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layce2015 · 4 years

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SPOILERS: My Two Cents on Joel's Death Scene

I've been seeing alot of criticism about how Joel's death was handled. And what's funny is that I've been seeing like a bunch of different perspectives of how it was handled.

Some people said it was good and that he deserved what he got. And that for someone like Joel, he didn't deserve a heroic death because they say he was basically the bad guy of the first game, just because of what he did at the ending of Part 1. And also, they say the game was trying to be a bit realistic, as in the real world death is sudden and you don't get to choose what kind've death you get.

And some people jump in and get mad at the people who didn't like this game and say well, you don't like it cause your straight white male character died. Which is so far from the truth!

Other people say that the way Joel died was a disrespect to his character and it felt like Naughty Dog was giving the middle finger to the fans. They say that he should've gone down in a blaze of glory. They also say the lead up to his death makes no sense cause Joel wouldn't have gone into that room as it was shown in the 1st game that he was very cautious, very untrustworthy and very smart and the writers made Joel stupid just so this scene could happen.

How do I feel about it? Well, I did say in my thoughts about Part 2 that Joel did deserve better. And I still stand by that but I wanted to go into more details about it.

And this is from someone who kinda likes the game. (Although right now I'm having a love/hate relationship with the game)

So, let's get on with it

Okay...so....I'm gonna put this out there:

No, I'm not mad that Joel died.

Honestly, I was expecting it to happen. But what I am mad about is how he died and how early in the game he died.

His death scene felt more like it should've been either at the middle or towards the end of the game, not at the fucking 2 hour mark of the damn game. Where it's placed feels more like for shock value than to tell a story. It also felt rushed like the game wanted to hurry and move along the plot.

When I first got to this scene and the moment Abby shot Joel in his knee, I ain't gonna lie I started crying. And when she gave that final blow to his head with a fucking golf club, I bawled like a baby and I couldn't stop.

I even stopped the game when I got to Ellie's 1st day in Seattle, and contemplated whether I wanted to finish the game or not because his death upset me that much. And it still upsets me.

And yes I know that's what Naughty Dog was going for, they wanted me to feel like Ellie, but the thing is...after thinking about it...his death really didn't make much sense.

How is it that a man that noticed an ambush right away just by looking at one guy holding his stomach and pleading for help then ran over that guy as a bunch of hunters come out of their hiding place is the same one who just walked into a room full of people and allowed himself to get surrounded.

And before anyone comments and say He had gone soft from living in Jackson for 4 years

We are actually shown in one of the flashbacks that he was still precocious when he tells Ellie to put on her mask. She even was like "Do I have to? It's just us." And he says "What if we run into someone?"

Plus I don't think living in one place for 4 years erases away your 20 years of living in the zombie apocalypse. And also he was shown to be untrustworthy at the very beginning of the first game when Tommy drives up to a family on the side of the road and Joel told him to keep going. And this was Joel the night of the Outbreak!

Now if we were shown, in the game, that Joel had gotten soft then maybe I would've believed it. But we weren't. Neil said in an interview that he had gone soft and I think he explained it but here's how I see it.

When you make a game, show or movie....SHOW, DON'T TELL!!

It doesn't look good when you have to explain some stuff in an interview or outside of your product when your product is supposed to do that for you, especially a video game.

Instead of having a character develop off screen, show us his development!

And for people that say Joel was the villian, go screw yourselves because he's NOT a villian. But yes he's not a hero either.

I always saw Joel as the anti-hero. He is someone that's not the good guy but he's not a bad guy either. He does things that only benefits himself or people he cares about.

Like Punisher, John Wick, Deadpool and one of the best anti-heroes, Walter 'Motherfuckin' White AKA Heisenberg.

But back to Joel, yes he has done bad things but in the world he lived in for 20 years, you have to do questionable and bad things to survive or you will die! Unfortunately, you can't live a peaceful life in the zombie apocalypse, you have to fight or you will die.

Plus let me ask you people that say Joel is a villian this, if someone you loved turned out that they are immune to a zombie-like virus and the only way they can get the cure is to kill the person you love. Would you let them kill the person you love? Or would you do everything in your power to make sure that person was alive?

I'm sure you guys would say "Oh I'd let them die to save mankind". Which is bullshit, cause if you were put in that moment, you guys would do what Joel did.

When I first finished the 1st game, I was conflicted. I wasn't for sure about the choice Joel made, but after thinking about I understood it and kinda agree with it.

Cause I know if it was my little brother or sister on that table, I'd have done the same!

Plus we aren't even sure if the cure would work! Yes I know there's a recording of the doctor talking about it and saying there's a chance for a cure. But thats the key word a CHANCE. Plus how do we know if the cure did work that the Fireflies wouldn't use that as a power play.

Cause sorry, human beings can be horrible and once they discover something that big and understand it, they want to weaponize it or do a power play and be like Oh look what I've got! Oh you want it too, well you have to do something for me first.

Anyway, I also didn't like that the game put Joel in a villainous light and it basically said that what he did was wrong, even though at the end of the 1st game it was being ambiguous and morally gray. There was no right or wrong answer to it, so I don't know what the hell happened there.

It feels like Neil Druckmann had succumbed to hating Joel and wanted him to suffer. It also feels like he hates Ellie too but that's a whole different conversation. Almost like he resents the things he has created.

And look yes, I do believe the consequences of your actions will come back to haunt you but there could've been a better way to handle Joel's death. He could've been captured and tortured and maybe Ellie tries to save him but at the last minute he dies in some form or fashion, I'm not sure.

Or how about this?

Have Abby beat the shit outta Joel and then be like "you know what? I want you to die right here, right now....but that would be too easy. So..." then she turns around and kills Tommy in front of Joel.

There you can still have your revenge plot and a story with Joel and Ellie!

I mean, I don't get why it took them 7 years to come up with a story and this game was the best that they could do and yet here I am, a random fan fic writer with no professional skills and a fan of the first game, came up with a better idea.

You know, it's just....I don't know, I wish I was like a very famous or popular person and was able to interview people cause I would definitely interview Neil Druckmann and ask him what the hell was going through his mind when he wrote this game?

Anyway, like I said there's so many ways to have dealt with Joel's death or with the whole story of the game but as for now thats all I've got to say. I'm sorry if it reads like I'm rambling but alot of thoughts kept floating through my head.

Let me know what you guys think and what are your thoughts on Joel's death?

Do you think it was good? Or are you like me and think it should've been handled better?

#the last of us part 2 #the last of us #the last of us joel #my thoughts #joel miller #joel #joel and ellie #tlou spoilers #spoiler warning #naughtydog #my two cents #anti hero #tlou joel #tlou #tlou2 #tlouedit #deserved better #justice for Joel Miller #fandom

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mor-beck-more-problems · 4 years

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A Brainful Process || Morgan &Rio

@3starsquinn

Cemetery field trip!

(Contains: zombie and animal gore)

Cemeteries were safer to visit in Morgan’s idle house than the woods. In cemeteries, most of the company was resting six feet under, and those that weren’t had a tendency to wave at Morgan as she walked by, content to leave her alone, one still soul to another. Some even warned her when it was better to turn back home. There’s a girl with the stake that comes by around now, a ghost might say. Or, we don’t like you that much. Cemeteries were safer, yes, and yet somehow tonight Morgan still found herself tackled to the ground, wrestling with a one legged zombie who, for all her wild hunger, really knew how to use her strength to her advantage. “Uh--a little help, maybe?” She called, appealing to one of the spirits nearby. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,” the old man said, and drifted off to watch her struggle somewhere else. “Okay, okay, ok--ow!” The zombie woman bit into her shoulder, moaning with hunger. Morgan kicked, trying to knock her off balance enough to shift the weight between them like Mina had taught her, but it was a lot harder when the opponent didn’t have much of a mind for sensing pain. Morgan set her jaw and lashed out to struggle with the zombie woman again. “We got this,” she grunted. “You’re gonna be fine, you just gotta stop trying to eat me!”

Cemeteries had scared Orion far before he knew ghosts and spirits existed. He supposed he always knew they were real. Growing up learning about werewolves and Fae made pretty much anything believable. If his parents had bothered telling him about Santa, Rio might still think he was real. But he had always thought of ghosts in the more creepypasta YouTube sense. That they haunted others. They were crazy stories that made things colder and flipped on lights. Not the kind that possessed other humans and drained their life force. But ever since Rio had learned about the Dybbuks and other evil spirits, Rio hadn’t been able to get them off his mind. Rio began pulling books about ghosts and spirits. The more he read, the more intrigued he became with some of the accounts of sightings. Winston and Ricky must have really gotten to Rio. Without even realizing it, on his way home that night he was taking a detour and heading towards the cemetery. For no other reason than pure stupidity, if Rio had to guess. Once he was within range however, he started hearing voices. The hairs on his arms stood straight up and he immediately began shaking. At least, until he realized that the voices weren’t ghosts or spirits but a person. A person that sounded like they were in danger. Rio picked up his pace, beginning to job before breaking into a sprint towards the cemetery, stopping only when he finally spotted the source of the voice, a woman being attacked by another. “Hey!” Rio yelled, trying to sound more dangerous than he actually was, “Let her go!” Rio began moving towards the two slowly, freezing when he finally realized who the victim of the evening was, “Professor?”

The sound of another voice made Morgan’s dead body go stiff. Fuck. The last thing she needed was human company, or some hunter about to stumble upon a two-for-one deal. “W-we’re fine!” She grunted, finally grappling the zombie woman to the ground and pinning her down. “She’s--she’s just---uh--” Morgan struggled for a good lie. The woman was in literal pieces, her skin sagging off her bones and pockets of bare muscle spreading bursts of dark, grotesque color. And the person was coming closer. “Having an attack! Nothing to see here--Rio?”

Morgan saw him through the edge of her vision and didn’t know whether to be relieved or agitated. She hadn’t told Rio the ‘sudden loss in her family’ that explained away two weeks worth of missed classes had been her own. She hadn’t told any of her students. Funny enough, that still wasn’t a conversation she felt like having. But there wasn’t going to be any fooling him. He was too much of a supernatural scholar to not see the obvious, at least when it came to the woman thrashing and groaning under her. “Hey!” She said brightly, panic tight in her smile. “How weird and amazing to run into you here! I’m fine, she’s fine, we’re both fine right now, completely. But you should really stay back and um, maybe grab some rope? And some fresh brains?” She was convinced, maybe falsely, that she had enough confidence to sell everything she was saying without the need for questions. Then the zombie woman rocked against her weight and threw her off, driven by the pull of fresh meat.

For a long moment, Orion just stood from a distance and stared at Morgan and the woman clawing at her. This didn’t make any sense. Why was Morgan being so casual right now? Was this some sort of fever dream brought on by the lack of sleep? “Uh” Rio hummed, drawing it out for far longer than any of them needed. “Both fine. Right.” He realized, maybe many beats too late, that he had still not moved from his spot. Until now, he had stared at the sight as if it was a horror scene in a movie. “Brains?” Rio asked, touching at his head instinctively before realizing that Morgan probably had a rope and brains here. Because this was a zombie. A zombie. A ZOMBIE? It took this long for the fear to finally rush into Rio’s body and he immediately started fidgeting, the usual skin crawling feeling worming its way through his body. “Oh my god. A zombie! I’ve never met a zombie! I’m going to do something now.” Rio spoke aloud, as if that was going to finally motivate his body to follow the commands. Apparently it worked, his feet finally inching across the grass and towards the two. “What do you want me to do with these things once I have them?”

Morgan’s thin smile fractured with dismay. As much as she was relieved Rio wasn’t some guns a blazing hunter trying to get more goo for their collection. But she didn’t know if this was really the time for scholarly curiosity either. Maybe more like run and take action time. Move faster NOW time. Morgan dove for the zombie again, tackling her to the ground and pressing down with all her weight. She looked up at Rio, pleading for his help. She could keep the zombie pinned down for now, but she wouldn’t be able to help the dead woman with just her hands alone. And, shit--of course Rio wouldn’t have anything on him. He wasn’t Kaden, for crying out loud. Morgan looked around them, mind racing to keep up, to stay ahead of any panic. Maybe this was the time for scholarly curiosity. “The plan!” She said, forcing as much confidence into her bright voice as possible. “The plan is you...find something that will do instead of rope. Um...your belt! And uuh…” She looked around her with dismay. “My belt!” It was a lot daintier, meant for her small waist as decoration rather than supporting any weight. “And we are going to bind the zombie as tightly as we can. Because, fun fact: zombies have a much higher pain threshold than humans! Whatever would hurt for you won’t hurt for them, so that’s not something to worry about when they’re...like this.” She swallowed thickly and forced another smile as the zombie rocked and struggled under her. “When her limbes are secure, we’ll get her some of the food from my bag--” what was supposed to have been her lunch, “--and give her some of that. And then...more, probaby. From...somewhere else. I’m not...actually sure from where yet, but--fun zombie fact 2: decomposition and ‘rabid’ behavior is a symptom of starvation and not, necessarily, the zombie’s natural state! With sustainable access to food, your average zombie isn’t much different than a human, by outward appearances anyway.” Now if they could work on this together without Rio wondering too hard about how she knew all this, it might actually be easy. Or at least, not hard.

Okay, obviously it was clear that Morgan was preoccupied right now. Trying to hold back the woman- er uh the zombie from munching on either of them. Ignoring the swelling excitement as well as the far more palpable fear that was building inside of him, Orion tried to put aside any jitters and listen to Morgan’s instructions. He was lucky he had worn jeans today instead of the usual joggers or track pants, and that he was embarrassingly skinny for his age and height, so any pair of jeans that he wore usually required a belt. He pulled the belt free, hooking his pinky around a belt loop to avoid his jeans dropping. God, that would be embarrassing. “Okay uh- my belt is good. And your belt is uh- still attached to you.” Rio called, still standing a few feet back. He was not incredibly comfortable with the idea of undoing his teacher’s belt, but he supposed there were… strange circumstances.

“This is great!” Rio tried remaining positive, his voice cracking at the end of his sentence. Although Rio greatly appreciated the information on Zombies, a species he had not done much study on. He was familiar with a couple of culture’s depiction of zombies in their own lore, but from what Morgan was describing, they differed quite a bit. “I am very happy to help and I am totally going to keep my cool during this time.” Rio said aloud, probably trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince Morgan. He slowly inched towards them, holding his arms out with his belt gripped tightly in both hands. “Do uh- you want me to do this? Or you? Is the whole thing about a zombie bite still true?”

Jeepers, this was going to be tricky. The zombie woman was beginning to thrash, dragging her and Morgan across the ground inch by inch. The closer Rio got, the more she wriggled her head, gnashing her rotting teeth. Morgan shifted position, pressing her knee down into the woman’s back. This was really not very seemly, but she couldn’t think of another way that would keep the zombie from hurting anyone long enough to feed properly. “We got this, we got this,” she murmured, still racing for ideas. “We got this!” She declared. “You are doing a great job, Rio! Just grab her legs and I’ll get the arms, and we’ll bind them up together. No worries!” She grabbed one of the zombie’s arms, then the other, wrestling against the woman’s frustration. “But, uh, yeah, about the bite. Fun fact, that’s--fuck!” The zombie woman’s teeth bit into her hand, grazing the cuff she used to hide her real scar. Morgan finished wrangling the arms with a grimace and whipped off her belt to fasten her arms together so the wrists would come more easily. “The bite thing is real,” she said, looking down at the wound in her hand. “But don’t freak out, Rio, okay? It doesn’t matter if she bites me, it’s you I’m worried about. Uh, get her wrists and ankles together?”

Orion could do this. He could totally do this. He did not love the idea of grabbing onto this woman, zombie or no. But Morgan seemed convinced that she would not feel the pain and that they were not going to harm her. That was what Rio wanted right? What was some tying and gagging if it meant helping her and others not get hurt? That was totally something that Rio could get behind. Grabbing onto her legs was surprisingly easy. Hunter strength and all made wrangling the woman’s legs surprisingly easy. At least, until the zombie bit Morgan. Rio dropped the legs immediately and began screaming his head off. At that moment, he wasn’t sure what was happening. Would Morgan turn into a zombie? How fast was the process? Was there something he could do to stop it? Rio had seen some zombie shows. How they amputated the body part that had been bitten to stop the spread. Even the idea made Rio light headed. He definitely couldn’t do that. Finally, Rio contained himself again, grappling the legs again and holding them. What the heck did Morgan mean that she wasn’t worried about herself? Was she immune to the bite somehow? “I- I don’t- uhhhhh” Rio’s brain broke for a moment, but he forced himself out of the slump. Grabbing onto the woman’s wrists and easily pulling them back to meet the ankles and wrapping his belt around them. “Oh god- Oh god. I hate this. I’m really bad at this. I think I’m going to puke. Are you okay???”

“Rio! You cannot puke on this woman!” Morgan shrieked. Oh dear. This wasn’t calm. This was the opposite of calm. Could she breathe? Was that ever going to work again? She missed the time when all she had to do was tell herself to breathe and her body would start to right itself back into something right and normal. But the quiet was too great and there was too much happening at once. “I’m fine! I’m not even bleeding!” Mostly because she didn’t have any circulation. “Just--just hold her steady and don’t turn into a zombie!” She scrambled over to her bag and prised open a tupperware full of brains, a blend, as it happened, but even a smidgen of person in there probably wasn’t going to get this woman back to normal. They’d have to take her somewhere better, or get better to her. Morgan stuck the tupperware under the woman’s nose and watched, grimacing, as she moaned and wrangled herself closer to fit as much of it in her mouth as possible. Morgan sat back and deflated. That would keep her busy for, what, five minutes? “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am fine though. I’m…” Morgan shook her head and sid off the cuff, showing Rio her old scar, a perfect oval in the shape of Remmy’s mouth. “I’m already bitten and dead, Rio. Say, you didn’t happen to bring a car here, did you?”

“I’m not going to puke on her!” Orion yelled back, unsure why he was even still yelling. Stress. He totally blamed stress. He needed to calm down. Take a chill pill or something. That was all thrown out the window when Morgan tried to reassure him by letting him know that she wasn’t bleeding. “How are you not bleeding?” Rio was right back to freaking out now. But Morgan seemed more together than Rio was. She was in the right state of mind to fish out something from her bag and give it to the tied up woman. “Is that… brains?” Rio asked, the most calm he had been since showing up here. He examined the mush curiously. Everything seemingly clicked into place when Morgan showed off what looked like an old, already healed scar. She was dead? “You’re… a zombie?” Rio muttered aloud, needing to hear the words to actually begin processing it. A moment of fear passed through him as he considered that Rio had just willingly walked into being part of their midnight snack. But he pushed the thought away quickly. That couldn’t be. This was his professor. They had talked about books and the supernatural together. “Woah. You’re nothing like the old Haitian story of zombies.” His head tilted curiously as he examined his teacher to try to pick out any defining details. By all accounts, she looked human to him. “Hmm… interesting.” Rio nodded, and then grimaced at the next question, “About that… I don’t really have a car right now. It belongs to my parents and I’m not really talking to them right now and- y’know what? It’s a whole thing. Clearly we have other things going on right now. Maybe I can call my friend Blanche. Or one of my roommates! Maybe they can help us? Or uh… Where are we taking her anyways?”

“Wow, kid, that’s really one heck of a compliment,” Morgan deadpanned. “But...yes. I got hurt really bad and I died. Two months ago now. That’s why I missed so much school towards the end of the semester. I died, Rio.” She looked down at the woman gnashing her teeth at the brain bits in the tupperware. “But I have people who help take care of me. I can stay fed easily. I have a home. I have a girlfriend that loves me. I even have magic pills for my new zombie physiology that help manage all the depression I’ve got over dying. I don’t know which of those this woman is missing, but whatever it is, she’s still a person. She’s as much of a person as I am. Does that make sense?” She looked at him earnestly. Rio was a good kid. Rio didn’t believe in hurting people. He had to get it. Maybe it was hard to see the woman in her own right. Even Morgan couldn’t do that. She didn’t know her name or if she was happy before she died or how long she had been dragging herself out of bed. She could only see her pain. She had to be in so much pain to have sunk this far. The days of starving had to have been excruciating. With this kind of decay, maybe it was even weeks. “I was thinking of getting her to the butcher’s, but I don’t know if their stock will be enough for her. It’s worth a shot, if we can keep her from getting noticed. “Unless you wanna do a run? You got venmo, Rio?” She asked. The brains were almost gone, and of the two of them, Rio was the one most in danger. And this wasn’t his problem, now that she was mostly subdued. “You don’t have to, you know. I can take this from here.”

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say at this moment. Clearly, Orion had no idea what he was doing. He had grown up knowing about the supernatural. He loved learning about them and yet despite this he still had just barely scratched the surface. He knew nothing about Zombies, or real zombies at least. “Wow. I’m uh- sorry? That doesn’t sound like a good thing. But you don’t look dead.” Rio tried, he didn’t think that helped redeem him. “Okay that was probably a bad thing to say too. But despite all that… I’m really glad that you have a good support system, y’know? That must have been a really difficult thing to go through and… well I’m really glad things seem okay now. At least, hopefully everything’s okay.” And Morgan seemed dead set on helping this woman right now. And though the woman tied up seemed a little… murdery right now, Rio believed that with some help she could end up like Morgan seemed now. Completely put together. “I believe you. And I’m in. Let’s help her. Uh- I can run somewhere and get stuff… I don’t know what to get. But tell me and I’ll figure something out.”

“Well, you can tell that to my necrosis whenever I wait too long to eat my wheaties.” Morgan mumbled. You can test my pulse too, if you want.” She held out her hand, the bite standing out as a heavy shadow on her pale skin. “And no, you don’t need to be sorry--” But Rio was. He was just a kid doing his best with problems way bigger than himself. “But thank you. I know you mean it well.” She stared at the woman writhing in front of them again. She could see, too clearly now, what hunters did. A raving thing, a disaster they needed to triage before it got out of hand, a monster… “I can venmo you. A hundred dollars so should be able to buy out the brains at the butcher shop, whatever other weird organs they’ve got. That’s a start.” And while he was out she could maybe scrounge up a deer. They wandered through near dusk in little clusters, and it was the time of year when fauns were left to hide in the tall grass while mothers hunted. If she was quick and lucky, she’d be able to nab one for this woman to have. And maybe then, maybe if they were lucky, she could be okay. Morgan wrenched a hand through her hair and took out her phone to send the money over.

Orion laughed, happy that despite the horrible events that had clearly befallen his teacher without him even knowing about it, she could maintain some level of humor. “Don’t worry. I believe you. It’s uh- definitely not my first rodeo with the supernatural.” Even if he didn’t quite understand, he did believe. “Um right. I got it. Give me…” Rio paused, checking his phone for the time, “Twenty minutes. I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

One of the good things about being a hunter? Superhuman endurance. Rio was definitely not in shape, but he could run for a while without having to stop. From here, he was pretty sure that it would be more efficient to get a car. If he could run home and borrow Ricky’s truck then he could get to the butcher shop and back without too much trouble. So he ran towards their house as fast as he possibly could, not letting anything distract him.

It worried Morgan how much animals still trusted her. The faun was too scared of the moaning woman six yards ahead to move. Morgan was able to settle down near it, still as death, and when it came over to sniff her out of curiosity, she took its neck and snapped it. The head dangled limp from the body like a toy that had lost all its stuffing. She carried it back to the woman and did not have to wait for her to wriggle and strain against her bonds trying to eat it. Morgan took out a knife and sliced the creature open neatly so she didn’t have to fight. Then she walked away enough yards so the smell of it wouldn’t compel her to steal a starving woman’s meal and licked blood and skin from her hands.

When Rio finally returned, Morgan was perched atop a large cross marker, stained with blood for all that she’d tried to keep herself clean. “Just unwrap everything for her and drop it where she can reach,” she called. “And then, you know, come over here so you don’t get bitten.”

Buying brains from a butcher was perhaps the most uncomfortable Orion had ever been. Despite this incredibly odd request, the butcher didn’t seem to think much of it at all. Which could only mean that this was not an uncommon request that he received. Which probably implied that Morgan and this woman were not the only zombies in town. It hadn’t occurred until now that Morgan could have been the one that turned this woman. But no. His Professor wouldn’t do that. Not unless she had to for some reason. Right?

Rio drove back to Morgan mostly in silence. He hated driving the truck. He didn’t trust himself with a big car. Plus he could barely see while driving the thing and hated ruining Ricky’s seat and mirror placement. But desperate times. Rio parked and hopped out, extending his arm so he could hold the brains at a distance from himself. “I’m here!” Rio yelled out, stopping when he noticed that Morgan had blood all over her shirt. Oh no. “What happened? Are you okay?” Rio asked. Despite this, maybe because he was too trusting just as Athena had always insulted him with, he followed Morgan’s instructions. Unwrapping the brains and tossing it to the tied up woman before hopping away and standing close to his professor. He could smell the blood that stained her. It was fresh.

“It’s okay, Rio,” Morgan said. “What do you think I’m gonna do, die again?” She smirked. A beat later, maybe too late, she wondered if that was maybe a bad joke. Rio knew about the supernatural, but maybe not about death. He hadn’t studied zombies before in his big secret library. He barely seemed comfortable with hauling brains and organs over from the butcher. Morgan sighed with a grimace and tried again. “I killed a faun for her. I didn’t think that was something you needed to be around to see. Brains sustain zombies best, but freshly dead meat is…” Her stomach grumbled, twisting. “Like candy on Halloween. You can’t not have any.” She looked down at him, still clinging to her perch. Her fingers had worn notches into the rock, worrying at the grain to keep from breaking off Bambi’s leg and going to town herself. “It’s just how we’re made,” she said quietly. “When the mother comes back to see if her faun is still around, I’ll try to get her too, if our friend isn’t back to herself yet.” She hesitated a moment, wondering if they had crossed into over sharing territory, if this was already too much for one troubled kid to bear in one night. “You don’t have to watch, or be around for any of that,” she said. “This is just another Tuesday for me, but it was a lot to get used to. It still is. You’ve been a big help, though. If all this turns out okay, it’s gonna be because of you. Because you cared.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “You uh...you can ask me questions, if you have any. I know all this is...strange. And lived experience can tell you certain things a book can’t.” She offered him a smile, her fear weighing on her softness. Please don’t think less of me for this.

Orion laughed nervously. Was that Morgan being offended? Or Morgan making a joke. A few seconds later and Morgan smirked at Rio, hopefully confirming that it had been a joke instead. “A faun.” Rio repeated, mostly to himself. He was still processing. Rio appreciated the information. He was taking mental notes, making sure to remember all of the information that he was learning about zombies. Maybe he would head back to the building tomorrow, start digging through his books for some information on the undead. The whole thing seemed like Alain’s side, but Rio knew better than to trust a hunter’s point of view when it came to the supernatural. Rio knew from personal experience that those teachings were biased. “I don’t- I usually don’t do that well around blood. But uh- I don’t want to make you do this stuff by yourself.” Morgan opened the board for questions. And boy, did Rio have questions. Way more questions than he possibly knew how to order and ask. “I- I have questions. But right now seems like the wrong time, y’know? With her… in the state she is in.” He sighed. Just another person in this town that has been through some awful experience that Rio wasn’t able to help prevent.

Morgan nodded and watched the woman eat. It might’ve been faster to let her have her hands back, but Morgan remembered the complete haze around her mind when she woke into her feeding frenzy. She hadn’t even known her own name, much less ‘eating people bad.’ If the wrong person had been in the room, she probably would’ve done everything she could to tear them to bits. “Anyone tell you lately what a good kid you are?” She asked. It was a rhetorical question, but she hoped nonetheless that someone was encouraging his generosity. Even if he could probably stand to get less squeamish. In time, the groans of the woman changed. Morgan gestured for Rio to stay back and made her way slowly over.

There was hardly anything left of the faun, but just enough that Morgan couldn’t stop herself from reaching into its ruined skull and scooping out its small black eyes and the thin tissue of its cheek muscle to munch on. She knelt down near the woman, still working the flesh in her mouth. “Hey,” she said, gently as she could with her mouth half full. “Can you talk? Are you good now?” The woman groaned and dashed herself into the red stained grass, angling her mouth for the rest of the faun. “Okay! Not feeling the impulse control. That’s okay! But I’m gonna need like...one intelligible word before you get this carcass.”

“Mmmhh. Aaarr...oh..k-kay.”

Blessed universe she was okay.

Morgan went around and loosened her bonds enough for her to wriggle free and stepped back as she held the faun and the scraps of flesh she hadn’t devoured yet as if they were all the treasure in the world. “You...shouldn’t...have done this,” she panted.

“I don’t see why not, Morgan replied. “What’s your name?”

The woman sucked the last remnants of life from the faun’s ribs and reached for a scattering of brain bits to shove into her mouth. “Ashley,” she said at last. “I didn’t--” She paused to swallow. As she wiped the mess from her chin she caught sight of the blood and mess on her hands, matching Morgan’s and then some. “I didn’t ask for any of this,” she said through gritted teeth. “Not any of this, you idiots.” And then she was sprinting downhill, stumbling and falling over her own feet but never stopping, the dead animal still tucked in her arms. Morgan reached for her, but caught only the edge of her torn hiking vest. It fell right off, like it had been waiting to all along.

“It hurts sometimes, being like this, Rio,” she said, hanging her head as Ashley disappeared from sight. “Even when you have everything you need, it can still hurt.” There wasn’t any point in tracking her down again, not when Rio could get hurt, and he had done so much already. She willed herself to look up and gave him the saddest apologetic smile. “Sorry you got sucked into this. What were you up to before anyway?”

Orion felt the heat burning his cheeks as the blush came on. Good kid. They weren’t unfamiliar words, not anymore. But they still warmed him each time he heard them. He supposed being starved for acceptance and praise did that to a kid. “Uh- I get told that more so recently than ever before. But uh- Thank you.” Whether or not she was expecting an answer, Rio thought it would be rude to just not thank her for the compliment.

Over time, Rio witnessed first hand how the almost primal hunger seemed to die down from the woman. Slowly, her eating became less frantic and more of that of a human that had not eaten in days. Morgan was fearless, strolling right up to her. Though he supposed death probably helped to quell many of the fears that Rio felt right now.

The zombie- Ashley- seemed confused. Scared, even. And despite what the two had done to help her, Ashley took off the moment she was comprehensive and scurried off down the hill, leaving Rio and Morgan by themselves. And all of that fear and anguish that Rio could see in Ashley’s face, must have been similar to what Morgan had been through. Her words were raw, her smile doing nothing to mask the sadness or pain present in her voice. This was her life now. Something she was forced to deal with in order to stay alive. Or re-alive, which wasn’t actually a word but would have to apply for this situation. “You helped her. Even though she couldn’t see it right now… you just protected people from potentially getting hurt. And you protected her from making a terrible mistake. That’s… incredible.” Rio breathed, realizing only now that he had been holding his breath the entire time. “I was just at the old Scribe building, heading home for the night when I heard the noises outside the cemetery.”

“Stars, I hope so,” Morgan sighed. She didn’t feel like she had done much. She had hoped to at least talk to someone else like her for a little longer, to ask what she really needed to get by for longer than a day or two. Who did she have? How had she starved so badly? All she had to go on was one torn up hiking vest and a name. She pushed the thought of Ashley to the back of her mind. Maybe she could put out a call online or ask the ghosts in the cemetery to keep an eye out, just in case she turned up here again or...something. But for now she was as good as lost.

Morgan exhaled. Without the need for air, her body retained most of its tension from the past hour until she worked consciously at it, slumping and rolling her neck and shoulders and arms. “You helped too, Rio. I wouldn’t have been able to manage her by myself. Come on,” she urged gently. She held out an arm, beckoning him close, imagining a one armed hug to calm his nerves. Then she saw the blood on her hands and thought better on it. She let it fall limp at her side and wiped it down on her skirt. “I appreciate that you tried. That counts for something. Let’s get you home, okay?”

#brainful process #wr rio #wr chatzy #wr rio chatzy #wr

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tumblunni · 6 years

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OH MAN I HAD SUCH A BAD SLEEP I took too many headache pills and forgot they contain caffeine and i was up all night Dying Of Tired and then when i finally passed out i had like five damn nightmares at once?? Its hard to even remember most of them but I just know I was really inexplicably legitimately panicked about a bunch of super arbitrary nonsense. Like.. brain so shot that I couldnt even compose a decent narrative for why the thing is scary. WTF...

Like at one point I was just reenacting the final boss fight from Deadly Premonition?? And like there’s a bunch of actual reasons why that thing pisses me off, like how cliche it was to make the One Fat Man In The Town the villain, and how suddenly we’re adding a really crass rape plot and LOL isn’t it even more gross cos he’s overweight. Right after a big ol ‘demon trans person’ fight and one of the most sympathetic characters getting dragged through the mud and discarded. Like seriously fuckin EVERYONE betrays you and then your love interest dies from monster rape while crying ‘don’t look at me I’m soiled’ and fucking PUNS cos evil fatman is some sort of plant monster. God I stopped caring about that game immediately, it went from zany weird to just horrible. ...but in the dream it wasn’t any of that sort of nuance, it was just me for some reason being legit terrified of evil fatman’s comedy boss fight. Seriously, after how detestable he is, they give you a stupid fatness stereotype joke fight where he bounces around like a terrible 60s b-list superhero. Why was dream me legitimately terrified of friggin yoshi ground pound man?! I think the real terror here was just that I was reminded this damn game exists.

And then also for some reason another part of the nightmare was Supreme Anxiety over designing a fan character for sonic the hedgehog?? Somehow I’d won the awesome right to add a character to the series and I was like BUT I HAVE NO IDEAS EXCEPT *points at literally the exact same sprite of my terrible super sonic recolour monkey oc from age 12, somehow blown up to the size of a building* And like I needed to demolish that but it was made of lego bricks, and I was all ‘aaa but i don’t even know if the character would be put in the games or the sonic boom tv show, they have very different sense of humour. do i have to make a playable character or just a comedy npc like the Meh Burger guy?’ incidentally sonic boom the show is awesome and reminds me of my childhood cos lol we got AoStH in britain instead of that grimdark future freedom fighters thing. That was our comic instead! its funny how similar the british and american comics are and yet how insanely different! but i still love a zany fourth wall breaking trash show and im so fucking happy we now have a way more well animated one! Anyway this was SO SUPER STRESSFUL cos I havent even been very involved in sonic fandom since I was a lil kid, but it was a thing I did with my now deceased grandma so its Kinda A Big Deal. I think dream me even considered making a character based on her, but I decided it was too close to eggman. She was such a supervillain of hugs! So yah it just ended with me at Green Hill Zone and then i fuckin run off into the distance and never come back. DONT GIVE BUNNI RESPONSIBILITIiiiiiies...!!

Also there was something about some sort of.. ghost phone app dating game? It was so weird cos I was a person sitting on a bus playing the app and then the love interest from the app actually got on the bus and I guess we were actually just texting? And for some reason I had to take pictures of the moon, which looked like a tiny head of eggman’s voiceactor with little stick limbs attatched. And a day and night cycle kept going super fast so i was like ‘ehh only ten minutes til another good shot’. And I guess the eggmoon got bigger to show your progress thru the plot...?? ‘That’s my favourite star’ says anime schoolgirl, romantically... So yeah all I knew was that this was somehow a horror game and supposed to have jumpscares, but I was like HELL YEAH DATING A GHOST! And then the plot twist was something like the bus was the bus to the afterlife and we were both ghosts. So like you’d get the bad ending for running away from ghost girlfriend and then find out the only thing outside the bus door is infinate blackness and You Was The Zombie Too But the bigger scary twist for me was that in this universe I’d died from being strangled by my abusive dad and then suddenly everyone was super unsympathetic to me and telling me I’d deserved it and oh man poor dad having to deal with a lil shit like me Zombie dating? perfectly fine! zombie dating an abuse apologist? NOPE.

And then i also dreamed about a neat game that I’m sad doesn’t actually exist. I was desperately trying to remember the name of it as if it did exist?? i feel betrayed?? XD It was something where there were four nature spirit boys and I had to help them regain their power and potentially have dating sim shenanigans I guess?? I just recall that they all started as a tiny mascot creature and it was that dumb cliche of ‘actually my true form was specifically an attractive person of the designated gender you prefer, at the exact same age as you! what are the odds!’ But they still looked pretty neat in their more humanoid form, they were still monster boys rather than the super superest of cliche dating sim characters. And I recall there was an interesting thing of every route being a wildly different genre? like they’d all start the same with me suddenly getting this weird mascot critter, but then the answer as to what exactly the spirits were and what his amnesiac memory was was always different. Like in one of them (fire, I think?) it turned out to be a post apocolyptic sci fi where the earth was running out of resources and children with psychic potential were kidnapped and turned into genetic experiments to create these ‘spirits’. They were more like humanized terraforming machines?? It was really kind of a neat plot twist?? And I recall that fire guy was a sad shy dood kinda like nageki from hatoful boyfriend, and his monster boy traits were interesting cos he had dusty grey hair with only a few scattered red strands, and it would blaze up into a burning white flame whenever he lost control of his emotions. (similarly with just a tiny red flame cowlick in the middle) And I think the water spirit was a very pompous kingly type whos mascot form looked like a slime from dragon quest. He was my favourite, he was good comic relief and very huggable! I think his plot got all twisty and sad tho, like it turns out he wasn’t the real king but just a clone duplicate made to use as a body double. And it was depressing that he was so convinced his memories were real and so utterly oblivious to the fact he was like.. melting, a lot, often. Thats normal rite? U just cant do it cos you’re a commoner! These magic powers are totally a thing of the royal lineage and not proof that I actually really am a dragon quest slime with a bad case of identity issues! Anyway we punched the jerkass king and rescued the real prince and they lived happily ever after as if they were just a regular set of twins. And human prince was all ‘I’mma be the best wingman!’ and kept teasing you about ending the story on a kiss. It was cute! I dunno about the other two love interests tho, I just definately know there were four of them for some reason. Also for some reason dream!me was constantly criticising the game’s art style, that was a little annoying XD

#blunni thoughts #incoherant dream babble #i kinda want the elemental boyfs game to be real

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