion and punishing abusers – Harris became a prosecutor, she said, because a high school friend was being sexually abused and she grew up wanting to nail the bastard – nowhere was the language expressly feminist or foregrounding of the unique nature of her candidacy.

[...]

Instead, Harris lets the optics do the work for her and wears the various aspects of her identity lightly. “I stood up for women and children against predators who abused them,” she said at the convention, trying to spin her role as a prosecutor away from the cop-like end of the spectrum towards something that sounds more heroic and nurturing. But in general, and in terms of the way she uses her own personal history to engage voters, Harris has emphasised coming from the middle class far more than being a woman; and, for my money, it seems to be working. As for Clinton, God love her, she’s still ploughing on with the glass ceiling thing. At the Democratic convention, she referred to Harris’s candidacy as the “highest, hardest glass ceiling”. And fair play to her. She isn’t wrong, factually, even if politically she may be off base. 

Kamala Harris has a real shot to become the USA’s first woman to become President in its 248-year history; however, unlike Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run, Harris has mostly downplayed glass ceiling-type messaging.

[peridottea91]

So, because I'm weird about trying to make my own fics weave with canon compliance, I just wanted to share a little tidbit when doing fics for SPN, particularly with placing Bobby's house. I'm combining my neurotic researching skills, encyclopedic SPN knowledge, personal experiences, and my work-related aeronautical knowledge for this one (explained below).

The issue a lot of fic writers and fans (myself included) have vocalized over the years is how the show runners clearly had never been to Sioux Falls, SD or weren't familiar w/ the area, and kind of did bad placing with Bobby's house. However, there is a way that Bobby's house could be technically in Sioux Falls and have more rural aspects.

**NOTE - if you're from Sioux Falls or know the area, feel free to correct me or add on to this**

Basically, you have to treat it more so the way you would general metropolitan areas. For example, UMBC is actually in Catonsville, MD but uses a Baltimore address. Cape St. Claire, MD has a similar situation where it is its own individual town, has its own post office, and has its own fire department but it's still listed as Annapolis, MD on postage. When I went out to CA, there were little towns all over the greater LA metro area that do the same thing. My friends in CA, instead of saying the actual name of the town they live in, will just call it Long Beach because they're in that area. When I talk about Cape St Claire to folks not familiar with MD, I just call it Annapolis and so do some of my coworkers. So, when Bobby talks about being from Sioux Falls, he might actually just be referring to the general area.

Continuing from the previous point, there is a shit ton of rural areas immediately outside the city limits. Bobby's house easily could have been just outside of the city limits and still be considered Sioux Falls.

Sioux Falls is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Back in 2005 when SPN started, it had a population of approx. 141k. In 2023, it had a population of approx. 206k. A significant trunk of the outer edges of the city were still rural during early seasons SPN. A radio station in Sioux Falls, 104.7 FM, has a page comparing areas of Sioux Falls from 2008 to 2022. Based of city development from the past 10-14yrs, Singer Salvage easily could have been still within city limits but in a more rural neighborhood.

Looking at Google Maps, it is not uncommon to have car dealerships, repair shops, etc. seemingly in the middle of nowhere outside the official Sioux Falls city limits. We have this in SoMD too, where you'll be driving through the woods, on back roads, in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, and suddenly find a random auto shop or junk yard (my step-dad's cousin owns one such shop)

Bobby's house was probably either SE, SW, or N of the city, since it was seemingly not in the flight path of FSD (Sioux Falls Regional Airport). I say this knowing full well that TV magic would have blocked out any airplane noises from the sound tracks. However, considering that airplanes were shown/heard several times throughout SPN, if Bobby's house had been in a flight path, it probably would have been mentioned. Based on the show transcripts, it was never mentioned in the show (f/ what I've seen), so it's safe to assume that he is not near the airport or within the flight path. You can look up the flight paths of active flights going to/from Sioux Falls for free on flight aware.

[e3khatena]

so whats the deal with overkills the walking dead?

I'm glad you asked! (approx. 2,300 words)

So our story starts during Payday 2's first anniversary, the Fall of 2014. Players had to attain certain community goals to get new things to play with during their first annual Crimefest event, and the last two prizes were secret. They wound up being John Wick as a playable character, and the trailer for a new game Overkill was working on, based in the world of The Walking Dead comics. The premise was simple: it was set in the same part of the world as Payday 2, Washington DC, and would involve players trying to keep themselves and their camp alive during the zombie apocalypse made popular in Robert Kirkman's graphic novels and the AMC TV show. Given the fact that Payday 2 had proven to be a tremendous cultural hit around this time, getting the likes of Giancarlo Esposito and making cameos in the Wick movies at the height of their popularity, and given how at the moment it is very possible to argue that Payday 2 might have sold more copies than Super Mario Brothers 3, it would seem that OTWD was in good hands.

The problem, though, was their CEO. Bo Andersson used pressure he conjured up in Varvtre AB, a holdings company he was on the board of directors for, to become the CEO of Starbreeze when they acquired Overkill Software, the makers of Payday: The Heist and Payday 2. This also moved Bo from a role within the games industry alongside his brother to being his brother's superior and putting him in a firmly business role. This was good for Bo, because it would allow him to scrape capital from Overkill on their pursuit into superstardom to fund his own dream project: Storm.

Storm was a concept that Bo had been working on since 2008, the idea of bringing virtual reality back from being a curious novelty we played with in the 1990s into a mainstream competitive eSport. Players would wear tactical vests with computers built into them and a 5K resolution HMD that Acer would develop with the aid of Starbreeze in a massive bespoke arena, and using a combination of LIDAR scanning, realtime texture mapping, and the Valhalla game engine Starbreeze paid $8 million for, their physical arena would turn into a sci-fi deathmatch where players would cooperate to eliminate the enemy team and seek victory.

Bo Andersson was paying tens of millions of dollars to invent Laser Tag.

But how does this tie into The Walking Dead? Well, as a proof of concept, the work that Overkill had done in their in-house game engine, Diesel 2.0, would be ported into Valhalla to bring Overkill's The Walking Dead to life. Overkill's employees had long complained that Diesel could not compete visually, and even incorporating proper normal maps and bumping up the texture quality could not shake the appearance of a Source Engine or early Unreal 3 title. Despite releasing in 2013 and with the game now moving into 2016, onto the 8th generation of consoles, Payday 2 was not a looker and Overkill's The Walking Dead faced the same fate.

The problem, though, is that Bo Andersson bought the Valhalla Engine, which was being designed for VR first and foremost, much too early. The engine was literally incomplete, and the programmers had to write tools for the engine before they could write any code for the game itself. After nearly a year of work, they did bring Valhalla into a usable state, and used its VR prowess to power Payday 2's VR version. Bo also proposed a VR demo of Overkill's The Walking Dead to be hosted in Dubai, at VR Park (now titled PlayDXB), to demonstrate the game, the headset, and the VR technology to Middle Eastern investors who could free Bo from the shackles of Scandinavian game development and make him the worldwide name in VR. This delayed their actual non-VR Walking Dead game, which had serious funding from Skybound Entertainment and Robert Kirkman, past its intended 2016 street date. The game was nowhere near finished as Overkill staff were pulled back and forth to so many different projects within the studio. They received an extension to their deadline, Fall 2017, and work continued on the Valhalla Engine and the VR demo.

Fast forward another year. Starbreeze puts out Raid: World War II, a Diesel 2.0 title in which four players steal from the Nazis in almost exactly same manner as in Payday 2, starring John Cleese as the handler for the crew, and some trailers commissioned for their Walking Dead game using virtually zero actual in-game assets, and Skybound makes them an ultimatum: if the game is not out by November 2018, then they lose the rights to the license. They have wasted the rights holder's time and money for too long, and the project is dragging its heels with a CEO seeing it as a low priority to get their contractually-obligated co-op FPS for PCs and consoles out versus his ambitions of filling an entire space in Dubai with his name, his brand. Overkill developers, who had been clamoring for years to use an actual engine that makes sense for FPSes, finally get their wish, and Bo Andersson invests in commercial licenses for Unreal Engine 4. The problem now, though, is that the staff have a year to make the game in Unreal, with the caveat that they have zero experience in the engine. If they had made this move two years ago, they'd have the time to commit to learning the ins and outs, but they don't.

Overkill goes into crunch, with staff sleeping in the offices and working 100-hour weeks to learn Unreal and take what the documentation and tutorials offer them and implement it into their Walking Dead title, reverse-engineering the concepts they had implemented into the Diesel and Valhalla versions of the game and dropping them into Unreal. Bo Andersson, all the while, is going on vacations and not coming in on the regular, spending his time playing zombie games for inspiration and coming to the staff with his own ideas for the game based on them. Glory Kills, Special Infected, robust base maintenance mechanics and the ability to command teams of non-player survivors on missions all wound up in the game with little actual regard for how these pieces fit together. By the time that he realized he should be more actively hands-on, he only had a scant few months to spend with the staff at the final mad dash to make a playable product. The game was playable at E3, with two demo levels, and one of them playtested so poorly that the staff had to pull it from the rotation, but when Bo heard this feedback he would not tell his staff. He told them the game was testing great at E3, that people loved it.

Overkill's The Walking Dead released on the 7th of November, 2018, a week after Payday 2 ended support by letting players kill fallen angels and solve a giant puzzle wheel about the in-game lore in order to turn Bain, the player's main contact, into the US President via a body-swapping artifact used by the ancient kings of Kataru, who were gifted immortality at the same time common man was gifted the knowledge of good and evil at the Garden of Eden. While the clown-themed robbery game ended on a confusing note, Overkill's The Walking Dead was getting started to a whole heap of roughness. The game's combat was frustrating, with hordes of walkers that had to be put down one clumsy charged melee swing at a time and human enemies who fired off AKMs and MP5s with reckless abandon. Their noise would draw hordes, which would need to be contended with via your own noise, as dealing with a few dozen enemies with melee combat was awkward and difficult.

Being grappled by a zombie cost a health bar and a half in a game where your starting character had on average four healthbars to their name, and the underlying gameplay, despite being completely linear missions in level and objective design, were just Payday heists at the end of the day. Hell or High Water involved you raiding a camp owned by The Family, an antagonistic gang your camp is at war with, and stealing their supplies. In turn, they arrive at your camp and you kill five waves of them in Worse Than Walkers, in a move no different than Payday 2's Safe House Raid mission, with no zombies in sight. The camp-building mechanics, which were tied to player level and their ability to tend to the needs of their workers, were a confusing mess of UI elements that did not mesh together, and all weapons were earned in a gachapon-style case system and would degrade over time, requiring the player unjam them, fix them with the supplies they need to keep camp morale up, or watch them fall into disrepair. There was also no tutorial mission, with the game opening with The First Shot, the E3 demo mission that tested so poorly they stopped running it.

Overkill's The Walking Dead performed poorly, both critically and commercially, and Starbreeze went right into damage control. The game's high price tag to low gameplay ratio was combatted with a $30 version that required paying for the missions $60 players got for free. Season 2 went into production very quickly, with fixes to the base game, new weapons, and new survivors being promised within the coming months. Unfortunately, this was too little, too late, as Skybound issued a cease and desist to their business partner after just three months of sale, and by February 2019, Overkill's The Walking Dead was just as much a corpse as the undead shamblers present in the video games.

Perhaps what sealed the fate of the game wasn't its overall quality, as The Walking Dead is home to a large number of subpar games, but its tone and gameplay. Overkill's The Walking Dead is a very staunchly libertarian take on the franchise, pitting the player with the idea that they are to be a colonizing force, destroying an antagonistic camp and treating the other people just trying to survive as cannon fodder not unlike if they were just walkers with guns. This is no surprise given another face at Overkill, executive producer Almir Listo, having a robust fascination with libertarianism and the cult of personality that surrounded fringe Right-wing groups. Almir himself is not a conservative, but he has proven time and time again that he thinks the way Donald Trump talks is funny and has an interest in American conservative viewpoints and conspiracies as an outsider looking in, likely not helped by an unnamed comics writer taking over Payday 2 in its final year to turn the game about robbing banks into one with an ancient conspiracy and Nephilim to mow down with your MG42 or M16.

The Walking Dead is a story about its people and how they're shaped by the conflict, by the apocalypse that surrounds them, and while Kirkman expressed early interest in the sound-based horde gameplay encouraging quiet takedowns and swift, accurate gunplay, it is very possible that the idea of not just a bad Walking Dead game, but a bad Walking Dead game from a popular studio that fundamentally misunderstands the world of The Walking Dead and needs to fall back on generic bandits and raiders to fill its spaces a la Bethesda's open world titles was a bad look. We'll never know for certain, though, as the game has been pulled from sale for ages.

But this brings us to sometime last week. September 21st marked the launch of Starbreeze Studios' (formerly Overkill Software's) Payday 3. The game features a lot of the stuff they had worked on for The Walking Dead (weapon models, a rework to the Shield enemy, armor working exactly like health in OTWD) but also a ton of its own ideas, and in general the gameplay is very solid. The issue, though, is the progression and a number of bugs that hamper the experience, alongside requiring a Starbreeze Nebula account and online connection to play, with no offline mode to speak of, which caused problems when the servers for the game were down for its first three days after launch. Starbreeze promised a patch was coming shortly thereafter, but on October 21st, a month after the game released, someone with ties to Starbreeze, fed up with the Starbreeze Nebula account requirement and persistent Internet connection to play a game with obvious issues and no Patch 1 release date in sight, released the final build of Overkill's The Walking Dead. This featured a proper tutorial, made the original The First Shot into an optional random encounter a player could take on for additional resources, a slew of new weapons, a wandering trader who could sell you blueprints to the DLC's guns, and the rest of Season 2's missions. The leaked build is not playable online but is DRM-free, running just fine completely offline and preserving the game for future generations to point and laugh at, albeit without any help to ease the difficulty for a game that expected four human players at a time.

Perhaps the weirdest part of the leak is that it brought out a handful of fans from the woodwork who view Overkill's The Walking Dead as an underrated gem buried before it could truly shine, individuals who feel the game could be one of the studio's best with enough polish, and as a result Robert Kirkman has been once again inundated with people asking about the now five year-old game, hoping to give it another chance. I, personally, feel that the clumsy pacing, questionable storyline bearing little similarities to the graphic novels it's based on, and the over-reliance on generic bandits voiced by Payday regulars Josh Lenn and Joseph Balderrama prevent the game from being anything but a really weird footnote in a company's confusing, convoluted history.