RDR2 for R&R

How to Play Red Dead Redemption 2 to Relax

Serious spoilers below, so if you’ve somehow made it this long not playing RDR2 and still know nothing about it and still want to play it spoiler-free, you should probably leave. But not before telling me how you’ve remained spoiler-free for so long while living on the internet. I haven’t seen anything beyond the first season of Game of Thrones but I know all the major beats for the entire thing because I live on the internet and spoilers are like fucking currency around here. If you’ve already played, or haven’t played and never will and want to read anyway, please proceed past the Spoiler Chocobo.

Giddyup

Or How I Learned to Ignore the Main Plot and Love Wandering Around

For anybody reading who hasn’t played, Red Dead Redemption 2 is an open world prequel to Red Dead Redemption, which is a game that came out before I started playing games so for all intents and purposes it doesn’t exist. I mean, I’ve got a vague idea of the plot and I know you play as John and at the end everyone ends up dead and there’s some message about the ‘circle of hatred’ or whatever and see? See how much I know about this game I’ve never played just because I live on the internet? The internet does not keep secrets.

Anyway, RDR2 happens before any of that. You play as Arthur Morgan, a member of the Dutch van der Linde gang, living in the last days of the Wild West in a sort-of America. The game picks up immediately after a ‘job’ has gone bad, leaving two of the gang dead and the rest hiding out in the Grizzly Mountains, the game’s stand-in for the Rockies. Dutch is convinced he can pull the gang out of its death spiral with just ‘one more job’ and keeps babbling about Tahiti, and even without knowing the plot of the first game it becomes obvious really fucking quickly that things are going to go from bad to shithouse. Indeed, by the end of the game, most of the gang (including Arthur) is dead and the rest are scattered.

The game is, in the most correct terms, a Massive Bummer. Arthur’s death is obviously the climax of the game, but even before that, in Chapter Five, Arthur learns he has fucking tuberculosis, a disease famously incurable in 1899. For the last chapter of play through, you play as a man visibly sick. Your health and stamina are permanently lower than they were and you can’t fix yourself with food without making yourself sicker. The whole time you’re walking around he just looks and sounds terrible, gaunt and constantly coughing.

This is a game people play for fun.

But it is possible to play this game and have a relaxing time!

Fuck the Main Story and Never Play Past Chapter Two

What are you supposed to do, then, if you don’t play the game’s plot?

I’m imaging people who haven’t played this game asking. People who have played obviously know the answer is ‘a fuckton of wandering around.’ As I said previously, the game takes place in a sort of pseudo-America, and I really mean that. It stretches from an area resembling West Virginia in the northeast to the inner southern states in the south, culminating in Saint Denis, an obvious stand-in for New Orleans. The center of the map is clearly the Great Plains region pushing west into the Rockies, and of course New Austin represents the southwest. It’s fucking huge, takes forever to get anywhere, and is filled with stuff to do that isn’t the main plot, including:

  • Stranger missions
  • Hunting
  • Bird watching
  • Robbing houses
  • Falling off cliff sides
  • Taming wild horses and selling them for profit
  • Complete some of the Challenges
  • Fill out your Compendium
  • Killing the various gangs of bad guys over and over
  • Treasure hunting
  • Bounty hunting
  • Ignoring your gang friends when they come find you to ask why you never come back to camp
  • Making NEW friends. Better friends. Friends who aren’t trying to stab you in the back. Friends who aren’t trying to get you into dangerous situations due to their own greed. Friends who don’t take advantage of your slow but trusting nature to turn you into a thief and a murderer.
  • Collecting herbs

Let’s Answer a Few Questions

Q: Why Don’t You Play Online?

A: Because I fucking hate it.

Q: Why Don’t You Just Play At The End As John So Everything Is Open?

A: Because I fucking hate John.

Q: Why Stop At Chapter Two? Why Not At Least Play Through Five?

A: Because I can do what I want, get off my fucking back about it.

No, Seriously, Here’s Why You Want to Stop at Chapter Two

If like me, you don’t want to play online and you hate John’s stupid guts, here’s how far you want to get in the game before you fuck off from the gang forever.

Obviously, you need to get out of Chapter One, where you’re stuck in that snowed-in town. I mean, you can probably fuck off? But you’re going to want to get to Two to unlock a few things, so power through Chapter One and get the gang down to the Horseshoe Overlook.

Once there, you can safely do “Polite Society, Valentine Style,” “Americans at Rest,” “Who is Not without Sin,” and “A Quiet Time.” Missions you’ll definitely want to do:

  • “Paying a Social Call” will get Kieran untied from the tree and mildly trusted by the rest of the gang.
  • “The First Shall be Last” will rescue Sean.
  • “Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego” will get you the Legendary Animals Map
  • “The Spines of America” will unlock the fence, so you can begin selling all your stolen goods.

At this point you’ve unlocked everything except two, and I’m going to leave it up to you to decide if the trade-off is worth it.

To unlock upgrading your satchels, thus being able to carry more, you will have to get Pearson new Leather Working Tools, something that only happens after playing “Money Lending and Other Sins.” Strauss asks you to collect money from four people – and that fourth person, Thomas Downes, is the SOB who gives Arthur TB. In this exact moment. You can see it happen. So, yeah, no fucking way I’m going anywhere near any of Strauss’ missions.

Important to note, you can do the first three collection missions, open up the Leather Working Tools, and then completely avoid the Thomas Downes mission. I haven’t as I don’t particularly care about increasing my carrying capacity and I haven’t ever played Arthur as someone who would be comfortable with this particular line of work. If you play Arthur as a homicidal maniac, then go for it.

Now, the other thing you still have to unlock is fishing. I really tried to unlock this without moving too far ahead, but with a little research and my own play-through I have come to a single conclusion: you cannot unlock fishing without first breaking Micah out of the Strawberry jail. And if it came down to fishing, or occasionally visiting Micah and taunting him through the jail window, I know what I’d pick. And I did!

I leave those decisions up to you. Obviously, this is not the way to play if you’re trying to be a completionist. I mean, you never even get to go back to New Austin as Arthur except for rescuing Sean, not unless you want every bounty hunter in the west to land on you with two feet. The only way for that is to play as John at the end of the game.

If you play my way, you’ve locked in the game in what I think is its most positive state. Kieran is in camp and still has his head. Nobody’s been shot. Arthur isn’t sick. And, most importantly, Micah is left to rot in jail while everyone at camp just assumes you’re taking care of it while, actually, you’ve spent the past three days camping in Big Valley and trying to catch sight of a blue jay.

Music Box

Sitting on the card table, nestled between a couple of Nerf guns and a tall stack of Hardy Boys novels, was the music box. It was made of a dark wood, and intricately carved all along the sides and the top. Celtic knots, mostly, but the design carved into the middle was foreign. Three triangles all pointing at different angles, surrounded by waves. Inside, standing on her toes on a spring, was a ballerina. The pink felt underneath was worn in a few places, and the mirror underneath the lid was almost washed out. After a few turns of the key, a little song played, unrecognizable, and the ballerina spun delicately on her toes.

“Anything you’re looking at?”

Lydia jumped, closing the music box with a snap. She’d been so taken by the little song she’d completely forgotten where she was, like it had been drawing her in. The woman standing on the other side of the card table, the owner of the house presumably, stared at her with an eyebrow raised.

“How much is the music box?” Lydia asked, holding it up.

“Oh, that thing. Not sure how that ended up out here. That’s…kind of an antique. It was my mother-in-law’s. She passed a couple of years ago.”

Lydia shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be, I’m not,” the woman said with a glance to a man standing on the other end of the driveway. “She was…peculiar. Anyway, I don’t know if I can sell that to you. I should probably ask my husband. Tony!”

Lydia pulled back, wincing. The woman’s soft, almost pleasant voice had turned into a chicken-squawk as she called across to her husband.

“What?” he shouted back, not moving from between an old lawnmower and an older snow blower.

“Isn’t this your mom’s music box?” she asked.

Lydia held up the box. Tony didn’t try to move any closer, only leaned forward and squinted.

“Oh, yeah, that was hers alright.”

“Well? Can we sell it?”

“You brought it down, didn’t you?”

“I thought you did.”

Tony held his hands out. “If I brought it down why are you asking if we can sell it?”

“I didn’t know if you had brought it down.”

“What, do you think it just walked itself down here?”

The woman shrugged. Tony waved at her and went back to trying to sell the lawnmower to the young couple with the baby.

“Five dollars.”

Lydia pulled the money from her purse, very happy to be done with this interaction.

~

She had to park in front of the neighbors’ when she got to her sister’s place. Well, her ex-brother-in-law’s place. The divorce wasn’t a shame. Lola and Kyle never should have gotten married in the first place. The fact that they had made it seven years meant Lydia owed their Aunt Beth twenty bucks. The shame wasn’t even that Lola was using the divorce as an excuse to move a thousand miles away, to ‘start fresh’ in Florida. What she thought was so fresh about Florida, Lydia would never know.

That she was taking her Patty with her, that was the shame of it all.

Lydia spied her sitting on the side porch. Her hair was in pigtails and she was clutching a half-naked Barbie. Her little legs kicked back and forth over the grass.

“Hey, Patty Cake,” Lydia called.

Patty didn’t run at her like she usually did, meeting her halfway across the yard and jumping into her arms. She barely even looked at her. Tears in her eyes. Lydia had to steel herself to keep her own eyes from getting misty.

“I don’t want to move to stupid Florida,” Patty said as Lydia sat down next to her.

“Florida can be okay,” Lydia lied. “Disney is in Florida.”

“Mommy says we won’t be close to it. She says we’re moving to the pam-handle. I don’t wanna live in a pam-handle. I want to stay here with my friends and my bike and you.”

“I know. I’d keep you if I could, but then your mommy would be sad. You don’t want her to be sad, right?”

It took a few seconds, but slowly Patty started shaking her head.

“Anyway, look. I got you something.”

Patty looked up slowly, sniffling, and Lydia thought she must really be down if she’s not excited for presents. She handed the little girl the music box.

Patty turned it over slowly in her hands. “What is it?”

“It’s a jewelry box, and it plays music. Open it like this. See the ballerina? And there’s a key on the back. It’ll play music and the ballerina will dance. You have to promise me something, though, okay?”

Patty looked up from the music box, hand still on the key, and nodded solemnly.

“When you play it, you have to remember me, okay? That way we can still be together sometimes.”

She put the music down next to her on the wooden planks before wrapping her little arms around Lydia’s waist. Lydia put a hand on her back and held her while she cried. Around them, the movers continued to empty the house and the late summer afternoon fell slowly to evening.

~

Patty didn’t like her new house. It was weird and all one story and it smelled funny. Her room was small and the walls were painted an ugly brown. There were weird shutters attached to all the windows and when her mom had explained they were for hurricanes she’d had nightmares all night of wind and rain ripping the roof off and taking her away. It was better being in her room, though. Her mom already had lots of new friends, and she always wanted Patty to meet these new friends and her kids. To play with those kids and just be friends. But all her friends were back in Ohio so she stayed in her room.

She went to take a book off her dresser and knocked the music box off.

“What was that?” her mom called from the kitchen, only down the hall.

“Nothing, I’m okay,” Patty said, turning the music box over in her hands.

“Dinner is in five minutes!”

The music box was okay, not broken. She thought of her Aunt Lydia, which made her think of her real home and her real town and her real friends. It wasn’t fair. Everyone was back home and she was stuck here in the pam-handle. Sniffling, she opened the top of the box and turned the key at the back.

The music was nice. Pretty. She didn’t know the song, and wished she had asked Aunt Lydia if she knew it. The ballerina spun around, and she pulled on the spring to make her bounce. The music went on and on, lots of high pitched ting ting tings.

But if she listened closer, she could almost make out words. Yes, she was sure someone was singing. She brought the music box up to her face, trying to hear the words and watch the ballerina spin and bob.

Watch the ballerina spin,

I can make you smile again.

Come along, away with me,

I’ll always keep you happy.

The box was glowing.

~

Lola opened the door to her daughter’s room. “Come on, Patty Cake, dinner’s…”

The room was empty. The bed was made, the closet was wide open, the only toys in the middle of the room were a doll and that music box Lydia had given her. There was no place for her to hide.

“Patty?” she called anyway. Lola stepped into the room and looked behind the door. “Patty, where are you?”

The calls for Patty got louder and louder. So loud the neighbors began to get scared. So loud the police were called. So loud eventually Lydia and Kyle heard it, a thousand miles away. But not loud enough for Patty to hear.

It would never be loud enough for Patty to hear.

Village Lost

It was a nice day for a hike, right up until they found the abandoned village that was definitely haunted as fuck.

“It’s not haunted,” Mike said. He even rolled his eyes at her as he walked down what could have once been a street.

“Do you have eyes? Are you seeing the same shit I’m seeing?” Ophelia asked.

They were in the middle of the backwoods of Vermont. There shouldn’t have been anything out here except trees and trees and more trees. It was high summer, and they almost missed it. All hidden behind huge green leaves. But then Ophelia had glanced in just the right direction as they had paused to drink water, and seen the brown slats. She wished she had kept her mouth shut, but like the big idiot she was she had said something. Mike had practically sprinted over, ignoring her calls to watch for deadfalls. By the time she had caught up he was standing on the edge, practically bouncing in place.

It was a collection of houses. Old houses. Some of the wooden slats were so rotted through Ophelia wondered how anything was even still standing. Small things, probably only one room, all in two lines facing each other. Everything was overgrown. One house had a thirty foot tree growing straight through the roof. Doors had fallen off and been covered in moss, and as she looked squirrels ran in and out of the space. They looked like illustrations in her history textbooks from school.

“This place must have been here for hundreds of years,” Mike said. He was going in and out of the buildings, trying to open closed doors, and just generally not understanding how fucked they were.

Ophelia still hadn’t stepped foot in the little town. There was nothing to mark the edge of it, but she still just knew she was on the line. If she turned around she could just see the pair of trees they had stopped at for a break. Looking at the soft dirt between the houses, she couldn’t see any foot prints besides Mike’s. No trash, no names carved into anything.

“These houses are so close to the trail,” she called to him. “But it doesn’t look like anyone else has been over here.”

“Maybe we’re the first to notice,” Mike called back, sticking his head out of a window. “What are you doing? Come look at all this.”

Ophelia shifted her feet but went no further. “What about in the spring and fall when the leaves aren’t so huge? You’d think at least the parks people would know about this.”

Mike leaned around one of the houses. “Ophelia. Please. There’s no such thing as ghosts. I know it looks creepy, but once you’re in here it’s so cool. Do you really want to miss out on something historical like this because you think Casper is going to jump out of a fireplace?”

Ophelia put her hands on her hips and shuffled her feet a bit. He was right, she was being ridiculous. Slowly she put her foot out, stepping forward toes first. Nothing happened. No gust of wind, no lightning, no creepy voices. She released the breath she hadn’t even known she was holding and walked further into the little town.

Now that she was in the middle of them, they didn’t seem that creepy. They were just little old buildings. Ophelia poked her head into the first one with its door off. It smelled of wet dirt and animals, and she was sure something was nesting in the rafters. Ignoring all that, she tried to imagine what it would have been like living in such a little space. How big was the family that lived here, she wondered?

“How old do you think these are?” she called.

“A couple hundred years, at least,” Mike called back. He was down at the other end of the row of houses, somewhere she couldn’t see. His voice volleyed between the houses. “They look colonial, don’t they?”

She walked toward where his voice was coming from, examining the houses as she passed.

“They definitely look old. Why would anyone want to build a town all the way out here?”

It was just a throwaway question, but it kept nagging at her. They were in the middle of the Green Mountains. They’d driven twenty miles from the last town to get to the trailhead, and then had walked another five. Everything in this forest was old growth. Big trees and sprawling shrubs. She’d never heard of old roads going up here. The only old roads were the ones they ended up paving for cars.

Something fluttered in the trees above and she jumped. A little dark shadow was running in the branches. A squirrel. It had to be.

“You know, I’m not the only one afraid of the woods,” she called out to Mike. “Especially in New England. They say there’s magic in the woods, but especially around here. Old magic. Dark magic. Men in their suits and wigs wanted to punish women who had sought out their own power, kill these women who dared to live any other way besides the way they wanted, and in the process poisoned the land with magic nigh uncontainable, so dark the stars couldn’t even shine in its wake.”

Ophelia clamped her hands over her mouth. Those hadn’t been her words.

The sounds of the forest had dropped out. A wind picked up, making the branches shake and leaves rustle and gooseflesh rise on her arms and neck.

“Mike? We have to go now.”

Nothing but that relentless wind, whipping through the trees. She had gotten to the other end of the houses. Facing them all, like a king in front of his subjects, was a chapel. It was shaped like a chapel. The iron symbol atop the roof was not a cross. She had never seen it before.

She spoke its name.

The door to the little chapel was gone, replaced by a square of darkness so firm it seemed physical. Below, on the ground, the dirt and the pine needles were covered in a smear of blood.

A voice that sounded like rats through withered husks came from the darkness.

“Come in, child. We’ve waited so long.”

Shaking but no longer afraid, Ophelia walked through.

Secondary Protocols

Everything that will happen in the next fifteen minutes, and this is the moment she will dream about over and over.

They are sitting in the middle of the factory floor, in the area they have built into a living room, of sorts. It’s just some old chairs around a fire pit, but it’s the closest thing to home she’s ever known. The wood is burning, and she’s sitting a little too close. The heat is making her blush. She’s on the ground because she prefers it. Katya is sitting on her right side. Dillon on her left. Across the flames are Teek and Lisbon. The sparks and smoke from the fire rise up into the air, eventually lost to the darkness. The smell is in her clothes, her hair, and that’s better than the smell of the city so she doesn’t care. Teek has just told a joke. It’s not a good joke, but for whatever reason Dillon thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world. His laughter, deep and booming, is billowing out in shockwaves, making others in the barren factory turn to look. She is looking at a woman she does not know, with a child asleep in her arms. The woman looks up at Dillon’s rolling laughter and begins to smile.

There is an explosion on the other side of the factory followed only by the reverb. The smile is gone from the woman’s face and she is clutching her son. Dillon isn’t laughing anymore. They are all waiting.

Another explosion.

Gunfire.

“THEY FOUND US.”

Over. And over. And over.

That’s when they began to run. At first, Simone couldn’t. It felt like she was in a dream, one where the air had become thick and every motion was too slow and weak. Just standing up took all of the power in her legs and back.

Another explosion just on the other side of the big room knocked her out of her dream. This is real. This is happening.

Teek was the only one with any kind of head on her shoulders. She stood up but didn’t begin running, staring down the problem like she could make it go away through sheer force of will. Her stillness calmed the others, made them wait even as their legs and feet twitched like rabbits.

“Just like we practiced,” Teek said, her voice level. “The tunnels. Let’s go.”

That’s when they started running, Teek included. She was yelling about the tunnels, turning from side to side to make sure everyone knew where to go, but she was still running. Teek saw Simone watching her as they ran, and gave her a wink. It shouldn’t have helped, but it did. Teek wasn’t scared. And if Teek wasn’t scared, then Simone wasn’t scared either.

Much.

The tunnel entrances were in the back, hidden behind metal gratings. They were a major part of the factory, bringing bricks to the stacks to be baked, but no one knew about that part of the factory anymore. Or should have.

Simone could see the tunnels. Other refugees had already reached them and had shoved the grating to the side. Dark, drafty holes that would deliver them to freedom, allow them to regroup. They had been found out before, and while this was definitely the closest they had ever come, they would not-

“GO BACK.”

The sound of gunfire exploded out of the tunnel entrances, so distorted and warped by bouncing around the close walls it was only identifiable by the muzzle flash. The rebels and refugees at the mouth of the tunnel start turning around, trying to run in a new direction. Simone and the others who had been around the fire – had that really only been a couple minutes ago? – skid to a halt. Simone looked to Teek for the next step and ice dripped down her back.

Teek looked scared.

“What do we do?” Dillon asked.

“They shouldn’t have known about that,” Teek mutters. Simone could barely hear it over the yelling and the guns.

“Teek!” Dillon barks.

Teek rubbed her face, and then swallowed so hard Simone could see it in her throat.

“Secondary Protocols.” Her voice shook, and she must have heard it. She rose up to full height and looked at Dillon. “Secondary Protocols.”

Dillon nodded, and then screamed a single word above the din.

“Scatter.”

It didn’t matter, because that’s what most people were doing anyway. Anyone who still had enough brains about them to wait for the official word started moving faster, ushering people along to any exit. Scatter and regroup. It was all that was left.

Dillon and Teek began running for the north side of the factory. Simone didn’t hesitate to follow. Glancing over her shoulder she found Katya and Lisbon on her heels. Lifting her eyes from Lisbon’s flushed cheeks, she saw something else for the first time.

Black suits.

She turned back and focused on running, knowing if she looked too long her knees would turn to jelly.

They were headed for the garage doors, and as they passed one of the pillars Dillon paused just long enough to slam on the button. Gunfire went off behind them and Katya screamed, tripping over her shoes. Dillon didn’t even slow down as he picked her up, carrying her like a football until she could get on her feet again.

In front of them, the slow doors were rolling up, revealing the night. They could already hear helicopters. See the spotlights pointed at the ground. How did they know? HOW DID THEY KNOW? There were a few people in front of them. As soon as they were out of the factory they were gunned down, falling into heaps.

Teek skidded to a halt just before the doors, keeping to the shadows. The others instinctively gathered around her, including Simone. Teek had kept them alive for months, now. She would know what to do.

“There’s a truck, on the far side of the lot,” she said, pointing. Simone looked but couldn’t see beyond the roving spotlights. “We have to run for it. But if we stay to the edges of the lot, out of the spotlights, we can make it. They won’t hear the truck with the choppers in the air. We drive it dark until we’re out. Ready?”

No. But Simone was nodding along with the others. Katya looked at her and attempted a smile. They took each other’s hands and got in a good squeeze before they were off.

They kept low to the ground, following Teek in a single file. First they stayed up against the building, hiding in whatever shadows they could find until they found the edge of the pavement. Above the helicopters whirred in circles, the sound of their engines echoing off the factory walls, filling her ears and grating her back.

Teek moved away from the building, crouching so low she was practically crawling. They moved in fits. The spotlights would come and they’d stop, hugging the earth, hoping they wouldn’t shine over them. Then the helicopter would go off in a different direction and they’d move again. Fast but low. Simone’s legs were beginning to cramp. Behind her, she could still hear screams, gunfire, ordered shouts from the black suits. She could see the truck they were heading for. Not one of the ones parked in a row. Another, hidden a few feet away in a hollowed out container. From above, it would just look like a propane tank.

Screaming and gunshots got closer from behind. Simone turned around in time to see other refugees running away from the building, across the grass.

Black suits followed. Armed. Jogging after them, guns up.

Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.

“Over there!”

“Run,” Teek shouted.

Simone didn’t remember going from crouching to running. She just was. Her hair was behind her and the air rushing by was making her ears freeze. Whizzing sounds shot past her, exploding into the ground around her.

Katya grunted and then she wasn’t next to her anymore.

“Katya-”

“Keep moving!” Dillon said, pushing her from behind. He was blocking her view, moving so she couldn’t see anything more than Katya’s outstretched hand. “We’re-”

He didn’t scream or yell. It was more like an exhalation from being punched. Something wet and warm sprinkled over Simone’s face and neck. She didn’t need to wipe at it to know it was blood.

“Keep going,” Dillon said. He pushed her again, but it was weak. Teek and Lisbon were in front of her, she kept her eyes on them. The truck was another thirty yards or so, they could make the truck and maybe Dillon was still behind, still moving.

Another shot whizzed by her and took Teek in the leg. With a scream of frustration she went down. There was no hesitation. From the front pocket of her shirt she pulled the keys and thrust them into Lisbon’s hand.

“Get out of here,” she growled.

“Teek!” Simon said, kneeling next to her. “We can get you up, we can help you.”

“Not enough time. They’re right there. You two need to go.”

“No, Teek, I’m not leaving you-”

“Lis, get her out of here!”

Strong arms wrapped around her stomach and pulled her back. She knew it was Lisbon. She didn’t care. She thrashed and kicked, screamed and reached. Lisbon was so much bigger than her. They didn’t even stagger as they pulled Simone away, practically dragging her the rest of the way to the truck. They held her with one arm as they unlocked it, then unceremoniously shoved her in.

Simone immediately moved to the other door. She wasn’t going to leave all of them. She couldn’t leave all of them.

It was locked. Maybe even broken. The door handle clicked uselessly and she couldn’t find a way to unlock it anywhere on the door.

The engine roared to life and Lisbon punched the accelerator. Simone was thrown back into the window. Like she cared. All she cared about was the scene behind them. Teek surrounded. Katya and Dillon, not moving. All of it getting smaller and smaller, no matter how much she screamed or pounded on the window.

Behind it all, the factory had begun to burn.

She’s So High: Pacific City

Pacific City

Peggy showed Aster how to keep pressure on their neck as they walked back into Dinah’s.

“Does this place have a first aid kit?”

“Uhhh…the office, I think.”

Aster led them through the kitchen and to the back hall. At the end was a door Peggy had never been through before, and behind that was a flight of stairs Peggy didn’t even know existed. At the top was two doors, and Aster opened the one on the right.

“Dinah’s office?” Peggy asked, helping Aster to sit in one of the leather chairs in front of the desk.

Aster snorted. “There’s no Dinah. This place is owned by Frank Gonzalez. He’s hardly ever here, he owns, like, three other places in the city.”

For mostly sitting empty, the office was a cluttered mess. The desk was covered in papers and snack cake wrappers. The bookshelves on either side were a mess of binders with paper falling out and transaction books and a couple of family photos. Even the heavy safe, squatting in the corner, was covered in a heap of clothes.

“First aid kit?”

Aster pointed at a skinny closet. Inside was surprisingly neat. Everything lined up in perfect order on the shelves and no signs of junk food. Sitting on the top shelf was a metallic red box. Peggy reached for it and checked inside.

“Gauze and tape a-plenty,” she said to herself.

“What the fuck was all that?” Aster asked as Peggy sat down in the other leather chair.

Peggy shrugged, trying to make it casual, and kept her face neutral.

“Must have been…I don’t know…a mugging gone wrong?”

She had just been lifting up Aster’s purple hair to get to the wound when they pulled back, eyes wide and incredulous.

“A mugging? Are you seriously trying to tell me that bitch in the outdated jeans was just trying to mug me? For money?”

Peggy threw up her hands. “Well, what else could it have been?”

“A vampire!”

Her mouth fell open like she had been slapped. Peggy tried to cover it up, turning and coughing into her hand, but Aster had seen. Peggy shook her head and tried to sound innocent. She gently turned Aster’s head and lifted up their hair again. As she started to clean their neck Peggy did an excellent job of pretending the wound wasn’t two puncture marks.

“A vampire? Are you kidding? Please tell me you don’t actually believe in that kind of thing.”

“I didn’t. My whole life, I didn’t. Right up until that skank came up to me in the alley. Right up until her canine teeth grew into fangs. Right up until those fangs were in my fucking neck.”

“All right, keep your voice down,” Peggy said, glancing at the closed door. She slowly took the gauze away from Aster’s neck, and when she was sure it wasn’t going to start bleeding again, she put a fresh piece on and began taping. “Maybe…maybe she was just crazy…Maybe she just thought she was a vampire.”

Aster sat back in their seat and pointed dramatically at their newly patched neck. “Fangs! In my neck! Drinking my blood. If you hadn’t shown up when you did…”

As they trailed off, their eyes darting around the room like they were a scientist having an epiphany, Peggy had precisely one thought.

Fuck.

“You…you fought that thing,” Aster said.

“No. I-”

“You did. You fought that thing. And you did things…you jumped over her, you ran up a wall…it was unreal.”

“You weren’t seeing things right. Because of the blood loss.”

“The blood loss I got from the mugger who totally only wanted my money and didn’t want to drink my blood until I was dead?” Aster asked. “That blood loss?”

“I know how to fight, sort of,” Peggy said. She was floundering and she knew it. She had lost total control of this conversation, but she wasn’t going down without a fight. “I took some krav maga as self defense a few years ago.”

Aster looked at her with a flat, unimpressed face. “I don’t know much about krav maga, but I’m fairly certain they don’t teach you how to vertical leap ten feet in the air. Oh, my God. You’re gaslighting me!”

“What? No, I’m not!”

“Yes, you are! You’re trying to tell me I didn’t see what I saw, but I know what I saw because I saw it. Stop fucking around and tell me the truth. Motherfucker, I just got bit, I think I at least deserve the truth.”

Peggy glanced around the room, hoping she would spy some secret stash of liquor. She very much did not want to have this conversation without a drink. There was nothing she could find. Guess you didn’t need to keep liquor in your office when there was an entire bar underneath. She stood up and rubbed her hands together.

“Fine. That woman was a vampire. Vampires are a thing, and that was one of them.”

Aster leaned forward in their chair, their eyes lighting up. “I knew it. I feel like I always knew it, on some level. There’s some weird shit that goes on in this city. Wait…am I going to…to turn?” They clutched at their neck. “I need sun, Peg, I do not look good pale.”

“You’re not going to turn,” Peggy said, rubbing the back of her neck. “Making a vampire is more complicated than just a bite. It’s a whole thing.”

They leaned back with a sigh. “Well, thank the universe for that, anyway. So, what about you?”

“What about me?”

Aster narrowed their eyes. “Oh, no. The truth, Peggy. All of it. What are you, some kind of vampire-human hybrid? Like Blade?”

“No, no,” Peggy said. “Not vampire.”

They gestured for her to keep talking. Peggy shifted her weight between her legs, back and forth. She hadn’t actually said this part out loud in years.

“Mygranyasaod.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“My granny…was a god.”

Aster stared at her, open-mouthed and eyes wide, for so long Peggy began to believe they had somehow passed out in an upright position. Eventually, slowly, Aster put their hands in front of their mouth.

“Your grandmother…was a god.”

“Yes.”

“A god.”

“Right.”

“Like…God god? Like you’re Jesus’ cousin or something?”

“No, not that one. There’s a lot of gods.”

“And your grandmother was one of them.”

“I mean, is. She’s not dead. She’s a-”

“God, yeah, I got it,” Aster said, squinting their eyes shut and rubbing their temples. “I’m going to have to sit with this one a minute.”

“You wanted to know,” Peggy said. She leaned against Frank’s desk and started chewing her thumbnail. Three years and she’d managed to keep that part of her life to herself. Hadn’t told anyone. Had even started to believe it wasn’t true. It was just some made up story her mother had told her, and as long as she didn’t talk to her mother anymore – and that was certainly the plan right up until the day Peggy died – then it was easy. Only now it was out there, and it had once again fucked up her life. She didn’t want to find another karaoke bar.

Aster looked up at her, and broke out in a quiet grin.

“You’re a superhero.”

Peggy practically jumped. “What? No I’m not!”

“You have superpowers, I’m not seeing the problem. What is it, like, super speed?”

Peggy nodded her head back and forth. “A little. It’s mostly heightened agility and reflexes. And my senses are better than most. But I wouldn’t call anything super. And I’m definitely not a hero.”

“Oh, come one. If I could move like you and I knew there were those things out there, I’d be out there every night. Wait…seriously? You’re not?”

Peggy threw her hands out. “What am I supposed to do? Spend all my nights, patrolling Pacific City, stopping all kinds of crime and vampires while wearing a brightly colored leotard and a cape?”

“Okay, first all, you would look great in some colors, I can’t believe you wear black all the time and I’m so glad I can finally bring that up. Second of all…yes, are you crazy? How can you sleep at night knowing people are getting attacked and there’s something you can do about it?”

Peggy rubbed at her eyebrow and stood up. “Okay, I’m done with this conversation. Have a good night, Aster. If you start feeling lightheaded maybe go to the ER or something.”

“Wait, you can’t just walk away from this,” Aster called after her. Their words bounced down the stairs, following. “We can help people and you’re just going home? Don’t think you’re getting off this easily, I know where you drink!”

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The Adventures of… Dick Dangerly! The Newspaper Nerd

Previously on The Adventures of…Dick Dangerly!

My name is Dick Dangerly, I’m a Private Eye in the bloody, beating heart of Los Angeles San Francisco in the 1940s or maybe it’s still 1939 I’m really not sure. What I am sure about: the criminals are dangerous, the dames are leggy, and I am drunk all of the time.

The elevator doors open and I fucking leap out, holding up my gun and the badge I cut out of the back of a comic book and pasted onto a piece of cardboard.

“Nobody move! I’m Dick Dangerly! I’m a private eye, and I’ve got some questions!”

This is the fifteenth time I’ve jumped out of the elevator and screamed. My legs are tired. Mostly I’ve just found empty hallways. There was one floor where a couple of alpacas were having a birthday party, I’ll have to ask about that. But now I’ve finally found the sneaky bastards. They’re all staring at me from their desks. Good. Now that I’ve got their attention, it’s time to start asking the real questions.

“Where am I?” I shout, pointing my gun in random places to show I mean business.

“The San Francisco Chronicle!” someone shouts at me. I can’t tell who, they’re all kind of blurring together into one mass of people. It sounded like a dame, though, so I bet she’s leggy. I swing the gun around some more. That seems to be getting answers out of these shady, leggy bastards.

“Why am I here?”

“Shouldn’t you know that?” the same dame or possibly an entirely different dame or maybe one of the men ask.

“Look, I’m going to be honest with you. I’m going to lay it down, speak your language, lay it flat, lay it up? No, that’s a football thing. The ride up the elevator was long, and I kind of lost the thread.”

Everybody suddenly comes in to focus. Mostly it’s a bunch of men with a few dames scattered here and there. And they’re dressed like a bunch of nerds. Glasses. Pocket protectors. All the dames are still wearing pantyhose. I can’t believe it, but I’m starting to think this Big Pantyhose business goes all the way to the top. It’s going to take long nights, lots of coffee, and lots of tugging on threads to get to the bottom of this mystery. Or the top of this mystery? Wait, which direction should I be going in?

“If you’re a PI, you must be here about Mr. Pettiford.”

The dame scares the shit out of me because I forgot people were here. I scream and jump. My vertigo kicks in and I stumble around. Eventually I just give up and let myself fall, hoping I don’t hit anything important on the way down. Luckily, I am a master of my art, and only hit my temple on the side of a desk. I pop back up, to show how manly and un-concussed I am, and grip the desk as I talk.

“Is he treating you wrong, dame? Don’t worry, I’ll find him and make him pay the consequences. Bra-”

“No, he’s dead.”

I tuck the gun into the belt of my pants, having lost my holster in a freak crab leg accident, and triumphantly pull one of my back-up flasks from my ankle holster.

“All in a day’s work for Dick Dangerly,” I say, and pump my fist into the air while I chug my flask. I have no idea what I’m drinking.

“No, Mr. Dangerly, Mr. Pettiford was murdered, and I think his wife hired you to find his killer.”

This nerdlinger has stepped in front of me, and I spit all over his face. He wipes his face with a handkerchief he keeps in his pocket, the nerd, and then frowns at me.

“Is that…triple sec?”

“I’m, like, seventy percent sure that’s Grand Marnier, but enough about my detective tools. What’s this about a murder?”

Yes, it’s all coming back to me now. Mrs. Dollface Dame, the one who hid her face behind that thingy. Weren’t we on the same rowing team in college?

“Have no fear, nerds and dames,” I say. “I’m going to find the killer. In fact, I know for a fact the killer is in this room!”

Not getting the shocked gasp I want, I gasp instead to make them all feel foolish. The nerd in front of me crosses his arms. He smells suspiciously like orange.

“How could you possibly know that? You’ve been here for two minutes and all you’ve done is yell at us.”

“How could I know? I know all sorts of things, buster! I know cold nights and hard streets. I know how to shoot first, get questions later, and when I don’t like the answers I know how to brain someone with the butt of my pistol. But most of all, I know every red-blooded American hates their boss. I know I hated all of mine. Brained every one of them.”

The nerdlinger sneered. “How are you not in jail?”

“How are you not in jail?”

“I didn’t kill my boss!”

“Yes, you did!”

I stumble over to his desk – I can tell it’s his because of all the nerd shit on it like pencils and a typewriter and a bunch of paper and also he keeps trying to stop me by yelling things like ‘hey, that’s my desk!’ – and start opening all the drawers, dumping everything out. More papers! Such a nerd! But no murder weapon. No confession letter. This nerd is sneakier than I thought.

“Do you see? Are you happy now? I have to clean all of this up.”

“Only nerds clean. Nerds…and murderers. Oh, and something else they do! They…hide!”

I triumphantly kick his stupid nerd chair over. Without two legs under me I of course fall on my ass and begin puking, just, everywhere, but that’s the price to pay for finding the murderer. Everyone around me finally gasps. And at the wrong fucking thing. I try to wave as I stand up and lose my footing all over again.

“No, nerds and dames, I’m oof I’m fine, don’t worry about me.”

“He really did do it!” some dame shouts from behind me.

The nerd’s chair has fallen over, and taped to the bottom of it is a revolver. The nerd’s face turns red, and he runs at me. I put up my dukes, ready as ever for a fight to the death, but before he can reach me he hits the puddle of puke I urped up the last time I fell. His feet skid out from under him and he falls, slamming his head on the ground. I open up my flask and pour the last of the Grand Marnier on him.

“And don’t you forget it,” I say. “Crime should never try to stand up to Dick-”

I slip in the same pile of sick and hit my head. All in a day’s work for Los Francisco’s best detective.

Will Dick Dangerly remember how to get home? Will he realize that the phone number written on his arm in marker is Estelle’s? When will the next dame show up looking for someone to brain the guy doing her wrong? Tune in next time for more Adventures of…Dick Dangerly!

The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Mother’s Heart and Blackout Squares

The HZD Blanket

Mother’s Heart

There’s a lot of Nora villages, and a handful of important ones where Aloy can pick up quests, but their main village is Mother’s Heart so that’s the one I chose to represent with a square. Also so I could make this adorable pattern.

It’s a little wonky, mostly because I’m not great at bordering a square I otherwise did in rows, but it should pull out okay in the blanket. If it doesn’t this one was super easy, only taking me about an hour, so I can make another.

I used the Gull as the base, previously used in the Nora Protector for the machine parts, mostly to get the square to stand out a little in the sea of Almond and Merlot Heather. I was initially going to go with the obvious choice and make the hearts red, but my husband pointed out the Nora barely use red at all, and that the blue they put in every outfit is obviously special to them, so I went with the Solstice Heather.

This is another pattern that doesn’t utilize any special stitches. It’s all made by mixing in stitches of different heights and a few chains here and there. And credit where it’s due – there were no mistakes in this pattern and it was only a little bit confusing. Good job, Big Book of Granny Squares! You did one right!

The Blackout Squares

My first thought was to make the blackout squares with two separate blacks – I already had a bunch of the Coal black from knitpicks, and they have another shade called Penguin. Of course, when I went to order some of the Penguin they were sold out. The restock date wasn’t for another three weeks. I mean, I wasn’t even going to start any of the blackout squares for at least three weeks. But I am oddly impatient in very specific areas of my life, and apparently buying yarn was one of them. I went with the Onyx Heather instead, one of their darkest grays.

With each square I just eyeballed it, picked which colors I thought were lighter and which were darker, and then just replaced those with the Onyx Heather and the Coal, respectively. I made four each for the Nora Survivor and Protector and two for the Silent Hunter. And I made them directly after I made the main squares because otherwise if I tried to come back to a pattern I knew I’d essentially have to relearn the whole thing.

My Crochet Supplies

Since this is a shorter article, I wanted to highlight the supplies I use for crocheting. One of the things I like about crocheting is how it can be relatively cheap. Of the things I’m going to go through, all you really need are the hooks. After that it’s just a matter of how much you want to spend on yarn. Even these other supplies weren’t expensive, and they make crocheting a little bit easier.

The Hooks

These are the hooks that came in the Crochet for Beginners set I bought off Amazon when I started, and honestly I don’t see myself replacing them unless I lose them. They’re comfortable, they’re colorful, and they’re hooks. Hooks. How is spending more going to get me better functioning hooks? They also came in this cute case which is a little flimsy but again, why spend more for something a little better? I’ll keep using this thing until the zipper inevitably rips, and then I’ll crochet my own replacement.

The Yarn Bowl

My husband, Peter, got this for me for Christmas a couple of years ago. Before using the bowl I would just sit the yarn between me and the side of the couch and let it dance around while I pulled on it. The bowl is nice for two reasons:

  1. I can use the bowl to hold the other end of the yarn so I can pull it taut, which makes more complicated stitches like trebles easier.
  2. I can keep the yarn in front of me at all times, so certain death-wishy cats can’t sneak up alongside me and start feasting on yarn snacks until I notice.
She would absolutely eat this sweater if she could unravel it.

Of course, the yarn bowl doesn’t actually work unless you ball your yarn, which I never did because it was a pain in the ass. It took hours to ball one skein of yarn and they usually got to the point where they were too big for my hand and then they’d go flying and I’d lose all my progress and screech about it until my husband would look at me like I’d just eaten a bunch of fish raw. Which is why my very favorite purchase is…

The Yarn Baller

Actually, it doesn’t make yarn balls. It makes yarn cakes, which I like better because there’s a lot less rolling around. This thing is twenty dollars. Besides yarn, obviously, the most expensive thing I’ve spent on this hobby. And I love it. It makes a yarn cake in about three minutes. It’s super simple to use. It only cost twenty dollars. I didn’t buy the swift because that was sixty bucks and I don’t think I buy the right kind of skeins to make that work anyway, but it doesn’t matter. Just let the yarn sit beneath it and watch it dance as you spin the wheel and just make sure you don’t have any cats trying to fuck with it.

Once you have the yarn cakes, you can put them in your yarn bowl, and use the yarn hooks to just have a yarn old time.

Update from the future: After eight months of consistent use, the thing broke. Apparently, this is not uncommon. I mean, it is twenty dollars. The gears underneath are plastic and slip or break. If you’re getting into crochet and you’re uncertain you’ll stick with it, I think this is still the one to buy. It’s like with any tool: buy the cheap version first, and if you break it you know you use it enough to go for the expensive version. If you don’t, well, you’ve saved some money.

Coming Up Next

I’ve finally finished all of the Nora squares needed, so it’s on to a new tribe! I will be doing the squares for the Oseram next, a little because it sort of makes sense, plot wise, and a lot because while I needed fourteen to eighteen of each Nora square, I need less than ten for the Oseram. It’s like a working vacation!

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Control

The first thing she felt upon waking, besides the dull throbbing behind her eyes, was surprise. Fennix didn’t think she would be waking up again. At least, not in any way that mattered. What did those that were already caught by Emmaline’s web think and feel? She had assumed she would know by now, but while she had no real idea, she doubted they were tired and achy on a stiff mattress.

The cell she was in was made of stone, with a single door made of wood and iron. Light came in from the only window, nothing more than an arrow slit above her. The stiff mattress, stuffed poorly with hay, was on the stone floor and barely warmer for it. She had not been given a blanket, and she guessed part of the reason for the all-over aches was shivering in her sleep. Wherever she was, it certainly wasn’t Wyerilte.

Using careful movements, every one hurting anyway, Fennix slowly stood up from the mattress. She had to stretch to peer out the bottom of the arrow slit, but saw enough. Solisilte spread out far below her, stony and gray in the morning sun. Only one of the towers in the castle could provide such a view. From where they were in Wyerilte to the heart of Solisilte should have taken a week, at least. Had she been asleep for so long? Or had the queen learned something new?

Unbidden and unwelcome, the memory of Imrie dying came to her. Still somehow beautiful, her curls around her face, her clothes hanging in the air around her. The look on her face, shock and fear, her eyes so wide they were near perfect circles, as she disappeared over the edge of the canyon. Fennix didn’t want to think of that, didn’t want to see it. She wanted to see Imrie in any other way, but that was the vision that stayed. It overwhelmed her, let her think of nothing else. It clutched at her heart and her stomach and squeezed. It took the strength she had from her legs, and she buckled back down to the mattress. Great braying sobs wracked her whole body, and echoed back at her from the walls, as though mocking her. Grief, greedy and strong, swallowed her whole. She had no idea how long it held her, only that as its icy fingers finally began peeling away from her spine the sunny spot on the floor had moved from one side of the cell to the other.

Feeling cold now both inside and out, she heard Imrie’s voice. Not her real voice, just a faded memory of it. If there’s a way to get out, you have to find it. Fennix stood, the aches worse and her legs like jelly. Pressing her hand against the stone wall for support, she made her way around the room to the wooden door. Iron bars ran the length of it, and framed a small hole cut into it, just big enough for her to press her face to it and look out. It was dark on the other side, lit only by a couple of torches affixed to the walls. When her eyes adjusted she could see it was just a stone hallway, ending in a wall in one direction, and disappearing down stone steps in the other. When she shook the door, hoping for some corner to give or budge, she got nothing. The door was heavy, and locked securely into the stone surrounding it. Out of reflex she reached for her flowers and leaves. Nothing glowed beneath her skin. She had put it all in the hands of Roa. Surely, then, all of it was lost.

Footsteps began from far down the stairs. Climbing. The echo off the walls made it hard to tell what kind of feet they might belong to at first. Eventually, though, just as she could see new torchlight coming up the bend, they began to sound clearer. Heavy boots, belonging to a man. Neiro. Back in the cradling arms of the queen’s control. Fennix took a few steps back into the cell and squared her arms up the way Imrie had taught her. She wouldn’t be able to fight him. But she would die trying. Yes, that was an excellent way to go. The two of them tumbling head and heel down a long flight of stone-

A face appeared in the small window in the door, and Fennix faltered.

“Fennix,” Rokco said, smiling.

Her arms fell to her sides in desperate relief. “Rokco?”

He stepped back, and Fennix heard a key working a lock. He had escaped, somehow, and had come to rescue her. They could go back to Wyerilte, they could run and start again. No matter how long it took, she would go to all ends to get what she needed for the spell, and they would do it again.

The door swung open and Fennix, ready to run for him, to embrace him, instead froze. Rokco stood at the door, dressed in a Queen’s guard uniform. His hair had been shaved off, and that loose, ragdoll way he had of standing was gone. He stood straight, his back stiff and rigid. The smile he gave her was not one of his open grins. It was a tight, small thing. His eyes seemed bland. Dull. He made no move towards her, and for a second the two of them only stood on either side of the open door, looking at one another.

Grief welled up inside her and Fennix used every ounce of strength she had to push it down.

“Oh,” was all she managed to say, and even that came out with a hitch in her throat.

If Rokco noticed, he didn’t say anything about it. Only continued to look at her with that ugly smile.

“Her highness will be pleased you’re awake,” he said. Talking to her like she was a stranger. “You will come with me. I will bring you to her.”

Fennix wished so hard for her flowers she thought her bones might snap. At the same time, she wondered if she could have even done anything with them. This was far beyond the control that traveled down the magic lines. This was a direct connection, just as it had been with Neiro. Breaking it with him had taken all of her strength. If she were even to try it now she was liable to split herself apart. Still, she took only a small step towards him, holding her hands in fists at her sides.

“Do you remember me?” she asked. Her voice reminded her of being a child, scared and alone.

“Of course I do.”

There was no change in him, not his demeanor or his voice or that dull, awful smile. Just a wooden toy puppet with invisible strings.

“We should go now. I’m to bring you to her.”

She took small step back from him. A breeze pushed in through the arrow slit behind her, and she fought the urge to shiver.

“What if I don’t? What if I want to stay here?”

“The Queen wants you to come to her.”

“Will you hurt me, Rokco? If I don’t come?”

Rokco opened his mouth, but closed it again without saying anything. He shook his head, just ever so slightly, as though a marshbite had buzzed by his ear. It all lasted barely more than a couple of seconds. If she had looked away she would have missed it. In short time he was back to how he had been, looking at her with a too-easy face.

“The Queen doesn’t like it when people get hurt. But you’re supposed to come with me to see her.”

He hadn’t said it, but it was there all the same. Emmaline would make him hurt her, if he had to. Rokco, who wouldn’t hurt anyone who hadn’t already hit him, would hurt her. Briefly her mind made an attempt to explore how, but she wouldn’t let it. She wished she had a shawl or a cloak to draw around her bare arms. Instead she drew herself up and crossed her arms in front of her.

“Let’s go, then,” she said, trying very much to not sound like a scared child and believing she had succeeded.

Main Street, Seaview

A House by the Ocean

It had felt very important to be properly dressed before leaving the house this morning. Proper decorum had been a vital part of keeping her sane these past few months. Loretta had thought it was odd that the only proper dress Ramona had was tucked away in the back of the closet. Odder still that she not only dressed herself in a pair of trousers she called ‘jeans,’ and a thin blouse, but that she also let her children wear the same things! She held her tongue for politeness’ sake, not wanting to abuse her host, but hoped that wearing the gown would show the children what proper young ladies should be wearing.

It was only as they walked down Main Street from the Seaview Historical Society to find this witch that she realized her mistake.

“Ramona, you could have mentioned this morning that nobody wore dresses like this anymore,” Loretta said as they stood waiting for a little box across the street to tell them it was okay to walk again.

“Would you have believed me?” Ramona asked.

“Well, no, probably not. But I might have! You could have tried!”

The little box across the street changed from an orange hand to a white figure walking, and Winnie pulled on Loretta’s arm, hustling her across the street.

“I didn’t think you’d even want to dress like us,” Angie said from behind her.

Her brother snorted. “Yeah, I thought everyone from way back then was all stuffy and proper all the time. Except cowboys. Hey, did you know any cowboys?”

“She lived in Maine, dumbass, why would she know any cowboys?”

“Don’t call your brother a dumbass.”

They were walking mostly in a line. Ramona in front, Winnie pulling Loretta along, and the two older children behind her. People streamed around them, looking and then looking again at her dress and working so hard on not tripping over the skirts that they’d then trip over something else, like a bench. They were almost all wearing jeans. Some of these jeans stopped above the knees! The shoes people wore were very odd, many of them only wearing brightly colored sandals. And the women with their blouses! If you could call them blouses. Loose things that showed off the arms, the shoulders, even the tops of their breasts! Loretta watched as one woman walked by with the tiniest blouse and shortest jeans she had seen yet.

“You can see her butt,” Loretta said to herself.

“Oh, man,” Angie said with a giggle. “You are going to freak out when you see bathing suits.”

Loretta tried to straighten up and got her arm pulled on by Winnie again.

“Well, I don’t want anyone to see…that…on me…but I think I should be dressing the way modern people dress. Everyone does look far more comfortable in those clothes. It’s so hot…I don’t remember summers being so hot here.”

“Oh, that’s from global-”

Noah grunted, and when Loretta turned she found him holding his arm and glaring at Angie. She looked between the two.

“Did you hit your brother?”

“She did hit me! Mom!”

“Angie, don’t hit your brother. Wait, why are you hitting your brother?”

Angie rolled her eyes. “Because I don’t think we need to be having that conversation right now. Especially if she can go home and not have to worry about it?”

Loretta turned to Ramona. They had come to another street and were waiting for permission to cross from another little box. Ramona had obviously only been half listening to their conversation, and Loretta could see her playing everything in her head. Eventually she made an ‘o’ shape with her mouth and nodded.

“Noah’s right. We don’t need to be talking about that.”

“You’re keeping things from me?” Loretta asked, frowning.

“Well, yes. But Angie – besides hitting – is right. If we can get you back home, there’s no need to have to explain…that. It’s…well, it’s scary. And I’m sure you’re plenty scared enough.”

The little box showed the little white man and they all started walking again. Loretta was quiet as they walked the next block, reflecting on what Ramona had said. ‘Plenty scared.’ She should be ‘plenty scared,’ shouldn’t she?

The thing of it was, she wasn’t. Nervous, yes, from all the people and the cars on the road. Seaview had certainly become a noisier place in one hundred and sixty years. But she wasn’t scared. The cars were a little hard to get used to. She barely recognized any of the words on the signs or the shops – Yoga? Pilates? Ye Olde? – and the little bits of magic she had been surrounded by in their room were apparently everywhere. But it wasn’t scary. If anything…it was a little thrilling. With a shock, she realized that besides the discussion with Mrs. Reed at the Historical Society, she hadn’t thought of her husband or her grief once.

She looked ahead, to Ramona. She was still leading their little group, looking to every shop sign to find the right one. She was a strong woman, so strong Loretta had completely forgotten her own husband had died recently, too. And now, on top of the children and the house, she had Loretta to deal with. Loretta, wallowing in her own pity and wading around in this huge dress. What were they going to do today, if they didn’t have to wander the streets of Seaview looking for a historian and a witch?

Loretta wasn’t sure if she wanted to go back to 1868 anymore. But maybe it was the proper thing for her to do.

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The Horizon Zero Dawn Blanket: Nora Silent Hunter

The HZD Blanket

Y’all, I cannot express to you how happy I am with the way this square came out. Someone get the Happy Clichés off the high shelf and just let them unspool around the floor so I can swim around in them and throw them over my head and, just, like, make it rain happy clichés.

The Outfit

As I mentioned last time, the Silent Hunter is one of my favorite outfits. First for the aesthetic. That deep purple of the undershirt alone makes it stand out from the Survivor and the Protector before you even get to the ghillie suit-esque green mesh. Despite teenage me trying to be Not Like the Other Girls, once I got over that it turns out I love pinks and purples.

While I wanted to base all my squares off the Heavy versions of the outfits, I prefer the Light version without the green. As I have mentioned a lot, I care deeply about what my video game characters are wearing. Here’s what I like to do: wear the Light version of this or a few other outfits because in them Aloy looks fabulous, and once I get into a fight I switch over to something that offers actual protection. Or I forget to do that and wonder why I’m powering through so much healing until the fight is over. Either way, I have a lot of fun.

The other reason I wear this outfit a lot is for the perks. I am not the kind of player that likes charging in for close combat. I did every bandit camp in this game the same way: I moved from one patch of sneaky grass to another picking off bandits one by one until everybody was dead. The more damage I could do to a machine before it noticed me, the better. The Heavy and the Master versions of this outfit add in another sneaky bonus: running past machines you don’t particularly feel like fighting at that exact moment. There’s a skill you can get that reduces the sound you make when you run, and if you pair that skill with the Silent Hunter you can essentially slap a Watcher on its ass as you whizz by and they’ll be none the wiser.

The Master Silent Hunter was added with the Frozen Wilds DLC, and mostly exists as an excuse to let Aloy wear Sona’s outfit, which I am immensely grateful for.

The Square

So, I’m still using The Big Book of Granny Squares, and this is a modified version of the Lattice square. The instructions on this square didn’t have any errors that I noticed, but I’m not entirely sure because there’s a strike 2 against this book: it’s confusing as shit. There were quite a few complaints in the Amazon reviews about how everything is written out and there are no diagrams. Crochet diagrams look like this:

Now, I have not learned how to read these, so this looks like someone mixed up some spaghetti and Spaghetti-o’s and just splatted them all onto a page. But if you do understand how to read these, it can make instructions incredibly easy and clear cut. I plan on learning how to read these for my next project, because I’ll be pulling patterns off the internet instead of relying on one (poorly edited) book. The only reason I’m not learning now is because the book doesn’t have any!

It’s all written instructions. Poorly written instructions. Here’s how the lattice stitches are explained:

what.

This is how my first attempt came out:

My issue was entirely with the phrase ‘joined at top’ in the FPtr2tog special stitch. What does that mean? Well, as a beginner, to a beginner it means nothing. Of course it’s going to be joined at the top, that’s where the stitch is anchored. I figured out on my own that what they meant was to start the first Front-post treble stitch and only pull through the loops twice. Then, with two loops still on the hook, start the second Front-Post treble stitch, and the last time you pull the yarn through the loops, you pull the yarn through everything, closing both stitches and leaving one loop on the hook. I barely know what I’m doing and I feel like I just offered a better explanation for what I was supposed to do than they did, because all they said was ‘joined at top.’

The other thing I did to make the trebles look better was switch to a smaller hook. I typically crochet with the 5 gauge, and you can see how loose and untidy the trebles looked when I tried to use that to make the lattice. So I experimented with using the 3.5 and immediately loved how much tighter the lattice looked..

For the purple base I used Wool of the Andes Blackberry. All of the other colors have already previously been used: Almond, Solstice Heather, Forest Heather, and Merlot Heather.

The Thing About the Nora

I switched the order around for this article to crochet first, game second, so I can put up the Spoiler Chocobo. I’m going to be talking about early-game plot elements, so if you’re still thinking you want to play the game you can sign off here and go play the fucking game already.

Kweh.

Despite not actually liking the Nora people as a whole, I really like what the game designers did with them. Aloy has been outcast from the tribe since she was born because she just kind of appeared one day outside All Mother Mountain and no one knows who her mother is and because the Nora are a matriarchal society, that’s kind of a Big Deal. She spends her entire childhood and youth training to be a part of The Proving, which for Nora teenagers is kind of like the SATs if there were less filling in bubbles, more shooting grazers, and instead of getting into college they get to be a Nora Brave. Even outcasts the right age get to be a part of the Proving, and as long as they finish they can become a Brave and thus no longer outcast.

Aloy doesn’t give a shit about any of that. Aloy doesn’t want to just finish the proving, she wants to win it, because the winner gets a boon from the High Matriarchs. And Aloy knows exactly what she’s asking for: the truth about who her mother is and how they could possibly justify jettisoning a baby into the woods.

Playing as Aloy, you spend the first few hours dicking around the Sacred Lands, doing side quests, meeting Nora, learning how the game works, and always the Proving is there, looming as the next big Main Quest step. As you finally go into Mother’s Heart, the game shows you where this is all going: Aloy just wants answers, but she’ll have to learn to be a functioning member of the Nora, as well. She meets a friend in Vala, a frenemy in Bast, and clear opposition in Resh. The story is setting itself up to be about Aloy finding a place among the Nora.

And then at the end of the Proving a bunch of Cultists show up and kill everybody. The Proving Proctor takes an arrow to the chest, a bunch of the Nora teens get set on fire, and Vala and Bast get mowed down by the arrow mini-guns that of course the Cultists have. Even Rost gets exploded off a cliff and Aloy nearly gets her throat slit.

The message is clear, even before Aloy gets her Seeker’s mark: Aloy isn’t finding her place among the Nora, she’s finding her place in the world.

I loved this.

I didn’t see it coming, so it was an honest shock when the Cultists showed up. Also, if the story had been about Aloy finding her place among just the Nora, it would almost have been like she was absolving her abusers. If she were to be comfortable living among the Nora, she’d have to find a way to be okay with all of the outcasts, right? Either that or work to change it, and how do you change the hearts and minds of people who were not only okay with outcasting a baby but continued to treat her like flaming garbage her entire life? Yeah, gross.

Happily, none of that happens. Aloy realizes she has to go out into the wider world to figure out what’s going on. She gets to meet the other tribes in the immediate area, and gets to be super salty anytime she’s called a Nora. This isn’t a story about Aloy absolving her abusers, it’s about Aloy growing past her abusers and leaving them to their own self-destructive ways. When she comes back later to help them out it’s not because they’re Nora, just because they’re people in danger. It’s why she and Varl are never going to work: she doesn’t want to be a Nora, and he doesn’t know how to be anything else.

That’s the Nora Silent Hunter Square. Tune in next time when we’ll discuss the square for Mother’s Heart and the blackout squares I’ve been mentioning.

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