hm. okay someone said something on twitter that got me thinking. okay i am very firmly a yoohan truther supporter lover all that stuff. and i think there are many situations in which they can be and will be together in some shape or form, without kdj. coming to mind instantly are the three year gap, 1865th round, and 1863rd round. prime yoohan material. but at the same time i think these situations are sort of haunted by kdjs absence, and/or really set up to fail. yoohan are people who work well together in achieving a shared goal, for better or for worse. like with 1863 - which would have the least amount of kdj influence - they are pretty much on a path of mutual destruction, hastened by one another. all of these situations, in which theyre working together for some reason or another, it never feels like they can bridge in to anything really vulnerable, you know? i love yoohan on its own, and i do think they can get shit done on their own, but at the same time, kdj coheres them in a way i dont think they can really achieve without him being there. do these words strung together like this make any sort of sense.

why do i keep going w this stuff dude

like what id have to do to justify what happened to the travelling partner is.... like... itd be a character thing. youd have the Survivor right there, and his personality would already establish he’d be capable of nasty shit (mostly because he literally does nasty shit during the story, yknow). but the hunters have to characterised as able to do it posthumously, which is difficult, because typically shit gets rose tinted. there’d be few people who’d be willing to say bad shit about a dead person. though its possible we’d get that insight from the people the Woman befriends, as they’re unlikely to be super close to the hunters (or theyd be keeping distance) and it means theyve got distance and more objectivity about their actions.

then i have to decide why. like, whhyyyyy? why do it. why do that. why attack an exhausted woman and kill her while her friend watches? a personal ‘quirk’? did she say something? did they do something and she reacted negatively? what happened. theres a couple of possibilities which i guess ill detail for future/current pickings

- ~just a prank~. possibly some sort of stupid action involving hurting the woman that went too far and resulted in her death? difficult to justify, but if the hunters are young enough or established to be immature enough, it could work. maybe the idea was that theyd injure her and then bandage her up and bring her back to the village, like they wanted? kinda fucked up but this is also Murder so i guess fair game

- more nasty shit. like, yknow.... assault? pretty young ladies wandering the forests, shit gets nasty, eeeewwwww. i dont want it, but it could explain stuff. itd especially help explain why the Survivor would hide the body, beyond the obvious. kinda gross, kinda dont want it because of my personal preferences, but it COULD work

- genuine accident. itd make it less questionable, but itd also ruin the idea that the Woman acted out of ‘self defence’ if it was an accident. shit gets rough and goes too far? like they push the girl around and she trips and hits her head? but again, ruins the narrative if harm wasnt intended. harm has to be intended to the girl in order to justify the Woman’s actions

- honestly dunno. to keep her quiet? like, the idea here is that the hunters are doing Bad Shit, possibly the above or something not directly related to the women, that they end up bearing witness too. like, illegal shit. or just very damning stuff, character wise. such as. idk.... honestly dont know. maybe something related to status? burying something they stole? it could work that way. Then the idea is that the girl is specifically outspoken in calling out and not taking their bullshit excuses, and the hunters decide to keep her quiet, resulting in her death while her friend (the Woman) watches in fucking disbelief. itd be interesting if the hunters had committed a crime that led them to commit that crime, yknow?

thats about it. ofc it needs a lot of though. i think the accident angle is out, though an aspect of it can be included in others, especially for some characters. for instance the Survivor, who was clearly not strictly involved, hence him being spared. he was complicit, hundo percent, but he could easily see the whole thing as a tragic accident. perspective and stuff. i think the Prank is also out because thats fucking stupid. leaving Gross Nasties and Covering Up.

both could easily justify the Womans actions, i feel. Nasties would be her friend being yucked while the woman is prevented from intervening, and when the yuck goes too far and the woman’s friend dies, she flips (understandably). and in that context, the argument can also be made for them possibly doing the same to her, yknow. that’d play in.

cover up would be the two of them coming across something suspect that the hunters have done/are doing, and the woman’s friend being attacked for witness. in that, the woman would be simply held down quietly because shes a much more quiet character and would submit quickly to prevent danger, while her friend would refuse despite her exhaustion. so then the hunters would pull their weapons to force her to submit, and then it goes too far (theres the accident angle) and the woman flips. and again, the aspect of whether or not after essentially torturing her friend, whether theyd do the same to her. 

i think Cover Up might be easier to spin w/ murder, as itd be easier to prove. as in, the woman’s body would show clear signs of this, bloodstained gashes in clothes and shit. whereas Nasties could be a little harder to prove as murder, since, well, i know exactly what Nasty im thinking of and idk how long that sort of evidence would last in a ditch. i mean, there shit down there that at least partially preserves her, but STILL.

the issue w/ Cover Up is that i need to work out what started it. as in, what the hunters were doing. like, theyre out hunting, yea, but what are they hiding? it has to be something worth killing over. it cant be too petty. its not another murder, thats for sure. a theft? a theft of a valuable item? either personal or general monetary. but it also couldnt be TOO important, because then theyd look harder for it. though, if it IS valuable, would they go looking in a ditch? probably not. cause the idea is that they were gonna bury it, right. but with the whole murder thing, the Survivor is disposing of evidence. chuck the body, chuck the goods, they arent worth it now, clitter clatter crack. plus, the idea is that the Survivor is more a lookout than actually perpetrating anything. still a cunt, but a lesser cunt. hes not invested in it personally, more on his friends’ behalf, and his friends are dead, so what does it matter? down the ditch, clitter clatter crack.

that could work. it could even explain how they finally find the body in the ditch - the body was more carefully disposed of, and the goods were just chucked. one of them missed, or remained closer to the surface, buried lightly under leaves and dirt until its found. meaning multiple goods. could work. what they actually stole isnt the important part, though - just the fact its worth killing a complete stranger for. OOH! oh fuck i had an idea. ok keep Cover Up as an idea but heres a second idea.

Robbery. they were robbing the two of them. theyre foreigners, a long way way from home, and well dressed beyond dirt and grime. maybe they were carrying something valuable, or valuable enough. nice jewellery, that sorta thing. the hunters, encountering this well dressed tired duo in the woods, offer to take them back to the village, but instead take them further with the intend to rob and kill. make the death look like an accident, claim they discovered the poor women, or just dispose of the bodies and sell the goods on the down low with no questions asked. both good. the former has the accident angle in, too, both deliberate and in how it ended up being incriminating.

so the women get taken further into the woods, and then the friend realises this, she makes a break for it. the Woman is quickly held so she cant flee, because she didnt react fast enough, and the girl is tackled to the ground and held down. the man holding the Woman quickly rifles through her pockets for her goods while she looks on in terror, as the other hunters hold her friend down and forcefully keep her quiet while robbing her too. ofc, as i said earlier, the friend is a lot louder and ‘feistier’ than the Woman, and shes not gonna let them rob her blind without a fucking fight. kick, scream, bite. eventually they start pulling weapons and threatening her with them, and its at this point that the Survivor starts having second doubts. this is when he steps back. he was probably gleefully robbing her, taking off jewellery and stuff, but oh shit, oh dear, oh god, this is going far. but, ofc, the friend isnt letting weapons stop her, until it HAS to stop her, because they start like. cutting and stabbing her. The Woman screams, the Survivor cries out, and thats the point where locals start going ‘hmm did you hear that martha? sounded like screams’ ‘i bet its just the boys being silly’

of course the screams will quickly escalate when the friend stops. brief silence as she stops struggling and screaming. the hunters proceed to rob her blind and gloat as the Survivor cautiously moves in closer. ‘You.... you killed her??????????’

crack. foosh. scchrrk. hunters dead, survivor yelling in terror, the Woman screaming in rage before running further into the woods. Survivor checks his friends, works out fairly quickly its too late, and proceeds to dump the body and clumsily toss the goods before starting to head back to the village, trying to carry one of his less-injured-but-still-totally-dead friends. open shut.

fuck. that works well. and its make the survivor at least a lil sympathetic while still being a cunt. a young man out of his depth, surrounded by older friends with more force. the thing is that its not premeditated. they didnt plan this encounter. they decided to go with it. so the Survivor is similarly trapped in it and mostly non complicit. he starts helping rob the friend because his friends say so. ofc, that doesnt excuse the fact that once everything is said and done, he disposes of the body and the evidence of their crime, and frames it all on a woman they attacked. perjury and shit. broke the law. cause like, yea, hes doing it to help his friends, but his friends ARE dead, nothing is actually keeping him there, because he checked on his friends before disposing of evidence. still a cunt, yknow.

this works. i like this. well, ok, i dont, its fucking murder, but narratively i mean, i dig the shit out of this idea, make the hunters actual criminals here. means the posthumous establishment of character has to establish their forcefulness and violence.

another thing - how many hunters? based on the scene above, at least 3. one to hold the Woman, one to hold the friend, and another to rifle her pockets. the Survivor helps to rifle pockets, but hes separate. thats 4 guys overall. that seems a fair amount for a hunting party. fuck. this is good. i like this. initially, in the dreams and shit, there were 4 dead hunters, but 3 works just as well and makes less work for me as a writer. i like this a lot.