#IMAGINE being a JUROR

[adorablest-mutt]

so i just finished ep. 6 of jane the virgin and. her lawsuit on luisa has to be. a fucking mess. like a motherfucker

[haggishlyhagging]

When I started looking at feminist efforts at the end of the nineteenth century, I knew that women had been involved in work against prostitution because there has been some feminist historical work on the Contagious Diseases Acts. What astonished me about these feminists was that the language they were using was so fiercely feminist. They described men's use of women in prostitution as an abuse of women, as dividing what they called the class of women, and putting aside one half of that class simply for men to use for their own purposes. I was surprised by the strength of the language that was used and the way in which these writers were very directly pointing out men's abuse of women in prostitution, and targeting men directly in everything they said.

I went on to discover something I had no knowledge of and about which there was virtually no information in secondary sources: there was a fifty-year campaign by those women against the sexual abuse of children. This started out of the struggle against prostitution, and it centered at first on raising the age of consent for girls so that young girls could not be used in prostitution. There wasn't a law against men using women in prostitution, but age of consent laws would have removed young girls from men's reach. That campaign culminated in the raising of the age of consent for sexual intercourse in Britain to 16 in 1885, and for indecent assault to 16 in 1922. It took fifty years.

Feminists were not simply trying to raise the age of consent. They were fighting incest, pointing out that incest was a crime of the patriarchal family, of men against women, and that sexual abuse of children was a crime carried out by men of all classes. They were fighting for women jurors, magistrates, women police to look after victims, fighting for all kinds of reforms that I thought had been invented by this wave of feminism. They were involved in setting up shelters for women escaping prostitution, something that is happening again in this wave of feminism.

I was enormously impressed by these feminists. In fact, I sat in the Fawcett Library in London getting terribly excited and wanting to tell everybody what I was finding out. Feminist theorists like Elisabeth Wolstenholme Elmy and Frances Swiney were writing at this time about sexuality. We haven't had access to their work because it hasn't been taken seriously. Where they are written about at all in history books, they are simply called prudes and puritans and their ideas are seen as retrogressive. What these women were arguing was that the sexual subordination of women—men's appropriation of women's bodies for their use—lay at the foundation of the oppression of women.

Interestingly, these two women, Swiney and Elmy, made clear their opposition to the practice of sexual intercourse. This practice has become so sacred that it is almost impossible to imagine any serious challenge being made to it. What we have seen in the last hundred years is the total and compulsory enforcement of that sexual practice upon women so that women are allowed absolutely no outlet or escape from it.

But at the end of the nineteenth century there were feminists who were prepared to challenge intercourse. They were prepared to say, for instance, that it was dangerous for women's health; that it led to unwanted pregnancies or forced women to use forms of technology, contraception, that reduced them simply to objects for men's use; that it humiliated women and made them into things. Feminists pointed out that sexual diseases transmitted through sexual intercourse were dangerous to women's lives. They felt sexual intercourse to be a humiliating practice because it showed men's dominance more obviously than anything else. They believed that this practice should take place only for the purposes of reproduction, maybe every three or four years. I know these are ideas which if you voiced them today would make people think that you had taken leave of your senses. But these were ideas that were absolutely mainstream; they were being put forward by respectably married women, one married to a general.

These women were campaigning fundamentally for a woman's right to control her own body and to control access to her own body. The integrity of a woman's own body was the basic plank of their campaign.

-Sheila Jeffreys, “Sexology and Antifeminism” in The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism

[stellisketches]

i think the fact that Garroth never bothered to change his name lowkey indicates that it’s at least a somewhat common name throughout Ru’aun. I mean sure it could’ve just been a himbo-brained thing to do but the idea of it being a popular name really could’ve been used for peak comedy. 

Like imagine a juror getting sent to a random village thinking they’ve found the right Garroth and it’s just some dude.

Even funnier to imagine none of the jurors have met Garroth personally or really knows what he looks like so they have to drag whatever guy they found all the way back to O’Khasis show him to Zane and be like “is this the right one”

[gumbootillustrations]

decided to fuck around n update garroth's ref sheet

other bits below the cut :3

the armour that garroth is introduced in is stolen from o'khasis. specifically, it's standard issue o'khasian guard's armour, and he passes it off as being a hand-me-down from his father (which isn't entirely untrue, and why he can say it with a relatively straight face). its old and its fucked but hey, beggars can't be choosers so garroth makes do. when they go to pikoro, he chucks a big fuckoff fluffy cloak over the top of it that i couldn't be assed drawing so use ur imagination if u wanna. tbh, this is probably the design i changed the most bc i lowkey hated my first iteration of his intro armour n it looked a bit too much like brian's so uh. yeah.

nothing much changed w his standard armour except that i shuffled around the layers a bit n whacked on a belt for his sword. plus a couple of variants (his 'juror' form n what he wears when the group goes to gal'ruk chasing down a certain carin valkrum, an ex-juror and the best lead they have on finding enki's relic). not much else to say here.

nothing much else changes w his out of armour outfit either except for some detailing on the waistcoat and i tidied up the collar of his shirt. yeah.

OKAY JUICY LORE DROP. so when garroth was around three or four, a plague swept through o'khasis and almost wiped out the city (nobody knows what brought it on, but the narrative pushed by the higher ups was that it was biological warfare perpetrated by either tu'la or scaleswind), and the ro'meave house wasn't left untouched by the plague - in fact, it almost killed garte, and both garroth and zane got really sick from it. during a particularly bad episode of fever, garroth went for a wander through the relatively abandoned halls of the lord's manor and wound up in a room full of antiques and heirlooms and a weird looking, glowing rock - which he promptly picked up and sort of absorbed. turns out that the rock was esmund's relic, and it just sorta. hangs out unnoticed by anyone (garroth puts the whole incident down to a fever dream) until zane sucks everyone into irene's cathedral (aka the irene dimension) and the relic possesses him, leading to zane's death at his hand.

but yeah, nothing much changed w this design either except for me updating it to reflect the design as expressed in my post re: the divine warriors of the second war of the magi.

as always, let me know if u have any questions/comments! <3

[refs-r-ences]

(Major spoilers for all Ace Attorney Games as well as Ghost Trick) I already posted something similar to this, but I’ve now played the Investigations collection and the Layton crossover, so I figured I might as well update it. Imagine a trial where “Calisto Yew" is the defence, with Kristoph Gavin as Co-council, facing off against Manfred von Karma as prosecutor, with the Phantom disguised as Daryan Crescend as the detective, Courtney Sithe as the coroner and Mael Stronghart as the judge. The defendant is Matt Engarde, accused of the attempted murder of William Shamspeare, who survived due to plot armor, with Cammy Meele, Luke Atmey, Ashley Graydon and Fifi Laguarde as witnesses. If it’s done TGAA style, then the Jurors would be Enoch Drebber, Nikolina Pavlova, Darklaw, Shelly de Killer via the radio, Roger Retinz, and Yomiel from Ghost Trick because why not. Now the culprit would turn out to actually be von Karma because of course it is, and since he got annoyed by Shamspeare, being well, Shamspeare.

[monkey-network]

The Beauty of 12 Angry Men

I remembered in 6th grade lit reading Franz Kafka's The Trial, a story about everything judicial being set in stone for someone completely out of the loop. The bureaucracy behind Josef K.'s fate is never given a cause, no method helps him, and after a year he's at the mercy of a situation nobody said would be fair to him. It was a striking story to me, and lead me into recognizing Sidney Lumet and Reginald Rose's 12 Angry Men as a similar yet antithetical story. The film keeps everything in the dark except for the titular jurors trying to piece the case together for a boy expected to get the death penalty. The matter though, is that the defendant's fate was clear from the start and the journey is about getting to that thread's end. What follows is one of the most well written, performed, and staged movies I watched in my entire life and I just wanted to finally talk about it. So, let's talk.

Setting the Stage

It takes three minutes almost exactly for the title to appear. You get the mission statement from the judge, a good scan of the main characters, and a single moment of the defendant's face, basically the only time you ever get to see said defendant for the whole movie. After that, we the audience are locked in the deliberation room where the film starts to shine after the credits role.

For the longest time watching movies, I was so used to big colorful settings, the characters going places even if it's just another place to talk, where it's a gamble if you can memorize those places. Oppenheimer last year became the widely regarded movie that consisted of next to nothing but conferencing in rooms. Even in older movies, things were never shot in the same spot for long. This film was the first instance where they stripped everything and worked with bare bones staging. All it is are the men in that one room. No flashbacks, no cuts to anything beyond the group speaking. The only other places you get are the adjacent men's restroom and the courthouse steps at the film's very end, scenes of which add to less than 4 minutes. And you would think it gets boring, but 'focus' is the keyword behind everything. The fact there's next to no music adds to it having an actually engaging script that doesn't manipulate or go to unnecessary places to get the point across.

12 Angry Men is what I'd call a "dynamic stage play" where you could imagine yourself seeing this in a live theater, but it wouldn't have worked as well without the secret main character that is the camera. This film knows how to prevent things from getting too static; the cinematography is... well-paced in laments terms. Again, in that one room, you're engaged in where it's focused, how it moves with the characters, when it cuts especially when it closes in on the jurors at their most serious. From a technical perspective, it's immersive at its simplest. No juror feels left out even when out of frame and nothing distracts you from the brilliant acting everyone brings to the literal table. After seeing this, I felt like this was the kind of movie I'd want to make. One that can work with so little but feel as tightly coordinated as any other similar to this. Then again, I wouldn't have concerned about this movie on technicalities alone. Let's get to the story.

The Stakes of Uncertainty

The trial is a first degree murder charge where if unanimously found guilty, the defendant would be sentenced to the electric chair. Everything surrounding this film hinges on the one person who votes not guilty, juror 8. Number Eight makes it clear that his vote is not about bias, there's never a hint at him or anyone having a relation to the defendant outside the case. His vote is the biggest gamble dependent of everyone retracing their steps of the details surrounding the trial, and what I love most about this is the fairness.

Eight doesn't know if the boy's not guilty, he never forces anybody to side with him, but recognizes that the defendant's life is a serious matter and shouldn't be as open shut as everyone else makes it in the beginning. The film shows within reason that the trial wasn't as clean cut as it seemed. And I know the movie isn't judicially accurate and everything's circumstantial, assumptive, and so on. If there's any real issue the film has for me is that they never indict Eight for sneaking in the switchblade even though that scene is still a goddamn show stealer.

Henry Fonda excellently portrayed a man who knew how to play the cards right

Then again, the increased flimsiness of the trial made with the uncertainty of the outcome is the point. We never get the sentencing after the men leave that room, it's all about Eight showing the others that the boy's life deserved more deliberation than the others were willing to give him. Hell, it discusses that trials like this can and have existed where measures of the outcome are made beyond the defendant's control. Breaking through the easy decision every other juror had was more valuable, and Juror 8 did that responsibly while never trying to be above anyone. That in turn is what makes this ensemble cast nearly flawless.

The Angry Men

Before ever seeing it, I've seen a couple jokes of this movie's premise of how it was nothing but said 12 men who sure were angry. Having now seen it myself, it's amazing how much we get to know about the jurors yet only two are ever given names. You'd think the film would give them simple archetypes and gimmicks, but even if you disregarded the acting chops everyone brings, the writing was able to balance who they each are relative to the case and each other. You can memorize which juror is which yet that never makes them just a number on the table.

To me, the best part about this film is how the group is able to collectively debate about the trial with individual motives and understandings. Jurors Eight and Three are the focal characters, they're the most opposing, but I don't consider them the main characters. A Youtube video I watched explores this better than I ever could, but everyone is in this together, regardless of how present they are in the movie and you notice this in their behavior. The character writing made with the simple staging does so much while explaining so little.

Juror Four, who reveals himself to be a stock broker, is the most clinical about the details. He does his best in retracing the trial as factual as possible, discussing the evidence in a way not even Eight is able to fight. What makes him crack though is when it came to jurors Eight, Five, and Nine bringing up certain conditions of the defendant and witnesses that he didn't care to notice. Juror Nine is the opposite, concerning about the witnesses' conditions and probable influences which helped reveal factual doubts in their testimonies.

Juror Seven from the getgo is made the most detached of the group. By the way he's dressed, constantly checking the time, while capable of paying attention Seven is the most dismissive of the case for the simple reason of just wanting to leave for baseball. This is where he comes into conflict with jurors Two and Eleven especially. Eleven is expressively respectful toward the judicial due process, mentioning himself being an immigrant, which makes him eventually fed up with Seven's disinterest. He's not somebody who changed his vote easily nor adds a lot to the debate himself, but recognizes Eight's efforts of a fair discussion and naturally confronts Seven about his constant snide attitude towards the case.

One of the film's strongest moments, where the build up was genuine even if you felt it was unexpected

Everyone makes sense with is established about them in the beginning and I could go on about the little things. Juror Nine, being the first to switch his vote, is the only one who meets with Eight outside in the film's end. You can tell by Juror Twelve fiddling with his glasses and concerned of having the info laid out sequentially is the most flippant about his vote. Juror Five being more likely to change his vote out of sympathy, having grown up and is more knowledgeable of the slums given that's the defendant's home. Nothing about this movie or ensemble is complicated, but the through-line behind everyone's choices in this gets to be more complex than realized. Everything about this is encapsulated in my favorite scene of the whole movie.

Pulling It All Back

Juror Ten is the most openly bigoted of the ensemble. From the start he is racially motivated in his vote, but that's not expressed until a little later. Of that point, he's certain of himself like juror Three about the vote being clear while scoffing at Eight's opposition. When the cracks of the case start to show, Ten's arrogance starts to show and his words become charged. He becomes the most hostile toward everyone and especially gets a rise out of Juror Five when talking about "these people". Everything comes to ahead when the vote is 9 to 3 for not guilty. Ten finally has his outburst, his racial rant unspecified but striking all the checkmarks of a man that stuck in his ways. Then it happens.

Everyone put up with his remarks up to that point, but here they finally step away and we get the most striking moment of a man finally alone with his thoughts. After Juror Four tells him off, Ten goes to the corner desk and basically shuts down for the remainder of the movie. This was the film's strongest payoff in every sense. It wouldn't have worked without the buildup just as much as the civility that came with everyone involved. Nobody had to throw a punch or challenge his beliefs, you never know if this changed Ten as a person, all that matters was that Ten knew he exasperated any goodwill from the jury and finally checked out the conversation. 12 Angry Men knew how to make the characters see their errors naturally, never feeling like they played up the drama for everyone to get their moment.

Conclusion

To me, I'm reminded of when in 6th grade, my literature teacher would have these Socratic seminars discussing the books we'd read. You could say it was the most involved I was in that class. This film knew how to capture that feeling, how towrite a roundtable where the stakes are high from the start but doesn't make it sanctimonious. Again, Juror Eight doesn't force or manipulate the others to see things his way. They try to convince him initially, adding up to a tangled but mutual engagement and it always feels like you're with them in the moment. You feel Eight's uncertainty is as sincere as his conviction, the same going for everyone else involved. The fact they're all sitting in sequential, helping you naturally follow who is who, is the cherry on top.

Before watching this, I didn't presume much beyond a simple courtroom drama which I enjoy ever since Ace Attorney. What followed after was just being more than impressed by how concise and thoughtful this was made. No second felt wasted, no detail felt trivial, ALL THIS and not even mentioning it being like a "bottle episode". Believe me, this post is long enough fanboying about a film from the 50s. It earned being the most ergonomic and engaging movies I've ever seen. If this essay wasn't enough, I recommend it at least once in your life as it's free to watch. What else is there to say?

It's the Best

[princesssarisa]

Autism (and possible ADHD) headcanon: Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass)

This analysis is based on the books, but most of it applies to Disney's Alice too.

Now of course she wasn't written with either autism or ADHD in mind: no concept of either existed when the books were written. Some people might argue that all the "evidence" below is just her being a seven-year-old child. But all these qualities make her relatable to neurodivergent people, and whose to say that she wouldn't be diagnosed as neurodivergent if she were a real person and lived today?

Autism evidence

*Alice is a very inward little girl. Not only do both books literally take place mostly in her mind, but even within her dreams she's constantly thinking, daydreaming, analyzing, and imagining things. She sometimes gets so lost in her thoughts and fantasies that she forgets all about what's currently happening, or about the other characters, and they sometimes notice this (e.g. "You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk.").

*She constantly talks to herself and pretends to be two people.

*In what little we see of her life in the real world, she's never shown playing with children her own age. She's content to play by herself, talking to her kittens, creating elaborate fantasies, or even playing a game of croquet against herself.

*She's precocious and smart, with a good (though imperfect) memory for facts she's learned in school, and she likes to show off her knowledge, both to others and to herself. She knows many "grand words" that other children her age don't know (e.g. "latitude," "longitude," "jurors"), and she enjoys saying them out loud, even when she doesn't know what they mean. In Wonderland, when she tries to recite the lessons and poems she's memorized and finds herself comically mangling them, her core sense of self is shaken.

*Despite being sane and sensible compared to the fantasy characters she meets, Alice is more than a little eccentric herself. She constantly daydreams and talks to herself, as mentioned. She comes up with outlandish fantasies, like mailing Christmas presents to her own feet, or that different foods change people's temperaments, or that people in New Zealand and Australia walk upside-down. Her confusing experiences in Wonderland make her wonder if she's still Alice or if she's become a different person. The fact that her adventures in Wonderland and Looking-Glass Land are dreams make her seem all the more eccentric in hindsight: those two fantasy worlds and all the strange things in them are creations of Alice's own mind.

*Even though she tries to always be proper and polite, she sometimes makes offensive remarks without meaning to. For example, when she praises her cat Dinah's skill at catching mice and birds in front of a mouse and group of birds, or when she calls three inches "a wretched height" while talking to a three-inch caterpillar. She also throws manners aside and talks back to adults whenever she thinks they're being especially rude or unreasonable.

*She often seems to imitate the adults in her life. When she remembers to check the "Drink Me" bottle and make sure it's not marked "poison," or when she scolds herself for crying or for lolling on the grass, she's clearly parroting what she's heard from adults. Likewise, when she scolds the pig-baby for grunting, or her kitten for all its mischief and "bad manners," she's obviously affecting a tone that adults have taken with her. All the scolding and correcting she does, especially to herself, might also imply that she's a child who's been scolded and corrected especially often.

*She's often described as speaking "shyly" or "timidly" – though as mentioned, she can be bold to the point of impertinence when she's pushed far enough.

*She dislikes books without pictures, and she can make no sense of the poem Jabberwocky – even though its plot is easy for most real-world readers to follow – because there are too many made-up words in it. Now, these don't necessarily imply that she has trouble with reading comprehension, but they might.

*One throw-away line in Through the Looking-Glass implies that she's a picky eater. When she brings up the subject of having to go without meals as punishment, she says she would rather go without them than eat them anyway.

*She's particularly annoyed by certain small noises and sensations – like Bill the Lizard's pencil squeaking at the trial in the first book, or the Gnat's tiny sigh that tickles her ear in the second.

*Both stories consist of her wandering through nonsense worlds, being baffled by their strange rules and customs, and being ordered around, corrected, and judged negatively by the strange creatures she meets, just because her logic is different from theirs. For those of us on the autism spectrum, this is a relatable experience.

ADHD evidence

*She tends to be impulsive, particularly in the first book. For example, she goes down the rabbit hole without thinking of how she'll ever get out again, and later drinks the potion in the White Rabbit's house without knowing if it will make her grow or shrink just because she's anxious for some change in her size. This isn't a matter of not knowing better – she sometimes tells herself what she should do, only to act on her impulses anyway. Or, in other words, she gives herself very good advice, but she very seldom follows it.

*She can be verbally impulsive too: for example, her careless remarks about Dinah catching mice and birds.

*She's prone to daydreaming, as mentioned above.

*She sometimes has trouble controlling her emotions, most memorably when she cries a big pool of tears after growing to the size of a giant. She tells herself she should be ashamed for crying so much, but she can't stop.

*She can be easily distracted, especially by her own imagination, and in the first chapter of Through the Looking-Glass, she flits from subject to subject while talking to her kitten.

*She's easily bored and always in search (literally or figuratively) of some new adventure or amusement. One of the things she most dislikes is "having nothing to do."

[tsuchinokoroyale]

Are you in RI often?

I think I went to Providence once when I was like 9 years old on what ended up being a hilariously homophobic family trip. So the Royale family decided to go to famously gay city Providence in June, and there were definitely some pride activities going on. My parents were very frantically trying to cover our eyes from the leather clad bears, but there were three of us and two of them so I saw them and I was like “what is the problem here.”

This imprinting of morality is pretty funny in retrospect. If my parents didn’t try so hard to cover my eyes, I would never have glanced over to see what the fuss was about. And then it wasn’t like “egads those hunks are wearing fetish gear!” It’s like “oh there’s some people over there? Crossing the street without looking first, I guess? Idk.” I couldn’t have told you what was “wrong” about the picture. It’s not even like it was hardcore dicks out fetish gear, there were men in less clothing down by the beach. The only thing it did was make me nervous that my parents might be homophobic when I put all the pieces together later in life. Like these hunky leather bears weren’t even a major factor in me realizing I was gay.

But that honor would go to Season 3 Episode 19/21 of Fox/ScyFy television series Sliders, hilariously called “The Breeder” in which Kari Wührer (( who I only knew from the lyrics of the iconic Rural Juror song from 30 rock )) becomes host to a parasite that loves breeding hot men. This process is not as sexy as it sounds.

Imagine this: you’re a pre-pubescent preteen home sick with a fever and you put on the TV just to have something on while you sippy on some soupy. You’re like oh dangggg, hot babe in a towel, yeah boys my age are into that. And then That Happens™ and your feverish brain is like Women Are Scary Actually. Less of a coming out and more of a staying in, really.

I turned out gay for more normal reasons later in life but I do attribute this show as being the turning point in my life and I’m so grateful for that ❤️

But no I’m not in RI often

[kurithedweeb]

Katelyn the Fire Fist used to be Katelyn Anchorage III, the only daughter of a working class family with five sons, named for her mother Katelyn II (hereon referred to as Mama Katelyn).

Her father died before the birth of her youngest brother, and ever since then she had wanted to be a guard to help protect and provide for her family. Her mother and older brothers always encouraged her and worked hard to help pay for the gear she'd need for the academy. They were all very close-knit until Katelyn was selected for the Jury.

Her older brothers Keiran and Killian are identical twins about eight years older than her, so identical that the only way to the only way to tell them apart for the longest time was a scar from when Keiran broke his collarbone at seven. Kacey, a shy boy who liked to sit with their mother while she worked, is two years younger than Katelyn. Pretty boy Kenneth is five years younger, and Kyler the baby of the family is about eight years younger. There's a whole sixteen years between the oldest and the youngest of the brothers, so Kyler ended up mostly being raised by the twins while Mama Katelyn recovered and went back to work. Katelyn once called the twins dad and they shut it down real quick. The majority of their stories about dad comes from them since Mama Katelyn doesn't talk about him all that much.

Mama Katelyn collects stories. Her work is fairly repetitive, so she and her fellows often tell stories and share gossip to fend off the boredom. She's so opposed to Katelyn joining the Jury because she's heard such terrible things about them, and sure some of them are bound to be rumors, but how can she not be wary after hearing about Janus terrorizing the Tu'lan countryside or Ivan cursing a village with winter year-round? But she doesn't want to discourage Katelyn into quitting because, well, isn't joining the Jury of Nine every guard's dream? Instead, she quietly confides her worries in Keiran.

Keiran, now terrified his baby sister is going to be made into a monster at the behest of the church and Lord, starts a massive argument to try to convince Katelyn she's making a mistake by not passing on the invitation. Katelyn blows up instead of listening to what he's trying to say and it gets really out of hand. She ends up completely cutting ties with her family and completely devoting herself to her duties as a Juror.

They parted on such bad terms that after she's left the Jury she fears she ruined her chances of speaking to them again for no good reason since she didn't even stay with the whole reason she left in the first place. She's incredibly hesitant to reconnect in case they hate her, or worse fear her, and never reaches out. She talks about her family so rarely that the only reason anyone even knows she has one is because one time she got a little too tipsy around the campfire and started going on about how proud she is of them.

Imagine her surprise when she runs into one of her brothers completely on accident someday post-Irene Dimension and learns that Kenneth is now all scarred up and missing a leg, little Kyler is running the O'khasian citizens' resistance under Tu'la rule, shy Kacey has gone off and become a mercenary, Mama Katelyn is running a shelter named after her daughter, Killian's running a pirate crew, and Keiran's been searching all of Ru'aun for her for years. She's been just missing three of them for years! Killian's even been weighing anchor in Phoenix Drop and Meteli for ages!

Does she ever really reconnect with her family? Does she recognize her brothers? Do the younger ones recognize her? Does she ever see her mother face to face again?

[allthesmutl0vers]

The Fate Of Us- Chapter Five

MDNI, 18+

Pairing: Sam/Reader, Dean/Reader, Castiel/Reader, Dean/Castiel and Coming Soon: Dean/Sam, Castiel/Sam

Chapter Five

Dean

Maybe y/n isn’t so bad. I’m not saying that because she made me breakfast, either. She actually knows her stuff, even after I drilled her on the different ways to kill monsters. She answered them all correctly, even when I tried to trick her.

I can’t lie and say she isn’t attractive either. The way her long brown hair flows down her back and goddamn that smile. It’s a smile that can make a man do bad things. And I’ve done some of the worst. The only complaint I have is that she’s wearing Sam’s jacket. And even that isn’t really a complaint because of how good she looks in it. But a part of me wishes it was mine she was wearing instead.

She’s fucking funny too. When she made breakfast, she did this whole bit where she put whipped cream on her hand, hit her wrist with the other, and tried to catch it in her mouth. Something about it being a TikTok trend? I don’t know what that means, but what I do know is that it shouldn’t have made my dick as hard as it did.

I briefly look at her as she sits between me and Sam on the couch, watching a horror movie she picked out. How she got Sam to watch one? I’ll never know. Her hands are sitting on her lap as her eyes are glued to the screen where a father is trying to rescue his son from ‘the other side’ as the old woman in the movie called it.

“Do you really believe in this stuff?” I ask her quietly.

She turns to me, looking up at me with those big brown eyes. “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve heard of astral projection before, but it’s never worked for me,” she shrugs her shoulders.

“Where did you try to go?” Sam asks from her other side, pressing pause on the movie.

She looks at him before facing forward again, trying to hide the blush that’s appearing on her cheeks. “It’s stupid,” she says softly.

“Oh, come on, tell us,” I tease her lightly, nudging her with my elbow.

She smiles and rolls her eyes, looking up to the ceiling. “Here, actually,” she says to the ceiling. “I always imagined what it would be like here, and a part of me still thinks I’m dreaming sometimes.” She says looking back down to her hands in her lap.

I can’t help but chuckle softly. “You mean you tried to come here in a dream to a world full of monsters when you were perfectly safe in yours?” I ask her, trying to wrap my head around the concept. I’ve dreamed of living in a world with no monsters, but she actually wants to risk facing them.

“We have monsters too, maybe not the kind you guys have here. But we have them, the only difference is in this world, you can make your own justice. In mine, you have to rely on crooked judges, disbelieving jurors, and overworked, entry-level prosecutors,” she explains with a certain degree of pain and a tinge of anger in her voice. She clenches her hands in her lap for a moment before she takes a deep breath and releases them. “Or family members who don’t believe you.” She whispers.

I look over her at Sam, whose brows are furrowed in confusion like mine.

What do I even say to that? And what is she talking about? What happened to her?

Sam puts a hand on the top of her back, instantly making me want to take it off. It’s a weird feeling because I never get jealous, but is that what this knot of anger in my stomach is? Or is it about whatever this girl has gone through that makes her believe she’s safer in a world where she could be ripped to shreds, over a world where the worst of the worst are only humans?

“I’m sorry for whatever you went through, y/n. And you’re right. The justice system does suck—”

“Says the one who wanted to be a lawyer,” I scoff.

Sam throws me an annoyed glare. “Yeah, to advocate for victims, not victimize them all over again on the stand,” Sam fires back at me.

My eyes go back to y/n, who’s quickly wiping away tears. “Listen, I don’t want to be the weepy girl with a sad story. What happened to me happened, and there’s nothing I can do to change it,” she says, looking between me and Sam, she takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to dump my trauma on you guys. I mean, we barely know each other. We just met yesterday. I just want to try to forget about it, okay?” She says, looking between us again.

Sam and I both nod our heads in understanding. Her business is her business. Don’t get me wrong, I’m curious. But a person’s past is something that belongs to them, and they shouldn’t feel obligated to share it if they don’t want too. She silently accepts our nods with one of her own, and we finish watching ‘Insidious’ and end up watching the second one while Bobby heads out for pizza.

Sam

“Hey man, grab me another while you’re up, will ya?” Dean asks with a smirk from the table, waving his empty bottle of beer.

I roll my eyes and look over at y/n. “You need another one, too?” I ask her, not bothered at all.

She smiles and shakes her head. “I’m good, Sam, thanks though.”

I nod once and smile back before looking at Bobby. “Bobby? You need another while I’m up?”

Bobby shakes his head, finishing off his bottle. “I’m good. I’m fixing to head to bed here soon,” he turns to y/n as I hand Dean his beer and sit back down across from y/n. “You gonna be alright with these two idjits?” He asks her, only half joking.

“Hey! We’re not that bad,” Dean quips, swallowing his bite of pizza.

I laugh and shake my head. Bobby raises his scruffy eyebrows at Dean while y/n covers her mouth, trying not to laugh. “Oh really? Who damn near set my whole property on fire trying to get rid of a vamp body?” Bobby shoots back.

I lean back in my chair, sipping my beer, thoroughly enjoying their back and forth.

“Got rid of the body, though, didn’t I?” Dean quips back.

I lock eyes with y/n, who’s trying so hard to hide the fact she’s laughing behind her hand.

Bobby stands up from the table. “Yeah, yeah. Just try not to burn anything down tonight, will ya?” He says as he places his plate in the sink.

“Scouts honor,” Dean raises his hands with a smile that he directs to y/n, even throwing in a wink.

Damn. Really laying it on thick, huh, Dean?

I can’t help but feel irritated that he’s flirting with her. But really, how can I when I was doing the same thing just this morning? Man, when she called me her hero… I felt my heart beat faster for the first time since Eileen died.

I swore I’d never fall for anyone again, given the fact they always die. But she told us that she couldn’t die earlier. At least she can’t die by anything in this world. But crazy shit happens to us damn near every day.

I’m not proud to admit that I’ve adopted Dean’s ‘hit it and quit it’ attitude when we have cases. But not nearly as much as he does, just enough to blow off steam once in a while.

I don’t want to do that with y/n. I feel like I have a real potential to be good friends with her.

And maybe more.

No. No, I can’t think like that. She’s technically Bobby’s daughter. Another bombshell dropped on us earlier. But how can I just be friends with her when, deep down, I know I might want something more?

“Sam?” Her sweet voice brings me back from my spiraling thoughts.

I look up and smile at her. “Yeah? Sorry,” I try to brush it off, running my hands through my hair.

She laughs and shakes her head. “I said goodnight,” she says with a tired smile. My jacket practically swallows her, and one side hangs off her shoulder. She looks damn good in it, too. I can’t help but wonder what she looks like wearing nothing at all.

“Oh, you’re heading to bed already?” I ask her, unable to help but feel disappointed.

She shrugs her shoulders. “Well, I’m going to write a bit more before I actually go to bed. But yeah, I am heading to my room for the night.”

I nod my head twice. “Working on your same story from this morning?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation going for another minute or two.

A cute blush tints her cheeks. She blushes so easily, and I love it. “Um, yeah, maybe. I have a few other stories I’m working on, too, so I’ll just see where my brain takes me.”

I smile and nod my head. “Well, if you ever want to bounce ideas off someone, I’m here,” I say back to her.

Her body stiffens slightly. “Yeah, maybe. The other ones are usually just for me, kind of a creative outlet when I have writer’s block from my novels,” she looks down at her feet.

I feel like she’s hiding something. Or holding something back, and I want to know what it is. I want to know everything about her. But I’ll let it go for now.

“I understand completely,” I smile at her. “Coffee in the morning?” I ask hopefully.

Y/n smiles and nods her head. “I’m Looking forward to it. Goodnight, Sammy,” she catches herself. “I’m sorry. I forgot. Only Dean can call you that,” she apologizes.

I wave my hand. “It’s okay, you can call me Sammy,” I smile at her, and she relaxes. “Maybe we can come up with a nickname for you in the morning,” I smirk.

She sucks her lips into her mouth, trying to stifle a smile as she nods. “Goodnight, Sammy.”

“Goodnight, y/n,” I say as she gives me one last smile before exiting the kitchen and walking up the stairs.

When I get into the living room, Dean is already passed out on the couch. I thank God that he wasn’t awake for that conversation I had with her. I don’t need him waking up and interfering with my time with her in the morning. Those belong to us now.

Woah, a bit possessive there, huh?

I brush the thought off as I kick my boots off and lay down, pulling the blanket over my body. As I drift off to sleep, I think about nicknames for the girl upstairs that don’t come off too strong but also let her know I’m interested. Because fuck it, I am. It’s a fine line to walk, but as I think of nicknames, I also find myself wishing I was lying down next to her as she writes, holding her close to me as we both fall asleep.

It’s been too long since I’ve had that, and hopefully, it won’t be much longer before I have it again.

Chapter Six

[beardedmrbean]

Nobody would have a "shred" of sympathy for a teacher accused of having sex with two teenage pupils if she was a man, a jury has been told.

Rebecca Joynes denies six charges of sexual activity with two teenagers including two while she was in a position of trust.

Joe Allman, prosecuting, said if Ms Joynes, 30, had been "Robert" Joynes and the complainants had been girls, it would not have been suggested to them they were "up for it" or the ones wanting sex, "because that would have been quite obscene".

Ms Joynes said she had made "mistakes" but denied underage sex.

'Attempt for sympathy'

The court was previously told the teacher was already suspended from her high school job and bailed for alleged sexual activity with boy A, 15, when she allegedly began a sexual relationship with the second youngster, boy B, who fathered her child.

In his closing statements at Manchester Crown Court, Mr Allman said Ms Joynes was making a "naked attempt" for sympathy by having a pink bonnet - from the baby fathered by one of the underage boys she is accused of having sex with - tucked visibly into her trousers during the trial.

He asked the jury: "Is what is going on here, is: she hopes you will treat her very differently because she is a woman and not a man, and you will see this case differently because she's a woman and not a man?"

He suggested Ms Joynes would like jurors to forget she is a responsible, mature adult teacher and the boys were teenage children and school pupils.

"It has the effect of warping the picture, so she almost becomes the victim and the boys the perpetrators."

The prosecutor asked the jury to imagine a scenario where a male teacher exchanges Snapchat messages, buys one girl a £350 belt and takes her back to his flat, while a second teenager falls pregnant to "Robert" Joynes.

'No sympathy'

"You would not have one shred of sympathy for Robert. This thought experiment drags Miss Joynes' defence into the light."

Previously, the court heard how both boys sent her flirty Snapchat messages before Ms Joynes took boy A shopping and bought him a £350 Gucci belt, then took him back to her flat on Salford Quays where they allegedly had sex.

Ms Joynes told the jury she ruined her "dream job" with "mistakes" by meeting up with the two teenagers and having them back at her flat, but denied underage sex.

Michael O’Brien, in his closing speech for the defence, said boy A had lied about what had taken place between him and Ms Joynes while boy B had “put the boot in” while being interviewed by detectives.

He said meeting students outside school was wrong, but not a criminal offence.

Mr O'Brien also said boy B had given “unclear and inconsistent answers” to questions.

He added that Ms Joynes and Boy B, were in a “perfectly legal relationship” which the teenager had chosen to “twist the dates” and “put the boot in”, to say sex began earlier when he was at school and aged 15.

Ms Joynes denies the allegations.

The trial continues.

[cinemaocd]

My april films list

The Scar/Blizna (1976): When I was in college my roommate was in a Polish class and she had access to a library of films and we watched a lot of Krzysztof Kieślowski and they are all good, I think. This one is about a mid level manager who inherits a white elephant of a project: clear a forest to build an industrial plant. The local people and the forest itself turn against him. It's magical realism with that Slavic touch of fatalism that always feels relevant.

Sweetie (1989): I saw this in the 90s at a film festival and so it was a bit of a shock when The Piano came out and it felt like you could not have two more different films at least on the surface, but both are directed by Jane Campion. Sweetie is a frank and often dark comedy about an ungovernable woman--a cautionary tale about the infantilisation of women, seen through the eyes of her long suffering sibling.  Akira (1987): Iconic anime with a beautiful smooth style. Copied so frequently it can look a bit basic to those who've grown up with its imitators, but the heart of it is a great score and atmospheric noir setting that make the set pieces like the night motorcycle ride through Tokyo the perfect accompaniment to millennial angst. Near Dark (1987): Katherine Bigelow's shot at the sexy vampire genre features most of the cast of Aliens as a troop of vampires who follow around a Confederate soldier. Bill Paxton does an entertainingly nasty turn as one of the baddies. Feels like an Aliens/Lost Boys AU and that is a compliment, really.

Cleo from 5-7 (1962): Not to be like this already in what amounts to a two sentence blurb, but the summary for this film describes Cleo as a hypochondriac? Excuse me but she is waiting around to find out if she has cancer. It seems to me that this is a movie about the way women are dismissed and not seen, even when they are famous and actually the center of attention wherever they go. On the surface she looks like a spoiled diva, but behind the scenes we see she is frightened and lonely. Anyway fuck the patriarchy and Free Cleo! Twelve Angry Men (1957): We rewatched this because my son is on some weird reddit sub thread discord where everyone rpgs as jurors from this movie...I'm not joking. Imagining a super niche fandom for Jack Warner. It exists. THe internet is a wild place. Anyway, this holds up. Don't mix up Syndey Lumet and Sydney Pollack like I did, lol. Embarrassing!

Ashes and Diamonds (1958): Polish film master, Andrez Wadja's be bop riff on neo realism, is a chronicle of the final day of German occupation, and a Hail Mary attempt by a young resistance fighter to wrest the country back from the Soviet Army which is already there. It's a hopeless mission, born of drunken desperation in smokey back rooms, one that comes apart in daylight. It's feels like Rebel without a Cause, but like...he has a cause? There a sense of tragic waste that mirrors Nicholas Ray's vision of restless American youth. Scoop (2024): A rather weak entry in the behind the scenes journalism drama genre that I seem to be unable to resist in any form. This has Billy Piper as a booking agent who manages the coup of getting Prince Andrew to sit down for an interview with the press about the pedophilia allegations. Your average episode of The Thick of It, probably has more meat than this made for TV film.

The Two Popes (2019): For those playing along at home this was my fourth time watching this. What can I say, two of my fave old lovies flirting away in Pope costumes. It's a comfort film. You are not immune to propaganda. Bulworth (1998): Featuring just about every working black actor of the era, this movie was kind of ahead of its time. About a liberal politician who is so depressed about the state of his party being owned by powerful business interests that he decides to commit suicide by hiring a hitman to kill him so that his family will at least get the insurance. Warren Beatty at his most ridiculous, this is underrated gem.

Great Expectations (1974) After revisiting this version, I went back to David Lean, which is no surprise. This is a made for TV movie that has a lot of familiar faces from 50s British film including Robert Morley and my boi Anthony Quayle. Michael York is Pip. Heat (1995): I might become slightly obsessed with Michael Mann after watching all this moody atmosphere punctuated with bursts of violence, with long passages set to a synth score that made Chris Fleming want to crash his car. Some beautiful lighting and camera work in the final set piece which takes place on an airport runway. Iconic and yet, bloated and overlong and I just don't know why I like it so much? Maybe it's Al Pacino's reactions which are just so off the wall in some scenes, and the disconcerting normality of the other people in the same scenes, ya know? Like they are in two different movies. I shot Andy Warhol (1996): Watched this for Jared Harris (who is adorable as always and terrific as always and completely sinks into the role as always) and came away remembering why Lily Taylor was a 90s icon/IT girl and boy can she act. Like wow. Andy Warhol is the title character, but it's more about Valerie Solanas the radical feminist lesbian who shot him because she believed he stole her work. (The movie implies that he did, a little bit...). Her SCUM manifesto remains controversial to say the least, but her story is a utterly heartbreaking, told with humanity and nuance. Actually a great choice for Pride month because it talks about gay history and it's not pretty or comfortable but it's necessary to learn. Hopscotch (1980): Delightful comedy starring Walter Matthau and Judy Collins as a spy couple. Combines actually decent spy thriller with actually funny stuff and it's romantic and sweet as well.

[stellisketches]

why? please explain the soldier, port, king in excruciating detail PLEASE

EDIT: ITS FINALLY DONE i'm so sorry this took me like six months I got really busy with school work and I wanted to make sure I wasn't half-assing this anyway thank you for asking please enjoy

For reference I will be quoting the “Poet Soldier King” test on uQuiz as I feel they summarize each role most succinctly.

"You wonder, sometimes, if anger is the only thing you can feel. Remember: love is passion too. You made your own rules and will follow them to death. You try and forget that there is only one rule, and that it is "FIGHT". You are tired of fighting. You try to forget that, too, and keep going. You dream of quiet. Your love is where you heal." -Soldier

It's a subtle element but Vylad’s entire character/existence is about enduring conflict. It's an easy thing to forget due to his calm demeanor, but Vylad has been fighting since the moment he was born (hell, even before). Fighting the ill-contrived gossip of being a bastard son, fighting to prove himself a genuine Ro’Meave, and fighting against Garte and Zane’s abuse over his childhood. It’s a subtler form of conflict, but it’s very interesting to imagine how he was able to put up with all of it (I’ve planned so many prequel fics about the Ro’Meaves you guys). Then there’s the whole shadowknight topic that really is indicative of itself. Vylad's whole arc was based upon leaving behind the violence of his past as a literal soldier within the Shadow Lord's army. Again it’s really easy to forget but this is someone who was revived to burn the world to the ground and slaughter any and every man, woman, and child that got in the way of it. He told Aphmau himself in season 2: “One good deed does not fix a thousand wrongs done. I'm not a good person, let's just leave it at that. Please.” We may not have seen it on screen, but who knows how long Vylad was traveling with Sasha and Gene. I doubt Phoenix Drop was the first village they targeted, and I doubt Gene or Sasha or even Zenix were ever like “oh yeah you can wait outside while we commit atrocities on this Lord and his family and burn the whole village to the ground.” Vylad has a very practical mindset (another trait indicative of a good soldier), and it wouldn’t surprise me if he was purposefully good at his job so it would land him more opportunities to get out of the nether now and again. He enacted violence well enough that he was trusted to be sent outside the nether to go fuck up the overworld. Vylad is a man thoroughly haunted by war and the violence he’s committed against others in a way his brothers just… aren't. Sure, Garroth knows fighting and violence as a means of protection and ensuring the safety of others, but he doesn’t know war. He’s never had someone he cared about die in his arms. He’s never seen a whole village burn to the ground and see innocent people slaughtered left and right. He’s never seen a child screaming at their dead mother to get up. He may use violence, but he was never a violent person. Zane, on the other hand, most definitely was, however, but he hardly ever enacted any of the violence himself. 90% of the time it was jurors or guards he’d given orders to. And while he was more than happy to get his hands dirty every once in a while, he never felt genuine consequence from it. 

Continuing on Vylad’s inner psyche, we see after he still keeps a very practical, soldier-like mindset out of the nether in company with Aph and Co: He gets annoyed at Aphmau when she puts off telling everyone about the Tuu’la invasion. He surveys Laurance from a distance and does not interfere even in danger because he’s aware of the long term effect of distrust it would cause him. Upon the chaos in Narhaka, he immediately goes to burn books that have important locations the enemy could use against them. This is actually one of my favorite scenes because of how subtly status-quo breaking it is. Tell me right now of any scene involving book burnings done by a guy the audience is supposed to root for. Vylad’s view of the world makes him incredibly pragmatic and able to calculate the win-loss ratio of his actions and let that decide whether or not he will go through with it.

Vylad may not have the typical surface-level look of the characters often put into the category, but if you really dive into his past, his mindset, and the way he views the world, he easily fits into the role of soldier; with the final line “Your love is where you heal” setting him on the path of redemption we see throughout the whole series.

"Loneliness. Strength. Joy. You are powerful, but struggle believing it. You think you're not enough. Here's the truth : you are. You sing songs and hope they carry faith, because you have run out of it, and yet you still throw your heart out to the world and hope it makes it through. You convince yourself that pain is art because at least then, you will always have something to create. You are tired of stumbling through life. You dream of a ground you can stand on. One day, you will dance. Your love is where you feel - without fear." -Poet

Now I admit for Zane it does require a more particular perspective to place him as poet, but I’ll start simple and slowly transition to red string and corkboard. Firstly, from the original song lyrics, “He will slay you with his tongue” applies in at least two different ways. The first being obvious: Zane is incredibly charismatic- you don’t just make it to High Priest without a certain degree of people skills included but not limited to negotiating, preaching, and being able to reason your way through any theological question a questioning sinner could ask you. It’s a shame we don’t see it put into use very often throughout the series, but I think his position gives enough testament to his people skills. The second way this line applied is a bit more literal and a bit more dark, which would be the sheer amount of people who were murdered not by his hands directly, but on mere orders. He can quite literally have people slain in just a few words to the right people. Moving to the more esoteric; the line “You are powerful, but struggle believing it. You think you're not enough.” seems like it be a hitch to his characterization, as it first invokes the idea of someone who lacks self-confidence, which is FAR from what we see Zane characterized as in the story. However I see this from the lense of artists becoming blind to the depth of their own skill. Zane is powerful, but it’s not enough for him. He’s become so accustomed to the level of influence he holds he’s become desensitized to it, like how you stop feeling the cold of the water once you stay in it long enough.The power he’s been swimming in his entire life no longer brings that vitalic shudder of control he craves. Thus he seeks power that goes beyond mortal influence to raw, unchanneled divinity, as that’s the only thing that he has ever been told is above him. He hungers the same as any artist— to be something greater than they already are.

“You convince yourself that pain is art because at least then, you will always have something to create.” The idea of creation draws back to Zane’s relationship with control and divinity. I think it's highly debatable as to whether or not Zane has actual “faith” in the divine (i.e, seeing them as gods he wishes to emulate or simply as extremely powerful beings minus the religious element), but in either case it again leads back to desire for more. (sidenote: Zane’s fatal flaw being lust is such a delicious piece of irony and I could make an essay of its own on it). Anyway, back to the point I was originally trying to make: Zane sows pain and destruction as a means of asserting his power/importance both to others and himself. The “pain” spoken of would normally belong to the poet themself— but this is no ordinary poet, and there is no specific indication where said pain emerges from. 

"Duty. Strength. Resignation. You were told to do things and you did them. The world is something that was put into your hands and that you must deal with - so you will. You have a rigid back and steady hands, either metaphorically or physically. Is it nature or nurture ? You don't know. You are tired of being steady. You dream of feeling alive. Not that you aren't, but, sometimes, it's hard to remember that there is a heart between your ribs. Your love is where you breathe." -King

God where do I start. “Duty. Strength. Resignation” It’s like someone just said ‘describe Garroth in three words’. Duty has been his entire life, wanted or not, which leads directly into resignation. “You were told to do things and you did them.The world is something that was put into your hands and that you must deal with - so you will.” He learned his history. He learned the politics. He followed the dogma. He believed in Irene and his father and the glory of O’Khasis and his divine duty to lord over its people. His people. He said it himself in episode 68 he wanted to be exactly like his father, and that he thought to be lord was an honor and a privilege. To him, the weight of the world has rested upon his shoulders for so long that he becomes accustomed to each additional hardship quickly and quietly, never kicking up a fuss about his growing stress and dissatisfaction, like a frog in a pool of water that is steadily increasing in temperature. He locks his festering disdain for glorification of leadership away from his father, his family, and the rest of the world because he cannot show that he is anything but the Atlas of duty he was born to be. 

Until, one day, he has enough. He saw what happens to his dear little brother, likely the only person he felt he could truly bond with, and despite everything he still dealt with it, for the sake of the people around him, but when his father commands him to marry a girl he has never met (likely while he is still processing his grief) in the name of ‘duty’, it is the straw that breaks the camel's back. He sees that everything he has worked towards is meaningless as he will never reach a point where his father will be satisfied with him. That his father will continue to take and take from him until there is nothing left but a soulless puppet that will continue to speak his words even after his reign has ended. Every burden he has carried, every grievance he has hidden, every struggle he’s overcome and the hard work he’s put into building himself a true heir of O’Khasis— it all amounts to nothing.

So he leaves. 

Now, let me ask you: what would you do if you were a runaway prince escaping the crushing weight of expectation? Take a bunch of money from your no-good dad? Buy a boat ticket and live a new life in luxury on the other side of the world? Never work a day again and dive head first into careless relaxation? Surely, you wouldn’t look twice at a dilapidated little village on the coast. Wouldn’t bother to stop by and lift a finger to help it. You're free, you have a whole life of sweet exemption to look forward to. You wouldn’t give it the time of day.

“You have a rigid back and steady hands, either metaphorically or physically. Is it nature or nurture?”

Garroth finds himself in Phoenix Drop— a rickety dead-end little town as far away from home as possible. He stays, and he helps. He keeps the village running, he helps the Lord wherever he can. He takes in the broken, starved boy he finds in the woods. He does whatever he can to improve the lives of the people around him. Why? He owes them nothing, he’s spent a lifetime crushed under the weight of people's expectations and he turns around just to find himself carrying the weight of more lives on his shoulders. He is doing everything he was taught and everything he ran away from. 

But this time it’s different. This time, he sees how he’s helping. There’s no more grating voice telling him none of the effort matters. He has a rigid back and steady hands, metaphorically and physically. For the first time in his life, he can see with his own two eyes that his effort is worth it. There isn’t doubt and lies and corruption floating in and out of his mind. Just the warm, honest smiles of the people he helps. He feels it and it is real. The question “Is it nature or nurture?” is genuine: Is Garroth helping these people out of the kindness of his heart or because it was what he was always told to do, and now that he is without the purpose he was assigned he’s leaning on something familiar? Personally, I think that’s for the audience to decide. I myself would say a mixture of both, leaning more so towards nature. But I digress. 

It’s better then, when he helps and can see that he is doing good, but of course, that peace is not to last him. With the Lord’s death and impending turmoil of Phoenix Drop, Garroth’s role in the village shifts drastically to closer resembling the role he ran away from. People are treating him with near as much kindness anymore, no. The most forgiving are losing faith and the least are blaming him. Blaming him for failing to meet their expectations. Now, as things are deteriorating, he has more than enough reason to leave. He gave it the good ol’ college try, and he failed. With the sentiments of the village becoming scarily familiar to that of his father, he should just say “fuck it” and head on off to that faraway land where no one will know his name.

But still, he doesn’t. We see him in Rebirth and how desperate he is to fix the village, to make it work. Even when everyone else is telling him to give up, he refuses. Even sinking, a captain stays on his ship. (Side note: it’s scenes like this that cause me to start tearing up people’s lawns whenever I see takes that label Garroth as having a “fear of responsibility”). And he is completely ready to either make things work or die trying, regardless of what stands in his way. 

‘You are tired of being steady. You dream of feeling alive. Not that you aren't, but, sometimes, it's hard to remember that there is a heart between your ribs.’

Aphmau wasn’t the first person he saved. Zenix had likely been around for at least a year beforehand. However Zenix was a hothead teenager in need of guidance, which simply made him become another responsibility Garroth set upon himself. Don’t get me wrong, he definitely cares for him, but their relationship is far different than the one he has with Aphmau. 

With Aphmau, he finally has someone who shares the burden. Not only that, but sharing it willingly and with a smile on her face. He’s not used to having a person who presents themselves as an equal sharer of responsibility. Much less, someone who is willing and wanting for him to put his burdens on her (At least, that’s how he sees it). He can’t remember the last time he truly allowed himself to be vulnerable with someone. All the desires he’s pushed down start to bubble back up again, and he starts to imagine things he’d long tried to do away with. He sees Aphmau as a strong leader, one whose idealism is a strength and not a weakness, and how she accomplishes things he never quite got around to doing. An admiration grows for her, yes, but that’s not what makes her different. The difference, he sees, is her vulnerability. How she allows herself to be vulnerable around him. How despite the brave face she puts on, she has just as much fear that she isn’t enough. And she tells him this, directly, because she trusts him. And all of a sudden he realizes that if she can be strong to the rest of the world, and yet still let him see her weakness, her softness, then maybe, just maybe

“Your love is where you breathe.”

He can take his armor off, too.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Plato’s apology is a record of one of history’s greatest miscarriages of justice: the conviction and death-sentencing of Socrates on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. It is difficult, from a contemporary perspective, to imagine a legal system so inhumane as to permit such a naked abrogation of human autonomy, and it is illuminating to reflect on it as a sort of anti-model, a negative inspiration

The charges seem to have arisen from Socrates’ well-known penchant for public philosophical debate—principally in the Athenian agora—with figures both public and private, on matters ranging from knowledge to friendship to justice to sex to the merits of writing. So integral was this habit to his persona, in fact, that at points in the text he is shown (against standard procedure) entering into informal “philosophical” dialogue with his accusers. By his own admission in the course of the defence, he drew inspiration in this unpaid career from two divine authorities: the Oracle at Delphi (whom he interpreted as calling on him to discover a man wiser than himself) and his personal dæmon (whom, he insists against his jurors’ incredulity, was ever present at his side to warn him against any wrongdoing). While executing this alleged divine mandate, he attracted a small following of (often very well socially positioned) young men, some of whom regrettably were to ally themselves with the tyranny of the thirty imposed upon Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian war. This guilt by association seems to have incited his trial itself, conducted in the span of a day, as a political enemy of the Athenian polis. And yet, speaking in his own defence, he refused to admit any guilt, insisting to the contrary that he was a gadfly to the city and a model of virtue to its citizens. In light of his irreverent defence, he was condemned to death at his own hand by swallowing hemlock

This context allows us to understand and explain, if not excuse, the Athenians’ actions during the trial. On the one hand, it is hard to impugn their motives in trying and convicting, even executing, him. As we have seen, after all, he was a regular peddler of misinformation, used in radicalising “disaffected” young privileged men into a virulent anti-democratic movement known to collude with human rights abusers and enemies of the rules based Delian order. Indeed, he was plausibly guilty of incitement to violence, and was certainly motivated in his actions by ideals of religious extremism and a disrespect for established democratic norms

But despite the justice of the charges, the procedure of the trial itself is one we would today rightly recognise as grossly abusive. Throughout his speech, he endorses straightforwardly disordered claims about himself and his place in the world, ranging from the fantastical and megalomaniacal (being accompanied by a supernatural dæmon) to the outright bizarre (being a fly or spur), interspersed with confusing and nonsensical chains of reasoning, articulated during seemingly uncontrollable outbursts against court procedure. A case of psychosis this pronounced, in a contemporary setting, would at the very least elicit an assessment of the defendant’s competence to stand trial, and certainly of his competence to represent himself. And yet, rather than taking the time necessary to conduct such an assessment, the trial took the span of a single day… a far cry from the cautious timeframes we have come to expect in the present!

Nor, of course, can we approve of his sentence to suicide, or probably even his conviction. As repugnant as his incitement to democratic backsliding might strike us, he seems to have been, in the end, a sick man. And while in those dark days that might have spelled death, we live today in more humanitarian times. In such a case, it is a sign of scientific dispassion to regard the relevant infractions less as crimes than as symptoms, and to offer less punishment than treatment. Barbaric methods, like requiring him to drink hemlock, would be out of the question. We should take pride in our current level of civilisational advancement, instead, to know that we would demand he give himself haldol up through his dying days, as he would cry out in vain against the crippling torment and helplessly witness his power for abstract thought—the one thing he insisted he could never live without—leaking out of his brain. Wouldn’t he have been grateful? Aren’t we so fucking decent??

[jurassicworldtieindrpepper]

Reading List

to be updated constantly

Articles:

"Why Women Online Can’t Stop Reading Fairy Porn" by C.T. Jones for Rolling Stone

"They Called 911 for Help. Police and Prosecutors Used a New Junk Science to Decide They Were Liars." by Brett Murphy for ProPublica

"‘I Think My Husband Is Trashing My Novel on Goodreads!’" by Emily Gould for The Cut

"Woman in Retrograde" by Isabel Cristo for The Cut

"The unwanted Spanish soccer kiss is textbook male chauvinism. Don’t excuse it" by Moira Donegan for the Guardian

"I Started the Media Men List" by Moira Donegan for The Cut

"What Moira Donegan Did for Young Women Writers" by Jordana Rosenfeld for The Nation

"The Key Detail Missing From the Narrative About O.J. and Race" by Joel Anderson for Slate

"The Coiled Ferocity of Zendaya" by Matt Zoller Seitz for Vulture

"OJ Simpson died the comfortable death in old age that Nicole Brown should have had" by Moira Donegan for The Guardian

"Norm Macdonald Was the Hater O.J. Simpson Could Never Outrun" by Miles Klee for Rolling Stone

"Trans Stylists and Makeup Artists Are Reshaping Red Carpet Looks. Will They Get the Credit They’re Due?" by James Factora

"The ‘perfect Aryan’ child used in Nazi propaganda was actually Jewish" by Terrence McCoy for The Washington Post

"There Are Too Many Books; Or, Publishing Shouldn’t Be All About Quantity" by Maris Kreizman for Literary Hub

"An O.J. Juror on What The People v. O.J. Simpson Got Right and Wrong" by Ashley Reese for Vulture

"Super Cute Please Like" by Nicole Lipman for N + 1 Magazine

Essays:

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture edited by Roxanne Gay

Creep: Accusations and Confessions by Myriam Gurba

"On Chappell Roan and Gen Z Pop" by Miranda Reinert

"In Memory of Nicole Brown Simpson" by Andrea Dworkin

"My Gender Is Dyke" by Alexandria Juarez for Autostraddle

"Columnists and Their Lives of Quiet Desperation" by Hamilton Nolan

Nonfiction:

Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women by Lyz Lenz

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life by Lyz Lenz

The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination by Sarah Schulman

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe

The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory by Carol J. Adams

Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs by David Bellos & Alexandre Montagu

The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society by Eleanor Janega

Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America by Krista Burton

University of Nike: How Corporate Cash Bought American Higher Education by Joshua Hunt

What it Feels Like for a Girl by Paris Lees

Female Masculinity by J. Jack Halberstam

The Theory of Everything Else: A Voyage Into the World of the Weird by Dan Schreiber

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper

Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration by Alejandra Oliva

Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate by Anna Bogutskaya

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Eyeliner: A Cultural History by Zahra Hankir

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Fiction:

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Just as You Are by Camille Kellogg

Just Happy to Be Here by Naomi Kanakia

The Misadventures of an Amateur Naturalist by Ceinwen Langley

Family Meal by Bryan Washington

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera

Blackouts by Justin Torres

We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Less Is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

The Faithless by C.L. Clark

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The Institute by Stephen King

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin

Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix by Aminah Mae Safi

Only a Monster by Vanessa Len

[offender42085]

Post 0586

Skylar Preciosa Maciel, formerally Skylar Deleon, formerly John Jacobson, Jr, California inmate G56028, born 1979, incarceration intake in 2009 (this time) at age 30, sentenced to death

Murder

In 2009, a man was convicted of murdering an Arizona couple by tying them to an anchor and throwing them overboard from their yacht off Southern California was sentenced to death. Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel imposed the sentence recommended by the jury that convicted Skylar Deleon, 29, of killing Tom and Jackie Hawks of Prescott, Ariz. DeLeon, who appeared in a non-credited role in a "Power Rangers" TV series and starred in commercials, was also convicted in the 2003 killing of Jon Jarvi, an Anaheim man he met on a work furlough program.. "It is the judgment and order of this court you shall suffer the death penalty as to each count," Fasel said, adding that he decided to impose the penalty partly because of the horrific nature of the murders. Prosecutors said Deleon, of Long Beach, feigned interest in buying the couple's nearly half-million-dollar yacht and threw them overboard during a test cruise out of Newport Harbor in 2004. The Hawkses' bodies were never found. They said Deleon and his then-wife, Jennifer Henderson, crafted the plan to kill the Hawkses to steal their boat and savings. After the yacht killings, prosecutors said, Deleon and Henderson scrubbed the boat clean with bleach wipes. "It is difficult to imagine a case where it's more cold-blooded and calculated than this series of murders," prosecutor Matt Murphy said after the sentencing. "I can't imagine a situation that is more deserving of the ultimate punishment." Defense attorney Gary Pohlson had asked jurors to spare his client's life, arguing that Deleon was abused by a drug-dealing father who left him predisposed to violence. He declined to comment after the sentencing.

After being committed to prison, Deleon transitioned to a woman and changed the name they are known by.  

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