#victim's memoirs

[audioaujom]

26: Victim’s Memoirs [wrong end 3 ★4]

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This is wrong end 3 ★4 from Chapter 1! If memory serves, this was originally a 3ds exclusive ending, but was added to the remastered PC version released a few years ago. The messed up/censored text will be translated at the bottom for anyone interested since I did alter it slightly from the original canon victim's memoirs.

Pairing: Ranboo and Tubbo

Word Count: 2332

Chapter TWs: Mind Manipulation ("Darkening")

--

“Hey, what's that?” Ranboo asked randomly, noticing a loose leaf sheet of paper tucked between some floorboards on the ground in the classroom he and Tubbo were investigating.

Tubbo shrugged, not really paying it much mind as he tried to rifle through some desks further away. “Dunno. Looks like notebook paper.” 

“I think there’s something written on it…” Ranboo couldn’t help himself, crouching down beside it and trying to get a better angle on the hastily scrawled writing.

“Read it to me.” Tubbo called, not looking up from the desk he had his face stuck in.

“What?” Unimpressed, Ranboo grabbed the page and stood up, walking over to Tubbo with a frown. “Why would I do that?” 

“I'm dyslexic.” Tubbo answered simply, looking up with a grin.

“That doesn't mean you can't read!” Ranboo protested, Tubbo checking the desk to make sure it was stable before hopping up on top of it and sitting down.

“What if I'm too lazy to do it, then?” 

“Somehow worse.” Ranboo glared, but it didn’t bother his friend in the slightest. He finally gave in, sighing, “Here. I'll read it first, see if it's too difficult for you.”

“You're the best.” Tubbo grinned even wider, letting Ranboo scan the page before passing it over to him.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Let Our Parting Be But Temporary I send thee flowers, my beautiful flower, as thou wait'st eternal for my return; beautiful flowers thou canst see. And shouldst I e'er break free of this hell, and retake my place at thy side. These words I couldst never say and these feelings I couldst never give will all be laid bare for thee. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

“Cool. Love poem. Odd place for it, but… who am I to judge?” Tubbo looked up, tossing the paper off to the side after Ranboo didn’t seem to want it back.

“Most of the papers in here are more… um… ominous and awful.” Ranboo conceded, wandering back to the front of the classroom to continue poking around. “Wonder who wrote it.” After wandering out of the first classroom and rounding the next corner, Tubbo noticed the similar looking paper before his friend and ran over curiously. “Oh! Maybe this is a sequel to that love poem.”

“That doesn't concern you at all?” Ranboo asked, despite the fact he was already hovering over Tubbo’s shoulder as he crouched down to pick the paper up.

“Of all the things here that could concern me, this concerns me the least.” The blank look he shot back over at Ranboo was met with an eye roll, the two looking over the paper at the same time.

“...fair.”

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Alas, the only flowers that bloom in hell are white as freshly fallen snow. So on a lark, thy heart—pure as a heart can be—I wish to stab with pins, and scatter the petals. Let the white flowers be dyed red by thee you poor, poor boy! — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

“What in the Edgar Allen Poe?” Ranboo laughed a little, an odd feeling starting to build in his stomach from the weird writing.

“No, but it kinda is!” Tubbo nodded approvingly, setting it back down on the floor with a laugh of his own. “In a horribly disturbing kind of way.”

“Yeah, because Poe’s stuff wasn't disturbing.” Rolling his eyes, Ranboo started poking around the rest of the classroom to see what else they could find.

“I wouldn't know.” Tubbo grinned, watching him look around before adding, “You poor, poor boy~.”

“Don’t joke about that, it’s weird!” Ranboo chastised, the two going back to their hunt in relative silence, only commenting about the occasional bodies, nametags, or particularly ominous bloodstains.

Eventually deeming this classroom empty, they decided to try their luck on one of the higher floors and quickly climbed the closest flight of stairs. Hunting around the hallways, they quickly both spotted another paper, looking similar to the other ones they’d found so far.

“...more?” Ranboo asked, a little nervous, both of them bending down to look at the same time.

“Looks like.” Tubbo nodded, finally starting to pick up on his friend’s worry. “You can go first.”

“How gracious of you.” Ranboo huffed, standing up with it but holding it out at a distance they could both see it from.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — woe is me woe is the me who never stopped loving thee even if thou choosest to move on i will always love thee forevermore forevermore forevermore foreverm woe is you you poor boy who has left me after carving thine name in both heart and skin i want to show it to thee to prove that it is thine and that i still love thee you poor boy you poor poor boy — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

“You know… normally I don’t mind poetry, but I gotta be honest, boss man, this is the weirdest shit I’ve ever laid eyes on.” Tubbo commented after a minute, Ranboo nodding instantly.

“It’s getting really creepy, for sure.” Tossing the page aside, Ranboo hugged his arms in a little tighter to his chest, glancing around to make sure there wasn’t anyone watching him as the hair on the back of his neck started to stand on end. “It’s starting to freak me out.”

“Starting to?” Tubbo scoffed, crossing his arms but also taking a quick survey of their surroundings. “I’m starting to think we’re the poor boys, since we’re being subjected to these things.”

“Always a possibility.” Ranboo trailed off, letting the paper drift back to the floor before heading towards the classroom they had just passed and poking his head in the door. As if looking for it, he immediately spotted the notebook paper in the corner of the room, with words hastily scrawled on it in the same light pencil as last time. “How many of these are there?” He complained loudly, his feet already carrying him over to the page.

“Only one way to find out!” Tubbo jogged past him, swiftly picking the page up and starting to read it.

“Tubbo, wait—!” Ranboo reached out to grab the paper from his friend—something about these pages was giving him a seriously bad feeling, but he was a moment too late as Tubbo angled it so they could both see and he gave in to his own curiosity.

“Too late!” 

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — didn't want to see your face, you poor boy your face is for no one but me, you poor, poor boy as you burn in the fires of hell, you poor boy i continue to live here, you poor, poor boy i am not dead yet, you poor boy let our par**** ** *** ***pora** y** *oor p*** b** — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Anything past the last few letters was completely caked with blood, the rest of the writing obscured by the still damp covering of red.

“You spoke too soon, Tubbo. This is the weirdest thing we’ve ever laid eyes on.” Ranboo spoke first this time, Tubbo agreeing quietly.

“Are you starting to get a really bad feeling?”

“If you mean the kind of bad feeling that would make me actually pee my pants, then yes. Yes I am.” Ranboo nodded seriously, though Tubbo chuckled a little at his awkward ramble. “These notes are getting really freaky, maybe we should stop reading them.”

“Yeah…” Tubbo didn’t mind the silence that hung between them after, understanding the anxiety Ranboo was feeling even as his was slowly overtaken by a strong, overwhelming curiosity.

If there are more, what do they say?

Scouring the rest of the floor was surprisingly uneventful, though it only served to grow the boy’s panic. Ranboo continuously fiddled with his hands while they looked around, the panic giving way to a slowly building dread that was heavy in his stomach.

Climbing the new flight of stairs felt like they were drawing closer to something awful, him hesitating before finally making it to the landing as Tubbo looked at him curiously.

“You alright?”

“This place, it… it makes me feel really, really bad.” Ranboo answered as best he could, Tubbo’s silence urging him to continue. “I don’t like it. Like, I know I’m not supposed to like some random haunted elementary school that feels like it’s in another dimension or something but I really, really, don’t like it.”

“I get it, but we can’t really do much other than continue exploring.”

Tubbo was right, unfortunately, so all Ranboo could do was trail nervously after his friend as they found themselves near a set of bathrooms right by the top of the stairs.

They both spotted the blood covered page at the same time, Ranboo freezing in place as his dread became so heavy he couldn’t imagine taking a step closer to it. He turned to say something to Tubbo, but the boy was already running forward to scoop it up.

“Alright, fuck it.” Tubbo called as he jogged over, picking the paper up and quickly scanning its contents. “I'm too curious.” 

“No, don’t—!” Ranboo reached out to stop him but was too late, Tubbo’s eyes going blank by the time he reached the bottom of the page. He carelessly dropped the paper to the floor, slowly walking back towards Ranboo with an empty expression.

“Tubbo? Are you okay? What happened?” Ranboo tried, watching Tubbo slowly shamble towards the stairs. He glanced back over his shoulder at the rather innocuous looking page, curiosity and concern driving him to walk over to it even as his gut screamed at him to run. “Is it the note? What did it—!” One glance at the half-obscured writing had his head pounding, his vision going blurry with strange dark spots. “Ah!”

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — **U CA* **ST DIE Y*U **OR **Y AP***GIZ* TO ME W*** **UR DEA** *OU POOR ***R B** IM GOIN* ** R** **UR INTEST***S FR*M Y*** B**Y **U POO* *OY AND MAKE RED FLOWERS BLOOM A** ****AD A** *VER THAT WH*TE SKIN O* **URS YOU POOR POOR BOY TH** **NT EV** ** *BLE TO TELL WH* YOU A** AN**ORE ***N IM DONE WI** YOU Y*U P**R B** YOU *OO* P*OR BOY **U POO* *OY *OU POOR ***R B** YOU P*OR BOY Y*U P**R POOR B** Y*U PO*R B** YOU POOR POOR BOY — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

All he saw after that was black.

Ranboo was collapsed in a heap on the floor when he finally managed to pry his eyes back open, his head still distantly pounding as he groggily sat up and looked around.

“Tubbo? Are you here?” He called into the empty halls, a quiet wind whistling through broken boards the only answer he received. “Where’d you go?”

Awkwardly wobbling to his feet, he headed for the steps, remembering vaguely that his friend had been heading in that direction before he’d passed out.

What happened? Was it… the pages?

He continuously called his friend’s name as he slowly made his way down the steps, heading into the closest classroom after making it down to the second floor. Not finding anyone in there, he headed back towards the stairs to head down the other hallway, trying that classroom instead.

“Tubbo?! Tubbo!!” His cautious calling turned to a cry of relief as he spotted Tubbo sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, ignoring the dread that was building back up from the blank way he was staring off at the wall in front of him. Ranboo was quick to grab him by the shoulders, shaking him gently to try and get his attention.  “...Tubbo?”

“Poor boy… Poor boy…” Tubbo mumbled quietly, rocking a little in his seat and not even slightly acknowledging his friend’s presence. His voice was odd and flat, a strange darkened sheen having taken over his normally vibrant eyes. “Ranboo… You poor boy. You poor, poor boy.”

“Tubbo! What happened to you?!” Ranboo was completely panicked now, shaking his friend harder in desperation. “What's going on?! Tubbo!” 

The dull, humorless laugh that came out of Tubbo had Ranboo jerking back, his mind torn between screaming at him to run and crying out for Tubbo to come back to his senses.

“Tubbo! No, please!” 

The laughter turned almost inhuman as it pitched up, shrieking and hysterical as Ranboo backed away further with the feeling that something terrible and irreversible had happened to the other boy. 

How much time had passed since they’d gotten stuck in here? It had only been a couple of days at the max, but it felt like a horrifying eternity. Hungry, tired, and nearly desensitized to the constant and ever present violence and madness, it was like Tubbo had finally shattered from everything. The laughter died down, his head lolling forward as overgrown bangs hung in the way of his lifeless eyes. “...Ranboo?”

Ranboo’s head shot up as Tubbo sounded… normal. He wiped at his face—When did those tears get there?—and walked back over towards his friend hopefully. “...Tubbo?”

“Ranboo…” Tubbo seemed close to tears, Tubbo reaching out to grab his shoulders again as a spike of relief shattered the stone of dread.

“Oh thank god, have you finally come back to your senses? You have no idea how worried I w—” 

“Ranboo… you poor boy.” Tubbo cut him off, any semblance of himself gone from his tone in an instant. Dark, glazed eyes turned their attention to him, an unnaturally wide grin spreading across his face as he mumbled emptily, “You poor, poor boy…”

Horror crashed down on Ranboo like a wave, his heart and hopes smashed as he stumbled back a step. The laughter was back, gurgling and spilling out of Tubbo in gross waves, Ranboo’s panic overloading as he fell to his knees and clutched at his head in anguish.“I can’t… I… I can’t… take this… any… more…” He couldn’t see anything in front of him anymore, unsure if it was the mess of ice cold awful feelings that had overtaken his body or the strange dark mist clouding in from all sides, his own voice sounding foreign as all he could manage was to scream, “I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!”

--

Translated Notes

Note 4/5

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — didn't want to see your face, you poor boy your face is for no one but me, you poor, poor boy as you burn in the fires of hell, you poor boy i continue to live here, you poor, poor boy i am not dead yet, you poor boy let our parting be but temporary you poor poor boy — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Note 5/5

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — YOU CAN JUST DIE YOU POOR BOY APOLOGIZE TO ME WITH YOUR DEATH YOU POOR POOR BOY IM GOING TO RIP YOUR INTESTINES FROM YOUR BODY YOU POOR BOY AND MAKE RED FLOWERS BLOOM AND SPREAD ALL OVER THAT WHITE SKIN OF YOURS YOU POOR POOR BOY<br /> THEY WONT EVEN BE ABLE TO TELL WHO YOU ARE ANYMORE WHEN IM DONE WITH YOU YOU POOR BOY YOU POOR POOR BOY<br /> YOU POOR BOY YOU POOR POOR BOY YOU POOR BOY YOU POOR POOR BOY YOU POOR BOY YOU POOR POOR BOY — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

[wickershells]

never fails to frustrate how many people online hold steadfast to the belief that fiction materially affects reality (as opposed to a reflection; media-as-mirror, harm coming from pre-formed factors) yet insist on adding “in fiction” as a post-requisite to discussing something like the believability of trauma. calling a little life by hanya yanagihara “euthanasia fan fiction”: hidden there is the acknowledgment of a severance between fiction & reality but only, as always, under conditions that allow people to disregard and dismiss victims. swearing that if someone develops or projects a form of their trauma in/onto an incest narrative then they are contributing to rates of incestuous abuse itself (or, here, of suicide, self-harm, etc); immediately dropping the whole compassion-prevention charade to swear there are levels of abuse where a line is crossed and it starts to sound ridiculous, fanciful. trauma hypochondriacs: no way there can be that much suffering in someone. a very real, material perception, that affects quality of treatment, of communal support. and so we deride the book and its author and call it “trauma porn” (a phrase that makes me break out in hives), say its graphicness and excessiveness made us just want the main character to kill themselves already, because hey, we would, and fail to see how disgusting that is to say, because hey, it’s fiction, we would react differently if it was real — because of course fiction affects reality, but our virulent & vitriolic responses to it, that victims everywhere can see, do not

[meyhew]

well thanks for finally making it clear that you don’t care or believe what happened to maya. she has addressed people saying it’s fiction and whatnot multiple times already. yall are doing most typical victim blamey shit questioning the way she did things like do u hear yourselves?

and a grown man getting with a 17 year old then lying about her being 18 to save face is a lot more than just “kind of weird” but everyone’s ignoring that part.

i didn’t say it’s fiction. maya did. and i’m not saying nothing happened to her. i’m saying We Don’t Know which parts of that book are true to life and which have been exaggerated. she was a kid at 17 but she’s not a kid now and she has unlimited resources at her disposal. where are the adults in her life to guide her? where are her parents telling her if she says her book is fiction and only parts of it are based on things that happened to her, people won’t know which parts those are? i know about her at home abortion because she spoke about that but i don’t know anything else that’s true because, again, SHE said her book is fiction. that is not on me or anyone else. no one is ignoring anything, you’ve just hated liam long before he had anything to do with maya

[ouclematis]

japan is a very sinister country. they're just that one colonizer country that's somehow seen as the "animu, yaoi/yuri~! sanrio kitty hub." instead of "colonizer country who has done lots of very horrific things towards minorities like the filipinos, chinese, koreans, cambodians, laotians during its colonialist pursuism" and somehow it's swept over like it's nothing. not to mention the violent treatment of ryukyuans and the ainu and it's refusal to admit that it committed these crimes is so abysmally horrifying. like people are genuinely brainwashed to like admit that it was a colonial empire that did a very nice rebranding that quickly like. somehow people know of england and france and spain's colonial pursuit in full detail from the ugly and horrifying . but not...japan. huh...? how very strange how yellow fever drowns everything out. i guess...

[viktoriakomova]

I know this sounds very unempathetic but I really do feel like the knife cuts both ways in terms of “knowing everything Valeri has been accused of doing to gymnasts”…..

like yeah… if WE know that (“we” being the general gymnastics fan base, consuming media and interviews with gymnasts going on the record publicly about their experiences, not even taking into account the credible yet unsubstantiated and unverifiable rumors and whisperings over the years), then the gymnasts who were on the national team at the same time as those other woga gymnasts in question absolutely do know about that shit. And she made a choice to train with him, at 26/27 years old, in the year 2022. I get that there is a finite number of options for elite coaching in the US but…

[marshmellowtea]

Proshippers literally pretend that POCD means you are a pedophile and want it what the fuck are you on about? Proshippers try to force pwOCD to engage in checking compulsions because they pretend it's pro-recovery.

normally this is the kind of ask that i would just quietly delete but i'm actually going to answer it rn because this is so absurd i have to laugh. no, bestie, the people pretending that people with pocd are pedophiles are YOU GUYS. that's all you! antis are the one who i have seen treating intrusive thoughts as secret desires. antis are the ones i've seen with "people with pocd dni" in their bios. and fucking antis are the ones who have made pocd so commonplace on this website in the first fucking place because of the way you try to look for proof people are predators in the most innocuous shit.

believe it or not, part of ocd recovery is accepting the thoughts you have and learning to deal with them in some way. y'all want people to feel ashamed of their intrusive thoughts forever to "prove" they're a good person and that's the exact opposite of healing. that's just making ocd worse. and, in speaking of learning to deal with them, one of the ways to DO that is to write fiction about said thoughts and make them less scary to you! that's part of the reason why i create and enjoy fucked up fictional content! it's a way of dealing with my intrusive thoughts that puts the power back in MY hands, and treating these fictional depictions meant as coping mechanisms as "proof" someone's a predator is not just stupid, it's also cruel, because you are actively trying to make someone's disorder worse.

i guess you missed this part of my original post, so i'll say it again here: when i was an anti, you fucking people had me so convinced i was doomed to sa a child because of 1) the fact i like dark fiction exploring topics such as csa, and 2) my intrusive thoughts themselves, that i thought i was going to have to commit suicide. my life was in danger because of you people. and i was a fucking teenager when this all was happening! i should not have had to deal with that, but because you made this environment so toxic and preyed on my already existing ocd, i did! i was miserable and i hated myself and i thought i was a predator in the making! that's a horrible way to live!

tldr; go fuck yourself anon lmao, you have no idea what you're talking about and the extensive damage people like you have done to people with ocd. fuck off <3

[aidenwaites]

I've said this before but in my mind Alex Prescott and Daniel Malloy are coworkers (journalists who have crossed paths multiple times due to their similar beats and haunting grounds and now have books under the same publisher) who sometimes take lunch together. Bitchy old queers who are seen at the local hole in the wall sub shop every other Wednesday. They read each other's manuscripts before they went to print and absolutely did not take any of the other's advice and/or criticism.

[llegato]

?? i dreamt that i ate my friend in heavenly host

[nerdymuffinbonkcloud]

Gotta love when the police call you on your cell at 2pm

[artbyblastweave]

One thing I really enjoy about Fallout New Vegas is that it's really really good at modeling The Long-Suffering Protagonist Who Things Just Keep Happening To. Fallout 4, one or two things happen to you at the start, and they're doozies, but then for the most part you start happening to everybody else. You don't suffer that many ignominies. Fallout New Vegas, you get shot in the head and dumped in a shallow grave. Two different guys stick a bomb collar on you and force you to run errands. You have to dodge howitzer fire like in that one Malcom In The Middle Episode. All your organs get stolen. You think you're gonna get an easy payday killing some feral ghouls at a test site and then boom, you're getting canonized as a saint by a ghoul rocket cult, pouring radioactive coolant out of toy rocket ships into a real rocket ship one at a time. You get tricked into initiating a nuclear strike. Twice. You play a shell-game with human trafficking victims to bluff a guy into thinking he's pulling a tantalus when it's really just beef. You're forced to have conversations with Mormons. You simply get involved in more situation per situation, hands down. Sole survivor's memoir, I mean, whatever, it'll be okay. Courier's memoir? Oh boy

[sallyember]

What, Who and When is YOUR Anagnorisis?

Anagnorisis: “The point in a play, novel, etc., in which a principal character recognizes or discovers another character’s true identity or the true nature of their own circumstances.” What, Who and When is YOUR Anagnorisis? Let’s talk about personal epiphanies. Imagine (and we all do, don’t we?) that your life IS a novel, play, film, etc.: What, Who and When is YOUR Anagnorisis? Don’t know?…

[jewish-microwave-laser]

And here is the most devastating fact of Frank's posthumous success, which leaves her real experience forever hidden: we know what she would have said, because other people have said it, and we don't want to hear it.

The line most often quoted from Frank's diary are her famous words, "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." These words are "inspiring," by which we mean that they flatter us. They make us feel forgiven for those lapses of our civilization that allow for piles of murdered girls—and if those words came from a murdered girl, well, then, we must be absolved, because they must be true. That gift of grace and absolution from a murdered Jew (exactly the gift that lies at the heart of Christianity) is what millions of people are so eager to find in Frank's hiding place, in her writings, in her "legacy." It is far more gratifying to believe that an innocent dead girl has offered us grace than to recognize the obvious: Frank wrote about people being "truly good at heart" before meeting people who weren't. Three weeks after writing those words, she met people who weren't.

Here's how much some people dislike living Jews: they murdered 6 million of them. This fact bears repeating, as it does not come up at all in Anne Frank's writings. Readers of her diary are aware that the author was murdered in a genocide, but this does not mean that her diary is a work about genocide. If it were, it is unlikely that it would have been anywhere near as universally embraced.

We know this, because there is no shortage of writings from victims and survivors who chronicled this fact in vivid detail, and none of those documents have achieved anything like Frank's diary's fame. Those that have come close have only done so by observing those same rules of hiding, the ones that insist on polite victims who don't insult their persecutors The work that came closest to achieving Frank's international fame might be Elie Wiesel's Night, a memoir that could be thought of as a continuation of Frank's diary, recounting the tortures of a fifteen-year-old imprisoned in Auschwitz. As the scholar Naomi Seidman has discussed, Wiesel first published his memoir in Yiddish, under the title And the World Was Silent. The Yiddish book told the same story told in Night, but it exploded with rage against his family's murderers and, as the title implies, the entire world whose indifference (or active hatred) made those murders possible. With the help of the French Catholic Nobel laureate François Mauriac, Wiesel later published a French version under the new title La Nuit—a work that repositioned the young survivor's rage into theological angst. After all, what reader would want to hear about how this society had failed, how he was guilty? Better to blame G[-]d. This approach earned Wiesel a Nobel Peace Prize, as well as, years later, selection for Oprah's Book Club, the American epitome of grace. It did not, however, make teenage girls read his book in Japan, the way they read Frank's. For that he would have had to hide much, much more.

from "Everyone's (Second) Favorite Dead Jew" in People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn, pp 9–10

[theoriginalyorick]

There’s a theory going around that the missing Journal 3 pages from The Book of Bill are in some way edited or completely fabricated by Bill, because why would Bill suddenly give us factual information when he never has before? Bill has absolutely no motive to show the reader any of the gruesome facts regarding what actually happened between him and Ford without putting his own spin on it, right? I mean, why would he purposefully show something that makes him look bad in the middle of his own megalomaniacal memoir? 


I think this theory is missing a core part of his character: Bill doesn’t think the missing pages make him look bad.

All of the pathetic attempts to get Ford’s attention, the psychological and physical torture, the pretty obvious metaphor for gaslighting that is making Ford forget his mother’s face and his own name, Bill thinks NONE of that makes him look even remotely awful and desperate. He fully expects us to read that and go “yup, okay, this guy was clearly in the right and SO cool and powerful. The dumb scientist who fell for his lies because he was shunned for being different and this was the first time he’d gotten any real validation in his life is so stupid and gullible lol.” 


Bill shows these pages with total accuracy because he thinks the only thing they accomplish is making a complete fool out of Ford. He wants us to laugh at Ford with him and feel superior, because Bill is a textbook abuser. The “Hiya, Smart Guy!” page supports this, with Bill’s reason for showing the pages in the first place being exposing Ford’s “issues with others, especially me.” The point is to embarrass and mock his victim in front of whoever will listen. 


Bill does not understand that all this actually does is incriminate himself because he does not understand the concept of empathy. The only time he tells the truth is when he thinks it makes someone else look weak so he can look clever by comparison. And this is absolutely one of those times. I have seen people who are chronic liars do this in real life as a manipulative tactic, not realizing it reflects more poorly on the abuser than the victim. 


Which is why it’s such a shock to him when the reader backs out of the deal at the end. The missing pages and the horror we feel on Ford’s behalf are what wakes us up from Bill’s fever dream and make us see him for the pitiful ball of self-loathing that he is. We have the capacity to empathize— Bill does not. And he can’t comprehend that. And then has a breakdown because we won’t laugh along with him. 


TL;DR the missing Journal 3 pages in TBOB do more for Bill’s character if they are completely true than if they are lies.

[volkswagonblues]

a bibliography for us Daniel Malloy freaks

(a loosely pulled-together reading list about print journalism, New York, the 1970s & 80's, and the AIDS Crisis. Most of the credit goes to @islandbetweenrivers who started this)

On Daniel Molloy, California Boy

The show never explicitly states if Daniel went to college, but since college students were exempt from the Vietnam draft, which ended officially in 1973, it could be interesting to imagine Daniel in Berkeley.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion

The White Album by Joan Didion

Berkeley Barb archives (link) -- weekly underground newspaper that ran in Berkeley between '65 to '80

The Daily Cal First 150 Years (link) -- student newspaper at Berkeley

On Journalism

Iphigenia in Forest Hills by Janet Malcolm

From her reporter's seat, Malcolm observes that a trial is merely "a contest between competing narratives". (Guardian review)

The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm

“"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible," wrote Malcolm in an opening sentence that caused a sensation in the tiny, self-referential world of posh American journalism.” (Guardian review)

The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice by Trisha Romano

“The Voice’s origins were proudly amateurish. One early contributor was a homeless man recruited from a local street; equipment consisted of two battered typewriters, an ink-splattering mimeograph machine and a waste paper basket for rejected submissions. Morale spiked when a staff member discovered that dried pods used in fancy flower arrangements contained opium, which was boiled up in the office when the time came for a coffee break.” (Guardian review)

Note: The Village Voice was THE alt-weekly newspaper and it was run out of Greenwich Village in NYC. Lots of incredible writers start there and then move onto the Times, Vanity Fair, etc. Very much the sort of crowd a young Daniel would be mixed in circa 70's and 80's.

The Night of the Gun, by David Carr

David Carr redefines memoir with the revelatory story of his years as an addict and chronicles his journey from crack-house regular to regular columnist for The New York Times. Built on sixty videotaped interviews, legal and medical records, and three years of reporting, The Night of the Gun is a ferocious tale that uses the tools of journalism to fact-check the past. (amazing rec from @archive-z)

Note: imagine if Daniel did this and then fact-checked his way into remembering that vampires existed

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe

Keefe can paint complicated portraits of victims and vigilantes alike while covering their lonely pursuit of justice. He intuits why a Dutch woman who has exposed the crimes of her gangster brother might lie about her present whereabouts. He understands why a man who lost his brother in an aeroplane bombing might spend the rest of his life trying to find the culprit. Again and again, Keefe surmises that even the most detailed of investigations can only speculate about human motives. (Guardian review)

Note: the sort of deeply human longform profiles that feels like the sort of writing Daniel does, based on his masterclass clip and what he reveals in his interactions with Louis

On New York, New York (in the 70s)

Notes from Underground, by Eric Bogosian + Perforated Heart, by Eric Bogosian

In four billion years the sun will explode. But before that we'll run out of fresh water and before that we'll all die of some mutation of AIDS that's spread by coughing. It's not my fault anyway. I can't think about this any more today. I'm going to masturbate.

Note: The OG. What else is there to say.

Ladies and Gentleman, the Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler

In the long sweep of American history, of course, 1977 is not exactly 1865, 1941, 1968 or 2001. Yet from porn shops to gay bathhouses, from Yankee Stadium to City Hall, from the blackout to Son of Sam, from Rupert Murdoch's New York Post to the rise of SoHo and Studio 54, the city was living through what Mahler convincingly calls "a transformative moment . . . a time of decay but of rehabilitation as well.” (New York Times review)

Remain in Love: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina, by Chris Franz (2020)

Frantz’s account of the early days, when the Heads lived in the pre-gentrified Lower East Side of New York, an almost literal war zone. While searching for a loft to live in, they viewed one building that was on fire. One spring afternoon, Frantz walked over to the now-legendary club CBGB to ask for a gig. The place smelt of “beer, roach spray, dog doo [the owner, Hilly Kristal, had a free-roaming saluki] and Chanel No 5”.

Winter’s Journal, by Paul Auster

Note: To me, Auster is one of the closest real-life Daniel Malloy analogues: born around 1950, literary career in NYC, moved to Paris in the 1970s for a few years, troubled middle-class background. Novelist though, not a journalist. There’s an anecdote in this book about a car crash that feels like a deadass Devil’s Minion fever dream. Crazy stuff. One of my personal favourites

On the AIDS Crisis

And the Band Played On, by Randy Shilts

The book chronicles the discovery and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) with a special emphasis on government indifference and political infighting—specifically in the United States—to what was then perceived as a specifically gay disease

The Journalist of Castro Street: The Life of Randy Shilts, by Andrew E. Stoner

Biography of Randy Shilts that’s very helpful for imagining Daniel in the early 1980s newsrooms covering Karposi’s sarcoma

How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS by David France (2017)

It’s not easy to balance solid journalism with intimate understanding of a subject, and even harder to write eloquently about a disease that’s killing your friends and loved ones. France pulls it off, in his own words (his description of finding a college roommate’s panel in the AIDS Memorial Quilt is heartbreaking) and in letting his articulate sources speak for themselves. (SF Gate review)

Timeline of AIDS (link)

Overview of HIV (link)

And some films, just for fun

The Panic in Needle Park (1971): Drama film directed by Jerry Schatzberg. Al Pacino is a heroin addict and small-time dealer in Manhattan who falls in love with another addict.

Serpico (1973): biographical crime drama film directed by Sidney Lumet. Al Pacino is a hippie cop (yes, I know, its part of the plot) with one foot in the 1970s bohemian art scene

American Graffiti (1973): teen movie set in 1973 Modesto ("I'm just a shitty kid from Modesto"--Danny Malloy)

The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974): More grimy 1970s NYC stuff

All the President’s Men (1976): THE ABSOLUTE JOURNALISM MOVIE??

Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)

Cruising (1980): 1980 crime thriller written and directed by William Friedkin. Al Pacino is a cop (again) but this time he goes undercover in NYC gay leather clubs

Almost Famous (2000): Set in 1973, it chronicles the funny and often poignant coming of age of 15-year-old William, an unabashed music fan who gets the chance to write for Rolling Stone

Spotlight (2015): More journalism movies! The true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese

everyone say thank you to @islandbetweenrivers for starting this, I just polished up our google docs and posted it on tumblr.

Also if anyone has something to add please let me know!

[mermazeablaze]

I thought some of my Tumblr mutuals would be interested to see this article.

Viola Ford Fletcher, aged 109, just published a memoir 'Don't Let Them Bury My Story' about her experience during the Greenwood/Tulsa Massacre. It will be available for purchase August 15th.

"Her memoir, “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story,” is a call to action for readers to pursue truth, justice and reconciliation no matter how long it takes. Written with graphic details of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that she witnessed at age seven, Fletcher said she hoped to preserve a narrative of events that was nearly lost to a lack of acknowledgement from mainstream historians and political leaders.

The questions I had then remain to this day,” Fletcher writes in the book. “How could you just give a mob of violent, crazed, racist people a bunch of deadly weapons and allow them — no, encourage them — to go out and kill innocent Black folks and demolish a whole community?”

“As it turns out, we were victims of a lie,” she writes.

Fletcher notes in her memoir just how much history she has lived through — from several virus outbreaks preceding the coronavirus pandemic, to the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2008 to every war and international conflict of the last seven decades. She has watched the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. lead the national Civil Rights Movement, seen the historic election of former President Barack Obama and witnessed the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement."

[llegato]

i read this one mayushige fic a week ago and i have not been able to stop thinking about it