[ vasiliy's a former stalin-era NKVD interrogator who played the 'good cop' to coerce prisoners into signing false confessions by acting as though he was speaking to their best interest, executed in 1940 when nikolai yezhov's appointees were purged - who then woke up in the middle of nowhere in the winter of 2015, alive, unscathed, and with documentation claiming he was born in 1985. in the canonpoint i'm pulling him from he's been out in the world for 3 years and has started to come to grips with what he did/started to unlearn stalinism, and is an EMT in chicago in an attempt to feel like he's balancing some of the cosmic harm he did. he comes with warnings for references to the yezhovshchina, torture, etc.; his curse is starting out with randomly bleeding hands as a manifestation of his guilt. it's worth noting that he speaks english despite it being his second language instead of defaulting to russian and letting the world handle it because he knows that his patterns of speaking are anachronistic for someone ostensibly born in the 80s. info here, permissions here. ]
1. LIFE IN A NORTHERN TOWN gold rush mini golf.
[ There's not a whole lot to do while he's in the fire department's hiring process, so Vasiliy finds himself exploring more often than not—getting the lay of the land in a hostile country, when it comes down to it. Mini golf isn't something he'd even heard of before arriving on American soil last year, and he's convinced, now that he's actually played it, that he was missing out on absolutely nothing. Again the golf ball overshoots the plastic mouth of the longhorn cow that comprises this hole, which is going about as well as all the other holes before it. He huffs to himself and watches it for a moment, hands on his hips. ]
What stupid game. For people with nothing better to do.
2. DON'T SAY THAT YOU LOVE ME around town | cw: xenophobia mentions, smoking.
[ There's no need for most of these people to learn English. For whatever reason, their environment takes the liberty of translating, which Vasiliy is sure of because he hears everything in the same language he thinks in—but he doesn't exactly have a choice in the matter, not when leaning on the bizarre quality to this world would make it immediately apparent that he wasn't born in 1985. You talk like an old man, everyone had told him back in Russia, and they were unknowingly correct. He is, chronologically speaking, old, even if the past 85 years were spent...(where, exactly? Rotting? in some alternate dimension? He's not particularly sure about that one and doesn't care to think about it).
But speaking in an attempt at modern English, never having known any other variant of it, raises its own issue. People in 2018 didn't like him much because he was an immigrant with a limited grasp on their language and trying meant absolutely nothing to 95% of them, and also because, apparently, every Russian in the country was still under suspicion for having "meddled" in their clearly staged election. (Meddle. A word he learned quickly.) People here don't like him or at least don't trust him because he's obviously an enemy national, with the exception of a few liberals he's encountered, who make it very clear they're not judging him in a way that also chafes.
So he finds a bookstore and crouches down to read the spines in the minuscule bottom-shelf section on learning English, dwarfed on either side by more fashionable languages (French, Italian) and more theoretically useful ones (Spanish, Russian—the irony.) The accent is something he needs to resolve. The more Americanized he seems, the easier things will be for him, and the less suspicious of him they'll. They're already shitting their pants over the KGB. No telling what they'd do to a former officer in the NKVD, someone predating the muzzle Khrushchev put on Russia's secret services. He sees a prison cell, the Hague, quiet deportation to be executed a second time on Russian soil if he's "lucky".
Vasiliy doesn't want to die, so here he is.
a. It's possible for your character to catch him scanning through different books to see if they're good enough to justify the price, which might strike some as a little odd to see in a place where the work of translation is done for them.
b. If they're not the type to strike up conversation with a stranger, fear not! There's a situation-mandated option: once he's chosen and paid, he sits at one of the tables, lights a cigarette, and starts to read—the only spot that's available if your character wants to enjoy their purchase in the in-store cafe once he's taken one of the two is right beside him, his peculiar choice of reading material, and a freshly lit Belomorkanal. ]
3. WILDCARD
[ vasiliy's likely to be exploring the place/gathering as much information as he can, with his hands intermittently bleeding despite a lack of visible cuts. if you'd like a starter or want to plot feel free to hit me up here or send a pp to bluehellgazette! i'll be tossing up continuations for his tdm threads throughout the weekend. ]
vasiliy yegorovich ardankin | original — historical/(secret) revenant
gold rush mini golf.
[ There's not a whole lot to do while he's in the fire department's hiring process, so Vasiliy finds himself exploring more often than not—getting the lay of the land in a hostile country, when it comes down to it. Mini golf isn't something he'd even heard of before arriving on American soil last year, and he's convinced, now that he's actually played it, that he was missing out on absolutely nothing. Again the golf ball overshoots the plastic mouth of the longhorn cow that comprises this hole, which is going about as well as all the other holes before it. He huffs to himself and watches it for a moment, hands on his hips. ]
What stupid game. For people with nothing better to do.
2. DON'T SAY THAT YOU LOVE ME
around town | cw: xenophobia mentions, smoking.
[ There's no need for most of these people to learn English. For whatever reason, their environment takes the liberty of translating, which Vasiliy is sure of because he hears everything in the same language he thinks in—but he doesn't exactly have a choice in the matter, not when leaning on the bizarre quality to this world would make it immediately apparent that he wasn't born in 1985. You talk like an old man, everyone had told him back in Russia, and they were unknowingly correct. He is, chronologically speaking, old, even if the past 85 years were spent...(where, exactly? Rotting? in some alternate dimension? He's not particularly sure about that one and doesn't care to think about it).
But speaking in an attempt at modern English, never having known any other variant of it, raises its own issue. People in 2018 didn't like him much because he was an immigrant with a limited grasp on their language and trying meant absolutely nothing to 95% of them, and also because, apparently, every Russian in the country was still under suspicion for having "meddled" in their clearly staged election. (Meddle. A word he learned quickly.) People here don't like him or at least don't trust him because he's obviously an enemy national, with the exception of a few liberals he's encountered, who make it very clear they're not judging him in a way that also chafes.
So he finds a bookstore and crouches down to read the spines in the minuscule bottom-shelf section on learning English, dwarfed on either side by more fashionable languages (French, Italian) and more theoretically useful ones (Spanish, Russian—the irony.) The accent is something he needs to resolve. The more Americanized he seems, the easier things will be for him, and the less suspicious of him they'll. They're already shitting their pants over the KGB. No telling what they'd do to a former officer in the NKVD, someone predating the muzzle Khrushchev put on Russia's secret services. He sees a prison cell, the Hague, quiet deportation to be executed a second time on Russian soil if he's "lucky".
Vasiliy doesn't want to die, so here he is.
a.
It's possible for your character to catch him scanning through different books to see if they're good enough to justify the price, which might strike some as a little odd to see in a place where the work of translation is done for them.
b.
If they're not the type to strike up conversation with a stranger, fear not! There's a situation-mandated option: once he's chosen and paid, he sits at one of the tables, lights a cigarette, and starts to read—the only spot that's available if your character wants to enjoy their purchase in the in-store cafe once he's taken one of the two is right beside him, his peculiar choice of reading material, and a freshly lit Belomorkanal. ]
3. WILDCARD
[ vasiliy's likely to be exploring the place/gathering as much information as he can, with his hands intermittently bleeding despite a lack of visible cuts. if you'd like a starter or want to plot feel free to hit me up here or send a pp to