#outside the st quentin tunnel

[ziracona]

Do you have your own headcanons for the newer characters? I try to imagine them interacting with the rest of the characters and after reading ILM everything you write is canon for me now (been dissapointed with the recent tome).

I have some! Though except for the Stranger Things kids, I don’t know any of the new ones as well and I haven’t written for them, so I don’t have a ton for most of them. 

I think for Ash, being in the realm is weird, because he’s been through his share of hell, but like, Ash is from a Horror-/comedy/? And there’s a lot of overlap, but if you lived in a horror comedy world and went to psychological horror torture horror world, it would be some whiplash, even for a seasoned dude. It’s not that he hasn’t been through horrible stuff, it’s that it felt different before. The realm is such a grind. It’s an unending cycle. And Ash is used to not being able to outrun trouble, but he’s used to that meaning life is a fight. Now, there’s nothing he can really do, and danger means constantly running and struggling and failing. So I think that would be hard to cognitively get used to. Because of his personality (as I understand it--I’ve only seen Evil Dead, & I’d do more research before actually writing him) though, I think he would weather it surprisingly well, and be the kind who can crack jokes and be cocky and fun even there. Because of that, I think he and Meg would vibe really well and get along, and so would he and Ace.

Ash likes to tell stories about all the wild stuff he did before the realm. Some of them believe him (Claudette, Meg, Dwight, Steve)--or mostly do but think he exaggerates (Laurie, Quentin, Nancy), some think he’s super lying (Jane, Jake, Min, Zarina), and a lot fall in between. They all enjoy them though, because he’s a great storyteller and very engaging.

Ash isn’t exactly a support unit /at all/, but the fact he lost a hand pre-realm is surprisingly helpful to the group in a support area. Any time someone in the group is wounded outside a trial and has to recover, he’s way better than anyone else at helping them get used to operating without whatever they’ve lost, and just seeing how well Ash can carry his weight doing complex stuff like fixing a gen even down a hand alleviates a lot of fear for them about what would happen if one of them got /gravely/ hurt. This is wild for Ash, because he sure wasn’t much of a support member/usually isn’t, but he goes with it and is glad to help.

Ash greatly dislikes going against Rin. She hits way too close to home. He’s pretty desensitized to gore and horror and violence from his life even pre-realm, but his first experience with horror involved his sister and his girlfriend being attacked and then turning into monsters and trying to kill him, and he was a baby--like 21 at the time, super young adult--and it was extremely traumatic. He almost died because his girlfriend kept seeming like herself and the horror and gore would vanish from her demon-zombie form and she’d be her again, and he’d think he could save her, but she was dead the whole time. The way that Rin looks like a horrible smiling monster viciously hungry for your pain and then will suddenly flash to looking like a heartbroken teenager crying over what she’s done is way too reminiscent of that. It’s literally the only thing in the realm that /really/ shakes him.

(Nancy, Steve, Yui, Zarina, and Cherly HCs under the cut)

Nancy and Steve are really glad they ended up there together instead of alone (I mean, they aren’t happy the other is in hell, but like, it really helps them both to have the emotional support of person they knew from before with them). Nancy adjusts to the realm faster than Steve as in takes it in stride and learns faster, because she’s more cool headed, but it’s about equal levels of awful and slowly eating at them both. They depend on each other a lot to keep up their spirits and to talk about old memories and the loved ones back home.

Nancy gets along really well with Kate, Claudette, Yui, Jeff, and Laurie, but pretty well with them all. Steve also fits in just fine, but gets along especially well with Claudette, Meg, David, Quentin, and Min and Laurie (eventually).

Laurie and the ST kids bond and get a lot of relief from being from similar times. This is especially nice for Laurie, who hasn’t seen anyone from her time in a long time, and feels very lost and last-man-standing because of it. Since the ST kids are from only a few years after Laurie, they get to talk about a lot of the same stuff.

Steve tries to pick Laurie up because he’s bowled over by how cool and strong she is. She doesn’t even notice. When she /finally/ does like a week after he starts trying, she goes, “Are you trying to hit on me /here/?” bc dating in the realm is beyond wild to Laurie who has been in survival mood since 1978 and not even /thought/ about changing that setting. They’re in a group at the time and Steve is so embarrassed that even though he’s flirty, he doesn’t flirt with anyone for like a whole month. This is actually really good for him, because Steve is the kind of person who doesn’t really know how to /not/ be in a relationship, and solo time helps him build a lot of self-worth and self-confidence outside of any kind of relationship at all. Laurie feels kinda bad he took it so hard and tries to be nice to him, and eventually they end up p close friends and it’s very good for both of them.

Nancy is excited to learn fighting tips from David, Yui, and Laurie and pursues it with a vigor. They are all impressed but especially Yui is. Nancy’s very passionate and forceful when she has to be and has a lot of pride, but is also very willing to be humble when she thinks she should be/someone knows more than her about whatever area, and Yui really likes that about her and is interested by it, and she and Nancy kind of slowly become best friends. They vibe really well because they operate similarly.

One of the ST kids mentions a song Quentin likes and he gets really excited they might be into his kind of music, and then finds out Nancy isn’t deep into any specific genre and Steve likes top 50 hits and they’re both like “It sucks for you it’s us and not Jonathan bc you have the exact same taste” and Quentin’s like :’-] “damn it.” He definitely teases Steve for some of the bops he likes, but like, in a lighthearted friend way, and it’s a rapport they get--throwing not-seriously-meant-at-all jabs about music that always devolves into “That one’s actually really good,” “Oh yeah?” “Oh totally you’d really like it. The baseline is like--” “--oh is it crunch?” “Oh, /hell/ yeah.” 

Yui is super unhappy about being stuck here, because she dedicated a lot of her life to being a spokesperson about violence against women and stopping it, and now she’s trapped in hell where she and everyone else get cut up and killed constantly and she can do very little to help them. That manifests as anger instead of depression though, and she is a /spitfire/ in trials. Girl will throw hands at the drop of a hat if it has even a small chance of helping the gang make it out. Some of the killers (Legion, Michael, Pig, Wraith) start to dread getting her because she /will/ kick their ass. Like, she won’t win, ever, because the realm is stacked, but she /will/ injure you. She’s like, the one killers start to request /not/ to get. 

Some of the killers fight back at this though, and Yui ends up getting super tunneled and injured and soloed out to be hurt, and even tortured a few times, and that is really hard for her. I mean, torture and violence are hard on anyone. But not only does she get punished for fighting as hard as she can for her friends in a hopeless situation by enduring a bunch of awful violence, she also feels like she can’t be candid about how bad it was or ask for much help because she doesn’t want anyone to think she’s beaten or weak or will be deterred by this, or for them to see her any differently--she /really/ doesn’t want to be seen as a victim. She’s a fighter. And she keeps fighting, though she slacks off a little gradually with how aggressive she is both to help the team and because how much she’s enduring as punishment is unbearable, which makes her feel a lot of self-loathing and like she’s letting herself down.

A lot of people try to help her because they know she’s not doing so well, but this makes her feel worse because she doesn’t want them to notice at all. Quentin finally is able to get her to talk a little by just being /super/ candid about how he’s felt about stuff that’s happened to him, even the ugly feelings, and sharing details/vulnerability with her, and that helps her a /lot/ because there’s at least one person she can talk to some. She doesn’t have anyone she tells everything or most of everything to until much later though, after Nancy becomes her friend. Once they’re really, really close, she eventually tells Nancy the truth, then immediately wishes she hadn’t, but Nancy handles it really well and gives her good advice and is super honest about how much Yui’s strength and selflessness inspire her, and that hearing all this she’s been going through and how awful it’s been and that she’s still doing all this in spite of what a war that is inside her just makes her even more impressed and see how utterly outclassed she is in bravery and how much work she has to do to get close to where Yui is, and it helps a whole lot, and they were already best friends, but they are /incredibly/ close after that night. Yui also opens up more to some of the others and is more okay asking for help, although she stays pretty guarded about how hard things feel.

Once she hears what Rin is, Yui feels terrible for her. She tries to keep small gifts on her she has no idea if Rin would like or even be /able/ to enjoy, and when she gets Rin in a trial, she’ll leave them for her/in her pockets. She has no idea if this means anything, but she’s miserable for the Onryo and wants to be able to help, even if she really can’t. She’s similarly very sympathetic to any killer she finds out was lied to or is not in control of their own actions, like Lisa and Philip. Detests all the serial killer/torture killers to a level on par with the vicious hatred the creator of the “ i fucking hate jurgen leitner “ video feels towards Jurgen Leitner. Gets along really well with Kate, Tapp, and David bc they similarly want JUSTICE and cannot get it.

Zarina shows up in realm and is like “Un-fucking believable. I try to uncover the truth about a cover up and I get kidnapped by an eldritch demon. That figures.” She’s distressed life has yet again been like “No, f you in particular Zarina,” but she is determined to help the others stuck there, and /very/ determined to find a way to escape. Gets along well with Jane, Jake, Dwight, and Adam right away, because she and Jane have a lot of “Oh something like that happened to me!” kinds of stories to share with each other, Adam’s curiosity vibes with hers, and Dwight and Jake lead the “Escape Planning Time” discussions.

After she learns enough second-hand about Dwight to know he was way less cool before and fixed his life, she likes him even more and has a kind of kinship with him and mentions how she kind of hid from who she was and lost herself in even feeling shame about her identity and how hard but invaluable becoming who she is now was, and how proud she is of herself. It’s a super relief for Dwight to meet someone as cool and good as her who comes up to him and goes “Hey we’re the same!” because he still worries about himself and how he’s doing. Gives him a lot of peace of mind and they are bros.

When she realizes Caleb Quinn is a killer in the realm, Zarina is thrown for a huge loop. She’s still curious if the stories about him are lies, but uh, getting murdered by him doesn’t exactly make her feel very warmly towards him and she kind of loses a lot of enthusiasm about it, until she hears him mutter his old boss’s name (which she remembers from her investigation) hatefully under his breath while attacking Jeff, as if he is talking /to/ his boss, and she starts running observation point with some of the others and figures out that he’s hallucinating who he sees. Eventually she executes an elaborate mid-trial “Hey you’re being lied to” that works well enough he actually figures out the Entity has been manipulating him hardcore. It does not change much on their end, sadly, once he knows? Caleb is out of rotation for a while, then goes back into it with very little change in how he hunts them, although he is somewhat less brutal/isn’t excessively cruel, and is more scarred than before. He also definitely avoids Zarina specifically and if he has a go after this person or her choice, always goes after the other person. He’s a long time violent criminal so he’s ofc not like, reformed by being informed he was being used, but Caleb hates being used more than anything else, and it’s happened a lot, so in a “honor among” something way, he tries to pay her back by only hunting her when there isn’t someone else to hunt. She is simultaneously annoyed by this and curious/hopeful that maybe it means there is some slim chance the dude has some humanity left, but she remains unsure.

Zarina joins the support squad of Adam, Claudette, and Quentin during trials, and enjoys hanging with them and picking up skills from the more seasoned members. 

She is also /super/ interested in trying to solve the realm and how it works, and asks people for detail on everything they know and takes copious notes. She’s fascinated by Benedict Baker, whom she hasn’t met, and starts collecting everything he has written that she can find, and begins journaling some in a similar fashion to record things she discovers or guesses. She likes to interview her friends about themselves, and they find it kind of awkward and odd at first, but get to really appreciating having their experiences listened to and recorded. It makes them feel more like their existences and suffering and hopes and pasts all matter.

Cheryl was traumatized before even /getting/ to the realm. She’s pretty closed off about her personal backstroy, because uh, it’s a /lot/, and it’s heavy af. She’s kind of nervous and paranoid people will want to use or hurt her if they know what she is, because it’s happened in the past, so she’s very skittish about deep relationships and divulging the truth.

This nature makes her click pretty well with Laurie, whose interests explicitly do not involve prying. They’ve also both been through a lot of trauma and don’t like people to know the details, so they are pretty happy just being silently in each others’ company.

After she has an especially bad nightmare she wakes up from screaming about the fourth time, Quentin hesitantly starts trying to get to know her and walk the balance beam of “I want to know what’s going on so I can help” and “I don’t want to pry.” He and she confide in each other some, albeit pretty vaguely, but it helps. They’ve both got a lot of guilt over stuff that isn’t their fault and endless nightmares and are very empathetic/altruistic people, and it’s probably that overlap that gets Min and Nea god-tier invested in Cheryl’s welfare after a couple months of her steadily proving she is not getting very close to anyone, and almost seems to think she deserves this hell and will never escape it.

On basically wild impulse alone and too much chaotic energy, Nea and Min decide to make looking out for and forcing Cheryl to hang w them a pet project. She’s super confused and nervous at first, and doesn’t want to drag anyone down with her, but the girls are nothing if not persistent, and she kind of slowly comes more out of her shell and starts to laugh and smile some and very slowly decides they don’t have any ulterior motives and so far nothing bad has happened to them because of her, so maybe it’s okay. David and Kate also like Cheryl a lot--initially probably because she reminds them some of Quentin, who they’re both very fond of, but then after they know her better just because they really like her herself as a person. Everyone likes Cheryl, but some are much better than others at trying to be friends with her. A lot of the high-energy ones kind of are overwhelming for her, at least at first, and she’s got so much despair and guilt and disappointment in herself that the less vocal ones she tends to read as not liking her even though they’re just quiet. This slowly improves though, and she ends up much happier and less alone.

When some of them finally get /part/ of her life story, everyone is overwhelmingly horrified for her. The whole group turns into a Cheryl Protection Squad for the next like 6 months. She is overwhelmed and confused and mildly distressed by this, but also happy and moved on a “I want to go find somewhere to cry alone” kind of level because after all she’s been through, it’s dragged back to hell again she’s the happiest she’s been since she was a kid.

I’m gonna stop here bc that’s a lot, but hope you enjoyed these! : )

[leflaneurandhieronymus]

And so, we left Cambrai after a week of work on board and lethargy. For our next adventure, we had to climb through 17 locks in a day and a spot of ice. Fortunately, the weather could not have been better (for February) for such a long day. We tied up with rond anchors to the side of the canal, resulting in the above photo of Mum holding the boat together. 

[leflaneurandhieronymus]

To avoid building even more locks, Napoleon Bonaparte built an enormous, 5.6km tunnel (by himself; everyone needs a hobby) under the town of Bony (we were not able to establish whether the town was jokingly named after him or whether this is a fantastic coincidence) for peniches and plaisanciers to pass through. For whatever reason: tradition, safety, giving the VNF something to do; it is compulsory to be towed through the tunnel. This only happens once or twice a day, with the tug going backwards and forwards each time. 

So, on a pretty Saturday morning, we and our only companion - the barge that we let do the icebreaking the day before: Aquarius - lined up, sorted out 2x30m worth of ropes and were gently led into the tunnel. 

Like many souterrains, the Bony Tunnel is dark, humid and, in the middle of February, almost warm. Turning your engine off while still moving is rather eerie. The fumes from Aquarius (the tug is electric) were very uncomfortable and a more unfortunate part of the process. After a while, Mum needed a rest inside. The whole process of coupling, uncoupling and convoying takes around two hours. 

Just outside the tunnel’s southern entrance is a place of historical significance: a reasonably old bridge over the canal.

Though apparently unremarkable as far as bridges over the Canal St Quentin go, the Riqueval Bridge is the site of an extraordinary historical photograph, taken during the Battle of the St Quentin Canal at the end of the First World War: 

Brigadier General J V Campbell addressing troops from the Riqueval Bridge over the St Quentin Canal, 1917

From there, it’s on to another tunnel, though this one is only a kilometre long and you get to do it under your own steam. This ended up being pretty nerve-wracking, because we weren’t sure whether Aquarius was in the tunnel, or if someone was coming towards us. Nautical tunnels are, as a rule, one way.