#with a long record of unethical actions and crimes

[gameboy-berry]

Here is my Gold Ingot VS Controlly death fight proposition

[eiseryn]

Mafia/ Crime AU

Synopsis: Remember that yandere! Vail picture I drew way back? Well this is the collection of notes which are the plot as to why that type of Vail came to be! It is a tragedy so... TW character death? But not in the way you expect? Hopefully? This takes place in a crime/mafia AU (which I am not well-versed in), so note there's not much description about that. These notes are mostly focussed on "romance" and written in a very messy style.

Under the glamour of the city of Mertalline lurks the underdark where organized crime is rampant, and there are many gangs fighting amongst themselves. Rarely do citizens get caught up in their actions, and some aren’t even aware of the darkness that lies underneath… 

A small but prominent group — Lexi’s Red Dragons have been catching the attention of bigger and older groups due to their excellent work. Everyone in this group has insignias/ tattoos of a red dragon with horns on them.

Lexi (boss)

Rose (2nd in command?) + sniper 

Zoey (classic muscle(wo)man/hit(wo)man who goes on the frontlines), Keeper (works behind the scenes, mostly runs the comms line + rarely goes on the front lines. She also often is their strategist.), Vail (often sticks to things in the shadows/stealth missions, but does go on the frontlines) 

They also later recruit Liam as a standard muscleman for their work who also goes on the frontlines 

For funsies Elik + Tiger are here too XD (in my AUs they will NOT be villains) 

Elik is an assassin ofc, classic hitman — he is #1 in terms of damage tying with Lexi.

Tiger is a hacker ofc 

PEOPLE WHO ARE ALSO IN THIS GROUP FOR PLOT REASONS

Maric — we need more Runner bodies to fill up the hitmen slots LOL 

Flash — getaway driver :3 

The reason they are powerful is because they also have backing from Maria, one of the richest in the city. This might also mean they do dirty jobs for Maria.

The order they were recruited in:

(Starting members) Lexi, Rose, Vail, Keeper, Elik, Tiger. Then Zoey was recruited, and then Flash, and then Maric, and Liam is the newest recruit. 

Underground doctor group — Elise, Lei, Ceres. 

Elise, who has a mysterious past (would be revealed in plot) as to why she’s an underground doctor. 

It is likely because her company did illegal experimentation/ unethical experimentation and she ran away somehow? She might still be hiding from them.  

Ceres — got caught up with the mess due to her relation to her brother Rose, who hid his criminal activities from her for a long time. Unfortunately, she is now also hiding from whatever forces are going after Rose. 

She often stays indoors, as forced by Rose and Lei so that she stays “safe”. 

In this AU she got trained to shoot — by Lei and Rose. 

Lei, formerly falsely accused of making illegal drugs in her company, and thus had to turn into underground doctoring after this stain in her records. She probably did go to jail for this but got a reduced sentence. 

She is popular because she cooks the cleanest drugs on the black market. They’re so clean people wonder how she got here.

Under her cold bitchy persona there lies a soft heart. 

Carries a gun strapped to her thigh for “self-defense” but also can kill in self-defense. 

Only wears dresses/skirts, almost never wears pants. Often wears heels as well because she used to have a sort of agreed immunity by the gangs as a doctor… until some gangs thought she was favouring a certain group a little too much.

Plot: 

Due to competition from the other gangs/groups, Lexi’s group is being targeted and many other crime groups are trying to wipe them out. 

As an underground doctor, Lei is supposed to remain impartial to those who show on her doorstep — as long as the money is there. But she may have favoured Lexi’s group a little too much and is now being targeted by the mysterious forces after Lexi’s group.

Lexi assigned a bodyguard for her — Vail. 

Vail does his job diligently but Lei isn’t so pleased with this set up (in the beginning) b/c she doesn’t want someone to die for her and she knows people are going after HER life. This responsibility makes her a little anxious.

Lei: Why did they send you? I can shoot better than you. 

Vail: Just think of me as a meat shield then. 

Lei: This is a waste of your time. I can take care of myself.

Vail: Just following orders from the boss (Lexi).

It is hinted that there is a mole in Lexi’s group — they don’t know who at the moment but they suspect someone is betraying them.

Early in the story, Liam might look sus since he is the newest recruit but it will be soon proven false.

Throughout the plot the red herring for the suspect is Maric, who is the second most recent recruit.

Smoking scene (kinda spicy?) 

Aside from her doctoring duties and selling the drugs she makes, Lei often does networking (which Elise is actually better at but Lei feels like she’s at less of a risk than Elise). 

In the alleyway, Lei takes out a cigarette and lights it up and smokes it. As her loyal bodyguard, Vail is standing basically beside her.  

Lei: Hey, you know second hand smoke is bad for you right? 

Vail: Yes, and?

Lei: So stay a little further away. 

Vail: I’m your bodyguard. I can’t protect you if I’m far away. 

Lei stays nothing, because she begins to shiver a little. Nights in Mertalline are cold, especially in sketchy alleyways. And yet she also often wears sleeveless dresses. Vail takes off his suit jacket and moves to put it on her shoulders and she kind of flinches away as he approaches. 

Vail, confused: You said you’re cold. 

Lei: I didn’t ask for your jacket. 

Vail: Yeah, you didn’t. I’m just giving it to you.

She shivers again, so he drapes it over her shoulders.

Lei: It’ll smell like cigarette smoke.

Vail shrugs: Most of the Red Dragons smoke, so it doesn’t matter. 

He doesn’t tell her that he usually stays away from them when they smoke. But she doesn’t ask why his jacket smells devoid of smoke either. 

Sedatives

Vail needs sleeping pills to sleep b/c he has some insomnia → trauma of his job? 

He gets them from Lei usually, so this is how they knew each other before he became her bodyguard.

When it gets really bad to the point it’d become dangerous on the job (unable to sleep at night, falling asleep on the job?), he asks her for better/more effective ones.

She has a new recipe she’s trying out but she’s not sure of the risk/side effects.

He tries them and they’re quite effective, but they don’t really seem like there’s that many side effects … that are obvious.

The amount of dosage needed is lower

And it’s less addictive/ barely addictive at all. 

But they will later find… there is an issue with this new drug

Sometimes after eating these drugs and falling asleep he also has strange dreams… 

In some dreams he is having a spicy time — he’s touching her (hands on thighs? Face? etc.), kissing her, she might be whispering sweet nothings into his ears as her hands wander lower (and also more spicy things happen that I will not describe… in this doc LOL). He probably feels guilty after waking up and wonders why he dreams these things.

In some dreams he’s killing her — sometimes he’s choking her, sometimes he slits her throat, once it was a gun to her abdomen and he watched her bleed out.

He doesn’t realize he only has these dreams when he’s eating the drugs, because dreams are strange like that / doesn’t make the connection. 

He does not tell anyone about these dreams.

These dreams he has… start to bleed into reality… (the spicy good ones not the killing ones) 

Guns

Vail hates guns. That’s the truth. He hates using them and he hates that he needs to use them sometimes. 

Maybe his parents were killed by one, and a gang, so he first became part of the scheme to avenge his parents?

But either way, whenever he doesn’t need them, he will not use them.

Lei also hates guns but it is the only way she can protect herself, being physically weak otherwise.

She is good with them though, it’s so easy to aim and pull the trigger. Concerningly easy → cold bitch Lei let’s go.

Of the doctor ladies she’s killed the most. I think maybe Ceres has killed more than Elise directly though :3 

Maybe their mutual dislike in guns is revealed in the story and this brings them closer

Lei: Why didn’t you use your fucking gun? You almost died!

Vail: … I…

Vail: I hate using them. Sorry. 

Lei: … 

Lei: (sighing) That makes two of us. 

Flash saving Lei :3 

This might happen very early in the story — one of the first events, which is why they discover she’s being targeted. 

Lei is walking in the sketchy alleyways and she notices someone is following her, so she begins to run and they also run after her. There are possible gunshots that she manages to dodge. She also shoots back and manages to land 1 shot on her pursuer, which is why she escapes from the situation. 

Coincidentally, Flash pulls up and tells her to jump in so they escape the situation.

This high stress situation → getting saved by Flash → makes her very grateful to Flash and she finds herself trusting him more quickly/easily than she should.

Although, she doesn’t seem to be aware of this being the reason why, as Flash seems to have high emotional/social intelligence

She does find that he seems to always say things that SHE likes to hear, but she feels like he’s not like this with others, which reassures her a little. 

He also gives her rides sometimes when he’s not on jobs from Lexi. He even opens the door for her when he does so like a gentleman. 

She ends up talking to him more than she anticipates because he makes the situation seem comfortable. 

Liam being scrutinized as the newbie 

Liam gets recruited because his goal is similar to Lexi’s goal — to get rid of the scum of the city (Maybe?) — him to make the city a better place for his brother, Lexi just because she is a hero (main protag energy). 

Other than Zoey, the rest of them were not so keen about Liam at first and there was a bit of a distrust for him.

Zoey and Liam might be childhood friends in this because their homie energy is too strong. 

He also quickly hit off with Tiger + Elik — probably didn’t get along with them at first, but after doing a few jobs with them… they found out they got along quite well, especially him and Tiger. 

Rose might have been one of the people who distrusted Liam the most at first, but warmed up to him eventually when they slowly found out about each other.

Keeper probably started out neutral with him but like tsundere, he does end up having a place within her circle. 

Maric, Vail, and Flash were pretty neutral about him. I imagine most of them would still be neutral about him, but more accepting of them. 

As the newbie, he was first to be accused/suspected of being the mole, but Rose, Elik, and Vail probably all took turns tailing him and found his sneaking around was him trying to stalk his bro

Maric as the red herring

He is the second suspect after Liam is “cleared” of his suspect status. 

Personality wise he’s a little rash → jump into action type. I also think he’s the type to follow instructions / not think too much because he’s just the muscle. Other people with bigger brains can do the thinking. 

But the fact he follows instructions well makes him more sus maybe? 

Maybe sometimes he even messes up a little, which makes him a prime suspect.

I have no idea why he was cleared of being the suspect but they just find out he’s kinda just a guy. And then they’re like why did we even suspect him… he’s the most normal jock type person ever.

Protection

For like the first month-two months nothing really happens when Vail is bodyguarding Lei so they lessen the amount of that so he can work on other things Lexi needs him to do. 

One time she’s walking alone and she actually does get attacked. She manages to take down her pursuer but also gets injured in the process — luckily just a sprained ankle (from running in heels LOL) 

When they inspect the pursuer’s dead body, they do find an insignia of a rival gang/ tattoo on him — Rats maybe? XD 

She does stop wearing heels as frequently after and opts for lace-up boots.

He finds her at the clinic later where she is doing her own treatment. 

Vail: Sorry… 

Lei: It wasn’t your fault. We got too comfortable since they didn’t make any moves. 

She sighs, taking off the ice pack from her ankle and binding it to reduce the swelling: I guess you’ll be stuck with me a little longer. 

Vail: …

Lei: Well, don’t get too excited there. 

Vail: Don’t worry, I’ll protect you next time. So it won’t happen again.

Lei laughs a little: That is definitely supposed to be your job. I’ll be looking forward to it then~

He’s just keeping his eyes on the treasure

Since he often walks behind her and slightly to the side of her, when he’s not paying attention to his surroundings, he’s watching her from behind. 

Lei: You could stare at my ass and legs less often, you know. 

Vail, surprised: How did you know that? 

Lei: … Well I didn’t but now I definitely do. 

Vail: … 

(She’s always wearing like short dresses and skirts — sometimes with stockings, sometimes her legs are bare — anyways there is a reason he is looking) 

Lei: What do you like better?

Vail: What?

Lei: Stockings or bare legs? 

Vail: Stockings  (because it’s more fun to imagine taking them off :3 and it looks less cold) 

Lei: No hesitation… Alright. 

And then starting the next day she starts to wear stockings/ tights more. Vail doesn’t ask but she explains it like

Lei: Since you’re guarding me, I thought that I should give you some motivation, y’know. You can look — you just can’t touch. 

Liam in this world

In this AU, similar to canon, Liam would do anything to make sure his younger bro Alba has a good future so after their parents’ death, he turned to crime to make a living for Alba. 

Possibly went to jail a few times for pettier crimes. Eventually starts doing organized crime as a grunt/hitman. 

Alba eventually found out about Liam’s criminal activities and cut Liam out (same as the canon LOL) but Liam is okay with this more so because he wants Alba to live the best life he can, untainted and pure as he is. 

Liam still kinda stalks Alba creepily though, whenever he can or hires someone to do it/ gets someone from the gang to do it (maybe Rose or Elik? — whoever is willing)

Tiger + Elik 

The twins, for as long as they knew, only had each other in life. So it makes sense that after all these twenty-something years, they still stick together as much as possible.

Part of the story for them in this AU is to learn that yes, they will always be important to each other, but also learning that they can be independent of each other

Liam gets close to both of the twins in different ways! 

Elik cuz they’re both big bros. And they’re bros. And maybe more than just bros XD 

Tiger because they just have similar ideologies and their personalities mesh well together so they’re very close friends! Liam also becomes her big bro (cute vibes only)

the twins are still very girlboss in this AU so they are like some of the #1 in Lexi’s group. (obviously). 

Rose + Ceres

In this AU, Rose and Ceres grew up together and their parents were really bad so Rose took Ceres and escaped as soon as he could (maybe he was 18 and Ceres 10) 

Rose had to turn to crime to ensure he could raise Ceres. But he would do anything for his precious younger sister…

They’re quite close in this AU but Ceres feels guilty that her brother went to such lengths so that she could grow up… and Rose feels guilty he got Ceres involved in this mess.

At some point Ceres almost got taken which made Rose have a bad time and break down but it’s okay she was okay in the end and Rose trained her in shooting after so she could protect herself

She doesn’t like using guns but she’ll do anything to ease her bro’s burden

Ceres does feel like a little trapped bird in a cage sometimes though… it suffocates her a little. 

Ceres + Elise + Lei 

After prison (?) Lei had to turn to doing underground doctoring which was pretty dangerous since she was a lone young woman. Elise heard about her and asked if she wanted to work with her (and Ceres)

Of course there is no reason not to accept so Lei did and thus they opened their own little underground clinic, mostly catering to the organized crime groups.

Lei got particularly close to Ceres because they were close in age and they spend the most time together in the clinic. Ceres because she’s not that allowed to leave and Lei because she’s cooking drugs. 

Sometimes Lei would joke with Ceres that she could be her older sis (instead of Rose LOL) 

Ceres: My older sister? Like… my sister in law?

Lei: ABSOLUTELY NOT. 

Lei makes a disgusted face: I love you, Ceres, but I would not marry Rose for you. I’m sorry. 

Ceres: A-ah… o-okay… 

Lei: We don’t have to be sisters by law. After all, when has the law ever done something good for us? 

Lei: Instead… we can be sisters by oath (smiles)

Ceres smiles back: Okay… sisters by oath.

Sometimes Lei helps Ceres sneak out… because if Ceres is with her she’ll be safe right? :) Lei will protect her.

An intended promise

Lei: You know, I don’t think it would be too bad, if the three of us stuck together for the rest of our lives.

Ceres: Y-yeah? You think?

Lei nods: The prospects aren’t high, but… 

Ceres: Pro-promise?

Lei: Well as long as I don’t croak early and the two of you don’t get married, yes I promise.

Ceres: D-don’t say that! We will all be fine…

Lei: …

Lei: Yeah…. 

(in her thoughts) Hopefully… 

Since the red dragons all carry red dragon tattoos/ insignias… I think it would be cute if the doctor gals also have their own little symbol they carry. I have not decided what this symbol is, but probably a bird like a dove (Elise is an eagle, Lei a swan, and Ceres in this AU is a bird in a cafe. Doves are supposed to represent peace). It’s probably a little keychain though. 

Elise hangs it on her stethoscope

Ceres on car keys (when she is allowed to go out LOL)

Lei’s is on her keys to the clinic. 

It would be a shame… if anything happened to anyone in this group. They are very tight-knit and all of them play very important parts in the running of their little underground clinic… 

Big Bro squad

Liam, Rose, Elik. They hang out a lot and do missions a lot together XD they can all relate that they are big bros who would do anything for their younger sibs…

POSSIBLY AN OT3??? Age gap between Rose and the other 2 is concerning but let’s handwave this for funsies. Maybe they are just FWB who knows this is a spicy dark AU so anything goes.  

THEY CAN ALSO JUST BE SUPER GOOD FRIENDS. Not everything has to be a ship. I said. Me LOL. But no, I just want them to be a squad for sure. 

Ceres gets kidnapped by one of the rival gangs.

Against Lexi’s wishes, they (Rose, Lei, Vail) go on a rescue mission to get her back.

They might also convince Liam + Elik/Tiger for this rescue mission due to big bro squad camaraderie. 

It’s very dramatic and epic — stealth mission after all to break in and get the girl

Rose actually doesn’t miss many shots this time and he snipes a bunch of people. He first takes out some guards at a distance before the others go in. 

Liam goes in guns/sword ablazing —what is stealth? He tanks again.

Elik is very calculated about the way he approaches this. He doesn’t need to stealth though cuz everyone will die as soon as he steps in #girlboss 

Vail stealths… it’s in his kit to ambush people from the shadows. 

Lei is also just shooting cuz she does not have stealth. She even wears pants for this mission. (She only wears pants when she’s serious LMAO) 

They get Ceres, who is in a little room on her own, knocked out (sedative), tied up to a chair, and gagged. She is otherwise okay.

It is concerningly easy to get to Ceres once they kill everyone and the way back seems unusually clear… 

As if it were a trap :3 Or a set up for something :3 

Lexi shakes her head at them when they return… saying there will be repercussions for their actions…

After this rescue mission, Vail and Lei grow a little bit closer. They start to talk more over the few months and sometimes also borderline flirt. This flirting is in Lei's personality though — she’s used to sucking up a little.

Jacket

Vail, putting his jacket on her again because she’s cold: Why do you never bring a jacket?

Lei: It wouldn’t go well with my outfit. Besides, why bring my own jacket when you’ll give me yours~ 

She’s right though LOL he will give her his jacket.

Collar

I just think this would be hot. There's no particular reason why Vail ended up with a collar from Lei. It’s a very simple choker — like a stretchy durable piece of durable fabric with a silver clasp… TRUST ME BRO 

Someone may have called Vail Lexi’s dog or Lei’s dog or just a dog in general

Lei: Don’t listen to that drivel. You aren’t anyone’s dog. 

Vail: Well… essentially I am your guard dog right now.

Lei: Bodyguard. You’re a bodyguard.

Vail: I dunno, sometimes I think dogs are better than people…

Lei: … You’re not wrong about that… but… 

Lei: What, you want a collar, too?

Vail: If it’s a gift from you. 

around here is where Lei starts to suspect something is wrong. 

She still gives him the collar though :3 cuz it’s sexy.

Lei: Since you asked so nicely, here. 

Lei: It’s really simple though, so you can throw it away if you want. 

For some reason, Vail is exceptionally touched by such a small tiny action. 

Vail: I won’t. 

And then he puts it on right away. He only takes it off when he’s showering, and cleans it immediately if it ever gets bloodied. 

Name 

In the beginning, he simply called her “Doc”. 

But at some point during the bodyguarding (close to like 4 months and almost every day too?) this changed.

Lei: You know, you don’t have to keep calling me “Doc”. I’m not your doctor right now.

Vail: Yeah? What do you want to be called?

Lei: Just call me Lei, at least we are alone. 

Since it is her request, who is he to refuse? 

Jealousy

canon Vail doesn’t get jealous but this AU’s Vail… is a spicy meatball also for legitimate plot reasons. 

Specifically, this event takes place where after Lei treats a patient, they’re extra touchy with her, which she shuts down quickly, but the patient is generally being a sleaze? 

Lei asks Vail to show the patient out the door and he does, but as soon as he and the patient are in the alleyway, he kills the patient in cold blood.

He doesn’t even realize —  he’s doing this subconsciously — until the blood is on his sword and hands.

He just realizes after that, he didn’t like how the person was treating her… and in cold anger he decided that such a person was not needed in the world.

He has to get rid of the body first before returning

When he comes back a little later, Lei notices the blood on him and after confirming it’s not his injuries… she realizes he’s just killed someone.

Lei: Who was it? That you killed? 

Vail: …

Vail: The guy just now. 

Lei: Why? Was he from a rival gang?

Vail: … He touched you. 

This is more evidence that allows Lei to realize something is wrong with Vail. 

She used to feel safe with him… but now, she just feels dread… and fear. 

“More Addictive than Any Drug”

Lei is not blind, she notices him looking at her mouth, so she says, mostly as a joke. 

Lei: You want to kiss me so bad it makes you look stupid.

Vail: And what if I do?

Lei raises her eyebrow, clearly not expecting him to admit it. With a smirk, she beckons him forward with a finger. 

He obliges, and once he’s right in front of her, she pins him to the wall, presses her knee between his legs and then leans in to kiss him, hard. 

“Fuck” he thinks. Because her kisses are more addictive than any drugs he’s taken before. And he suffers withdrawal symptoms every time. 

His fantasy (dreams) and reality blurs a little when it comes to this. But a dream is no longer enough… 

I don’t know where this scene fits in the plot but it’s spicy so it has to happen. Also that previous point is important. :3 

“First Time”

Things get spicy real fast… not sure why this happened but I need it for plot reasons… plot reasons XD 

Maybe they just gave into the desire — what is self control when there’s always a chance you’re going to die the next day? 

The other option is she got drunk somehow (maybe the stress of the situation) and called him up LOL cuz she has a diff personality when she’s drunk. 

Canon Vail would not do anything to her while she’s drunk/ under the influence, but this AU’s Vail has a reason why he’d give in… 

It's Vail's first time so it’s still spicy in that regard because Lei is still leading. 

Spicy things happen and he finally gets to touch the legs and thighs he sometimes looks at. 

He whispers the words "I love you" before he passes out which makes Lei freeze up and realize she’s made a huge mistake. 

If she’s drunk this is what causes her to have a moment of being not drunk → cold water to her face

Spicy scene: Morning after 

He wakes up alone the morning after and finds no notes left for him or anything — no trace of what happened last night. He goes to find her, but when he goes to her workplace, he finds Liam standing outside the door. 

Vail: What are you doing here?

Liam: I’m Doc’s bodyguard.

Vail, frowning: No, I’M her bodyguard. 

Liam: Not as of this morning. Ask Lexi for details. 

Vail, bristiling with anger: Are you fucking with me right now? 

The door opens and it is Lei who has her hands on her hips. For once she’s wearing pants: You two are making a ruckus while I’m trying to do my work. 

Vail: Why the fuck is Liam your bodyguard now?

She seems to hesitate for a little bit but she exchanges nods with Liam and finally invites Vail to come inside the room where she’s working on drugs.

Vail: Lei-

Lei: Doc. Call me Doc. 

Lei: … Last night was a mistake, Vail. 

Vail is deeply hurt by these words: What do you mean a mistake? 

Lei: … A temporary lapse in judgment. We were simply giving into our animalistic desires. 

Vail: Animalistic desires? I said I love you.

Lei: … Love doesn’t exist for people like us, Vail. I’m sure you didn’t mean it. You just got caught up in the moment. 

Vail: What if I mean it? 

Lei: You don’t.

Vail: How would you know that? 

Lei: … 

Lei: … Well, either way, you definitely can’t be my bodyguard anymore. 

Vail: Why not?

Lei hisses: It’s for your own sake. This is supposed to be a job for you — you can’t just bring your personal feelings into it. 

Vail: Then what was last night supposed to mean? 

Lei: … You’re right, I’m sorry. If I had known it was your first time I wouldn’t have played around with you.

Vail: … Is that all? Just that you wanted to “play around” a little? 

Lei: …Yeah. That’s all. 

He is silent, the hurt stinging, so he says nothing. They both stay in this tense silence for a long time — the clock continues to tick tick tick on the wall and it is the only noise for a few long minutes. 

Lei, more gently: You can love anyone you want, Vail. It just can’t be me. 

“I don’t want anyone else” Vail thinks, “I want you.” But he doesn’t say this. He cannot, because he knows she would shut him down even further. He simply clenches his fists. 

“Alright.” He says instead. What else can he do? 

Lei seems to smile at him, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. 

Lei: I need to do my work now, and I’m sure Lexi has tasks for you to do. Let Ceres or Elise know if you want any drugs on the way out though. 

His voice is empty when he says his second “alright". And it takes every fibre of effort in his being to walk away, but he manages to leave. 

He doesn’t see how when she turns away, her hands are shaking as they grip the glassware she’s working with. 

Withdrawal symptoms 

Time passes. They do their jobs separately. 

Everytime he gets injured (and he seems to get more injured during this time, especially because he gets distracted a lot and keeps thinking about her), he goes to their clinic hoping to even just get a small glimpse of Lei but it’s always Ceres and Elise who treat him. 

Ceres treats him silently and rarely, only for minor injuries (first aid lower than Elise + Lei)

Elise is usually the one who treats him, and usually tells him Lei is 1) not here, 2) busy, 3) seeing another patient. 

Elise usually doesn't say much but once she tells him that he needs to stop coming here to try to see Lei because she has been firm she won't see him. 

He asks why.

Elise: Lei… she thinks it's best for you if you can forget about her as quickly as possible.

Vail: I'm trying but it's not working.

Elise: Hmm… clearly. But she is right, whatever you’re feeling… it isn’t as you think it is.

Vail: Why does everyone keep telling me what I should feel? 

Elise: … 

Elise: Our advice comes with experience. Of course I cannot control what you feel, but, just err on the side of caution when it comes to these things. 

Elise: After all… this world is cruel to those who show weakness.

Vail: I'm strong, I can protect her.

Elise: Maybe you are. But you haven't considered that if you’re the one showing weakness… she might be the one to get hurt.

Elise no longer elaborates as the treatment has ended. On the way out she does say something else

Elise: If you really do care about her… it’s best to stay away. 

Vail still doesn’t understand but just generally feels bad as he continues to stay away. There’s a constant sort of small pit in his stomach as he’s separated from her and even though spending time away should make it fade — it doesn’t… 

It is also heavily hinted during this period that the sedative he gets from her has trace amounts of the yandere/obsession drug in it (but if you see previous parts, this has been foreshadowed). This is why he is extra obsessive / why he developed feelings so fast. He is not aware of this at the time and Lei began to suspect it later. 

Elise has also been told by Lei of the issue and now she is seeing it in action.

Re-meeting

Liam gets busy / assigned to do stuff with Tiger + Elik (in terms of trying to crack down whom exactly are the rival gangs trying to take them down) so Vail is reassigned to be Lei’s bodyguard

It has been ~2-3 months and the first re-meeting starts off a bit tense… 

From Vail’s POV he is immensely excited though — as though it’s a natural body response from him and he cannot explain why. 

Imagine like a dog wagging his tail — but he tries his best to hide this. 

Lei is like: Oh good, you seem to be well. 

Vail, in pain is like: Yeah I got over it. Don’t worry about it/ about me. 

He is lying, but he got better at hiding it… he used to not lie at all… but he has to now. 

Because in his eyes, being just a bodyguard is better than being nothing at all… 

Lei: … Good. I’m glad to hear it. 

She thinks MAYBE the drug is wearing off and she’s relieved but she’ll still work on the “cure” if she can. 

She later finds out the drug has not worn off. 

She does get attacked eventually by a group of people durin this time. 

Vail does his bodyguard duties all cool and he gets injured in the fight, so he gets treatment by her ASAP.

He goes unconscious from blood loss but when he wakes up, he finds himself lying in a bed and she’s like there with him, asleep on the floor beside the bed.

For extra spiciness she might be holding his hand, which she planned to retract before he woke up but she fell asleep from the hard work of making sure he didn’t die. 

He’s like “don’t play around with my feelings like this” but he takes the hand that’s holding his and kisses it.

She doesn’t wake up. 

Because of fatigue, he does end up being able to fall asleep and when he wakes up the second time, she is gone, like she was never there to begin with. 

Tiger finally breaks into the systems of the rival gangs and they figure out the main gangs that are after them. Lexi + Keeper + Rose and some of the higher ups decide it’s time to get rid of them because they’ve been a pain in the assforever → final battle/ big confrontation time. 

They’ve been doing plot stuff in the BG but I’m not actually that well-versed with mafia AUs so just know the plot is going on in the BG but… the action is NOT the focus of this story :3 it’s just the setting for something else I want to convey. 

“Dinner” 

She’s changing his bandages for the last time before the final battle — he’s basically healed enough to fight and there is no choice. 

Vail: If I live, let’s go out for dinner. 

Lei: … That’s a death flag. You shouldn’t say those things.

Vail: We deal with death flags all the time. I’ll be fine. 

(his thoughts) And as long as you’re alright… then that is what matters. 

She is silent for a long time. Because he can’t see her expression right now since her face is downturned, he has no idea what her face looks like. Is it angry like it has been before? Is it disgusted? Is it sad? He will never know. 

Lei: … Maybe. (she finally answers very quietly. She is still looking down and shadows obscure her face.)

Vail: Maybe?

Lei: I didn’t outright say no.

Vail: If that’s the case then it just might be enough to get me through this. 

She doesn’t reply. (She is too scared that she will say her true feelings if she opens her mouth, so she keeps it shut). 

There’s a super epic final battle with Lexi’s group vs some other gangs. Lexi’s group wins of course with no casualties — although there were some close ones.

almost deaths: Keeper, Zoey, Rose, Maric, Tiger

The rival gangs found the hideout that Keeper + Tiger were in doing comms work and hacking work, but they manage to escape. Maric was probably the one with them, and so also got caught in the crossfire. They then join the main battle, Flash brings them. 

They are injured so Elise/Lei/Ceres patch them up… well as best as they can cuz this is semi-realistic and there are no magical regen stims. 

Maric is the most injured, he unfortunately cannot participate in the battle after but he did his job of guarding their squishy girlies so y’know give him some applause please. 

Then both Keeper and Tiger go in guns ablazing as well — when I’m talking epic I’m saying gunshots explosions everywhere LOL 

Keeper steals one of Zoey’s shotguns and uses that. 

Zoey and Rose almost get taken out by a bomb / explosion/ cave in but somehow Liam saves them (just like in the canon universe) 

Lexi is of course on the frontlines with the other DPSes — Elik, Zoey, Liam, Vail. They are all girlbossing their way through this. 

Ceres even goes out and shoots some people — I imagine she takes down someone who almost killed Rose. Sibling bond uwu

Elise is in the corner providing medical care. Lei and Ceres are with her — although Lei is shooting at people who come too close XD. 

“Support? Yeah I support the enemy’s right to die” — Lei, probably.

Lei probably ends up fighting a lot/ not standing in the corner in the end cuz she is capable of that. 

Everyone lives :3 well except for the gangs they decimate. They uh destroy a lot of gangs one by one… it’s only the remnants that are really in the final battle, trying to get revenge on their fallen brethren. Lexi’s group has been slowly whittling the forces of the scummiest over time. 

They celebrate after with drinks + dinner party 

People who drink: Lexi, Rose, Elik, Tiger, Liam, Zoey, Vail

People who do not drink/ drank nonalcoholic beverages: Maric (he’s in the hospital bed LOL) , Flash, Ceres, Keeper, Lei, Elise (she’s watching over Maric LOL) 

Lei leaves early to “go sleep” but she’s really going to work on developing a cure for the Bessenheit symptoms and Vail notices and tells her he’ll walk her home. 

She’s like “You don’t have to guard me anymore.” (thinking the gang situation is resolved)

He’s like “I want to, though.”

Again, she is silent and feeling hella guilty.

During this time he asks her about dinner again and she’s like “... I will think about it carefully. But I also have something that I might need to tell you so please give me a few days.” 

This sounds more hopeful than he was expecting so he’s like “Alright. I will wait.”

And so she gets dropped off at her workplace?, but they don’t notice there is a car following them with someone watching very carefully… 

The “End”

They think because they uncovered and eliminated the groups that were after Lexi’s group they’re safe now. 

A few days pass uneventfully and some of their guards lower, although strangely, they never discovered the mole.

Lei still hasn’t responded to Vail’s dinner request. She is too afraid and she knows that his feelings are all but lies, so she doesn’t want to complicate it, but she’s thinking of telling him why / informing him of the likely contaminant in his sedatives. She’s already stopped giving him those sedatives but knows the effects are still lingering based on his reactions toward her… 

She’s considering telling him why she cannot accept the dinner request after she goes to black market that day.

Lei gets into the familiar car of the gang’s getaway driver, Flash… she had asked him prior to take her to black market so she could get the materials for a drug she’s trying to figure out what is wrong with Vail’s sedative.

He opens the backseat door for her, which he has done for her before so it is not unusual and she’s busy thinking about what to do with the Black market.

But instead of going to the driver’s seat, he overpowers her with his strength and injects her with a sedative she had given to him days prior… 

Specifically he sometimes does deliveries for her + maybe for the gang in general, so it was not unusual for him to have access to the materials she was using… 

It is also possible he simply managed to steal one, but I think it’s spicier if he simply got Lei to trust him enough to believe his word that Lexi or someone else needs 1 dose of the sedative. 

She thinks: Fuck, the mole was Flash all along… I shouldn’t have trusted him… 

And she goes unconscious… 

When she wakes up, she finds herself in an unfamiliar location — a dirty and abandoned barn, likely far away from the city. She is tied up and cannot move, Flash looks at her with surprise. Her gun is in his hands, pointed at her head.

Flash: Thought that sedative was supposed to knock out a grown man for 12 hours. 

Lei: It should. But I built up a resistance to it. I like to be prepared.

Here it is revealed she also needs sleeping pills in this AU. Cuz trauma. 

Flash: I’m surprised you’re not screaming your lungs out. I didn’t gag you. 

Lei: What’s the point in that? No one will come save me.

Flash: Oh, you’d be surprised.

Lei: …

Lei: Well, what? Is this where you’re going to monologue like a villain? 

Flash: A villain? 

Flash: Believe me when I say, I didn’t want to do this. 

Lei: Whether you wanted to or not, it doesn’t change that you did. Intentions mean nothing in this world, only actions matter. 

Flash: That’s true. But I am sorry. It wasn’t supposed to be you. It could have been anyone else. But I’m out of time and my hands are tied.

Lei: Say whatever you want to make yourself feel better. But it doesn’t change what happened.

She tries to struggle a little more in the ties, but she truly doesn’t have the strength to escape. And she’s tired, and she’s cold. She wasn’t lying when she said no one will come to save her. 

Lei (tired voice): Why don’t you get it over with?

Flash: Maybe I’m just trying to buy you some time.

Lei: (scoffs) Buy me some time? Or maybe you’re just having fun trying to torture your prey before her death? 

Lei (sigh): Just kill me already…

Flash: You really that eager to die? 

Lei: Don't really have a choice here, do I? 

Flash: Maybe, not. But what about those you’ll leave behind? Don’t you think about them at all? 

Lei: … 

Lei: That’s not my responsibility. 

Flash: Maybe, but what might they think? Elise? Ceres? 

Flash: … Vail? 

Lei: … 

Lei: They shouldn’t think anything of it at all. We are all not strangers to death. They will be fine. 

Lei: Please… just get it over with, Flash. 

She finally hears the safety click OFF and wonders how long Flash has been keeping her here for, without just shooting her while she was unconscious. He could have even done so in the car, or could have dropped her body off a cliff. Maybe he was not lying in saying he tried to buy some time for her, or maybe he was just getting off to torturing her a little before her death. That is something she will never know.

As she closes her eyes and braces herself for the gunshot that will finally end it all, she wonders how much of her words she’s just said to Flash are lies and how much is the truth. 

She hears the ringing gunshot

But she feels nothing. 

There’s a crashing noise of wood breaking and when she opens her eyes, she sees Vail crashing through the barn door, eyes blazing. He is holding a gun in his hands as well — the very weapon he hates. 

They exchange fire for a while, but Flash is fast and dexterous and Vail is not adept with his gun. Vail also manages to dodge the gunshots Flash fires at him. 

But unfortunately, Flash manages to land a shot at Lei who is still tied up and hits something in her abdomen. 

Through the red mist of pain, she sees Flash mouth the words “I’m sorry” and he promptly runs away.

You can see the internal conflict where Vail starts to run after Flash, but he sees the amount of blood pouring out of Lei and goes over to her instead.

He holds her in her arms but she’s bleeding too much… A doctor cannot administer first aid on herself, and he’s essentially useless as she’s quickly bleeding out. Even if Elise were here herself, the wound is in such a vital area it would only really be a miracle that would allow her to live. 

Lei: Why… did you come?

Vail: To save you. 

Lei: Sorry… you wasted… your time. 

Vail: Don’t say that I’ll get you to Elise and you’ll be alright… you’ll be alright. 

Lei: Not enough time. 

Vail: Save your strength. You just need to hold on a little longer. 

Lei laughs bitterly but it turns to hacking coughs and she coughs up blood.

Lei: That dinner… I wanted…

Vail: You can tell me later. We have to get you out of here. 

Lei: I wanted… to say…yes.

Vail: Don’t say these things… why did you- 

Lei: But… your feelings… it’s all… a lie… I'm sorry.

Lei: Vail… Forget me… and.. goodbye…

And thus her green eyes flutter shut and they do not open again. She lets out the softest and shakiest sigh — her last breath, and no more air enters or escapes her lips. Like a candle extinguished out by the tiniest breath, the life in her has been snuffed out. This bud has wilted before it had the chance to bloom.

Vail: Lei?

There is no reply. Only the sounds of his own harsh breathing.

Still holding her in his arms, he bends his head over and tries to listen for a heartbeat. There is none.

Alone in the barn, holding the body of the woman he loved, Vail bends his head over and cries. 

He could not protect her. 

He could not save her.

 “The Truth”

He brings the body back so Elise and Ceres and the others can see, holding it like it is something precious. 

Before they burn (?) the body, he gently brushes her hair from her face. If it weren’t for the blood, it would look like she’s sleeping. 

Ceres is heavily distraught and unstable over this so they have to sedate her over this. She straight up breaks down when she sees the body.

Elise seems unaffected on the outside but she breaks down when she's alone later. 

Elise: I see. 

and that is all that you get from her. 

Later (maybe a few days later?) Elise shows Vail certain pages from Lei that were in her lab notebook. They state:

"The sedative I have been giving Vail seems to have trace amounts of another drug. Elise suspects it has been contaminated with Bessenheit or related family of drugs. Likely, raw materials have been contaminated with it, possibly from Chemical Y because it is a liquid reagent that may have Bessenheit dissolved into it. Further investigation is required.” 

There are many drawings of what appear to be metabolic pathways of how drugs affect human systems, lots of complicated diagrams of the brain, thyroid, etc. and very neat handwriting. There are also various chemical names and recipes listed. 

There is a list of objectives written on the side:

Determine the contaminant → likely Bessenheit 

Determine the source of contamination → likely raw materials? Check out Black Market? 

Determine a possible solution to reverse the lingering effects of the drug → possibly xxx hormone pathway + xyz metabolic pathway + chemical X 

Tell Vail about the situation when prior objectives are mostly complete.

A sticky note says: Go to Black market — Flash — xx pm. It is dated for the day she died.

Elise tells him about a drug her and Lei’s former company was developing that causes the taker of the drug to develop an obsession with the giver of the drug… = Bessenheit 

Elise also tells him since he’s only been getting trace amounts, it should not affect him as much as it did the other test subjects, but clearly, he suffers from some symptoms. 

She explains she and Lei started suspecting that he was under the influence of this drug around 3-4 months ago, hence why they had him stay away from her until they could find a solution to it but… unfortunately they were still working on it when Lei died. 

She does not explicitly tell him Lei was looking into this that day she died, but he can see from the sticky note that was definitely the case. 

So how much of his feelings were real and how many were from the drug? There is no clear distinction between them — it is muddled and murky… 

Lei died believing that his feelings were all a lie fed to him by the drug. That is why she could not accept them, because she believed they were not real. 

She died believing that she ruined something for him when she was trying to help him (with the sedative). She died believing that it was all her fault… 

She told him to forget her because she wants him to no longer be affected by the drug. She wants him to live his own truth, untainted by all the lies. 

He will never be able to accomplish her dying wish to forget about her… Is that due to the drug or did it simply enhance his true feelings? 

They will never find out this truth… because she no longer exists in this world.

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

It’s been a pretty quiet week in the Fahrni household and at work. I’d say we’re in a steady state at both. Of course it won’t stay that way for long so I’m gonna enjoy it while I can.

Our granddaughter is with us this weekend so let’s see how much writing I’ll get done. 😁

I’ve saved so many interesting links this week. I hope you enjoy them.

Caleb Newton • Bipartisan Report

J. Michael Luttig, a widely consulted former federal judge, is among those harshly condemning the recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to give presidents a layer of legal immunity, meaning protection from prosecution, for certain actions taken in office.

Our Supreme Court has done democracy a big disservice. The immunity they’ve granted Presidents basically gives them carte blanche to commit crimes as part of holding the office.

They’re evil idiots.

Jason Koebler • 404 Media

The real Christina Warren hasn’t been writing these new posts on the zombie TUAW, however. The site’s new owners have stolen her identity, replaced her photo with an AI-generated one, and have been publishing what appear to be AI-generated articles under her byline.

Here’s someone using “AI” in an unethical way. Taking someone else’s work, running it through an LLM to change it, and republishing it under the authors name — with a different author picture — is disgusting.

Victoria Namkung • The Guardian

Whenever Cassie Yoshikawa drives through the Central Valley on the former US Highway 99, she looks for the century-old landmark that symbolizes the midpoint of California: the Palm and the Pine.

You’d think being a lifelong Californian I’d have known about this. I recall passing them but I had no idea they represented the center of California. They’re an official unofficial marker. Folks just did it. Pretty nifty.

Of course they’re going to be ripped out for highway expansion. Goodness knows we need more cars on the road.

Noor Al-Sibai • Futurism

Elon Musk is a man with many brands — but for electric vehicle shoppers, his personal brand has become increasingly toxic.

That’s right, folks are not buying Teslas because Space Karen is such a dick.

I’ve given up on The Musk Files. The man is just so toxic and disgusting his crimes against humanity are too many to enumerate.

Janko Roettgers • Lowpass

This is it for Redbox: The judge overseeing the bankruptcy case of Redbox’s corporate parent Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment granted the debtors request to convert it from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, effectively paving the way for shutting down the company and liquidating its assets.

Wow. BluRay and DVD renters are out of luck it seems. Before streaming became ubiquitous we’d rent from Redbox about once a week. We had one at our local grocery store. It was easy and cheap.

There’s a bit of irony in this whole thing. I’ve gone back purchasing BluRay + digital download movies. We use the digital version all the time but have that BluRay backup should the license for the digital copy be revoked.

Dalia Faheid, Monica Garrett and Brandon Miller • CNN

Death Valley sets a new daily record with a searing 128 degrees as West Coast heat wave drags on

Poor California, poor planet. If this keeps up how long will it be before California can no longer produce the fruits and vegetables that feed the world? That’s not hyperbole. California’s San Joaquin Valley really is the breadbasket of the world.

Patrick Wyatt • Code of Honor

I’ve been writing about the early development of Warcraft, but a recent blog post I read prompted me to start scribbling furiously, and the result is this three-part, twenty-plus page article about the development of StarCraft, along with my thoughts about writing more reliable game code.

Don’t look at the date this article was published. Yes, it’s from 2012. 😄

You know I love a good discussion about code architecture, especially when presented in the form of an actual product. Not just some sample code to illustrate the point. He links off to another post discussing a linked list implementation and it’s great reading.

Chris Medland • racer

Lewis Hamilton’s victory in his last British Grand Prix for Mercedes is “like a little fairytale,” according to team principal Toto Wolff.

It’s really nice to see Lewis Hamilton pick up a win in his final season the Mercedes.

Manton Reece

Everyone who has implemented ActivityPub from scratch knows that there are implementation-specific quirks that trip up developers, making compatibility between apps more difficult. Some of these issues are being clarified by the Social Web Community Group. Test suites will help too. Micro.blog has had ActivityPub support for years and we’re still finding edge cases.

So many folks are climbing on the ActivityPub bandwagon and that’s a good thing. Providing more integration with other services and allowing those to be displayed in native clients without changing formats is wonderful.

As much as I’d like to finish writing, my granddaughter is up so I’m gonna hit the publish button now and hang out with her. 😃

Steven Beschloss

The dangerously self-important Roberts insisted that the country is “in the process of the second American Revolution” and further noted that this so-called revolution “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Tom Warren • The Verge

Microsoft is finally rolling out spellcheck and autocorrect for its Notepad app in Windows 11, more than 40 years after the simple text editor was first introduced in Windows in 1983.

Skye Jacobs • TechSpot

Big Tech needs to generate $600 billion in annual revenue to justify AI hardware expenditure

Sarah Kuta • Smithsonian Magazine

While visiting his parents’ recently renovated house in Europe, a man spotted something unusual in one of the floor tiles. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be part of a human jawbone—and it still had a few teeth.

Spire Motorsports

Rodney Childers, a 40-time NASCAR Cup Series (NCS) race winning crew chief and one of the sport’s most respected tacticians, will lead Spire Motorsports No. 7 team and driver Corey LaJoie in 2025.

Felix Salmon • Axios

The Slacker generation might have been slacking off when it came to planning for retirement: Gen X consistently ranks in surveys as the least-prepared group for when they stop earning.

John Stoehr • Raw Story

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) declared Monday he is advocating for Christian nationalism, a far-right ideology that claims there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution, and promotes as a national religion Christian fundamentalism, a hardline, extremist brand of Christianity at odds with the religious beliefs of many Christians across the country

Drew Magary • SFGATE

But again, discretion isn’t this car’s job. This is a loud and lonely car for loud and lonely people. And while I enjoyed driving my Cybertruck, I hope I’m never loud and lonely enough to want to buy one.

[redthefortuneteller]

Dr. Andonuts' Chimeras sound particularly promising in terms of connections and parallels, as they're part human, animal and robot. I must read more from your Mother3 theory in a near future. I'm afraid I tried getting into it at the wrong time and my mind just couldn't follow along. Probably also because I simply know nothing of Mother3 to begin with.

Since you're going to read the book yourself I will refrain from spoiling it for you. But, without going into detail, what happens to Moreau is that his creations also have a mind of their own and do give him some trouble. He also has a bit of an altercation with one of them which escaped her restraints from being in so much pain. I think that should suffice to make the parallels fit in the sense that, Moreau also had to keep a strict order to keep his experiments in check, and even then, with a couple of exceptions, he ultimately couldn't.

As with Dr. Mengele, Moreau escaped to a deserted island, but in his case it was to conduct his crimes against humanity(frankly, against life) there, unbothered.

I haven't delved too deeply into Undertaker's mind, but keeping that in mind, I think he is so aged and has been planning this and working on it for seemingly such a long time that he strikes me as being way past the point of questioning ethics and morality. Dr. Moreau controlled his experiments with something akin to brainwashing. Undertaker literally puts thoughts into their minds, correct? Via forgery of the cinematic records? Still, at the very end, if everything inevitably goes totally wrong for Undertaker, I guess there might be a chance for him to see how immoral and unethical his actions were...

Finally, I think I've mentioned before that I quite like the idea of Finnian being his own researcher's son. The only problem I have with that is that there's a similar situation with Sieglinde and her mother. Just as I see a problem within my own theory with Snake coming from a facility because Finnian already has a similar background. See I sort of constrain myself when I see repetition in some shape or form, for fear of unoriginality.

Snake is not a human with snake genes. He's a snake with human genes.

Edit: I've added at the bottom something else I had forgotten about. If you've read this post before, give it a read. Sorry about that! If you're at all familiar with the 1896 early science fiction novel "The Island of Doctor Moreau" by H. G. Wells, the tittle surely might've brought it to mind. Indeed, I am basing this theory on this novel. "The Island of Dr. Moreau reflects the ethical, philosophical, and scientific concerns and controversies raised by the themes and ideas of Darwinian evolution, which were so disruptive to social norms in the late 1800s."

In brief, Doctor Moreau was an eminent physiologist (read: mad scientist) in London who ended up fleeing Great Britain due to his experiments in vivisection being publicly exposed. Vivisection is, for all intents and purposes, experimentation on live animals. What he accomplished with his experimenting was human-animal hybrids. But it's not as one would assume at first glance (as did the main protagonist in the novel), that he'd turn humans into animals, as is often portrayed in this sort of fiction or even in real-world folklore (think werewolves or berserkers).

Instead, Doctor Moreau turned animals into humans. And unfortunately, through means of extremely painful surgery, which fits in quite well with a dark story such as Kuroshitsuji.

Almost all of the beast-folk are named after "what they're made of". For example: Leopard-Man, Hyena-Swine, Wolf-Man, Fox-Bear Woman, etc… And he refers to them as his children. Children he holds hostage on an island. You know, like an orphanage? The orphanage, which is mentioned in Chapter 192, could very well be "the island" where the Doctor's children were being held at. After all, an island is just like a building where one can be held in, only the walls are a vast ocean. Snake (or Oscar) refers to it as "… a terrible place." and remembering the painful surgery part, I think that's an understatement.

In a 1996 film adaptation that slightly deviated from the original work, the beast-folk as they're called, need to take a serum in order to keep them from turning back into their original form. All except for one hybrid in particular, which the doctor refers to almost perfect or the closest he's gotten to perfection. I feel inclined to mention that in the film someone confronts the protagonist with something along the lines of "What do you intend to do once you get her out of the island? Sell her to a circus?" referring to that almost perfect hybrid. I believe it to be the case that Snake could be the perfect hybrid. The doctor mentions the fact that in turning animals into humans, he could create the perfect human, devoid of its human flaws, devoid of malice. I firmly believe Snake is devoid of malice.

The whole incident with Phelps was nothing but a mistake, and Snake's paying dearly for that mistake as he got his neck sliced in the same place Phelps had the mamba bite.

Whichever the case, the plan was not very well thought through: he was going to kill Smile without knowing the circus troupe was dead and without so much as asking Smile about it. He was going to kill Sebastian too, were he not a demon. As Smile was telling him that he had infiltrated the circus in order to investigate, Snake kept flip-flopping between getting shocked with the revelation that the troupe were kidnapers and getting aggravated, insisting Smile was lying. Probably due to the snakes' chattering each of their opinions. He's confused, but he's not evil. It's clear from his reactions.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because he was acting purely on impulse. Not much thought. Or at least, the thought he put into it wasn't much. It wasn't malice guiding his actions, but a sort of instinct. Snakes don't think much about attacking when they feel threatened. If they feel inclined to do so, they just do. No questions asked. No thinking about consequences.

In the film mentioned earlier, the doctor's office looks like a small library. The doctor is obviously quite literate. However, his "children" aren't.

There seems to be quite a bit of focus on Snake not knowing how to read. First mentioned on Yana's personal blog and most recently brought up in Chapter 195. It was quite common for people to be illiterate at the time Kuro takes place, but there was a focus on Snake from Yana's part, which I only find interesting because of how his snakes were named. After famous writers.

Could the doctor have named the other snakes but not him, as he was the first snake? The Snake. Or could Snake have named the others because he himself didn't have a name? It's funny that among all his family, the one human is simply named "snake" while the ones that would be naturally referred to as snakes are named quite fancifully. It's also quite comical if you consider chapter 51, when Finnian thought Snake was "Mister Oscar" as he introduced himself with "I'm Snake…", "- Says Oscar."

If you'd like to consider going a little further and going a bit crazy on these what ifs: consider that his snakes are the others who didn't make it or reverted back to normal. The panel in chapter 195 (page 7) where Snake has himself a little dilemma (in space!) with all the snakes chiming in in his head? I know it might sound a little out there, but I think the reason those three Snakes are shown naked could be because they're not Snake, they really might be Keats, Emily, and Wilde. Either the Snake-Man hybrids all look the same, or this is how Snake visualizes them speaking, as he himself is a snake like them. The difference is that he can use human speech, so if they were to use it as well, they too would look like him… right?

In fact, he often makes little distinction. He's said this in chapter 202 when Arty asks if he's a snake charmer, to which he firmly responds, "No. Snake and us are family. - says Dan." and "We are all footmen. - Says Goethe." Before this, he says "We're all here. - says everyone." He refers to them as "us". He makes little separation between himself and the other snakes. He understands and talks to snakes because, naturally, he is a snake. And he's the only snake who can talk to humans—the only one who is also human. He's the spokesperson (spokesnake, lol) of the group. Edit: He makes different voices for different snakes. Each snake has their own voice. What if those were really their voices at some point in time? The first idea one gets from Snake is that the snakes are like parts of his personality that he's expressing through them. However, this isn't true (or entirely true) because they do really do communicate with him, as proven undeniably by Oscar sneaking into the castle basement in the Green Witch arc and bringing back information Snake had no way of knowing (and couldn't really explain very well when Bard asked for details).

In chapter 53, he's sneaked down to the cargo to share the food with "everyone" as he says. I always found it a little odd to share human food with snakes, who only eat whole animals. On the plate, there were some leaves. There are no herbivorous snakes; they're all exclusively carnivorous (insectivorous, too). Of course, the lettuce, or whatever it is, is intact. But still, snakes don't eat breaded chicken or liver pâté either… It's just odd that Snake, who's been seen feeding his snakes mice twice, suddenly thinks they'd be interested in this gourmet, first-class dish. I believe he thinks, since it's delicious to him, surely they might think so too. After all, they're all snakes. Could he get a little confused sometimes?

He's also never showed any fear of the werewolf forest while the other servants were scared as they made their way to the village in the Emerald Witch arc. He doesn't seem phased by the idea of wolf-men. He was freaked out by the torture instruments in the village though, meaning some things are scary, just not the werewolves.

Edit: I forgot to mention an interesting passage from the Kuroshitsuji Original Picture Drama live reading from 2015. As far as I know, the script was written by Yana Toboso. It's all done mainly for comedic purposes. However, there's a part where the characters are drinking and chatting and eventually some get a little tipsy. What Snake says in a drunken crying fit is "I'm a snake! I feel better if I drink a lot of sake!" Interesting, isn't it? ;) Go ahead and watch it yourself here if you feel like it: https://youtu.be/xMmrWsHLaqc?si=ozkAfssE_fLOOoaM&t=506

To end I'd also like to call attention to the cover art from Chapter 196. Him being confused about a lemon cake and a lemon tart being different snacks when they're both sweet and both cakes made it to the cover art. He's having trouble grasping how a lemon flavored dessert can be different from another lemon flavored dessert.

I think that sums it up nicely, although I might have forgotten some things. I do apologize if anyone has already made this correlation between this work by H. G. Wells and Snake's possible origins, I couldn't find anything related.

Of course it can all be explained easily by just saying he sees the snakes as family and as "us" because he has a connection to them. However, it's the "how he came to be" part that is my main motive behind the theory.

I put a lot of love and care into this theory and since Snake's flashbacks might be coming up soon, I thought I'd share it just so that it's out there for all it's worth.

Thank you so much for reading. Have a lovely day. Red

[dabistits]

To talk about Twice and villainy is to talk about class and criminality (II)

(Masterlist)

Poverty and crime in Japan

Despite Japan’s perception as a country with relatively low inequality, that reputation has somewhat suffered as capitalism advanced and the country faced economic downturns in the 1990s and 2000s. Japan still claims a high life expectancy, universal healthcare, and low infant mortality, but conversations about wealth have been ongoing: academic Sugimoto Yoshio records the changing discursive landscape that transformed Japan “from a uniquely homogeneous and uniform society to one of domestic diversity, class differentiation and other multidimensional forms.” Sugimoto describes the increasing discussion of a kakusa shakai, a disparity society, and the emergence of a karyu shakai—the underclass. Since Sugimoto’s article was published in 2010, [source] many issues of this kakusa shakai identified by him and academics from ten-plus years ago have persisted, such as the proliferation of non-regular workers (now comprising 15% of the labor force), [source] the growing wealth inequality being reflected in Japan’s aging population, and the increasing numbers of elderly poor. More recently, increasing attention has been devoted to the issue of child poverty, usually connected to the low incomes of single, working-class mothers. [source] In 2017, Japan’s relative rate of poverty rose to 16.3% (for comparison, the relative rate of poverty in the U.S. declined to 17.3%), and many non-regular workers expressed fears of getting sick and losing their jobs, remarking on their total lack of stability. [source] [source]

Reflecting working-class desperations worldwide, the most common crime in Japan throughout the Heisei era (1989-2019) was theft. Theft, particularly of material goods, should be thought of as a crime of need, arising out of a lack of a particular good and the money to pay for it. It’s a crime that points to a society with unmet needs, and an effort to criminalize those who try to have their needs met through their own power when social institutions refuse to help. It has long been asserted that the “concepts of "crime" are not eternal,” and that “the very nature of crime is social, and is defined by time and by place and by those who have the power to make the definitions.” The contested legality of abortion is a simple illustration of how definitions of “crime” are constantly in flux, constantly debated, and not at all intuitive or self-explanatory. Being able to label an action, a behavior, or a group of people “criminal” or “illegal” is an act of power, and people doing the labeling have a vested interest in determining what “crime” is. Activist Sabina Virgo, source of the previous quotes, elaborates: “The power to define is [...] the power of propaganda. [...] Most of us accept the images and definitions that we have been taught as true, neutral, self-evident, and for always; so the power [...] to define what is right and wrong, what is lawful and what is criminal, is really the power to win the battle for our minds. And to win it without ever having to fight it.” [source]

The choice to inscribe theft as a crime, as an act to be punished, is part of that propaganda. It’s the decision to criminalize poverty and to protect profit over people, rather than rightfully interpreting theft as a symptom of a dysfunctional system. In Japan, this looks like a large percentage of crimes getting committed by the elderly, particularly theft (90% of shoplifting offenders were elderly women), and a large percentage of incarcerated seniors, who by 2018 made up 12% of the prison population; on the other hand, the law is just beginning to address unethical workplace practices like overwork and power harassment, while facing a rising number of reports on domestic and sexual violence—the raw numbers of which are likely even higher than reported. [source] The difference between which acts are ruled criminal, and who gets criminalized for acting, lays stark the difference between the unethical actions undertaken by the powerful, and the criminalized actions undertaken by the powerless; the more an unethical act abides by and benefits entrenched systems of power, the more we are compelled to see it as normal and acceptable, whereas actions, however minuscule, that resist the hegemony of the capitalist class and reject its propaganda end overwhelmingly with more debt and prison time.

Family and class.

The socioeconomic forces that shift our societies are no less felt within the family structure, and family may be one of the first social units to see destabilization. In a world of increasing economic strife, it isn’t uncommon for parents to spend more hours working than at home, or even to travel abroad to provide for their family in their native country, to see traditional norms rewritten as children either move away or continue to live with their parents, as marriage and birth rates rise or fall, and as the elderly are either embraced back into the family structure or left to fend for themselves. Due to generational wealth, family is also often the determining factor for whether or not someone succeeds, to what degree, and with how much effort. Needless to say, when it comes to “class,” the topic of family receives much scrutiny as academics, journalists, and creators delve into the ways our notions of “family” shift according to time, class, and economics.

Consider that in Japan, and de facto in most countries in the world, the first and most important safety net in modern society is the family. “Public social protection schemes are based on the assumption that everyone is supported by family first,” [source] and this includes the assumption of financial assistance, and duties like procuring care for the family’s elderly. The Japanese family registry—the koseki—is a family tree that records births, deaths, and marriages, and is in many ways a codification of the centrality of family, bloodline, and inheritance. [source] When a character like Jin says that he’s “someone without roots,” perhaps our first impulse is to imagine it as a description of emotional relationships, a difficulty he experiences because others can’t relate to him, but it’s not purely an intangible feeling; there are very tangible repercussions to being “unrooted.” Without a stable family, “unrooted” people miss the safety net that family is supposed to be—they miss its protection. Under a system that expects the worst scourges of modernity to be alleviated by the family, this leaves the “unrooted” out in the cold.

These failures on the part of the traditional family structure to account for prosperity, whether it be through generational poverty, through abuse, or through instability and absence, often leads to a restructuring of these bonds. In Japan, “when the economic bubble burst and the recession exposed the illusion of permanent and stable employment for the diligent workforce, the children found that attaining a better living than their parents through hard work and better education was no longer guaranteed,” and once economic success was no longer guaranteed through traditional paths, children’s bonds “shifted to more individualized, voluntary ties.” [source] Of course, shifting economic conditions aren’t the only reason for non-blood-related individuals to come together—many also come from backgrounds of loss or rejection. As a columnist wrote: “Tragedy and suffering have pushed people together in a way that goes deeper than just a convenient living arrangement. They become, as the anthropologists say, “fictive kin.””

BNHA poignantly embodies these dynamics as Jin tearfully declares that the LOV gave him a “place to belong.” In Japanese, the term used is 居場所 (ibasho), a phrasing which contains the 居 kanji for “residing” or “residence,” as well as “to exist” (it reprises in “I was happy to be (居られて) here” in Jin’s final thoughts). A literal reading could render ibasho as a “place to reside,” or a “place to exist”—something offered only by the friends Jin made, who are a sanctuary from the public that overlooked his alienation, rendering him invisible and denying him existence. For their parts, the other villains are also marked by an ambiguous relationship to their biological family, if not an absence altogether. Himiko and Tomura, whose backstories were touched upon in the same arc, led contentious family lives: Himiko’s parents appeared to regularly condemn their child, and the repeated rebukes that Tomura (Tenko) endured from his father—including an incident of physical assault—resulted in the awakening of Decay and the deaths of his family.

These three were remnants of broken traditional families, scattered and largely isolated across the country. Originally united as a villain group bound loosely by similar goals, they eventually came to rely on each other for survival once the stability of All For One’s hideout and resources were stripped away, leaving them to face a hostile world saturated by incessant policing and villain power struggles. Mutual protection became not only necessary for survival, but necessary for triumph—the League of Villains are consistently shown to be at their best when working as a team, operating on a mixture of communication and even blind trust. Ironically, it’s only when they try to bring outsiders into the fold that the situation goes awry, suggesting that their strength isn’t in numbers or recruitment, but in the relationships they’ve built between one another, relationships that ultimately coalesced under the unpopular worldview that maybe there is nothing wrong with them, but something very wrong with the world. What the readers come to understand is that the LOV are no longer only convenient allies: they can best be understood as a residence for a group of outcasted people with similar experiences and outlooks, who finally found in each other the shelter that traditional family had failed to provide.

[atheistforhumanity]

The Case Against Flynn is Dropped and So is The Rule of Law

A few days ago I wrote about Flynn’s attempt to withdraw his guilty plea and how conservative news outlets claim there was a conspiracy against him. The case against Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI, which he pled guilty to twice, has been dropped by the DOJ. Republicans are celebrating this as a win against the “deep state.” However, I want to make a couple things clear on why Flynn’s case being dropped does not actually vindicate their conspiracy theories. 

1. No conspiracy was proven and there were no admissions of misconduct. I had multiple people telling me to wait and see, and all this would be blown wide open. That’s not what happened at all. If you read my previous post I broke down what would need to be explained to prove a conspiracy, and nothing close to that has taken place. 

2. Who dropped the case? Contrary to what Republicans may believe, the people who investigated and prosecuted Flynn did not flip their position. The case was dropped by Washington Attorney General Timothy Shea. Shea, who was a long time aide to Barr, was put into power by AG Barr in January. As everyone should know, AG Barr has been facing large bipartisan scrutiny for unethical practice and partisanship. The NYC City Bar association wrote a letter pleading with Congress’ leaders to investigate AG Barr. Barr himself was handpicked by Trump, who has a pattern of choosing people for loyalty rather than qualifications or ethical standing. 

3. Flynn was not let off the hook because of any wrong doing by investigators. That’s not even the official reasoning for dropping the case. The case was dropped on the basis that Flynn’s lies were not material to the case. Let’s be clear that even in dropping the case, no one has denied that Flynn told multiple lies. Now, what it means for lies to be material is that they are directly relevant to the overall investigation agents are working on. Attorney Shea is claiming that the lies Flynn told were not directly relevant to the overall Russia investigation. There are multiple things wrong with this reasoning. 

A. There is no precedent for the FBI ever dropping a case against someone who has already plead guilty twice. Virtually everything done by Trump and Barr is shocking and unprecedented with unethical overtones.  

B. Shea claims that it would be too difficult to get the jury to believe that Flynn’s lies are material to the case. That’s why he is dropping it. This makes no sense though. Flynn already plead guilty, so the chance that a randomly selected jury would view him as innocent should be extremely low. If Flynn went into court using the defense of materiality (relevance), then he is making an admission that he is guilty of lying. Otherwise, the truth of his statements would be the focus. 

C. Samuel Bell, a professor of law at Duke University, commented that the law’s definition of material is advantageous for the government in justifying interviews. Defense attorney James G. McGovern said that juries rarely buy a defendant’s claim that their lies are immaterial. Many other professionals have spoken out against this action and the reasoning behind it. The argument for dropping the case is razor thin. 

This action is much more detrimental to our rule of law and democracy than I think most realize. There is a very short and clear line of authority connected to dropping the case against Flynn. Shea dropped the case, at the behest of AG Barr, and Barr acted in the publicly stated interest of The President to reverse Flynn’s charges. What has happened here is that a guilty man was not charged due to his relationship to the President. It doesn’t matter what the charge is or how serious. What matters is that our system of checks and balances have been completely broken. 

Although the President does have power to pardon individuals, it is not their place to interfere with the investigation and prosecution of any American. That matter belongs solely to the DOJ, who is lead by the Attorney General. The AG stands separate from the President and holds the independence to disagree with the President and even curb their power in some situations. The independent AG is meant to be a check on the President’s power, not an arm of his will. Furthermore, it is the ethical responsibility for the AG to act without bias on any basis in his prosecution of the law. If you read the letter from the City Bar Association I linked above, you will see a clear record of AG Barr’s outrageous partisanship and bias. Barr even openly promotes the conspiracy theory that progressives and a deep state are working to destroy the country. 

Whether or not someone is charged of a crime should never have anything to do with the personal feelings of a political figure, and not even of the AG. The rule of law demands that we face each case critically and objectively. For Trump and Barr to be attacking the prosecution of Flynn, not based on factual evidence, but rather on their partisan objectives is the most unethical act that can be taken by those two offices. To publicly assert that a conspiracy has taken place, and then reverse this sentence under weak pretenses with no evidence whatsoever of said conspiracy is a distortion of truth and justice that stains our entire country. 

If we cannot count on individuals being investigated and charged purely on the basis of facts, but rather worry about who is “untouchable” due to political power, our entire democracy and way of life is abandoned. These types of actions are only seen in a dictatorship. 

All of the republicans who are celebrating the dropping of Flynn’s case are celebrating the highest form of political corruption and the destruction of our nation. 

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

DC:IRL Gotham Rogues Gallery

My original post: https://somethingusefulfromflorida.tumblr.com/post/190712516986/dcirl

There are no super powers, no magic technology or medicine, no cartoony gimmicks, just normal people going about their lives in the big city (well, not “normal,” per se).  In the real world there are no “super villains,” so in this universe these people are just mundane criminals with varying degrees of severity.  What would be the real world implications?  Nobody wears a mask.  Nobody plays a character.  What if their mental illnesses and motivations were grounded in reality rather than fantasy comic book land where “crazy people” commit crimes for fun?  What if Gotham was just New York, a regular city, not some dystopian hellscape?

John Doe: little is known about the so-called Joker Killer, this John Wayne Gacy wannabe who murdered 37 Gothamites in the last 10 years.  He’s like the Zodiac Killer, Son of Sam, the Unibomber, always leaving calling cards for the police, daring them to track him down.  Nobody knew if he was just one guy or if there was a group of people using the Joker alias as a scapegoat to throw the police off their trails.  When the culprit was finally caught, it was revealed that he’s a phantom, he didn’t have any government records, and to this day nobody is sure how he managed to cover his tracks so well.  He was found guilty, but legally insane, so was remanded to Arkham State Psychiatric Hospital.  He doesn’t play well with the other inmates. Or the doctors. Or the guards.  He doesn’t have henchmen, he doesn’t ransom world leaders, he’s just a serial killer with a theme, not a domestic terrorist with goals.

Oswald Cobblepot: a mobbed up ex-lawyer who runs a night club as a front for his criminal activities. He’s basically Roger Stone is Roger Stone was smart enough to avoid going to prison.  He’s a public figure in Gotham, and pretends to be a philanthropist to cover for the fact that he’s very clearly corrupt.  He owns multiple buildings with his name on them, he refuses to rent apartments to black people, he molests women and brags about it on tape, and has run (unsuccessfully) for mayor, governor, senate and president of the United States on multiple occasions.  Everyone knows he’s guilty of something, but the GCPD refuses to look into his finances because some of them are on his payroll.

Harvey Dent: Gotham District Attorney known for fighting corruption, he was nearly assassinated by the mob, horribly disfigured over 50 percent of his body.  He struggles with bipolar disorder, exacerbated by his incident, but continues to fight the good fight, all the while going through therapy.  There’s a 50-50 chance he’ll recover and return to the practice as an underdog or have a mental episode and become a Howard Hughes recluse.  As a public figure he has access to all the help he needs, he is privileged not to have to suffer in silence like so many other mentally ill people.

Eduardo Dorrance: he’s this universe’s version of Fidel Castro.  A left-wing extremist from a small Caribbean island, he killed his way to head of the communist party and overthrew the government in the Santa Prisca Revolution in the 1960s.  President Kennedy instated an embargo against the island, after which the Soviet Union attempted to store chemical weapons there, which Dorrance co-opted to be used against political dissidents and human rights workers.  He is nicknamed Bane by the western world, and is one of the last holdouts of the Cold War, though he is aged and in poor health now (there are conspiracy theories that he’s actually been dead for years), and has pawned off leadership responsibilities to his brother.

Pamela Isley: environmental activist, conservationist, speaks out against climate change and deforestation, wanted by Interpol because she killed a few of the billionaires responsible for the Amazon fires.  She’s labeled a terrorist by the US government, with conservatives going so far as to call her the female Osama bin Laden.  Whether or not she really is a terrorist is up for debate, but either way she’s nowhere near bin Laden, they just want the association to stick so nobody can defend her actions without defending bin Laden’s (”see, this is what happens when socialism and radical feminism are left unchecked,” they say).  She can’t control plants or hypnotize people, but she’s not just a hemp loving hippy, she’s a revolutionary who may or may not have worked with the Dorrance regime to promote anti-government movements throughout South and Central America.

Victor Fries: his wife Nora was diagnosed with early-onset McGreggor’s disease, a degenerative neurological disorder which is invariably fatal within 10 years.  He has dedicated his life to finding a cure, but has recently come under federal investigation when a whistle blower revealed that he has been performing unethical medical experiments to test his research.  Some media outlets campaign for him, others against him; he’s fighting for a good cause, but his results are invalid because the tests were performed under suspicious circumstances outside a controlled laboratory environment.  He is at risk of losing his medical license, and his funding is being slashed as he is under review.

Edward Nygma: a local nobody, he suffers from antisocial personality disorder and OCD.  When the Joker Killer rose to prominence, he was compelled to try and outdo him, inspired by his notes taunting Gotham police.  Also like the Zodiac Killer, Nygma has resorted to cryptograms and ciphers, trying to prove his intelligence and his ability to evade detection.  So far he has done a much better job than the joker, as he is still at large, with no known suspects.  He can’t not commit crimes, he is drawn to them, he can’t stop himself no matter how hard he tries and he can’t afford medication to keep himself in check.  He secretly hopes he’ll get sloppy one day and the cops will be able to trace him, but his superiority complex prevents him from doing anything that would be personally disadvantageous.  He would benefit from therapy, should he ever find himself in Arkham State Psychiatric Hospital.  He’s resentful of men like Harvey Dent who he thinks can just make their problems go away with money (he doesn’t realize that Dent has just as many problems as he does and that mental illness can effect anyone regardless of status)

Selina Kyle: she lives in the slums outside the city proper, the sprawling crime ridden suburban cesspool that is Upstate Gotham.  She subsists as a petty thief, breaking and entering into super-rich apartment buildings and selling the goods to pay her bills.  She’s not a bad person, she’s just in a bad situation, born into poverty in a country with no class mobility.  She’s troubled, abused, and on the brink of homelessness at any given moment, she does what she needs to do to get by.  She’s not a maser jewel thief, she doesn’t break into museums or banks, her scores have much lower stakes than that.

Jonathan Crane: a doctor at Arkham State, he was arrested and tried for criminal misconduct.  He would regularly torture the patients, withholding basic necessities, making them live in filth, locking many of them up in solitary confinement for months on end to see how they would react.  He wanted to prove that his patented “isolation therapy” was the most effective treatment for any number of mental illnesses (in reality, he was just a sadist who had authority over people and wanted to show it).  He drove dozens of patients mad, making them question their own sanity by making them stay awake for long periods of time and playing audio recordings in their rooms which he denied he could hear.  He played on their greatest fears, using information they gave to their therapists against them, and would then punish them if they stopped talking.  He was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but was not labeled a flight risk because he was a celebrity (think Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil), and subsequently fled the country before he was to report to Black Gate.

Harleen Quinzel: also a doctor at Arkham State, her goal was to make as much money as possible by writing a tell-all book about one of the patients and charging exorbitant amounts of money for therapy sessions.  She honed in on John Doe, the Joker Killer, because he was the biggest name in the hospital and had refused to talk to any doctors before her (he killed one and has seriously injured seven, but he already has multiple life sentences in a state without the death penalty, so they can’t get rid of him).  They both think they are smarter than the other and can play them like a fiddle, Doe by pretending to be receptive to her, and Quinzel by treating him like he’s a victim of circumstance.  Over the years, he ends up manipulating her, having her smuggle contraband for him which he eventually uses to escape, for which she is fired and arrested.  No clown theme, no sexual relationship with her client, just your run of the mill criminal misconduct.

[hellzyeahwebwieldingreviews]

Untold Tales of Spider-Man 02: After the First Death… – by Tom DeFalco

A story that has me debating the nature of these stories.

A soggy Spidey swings through rainy Manhattan looking for crime shots for the Daily Bugle. He comes upon Kent and Wayne Weisinger on the roof of Stockbridge Jewelers, planning to rob it. Confident that he can end the fight anytime he wants to, Spidey stretches it out so that his automatic camera can take as many photos as possible. Kent and Wayne have a longstanding sibling rivalry marked by Kent's resentment of being the "muscle" to Wayne's "brains" along with feeling that his brother always cheats him. During the fight, Kent appears to charge at Spidey but when the web-slinger leaps out of the way, Kent doesn't stop, charging into Wayne and knocking him off the roof. Wayne falls five stories to his death and all the by-standers think Spidey did it. Guiltily, Spidey flees, forgetting about Kent altogether.

So, Kent goes to Wayne's estranged wife Jeannette to tell her the news. "Solid ice," Jeannette could care less about Wayne's death except that she's lost her meal ticket. When Kent blames the death on Spider-Man, Jeannette gets an idea on how to cash in.

In fact, Peter Parker seems to be the only one emotionally affected by Wayne's death. He has a sleepless night, trying to cope with the situation. Unguarded, he admits to J. Jonah Jameson that he has photos of the incident. His resolve to not sell the photos is beaten down by Jameson's arm-twisting and his own need for money. He sells the pictures and is then introduced to Jeannette, now the grieving widow of Wayne, who has come to JJJ for help in instituting a civil suit against Spider-Man. At school, Peter's conscience makes him counter Flash Thompson's avowal that "Spidey's no murderer" with "Maybe the wall-crawler didn't actually kill the man... but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be held accountable for what happened." Back in action, Spidey hesitates over stopping a purse-snatcher, fearful that he may cause another tragedy. Back home, Peter doesn't know what to do. He recalls that Uncle Ben's death made him swear, "that no innocent person would ever again be made to suffer because Spider-Man had failed to act. It had never occurred to him that anyone would suffer because of Spider-Man's acts." And while Wayne wasn't exactly innocent, "he had suffered because Peter had acted irresponsibly." He ends up having one of those vague discussions with Aunt May where he can't tell her any details because she doesn't know he's Spider-Man, yet she manages to hit the nail on the head, telling him in this case, "Everybody makes mistakes, Peter. You just try to learn from your failures as best you can, and you move on. You'll always get another chance to do better as long as you keep at it."

Meanwhile, Jeannette decides to kick Kent out of the deal and keep any anticipated profits for herself. So even as Spidey sucks it up and gets back into action, proving himself a hero, Kent decides he's not going to be kicked around anymore, buttonholes a TV reporter and gives an interview in which he reveals "that he deliberately pushed his elder brother off the roof of Stockbridge Jewelers because of numerous past frustrations." At Midtown High, Flash crows over Spidey's exoneration but Peter won't let the web-slinger off so easily. "A real hero would have found a way to save Wayne Weisinger" he says, "He would have acted smarter, reacted quicker, or behaved more responsibly... And that's something Spider-Man will have to live with for the rest of his life."

Because these are untold tales, prose stories and utilize the comic book continuity you can analyse them from several different angles and their worth changes depending upon those angles.

 Chiefly this boils down to whether I judge this as a story unto itself or within the context of comic book continuity as it existed back then? What about the fact that I’m here in 2020 evaluating a prose book written in 1990 that’s trying to synch up with comic book stories written in the 1960.

 It boggles the mind. All I can do is write about how I feel.

 I liked this story unto itself and within the context of this book. I think, kind of like the last story, that it doesn’t really integrate into Spider-Man’s comic book history.

 The emotional journey of Peter in this story involves learning that he needs to be careful about how he acts. In this regard it’s rather similar to his lesson from Gwen’s death, which is kind of my problem. This story’s title implies this is in fact the very first time Spider-Man has experienced death ‘on the job’ as it were.

Surely such a thing would weigh on his mind more, surely it’d crop up when he dwells on the list of people he’s seen die or feels guilty about dying. Or at least he’d be reminded of Wayne’s death when Gwen dies.

In the comics of course Wayne has never ever been mentioned. Duh, because he didn’t exist until DeFalco invented him for this story. Of course we could draw comparisons with Sally Avril, a character from AF #15 who died in the comic book version of Untold Tales but whose death went unacknowledged in stories from the 60s-90s.

I think the critical difference there is that (IIRC) Peter wasn’t particularly responsible for her death whereas in the case of Wayne, whilst he didn’t push him off the building, his arrogance really did directly contribute to his death. Plus seeing a man die in such a horrible way, especially if it is the first time he’s ever seen a dead body, would likely leave a bigger impression upon Peter than the nature of Sally’s death, although I must admit it’s been a long time since I read that issue so perhaps I am wrong.

From a continuity stand point this is the minefield you always walk, but at the same time it’d be difficult to generate drama if you didn’t step on those mines occasionally.

I feel DeFalco here wanted to tell a dramatic story that had Peter grapple with a genuinely emotional situation and also took advantage of the nature of this story as a flashback tale.

And frankly he succeeded. If you view this either out of continuity or essentially within an incredibly generalized canon of Spider-Man (i.e. Gwen Stacy died, whether Peter did or didn’t think about Wayne is ambiguous though) the story very much works. I doubt DeFalco or anyone else was honestly feeling any of these stories were going to strictly be canon anyway. However for the record this story happens at some point after ASM #9 because when we get a list of Spider-Man’s opponents they all appeared up to that issue.

 Looking at the story itself its flaws are incredibly minor.

 Some of the dialogue feels old fashioned, but I argue that is likely by design since this is set in an older time period. We go over exposition related to Peter’s origin again, which is more the editor’s fault since we got those details in the first story of the anthology. In fairness revisiting it does serve a greater purpose here because the story is directly ruminating upon the nature of responsibility. In that sense it would’ve been more logical to open the book up with this than the Ant-Man story and I see little reason as to why this couldn’t have in theory happened at an earlier point chronologically. Yeah the Ant-Man story claims Spider-Man’s a new figure on the scene but the passage of time in the first 10 issues of ASM is so vague it’s really not unbelievable that even by issue #9 Spidey might still be considered ‘new’.

 Not only does the story explore (and successfully at that) the theme of responsibility, approaching it from the opposite direction from the lesson Ben’s death imparted, but it also features the supporting cast more. Flash, Aunt May, Jameson, the Bugle and public distrust of Spider-Man are all given notable roles to play in the story, again proving that THIS should’ve opened the book.

 To go back to the theme of responsibility for a moment, perhaps the most nuanced bit of writing in the story is when Peter is on the phone to Jameson. Peter has a really great ethical dilemma. Would it be irresponsible to profit off of Wayne’s death or would it be irresponsible to not profit off of it and use the money to support his Aunt May?

 DeFalco more than any other writer GETS Spider-Man and his depiction of Peter’s internal debate, whilst short, rings utterly true. What gets me is that most of the time whenever I’ve seen this sort of thing done with Peter he’s actually made a different decision, but here DeFalco recognizes that in actuality Peter WOULD consider his responsibilities as the bread winner outweigh what boils down to him merely feeling bad about profiting off a man’s death. It’s not all that different to when he faked photos of Electro to help Aunt May. Yes it’s unethical, but there was a higher responsibility, a greater good at stake.*

 Kent and Jeanette’s subplot, whilst arguably wrapped up unsatisfactorily, does a neat job of evoking something of a daytime drama or even noir story, and in that light fits wonderfully into the brand of stories Lee and Ditko churned out way back at the start.

 In fact of the two opening stories this one more successfully captured that era and by extension the approach of the comic book version of UToSM. Whilst the Ant-Man story was fun, it was the prose equivalent of a typical MTU super hero yarn complete with dodgy pseudo science.

 This story though? Now this is a Spider-Man  story. It has a singular main character (Kent is ultimately a supporting player) and whether he’s in or out of the costume the story is driven by the emotional and human problems faced by the character, not the fantastical super human issues. In classic Spidey manner those two halves of his life bleed over into one another and lack a clear cut divide.

 Really in the Ant-Man story Peter’s personal life would’ve gone mostly unaffected whether he had gotten involved or not. It wasn’t about Peter Parker, it was about Spider-Man. This story is about both.

 Peter needs money to look after himself, his home and Aunt May. So he looks for trouble as Spider-Man and pads out a fight. That gets someone killed which haunts Peter and makes him hesitate to BE Spider-Man, even whilst he reluctantly profits off it as Peter Parker which in turn contributes to his being falsely accused as Spider-Man and kids as school hating on him because he will not defend Spider-Man from these accusations.

 Wham, Bam, DeFalco is the Man. THAT’S a fucking Spidey story right there!

 The only thing for me which really and truly did let this story down wasn’t the fault of the book, but the audio production.

 I’m hoping DeSantos was just off his game for this story, but between this and his prior efforts I think he’s achingly miscast as the narrator of this title. He worked better narrating Stan Lee and Busiek’s forwards than the actual stories. As Aunt May, Kent and Jeanette he wasn’t that bad (actually pretty good as Kent), but his Peter/Spider-Man fails. He can’t even sell the emotion of the non-dialogue bits. He’s not a bad narrator, but not right for this book.

 Over all taken strictly within comics canon there are a lot of contradictions. But taken as it’s own thing or (I suspect) within the context of this one book, this is a knock out story.

 *By the way DeFalco also seamlessly blends humour and tragedy in the scene. Peter’s internal debate and horror at the prospect of profiting off of Wayne’s death leaves him in silence which in turn is misinterpreted by Jameson causing him to raise his offer which in turn causes Peter more internal strife. Just brilliant!

[darlinique]

mobile won’t let me write headers anymore? sucks! anyways, here’s my general 4x06 thoughts/predictions post.

• i saw elliot’s actions coming, and yet i was still surprised. i figured he would threaten olivia with custody of her son, but i thought he would say he’d hack into her medical records or something...not actually fucking drug her. jesus christ. robot put my thoughts on that situation the best: did elliot change under pressure, or did this only reveal who he really is?

• further, while what he did in itself was fucking immoral on every level, one of the things that gets me the most is that he was throwing it back at her. saying olivia had this coming when she turned a blind eye to what her employers were doing. uh, NO, then the employers should’ve had it coming. she was literally just an innocent person caught in this crossfire. didn’t elliot himself accept in season 1 that most people had to compromise themselves under capitalism? her looking away to support her son isn’t comparable to the crimes of the dark army, and as someone now compromising his former morals to do this kind of shit, he shouldn’t have even thought that.

• basically, while i could’ve lived with elliot doing one completely fucking evil thing for the greater good, the fact that he tried to justify it at all is just fucked. he should’ve accepted what robot said: that what he was doing would never be okay, and there is no justification for how far he went. i’m...intrigued, i guess, by this plotline where elliot’s acting more and more unethically, but fuck if it isn’t hard to watch.

• but on a more exciting topic: LEON! he’s freelance! and calling elliot ‘elli,’ lol. i’m so glad to see him, but if i have a single half-complaint, it’s that i kind of wish he were still with the DA just because i think it would’ve been fantastic to watch him flip and help elliot instead. good for him for getting out, though; i just wanted a payoff of being able to watch something that cool... plus, i guess he would’ve had to kidnap elliot if he were still with them, which would’ve caused issues with the vera storyline. but great to have him back—joey bada$$ is an amazing actor. and on that note, i’m now preparing for leon to beat vera’s ass instead of a DA fight.

• ...maybe. back to that shortly.

• i see a lot of people asking why vera is back and what role he’s going to play, and after thinking it over myself, i feel like he’s just here to be a catalyst. considering the episode summary for 4x07 and the fact that it’s going to be a commercial-free special, i’m feeling like the whole episode will be a (super tense) one-room event where vera is grilling elliot&robot while threatening krista. which means we’ll probably have to wait for any updates with the dom/darlene/janice/DA situation, but i think it’ll be something pivotal for elliot and robot. vera’s the guy who killed shayla, and elliot lost the month after that event...which isn’t a coincidence. i feel like no matter what else happens, we’re finally gonna get actual information on the other alter from this. vera’s certainly the first person i would think of who could trigger something like this for elliot, especially now that he’s threatening another s1 person elliot has long cared about. god, i’m worried for krista...

• back to the leon aspect: i’m now debating vera’s fate. i feel like he’s going to die, and while i’d love to see leon demolish that motherfucker, i’m not sure if the final nail in his coffin will actually be leon or if it’ll be elliot. i think leon will probably be the one who gets elliot out of that situation, but as for who would actually kill him...i’m just wondering what exactly is going to unfold in that room and if it’ll be enough for elliot to break on him.

• also, elliot villar is fucking Phenomenal as vera. super underrated actor. shoutout to ashlie atkinson too, because she is very effective at scaring the shit out of me every time she so much as breathes on screen.

• this whole episode was just so fucking anxiety-inducing, and i’ll contain my dom/darlene/janice thoughts to another post bc this would double in length if i started on that now. anyways, this does NOT have me feeling 💯 this week, so i’m just gonna drag my feet until next sunday.

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

crime and disorder

Previously on Impeaching the Motherfucker: Donald “Individual-1” Trump tried to use the Oval Office to shake down Ukrainian President Zelensky for a public announcement of bullshit investigations, which Trump wanted to use to discredit American citizens and intelligence agencies.

You may have seen people compare Trump’s scheme to have the Ukrainian president announce investigations into his Democratic opposition to James Comey’s various interventions in the 2016 election. This comparison is not wrong. If anything, it understates the similarities.

The story that former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to feed Zelensky about a member of Joe Biden’s family was basically fascist fanfiction by a guy named Peter Schweitzer. Schweitzer worked for Steve Bannon, who led the Trump campaign for a while, at the racist agitprop website Breitbart. His books are funded by the Mercer family. (If you’re struggling to place that name, they also finance the Facebook data thieves at Cambridge Analytica.) As Schweitzer’s lies were being used to pressure Zelensky to abuse law enforcement, they were also being fed to the mortifyingly credulous New York Times. The NYT validated the smear, which gave Giuliani and his crew leverage to increase pressure on law enforcement to take action in the hopes that this would create more news.

These exact same people pulled these exact same moves in 2015 and 2016. Of course, that time the Democratic frontrunner was Hillary Clinton, and Schweitzer’s lies were about the Clinton Foundation.* Those lies were debunked as quickly and easily as the stories about Biden, but they were still validated and spread by the mainstream media, in particular by the New York Times. These stories were picked up by the various disinformation trollbot networks throughout the 2016 election and used to drown out the serious stories about Donald Trump’s many financial crimes. And it gave a partisan faction in the FBI an excuse to open an investigation into Clinton.

Giuliani, by his own admission, was also the Trump campaign’s connection to the FBI’s New York field office in 2016. Now he’s telling the press, on the record, that his scheming in Ukraine is an attempt to manipulate the Department of Justice into investigating Biden.

It’s important to remember what happened from there. Short-term, we need to prepare ourselves to keep it from being so effective next time. The impeachment hearings might have discredited this particular line of attack against Biden, but something like this will happen to whoever the Democratic nominee ends up being. Long-term, progressives need to start holding grudges the way conservatives do, not least because our grievances are real. And we have to do this for ourselves because, let’s be honest, most of the mainstream and nearly all of the “leftist” media would rather be rounded up at gunpoint and sent to a gulag than admit they fucked up in 2016.

We remember the EMAILS investigation because it was so public, but in fact, the FBI was also investigating the Clinton Foundation, despite the Department of Justice telling them there was no case, specifically because their “evidence” was just trash from Schweitzer’s book.+

An FBI investigation is a serious thing, even if the director doesn’t use it as a pretext to throw a presidential election. That’s why the FBI is supposed to take it seriously. They’re only supposed to open an investigation if they have an an actual reason. (To state the obvious, debunked conspiracy theories by a political propagandist are not an actual reason.) Then they’re supposed to shut the fuck up and actually investigate, not preen for the media about how great they are for doing all this manly investigating. This is both to protect the reputation of the person they’re investigating and because you can usually investigate something better if you minimize how many people know you’re investigating. When they’re done, they’re supposed to either charge someone with a crime or to close the case and leave the person alone.

The FBI clearly did not take the Clinton Foundation investigation seriously, because if they had been taking it seriously they never would have pretended there was a case there at all, but it was still a serious thing. The existence of this “investigation” bolstered these false propaganda narratives which were intended to distort a presidential election, and which publicly disparaged a world-class charity that has saved millions of lives around the world.

Worse, the bullshit metastasized within the FBI. It ate into the time and attention of senior leadership, when they needed to be making some genuinely complicated decisions concerning the national security threat posed by the criminal syndicate known as the Trump campaign. Instead, they were finding out what happens if you give a mouse a cookie. The faction of the FBI who were abusing their power to hurt Clinton and help Trump seem to have been emboldened by the indulgence. FBI leadership fell into the bad habit of feeding the press, especially right-wing media like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, hints that something crime-y was going on with the Clinton Foundation. A week before the election, after Comey had upended the election with his letter about the emails, “sources” at the FBI were telling a Fox News anchor that there were about to be indictments over something at the Clinton Foundation.

Reading between the lines of various reports, it looks like these pressures within the FBI to support the Clinton Cash propaganda helped desensitize Comey and his bros to the idea of taking dramatic public action against Hillary Clinton. It never occurred to anyone else that they would pull a stunt like this, not because everyone trusts the FBI so much, but because it is so far from what they do. Nobody expects the feds to start wearing mashed potatoes to the office instead of suits, either, not because they have such great fashion sense, but because it’s too bizarre to occur to anyone. But if there were a handful of agents crabbing every day that they should wear mashed potatoes to work, and those agents kept forwarding around a drumbeat of media speculating that maybe they would start wearing mashed potatoes to work, maybe they start to think it’s not too weird of a compromise if they just start wearing mashed potatoes instead of jackets and ties.

Law enforcement abusing its power to influence elections is bad for democracy. But it’s also bad for law enforcement. As long as everyone understands the FBI shouldn’t be expected to get involved in partisan politics, there’s no incentive for politicians to waste time trying to pressure them. But once they caved to this pressure from right-wing media, it showed that they could be manipulated by at least one side, and the Republicans have been hammering them relentlessly ever since. Trump doesn’t beat up on the FBI – or, for that matter, the NYT – because he’s afraid of them. He beats up on them because he knows, from experience, that it works.

Since all that happened, Trump’s had time to purge his dupes from FBI leadership and replace them with people he believes will be even more likely to follow his unethical directives. So that’s not great.

One major difference in Giuliani and Schweitzer’s scheme this year is that they’re trying to outsource their dirty work to Ukraine, which is a lot riskier and a lot more work. In a weird way, this is a slightly encouraging sign for 2020. Even if the real motivation is that Trump is fucking around with Ukraine to please Putin and smearing Biden is just a side benefit, I doubt it would be happening like this, because you don’t actually need to bring your clown sidekick and his clown sidekicks into your clear-cut impeachable offenses. It’s entirely possible that they’re going global because they don’t think the FBI will throw all the rules out the window to help them this time.

On the other hand, the fact that they’re changing the pattern means it could easily get even worse. Right-wing ratfuckers have already attacked at least two 2020 Democratic presidential candidates with false claims of sexual violence. At this point, it’s still the JV squad,± but once we have a nominee, the professionals are going to get involved. It wouldn’t even take Giuliani’s subtlety and finesse to get law enforcement involved, either, just one pro-Trump sheriff’s office in an area the nominee could have conceivably visited. I don’t have a concrete idea of what to do if things take this particular turn, but I’m legitimately worried that we need to brace ourselves for it.

*Substantively, this comparison is unfair, because Burisma is an oil and gas company with a mixed ethical record, while the Clinton Foundation is a clean, transparent charity that has saved millions of lives. The fact that Schweitzer and the New York Times describe them nearly interchangeably says it all.

+The existence of not one but two flimsy investigations into Clinton actually discredits both of them even further, because it shows a pattern of the FBI investigating a person rather than a crime.

±It’s easy to treat the Warren thing as a joke because this particular ratfucker faceplanted so badly, but the lie itself wasn’t funny. Escalating consensual BDSM into a vicious, traumatic beating isn’t some wacky cartoon trope, it’s a type of abuse that real people have experienced.

[marcjampole]

The history of presidential misconduct puts a whole new light on the Trump impeachment hearings

When viewed through the lens of today, the defense of Trump by Republicans seems reprehensible to a growing number of Americans. Despite the daily piling up of more evidence of his illegal attempt to force a foreign government to interfere with our elections, most Republicans continue to vociferously support the president. Those who are inching away, such as Senators Linda Murkowski and Mitt Romney, do so with extreme care. Trump’s betrayal of the Syrian Kurds has influenced almost no Republicans to look at Trump in a new light, just as most Republicans ignored Nixon’s illegal bombing of Cambodia—at least at first.

But in the context of American history, the Republican reaction is pretty standard. As you can learn by reading Presidential Misconduct, virtually everything about the current situation resembles most presidential scandals throughout American history.

Presidential Misconduct is a compendium essays about investigations into the misdeeds of presidents and their immediate coterie edited by the distinguished historian James M. Banner, Jr. Originally commissioned by the House Judiciary Committee during the 1974 Watergate Hearings, Presidential Misconduct presents the historical record of the misdeeds of past presidents and their cronies reaching back to the Washington administration and compiled by leading presidential scholars of the day. The Committee originally conceived of the book as a benchmark against which Nixon’s misdeeds could be measured. A recently published update includes all the presidential administrations through Obama’s. What is stunning is the degree to which every controversy surrounding virtually every potential presidential misdeed—whether an impeachment hearing or a Congressional investigation—follows a set pattern that only three people break: Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and now, Donald Trump.

In depicting this pattern, I will leave out consideration of one investigation—the impeachment of Bill Clinton related to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In every other of the literally hundreds of cases of investigating a president or his administration for wrongdoing (including other accusations against Clinton), the issue was either corrupt practices in which money exchanged hands for favorable treatment or unlawful attempts to influence elections. Only in the case of Slick Willie’s oval office affair was the issue a personal indiscretion—in this case, a sexual relationship between consenting adults. Despite the fact that there are many instances of fooling around by presidents or their advisers, Congress has only once decided to open an investigation related to a sexual dalliance, which lead to Clinton stupidly do what most people do when confronted by their infidelity—they lie. Again, there are numerous documented cases of presidents lying or stretching the truth—Tyler, Lincoln, LBJ, Reagan, Bush II—to name just a few before our current liar-in-chief. You know, the one who manufactures new lies almost on a daily basis. Yet very few have been taken to task for lying and no president other than Clinton suffered punishment for lying about a personal matter. The Trump impeachment hearings have so far completely ignored the more than 20 outstanding accusations of sexual assault against the Donald. A strongly partisan element infects all investigations of presidential malfeasance, to be sure. But the Clinton case is so out of the ordinary that we can learn nothing from it that we can apply to the current situation.

With that caveat out of the way, what we learn from Presidential Misconduct is that the unfolding of the Trump impeachment hearings proves the validity of the old French expression, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” 1) In virtually all cases, someone found malfeasance by a member of cabinet, a high ranking advisor, an entire department or a close relative or friend of the president. 2) Opinions have always split down party lines, with the party of the president and friendly media aggressively proclaiming the innocence of the accused party and the opposing party and media hotly and noisily proclaiming and pursuing guilt. 3) A common defense was to admit the suspect events took place but insist they were not illegal. 4) Presidents have varied in the speed of their responsiveness to requests for information and the testimony of subordinates. Yet while executive privilege was sometimes invoked at an early point, at the end of the day presidents almost always have provided the information requested without lawsuit and virtually all witnesses called ended up testifying or giving a deposition. 5) The president always loyally supports those accused, often after their guilt has been well established. In most cases, the president runs into the most trouble for his continued backing of a crony or subordinate under investigation. 6) Often, as with the case of Grant, Harding and Truman, the dastardly deeds turned out to be legal, but didn’t pass the common sense “smell test.” In these cases, Congress passed new laws and /or the department in question changed its standard practices.

Most important, every president except Madison, Polk and Ford has faced a number of major scandals in his administration, and at the end of the day, virtually none were blamed for it. Either the officer, department or crony was exonerated, or the president was found completely innocent of knowing anything about the crimes. Besides Nixon’s administration, among the most corrupt were those of Tyler, Buchanan, Grant Harding, Truman, Reagan and Bush II. The Reagan administration provides an interesting case: The administration involved itself in as much law-breaking as Nixon’s did, but Reagan never personally benefited from any of the corruption and no one could find evidence that he knew about the political scandals like Iran-Contra. In a sense, he was a modern Ulysses Grant, personally incorruptible and idealistic, but surrounded by a den of thieves. With investigations exonerating presidents for everything except bad judgment and rigid loyalty, impeachment was hardly ever mentioned and almost never attempted.

Kevin M. Kruse said it best in summarizing the Carter administrations on page 402: “In the end, the three main scandals of the Carter Administration followed the general pattern, in which sloppy financial practices and suspect business dealings invited close inspection but ultimately proved to have fallen short of outright criminal misdeeds.”

The first exception to this pattern of presidential exoneration was Andrew Johnson, whose “high crimes and misdemeanors” involved orders he gave and did not give, specifically concerning the Secretary of War and the treatment of the renegade southern states returned to the union only after a long, bloody war. In a sense, Johnson’s impeachment and near conviction was the last skirmish of the Civil War.

The second exception was Nixon, who unlike all other presidents, knew all about all the corruption in his administration, serving as the source and center for most of it. The Watergate break-in and other dirty tricks. The illegal pay-offs to silence the guilty and protect the administration. The enemies list. The illegal campaign contributions. It was Nixon who authorized the illegal bombing of Cambodia and directed his representatives to convince the South Vietnamese to refuse to come to the negotiating table until after the 1968 election. Nixon was as dirty as dirty can be.

And that’s why I think Trump is going down.

Trumpty-Dumpty, like Tricky Dicky, is at the center of every controversy as instigator, motivator and bad actor. His already debunked fantasies of the Bidens corruptly profiting from Papa Joe’s influence as vice president and of Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election served as the motivating factor in the illegal and unethical actions of Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Pompeo and others in Ukraine. Trump is leading the cover-up by refusing to hand over documents or let officials testify. Like Nixon and Cambodia, Trump is solely responsible for the scandals that are not part of the impeachment proceedings but are causes for additional disgruntlement, such as the betrayal of the Kurds, the separation of children at the border, the exit from the Iranian nuclear deal and the Paris Accord, and Trump’s record of sexual assault and harassment.

Like Nixon, all the evidence points to Trump being dirty.

Those despairing that like Andrew Johnson and Clinton, Trump will be impeached by the House but not convicted by the Senate should consider that we’re still early in the process, still at the point at which all opinion has a highly partisan tinge to it.

What the Republican Senators are waiting for is a smoking gun. And if Nixon serves as a precedent, the court will supply the requisite still-hot firearm by forcing Trump to turn over material including his taxes. I’m guessing that the requirement to turn over the taxes will compel Trump to resign from office rather than let it out that he is owned by Russian interests and that he is worth far less than a billion smackers. But whatever it is, something in what we find in the taxes or in the records that the administration wants to keep hidden will hang Trump with his own party. He will most likely resign in a deal that spares him indictment on any federal or state charges rather than face conviction. If in his crazy grandiosity, the Donald refuses to follow the Nixon model, he will not have a big enough Praetorian guard, loyal only to him, to attempt to stay in office by force after his conviction. While we can spin apocalyptic fantasies about the end of our democracy, I think we can realistically depend on the loyalty to the United States and our Constitution by the military, the Secret Service, the FBI and local police.

History suggests that because the investigation centers on Trump and not his subordinates, the likely result will be that he leaves office before his term is up. That is, assuming the smoking gun produces enough smoke.

Meanwhile, although we may consider the Republicans sticking to Trump like white to rice to be despicable, they are in fact engaged in nothing more than business as usual, the same business that has surrounded presidential misconduct since the time of George Washington.

[forgxtemall]

@roleplayersoul​ has sent: Has any of your muses commited a crime that they then covered up and/or denied doing?

WHEN BOBO STRIKES MY INBOX

Agatha has used trainning methods that in present times, have been deemed unethical and illegal by the League’s standards. Agatha’s crimes, are way more related to how things and views have changed throughout the decades.

Once it had been found out about Team Rocket’s involvement in the Mewtwo project, the whole experiment has been deemed an illegal sceme. And everyone that was involved into it, are being taken accountable for it - Blaine included. Although, thanks to Lance pulling the strings in the background in order to silence those who speak on it, Blaine hasn’t really suffered any consequences for his actions. For one he wasn’t aware of the organisation’s involvement in the first place, but he still actively took part in it - so he got out of it all with just a light slap on the back of his hand and advised to not comment on the matter.

Read more bc of the length!

If it weren’t for the fact that most things Drake has committed took place out into the open waters (meaning there are no records of these incidents - besides word of the mouth), and for mr.Stone’s help. He was supposed to have quite the large criminal record on his back. From starting fights in bars, involvement with the black market - more specifically pokemon trafficking (how did you think he got the majority of his pokemon in the first place?), physical assault, torture and the most severe being straight up murder. Because Drake is always under the effect of alcohol, he may end up openly talking about these things - but no one around him seem to believe in his words. Most assume it is just the alcohol, making him exaggerate things.

During his teenager years Morty used to always have with himself fake IDs, which lied about his name and age. This allowed him to apply himself for some minor jobs - to try and get some money, as well as buying alcohol. Nothing came out of it - no one ever found out about it etc. Because this happened before he ran into the Shedinja, Morty has no recollection of ever doing anything of this sort.

You bet the Wataru clan is ALWAYS in some degree, involved in some corruption scheme. Lance has been taught his way around these sorts of politics, and he uses it its fullest potential for his advantage. Obviously no one has ever dared to look into things, no one in the Johto region - wishes to stand against the clan’s wishes and desires.

Need I say anything in regards to Tabitha? He was a member of Team magma. And his crimes ranged from robbery, physical assault and even torture. Currently, he is an wanted man by the Interpol.

Although not exactly a crime, but Juan could in theory be charged for animal abuse. Because he forced, the premature evolution of his Kingdra, I’ve gone in more details here! However, this happened when he was still collecting the ribbons - during a time, in which this would be deemed normal/acceptable. I’m not done yet with his crimes. Juan to this day has refused to sign any paternity papers and do any DNA tests to prove it in regards to Ceasar, his legitimate son. It is a matter of time, until the law knocks on his door - and he will be forced to go through the whole process. Juan has also, a few times cheated on his contests - towards his actual opponents when he was very active as a coordinator. Needless to say, Juan never addresses nor comments on anything about these subjects.

Riley’s list is pretty big actually, not in its variety rather for how long he has been doing these things. Money extortion (from his partners), animal abuse (he has hurt his pokemon on numerous occasions in order to experiment with his healing powers). Obviously, he covers these things up.

[blog-researchblog]

Law Enforcement

7 Powerful Questions

When you think of your dream job you think of a career field that you know you’ll be passionate about. I am passionate about a lot of things in life but above all I am passionate about making a change..I bounced from multiple different majors throughout my college career and I finally decided that I wanted to invest my time and energy into criminal justice. I have always been obsessed with crime shows and documentaries; ranging from homicide cases to federal offenses like robbery and drug trafficking. My choice to go into law was an obvious choice for me after a good amount of time of learning who I was as a person. I’m not quite sure what I want to do with my Criminal Justice degree but I am leaning more towards law enforcement because I feel like it would be a good fit for me. Becoming a police officer isn’t for everyone, it can be very tiring and stressful. You’re put into situations that most people do not find themselves in very often. I have achieved great accomplishments throughout my life but in order for me to be really dedicated to whatever goal I was reaching, I needed to be passionate about it. I have a lot of goals that I set for myself to achieve. My biggest goal in life is to be happy. I want to be passionate about whatever I do in life and be happy with myself, nothing else in the world matters if you’re unhappy. Your career choice can be very detrimental to your overall happiness in life. Picking the right career for me was a very big decision and I know criminal justice is it for me. 

Passion stems from a deep desire for whatever you happen to be passionate about. I’m most passionate about making a change. Being a police officer gives you the chance to make a change in someone’s life or in your community. I love giving back and helping people when they need it. Making a change is changing the world for the better. It's improving someone's everyday life, for the better. One of my greatest accomplishments in my life so far is following through with my goals and achieving them. When I feel like I have helped someone or have improved their well being I take that as an accomplishment. My goal in life is to be passionate about whatever I do. I don’t care for the money, I just want to genuinely enjoy my job. I would like to work in multiple different branches in my career field and learn the ins and outs of law enforcement. I admire people who take their skill and craft seriously. Everyone is gifted and passionate about certain things. The people who capitalize on their gift excel and achieve their goals. It’s not easy to achieve any goal you set, I believe hard work and dedication is the only way to success. 

I am someone who gets bored of things very easily, I love change. Things that get you up and moving occupy my attention. I like to stay active and on my feet. Not knowing what’s going to happen next keeps things exciting and brings me back for more. I would hate to be working at a desk job doing the same tasks over and over again everyday. Law enforcement offers multiple different choices in the field that require a lot of versatility. One day you could be on patrol pulling over cars for speeding and the next day you could be working on homicide cases. 

Hard work and dedication is the only thing you need to get far anywhere in life. I am a hard worker and I do take pride in that, anything I am passionate about I will give my all to. I am willing to work as hard as I possibly can for something I want. I believe that nothing is handed to anyone, you should work for the things that you want in life. I have also been passionate about achieving things on my own and being independent. I know where I need to be in life to achieve what I want and nothing will stop me from getting what I want. Knowing that I achieved something on my own with no help motivates me to do even more for myself.

Occupational Outlook

The job of a police officer is way beyond arrests, ticketing, and investigating. Policing is a hard profession, it’s mentally and physically draining. The stress police officers endure is like no other compared to any other profession. When I was little I always knew whatever I wanted to do or be when I was older it had to be a job that was in uniform. A job that took a lot of bravery and courage was always appealing to me. Being a part of something that is bigger than just myself and was honorable looked like the best fit. Being a police officer is much more than responding to calls or stopping cars. Being in law enforcement is a serious commitment. This job isn’t easy and you never know what you’ll encounter. Each shift is different, from helping cats out of trees to responding to homicide cases, the possibilities of what you will be exposed to as an officer is endless.  I want to work in law enforcement, whether it’s locally, state, or federal. Average pay for a police officer is around 60k a year. Most people go into this career field for the passion of the job, not the pay. It’s a very demanding and stressful job so most police officers retire after being in the force for about 20 years. Employment for police officers is expected to grow 5% in the years to come. There is competition when fighting for a job in policing. One out of a hundred applicants applying for a position are projected to be hired. The process of being chosen to serve and protect their community is long and extensive. There are a series of tests that the applicant must go through to be considered. They must take a written exam that is continued with a physical ability, and background test. These tests would be continued with psych tests that measure how well or if you can carry out the job of a police officer. Applicants who have a degree,military experience, and speak multiple different languages have the best chance of getting chosen for the job. It’s a tough career to be selected for. Not just anyone can be a police officer. The process of being elected for the job is so extensive because not just anyone is given the authority over the general public.

The Truth Behind Policing

To get a better understanding of the police force I interviewed a local police officer who works for the Evesham Township police department of Burlington county in South Jersey. The officer asked to remain anonymous. I began the interview by asking the officer simple questions like what made you decide to become a police officer, do you enjoy your work? He stated that he loves his job as an officer but the job comes with a price to pay. He chose law enforcement mainly for the benefits and because the job itself was a good fit for his personality and work ethic. He has been in law enforcement for a little over 20 years and has endured a lot of stress throughout his time of service.. He explained that you’re going to be placed in situations that are hard to deal with mentally and emotionally. The job itself is rewarding but outside factors can greatly affect you due to this line of work. He continued to explain that some days you're going to be the hero and others you’re going to be the villain. Nowadays police officers are not portrayed in the best light which can affect how others see and treat you. There’s a lot of people who do not support police officers and are against them due to social media and personal experiences with officers who did not carry out their job in the right manner. He brought to my intention that one bad officer sets the tone for the police force as a whole. There are bad workers in every industry, for example, one bad doctor does not label the entire medical field as a whole. He highlighted the most favorable and least favorable aspects about the job. Starting with the most favorable aspects of the job is that he made lifelong friendships throughout his unit. Police force itself is a family, everyone is looking out for each other and at the end of the day all that matters is that every officer went home safe that night. Another pro he listed was that he really does enjoy helping people when they are in need. He joined the police force with the intentions to make the community a safer and better place as a whole. His least favorable aspects about the job is the stress that is added to your health. Law enforcement is not an easy job to mentally endure. You will find yourself in positions that seem unethical or unfair to others, but you have to do what’s best for the community and yourself and enforce the rules. 

Policing and Social Media

One of the hardest parts of being a police officer is how the public is going to portray you every time you put that uniform on. Nowadays police officers do not have a good reputation with the public due to the news and social media. Every time an officer acts in a certain way that is deemed unacceptable, his actions are plastered in the news or published in articles online for the whole world to see and read. Police brutality has always been a major issue in policing. The use of force is often misused within law enforcement, and that is not an issue that is lightly taken. In a current article posted by ABC news, an undercover cop was seen using excessive force when attempting to arrest a man over marijuana charges. This interaction was recorded by a passing citizen and posted the entire video on the social media platform twitter for millions of people to watch. Incidents like this give the thousands of police officers a bad rep which results in citizens revolting against police officers. There was no need to use such force against a man for the use of a drug that is legalized in half of the states in America. Incidents like this happen everyday when an officer uses his authority in the wrong manner. Incidents like that make the public not trust the police which is quite the opposite of what police officers want. 

By: Skyler Italian

[duaneodavila]

When And How To Use a Lawyer

Introduction

Almost everything we do from making a purchase to driving a car, to interacting with others is affected by the law in some way, shape or form. While it often seems hard to live with the law, it would surely be harder to live without it.

In our country, the law is, in a real sense, the people’s law. It is part of the democratic heritage of Americans.

The availability of the law does, however, reveal a bewildering variety of choices. When do you need a lawyer? When can (or should) you handle a matter on your own? The purpose of this chapter is to help you make the best choices.

There are many legal situations that you can and should handle on your own, without the assistance of a lawyer. However, when circumstances and laws are unique, complicated, or confusing, you may need a lawyer’s guidance. You also may need a lawyer’s services when you are so close to a problem that you are unable to see your way through to a proper solution. While this chapter does not examine specific situations, it can help you determine when you should hire a lawyer, what a lawyer can and cannot do for you, and what you can do to help yourself.

Article Outline

Introduction

When You Need Assistance

Does needing a lawyer’s help always mean that I have a legal problem?

Do I need a lawyer every time I have a legal grievance?

What should I do if I have an argument with a neighbor over the boundary line between our properties?

If I buy a new stove and it stops working just as the warranty expires, should I contact a lawyer?

Should I always wait until a problem becomes serious before I contact a lawyer?

Why can’t legal documents be in a language that I understand?

Help From People Other Than Lawyers

If I do not use a lawyer, who else can help me?

Are there other professionals who can be of assistance?

Can counseling solve some problems?

What is a small claims court?

A friend recommended that I try a local dispute resolution center. What does this offer?

Help From Lawyers

I understand that, under certain circumstances, going to a lawyer may be unnecessary. Are there specific cases when I should see a lawyer?

Is there another way to determine whether I need to hire a lawyer?

Is the use of lawyers growing?

If it is obvious that I will need a lawyer for a certain circumstance, should I save money and wait until I absolutely need the lawyer’s services?

What exactly is a lawyer?

Are most of a lawyer’s time usually spent arguing cases in court?

What are a lawyer’s main duties?

What are the professional requirements for becoming a lawyer?

Once licensed in one state, is a lawyer automatically allowed to practice law in all states?

If I have a legal problem, may I hire someone other than a lawyer?

I come from another country, and I need to hire a lawyer. Aren’t notary publics actually lawyers?

Types of Lawyers

Do lawyers normally work alone or do most of them work for companies or the government?

How are lawyers split between rural and metropolitan areas?

In what areas of practice do lawyers normally concentrate?

Areas of Legal Practice

Looking for a Lawyer

How do I go about choosing a lawyer?

Are there any practical considerations to keep in mind when choosing a lawyer?

Where should I start to look for a lawyer?

Are advertisements a good place to look for a lawyer?

What about a local referral service?

My new job offers a pre-paid legal services plan. What can I expect?

I have heard about legal clinics, but I am not sure if I can use their services. What kind of help do they offer?

I may want to hire a lawyer, but I do not have much money. Where can I find low-cost legal help?

I have been accused of a crime, and I cannot afford a lawyer. What can I do?

Besides court-appointed defenders, is there any other form of government assistance available?

Questions to Ask a Lawyer

How will I determine whether I want to hire a specific lawyer?

Have Faith

What sort of questions should I ask?

Is it proper to ask the lawyer if anyone else will be working on my case?

I met with a lawyer who referred me to another lawyer. Should I be angry?

What, in particular, should I ask about fees and costs?

When I first meet with my prospective lawyer, should I ask about the possible outcome of the case?

Should I ask if and how I can help with my case?

During our first meeting, should I ask what will happen if the lawyer and I disagree?

Legal Fees and Expenses

How can I be sure that my lawyer will not overcharge me?

Talk About Fees

Someone said that I should ask my lawyer to use the billing method that is based on contingent fees. What does this mean?

Are all contingent fee arrangements the same?

If my lawyer and I agree to a contingent fee arrangement, shouldn’t the method of settling my case affect the amount of my lawyer’s fee?

What billing method do most lawyers use?

Types of Fees and Expenses

A friend suggested that I might want to have a lawyer “on retainer.” What does this mean?

I saw an advertisement from a law firm that charges fixed fees for specific types of work. What does this involve?

Does the lawyer’s billing method influence the other costs and expenses that I might have to pay?

What are referral fees?

Should I “shop around” for the cheapest lawyer I can find?

Is there anything I can do to reduce my legal costs?

Should I wait for my lawyer to say what he or she needs from me?

If something related to my case has occurred, should I wait until my next scheduled meeting to tell my lawyer about it?

Can I reduce my legal costs if I get more involved in my case?

What to Do if Your Lawyer Does Not Satisfy You

Expectation About Your Lawyer

I lost my case, and I still had to pay my lawyer’s bill along with costs and expenses. I am not very happy with my lawyer. What can I do?

I have tried to talk to my lawyer. However, my lawyer will not discuss it. Do I have any alternatives?

What if I feel that my lawyer has acted unethically?

What are some specific examples of the ethical duties of lawyers?

A Client’s Responsibilities

I am upset with the way my lawyer handled my case. Can I file a complaint?

Where can I file a complaint against my lawyer?

Then how can I get money to compensate me for my lawyer’s misconduct?

My lawyer settled my case out of court and refuses to pay me my share of the settlement. What can I do about it?

If I am having a problem with my lawyer, is there any reason that I would want to call the police?

Alternatives to Lawsuits

I am considering filing a lawsuit against someone. Is there anything I can do to avoid this?

Listen to the Other Person

I have already hired a lawyer and filed a lawsuit. Is it too late to negotiate a settlement?

After You Settle

Can my case be thrown out of court because it is too old?

Where to Go for More Information

Practical Information About the Law.

Alternative Dispute Resolution

To Complain About a Lawyer

When You Need Assistance

Does needing a lawyer’s help always mean that I have a legal problem?

Answer. No. In fact, lawyers very often help clients in matters that have nothing to do with disputes or legal cases. For example, with their lawyer’s help, people are advised about the legal aspects of starting a business or engaging in a partnership, assisted in buying or selling a home, and counseled on tax matters or estate planning, to name just a few possibilities. Often, clients receive a regular legal check–up that, like a medical check–up, is designed to prevent problems or nip them in the bud.

Do I need a lawyer every time I have a legal grievance?

Answer. Although the law enters into many aspects of daily living, you certainly do not need a lawyer every time you become “involved” with the law. Some Americans have become too inclined to hire lawyers and proceed to court to resolve problems. For example, sports fans have sued to have a referee’s controversial decision reversed, and a jilted suitor has tried to recover the cost of an evening’s entertainment. Of course, lawsuits like these are not common (that is why they make the news), but they illustrate that many problems are not really the business of the law or our courts.

What should I do if I have an argument with a neighbor over the boundary line between our properties?

Answer. First attempt to talk to your neighbor. After all, you probably will have to go on living next to each other. If that fails, you may wish to seek mediation or some other form of informal dispute resolution to help the two of you resolve the problem. Perhaps you can get some guidance from public records, already existing surveys, or title searches that have been done. Maybe prior owners can cast light on the subject. If these options fail, the two of you might want to jointly pay for a survey or jointly ask a court to decide the matter (see discussion of “quiet title” in the

If I buy a new stove and it stops working just as the warranty expires, should I contact a lawyer?

Answer. No. First, read the warranty and see what rights you may have, notify the merchant and see if you can negotiate a satisfactory solution. If that does not work, contact the manufacturer. Though the Better Business Bureau does not resolve disputes, perhaps a complaint to them will stir the merchant or manufacturer to action. As a last resort, you can file suit in a small claims court. You can do all this without a lawyer.

Should I always wait until a problem becomes serious before I contact a lawyer?

Answer. No. In certain matters, if you call a lawyer as a last resort, it may already be too late. For example, it is difficult for a lawyer to protect you after you have signed away your rights or if you have waited too long to assert your rights. And some legal matters are so important or so complex that you will need a lawyer from the beginning. In such cases, having legal help early will probably save expense—and anxiety.

Why can’t legal documents be in a language that I understand?

Answer. Lawyers and others trained in the law often use legal terms as shorthand to express complicated ideas or principles. The words and phrases, many rooted in Latin, are often jokingly referred to as a foreign language—“legalese.” Although some legalese may be necessary in order to communicate certain ideas precisely, a document that is understood by very few of its readers is just plain poor communication.

Since 1978, federal regulations are required to be “written in plain English and understandable to those who must comply” with them. Many states also have laws requiring that insurance policies, leases, and consumer contracts be written in plain English. Of particular importance here is the trend among law schools to discourage the use of legalese while encouraging writing in plain, comprehensible English.

Help From People Other Than Lawyers

If I do not use a lawyer, who else can help me?

Answer. Unless your problem is so serious that only a lawyer can resolve it, you should first consider another source of help. If you believe a business has cheated you, help can be obtained from a consumer protection agency run by your city, county, state or federal government. Many businesses, stores, and utility companies have their own departments to help resolve consumer complaints. Some communities have an ombudsman to mediate and resolve minor landlord/tenant, consumer or employment issues. Local television and radio stations may have programs to resolve consumer–related disputes.

Are there other professionals who can be of assistance?

Answer. Yes. Do not overlook the obvious. If you have a problem with insurance, for example, discuss it with your insurance agent. Bankers, accountants, real estate agents, and stockbrokers are others who may be able to help with problems in their specific fields. Of course, if your dispute is with them they may not be a source of unbiased information. Even so, it costs nothing to ask and they may provide free advice that can help you evaluate whether your problem needs the attention of a lawyer.

Can counseling solve some problems?

Answer. Yes. Sometimes problems that seem to be “legal” may be helped or prevented by other means. Many groups offer guidance and counseling for personal problems arising in marriage, child-rearing, and managing finances. Private counselors or members of the clergy also may provide such help.

What is a small claims court?

Answer. Disputes over money are common, but often the amount of money at issue does not justify hiring attorneys or using scarce judicial resources. Small claims court is a streamlined forum where people can air their dispute and have it decided promptly and fairly. Most states have procedures that allow people to represent themselves in court if the total amount of their claim is under a certain dollar amount. The cost is minimal, procedures are simple, and there is usually little delay. Keep small claims courts in mind if your problem is not very complicated and your losses are relatively small—in the hundreds or low thousands. The next chapter provides guidance on how to file and pursue a small claims lawsuit.

A friend recommended that I try a local dispute resolution center. What does this offer?

Answer. For the right kind of case, these centers can be a quick, low–cost (or free) alternative to formal legal proceedings. These will also be discussed in the next chapter.

Help From Lawyers

I understand that, under certain circumstances, going to a lawyer may be unnecessary. Are there specific cases when I should see a lawyer?

Answer. Yes, there are matters best handled by a lawyer. While these matters are sometimes hard to recognize, nearly everyone agrees that you should talk with a lawyer about major life events or changes, which might include:

being arrested for a crime or served with legal papers in a civil lawsuit;

being involved in a serious accident causing personal injury or property damage;

a change in family statuses such as divorce, adoption, or death;

a change in financial status such as getting or losing valuable personal property or real estate, or filing for bankruptcy.

Is there another way to determine whether I need to hire a lawyer?

Answer. Yes. One way is to look at how other Americans have answered the question. In a recent study of Americans over the age of 18, researchers for the American Bar Association found almost half had used a lawyer in the past five years. The most common legal matters taken to lawyers involved

real estate transactions (12%)

drawing up a will (11%)

as a party to a lawsuit (11%)

divorce/separation (9%)

probate/estate settlement matters (6%)

child support/custody matter (5%)

draw up an agreement/contract (5%)

Other fairly common matters requiring a lawyer’s help included traffic matters, insurance claims, bankruptcy, auto accidents, and being a complainant or defendant in a criminal proceeding.

Source: Perceptions of the U.S. Justice System (Chicago: American Bar Association, 1999).

Is the use of lawyers growing?

Answer. Apparently. A 1993 survey of 815 adults nationwide showed that the use of a lawyer for both personal and business matters had increased significantly from 1986. Researches found that more middle and low-income people were reporting that they used lawyers’ services.

If it is obvious that I will need a lawyer for a certain circumstance, should I save money and wait until I absolutely need the lawyer’s services?

Answer. No. Lawyers should be thought of as preventers of legal problems, not just solvers. When dealing with legal issues, an ounce of prevention is worth many dollars and anxious hours of cure. Once you have determined that you need professional legal help, get it promptly. You can get the most help if you are in touch with a lawyer as soon as possible.

What exactly is a lawyer?

Answer. A lawyer (also called attorney, counsel, counselor, barrister, or solicitor) is a licensed professional who advises and represents others in legal matters. When you picture a lawyer, you probably think of an elderly gentleman in a three–piece suit. That picture is no longer accurate. Today’s lawyers can be young or old, male or female. Nearly one–third of all lawyers are under thirty–five. Almost half the law students today are women, and women will probably ultimately be as numerous in the profession as men.

Are most of a lawyer’s time usually spent arguing cases in court?

Answer. No. A lawyer normally spends more time in an office than in a courtroom. The practice of law most often involves researching legal developments, investigating facts, writing and preparing legal documents, giving advice, and settling disputes. Laws change constantly. The new law is enacted and prior law is amended and repealed. In addition, judicial decisions in court cases regularly alter what the law currently means, whether the source of law in the United States Constitution or a state constitution; federal or state statutes; or federal, state, and local codes and regulations. For these reasons, a lawyer must put much time into knowing how the laws and the changes will affect each circumstance.

What are a lawyer’s main duties?

Answer. A lawyer has two main duties: to uphold the law and to protect a client’s rights. To carry out these duties, a lawyer must know the law and be a good communicator.

What are the professional requirements for becoming a lawyer?

Answer. To understand how laws and the legal system work together, lawyers must go through special schooling. Each state has enacted standards that must be met before a person is licensed to practice law there. Before being allowed to practice law in most states, a person must:

have a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent;

complete three years at an accredited law school;

pass a state bar examination, which usually lasts for two or three days; it tests knowledge in selected areas of law and in professional ethics and responsibility;

pass a character and fitness review; each applicant for a law license must be approved by a committee that investigates his or her character and background;

take an oath swearing to uphold the laws and the state and federal constitutions;

receive a license from the state supreme court; some states have additional requirements, such as an internship in a law office, before a license will be granted.

Once licensed in one state, is a lawyer automatically allowed to practice law in all states?

Answer. No. To become licensed in more than one state, a lawyer must usually comply with each state bar admission requirements. Some states, however, permit licensed out–of–state attorneys to practice law if they have done so in another state for several years and the new state’s supreme court approves them.

If I have a legal problem, may I hire someone other than a lawyer?

Answer. In some specialized situations, such as bringing a complaint before a government agency, nonlawyers or paralegals may be qualified to represent you—and their services may cost less than a lawyer’s. Ask the government agency what types of legal representatives are available.

I come from another country, and I need to hire a lawyer. Aren’t notary publics actually lawyers?

Answer. A “notary public,” “accountant,” or “certified public accountant” is not necessarily a lawyer. Do not assume that titles such as notary public mean the same thing as similar words in your own language.

Types of Lawyers

Do lawyers normally work alone or do most of them work for companies or the government?

Answer. About two-thirds of all lawyers are in private practice; many others work for corporations or the government. Firms of various sizes employ lawyers in private practice. Almost half of the lawyers in private practice are sole practitioners who work alone. Others join with one or more lawyers in partnerships. As the table shows, about a quarter of lawyers are in partnerships that have ten lawyers or fewer.

Private Practitioners (1995)

Total practitioners: 634,475

Population/practitioner ratio: 410/1

Practitioners by Practice Setting and Sex

Source:

The Lawyer Statistical Report: The U.S. Legal Population in 1995 (Chicago: American BarFoundation, 1999)

How are lawyers split between rural and metropolitan areas?

Answer. 88 percent of American lawyers work in metropolitan areas, and about one-third of all lawyers work in large cities. Especially in rural areas and small cities, there are many general practitioners who, by themselves or with the help of other lawyers, handle most types of cases. However, the family lawyer/general practice lawyer is becoming harder to find.

In what areas of practice do lawyers normally concentrate?

Answer. Most lawyers concentrate on one or a few specific areas, such as domestic relations, criminal law, personal injury, estate planning and administration, real estate, taxation, immigration, and intellectual property law (see chart).

Areas of Legal Practice

Business Law

Advising about starting a new business (corporation, partnership, etc.), general corporate matters, business taxation, and mergers and acquisitions

Criminal Law

Defending or prosecuting those accused of committing a crimes

Domestic Relations

Representing individuals in separation, annulment, divorce, and child custody matters

Estate Planning

Advising clients in property management, drawing wills, probate, and estate planning

Immigration

Representing parties in proceedings involving naturalization and citizenship

Intellectual Property Law

Dealing with issues concerning trademarks, copyright regulations, and patents

Labor Law

Advising and representing employers, unions and employees on questions of union organizing, workplace safety, and compliance with government regulations

Personal Injury

Representing clients injured intentionally or negligently, and those with workers’ compensation claims

Real Estate

Assisting clients in developing property; re-zoning; and buying, selling, or renting homes or other property

Taxation

Counseling businesss and individuals in local, state, and federal tax matters

Looking for a Lawyer

How do I go about choosing a lawyer?

Answer. The lawyer will be helping you solve your problems, so you must feel comfortable enough to tell him or her, honestly and completely, all the facts necessary to resolve your problem. No one you listen to and nothing you read will tell you which particular lawyer will be the best for you; you must judge that for yourself. Most lawyers will meet with you briefly to “get acquainted,” allowing you to talk with your prospective lawyer before making a final hiring decision. In many cases, there is no fee charged for an initial consultation. However, don’t assume that an initial consultation is free. To be on the safe side, ask about fees before setting up your consultation appointment.

Are there any practical considerations to keep in mind when choosing a lawyer?

Answer. Yes, the lawyer’s area of expertise and prior experience are important. Eighteen states have specialization programs that certify lawyers as specialists in certain stated types of law. These states are Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. To find out which areas are certified in which states, access the ABA’s specialization guidelines. In states without certification programs, you may want to ask about your lawyer’s areas of concentration. You also may wish to ask about the type of cases your lawyer generally handles.

Other considerations are the convenience of the lawyer’s office location, the number of fees charged, and the length of time a case may take. Although they are not always wise guidelines, consider your personal preferences about the lawyer’s age, gender, and personality. These preferences may guide you in locating someone with whom you feel most comfortable.

Where should I start to look for a lawyer?

Answer. There are many sources for finding a reliable lawyer. Some of the best are recommendations from trusted friends, relatives, or business associates. Be aware that each legal case is different and that a lawyer who is right for someone else may not suit you or your legal problem.

Are advertisements a good place to look for a lawyer?

Answer. In some ways, yes, ads are useful. However, always be careful about believing everything you read and hear—and nowhere is this truer than with advertisements. Still, newspaper, telephone directory, radio, and television ads, along with direct mail, can make you familiar with the names of lawyers who may be appropriate for your legal needs. Some ads also will help you determine a lawyer’s area of expertise. Other ads will quote a fee or price range for handling a specific type of “simple” case. Keep in mind that the lawyer may not be a “specialist” in the advertised field and that your case may not have a simple solution. If a lawyer quotes a fee, be certain you know exactly what services the charge does and does not include.

What about a local referral service?

Answer. Most communities have referral services to help the public find lawyers. These services usually recommend a lawyer in the area to evaluate a situation—sometimes at a reduced cost. Several services offer help to groups with unique characteristics, such as the elderly, immigrants, victims of domestic violence, or persons with a disability. Bar associations in most communities make referrals according to specific areas of law, helping you find a lawyer with the right concentration. Many referral services also have competency requirements for lawyers who wish to have referrals in a particular area of law.

Still, these services are not always a surefire way to find the “right” or even a “good” lawyer for you, since some services make referrals without concern for the lawyer’s type or level of experience. In the end, you must make your own decision in order to feel confident about your selection. To contact a referral service, look under any local or state bar association website listing, or access this directory for a list of more than 25,000 lawyers who offer free consultations across the country,

My new job offers a pre-paid legal services plan. What can I expect?

Answer. Legal services, like many other things, are often less expensive when bought in bulk. Employers, labor and credit unions, and other groups have formed “legal insurance” plans. Many plans cover most, if not all, the costs of legal consultation, document preparation, and court representation in routine legal matters. Other programs cover only advice and consultation with a lawyer. Before joining a legal plan, make sure you are familiar with its coverage and know whether you will be

required to make out–of–pocket contributions. These group plans follow the same pattern as a group or cooperative medical insurance plan. Employers or unions set up a fund to pay the employees’ legal fees, just as they contribute to group insurance plans to cover medical costs. Legal group plans have become much more widespread in recent years. Some retail department stores and credit card companies even offer such plans to their customers.

I have heard about legal clinics, but I am not sure if I can use their services. What kind of help do they offer?

Answer. Legal clinics primarily process routine, uncomplicated legal business. They generally use standard forms and paralegal assistants. Paralegals are those who have received special basic legal training and have learned skills through their jobs.

These clinics often charge less than traditional law firms for their services. They mainly work on wills, personal bankruptcy, divorces, and traffic offenses.

I may want to hire a lawyer, but I do not have much money. Where can I find low-cost legal help?

Answer. People do not have a right to a free lawyer in civil legal matters (they do in most criminal cases). However, several legal assistance programs offer inexpensive or free legal services to those in need. Most legal aid programs have special guidelines for eligibility, often based on where you live, the size of your family, and your income. Some legal aid offices have their own staff lawyers, and others operate with volunteer lawyers. To find free or reduced–cost legal services in your area, call your bar association or the county courthouse. You also may look in the telephone book’s yellow pages under “Legal Aid,” “Legal Assistance,” or “Legal Services.” Sometimes the telephone book will list a legal aid office under “Lawyers” or “Attorneys.”

I have been accused of a crime, and I cannot afford a lawyer. What can I do?

Answer. If the government accuses you of committing a crime, the United States Constitution guarantees you the right to be represented by a lawyer in any case in which you could be incarcerated for six months or more. If you cannot afford a lawyer, the judge handling the case will either appoint a private lawyer to represent you free of charge or the government’s public defender will handle your case, also at no charge.

Besides court-appointed defenders, is there any other form of government assistance available?

Answer. Departments and agencies of both the state and federal governments often have staff lawyers who can help the general public in limited situations, without charge. The United States Attorney’s Office might be able to provide guidance about federal laws. It also might guide you to federal agencies that deal with specific concerns, such as environmental protection problems and discrimination in employment or housing.

The state attorney general also may provide guidance to the public on state laws, without charge. Some states, for example, maintain consumer protection departments as a function of the attorney general’s office.

Similarly, counties, cities, and townships often have staff lawyers who may provide the public with guidance about local laws. Some of these local offices also offer consumer protection assistance through their law departments. However, government lawyers may not, at the government’s expense, advice or represent anyone in private legal matters.

Questions to Ask a Lawyer

How will I determine whether I want to hire a specific lawyer?

Answer. Many lawyers are willing to meet with you briefly without charge so the two of you can get acquainted. During (or soon after) this first meeting, you can decide whether you want to hire that lawyer. Many people feel nervous or intimidated when meeting lawyers, but remember that you are the one doing the hiring, and what’s most important is that you are satisfied with what you’re getting for your money. Before you make any hiring decisions, you might want to ask certain questions to aid in your evaluation.

Have Faith

It is important that you trust the lawyer you hire, believing that he or she will do the best job possible in protecting your legal rights. However, remember that lawyers cannot work magic. No lawyer can be expected to win every case, and the best legal advice may turn out to be not exactly what you wanted to hear.

Author

What sort of questions should I ask?

Answer. Ask about the lawyer’s experience and areas of practice. How long has the lawyer and the firm been practicing law? What kinds of legal problems does the lawyer handle most often? Are most clients individuals or businesses?

Is it proper to ask the lawyer if anyone else will be working on my case?

Answer. Since you are the one paying the bill, it is well within your rights. Ask if nonlawyers, such as paralegals or law clerks, will be used in researching or preparing the case. If so, will there be separate charges for their services? Who will be consulted if the lawyer is unsure about some aspects of your case? Will the lawyer recommend another attorney or firm if this one is unable to handle your case?

I met with a lawyer who referred me to another lawyer. Should I be angry?

Answer. Probably not. Occasionally, a lawyer will suggest that someone else in the same firm or an outside lawyer handle your specific problem. Perhaps the original lawyer is too busy to give your case the full attention it deserves. Maybe your problem requires another’s expertise. No one likes to feel that a lawyer is shifting him or her to another attorney. However, most reassignments within firms occur for a good reason. Do not hesitate to request a meeting with the new attorney to make sure you are comfortable with him or her.

What, in particular, should I ask about fees and costs?

Answer. How are fees charged—by the hour, by the case, or by the amount won? About how much money will be required to handle the case from start to finish? When must you pay the bill? Can you pay for it in installments? Ask for a written statement showing specific services rendered and the charge for each.

When I first meet with my prospective lawyer, should I ask about the possible outcome of the case?

Answer. Certainly, but beware of any lawyer who guarantees a big settlement or assures a victory in court. Remember that there are at least two sides to every legal issue and many factors can affect its resolution. Ask for the lawyer’s opinion of your case’s strengths and weaknesses. Will the lawyer most likely settle your case out of court or is it likely that the case will go to trial? What are the advantages and disadvantages of a settlement? Of going to trial? What kind of experience does the lawyer have in trial work? If you lose at the trial, will the lawyer be willing to appeal the decision?

Should I ask if and how I can help with my case?

Answer. Yes. It is often in your interest to participate actively in your case. When you hire a lawyer, you are paying for legal advice. Your lawyer should make no major decision about whether and how to go on with the case without your permission. Pay special attention to whether the lawyer seems willing and able to explain the case to you and answers your questions clearly and completely. Also, ask what information will be supplied to you. How, and how often, will the lawyer keep you informed about the progress of your case? Will the lawyer send you copies of any of the documents that have to do with your case? Can you help keep fees down by gathering documents or otherwise assisting the effort?

During our first meeting, should I ask what will happen if the lawyer and I disagree?

Answer. Yes, your first meeting is the best time to ask about resolving potential problems. Find out if the lawyer will agree to binding arbitration if a serious dispute arises between the two of you. Most state bar associations have arbitration committees that, for a fee, will settle disputes that you and your lawyer may have, say over expenses. By agreeing to binding arbitration, both you and the lawyer consent to present your cases to an outside panel and abide by its decision.

Legal Fees and Expenses

How can I be sure that my lawyer will not overcharge me?

Answer. The fee charged by an attorney should be reasonable from an objective point of view. The fee should be tied to specific services rendered, time invested, and level of expertise provided.

There are some broad guidelines to help in evaluating whether a particular fee is reasonable:

the time and work required by the lawyer and any assistants, and the difficulty of the legal issues presented;

how much other lawyers in the area charge for similar work;

the total value of the claim or settlement and the results of the case;

whether the lawyer has worked for that client before;

the lawyer’s experience, reputation, and ability; and

the amount of other work the lawyer had to turn down to take on a particular case.

Talk About Fees

Although money is often a touchy subject in our society, fees and other charges should be discussed with your lawyer early. You can avoid future problems by having a clear understanding of the fees to be charged and getting that understanding in writing before any legal work has started. If the fee is to be charged on an hourly basis, insist on a complete itemized list and an explanation of charges each time the lawyer bills you.

Legal advice is not cheap. A bill from a lawyer for preparing a one–page legal document or providing basic advice may surprise some clients. Remember that when you hire a lawyer, you are paying for his or her expertise and time.

Author

Someone said that I should ask my lawyer to use the billing method that is based on contingent fees. What does this mean?

Answer. A client pays a contingent fee to a lawyer only if the lawyer handles a case successfully. Lawyers and clients use this arrangement only in cases where the money is being claimed—most often in cases involving personal injury or workers’ compensation. Many states strictly forbid this billing method in criminal cases and in most cases involving domestic (i.e., family) relations.

In a contingent fee arrangement, the lawyer agrees to accept a fixed percentage (often one third) of the recovery, which is the amount finally paid to the client. If you win the case, the lawyer’s fee comes out of the money awarded to you. If you lose, neither you nor the lawyer will get any money, but you will not be required to pay your attorney for the work done on the case.

On the other hand, win or lose, you probably will have to pay court filing fees, the costs related to deposing witnesses, and similar charges.

By entering into a contingent fee agreement, both you and your lawyer expect to collect some unknown amount of money. Because many personal injury actions involve considerable and often complicated investigation and work by a lawyer, this may be less expensive than paying an hourly rate. You should clearly understand your options before entering into a contingency fee agreement, which is a contract in itself.

Are all contingent fee arrangements the same?

Answer. No. An important consideration is whether or not the lawyer deducts the costs and expenses from the amount won before or after you pay the lawyer’s percentage.

Example: Joe hires Ernie Attorney to represent him, agreeing that Ernie will receive one-third of the final amount—in this case, $12,000. If Joe pays Ernie his fee before expenses, the fee will be calculated as follows:

$12,000 Total amount recovered in case

-$4,000 One third for Ernie Attorney

$8,000 Balance

-2,100 Payment for expenses and costs

$5,900 Amount that Joe recovers

If Joe pays Ernie after other legal expenses and costs, the fee will be calculated as follows:

$12,000 Total amount recovered in case

– 2,100 Payment for expenses and costs

$9,900 Balance

-3,300 (One–third for Ernie Attorney)

$6,600 Amount that Joe recovers

The above figures show that Joe will collect an additional seven–hundred dollars if the agreement provides that Ernie Attorney collects his share after Joe pays the other legal expenses.

Many lawyers prefer to be paid before they subtract the expenses, but the point is often negotiable. Of course, these matters should be settled before you hire a lawyer. If you agree to pay a contingency fee, your lawyer should provide a written explanation of this agreement that clearly states how he or she will deduct costs.

If my lawyer and I agree to a contingent fee arrangement, shouldn’t the method of settling my case affect the amount of my lawyer’s fee?

Answer. Yes, but only if both of you agree beforehand. Lawyers settle most personal injury cases through negotiations with insurance companies; such cases rarely require a trial in court. If the lawyer settles the case before going to trial, this requires less legal work. You can try to negotiate an agreement in which the lawyer accepts a lower percentage if he or she settles the case easily and quickly or before a lawsuit is filed in court, though many good lawyers might not agree to those terms.

What billing method do most lawyers use?

Answer. The most common billing method is to charge a set amount for each hour of the time the lawyer works on your case. The method for determining what is a “reasonable” hourly fee depends on several things. More experienced lawyers tend to charge more per hour than those with less experience—but they also may take less time to do the same legal work. In addition, the same lawyer will usually charge more for time spent in the courtroom than for hours spent in the office or library.

Types of Fees and Expenses

The method used to charge fees is one of the things to consider in deciding if a fee is reasonable. You should understand the different charging methods before you make any hiring decision. At your first meeting, the lawyer should estimate how much the total case will cost and inform you of the method he or she will use to charge for the work. As with any bill, you should not pay without first getting an explanation for any charges you do not understand. Remember, not all costs can be estimated exactly because of unforeseen developments during the course of your case.

Author

A friend suggested that I might want to have a lawyer “on retainer.” What does this mean?

Answer. A retainer fee is a set amount of money paid regularly to make sure that a lawyer will be available for any necessary legal service you might require. Businesses and people who routinely have a lot of legal work use retainers. By paying a retainer, a client receives routine consultations and general legal advice whenever needed. If a legal matter requires courtroom time or many hours of work, the client may need to pay more than the retainer amount. Retainer agreements should always be in writing.

Most people do not see a lawyer regularly and do not need to pay a retainer fee. Sometimes, however, a lawyer will ask the client to pay some money in advance before any legal work will be done. Although often called a “retainer,” this money is really a down payment that will be applied toward the total fee billed.

I saw an advertisement from a law firm that charges fixed fees for specific types of work. What does this involve?

Answer. A fixed fee is an amount that will be charged for routine legal work. In a few situations, this amount may be set by law or by the judge handling the case. Since advertising by lawyers is becoming more popular, you are likely to see ads offering: “Simple Divorce—$150″ or “Bankruptcy—from $50.” Do not assume that these prices will be the amount of your final bill. The advertised price often does not include court costs and other expenses.

Does the lawyer’s billing method influence the other costs and expenses that I might have to pay?

Answer. No. Some costs and expenses will be charged regardless of the billing method. The court clerk’s office charges a fee for filing the complaint or petition that begins a legal action. The sheriff’s office charges a fee for serving a legal summons. Your lawyer must pay for postage, copying documents, telephone calls, and the advice or testimony of some types of expert witnesses such as doctors. These expenses, often called “costs,” may not be part of a legal fee, and you may have to pay them regardless of the fee arrangement you use. Your lawyer will usually pay these costs as needed, billing you at regular intervals or at the close of your case.

What are referral fees?

Answer. If you go to “Lawyer A,” he or she may be unable to help but refers you instead to “Lawyer B, “at another law firm, who has more experience in handling your kind of case. In return for the referral, Lawyer A will sometimes ask to be paid part of the total fee arrangement you pay to Lawyer B. The law may prohibit this type of fee, especially if it increases the final amount to be paid by a client. The ethical rules for lawyers in most states specify that two lawyers may not divide a client’s fee unless:

the client knows about the arrangement;

both lawyers do some actual “work” on the case;

they divide the fee to show how much work each lawyer did; and

the total bill is reasonable.

If one lawyer refers you to another, ask whether there will be a referral fee and, if so, ask about the specifics of the agreement between the lawyers.

Should I “shop around” for the cheapest lawyer I can find?

Answer. With legal advice, as with other products and services, you often get what you pay for. Although you should not expect to get good legal advice without paying for it, you should not pay for anything that you don’t actually receive. After you and your lawyer have discussed fees, make sure to follow through by examining each bill carefully. If you feel that any charge is too high or if you do not understand a billed item, ask your lawyer to explain it before you pay.

Is there anything I can do to reduce my legal costs?

Answer. Yes, there are several cost–cutting methods available to you. First, answer all your lawyer’s questions fully and honestly. Not only will you feel better but you also will save on legal fees. If you tell your lawyer all the facts as you know them, it will save time that might be spent on the particular case and will help your lawyer do a better job.

Remember that the ethics of the profession bind your lawyer to maintain in the strictest confidence almost anything you reveal during your private discussions. You should feel free to tell your lawyer the complete details in your case, even those that embarrass you. It is particularly important to tell your lawyer facts about your case that reflect poorly on you. These will almost certainly come out if your case goes to trial.

Should I wait for my lawyer to say what he or she needs from me?

Answer. No, some things should be obvious to you. Before the first meeting with your lawyer, think about your legal problem and how you would like it resolved. If your case involves other people, write down their names, addresses, and telephone numbers. Also, jot down any specific facts or dates you think might be important and any questions you want an answer. Bring the information with you to the first meeting, along with any relevant documents such as contracts or leases. By being organized, you will save time and money.

If something related to my case has occurred, should I wait until my next scheduled meeting to tell my lawyer about it?

Answer. No, situations can vary from one day to the next. Tell your lawyer immediately of changes that might be important to your case. It might mean that the lawyer will have to take a totally different action—or no action at all—in your case. This could greatly affect your lawyer’s fee.

Can I reduce my legal costs if I get more involved in my case?

Answer. Sometimes. Stay informed and ask for copies of important documents related to your case. Let your lawyer know if you are willing to help out, such as by picking up or delivering documents or by making a few telephone calls. You should not interfere with your lawyer’s work. However, you might be able to move your case quicker, reduce your legal costs, and keep yourself better informed by doing some of the work yourself. Discuss this with your lawyer.

What to Do if Your Lawyer Does Not Satisfy You

Expectation About Your Lawyer

When you agree to hire a lawyer and that lawyer agrees to be your legal representative, a two–way relationship begins in which you both have the same goal—to reach a satisfactory resolution to a legal matter. To reach this end, each of you must act responsibly toward the other. In a lawyer/client relationship, acting responsibly involves duties on both sides—and often involves some hard work.

You have a right to expect competent representation from your lawyer. However, every lawsuit has at least two sides. You cannot always blame your lawyer if your case does not turn out the way you thought it would. If you are unhappy with your lawyer, it is important to determine the reasons. If, after a realistic look, you still believe that you have a genuine complaint about your legal representation, there are several things you can do. The accompanying questions and answers discuss your alternatives.

Author

I lost my case, and I still had to pay my lawyer’s bill along with costs and expenses. I am not very happy with my lawyer. What can I do?

Answer. First, talk with your lawyer. A lack of communication causes many problems. If your lawyer appears to have acted improperly or did not do something that you think he or she should have done, talk with your lawyer about it. You may be satisfied once you understand the circumstances better.

I have tried to talk to my lawyer. However, my lawyer will not discuss it. Do I have any alternatives?

Answer. Yes. If your lawyer is unwilling to discuss your complaints, consider taking your legal affairs to another lawyer. You decide whom to hire (and fire) as your lawyer. When you fire a lawyer, you may be charged a reasonable amount for the work already done. Most documents relating to the case are yours—ask for them. In some states, however, a lawyer may have some rights to a file until the client pays a reasonable amount for work done on the case.

What if I feel that my lawyer has acted unethically?

Answer. How a lawyer should act, in both professional and private life, is controlled by the rules of professional conduct in the state or states where he or she is licensed to practice. These rules are usually by the state supreme court through its disciplinary board.

These codes consist of rules that describe generally how lawyers should strive to improve the legal profession and uphold the laws. They also give more detailed rules of conduct for specific situations (see below). If a lawyer’s conduct falls below the standards set out in the codes, he or she can be disciplined by being “censured” or “reprimanded” (publicly or privately criticized), “suspended” (having the license to practice law taken away for a certain time), or “disbarred” (having the law license taken away indefinitely).

The law sets out punishments for anyone who breaks civil and criminal laws, and that includes lawyers. But because of the special position of trust and confidence involved in a lawyer/client relationship, lawyers may also be punished for things which are not unlawful—such as telling others confidential information about a client or representing clients whose interests are in conflict.

What are some specific examples of the ethical duties of lawyers?

Answer. Among the highest responsibilities a lawyer has is his or her obligation to a client. A number of strict rules and common sense guidelines define these responsibilities.

Competence. This requires the lawyer’s ability to analyze legal issues; research and study changing laws and legal trends; and otherwise, represent the client effectively and professionally.

Following the client’s decisions. A lawyer should advise a client of possible actions to be taken in a case and then act according to the client’s choice of action—even if the lawyer might have picked a different route. One of the few exceptions is a client asking for a lawyer’s help in doing something illegal such as lying in court or in a legal document. In these cases, the lawyer is required to inform the client of the legal effect of any planned wrongdoing and refuse to assist with it.

Diligence. Every lawyer must act carefully and in a timely manner in handling a client’s legal problem. Unnecessary delays can often damage a case. If, because of overwork or any other reason, a lawyer is unable to spend the required time and energy on a case, the lawyer should refuse from the beginning to take the case.

Communication. A lawyer must be able to communicate effectively with a client. When a client asks for an explanation, the lawyer must provide it within a reasonable time. A lawyer must inform a client about changes in a case caused by time and circumstances.

Fees. The amount the lawyer charges for legal work must be reasonable, and the client should be told the specifics of all charges.

Confidentiality. With few exceptions, a lawyer may generally not tell anyone else what a client reveals about a case. The reason for this strict rule is to enable a client to discuss case details openly and honestly with a lawyer, even if those details reveal embarrassing or damaging information about the client. A rule called the “attorney/client privilege” helps protect confidential information from being disclosed. Ask your lawyer to explain the privilege to you.

Conflicts of interest. A lawyer must be loyal to his or her client. This means that a lawyer cannot represent two clients who are on opposite sides in the same or related lawsuits unless both clients give permission. And ordinarily, there can be no representation of a client whose interests would conflict with the lawyer’s interests. For example, a lawyer may not be involved in writing a will for a client who leaves the lawyer money or property in that will.

Keeping clients’ property. If a lawyer is holding a client’s money or property, it must be kept safely and separately from the lawyer’s own funds and belongings. When a client asks for the property, the lawyer must return it immediately and in good condition. The lawyer must also keep careful records of money received for a client and, if asked, report that amount promptly and accurately.

A Client’s Responsibilities

As in any successful relationship, a good lawyer/client relationship involves cooperation on both sides. As a client, you should do all you can to make sure you get the best possible legal help. This includes:

Author

Being honest. Be honest in telling all the facts to your lawyer. Remind yourself of important points or questions by writing them down before talking with your lawyer.

Notifying the lawyer of changes. Tell the lawyer promptly about any changes or new information you learn which may affect your case. This responsibility is a broad one and covers things from a change of your address or telephone number to let your lawyer know if and why you are unhappy with his or her work.

Asking for clarification. If you have any questions or are confused about something in your case, ask the lawyer for an explanation. This may go a long way toward putting your mind at ease—and will also help your lawyer do a better job of handling your case.

Being realistic. A lawyer can only handle your legal affairs. You may need the help of another professional—banker, family counselor, accountant, or psychologist, for example—for problems that have no “legal” solution. After you have hired a lawyer you trust, do not forget about that trust. The lawyer’s judgments are based on experience and training. Also, keep in mind that most legal matters cannot be resolved overnight. Give the system time to work.

Paying. A client has the duty to promptly pay a fair and reasonable price for legal services. In fact, when a client fails to pay, in some situations the lawyer may have the right to stop working on the case. Still, the lawyer must then do whatever is reasonably possible to prevent the client’s case from being harmed.

I am upset with the way my lawyer handled my case. Can I file a complaint?

Answer. Yes. As noted above, lawyers can be disciplined for violating ethical guidelines.

Where can I file a complaint against my lawyer?

Answer. If you believe you have a valid complaint about how your lawyer has handled your case, inform the organization that grants or withholds licenses to practice law in your state. Usually, this is the disciplinary board of the state supreme court. You’ll find it under the government listings for your state. You can also obtain its location from the local bar association. Or access a listing of lawyer disciplinary agencies here.

State Name Address Phone Website ALABAMA General Counsel Alabama State Bar Center for Professional Responsibility 415 Dexter Avenue Montgomery, AL 36104 Toll-Free Local Website ALASKA Bar Counsel Alaska Bar Association Post Office Box 100279 Anchorage, AK 99510-0279 Local Website ARIZONA Chief Bar Counsel State Bar of Arizona 4201 North 24th Street, Suite 100 Phoenix, AZ 85016-6266 Toll-Free Local Website ARKANSAS Director & Chief Disciplinary Counsel Committee on Professional Conduct 2100 Riverfront Drive, Suite 200 Little Rock, AR 72202-1747 Local Toll-Free Website CALIFORNIA Chief Trial Counsel State Bar of California 1149 South Hill Street, 10th Floor Los Angeles, CA 90015-2299 Toll-Free Local Website CALIFORNIA State Bar of California 180 Howard Street, 6th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105-1639 Local COLORADO Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel 1300 Broadway, Suite 500 Denver, CO 80203 Toll-Free Local Website CONNECTICUT Chief Disciplinary Counsel Statewide Grievance Committee 100 Washington Street Hartford, CT 06106 Local Website DELAWARE Delaware Office of Disciplinary Counsel 820 North French Street, 11th Floor Wilmington, DE 19801 Local Website DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA District of Columbia Office of Bar Counsel 515 5th Street, NW Building A, Room 117 Washington, DC 20001 Local Website FLORIDA Director of Lawyer Regulation The Florida Bar 651 East Jefferson Street Tallahassee, FL 32399-2300 Toll-Free Local Website GEORGIA General Counsel State Bar of Georgia 104 Marietta Street NW, Suite 100 Atlanta, GA 30303 Toll-Free Local Website HAWAI’I Disciplinary Board of the Hawai’i Supreme Court Office of Disciplinary Counsel 1132 Bishop Street, Suite 300 Honolulu, HI 96813 Local Website IDAHO Bar Counsel Idaho State Bar Post Office Box 895 Boise, ID 83701 Local Website ILLINOIS – (CHICAGO AND NORTHERN ILLINOIS) Administrator Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission 130 East Randolph Street, Suite 1500 Chicago, IL 60601-6219 Toll-Free Local Website ILLINOIS – (CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN ILLINOIS) Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission 3161 West White Oaks Drive, Suite 301 Springfield, IL 62704 Toll-Free Local N/A INDIANA Executive Secretary Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission 30 South Meridian Street, Suite 850 Indianapolis, IN 46204 Local Website IOWA Assistant Director for Attorney Regulation Iowa Supreme Court Office of Professional Regulation 1111 East Court Avenue Des Moines, IA 50319 Local Website KANSAS Disciplinary Administrator Kansas Disciplinary Administrator Office 701 SW Jackson, 1st Floor Topeka, KS 66603 Local Website KENTUCKY Chief Bar Counsel Kentucky Bar Association 514 West Main Street Frankfort, KY 40601-1883 Local Website LOUISIANA Office of the Disciplinary Counsel 4000 South Sherwood Forest Blvd., Suite 607 Baton Rouge, LA 70816 Toll-Free Local Website MAINE Bar Counsel Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar 97 Winthrop Street Post Office Box 527 Augusta, ME 04332-0527 Local Website MARYLAND Bar Counsel Attorney Grievance Commission of Maryland 100 Community Place, Suite 3301 Crownsville, MD 21032-2027 Local Website MASSACHUSETTS Office of the Bar Counsel 99 High Street Boston, MA 02110 Local Website MICHIGAN Grievance Administrator Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission 535 Griswold, Suite 1700 Detroit, MI 48226 Local Website MICHIGAN Executive Director & General Counsel Attorney Disciplinary Board 211 West Fort Street, Suite 1410 Detroit, MI 48226-3236 Local Website MINNESOTA Director Minnesota Office of Professional Responsibility 1500 Landmark Towers 345 St. Peter Street St. Paul, MN 55102-1218 Toll-Free Local Website MISSISSIPPI General Counsel Mississippi State Bar 643 North State Street Jackson, MS 39202 Local Website MISSOURI Missouri Supreme Court Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel 3335 American Avenue Jefferson City, MO 65109-1079 Local Website MONTANA Disciplinary Counsel Post Office Box 1099 Helena, MT 59624-1099 Toll-Free Local <a href="http://www.montanaodc.org “>Website NEBRASKA Counsel for Discipline Nebraska Supreme Court 3808 Normal Blvd. Lincoln, NE 68506 Local Website NEVADA Bar Counsel State Bar of Nevada 600 East Charleston Blvd. Las Vegas, NV 89104 Toll-Free Local Website NEW HAMPSHIRE Disciplinary Counsel New Hampshire Supreme Court Attorney Discipline Office 4 Chenell Drive, Suite 102 Concord, NH 03301 Local Website NEW JERSEY Chief Counsel Office of Attorney Ethics Supreme Court of New Jersey Post Office Box 963 Trenton, NJ 08625 Local Website NEW MEXICO Chief Disciplinary Counsel Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of New Mexico Post Office Box 1809 Albuquerque, NM 87103-1809 Local Website NEW YORK CITY 1st Department Chief Counsel First Judicial Department Departmental Disciplinary Committee 61 Broadway, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10006 Local Website NEW YORK CITY 2nd Department Chief Counsel Grievance Committee for the Second, Eleventh, and Thirteenth Judicial Districts Renaissance Plaza 335 Adams Street, Suite 2400 Brooklyn, NY 11201-3745 Local Website NEW YORK STATE 2nd Department Chief Counsel Grievance Committee for the Ninth Judicial District 399 Knoll wood Road, Suite 200 White Plains, NY 10603 Local Website NEW YORK STATE 2nd Department Chief Counsel Grievance Committee for the Tenth Judicial District 150 Motor Parkway, Suite 102 Hauppauge, NY 11788 Local Website NEW YORK STATE 3rd Department Chief Attorney Third Judicial Department Committee on Professional Standards 40 Steuben Street, Suite 502 Albany, NY 12207-2109 Local Website NEW YORK STATE 4th Department Chief Counsel Grievance Committee for the Fifth Judicial District 224 Harrison Street, Suite 408 Syracuse, NY 13202-3066 Local Website NEW YORK STATE 4th Department Chief Counsel Grievance Committee for the Seventh Judicial District 50 East Avenue, Suite 404 Rochester, NY 14604-2206 Local Website NEW YORK STATE 4th Department Chief Counsel Grievance Committee for the Eighth Judicial District 438 Main Street, Suite 800 Buffalo, NY 14202-3212 Local Website NORTH CAROLINA Counsel North Carolina State Bar Post Office Box 25908 Raleigh, NC 27611-5908 Local Website NORTH DAKOTA Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of North Dakota Post Office Box 2297 Bismarck, ND 58502-2297 Local Website OHIO Office of the Disciplinary Counsel of the Supreme Court of Ohio 250 Civic Center Drive, Suite 325 Columbus, OH 43215-7411 Toll-Free Local Website OHIO Secretary to the Board Board of Commissioners on Grievances & Discipline 65 South Front Street, 5th Floor Columbus, OH 43215-3431 Local Website OHIO Grievance Director Akron Bar Association 57 South Broadway Street Akron, OH 44308 Local Website OHIO General Counsel Cincinnati Bar Association 225 East 6th Street, 2nd Floor Cincinnati, OH 45202-3209 Local Website OHIO General Counsel Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association 1301 East 9th Street, 2nd Level Cleveland, OH 44114–1253 Local Website OHIO Bar Counsel Columbus Bar Association 175 S. Third Street, Suite 1100 Columbus, OH 43215 Local Website OHIO Assistant Executive Director Dayton Bar Association 109 North Main Street, Suite 600 Dayton, OH 45402–1129 Local Website OHIO Bar Counsel The Toledo Bar Association 311 N. Superior Street Toledo, OH 43604 Local Website OKLAHOMA General Counsel Oklahoma Bar Association 1901 North Lincoln Blvd. Post Office Box 53036 Oklahoma City, OK 73152–3036 Local Website OREGON Disciplinary Counsel Oregon State Bar Post Office Box 231935 Tigard, OR 97281–1935 Toll-Free Local <a href="http://www.osbar.org/discipline “>Website PENNSYLVANIA Chief Disciplinary Counsel 601 Commonwealth Ave, Suite 2700 Post Office Box 62485 Harrisburg, PA 17106–2485 Local Website RHODE ISLAND Chief Disciplinary Counsel Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island Fogarty Judicial Annex 24 Weybosset Street, 2nd Floor Providence, RI 02903 Local Website SOUTH CAROLINA Office of Disciplinary Counsel 1015 Sumter Street Columbia, SC 29201 Local Website SOUTH DAKOTA Disciplinary Board Counsel Post Office Box 511 Beresford, SD 57004 Local Website TENNESSEE Chief Disciplinary Counsel Board of Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Tennessee 10 Cadillac Drive, Suite 220 Brentwood, TN 37027 Toll-Free Local Website TEXAS Chief Disciplinary Counsel State Bar of Texas Post Office Box 12487 Austin, TX 78711 Toll-Free Local Website UTAH Utah State Bar Office of Professional Conduct 645 South 200 East, Suite 205 Salt Lake City, UT 84111–3834 Local Website VERMONT Disciplinary Counsel Professional Conduct Board of the Supreme Court of Vermont 32 Cherry Street, Suite 213 Burlington, VT 05401–7305 Local <a href="http://www.vermontjudiciary.org/LC/attydiscipline.aspx “>Website VIRGINIA Bar Counsel Virginia State Bar Eighth & Main Bldg. 707 East Main Street, Suite 1500 Richmond, VA 23219–2800 Local <a href="http://www.vsb.org “>Website WASHINGTON Chief Disciplinary Counsel Director of the Office of Disciplinary Counsel Washington State Bar Association 1325 4th Avenue, Suite 600 Seattle, WA 98101–2539 Local Website WEST VIRGINIA Chief Lawyer Disciplinary Counsel Office of Disciplinary Counsel 4700 MacCorkle Avenue SE, Suite 1200C Charleston, WV 25304 Local Website WISCONSIN Director Office of Lawyer Regulation 110 East Main Street, Suite 315 Madison, WI 53703–3383 Toll-Free Local <a href="http://www.wicourts.gov/services/public/lawyerreg/file.htm “>Website WYOMING Bar Counsel Wyoming State Bar 4124 Laramie Street Post Office Box 109 Cheyenne, WY 82003–0109 Local Website AMERICAN SAMOA American Samoa Bar Association Post Office Box 23 Pago Pago, AS 96799 N/A Website GUAM Hearing Counsel Office of the Guam Bar Association Ethics Prosecutor Guam Judicial Center, 2nd Floor 120 West O’Brien Drive Hagatna, Guam 969104-5174 N/A Website PUERTO RICO Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico N/A Local Website PUERTO RICO Tribunal Supremo de Puerto Rico Department of Justice N/A Local Website US VIRGIN ISLANDS Disciplinary Counsel Office of Disciplinary Counsel Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands Post Office Box 590 161 B Crown Bay Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, VI 00802 Local Website

In some states, the state bar association handles lawyer discipline. The board or the bar will either investigate the complaint or refer you to someone who can help. If your complaint concerns the amount your lawyer charged, you may be referred to a state or local bar association’s fee arbitration service.

Making a complaint of this sort may punish the lawyer for misconduct, but it will probably not help you recover any money. Filing a disciplinary complaint accusing your lawyer of unethical conduct is a serious matter to the lawyer. Try to resolve any differences or disputes directly with the lawyer before filing a complaint.

If you have a case pending that your lawyer has mishandled, be sure to also protect your rights by taking steps to see that your case is now properly handled.

Then how can I get money to compensate me for my lawyer’s misconduct?

Answer. You will have to file a malpractice suit against your lawyer. The discussion on medical malpractice in the “Personal Injury” chapter will provide useful information on malpractice in general. You may also have the right to receive compensation from a client security fund.

My lawyer settled my case out of court and refuses to pay me my share of the settlement. What can I do about it?

Answer. If you believe that your lawyer has taken or improperly kept money or property that belongs to you, contact the state (or sometimes, local) “client security fund,” “client indemnity fund” or “client assistance fund.” The state or local bar association or the state supreme court disciplinary board can tell you how to contact the fund that serves you. Under any name, these funds may reimburse clients if a court has found that their lawyer has defrauded them. Lawyers pay fees to maintain such funds.

If I am having a problem with my lawyer, is there any reason that I would want to call the police?

Answer. Yes. If you believe that your lawyer has committed a crime such as stealing your money or property, you should report that crime to the police. This is the last resort that should be taken only when you feel certain of your position. However, if you are certain, do not feel intimidated because your complaint is against a lawyer.

Alternatives to Lawsuits

I am considering filing a lawsuit against someone. Is there anything I can do to avoid this?

Answer. Yes, you can try to negotiate. Before you even think of going to court, try to talk with the other person in the dispute. Most potential suits are settled long before they go to court. The next chapter discusses steps to take in settling your case.

You can also explore other low–cost, informal alternatives that probably exist in your community—mediation, arbitration, and small claims court. The next chapter also provides practical information about each of these options.

Listen to the Other Person

Keep an open mind to possible solutions and listen to the other person’s side of the story. Remember that, with or without the help of lawyers, most people settle their legal disputes out of court.

Author

I have already hired a lawyer and filed a lawsuit. Is it too late to negotiate a settlement?

Answer. No. It’s almost never too late to settle. Judges and lawyers encourage those involved in a lawsuit to reach an agreement between themselves. If you reach an agreement after filing your case, let the court know you have settled the matter, and the case will be removed from the court’s calendar. If you have hired a lawyer, he or she should do this.

After You Settle

It is important to get your settlement in writing, and it is best if you and the other person involved sign the final agreement. Suppose that, after filling a lawsuit, the two of you are able to work out the main problem such as who owes how much to whom. It still may be necessary to appear before a judge to determine a method or schedule of payment. It is usually best to get the advice of a lawyer about any settlement before you put it into writing and sign it.

Author

Can my case be thrown out of court because it is too old?

Answer. Yes, every state has a time limit within which a case must be filed. The logic behind such limits, called statutes of limitations, is that most lawsuits are more easily and more fairly resolved within a short time. This is another reason that it is important to act as soon as you and your lawyer feel that you may have a valid legal claim. The time limits vary for different types of cases.

Where to Go for More Information

Practical Information About the Law.

There are many good sources of information about everyday law that will help you understand legal matters better and may give you a sense of your options. Many groups such as bar associations and consumer groups offer free or inexpensive brochures on various aspects of everyday law. A few of the many good practical law websites include:

The ABA’s Division for Public Education.

FindLaw provides a wide network of attorneys near you (Website)

For consumer issues, the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau will be able to help.

For concerns of older persons, AARP.

For tax issues, the IRS.

Alternative Dispute Resolution

For information about mediation and arbitration in your community, you can perform a search on Google or contact your bar association or court system. For the leading provider on mediation and arbitration, services you can access JAMS.

To Complain About a Lawyer

Call you bar association, which will tell you how to proceed, which you can view above in our listing of lawyer disciplinary agency services in every state.

Cited Sources: The ABA Legal Guide

via When And How To Use a Lawyer

[ernmark]

I have a big question. Since you seem to pull apart every part of TPP, I was wondering what happened in the first episode. Who wrote Juno's name on the wall. Did Cassandra actually do it without meaning to? Did Peter do it? How did the message get there?

I know you figured this out on your own, but I think it’s worth addressing because it really is a bit convoluted. I know with the first version of Murderous Mask, I was genuinely confused about who did what and how much influence Min had over the whole proceedings.

2Mask2Murderous did a much better job of clarifying who did what, but even that’s really hard to parse just because everything is told out of order.

So the long and short of it:

1) Croesus promised Cassandra that she’d get to make her documentary series. Min found out, and she did not like that. It was probably the last straw, really: Croesus had been hemorrhaging money for years at that point, and he had to go. 

2) Min created the schedule for the show, probably forging Croesus’ signature on it to make it official, and left it on Cassandra’s set so Cassie would find it. Did she know that Cassie would go into a rage and attack her father? Knowing Min, she knew something big was gonna happen, and she was fully prepared to use whatever it was to her advantage.

3) Cecil left the mansion, disguised as Cassie. Min knew that it had to be Cecil, because Cassie was too enraged to cheerfully go out and party after what she had discovered.

4) Peter Nureyev was busy breaking into the Kanagawa mansion and got the display case open, but Croesus came in to admire his collection before Peter could grab it. He made a break for it, and Croesus discovered the unlocked case.

5) Cassie stormed in to confront Croesus, who was already freaking out about his unlocked display case. They had a confrontation, and Cassie pushed Croesus into the case, where the Mask crushed his skull.

It’s really important to note here that Min couldn’t possibly have predicted that things were going to shake out exactly this way, but she did know that something was going to go down. Either Cassie would hit him too hard, or she’d shoot him, or they’d just yell to the point where his heart would give out-- no matter what happened, she would adapt. Min was almost certainly waiting outside the room for precisely that reason.

6) Once Croesus was dead and Cassie had fled, Min gathered some of Croesus’ still-wet blood and wrote “YOU’RE NEXT JUNO STEEL” on the wall, in order to lure Juno in to solve the case. For one, this makes for a thrilling story, and she’s trying to turn Croesus’ death into a ratings-boosting narrative that she can sell her viewers; for another, a less competent detective than Juno would see the video of “Cassandra” out on the town and take it at face value, and therefore arrest Cecil for the murder. She couldn’t let that happen-- if she did, she would lose Cecil’s “From The Jaws Of Death” show, and be stuck with Cassie’s documentary series. She needed someone who would solve the case to really peg Cassie for the crime.

7) Min then went to Cassie’s personal doctor and requested an unnecessary prescription for antihallucinogens (which, by the way, is suuuuuuuuuuuoer unethical and wouldn’t be possible if Min didn’t already own the doctor). This was specifically and explicitly an unnecessary prescription, implied to be “meant” to treat back-trips that Cassie would have from recreational drugs she took years back. In reality, Min ordered the prescription in order to discredit Cassie. By claiming that Cassie’s been hallucinating so badly that her stepmother needs to intervene, she’s suggesting that Cassie can’t tell reality from fantasy and isn’t in control of her own actions. 

8) She also stole the show schedule that Cassie left by the display case, in order to reinforce the narrative that Cassie is delusional and out of touch with reality. She was gaslighting the fuck out of Cassie, and also ensuring that nobody would believe Cassie when she tried to defend herself. 

9) Min brought Juno in (along with Peter) and lead them on a merry little chase around the mansion so he could gather clues and figure out what Cassie did, but not have enough downtime to puzzle out Min’s place in all of this.

10) The minute Juno and Peter got done with Cecil, Min did something to provoke Cassie into attacking her. Her camera crew was right there, watching and recording the entire thing. Min was already prepared, having somehow implied that the schedule was in her purse, and having already planted the bogus prescription in there.

11) Cassie threatened her with a gun, and Min screamed for help in a really out-of-character way, specifically to make Juno and Peter run to her. The screaming is obviously fake when you get there and realize how very unfazed she was by all of this. While Cassie held her at gunpoint, Peter pulled the prescription out of her purse in front of the camera, discrediting Cassie for the audience. Juno, being Juno, confronted Cassie in a big dramatic showdown, goading her to confess to the murder. And the moment Min got what she wanted, the cameras stopped rolling.

Min just got everything she wanted. She has full control of the family franchise without anyone (except for Juno) realizing that she arranged Croesus’ death; she got rid of Cassie’s documentary series, as well as Cassie’s rebellious temperament; she has control of Cecil and his money-making shows. And while Cassie is in Hoosegow and under the thumb of Min’s psychiatrists, Min either gets to make an Orange Is The New Black-style show about Cassie’s prison term, and who even knows what else Min had planned for her ‘psychiatric professionals’ to do to her. 

I want to reiterate here what I don’t say nearly enough: Min Kanagawa is fucking terrifying. 

[phantom-le6]

Episode Reviews - Batman: The Animated Series Season 1 (3 of 10)

We’re now into our third instalment from season 1 of Batman: The Animated Series, and this one begins with the re-invention of a formerly minor character that made that character a major foe of the Batman, albeit a bit infamous in the history of the live-action films.

Episode 14: Heart of Ice

Plot (as given by me):

In the middle of the hottest August in record for the people of Gotham, a series of cold-related crimes that involve the use of a freezing gun are occurring.  The crimes all involve thefts of equipment from facilities owned by GothCorp. Batman deduces that the equipment all fits together to create a larger and more powerful version of the freeze gun, and that the final component is only made by a single GothCorp manufacturing plant.

 That night, the thieves strike and Batman intercepts them, learning that the thieves are led by a man calling himself Mr Freeze, and it is Freeze who uses the cold gun in committing the robberies. Batman’s efforts to stop the theft fail, and when Freeze leaves one of his men behind who was hit by the freeze gun, Batman takes him back to the batcave to thaw him out.  At the same time, the dark knight begins to demonstrate that he has picked up a cold.

 Batman meets with GothCorp CEO Ferris Boyle the following day in his Bruce Wayne identity to try and find out why the company has been targeted.  Boyle claims the only person who would hate GothCorp so much died in an explosion when he was fired over an unauthorised experiment.  Batman suspects a cover-up and returns to GothCorp that night to investigate.  He finds a video tape showing that GothCorp scientist Victor Fries developed a form of cryogenics technology with GothCorp resources to save the life of his ailing wife Nora.  When Boyle tried to end the experiment, Fries fought for his wife’s life, resulting in Boyle kicking Fries into vials of coolant.  At that point Mr Freeze, who is in fact Victor Fries, enters and fires at Batman with his freeze gun.

 Back at Mr Freeze’s hideout, Batman deduces the suit Freeze wears is a result of the coolant altering his biology.  Freeze confirms he is no longer able to live outside of a sub-zero environment, compelling him to lash out at Boyle for the change.  Freeze leaves with his men and the freezing canon, as well as Batman’s utility belt. However, the caped crusader is able to free himself and pursues Freeze to a building where Boyle is being given an award for being the “humanitarian industrialist of the year”.  When Batman attacks and retrieves his utility belt, Freeze opts to enter and confront Boyle directly.

 Inside, Freeze reveals his true identity to Boyle as he freezes him up to his waist, but Batman intervenes before he can complete his revenge.  The suit that keeps Freeze cool also triples his strength, making direct combat useless, but Batman is able to stop him by cracking a thermos of chicken soup (given to him earlier by Alfred) against Freeze’s glass helmet.  Batman gives a tape showing Boyle’s actions to the press and sarcastically bids the half-frozen CEO good night.  Later, Freeze is incarcerated in a specially chilled jail cell.

Review:

This episode is another example of how much of an impact this series had on the Batman’s comic books and other mediums. Before this, Mr Freeze was apparently a minor rogue, simply being a guy with a freezing gun that would have been not much different from the Flash’s long-time enemy Captain Cold.  The tragic backstory and Freeze’s need to remain in a sub-zero environment were created for this episode, and as a result the Mr Freeze the fans of today know and love now exist.  Sadly, Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin film never did the whole thing justice, meaning that live-action film audiences who have never seen this episode or read any comics related to Mr Freeze from after this episode have never been given this character as he should be seen.

 The episode also features what was technically the first voice role in the series for Mark Hamill; he provides the voice of Freeze’s target Ferris Boyle, and only gained the role of the Joker later when Tim Curry found he couldn’t do a Joker voice without straining his vocal cords. It’s weird to learn this given that three Joker stories were already produced by this point, and perhaps it was this sort of re-casting and re-recording that at least contributed to the episodes not airing in their intended order.

 It’s a good story, and easily stands up as a fairly flawless example of the show’s quality.  I especially like how Batman empathises with Freeze enough to leave Boyle frozen after exposing him to the press.  A pity more unethical people in power never receive similar comeuppance. Another top scorer, 10 out of 10 for this episode.

Episode 15: The Cat and The Claw (Part 1)

Plot (as given by me):

Batman investigates a cat burglar and discovers it to be a woman; more specifically, Catwoman.  Catwoman uses a trained cat named Isis to assist her in her burglaries, and upon meeting Batman, she battles and attempts to flee him while also flirting with him.  There is a moment where her escape is almost ruined by the near-running over of Isis, but Batman saves the cat before losing both the cat and her owner.

 Later, Bruce Wayne attends a charity auction in aid of an animal charity, where the featured lot is a date with him.  The bidding initially only reaches the low thousands before wealthy animal rights activist Selina Kyle bids $10,000 for the date. Bruce is immediately attracted to Selina and insists on honouring the date, despite Selina’s protestation that she only made the bid to help the animals and has no real interest in a date. Gunfire is then heard from outside, prompting Bruce to leave so he can act as Batman.

 The gunfire turns out to be a group of terrorists trying to steal a truck of US army weaponry, but Batman manages to interfere and foil the theft.  Commissioner Gordon explains that a mysterious terrorist leader known only as Red Claw is in Gotham, and Batman promises to investigate.  The next day, Bruce turns up for his date with Selina, but beforehand Selina confesses to her secretary Maven that she is more interested in Batman.  The date is prematurely spoilt, however, when Selina learns that some land she was trying to acquire for a mountain lion reserve has been nabbed by a business cartel, Multigon International.

 Bruce uses his influence to arrange for Selina to meet Stern, the chairman of Multigon, who claims they’ll be developing the land into a luxury resort.  Selina is unconvinced and tells Stern she will have every environmental group putting Multigon under a microscope.  Unknown to Selina, Stern and Multigon are in league with Red Claw, who orders Selina monitored so she can’t jeopardise their plans.  That night, Batman grills the local mobs for intel on Red Claw, while Selina returns to Multigon in her alternate identity as Catwoman.

 Catwoman and Isis manage to gain information on Multigon’s real plans, unaware that Red Claw and her men are on the premises and planning the theft of a virus from a military transport train.  When Catwoman trips an alarm, Red Claw’s men try to capture her.  She almost makes a clean getaway, but Red Claw foils this by firing explosive ordnance at a ledge she is clinging to.  Batman manages to save Catwoman, only for her to then escape him.  She returns home with Isis and reports her success to Maven, unaware that one of Red Claw’s men has followed her and seen her unmask.

Review:

As the show’s introduction to Catwoman, I’ve often felt this episode and its part 2 follow-up had one major flaw; the inclusion of another villain.  Much as it’s cool to have Kate Mulgrew of Star Trek: Voyager fame voicing the TV show original villainess Red Claw, I think Catwoman should have been a featured solo villain rather just being the top-billed villain out of two.  After all, she doesn’t need an additional antagonist to tip her into villainy like Two-Face did, and she’s certainly the most well-known and high-profile of Batman’s female adversaries to the general public, especially in the early 90’s.  As with this show’s initial version of the Penguin, animated series Catwoman is based on the Michelle Pfieffer Selina Kyle in a grey catsuit.

 The Pfieffer influence on this character is less of an issue than styling the Penguin after the one played by Danny DeVito, since it only boils down to a hair colour and not a physical deformity. However, that’s about where the influence ends, as this version isn’t just a pure cat-burglar, nor is she seeking revenge as I understand the Pfieffer version did.  Instead, we’ve ended up with someone who is to cats, and to a lesser extent other wildlife, what Poison Ivy is to the plant world. In other words, an eco-warrior, albeit one that commits theft to finance activism where Ivy is more about direct eco-terrorism in most cases.  On the one hand it keeps the character unique from past versions of Catwoman, but it also detracts from the simple uniqueness of her being a thief where most of Batman’s other adversaries are either criminally insane or part of organised crime.

 Overall, part 1 is ok, but I feel like they should have been split into different stories so a simpler version of Catowman could have commanded the spotlight in her series intro.  For me, this episode only warrants 7 out of 10.

Episode 16: The Cat and the Claw (part 2)

Plot (as given by me):

The mob boss leaned on by Batman in part 1 informs him of an impending train heist being made by someone outside the local criminal underworld.  With nothing on the public schedules and no last-minute changes communicated to Commissioner Gordon, he and Batman deduce the train must be a classified military one. The train is soon raided by Red Claw and her men; they manage to secure the canister of virus before Batman can intervene, and he is forced to let them go in order to avoid them unleashing the virus.

 The next day, Bruce tries to take Selina out for their re-arranged date, but they are pursued by Red Claw’s men, who try to run the couple off the road.  Bruce manages to defeat the thugs by executing a series of evasive driving manoeuvres and then running them off a bridge by playing chicken.  He urges Selina to let him help, having deduced the men were after her and revealing he truly cares for her.  However, Selina insists she can take care of herself.  Later, back at the Batcave, Batman struggles to work out why Red Claw’s men would target Selina until Alfred finds a cat hair on Bruce Wayne’s suit jacket.  The colour is unique and matches cat hairs left by Catwoman’s cat Isis, causing Batman to realise Selina is Catwoman.

 That night, Batman rescues Maven from one of Red Claw’s men and asks her where Selina is.  Maven reveals that Selina has gone to the Multigon site on the land she’d wanted for the mountain lion refuge.  Maven also reveals to Batman that Selina loves him, but if this has any impact on him, he doesn’t show it.  At the site, Catwoman is caught taking photos of weapons stored in an abandoned military bunker, and has to be saved by Batman, but then both are captured. Red Claw, who is in the process of holding Gotham to ransom with the virus, opts to use it to kill Batman and Catwoman as her forces evacuate, believing a placebo will have the same effect. However, the pair of them manage to escape, and Batman quickly works to set the bunker on fire to destroy the virus while Catwoman gets out.

 Batman’s efforts not only destroy the bunker and the virus, but he heads a fuel truck into the side of the transport helicopter Red Claw’s men meant to use for escape.  Police helicopters then arrive to arrest the men, along with Stern as well. Red Claw, rather than flee, attempts to attack Catwoman, but is instead attacked and pinned by a mountain lion. Catwoman is then able to escape, but back at her apartment, Batman reluctantly arrests her.

Review:

This episode is mostly more of the same as what part 1 gave us, but the pay-off isn’t really any better than the build-up. In fact, if anything it’s a little anti-climactic, and in large part that’s due to everything to do with Red Claw and this version of Catwoman not just being a straight-up thief.  For me, I can’t really say much more and only give this part 6 out of 10.

Episode 17: See No Evil

Plot (as given by me):

A thief with a suit that makes him invisible commits numerous robberies across Gotham, using most of it to provide money for himself, but also giving some of the stolen items to a little girl called Kimmy, who believes her invisible benefactor to be her imaginary friend Mojo. One robbery occurs while Bruce Wayne is out shopping for a new watch, and he promptly intercedes as Batman. However, the invisible thief is able to get the drop on Batman and escape, and Batman begins to investigate further.

 It turns out that the suit is made from a plastic that bends light instead of absorbing it when an electrical current is supplied.  In the process, however, the plastic becomes toxic; the inventor has died and one of his assistants is trying to dispose of it, but some has been stolen by the other assistant, an ex-con named Lloyd Ventrix.  Kimmy is Lloyd’s estranged daughter, and he is using the invisibility suit to circumvent a court order keeping him away from Kimmy and her mother. With Kimmy believing Lloyd to be Mojo, she has informed him that she and her mother will move soon, prompting Lloyd to use Kimmy’s belief to abduct her.

 Batman pursues Ventrix to a nearby empty drive-in movie theatre, where Kimmy is now recoiling from her father after learning who he truly is.  With Ventrix’s head visible following his reveal, Batman is able to knock him aside, enabling Kimmy to flee to her house and her mother nearby.  Batman and Ventrix then engage in a protracted battle which leads them from the drive-in theatre to the Gotham rooftops.  There, Batman is able to make a water tower rain down on Ventrix, rendering him visible long enough for Batman to subdue him for the police.  Later, Kimmy confides in Batman that she and her mother will soon be moving, though her mother believes she has just developed another imaginary friend to replace ‘Mojo’.

Review:

This episode seems to have elements that make it a slight homage to the H.G. Wells’ story The Invisible Man, and fans of the 2020 modernised remake film of the story may be interested to note that the film’s lead actress Elisabeth Moss actually appears in as the voice of Kimmy. Personally, I know her better as Zoe Bartlett from TV drama series the West Wing, but it’s still interesting to note that she’s twice had acting roles relating to stories about invisible men. For me, though, the greater interest lies in getting to see Batman involved in what ultimately boils down to a domestic dispute that goes sideways as badly as a show like this can allow. It’s rare to see Batman, or any superhero, deal with a situation like this, and it’s a refreshing change not just in this show, but in superhero lore as a whole.

 My only real complaint with this episode is that Batman never once tries to employ an alternate mode of vision to see his invisible adversary.  His first confrontation with Ventrix reveals the suit’s current could be increased to produce a heating effect, suggesting the suit would emit a thermal signature. As such, infra-red lenses designed to register thermal energy instead of light energy would have been a clear and obvious solution.  The fact that Batman never even tries this feels like very poor attention to detail on the part of the show’s makers.  Batman is, among other things, a highly skilled tactician, and anyone deducing they’d fought an invisible thief once should surely have gone into their second bout with a better counter-measure than ‘fight across half the city and hope to luck into something like a water tower’.  For me, this episode gets 7 out of 10.

Episode 18: Beware the Gray Ghost

Plot (as given by me):

A series of bombings occur across Gotham City, and Batman finds evidence that suggests the bomber is mimicking the plot of a TV show he watched as a child, ‘The Grey Ghost’.  Unfortunately, the original reels of the shows were apparently destroyed in a fire years ago, so the series has never been committed to video. This prompts Batman to track down the show’s lead actor, a man named Simon Trent.  Trent is out of work because his time spent playing the Grey Ghost type-cast him, and he is forced to sell off the last of his Grey Ghost memorabilia to cover his rent.

 Batman uses his wealth as Bruce Wayne to return Trent’s collection to him and enlists his aid in the case.  At first, Trent is reluctant, but eventually gives Batman a copy of the relevant episode, asking to be left in peace.  Batman watches the episode in his civilian attire back at Wayne Manor, and learns the bombs are being hidden in remote-control toy cars. At the next bombing, the police and Batman have more success preventing major damage, but at one point the bomb cars almost kill Batman, and only Trent’s intervention in his old Grey Ghost costume saves the dark knight.

 After the two costumed crime fighters evade more of the bomb cars, they head back to the Batcave to analyse one decoy car Batman managed to retrieve.  Trent is shocked when he discovers the only evidence on the car leads back to himself, but then realises that Ted, the toy collector he has sold his memorabilia to, is behind the bombings.  Batman confronts Ted, who reveals he is a toy addict that has had to turn to crime in order to finance his collecting.  He tries to trap Batman with some of the bomb cars, but Trent then intervenes as the Gray Ghost.  The ensuing confrontation results in a fire that destroys Ted’s collection, and he is soon taken into police custody.

 In the aftermath, Trent’s popularity soars and his reels of the show are turned into a video release of the old Grey Ghost series.  As he autographs copies of the series, he does one for Bruce Wayne, who reveals his secret identity to Trent through a call-back to something he’d said earlier as Batman.

Review:

This episode literally has one thing going for it; the worst live-action Batman actor of all time having a guest role alongside one of the best Batman actors ever (Jason O’Mara of the DC Animated Movie Universe holds joint-top spot with Kevin Conroy in my estimation at present). While I know many people love and respect West’s version of Batman, I cannot stand it.  Granted, West was forced to play the character as it was at that time, which was a horrible campy parody of what Batman originally was, and later returned to when the comics code that stemmed from 1950’s McCarthyism was relaxed, and then ultimately scrapped in favour of age-based certification similar to the film and TV industry.

 However, that doesn’t change the fact that West’s Batman was simply too light and silly to be a true Batman.  Frankly, I see this episode less as an homage to West’s real-life story (though it does use his struggles with being type-cast as a plot point), and more as the actor’s redemption.  Here, he gets to play a role in a serious version of Batman, and he actually does it very well.  It’s such a shame, however, that in the end they’re just dealing with a toy collector gone mad enough for crime, yet not mad enough to really develop the full supervillain melodrama of costumes, gadgets, etc.  For once, we have an adversary so underwhelming as to prove there’s such a thing as a Batman story being too grounded.  For me, the episode only warrants 5 out of 10.

Episode 19: Prophecy of Doom

Plot (as given by me):

Bruce becomes concerned when fellow businessman Ethan Clark claims that psychic fortune-teller Nostromos has been saving him a fortune by steering him clear of certain disaster.  Ethan’s daughter Lisa is convinced Nostromos is a con-man, and that he makes accidents happen according to his predictions just to prove them true.  Bruce attends an event with Nostromos, who claims an accident will soon befall him. Shortly after he claims this, Bruce’s glass shatters seemingly of its own accord.

 Suspecting the glass was broken by a device emitting high-frequency sound, Batman later identifies Nostromos as former actor and ex-con Carl Fowler.  Fowler’s associate, Lucas, is a special effects man, which suggests how the con is being pulled, but not its ultimate conclusion.  The next day, Lucas tries to kill Bruce Wayne in his personal elevator at Wayne Enterprises, but Bruce manages to escape as Batman.  He is unable to catch Lucas, and feigns falling for the con after the near-death experience to learn the intended conclusion.

 It turns out Nostromos is predicting a massive societal collapse, and is convincing his wealthy followers to stash their funds in a single combined account so it will be unaffected by the collapse.  However, Nostromos can’t touch the funds without Ethan Clark’s written authorisation. Lisa also discovers the con, but is captured by Lucas before she can tell her father.  Bruce realises Nostromos will somehow try to leverage Ethan into signing his consent ahead of the supposed collapse so he and Lucas can walk away with all the money.

 At the observatory where Nostromos has based himself, the fake psychic convinced Ethan to sign the papers, otherwise Lisa will be killed in the giant mechanised model of the solar system suspended from the ceiling.  Batman arrives just after Nostromos and Lucas have tied Ethan up, and he manages to defeat them both and save Lisa in a battle that wrecks the solar system model in the process.  The two con-men are taken to jail, and as Ethan ponders how he was easily misled, Bruce quotes a Shakespearean passage about the fault lying not in the stars, but in ourselves.

Review:

This episode is quite ‘meh’ compared to others in the series.  While seeing Batman bust up a con operation is a bit of something different, the sheer ridiculousness of the whole pretence makes it almost cringeworthy to watch. I’m not quite sure where this episode’s idea came from or what its purpose was, but if it was to teach audiences not to buy into such things, I think they should have toned the con down a bit.  Frankly, if anyone bought into a con as badly acted and generally blatant as this one was in real life, they’d have to be way too gullible to even live, much less accumulate enough wealth to make a worthy mark.  4 out of 10 for this one.