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jesncin · 2 months ago

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The Portrayal of Noah Ikumelo's Disability in Spurrier's Hellblazer and Dead in America run

Noah Ikumelo is a divisive new character introduced in Si Spurrier's 2019-2020 Hellblazer 12 issue solo (illustrated by Aaron Campbell and Matias Bergara, colors by Jordie Bellaire), he continues appearing as a recurring character in Hellblazer Dead In America (2024, 11 issues) Spurrier's long awaited continuation of his original run. Introduced in the very first issue as a Black, mute (hearing, but unable to orally speak) teenager who predominantly uses BSL to communicate.

We'll be discussing how Noah's disability was portrayed, how effective it was narratively, and thoroughly analyze the limits and ableist biases comics have as a visual language. Spoilers for Spurrier's Hellblazer and Dead In America run below. CW for ableism, racism, SA, police brutality, and general violence.

Disclaimer!! I am an able-bodied person with only occasional interactions with the Deaf community and am still studying ASL in my own time. All of these observations are made from an outsider perspective. I feel that starting a critical discussion from any source of knowledge for other more informed perspectives to follow up on is better than having no discussion at all.

However! I can offer some valuable perspective as a ~classically/formally trained~ comic artist- because we'll be discussing some inherit biases with how comic artists are trained to illustrate communication in this visual medium. I'll also be talking about lettering, which I'm nitpicky about so if I'm an expert on anything, it's those things.

I won't be going through each issue in as much detail as these first few issues for the sake of set up, but I will stop every now and then to discuss the portrayal of some scenes.

Let's start with Noah's very first appearance in Hellblazer 2019 #1. Noah is introduced as one of the very young members of a gang called the Ri-Boys. He's tasked with kidnapping a magic specialist to help get rid of murderous angelic spirits in their local park that are getting in the way of their prime location for selling drugs. He kidnaps John Constantine, who is quickly informed that Noah is mute.

Noah doesn't sign at all in this first issue, opting instead to communicate with a little notebook tied around his neck.

Despite K-Mag's (the gang leader) justification for recruiting teenagers as a "refuge" from a world that hates them, he's not afraid to treat Noah as disposable. He opts to send Noah's able-bodied friend (named Isa) on an errand instead of Noah because they "don't need no tongueless splesh backin' on ops-" and threatening Noah's life in order to get John to cooperate. So narratively the set up is clear: even though this gang is meant to provide jobs for the marginalized, it's still a bigoted organization that doesn't treat Noah well.

After accompanying John to the park where the angelic spirits murder another junkie, Noah is so traumatized by what he witnesses that he throws up on his notebook- rendering it unusable. Issue #2 starts with Noah raving in BSL (the image at the very top of this essay) to his gang mates that ignore him. When John asks if anyone knows sign language, he gets no response. It's clear that Noah is an outsider even among the Ri-Boys. Regardless, by the end of the issue in the following day, Noah is back to using his notebook (I guess he got a new one).

So. The notebook. I'll be honest I hate the notebook. It's such a clunky thing for Noah to carry around his neck, and it's clearly a set up so that Noah throws up on it and can't communicate to people who don't know sign.

On personal experience alone, I've been able to communicate with deaf people through texts on a shared phone. We'd just pull up notepad and write to each other to bridge the language barrier. And (as I've been informed by @scoliwings!) if phones running out of batteries is the worry, there's also pocket-sized boogie boards as a handy means of communication. At the very least Noah canonically has a phone (he is texting John in the panel above), and the Ri-boys can afford an ipad that K-Mag uses. These boogie board devices are much more affordable than either of those items and far better than a notebook.

Throughout Spurrier's treatment of Noah's disability, there will continue to be a sense of "we haven't even exhausted basic options to bridge a language barrier yet-" and this one is the first instance of that.

[this is not how the panels look in the comic, I chopped and arranged the last panel to save up on tumblr blog image space]

To keep this essay focused on Noah's disability, by issue #3 after some plot stuff progresses, John reveals to Noah that he actually can understand BSL. It turns out he knows "a bit" of BSL from a relationship he had with a deaf man in the 90s. Regardless, throughout Spurrier's whole run, John is shown to understand Noah's signing fluently. You might be wondering why John kept this a secret. Was he withholding his understanding of BSL so he could "eavesdrop" on something Noah signs to his friends without knowing? Nope. This reveal had no narrative purpose; John gained nothing from hiding this from everyone and it retroactively makes earlier scenes weirder. John just decides to reveal this to Noah for no other reason than to be a jerk I guess?

Once John fixes the "murderous angels in the park" problem, he also convinces K-Mag to let go of Noah from the Ri-Boys gang so that Noah can live a more honest life going to school (we will never see this) and uh. Being John's new personal driver. John used to have a friend, Chas, who drove him around everywhere but with Chas gone now- Noah is narratively set up to take his place.

Eagle-eyed readers might notice something odd about the way the scene where John reveals to Noah that he understands BSL is staged: if John supposedly understands what Noah is signing, why is he walking away, yet responding to what Noah is signing behind him? Yeah. This is one of the most annoying artistic blunders throughout all of Spurrier's Hellblazer runs with Noah. Despite Noah being mute, other characters still act like they can "hear" him.

Sign language isn't a language you can passively listen to. When someone is signing, that means you have to be looking at their hands and facial expression in order to understand what they're communicating to you. A casual irl example- in art school us hearing students could draw in our sketchbooks as the teacher lectured. A deaf student we had that year had to clarify that was not something they were able to do. As whenever the lecturer spoke- that meant that student would have to look up to their interpreter translating the lecture. So they weren't able to catch up with the classwork the way us hearing students could.

You'll notice in the panels above, John is preoccupied and talking to someone on his phone. Yet he's "hearing" what Noah is signing to him. John self identifies as someone who knows "a bit" of BSL- meaning he's not fluent. But this doesn't go anywhere since John's functionally fluent throughout both runs. It's like having a character say they know "a bit" of French only to show them being fluent through the whole story. Why bother mentioning a language barrier if it wasn't going to matter?

In these panels, Noah is signing while facing to the side- as in he's not facing John directly as he's signing, which obscures his signs from being clearly read. This wouldn't be a problem for folks who are way more fluent with any sign language (they can recognize signs at many angles), but for newbies you'll usually have people signing with their torso directly facing the other person to be as clear as possible. And they'll sign a lot slower. Little nuances like that make it clear that no one on the Hellblazer creative team have conversed with deaf people before- but why would something so obvious not be considered in the artistic direction of this run?

Let's quickly go over comics visual storytelling and how comic artists are trained to tackle staging a "talking heads" scene. Scenes like this are when characters are having a long conversation, visually giving the scene a "samey" vibe. Our job as comic artists is to keep the visuals interesting, so there are a ton of tricks we're taught to vary up how a conversation looks. We'll have a character hold a prop, walk around, look away to something else, have characters multi-task as they talk (bonus if it's thematic to the conversation), basically outside of zooming in and out it's good to keep a character busy to give the scene visual variety. Anything to break out of that silhouette of two characters directly facing each other.

[these are not how the panels are presented in the comic, I spliced these panels from 2 different issues to save up space]

Therein lies the problem: these tricks rely on an able-bodied standard of communication in order to function. Having a character like Noah communicate in sign, relies on the character he's signing towards to be paying full attention. Tackling "talking heads" as a comic artist explains but doesn't excuse these horrendous instances where poor staging of the characters ends up accidentally implying Noah "has a voice" because the able-bodied characters sure seem to be able to "hear" him even though they're facing all sorts of directions. Again, this just means the artist and writer have to rise to the challenge of keeping the scenes visually interesting while being inclusive to the disabled character the writer introduced into this world.

While we're talking about comics, I'm just going to go ahead and say I'm not a fan of the letterer's choices to visualize Noah's dialogue. To differentiate from the other characters, Noah's speechbubble is more like a caption box- it's square and light green. Instead of a tail pointing out of it to indicate who is talking like a traditional speechbubble would, instead Noah's dialogue box has a long arrow coming out of it. The arrow pointing out is just so corny. It says: "look! here's where the words are coming from! His hands!! Whoaaa".

Moreover, the arrows ruin the visual flow of the comic pages. We humans are hard wired to look at where an arrow is pointing. It's what that symbol is designed for. It's why all those clickbait youtube thumbnails have arrows pointing on them, it steals your attention. The best kind of speechbubbles are unobtrusive to the art, complementing it. Having it so that whenever Noah has dialogue we get these annoying arrows that stick out of the page composition just ruins it. Here's what it looks like edited on other characters' speechbubbles. It's a lettering eyesore.

I see no reason why Noah can't have a speechbubble tail like everyone else. I personally like making the speecbubble tail a lil-squiggly when I'm drawing a speechbubble for a character signing. Differentiating the speechbubble enough but not to the point it's obtrusive to the page flow.

Additionally, Noah has "translation brackets" around his dialogue- it's a block of dialogue that starts with the "less than" symbol and ends with the "greater than" symbol to indicate a sentence being translated from another language.

<So you'll have a character's dialogue look like this in the speech bubble.> *

accompanied by a translation box clarifying that the dialogue is; [*translated from French, for example] in the first instance we see the language featured in the comic. Of course this isn't the only way to portray language in comics, sometimes letterers will go for using colored text to differentiate languages. There's no standard look! Noah's dialogue never featured an initial caption box that discloses what language he's signing in. I'm going to charitably presume that it's a stylistic move away from that practice so that the reader is put in the same confused position as John is upon first meeting Noah.

I don't personally have an issue with the application of translation brackets to Noah's dialogue. Because even though Noah is communicating in a type of English language (British Sign Language), what we're seeing written in the dialogue of the comic isn't a direct translation of what he's signing. Unless it's Sign Exact English, sign language has different sentence structure, grammar and syntax from spoken English. So if Noah signs something like "#BUS RED YOU SEE WILL", then that translates to him saying "You will see a red bus." in written dialogue. It's a translation of his signing, even if it's still English.

I don't think there's an indisputably correct way to portray sign language in comics. Something like this will go down to personal stylistic choice of the artist. Maybe one artist decides they don't want to put brackets on ASL dialogue because they'd rather use that to differentiate English language from non-English language. There's an argument to be made either way! So long as you commit to your set of rules, I can at least try to engage with where an artistic choice is coming from even if I disagree with how it's done.

Unfortunately, that's not the case for Dead in America:

It's in the very last issue of the run, but well. You forgot the translation brackets there, guys. Sloppy work.

To wrap up Noah's arc in Hellblazer 2019, Noah is revealed to be John Constantine's son. John had a graveyard fling with Liza Ikumelo, a police woman (barf), thereby insulting a demonic spirit (and by extension, me, the reader). Many years later the spirit hunts down the woman, cursing her to an eternal sleep. Her child, Noah, was nearby and by proxy lost his voice from the incident. So it's John Constantine's fault that Noah's mute, and that Noah's mom is in a coma. Hellblazer 2019 ends with John feeling an immense guilt for forcing Noah to kill a friend, meaning they now have to flee the country. John doesn't tell Noah that Noah is his son.

So despite the poor portrayal of Noah's disability in this run, his character overall at this point was a really interesting addition to Hellblazer lore. He has a unique background of hardship; cursed by John's shenanigans at birth without even knowing it, and despite all of that he still has it in him to want to help and be kind. The reveal that he's John's son adds a layer of tragedy to everything- what does it mean to be another continuation of the Constantine family? Without even knowing it? There's plenty of angst on John's end of things, having unknowingly been an absent father for years. We get to see echoes between father and son in their actions. They're both from harsh backgrounds but humanitarians at heart, in different ways. It's very compelling stuff.

Years later, Dead In America is released as the long awaited continuation of this story. John, his friend Nat, and Noah are in America now, going on a long cross country road trip in a double decker London bus. Why? Just because. Noah and Nat take turns driving because John can't drive. In my opinion Dead In America is a bigger, more convoluted plot so I will stick to summarizing things that are relevant to Noah's disability.

This run has all the same problems as the 2019 Hellblazer run does with characters not being staged properly when Noah is signing to them, but it's the very first issue that reveals something particularly damning about how Spurrier views sign as a language.

As Noah is driving the bus he is instructed not to stop for anyone. But later that night he suddenly does. John berates Noah, only to be surprised that Noah is speaking (and sounding uncharacteristically posh)! John suddenly can't speak, instead he signs. This is how he realizes he's in a dream and regains his ability to speak. It's clear what's intended by the storytelling here. Seeing an able bodied person sign is part of the surrealism that makes this scene out of the ordinary. It's supposed to be odd that John is signing, because it's weird that Noah is the one speaking. Signing is a thing only disabled people do, not anyone else. This dream sequence is the only time a character other than Noah signs.

This single narrative choice has a drastic ripple effect on the rest of the run; it means that through both runs, no one ever signs back to Noah. According to the National Association of the Deaf, 72% of hearing parents with deaf kids don't learn sign language. This leads to deaf kids struggling culturally within their own families. Sign language expresses things that written or spoken languages can't. So having their own family not bother to learn sign is deeply isolating for deaf kids. By not having anyone but especially John sign to Noah, any narrative attempt to portray familial care and consideration between the two is undercut by this barrier. Sure John cares for his son in his own way, but not enough to converse with him in his own language.

This is when it became clear to me that Noah's use of BSL functions more as "a voice but #diverse" instead of portraying sign language as a culture and community of its own. It's like characters of color being written as white, where their identities are just a palette change. Only here, it's more of "this character is speaking, but with his hands this time" never mind how that drastically changes how a character navigates the world and how people interact with him. Attempts at writing Noah's disability in this run continue to be lackluster at best and insulting at worst.

Don't get me wrong, Noah is not a "whitewashed" character- his Blackness is integrated into the narrative of both Hellblazer 2019 and Dead In America... for better or for worse. By this I mean especially in Dead In America, Spurrier really likes to use Noah as a prop to show how racist America is. I don't think there's anything wrong with showing some uncomfortable scenes of Noah facing off American cops. In fact I like how this scene in the first issue shows the specific struggles a Black disabled person goes through, being double profiled as someone dangerous when Noah's attempts to communicate are misinterpreted as a threat- it sets the tone for how dangerous the country is for someone like him.

The original Hellblazer showed plenty of scenes where John is brutalized by the cops in both the UK and US, so gritty commentary is right at home with the character's stories. The difference here is there is almost a giddiness to inventing scenarios for Noah to experience profoundly racist situations at the expense of Noah's own characterization in this run. It becomes more obvious as we progress.

This is another nitpick but when John, Nat, and Noah meet up with Clarice Sackville (an elderly magician lady) in issue #2, Noah discreetly signs to John, calling Clarice a "wrinkled old hag" only for John to whisper back "Be grateful she can't sign, Noah." meaning "be glad she can't understand what you're saying". If there was any opportunity to use sign language as a means of discreetly communicating around someone who doesn't understand it, this would've been the moment. But alas, only disabled people use sign language, right guys. John can only sign in a weird dream sequence.

The punchline here is that Clarice actually understood what Noah was signing, making a jab at him for calling her a "wrinkled old hag". I don't know how she understood what Noah was signing when she was clearly facing away from him the whole time but well. That's basically a tradition for Spurrier's runs at this point. Technically John's dialogue isn't wrong here. Clarice "can't sign". She understands it, but doesn't sign. Because that's a thing only disabled people do.

Let's put a pin on issue #4 and skip ahead to Dead In America issue #5. This is essentially an anthology issue containing short stories of little incidents John, Nat, and Noah encounter on the American road. I will be discussing the second story, "One-Way Ticket" written by Aaron Campbell (ordinarily the main artist of Spurrier's runs) with art by guest artist John Pearson.

It's a story about a ghost guy who wants to go home but everyone ignores him (because they can't see him), John helps out by discovering his dead body and bringing the spirit comfort. It's a cute and cozy story if it weren't for the abysmal way Noah is treated in it, completely contradicting its themes. Noah is horrified at the prospect of John leaving him alone in the red bus, fearing the cops will show up. John responds "You're mute, just pretend you're dumb too." Even for asshole-John standards this is unnecessarily cruel. Dead In America started with Noah being profiled by the police, so Noah's fears are as founded as it gets. This short story may not be written by Spurrier, but it is written by the artist who DREW THAT SCENE.

I didn't splice the panels above, that is exactly how they are presented in the comic. Not only do we have characters facing away from Noah as he's signing again (a tradition even guest artists continue to perpetuate it seems), but it's followed up immediately with a ghost being grateful that John recognizes him. The irony that John gets told that after ditching his son. Why not make the story about Noah relating to the ghost? Remember that scene where Noah is signing to the Ri-Boys and they all ignore him? He and the ghost could connect over how they're ignored and treated as disposable, how accommodation for people like them is considered an inconvenience, how no one cares when their life is threatened.

When John returns from discovering the ghost's dead body, just like clockwork Noah is being searched by a cop. Only now it's treated like a joke instead- with Nat taking a smoke on the side and John just slapping a spell on the cop to make him stop.

This nonchalant carelessness for the portrayal of cops is a big departure from how ACAB John was in his original Hellblazer run. John was a man who could outsmart and kill the Vampire King only to be immediately beat up by cops afterwards. He's called homophobic slurs for defending the dead body of his sex worker guy friend. It paints this image of a guy who can overcome the supernatural but doesn't stand a chance against mundane human cruelty. Because that kind of thing takes more than a magic trick to defeat. But in Dead In America, cops are a mild inconvenience to John. He can just cast spells on them and move on. It's disappointing how even in a run that's supposed to be a return to form for Hellblazer, John isn't as radical as he was written in the 80s and 90s. The cops don't have the kind of threatening authority they had in the older comics. Don't worry, it gets worse.

Let's hop and skip ahead to Dead In America issue #9. For plot reasons, John went missing. He disappeared to Hell and back for four weeks, separated from Noah and Nat. When he reunites with his friends, they want nothing to do with him. They're now running their own little film studio, shooting a film that metatextually reflects their road trip adventure. Again, for plot reasons. They're teaming up with a metamancer to speed filmmaking along. Nat's the director and Noah's the producer. He's practicing magic, and even found himself a girlfriend, Liz! She's an Asian girl though and that worries me. Because Asian love interests are usually seen as narratively disposable. A racist character assumes Noah is using "mind magic on her" because there's no way Noah would end up with someone so "hot", right? Right.

[spliced panels from issue 9 and 10]

Issue #10 is when we get very much needed perspective from Noah and Nat's point of view. Nat always wanted to be a writer, while Noah longs for a life of normalcy. The two narrate their backstories, building their life up to meeting John, to where they are now with their film studio.

We learn how Noah got into using magic, and. Urgh. Sick of dealing with a language barrier as a disabled person, Noah uses magic to communicate with people. It's another case of "we haven't even exhausted basic options to bridge a language barrier yet-" I get it, throughout this run Noah doesn't have his notebook, and he doesn't appear to have his phone either (perhaps to hide from the authorities tracking them down) but to that I say pocket-sized boogie boards are still an affordable option that won't get you tracked down by the cops. I'd even prefer him buying another notebook over this. In this issue he's even seen with a phone, so what do I know.

"huh! I just remembered that I, an American, actually do know British Sign Language! Hah how could I forget something like that ho ho" it's just so trite. Like we're not even going to try and grab a paper and pen to communicate? We're skipping to using dark magic instead? Okay. Worst of all, so you're telling me the racist loser was right about Noah?? That Noah wouldn't have a chance with Liz if it weren't for magic? What are we doing...

I'm not including the panel here but after Noah narrates "I won't use this shit to coerce people-- I'm not him. But... making things easier? Simpler? Why not?" the following panel is of him and Liz getting funky style in bed. Even with Noah saying he won't "coerce people" he still says that magic can make things easier. Simpler. There is this uncomfortable implication that Noah "made it easier" for Liz to sleep with him. Sure it can be read that he got close to her through them communicating on the same page. But when their relationship isn't developed, narratively she just kind of exists as a prop for his desires. To quote Noah himself in Dead In America issue #4: "It was rape."

Time to revisit that pin. So issue #4 is about John and Noah masquerading as an exorcist and...an enslaved person to trick a small town into revealing a coverup: a girl was assaulted by six boys in their local football team, ending her own life from her story being pushed aside for the bright future of the football boys. Noah is so infuriated by how she was mistreated that he beats up one of the boys. It's a heavy story about how far a town will go to protect the future of boys while discarding the life of the girl, who to this day is anonymous. If you're wondering whether Noah pretending to be an enslaved person was necessary to the con, I can assure you it really wasn't.

What's frustrating here is that are we really supposed to believe that Noah, a character who was willing to risk his safety by beating up a rapist, would then go ahead and "make it easier" to sleep with a girl later? Remember. The reason he did that was because his disability was apparently holding him back. Are we really having it so the only person of color in John's cast for this story did this? That if he wasn't disabled, he wouldn't do this? It's frankly disgusting.

Through John's silver tongue trickery, he pulls shenanigans that cause Nat and Noah to get arrested. Despite Nat being known to be violent, Noah is the one who is brutalized by the cops and put into solitary confinement. Because racism. Spurrier really wants you to know that American cops are so racist, guys.

I wonder where all this energy was for his Hellblazer 2019 run taking place in the UK. Where the only cop characters were noble people of color who are looking out for each other. Noah's own mom was a cop, even. He'll show Noah looking tense in a car as cops walk by in Hellblazer 2019, but for Dead In America? Noah is profiled by police three times, made to play an enslaved person for John's ends, and is in the receiving end of so many bigoted characters' racism. Spurrier is selective about his portrayal of cops when it suits him.

At this point it's transparent looking back at the treatment of Noah's character throughout Dead In America, that there's a giddiness Spurrier (and technically Campbell) have in crafting racist scenarios for Noah to go through. But it's okay because they have John say a lamp-shading comment to assure readers that the writers recognize "This Is A Racist Thing Happening".

Reading Dead in America reminded me of the discourse surrounding "Strange Fruit" a comic by Mark Waid and J. G. Jones. I won't belabor explaining the plot, but what they have in common is this self congratulatory "giddiness to put Black characters in compromising situations" I keep describing. Like, they didn't have to create a naked Black Superhero named "Johnson" who doesn't speak and wears a confederate flag while dealing with racists in the Jim Crow era South but...these white writers just didn't have a choice! It's the rules of story! John has to pretend Noah is his property!

"Strange Fruit's desire to make big, albeit familiar statements about America's sinful past and do justice to both the subject matter and history often comes at the expense of considerate or even dimensional characterization."

-Vox writer Tre Johnson, 2017.

This is the kind of giddiness to indulge in fictional cruelty that isn't written with Black readers in mind. It's to entertain white readers with an exaggerated depiction of racism to make themselves feel better about being British. And if anyone's excuse is "well it's Hellblazer! Vertigo comics are supposed to talk about uncomfortable topics, John gets beat up by cops too back in the day", then need I remind you that unlike John, the sheer frequency Noah is put into these compromising scenarios is at the expense of his characterization.

Don't think that Spurrier's done playing with his "America Sure Is Racist" prop yet though.

As Noah (still bruised and battered) escapes prison, John pulls a couple more tricks on him: he "accidentally" reveals that Noah is his son, tricks Liz into faking her death to freak Noah out (we'll never see her again after this), and gets Clarice to pretend to die in front of him. All this angers Noah into attempting to kill John- but he stops. Because Noah still isn't that kind of person.

This is all part of John's plan, supposedly he made a deal with demons in Hell that if John himself is killed in the allocated time, he won't actually die. But his plan failed. Unfortunately for John, Nat is still filming their road trip movie, and whatever the actors do, the real characters do as well. A script change happens, and John ends up killing Noah.

But aha, this is yet another trick. By issue #11, Noah wakes up bruise-free and alive (he even gets to smash in John's stand in actor for good measure). Turns out, John's deal with the demons of Hell was for his son to live, instead- a selfless act that none of the Gods and demons saw coming. After John does some more silver-tongue talking to a Dream Entity, he's able to grant people some rushed happy endings.

Noah's mom wakes up from her eight year magical coma, the policeman hunting down Nat and Noah deletes his files, and Nat becomes the boss of a major studio- her writer dreams come to fruition. I don't know how Noah's getting back home to his mom, but shh shhh it's a happy ending, Spurrier promises.

So we have a twist to the usual Hellblazer story. Instead of John surviving at the expense of his friends and family, now John sacrifices his life to Noah and Nat so they can live freely. Last but certainly not least, as Clarice dies she gifts Noah the ability to speak. And when Noah does speak, he sounds so out of character I thought I was misreading things. Is this another lettering mistake? No? Then what is this random poetry.

I recognize what the narrative is doing here. It's John's fault that Noah's mom is in a coma and that Noah is mute, so the resolution to that conflict is for him to undo the wrongs he did to the Ikumelo family- which includes Noah being "cured" of his disability. The problem here is not only is this an exhausting continuation of the "disabilities getting cured" trope- so Noah can join the "easier, simpler" life of able bodied people- but also that a large facet of Noah's identity is tied to John's character development.

Noah might not be the main character, but he's the deuteragonist of Dead In America- the beating family heart that ties John to someone who would otherwise be a stranger. Instead of narratively endearing us to Noah's character, Spurrier seems content to just have Noah drive the bus only to make occasional stops to demonstrate how Racist America Is. It's such a fall from grace to the intriguing character we met in Hellblazer 2019. All that characterization of someone willing to help despite a life of hardship is just out the window.

[spliced panels]

My overall feelings about the treatment of Noah Ikumelo is that whatever representation he embodies feels like being thrown a really shitty party. Noah Ikumelo is an original creation for these two runs. Si Spurrier didn't have to make Noah a Black disabled teenager, but he did. Spurrier takes up that responsibility of representation by half-assing it. The kind of thing a guy who gloats about a bi-colored comic cover would do before accidentally calling the character in it "pansexual" in said comic. And then backpedal on twidder when called out for it. Half ass behavior.

Noah went from being this interesting exploration of unintended legacy to being a prop to make shallow commentary on American racism. Noah is never drawn consistently between artists but he sure is adultified a bunch to the point that I even see readers describing him as "basically an adult" when he's only 16-17 years old. I get that it's supposed to be tragic that he's forced to grow up too soon, but part of that tragedy is that he still is a kid. The portrayal of his disability shows how no research was put into being inclusive in either the writing or the art to the point it's downright nonsensical. The research amounts to looking up a sign language dictionary for words and that's it. This isn't even touching on how there was no recognition of the intersection between Black culture and sign language.

The problems with Noah Ikumelo are not unique to Hellblazer, or Si Spurrier or the Hellblazer creative team. They're a reflection of a predominantly able-bodied and white industry that is comics and media as a whole. The very way comics as a medium is taught carries with it an ableist standard for portraying communication. All this to say that tackling a character like Noah would mean doing the extra work to be critical of what we're used to seeing as the norm. But if you were just going to half-ass setting up a party for Black disabled readers, then why even bother y'know? It's not like Spurrier was held at gun point to create a disabled character. Frankly he was too busy crafting scenarios for guns to be pointing at Noah instead.

#ramblings #jesncin dc meta #hellblazer #noah ikumelo #john constantine #long post #it's christmas let's go home #i left you all a spicy meatball for the holidays

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delusional-day-dreamer · 7 months ago

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paige x olympian gymnast hcs!

‣ paige bueckers x olympic gymnast reader!

‣‣ synopsis: gymnastics has always been your entire life, and your dedication truly paid off when you made team usa for the 2016 rio olympics, but what happens after your injury while in the running for the 2020 tokyo olympics? #uneditedfornow

‣‣‣ a/n: just a few headcannons i have in mind for this story, if i were to make this a full blown series it MIGHT be a wattpad story with an oc or just a full tumblr series because of how long it would be... 👀

your life leading up to and including the 2016 rio olympics:

you've been doing gymnastics since you were three years old

at the age of thirteen your parents switched you to online school so you could train full time, but during this process it set you back a year, making your graduation year 2020 (same as Paige)

at the age of just fifteen you qualified for the rio olympics (meaning you were born in 2001)

your roommate that year was simone biles, and you competed at the olympics, taking home two golds (all around team and beam) and one silver (beam).

following the olympics, you became very popular for your skill at such a young age, leading you to signing many brand deals, sponsorships, photoshoots, etc.

it just so happens that your popularity reaches a certain basketball player, miss paige bueckers. in her slam interview in 2019, when asked about an athlete she admires outside of basketball, she says you. you have no idea who she is, but dm her regardless thanking her for her kind words. this is the only interaction you two have until uconn.

you continued online school for the rest of highschool, and throughout the next three years you received thirty recruitment offers out of the sixty-two schools that had a women's college gymnastics team.

your dream school had always been the University of Connecticut, but their gymnastics team didn't impress you throughout the recruitment process.

your graduation year is 2020, which happens to be the same year you got injured, right before choosing a college to commit to.

injury-related; 2020-2021:

in february of 2020, you got into a car crash while driving home from a late night practice.

you tore your left acl, dislocated your right shoulder, fractured your left collarbone, had a concussion, and suffered a left femoral fracture (ouchies i know)

thankfully you were mostly okay, but the accident completely put you out of the running for the 2020 (now moved to 2021 due to the pandemic) olympics, and doctors told you it would take at least two years to fully rehabilitate before you could even beginning training for competitions again.

your left leg had quite a few complications with the acl tear and the femoral fracture, and you had four surgeries in total on the leg.

during this time, you decided that since you couldn't compete in gymnastics, you might as well commit to the college of your student-life dreams, the university of connecticut.

UConn Era!!:

you commit to uconn for your undergrad in the sports management program, since you couldn't compete, you still wanted to remain in the athletic world.

your freshman year classes (2020-2021) was fully online due to your injuries and the pandemic, but it just so happens that you're placed as an intern with the women's basketball team for your sports management program.

you meet the team before the school year starts, and it just so happens that paige bueckers has remained a huge fan of yours.

the only reason the team recognized you immediately before you were even introduced is because of how much she has fangirled over you

you get your own apartment at uconn due to the program and your status (okay olympic privilege), which meant the team loved to hang out at your giant, well-furnished place.

you become extremely close with the team, and your first two years of rehabilitation seem to go well. it also happens that in your sophomore year, your best friend paige also fractures her meniscus, so the two of you are the resident cripples of the team!

paige has always had a huge fangirl crush on you, but over the years of you being friends, it seems those feelings develop into a little bit more...

one night while you were having a sleepover with her during her acl recovery she confesses, and the two of you start dating on the very down low

during your junior year is also when you are fully cleared to start re-training and you start getting back into gymnastics with a new coach (idk who yet!)

while balancing school and your duties with the wbb team, you start to train only four days a week, slowly getting back old skills on all four events.

you start competing in the 2023-24 season (i believe that’s how it’s measured?) and qualify for the 2024 olympics at the 2024 Xfinity U.S Gymnastics Championship

it’s safe to say your girlfriend and the entire wbb team were your biggest supporters apart from your family

Actual Olympics:

i can see you being roommates with Hezley Rivera, since she reminds you so much of yourself and you’re able to form a connection because of that.

Paige is unfortunately not able to make it to the first half of the Olympics, but she is your biggest supporter from home, constantly posting and hyping you up.

While competing, you definitely wear jewelry that she gifted you for good luck, and your hair has two braids going up into your bun, just to keep a piece of your girl close to you. Maybe even a purple ribbon braided into your hair at some point?

You also definitely took half of her closet of hoodies with you so that you could wear them and have her scent with you at night

the entire uconn wbb team, both current and players from your earlier college years, show support for you on social media, but paige’s is a little.. different than theirs

while all the girls post you on their stories or tweeting about you as, so proud of our husky 💙🐺, that’s my our uconn girly!!, etc. Paige’s are a little more special, hinting at your relationship, ex: so proud of my girl 🫶🫶

there were rumors about you and paige circulating since your freshman year, but you never bothered addressing them, and this only fueled them further.

You definitely text Paige as much as possible during meal times, facetiming at night, sending selfies all the time, etc.

The other girls definitely make fun of you if they overhear you on the phone with her, mocking you since you call each other baby as a term of endearment. They also make a tiktok cut together of a bunch of clips, basically every single time you were texting or atp with paige. the tiktok has over 50 clips!

“can you pass me that y/n?” suni asked you

“yea sure, here” you passed her the makeup brush

“thanks, baby,” she teased, making you blush

After the olympic athlete who ran straight to his girlfriend after breaking the Olympic record, I can definitely see Paige flying out to surprise you for a week or so in Paris.

Her flying out to come visit is when you guys actually hard launch, posting pictures of you at dinner with the captions, “my girl is finally here” or “yk i had to come cheer my girl on in person”

a/n: this is #uneditedfornow but that’s all i have for now yall! idk when i’m gonna make this a series but i have so many ideas for it i just might have to, but i also have two other unfinished series rn so… 😓😓

480 notes · View notes

thankyouforthememoriesworld · 7 months ago

Note

I present the master Paige/Azzi youtube watchlist in chronological order of filming (sorta). I'm not including every game because that would take forever but I did include workouts that I've loved watching. Of course this doesn't have everything but maybe someone can help put together a playlist or something haha. I just wanted all the major interviews that I love in one spot tbh and I supposed this is also a great way for new fans to get to know these two players actually.

Spring 2019

Azzi Fudd wins Gatorade Player of the Year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmI8Ochf92Y

Azzi Fudd’s remarkable road to recovery | ESPN Cover Story (technically this spans a lot but because it is about ACL, I'm placing it here)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6xpNyfPxsk

Azzi Fudd and Paige Bueckers after dinner at Cheesecake Factory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFzQocVgm10

Summer 2019

One-on-one with Azzi Fudd: Steph camp, Unicorn Fam, early offers and more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgQeatZpetQ

Paige Bueckers & Azzi Fudd Battle To Be The #1 Hooper (July 2019 is 6 weeks after her ACL surgery)

https://youtu.be/eTbVfXufQsg?si=VF7bE-fB7P6-6tVu

Fall 2019 to March 2020

Azzi Day in the Life (photoshoot was on Jan 30, 2020 for reference)

https://youtu.be/enzGl05J-4Q?si=_LpwhC3M_OIP0clJ

Hopkins Royal FULL SERIES (season ran Nov 23, 2019 to mid March 2020 and it is over an hour long)

https://youtu.be/kAmSzerEoHc?si=h__o2wWSIbbdvVnl

No. 1 Overall Recruit Paige Bueckers Is a Human Highlight Reel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT9P-96vA7k

Ball Is Life Paige Bueckers Day in the Life

https://youtu.be/mouE9jO9Y_A?si=O5P1W0iH5IZnCHSM

Spring 2020

Paige wins Gatorade Player of the Year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IENvfOL-YIA

Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd 1v1 Against Trainer (date based on Azzi's IG post)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxWgLaCAm6I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQN8cFt1o00

Azzi Fudd workout highlights with Chris Brickley

https://youtu.be/KpWVfzZN7qM?si=Ns6D6Vl1Yt01VGIB

Summer 2020 (starting with May)

20 questions with Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaK2qM05t7Y

Buried Treasure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEEEnYMibFQ

Purple Hair

https://youtu.be/nTmAQKScbUM?si=vCdOBMqK-mlDMkWZ

Quarantine Haircuts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTnDwiQc5qk

Paige Bueckers Receives Advice From WNBA SUPERSTARS Ft. Brittney Griner, Sue Bird, and More!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0MagDKjoTA

A Day in the Life of Azzi Fudd

https://youtu.be/ILZCeNVcL1U?si=iouVrM2rEqIkSWAP

Paige Bueckers & Azzi's CRAZY Quarantine Day In The Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_TmMlXPmB4

Azzi Fudd #1 HS Player in the Country & GTS Fusion BALL OUT Series (This technically overlaps with Fall 2020 especially with Azzi signing to UConn on her birthday and is approximately an hour)

https://youtu.be/nU24h5_vnBI?si=H8Ey8V9h6kDX-4l8

Fall/Spring 2020

Azzi Fudd Carpool Karaoke, Paige Bueckers FaceTime, and More | Day In The Life (Nov 5, 2020)

https://youtu.be/RmMe60uzbUM?si=lMLALlwBmRHK0kOE

Azzi Fudd's commitment live

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xdnt7TXIdw

Faces In The Crowd: Azzi Fudd

https://youtu.be/bIz7Z_vLZJQ?si=LKlDWLhwN2yDQ6uv

"Step2TheMic" podcast Episode #4 featuring Azzi Fudd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-idN_tl9cSI

Beginning of 2021

Sports Stars of Tomorrow Feature on Azzi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXep2STcYq8

Summer/Fall 2021

Paige's live of Jon Fudd eating Cicadas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkVkxsc8rKo

PAIGE BUECKERS | Day In The Life!

https://youtu.be/6CzGZQe1pRU?si=6AcXFcIsYigTEzi1

UConn Star Paige Bueckers Shows Off Her Dope Sneaker Collection

https://youtu.be/IZArJtbceys?si=TKp83pvp6Lz_Sh8-

Azzi Fudd and Paige Bueckers: UConn Women's Basketball Media Availability - 7/6/21

Paige: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0vKs7VjYb0

Azzi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGwUNtXSEE0

Both: https://youtu.be/bL4Jq2sFt0A?si=Fkl5eDxwl3V-8zL-

Chris Brickley Workouts (Don't know when exactly this was)

https://youtu.be/nkcLs9qkz8g?si=7Sd-ho-d6YxreJ-T

Slam Cover Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HaJSLhx8xU

First Press Conference

https://youtu.be/JOuVS5RfsFA?si=lbcCMT_wX-u263W7

USF Presser (lowkey love this presser so much)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOdWM_xTO7k

2022

St. Johns Presser

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v4BgJhEc0M

Azzi Fudd's 2 dogs, playing with Paige Bueckers and her relationship with her parents | Inside Look

https://youtu.be/U9vnxoyoEwo?si=DmyoMR7-j_SfpksJ

UConn stars Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd talk basketball

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szGAuDtsfkU

The Workout: UCONN Duo Paige Beckers & Azzi Fudd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN5Gtzx1jt8

How UConn’s Azzi Fudd Balances Brands and Basketball

https://youtu.be/7VFgYc6eXiY?si=P5zYmtqxFYaNU-uh

2023

Kelsey Plum and Azzi Fudd Exclusive Workout

https://youtu.be/EmEO5aweU2Y?si=vAS60IQuieEtbRGQ

2v2 Azzi's Camp

https://youtu.be/VbYGpBW6SUs?si=H-8rYG7PjGUCr54S

Azzi Fudd at Curry Camp

https://youtu.be/-w0kjDPLhPQ?si=iwd0NKPMSyiaL8fH

UConn in Europe Special (48 minutes but not just them)

https://youtu.be/hhOfSaY9D-c?si=Ly2MnTfL4dbt2Ydh

How Kobe Bryant's mentality helped Paige Bueckers' ACL recovery

https://youtu.be/ugq1GLWqxPQ?si=3-6QaO81GovOA7Re

Sue's Episode

https://youtu.be/ZONny74MNWU?si=x0nG2Ny4HJDYirlQ

YOU'RE THE BEST, YOU SHOULD GET EVERYTHING YOU WANT IN THIS LIFE 💖. You make me precise timelines and you know how much I appreciate that, plus you provide me with Azzi videos (when she's starving us out).

#I appreciate your work 🤗#youtube watchlist #azzi fudd #paige bueckers #🔎

273 notes · View notes

someone-will-remember-us · 4 months ago

Text

A total of 51 men are on trial over their alleged attacks on Gisèle Pelicot, recruited by her then-husband Dominique Pelicot, who has admitted drugging and raping her.

The 50 men accused of rape and assault alongside Dominique Pelicot are aged between 26 and 74. They include a nurse, a journalist, a prison warden, a local councillor, a soldier, lorry drivers and farm workers. They each face up to 20 years in prison.

In total, 49 are accused of rape, one of attempted rape and one of sexual assault. Five others are also accused of possessing child abuse imagery.

Most lived in south-eastern France within a 60km radius of the village of Mazan, where the Pelicots lived. Six have previous convictions for domestic violence, two have convictions for sexual violence. A total of 23 have a criminal record for offences such as drunk-driving and possession of drugs.

Some of the accused men have admitted rape but said they did not set out with this intention, and have apologised in court to Gisèle Pelicot, 72, a grandmother and former logistics manager. Others have denied the charge of rape, saying they believed they were taking part in a game by the couple.

Gisèle Pelicot was unknowingly sedated and raped by her former husband, Dominique Pelicot, 71, who crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her food and drinks and invited men to rape her over a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020.

Pelicot has admitted the charges against him and said that for almost a decade he was in contact with men on an online chatroom titled “without her knowledge” where he would organise for strangers to come to the couple’s home

“I am a rapist, like the others in this room,” Pelicot told the court.

The case is being heard by a panel of five professional judges in the southern city of Avignon and runs until December. Gisèle Pelicot has waived her right to anonymity in order for the trial to be held in public, saying: “Shame must change sides.”

As the men appear in court over the course of the four-month trial, the Guardian will detail their profiles and testimony.

Cyrille D, 54

Trained as a butcher, Cyrille D is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in her home in September 2019. Cyrille D’s partner, the mother of his children, was on holiday at the time. He said he was sexually frustrated in his relationship and had gone on to the online chatroom to console himself.

In court, Cyrille D admitted rape, saying he had realised later that he had not gained Gisèle Pelicot’s consent, only her husband’s. He said Gisèle Pelicot was clearly unconscious but that her husband had been “insistent”. He said: “I’m sorry, I was naive, a little stupid, an idiot.” He told the court that while in prison on remand he had understood that “women do not belong to men”.

Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyer said video evidence had showed that the alleged rape by Cyrille D had put her life in danger as she had risked not being able to breathe.

Cyrille D detailed a violent childhood at the hands of his alcoholic father, who he said would wait outside school with a meat cleaver to attack him and threaten him. “My father was Hitler,” he told the court. After a brutal public beating by his father outside school, Cyrille D was placed in care as a teenager.

Lionel R, 44

A worker at the Pelicots’ local supermarket in Carpentras, Lionel R was a married father of three when he made contact with Dominique Pelicot. In court, Lionel R admitted raping Gisèle Pelicot on 2 December 2018 at her home, but he said he had not intended to commit rape.

“Since I never obtained Mrs Pelicot’s consent, I have no choice but to accept the facts,” he told the court. Turning to Gisèle Pelicot, he said: “I am sorry, I can only imagine the nightmare you’ve lived through … and I am part of this nightmare.” He said: “I never told myself: ‘I will rape that woman” but he admitted: “I’m guilty of rape.” He added that he should have left when he saw she was unconscious, and that it was cowardly of him not to have said anything.

The court heard that Dominique Pelicot had previously brought an unsuspecting Gisèle Pelicot shopping at the supermarket so that Lionel R could see if he was attracted to her.

Lionel R told the court he had been sexually abused at the age of 12 to 13 by the president of the pétanque club in his village.

Jacques C, 72

A former fire officer who had worked as a truck driver and then owned a pizzeria, Jacques C had been married for 25 years and had two children.

He told the court he denied rape. He said he had been “naive” and he thought that Gisèle Pelicot would wake up and it was a game by the couple.

Jacques C admitted touching Pelicot, but said there had been no penetration and therefore no rape.

Jacques C told the court he considered that his religious education had made him a “giving person” who did good and respected women. He said he loved women “in all their complexity”.

Jean-Pierre M, 63

A former lorry driver for an agricultural cooperative in southern France, Jean-Pierre M is not accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot. Instead, he is accused of using the same technique to drug and rape his own wife, and organising for Pelicot to rape her with him.

Described in court as a “disciple” of Pelicot, he admitted sedating his wife, with whom he had five children, and enlisting Pelicot to rape her.

The two men made contact in the online chatroom called “without her knowledge”. Pelicot is alleged to have provided sedatives to drug the man’s wife, explained the method and travelled to rape the woman himself.

Twelve rapes of Jean-Pierre’s wife are alleged to have taken place between 2015 and 2020. Jean-Pierre told the court that he admitted the charges.

Pelicot admitted raping Jean-Pierre’s wife on several occasions and said he regretted his actions. He said he had cut contact with the couple after Jean-Pierre’s wife woke up during one of the assaults while he was in her bedroom.

The court heard how Jean-Pierre’s childhood in the French countryside was marked by extreme poverty, extreme violence and he was the victim of sexual abuse within his family. “I was raised by pigs in the woods,” he had told his children.

Joan K, 26

A soldier in the French military, Joan K is the youngest man on trial. He was 22 at the time of his alleged raping of Gisèle Pelicot on two separate visits to her home in 2019 and 2020.

He told the court: “I’m a rapist because the law says I am” – but he said he had not intended to rape and “at the time I did not know what consent was”.

He said he had been invited to the couple’s home by Dominique Pelicot for an encounter and had not asked for Gisèle Pelicot’s consent, saying he learned only in prison what consent was.

He said he had found it strange that Gisèle Pelicot was snoring, and that he knew she was unconscious but he had not known that meant she had not consented.

In November 2019, Joan K was absent for the premature birth of his daughter on the night he was accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot for the first time.

Born in French Guiana, he joined his brother in Avignon when he was 16 before enlisting in the army. The court heard he had lived on the streets as a teenager and three of his brothers had died. He lost his army job when he was arrested. He was described by a psychologist as a chronic user of alcohol and cannabis, “depressive, impulsive and solitary”.

Hugues M, 39

A tiler, motorbike enthusiast and father of two, Hugues M is accused of the attempted rape of Gisèle Pelicot a few days before his then girlfriend’s birthday in October 2019. He denies the charge. He said he did not know Gisèle Pelicot was drugged and had not looked at her face, just her body.

His ex-partner Emilie O, 33, who met him online and lived with him for five years, told the court she feared she may have been drugged and sexually assaulted by him herself. “I don’t know if I was raped,” she said. “It’s terrible. I will always have doubts.”

She told the court that one night in 2019 she had woken up to find her partner attempting to assault her. She launched a police complaint, but it was dismissed for “lack of material evidence”. She told the court she had experienced “dizziness” between September 2019 and March 2020, but investigators did not detect any substances that might have affected her at the time.

Husamettin D, 43

A married father who had given up part-time work to care for his disabled son, Husamettin D is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in June 2019. He denied the charge in court saying: “I don’t accept being called a rapist, I’m not a rapist.”

The court heard that Husamettin D had made contact with Dominique Pelicot in the chatroom and had gone to the Pelicots’ home the same night, telling his own wife he was going out.

Pelicot had told him he was looking for an “Arab” man for his wife – Husamettin, born in Turkey, used the online pseudonym “Karim”.

He admitted that Gisèle Pelicot “seemed dead”, with her leg dangling oddly, but he said he had thought it was a scenario or game and that she was pretending.

He said Dominique Pelicot had said his wife was in agreement. He said he had not known she was drugged.

The court heard that Husamettin D had become addicted to cannabis from the age of 11, and had lived in children’s homes. In 2000, he was convicted for dealing drugs.

Fabien S, 39

A man with 16 previous convictions ranging from armed robbery and drug dealing to domestic violence and sexual assault of a minor, Fabien S said he admitted the charge of raping Gisèle Pelicot in August 2018. But he said he had not gone to the Pelicots’ home with the intention of raping her.

“I didn’t go there to rape her. I didn’t know I was supposed to rape her, but I recognise the facts,” he said, adding he had “not paid attention” to whether or not she had consented.

He said he wasn’t interested in a scenario where a woman was unconscious because he liked to hear women scream. He apologised to Gisèle Pelicot in court.

The court heard that Fabien S allegedly raped Gisèle Pelicot in her dining room. Asked how this was possible, Dominique Pelicot said he had put drugs in her meal and carried her unconscious to the dining room table.

The court heard that Fabien S had been sexually abused by his father from the age of two, then placed in different foster families where he faced further violence and sexual abuse, and that he was admitted to psychiatric care at the age of 16. From 18 to 28 he lived on the streets in Toulon as an alcoholic.

Mathieu D, 53

The father of two had worked as baker for 25 years before having to leave his job because of an intolerance to wheat.

He is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot with Dominique Pelicot on 3 October 2020. He admitted the facts, saying he was high on the drug MDMA at the time and thought it was a game with a married couple.

Mathieu D accepted later that Gisèle Pelicot had not been in a fit state to consent. “I can’t deny it was rape,” he said.

The court heard that Mathieu D’s stepfather had been violent. Mathieu D told investigators he was inspired by Buddhism and “the balance of karmas”.

Andy R, 37

An unemployed agricultural labourer and married father of two, Andy R has two domestic violence convictions and is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot at her home on New Year’s Eve 2018.

He said he did not intend to rape Gisèle Pelicot, telling the court: “As the husband had given me permission, in my mind she agreed to it.”

Andy R arrived at the Pelicots’ home an hour after first making contact online with Dominique Pelicot on New Year’s Eve. He said he had “nothing else to do” that night because his brothers hadn’t invited him to their New Year’s Eve party. He said he had thought it was a sexual “game” between the Pelicots.

The court heard he had been addicted to alcohol since he was 13 or 14, and was a regular user of cocaine.

Simone M, 42

A builder, former soldier and father of five, Simone M lived on the next street to the Pelicots in the village of Mazan. He is the only alleged rapist whom Gisèle Pelicot recognised when she was shown video evidence by police.

She told the court he had come into their living room once to discuss cycling with her husband. “I saw him now and then in the bakery; I would say hello. I never thought he’d come and rape me,” she said.

The former mountain infantryman made contact with Dominique Pelicot in the online chatroom before realising they lived less than 200 metres apart. Simone M lived opposite the tennis club where Dominique Pelicot played. “Things were going badly with my ex-wife, I was looking for love, an encounter to calm myself,” Simone M told the court.

Dominique Pelicot suggested Simone M first come to the house during the day “to see how beautiful my wife is”, adding: “If she asks, say you’ve come to discuss my bike.”

Simone M is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on the night of 14 November 2018. He denies rape. He said he thought Gisèle Pelicot was only pretending to be asleep and would wake up. “I’m not a rapist,” he told the court.

His ex-wife told the court he had once threatened her with an axe.

Simone M is from New Caledonia, where he grew up. As a teenager he was abused and raped by a man his parents had sent him to live with as a labourer. The court heard he had a complex about his penis size and needed constant reassurance. He had debts and periods of alcoholism.

He has a 15-month-old daughter with his current partner, who told the court she stands by him.

Thierry Po, 61

A refrigeration specialist and father of three from Bouches-du-Rhône in southern France, Thierry Po is also charged with possession of hundreds of child abuse images found on a USB stick after his arrest for the alleged rape of Gisèle Pelicot. He admits those charges but denies raping Gisèle Pelicot on 21 August 2020.

He said hadn’t seen anything abnormal about the night he went to the Pelicots’ home, believing he was meeting a couple. “I always thought Mrs Pelicot would wake up,” he said. “She wasn’t cold, she wasn’t dead, her skin was soft.”

He said he had not sought Gisèle Pelicot’s consent because he had lots of experience of encounters with couples when it was mostly the man who gave consent for the woman. He said he had had three “major” previous experiences where a husband had invited him to have sex with a wife and “she’ll be asleep, she doesn’t want to know, we’ll film it”. In one case, the woman had woken up. In two cases, he had left without seeing the women’s faces. He said he couldn’t tell if those women had been asleep or not.

He told the court: “After I leave prison, I’d like to create an association to get men like me to understand that consent is important. I’d go to swingers’ clubs and say: “Don’t forget to get consent!”

Jérôme V, 46

The former grocery store worker and father of three is one of the few accused men who admit the charges of raping Gisèle Pelicot with the knowledge that she was drugged. He told the expert psychiatrist in the case that he was aware she had not consented.

He allegedly went to the Pelicots’ home six times between March and June 2020 to rape her during the first Covid lockdown in France. A volunteer in the fire service, he lived 30 minutes’ drive away.

He told the court: “I didn’t keep going back because rape mode was my thing, but because I couldn’t control my sexuality.” He said he was at first attracted by the idea of having an inert body at his disposal and being free to act however he wanted.

He said his life was defined by sexual urges, and he was regularly unfaithful to partners because they “couldn’t meet my demands” and he tried extreme practices to break the “monotony”. He said he paid “less and less” attention to his partners.

Jérôme V said he was addicted to sex and that Pelicot took advantage of that. In court, looking over at Gisèle Pelicot, he said he was ashamed “to have done bad to someone who seems so pure”. At his home, a list of 89 names of sexual partners were found. “I needed to count my conquests,” he said.

His current partner told the court she stood by him and visited him regularly in prison.

He said he was never supported or protected by his parents. He was bullied at school and once forcibly stripped in public by other pupils at high school.

Thierry Pa, 54

A former builder who turned to alcohol when his 18-year-old son died in a road collision, Thierry Pa was an inpatient on a psychiatric ward after suffering from depression when investigators identified him as allegedly raping Gisèle Pelicot several months earlier in 2020.

He had separated from his wife a few weeks before his alleged rape of Gisèle Pelicot in July 2020 and had left his family home, saying he was unable to bear the photographs and memories of his son.

He said he had contacted Dominique Pelicot online for an encounter with a couple. He denied rape, saying: “I didn’t set out from my house saying: ‘I’m going to rape someone.’” He said: “I don’t understand how she didn’t feel anything, didn’t realise.” He said he thought Pelicot may have drugged him, and that he was manipulated and brainwashed by Pelicot.

His ex-wife told the court the alleged rape was out of character. She said she would like to get back together with him.

The court heard that Thierry Pa’s mother was an alcoholic and his father was often absent.

Adrien L, 34

Adrien L, a former building site manager from Carpentras, was convicted last year of the rapes of three former partners in a different trial and is serving a 14-year jail sentence.

He denied raping Gisèle Pelicot in March 2014. He said he had thought he was taking part in a game and did not think she was drugged.

Aged 23 at the time of the alleged rape of Gisèle Pelicot, he is one of the youngest men on trial. He was educated at private school before joining his father’s successful building business, and was described as coming from a higher-income background than many of the other men accused.

He told the court that when he was 21 he discovered after a paternity test that he was not the biological father of the three-year-old girl he was raising with his girlfriend. He said from that point onwards, “I had a hatred towards women”.

The night he was alleged to have raped Gisèle Pelicot, his new girlfriend was nine months pregnant and gave birth 10 days later. He admitted to court experts that he had mistreated his pregnant girlfriend and called her a whore.

The court heard that he was sexually abused by a cousin when he was 10.

Jean T, 52

A former roofer born on the French Indian Ocean island of Réunion, Jean T was in a nine-year relationship when he drove two-and-a-half hours from Lyon to allegedly rape Gisèle Pelicot in her bed on the night of 21 September 2018.

He had made contact with Dominique Pelicot in the chatroom, where he used the name “Bill”.

He told the court: “I am not a rapist”. He said he thought Dominique Pelicot had drugged him. “I don’t remember anything,” he said.

In court, he recalled many details of the evening, including the house, the rules of undressing in the kitchen and seeing Gisèle Pelicot on the bed. But he told the court he had no memory of the actual moment of his alleged rape of Pelicot, and recalled only getting into his car afterwards when he drove home.

Judges observed that he had not appeared drugged in seven videos, in which he was active and gave a thumbs-up sign. He was asked why, if he feared he had been drugged, he did not report this to police. He said at the time he had thought: “It was a bad encounter, forget about it.”

The court heard he had regularly sought encounters with couples for more than a decade and had paid sex workers but “it felt dirty”.

Redouan E, 55

A former anaesthesia nurse in hospital operating theatres in Morocco, Redouan E lived in Avignon, where he worked as a community nurse.

He was married for the second time and in the process of adopting a young girl from Morocco. He was disappointed that the adoption process was stopped after he was arrested for allegedly raping Gisèle Pelicot at her home on a Saturday night in June 2019.

Redouan E told the court: “I plead not guilty.” He denied rape, saying he was the “victim of a trick” and had been too “terrified” of Dominique Pelicot to say no. Confronted with video evidence of several alleged rapes of Gisèle Pelicot, he said: “I was terrified, but you can’t see it.” He said he did not leave because he feared that would ruin Pelicot’s Saturday night.

He said he had not known Gisèle Pelicot was sedated. Asked in court, how, as a trained aneasthesia nurse, he had not seen that Gisèle Pelicot was unconscious, he said he thought she was pretending to be dead “but never that she’d been drugged”, and he believed he saw her move.

Patrick A, 60

A former factory worker and video-club owner from the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Patrick A admitted the charge of raping Gisèle Pelicot but said he had taken part reluctantly because he was gay and had wanted an encounter with Dominique Pelicot, not his wife.

Patrick A met Dominique Pelicot in the online chatroom and they messaged on Skype, where Pelicot told him Gisèle Pelicot was a “prudish bitch who didn’t want threesomes” and said: “I’m looking for a pervert accomplice to abuse my wife, she takes sleeping pills and I take advantage.” Patrick A had replied: “OK.”

He told the court he had wanted so much to have a gay encounter with Dominique Pelicot that he was blinded by it and brainwashed. He said he raped Gisèle Pelicot “reluctantly” to “please” Dominique Pelicot. He questioned whether he may have been drugged.

“You are homosexual but you have committed a heterosexual rape, which you admit,” said Antoine Camus, Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyer. “In this trial we have already heard of rapes committed ‘by accident’, your specificity is to plead rape committed ‘reluctantly’.”

Patrick A apologised in court. He told the court he had known he was gay from his teenage years but sought to hide it from his homophobic parents. He married a woman, had two children and after divorcing at 43 regularly met men for sex in saunas and backrooms of sex-shops in the Avignon region, and truck-drivers in motorway laybys.

Didier S, 68

A former long-distance lorry driver and divorced father of two, Didier S said he went to Dominique Pelicot’s house “exclusively for a homosexual encounter” with him. He denied the charge of raping Gisèle Pelicot on 30 January 2019. He said he had thought she was pretending to be asleep.

In court, he said he had had no intention to rape Gisèle Pelicot and was simply following her husband’s instructions. “It’s not me you should be angry with, it’s your husband,” he told Gisèle Pelicot in court, trying to catch her eye. She turned away.

He lived a 20-minute drive away, had logged on to the chatroom at 8pm one night, and two hours later went to the Pelicots’ home.

Five years earlier he underwent bladder and prostate surgery for cancer and had begun meeting men. The court heard he was raped when he was 16.

Karim S, 40

A computer expert with two university degrees, Karim S denied raping Gisèle Pelicot on 27 June 2020. He is also charged with possessing child abuse imagery found on his computer during the investigation. He denied those charges, saying he downloaded the images “inadvertently”.

He told the court of the night he went to the Pelicots’ home: “I did not go there with the aim of committing a crime and I had absolutely no idea that Mrs Pelicot was not consenting.” Messages between him and Pelicot showed them discussing Gisèle Pelicot in crude terms, referring to her not being aware of what was going on. Karim S had been told that Gisèle Pelicot would be “asleep from alcohol and a sleeping tablet” but he said he had thought it was a game.

Dominique Pelicot, who told Karim he was a doctor, invited him back in August. Karim said he feigned food poisoning as an excuse because the June encounter had been “too bizarre for me”.

He grew up in Marseille and had moved to a picturesque village half an hour’s drive from Mazan just before the Covid lockdowns of 2020.

Vincent C, 42

Vincent C, a carpenter, was convicted of domestic violence against his ex-partner in 2021 and given a six-month suspended sentence. The court heard he had had an alcohol addiction since he was a teenager.

He is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot at her home on two occasions in October 2019 and January 2020. He denies rape. He admitted a sexual encounter but said he had had no intention of committing rape. He said he had thought Gisèle Pelicot would wake up.

He met Dominique Pelicot in the chatroom after a postcode search on the site to find people nearby. He tended to log on after his village bistro closed on a Saturday night.

“I was looking for sex,” he said, adding that he had not put much thought into it. He said he found the situation in the Pelicots’ bedroom “bizarre” but trusted the fact that he was “at a couple’s home, invited by the husband”. He said he felt no pleasure himself, but went back a second time because Dominique Pelicot had told him that he and Gisèle Pelicot had “enjoyed it”. Pelicot said Gisèle Pelicot had watched a video of his first visit and “liked it”, which for him, “closed the door on any doubt”, he said. He said he felt he had “satisfied” the Pelicots more than himself.

During his testimony, Gisèle Pelicot got up and briefly left the courtroom, appearing exasperated.

Jean-Marc L, 74

Describing himself as a former “international truck-driver between Paris and Baghdad”, the divorced grandfather is the oldest of the accused men.

He denied raping Gisèle Pelicot in May 2017. He said he had always thought that rape was “something violent … done by a madman, a brutal thing”, but that this had instead been a “sexual game”. He told the court he had only “obeyed orders” from Dominique Pelicot. He said: “She was going to wake up because it was a game.”

It was only after he left the house that he thought about whether Gisèle Pelicot had consented. He didn’t alert the police. “I should have done but it didn’t cross my mind.”

He said Dominique Pelicot, whom he had met beforehand in a supermarket car park, had told him he wanted to “punish” his wife for having had an affair in the past.

He said Pelicot asked him to come back another time “with a friend”, which he didn’t do, after mentioning it to another truck driver who said it wasn’t normal.

Jean-Marc L said he had often paid sex workers in Spain. “What truck driver hasn’t been to prostitutes?” he said in court.

Dominique D, 45

Dominique D, a lorry driver and former soldier, said he was contacted via the online chatroom in February 2015 by Dominique Pelicot, who said he was looking for a man as a “gift” for his wife “for Valentine’s Day”.

Dominique D is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six different occasions. Police found video evidence of five visits to the Pelicots’ house, but he told them of one further visit.

He denied rape, saying he had not intended to rape anyone. He told the court: “I didn’t wake up one morning and say to myself hey, today I’m going to go to a couple’s house and commit a crime.”

He said that before going to the Pelicots’ home for the first time in 2015, he had asked to see Gisèle Pelicot and was sent a video of her taken without her knowledge as she left the shower. He also briefly visited the home pretending to be an electrician and saw Gisèle Pelicot reading on the sofa. He said he felt he had enough guarantees from Dominique Pelicot, adding “I just forgot one big guarantee – Madame’s consent.”

He is the youngest of 16 children and was placed in care at the age of six months.

Mohamed R, 70

Mohamed R, a former discotheque worker from La Rochelle who in 1999 was sentenced to five years in prison for raping his 17-year-old daughter, is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in May 2019 at the holiday cottage of the Pelicots’ daughter, Caroline, on the island of Île-de-Ré in the west of France.

Mohamed R denied raping Gisèle Pelicot. He told the court: “I couldn’t imagine for a fraction of a second that Dominique Pelicot did that without his wife knowing.” He had been in contact with Dominique Pelicot via the online chatroom.

Dominique Pelicot was asked in court why he had drugged and raped Gisèle Pelicot not just at the couple’s own home but at their daughter’s holiday home, where the Pelicots often went with their grandchildren. The couple’s daughter and grandchildren were not at the cottage at the time.

Pelicot said: “There was no symbolism, it could have happened anywhere.”

Ahmed T, 54

Ahmed T, a plumber and former champion boxer married for more than 30 years with three children, is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot at the couple’s home in June 2019. He denied rape and told the court: “I’m not a rapist, but if I had wanted to rape I wouldn’t have chosen a 57-year-old woman, I would have chosen a pretty one.”

He was in contact with Dominique Pelicot on a chat room, saying that at the time he was having less sex with his wife and he “did not want a mistress” but thought “why not” have an encounter with a couple. He said Dominique Pelicot had referred to Gisèle Pelicot as “la bourgeoise”, saying she was away a lot in Paris and home at weekends. He said he had thought Gisèle Pelicot must have been shy, and that he had trusted her husband.

Ahmed T said he travelled to the couple’s home by car after his own wife had gone to bed.

Redouane A, 40

Redouane A, an unemployed, separated father of four who has convictions for domestic violence, burglary and death threats and has served time in prison, went to the Pelicots’ home twice in 2019.

He denied rape. He said he had asked Dominique Pelicot if it was normal that Gisèle Pelicot was snoring and had been told: “Yes, we like doing it like that.”

He described the Pelicots’ home as “a beautiful house in Provence” with a “well-kept garden”.

He said he grew up on a housing estate, began smoking cannabis at 10 and was the victim of sexual abuse at this age, by an old man he met in the park who took him to his van. He left school at 16.

The question was raised in court of a possible diagnosis of schizophrenia, with one psychiatrist saying he instead had a personality disorder.

Mahdi D, 36

Mahdi D, a transport worker and father of one from Avignon, is accused of going to the Pelicots’ home once in October 2018.

He denied rape. He placed the responsibility on Dominique Pelicot, who he said had presented himself online as part of a couple who wanted to meet single men.

Mahdi D said of Gisèle Pelicot: “One can’t imagine what she has been through, she has been destroyed and I have thoughts not only for that poor woman but her whole entourage and family.” He said it was “terrible” for him to find himself caught up in something like this.

Cyril B, 47

Cyril B, a single lorry driver who described himself as a daily consumer of cannabis, is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot at her home in November 2018. He was recorded by Dominique Pelicot in a video called “With Cyril from Carpentras.”

He denied rape and said he had been manipulated and was not capable of committing a rape. He said he was also a victim of the situation, as he had been duped by Dominique Pelicot, whom he had met on an online chatroom.

He told the court he had previously had encounters with couples he met via websites.

Cyprien C, 43

Cyprien C, a former lorry driver and father of one, is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in her bed in Mazan in 2017.

He denied rape. During cross-examination, he accepted a sexual encounter had taken place and said he was sorry to Gisèle Pelicot but that he could “not say more than that”. He did not say the word rape, telling the court “I can’t say that it’s rape”, arguing that Dominique Pelicot had led him to believe that Gisèle Pelicot was playing a role in a game and “would pretend to be asleep”.

The court heard he grew up in children’s homes and foster families and later suffered from alcohol addiction as an adult.

#radblr #radfem #radical feminist #gender critical #radical feminism #terfblr #gisele pelicot

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sevs-corner · 3 months ago

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Gary “Roach” Sanderson if he was in the CoD: MW Series (2019-2023)

LOOK-- I really like Roach (i watched the remastered mw2 2020 recently) and I wish he comes back later on in the current MW series. So for now (and my coping-ness) let’s imagine his dynamic with the gang! (These are all HCs with some in between dialogue and plot, and I'll be using some major plot points from the campaign. A lil' heads up, its been awhile since i've watched the gameplay so the timeline might be a bit confusing lol) Masterlist here ! And a previous HC of Roach here !

Roach gets recruited around the same time Gaz does, after the mission in London when Gaz’s team was trying to stop a cargo right in the middle of the city.

Roach is one of the many officers that gets called in for back-up

And then finds himself working in tandem with Gaz, covering each other’s backs as they try and secure the hostages

Price shows up as per usual and saves the two from under the rubble

Afterwards, with the two surprisingly not broken, they handle the aftermath and comes in the scene where Price recruits Gaz after he admits they had a great deal of info on the bust but was unable to act on it

Roach agrees, seeing the movements and reports that Gaz makes to their boss in the SAS, and feels mutual of how restricted they are right now

Seeing their conviction, Price gives a call to Kate and adds an additional person to the team-- Roach.

Then they all go on all sorts of missions together, Roach actually being the more grounded but chaotic of the three

So, lets say he adapts the shenanigans we do as players when we play as his POV in game

Randomly, he is picking up all sorts of guns from the ground, constantly swapping and taking too long to loot enemy bodies (that sometimes Gaz does it for him so they could move on quicker)

Price on the other hand just lets him does his thing-- until he rushes forward like a maniac and go guns blazing in the Embassy

But, he also gets scolded by plugging up comms from humming-singing, and--

what the fuck- PUT THE BANJO DOWN--

He's the type of person to be like that one guy who plays jazz music on his comms in a gun fight (yeah i made a gundam thunderbolt reference mhmm)

You'd think he'd go deaf but no, he takes peace in the chaos

Reveling and thriving in it actually, like he’s too used to the scene (he is but he would rather work in the moment then act in worry and in constant stress)

Roach was almost tempted to go with Alex and Farah for their cause but thinks about how he’s a much better fit with the 141 guys, and how he could see himself working in the squad long term

He eventually meets Johnny and Simon on the mission to get Hassan

Yet that goes to high and hell when he was a part of the A squad, barely clear of any wounds- luckily, nothing fatal

But the situation he found himself made him more energized with serotonin, easily making quick work of the combatants in his vicinity— doing his best to cover for his comrades who were still recovering

He knows Soap and Ghost would be here immediately but he tries to convince to focus on the mission, to let him handle it as he hunkers down for a moment to reload

They both deny, checking out first the crash site before checking out Hassan, and coming up empty

Until Roach finds the metal shipping carrier, calling over Soap, then Ghost and showing the find of that disdained American rocket

Soap, is obviously confused, and doesn't quite piece it together until Kate discusses it with him

As the others got busy with their personal mission

Of course, we're having Roach join the Ghost-Soap duo in Las Almas

Because of needing more man power in capturing Hassan of course

He hops into the mission somewhere in the middle, in the mission in getting Hassan with the assist of Graves and his shadows

Roach definitely hissed at this man on instinct and had to be held back by the armpit by Ghost

Even though he had a bad feeling swirling in his stomach, he kept it in and somehow ended up on the same squad as Graves going into the Oil Rig mission

Anddddddddddddddd you can guess how it went with him-- horribly

Personally, I can see how Graves to be this straight-laced guy when it comes to missions in a way that, if someone diverts from the mission or does something that may jeopardize it even a little-- he is going to flip

So that's what Roach exploited, the comms in his ears blowing up every time he goes for a risky kill or -instead of going for a stealth kill- he's going in guns blazing with a very, very exhausted Graves behind him

But the thing about Roach, no matter how reckless he is, he gets the job done

Graves wanted to oh so leave him in the Oil Rig before he and Soap exploded it, but sadly Ghost had told him and Alejandro to get the hell outta there before he could (such a damn shame)

But at least he gets to capture him in the streets of Las Almas

He got quite unlucky actually, about to meet Soap and Ghost but one wrong move got him captured

Ghost and Soap obviously becomes worried, and they're (with Rudy) are more determined than ever

And yep, this is the moment where Roach just sees red

Wreacking absolute havoc in his way with rage filling his veins

If there was anything that was going to tick Roach off, it would be his own allies hurting

Loyalty, whether in the military or not, is special

And if you use him and his allies for your own bitter ends and means?

Oh, you are in a world full of hurt

So much so, that you wished he spoke the merciful words, "pick and God and pray" by your death bed

He doesn't, not for Graves and definitely not for the man he called the General- Shepherd

He swears that Shepherd counted his lucky stars that night when they couldn't locate him after "getting rid of Graves and his lackeys for good"

But it doesn't end there- their job never does

This time, he accompanies Price and Soap into infiltrating the building for Hassan, leaving Overwatch to Ghost and the other team climbing the tower led by Gaz

He is back to, not even exploding the glass and breaking it, but pushing himself off the side of the building and cannon-balling straight through (with, suprise surprise, little to no injuries sustained)

He's a miracle ball of sunshine really

Soap then follows through and Price just... he could care less at the moment with Hassan (who is once again near their grasps)

Roach wanted to stay and help Price (who didn't get shot fatally but was still hurt from the blow) but his captain said to go

Thus, he went--

Doing his best to cover Soap as they finally steal the detonator from him but eventually run out of guns, and eventually--

Get

Shot.

Soap has to decide now- whether to save his comrade and friend or to stop the fucking missile from destroying the white house

Roach knew the cogs that was turning behind Soap's eyes, so he grabs his cheek and head butts him

Telling Soap to get his priority straight as he forces himself back up to distract Hassan

Soap tries to decode and hack the missile as soon as possible when the coast was clear

Luckily, he had just a couple of seconds to spare

Unluckily so, he saw Roach's pliant body in Hassan's hands- being dragged right in front of him

Soap is enraged, wrestling and trying to get the upperhand on armed Hassan

Luckily, Ghost always has his back-- shot on point, direct, and done in one click

With a heavy breath, he gives his thanks to Ghost before calling an evac- checking Roach's condition

Hands are cold to the touch but his artery pulse--

Faint!

By the time MW3 rolls around, Roach is up and at 'em!

Refreshed and recovered with the proper treatment and therapy

Some grazes to the nerves on his shoulder but its still all good and working--

"Ow!"

Yeah, he can't overexert it like before

Which makes the Tf 141 relieved...for now

A/N: Cont for the MW3 part soon! I just wanna freshen up with the plot on Makarov 'cause it was a bit confusing to follow so yeah lol

#unedited #crackfic #cod mw2 #cod x reader #roach x reader #cod roach #gary roach sanderson #ghost x roach #soap x roach #price x roach #gaz x roach #graves x roach #cod gary sanderson #gary roach sanderson x reader

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simply-ivanka · 7 months ago

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A Minnesotan Sizes Up Tim Walz

During his tenure, student achievement has slipped, crime has surged, and state residents have fled.

By Scott W. Johnson - Wall Street Journal

St. Paul, Minn.

Tim Walz has such a bad record as Minnesota’s governor that I was astonished when he landed on Vice President Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential shortlist. As Minnesota’s Center of the American Experiment has documented, under Mr. Walz Minnesota has become a high-crime state. Student achievement has tumbled as spending on schools has skyrocketed. Per capita gross domestic product has fallen below the national average. Minnesotans have joined residents of New York, California and Illinois in fleeing their home state.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—also on Ms. Harris’s shortlist—made sense to me. Pennsylvania is a key state. Mr. Shapiro seems to be a man of substance and would give liberal Jews a reason to vote for Ms. Harris without a guilty conscience. As a Jewish supporter of Israel, I worried that Mr. Shapiro would give the animus throbbing in the heart of the Democratic Party cover. Indeed, that animus drove a nasty intraparty campaign against him.

But Tim Walz? I’m a conservative Republican. I don’t completely understand Democrats’ ways. As an observer of Minnesota politics, however, I understand how Mr. Walz became governor. Having served six terms in Congress from a rural district, he challenged the endorsed DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) candidate—a liberal metro-area state senator, Erin Murphy—in the 2018 DFL primary. Ms. Murphy was also challenged by another metro-area liberal, Lori Swanson, then state attorney general. With Ms. Murphy and Ms. Swanson dividing the liberal urban vote, Mr. Walz and his far-left running mate, former state Rep. Peggy Flanagan, won the primary with 41%.

On taking office in 2019, Gov. Walz was restrained by a one-seat Republican majority in the state Senate—until Covid hit in the spring of 2020. He declared a state of emergency on March 25, 2020, and ruled by decree for 15 months. He proclaimed the emergency on the basis of an allegedly sophisticated Minnesota Model projection of the virus’s course in the state. In fact, the projection reflected a weekend’s work by graduate students at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Relying on their research, Mr. Walz presented a scenario in which an estimated 74,000 Minnesotans would perish from the virus. The following week the Star Tribune reported that with the lockdown Mr. Walz ordered, 50,000 would die. Maybe it would have been preferable to address the virus through democratic means.

Having destroyed jobs and impeded life routines, including family get-togethers and church attendance, Mr. Walz finally let his one-man rule lapse on July 1, 2021. When the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center stopped counting in March 2023, the deaths of 14,870 Minnesotans were attributed to the virus. (In 2020 I successfully sued the administration for excluding me from Health Department press briefings on Covid.)

During the state of emergency, protests broke out in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020 following the death of George Floyd. That Thursday, rioters burned Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police station to the ground. Mr. Walz didn’t deploy the National Guard until the weekend. Riots, arson and looting throughout the Twin Cities caused about $500 million in damage.

Minnesota leads the nation in Covid fraud. Under the auspices of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, its founder, Aimee Bock, allegedly recruited mostly young Somali men to seek reimbursement for millions of meals supposedly served to poor students and families. According to indictments handed up by a grand jury to U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, Ms. Bock and others allegedly defrauded the state and federal government of $250 million. Ms. Bock has pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges.

Among the 70 defendants charged to date, 18 have pleaded guilty. In April the first of the cases to go to trial had seven defendants; five were convicted. The remaining cases have yet to be tried. In all, the Minnesota Department of Education oversaw the payout of $250 million to reimburse fictitious meals. The nature and scale of the fraud are staggering. Mr. Walz tried to blame state district court judge John Guthmann, who in April 2021 handled a case regarding the department’s processing of applications for reimbursements. According to Mr. Walz, Judge Guthmann ordered the state to continue payouts to the alleged perpetrators of the fraud even after the state Education Department discovered it.

In September 2022, Judge Guthmann authorized a news release titled “Correcting media reports and statements by Gov. Tim Walz concerning orders issued by the court.” The release concluded: “As the public court record and Judge Guthmann’s orders make plain, Judge Guthmann never issued an order requiring the MN Department of Education to resume food reimbursement payments to FOF. The Department of Education voluntarily resumed payments and informed the court that FOF resolved the ‘serious deficiencies’ that prompted it to suspend payments temporarily. All of the MN Department of Education food reimbursement payments to FOF were made voluntarily, without any court order.”

In November 2022 Mr. Walz was elected to a second term, and the DFL won majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. In the preceding two years the state had accumulated an $18 billion budget surplus. With the DFL in full control, Mr. Walz and the Legislature have spent the $18 billion surplus on infrastructure, education and other programs that will burden the state for years. They have also raised taxes.

Mr. Walz and his DFL colleagues have backed measures establishing Minnesota as a mecca for abortion and a “trans refuge.” The legislation prohibits enforcing out-of-state subpoenas, arrest warrants and extradition requests for people from other states who seek treatment that is legal in Minnesota. It also bars complying with court orders issued in other states to remove children from their parents’ custody for authorizing hormone treatment or surgery to alter sex characteristics.

Like so many Democrats who have kept up with the demands of the progressive agenda, Mr. Walz has “grown” in office. In his second term, he has been the most left-wing Minnesota governor since the socialist Floyd B. Olson (1931-36). I doubt that Mr. Walz could be elected to Congress in his old district, which is now represented by a Republican. The idea that he can appeal to voters who don’t already support Ms. Harris seems far-fetched.

Mr. Johnson is a retired Minneapolis attorney and contributor to the site Power Line.

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lokideservesahug · 11 months ago

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For How Long!?! -Extras

Extra 1: Y/N Y/L/N - Timeline

-°•°•°•°•--•°•°•°•°--°•°•°•°•--•°•°•°•°-

Pairing: Logan Sargeant x fem!driver!Reader. Oscar Piastri x reader (platonic), Arthur Leclerc x reader (platonic), Mick Schumacher x reader (platonic)...

Warnings: None that I can see.

Notes: This isn't a SMAU (sorry). Also this could be added to/altered. And I hope to put out the next chapter pretty soon...

Also!!! I got way too far into writing this before finding out that a driver can only win F2 once (or rather after they win it, they can't return)....so for my own sanity, that rule doesn't exist or if it does then it came into place after Y/N won 5 championships😅

-°•°•°•°•--•°•°•°•°--°•°•°•°•--•°•°•°•°-

2012- Age 11

Y/N Signed with Red Bull Racing for them to sponsor her in her karting career. This was a part of the Red Bull Recruiting Scheme (RBRS).

2017- Age 16

Y/N becomes the first woman to race in The F3 European Championship. She goes on to come second in the drivers championship.

2018- Age 17

Y/N meets F3 rookie Oscar Piastri and the two become friends (they still are to this day). She wins the F3 championship and recieves an offer to move up the ranks and into Formula 2. She runs into Logan Sargeant, he asks her out and the two start dating yet don't tell a soul.

2019- Age 18

Y/L/N Moves Up to Formula 2 into the newly established Red Bull Racing Formula 2 Team. The RBRS terminates any connection with lower leagues of racing but establishes a Formula 2 team. Y/L/N is the first woman to ever enter F2. She also signs as Red Bull's F1 reserve driver. Y/N even stood in for (and came 3rd in) a race after Pierre Gasly became extremely ill. This makes her the first woman to ever get on the podium in an F1 race and also one of the youngest drivers to ever start a race.

Y/N meets driver Mick Schumacher and the two become good friends despite their different teams. Y/N went on to come second in the championship, narrowly missing Nyck de Vries for points. She is also awarded the Anthoine Hubert award.

2020- Age 19

Y/N once again, comes runner up in the Formula 2 championship by loosing to her good friend Mick Schumacher by a few points.

Red Bull Racing renew a contract for the next 2 years to be a team in Formula 2 and they sign Y/N's new teammate, Liam Lawson. Y/N continues to race for them and for the third year in a row, she comes second in the Formula 2 championship due to a technically issue with the car causing her to DNF (huge scandal in the F2 world). The media also sees Y/L/N "meeting" rookie Logan Sargeant and the pair become extremely close...

2021- Age 20

2022- Age 21

Liam Lawson swaps teams to race for Carlin with Logan Sargeant. Y/L/N once again comes second in the F2 championship. People are confused by her lack of wins or lack of moving to other motorsports categories (especially with her F1 podium in the past). Y/L/N is unable to win due to the amount of races and points missed by driving in F1 (as a reserve driver). She does however score many more points and podiums in F1.

2023- Age 22

In mid December, Y/N receives a call from Aston Martin F1 executives. They invite her to have a meeting about possibly racing for them that year. Y/N goes to the meeting and leaves having signed for Aston Martin Aramco F1 team for the 2024 season. This is because Lance Stroll dropped out for undisclosed "personal reasons"

Y/N meets Arthur Leclerc. The pair become very good friends - this is aided by Logan Sargeant and Oscar Piastri's Formula 1 debuts and subsequent exits from the F2 scene. Y/N wins the F2 championship finally, making history for women in motorsport. Not long after, Red Bull announces the retirement of their RBRS programme and they pull out of junior motorsports to "focus on the current success of [their] Formula 1 team"

2024- Age 22 (not yet 23)

It is publicly announced that Y/N Y/L/N is replacing Lance Stroll to race at Aston Martin for the 2024 season...

-°•°•°•°•--•°•°•°•°--°•°•°•°•--•°•°•°•°-

Thank you for reading. As always likes, reposts and especially feedback is greatly appreciated.

Please don't copy, translate or steal my works without permission.

Taglist: (I didn't know if I should do this or not because it's not a chapter but oh well)

@nikfigueiredo

@mysoulispainted

@leclercings

@hiireadstuff

@a-beaverhausen

@d3kstar

@nichmeddar

@lozzamez3

@stinkyjax

@littlesatanicassholebitch

@insanedeathwish

#f1 #formula 1 #f1 x reader #logan sargeant #f1 fanfic #logan sargent x reader #logan sargeant x you #logan sargeant fic #f1 x you #logan sargeant x reader #ldah's writing

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justinspoliticalcorner · 19 days ago

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Walter Einenkel at Daily Kos:

President Donald Trump held a press conference on Thursday to address the late-night crash between a commercial airplane and an Army Black Hawk helicopter. Unsurprisingly, Trump used the tragedy to play a blame game that included everything from President Barack Obama and Pete Buttigieg, to the helicopter pilot and “dwarfism.” After telling reporters that there will be an investigation, Trump launched into a—frequently contradictory—litany of reasons that he and his new, unqualified Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy would not take any responsibility. “The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems,” Trump claimed, before generating an incorrect retelling of the Federal Aviation Administration’s hiring policies.

“Obama-Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody's ever seen because this was the lowest level,” he blathered. Trump also mentioned a mythical “Obama policy” that he claims to have changed at least four times. “Biden came in, and he changed it,” Trump added as a reason why the FAA is no longer up to his standards. Trump went on to blame the crash on the 2020 election results, which he refuses to accept to this day. [...] “The FAA's website states they include hearing vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism,” he said. But the FAA's inclusion of disabled people has actually been an active policy since 2013. Trump didn’t just work under that policy during his first term, but he even launched his own FAA disability outreach initiative in 2019.

Donald Trump’s presser today on the Potomac River mid-flight collision reveals why many people hate him: turning an press conference on the tragedy into his own grievancefest, such as baselessly blaming DEI policies for last night’s plane crash and past Democratic predecessors.

See Also:

AP: Trump consoles crash victims then dives into politics with attack on diversity initiatives

HuffPost: Donald Trump Goes On Rant About DEI In Response To DC Plane Crash

The Guardian: Trump baselessly blames DEI and Democrats for Washington DC plane crash

NCRM: Trump’s Claim Diversity and Democrats ‘Could Have’ Caused Deadly Collision Draws Backlash

#Potomac River Midair Collision #Donald Trump #Pete Hegseth #Sean Duffy #DEI #FAA #Aviation #PSA Airlines Flight 5342 #Plane Crashes

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eldesperadont · 1 year ago

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@ AEW GIRLIES (gn) who are interested in NJPW lore

with All In coming up, I need fans that only know Kota as Kennys insane boyfriend and Jay as the silly Bullet Club bastard to know about their history with each other (and Kenny/Hangman) which spans 5 years at this point, even more if you count in Jays time as a trainee in njpw (2015/16), so he like.. watched and learned from them all – anyways lets go with the rambling recap

Starting with Jays first title win and how it came to that: early 2018, Kenny was in the midst of a power struggle in Bullet Club, his relationship with Cody was getting more strenuous by the day and the non Elite BC members were getting tired of their BS.

Kenny, trying to legitimise his position as a leader, thought recruiting new promising talent to his side would help, so he offered a young Switchblade Jay White “the opportunity of a lifetime”.

Jay accepted, only to attack him right after, and with that nothing could stop the threads holding Kennys BC together from rapidly unravelling.

Kenny would lose his US Heavyweight Championship to White soon after, and in the aftermath of the match even more. Hangman, finally taking a step out of his friend's shadow, got all up in Jays space, snatched the belt and obviously implied a challenge, but Kenny wouldnt have any of that. He pushed Adam aside and gave Jay his price back. (to the surprise of the crowd who expected Kenny to be more bitter apparently lol)

Enter Cody. Opportunistic and sinister as he was at the time he immediately stoked the flames, snapping at Kenny why he wouldnt let Hangman have that moment.

They seem to talk it out but whoops, Cody attacks Kenny after all, Adam helping him.

They are about to lay him out as Ibushi runs to Kennys aid, finally giving us the reunion people have been waiting for years.

In the following months a lot happens, Adam gets his match with Jay (and is read to filth by him - it’s essential to watch that promo, here) but doesnt succeed, the Golden Lovers and Young Bucks have an emotional feud, Cody continues being a menace with Hangman at his side, Kenny finally wins the IWGP Heavyweight belt, the Golden Elite was formed, Cody is a sad lil bitch now, they were all kinda friends again, oh and Bullet Club split fr*.

[*On one side you had Kenny and his friends, on the other BC originals Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga plus his younger brothers and technically their dad? Things were kinda messy but thats technically the BC that stayed in Japan and made Jay White their leader. The last real appearance of the Elite as BC was at the inaugural All In, their indie PPV.]

Alright end of 2018/beginning of 2019 - Kenny loses his IWGP belt at Wrestle Kingdom (njpws wrestlemania) and quietly leaves NJPW with the Bucks, Cody and Hangman, starting AEW (things behind the scenes didnt work out as expected and nooj didn’t wanna cooperate with them at first)

So yeah. Ibushi. He was all alone again, but in the summer of 2019 finally manages what he was so close to in the previous year: winning the G1 tournament.

He faced Jay White in the finals, who at that point firmly held Kennys position as Bullet Club leader and is the top gaijin of the company.

Both him and Ibushi were together with Kazuchika Okada and Tetsuya Naito the top of NJPW. And all four would be involved in the main events of the following Wrestle Kingdom. Jay and Okada as titleholders, Naito and Ibushi as challengers.

Well neither Jay or Kota came out victorious on the first WK night, but the following day, in a match for third place, Jay defeated Ibushi, making the latter the biggest loser of the event,,

Covid caused quite a mess in the following months - their next singles meeting wouldn't be till late 2020, during that years G1, where Jay gets another win over the Golden Star

but is unable to reach the finals, in contrast to Ibushi, who wins the whole tournament for a second time.

Jay doesn't wait and immediately brings up Kotas loss to him, demanding a match for the WK contract he's just won.

Alright bada bing bada boom Ibushi-

LOSES??

Yeah to the shock of everyone Jay actually managed to put himself in the main event for the following WK, thinking he'll face double champ Naito to dethrone him .. but Naito still wanted to face the G1 winner so Kota got his title shot regardless lol

so yeah we got Ibushi vs Naito on night one, and whoever wins that on day two against Jay

In complete contrast to the previous WK Ibushi would not only be victorious on the first night, but also finally beat Jay for good, becoming the undisputed double champ, and God. (their words not mine)

Which absolutely broke White, giving us a glimpse at whats really going on in the "Switchblade". He's so obsessed with success, finally wanting HIS moment, his era, and despite everything he's sacrificed it doesn't seem to happen..

(pls watch the whole promo, its an insane performance)

He'd show up for one last "contractually obligated" match, battered and bruised, taking the pin in a multiman tag match between Bullet Club and Chaos, before leaving everyone in the dark for month about whats next for him.

He'd stick with NJPW for two more years, returning even more unhinged than he already was.

Kota would go on with his reign as double champ, till NJPW unified the titles to create the IWGP World Championship (a highly unpopular move with the fans), which he's the inaugural champion for.

Jay would try his best in the New Japan Cup in hopes of getting another shot at Ibushi, but fall short in the quarterfinals - new focus new goal, he goes for the NEVER Openweight title, and becomes the first ever NJPW "Quadruple Crown" champ, having already held the IWGP US, Heavyweight and Intercontinental Championship at that point.

Ibushi, now with the IWGP World Championship, has his first proper defense with the new singles belt .. and loses to 2021 NJ Cup winner Will Ospreay, cutting his reign shorter than anyone expected.

His bad luck doesnt end there tho, despite making it to the G1 finals for the fourth time in a row, he breaks his arm in said match and is unable to continue. He'll not appear in a NJPW ring again. Mistreatment by staff which caused serious trouble in his private life has him decide against re-signing with the company.

Jay in the meantime would shake things up overseas, defending his NEVER title, debut in IMPACT, be on weird terms with the Elite, lose the NEVER title, debut in AEW, oh and not return to Japan. For a full year, missing out on key events, which had even his BC mates start asking questions.

After some rearranging within the club (kicking out old and recruiting new members) he’d finally return to Japan in the summer of 2022, swiftly dethroning IWGP World champ Okada, Jays last title reign in NJPW (youve might seen his first defence, at Forbidden door against Hangman, Cole and Okada).

He’d hold the title till early 2023 and in good old switchblade fashion be this 👌 close to realising his errors, only to blame everyone else and lose his mind over it, getting involved in a “loser leaves Japan” match against Hikuleo (who had turned his back on Jay) and afterwards, cause that somehow wasnt enough, a “loser leaves NJPW” match against Eddie Kingston. And thats how we got Jay White in AEW, mf is in exile and acts like nothing ever happened lmao

Ibushi, whos last match had been in October 2021, would finally return to the ring in March 2023, at Josh Barnetts 9th Bloodsport event, and make his AEW debut at Blood and Guts, reuniting with Kenny, the Bucks and Hangman as the Golden Elite :)

So yeah both Kota and Jay had quite different paths (that crossed a lot) towards AEW, and as someone who's been watching them for so long now I'm absolutely giddy to see them face one another again - if youd have told me a year ago that I'd get to see Kota and Jay in the same ring again, cause of KENNY of all things, I'd have imploded on the spot (positive)

📷 picture credit: NJPW World, one pic from Jays Instagram, one impact thumbnail and one aew thumbnail

‼️ feel free to ask about anything / correct me on info or spelling mistakes, english is not my mother tongue and im disabled so sometimes i mess things up

#hi i have a lot of feelings about seeing them at all in #jay white #kota ibushi #kenny omega #adam page #aew all in #aew #njpw #bullet club #wrestling thoughts tm

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darkmaga-returns · 1 day ago

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Ten years? Twenty years? Is Pocahontas with her net worth of 20 million from a 200,000 a year salary emblematic of the majority of House and Senate Congress critters and POTUS Administrations?

Hopefully, taxes and spending (and prices) will go down to close to pre-scamdemic levels - by around 15% or so - once the corruptions is exposed and removed, but somehow, all the money sent to fund drag queens shoving their junk in the faces of 5 year olds, the payments to grom recruits to DEI and all the taxes spent on sponsoring men into women’s locker rooms will cease - along with the climate freak shows that falsify the historical record.

Let’s start with the Federal spending on the C19 scamdemic.

From Brave AI:

“The CARES Act, signed into law on March 27, 2020, was a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill aimed at providing emergency assistance and health care response for individuals, families, and businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The CARES Act represented about 45% of all federal government expenditures in 2019, with the federal government spending $4.45 trillion that year.”

Let’s compare that to the “cases” diagnosed using the useless and inappropriate RT-PCR “test” that had no “virus” to benchmark against, and no “proof” of an inappropriate cycle threshold to “test” for “infection”.

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grits-galraisedinthesouth · 10 months ago

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Show me your friends & I will tell you who you are: "Chrissy Teigen admits she would eat Human Flesh & she's shocked to be in the minority."

The next time MEgain Markle complains about suicidal ideation or "shows up" to speak with grieving parents about cyberbullying & mental health, please remind her of her FRIENDS.

The irony of MEgain: a predator, a bully, and a professional VICTIM who is rebranding as a mental health/digital justice "activist" inviting a disgraced celebrity predator and cyberbully to promote her "brand" is not lost on anyone.

Activist John Stephens was recruited by NOprah before the wedding to shut down media personalities who exposed Markle's red flags. After the wedding, BULLY Teigen on Twitter: "although I've never met Meghan, I'm very protective of her."

youtube

In 2019 or 2020, Toronto Papers revealed that MEgain was friends with the owners of a popular LA cannibal club restaurant. Holiday something??

Celebrities publicly promote eating placenta, why wouldn't they consume human flesh. There is nothing new under the sun. Regardless of Chrissy's behavior, she and hubby are untouchable.

youtube

Nigeria

Police arrested 11 people and closed a restaurant after two human heads wrapped in cellophane were discovered at a hotel restaurant that had been serving human flesh.

A tip-off led police to the macabre discovery in Anambra, Nigeria, with 11 people being arrested and AK-47 guns and other weapons being seized.

Human flesh was apparently being sold as an expensive treat at the restaurant, with authorities saying that roasted human head was even on the menu.

"I went to the hotel early this year, after eating, I was told that a lump of meat was being sold at N700, I was surprised," a pastor who had visited the eatery said.

"So I did not know it was human meat that I ate at such expensive price.

"What is this country turning into? Can you imagine people selling human flesh as meat," he added. "Seriously I’m beginning to fear people in this part of the world. "

Another local added to the Osun Defender newspaper: "I always noticed funny movements in and out of the hotel; dirty people with dirty characters always come into the hotel.

"So, I was not surprised when the police made this discovery in the early hours of yesterday."

The tabloid reported that two army caps, 40 rounds of live ammunition and 'so many cell phones' were also discovered by authorities.

youtube

#netflix #megflix #megxit #markled #meghan markle is a bully #waaagh #spare us #birds of a feather #cooking #cookbooks #cannibals #hollyweird #Obama #cooking show #cannibal club #los angeles #meghan markle is a hypocrite #meghan markle is a liar #predators

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reds-skull · 10 months ago

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Post script on BLOOD||HUNGER

OOOkay, like I said in the ask I got earlier, this post is gonna be LONG. I’ll be covering the poems at the start (and sometimes end) of each chapter, the source of inspiration for them, the timeline of the fic compared to canon, deleted scenes and maybe most importantly the true identity of the Hunter.

I’d like to say before I start rambling that I appreciate each and every one of you that commented, liked and gave kudos! It really means a lot to me, that you’re here reading my silly little stories haha.

I’m gonna start with the beginning - how I started thinking about the main plot of BLOOD||HUNGER.

So, I kept thinking about the Alone mission in mw2 (as we all do), but thinking about “what if Soap was a civilian in Las Almas when it happened?”

(This is slightly inspired by this fic by TRaena, which I read months earlier and kept thinking about its setup because it was so damn good. I highly suggest reading it!)

So originally, I imagined a whole plot where Soap is a football player, having a vacation in Las Almas when Graves suddenly attacks. Ghost is in the 141 like in canon, but he’s the one that gets shot in the shoulder. The two of them meet, and because Ghost is injured, and Soap is stranded alone in a foreign country, they decide to fight together to get out.

In that original plot, Soap continues sticking by Ghost throughout the campaign, creating distractions for Rudy and Ghost while they rescue the vaqueros, and getting kidnapped by Hassan where he gets dangled over a window in Chicago and Ghost saves him. As you can tell I thought about that version quite a bit, but I made one change that moved it in the direction of the actual story I ended up writing.

What if Soap was dishonorably discharged instead?

That trait changed his entire character, from a guy that got dropped into a war where he has no experience fighting, to someone that is bitterly familiar with it, yet he was exiled from participating. And yet it followed him.

Ghost’s character is actually inspired by who I originally thought he was, when I first saw the mw2 campaign.

See, I first watched my friend play it, and he’s been playing cod since the original mw. He built Ghost up for my like he’s this op guy (which he is), and when he said that he’s been doing guerilla warfare for years in Alone, I thought to myself ‘was this guy just running around fighting with scarp, when the British Military just… decide to pick him up and make him a soldier since he was so good at it??’

I didn’t know about any previous campaigns, and obviously not about ‘09 Ghost’s backstory. Straight up thought he was just some weirdo the SAS recruited because they went ‘why the hell not’.

Now, let’s get to the timeline differences between B||H and canon.

So, like mentioned in chapter 5, the reason Soap got dishonorably discharged was because he killed Makarov on the helo when they were exfiling with him, as seen in a mission on mw3. Soap shot him, by the way, because Price and Ghost weren’t on that mission. He didn’t respect his COs enough to not succumb to his gut reactions, so he ignored them. Because mw3 takes place in 2023 (if I remember correctly, since mw2 took place in 2022), that happened in 2019, and I specifically put it before the formation of the 141. When Soap and Gaz meet for the first time, as Ghost reveals his true identity, Soap mentions he didn’t know Gaz was in the 141, and that was the reason.

Price did want Soap on the 141, even with his track of insubordination. It was another reason he felt bad about his discharge.

I put Ghost’s capture by Roba and torture in 2009. He managed to run away and kill Roba in 2010. B||H takes place one year after Soap killed Makarov, meaning it’s 2020, so Ghost has been a mercenary for about a decade (as is mentioned in one line).

Ghost tried initially, like I wrote, to avoid fighting. He didn’t want to return to the military. After discovering his family was killed, however, he realized he has nothing. And so, he became a merc.

Which brings us to the last difference between canon and the fic (and the biggest one) - the Hunter. And to explain the Hunter, I have to first talk about the poems.

I’ll say it straight up, I have no clue what made me come up with the idea of the poems. One day, right before I was going to sleep, I shot up in bed and wrote down one poem. I put my phone down and instantly fell asleep. No idea what was rattling in my brain that night, but in the days afterwards I wrote down a few more poems, establishing the story of the Blind Man and the Beast.

Those poems I wrote in my notes app weren’t written in the same format as the ones in the fic, instead they are more… modern. I didn’t like that, I wanted them to emulate the format of a classic fairy tale or folk tale, but I didn’t really know how to write that. So I started doing research, and I decided to focus specifically on Medieval English poetry.

That is where I found the Exeter Book. And that find shaped the entirety of the fic.

Small history lesson on the Exeter, it is a codex of Middle English poems and riddles from the 10th century. Most of the poems are older than that, but the first (sometimes only) appearance of them written in text was in the 10th century.

The first poem I found a translation for and read was “The Wanderer”. The name just jumped out for me, so I chose it first.

The Wanderer is a poem that is basically a monologue of an exiled knight. His lord and companions have died in a past battle, and he now roams the land, with no goal, pondering the nature of men and war. He starts the poem as a melancholic, frankly depressed man, with pessimistic views on the world, and by the end he is referred to as the wise man, learning the values a man must keep close to his heart in order to be a good man.

Soap, as he is a sort of exiled fighter, fitted right in with that poem. Honestly, I was shocked at how much it fit. And so, he is based on that poem, the first word in the fic “often”, is the first word of “The Wanderer”.

Often, in The Wanderer, means “always”, according to the translation I was going off of. The first line of The Wanderer is “Often the solitary one”. In truth, The Wanderer is always the solitary one. The first line of the first chapter (not in the poem), is “Often was Soap told, “stop trying to be the hero, MacTavish.””. Often here, also meant to be “always”. The first line of the first poem, “Often were the stars, the only witness to me”, is in the same vein.

After reading a few poems, I moved on to the riddles. A lot of them are quite odd, some having innuendos on purpose, and some having such a weird answer I honestly have no idea how anyone found the actual solution. One riddle jumped out for me, though. It’s one I refer to as “the sword riddle”, as the answer is sword. Or at least, so it seems so, at first.

See, this riddle has possibly a different solution, but it is unfinished in the Exeter, as some pages seemed to be missing. The sword riddle starts out as follows: “I’m a wonderful thing shaped for fighting/beautifully dressed, dear to my master.” (sidenote: many riddles were in first person). The first half of the riddle continues similarly, as is a sword was explaining its victories in battle, and how it protracted its master. Except, the poem suddenly shifts, when the sword says:“I have often hurt another/at the hands of his friend. I am far and wide hated, /accursed among weapons.” as the riddle progresses, it becomes clear that this is not a sword talking, but a knight.

This riddle was the basis for Ghost, his struggles with his failure as a Lieutenant, and the resulting dehumanization he did to himself to distance himself from those emotions, as Ghost. The first lines of his introduction chapter, chapter 2, are inspired directly from the sword riddle: “It was an extraordinary thing - shaped for fighting, a strong, solid body, adorned with black…”

You can actually at some chapters find my direct inspiration for that chapter’s poem/s, if you look at the names. Every chapter name in B||H is taken from a poem or riddle in the Exeter, and I’ll list them here:

1 - Wræclast (Path of Exile): The Wanderer, line 6a.

2 - The Death-way: The Seafarer, one specific possible interpretation of a word in line 63, onwælweg.

3 - The Ruin: The Ruin, the poem is in reference to the church Soap and Ghost fight their way out of.

4 - Vainglory: Vainglory.

5 - Hell Rising: a line from “The Descent into Hell”, from a translation I don’t really like, but it’s the only complete one I found.

6 - Droops and Decays: The Wanderer, line 63a.

7 - Wont of Devils: The Whale, towards the end.

8 - Accursed Among Weapons: the sword riddle, line 16.

9 - The Downfall of Kinsmen: The Wanderer, line 7a.

10 - A Secret Disease: The Rhyming Poem, from a specific translation I chose.

11 - The Battle-Sick: Wulf and Eadwacer, again specific translation, this website has a weird format that might be broken, but it kinda makes the poem feel different, and I liked it. [Here's the Wiki for it]

12 - The Bearer of Gold: this one is from a fragmented riddle, one where the answer can’t be determined.

13 - The Song of Us: Wulf and Eadwacer, same translation.

14 - Famous Fate: The Wanderer, 100a. The translation notes this means “turn of events”.

15 - Where All Permanence Rests: The Wanderer, 119a, the last line in the poem.

To properly see all the little tidbits I took from each poem, I’ll have to explain each one, and probably also paste it here so you can read. I would if that hadn't taken five years to do, and I want to talk about other stuff haha. But I just wanted to list the ones I did reference.

So, now that I’ve explained how the poems are referenced in the main fic… what about the poems I wrote?

Obviously, the first poem references The Wanderer, just as the first lines in the fic do. But what is the story of the poems?

Blooede Starvatfōre-dēde, a fictional codex I made for the fic, is a book similar to the Exeter, collecting stories from the 10th century. Except, unlike the Exeter, all the poems in the book tell the story of the same characters: the Blind Man, the Beast, and the hunter (not to be confused with the Hunter, capital H, which refers to the character in the main plot). Blooede Starvatfōre-dēde, by the way, meaning “Blood Starvation” in Middle English. Or, Blood Hunger.

Blooede Starvatfōre-dēde does exist in the world of B||H, Soap, Ghost and the others are simply not familiar with it. I had a plot for the story in the poems I wrote, which is in direct parallel to the main story in the fic. In fact, some poems spoil some plot points, if you go back to read them after you finish the chapter they were in.

Like I mentioned in the ask I got today, I’m not sure how much, if anyone, really understood what’s going on with the poems. I honestly don’t know if it was clear, I never have anyone beta my writing, unfortunately. So, I’m going to explain the story told in the poems, and how it connects to the main plot.

I’ll be explaining the poems in the order they appear (not always the order of the book itself, as noted by the page numbers on each poem).

The Blind Man is a fallen knight (sidenote: the Beast never refers to the Blind Man with that name, and he usually calls him Fallen Knight), who lost his mates and Lord in battle, the same battle that took his eyesight. He roams the earth with no destination, simply mourning what he used to have.

The Beast starts out as a terror on a road leading to a village. The trader that first meets him decides to go to a different road, and the young girl is so afraid of him, she turns back. All the village people fear the Beast, for they know how it terrorized others in the past. The Beast at present, however, is mostly docile.

The Blind Man bumps into the Beast, while he walks on his road. The Blind Man apologizes, explains how he lost his sight in battle, and asks the Beast kindly to move. The Beast does, but he also asks the Blind Man (the Fallen Knight), if he could let him follow, as the Beast too doesn’t have a goal or destination. The Blind Man agrees.

The Trader sees the Blind Man walk with the Beast, and he worries about him, as he thinks the Blind Man didn’t realize he’s walking alongside a Beast. The Blind Man asks the Beast if he plans on hurting him - to which the Beast answers, if the Blind Man finds that the Beast pushes him on a path of death, he asks the Blind Man to kill him.

The Beast, at a later point, asks the Blind Man why isn’t he afraid of him. The Blind Man answers, that he doesn’t believe in monsters, he believes in mankind, to be kind, and cruel. For him, there is not such thing as monsters.

A knight, who once fought besides the Blind Man, spots him alongside the Beast, and he stops them both, threatening the Beast to leave the Blind Man alone. The Blind Man assures the knight, that the Beast is calm, it doesn’t hurt him. The knight asks, how come the blind lead the sinner, and the Blind Man replies, that when all other paths are unavailable, sometimes only the blind can truly lead.

The Blind Man asks the Beast what is his true name. The Beast answers, that Beast is the only name they know. The Blind Man insists that it is only the name the village people call him, and the Beast repeats his answers. It is then that the Blind Man decides he will name the Beast himself, with deeds this time, and not words. He is telling the Beast he can be defined by more than his past, than his looks. The Beast asks how, and the Blind Man answers, with ferocious will to mark yourself with actions yet to come.

At this junction, they meet a man called “the hunter”, who announces that this land is infested with many Beasts, and if one wished to do good in the world, they must kill them. It is why he, the hunter, slays such creatures. He asks how could the Blind Man protect such evil, to which the Blind Man answers, that the Beast is no more different than a man than he is. The hunter accepts the answer, but comes to the conclusion that they’re both Beasts.

One day, the Blind Man asks to see the Beast’s face. The Beast answers, confused, that he thought the Blind Man was, well, blind. The Blind Man says he’s correct, but that his hands have yet to fail him. So the Beast lets the Blind Man feel his face, his hands. The Blind Man then realizes, that the Beast isn’t actually a beast, but a man like him. He tells the Beast as much, but the Beast says that perhaps the Blind Man is also a Beast, if he thinks the Beast is like him.

The Beast asks the Blind Man how could he care for a monster like himself. The Blind Man smiles and says, how could I not?

They come across a village the Beast terrorized in the past, and the villagers come out to curse at him, telling of how the Beast took their children and ruined their crops. The villagers ask how could the Blind Man stand to not kill the Beast. The Blind Man first asks if what the villagers are saying is true, and when the beast confirms, that he was a terrible thing before anyone saw him as more than a monster, the Blind Man understands. He, too, felt like nothing more than a blind man, an injured knight, before the Beast joined his travels, and treated him as more than just his bloody past.

In the next poem, it is revealed that the Beast was once a knight himself, one that slayed friends and foes, as his masters ruled. He was cursed to be seen as a Beast by everyone that casts their eyes upon him, and that he’s damned to be starved of blood and flesh. It is here that the reason the Blind Man recognizes the Beast to be a man becomes clear - because he is blind, he doesn’t cast his eyes on the Beast.

The following poem is a riddle that its answer is “the hunter”. The hunter used to hunt for consumption, but now hunts sinners. He says, only those that know justice will know his name.

The Blind Man asks the Beast, one night right before the sun rises, what he thinks will be his fate, once he dies. The Beast replies that death comes to all equally, knowing the Blind Man’s past. The answer comforts the Blind Man, that his death will be the same death as his fellow knights, and as his companion, the Beast.

The knight returns to warn the Blind Man and the Beast, that he learned what makes someone a Beast. He tells them of knights who were tortured many years, that were labeled “Beast”. Of the young girl, that instead of cursing the Beast blocking her path, only prayed for her safety. Of a man, that fell in battle, and was abandoned by all but death, that he was also labeled “Beast”. This man is implied to be the Beast travelling with the Blind Man. The knight goes on to say that the hunter, who says he’s versed in justice, calls himself a hero. The knight disagrees, says he’s no better than any of them, and that a man like the hunter, who thinks he’s above God, must be sent to the only equalizer, to death itself.

The knight leaves his sword with the Blind Man.

The hunter approaches, and he swings towards the Blind Man, but the Beast slashes his face, blinding the hunter. The Beast tells the Blind Man, that they will fight as equals. The Blind Man, with the Beast’s aid, manages to kill the Hunter.

The village people hear of the hunter’s death, and they come out to investigate. They find the blind Man and the Beast, but now instead of a monster, they see the man that he truly is. Killing the hunter lifted the curse. The Beast, the Cursed Man, however, isn’t extremely happy, because the Blind Man has always seen him as a man, when the rest saw a monster, and that is what he cares about most.

The Blind Man asks the Cursed Man, where would he go now that he is not viewed as a Beast. The Cursed Man answers, that he has no place he belongs to, but by the Blind Man’s side. The Blind Man replies, that then they will travel together, until their death, and perhaps, if God gives them mercy, they will always be together, no matter which path they belong.

Now that I explained the story of the poems, I can start explaining how it connects to B||H.

Each main character in B||H has a direct parallel in the poems, with a few exceptions.

Soap is the Blind Man, a man who is defined by his failure. He is the first one to see the Beast for what he truly is, and consistently compares himself to the Beast. He is the one that kills the hunter.

Ghost is the Beast, later on the Cursed Man. Everyone sees a monster when they look at him, and he himself ended up convinced he is one, after years of being called a Beast. He admires the Blind Man greatly.

Price is the trader (I chose that profession because of his surname), he meets the Beast before the Blind Man. Unlike Price, the trader does not know the Beast before he became a monster.

Gaz is the Knight (because of his relation to Soap and his VA’s surname is literally knight). He threatens the Beast, thinking he means bad for the Blind Man. He also ends up being on the Blind Man and the Beast’s side, giving him his sword so he could kill the hunter.

The village people are the city people in the story. Alma actually accuses Ghost of being the reason their children are dying, just like the village people do in the poems.

Other characters like Laswell and the communicator do not have a parallel character in the poems.

And the last one… The Hunter. He is the hunter, obviously.

Except, he’s literally the hunter. The only character that is exactly the same, and I mean, the same person, is the hunter. The only one whose name is identical to the one in the poems.

And this is the plot twist I was keeping hidden in the poems all along - BLOOD||HUNGER is a fantasy story, only not from Soap or Ghost’s perspective.

There is a third story, beside the main one and the one in the poems. The story of the hunter.

The hunter, after being killed by the Blind Man, finds himself in the future. He doesn’t know how, doesn’t know where, but he knows one thing:

The Beast is alive, he walks with the Blind Man, and he must be killed.

The hunter finds them. And again, he fails.

It’s not known how many times the hunter fails. But each time he’s killed, he wakes up decades into the future, with an innate knowledge that the Beast and the Blind Man are alive, and he has to kill them.

The hunter wakes up again in 2019. He knows the Beast and the Blind Man are alive, and this time, he tries something new. He gathers an army, he hides his face, and he waits for the right moment to strike.

He thought, perhaps if someone else kills the Beast, he could be free from the curse placed upon him centuries ago, by death itself, as punishment for his hubris.

And the events that follow, are the plot of BLOOD||HUNGER. And as you know, the hunter fails yet again. He will wake up again, but Ghost and Soap will be long gone by then.

This is why the Hunter seemingly didn’t exist on paper, a year before B||H. Why he knew so much about Simon, despite the fact it shouldn’t be possible. And this is why he says to Soap what he said to the Blind Man the first time he died. Because, in the Hunter’s eyes, Soap IS the Blind Man. Soap mentions that when the Hunter’s face is uncovered, he seems familiar, and after he dies, he feels like it happened before. Because it did.

The claw marks on the Hunter’s face are the biggest clue that he is the hunter, as the hunter’s face was slashed by the Beast in the poem.

And the Blind Man’s wish, to always walk alongside the Cursed Man, is the reason both Soap and Ghost feel like they belong with each other. They’re destined to meet, no matter what form they take. Whether as enemies, friends or lovers, they will walk the same path eventually.

See, I don’t write stories like BLOOD||HUNGER usually. I write fantasy, sci-fi, supernatural stuff like every other work I posted. But this, the poems, the Hunter, are the reason I wrote BLOOD||HUNGER.

Because it’s not fully set in the real world. Still, this fic was quite a challenge for me, with no magic, enemies-to-lovers (which I never use, I don’t know why I decided to here, but that’s how it ended up), and limited characters.

A little tidbit about the city - it isn’t named on purpose, I wanted it to have more of a vague vibe that fairy tales (and the poems in the Exeter) have. I was also initially considering having the entire fic set at night, one night, but with the amount of things that happen it felt a little ridiculous. Most of it is at night, though, as Soap and Ghost sleep through days more than they do nights.

Also fun fact, the names of the civilians are all names of family members of mine, with the exception of Mihail. The name he’s based on is Mircea, and it’s a little too Romanian for my purposes, so I changed it so something more vaguely Eastern European, which is where the city is.

Now, onto the last section of the post script, the deleted scenes! (Are they really deleted if I keep them, though?)

Like with Not Alive, Nor Dead’s PS, I’ll try to give each of them context and the reason they were cut:

[Context: the entirety of the scene where Ghost gets betrayed and poisoned by the Hunter in chapter 2.]

He didn’t get a potential location for intel, so he started methodically searching all drawers and cabinets, lightly passing over surfaces to search for abnormalities. The longer he goes on finding nothing, the more an icy chill spreads through his gut.

Every cell in his body is screaming something is wrong here.

Footsteps on the lower floor catch his attention. Multiple, heavy, hurried. Ghost snarls.

The soldiers climb the stairs quickly, Ghost melting into the shadows, watching them pass by him. The soldiers are the Hunter’s, their blood-red insignia staining their black gear.

He’s being betrayed again. He needs to get out. He has to get out.

“We know you’re here, Ghost. Change of plan, we need you on another location.” The soldier communicating for the Hunter calls.

No, no, no. They’re lying.

“Commander”, another soldier says, “he might be gone.”

The Hunter doesn’t answer, but frantically, Ghost hears the floorboards creak closer and closer to his location, until a red glove reaches out and pulls him out of the shadows.

He instantly shakes it off, “the fuck are you doing here?!” he growls. The Hunter looks to his communicator, “this target was a ruse, Ghost. We have a new one for you.”

They’re lying. They’re lying. Ghost can feel the barrels of rifles at his back, lifting slowly to strike him down. He can smell the gunpowder and the bite of metal-

Ghost glances behind him. The soldiers are busy searching the house. He nods.

It feels so wrong, but… could he be wrong? Is he just getting paranoid over nothing?

“Give me the location.” he grunts, his back constantly tingling with the weight of phantom gazes.

The soldier walks over to the balcony, pulling out a spotter scope, “your target will be in the central city, the high rise building next to the church.” the building is lit by neon lights, red and foreboding in the darkness of night.

Ghost carefully walks to the balcony, taking the scope from the soldier. He doesn’t put it up to his face, not when there are phantom breaths on his nape.

They’re waiting. They’re watching. They’re going to-

A hand wraps around his neck, roughly pulling his mask up to reveal the pale skin underneath. Ghost grabs it, pushes it away, when a sickly cold sting bites the side of his neck, followed by a disgusting chill that seeps into his bloodstream.

Poison.

Ghost shoves the soldier off, swiftly sliding a knife to his palm and slicing his neck. The man doesn’t have time to react, before Ghost drops down to avoid another attacker. The world explodes with hands reaching for him, weapons slung with purpose to strike.

Not kill. They want him alive.

He has to GET. OUT.

A hostile rushes to tackle him, and Ghost uses the momentum to grab him and jump off the balcony. Glass surrounds them both for a moment, before they all fall down.

The body beneath him crashes with a sickening crunch, and Ghost takes the pistol in his hand to swing around and shoot at his attackers. A few of them fall over the railing, and the resulting confusion is enough for Ghost to take off and run.

Ghost feels the poison corrupt his blood, physically sense the way it travels down his neck, the chill spreading to his fingertips. He mutters a few curses.

He should’ve listened to himself. Never trust anything but himself.

[Reason to cut: I didn’t want Ghost to suspect anything before the Hunter attacks, I thought it would be scarier than if he anticipated it.]

[Context: the last lines of chapter 2 (can you tell I struggled with that one lol)]

Ghost internally sighs. This whole ordeal drudges up too many old memories, things he rather would’ve stayed buried in an unmarked grave. But he just has to put up with Soap until they leave the city.

And after that? He can leave him to the wolves.

[Reason to cut: Ghost sounds here like he wants something bad to happen to Soap when he leaves him. I wanted him to just not care about what happens to him.]

[Context: the talk Ghost and Soap have in chapter 6, when Soap reveals he killed Makarov.]

The Sergeant laughs bitterly, “he was already captured. I slit his fuckin’ throat when his hands were cuffed.”

“Really?” Ghost drawls, “as if bars would’ve stopped Makarov.”

Soap bristles, “so what, yer saying I was right?”

“You were the only one with half a brain there, it seems.”

Soap is visibly stunned at that, quieting down and averting his gaze. Did he really believe that he shouldn’t have done that? Shouldn’t have killed the worst man in modern times?

Really thought those restraints were made for the betterment of humanity, rather the benefit of the powerful few?

They continue walking in silence, the only sound accompanying their steps is the bristling of crops.

[Reason to cut: didn’t like how the dialogue sounded, wanted the conversation to be longer.]

[Context: the first time Ghost called Soap “Johnny”, chapter 7.]

Soap has a feeling the nickname just slipped, and he didn’t mean to call him ‘Johnny’. His mind, as it often does, starts mulling that small detail over.

If it was a slip of the tongue, it means this wasn’t the first time Ghost thought to call him that. How long have he thought of him as “Johnny”? Does that mean, under that bleached bone, he

[Reason to cut: didn’t like where Soap’s thoughts were going. Didn’t know what to do with them.]

[context: beginning of chapter 8, when Ghost’s real identity is revealed.]

(From the grave rises someone else, someone wrong-)

Soap takes a step back, the sound echoing through his mind and returning him to the surface-

(They know. The communicator. The Hunter.)

Johnny knows.

[Reason to cut: I liked the first line, but I wanted it to be memories of Simon’s rather than introspection of Ghost.]

[Context: start of chapter 8 again. It’s always the Ghost POV ones I struggle with huh?]

“Didn’t you,

Simon Riley?”

Ghost ceases his attempts to move. Thoughts slipping away from him, sinking down to the dark sea, drowning him.

(Don’t cry like a pansy, son. Just like your mother, you’ve always been weak-)

(You always had a bleeding heart, Riley. Time you wake up, see how the world really works-)

(The rotten flesh, the maggots borrowing into his ears, the dirt and grit between his teeth-)

(Lieutenant Riley was his most caring soldier-)

(What’s wrong, son?-)

(LT-)

(SIMON-)

Ghost feels him claw out, from the fortified casket he buried him in. Memories as his weapon, he rips through his chest, uncaring of the trails of broken bone and blood he leaves behind, splattering on the floor.

From the grave, a dead man rises. A man who always found the world too cruel, too loud, too unforgiving.

And with him, emotions Ghost long buried; Hurt, sadness, confusion. Fear.

Rage.

The knife in his sleeve slides easily to his palm, cool metal doing nothing to soothe Simon. He winds his hand back, and throws.

The blade shines almost blindingly across the room, missing Johnny by less than an inch and hitting the gleeful communicator in his eye. The man slumps over, smile melting away with the last of his life.

Simon heaves a breath, arm still forward, eyes snapping from the corpse to Johnny.

Johnny, who turns around, shock in his bright blue eyes, mumbling, “What… the fuck… did you do?”

He can’t look at those eyes again, can’t see the betrayal cloud them over, the pain he caused, always causes, spread through him. And so Simon, the coward he is, looks away.

“What the fuck did you do?!” Johnny repeats, stomping forward to haul Simon up by his vest. “LOOK AT ME! YOU JUST KILLED OUR ONLY WAY TO THE HUNTER!”

Johnny’s hands are trembling, Simon notes, when they take hold of his face to force him to make eye contact. Simon watches Soap’s expression falter.

What do you see, he wants to ask.

Do you see the man he was, Or the monster he became?

The clanking of the metal staircase behind them makes Soap sharply turn. Simon can’t see, doesn’t care to when Johnny is in front of him.

Tell me, he wants to scream, tell me I’m irredeemable. Tell me you hate me. Bury me, please.

I can’t be Simon again.

But Johnny ignores his silent pleas, grabbing his forgotten rifle and throwing it to Simon. With a dirty glance, he growls, “don’t think I’m lettin’ it slide. Get up, we need to fight.”

And Simon would’ve stayed in the tower, waiting death to take him for the final time, if he could stomach the idea of taking Johnny down with him. Simon, stupid, foolish Simon, wants the Sergeant to do what he couldn’t. To be better than him.

He takes the rifle, military instilled instincts helping him push up and take aim. Johnny is already ahead, fighting his way down the stairs.

The world outside is loud, gunshots and screams, bullets dinging off metal, blood dripping down to the earth below. Soap shoots them as the come up, but he’s quickly getting overrun. Simon spots a pile of crates right at the edge, where Johnny is currently taking cover.

He runs at it at full speed, shouldering it and pushing it down. Johnny curses at him, before he watches how the heavy crates clear them a path down. The soldiers groan, struggling to get up. They run down, barely avoiding the hands grasping at their feet. Below, soldiers attempt to shoot them, but they make an almost impossible target on the spiraling steps.

Simon jumps the last few, firing at the group around their truck to cover Johnny. The Sergeant shouts at him something, but he’s too focused on the enemies aiming at them.

A few bullets hit him square in the chest, knocking the breath out of Simon.

He doesn’t get time to recover when another bullet pierces through his shoulder.

It hurts more, oddly enough, after Simon clawed his way out. Everything feels… more.

Johnny takes out the shooter, and drags Simon to the truck. Throwing him to the passenger sit, he starts up the engine and shifts it to reverse to run down a few hostiles.

“Yer not gonna die on me, are ye?” He grunts, examining the blood sluggishly flowing down his gear.

Simon opens his mouth to answer, as he sees from his peripheral a wounded soldier shakily lifting his gun to aim at Johnny.

He pulls out a knife to throw at him before Soap can even clock the danger, the soldier crumpling back down in a blink. “...Thanks.” Soap’s eyes narrow. His eyes are no less bright for it, Simon reckons.

He returns to his sit, applying pressure to his gunshot wound, “drive.”

In the silence, Simon’s mind drifts. He’s finding it harder and harder to focus on anything besides Johnny.

[Reason to cut: a few things here are the same as the final version, but I specifically didn’t like how Soap acted here, and the fight Ghost soloed.]

[Context: chapter 10, after Soap bit a guy, and Ghost lost control of his limbs because of the poison again.]

The pain doesn’t even register in Ghost’s mind anymore. Nothing does, except Johnny’s form, sure-footed as he rushes back to battle, mouth still red.

Johnny is a disaster. An omen of ruin. A harbinger of death.

Simon wants to be destroyed by him.

If only to feel that searing touch once more.

[Reason to cut: Ghost is a little too in love with Soap with the way he’s talking here. Didn’t want that yet.]

[Context: chapter 11, the very end of it, where they realize who could find the Hunter.]

Soap inhales sharply. That’s it!

“Simon.” Dark eyes look up at his urgent tone, “I know how we can get to the Hunter.”

Gone is the softness in his eyes, Ghost turns to face him fully

[Reason to cut: wanted Ghost to come to that conclusion, not Soap. Thought it would be more impactful, if Simon chooses that fate on himself.]

[context: chapter 12, when Ghost and Soap explain to Price and Gaz that the Hunter is responsible for everything that happened in the city, not Ghost.]

“The Hunter?” the name makes Gaz falter, “who-”

Ghost cuts him off, “who do you think is in charge of this militia, Lieutenant?” he says the rank mockingly.

The Lieutenant fires back, “according to our intel, you!”

Soap shakes his head in disbelief, he and Ghost sharing a baffled look, “yer tellin’ me ye never heard of the Hunter?!”

This complicates everything. Ghost himself knew of the Hunter because of his line of work, and he was aware their existence was a closely guarded secret, but for the 141 to not even know of them…

It’s like they popped out of nowhere, a special hell designed for Ghost.

It does clear out one thing. The reason they wanted to pin the massacre of the city on him, leave him poisoned to rot until the 141 catches him. If the SAS believes they took down the militia, the Hunter would be free to do anything they wanted, under the radar.

Cut the head off the snake, it dies. Unless you cut the wrong head.

“You’re telling me”, Price starts, “that we’re after the wrong person?”

Soap sighs, “Ghost may not be a bleedin’ saint, but he’s not the leader of the fuckers shootin’ everyone out there.”

Gaz scoffs, “John, you know I’ll fucking take a bullet for you, but I won’t be able to believe that without some solid proof.”

Price joins him, “even if there is another individual… “The Hunter”, you called him?” he realigns his gun with Ghost, “we still need to take Ghost into custody.”

Soap bodily pushes Ghost behind him, again, “if you want ever want to catch the Hunter, you’ll need him! We’re not gonna-!”

[Reason to cut: Okay, I did a little mistake and completely forgot that Gaz and Price brought up the Hunter by name before, therefore they know of their existence. Had to cut a few pages because of that, as you can see…]

[Context: chapter 12, after Ghost falls because of the poison, still discussing the Hunter.]

Price holds it still, “Laswell said local police reported of a skull-masked man.”

“I haven’t seen a single police officer in the entire city.” Soap says slowly, “fuck- how did we miss that?”

“This city…” Gaz’s brows lift in shock.

Simon grunts, “the Hunter’s soldiers took over before I ever stepped foot here.”

[Reason to cut: didn’t like this explanation, didn’t feel like it made sense to me. The final version uses the informant instead, which ties in with the man Ghost kills for the Hunter in chapter 2, and I like that way better.]

[Context: chapter 13, when Soap and Gaz talk while he’s smoking.]

“John, mate. C’mon.” Kyle places a hand on his shoulder, leaning in to whisper, “tell me, what are you going to do after?”

“After what?”

“After you kill the Hunter. Are you going to leave back for Scotland, never see Ghost again, go back to your civilian life? Or…” Gaz nods towards Simon, “you’re going to stick with him?”

Oh… He didn’t even think about that. ‘After’... Soap swallows around the excitement the second option rises within him, “yer jokin’, right? I don’t- that’s not even a choice. What am I gonna do with Ghost?”

[Reason to cut: didn’t like how I phrased things here, felt like I could do it better.]

[Context: chapter 14, right before the operation to kill the Hunter begins]

It strikes him then, how much he wished they could’ve met on different circumstances. Perhaps if they knew each other before, they could’ve been more.

Perhaps he wouldn’t feel as doomed.

[Reason to cut: just didn’t really like it, it kinda introduces new feelings that I didn’t have time to explore in the last chapter before the epilogue.]

EDIT: I FORGOT TO PUT THE POEM AAA SHIT

Page ?? of the “Blooede Starvatfōre-dēde”, parable ?:

What drives a monster from the woods, the merchant questions,

As evil often lies within the dark, feasting on sin and vice,

What drives a man from his home, the Beast replies,

As he is nothing, when his steps sound alone,

What drives a knight from his kin, the Blind man finishes,

As a vow cannot be fulfilled, when it is voiced to the dead.

[The only reason I didn't put it in is because there wasn't a good point to, sicne I wrote it when the fic was already ending]

And that’s it! Another fic done!!! I had a lot of fun, I think you can tell haha. I also feel like I improved a lot compared to Not Alive, Nor Dead, I love seeing the progress. Thank you, if you read this monster of a post script, and for reading BLOOD||HUNGER.

As a little thanks… I will probably talk about it more later, but I am planning on beginning work on Revenant AU part 2 after I finish my semester. It will involve new villains, new Revenants, new Reapers… I’m excited to be able to return to that universe again!

#BLOOD||HUNGER #not tagging everything bc this is a post script #fellas Ill be honest its like 2 am #if there are any mistakes pls tell me Im very tired and I dont think i got all braincells working rn lmao #edit i did forget. I forgot to put the cut poem. its here now

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beardedmrbean · 5 months ago

Text

A convicted killer was brutally beaten to death by three other inmates inside a California prison, according to authorities.

Alberto Martinez, 46, was knocked to the ground and beaten by three inmates in the prison yard at Calipatria State Prison in Imperial County on Thursday, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a press release on Friday.

The attack unfolded at around 1.23pm when officials allege that Tyler Lua, 25, struck Martinez, knocking him to the ground and repeatedly striking him.

Officials allege that the two other inmates Jorge Negrete-Larios, 33, and Luis Beltran, 31, then began striking Martinez “as he lay motionless.”

Staff reportedly broke up the altercation using pepper spray and a baton and performed life-saving measures on the 46-year-old.

He was rushed to the prison’s urgent care treatment area before being pronounced dead around an hour later. A coroner will determine his official cause of death.

No other staff or prisoners were injured in the incident.

Prison officials said “two incarcerated-manufactured weapons” were discovered at the scene.

The motive for the attack remains unknown.

The three suspects have now been placed in “restricted housing pending an investigation,” the CDCR said.

Martinez had been held at the facility since 2014, after being sentenced to death for first-degree murder. He was also sentenced to life with the possibility of parole for attempted first-degree murder with an enhancement for street gang activity and two years for street gang activity.

Martinez was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and street terrorism in the killing of Orange County businessman David Montemayor in 2002, according to The Orange County Register. During his trial, jurors heard how Martinez and three other gang members were recruited by the victim’s sister to kidnap and kill him.

Despite being initially sent to death row, Martinez was moved to general population after California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium on executions in 2019.

Lua, who had been behind bars at Calipatria State Prison since 2019, is serving a 19-year sentence for attempted second-degree murder with an enhancement for use of a firearm. He is also serving a two-year sentence for possession of a controlled substance while in prison.

Negrete-Larios is serving a 32-year, four-month sentence for attempted second-degree murder with enhancements for inflicting great bodily injury, discharge of a firearm, and street gang activity in commission of a violent felony.

The third suspect – Beltran – is serving life without parole for first-degree murder with enhancements for intentional discharge of a firearm causing great bodily injury/death; as well as possessing/owning a firearm as a felon.

Martinez’s death comes four years after another inmate died at the prison after being allegedly attacked by fellow inmates. Joseph Martinez, 21 – who was serving 24 years to life for attempted first-degree murder – was fatally stabbed in the chest and back in February 2020.

Calipatria State Prison is home to at least 2,638 minimum and maximum security prisoners, according to California prison authorities.

#nunyas news

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lurksunderthebed · 1 year ago

Text

Ghoap Analysis/Meta (1?)

The Evolution of GhostSoap Redux

Continuing thoughts on how Ghost and Soap's relationship has changed over the course of mw(19), mwii(22) and mwiii(23)

Spread out amongst several posts. This will be long 😅

(Part 1)

BEWARE SPOILERS TO MWIII(23) !

I've had time to settle my thoughts on Ghostsoap in mwiii (23) and this will go more into depth of the re-contextualising of Ghost and Soap's relationship in mwii (22) from the verdansk mission: "Flashpoint".

Flashpoint is set 4 years to mwiii(23). The game places it as April 6, 2019. This is important to us because it sets a different potential first mission (meet cute lmao) between the two and thus changes the tone of their interactions in mwii (22)

So let's set up a timeline with the available dates. Thankfully, the game sets some very concrete dates for us. Not all missions are included.*

2019

Flashpoint - April 06, 2019

First canonical appearance of SAS Ghost and Soap

Ghost provides sniper cover for Soap

Price/Soap capture Makarov and transport him to a helo with Ghost and Shepherd

There's a failed interrogation by Ghost and Soap.

Makarov implies he has met Ghost before and thought him dead at an airport

2019 Mw(19)

Piccadilly - Oct 25, 2019

First canonical appearance of SAS Gaz

Gaz is attached to Met Counter Terrorist Police. This implies he has worked largely in his career in conjunction to the Police. It's unknown whether he met Soap or Ghost before.

First meet of Gaz and Price to combat terrorists in London

Old Comrades - Oct 31, 2019

Gaz meets Nikolai

Interrogation scene. Arguably strengthens Gaz and Price's relationship

Into the Furnace - Nov 03, 2019

Last mission, they kill general barkov

Credit Scene - Nov 03-04, 2019* (hypothetical)

Laswell and Price form task force 141

Price seconds Ghost, Soap, Gaz. This implies that Price has worked with Soap and Ghost on missions for x amount of years. It's Gaz who was the surprise recruit.

2020 Cod Warzone

Season 2 - Mar 2020

First appearance of 141 Ghost

Unknown amount of 141 stationed in Verdansk. Ghost asks for backup.

Season 3 - Apr 2020

Armistice dissolved

Price and Gaz show up to help Ghost

Implied- unknown amount of 141 to Verdansk (possible meeting of Soap and Ghost)

Season ? - Dec 2020

Price kills Zakaev

First appearance (via call) of 141 Soap asking for backup in Verdansk

Price, Ghost, Gaz, Farah etc backup Soap who is somewhere else in Verdansk getting pinned down by enemies

2022 Mwii(22)

Strike - July 15, 2022

Ghost calls an airstrike on Ghorbrani with the aid of Shadow Company

Hindsight - Aug 12, 2022

Shepherd/Shadow Company loses American missiles to terroists

Kill or Capture - Oct 28, 2022

Ghost gets assigned Soap as his sergeant for Al Mazhrah mission to kill or capture Hassan

They find American missiles instead

Cartel Protection - Oct 30, 2022

Ghost/Soap meet Ale/Rudy in Las Almas

They fight the Mexican army under control of the cartels

RV with Graves/Shadow Comp.

El Sin Nombre - Nov 01, 2022

Soap infils cartel mansion

Valeria is revealed as El Sin Nombre

They take her into custody

Dark Water - Nov 02, 2022

Boat/oil rig mission with Shadow company

Missile launch averted by Ghost, Soap and Graves

Alone - Nov 03, 2022

Graves and Shepherd betray 141/mexi bros

Ghost and Soap get out of Las Almas

RV at ale's hideout with Rudy

Prison Break - Nov 03, 2022

Ghost, Soap, Rudy break out ale from prison

Meet up with Price/Gaz

Ghost Team - Nov 03, 2022

141 with mexi bros take back mexi bros base

Soap and Rudy "kill" Graves

Countdown - Nov 04, 2022

Stop missile launch in Chicago

Ghost and Soap kill Hassan

2023 Mwiii (23)

Operation 627 - Oct 13, 2023

Makarov breaks out of prison

Reactor - Nov 10, 2023

141 find out that Makarov escaped

141 assaults konni base

Price finds chemical weapons (almost died)

Payload - Nov 11, 2023

141 split up to stop missile launch of chemical weapons

They fail to stop 2 missiles to Russia

Oligarch - Nov 12, 2023

Ghost/Soap island mission to find Makarov's financier

Interrogation of Milena for Makarov's location

Frozen Tundra - Nov 14, 2023

141 ambush konni convoy

Find Shepherd was Makarov's prisoner

Interrogate him on Makarov's location

Gora Dam - Nov 16, 2023

Ghost/Soap split up to stop chemical weapons in Verdansk

Trojan Horse - Nov 21, 2023

141 split up in London tunnels to stop Makarov from using chemical weapons in subway system

So now that's done. I've mostly ignored Farah and Alex and focused on Price, Ghost, Gaz, Soap and Nikolai as it pertains to relationships within the core group of Price/Ghost/Gaz/Soap.

What can we make of this ?

Well, a couple things.

We can now say that from 2019 to the events of "Kill or Capture" in 2022, Ghost and Soap have most likely worked together on missions before. The timeline shows that they at least had to have met in Dec 2020 in Verdansk as Soap had called for backup to Price and group.

That makes it actually at least 3 years of knowledge of each other prior to mwii(22). So a total of 4 years + potentially at the start of mwiii(23).

It also shows us how quickly their relationship changed from the Alone mission in '22 despite the 3 years of prior knowledge they had since '19.

Let it be said that it took 1 week, ONLY 7 DAYS!! to change Ghost and Soap's relationship. 7 days out of a total at least 3 years total.

Ghost started at not even bothering to name Soap in 2019, to presumably basic Soap/Mactavish/sergeant for the next 3 years.

Cut to the events in mwii(22). Lets say beginning at "Kill or Capture" and finishing at "Alone" and suddenly Ghost ends up having made up his own personal nickname that no one else can use for Soap in just those 7 days.

I posit that this was in part due to "Kill or Capture" in '22 being the first mission that Soap has directly worked under Ghost's command.

This is all hypotheticals and guesswork so take it as you may.

Assuming Ghost was mainly a solo mission sort of guy, let's also assume he mostly helped as sniper overwatch if he ever had team missions (like in Flashpoint). Most 141 missions have him taking that position as well, so it's safe to say he is support most of the time.

Given that assumption, it's also likely that Soap and Ghost had to have interacted mainly on comms and any physical meeting would be restricted to transport via heli or otherwise.

It's possible Soap and Ghost have worked together on a more physical basis (aka Ghost leading Soap on a squad), but given how much Ghost seemed to be testing Soap in "Kill or Capture" I find that somewhat unlikely.

In 2019 we see how brusque Ghost is with Soap. It's very likely that Ghost was largely monosyllabic with Soap pre or post missions to Flashpoint.

Considering Soap's propensity to chatter in 2022 and 2023, it's also very likely Soap annoyed the hell out of Ghost on comms. Lol.

This could explain why Ghost was so dismissive of having Soap as his sergeant in "Kill or Capture", despite working together 3 years ago.

I, and arguably most of fandom had theorised that "Kill or Capture" was the first mission that Soap and Ghost ever had together. And we weren't quite right, but we weren't completely wrong either.

With Flashpoint, it's obvious now that was not quite true. It even suggests in it that Ghost and Soap had worked together prior to even that, as there was no formal introduction between the two.

This dramatically changes how Ghost's dialogue and Soap's to a lesser degree can be read in mwii(22) and implies much much more if you consider how they interact with each other in '23.

So why does it matter when Ghost and Soap's relationship started?

With mwiii(23) we can now definitively tell when Ghost and Soap's relationship changed. We now have a rough basis of a timeline and we can track down the differences between '19 -'22 and then '22- '23. Its important because we can see how their relationship deepens and how it changed within a span of 3 years, 7 compelling days and 1 heartwrenching year later.

For all that mwiii(23) was lax with explicit Ghostsoap moments, it's rich in how much context we gain to their relationship. We see how Ghost changes and how his relationships differ between 141. It's an interesting and compelling look at both Ghost and Soap's characters.

In this discussion I separate this analysis into 3 parts. Part 2 will cover the implications of "Flashpoint" on mwii (22), with discussion line by line. Part 3 will most likely go over comparisons a year makes from the events in '22 to '23. (This might be subject to change as I get further into the analysis)

Onto Part 2.

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