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31_days2006-05-01 09:58 am
yesthatnagia.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2006-05-01 09:58 am
[May 01: it don't lead nowhere but damnation] Story of a City, FF7
[t]itle: Story of a City
[r]ating: PG
[w]ordcount: 505
[d]ay: May 01 - it don't lead nowhere but damnation
[f]andom: FF7
[p]airing: cobblestones/cobblestones?
[s]ummary: Nibelheim wasn't always like this. So silent, so cold. Sepulchral. It is all because of that road at the edge of town... and where it leads.
[n]otes: Sure, we all felt for Cloudandtifa, but what about the ShinRa employees? This isn't a disassociative fugue, this isn't acting, this is being forced to take on a completely different identity. They drove themselves insane, and that delusion was all that kept them functional. Cloudandtifa showing up and saying "DUDE WHAT THE CRAP" threatened the only thing that allowed them to cope. Frankly, I'm surprised that the neo-townspeople didn't get out the shotguns, pitchforks, and Deadly Kitchen Utensils (TM) to dispatch said threat.which would have been awesome, WHY DID THAT NOT HAPPEN?!
There is a road at the edge of town. Close the very, very end of the town, close to the Mountains. Everybody knows where that road goes: the Mansion.
Nobody wants to warn anybody away from it. That's stupid. Stereotypical. Cliché, even. After all, every town, if it's old enough, has a Place where Nice Children Just Don't Go. A place where even the teenagers, wild and hormonal and in search of a place to call their own, do not go.
And it is cliché, to say that the Mansion is haunted. It isn't. Hauntings aren't real.
("Tell that," some of the teenagers whisper, wild-eyed but quiet, so, so quiet, because this has become a city of silences, "to the empty rooms.")
And the teenagers, as they so often aren't, are right. Even the most sceptical, even the most rational and scientific of the townspeople, will silently confess that living where they do is rather chilling. The lucky ones, the ones who find peace in their job-lives, forget who they were before they came here. They assume the name they were assigned.
The lucky ones make peace with the slightly lighter patches of carpet where they scrubbed out the bloodstains. They make peace with talking about the photographs of people who aren't them doing things they never did. They make peace with the nicks in the furniture, the scorch marks on the walls they had to paper over.
The unlucky ones do no such thing. They remember who they were. Answering the letters from the relatives who moved away is difficult. Learning to sign names that aren't theirs in convincing handwriting and make vague references to things about which they have no concrete idea is almost torturous.
And always, always, ALWAYS, there is that sensation. It is unpleasant enough that they often fall silent at it. It turns the town, once a living place, a throbbing, pulsating, irritating centre of noise (where are the chickens? The ghosts would wonder. Where are the children? Where is that goddamn truck that backfires every five seconds, loud enough to be heard from the top of the mountain, that Johnny and Will were working on?) into a library.
This is a town of silence. A room that falls silent is left that way on pain of-- nobody's sure, really.
You are always, always, ALWAYS being watched by the people you have replaced. The people in the photographs you have replaced glare at you from behind strained, desperate smiles. In the mirror, your face never looks quite like the one you remember.
And every time you touch the gate that closes off the road at the edge of town, a chill runs down your spine.
Subconscious social facilitation. Subconscious conformity. The power of persuasion. The power of belief. The voodoo principle.
There are lots of names for it.
None of them involve paranormal investigations. None of them involve religious belief.
But you, as a resident of Nibelheim, know where the road the newcomers now follow leads. It leads to hell.
It don't go nowhere but damnation
THE ALSO PEOPLE, Ben Aaronovitch
[r]ating: PG
[w]ordcount: 505
[d]ay: May 01 - it don't lead nowhere but damnation
[f]andom: FF7
[p]airing: cobblestones/cobblestones?
[s]ummary: Nibelheim wasn't always like this. So silent, so cold. Sepulchral. It is all because of that road at the edge of town... and where it leads.
[n]otes: Sure, we all felt for Cloudandtifa, but what about the ShinRa employees? This isn't a disassociative fugue, this isn't acting, this is being forced to take on a completely different identity. They drove themselves insane, and that delusion was all that kept them functional. Cloudandtifa showing up and saying "DUDE WHAT THE CRAP" threatened the only thing that allowed them to cope. Frankly, I'm surprised that the neo-townspeople didn't get out the shotguns, pitchforks, and Deadly Kitchen Utensils (TM) to dispatch said threat.
There is a road at the edge of town. Close the very, very end of the town, close to the Mountains. Everybody knows where that road goes: the Mansion.
Nobody wants to warn anybody away from it. That's stupid. Stereotypical. Cliché, even. After all, every town, if it's old enough, has a Place where Nice Children Just Don't Go. A place where even the teenagers, wild and hormonal and in search of a place to call their own, do not go.
And it is cliché, to say that the Mansion is haunted. It isn't. Hauntings aren't real.
("Tell that," some of the teenagers whisper, wild-eyed but quiet, so, so quiet, because this has become a city of silences, "to the empty rooms.")
And the teenagers, as they so often aren't, are right. Even the most sceptical, even the most rational and scientific of the townspeople, will silently confess that living where they do is rather chilling. The lucky ones, the ones who find peace in their job-lives, forget who they were before they came here. They assume the name they were assigned.
The lucky ones make peace with the slightly lighter patches of carpet where they scrubbed out the bloodstains. They make peace with talking about the photographs of people who aren't them doing things they never did. They make peace with the nicks in the furniture, the scorch marks on the walls they had to paper over.
The unlucky ones do no such thing. They remember who they were. Answering the letters from the relatives who moved away is difficult. Learning to sign names that aren't theirs in convincing handwriting and make vague references to things about which they have no concrete idea is almost torturous.
And always, always, ALWAYS, there is that sensation. It is unpleasant enough that they often fall silent at it. It turns the town, once a living place, a throbbing, pulsating, irritating centre of noise (where are the chickens? The ghosts would wonder. Where are the children? Where is that goddamn truck that backfires every five seconds, loud enough to be heard from the top of the mountain, that Johnny and Will were working on?) into a library.
This is a town of silence. A room that falls silent is left that way on pain of-- nobody's sure, really.
You are always, always, ALWAYS being watched by the people you have replaced. The people in the photographs you have replaced glare at you from behind strained, desperate smiles. In the mirror, your face never looks quite like the one you remember.
And every time you touch the gate that closes off the road at the edge of town, a chill runs down your spine.
Subconscious social facilitation. Subconscious conformity. The power of persuasion. The power of belief. The voodoo principle.
There are lots of names for it.
None of them involve paranormal investigations. None of them involve religious belief.
But you, as a resident of Nibelheim, know where the road the newcomers now follow leads. It leads to hell.
THE ALSO PEOPLE, Ben Aaronovitch