#zone headcanon

[vinyls-and-valentines]

Drinking glasses and mugs are not exactly uncommon out in the Zones, but they are not plenty either, so the killjoys often use substitutes such as:

various sized jars

various sized bowls

various sized trophy cups

cut up soda and/or power pup cans

pieces of cut-up tarp (straw required)

ziplock bags

baby bottles

etc.

[vinyls-and-valentines]

Literally no one asked, but it is very important for me that you know that:

the WKIL station broadcasts in DRM (wikipedia link for more information);

most killjoys try to keep both a digital and an analog radio of some sort of them even if it's just a dashboard radio or a handheld;

the WKIL station has secondary set-up with an analog-to-digital system they use to receive calls from listeners that Newsie threatened to go on several rampages over, and Pony and Cherri both seconded that decision for having to play dispatch after its completion;

there's a few books on transistor radios going around the Zones, and whenever someone needs it they leave their contact info on Dr. Death-Defying's radio segment or in a zine, alongside a time when they'll be expecting an answer on the provided frequency;

calling anywhere other than WKIL is one of the most annoying feats known to humankind, and even on WKIL you'll sound like you're inside a washing machine while speaking, but beggars can't be choosers;

there are ghost stations out in the Zones! Impossible stations that play recorded clips of 'joys that tried to disturb the on-going transmission of white noise, and number stations BL/I gave up on trying to locate and left run out;

parabolic dishes and various radio broadcasting equipment is often left at the broadcasting site of said ghost stations to both provide coverage Zone-wide (or at least in the eastern and north-eastern areas) and conceal them from BL/I's satellites by playing a bunch of extra junk.

[vinyls-and-valentines]

Things to leave at a shrine dedicated to the Witch:

paper flowers made from your favourite poems

cat eye beads

candles

a broken vinyl

a heart-shaped box full of good memories and bottle caps

a good luck charm or a crystal necklace

Things to leave at a shrine dedicated to Destroya:

old batteries and fairy lights

a well-loved toy

a map of the night sky

the leather-bound notebook you wrote all your dreams inside of

sea glass

the bracelet you made for your first Mad Gear concert, that has found its way back to you

And if you've got none of these? Well, least you can do is tidy things up a little, maybe leave whatever words you wish you had said with your deity of choice. Watch the paint bleed as it dries and know that you're not alone

[vinyls-and-valentines]

The Diner features sights as:

that one sink permanently stained red from Poison’s excellent (/s) hair-dying skills

the one table Kobra and Jet stuck all their chewed gum under

a pair Ghoul’s underwear that somehow got onto one of the pallets of the fan in the main are of the diner

Kobra’s graffiti stall that’s slowly starting to take over the next one over as well

so many of their logos doodled or carved in random spots

the dent in the wooden counter in the window that opens into the back room created by Jet repeatedly forgetting that there is a counter there

glitter on top of every Power Pup can they own despite there not having been glitter in the Diner ever since The Incident

the rats’ nest of blankets, pillows and clothes the Four call a “bed”

the oven which they never open because they’re scared of what might be inside as they tried to once and it smelled really bad and now they’ve convinced themselves there might be something living or at least very gory in there

the ever-growing stack of zines in the storage room, all alphabetically ordered thanks to Ghoul

[vinyls-and-valentines]

Zone slang, much like the people who speak it, has a far more bohemic aspect than it's City counterpart, spoken by juvies down in the Battery City slums; though perhaps that's to be expected given the artistic nature of the colorful rebels. Differences aside, the two were born of the same mix of the code spiders used during the Analog War and whatever caught on in the pit of the underground, so it's only natural there is some areas where the 2 overlap.

One of said areas are directions— a mix of analog and digital clock face terminology, more often used with its newfound purpose rather than actually telling the time— but whereas in killjoy slang it's more of a warning than anything, in juvie it can be used to quickly and discreetely establish an alternative route. A.M and P.M are simple enough— just in fornt and behind you— while numbers 1-12 are if you want to get more specific. Juvies, however, have added minutes into the mix, signifying for how long you have to walk a certain direction

[vinyls-and-valentines]

The best of Cherri Cola's poems are ones they never wrote. Carefully bound in a leather notebook, tone deaf melodies get passed around on scraps of paper or running neons on faded walls. It doesn't matter that the writing style doesn't match or that there is a burning anger underlining every word instead of biter-sweet resignation. There's no one else they could belong to— the book was found at NeewsAGoGo's Diner, after all

[vinyls-and-valentines]

where do killjoys get their gasoline? Does battery city even have cars anymore??

At Dead Pegasus gas stations, of course! By all means they are abandoned and if one looks a tad bit too much like one of Tommy’s storefronts then that only ever means some ‘crow got lazy and tried to get some easy kills to meet their quota. Still, they never refill the oil pumps, but they work just fine anyways. 

There’s a lot of rumors going around that it’s because the bombs created a crack in an oil pocket or that it’s ran by ghosts and you’re going to crash if you don’t pay up a fair price at the counter. Regardless of what the truth actually is, motorbabies, tumbleweeds and even beta bugs know better than to question why it still works. Always count your eggs when they’re in the basket or something.

The answer to the second question depends. They have patrol cars, which are semi-electric, and those get stolen a whole bunch, so there’s quite a few going around the Zones and Lobby, but the average Better Living citizens is prohibited from owning personal vehicles due to the ETHER Act (“Environment, Technology and Hazard Exposure Reduction” Act) passing in november 2004, post-Helium War. It’s some bullshit clause that’s using the pretext of individual carbon footprint to keep citizens within the City while also trying not to ring any alarm bells that they’re a company getting weirdly involved into politics.

No one could’ve predicted them overtaking the government in 2-ish years from then. Not at all /s

[vinyls-and-valentines]

The killjoys knew that trying to get their kid back was a suicide mission. They’d taken BLi on before, sure, but this time they were older- more predictable and more important all the same. This was the end of their cat and mouse game and if they were going to lose they decided to at least put on a damn good show.

Beat down and broken, they carefully crafted one last fiction to conceal their shortcomings, and with the help of their friends, put it into action. Jet and Kobra didn’t turn to static in a clap on Route Guano the fabled day when D announced it, as they were miles away from the closest killjoy outpost behind white concrete walls. Ghoul and Poison didn’t go down in a subatomic tantrum at the celebration for their crewmates’ lives, as they got wheeled out in cellophane by Chimp wearing draculoid garb.

They were supposed to go down as rebels crashing and burning in their own spotlight- as something not to inspire anger, but defiance- but the company had other plans. Their failures were broadcasted publicly over the airwaves, painting them as martyrs of a gutter cause for everyone to see