THERE'S JUST ONE LINGERING FEAR: OH, MY SOUL, IS IT HERE? OR IS IT ROTTING SOMEWHERE WITH MY HEAD?
private JANE DOE / PENNY LAMB of jacob richmond and brooke maxwell’s ride the cyclone, as understood by alyssa, ( they / she, twenty - four ) . musical and headcanon based. exploring the themes of: the living dead girl, the loss of personhood after death, the debated placement of a soul, and coming back from the dead wrong.
note: discussions involving sensitive topics such as child death and decapitation heavily present. additionally, this is not my main blog. i will be found primarily on vasilievna. as i haven’t set up a formal rules page here yet, please refer to my rules on that blog in the meantime. other relevant information will be placed under the cut.
RULES AND DISCLAIMERS:
i prefer that only people older than eighteen follow me, as i am twenty-four, but this does not in any way imply that i will be writing adult / sexual content. penny died at sixteen, as a minor. even after she comes back to life, there is a major part of her that is stunted and will always remain a sixteen - year - old dead girl.
IMPORTANT CHARACTER INFORMATION:
as i don’t yet have a dossier up for jane, here are the basics of my interpretation:
on september 14th during an unspecified year, the st. cassian chamber choir from uranium city, saskatchewan visited an amusement park. at 6:17 pm, the choir boarded a roller coaster called “the cyclone.” at 6:19, the front axle of the roller coaster broke, causing it to derail at the apex of the loop-de-loop, leading to the death of all six choir members: ocean o’connell rosenberg, noel gruber, mischa bachinski, ricky potts, constance blackwood, and JANE DOE, an unidentified sixth member who was found without a head.
‘jane’s name is PENNY LAMB. she is a sixteen - year - old girl who had always lived just outside of uranium city, but had lived in an off - the - grid commune with her reclusive parents and brother. after begging to experience the outside world, her parents enrolled her into st. cassian’s, where she remained largely unnoticed and occasionally bullied due to her lack of knowledge of ‘normal’ life. two weeks into her attendance at the school, she joined the choir. the next day was the ‘cyclone’ disaster.
after the choir’s deaths, they are sent to a purgatory where a novelty mechanical fortune teller gives them the chance to compete to bring one back to life. being the one member with no memory of her life before the accident, they decide to send jane, who they now know is penny, back to live out the rest of her life.
this blog will primarily focus on JANE, and only partially on penny. my portrayal departs from the canon in that, after being afforded a second chance at life, she is shown to live a steady, normal life. instead, i will write the returned penny as a strange amalgamation of the two selves, who she used to be in life and who she became after she died.
before her death, penny had been a girl of medium height, with light brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles. after her death, having lost her head, her body instead steals that of a doll she had had as a child, with white - blonde ringlet curls, porcelain skin, and entirely black eyes. she carries with her the headless doll. she moves strangely and rigidly, as if unused to controlling a body, and displays little emotion other than confusion.
she returns to life as if no time passed at all, having been found harmed but alive on the fairgrounds. she wakes in a hospital room.
when penny is returned to life, she has green eyes, having wished for them in purgatory, but otherwise regains the features she had in life. her mannerisms are strange and jilted, but not to off-putting degree. her knowledge of her life before her death is spotty, but not completely gone. she has no memory of what happened while she was in purgatory, but notes a feeling of deep connection to the five choir members who died that she doesn’t quite know what to do with. she is subject to bouts of confusion, which doctors attribute to the trauma caused by the accident
her parents pull her out of st. cassian’s after the accident, once again keeping her at home in the commune. when she turns eighteen, she leaves the commune once again, to the dismay of her parents.
thinking about the way penny acts towards the other choir members while in purgatory and whenever anyone expresses any sort of curiosity about her or affection towards her she immediately flocks towards them or holds out her arms. she’s just so desperately looking for any sort of humanity or connection and she not only can’t find that within herself, having lost all her memories and understanding of what once made her a person, but also within the choir members, this group of kids who don’t know her, either.
and this is probably characteristic of her when she was alive, as well — she had been isolated her entire life with only her family and had so desperately wanted to get out and the second she does, she dies and is only further isolated.
AND THEN, continuing on with my canon (because i apparently cannot let characters who deserve to be happy just be happy for once), the idea of her coming back to life, as the group decided, but everything is different and strange and she still just doesn’t fit, can’t belong the way she wants to, because her death has so irrevocably changed her. just, god? she needs a hug
empty, black - filled eyes stare back at her, brows knit in their near - perpetual state of confusion. there is no offense to be found in the strange porcelain of her face, only the sincerest and most innocent form of curiosity. she cranes her neck, half flesh and half ceramic, towards her.
JANE DOE, THE ONE UNIDENTIFIED BODY OF THE CYCLONE ROLLER COASTER DISASTER. EVERYONE KNEW EVERYONE IN URANIUM, BUT NO ONE COULD RECALL THIS MEMBER OF THE CHOIR. THERE WERE RUMORS OF A GIRL WHO JOINED AT THE LAST MINUTE, BUT AS THE CHOIR CONDUCTOR, FATHER MARKUS, DIED OF A HEART ATTACK SEVEN HOURS AFTER THE ACCIDENT, THERЕ WAS NO ONE LEFT TO VERIFY. SOMЕ BELIEVE THAT PERHAPS SHE WAS NEVER IN THE CHOIR AT ALL. I NEVER READ HER FORTUNE. I SADLY CANNOT TELL YOU. ALL ONE KNOWS FOR CERTAIN IS THAT A BODY WAS FOUND IN A SAINT CASSIAN UNIFORM WITHOUT A HEAD. SO... A MYSTERY.
private JANE DOE / PENNY LAMB of ride the cyclone, written by alyssa.
