#zombie survival hacks

[sirswooshnoodles]

Imagine a troupe of apocalypse knights on bicycles

why don't people in zombie apocalypse stories ever just wear suits of armor? you think any zombie is gonna get their shitty rotting jaws through this?

I'm gonna rip and tear my way through the zombie apocalypse completely unharmed because none of the undead hoards will be able to get through my plate mail

[mostlysignssomeportents]

When private equity destroys your hospital

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW in PHOENIX (Changing Hands, Feb 29) then Tucson (Mar 9-10), San Francisco (Mar 13), and more!

As someone who writes a lot of fiction about corporate crime, I naturally end up spending a lot of time being angry about corporate crime. It's pretty goddamned enraging. But the fiction writer in me is especially upset at how cartoonishly evil the perps are – routinely doing things that I couldn't ever get away with putting in a novel.

Beyond a doubt, the most cartoonishly evil characters are the private equity looters. And the most cartoonishly evil private equity looters are the ones who get involved in health care.

(Buckle up.)

Writing for The American Prospect, Maureen Tcacik details a national scandal: the collapse of PE-backed hospital chain Steward Health, a company that bought and looted hospitals up and down the country, starving them of everything from heart valves to prescription paper, ripping off suppliers, doctors and nurses, and callously exposing patients to deadly risk:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-02-27-scenes-from-bat-cave-steward-health-florida/

Steward occupies a very special place in the private equity looting cycle. Private equity companies arrange themselves on a continuum of indiscriminate depravity. At the start of the continuum are PE funds that buy productive and useful firms (everything from hospitals to car-washes) using "leveraged buyouts." That means that they borrow money to buy the company and use the company itself as collateral: it's like you getting a bank-loan to buy your neighbor's mortgage out from under them, and using your neighbor's house as collateral for that loan.

Once the buyout is done, the PE fund pays itself a "special dividend" (stealing money the business needs to survive) and then starts charging the business a "management fee" for the PE fund's expertise. To pay for all this, the PE bosses start to hack away at the company. Quality declines. So do wages. Prices go up. The company changes suppliers, opting for cheaper alternatives, often stiffing the old company. There are mass layoffs. The remaining employees end up doing three peoples' jobs, for lower wages, with fewer materials of lower quality.

Eventually, that top-feeding PE company finds a more desperate, more ham-fisted PE company to unload the business onto. That middle-feeding company also does a leveraged buyout, pays itself another special dividend, cuts wages, staffing and quality even further. They switch to even worse suppliers and stiff the last batch. Prices go up even higher.

Then – you guessed it – the middle-feeding PE company finds an even more awful PE bottom-feeder to unload the company onto. That bottom feeder does it all again, without even pretending to leave the business in condition to do its job. The company is a shambling zombie at this point, often producing literal garbage in place of the products that made its reputation. Employees' paychecks bounce, or don't show up at all. The company stops bothering to pay the lawyers that have been fending off its creditors. Those lawyers sue the company, too.

That's the kind of PE company Steward Health was, and, as the name suggests, Steward Health is in the business of stripping away the very last residue of value from community hospitals. As you might imagine, this gets pretty fucking ugly.

Steward owns 32 hospitals up and down the country, though its holdings are dwindling as the company walks away from its debt-burdened holdings, after years of neglect that have rendered them unfit for use as health facilities – or for any other purpose. Tcacik's piece offers a snapshot of one such hospital: Florida's Rockledge Regional Medical Center, just eight miles from Cape Canaveral.

Rockledge is a disaster. The fifth floor was, at one point, home to 5,000 bats.

Five.

Thousand.

Bats.

(Rockledge stiffed the exterminators.)

The bats were just the beginning. One of the internal sewage pipes ruptured. Whole sections of the hospital were literally full of shit, oozing out of the walls and ceiling, slopping over medical equipment.

That's an urgent situation for any hospital, but for Rockledge, it's catastrophic, because Rockledge is a hospital without any hospital supplies. Steward has stiffed the companies that supply "heart valves, urology lasers, Impella catheters, cardiac catheterization balloons, slings for lifting heavier patients, blood and urine test reagents, and most recently, prescription paper." Key medical equipment has been repossessed. So have the Pepsi machines. The hospital cafeteria had its supply of cold cuts repossessed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/massachusetts/comments/1agc1j4/comment/kolicqo/

It's not just Steward's nonpayments that reek of impending doom. Its payments also bear the hallmarks of a scam artist on the brink of blowing off the con. The company recently paid off a vendor with five separate checks for $1m, each drawn on "a random hospital in Utah" (Steward recently walked away from its Utah hospitals; its partners there are suing it for stealing $18m on their way out the door).

This company – which owns 32 hospitals! – has resorted to gambits like sending photos of fake checks to doctors it hasn't paid in months as "proof" that the money was coming (the checks arrived 22 days later).

Steward owes so much money to its employees – $1.66m to just one doctors' group. But the medical staff keep doing their jobs, and are reluctant to speak on the record, thanks to Steward's reputation for vicious retaliation. Those health workers keep showing up to take care of patients, even as the hospital crumbles around them. One clinician told Tcacik: "I watched a bed collapse underneath a [patient] who had just undergone hip surgery."

Rockledge has nine elevators, but only five of them work – the other four have been broken for a year. The hospital's fourth floor has been converted to "a graveyard of broken beds." The sinks are clogged, or filled with foul gunk. There's black mold. Nurses have noted on the maintenance tags that the repair service refuses to attend the hospital until their overdue bills are paid. The fifteen-person on-site maintenance team was cut to just two workers.

Steward is just the latest looting owner of Rockledge. After the Great Financial Crisis, private equity consultants helped sell it to Health Management Associates. The hospital's CEO took home a $10m bonus for that sale and exited; Health Management Associates then quickly became embroiled in a Medicare fraud and kickback scandal. Soon after, Rockledge was passed on to Community Health Systems, who then sold it on to Rockledge.

Steward, meanwhile, was at that time owned by an even bigger private equity giant, Cerberus, which then sold Steward off. That deal was performatively complex and hid all kinds of mischief. Prior to Cerberus's sell-off of Steward, they sold off Steward's real-estate. The buyer was Medical Properties Trust, who gave Cerberus $1.25b for the real-estate: three hospitals in Florida and three more in Ohio. Steward then contracted to operate these hospitals on MPT's behalf, and pay MPT rent for the real-estate.

This complex arrangement was key to siphoning value out of the hospital and to keeping angry creditors at bay – if you can't figure out who owes you money, it's a lot harder to collect on the debt. The scheme was masterminded by Steward founder/CEO Ralph de la Torre. De la Torre is notorious for taking a massive dividend out of the company while it owed $1.4b to its creditors. He bought a $40m yacht with the money.

De la Torre was once feted as a business genius who would "disrupt" healthcare. But as Steward's private jet hops around "Corfu, Santorini, St. Maarten and Antigua" as its hospitals literally crumble, he's becoming less popular. In Massachusetts, politicians have railed against Steward and de la Torre (Governor Healey wants the company to leave the state "as soon as possible").

Florida, by contrast, is much more friendly to Steward. The state Health and Human Services Committee chair Randy Fine is an ardent admirer of hospital privatization and is currently campaigning to sell off the last community hospital in Brevard County. The state inspectors are likewise remarkably tolerant of Steward's little peccadillos. The quasi-governmental agency that inspects hospitals has awarded this shit-and-bat-filled, elevator-free, understaffed rotting hulk "A" grades for quality.

These inspectors jointly represent a mismatched assortment of private and public agencies, dominated by a nonprofit called Leapfrog, the brainchild of Harvard public-health prof Lucian Leape, who founded it in 2000. Leapfrog likes to tout its "transparent" assessment criteria, and Steward are experts at hitting those criteria, spending the exact minimum to tick every box that Leapfrog inspectors use as proxies for overall quality and safety.

This is a pretty great example of Goodhart's Law: "every measurement eventually becomes a target, whereupon it ceases to be a good measurement":

https://xkcd.com/2899/

But despite Steward's increasingly furious creditors and its decaying facilities, the company remains bullish on its ability to continue operations. Medical Properties Trust – the real estate investment trust that is nominally a separate company from Steward – recently hosted a conference call to reassure Wall Street investors that it would be a going concern. When a Bank of America analyst asked MPT's CFO how this could possibly be, given the facility's dire condition and Steward's degraded state, the CFO blithely assured him that the company would get bailouts: "We own hospitals no one wants to see closed."

That's the thing about PE and health-care. The looters who buy out every health-care facility in a region understand that this makes them too big to fail: no matter how dangerous the companies they drain become, local governments will continue to prop them up. Look at dialysis, a market that's been cornered by private equity rollups. Today, if you need this lifesaving therapy, there's a good chance that every accessible facility is owned by a private equity fund that has fired all its qualified staff and ceased sterilizing its needles. Otherwise healthy people who visit these clinics sometimes die due to operator error. But they chug along, because no dialysis clinics is worse that "dialysis clinics where unqualified sadists sometimes kill you with dirty needles":

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-dirty-business-of-clean-blood

The bad news is that private equity has thoroughly colonized the entire medical system. They took hospitals, fired the doctors, then took over the doctors' groups that provided outsource staff to the hospital:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/04/a-mind-forever-voyaging/#prop-bets

It's illegal for private equity companies to own doctors' practices (doctors have to own these), but they obfuscated the crime with a paper-thin pretext that they got away with despite its obvious bullshittery:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/21/profitable-butchers/#looted

The financier who decides whether you live or die depends on an algorithm that literally sets a tolerable level of preventable deaths for the patients trapped in the practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca

Private equity also took over emergency rooms and boobytrapped them with "surprise billing" – junk fees that ran to thousands of dollars that you had to pay even if the hospital was in network with your insurer. They made billions from this, and spent a many millions from that booty keeping the scam alive with scare ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#doctor-patient-unity

The whole health stack is colonized by private equity-backed monopolies. Even your hospital bed!

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/05/hillrom/#baxter-international

Then there's residential care. Private equity cornered many regional markets on nursing homes and turned them into slaughterhouses, places where you go to die, not live:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#disposable-olds

The palliative care sector is also captured by private equity. PE bosses hire vast teams of fast-talking salespeople who con vulnerable older people into entering an end-of-life system before they are ready to die. Thanks to loose regulation, the nation is filled with fake hospices that can rake in millions from Medicare while denying all care to their patients (hospice patients don't get life-extending medication or procedures, by definition):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

If you survive this long enough, Medicare eventually tells the hospice that you're clearly not dying and you get kicked off their rolls. Now you have to go through the lengthy bureaucratic nightmare of convincing the system – which was previously informed that you were at death's door – that you are actually viable and need to start getting care again (good luck with that).

If that kills you, guess what? Private equity has rolled up funeral homes up and down the country, and they will scam your survivors just as hard as the medical system that killed you did:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/09/high-cost-of-dying/#memento-mori

The PE sector spent more than a trillion dollars over the past decade buying up healthcare companies, and it has trillions more in "dry powder" allocated for further medical acquisitions. Why not? As the CFO of Medical Properties Trust told that Bank of America analyst last week, when you "own hospitals no one wants to see closed." you literally can't fail, no matter how many people you murder.

The PE sector is a reminder that the crimes people commit for money far outstrip the crimes they commit for ideology. Even the most ideological killers are horrified by the murders their profit-motivated colleagues commit.

Last year, Tkacic wrote about the history of IG Farben, the German company that built Monowitz, a private slave-labor camp up the road from Auschwitz to make the materiel it was gouging Hitler's Wehrmacht on:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

Farben bought the cheapest possible slaves from Auschwitz, preferentially sourcing women and children. These slaves were worked to death at a rate that put Auschwitz's wholesale murder in the shade. Farben's slaves died an average of just three months after starting work at Monowitz. The situation was so abominable, so unconscionable, that the SS officers who provided outsource guard-labor to Monowitz actually wrote to Berlin to complain about the cruelty.

The Nuremberg trials are famous for the Nazi officers who insisted that they were "just following order" but were nonetheless executed for their crimes. 24 Farben executives were also tried at Nuremberg, where they offered a very different defense: "We had a fiduciary duty to our shareholders to maximize our profits." 19 of the 24 were acquitted on that basis.

PE is committed to an ideology that is far worse than any form of racial animus or other bias. As a sector, it is committed to profit above all other values. As a result, its brutality knows no bounds, no decency, no compassion. Even the worst crimes we commit for hate are nothing compared to the crimes we commit for greed.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/retaliation#charnel-house

[peachesofteal]

Ghoap x reader zombie apocalypse AU? 👀 just gonna leave that here...

Ooh anon you got me with this. Thought about it all night. A full fic of this dynamic in an apocalypse setting would be so good. Sadly, I don't have it in me to write an entire fic for this but I scratched it out as a dead disco au down below on my phone (I took bits and pieces of zombie media and smashed them together as I like):

18+ MDNI / angst, death

It was an accident.

All you had wanted to do was try to find some mushrooms. You knew this part of the woods usually had a fair amount to forage, and you were pretty good at distinguishing the good ones from the not so good ones. You hadn't meant to get distracted.

You knelt down to the forest floor, picking at a piece of bark on a downed log when you heard the rustling, the suspect sound of something moving through the brush near you.

You expected one of the slow ones. The ones that usually found themselves this far from the city, wandering aimlessly, looking for the next meal. Decaying and rotting flesh hanging from their limbs, a sign they had been long infected, the decomposition marking them as something easily escapable.

You did not expect a runner.

You screamed- a huge no no, as Simon had been drilling into your head- when you saw it, far too late, tripping over yourself to try to get away, your hunting knife pressed into the palm of your hand.

You stood little chance against a runner. They were fresh, muscles still intact, lactic acid burning through their bodies, movements fast and sharp, able to take down an entire human in one fell swoop. They even looked like you, still holding their pallor, their posture, their fine motor skills.

Only their minds were gone. Addled by the infection, brains turned to hot mush inside their skulls.

They had one objective.

Eat.

You managed to clear the log, sprinting as fast as you possibly could, trying to take long, deep breaths through your nose just as Johnny taught you.

"More oxygen that way, love. It'll help your endurance, keep you runnin' longer."

They were always doing that now, equipping you for survival. Trying to train you like a solider, teaching you the finer points they thought you should know.

"We're gonna make it, together." Simon had said, the morning they showed up in the middle being away for work, clad in full tactical gear, guns in hand. "As a family."

"Ye have to listen to everything we say, alright darling? Everything's goin' to be okay." Johnny promised at the same time as you tried to pack some essentials into your backpack with trembling fingers.

They were obsessed with trying to instill as much of their knowledge into as possible, trying to prepare you, help you, listing off rules they thought were key, ensuring you knew to follow them.

One being: don't get distracted.

You curse yourself, feet flying underneath your body and heart thrumming in your chest with panic. You're too slow, and you can hear it behind you, sprinting just as fast as you are, preparing to launch and take down it's next meal.

You don't see the snare of brambles until you're in them, nearly slamming to a stop, thorns scratching against your skin as you fight against the thicket. It's too dense, slowing your ability to get away... and the runner is still hot on your heels, working its way through the mess, snapping its jaw like a shark.

Simon comes out of nowhere. One second you're hacking away at the branches and the next, there's a massive, solid warmth at your back, standing between you and the snarling monster. He's facing away from you, brandishing a knife, engaged in a full fight with the runner, taking it to the ground in an attempt to get the blade into its temple. You watch mouth wide, frozen, holding your breath until the job is done, and Simon is hauling himself upwards, pulling you into his arms before stepping back to look you over.

You burst into tears. You've always told them, you're not for this kind of world. You're too gentle, too sensitive. You're a painter, for fucks sake. Not a killer. You're too soft to survive.

They say it doesn't matter. That you can be as soft as you want, because you have them, and they'll be the killers. They'll be the hard ones.

"Did it get you? Let me see, c'mon-" He checks your arms, your neck, the tear on your shirt but finds nothing. "Alright, you're alright." He's telling you, and himself, relief exhaling from his body with each syllable. "You're alright, darling. I've got ya. Come here." He holds you tight, rubbing your back, kissing your cheek, your forehead until you're calm, breathing deeply and wiping your face.

You believe the worst has passed, until you blink up at him, and see the blood on his neck.

The bite.

"We need to make a plan."

"We're nae makin' a bloody plan." Johnny hisses, and Simon closes his eyes like he's tired. "We keep goin'. We'll make it to the rendezvous with Price and they'll have a solution. We dinnae even know how fast it spreads."

Simon lets loose a sigh, heavy with exhaustion. With the toll that this life has become. With the weight, of everything. He tucks you into his body, wrapping his other arm around Johnny, and holds the two of you close. Tightly. Tighter than he ever has before.

"Alright."

The next morning, everything is different.

You woke up last, fire still barely smoldering, little energy bar on the ground next to you. The guys sleeping bags were already rolled up, stacked neatly with Simon's pack, and the long gun that Johnny carries.

But they were nowhere to be found.

Confused, you slid free, stretching with a silent groan, scanning your surroundings until you spot them on the edge of the woods, locked together on their feet, Johnny's face mashed against Simon's neck, strong arms holding him close.

"What's going on?" The question comes out confused when you get close, and Johnny pulls away with wet eyes, hands shaking. What's happening? Why are they both crying? Fear screams through your body, red alert systems firing up as your brain struggles to put all the pieces together.

"Simon-" Johnny begins, but stops abruptly, eyes slamming shut, lips pressed together in agony.

"'m not feelin' too well." Simon explains gently. "You and Johnny are gon’ start on ahead, and 'm gonna stay here for a while." Something, something logical, something smart, is shouting at you from the back of your mind but you shove it away, opting for delusion instead.

"Okay, you're going to catch up though, right? You said. We'll find-" You frowned, looking from him to Johnny as a sick feeling grew in your stomach. "Johnny?"

“Look at me.” Simon combs through your hair with trembling fingers, unsteady for the first time in your entire existence. “I love you, darling. I love you so, so much.”

“S-stop, we're supposed to stay together, you- you said-“

“You have to go with Johnny now, okay? He’s gonna take care of you.” He jerks you forward, closed mouth pressing against your forehead. "I love you."

“No, Si.” You sob, fingers curled in his vest. “You have to come with us. You have to, we’ll fi-find a cure, they’ll be help, somewhere.”

“Johnny.” He chokes, and a strong arm wraps around your waist, Johnny’s heavy, tearful breathing echoing just above your ear. Someone works your fingers free, pulling your hand away but not letting go, holding onto you like a lifeline.

You look up between him, to his face, to Simon’s and realize. They’ve already said goodbye.

Simon strokes the back of his fingers down Johnny’s cheek, tears dripping down his own.

“I love you both, more than anything. More than life.” He squeezes your hand, rubbing a thumb over the back of your knuckles, and then steps away, pulling the handgun from the holster on his thigh. "Take care of each other."

"NO!" you scream, but Johnny is dragging you backwards like a rag doll, away from where Simon stands in clearing, gaze never breaking from the two of you, face wet with tears. "Johnny!"

"Darling-" he chokes out amidst a sob. "Shhh, please. Please." He begs you to be quiet, to hush, but you can't, you can't stop screaming, or fighting him, trying to get back to Simon, to reunite your family, to stay together. You scream and scream until Johnny’s hand claps over your mouth, his own words clogged by his cries, pleading and begging until he's cutting off your oxygen with a desperate apology and lifting you over his shoulder like dead weight.

The last thing you hear before you lose consciousness is the sound of a gunshot.

[artbyblastweave]

I Am Legend is the predecessor of a lot of contemporary zombie fiction, and in particular a lot of survival horror zombie games. The blueprint for the gameplay loop is there- a single survivor with an increasingly fortified and built-up compound, scavenging during the day and hunkering down at night to withstand the siege. One thing I think a lot of zombie games lose when trying to capture that loop, though, is that Robert Neville knows a lot of those people. He's fortifying his actual house where he lived before the apocalypse, a lot of the infected outside are his neighbors, some of them know him and taunt him by name.

Zombie games usually don't model this element because I think a major appeal of zombie games, from a resource allocation perspective, is that it's a fast and legible way to introduce a huge volume of enemies that you don't need to characterize on an individual level. Anonymity is a virtue. On the cheaper side that translates to copy pasting the same handful of sprites or models; on the higher end, you get systems like Project Zomboid or Left 4 Dead, with the ability to algorithmically generate swarms of differentiated zombies on the fly. In both cases you are not looking at characters who are being written. On the flipside, a lot of open-world zombie survival games have protagonists with deliberately tenuous connections to the setting which they inhabit, for purposes of character customization. Understandable, but it precludes any telltale-TWD-style "I knew the people who ran this shop" moments. It ultimately amounts to a whole bunch of strangers trying to kill each other. One of my earliest ever ideas for a game involved playing as the single human survivor of an isolated hamlet in Colorado, whose population has otherwise been completely infected; the gimmick being the amount of development time sunk into every individual zombie. There would be a static number around the map, individually modeled, with extensive environmental storytelling in their homes and workplaces developing their personal connections to each other and to the player character and acting as a characterization vehicle for both. Your goal as the player would be to kill the static set of one or two hundred zombies, gaining the run of the town to yourself, using your involved knowledge of the community to your advantage. Combat as a tense and occasionally frenetic affair, dependent on positioning, planning, and Trap-making rather than a straightforward hack-and-slash rampage. Has anyone ever attempted something like this?

[disturbingstar]

TV/Comic Death Comparisons

Otis

• In “Save the Last One” Otis is left to be devoured by walkers after being shot in the leg by Shane Walsh.

• In the comics, Otis is devoured by walkers in the Prison. He is put down by Rick Grimes after reanimation.

Sophia Peletier

• In “Pretty Much Dead Already”, Sophia is revealed to have been bitten by a zombie and reanimated, and is later shot in the head by Rick Grimes after reanimation.

• In the comics, Sophia is still alive.

Dale Horvath

• In “Judge, Jury, Executioner”, Dale is disemboweled by a walker on Hershel's farm and mercifully shot in the head by Daryl Dixon.

• In the comics, Dale dies much later during the group's conflict with the Hunters, after being sustaining a bite from a walker. He is shot in the head by Andrea before reanimation. His death is similar to that of Bob Stookey from the TV Series.

Shane Walsh

• In “Better Angels”, Shane is stabbed to death by Rick Grimes, and is shot in the head by Carl Grimes after he reanimates.

• In the comics, Shane's death happens much sooner, roughly a day after the attack on the Atlanta camp. Instead of being premeditated like in the show, Shane's attempt on Rick's life is a “spur of the moment” event, brought on by Shane losing his mind due to several factors. Unlike the show, Shane is shot in the neck by Carl Grimes. After discovering that people reanimate regardless of the circumstances of their deaths, Rick travels to the Atlanta campsite to put Shane down, shooting him in the head.

Lori Grimes

• In “Killer Within”, Lori dies during a C-Section giving birth to Judith Grimes. She is shot by Carl Grimes before reanimation.

• In the comics, Lori survives giving birth to Judith, and isn't killed until the Governor's second assault on the prison, when she is shot and killed by Lilly Caul. This also results in the death of Judith, who is crushed by Lori's corpse, unlike the show where Judith is still alive.

Andrea Harrison

• In “Welcome to the Tombs”, Andrea is bitten by an undead Milton Mamet, whom Philip Blake stabbed and left in a room with a tied-up Andrea. Rather than die from infection, Andrea chooses to take her own life by shooting herself in the head.

• In the comics, Andrea dies much later during the war with the Whisperers. While leading a giant heard away from Alexandria, she is bitten on the neck while saving Eugene. She eventually dies from infection and is stabbed in the head by Rick Grimes after she reanimates.

Hershel Greene

• In “Too Far Gone”, Hershel is decapitated by Philip Blake after Rick refuses to vacate the prison. In “After”, he is put down by Michonne, who stabs him in the head.

• In the comics, Hershel gives up on life after his son Billy is killed during the second prison assault. He is executed by Brian Blake, who shoots him in the head.

Philip Blake

• In “Too Far Gone”, Philip is stabbed through the back by Michonne Hawthorne, and is later shot in the head by Lilly Chambler as he lay dying.

• In the comics, Brian Blake is killed by Lilly Caul, who shoots him in the head and kicks his body into a group of zombies.

Gareth

• In “Four Walls and a Roof”, Gareth is hacked to death by Rick Grimes.

• In the comics Chris, Gareth's comic counterpart, is brutally slaughtered by Rick Grimes, Andrea, Abraham Ford, and Michonne Hawthorne.

Bob Stookey

• In “Strangers”, Bob is bitten on the shoulder by a walker. To spare Sasha from watching his slowly die, he decides to walk out into the woods, where he is knocked out by one of the Terminus remnants. He wakes up, only to discover his leg has been eaten by the Termites. When Bob reveals he's been bitten, Gareth decides to return him to the church. He eventually succumbs to infection in “Four Walls and a Roof”, and is put down by Tyreese Williams before reanimation.

• In the comics, Bob is a former army medic living in Woodbury, who patched up the Governor after the latter endured brutal torture at the hands of Michonne Hawthorne. In the novel series, Bob continues to serve as the town's doctor following the second prison assault until his death of a heart attack. He is then put down by Lilly Caul before reanimation.

Tyreese Williams

• In “What Happened and What's Going On”, Tyreese is bitten on the arm by Noah's zombified brother. His arm is sliced off by Michonne to stop the infection from spreading, but Tyreese dies due to blood loss anyway. He is stabbed in the head by Michonne before reanimation.

• In the comics, Tyreese dies sooner, during the second prison assault. He is decapitated by Brian Blake after Rick refuses to vacate the prison. His zombified head is later stabbed by Michonne Hawthorne. His death is similar to that of Hershel Greene from the TV Series.

Ron Anderson

• In “No Way Out”, Ron holds Rick at gunpoint after witnessing Rick hack off Jessie's hand to save Carl. He is stabbed through the chest by Michonne, which causes him to reflexively fire his gun and shoot Carl's eye out.

• In the comics, Ron is devoured by zombies when he starts panicking and making too much noise. Carl's eye is accidentally shot out by Douglas instead. His death is similar to that of Sam Anderson.

Abraham Ford

• In “Last Day on Earth”, Abraham is picked by Negan Smith to be executed. Negan smashes Abraham's head with his baseball bat, Lucille, off-screen.

• In the comics, Abraham is shot in the back of the head and through the eye with a crossbow bolt fired by Dwight. His death is similar to that of Denise Cloyd.

Glenn Rhee

• In “The Day Will Come When You Won't Be”, Negan Smith smashes Glenn's head with Lucille after Daryl attacks him.

• In the comics, Glenn's death is similar, but happens under slightly different circumstances, as Glenn is the one who is chosen by Negan to be executed.

Olivia

• In “Hearts Still Beating”, Olivia is shot in the face by Arat as retribution for Rosita trying to kill Negan.

• In the comics, Olivia dies much later during the conflict with the Whisperers, when she is decapitated by Alpha.

Carl Grimes

• In “The King, the Widow, and Rick”, Carl is bitten by a walker while taking Siddiq back to Alexandria. In “Honour,” Carl shoots himself in the head after saying goodbye to his friends and family.

• In the comics, Carl survives the entire duration of the series.

Paul “Jesus” Rovia

• In “Evolution”, Paul is stabbed through the heart by an unnamed Whisperer.

• In the comics, Paul Monroe is still alive.

Alpha

• In “Walk With Us”, Alpha has her throat slit by Negan, who then decapitates her and brings her head to Carol. Her head is later recovered and put down by Beta.

• In the comics, Alpha's death is pretty much identical, although the circumstances of her death are slightly different. Negan doesn't lure Alpha away by claiming to have captured Lydia, but she instead approaches him after banishing him to sleep outside the Whisperers' camp. He also brings Alpha's head to Rick instead of Carol. In addition, Alpha's head is not known to have been put down afterwards.

Rosita Espinosa

• In “Rest in Peace”, Rosita is bitten on the shoulder and succumbs to the infection. She is then put down by Eugene before reanimation.

• In the comics, Rosita is one of the pike victims.

[crappymixtape]

crappymixtape recos

going to try and do this at least once a month – sharing fics that have just blown me away ❤ so many talented writers on here omg 🥺 show them some love and BE KIND, REBLOG! xoxo, 💿

❤ “project sunshine” series +18 only – @a-dealwith-god ( TW: typical violence, child abuse, horror, gore, and depictions of mental illness // when another product of Hawkins National Laboratory escaped a long-survived nightmare alongside her sister, she crashed into one unsuspecting teenage boy and dragged him deeper into the dark mysteries that made up their hometown • steve x reader )

❤ “simmer” series +18 only – @upsidedownwithsteve ( welcome to hawkins’ number one diner! where the staff don’t wanna be there and the linecook is a grumpy metal head who likes to argue with his boss and ignore everyone else. but the new waitress can’t hack the rude customers and the regulars can be a little… much • linecook!eddie x waitress!reader )

❤ "from bug’s summer fic fest" – @lovebugism ( reader is clingy but doesn’t wanna come off as clingy so she asks eddie if he wants to be alone and he reassures her he couldn’t go anywhere without her • eddie x reader )

❤ “a quest for bed” – @luveline ( eddie fights to get his usually shy and moderately intoxicated girlfriend to bed when you insist on clinging to him at every turn • eddie x reader )

❤ "lyric request" – @familyvideostevie ( lyrics: “i didn't know you then and i'll never understand why it feels like i did” • steve x reader )

❤ “i can see you” +18 only – @fairyysoup ( TW: read at the link // the secret history of your long and arduous relationship with steve harrington aka the 5 times you pined over each other, and the time you actually did something about it • steve x reader )

❤ "post-game james" +18 only – @theemporium ( james potter post quidditch game shower smut – thinking about his sweaty pecs and big hands and thick thighs • james potter x reader )

❤ "public kisses" – @starryeyedstories ( you know steve would be the mom to kiss his girl in front of the gang because he knows they hate it • steve x reader )

❤ "all i really want is you" series +18 only – @loveshotzz ( a series of slow burn blurbs between older!neighbor!widower! steve x fem!reader – updated every wednesday • steve x reader )

❤ "zombie au" series +18 only – @luveline ( TW: various, read at the links // stranger things AU – reluctant allies to friends to lovers, takes place during the apocalypse • steve x reader )

❤ "injured with eddie" – @eddiemunsons-missingnipple ( stubbing your toe in front of eddie and he acts like you’re dying • eddie x reader )

❤ "the summer of '89" series +18 only – @delphispoeticals ( this is truly going to be a fantastic stranger things meets dirty dancing series and omg just wait til we can read it • dancer!steve x reader )

❤ "dependency problem" +18 only – @writersblockedx  ( TW: drugs, substance abuse, alcohol // when you return to cousins this year, you find that conrad has picked up similar bad habits you once had • conrad fisher x reader )

❤ "a lesson in romantics" series – @stvharrngton ( a multi-part series where reader is the new art teacher at hawkins high and the history teacher, mr. harrington, takes a shine to the new girl. mutual pining ensues on their road to love • steve x reader )

❤ "learning in public" +18 only – @ohcaptains ( you didn’t think he’d enjoy it that much...didn’t think he’d want more, too • carmen ‘carmy’ berzatto x female! reader )

[sadiecoocoo]

newest bit of TBB zombie fic that I'm working on. I've made it to 11,000 words already! (but still have a lot more to write)

Echo removed the hand he held to Tech’s mouth. Tech shuffled a bit away, still concealed by the overturned bed. He fought the urge to peek behind it, to see the trooper’s positions. It would risk his own being discovered. He could hear more stumbling footsteps join the group. More troopers were actively entering the room. Tech turned quickly back to Echo, who had a serious and determined look on his face. He didn’t miss the hints of pain and the way his hand shook though. Tech signed quickly how many he suspected being in the room. Echo nodded stiffly. They were vastly outnumbered, and Tech estimated that he had undercounted. He frowned as he tried to come up with some sort of plan that didn’t end terribly. “Hello?” One drawled, accentuating the “o.” Tech tensed as he heard the footsteps move closer. He unholstered his blaster. A few of the troopers cackled again. They sounded manic, and brought chills up Tech’s spine. He held his breath as the footsteps got closer. He lost count of how many were in the room, too many for them to take. Why had he let Wrecker leave them alone? His lip trampled as his heart sped up. Echo placed an equally shaky hand on Tech’s shoulder. He knew he was trying to ground the splicer, but it only seemed to make it worse. Echo could be one of those monsters in a few hours if he didn’t get to work right now. The footsteps were right at the overturned bed. Tech could feel the trooper looming over them, his shadow peeking through gaps. Tech clenched his fists, holding his blaster like a lifeline, which it usually was. Tech saw the trooper place his hand on the top of the bed, as if he were about to look over. They would be spotted. They would be ambushed and terrifyingly outnumbered. They would be killed. He moved to place his back against Echo. He didn’t want to be the reason the ARC died. Echo had been through so much and had bounced back. How can someone possibly bounce back from being torn limb from limb like the corpse Echo had described had been? This was Tech’s fault. He let Wrecker go, he would have stayed if Tech asked him to. He forgot to seal the door after Wrecker left, not thinking about the fact that doors can’t be sealed from the outside. Why couldn’t he think right? Why was he messing up? Why wouldn’t he just jump out and give Echo a chance at finding some way to escape instead of sit here like a toobie? Oh maker, the trooper’s head was peeked over the bed now, he would be able to see them in seconds. No, no, he couldn’t leave his brothers alone. They were somewhere in this facility and they needed him and Echo to survive. They needed them for so many things. Who would fix the Marauder? Who would hack into separatist systems? Who would- A loud clatter made Tech jump. The trooper stopped in his movement, and turned away. He turned away. He didn’t see them. There wasn’t a swarm of zombie troopers attacking them. They didn’t know they were there. Echo grabbed Tech’s hand and pulled him into a tight hug. He gladly accepted it. They had both almost been murdered, he could stand to accept a hug for surviving. He released a shaky, quiet breath. There were tears leaking onto his cheeks, though he couldn’t tell if they were from relief or the quickly dissipating fear. Beep! beep! Beep! Both clones froze. With wide eyes, they turned their head to look at the machine Tech had been running tests on the samples with. It had gone off. It had found something. Tech didn’t even get the chance to be happy that he found something before the bed they hid behind was thrown to the side by two undead troopers. Many more were gathered behind them, their dead eyes shining in the red emergency lighting. Echo grabbed Tech again and shielded him as one lunged, teeth barred in a horrific, bloodied grin.

I put a lot more than usual, but I'm really proud of this part of the fic and wanted to share it ahead of time :)

if anyone would like to be tagged once I finish this, I'd be happy to do it, just let me know! <3

[radio-free-beth-sarim]

We talk about how we're currently living in a cyberpunk dystopia and yeah, we probably are. It's difficult to tell from the inside I guess. But that often seems to come with a sense of nihilistic futility. That capitalism has progressed to the point where the best you can do is give up and try to survive.

Fuck that! That isn't cyberpunk! Cyberpunk is about subverting technology for personal and anti-corporate means! It means using technology in the margins of life! Using human ingenuity and creativity to tell the corporations to go fuck themselves!

We live in a cyberpunk dystopia? Then be a fucking cyberpunk! Jailbreak your phone! Hack your Playstation 5! Learn to code! Use open source software! Build a pwnagotchi! Pirate the media that the corporations won't provide you because they used it as a tax write off! Set up a plex server and share it! Take back your tech or the corpos fucking win!

Ice T had a line in the movie adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic:

SNATCH BACK YOUR BRAIN, ZOMBIE! SNATCH IT BACK AND HOLD IT!

[screamingcrows]

Hello. Just wondering if you ever have any headacanons related to modern AU? Specifically for Zandik/Dottore or anyone else is fine. I'm just curious lol

DO I EVER ANON

*shakes them out my feathers*

I have several different modern AUs actually lmao.

I used to believe in mechanical engineer or something similar Dottore, but alas, this argument has me reconsidering, at least in terms of formal education.

For a couple of years after being thrown out of university, Zandik would show up randomly at oral examinations at the faculty he'd been on track to getting a degree at (they are at least public where I'm from, so technically anyone can go watch). And he'd ask horribly difficult questions, sometimes aimed at the examinatiors, or try to start discussions well outside the scope.

He's on at least one international watchlist but is impossible to pin down, seemingly being everywhere and nowhere all at once.

In my mafia AU, he's rumored to run an organ trafficking ring. When asked, he just laughs and continues the conversation like you never asked.

Smokes. Says he could stop any time he wants.

In my zombie apocalypse au, he's a bit of a prepper. Not just in terms of stocking items but also learning survival skills.

Refuses to seek professional medical help unless literally on the verge of death, claiming that 'he knows a fix'

Wants to enjoy camping but really doesn't.

Zandik once tried one of those 'natural hair dye' hacks and ended up staring at himself in the mirror for twenty minutes re-evaluating how much his tousled hair was actually part of his 'look'

Honestly, I could see him having something similar to a basement dedicated to model trains. Maybe not trains but, you know, lego or something. Click click assembly, something he can take apart, display, repeat.

Zandik absolutely had a period of living off of food he dumpster dived. Frankly, he had better things to spend that money on. Gradually tones it down but sometimes Dottore walks past a container and just kinda "....oh that's a waste... don't mind if I do.."

In relation; goes to junkyards and collects scrap for side projects

When he was younger, Zandik was one wrong move away from being sucked into a cult

I also have a modern AU in which he's a jaded university professor, and he keeps up with slang just so he can purposefully use it wrong and see his students cringe

Ah yes, I say 'do I ever' and then immediately my brain goes blank xD

[aliencartz]

i sorted. the fucking. burs. :3

musical burs

1. simpbur (your new boyfriend)

2. incelbur (the internet ruined me)

3. Ebur (im in love with an egirl)

4. softbur (softboy)

13. ycgmabur (based off wilburs album your city gave me asthma)

14. msrbur (a very sad bur based off his album mammalian sighing reflex)

23. lvjybur (when he does tour/conserts/makes music with lovejoy)

30. draq’thar, killer of men (wilburs “no haircut til my new song comes out” stream where he wore a wig)

42. boringbur (maybe i was boring)

content burs

5. ARG/argbur (wilbur soot’s ARG)

19. sorrybur/s!bur (sorry boys wilbur)

21. cc! wilbur (content creator wilbur so just regular wilbur)

22. modbur (literally every time he uses mods)

32. ylylbur (when wilbur did you laugh you lose)

37. earthbur (when he did earth smp)

47. ao3bur (when wilbur tweeted about his fic on ao3 and was upset when it got hacked)

8. q! wilbur (qsmp wilb)

dsmp burs

7. lmanbur (when wil was president on the dsmp)

9. revivedbur (wilbur after getting revived)

10. ghostbur (when wilbur was dead and in the limbo)

11. vilbur/pogbur (before wilbur died, but after schlatt took over and kicked him out of manburg)

12. c! wilbur/alivebur (when he first joined the dsmp)

36. drugbur (when him and tommy had the drug van)

random mc mods

15. godbur/100pbur (based off his 100 players ‘series’)

17. mulebur (when he trapped tubbo in his basement and sold mule bits, in tommys minecraft weather mod video)

20. phantombur (origin SMP with his phantom powers)

26. wimpfred (his character in we spent 100 days in hardcore minecraft apocalypse)

31. dr. malpractice (from toms minecraft surgery video when wilbur would steal everyones organs)

33. skybur (when wilbur played sky block)

34. smallbur (when wilbur was really small in the size mod video)

37. earthbur (when he did earth smp)

39. decaybur (minecraft but the world is rapidly decaying)

40. rockbur (minecraft but i leave a trail of bedrock)

41. livebur (wilbur doing smp live)

44. flowerbur (when wilbur would go on servers as ‘flowergirl86’ [or smth idr :,)] and tell people he was friends with techno)

45. voicebur (when him, phil, quackity, and tommy did the voice mod)

46. bodbur (body shuffle mod)

48. winbur/crownbur (when quackity won him and wilbur the crown in mc championship)

49. salmonbur (when wilbur was w sally and gave philza the 8 buckets of salmon)

sorry burs

25. zombur (we survived a zombie apocalypse video)

27. wilma (his fem version on the sorry boys)

28. dark wolf/cultbur (sorry boys ep4 we started a cult)

other game burs

16. raftbur/ishmael isaac(when wilbur played raft with tomz)

18. tiptup (when wilbur play geoguesser)

24. rustbur (when he played rust w sbi)

random burs

6. catbur/dogbur (my random headcanons)

29. daynjer boy (wilburs chaotic/risk taking character/side)

35. sogbur/wetbur (when wilbur, george, and tommy went to the water park)

43. sandbur (when wilbur bugged philza about sand)

[teecupangel]

I saw this amazing idea from another fandom that could be used to keep Desmond alive: his ghost possessing his own body. Not only that but whenever ghost! Desmond gets out of his body it becomes zombie! Desmond so there's two Desmond's sharing a body while trying to live(heh) in the modern time.

Oohhh, this sounds interesting.

Does this mean that Desmond’s body starts to decompose when he’s not in his body?

Or would that be too much and we’ll just let zombie!Desmond act as a usual zombie, looking for ‘food’.

Now, there should be a reason why Desmond would willingly (or unwillingly) stay out of his body. It could be that there is a limitation placed on the possession itself and Desmond could only stay for around half a day and the other half has to be him floating around as a ghost. He learns of this because the first time he returned to his body, he tried to stay there as long as he could and he’s just yanked out of the body after exactly 12 hours.

Of course, the first time this happens, he was still imprisoned in an Abstergo facility and… well… zombie!Desmond definitely had a lot of preys to eat then.

… does this mean that Desmond could accidentally start a zombie apocalypse.

Thankfully, the moment zombie!Desmond started attacking people, the entire facility went on lockdown and dropped heavy roll up covers for all entrances and exits, including windows.

This did mean that everyone is stuck inside with a growing zombie horde courtesy of zombie!Desmond.

And ghost!Desmond is just floating nearby, freaking out because he knows how this is played.

He does not want to be patient zero!

He tries to get back to zombie!Desmond but he’s pulled away each time, only able to take control for maybe 3 to 5 minutes.

Until…

12 hours passed and Desmond finally takes control.

As every single zombie turned to face him.

Because he no longer registers as one of them.

No.

He registered as ‘prey’.

And Desmond slips out of his body voluntarily this time, letting zombie!Desmond take control before the other zombies attack him.

And now…

He has to think of a way…

To kill every zombies here in approximately 12 hours… without the zombies attacking him and before Abstergo remotely opens the roll up covers to find out what has happened.

.

Berg and Sigma team enters the building from above later on.

They had lost contact with the facility 25 hours ago, the last transmission they received was an automatic message from the facility’s security system summarizing that the lockdown was due to an unknown highly volatile virus of unknown origins.

The security system cut off all connection to the outside world per protocol (a protocol that become the norm after an unknown hacker that has no connection to Erudito hacked a different facility and used the connection to send out different viruses to other facilities, many classified information were destroyed during the attack, including data about known Isus and Sages). Protocol states they wait 24 hours for any communications from the people in the facility or the security system before trying to breach the facility.

There was nothing.

And when they got there…

The security system had been destroyed together with all the recordings in the facility and its own black box.

And the entire place…

… was nothing more than a place of death.

No one survived.

There were signs that they had killed one another.

No.

They tried to eat each other.

Was this…

The ‘virus’ that the security system had pinged?

They could not be sure.

All they knew was…

The underground parking lot’s cover was not locked.

A person could lift it up and slip out before it fell back down.

So they had to make sure…

… to account for every single person.

Because if this was a real virus that can do such a thing…

They were looking for a potential carrier.

“Sir. Sofia Rikkin is in line 1.”

Berg nodded at the man to his right before he clicked a button on the portable radio connected to his earpiece, “This is Berg.”

“Is this right, Berg? You counted 80 bodies?”

That did not sound good. Sofia Rikkin was usually calm and a bit cold but she sounded like she was ready to tear Berg’s throat out if he said the wrong thing.

“We’re recounting the bodies but, yes. Our initial and second counting both-”

“There should be 81 bodies, Berg.”

Berg looked at the tablet in his other hand, “The list of personnel in this facility when it went on lockdown says eigh-”

“Because it’s not a personnel.”

He really wished she’d stop cutting him off.

But it was more important to hear what she was saying right now.

“Berg. The 81st body is the 2nd attempt to create an Isu body. A lot of data were destroyed during the attack years back so we used Sample 17 to plug the missing links.”

“Are you saying the possibly missing 81st body is Desmond Miles?”

“… possibly. Find that body, Berg. There haven’t been any tests done to that body yet so we don’t know what it can do. For all we know…”

“… it could be the original carrier of this unknown virus.”

[bigfathoe4you]

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

Preface:

My zombies are not dead, they are infected with a disease which makes them hungry, they are not decomposing or mindless, they are driven insane by the pain of hunger and the things they’ve done so in a sense they die. They are loosely based on a book called ashes by Ilsa J. Bick, a very good angsty zombie book with very little romance.

This fic is set in the north west of England, to make it plausible for the MC to stumble upon the 141. Being Scottish myself I would love to make the MC Scottish and move the fic to the highlands, but I want some feedback on that.

TW: Death of a friend/sister, skinny reader (she fattens up), a lot of gross descriptions of zombies and death, angst lots, smut in later chapters.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from living 6 years in a zombie apocalypse it’s “waste not, want not.” That was the thought that kept me from gagging at the smell of the jacket that I shook rotten skin off of. Rising I looked down at the skinny, pale ‘woman’ I’d pried it from. had she done the same? How many people have died in this jacket? Would I die in the cold, spend years wandering, Killing others, feeling a deep painful unending hunger?

I looked down at her failing body, before the fall of humanity these jeans would have been 2 sizes too small, the shirt about 3 or 4. I’d lost all shape, hadn’t had a period in years, my skin looked a shade darker thanks to the many layers of dirt that clung to me. I once took pride in my appearance, now my crowning achievement was surviving for this long by myself.

Taking one last sweep of the shop I found a grey eyed boy, looked about 19, his cheeks sagged and the bags under his eyes were bulging, purply red. His pale cheeks were littered with peach fuzz and tear stained, his nose a pudgy red from his quiet sobs. He groaned in pain as he pulled a skinny rat apart, sucking on the small bones. He looked up at me from his crouched position and growled, his primitive brain deciding if he should run with his meal or if he could take me. He twitched his way to his feet dropping the rat at his feet.

Before his skinny legs could take him to me I’d pulled the gun from my waistband and shot a few small holes through his chest. He let out some muffled whimpers as he crumpled to the floor, I followed him to the floor. I had grown to feel very little but when they looked so young it hurt. I stroked his thinning hair and shushed him whilst he hacked up blood and shook.

The trek back to base was long but quiet, the marshy ground of the north west sucked my feet deep into the ground, the ‘suctiony’ sound that emitted from dragging my feet drowned out my own thoughts. As the base came into view my steps hurried, eager to get inside, it was tuesday (possibly) which meant it was my allotted bath day, due to the difficulty of moving the water from the various rain collectors and the calories it cost, I allowed myself a bath every two weeks. 

The hard metal door bit at my reddening fingers as I fumbled with the keys, reminding me I needed to organise them somehow. I huffed at the effort it took to pull the second interior door open and closed, it had been ripped off its hinges and now scratched across the cold linoleum as I dragged it about. When I finally got inside I relocked every door I walked through to get to the innermost rooms of the base. Whilst people were rare- some zombies in the early stages retained the ability to open and close doors. 

I went to the woodburner and warmed the deer from the outdoor freezer. Most livestock like cattle and sheep were almost hunted to extinction by the zombies but some animals like deer and rabbits remained too fast for zombies. But not me and my gun. I cooked the whole leg, I’d refreeze the tougher bits and keep them for on the go.

Whilst the deer cooked I used my pot to boil some water for my bath. It was more of a sponge bath really, getting fully naked and into a slippery tub was inviting trouble. I used some watered down fairy liquid and an old PT (psychical training, yeah I did cadets so I’m qualified to tell you all about it) shirt to scrub at my skin, one limb at a time.

I pulled one leg out of my jeans leaving the boot and jeans scrunched so I could haul them back up if I needed to. And it was a good thing I did as I was picking dirt out of my scabby skinned knee, I heard a scrapping. My blood ran cold and I almost wept at the sound. 

Scrambling to put my jeans and boots back on. With each creak of a door opening and closing and the low raspy voices of men my hands shook more. 

And when I heard the noise that I knew to be the particularly squeezy door to the room I’d claimed as my own, I almost turned the gun on myself. There were at least 2 men and they knew there was a woman living here.

Steeling myself and setting my footing I readied myself in the middle of the room, no hiding the only power I have is I am pointing my gun at the single door to this room.

The kitchen door moved to open easily and a silhouetted figure pulled every shadow from the room and they pooled at this man's feet, he stood easily a foot taller than myself. The imposing figure took up almost the entire doorway. Although there were no shadows, it was only him, he dressed all in black, tactical gear and a dark balaclava covered his entire being. This man may be death itself.

“Fuck off.” A man wriggled around ‘death’ “Nae way!” barreling towards me a man not as tall as ‘Death’ but just as large wrapped strong arms around me.

My plans crumbled and I lost any ability to remain calm or strong were lost to me. “Please! Please there are guns, ammo, food! If you leave me alone I- I’ll tell you where” the words were choked out of me and my sweaty hands shook looking for my gun. 

The man pulled back but I couldn’t see through the tears that blinded me “It’s- It’s me Johnny” the voice and name were familiar. Strong hands snaked up my arms and held me at my shoulders “oh, darlin’ we’d never hurt you” he put a hand on my cheek and slowly brought my eyes to him. I almost gagged on my tears looking at him, my best friend's older brother, I looked at him and saw her. Alex, my other half, our whole lives attached at the hip, her death had hurt more than any of the rest. 

“Oh Johnny, I’m so sorry” his excitement at seeing me faded to the most hollow I’d ever seen a man. We sank to our knees together, forgetting the man in the doorway. I pushed our brows together “It was quick, I did it” I whispered to him, as I saw the small tears slip down his cheek. 

xx

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

Tags:

@audie-writes

[aahorrorfest]

Day 1: Horror Comedy

Below are all entries for our day one prompt, "horror comedy"!

Great Hunger and Little Hunger by 1800KAGA

Tags: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Ayasato Mayoi | Maya Fey & Naruhodou Ryuuichi | Phoenix Wright, Ayasato Mayoi | Maya Fey, Naruhodou Ryuuichi | Phoenix Wright, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood and Violence, Graphic Description of Corpses, Banter, Maya Fey & Phoenix Wright Friendship, Fear of Death, Nick and Maya are soulmates fight me, Crack Treated Seriously, Dark Comedy, One Shot

Summary: Maya and Phoenix find life in the midst of death.

Miles Edgeworth and Wendy Oldbag vs. The Undead by scheue_sonnenblume (tumblr post)

Tags: Mitsurugi Reiji | Miles Edgeworth/Ooba Kaoru | Wendy Oldbag, Mitsurugi Reiji | Miles Edgeworth & Ooba Kaoru | Wendy Oldbag, Mitsurugi Reiji | Miles Edgeworth, Ooba Kaoru | Wendy Oldbag, Auchi Takefumi | Winston Payne, Auchi Fumitake | Gaspen Payne, Itonokogiri Keisuke | Dick Gumshoe, Naruhodou Ryuuichi | Phoenix Wright, Ayasato Mayoi | Maya Fey, The Judge (Gyakuten Saiban), Zombie Apocalypse, Crack, Survival Horror, Comedy, Zombie Fighting, Ambiguous Relationships, could be shippy or not, Humor, Horror-typical zombie gore, Your fave Ace Attorney characters as creepy zombies, Banter, flirting?

Summary: Edgeworth had always hated zombie movies as a child. He couldn’t imagine anything more miserable than being the only intelligent life surrounded by mindless groaning automatons, doomed to hack his way through flesh and bone until he either succumbed to them or made it to safety. Now, as he hid behind a makeshift barricade in the courthouse, he realized his old fears were misplaced. The worst thing wasn’t fighting zombies alone. It was fighting them with Wendy Oldbag.

[certifiedwerewolf]

Supernatural is like a fever dream sometimes. Dean has been both a vampire and a demon. Everyone has been possessed by an archangel at least once. I'm pretty sure Misha has played every character at some point. They stopped explaining how Cas keeps getting brought back to life by like season seven. In season 11 Chuck just flat out says that it's because he keeps bringing him back. God is a hack writer and the big bad of season 11 is his sister. Literally everyone has daddy issues except the king of hell, who has mommy issues. Sam lost his soul once. Remember that? Remember that time Sam lost his soul? The incarnation of Death has spent multiple scenes chilling in the background eating nachos. The big bad of season 7 is indistinguishable from a right-wing politician. There are multiple episodes with zombie Nazis. The king of hell's mother shot her shot with God. Everyone woman Sam has ever slept with died a horribly violent death, including a woman who survived only to get brought back six seasons later so they could kill her anyway. Garth is a character that exists. The Winchesters did family counseling for God and Lucifer, and the Queen of Hell did couple's counseling for Dean and Cas. Literally the only character who has never betrayed Dean is a Cajun vampire he met in purgatory. A character changes time by saving the Titanic because he found the movie really annoying. And somehow the writers managed to make it even MORE queerbait by canonizing their gay character instead of leaving it ambiguous.

[daydreaming-robot]

My review for murder drones episode seven

SPOILER WARNING

Holy shit they were not kidding when they said so much is gonna be revealed. That is one hell of a lore bomb.

- First thing first, the Absolute Solver said that N was one of the main reasons that it wants them to retain their personalities after the trio was repurposed. Which confirms a long speculation I had. N and J’s personalities stayed the same, while V on the other hand, has her personality altered to a more ruthless state. In the beginning of episode two, V has a more softer and sweet personality back when they were all worker drones.

- The heart is actually Nori, Uzi’s mother. Who apparently survived everything. As shown in episode two the only way to kill a murder done is at the heart, seems like it also works for hosts of the Absolute Solver. By the way, why does Nori don’t want her own daughter to know that she’s alive( it’s already told to her by N either way)

- The cross is actually an USB drive that halts the Solver’s possession. Which it wants to destroy (and did it in the episode)

- When J recognizes the railgun, the visor says “Prior Hazard” pretty much says she remembered her own death

AND NOW THE MAJOR POINTS

- How the core collapsed is insane, as that’s what the Solver wanted. Apparently the humans put Nori in a private facility to prevent the Solver from taking over. And the intern grabbed Nori’s friend, Yeva for help. When the Solver got booted out from Nori’s system it played one last trick. The singularity explosion. Nori cannot control it so Yeva has to cut her hand off, but a major red flag is how the hand fell into the fleshy pit. And the core of Copper 9 went bye bye

- It’s getting more and more obvious that N killed Uzi’s mother, I dread the day it’s finally told. Uzi’s reaction isn’t gonna be good

- The vision(or flashback) N had. It showed all the disassembly drones massacring all humans on Copper 9. But at the end of it, N’s screen flashed purple and said “ Access Denied, Contact Admin” pretty much assuming that N and maybe V are resistant to the Solver’s influence. Thanks to Uzi’s hacking

- THE REVEAL THAT TESSA IS CYN IS INSANE. The Solver fused Cyn’s zombie drone body with TESSA is both insane and terrifying at the same time. Cyn is wearing TESSA’S SKIN AND HAIR, also her drone number is 1001, interesting to note.

- The ending scene, I have no idea how Uzi, ended up in outer space. And the shot of the planet, including the core crater looks like an eyeball looking at Uzi(that’s on me)

This episode left me on the edge of my seat and I’m scared for the season finale

[datcloudboi]

List of video games turning 10 years old in 2023:

Aliens: Colonial Marines (the godawful FPS from Gearbox)

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Animal Crossing: New Leaf (do people still like New Horizons? I genuinely don't know...)

Antichamber

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (the one where you play as a pirate)

Batman: Arkham Origins (IMO, not bad at all)

Call of Duty: Ghosts

Company of Heroes 2

Disney Infinity

DmC: Devil May Cry (the reboot. PS, c'mon, guys, this game wasn't bad at all)

Don't Starve

Dragon's Crown (developed by Vanillaware, who would go on to make 13 Sentinels, which is one of the best games I've ever played.)

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (the director's cut version of Dragon's Dogma and pretty much the best way to play the game)

Dynasty Warriors 8

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (the relaunch of what is now one of the most successful MMOs of all time)

Fire Emblem: Awakening (in the West)

Fuse

Gears of War: Judgment

God of War: Ascension (the last game in the series before Dad of Boi)

Grand Theft Auto V (old_man.gif)

Killer Instinct (the reboot)

Killer is Dead (a decent hack & slash from Grasshopper Manufacture, the devs behind No More Heroes)

Killzone: Shadow Fall (a launch title for the PlayStation 4)

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (as part of the Year of Luigi™️)

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (as part of the Year of Luigi™️)

Marvel Puzzle Quest

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (don't fuck with THIS senator!)

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (an excellent JRPG from Level-5 that was also animated by Studio Ghibli)

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

Pandora's Tower (one of the last big name games to release on the Wii)

Papers, Please

Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time

The PlayStation 4

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (the first Pokémon game on 3DS)

Pokémon X and Y (the first 3D mainline Pokémon games)

Project × Zone (a crossover between Capcom, Sega, and Bandai Namco properties)

Remember Me (the first game developed by Dontnod, who would go on to create Life is Strange)

Rune Factory 4

Ryse: Son of Rome (a launch title for the Xbox One)

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner - Soul Hackers

Shin Megami Tensei IV

SimCity (the one that was always online for some godforsaken reason)

Slender: The Arrival

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (the only Sly game not made by the original devs)

Splinter Cell: Blacklist (so far, the last Splinter Cell game to release)

The Stanley Parable

Super Mario 3D World

Tales of Xillia (is this one of the good Tales games or no? I thought it was decent.)

Tomb Raider (the reboot)

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (an absolutely terrible spin-off of the TV show centered on Daryl)

The Walking Dead: Season Two (or, at least, the first episode of the series)

The Wolf Among Us (or at least, the first episode of the series)

The Xbox One

Ys: Memories of Celceta