IFIAYaQD: Early edition and writer's prompt

[cyrano]

Let us suppose--just for a moment--that something horrific happened in our tight knit little town.

Oh, not recently. About twenty years ago. And many of our upstanding citizens were not only aware of it, but even complicit in this horrific something. It was done to serve the Greater Good, of course, but by unspoken agreement folks do their polite and utmost best not to speak of it.

*How* does this impact our town today? What bleeds through the bandage hiding history?

Southern Gothic fans, this question is especially directed at you.

Comments

[missroserose]

The most immediate and obvious answer is that the town will be drawn together, in solidarity of a sort. Not positive solidarity, as comes from pride of place and home, but bitter complicity, like puckered flesh closing over a suppurating wound. They won't like to face each other, but they'll like strangers even less. Negative feelings towards each other will be magnified, even without the influence of whatever's hidden. (That might be a fun question to play with, in fact - how much of the bitterness and misfortunes of the following years comes from its influence, and how much is simply the all-too-human tendency to detest seeing in others what we dislike about ourselves.)

Twenty years is enough time to start seeing the ripple effects, too. How has the town's self-imposed isolation affected its development? How have those people who were children at the time of the Big Shameful Thing dealt with it in their minds? How were they affected by growing up in such a toxic environment? Which aspects of their personality have been magnified, and which minimized? How do outsiders talk about the town, or do they? Also a good question is who're the less-bad guys - some folk must still be cooperating, if in a hidden or understated way, for the town to be surviving, and it makes sense that at least a few people are naturally positive/inclined to fight enough to combat the overwhelming negativity, if only in small ways. How are they getting by? Are they keeping their good works hidden?