WOLFMANS 15: RETURN TO RAJADA ~DAY 2 ENDS 7PMEST~

There are worse ways to spend the time, but not many.

Postby surly » Wed Feb 17, 2016 10:44 pm

Events:
Night 1: Alice, a villager died.
Day 1: Luke, the cable guy, was lynched.
Night 2: ?
Toggle Spoiler


Team tallies

26 team good
8 team evil
3 neutral
Last edited by surly on Sun Feb 21, 2016 9:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby john plainman » Wed Feb 17, 2016 10:49 pm

After so many... too many... years, John Plainman has returned to the place that he once called home... the Church of the Inner Flower. What was once a glorious beacon of Light and Love, in the form of a broken-down RV that he drunkenly stumbled upon while in the throes of a psychotic breakdown, is now little more than a desiccated husk of metal and plastic. He breathes in the night air and fondles himself every so gently.
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Postby The Unblinking Eye » Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:00 pm

Can anyone help me? I think my name is Flowermoon? That's what my mom called me most often, but she often called me something slightly different. She took my brother (Dreamday?) and I away from my father and made us call her Whisperfox instead of her real name, Brenda, if I can remember right. But to be honest, my memory has been pretty hazy. I just remember this big circle of light appearing in my brother's and my room one night. I walked towards it, got sucked in, and woke up in the middle of the desert. After wandering for awhile, I saw this big city. Is it called Rajada? Does anyone know if Adajar is anywhere nearby? That's where my mom took us, and I need to get back to her.
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Postby mudd » Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:04 pm

The kid is sweating profusely. You can tell by the redness of his face and the desperation of his breathing that riding an actual bicycle wasn't what he'd signed up for as a courier. He's panting and holding a piece of loose paper away from his body so that the drips from his forehead don't hit it. Despite his best efforts there are a number of wide splotches that spread the cheap ink like a bullet wound, and the he's left five fingerprints of blackish grease off the chains of the bike. He holds the poster slightly askew against the telephone pole, unable to concentrate on alignment because the rivulets of sweat flow directly into his eyeballs if he doesn't hunch awkwardly forward. Half-blinded by sweat, he fumbles with a staple gun in his other hand, eventually firing 15 or 20 staples through the paper, but all of them on the left side so the page almost immediately sags over itself hiding whatever information written below.

He's half on his bike already before he notices the poster is unreadable. He drops his bike into the grass, walks back to the pole and fires off another handful of staples, nailing the offending corner back like a good legionnaire. Standing back to survey his work, he nervously fiddles with the pin on the breast of his grey polo shirt. A pin of a muted post horn.

Neighbors!

Please join us on the corner of (obscured by sweat) and (obscured) on friday, february (obscured) pm for free lemonade and gluten-free cookies to welcome all our neighbors to the lovely township of Rajada.

Brought to you by the estate of Pierce Inverarity


Satisfied, or at least not disappointed, he gathers up his bicycle once more and awkwardly pedals away.

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Postby fox » Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:09 pm

post
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Postby VHB » Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:13 pm

"I'm doing it. I have to do it."

"You are insane."

"It's in Rajada!"

"You're going to throw your career away and take effectively a 75% pay cut to move across country because of fucking movie, what the fuck kind of retard did I marry?"

"I've always wanted to move to Rajada, you know that! This is my chance."

"You fucking do this, we're fucking done."

"....What?"

"You heard me, you idiot. I can't live with a psycho who lets his movie collection rule his life decisions."

"Oh, so as soon as I want to do what I want it's over?"

"Fuck you don't you EVEN DARE FUCKING START THIS AG--"

"NO I AM STARTING IT. WE MOVED TO CHICAGO SO YOU COULD GO TO SCHOOL AND GOT STUCK THERE BECAUSE YOU QUIT ON A WHIM"

"YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITICAL ASSHOLE DON'T YOU FUCKING START WITH ME ON THIS"

"WE MOVED FOR YOUR SCHOOL WHICH YOU DIDN'T EVEN FINISH. WE MOVED AGAIN WHEN YOU DECIDED YOU WANTED TO START ALL OVER ACROSS THE COU--"

"FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU"

"--NTRY. WE MOVED AGAIN, TO NEW YORK, FOR YOUR CAREER. AND THEN YOU WANTED TO PUT IT ON HOLD TO HAVE A BABY. AND THEN YOU DIDN'T WANT TO HAVE A BABY BUT STAYED HOME ANYWAY. I ALWAYS COMPROMISE AND DEFER TO YOU ON THIS SHIT--"

"BECAUSE YOU'RE FUCKING RETARDED AND I HAVE TO DO ALL THE THINKING FOR BOTH OF US ALL THE TIME, I'M FUCKING TIRED OF CARRYING YOUR ASS FOR YEARS"

"-- AND THE ONE TIME I WANT YOU TO DO IT FOR ME YOU FUCKING THROW THIS TANTRUM AND HOLD 8 YEARS OF PARTNERSHIP HOSTAGE WHY WAS I SO BLIND...Whatever. You clearly never really loved me and I just wanted to believe. Fuck you. I'm sure you'll sell all my shit and keep every penny and have some selfish-ass bullshit psycho reason that it's justfied because YOU ARE JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHER."

"GOD DAMN RIGHT IT'S THE LEAST I DESERVE IF YOU'RE GOING TO THROW A FUCKING SIX FIGURE JOB AWAY WHEN YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE FUCKING SUPPORTING ME YOU FUCKING BOY. YOU FUCKING TINY BOY MANCHILD PIECE OF SHIT"


Most people would have slammed the front door. Usually he would have. But when he was really upset, and she knew this, he would close a door as quietly as possible. Like he did now.

He had known she'd take it like this. He'd hoped otherwise, but deep down he knew. He'd already stashed a suitcase with a few clothes and the Dual Disk Collector's Edition/Director's Extended Cut of the cult classics RAJADA and its sequel RAJADA 2: RAJARDER and his companion version of WHO WAS THE REAL DUNSTON NEW MEXICO? documentary. Every other material possession could be replaced. Or was never really needed.

Like his wedding ring. Hawking that would be nice. Not as nice as hers, of course. She was "allergic" to most of the usual wedding band metals and couldn't wear them. All, naturally, save for the most expensive one, platinum. He should've known then.

Everybody should've known then, and doesn't see it until later. Hindsight's 20/20. Dunston said that at one point didn't he? Probably. He should've. Funny how for all the dozens of times he'd watched RAJADA he still hadn't memorized the dialogue. Once the credits rolled and the opening overture kicked in, he lost himself every time. It was a trance. It was his ritual.

Even thinking about it triggered a version of it and he might have just rolled right through a red light. Good thing he was white. His old friend Shaun would probably be getting 17 rounds in as many seconds if he'd run a red in this fucking city. Shaun had been a good dude. Best dude, as he always called Shaun, who didn't like RAJADA half as much as he did (but then who could) but would sit through it once or twice to humor a friend. Never should have let her come between them. He should've stood up to her then. Never turn on a life long friend to get with a lady. Wanting that from you is manipulative controlling shit and it's a red flag you need to find another lady. Horny and lonely 17 year olds finally finding someone who wants to date them tend to forget about that though. Or think there won't be another lady. There is. There was never another bro like Shaun, though.

Yes, he would hawk his wedding band for whatever he could get. Or maybe he could barter it. Surely somewhere in rippin' Rajada that was still possible.

A short detour to the office, say the usual hellos one more time, and clean out his desk without a word, out the door and halfway back across the parking lot before anyone even realized what was happening. Had he been a disgruntled spree shooter he'd have gotten them all. They were too straight, too square, too normal. He'd never told anyone how much Rajada, or RAJADA, meant to him. They could not have had a clue this was coming.

Miles of flat road. Days, nights, mountains in the distance, flat dry yellow brush and nothing else. Fuck staying in hotels. Waste of money. He could bathe in Mother Nature's bath in Rajada while they turned on the water at the apartment he already had lined up. He could piss in a cup. Or fuck it! Just change pants. Just take them off. Piss on the driver's seat, why not, he'd probably have to sell the car anyway. Be in Rajada as soon as possible. Start the new career and new life in Rajada. Walk the same streets and streams and forests as Dunston New Mexico. Nothing else was worth the brain space it would take to imagine.

Henry MacBalanced... no, fuck that, he was doing it. He was VANNER now. Vanner MacBalanced and he would not answer to anything else. New life, new name, new man. Dunston would be a little too obvious. Vanner was more inside. That he could make into his own. V's looked cool in monograms, too. Vanner MacBalanced looked around his new apartment, barren. Beautifully barren. Not even a bed yet. The new keys fell from his hand with a muffled jingle as they hit the both-supplied-and-installed-by-the-lowest-bidder carpeting. He fell to his knees and wept tears of joy.

He had chased the dream and caught it. He was free of the chains of the past and of normalcy.

His phone rang. He wasn't going to answer it unless it was the new employer. When he heard a voice mail message start to record, and heard her voice, his phone became the first flush in his brand new toilet. Well, it would be, anyway. Water wasn't on yet. He'd leave it there until it did. He could always get a new phone. Wanted a new number regardless.

The past was dead. And "Vanner" Henry MacBalanced, one might say, now had Everything To Live For.
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Postby fuckles » Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:15 pm

im a bear
Cyril Sneer wrote:INSANE post. I could literally read it for hours.
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Postby can't » Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:19 pm

Justin Keiller has had it with San Francisco. He's HAD. IT. It's not fair that there are literally SO MANY homeless people there now that you can't go a whole day with out being harassed by AT LEAST 3 of them. And there is HUMAN FECES on the sidewalks on his commute to work. He wrote the Mayor, but the Mayor and Police Chief are USELESS unless it's the Superbowl

Luckily he has family in Rochester, Denver, Santa Barbara and someplace called Rajada. And that's where he's headed now because no one in any of those other places wants to deal with him. "He's kind of a whiny bitch, honestly." They all say to each other, "Yeah, I can't stand him, frankly". But Aunt Joann and her boyfriend Mark are trying to sublet, so Justin takes advantage and moves his start up Commando.ol, his blog on svbtle.com, his twitter and his life to Rajada for the time being. He's visited a couple of times over the years. Found it a little dull, but it has all the amenities he needs, in somewhat close proximity and his Aunt Joanne's house is GINORMOUS. Mark is some kind of lawyer. Anyway the rent is cheap too, which is really good because there's more money available for Justin to gamble with in fantasy sports leagues and possibly buy a real doll to have sex with on the low.

Driving into Rajada in his Honda Element he is redirected around what looks like a pretty serious accident. He thinks to himself I hope people know how to drive in this town already missing the bay area and feeling a little deflated.
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Postby Alice » Thu Feb 18, 2016 12:08 am

Morning is coming to Rajada. It's just before sunrise. The sky is a deep purplish-pink and the sun is just starting to rise over the horizon and filter in through the drawn curtains in the window of a bedroom of a big white house up on the hill. Inside the room is stark white everything: white walls with white crown molding, a white bed with a big fluffy white comforter, white country style furniture, a white shag carpet covers the hardwoods making area around the bed look like a dream cloud. It's almost like someone's interpretation of heaven. No TV or electronics can be seen anywhere in the room. A woman rises from her sleep, her long white hair is disheveled and tangled and is covering her eyes and nose. She brushes it away from her face and we get a glimpse of her white painted nails. She reaches for her nightstand and puts her glasses on and rises from bed and does a light stretch. It looks really beautiful outside. It always has here.

Her name is Alice Magnolia. She's a long time resident of Rajada and has lived here her entire life. Never been married. Some people here call her a spinster and she thinks it's really nasty. She's approaching 73, her birthday is actually in just a few days.

She uses the bathroom, washes her hands and heads for the kitchen. We see her coffee machine and the light tells us it's already on. She flicks the switch and it starts brewing immediately. Must've already been prepared the night before. She glances longingly at the window and we notice a small picture frame sitting on the windowsill containing the picture of a very strikingly handsome middle-aged man. A small silver heart locket hangs from the corner of the frame.
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Postby Alice » Thu Feb 18, 2016 12:16 am

She lets out a soft sigh and says something barely audible

"Feech--"

We can sense the loss emanating from her in this most private, intimate moment. She sits down at her kitchen table, a notepad sits on the table and she scribbles some things down.

On her notepad we see some autobiographical writings in progress. She seems to be working on her memoirs in her old age:

I tried dating years and years ago and even fell in love with this lovely fellow named Feech. My oh my, he was quite the looker. It truly was one of the worst days of my life when I learned he died tragically in the ugly time before WOLFCORP took in this small town of aimless, stinking, drug-addled drifters under it's wing. I drank a lot those months after I lost him, those bottles of Zinfandel became a comfort to me. I didn't have a single person in my life that I could count on for emotional support so I turned to alcohol. Gosh, I sure did love him even though our time together was brief. I felt something deeper there. I knew we were going to be more. I still wonder what might've been if he hadn't been suddenly taken from me before we had a chance to let our love blossom.


Alice has run the fabric boutique here in Rajada for almost 40 years now. It's one of the last original small businesses still standing in the historic Main Street district of Rajada. She has seen this town go through some major changes these past 20 years. Changes she frankly considers have been for the better. It's definitely not the sleepy old Rajada it once was. Gone are the dirt roads, the dirty, smoke-filled, musty cabins and sheds surrounded by empty and crushed Old Hobbes cans. Now there are sidewalks along every street, gaslight street lamps, 5 bedroom McMansions, and chain restaurants on every corner. Life is truly better than ever for her.

The truth is, Ms. Magnolia came into a boon once WOLFCORP settled into town. A young man who grew up in Rajada and helped WOLFCORP settle in for good, Mr. Sage, was so gracious and kind to help Alice set up a thriving business model to keep her mind off the loss of Feech and her crippling wine addiction. She didn't know his reasons for helping her but it was what she needed to climb out of the hole she was in. Distraction really is the best medicine there is. She poured all of her life energies into her business in those years following Feech's death and thanks to her hard work and Blue's connections over at WOLFCORP, Alice now has a thriving fabric boutique franchise with over 30 locations spread out across the southwestern US and Texas. As Rajada began to grow and thrive, so did Alice and her business.

Now she lives in one of those big houses up on the hill that she always had always dreamed of owning as a little girl. A castle of her own.
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Postby can't » Thu Feb 18, 2016 12:40 am

I heard this was the hot new place for a budding young rich capitalist like me
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Postby werd » Thu Feb 18, 2016 1:20 am

My name is Andrew Ward but please call me Drew. I’m here to pay my respects, finally. I never knew my grandfather when he was alive; I was 12 when he died and still living in Phoenix with my father. Dad hadn’t spoken to grandpa in over 10 years at that point. He even went so far as to change our last name. Not that changing a single vowel is much of a change, I guess he wanted to remember where he came from somewhat.

Dad never spoke highly of grandpa when he spoke of him at all. Always called him the worst dude, but I had heard from my uncle that he was a great man. Once I was old enough I did my own research and learned that gramps was one of the original members of the Wolfcorp. exploratory committee that oversaw the initial land purchase that would become Rajada View Estates. He had gone so far as to sacrifice his own life trying to protect one of the board members when the original inhabitants of Rajada had turned on them. My grandfather was a hero.

When I learned that my grandfather had given his life protecting capitalism I knew I had to devote my life to money. So now I’m an investment banker living in New York doing excessive amounts of cocaine with high-class escorts every weekend. It’s not the life I would have chosen, but I have to honor his legacy somehow.

So I’ll be here for the next week or so folks, spending as much time at the casino as I do at the cemetery. It’s what grandpa would have wanted.
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Postby sevenarts » Thu Feb 18, 2016 9:08 am

Neil sits alone in a dark room, surrounded by paintings, brooding. He'd never wanted to come back to Rajada, where some of his family was from. He'd heard the stories about what the place had once represented - a commune of filthy degenerates wasting their lives in the desert - and even though he'd also heard that Wolfcorp had cleaned things up in the last few decades, he'd still only visited because his Uncle Robert had finally died and, bizarrely, had picked Neil from among a bevy of relatives to be in charge of Robert's estate. Maybe the old coot had thrown darts at a board to pick; certainly he'd had nothing to do with the more respectable wing of the family in decades, living out in the desert, dabbling with his paintings, even long after the old Rajada had fallen apart and the place was remade to exclude fools like Robert. Kicked out of the town proper, the rumor was he'd simply relocated to an even more isolated shack and continued with his painting. Wolfcorp had probably only allowed even that much because the poor old fool had once unwittingly allied himself with one of Wolfcorp's advance guard, a narc who inexplicably managed to infiltrate the old Rajada.

In any event, Robert had been found in his ramshackle shack, holding a paintbrush in front of a vapid landscape canvas. The paintings arrayed around the shack all showed Rajada as it once was, as a place of desolate beauty, all open spaces, an impossibly blue sky hanging above a desert dotted with little bits of greenery and twisted cacti. It was ridiculous. Rajada hadn't looked like that in 15 years; the place was civilized now, with expensive coffee shops and massive grocery stores, gyms and upscale bars, even an Ikea. The sky was broken up by the towers of fancy apartment buildings, all glass and steel. To Neil, the nice clean lines of the skyscrapers looked far more beautiful than any of Uncle Robert's paintings of dilapidated wooden buildings and empty desert expanses. What's so pretty about a desert? What's so nice about being poor and dirty and dying in an out-of-the-way shack, inconveniencing everyone?

Neil picked up the hotel phone and called down to the front desk. "Room 5023, can I get some room service?"

"Mr. Painter, right?"

"Yes. Neil," he responded tersely, wincing. As he placed his order, he reflected on how much he hated that last name, how much it made him think of his idiot uncle, who seemingly took the family name as a calling and dedicated his life to living up to it. Everyone had always called the fool "Bob the Painter," maybe not even realizing that he was just plain old Bob Painter, a moron who thought a surname was destiny. It especially bothered Neil because, though he never thought about it now, as a child he'd seen some of Uncle Robert's paintings and thought that perhaps he too could follow that path. Thankfully he'd outgrown those childish whims and gone into finance instead. Sitting there in his fancy suit, sipping expensive whiskey and waiting for his dinner to arrive, Neil looked around at the sad paintings scattered around his hotel room, the only product of his uncle's lonely life, and knew he'd made the right decision.

He'd be in town just long enough to auction off these hideous things, to eke whatever money he could out of Robert's defiantly non-commercial art, and then he'd head back east and immerse himself in work again, swiftly forgetting about Rajada and Robert and painting and everything else. All that mattered was success, and the money that came with it, the feeling of accomplishment whenever a deal went well. Those things were foreign to Robert, who never even sold a painting while he was alive, maybe never even tried - but Neil knew there were rubes out there who would pay dearly for anything they saw as "authentic" and non-commercial, anything that radiated what they saw as "real." Neil knew Robert's work would appeal to those people, but he also knew they were misled, that the skyscrapers and stores of the new Rajada were far more real than the illusions that Robert captured. No matter. He'd take their money, and then he'd never have to think about Rajada again.
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Postby bigcat » Thu Feb 18, 2016 1:12 pm

Jodie Smalls frowns as the slurpy vibration of air on ice tells her she’s reached the end of her venti iced caramel macchiato. Scanning the afterschool gaggle outside, she bites her bottom lip. Where the hell is he?

She spots a familiar backpack hustling past the SUV and rolls down the passenger window half an inch. The dusty Rajada heat invades the AC. What’s this loser kid’s name again--Kevin? Cameron?

“Kev! Kev, honey, have you seen Skylar?” Her voice rasps like she smokes a pack a day, even though she hasn’t touched tobacco since college.

“Hiiiii Skylar’s mom,” whines Kelvin. “Nuh uh. I dunno.”

The kid turns to leave, then looks back. “Uhhh…I could look for him… but I might miss my bus.”

Jesus, Jodie thinks, this wily motherfucker lives all the way out in Rajada Crest.

“I can give you a ride home, kiddo. But could you go find Sky?” The kid nods, and she trills, “Thanks, honey.”

Ugh.

Somehow even Jodie’s sighs have vocal fry.

This is just perfect. Another hour in the car, after trekking all the way downtown to see the lawyer for the third time this week. It better be worth it. Fuck that asshole, he can live with his bitch in Phoenix, Jodie’s getting both houses.

Her phone vibrates. Etsy notification. At least business is going well—another sale for the new terrarium line.

Her phone buzzes again. Rajada Tribune alert. Why’d she even sign up for local news push notifications? Oh right, that was when she actually cared about this place. Before she stopped going to PTA meetings. Before she caught Greg. Before Rajada became her personal purgatory.

A second Rajada Tribune alert. What could possibly merit two alerts in this suburban wasteland? Was there going to be a fucking parade?

Ignore.
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Postby palmer eldritch » Thu Feb 18, 2016 1:13 pm

PROLOGUE...





...

A shape of a man wandered in a dark space of dreaming. The figure had travelled far and wide through many different times, wearing many faces, mutable in name but not in nature. His footsteps echoed in the tenebrous hall as he smoothly floated through a white-grey fog past purple curtained walls and dimly beige columns to a weathered white stone dais. He turned smooth crystalline knobs atop the lectern as blurry orange orbs of light materialized and hovered around him.

Floyd New Mexico.

The man stepped away from the dais, more than a shape now, lean, mid-30s, neutral expression, short cropped dark brown going on black hair, medium tall, wearing light grey colored business suit with no tie. But his eyes, his eyes could not hide a faintly glow of red where the black of his his pupils should be.

He walked up to a large mirror placed about 10 full paces in front of the dais, a mirror that flowed vertically through the space surrounded by a golden wall that emerged from the rolling purple drapery. His hand slowly reached out to touch his reflection.


...


Image


RETURN TO RAJADA
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Postby palmer eldritch » Thu Feb 18, 2016 2:52 pm




...

Floyd New Mexico awakens from his obsidian sleep of no dreams, having to piss really bad, body burning up with intention. He rolls out of his bed, white sheets, white pillows, white room, minimally decorated, off onto the floor dramatically, sighing and groaning to no one. His mansion – they call it The Palace, because he calls it that himself of course – sits at the edge and the center of the town.

Walking out to his balcony, he looks at the audience (that would be you, dear reader) and raises his eyebrows with a wily smile, raising his arms in a dramatic shrug.


‘Yeah, it was all me.’ He chuckles.

‘I got the parcel of land, great property, I inherited it from my uncle, he didn’t have much but he did have a nice tract with some shitty ass cabin on it, and he didn’t have anyone to leave it to in terms of kin but his sister’s son. Yeah I was a little shit then but it didn’t matter too much.’

‘I grew up out in Flagstaff and that’s all you need to know, I grew and then I became something greater. Wolfcorp came to me with an offer and I said, yes – BUT. I want in on it all. I want in on the ground floor of this operation. Making Rajada something great, something people want to buy, this image of, an idea of a great life that they knew they wanted but they didn’t know what it looked like until we showed it to them.’

‘Wholesomeness is a product that you can sell – and these fucking idiots – they buy it up.’

...

Walking down the staircase from the second floor of The Palace, the central terminal where the carpets and walls bleed shades of burgundy accented with golden fixtures and frames.

‘I have the vision. I made Floyd New Mexico. I’m an artisan. I’m a sculptor, the self-creator, awakened fucking Übermensch. I made Rajada what it is today. This city is me, I’m this city. I am its avatar, I am its guru on the mountaintop.’

‘I have an 8% stake in Monster Energy and that doesn’t just fucking happen.’

He makes a circle with his thumb and forefinger, holds it aloft, and rolls his eyes.

‘I know where things have been’ he pauses to puff out his cheeks and blow out an exasperated puff of air ‘and I sure fucking know where things are going. People don’t give a fuck about being close to the earth, not any closer than a yoga mat.’

He waves his hand in a flourish. ‘We’re transcending possessions by having it all.’

...

Sitting at his pristinely white breakfast table, eating toast, drinking black coffee.

‘People don’t give a good goddamn about hippy dippy shit if it means getting your hands dirty. Environmentalism, you sell them carbon offsets, we planted you a tree buddy, so drive off into the sunset. Spirituality, you can sell that to them at a bookstore. Drugs, well,’ he pauses and smirks ‘everybody loves drugs, but you buy those at the pharmacy now, my man. And they do, believe me.’

He looks around dramatically, making his point by surveying his kingdom.

‘I built this town. This town is a dream that I put into people’s heads and then I made their dreams come true. And people show me the respect I deserve for that, they come to me when they’ve got a dream of their own to sell to people. They make sure that I’m on board. I’ll let them know whether it’s a dream worth giving.’

‘Being a prophet is an easy thing when your pen is writing the plot, I would say.’

...

At his bathroom vanity, he looks deeply with no expression at his reflection.

I am a golem built from unfulfillable desires and animated by greed. I will destroy anyone who tries to fuck with me.


...

As he drifts in his thoughts there is no way for him to tell where he ends and the city begins.
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Postby Luke » Thu Feb 18, 2016 2:58 pm

Elliott Salevyn wanted to work. He didn't need to, what with his late wife's life insurance payout and the settlement money from the capsizing incident (which, privately, he'd come to call the Marital Maritime Disaster), but it was good to keep busy. Not just good, necessary. You see, he wasn't busy when he took a sledgehammer to every bathtub in his house. He wasn't busy when he tried to have his neighbor arrested for putting in a koi pond. He wasn't busy when he filled his swimming pool with dirt and planted the shrubs that would later die when he neglected (refused, really) to water them. Technically he was very busy when he did those things because you try having someone arrested for increasing their property value, but it was being unbusy that led to them.

Alcohol was dehydrating. For that reason he didn't fear it like he did other beverages. And since nobody would hire him as a bartender (for so so many good, very very good reasons), he opened his own bar, sort of, one of a chain of obnoxiously named gastropubs (Slainte Abhaile), and there he worked incomprehensibly long hours. He took pride in his work, in pouring a perfect pint and offering gluten free versions of every item on the menu for a mere $1.30 extra. He liked his employees and his customers and learning their stories. Most of all he liked pushing himself to the point of exhaustion day after day after day, ensuring that when he closed his eyes to go to sleep he didn't see his wife's terrified face disappearing beyond the reeds.
Catullus wrote:I'm not the arbitrator of nudes I just pointed out what made me sad inside.
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Postby adamtrask » Thu Feb 18, 2016 4:43 pm

Part I

Maxwell William Titcomb was born on December 8th, 1944 in the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. By the time he was born, the narrative of the war-- in which his father, Loren Titcomb, had not fought-- had nearly entirely shifted to the positive, and Americans could see the end drawing near. For this reason, Maxwell’s homecoming to his family’s Barnstable, Massachusetts, estate that snowy December was quite festive, celebrated with champagne and hors d’oeuvres and the necessary members of Barnstable society. Though he could not remember the event himself, Maxwell’s family told the story so often that they had implanted their own memories in his head, and he spent too much of his life trying to recreate the revelry of that gathering.

The Titcombs were in the business of textiles manufacturing, a trade that had treated them to the best comforts New England had to offer since the early 19th century. Maxwell’s father, Loren, and his father before him, and his father before him had helmed the Titcomb Mills factory, the only facility of its kind in Barnstable, and this had made the Titcombs, if not the pinnacle of high society, at the very least a family spoken of with reverence and respect. After all, they employed nearly half of the Barnstable middle class, supplying them with well-paying jobs with regular hours and copious benefits, and generally boosting the economic prosperity of the town of Barnstable.

In the late 1950’s, Maxwell was flourishing as a popular and intelligent teenager at his Boston boarding school, pulling respectable test scores and performing admirably on the football field-- which his father called the ‘gridiron’ and lauded as the place where a man was truly born. Maxwell was happy, and he had taken as interest in the arts, poetry especially, and he voraciously read every novel, collection or play he could get his hands on. Owing perhaps to his assured future stability, in knowing that he would one day run the Titcomb Mills factory like his father and grandfather and great-grandfather, he never felt that the high pressure of that prestigious boarding school, and a the sphere of the learned became like an oasis for him.

At the same time, at home in Barnstable, Loren Titcomb was beginning to feel the pressures of globalism, and as the price of textiles dropped, he had to find more and creative ways to save money. He had had to lay off 50 factory workers, and this had been spoken of in hushed tones by the members of Barnstable high society. Wages were frozen and then they began to drop steadily. The Titcomb factory could no longer provide the citizens of Barnstable with the generous living wages it once had. Some of the workers quit, while others hung on until the bitter end. Finally, in April of 1963, Loren made the decision to sell the factory that had been run by his family for four generations to a large conglomerate that immediately laid off the remaining workers and sold the factory for parts. The Titcombs made it out of the deal with enough money to maintain their lifestyle, but their pride and their reputation were beyond repair.
Stuntman wrote:The party's over and we're just the people who are too drunk to drive home and everyone is fighting over who gets to sleep on the couch.
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Postby inspectorhound » Thu Feb 18, 2016 4:47 pm

what's up my name is Steve Roleplay
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Postby adamtrask » Thu Feb 18, 2016 4:55 pm

Part II

News of the sale of the textile factory hit Maxwell Titcomb particularly hard because he was heading to Yale in the fall-- the Titcombs were, of course, Yale men and wouldn’t have it any other way-- with plans to settle in at the factory under his father after he finished his four years. This was meant to set him up to take over management of the facility once his father decided to retire. This factory, a building that still bore his family name but none of what his family had built, was meant to be his life, and now it was gone. That summer he lived in a haze of confusion and despair, seldom leaving his room and diving deeper into his books. In the fall he left for Yale, just as he had planned before the sale of the factory.

His time at Yale was much the same as his time at boarding school, though he was less social and more academic. He maintained a level of popularity because of his boyish looks, with floppy blonde hair and a cool, disheveled demeanor, and his talent on the football field. He once again excelled in his classes, majoring in English Literature and spending nearly as much time in the library as he did on the field. Poetry and literature had become more than a passing interest, and he spent much of his spare time researching the works of TS Eliot, yes, a Harvard man, he knew that, but he wasn’t sure he cared anymore.

He pledged to a fraternity, Zeta Psi, and after many humiliating rituals, he became close friends with many of his brothers. This was also the first taste of overdrinking, as opposed to the respectful drinking of his upstanding family members, and indeed, this was the first time he felt close to that memory of revelry he had felt as an infant. Drinking and socializing with his frat brothers began to take up more and more of his time, and instead of spending less time as an amateur researcher of Eliot, he had begun to take time away from the football field. By his junior year he had washed out of the football team entirely, and his life became devoted to drinking and poetry. During this rambunctious period of his life, his fraternity brothers had even awarded him with a nickname, “Titty”, a juvenile but nonetheless accepted take on his last name. The nickname stuck, and it followed him for his entire life.
Stuntman wrote:The party's over and we're just the people who are too drunk to drive home and everyone is fighting over who gets to sleep on the couch.
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Postby wendy » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:02 pm

Still in bed, Wendy wondered if "before fully awake" was too soon to want a drink. She wouldn't drink, of course. She never did. Not until after 5, anyway. That was the promise she made to herself: she could drink alone as long as it wasn't before 5.

I wish everybody would fucking die, she thought, and got up.

Okay. Not everybody. But just about. What was frustrating was that she really liked people as long as they let her be. She worried about them, quietly, in her own way. She worried about the health and happiness of strangers more often than her own. That's why she opened the first Pleine de Grasse franchise in the southwestern United States -- to make people feel good. But it backfired. The company's whole philosophy was based on moderation, on quality and richness over quantity, but that was something her customers failed to grasp. Day after day Wendy watched with a mix of pity and disgust as they shoved various cheeses and pastries down their gullets. Eventually she couldn't take it any longer and hired a manager to oversee the day to day. It was for her own mental health, really. She still went in to work sometimes, late at night to use the printer, but truth be told business was going so well that she could afford her own printer
and ink and fancy paper.

So she spent her time at a nearby pub, close enough to the bakery that she could check in if needed, but far enough away that, most days, she almost forgot it was there. She enjoyed sitting in the dark at the end of the bar, reading through long-forgotten cold case files belonging to nearby police departments and taking notes in colored pencil. She ate faux-artisanal sandwiches with allegedly organic side salads and drank tea. At least, that was her existence until five o'clock rolled around, at which point she went HAM and downed bourbon after bourbon until she could barely see straight.

The walk home in the still, dry air always did her good. She'd fall into bed no later than midnight, sleep a full eight hours, swim a few laps in her pool, and then return to the pub when it opened to do it all again. And fuck it, you know? She was happy.
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Postby werd » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:06 pm

Hey Steve you like cocaine?

Wanna go bet on the horse races and get annihilated?

I've got most of this eight ball of garbage yak left and need someone to do it with
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Postby inspectorhound » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:10 pm

werd wrote:Hey Steve you like cocaine?

Wanna go bet on the horse races and get annihilated?

I've got most of this eight ball of garbage yak left and need someone to do it with

when I was a child my father took me to the racetrack and there was someone vomiting his brains out in the bathroom
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Postby werd » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:13 pm

inspectorhound wrote:
werd wrote:Hey Steve you like cocaine?

Wanna go bet on the horse races and get annihilated?

I've got most of this eight ball of garbage yak left and need someone to do it with

when I was a child my father took me to the racetrack and there was someone vomiting his brains out in the bathroom


Yeah man

That could be you
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hologram wrote:basically burn down your local whole foods and punch a cop because the galaxy don't give a fuck
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Postby Geoff » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:21 pm

Hartmann Che, a stoic and dependable fellow. Slow to talk, but he was home-schooled by his doting aunts, as a child he often found solace in a monster set of Encyclopedia Brittanica he found thrown away in a local junkyard. Eventually he left his aunts to live in the real world, busking for pennies. One day he hitched a ride to a place he'd never been before. It's name was Rajada...
Last edited by Geoff on Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby efreet » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:30 pm

Things had been going pretty well for Zach ("It's with an h, goddamnit") lately. He had a date lined up for next week (Applebee's, slightly embarassing but who could resist #HalfPriceApps), he hadn't had to put out any IT fires at Wolfcorp all week (no citrix issues!), and he shot an 87 last Sunday (pb, pb). His spirits were pretty buoyed.

That is to say they were until he found amongst his mail a letter with "Zefron" scrawled across it. It was from his dorm mate from ASU, with whom Zac hadn't spoke with for a few years but had heard faint rumblings of his falling in with a rather radical crowd. He opened the letter...
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Postby palmer eldritch » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:48 pm




...

Floyd New Mexico sits at night in the parking lot of Sam's Club, eating a burger from the In-N-Out Burger that he had brought to town, in his convertible (OF COURSE!) with the top down in the relatively brisk February air.

He was particularly proud of this parking lot. This parking lot stood at the former site of the Lone Twin bar, which he had been glad to purchase and summarily bulldoze and pave. He didn't really give a shit about the stories he had heard about his uncle busting out of the floor of the place, or that it was a symbolic center of the town's ultimately failed resistance to the new age of internet era yuppieism. He didn't give a shit about all that.

It was simply that he loved to destroy everything that was not made in his image.


...

Floyd unlocks the back entry of the tanning establishment he owns on the business strip adjacent to the Sam's Club. The front facade has a sign that says FRY-UP! TANNING in cheerful pastel seagreen letters surrounded by a clip-art palm tree and beach ball.

He walks up to his favorite bed, undresses, turns on the bed, puts on those fucking goggly things over his eyes, and gets in.


'Did you ever think about, when you were a kid, did you think about your future self sending their brain back through time into your current body. Like, with all the knowledge of your future mistakes so you could make different choices. Make the best choices only, as you live the same life over and over again, until you get everything perfect.'

'I read an article in TIME magazine on quantum physics that said it's not all so different than that. Future events affect the present, when you look at things closely.'

'I send my past self thoughts all the time so that I know how to make the right decisions. How do you think I got where I am today?'
Last edited by palmer eldritch on Thu Feb 18, 2016 7:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby adamtrask » Thu Feb 18, 2016 6:58 pm

Part III

Graduation was a difficult time for Maxwell; not only was he leaving the ivory tower of academia, which he had truly come to love, he also had no idea what would become of him now that the factory had been sold. The last four years he had been able to shake off the fear of a meaningless life with books and alcohol, but now, facing down the world at large, he once again felt small and empty. His parents, Loren and Margaret, though they usually pushed their only son to strive harder and reach further, knew that this current malaise was partially their fault, and they told him not to worry about life for now. Something would turn around, and he would know eventually what he was supposed to do with his life. Maxwell moved to Boston and, with his family’s money, bought a large apartment. He dedicated his life to poetry, both analysis of the American Modernists, especially TS Eliot, and writing his own original work.

Maxwell wasn’t a good poet, and somewhere in his heart he knew this, but he aligned himself with a crowd that propped him up and kept him writing. With his money and leisure time, he quickly became an important member of the Boston literati, and eventually, by a stroke of luck, really, more than anything, he was asked to write a review of a new volume of poetry for the Boston Globe. And like that, Maxwell Titcomb had found his purpose in life. After the success of his first published piece of literary criticism, the Globe hired him full time as a reviewer of literature. He continued to write poetry that was not very good. And, of course, the drinking; he had become very well-known as the host of enormous parties in his Beacon Hill apartment complex-- parties that would last until the sun rose with every type of alcohol and often times drugs (though Maxwell himself did not partake in drugs outside of alcohol). His parties made the newspaper nearly as often as his criticism, which is to say he had the reputation of something of a literary badboy.

In 1975, at the age of 31, he met Marilyn Brown. Marilyn was of the same class and culture as Max, she was born rich and had grown up into a life of artistry and leisure. They had not met at one of Max’s parties, but at the introduction of a friend, Sam Davies, after Marilyn had insisted to Sam that she thought Maxwell was nothing but a rich, talentless boar. Upon meeting Max, however, her opinion quickly changed, sparks flew, and they were married with nine months.

The death of Maxwell’s father did not hit him in the way that he had always assumed that it would. He had expected to feel sadness, and sadness he did feel, but it was the sad realization of what the future must hold for him and his happy, if a little bit rowdy, life in Boston. He knew what needed to be done, and though he had built an entire life, he knew that his dedication to his family, which now only consisted of his mother, must win the day. Just like that, in June of 1984, Max and Marilyn sold the beautiful Beacon Hill apartment to move back to the Titcomb family estate in Barnstable.
Stuntman wrote:The party's over and we're just the people who are too drunk to drive home and everyone is fighting over who gets to sleep on the couch.
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Postby wendy » Thu Feb 18, 2016 7:03 pm

goes fuckin nuts with colored pencils
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Postby can't » Thu Feb 18, 2016 7:18 pm

The unabridged autobiography of some one plays quietly on rajada pirate radio plays in the kitchen while justin builds his new ikea shelving unit. Justin is not listening but every once in a while the man is referred to as "Titty" which makes him goggle a bit. Anyway, he's too preoccupied and drunk on expensive beer to change it.
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