Yeah, but also with a dash of Charles Goodyear II, as in killing his father to take control of his industry.
"What Madness Is This?" Volume II: Prophecies in the Dark
- Thread starter Napoleon53
- Start date
There won't be too many Infees passing as Betters. Most would be Canadians who survived the war and desired to sell out and quisling themselves instead of fleeing or fighting. One of my main problems with my favorite franchise (you got it, Star Wars) is characters never staying dead even if they are cool. I stopped liking Marvel movies over the whole "they'll always pull a solution out of their hat". Sometimes people need to stay dead, sometimes the bad guys win. Having too many people pass as Betters cheapens Oswald's story, I feel.
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I agree with that.
Though I do get a kick out of the fact that the RU has basically two back-to-back leaders back to back who are of so-called inferior descent.
I'm also curious about what life is like for the vast majority of people who don't escape that predicament.
Definitely intended on my part lol. "Those who scream the loudest..."
Quick, depressing, and painful. Since the Cuban Insurrection, most Inferiors went from living as servile peasants to subhuman morlocks fit for death to the Betters. In Canada after the war most of them probably fled to the frozen north, to live like tribals.
And Steele.
Yeah, but that would hardly be unique ITTL; there's a lot of that.
To be fair, that's just being true to the source material.
Characters not staying dead is practically to be expected in a comic book universe where advanced alien tech walks hand-in-hand with literal magic.
Fair point.
Counterpoint: it could underscore how pointless the system actually is, sort-of a "you can't even tell by looking, so long as they have the right papers" kind of thing.
It might even be ironic that the most racistly "pure" nation on the planet is actually 40-50% "Inferior", it's just that they got better at forgery and lied enough that their kids don't even know it.
Do they harbor hopes of one day being able to go south again, after say a nuclear war? Anything like this?
Oh, I agree. Comic books are light hearted fun, as are the movies. Just not quite my cup of tea anymore. After you get things like the Thanos snap, all other movies in the series seem like small potatoes. lol "Jumping the Shark" in a way. I still like GotG, but that's more of a space movie, and I am a perennial Batman fan (though mostly the Animated Series, Adam West, and the Nolan films, and also Joker) but I digress from my unrelated rant.
And it may surprise you to learn that I had envisioned an ending for this TL where everyone is DNA tested and the results shatter NUSA society, but I don't really care much for where that storyline would have gone after.
That song sounds like a cross between Old Ones dialect, French, and a race of Warhammer Elves. I love it. lmao
I doubt many people here will understand my videogames references, but to me I'd say the song's beginning with the somewhat off sounding voices and the women wailing sounds like something one would hear in a Nier videogame. The later part sounds rather out of a Dragon Age. I don't know where the last part with the chorus could fit.
Although I may be squinting a bit with this.
I'm imagining that would go something like this.
NUSA, Modern Day, on alt-YouTube - McKnight DNA Test results reaction. The video was never uploaded.
"Hi guys! It's Andrew McKnight, today I just decided to get me and my family for a DNA Test. We're so excited! We have a rich Scottish lineage that supposedly goes all the way back to the 10th century and we just want to see what other things we can learn. So guys any predictions?" Andrew turns to his family.
"Well, we may have some English on my mother's side." George, the father says confidently.
"My grandmother told me there was German." Alice, the mother says.
"That's all exciting, so we spit in this tube and our results will be submitted in a few days."
Tubes are spat in and submitted. 2 weeks later.
"Alright, we just got our results back. I'm so excited!" Goes to open results, stop halfway. "So excited guys!" Continues.
"Okay, we here at the Office of Racial and Religious Affairs DNA Testing Office regretfully have to inform you that your DNA test results have come back and revealed that you are...eh..wait...87% Irish and 13% Norwegian?" Andrew stammers the last half of the statement.
The family looks in horror as their world comes crashing down.
"We're Irish? That's some kind of gosh darn mistake I tell you what!" George the father spoke in anger.
"Wait!" Andrew continues. "Due to the unfortunate DNA results, an ORRA team will be on their way soon to take you and deprive you of your false betterhood and send you and your family to our happy summer camps in Ohio where we hope you'll be of some use to the state before you are sent to the void." Andrew finished, tears rushing down his face.
"Was it all a lie?" He asks as a hard knock is heard from the door.
The problem is that with the advancement of computers and telecommunications the papers (SIN) and records can be checked by any law enforcement or Clan agency. Now it may be possible to bribe or blackmail someone to alter records but that will take more resources than the average person has. There are more chances for someone to assume another persons identity during some disaster or military action overseas. Maybe they could try to create an identity of a citizen outside the NUSA but it will be difficult.
If you're familiar with the phrase "money whitens", in this universe, "money betters".
The other main flaw I can see in NUSA/RU's security is immigration. If a German and English speaking Lithuanian immigrates to the RU, then in the pre-DNA testing era, who's to say that they're not a "Better"?
I figure that happens a lot post Great War and Second Great War.
You know even if Vince McMahon is a non-starter in this universe, there's no reason why a Better doppelganger can't take his place.
I suppose that depends 🤔 on the one hand Norway could spin them as infees to justify their moves to form a Kalmar Union (the stereotypical path); on the other they could be brought into the fascist tent given the imminent threat of Illuminism on the border (my personal preference).
Despite a feared secret police the Norwegians have been refreshingly diplomatic in their power moves, using soft power and diplomacy to quietly expand their influence, and I'm still enamored with the idea that the Swedes could ally with them hoping to use the fascists as tools against the loomies only for them to turn the tables and achieve their Manifest Destiny in a single stroke. Imagine a Kalmar Union that encompassed all of Scandinavia and the Baltic states! Then it's just a matter of absorbing Denmark and they'll have recaptured their ancient Pinnacle glory *without* having to fight a genocidal total war a la the BU in Ireland.
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Well they are all majority Protestant countries. There has been a Finnish American community since the 1640's, when Finnish settlers were part of New Sweden, and large amounts of Finnish migration came to the US historically in the 1870's-1930's, and they make up the largest ancestry group in Michigan's Western Countries, being something like 16% of the Upper Peninsula's population. Also, the Charterer of the Articles of Confederation and one of the founding fathers, John Morton, was of Finnish descent from New Sweden. With both Estonia and Latvia being majority Protestant countries were that religion is likely to be persecuted by the Orthodox Russian's and then by the heavily Anti Religion Illuminists if they took control of the area, Estonian's and Latvian's would likely be useful sources of Protestant migration for the RU, much like Rheinbund Protestant's were. Living under a Catholic government but being a Protestant not of a inferior ethnicity has been shown to not make you an inferior, and actually make you a useful resource for the RU when it comes to recruiting immigrants. Lithuanians, on the other hand, being mostly Catholic, are most likely classified as inferior. At best Lithuanian's would get the French treatment and be "Better if Protestant", which would be a small portion of Lithuanian's and mean migrating to the RU requires abandoning your religion and likely still facing discrimination, and THAT would only happen if the RU had sensible idea's about the interrelation of the Baltic State's peoples, which, considering the fact they consider the Scottish Betters but have a genocidal hatred towards the Irish, and don't see any issue with that despite how heavily related the Scots and Irish are and have been since the fifth century when Irish Gaelic speakers first invaded what is now Scotland and settled in the region, I heavily doubt. I think it's far more likely they would come up with some pseudoscientific "historical" explanation for why Lithuanians are Infee's but Latvian's and Estonians are betters, like saying the Lithuanian's were mongrelized by the "Slavic filth of Poland and Ukraine" during the period of the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth well the Latvian's are the descendants of the last remnants of the "Original Baltic Pinnacle men", or something (Estonian's likely wouldn't be included with the Latvian's and Lithuanian's here since they are actually a Finnic people, although I could see the RU misclassifying them and lumping them together anyway since they already have so many pseudoscientific racial theories).
I mean, I think its pretty easy for Norway considering Latvia, Estonia, and Finland are all Protestant countries. They would likely justify expansionism towards Finland by using Republican rhetoric about "liberating them from the foreign tyranny of the German Monarchy in Finland" and towards Estonia and Latvia by talking about protecting them from the Loomies and defending the Better race against the "Slavic mongrel hordes". It's not that hard, and there is no real reason to view them as inferior. I DO think they would likely view groups like the Sami as inferior's, however.
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THE RISING TIDE: A TANGLED WEB
THE RISING TIDE:
A TANGLED WEB
The African sun beat down on Big Bill Jennings. It reminded him of the rays depicted on the flag of Jacksonland, to the south. Standing at the cusp of this turning point in history, he thought of all that had led him to this. From his earliest days saying prayers to The Worm, to creating the Congo Dam Authority and Corporation, to meeting Grandmaster Armitage for the first time, it was a victory that tasted as sweet as sugar. He breathed in a damp, wet gulp of ocean air. Soon the Pyramids of Giza, the Panama Canal, and the Great Wall of China would have nothing on the Congo Dam. It would be a lasting monument that would forever change the earth. But it was not mere fame and sunshine in which Big Bill Jennings wished to bathe. He longed for a new era of world history. He longed for The Worm, the Cosmic Destroyer, the Crowned and Conquering King, to rise up and bring about the Age of Aquarius, when the age of Man would end, when all religions would crumble, when governments would fall, and there would be only chaos, only a darkness moving across the waters. The Death of Creation. The Death of God himself, if he wasn't already. As Big Bill Jennings stood, arms folded behind his back, on the top of the Congo Dam, he smiled. What if, through enough magick and occult rituals, he could become the physical form of The Worm? Armitage had bandied the idea about, that it was possible for one to submerge oneself so deep into the Mysteries of The Worm that it would be possible to become an avatar.
These fools and simpletons in Kappsburg and New York honestly believed they were creating a brighter future for Mittelafrika. The absolute nonsense of that idea made him chuckle. He would wipe out this nascent, disgusting little country. He would destroy it and reforge it in his own image, in The Worm's image (or their combined image?). The leaders of the Reich were not the brightest torches in the cavern by any stretch of the imagination, but the sheer gullible delight in which George Carver participated in the largest human sacrifice of all time--one in which the majority of its victims would be his fellow blacks--was hilarious in its blind egotistical stupidity. Carver, however nice, never forgot a slight. When the Mittelafrikan government nationalized and seized Pentagon Oil facilities in the Reich in the 1920s after the death of Pentagon's CEO, they essentially wrote their own death sentence. George Carver was one of the largest shareholders in Pentagon, and those seizures genuinely upset him. It was not hard to fan the flames that burned within the Sweet Victory CEO's heart and get him to fall under his spell.
While they had written back and forth several times, Jennings' first meeting with Carver had been a rather enjoyable tour of the flagship Sweet Victory confectionery plant in New York City in 1935, when the Dam was still a dream and Jennings was still an officer in ORRA's AAU. There he laid out to Carver another of his many, many pitches: a plan for an Africa dominated by Sweet Victory and George Carver, the Modern Moses. Jennings played the part of a well-meaning enlightened Southron, a man of progress bent on elevating the status of the negro race and ending backward, unchristian Carolinian brutality forever. Not only would George Carver provide a new homeland for the negro people, the Congo Dam would generate so much wealth, power, and industry, that not a single person willing to work and follow the rules would go hungry. Not a single black child would be forgotten, held back, or discriminated against, as Carver had been before his move to New York so long ago. American Fundamentalism would become the national religion of this new Union of Africa, and Carver would become the Black Custer, even the Black Lincoln. The black people of New Cackalack would flee the institutional racism of Carolinian rule and establish a glorious republic. Their inspiring stories of success would motivate Carolinian blacks in North America, and perhaps even other black Yankees, to emigrate to this new homeland, equal but apart. Africa for the Africans.
But not just any African. Better Africans, not the Godless heathen pygmyoids of the Interior. The Muslims, the witchdoctors, the stubborn... all of them would fall before the sword of progress. Their very existence disgusted Carver. The blacks of the Interior, the thousands of tribes large and small that rejected the Words of the Prophet and mixed with Arabs and other iniquitous Inferior bloodlines were too far gone for redemption or second-chances. Their ancestors had sold Carver's ancestors. Now, hundreds of years later, justice was coming. At the same time, Carver would end racism in the continent, providing a safe, secure, and peaceful home for blacks united not in tribes, but as one God-fearing Christian nation of Chosen Believers. It was delightful to dissect the minds of rabid racists. Jennings had moved beyond racism, beyond skin color. That's not to say he didn't hate the Negro race, for he very much did. It was was just that Big Bill Jennings hated everyone.
This mad world disgusted him, repulsed him with its gibbering sectarianism. Even the supposedly free-thinking Illuminists imposed boundaries on what was and was not permissible, going after Worm Cultists even as much as the American slime did. The only man who ever made sense before Armitage became the Black Prophet was Meinrad Beutel, the author of The Anarchist Way. As pathetic as that man still was, he laid the groundwork for Armitage's "do as thou wilt" belief system and morale code. The Christians, be they Fundamentalists, Protestant, or Catholic, disgusted him equally, often failing to conform to the strict codes of their own faiths, believers of convenience. It was not convenient to be an Acolyte of The Worm. It was not convenient to know you would be instantly torn to shreds the moment you were discovered. The Worm was the true path, the true path to power, carnal and infinite, and Jennings was in it for the long haul.
In his office at the factory, Carver had taken Jennings on a tour of his delightful collection of West African and slave-trade relics. Having been a member of the Union's ORRA Artifacts and Antiquities Unit, Jennings showed genuine knowledge and interest in Carver's personal museum, further cementing their false friendship. In 1936, they began preparing the way for the Congo Dam project. According to his analysis, the Dam would bring about a controlled deliberate flood that would annihilate much of the Basin, and the tribes therein. It wouldn't be total barbarism, of course. Leaflets would be airdropped, warning the villages of the impending tide, but if they couldn't read English or German, it wouldn't be anyone's fault but their own, and Jehovah would sort them out. Survivors would surge north, overwhelming the Europan colonies there. "To Hell with the Europans," Jennings and Carver agreed. And as the water taketh away, it would also giveth, providing a massive climate change and jolt of life to Central Africa, a new breadbasket for humanity. A New Eden, the sands of the Sahara would give way to thriving, lush sub-tropical environments fit for Carver's new empire.
To build this new empire, Carver would have to trust Jennings with his time and money. Jennings was the engineer, Carver was but a businessman. Carver happily agreed. Thus the fate of the Reich was sealed, long before the meeting in Kappsburg formalized the entire affair. Until that fateful meeting, Jennings used slush funds to supply the Congo King, Opulo Odika, with rifles and armaments. It was with from these weapons that Reichsmarschal Wolff Sauer's Heer forces suffered their embarrassing defeat at Ruprecht Creek, cut down and sent into a riotous retreat through friendly tribal lands that ended in rape and looting, turning even more natives against the German government in Kappsburg. With more Sweet Victory cash laundered through multiple accounts, Jennings hired Cokie and international handhunter units to harass and destroy tribal lands and murder in the name of the Reich, while also bully white settlers and pillage from their property as well. Jennings hated everyone. And now everyone hated Kappsburg, blaming the incompetents there for their current dilemmas and tragedies.
The history of the Reich was the history of an unstable, incompetent government, the history of mindless xenophobia and racism, and the history of dirt-poor black and white farmers being turned against each other. With the Dam, many of these people would lose everything. But it would be built back "ten-fold," according to Jennings, placating Carver's concerns. In the glorious future African nation, there would be no poverty or hunger. There would be no racist Germans or Cokies lording over blacks, quietly abusing them while the Union turned a blind eye. They would be exposed for the frauds they were and washed away with the tide. They would be Pharaoh and his chariots, consumed by divine waters.
Jennings lit up a cigar and took a long, satisfied drag and stared out over endless teams of construction workers, laboring away in the warm rays of that African sun. He had these people right where he wanted them. He was playing chess with himself. Every single person he roped into this scheme would lose. Every single faction would come out on the bottom. The Mittelafrikans would be overthrown and slaughtered. Sweet Victory and Carver would lose millions upon millions of dollars and years of time. The natives would lose their homeland, theirs for generations innumerable. The farmers, be they white or black, would lose their ranches and plantations, daring adventures and last-chances swept away. Everyone would lose. Except Jennings, because Big Bill Jennings never loses. And over a sea of bloated, festering corpses, both animal and human, he would take his place as a god over the few that survived. And if The Worm decided he was not an adequate vessel, at least he could pass into the afterlife with an army of slaves, his legions of victims. It was all coming together, filling Jennings with a joy that could not be dampened, a bloodlust so depraved that not even McClellan in Mexico or Viktor in Hungary and China could compare to.
A construction worker, covered in dust, walked past Jennings carrying a canteen. "'Evenin', Professor," the man said in an English accent. "Don't mind me, just takin' a break. Hot as 'ell out here, sir."
Jennings smiled warmly. "Good day, my man. How goes the work?"
The man chuckled, wiping sweat off his brow with a handkerchief and setting his steel helmet on the massive concrete ledge before them, looking down at the water of the Atlantic through what almost seemed like crenelations atop a medieval battlement. "Good, sir! You can always count on us, and meself, to get the job done! I'm right proud of the work we done! Gonna do an awful lot of good for this country and for an awful lot of people, sir."
Jennings slapped him jovially on the shoulder. Another clueless, uneducated moron. At least he was a useful pawn, if a pawn he must be. "You're English! What company brought you in? Or are you, I say, are you a local settler? What's your name?"
The man proudly said, "Lancaster's of London, sir! Crowley, me name is. Maybe one day, sir, I will be a settler. I'll build me a homestead here! Me and some o' the boys have talked about makin' us up a li'l village in the fertile lands after the Congo Sea fills in. Maybe I'll build us a church. Always had an interest in preachin'. I preach sometimes on our breaks. Motivates the boys, it does. Not only do we have the promise of a better life here, but a better life even in death."
"Sounds like you live a good, clean life, Mr. Crowley. Bully, I say, bully for you. Glad to have you here," Jennings said, saccharine-sweet. "I too have a keen interest in building a church here myself. And I am sure what awaits your honest toil in the great beyond are riches and rewards beyond your wildest dreams. Thank you for your labor, good man. I couldn't do this without men like yourself."
Crowley and Jennings shook hands vigorously and both turn to face the front of the dam, looking out to sea. "What's that, sir?" Crowley asked, squinting and pointing at several shapes below seemingly in a physical altercation by a security gate. As the two men watched from on high, they heard a crack ring out over the din of construction equipment. It was a gunshot. Now they heard more.
"What in blazes?" muttered Jennings, acid seeping through his gentlemanly Southron drawl. "What the hell is, I say, what in the sam hell is going on down there?"
Then came more cracks. From all directions. A bullet went whizzing by, smacking into a concrete crenel nearby. Sirens sounded from the various security stations and the sound of belt-fed grinders opening fire from guard towers filled the air.
"ATTENTION! ATTENTION! THE DAM IS UNDER ATTACK. THE DAM IS UNDER ATTACK! ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG! DER DAM IST ANGRIFF! DER DAM IST ANGRIFF!"
He seems nice.
He also seems a touch arrogant, expecting to get the better of men and god(s). If he's not guilty of hubris at this point we may need to delete the word from the dictionary.
There we go...
EDIT: I suspect by morning we'll hit 200,000 views! My goal is to keep up the steady updates and surpass a quarter million by March! Thank you to everyone who reads, including all the lurkers and those who aren't signed up! <3
I think we have figured out now that Jennings really is one of the biggest villains I have ever created. "Big" as in depth and lore-wise. He can't end the world (spoiler: Worm God probably isn't real :'p) or use nukes, but his attempts at inflicting as much damage as possible out of sadism, manipulating entire banks and megacorps, and outwitting a banana republic white supremacist government for his own gain while plotting to scar a continent are memorable, to say the least. He'll never be "that one villain from the Africa arc," he's Big Bill Jennings. There's a lot more inspiration to him than just Lovecraft cultists and tinpot despots. Aleister Crowley obviously influenced him, as well as many serial killers I have read about thinking their victims would be their slaves in the afterlife. I believe the Zodiac believed that. What Carver and the Reich are all planning/expecting is heinous, but they at least try to mask it with noble intentions (for this TL, lol). Jennings and Armitage just say to hell with pretenses, just let the darkness stare back into them.
This leads up to several things, such as the obvious comparisons you could make between Jennings and Oswald, with the Southron being the prelude to the later's even unstable and far more powerful persona. Jennings is clearly enjoying being evil, embracing chaos, but he still knows when to put a mask on and hide it. Oswald has the same sort of personality as Jennings, thinking others are mere bugs and pawns for in their one-man chess matches, but Oswald is clearly (by 1.0 standards and what we know from the non-canon Chuck short story I wrote) really just having fun with it and possibly with no greater goal other than self-gratification, damn everlasting monuments to some belief system. Jennings is the type of character that, as the Madnessverse grows ever more insane, gives up hope and embraces the darkness within. Not the first or last, but definitely one of the most stand-out open villains.
Jennings also is a precedent for other lunatic cultists, like the Necromancers for Jesus founder and author of the Necrotic Manuscript, Sweeney Ericson. I revealed Ericson as being a terrorist and looneybin occultist dumpster fire in the Pinnacle Future era in the chapter "Interview with the Cowboy." Really digging laying the groundwork for all this, and linking characters by personality traits and similar backstories or lives. In the end, Ericson likely won't be that important to the overall TL, but it's REALLY fun just setting precedents and making the Madnessverse feel more alive and like people's nutty ideas don't just come out of thin air. I could probably further link Beutelism with Wormism, as a precedent for the embrace of chaos, though the Beutelists could still be/some were good people, of course. It's like how Jim Jones was still technically a Christian leader... insofar as that he professed Christianity and used it as a tool after getting a big ego to kill hundreds in his own name. It's kind of hard to express what I am getting at, but my two cents.
EDIT: Also, Jennings is, in a way, a refinement of the Mad Viktor character type, this time with far more reason than just insanity behind his actions, which I think shows my writing has improved just since that era.
EDIT: Aleister Crowley is also a HUGE influence on both Armitage (obviously) and Oswald. Chuck's middle name is Alistair. #edgy Charles Alistair Oswald is one of my favorite fictional names I've ever concocted. It just sounds right.
Also, this latest chapter was actually inspired by one of my favorite paintings of all time! The Siege of La Rochelle by Motte. It always gave me major Bond-level villain vibes as Cardinal Richelieu looks out at the chaos. It just stuck with me ever since I was a kid and saw it for the first time. Reminds me of Darth Vader looking out the windows of a Star Destroyer Bridge. lol
I think we have figured out now that Jennings really is one of the biggest villains I have ever created. "Big" as in depth and lore-wise. He can't end the world (spoiler: Worm God probably isn't real :'p) or use nukes, but his attempts at inflicting as much damage as possible out of sadism, manipulating entire banks and megacorps, and outwitting a banana republic white supremacist government for his own gain while plotting to scar a continent are memorable, to say the least. He'll never be "that one villain from the Africa arc," he's Big Bill Jennings. There's a lot more inspiration to him than just Lovecraft cultists and tinpot despots. Aleister Crowley obviously influenced him, as well as many serial killers I have read about thinking their victims would be their slaves in the afterlife. I believe the Zodiac believed that. What Carver and the Reich are all planning/expecting is heinous, but they at least try to mask it with noble intentions (for this TL, lol). Jennings and Armitage just say to hell with pretenses, just let the darkness stare back into them.
This leads up to several things, such as the obvious comparisons you could make between Jennings and Oswald, with the Southron being the prelude to the later's even unstable and far more powerful persona. Jennings is clearly enjoying being evil, embracing chaos, but he still knows when to put a mask on and hide it. Oswald has the same sort of personality as Jennings, thinking others are mere bugs and pawns for in their one-man chess matches, but Oswald is clearly (by 1.0 standards and what we know from the non-canon Chuck short story I wrote) really just having fun with it and possibly with no greater goal other than self-gratification, damn everlasting monuments to some belief system. Jennings is the type of character that, as the Madnessverse grows ever more insane, gives up hope and embraces the darkness within. Not the first or last, but definitely one of the most stand-out open villains.
Jennings also is a precedent for other lunatic cultists, like the Necromancers for Jesus founder and author of the Necrotic Manuscript, Sweeney Ericson. I revealed Ericson as being a terrorist and looneybin occultist dumpster fire in the Pinnacle Future era in the chapter "Interview with the Cowboy." Really digging laying the groundwork for all this, and linking characters by personality traits and similar backstories or lives. In the end, Ericson likely won't be that important to the overall TL, but it's REALLY fun just setting precedents and making the Madnessverse feel more alive and like people's nutty ideas don't just come out of thin air. I could probably further link Beutelism with Wormism, as a precedent for the embrace of chaos, though the Beutelists could still be/some were good people, of course. It's like how Jim Jones was still technically a Christian leader... insofar as that he professed Christianity and used it as a tool after getting a big ego to kill hundreds in his own name. It's kind of hard to express what I am getting at, but my two cents.
EDIT: Also, Jennings is, in a way, a refinement of the Mad Viktor character type, this time with far more reason than just insanity behind his actions, which I think shows my writing has improved just since that era.
EDIT: Aleister Crowley is also a HUGE influence on both Armitage (obviously) and Oswald. Chuck's middle name is Alistair. #edgy Charles Alistair Oswald is one of my favorite fictional names I've ever concocted. It just sounds right.
Also, this latest chapter was actually inspired by one of my favorite paintings of all time! The Siege of La Rochelle by Motte. It always gave me major Bond-level villain vibes as Cardinal Richelieu looks out at the chaos. It just stuck with me ever since I was a kid and saw it for the first time. Reminds me of Darth Vader looking out the windows of a Star Destroyer Bridge. lol
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