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chriscdcase95 · 10 days ago

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Until Dawn updated headcanons: + Unlife is Strange/Screaming Until Dawn

The following headcanons are included in my AO3 stories; Unlife is Strange and Screaming Until Dawn. Both fics are part of the same “verse”.

Much of these were written down before the remake allowed us to save Josh. Because of this, Josh becoming the Makkapitew’s new host is canon as far as this “verse” is concerned.

Grab your popcorn. This is whole world building.

1. First things first, this bit was something taught to me growing up about the wendigo. I’m not sure if it’s a widespread belief or a regional/local one — especially since details vary between bands and regions.

Anyways what I was taught was that if you kill a wendigo without taking the right “precautions” — either burning their heart or cutting up their body and burying them at different locations — their spirit will fixate on you and actively haunt you out of revenge.

They will always know where you are and everything about you; your name, family, home; your fears and weaknesses; and they will use you against you. And there’s nowhere you can run where it won’t eventually follow. There's nowhere you can hide that they don't already know.

Enter the Makkapitew, an already powerful and vicious wendigo spirit which has possessed two people with grudges against the cast. Because of this, it holds a special grudge. Simply killing them just isn't gonna cut it. It's especially fixated on Sam, for so close to Josh and Hannah, and being the one who set off the explosion that killed it.

Following the events of “They All Live”, the Makkapitew spirit soon followed them from the Blackwood Pines and became a regular supernatural nemesis in their lives; either as a spirit or through Josh’s body. Sometimes the Makkapitew is a genuine threat or menace, other times it’s a petty annoyance out to ruin their day.

It’s like Eobard Thawne that way.

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In it’s first rampage the Makkapitew tracked them down to their hometown, and slaughtered several of their friends, neighbors and family members. Sam tried to reach out to “Josh”, and got non lethally mauled for her trouble — Sam has a few bite/scratch scars on her stomach, side, calf and thigh that haven’t quite faded.

After this, everyone save for Chris and Ashley came to believe Josh is well and truly gone.

2. Crossover Headcanon: Following the initial massacre, “The Blackwood Seven” are reached out to by the FBC (Control).

They are ultimately put into a witness protection sort of deal, with one of the catches being they’d do “Scout Work”; being civilian eyes and ears on a few ongoing cases. They were assigned to the Arcadia Bay case, soon befriending characters like Max, Chloe, Kate, Victoria and the vampiric Rachel Amber.

They soon become field agents, but during Screaming (set in October of 2016), Sam is taking a sabbatical to focus on college. Because of their involvement, the UD cast are recurring/supporting characters in Unlife is Strange; and the LIS characters are recurring/supporting characters in Screaming Until Dawn.

At the time of Screaming, Mike and Matt are taking an overseas assignment — something about containing a vampire nest in Iraq that was discovered in 2003, and now starting to leak; while Emily was coming back from working off the coast of Japan, looking into and covering up sightings of a “sea dragon” near Odo Island.

She brought with her pictures that would make Nessie/Champ enthusiasts “Mess their pants.”

3. Following the events of “They All Live” Josh is thrown under the bus by law enforcement and the media.

With the wendigo having been covered up during the investigation, the FBC and RCMP compiled all available evidence, which ultimately points at Josh as being a wannabe cannibal serial killer; going as far as to implicate him as being behind Hannah and Beth’s disappearance, with armchair psycho-analysts painting him as having an incestuous fixation on them.

The nail in the coffin against him was Josh’s teeth marks and DNA found on the cops he slaughtered, and on Sam after her attack; Jack’s severed head, Beth’s severed head; a shrine for his sisters; and the traps he set up throughout the lodge; videos recordings of Ashley and Chris being caught in these traps; and Sam taking her bath. For this Josh was labeled as an inhuman monster by the public, and his parents disappeared from the public. As a result, Bob’s Hollywood career is up in smoke.

His friends could try to speak out for Josh’s favor, but were coerced into going along with the narrative by Director Zachariah Trench; who pointed out to Sam that publicly defending the guy who recorded her bathing, drugged her and physically assaulted her, is not a good look. He gave the same kind of lecture to Chris and Ashley, pointing out how they were the only other two personally victimized by Josh.

As a result, the Blackwood Seven never speak about the case publicly, only talking about it to a select few friends who they trust with the truth.

It’s because of this, most of Josh’s friends write him off as truly being gone after his possession. If there was a way to bring him back, it’s not like he had much of a life waiting for him. As another result, Josh’s case is often publicly compared to that of Mark Jefferson Nathan Prescott, due to the events of LIS occurring not too long before Hannah and Beth disappeared.

The comparisons are usually made by those overly sympathetic to Nathan, and overly demonize Josh. Ironically it’s because of these comparisons, the Blackwood Seven were assigned to the Arcadia Bay investigation.

Much of Screaming is gonna deal with the fallout of what happened to the Washingtons.

4. Shipping/sexuality headcanons: I write Jessica, Emily, Mike and Matt as being bisexual, and Sam as a lesbian.

Mike is still coming to terms with his bisexuality, which is ironic because he’s normally supportive of his bi/gay friends. At the time of Screaming, Jess and Emily have been trying to pair Mike and Matt up for a whole now, often pulling strings to get the Bureau to put them on field missions together.

While Sam isn’t dating dating anyone, as of this post has a regular “Friends With Benefits relationship with Emily and Jessica, though it’s transparent their actual feelings are more than platonic. But following the events of UD, Sam took up a habit of casual flings and hookups as trauma cope.

She usually keeps it to consenting sapphic friends in her inner circle, with boundaries in place; mainly friends she made from Arcadia Bay. But her heart goes to Jessica and Emily. Sam, Jess and Emily are the main OT3 of Screaming Until Dawn. One of the inciting incidents is that the three are planning a “Girl’s Trip” together.

5. In this setting, Jack/The Stranger is not related to Jack Fiddler. While I’m not opposed to the Famous Relative/Ancestor trope, knowing the IRL history of Jack Fiddler, it was waaay too touchy. It helps that it’s not something explicitly mentioned in the game, therefore can be overlooked.

Here, Jack is a member of the Dibikad family, a minor but recurring Oji-Cree family I feature in my stories, and the last of the Pâhkwêkan (Night Owls) — a party of vampire/werewolf hunters formed during the Colonial era.

Their backstory goes that there was a vampire that lived in the Great Lakes Region for centuries, historically thought to be a Viking settler. For the most part, he was benign and left the natives alone, but when settlers started colonizing the Americas, they brought with them vampires and werewolves.

This “Viking settler” began teaching the natives about these creatures and their weaknesses. The Pâhkwêkan was soon formed from these teachings. Unfortunately, the Pâhkwêkan were so effective in dealing with vampires and werewolves among the settlers, that Colonists used their “raids” as an excuse to really crack down on the natives.

By the 1890’s, the Pâhkwêkan were down to one faction in Alberta. By then, a young and overzealous Pâhkwêkan hunter named Maxwell Dibikad led a raid in Blackwood Forest; erroneously coming to believe that wendigo were a type of vampire. As recompense, the Makkapitew slaughtered all but Maxwell, who was left crippled and forced to disband the Pâhkwêkan lest it returns continuously for his family and community.

In the present day, the Dibikads' want nothing to do with the Pâhkwêkan save for Jack, and his niece Vanessa - another recurring character in Unlife, who became handler to the Blackwell Seven.

6. In Screaming Until Dawn, Sam is sort of an alternate counter to Kirby Reed. Their connection is gradually revealed when they experience glimpses of each other’s lives as “dreams.” In 2011, Sam has a dream of being Kirby during Scream 4; and in 2015, Kirby dreams of the events of Until Dawn from Sam’s perspective.

For much of the story, Sam and Kirby are gonna be seeing/experiencing more of their lives through each other’s eyes; starting when Sam gets calls from a Ghostface repeatedly calling her “Kirby”, and is now targeting her friends; and Kirby repeatedly being followed a presence calling her “Sam”.

I also considered giving also Jessica some ties to Scream characters, but I haven’t made any final decision on that.

Gif unrelated.

I also had a joke in mind where Mike similarly “dreamt” of being the MCU’s Grant Ward. Somewhere in the multiverse, Ward dreamt of being Mike.

7. Since Bob Washington was a Hollywood director, Screaming Until Dawn includes one of his most popular movies. It’s not plot relevant or anything, but there for world building and a running gag.

In 2002, Bob directed a horror/fantasy swashbuckling movie called Wittebane — based on the Connecticut folk legends of two witch hunting brothers. It’s not the first adaptation of the legend, but it was one of the more popular ones, for its subversiveness and its love story.

The movie put a romantic spin on one of the brothers, Caleb (Ben Affleck) and the witch Evelyn (Winona Ryder); and the brother Phillip (Mark Whalberg) being an outright villain were most adaptations portray him as a tragic failure protagonist at best.

It was released by Disney and considered one of their riskier movies, like Pirates of the Caribbean or Haunted Mansion, it was one of those movies that are clearly written for a mature audience and given a PG-13 rating. But because it’s Disney, it’s marketed as a family film anyways, and a whole lot of kids bared witness to the eyebrow raising “waterfall scene”.

Said scene caused “childhood lesbian awakening” memes across early 2010’s Tumblr. Wittebane also had an award bait song called “The Piece of You (I Carry With Me)” sung by Michelle Branch. Basically an equivalent to “My Heart Will Go On” or “There You’ll Be”.

It was especially popular in the brothers hometown of Gravesfield, with there used to be yearly showings every Halloween. But after the events of Until Dawn and the controversy surrounding the Washington’s, it became a really heated debate of separating the art from the artist.

As it happens, when the Blackwood Seven and co were conscripted into the FBC, they learned that Wittebane's original writer was a supposed practicing witch, who disappeared and reappeared from a place called “the demon realm” as a teenager in the 90's.

The FBC seemingly had the writer's memory wiped, and have been trying to access that realm ever since.

8. Pretty big lore drop.

In Unlife is Strange, Mount Washington/Madahee was previously nicknamed as “Chepaiyikumik” (“Grave”), being thought of as a mass grave with a dark history. Much of that history is intentionally covered up and lost to time, to the point it was mostly forgotten about by the Colonial period.

Dating all the way back to “Fuck if I know BC” — estimated to be the time of giants, titans and the old gods — what would become Blackwood Pines was a hotspot “The Children of Ithaqua”. They were a cult that spanned across what would become North America and Eastern Eurasia, but has mostly reduced to a fractured memory.

In a semi-related fic, Loves Sacrifices — Ithaqua is one of the Greater Scope Villains. The “human” son and mediator to the King in Yellow, Ithaqua taught humanity to follow his example in decadence and vice. There’s also a UD cameo where a character makes contact with Ithaqua’s spirit, and witnesses Jessica’s rant at the cabin from Ithaqua’s perspective.

Ut’s also implied he taught early humanity the concept of colonization. When his father is slain, Ithaqua was bound to another world and cannot directly interact with this one. Through his cults practices, it’s believed many cultural taboos were formed — EG, “Hey, this evil shit is what Ithaqua and his followers practiced. Yeah, let’s NOT follow their example, kay-kay ?”

Ithaqua’s present followers exist by the 2010's, but are hardly the apocalyptic threat they were way back when. They exist under the guise of Christian based institutions, including prosperity gospel/quiverfull preachers and televangelists — obsessed with making money and “breeding prosperity.”

They don't really believe in Ithaqua as an actual entity anymore, and more of a concept to live under. But as of Until Dawn, they are keeping an eye out for the Blackwood Seven.

And they're not the only ones watching...

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thecurioustale · 2 years ago

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(Re)introducing the Author

I have two main series: a fantasy series called The Curious Tale and a sci-fi series called Galaxy Federal.

For those who are newer here, or wouldn't mind a refresher, here's a little about me and the kind of stories I write:

My name is Josh, pronouns they/he. (I am agender but I don't get upset if you gender me masculine; I do it myself sometimes out of force of habit.) I am 41 years old and live in Washington State not far from Seattle, in the beautiful but troubled United States. I am left-handed, hence my proudest epithet, The Sinistral, and I have been a writer for basically my entire life—even as a kid!

I published my first and so far only novel in 2015, Prelude to After The Hero, which you can currently buy as an e-book or read for free in HTML. Additionally, I have published countless worldbuilding articles and meta-discussions of my fiction over the years (see my previous post about Curious Tale Saturdays), and countless nonfiction essays and personal musings on my personal journal, which in more recent years I have updated much less frequently (but am still active on).

As an author I mostly write stories about "power" and "beauty." I'll have more to say about my specific stories over the next couple days when I do corresponding (re)introduction posts for The Curious Tale and Galaxy Federal, but the bottom line is that I am very interested in human potential, both at the individual and collective levels, and in the beauty of being alive and experiencing "the world," i.e. our material reality and our own headspaces within it. Other topics that interest me and frequently show up in my writing include justice, creation (both the acts and products of creating), civilization, Illumination (what many would call wisdom or "enlightenment"), ambition and desire, animism, and the poignance of the fleeting nature of all things.

I am fascinated by liminality and subliminality; boundaries; vast indoor spaces; megastructures; mysteriousness; "the magical"; surrealism; absurdism; nostalgia; pathos; journeys that do not involve backtracking; and other such things as generally might describe a vast world with hazy horizons lit in twilight. I also strive in my writing (less successfully, I fear) to convey a sense of mystery and wonder.

At the same time, I am also fascinated by human emotionality and subjective experience; personal relationships; the human condition and the human psyche; and narrative life arcs. Some who know me through my nonfiction or by talking to me in person have been surprised to see how passionate and emotional my fiction is.

My writing style tends to be long-winded and self-indulgent; deliberate and precise; esoteric and bespoke. I usually set a slow pace, and seldom indeed will I resort to cheap action or thrills. Most of my fiction is either long-form play-by-play scenes in high resolution, or Tolkienian epic narration far removed from the ground level.

With certain exceptions for key locations, I usually don't reuse a given location in a story; the locations are usually new from scene to scene, and thus there is a lot of environmental description throughout the whole length of my works and not just at the beginning. This creates a certain quality, where everything is always new, that I find engrossing.

In terms of the three most popular conventions, political intrigue, violence, and sex and romance: My writing mostly rejects the treacherous political intrigue genre conventions that are so prevalent in sci-fi and fantasy today, even though "politics" is definitely an integral part of my writing (and I am not shy about sharing my opinions, though I try to do so through specific characters rather than on narratorial authority). When it comes to violence, there is a lot of death and killing and suffering in my work, but I am not a big fan of writing extremely graphic violence and torture, mainly because I don't have the heart to dwell on it in great detail most of the time. (It's very draining for me.) And on the sex side of things, I eschew tacked-on romantic subplots and in general I would say that there's too much damned snogging in our contemporary storytelling, but I definitely do explore and depict matters of love and sex in my work in my own way—though not at a very high frequency, and, I would like to hope, never gratuitously. (Unless the gratuitousness is a tongue-in-cheek joke that we're all in on—which can be said of many other aspects of my writing as well.) I never write explicit, graphic sex scenes, although I do sometimes write sex scenes.

Which reminds me: My stories tend to have a lot of "competency porn" in them; my characters are usually intelligent, thoughtful, and logical. Ignorance and luck are not big plot story drivers for me, generally.

My favored characters tend to be some combination of fat, left-handed, and female; and, of them, my central protagonists additionally tend to be extremely powerful, demigodlike individuals who are able to operate within their respective domains virtually without limitation. In critical respects my characters are only vaguely-defined; I usually avoid character archetype trope reinforcement, so my characters are ideally as internally diverse as real-world humans are...which means you can't actually know them right away. And that opens the door for you to project your own personality ideas onto them. Which...I suppose is a feature?

I have a cinematic mind, and I think my stories are best appreciated with a strong visual imagination. I try not to smother readers with too many unnecessary details, though I confess I am only partially successful at this and often find myself hanging on every word of my lengthy environmental descriptions. I think some of my most satisfied readers are those who enjoy digesting these elaborate visuals as a reward unto itself.

I am a big believer in the idea that obvious story setups should have payoffs, that narrative arcs should eventually be resolved, and that plots and subplots should be be highly interconnected. I am chiefly theme-driven in my writing, as opposed to character-driven or plot-driven, and oftentimes the central purpose of a given scene will be to express one particular idea (or more than one)—either a conceptual idea, or a specific moment in the story. If you read the Prelude and remember Silence's introduction, I wrote that entire scene just to be able to describe the image of Silence in silhouette standing against the evening sky, and her powerful, predator-like movement as she turns around.

Add it all up, and my stories are definitely out of the norm for today's fashions and quite possibly for any fashion in history. They are slow and heavy and long. Their vastness belies their thrilling internal intricacies and shapes. The characters are highly realistic. The plots tend to feel emergent and organic. Or at least I think so. I am very much "writing the stories I want to see."

My stories tend to be incredibly long. Like...just know that going in. There are many sources for "tight," "fast" writing in the world. I am not one of them.

Oh, one more thing: There are various types of representation that are important to me and which I don't see the current state of sci-fi and fantasy storytelling doing a good job of delivering, so I explicitly lean into that, on top of my natural proclivity to write these kinds of characters anyway. So, if you're ever reading a scene and you find that the demographics of the people in it are noticeably unusual for contemporary American fiction, that's why.

More about me as a person: When not writing, I am a fan of sunsets, sunrises, and twilight; clouds and water; saying "Merciful McGillicuddy!" a lot while sighing loudly; solving Wordle; trying mostly in vain to gain weight; and being a curious information sponge.

#The Curious Tale #Galaxy Federal #Silence Terlais #Author Bio #I have no idea if this is actually what people want to know about an author.#When I read author bios in books or on websites they're usually lamentably generic #“Sam likes to go fishing.”#“And owns two dogs and a hamster.”#That's great for you and all Sam but what does it really say?

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