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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 2 years ago

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North To The Future [Chapter 15: Drive] [Series Finale]

The year is now 2000. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.

Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, violence, character deaths.

Word count: 7.3k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @elsolario @ladylannisterxo @doingfondue @tclegane @quartzs-posts @liathelioness @aemcndtargaryen @thelittleswanao3 @burningcoffeetimetravel @poohxlove @borikenlove @myspotofcraziness @travelingmypassion @graykageyama @skythighs @lauraneedstochill @darlingimafangirl @charenlie @thewew @eddies-bat-tattoos @minttea07 @joliettes @trifoliumviridi @bornbetter @flowerpotmage @thewitch-lives @tempt-ress @padfooteyes @teenagecriminalmastermind @chelsey01 @anditsmywholeheart @heliosscribbles @killerqueen-ofwillowgreen @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @tillyt04 @cicaspair418 @fan-goddess

A/N: This is the fic I almost never wrote because I didn’t think anyone would be interested in some random, angsty, 1990s, Alaskan, crime-thriller AU. Thank you for proving me wrong. I hope you enjoy the ending. 💜

Almost everything about your existence is pure chance; it’s the most freeing and horrifying truth imaginable. There’s the genetic lottery and corporate downsizing, revolutions and hurricanes, plagues, asteroids, famines, faulty airplanes and malignant blooms of cells and drunk drivers. There are 100 billion planets in this galaxy and your atoms ended up on the one called Earth. After all that, do you really think what you want matters? So make all the choices you like, all the nail-biting deliberations and promises and vows, weigh costs and benefits, do research, roll dice, ask astrologers and palm readers, start over every New Year because that’s something we tell ourselves is possible. The fact that you exist at all is one big cosmic coin flip. If you think you’re the one driving, you’re dead fucking wrong. You’re the speck of dust on a windshield, the spin of a roulette wheel. You’re a flash of silver in the universe’s pinball machine.

I spend a lot of my time thinking about chance, okay? My family is one of the wealthiest in the Western Hemisphere, and I didn’t do anything to earn that. I was born first, and I definitely didn’t do anything to earn that, Jesus Christ, what a chromosomal fuckup. I inherited an affliction that others get to live without. I can’t imagine what it feels like to wake up and not be horrified by myself, my shortcomings, my failures: too small, too stupid, too wild, too weak. And the first time someone says something like that to you, you want to apologize, you want to drop to your knees and cling to them and beg for absolution, maybe even the first hundred times, the first thousand. And then it just starts to piss you off. Yeah, I know, I’ve heard it all before, why would you expect anything different? Isn’t this getting old, Mom? Maybe you’re the stupid one, Dad, if you think you could cut me and anything but disappointments would fall out. I’m not horrified by the fact that I’m an addict. The horror came first. The horror is what led to all the rest of it.

One day when I was in 10th Grade—I was slumped way down in my chair and drinking vodka out of an Evian water bottle—my American History teacher, purely by chance, assigned me to make a poster about Juneau, Alaska. Some other kid got Los Angeles (Hollywood! The Whisky a Go Go!) and another got Chicago (the Mob!) and another got Nashville (Johnny Cash!) and some jock moron I hated got Baltimore (um, crabs? the War of 1812…?), but I got fucking Juneau, Alaska. I thought this was so unjust that I never forgot it, the fact that I had to get up in front of the class with my pathetic Crayolas-and-magazine-cutouts poster and pretend that Juneau was a place that mattered, that microscopic cloud-covered relic of a late-1800s gold mining settlement on the shores of the Gastineau Channel. Juneau was never on my list of cities to run to. It just wasn’t. It didn’t have anything I wanted. But when I started thinking about places where I could really disappear, where no one would ever bother looking, where days are short and dark and incurious and irrelevant…well, that sounds like Juneau, right?

Let me tell you something about the night I left. I’ve been more messed up, yeah, and I’ve hurt people worse, and I’ve been closer to death, I’ve been one more powder-white gram on the scale away from oblivion; but I’ve never felt that fucking low. I can’t decide if I wish I’d never gone to Juneau at all. I can’t decide if it was a blessing or a curse.

My flight is a red-eye with a layover in Ketchikan, American Airlines, bound for Seattle. Sunfyre has the window seat. He’s wearing the bright red Service Dog vest that I once stole for him specifically for such occasions. My dog fly with the cargo? My dog?! Bill Clinton will be elected pope first. Sunfyre is chewing contently on Milk-Bones and watching the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean. He knows the drill. We’ll touchdown and deplane, and then…and then…

And then we’ll start over again somewhere new. I’ll find a flight board and pick a destination; Seattle is a hub, with spokes leading everywhere. I could go south, to Galveston, Lafayette, Biloxi, someplace where it gets hot, someplace where I can sweat her out of me, purge every cell that still remembers what she felt like. I could go west, fading into mountains or cornfields, vapid infinitesimal towns in Montana, Iowa, Idaho, Nebraska. I could go to New England or the Great Lakes or freaking Hawaii, sleep in hammocks, swim with sea turtles, drink my rum and Cokes out of coconut shells. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that nowhere really sounds good to me. My legs are suddenly tired of running. There’s an ache that rattles down to the bone.

I don’t have to tell you that I love her, right? It’s not so easy for me to say. But it’s true, and it’s beautiful, and it’s torture, and it’s a dream. It’s pain that flays you alive and then builds you back again, layers of fresh muscle and tendons and veins growing over ribs and vertebrae like a trellis thick with ivy. It’s not a high. It’s just the best life can get down here on earth. It’s the ocean, it’s the Northern Lights.

I’m swimming in a black hoodie that is three sizes too big; I haven’t slept and I’m pale and raccoon-eyed, looking like death, feeling worse. When the stewardess rolls by with her clattering cart just slim enough to fit through the aisle, I order a cup of water for Sunfyre and a double rum and Coke for myself. It arrives with two blood-red cherries bobbing in a caramel-dark carbonated sea. The guy in the next seat over gives me a judgmental little eyebrow raise.

“That doesn’t look like breakfast,” he says.

I bite off both cherries—juice dribbling down my chin, wiped away with a sleeve—and throw the stems over my shoulder. The lady sitting behind me yelps in disgust. “Because it’s dessert.”

The man smiles and shakes his head, one of those I shouldn’t find it funny but I do sort of looks. I inspire a lot of those. He’s maybe mid-thirties, long hair and ripped jeans, very punk rock, cool as hell. There is a constellation of pins on his denim jacket. One of them has a roman numeral 10 on it, a stark X nestled inside a triangle. Unity, Service, Recovery, the gold letters say. To Thine Own Self Be True. It’s an Alcoholics Anonymous pin. What are the chances?

He catches me staring, and I ask: “Does it really make you a better man?”

“It doesn’t make you better. It just makes you real.” He smiles again, patient and kind. “It makes your emotions and experiences real, your relationships real. And so you become whatever version of yourself you were always supposed to be. But you have to want it. Not your wife, not your parents or your kids, not your pastor, not your friends, not your parole officer. You.”

I speak without knowing what I’m going to say. “I want it.”

“Yes, I think you do.”

He sees a lot, I think, as the plane descends into the grey fogbank of Seattle. 20/20.

When we land, the man squeezes into a cab with me and Sunfyre—he sniffles into a Kleenex for a while before reluctantly admitting that he’s allergic to dogs—and pays the fare. The cab’s worn brakes squeal to a stop outside a residential treatment center on the banks of the Puget Sound. When we step out onto the sidewalk, I ask the man if he’s going to take me to get one last drink first. He laughs in my face. Fucking jerk.

He pulls out a black Sharpie and rummages through his pockets, his wallet. He can’t find a scrap of paper. He writes his phone number on the underside of my arm instead. “You call me, okay?” he says. “Call me when you get out. Call me before you get out, if you need to. I don’t care if it’s in five minutes, I don’t care if it’s at 2 a.m. You just make sure you call.”

“Why would you do this? I mean, you don’t even know me. You have no idea who I am.”

“Because once, years ago, someone did the same thing for me, and someone did it for her too. Maybe one day you’ll be able to pay it forward. I don’t care who you are or where you’ve been. It doesn’t matter to me. I’d like to think that we’re all more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

And then he waits for me to go inside. He doesn’t leave until he watches me check in at reception on the other side of the rain-flecked glass. Outside, a brand new day is beginning. A misty sun rises as pieces of the sky fall.

Sunfyre trots into the lobby alongside me, panting cheerfully, shaking the perpetual Seattle drizzle from his fur. There’s a girl at the front desk, just a girl, and that’s the other thing that’s different now. She’s not a maybe-future-one-of-my-girls. She’s just like anyone else. I already have a girl. I mean, I don’t anymore, not really. But I still do.

I throw my things onto the counter: my single suitcase, my tattered wallet, my bundle of cash held together with rubber bands, my scraped-up electric guitar.

“Checking in?” the girl asks.

“Yeah.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes, I guess.”

She opens my wallet, reads my license, blinks in bewilderment. “Aegon…?”

I sigh dramatically. “It’s Greek.”

~~~~~~~~~~

You dream of him; and when you do, he’s always smiling. He’s reading your palm in an empty Taco Bell, he’s kissing you under the Northern Lights, he’s regaling your parents with stories—of lobster fishing in Portland, of cattle ranching in Denver—all through Thanksgiving dinner, he’s undressing you in his moonlit apartment, he’s climbing into your bed. He’s not angry, he’s not ruined, he’s not running away. He’s exactly as you remember him in his best moments. He’s all chaotic white-blond hair and weightless light, sharp laughter and bright eyes. And each morning there’s a splinter-thin moment before you remember that he’s gone. That’s the worst part, really. You always knew it would be. You can’t even begin to forget him.

Your friends want to help you, but they don’t know how. Neither do your parents. Your dad gets an atlas from the study, throws it down on the dining room table, and opens it to a map of the world. “Pick anyplace and we’ll go there,” he says. “We’ll close the vet clinic for two weeks and we’ll all go.” But you can’t give him a single name: not Athens, or Paris, or Buenos Ares, or Cairo, or New York City, or Rome, or Tokyo, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s the strangest thing. All your life you’ve been waiting to get out of Juneau, but now nowhere sounds good to you. And maybe that’s a lesson you wish you’d never learned: sometimes freedom is less about places than it is about people.

The blood on the equipment recovered from Trent’s apartment matches DNA from the first three victims. He is charged with eight counts of first-degree murder and held awaiting trial in the Lemon Creek Correctional Center. His family visits him faithfully each week. His lawyer is exasperated that he won’t plead guilty and spare his parents the humiliation and expense of a protracted court battle. But Trent’s story never changes: he’s innocent, he’s never killed anybody, he doesn’t understand how the blood could have been found on his belongings. He wants to know exactly what items the police tested; he and his lawyer are still waiting for the prosecutor to turn over all the details during discovery. In the midst of the scandal, the upheaval, you fade into the backdrop like the stars behind fog. People talk around you and through you. They offer gaps that you don’t care enough to fill in. Drinks clink, whispers fly, conspiracies are exchanged between pool shots. You watch the days grow longer and wait for the future to arrive. You don’t know what it will look like, you can’t even begin to fathom it. But surely there must be a future. Life goes on. It did for your mom after Jesse. It will for you too.

A week after Aegon leaves, there is a knock at your parents’ front door. You open it to find Aemond standing there in the muted amber-pink afternoon light. His hair is long and loose, his Armani suit immaculately tailored, his BlackBerry nestled in his right hand. He glances up from it at you and his jaw falls open. And only then do you realize how awful you must look.

You tell Aemond, your voice hushed and heavy, ankles in quick-drying cement: “I don’t know where he is.”

“No, I can see that,” Aemond replies, dull horror in his blue eye. Then he turns around and strides halfway down the driveway towards the street, where a cab idles as it waits for him, engine exhaust pouring into the air like smoke from a firepit.

“How’s your dad?” you call after him when you get your bearings.

He pauses under the dwindling light. “Alive. For now.” And then Aemond considers you for a while. “I suppose if I ever want to find you again, I know where to look.”

You nod. “I’ll be here.”

I’ll always be here.

A month crawls by like a wounded animal, dead leaves snared in the fur of its belly. The flesh on your thigh knits back together. The things that Aegon ordered show up in Juneau, packages left on the front porch and stuffed into the moose-shaped mailbox like Christmas gifts in a stocking. You pack these remnants of him—Zoobooks and cooking accessories, knives and Chia Pets—into a cardboard box and tuck it away in a dusty, cobwebbed corner of the attic, and you’re aware the entire time that this has happened before, almost exactly twenty years ago. When your dad puts a Third Eye Blind or Red Hot Chili Peppers or Oasis album on his record player, you find some excuse to leave the room. When you tack magazine cutouts of beaches and cityscapes to your bedroom walls, all you can think about is where Aegon might be now. You wonder where he works during the day, a surf shop or a construction site or a farm or a fishing boat; you wonder who he spends his nights with.

I’ll always be here. Even if I leave, I’ll always be here.

~~~~~~~~~~

Twenty years ago to the day, almost to the hour, a man fell into the Gastineau Channel and drowned. They found water in his lungs, though the autopsy was only a formality, an afterthought; Jesse had a reputation in Juneau, and no one was particularly surprised to see how his story ended. There were abrasions on his back and shoulders, contusions on his wrists, but so what? He probably tripped half a dozen times before he tumbled over some guardrail and into the frigid black water. There was a bloody mess of an impact wound on the side of his face, but who cares? The blood alcohol concentration doesn’t lie. The man was wasted, and more than that he was a waste. If his premature demise hadn’t been then, it would have been later, in a week or a month or a year. And when someone like that goes, there’s a sigh of relief that accompanies the misery, isn’t there? There’s the sense of a weight being lifted from a scale.

You’re sitting in Ursa Minor at the usual booth, but the bar is practically empty. It’s Valentine’s Day. Joyce is with Rob, Kimmie is with Brad; Heather’s parents have spirited her away on a short vacation to Sitka to try to take their minds off Trent’s imminent lifelong incarceration. Your mom and dad’s February 14th tradition is cooking a homemade Italian dinner together—pasta, bread with herbs and olive oil, caprese salad, tiramisu—and then settling in for a romantic Blockbuster rental. This year, it’s Runaway Bride. Your mom loves Julia Roberts. They didn’t ask for privacy, but you gave it to them anyway. Kimmie offered to drop you off at Ursa Minor and then drive you home after her date with Brad so you could drink away your sorrows without having to worry about calling a ride. So now Kimmie is getting wined, dined, and plied with boxed chocolates at the Red Dog Saloon while you drain appletinis and flip through one of Jesse’s journals, not knowing what you’re looking for.

Dale is washing pint glasses in the sink behind the bar and humming cheerfully along to a Cake CD. It’s just you and him tonight; evidently, Dale doesn’t have a hot date either. It was nice of him to eschew the usual Shania Twain or Sheryl Crow soundtrack. He’s trying to spare you from any crooning love songs. He must have forgotten that Cake has its own little slice of relevance in your memories of Aegon, those memories that refuse to fade, ink in your skin as dark as night.

Your fingerprints trace Jesse’s scrawling, handwritten letters. It’s his very last journal, the last words he ever wrote. His final entry is unremarkable, a lucid recollection of his latest woodcarving project: it’s a family of tiny bears, three of them. He says he wants the cub to have the same slope of your cheeks, the shape of your eyes. And it’s just like your mom said. It really did seem like he was getting better.

You flip to the next page, blank. The heading reads: Thursday, February 14th, 1980.

You go back a few days. And your gaze catches on words that you’ve read before, months ago, back when the journals were a new discovery like striking oil. The entry is from Saturday the 9th. It ends with an unceremonious bullet point of a reminder: dinner w/ Dale on Thursday.

You leaf forward to Thursday, to the blank page that tells you nothing. Back to the 9th, forward to the 14th, again, again. Valentine’s Day 1980, before Dale had married his wife, after your mom had stopped trying to make plans with Jesse, maybe even rebelled against them; just two unromantic, discarded men with a vacant slot in their calendars and troubles to drink into submission. Except that Jesse never came home.

Dinner with Dale, you think dizzily. Dinner with Dale on the night he died.

The opening notes of The Distance shout from the stereo. Everything suddenly feels very loud.

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line,

Engines pumping and thumping in time…

What had Aegon said about that song before you sang it together, stomping and staggering across the hardwood floor? It’s not about NASCAR, it’s about a journey!

Outside, it’s a rare clear night in Juneau. The Northern Lights are a kaleidoscopic ribbon against indigo night, the sky a mausoleum of stars. And you remember when Aegon sang Everlong, when he grabbed your hand, led you upstairs to the roof, kissed you for the first time under the ethereal, shimmering curtain of green and purple and blue…before Heather had interrupted to tell you that Dale was closing the bar. He was irritable, he was tired; he wanted to go home.

The arena is empty except for one man,

Still driving and striving as fast as he can…

And then they found a body, didn’t they? Yes, you can remember being in Aegon’s apartment and hearing the police cars zoom by. You remember the red-and-blue flashes on his face. You remember thinking they looked like sapphires and rubies, the ocean and blood.

The sun has gone down and the moon has come up

And long ago somebody left with the cup,

But he’s driving and striving and hugging the turns

And thinking of someone for whom he still burns…

Icy claws glide down the length of your spine. Memories play back with a focused clarity that you didn’t have before: Dale groggy and yawning just before they found the fifth victim at Christmas, and again before they found the eighth the same night Trent dragged you—shrieking, bleeding, virtually naked—out of your Jeep. You remember Dale at your parents’ New Year’s Eve party talking about how maybe the killer was an athlete with brain damage from CTE. You remember him offering to give Trent a box of his old equipment from when he was a park ranger. You remember him watching as Trent towered over you here in Ursa Minor with a cue stick clenched in his fist, demanding to know where you had been the night before, Dale’s eyes gleaming with disapproval and fascination and…and…oh god, opportunity.

He’s going the distance,

He’s going for speed,

She’s all alone (all alone)

All alone in her time of need…

And now Aegon’s long gone, but you’re still here. And so is the Ice Fisher.

You’re staring at Dale, eyes huge and glossy with terror. He glances up, gives you a brief casual smile, looks down at the pint glasses again. And then his eyes come back to you. He sees you and you see him, really see him, and it’s the first time in your life that you can recall him being a centerpiece instead of an ornament for gazes to skate over like ice, wallpaper or taxidermy deer heads or a mirror. And you watch as the thing that lives inside Dale stirs awake. It is a shadow with fangs, talons, barbs down its spine, a weblike scribble of a brain loud with the echoes of screams; and it unfurls and fills him completely, all the way to his fingerprints. It possesses him, it eclipses him.

It’s Dale, you realize like a bullet slicing through an aorta, spilling an ocean of hot blood. It was him twenty years ago and it’s him now.

You gasp and fumble for the cannister of bear mace still clipped to your purse. Dale crosses the room with staggering swiftness, like a wolf, like a storm, one pint glass still gripped in his hand. He reaches you just as your thumb presses down on the cannister’s release tab. The rust-colored mist spews not directly into his face but into the room; Dale is hacking and rasping, you both are, but he isn’t in too much pain to haul you out of the booth and onto the floor. You’re screaming, you’re clawing at him, your eyes feel like they’re on fire, tiny pinpoint infernos that drill down to the bone. You can feel the ice-cold juice and schnapps and vodka of your appletini, knocked off the table when you fell, soaking through the back of your sweater. You can feel pebbles of glass as they burrow into your flesh. You are dimly aware of a barstool tumbling over as you struggle with Dale.

“No!” you cry into the monstrous hand that he clamps over your mouth. “No—!”

Dale brings the bottom of the pint glass down on your head. The Distance lyrics—she’s hoping in time that her memories will fade—swirl around inside your fractured skull.

Silence descends like a curtain, shadows in, lights out.

~~~~~~~~~~

I knock, and he opens the door. The house smells like fresh bread and alfredo sauce, rosemary and crushed garlic. My rental—a Toyota 4Runner, I remember what she said about the Nova being a bad idea in Alaska—is parked in the driveway behind her Jeep. Sunfyre is standing beside me, eyes sparkling, smiling with that unburdened-by-intellect innocence that dogs have. There’s a bouquet of blue-dyed roses in my left hand, cool melancholy blooms of life like seawater, like bruises.

“Hi,” I say to her dad as he stands in the doorway. “It’s good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you too, Aegon.” He’s not just staring at me in the artificial front porch light; he’s gawking, he’s damn near speechless. “Wow. Wow. It’s really good to see you.”

Yeah, I know I look different. The dark rings around my eyes have vanished, my face is less puffy, my hair is trimmed and healthy and mostly out of my face, I stand taller. I’m wearing a white turtleneck sweater and a leather jacket, black skinny jeans, my combat boots. I have a red chip in my pocket that I can’t fucking wait to show her: 1 month sober. On the first day, you think you’re going to die, and on the second day you wish you would. But you don’t. You live, and that starts out as a grisly inconvenience, and then you get a taste for it. “You can probably guess who I’m looking for.”

“Yeah, I reckon I can,” her dad says. “But she’s not here right now. She went to Ursa Minor.”

I grin, a crooked little curl of the lips. “I think I remember how to get there.”

I hop back into the 4Runner with Sunfyre and pull out into the street, snow and ice chomping under the tires. I had missed driving, I realize now. I got so used to almost never being able to do it that I forgot how good it feels to turn the wheel yourself, to watch the speedometer ramp up when you decide you want to fly. Ten minutes later, I swerve into Ursa Minor’s deserted parking lot and screech to a stop across three separate spaces.

“Oh, what the fuck!” I choke out as I step into the bar, coughing into my sleeve. The blue roses tumble out of my hand. Ursa Minor is empty, but there’s something in the air, something invisible that drives scorching, stinging needles into my eyes and my sinuses. Tears stream down my face; my exposed skin prickles and burns. Sunfyre sneezes over and over again and lingers in the doorway, gulping in fresh night wind from outside. There’s shattered glass and green liquid on the hardwood floor. There’s an upturned barstool. The stereo is playing Cake’s cover of Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.

What the hell happened here—?

And then I see it: the cannister of bear mace that had rolled under the booth, the same one she and her friends always sat in.

She used the bear mace. She finally used it. But why?

There’s blood on the floor. There’s blood on the table too. There’s a tattered, olive-green journal opened to a blank page. The pieces slide closer and closer and then link together, an explosion in my mind like fireworks.

I bolt outside and study the snow-covered parking lot. There are fresh tire tracks there under the murky luminescence of the streetlights; they lead out to the main road and then north towards the lakes.

“No,” I whisper to no one but the fierce wind, the sky threaded with the opalescent Northern Lights. “No, no, no…”

I sprint back inside Ursa Minor, get the phone Dale keeps behind the bar, and call the cops. “Stay where you are,” the 911 dispatcher instructs me sternly. “Wait for the police, do not attempt to investigate yourself, do not attempt to intervene—”

“Yeah, fuck that,” I say, and slam the receiver into the cradle. Then I swipe the black 8 ball off the pool table.

I load Sunfyre into the 4Runner and spin out of the parking lot, following the parallel lines of tire tracks like the etching of veins beneath skin.

~~~~~~~~~~

There’s a sound, rough and grating; and then you realize that it’s you being dragged across the ice. When your eyes flutter open, you see the uninterrupted sky: indigo night, distant stars, the Northern Lights. Your clothes are wet with snow; it’s so cold that the fabric is freezing, stiff and crackling when you try to move. Dale is lugging you over the frozen lake by the collar of your sweater. It’s choking you, but of course that doesn’t matter much. He’s about to kill you anyway.

“It’s not right,” Dale mutters, and you’re aware through the disorientation and the fog-like cloud of pain that he’s not really talking to you. “Your mom’s a nice lady. It’s not right that she had to lose two people this way, she doesn’t deserve that. Oh well. It can’t be helped now, can it?”

You whimper something, disjointed helpless words. Please, hurts, don’t, please.

“It’s not me,” Dale says, as if it’s perfectly logical. “I mean, not really. It’s this part of me that I can’t cut out. I can only feed it so it goes away for a while. It quiets down sometimes, it hibernates like a bear in the winter…but it always comes back. And my god, is it hungry.”

You smack clumsily, futilely at his hands as he hauls you over the ice. Dale doesn’t seem to notice.

“You have to make it look like an accident. That’s the ticket, if you don’t want anybody to know. You shove a hiker from a ledge, a drunk into the ocean. I did that for a long time, never raised suspicion. Never pinged on anyone’s radar. Jesse was the hardest, though. Good lord, did he fight. Had to pour a bottle of Everclear down his throat. Had to make it look like he was drinking that night. He wasn’t, which was unusual. Kept saying he wanted to turn things around. I think you had something to do with that. Now this? You were never supposed to be here, ladybug. What a shame. What a goddamn shame.”

Consciousness is a river that you dip in and out of; blackness crumbles around the edges of your vision, collapses in, recedes, swells again like a wave. You moan, you beg, you struggle as much as you can. It’s not much. It might as well be nothing.

“Things were easier after I got married,” Dale continues. He has a large hiking backpack slung over his broad shoulders, you see now. It jostles from side to side as he drags you. You know what’s in there: a chisel to break the ice, fishing line to strangle you. “Having someone else there all the time, it was a distraction. And it kept that thing inside me…not tame, no, I wouldn’t say that. But chained up down in the basement, maybe. Now I’m alone again. And when the chains start rattling, there’s nothing to stop me from hearing them.”

You get your feet under you, twist around, and slam your fists into Dale’s chest as hard as you can. He laughs in a baritone rumble and shoves you back down onto the ice; your head hits the ground, and you can feel yourself fading again, the last wisps of sunlight at dusk.

“Sometimes you want to hide,” Dale says. “And sometimes you don’t. I was ready to stop hiding. I can’t tell you what a high it was every time they found a body. The news, the ceaseless chattering around town, the name they gave me…incredible. Exhilarating. I couldn’t sleep for days after each kill. I’d toss and turn all night imagining what the headlines would be. Let me tell you, ladybug. I’ve never tried heroin, and I never need to. It can’t possibly be better than this.”

What will happen to my parents? you think, heartbreak gutting you, dull knifes rearranging your organs. What will happen to Heather and Kimmie and Joyce? What will happen when Aegon finds out he left too soon?

“I knew I needed someone to pin it on,” Dale informs you calmly. “Didn’t take anyone who went to the bar, didn’t take anyone who could be traced back to me. And still, I knew they’d figure it out eventually if I didn’t give them another suspect. At first, I was thinking I might use Aegon. He was a little small, sure, but he showed up around the right time and he was an outsider. Then I saw the way Trent was with you…aggressive, menacing…and I knew it had to be him. It was almost too easy. I planted the seeds, and good lord did they grow.”

“They’ll know,” you croak. “If you kill me, the police will find my body and they’ll know Trent’s not the Ice Fisher.”

Hideously, horribly, Dale smiles down at you. “Oh, ladybug, I don’t think they’ll ever find you. They found the others because I wanted them to. And no one is looking for victims anymore. Once you sink, I’ll cover up the hole with ice and snow. No blood, no signs. People will assume you’re a runaway. It was just too much, wasn’t it? Trent getting arrested, Aegon leaving town. Maybe you ran off after him. Maybe you threw yourself in the channel. Who could say? No, your bones will become silt, your name will slowly disappear from Juneau. And in ten or twenty years, your parents will have you declared dead in absentia. That’s my best guess. That’s how it will go.”

“No,” you sob, battling against the hands knotted into the collar of your sweater. “No—!”

His knuckles bash the side of your head, and a black silence rolls in like high tide, engulfs you, drowns you. When you swim back up into consciousness again, Dale is a few yards from you and drilling a hole in the ice with his chisel. You try to crawl away and promptly collapse, frail and boneless. He glances over at you, chuckles pleasantly, and then begins using a hatchet to widen the opening.

No, you think, hooking your fingers into the snow and dragging yourself towards the forest. No, no, no…

Dale’s ready for you. He walks over, grabs both of your ankles, tugs you with terrifying ease to the hole in the ice. Then he has a length of fishing line in his hands, and he’s looping it around your throat again and again, and he’s tightening it until the needle-thin nylon wire bites into your flesh, spilling tendrils of blood. You know you don’t have a chance, but you try; you owe it to your parents to try. You claw at the fishing line and you struggle and you cry out in hoarse, useless screams—

And then you hear something that doesn’t make any sense. Through the darkness, through the wind, there are the barks of a dog. Sunfyre rockets into your dimming field of vision and jumps on Dale, snarling and growling and snapping at his hands, his face. Dale flings the dog away, and as he’s distracted, Aegon arrives. He’s holding—ludicrously—a black 8 ball from a pool table, and he smashes it into Dale’s head. A sick, wet, crushing sound ricochets, cracked bone cushioned by flesh, and Dale howls as he rolls onto his side and covers his head with his hands.

He peers up at Aegon, furious and pained and stunned. “You?!”

“Me.” Aegon’s voice is dark and low like thunder, like the iron gale of storms over the ocean. “And I’m a killer.”

He lunges at Dale, still wielding the 8 ball. Dale’s massive hand juts out and closes around Aegon’s wrist, and then he yanks him to the ground. They’re grappling on the snow and ice, they’re striking out with knuckles and elbows, they’re ripping at each other with their bare hands. You’re trying to unravel the fishing line still coiled around your throat, panting in deep, frantic breaths so you can see and think clearly, so you can scramble to your feet, so you can help Aegon. And then Dale gets away from him just long enough to grab you again, to wrap the ends of the fishing line around his fingers. He delivers one last macerating blow to your skull, pulls you by your throat to the gaping hole in the ice, and shoves you through.

The water is so cold it’s paralyzing. There is a thought that seizes you—so overwhelming, so strangely rational—that says all you have to do is stay where you are, to wait a little longer, and then you’ll never hurt again, you’ll never be disappointed or caged, you’ll never be anything. And you think of all the lives you could have lived, all the places you could have gone: cities and beaches and deserts and valleys, gardens and rivers, ruins and glass. You were always so afraid of really going after them. What the hell were you so afraid of? Everything worth fearing is right here in Juneau.

I can still do those things. I can still live. And I can still help Aegon.

You jolt out of your inertia and clamber madly for the surface. But you don’t hit frigid open air; you hit ice, ice too thick to break through, ice too thick for more than a murmur of light to penetrate. Your palms press against the semitransparent wall; bubbles of carbon dioxide spurt from your nose and mouth. You feel for the opening that Dale made, but you don’t know where it is. You are lost beneath the ice, running out of air, fading rapidly. Then you hear Jesse—and you aren’t sure how you know what his voice sounds like, but you do—speaking softly and kindly to you, comforting you, telling you which way to go.

I’m sorry that no one knows the truth, you say without speaking. I’m sorry we thought you destroyed yourself. I’m sorry you never got the chance to truly live.

You were all better off without me anyway, he answers, without any bitterness at all. And that’s true, isn’t it?

There is a great disruption that rocks through the water. New currents stir into existence, fresh waves spring out of the darkness. And then someone takes your hand and draws you towards a noise, muffled through the ice and water: a dog barking, you realize. Then your palms find the opening and you inhale brutally cold air into your aching lungs, the best you’ve ever tasted. Aegon helps pull you through the hole and out of the lake, out of the jaws of oblivion.

You lie together on the ice, breathing in gasps that turn to mist in the night wind. Dale’s body is sprawled several yards away. The hatchet he’d used to break up the ice is buried in his neck, spine severed, eyes slick and vacant. You can see reflections of the Northern Lights flickering in them.

“You came back,” you whisper to Aegon as whirling police sirens approach, the lights dancing on his face: blue like the ocean, red like fire and blood.

“Of course I came back, Appletini,” he says, laughing with frenzied relief, kissing your cheeks and forehead over and over again, lake water dripping from his hair. Sunfyre jumps around you both, yapping ecstatically, his tail wagging. “I couldn’t leave without my Juneau girl.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There’s wind, but it isn’t sharp like a blade. There’s a sky, but it isn’t cloaked in cloud cover or fog. The boats that bob in the surf are sailboats and cruisers, not fishing vessels. Dolphins crest out of the sun-speckled waves like someone coming up from a dream.

It’s June 9th, and you’re soaring down the Pacific Coast Highway in the red Ford Mustang convertible you rented after the plane touched down in Seattle. Aegon is in the driver’s seat, black sunglasses and white T-shirt, his hair whipping in the breeze. He has one hand on the wheel and the other behind your headrest. Sunfyre is in the backseat, grinning like only dogs can. You turn up the song on the radio: Drive by Incubus.

You and Aegon had stayed in Juneau long enough for your skull to heal, and for your parents to find someone else to take over the vet clinic. They settled on a 32-year-old from Detroit: Justin McNair, a former Marine like your dad, and he either has no family or a bad one because he never wants to talk about them. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter which it is; perhaps sometimes they’re just about the same thing. Your parents have already basically adopted him. He eats dinner with them three times a week and calls your dad when he needs help with house maintenance or scaring a moose away from his truck. And just before you went south, Aegon showed him how to make the world’s best hot chocolate.

You send postcards back to Juneau from each town you stop in. Heather’s bon voyage gift to you had been an indecently revealing swimsuit. Joyce appeared with—what else?—a stack of books fit for leisurely beach reading. And Kimmie gave you, however bizarrely, a compass. So you don’t get lost, she had said with an innocuous little smile. You honestly couldn’t tell if she was joking.

During his one month in jail, Trent learned how to meditate and do yoga. He’s still kind of a dumbass, but he’s also a supposedly devout vegan Buddhist, and he had the decency to leave you alone aside from an apology letter that he slid into the moose-shaped mailbox: handwritten, six pages, lots of spelling and grammatical errors. Oh, and he finally got that job with the Forest Service, probably mostly due to his high-profile wrongful detainment. Now hikers get to swoon over his muscles and hair flips.

You’ll go back to Juneau, of course. Maybe just for visits, maybe for more than that someday. But it will never feel like a cage again.

Aegon calls Aemond every two or three days, a habit he started when he was in rehab. At first it was by necessity—he needed someone to pay the $30,000 bill—but now you think he secretly looks forward to it. He updates Aemond about how the road trip is going and reassures him that the plan hasn’t changed: south to San Diego, and then cutting east across the country to Miami. You don’t know what exactly life will look like there, and neither does Aegon. That’s not the important thing about going. Part of AA is making amends, and Aegon has a lot of work to do in that respect. He wants to go back to Miami, he says. He’s ready to go back.

San Diego is exactly like Aegon once told you it would be. You weave through the rust-colored peaks of the Laguna Mountains and there’s the Pacific Ocean, glittering and sapphire-blue, peppered with surfers and sea lions. It’s hot and it’s beautiful beyond words and everything grows there: ivy, cactuses, palm trees, calla lilies, roses. And for the first time that you can remember, the world feels breathtakingly, impossibly big. You get carryout from an unassuming restaurant called The Taco Stand, and then Aegon parks the convertible in La Jolla. You walk down the steps carved into the cliffside, paper bags in your hands full of tacos and churros, Aegon carrying Sunfyre so the dog won’t slip.

You sit together on the golden sand and watch the 8:00 p.m. sun sink into the waves, Aegon’s arm around your waist, your fingers tucking his lock of silvery hair behind his ear. And then he takes your hand, kneads it until it’s sinuous and relaxed, and reads the lines of your palm in the amber dusk like firelight.

“It says you’re happy,” he tells you. “And that you’re free.”

“I am,” you reply, smiling as the ocean stretches out like the arm of a galaxy: the ancient past, the infinite future.

#aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon targaryen ii #aegon x reader #aegon targaryen #aegon ii targaryen #aegon x y/n #aegon x you #nttf #north to the future

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fomee-c · 2 years ago

Text

Adventure Time has the best redemption arcs

I love deep-diving into my favourite shows, which makes me lucky that Adventure Time has been analyzed to death.

It's awesome because it feels like the show itself is growing up along with Finn. The older seasons are a lot more episodic and focused on the surreality of Ooo. Meanwhile, the later seasons really embrace the show's complicated lore and the idea that morality isn't black and white. The progression of maturity in this one show is INSANE. As the show becomes more mature, so does main character Finn, physically and emotionally.

Nowhere are the show's themes and Finn's personal growth better demonstrated through the show's use of redemption arcs. As the show progresses, classical villain-hero archetypes are subverted to show that Finn is learning that people aren't exclusively good or bad. As the show and Finna age, being a hero or doing the right thing evolves from the basic idea of "fighting evil" to being empathetic and seeking peace.

Heavy spoilers for the main series after the cut.

Some context

I just wanna mention some facts about the show's history.

If you watch the first AT episode followed by the last episode, you're gonna feel disoriented. They're clearly the same show, but it feels like they have very different goals. Early AT is more lighthearted and less serious. The episodes have morals, but they're pretty simple. The randomness of Ooo is played more for comedy than for lore purposes.

Around season 5, the show started taking on a different direction. It's still funny and weird, but the characters are more fleshed out and the messages the show is trying to convey require a lot of digestion. For example, Princess Bubblegum is always smart, but the way she's depicted in episodes like"Enchiridion" vs "Burning Low." Although I consider this a massive improvement, it's unclear how much was pre-planned. Was PB always destined to become a control-obsessed, unethical ruler-scientist? Or was her initial characterization just Finn's crush?

Yes.

Episodes as early as season 1 ep 24 ("What have you done?") show PB acting more like a tyrant than a princess and have the Ice King depicted in a less antagonistic matter. The reason for the tonal shift in the later season is that as Finn grows up, his experiences change the way he perceives reality.

Ooo through Finn's eyes

Adventure Time is about Finn the human and Jake the dog, but really it's mostly about Finn.

The other characters get character arcs and have plot-relevant conflicts, but the show's main focus is dedicated to Finn's coming-of-age story. Finn is Ooo's hero: he's social, caring, and brave, and he's motivated by a strong sense of justice and a desire for adventure. All he wants is to try new things and help others at any cost.

However, he's only 12, at least at the beginning. His idea of being a hero is rooted in black/white morality. If you do bad things, then you're bad. Stopping bad people makes you good. And as a 12-year-old, he believes the only way to stop bad people is through violence.

The show is immature in this respect, too. For the first few seasons, there are two main antagonists. There's the recurring Ice King and his plots to force princesses to marry him, playing off the "save the princess" trope (more on him later). And then there's the Lich, who's a genuinely powerful cosmic entity that seeks to destroy life in all its forms. Naturally, Finn fights them both off through righteous punching.

The show presents this basic understanding of evil, that evil is as evil does. In the beginning, there's almost no nuance to these characters. And this is true with good characters, too.

Billy is a huge catalyst for Finn's character development, but you can see the show's limited understanding of heroism in his debut episode. Billy is Finn's predecessor in a way, being the number one fighter against evil. In "His Hero," Billy realized the fighting evil through violence didn't treat the root problem, opting instead for community activism. However, the show makes this look like a bad thing, with the moral of the episode being that violence can solve problems. Ironically, Finn's character development mirrors Billy, as he realizes over time that he fighting evil might mean hurting people he cares about. Case in point: Simon Petrikov, the Ice King.

The power of redemption arcs

Redemption arcs are controversial because they're ideal but they feel forced if they go unearned. In Adventure Time, redemption arcs serve a two-fold purpose: to convey the message that "evil" people can be understood and rehabilitated and to show Finn's developing maturity as he realizes this.

Ice King

The first character to get a real redemption arc is the Ice King. Initially, he's portrayed as Jake and Finn's natural nemesis, especially when he targets Princess Bubblegum. However, as the show goes on, it becomes clear that the Ice King isn't really malicious; he's just lonely and he doesn't know how to socialize in an appropriate way. Over time, he becomes a sympathetic villain. However, this changes with the Christmas specials "Holly Jolly Secrets, parts 1 and 2." In this episode, Finn and Jake discover the Ice King used to be a man named Simon, whose personality and sanity were corrupted by magic. Simon's backstory is further developed in "I Remember You" and "Simon and Marcy." From this point on, Finn starts referring to the Ice King as Simon, acknowledging Simon's true self and stops treating him less harshly. This leads to a really heartwarming moment in "Don't Look," where Finn's perception literally warps reality, causing the IK to revert to Simon (in appearance but not in personality).

Consequently, the Ice King becomes less antagonistic in general and we even get IK-centric episodes where he takes on a heroic role. For all intents and purposes, post-season 3 Ice King is Finn's friend. The show went from using a cliché villain-type to dedicating a significant amount of time and plot to Ice King's eventual return as Simon. From this, Finn learns that treating people with kindness is imperative to stopping evil. Not only did finding out that IK's personal life was tragic but by treating him as a friend he diminished IK's evil inclinations.

Magic Man

Magic Man is one of the more disturbing characters on the show. He always shows up to do something gross or psychologically messed up. Unlike the Ice King, who was shown to be evil because he wanted companionship, Magic Man wants people to suffer out of pure contempt for the world. His "pranks" include simple stuff like turning Finn into a foot, to more deranged acts like forcing Jake to escape a dream world where doing so would mean destroying all his new friends.

What's interesting about Magic Man's redemption arc is that Finn and Jake have little to do with it. Magic Man redeems himself practically by accident.

We gradually learn that Magic Man's wife was destroyed by GOLB, a powerful entity that can erase things from all realities. So Magic Man's cruelty is best described as frustration or vengeance to an extent. He is constantly suffering, which he tries to mitigate by deriving pleasure from others' suffering.

However, he eventually loses his magic powers (and with it, his anger and sadness) in"You Forgot Your Floaties", grounding him back in reality. From then on, his journey is one of atonement. He tries to reconcile with his family and seeks forgiveness from the people he has tortured.

This arc says more about the show's maturity than it does about Finn's. Although Finn shows no hatred towards a magic-less Normal Man, he seems pretty indifferent. The show, on the other hand, takes the time to make him a tragic figure and offers him a chance at redemption. It wants the audience to know that experiencing loss is not an excuse for being a jerk, but it can explain someone's actions.

King Man's (his title after rejoining the Martian community) redemption arc also demonstrates AT's advancing writing skills. Instead of giving King Man a clear-cut redemption arc, the show depicts him as genuinely sorry without changing his personality. King Man is still obsessed with Margles and is harsh with Martian prisoners, but he's no longer angry with the world. He hasn't moved, as is difficult to do with grief, but he wants to contribute to society instead of rage against it.

Betty Grof

Betty marks a milestone in the show and Finn's personal growth. She is the first antagonist who is shown to be sympathetic from the start. It helps that we know Betty before she goes crazy with magic, but despite that, Finn nor the show ever thinks of Betty as an "evil" character. She's misguided and unethical but well-intentioned.

Betty's whole deal is that she wants to be with Simon, which requires curing him of the Ice King Crown's effects. However, after she absorbs Magic Man's madness and sadness, she starts undertaking strategies that cause Ice King more stress than good.

She becomes a true antagonist in the Elemental mini-series when she prioritizes Simon's recovery over the lives of Ooo's inhabitants, despite the Ice King begging her to save his friends. Even after she betrays Finn, he doesn't seem to see her as a villain specifically. The real source of conflict in the Elemental series was more so the unchecked emotions of Finn's friends; Betty was just an obstacle.

Betty's redemption arc is completed in the show's finale. Betty summons GOLB, risking the entire universe's destruction to save Simon. Except her goal is not only to save Simon but to save their relationship. In an act of self-sacrifice, Betty manages to banish/merge with GOLB to save Ooo, despite knowing she could never be with Simon.

However, it's not as clear as I make it out to seem. While Betty does sacrifice her relationship with Simon, she still manages to save him, begging the question: if Betty couldn't save Simon, would she have made that decision? (I'm inclined to think no, but let me know what you think!)

Even if the "redemption" part of her arc feels rushed, it's Betty's journey that highlights the show's maturity. Just because she does bad things doesn't mean she's a bad person. Finn gets this; he doesn't blame Betty for almost destroying the world. He's more focused on aligning with her desire to save Simon and the rest of Ooo.

Through Betty, Adventure Time explains that it's impossible to judge people as good or evil. To do the right thing doesn't mean to help people who you think are "good" or oppose people you think are "evil" but to find common ground and a common goal.

Uncle Gumbald

He's basically the last antagonist of the show. I don't think there's a lot to say about him that hasn't already been said, so this section will be short.

He's a lot like PB in that he's a visionary. Their conflict stems from their competing ideas and the fact that they both want to subjugate each other.

They almost reach an understanding in the finale when they experience each other's lives, with PB realizing that Gumbald deserved to be treated as an equal. However, he isn't redeemed because he attempts to subjugate PB anyways by faking a truce. I feel like this was supposed to highlight PB's character growth as early PB definitely wouldn't have been willing to share authority.

Fern

I would say this is probably the most important redemption arc for Finn's character. It's weird to say that because Fern is introduced so late into the show and his arc is completed when he dies in the last minutes of the finale. Furthermore, he's a strange character to begin with. He's a grass clone of Finn made from two magic swords, and he's hardly antagonistic toward Finn except in the last two seasons.

But let's look at what we're dealing with here.

Fern's internal conflict is an identity crisis. At one point in the series, Finn comes into contact with a past self (merging timelines situation, dw about it), turning one of his selves into a sword. It's intentionally ambiguous at first, but it's eventually revealed that there is a miniature Finn inside the sword who is cognisant of the world around him. Because of Real Finn's carelessness, Sword Finn ends up getting busted, and eventually infected with a grass parasite, creating Fern.

Up until now, Finn has been acing his new pacifist approach to conflict resolution. He now prioritizes understanding someone's actions and reasoning with them, saving fighting as a last resort.

Fern represents Finn's greatest empathy challenge: trying to understand someone he thinks he already understands. To do this, Finn has to accept that his preconceived notions of Fern are wrong and take the time to get to know the real Fern. He thinks that because they share some sort of biology and memories, they are the same people. He fails to acknowledge the different life experiences that have forged him and Fern into distinct people.

When Fern heel-turns into an antagonist, it's not a surprise. We have seen repeatedly the jealousy that he feels outcasted by the real Finn. We also know he's frustrated with the dissonance between his past "life" and his current circumstances. Like Betty, Finn doesn't see Fern as a villain. However, he doesn't try to understand where Fern is coming from. He assumes that because they are similar, Fern will be willing to talk things out. In other words, Finn wants to reconcile with Fern but doesn't get how devastating Fern's identity crisis is.

In the finale's dream-dimension fight sequence, we see Finn finally hear out Fern's concerns and the two explore Fern's past together.

Fern does die because of plot reasons, but not before re-establishing his and Finn's friendship. I don't really like it when stories sacrifice one character for another's development, but it makes sense given Finn's narrative is about realizing that doing the right thing isn't always a feel-good experience. Finn wants the people he cares about to be safe, and he knows that Fern is in danger by siding with malicious characters like Gumbald. Fern also decides to align with people who care about him rather than someone who wants to use him. If Fern's villain arc is caused by feelings of inadequacies, then it's resolved through self-acceptance. Redeeming Fern requires Finn to truly understand Fern, but this means Finn loses someone who gets him.

I think it's implied Fern could never be at peace alive, since the grass demon was keeping him alive while corrupting his heart. It's a unique take on a heroic sacrifice: setting Fern free means letting Fern go.

Misc. thoughts

Not all redemption arcs are equal. I wanted to touch on a few mini-redemption arcs that either didn't fit the post or had a lesser impact on the story. These aren't relevant to the text, so feel free to skip to the conclusion.

Irredeemable villains

Some AT antagonists never get redemption arcs. These are usually one-off villains who don't get much characterization apart from just being evil. I don't think that AT wants to imply these people are beyond help (see Magic Man for proof), but maybe becoming a good person means that someone has to understand you first, which is harder to do in some cases. Examples include:

Ricardio the heart man

Thief Princess

Wyatt

Redemption arcs?

Originally, I wanted to write a section on Princess Bubblegum and how she gradually releases her iron grip on her kingdom. However, I decided against it because Finn never really sees her as a bad person. However, understanding that she's not perfect is definitely part of her arc. If I were to write about PB, it'd have to be a separate article, probably incorporating how Marceline plays into her character development and how her relationship with evolves over time.

Another character I omitted from this analysis was Lemongrab. I wouldn't describe his arc as a redemption arc because I feel it was more focused on self-discovery than making up for his past actions.

Finally, I thought about writing about the Lich's transformation into Sweet Pea, but I almost don't count it since they are essentially two different characters. A redemption arc to me means that a character undergoes a change of heart. I feel like Sweet Pea is more like the Lich reborn, and while you can argue that the events in "Whispers" are the good Lich fighting against his dormant persona, I feel like it's clear that Sweet Pea and the Lich are not one and the same. Either way, Sweet Pea being the Lich's redemption is to muddy to discuss in this context.

Becoming good

One thing I like about Adventure Time is that no one tries to make the bad guys turn good. Redemption arcs are mostly self-initiated. With characters like Ice King, Finn doesn't try to turn him into a hero, he just stops treating Simon like a villain. Unlike in other media, heroes and villains are not real roles in AT. They are more like social constructs that are easily altered once you start to empathize with supposed villains.

But while "villains" is a flexible term in AT, evil-doing is not. AT puts forward the standard that people should seek forgiveness and atone for the ways they've caused harm. It's a pretty grown-up idea that we should own up to our actions but also forgive people who want to be forgiven.

Conclusion

In Adventure Time, Finn wants to be a hero, but in trying to do so, he needs to answer this question: "What makes a hero?" Originally, the show asserts that a hero is someone who beats up bad guys and obeys people in authority. But as Finn and the audience get older, the show's ideas evolve, too. Through the use of its extensive rogue gallery, Adventure Time affirms that "bad people" are usually just normal people with personal issues. Heroism becomes less associated with righteous violence and more geared towards empathy and reconciliation. Eventually, Finn and the show give up on the hero-villain dichotomy, acknowledging that these categorizations prevent people from helping those who need it most.

Note: this is the first analysis I've posted on Tumblr and I'm planning on writing more with the goal of getting better at writing and media literacy. Additionally, I really love this franchise and I'm always down to discuss it further. Please let me know what you all think?

#adventure time #adventure time analysis #tv analysis #cartoon network #finn mertens #finn and jake #princess bubblegum #ice king #magic man #betty grof #fern #uncle gumbald #golb #the lich

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fool-counter · 14 days ago

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The Shark Punching Center, the Selachiosk Pungix Combin, the Centre — whatever they're referred to as, they're a GoI that punches sharks that was born from the typo of SPC.

Much like the SCP Foundation itself, the SPC has no one single canon, but rather a series of loosely connected documents. All of them have one thing in common: a monomania for punching sharks. Beyond that, go wild. Some SPCs are set in the Foundationverse itself. Some are set in a full-on alternate universe with a full implied alternate history.

There are three main 'philosophies' when it comes to the SPC, with significant overlap.

The earliest approach, and still the most common, is jokes about shark punching. They're just a group of random people with no real characterization other than punching sharks. I don't have much to say about this beyond that. If you need a shark punched or a random act of violence against something or someone that resembles a shark, use the SPC. No one will question it. It's time tested, and people have done it with great success before.

The next approach is a focus on the sheer absurdity of the existence of people whose life's work is to punch sharks. The prime example of this would be S D LockeS D Locke's SPC-2935-J. This is pushing the idea to the extreme. These people will do anything to punch sharks, and the multiverse is more than willing to grant them the opportunity to do so. An alternate approach is Critter Profile: Wobbles!, where an agent of the SPC infiltrates a wildlife shelter. It's ridiculous and unexpected, as opposed to mere violence. And of course, PeppersGhostPeppersGhost's SPC-001 proposal, which answers the question of what happens when there are no more sharks to punch.

The final approach is jokes about shark punching but as a backdrop for cosmic horror. This approach originated with Djoric in SCP-1449, where the existence of the SPC arose from the death of an incredibly important cosmic shark and so reality became horrifically wrong.

This last approach is what MrWrongMrWrong embraced and revived when he created the SPC GoI format for SPC-2615 and SPC-2000, and it was similarly adopted by sirpuddingsirpudding in SPC-140 and SPC-682 and LORDXVNVLORDXVNV in SPC-1258 and SPC-1981. These articles take a darker view of the SPC—that they don't punch sharks because they want to, but because they have to. In this iteration, it's usually referred to as the Centre. (They don't like to say "shark".)

SPC-507 embraces the alternate worldbuilding set up in SPC-140 and SPC-1258, while SPC-3733 embraces the undertone of horror. These are people in a bizarre world, one that compels them to punch sharks.

It sounds absurd, and it is.

But imagine if you knew, with 100% certainty, that your life's sole purpose was to punch sharks.

You would laugh so you would not cry.

The Shark Punching Center, the Selachiosk Pungix Combin, the Centre — whatever they're referred to as, they're a GoI that punches sharks that was born from the typo of SPC.

There are three main 'philosophies' when it comes to the SPC, with significant overlap.

It sounds absurd, and it is.

But imagine if you knew, with 100% certainty, that your life's sole purpose was to punch sharks.

You would laugh so you would not cry.

fool count: 24

#fools on demand

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queer-ragnelle · 7 months ago

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random question! do you have any recommendations for any Arthurian/knight related horror/vaguely spooky movies?

(i apologize if you have a post like this already, tumblr's lack of functional search engine is really something)

Hello!

The only Arthurian movie with horror elements throughout would be The Green Knight (2021). From the outset the entire film is shot very dark, the score is eerie and haunting, the color scheme of green life/rot and red blood plays into the horror as well. There's the obvious violence of the beheading of the Green Knight, but even before that, Morgan's spell and the possession of Guinevere to read the Green Knight's letter are pretty scary! One of my favorite scenes in the whole film. Later, Gawain is captured by scavenger bandits and left for dead, he meets a dead woman and retrieves her severed head, and immediately following his consumption of some mushrooms, he hallucinates moss growing on his hands, and then everything from that moment onward gets a little freaky for him. ;^)))))

Next best example would be Excalibur (1981), specifically the Grail Quest portion. It's a solid 20 minutes of non-stop psychological (and occasionally physical) torture. Arthur is the Fisher King here and rotting away, along with his land and people. Percival and all the knights venture out for what appears to be close to 20 years, as Mordred grows to manhood during this time. Percival is slowly debilitated from cold and hunger, assaulted by angry townspeople, psychologically tortured by Morgan with visions of his dead comrades, hung from a tree and left for dead, and even cosmically harassed by a glowing entity bombarding him with questions. There's also one scene in which Lancelot has a nightmare in which he fights his own suit of armor ("himself") which ends with a self-inflicted injury that never heals for the duration of the film, an allegory for his shame. Insanely good stuff.

After that I would suggest Starz Camelot (2011), which is a show. This has aspects of it I would definitely consider horror or at the least spooky. Morgan's storyline especially as she tries to gather magical power to herself and incurs the wrath of some demons. Morgan is also able to shape shift into other people and it's shot like a grotesque and painful experience which results in blood seeping from her eyes, nose, and mouth. Likewise Merlin deals with these same setbacks while using magic and is haunted by the people he's killed which drives him to madness at one point. Stepping away from the supernatural, the deaths in this show are especially gruesome, somewhat like Excalibur as well, but more of them with the longer run time. There's a scene with a character drawing themselves along a spear to finish their opponent (like Mordred at Camlann), beheadings, even a torture scene with a guy impaled on a stake and unable to flee while [redacted] continues to wound him in non-lethal ways to draw information out of him. So a lot to work with here!

The only other option I can think of is a bit of a stretch, but that's Merlin and The Sword (1985). The Knight of the Cart is adapted here, except that Guinevere is taken to the other world which can only be entered by magical means. Lancelot and Gawain venture there to try and rescue her and come across many corpses and skeletons along the way, which they joke about (they're so normal) but ultimately split up and deal with trials along the way. It has an element of unreality to it, as no one is said to return from there, and the fay rules challenge their every move. Lancelot also brutally murders people along the way including choking a guy with the bar of a spear, lifting his feet off the ground while holding the man to his chest. It's overall pretty camp, but if hopeless quests into other worlds is your thing, that movie has it in spades.

Tragically, that's all I got for you. We need more Arthurian horror! Thanks for the ask, I hope this helps.

#arthurian legend #arthurian legends #arthurian mythology #arthuriana #the green knight #tgk #excalibur #starz camelot #merlin and the sword #horror #ask #mushroomslovesyou

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sethan-obsession · 1 year ago

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What are some good new RPG maker games?

I played some ages ago, but the websites have now all been nuked because they were full of ripped assets from SNES games.

ooh i can answer this

for ones with no real combat that've been around for a while, yume nikki is good, but i've mainly played .Flow, a fangame of it, which has a darker tone and atmosphere with more understandable "goals", so i attached to it much more

Ib (eye, bee, as letters) is an interesting art game that appeals to emo/scene aesthetics that i like more, it has no combat but many puzzles and an incredibly interesting setting, to me

OFF is a french-translated RPG which is kinda the best in the business, the art & music are top notch and the gameplay is accessible, if seeing pictures of it or hearing music from it intrigues you, i think everyone should give it a shot.

almost all of these are real battle sprites. you play as a baseball player (The Batter) and purify ghosts as you come into existence. the fandom came & went in 2012-2014 or so, but the game's worth experiencing, very much. more games under the cut below the image

LISA: The Painful is an excellent game that has a post-apocalyptic setting and a weird axis/style for an rpgmaker game (being a sidescroller), the setting involves you playing as a very traumatized man living in a world where all women have gone extinct and people are fighting over nothing before the world ends, the feeling of it is pretty immaculate and the soundtrack is great but strange, it cultivated my interests at a developmental period

most of the aes can be described through this trailer

youtube

LISA also has a sequel (The Joyful) which takes place after the first to tie up the story, but most importantly is that the very interesting setting & vibe set up a slew of fangames, the strongest to start out with which are

LISA: The Pointless, where you play as a very washed up martial artist who gets dug out of a trash pile by a new friend he made; a gunslinger with a bolt-action pistol that only has one bullet, and thus he can never shoot it: only threaten enemies & fake out the fact that he MIGHT shoot them, to debuff them - this game also tightens up the RPG aspects of LISA significantly, and has an IMMACULATE vibe & unique feel, it's one of the most important games to me ever

and LISA: The Hopeful, which retains more of the aesthetic of the original as well as the goofy charm while telling a very compelling grounded story.

i also contractually need to mention Fear & Hunger, it's incredibly unfair and by most metrics fails at game design but if you're interested in body horror, cosmic horror & can stomach depicted (but very much so not portrayed positively) sexual violence, it's very good art

and finally, Hylics is an incredibly artsy game that's obtuse and strange but very beautiful. it's entirely sculpted and animated with clay, but i think (as someone interested in other claymation projects, but weaned off of them after a while) the aesthetic is notably better for hylics, it doesn't feel "gross" with its humor or too, "self-referential" i'd call it maybe?

the sequel, Hylics 2, is instead fully *animated* claymation that was then ported to blender, frame by frame. there's no other project on earth that really looks like Hylics 2.

youtube

i would highly recommend playing both if you gel with them at all or think they look cool, they're both pretty cheap on steam and are accessible for an RPG (if you can figure out its silly namings and mechanic equivalents for things like health & levelling up).

none of the games mentioned here have level grinding or random encounters, either (besides some parts of OFF)! i hate that! i only like good ones, i promise!

that's all, hope this helps lol

#rpgs #rpg maker #rpgmaker #hylics #off game #off #hylics 2 #fear & hunger #game recommendations #lisa #lisa: the painful #lisa: the pointless #ib #.flow #.flow (game)

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tibbycaps · 1 year ago

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ok this is crazy so everyone is after scar this session because scar’s been terrorizing people all season right. but that’s largely in part to scar’s tasks being centered around being a villain. in fact, he jokes about his opposites task being a “villain” task, and yellow names even accuse his task of being the villain. and then what do you know, by random chance or on purpose, scar later has a task where it actually says to be the villain. his tasks put a target on his back. early on in the session bdubs asks grian if he should kill scar to which he replies “yes”. they all want him Obliterated. and then when scar actually dies to skizz later on some of his last words are “why don’t you guys go pick on grian?” and it’s as if trying to redirect them to grian is the final nail in his coffin.

admittedly i don’t know a ton about watcher lore but to me it seems as if the universe itself wants to make an enemy out of scar. the secret keepers give him tasks that they know will make him a target. they give him tasks where he legally has to say No when someone tries to be his friend. when the players joke about him being the villain, he later gets a task where it actually says that. the secret keeper is toying with him, it’s having a laugh with him. and then when he calls for the violence to get redirected to grian specifically, his life is snuffed out in an instant. it’s because the secret keepers need to protect grian because grian is one of them, and scar is onto them, even if he doesn’t fully know it he’s onto the real secret that the secret keepers have. so they need to push him away by giving him these isolating tasks, until he’s so consumed by bitterness and in his words, “unhinged” that everyone can write it off that scar is just being scar, that he’s always like that, he’s just a crazy red name who wants to kill us all etc. and they steer everyone away from the truth about the death games once again with the cosmic undoing of this man

#idk what im saying blehht #thats my fun interpretation of things anyways #tldr scar is clever and i think the secret keepers/watchers/whatever make him a villain in his narrative because they need to stop him from #getting too close #even if scar himself doesnt realize how close he is to it #and grian is like the secret agent. pretending to be just another player but he’s their mole #idk like i said idrk watcher lore #secret life #secret life spoilers #skizz lights the tnt Right after scar says the name Grian. and then grian says bye scar in chat. derranged

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tomatoswup · 1 year ago

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New Horizons Hospital

___🕯️a decision based trigun horror adventure 🕯️__

summary: welcome to new horizons hospital, an abandoned hospital on the outskirts of town. Maybe you should denied that favor...

Play the game, Observe the story, Indulge yourself to the characters but converse with peers. Choose wisely, Every decision is dire.

caution: this game will contain : disturbing themes, horror themes, violence, the paranormal, blood, suggestive content, drug references(hospital), hospitals, insects, body horror,,, warnings will be applied to every entry this game will post.

🕯️If you can not handle any of horror or violent-like subjects, I would advise you not to play.

🕯️the way this story is written will be based on the consensus voting that the audience will be doing. You, the reader, are the main character.

A/N: hI YALLL!!! Welcome to the 100 follower special!🎉 :D It took a bit for me to make this work more easier so I thought this was the best way! I also been wanting to write a horror-centric trigun fic au bc of the lil cosmic horror that happens in the Trimax manga also fatal frame ;P ...and phasmophobia. And honestly this is gonna be a fun one!

Join and play the game! And careful, with every step you take, it may be your last. Have fun! :D

You've done plenty of things in your life... Actually rephrasing that, probably not the amount of things other people have done like party or adventure, but you've done enough that you were just...content!

Like visiting cafes, or visiting your local library! Those were most things you would've liked to been doing at the moment, and not..

This.

The loud cracks of thunder striked through the night sky and the drowning rain didn't stop for just one second as you tightly wrapped your jacket closer to your chest, taking a step to the side and closer to the white van doors you were standing infront of.

Wow! Look at that bright sun! Such mood-lifting weather huh?

'Fuck' You thought to yourself, staring up at the large ominous hospital that gloomed over you as the van stayed parked in place. With various vines crawling up its brick walls and the metallic debris scattered about the yard, you were kinda worried that you might catch tetanus in a run-down place like this.

Or maybe tetanus was the least of your problems...

"Hey, I thought you guys said it was a small clinic?" You nervously laughed, the palms of your hands feeling a tad bit more sweatier than before.

"Well, they did say it was pretty big hahah!" Your friend, Meryl, sweat-dropped, shooting you a sorry smile as she unpacked wires and cameras from the various boxes around the van.

You quickly whipped your head back to the abandoned place.

Clinic?

Whoever told Meryl about this absolutely lied to her because this damned place was not a fucking clinic. You didn't think there was any clinic that was this big around here.

"I don't think we should have anything to worry about though!"

Spinning around in her chair, Meryl shot you a small smile “Folks said it wasn’t anything too crazy like last time, just the normal nightly poltergeist!”

Normal. Poltergeist.

And too crazy like last time? WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME FOR THEM TO SAY THAT-

Goddamn it, you really should’ve said no to doing this favor for her.

“Pretty please? Oh cmon! You said a psychic told you that you had a really high energy no? Maybe you could help us get some ghosts while Nai is out sick! Please?” She had begged you while you were working your morning shift at the coffeehouse last week. You knew Meryl's done some odd jobs before but this one was the oddest. Ghost hunting really?

Thinking back onto it, it wasn’t even a real psychic it was really just some random ass dude wasted out of his mind from the club next door!

At least he was nice enough to not throw up on the floors the part-timer had just mopped.

But you couldn’t go back on your word could you?

You sighed, wiping the rain drops away from your forehead “So who’s going in with me-”

Your shoulders jumped up in surprise as a loud bang sounded through the van as her partner, Milly, slammed a large box from the van and right in front of you, just making sure it was still under the van’s roof.

“I-Im not going in alone right??” You worridly continued as Milly brightly laughed out “Of course you’re not silly!” Cracking the top of the box open, you couldn’t help but peek into the weird trinkets inside, spotting different kinds of tech and… Was that a fucking cross?

“The others should be in here in just a bit. The rain kinda set us back just an hour but- Hey and there comes one of our crew now!” Milly cheered, waving behind you as the smell of nicotine had started to get stronger and stronger.

“Sorry, had a late service at the church.”

Wait.

You whipped your body around at the very familiar rugged voice, your shoes making a dent in the wet mud as you watched the local priest walking up behind you, a lit cigarette in his mouth and the beaded blue and black rosary swinging from his neck back and forth.

It wasn’t until he was right beside you that he looked you up and down with a raised eyebrow.

“The coffee house barista?” “THE FUCKING PRIEST?"

Dude no fucking way was the priest who wed your aunt and uncle just a few months ago was gonna help ghost hunt.

You were taken aback as Wolfwood let out a “Hmph”, crossing his arms around his chest.

“Now I should be the one asking why you’re here. Didn’t you just make my drink a few days ago?"

“Yeah I did and I hope you know that’s the worst flavor on the menu. And I’m here as a favor for a friend that's all."

Wolfwood ignored your remark, turning to Milly who held out small ear pieces for the both of you to put on “Hey is blondie here yet or do we gotta start without him?” He lazily asked, taking the ear piece and putting it on as you followed suit.

“You guys can start,” Meryl called out from inside the van, before popping out and placing something bulky in your hands. With golden rims and odd scriptures alongside those rims, the old-

Actually really old antique camera fit well in your hands “Vash texted me he was gonna be a bit late so we’ll start off slow and steady, okay guys?”

Achieved! "Camera Obscura"

You couldn't help but scrunch your face up in confusion, motioning to the camera she had randomly just handed you. "Oh right! That's the Camera Obscura, it was given to us by our boss Roberto. You remember? The one I brought the other day?"

Oh! The tired man who really liked black coffee! "Apparently it exorcises spirits if you get them in the pictures you take but we haven't tried it out yet. Maybe you'll be the right person for this? Our medium isn't here yet but this is a good head start!"

You looked back down at the camera and moved it around in your hands, getting use to the weight as you looked at the dents and cuts on the surface of it t as Wolfwood blew out another small cloud of smoke.

“So who are we dealing with now?”

Meryl tinkered around with a tablet in her hands “Our main ghost is nicknamed “Four Legged Sherry”, apparently she appears more when people are alone…” At every word she spoke, you couldn’t help but play with the hem of your jacket in nervousness at the thought of what you were getting into.

Just your luck wasn’t it?

You put the camera strap over your neck, it's home for the time being before you felt the wind get caught in your throat as Milly slapped both hands down on your shoulders, a small “Eep!” slipping out of you as she gave you a thumbs up “I know you’ll do well with this being your first time and all! Good luck!”

Achieved! Teammate Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Exorcist

And before you knew it, you were making your way inside the desolate place alongside Wolfwood as the radio crackled through your ear piece.

“Check, check, check! If you can hear me, please click the button on the earpiece and respond.” Meryl’s voice rung out, earning a response from the both of you before you guys continued and thus, began the hunt.

“Do you guys do this often?” You asked curiously, closely following Wolfwood through the dimly lit hallways, each bang of the nearby animals making you turn in paranoia as every empty room was filled with darkness, the flashlights y’all held illuminating the peeled rotten walls around.

Each step the both of you took through the puddles on the floor echoed like music from the depths of hell.

Fuck, you were never doing this ever again.

Woflwood lifted up the small cross at the end of his rosary and used it to scratch the top of his head, cigarette kept lit in his mouth “Too often than I’d like to really.”

He suddenly stopped in place before whispering to himself, turning towards you as he made a taunting scary face “Scared already? You’ll get use to it, this is nothing!”

You couldn’t help but laugh at the small statement “You act like I’m gonna be doing this again.” You brought the camera up to your face and snapped a picture of the hallway before the polaroid slowly popped out from the top.

He went quiet again, staring down the dark hallway with a stern look, before taking the cig from his mouth and throwing it to the floor, crushing it clean under his shoes as he muttered under his breath, the final cloud of smoke leaving him.

"You will."

You didn't get to respond before a small breeze of wind gaze your cheek, making you turn your head and your light into one of the desolate rooms, rusted with olden beds and papers scattered around the floor.

Obtained this chapter:

-Camera Obscura

-Teammate Nicholas D. Wolfwood

UNLOCKED:

Entry 1 NOTEBOOK

description: photographic findings, files, and personal character entries will be posted in the notebook.

#trigun imagines #vash x reader #trigun #trigun headcanons #trigun stampede x reader #vash imagine #vash the stampede #vash the stampede x reader #nicholas d wolfwood #trigun au #trigun stampede headcanons #trigun maximum #New Horizons Hospital au #trigun paranormal au #hehehehehehe #oh this gon be a RIDE~

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wincestation · 10 months ago

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WIP Game!

Thank you so much to @cosmic-lullaby, @mistressvera @callmetippytumbles @writerrose1998 for tagging me!

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

i don't really have any wips yet (still taking much needed rest after finishing aitwys), just random ideas that might become wips:

Criminal Minds AU (Wednesday's characters in the BAU)

serial killers fic (optional title: Mallory to your Mickey) - this one probably won’t get realized soon since I’m struggling to write gore/violence at the moment

Tyler character study fic (angst)

These are all very vague ideas tho, nothing concrete.

tagging @the-strangest-person, @ilregnodidolcenera and @onlyelaine! <3

#my writing #wyler #wyler fanfiction

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morklagt · 8 months ago

Audio

#bandcamp #usnea #random cosmic violence #doom metal

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theresattrpgforthat · 2 years ago

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THEME: The Sea Calls

This week’s recommendations are aquatic adventures of all kinds!

Stoneshore, by Stoneshore.

Enter a coastal realm of sea-goblins, nymphs, crab-like shellfellows and human fisherpeople ekeing a living from the mostly pleasant, sometimes strange, occasionally dangerous Stoneshore region.

A simple, narrative-led tabletop role-playing game, the Stoneshore Micro RPG is a pleasant change of pace for seasoned players, or a good introduction to the world of roleplaying for those less familiar with the format. This tabletop role-playing game requires a twelve-sided dice (d12), six-sided dice (d6) and ten-sided dice (d10), pens and paper, and a couple of friends. This is a simple game to pick up and play, with tools to create quick improvised stories.

Rising Tide, by cosmic beagle.

In Rising Tide, you are a member of a crew fighting for ecojustice. You live your life aboard a ship, in a near-future Earth where the oceans have risen, destroying many coastal areas. Corporations and corrupt governments continue abusing the ecosystem, too dependent on the resources or too inept to break old habits.

In the story, your crew’s aim is to perform missions to take down the people and organizations continuing to exploit the Earth’s ecosystem. As you complete missions, you live up to ideologies, retiring when you’ve completed one ideology. Rising Tide deals with environmental disasters, injustice, and violence. There may be tension between the crew as they debate the ethical, moral, and appropriate actions to take.

This game uses the Paragon System by John Harper and Sean Nittner. It's an excellent system option for folks who want self-contained stories, and who want the space to determine whether or not they succeed before they narrate what it is exactly that they do. Your character will grow as you play, but some of that growth is determined by your teammates.

Jellyfish Felonies, by Penguin King Games.

Jellyfish. Few would suspect that these fragile bags of transparent goo are the most dangerous thing in the ocean – and that's just the way you like it. Take advantage of your unassuming appearance and the hidden wisdom of the depths to lie, cheat, swindle, defraud, embezzle, and prove that you don't need a brain to be a criminal mastermind!

Jellyfish Felonies is a semi-competitive tabletop roleplaying game for three to five players, plus an optional Game master. You will start with three stats: Drift Aimlessly, Philosophize, and Commit Fraud. Take turns swimming into the spotlight to accrue your Ill-Gotten Gains without increasing your Entanglement, Contemplation, or Liability. If you’re not careful, you’ll be eaten by a whale!

Emerge, by Jake Gollub.

Down in the ocean depths of a post-apocalyptic world, The Surface City is a symbol of hope to any human who can make it there, but the question is… will you be human by the time you reach it? Embark on an oceanic adventure for survival with your crew-mates as you stare down every danger thrown your way, whether it be mutant, mech, or something more ancient…

Emerge is a table-top RPG designed for 3-6 players with minimal prep time, dynamic story-telling opportunities, and flexible session length. Your characters are spending a number of days in the ocean, going through a number of phases in an attempt to keep your submarine running while facing numerous obstacles. The game uses Yahtzee rolls to determine what it is your characters will have to overcome.

Emerge is built so that you can determine how long you want to play for, whether it be for only two hours, or a full 4-hour session. It encourages players to take control over what exactly they’ll face when their bodies undergo changes, whether those changes be mechanical or mutative, and it’s absolutely free!

Bones Deep, by Technical Grimoire Games

Bones Deep is a tabletop RPG of skeletons exploring the ocean floor.

Emergent adventures. Every random encounter in Bones Deep aims to draw you deeper into the setting. Warring factions, clues to hidden treasure, terrible foes, cute pets, and nefarious mysteries all compete for your attention. The book includes 5 detailed quests to kick off your campaign.

This setting is wonderfully original and unique: bones don’t float, so your characters will travel along the ocean floor. There’s a mix of foes both real and imagined, from the devious cephalopods to the ridiculously wonderful Sharkball. On top of an intriguing setting, Bones Deep has one of the best set of hyperlinks I’ve ever seen. Every single page has a small index at the top and bottom that allows you to navigate between player options, locations, and foes. You need the Troika rulebook in order to know how to play this game, as it doesn’t explain the rules system in detail. However, this also makes it 100% compatible with your Troika game.

Requires Troika, by Melsonian Arts Council

Bro, is it Gay to Dock? by Nguyen Conditions

In every bay is booty waiting to be dug up. On every port an Imperial waiting to bind you. Coin is cursed with more than avarice. The sea, while you love it, does not always love you back as gently. Out there is a charge & cutlass with your name on it, waiting to meet you at your final destination. Which is all well and good! But, you're here for him. Your swashbuckling hero,

...The Legend.

Bro, Is It Gay To Dock? is a rules light tabletop rpg for a GM and 1-4 players interested in queer high seas adventure.

Players take on the role of novice pirates who're saved and companioned by a Pirate Legend. Play mixes swashbuckling adventure with romantic tension between pirates. In short... You meet a gay pirate. You are a gay pirate. You gay pirate together. Be Gay! Go Pirate!

This game is built off of the What’s So Cool About Outer Space rule system, by Jared Sinclair. It has quick, descriptive character creation, just enough of a setting to get you started, and a simple success metric that can be learned in one session. Check this game out if you like the idea of playing gay pirates, and you don’t want to learn a complicated system in order to do so.

Seemannsgarn, by Max Kämmerer

It is the golden age of piracy. The night has been long - or is it day already? - and you have been drinking heavily, sitting around one of the tables of the shady, dirty, and loud interior of your favorite watering hole, sharing tales from the high seas, each larger and more unlikely than the last. Tales of grandeur and ridicule. Tales of the Kraken, the wildest storms, and improbable feats. The sea is your one true love, be it as a pirate, a trader, a soldier, or a fisher. It is an unhealthy relationship of stiff winds, burned skin, and salty water, but you love her nonetheless.

In "Seemannsgarn" you take turns telling tall tales from the seas, your character claims to have experienced. You draw cards, which offer you prompts, weave a tale from those prompts and make a roll. Depending on the result of your roll the tale is true, exaggerated or completely made up. Other players may then decide which parts of the story are made up and tell the true story. During the game you draw symbols on a map that represent the tales you told.

#indie ttrpgs #dnd #ocean #nautical #game recommendations #seaside #tabletop games #stoneshore is exceptionally cute and I enjoyed it very much #and Bones Deep is hilarious

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romanceyourdemons · 1 year ago

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as a revisionist horror/slasher film, the cabin in the woods (2011) hits all the standard beats, but it does so in an interesting and well-executed way. much like scream (1996) and behind the mask: the rise of leslie vernon (2006), this film takes the typical slasher formula—a formula defined by its in-universe randomness and senselessness—and lays the genre’s tropes out deliberately, reframing the events and bloodshed as something clearly defined and deliberately staged. the horror within the film is shifted from the horror of helplessness before senseless, unstoppable, sexual-violence-coded violence to the horror of helplessness under the eye of voyeuristic, irresistible, manipulative and coldly controlling violence; the center of horror is shifted from the dangerous element outside of society to society itself. this element of voyeurism brings in an element of genre criticism present in films such as the poughkeepsie tapes (2007) and saw (2004), though not particularly present in the metacinematic slashers cited above: the audience itself is implicated in the same insatiable, violent voyeurism of the forces that orchestrate the random sacrifices of the innocent and likable protagonists. the comedic callousness of the directors of the show parallels and criticized the comedic callousness of the consumers of this show, the audience. this is not, of course, an original move, nor is the film’s almost overbearing emphasis on the supposed sex = death trope, but the fast-paced and funny script, the excellent acting and visual effects, and the clear love this film has for hammy horror of all sorts, from slasher to cosmic, brings a lot worth watching to this film. the cabin in the woods (2011) is a fun and clever horror film, and i would recommend it

#ryddles

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snekkythegreat · 15 days ago

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Rating the Fears out of 10 because I have homework that I am Not Doing

Note that these will be skewed a bit by the fact that I’m Christian and have a Christian perspective on the Fears

1 is very scared of it 10 is not at all

- The Web: 9/10. I’m not super scared of spiders, I think they’re pretty cute. I’m also not super afraid of not having free will, since I know that God’s in control of everything, and I would screw everything up if I tried to control my entire life

- The Eye: 7/10. I really don’t like being watched when I’m in a vulnerable position, but I also really like knowing things. At my youth group I have become known as the dictionary because I know the definitions of a lot of words.

- The Stranger: 6/10. Losing my sense of self is pretty scary, and I used to find my identity in a whole heck a lot of things. That wasn’t fulfilling and I found myself not knowing who I was, so I started putting my identity in Christ instead and I know who I am now.

- The Spiral: 5/10. I’ve convinced myself of a lot of things that aren’t true that altered my perception of reality a lot. It wasn’t super scary at the time because I couldn’t really tell, but looking back I was in a really bad place.

- The Corruption: 1/10. I really don’t like most insects, and getting sick is terrifying. I know that if I die I’ll go to heaven, but it’s the pain of being sick that scares me. My body not working how it’s supposed to. I am very fortunate to have not gotten seriously sick for a couple years now, and I think God’s been answering my prayers about that.

- The Slaughter: 1/10. Meaningless violence is really terrifying and saddening because it’s meaningless and random, with no real motive other than hate. I think about the wars going on in Ukraine and Israel and all the people dying and I don’t understand why God allows this to happen. Why do people feel the need to take others lives.

- The Flesh: 6/10. I’m not scared of the idea that humans are just meat, because I know that it’s not true. I don’t really like how my body is in a few respects, but God made me in His image and that’s got to count for something. And I used to really hate body horror in character design but I’m starting to like it a bit more, though I still pass out if I see serious injuries in real life

- The Buried: 9/10. I’m not at all claustrophobic. I really like being in caves and I don’t mind tight spaces at all. I’m a bit more scared of drowning, because I can’t imagine what it would feel like. I mostly dislike the metaphorical sense of being buried under a lot of things to do, like for school and other hobbies and stuff. I cannot schedule and that often comes back to bite me.

- The Dark: 10/10. Not at all scared of the dark or not knowing what’s in it. I know Jesus is the light of the world, but I also like to think that he’s the quiet peaceful dark at the end of a long day. I’m not scared of stuff I can’t see or know about, I’m more just mildly frustrated that I don’t know some stuff, but God knows it and that’s enough for me.

- The Hunt: 10/10. Anyone who has ever seen me play Manhunt (also known as Hide and Seek Tag in the dark outside) (also also known as Hide and Shrek) knows that I really like chasing people. I also like running and hiding in a sense because if I can disappear then I can instill fear in whoever’s chasing me. I’m also a furry so uh-

- The Vast: 7/10. God is really big and vast and that’s kind of scary, but it’s also comforting in a way because I know He’s looking out for me. I’m also not scared of the cosmic insignificance part because I know it’s not true. If anyone were cosmically insignificant God wouldn’t have sent His Som to die on a cross for our sins. I will say falling is terrifying though and thinking about space is overwhelming.

- The Lonely: 10/10. Not scared of being lonely at all because I know whatever happens I’m never alone, God’s always with me.

- The Extinction: 9/10. It’s always going to be kind of unsettling and really saddening thinking that the world will end and humanity will leave an irreversible mark upon earth, but at the end of everything God’s going to remake heaven and earth. Honestly I look forward to it.

- The End: 9/10. Similar to the Extinction. I know I’m going to heaven when I die, but the thought is still a little scary.

- The Desolation: 4/10. The desolation is about like destruction and revenge, and God does that a lot in the Bible, and I can see how scary God can be when he’s righteously angry. When people do that sort of thing it’s wrong, because we’re sinners and it would be hypocritical to get revenge on others while we’re still sinners. I am pretty scared of fire in general though, the first nightmare I can remember having was about my house burning down

That’s it

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #the magnus pod #the magnus protocol #magnus protocol #Magnus archives fears #fear entities #the fears #smirkes 14 #robert smirke #rating the fears

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spook-study · 2 years ago

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From Heathers to Jennifer’s Body, from The Craft to The Burning, from Carrie to Evilspeak, bullies are not something horror is want of. They litter the genre. As antagonists, as antiheroes, but most often as victims. And for good reason! It’s easy to cheer the demise of a bully. The more gruesome or wild the death, the more it is enjoyed. There’s a sense of cosmic justice, a ‘they got what they deserved’ mentality. They’re easy shorthand for inducing sympathy on behalf of the bullied, making it easier to connect and root for an underdog or outcast character. Audiences easily supplicate their own bully for whomever is shown on screen and watch as the silly fantasies of their teenage years are acted out for all to see and enjoy. Assholes are excellent horror movie fodder, particularly if the movie is going for multiple kills. There’s that…

And then there’s Piggy (2022).

There’s a special brand of cruelty associated with young women. It’s complicated and deep-seated, a slithering thing that even people involved in the exchange might not be able to catch. More than traditional bullying between boys, female bullying tends to be more insidious. Maybe that’s why female bullies tend to stick in our minds more, and why those stories remain points of fascination; Carrie is a classic for a reason, after all. There’s a certain level of cruelty between women that feels almost intimate. More intimate than getting beaten up, in any case.

Piggy, Cerdita in its native Spanish, is no exception to this rule. In fact, the movie hits all of the highlights, making it difficult at times to watch. The title of the movie and the star leave no question as to the source of the bullying. Sara, the title character’s real name, is fat. Perhaps one of, if not the most common thing someone can be bullied for. This group of girls snicker behind her back, or just at the edge of her line of sight. They feign politeness in front of her parents before uploading cruel videos with even crueler descriptions. Their eyes are mocking, without a hint of compassion, and there’s nothing quite like knowing that people hate you just because. And, because no one is being physically harmed, there’s almost nothing to be done about it. This is made worse by the fact that one of the bullies, Claudia, was once a childhood friend. Both Sara and Claudia still have their homemade friendship bracelets from those sandbox days. But even Claudia is one false step away from being bullied herself, teased by her friends for even her past connection with Sara. It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sara is more than miserable, potentially even suicidal, though it’s never mentioned. If it had been a different kind of movie, maybe.

Being quietly decried is one thing, being maligned and sneered at are horrible, life-ruining things, but then things are taken a step further. Sara goes to the pool alone, after everyone else in her community has left, a thing done in private due to her discomfort with her body and how she looks in her swimsuit. The girls pass by on their way to a party, and can’t help but berate Sara in the pool, making fun of her size, the way she looks, the way she moves, even the way she tries to hide. They force her underwater with a pool skimmer, almost drowning her.

But there are worse things.

They take her towel. They take her pack, with her phone. They take her clothes. They leave her to walk the long distance home in only her bikini, completely alone. This would be a terrifying situation for any girl, but the fact that Sara is fat adds to it. Harassment and violence are much easier to perform when the victim is considered on the outside of society. Still, Sara has no other options. She begins the long walk, skin burning under the sun, arms crossed, desperately trying to cover her body. She is made fun of and accosted by a random group of men passing by in a car, not offering her help, or a ride, and steering her off the main thoroughfare. She’s sobbing, she’s miserable, she hurt, and she’s humiliated. It’s a wonder she’s walking at all and not crumpled on the ground. And then she sees it. Her old friend Claudia, now her mildly reluctant bully, has been thrown in the back of a van. Bloodied and terrified, she slams her hands against the window, begging Sara for help. Frightened and not knowing what to do, Sara freezes. Only to have the Stranger, the Assassin in the English translation, drop a towel on the ground outside for her.

And then he drives off.

While female bullying can belie a certain level of intensity and carry almost sexual connotations, they left her practically nude, after all, the bathing suit covering even less than underclothes, it is rarely seen how that closeness would extend in the opposite direction. How would the personal attacks be returned? What does the opposite of this kind of bullying look like? In Piggy, it looks like sorrow, fear, and most of all, indifference. If these girls sunk their claws in and tore at the most vulnerable and sensitive areas of Sara’s very existence, how poetic that it is her lack of passion that abets the kidnap. A towel is now worth more than trying to save a life.

This level of connection trumps even the undoubtedly lifelong dance Sara has had with her bullies. What could be more intimate than a shared crime? How closely two beings must entangle in order to have both participated in lawlessness and violence. To have committed, enabled, and kept that moment to themselves. This man, who would kidnap and kill young women, was the only person to offer Sara even a modicum of kindness. To offer her help when she so needed it. How desperate must her heart have been that a stranger, holding her bosom friend in the back of his van ostensibly to kill, offering her a bloody towel was the most kindness she had ever been shown. Here was one of the girls who had thrust Sara into the situation in which she found herself. A girl who so callously caused her pain with the thoughtless cruelty of youth. A girl who had stood there with her friends, who spat the word “Piggy” again and again, who oinked at Sara, and did nothing. A young woman who had taken Sara’s towel, leaving her bare and exposed. Normally, an audience would cheer. Would say those girls were going to get what was coming to them, good riddance, and whatever happens they deserve it. But that feeling never comes. In its stead, there is only greater sorrow for Sara’s plight.

Sara, unfortunately, has no relief no matter where she goes. Not only is she bullied in her social life, her mother is a domineering, seemingly uncaring woman who speaks over her, bosses her around, and often calls Sara names herself. Her father does nothing, her younger brother only adds his own mocking. When it finally comes out that the missing girls bullied her extensively and called her “piggy,” her mother stands up for her until the minute they are home, where she feeds Sara a plate of salad and tells her the way to solve the issue for her to lose weight. It is intense performative care, going through the public rites of motherhood and then rescinding that care in private. Though she herself and her husband are also fat, it is only Sara who is deprived of the family meal, surely making her feel even more an outsider in her own home. She sneaks sweets and snacks when she can, she stress eats, she takes comfort in food, what little comfort it can bring, and her mother takes even that from her.

In Piggy, the desire to be seen and accepted transcends beyond normal social boundaries in the extreme. When Sara runs into the Assassin again, the two hide together, as she has continued to keep the secret of what she saw and what happened. They are close, face to face, staring at one another, his left hand over her mouth, a knife in his right. His left hand drops, and there is nothing more than a breath of space between them. It’s sexual, it’s tense, and, daringly, it’s romantic. Alone in the world, Sara clings to it, the only offer of intimacy she’s ever had.

Piggy is a fantastic and captivating movie. Often, killers are seen as attractive only after the movie has come out and some group of fans lay their hands on the subject, like Jason. Others, like Ghostface, are given a sexual nature that showcases their creepiness. Piggy has neither of those. The Assassin is not a particularly handsome man. His violence is brutal, unforgiving, and torturous; yet it is he whom our heroine finds attractive. What could be more evocative as maintaining such a tenuous and frightening relationship? Heartbreakingly, it seems to be the only positive relationship Sara has, or maybe has ever had. He may be evil to others, but to her he has only ever been silently understanding. The movie shows that her pain is profound, and that is what makes the situation believable.

The ending is a doozy, and one that should remain unspoiled, but you won’t be able to deny the anguish that comes from the battle between what is right but harder for oneself, against what is wrong but what one desires. What are people willing to forgive, to look past, when offered the right amount of attention and care? Where is the line drawn when those around you stand only to hurt and harm you, while the other stands to hurt and harm them? How much pain must be laid before revenge is justified? Will you cheer if the bullies end up killed? Piggy allows us to contemplate morality in a deeply personal and intense way. It strikes to the core. Who deserves to be forgiven? What would you, as a viewer, forgive? Bullies will always be a staple in horror, that won’t ever change. As long as there are underdogs, there are bullies. Bullies are there to be killed and for audiences to cheer at their death.

Piggy asks more.

It asks, if you were in Sara’s position, what would you do? How far would you go? And it never stops asking. It demands you to think, to feel, to fear.

What made Piggy so great was that it brings to the focal point things that horror can overlook. It’s easy for horror to slide past morality or reflection or grief. Hell, it can even overlook pain, at least the emotional type. Piggy grabs you from the very first frame and never lets you go, making demands of you from the first minute. The dread surrounding the story feels personal and real; real young women and men truly do go through that kind of horrendous bullying. It’s barbarous, vicious, and deadly. Piggy confronts the audience with that and puts them through an emotional wringer of right and wrong, kind and cruel. Piggy is a movie that aches.

Well paced, well written, and well filmed, Piggy rounds out its strong story with a powerhouse performance from Laura Galán, without whom the movie may well have fallen flat on its face. The oily nature of the movies makes it slick and hot. It might not be the prettiest movie you see this year, it definitely won’t be the goriest, but there’s a tang and a grit to Piggy that will have you rolling it over in your mind for days to come. Piggy is a movie with weight, with staying power, and, most importantly, with passion. You would never guess it was based off a fifteen minute short film, as each second feels full and earned. Unlike other short film adaptations, Piggy doesn’t feel drawn, slow, or slipshod. It feels rich and deep, a staunch departure from the wafer thin story and writing that usually accompanies extended shorts. This was a story that deserved a full length feature, and the horror world is all the better for it having happened.

Impactful, stunningly acted, incredibly culturally and socially relevant, Piggy (2022) is a movie of its time and for its time. I can’t wait to see what director and screenwriter Carlota Pereda will show us next. 5/5*

#piggy #cerdita #2022 #horror #movies #review #film review #spook study #writing #5/5 #carlota pereda #my writing #movie review #horror movies #modern horror #Spanish #long posts about horror

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