#attempts to murder their family member but fails and presumably is killed as a result of their own actions

[finedinereception]

ive never watched a marvel movie but just based on what ive read hollyleaf warrior cats and loki mcu are the same character.

[sepublic]

Amelia’s Alzheimer’s?

           From what Owen Dennis told us, Book 5 of Infinity Train would’ve been a movie, covering Amelia’s takeover of the train… Which, I don’t know if Book 5 would’ve gone over her takeover, AND her eventual arc post-Book 3, but; I believe the implication is that like Book 4, this movie would’ve been a pure prequel, set in the past. A good look and further contextualization of Amelia’s past sins and how she got into the headspace she now has, in order to set up for a future Book where she finally gets her proper arc.

           That leaves just three other books… One about Guilt, the next about Revenge, and the last of Acceptance. Book 5 is about Grief fittingly enough, and we know that Book 8 (Acceptance) would’ve delved into a passenger with alzheimer’s, whose condition would’ve kept them from engaging with the Infinity Train’s intended function properly. Owen Dennis mentioned how this final season would’ve been based on his own experiences with his grandfather, who had a similar issue in the past.

           It’s easy to assume that Book 8 would’ve been about a whole new character, which leaves either Books 6 or 7 for the resolution to Amelia’s arc- But what if that’s not the case? The Book 8 protagonist would be pretty old, presumably, so…

           …What if Amelia was the Book 8 protagonist? What if, by the end of the series, Amelia’s age would’ve caught up to her, and she’d start developing alzheimer’s- Further complicating her attempts to get her number down, especially when she can no longer remember Alrick like she used to!

           Think about it- Amelia as the final protagonist would be a neat book-end to the series, given how we began with her as the final antagonist of Book 1. The show starts and ends with Amelia, who alongside One-One and Samantha the Cat (and arguably Randall) are basically the core, central tenet characters of the entire show. The resolution of Infinity Train is the resolution of Amelia, who serves as the passenger most entwined with the train, having once been its conductor even!

           Not only that, but with how Amelia’s character serves as a means of criticizing and showing the fallibility of the Infinity Train, how she’s able to game the system, how she works in a place to criticize One-One’s direction with it… And her having to deal with alzheimer’s could continue that theme of Amelia’s character being a commentary on the flaws of the Infinity Train, if it can’t account for her memory loss!

           Amelia’s memory loss would be difficult to work with, if we’d only gotten to know her in just Book 8; But now we have Books 1, 3, 4, and 5 (at the very least!) to bring background and context to her life-story, and it’s a LONG one too! Setting up Amelia’s past in great detail, going into the intricacies across the entire show… It could be setting up the audience to remember all of this, when Amelia herself can’t- So we can get a better idea of her frustration, of how she ended up here when Amelia herself is confused, etc.! We gain a deep and intimate understanding of Amelia’s past for her, in preparation for the memory loss of Book 8.

           Owen talking about how Book 8 would’ve been based on his own experiences, watching his grandfather deal with amnesia- From a meta sense, the audience could serve Owen’s role! We’re the younger people, watching Amelia, our favorite old lady, grow across the series… We get attached to her, she’s basically like family, so naturally it hits harder to see her lose her memory. It’d be a meta way for Owen to really capture what he experienced in real life, by having the audience take his position when observing the character of Amelia.

           From an in-universe standpoint, perhaps Hazel could serve as the proxy for Owen! She’s more or less Amelia’s daughter in the technical and arguably figurative sense- We don’t know exactly how their relationship would progress, and the last time we had hopes of Found Family for Hazel, it didn’t quite work out… But regardless. Perhaps Hazel, as a kid with relation to the older Amelia, would’ve gotten to grow up with her surrogate caretaker, learn to value and appreciate her and vice-versa; And then we see from Hazel’s pained perspective, the loss of Amelia’s memories. Perhaps Amelia losing her memories of her times with Hazel, even!

           This could tie Amelia and Hazel’s stories together, especially with how linked the two are, with Hazel resulting from Amelia’s failed attempts to bring back Alrick! And Hazel has a few of Amelia’s memories- She remembers taking ballroom dance lessons, because Amelia was drawing upon those memories when trying to recreate Alrick. Hazel could serve as a young guide to comfort Amelia, a genuinely emotional connection, someone who remembers what Amelia can’t, in the absence of Alrick.

           Book 8 would’ve been about Acceptance- AKA the final part of the 5 stages of Grief, when dealing with the death of a loved one… And Grief is the theme of Book 5, Amelia’s origin story! Amelia would accept the death of Alrick at the end of Book 8, and perhaps Hazel could learn to accept the death of Tuba and another family member in Amelia… In the sense that yes, Amelia is leaving her too- But Hazel will learn to move past Tuba’s death, and perhaps her own experience can help Amelia as well. They can grieve for Amelia’s memories, for Alrick, etc.

           It’d also be an interesting and frustrating challenge for Amelia- As someone who no doubt has at least some pride in her intellect and mind, having her own mind start to degrade… It’d really put her into an interesting headspace, and force Amelia into that acceptance of what is inevitable, that some things she really can’t change. And of course, this could deal with theme of acceptance, of how Amelia clings to her past with Alrick; Having her memories of him start to fade could really shake this up, and force her to re-evaluate her life and values, her priorities… Perhaps decide to instead focus on the Now and Future, accepting that her past with Alrick is not only long-gone, but possibly due to be forgotten. That she can love and appreciate what it did for her, but Amelia has no choice but to move on- Even without those memories, without that past, she still has a future with Hazel and everyone else to keep living for.

           For all we know, Samantha the Cat could even come into play here! She’s someone with access to people’s tapes, among them none other than Amelia’s- And before she gave it to Simon, Samantha also had the ability to create new tapes from passengers on the go. Samantha is a long-lived denizen, at least about 150+ years old, she’s lived and seen the entirety of Amelia’s reign, and was likely there since the very beginning; Owen Dennis did allude to Samantha being present in Book 5… Specifically, he suggested that us seeing Samantha kill someone was a possibility, amidst One-One or Amelia committing murder instead; And that of course suggests that, regardless of whether or not the Cat kills someone in Book 5, she’d still be a prevalent character.

           Samantha having that past with Amelia, and her own conniving nature, could possibly lead to her conflicting with Hazel, perhaps recounting memories differently, or trying to tell them in a way that’d sway Amelia to her side, who knows? It’s also worth noting that she’s someone who has regret and loss in Simon… So perhaps if she served as a central cast member for Book 8 (befitting my point about Amelia being a book-ends kind of character), Samantha would’ve learned to accept the death of Simon, and/or help Hazel and Amelia move on as well. It’d be a fitting and appropriate farewell, I believe, to have Amelia and Samantha, two main-stays since the beginning, have their arc at the very end of the series.

           And Hazel? Hazel could be representative of a new generation, to step up and take the mantle passed down. One-One’s own input would be fascinating, because like Samantha and Hazel, he has quite the past with Amelia, and a lot of significance and understanding of her sins. And with his control of the Infinity Train, I can see him attempt to recreate Amelia’s destroyed tape, or even try to create a new tape for her, to try and get around Amelia’s memory loss. The Infinity Train selectively deciding which memories it only thinks are important could lead to disagreement with One-One and conflict, exposing the flaws of the system- And/or, the Infinity Train might come across a roadblock because it can’taccess Amelia’s memories anymore!

           This could be a culmination for One-One’s arc as well, as seeing his failure to account and accommodate Amelia’s alzheimer’s, leads him to decide to make MAJOR reforms to the Infinity Train as a result! Maybe he’ll even stop the whole process of kidnapping passengers (while still letting the denizens function and roam freely). Him and Amelia have an unusual, kind of at-odds but not really, sort of frenemy relationship; They’re working together, they’ve been enemies, they’ve collaborated, each was the reigning conductor at one point. We could have Samantha as someone with negative recollections of her time with Amelia, One-One with overall netural ones, and Hazel with positive associations! Three different people with different pasts and interactions with Amelia, to provide their own input on their time with her, and thus help her rediscover her past…

           …Or, at the very least- Come to terms and accept who she is, and finally move on. And, it goes without saying that Amelia’s dilemma with her huge number could be complicated by her Alzheimer’s, if she can’t remember things- And it’d be interesting to see how it might fluctuate, if at all. Perhaps Amelia’s progress actually gets pretty good, but THEN the memory loss begins to kick in, and that frustrates her. It’d teach the lesson that progress is not linear, that sometimes you might backtrack, you might think you’re so close, only to have retread the same path… And sometimes you’re tired of the journey and just want to get to the destination, to the final stop at the end of the railroad. We could have Amelia learn to accept help from others, to not try and seize control for herself as all-powerful Conductor, to gain some humility amidst her pride in her own ability and intellect…

           We could have Amelia awkwardly navigate the train without her memories, stumbling across and slowly figuring out what needs to be done in order to lower her number, with just the number’s movement as an indicator, and no memories to work off of! Her only hints are whenever her number moves to a certain situation, so Amelia really has to work backwards… Through trial and error, figure out what needs to be done; Perhaps a callback to Grace and Simon, who had no guidance and struggled with figuring out what their numbers expected of them.

          It’d be an interesting book-end to THAT point, especially since it was Amelia who unknowingly contributed to Grace misinterpreting the function of her number, so then having Amelia rectify this with herself, learning to properly figure out what her number means, and then accepting that without going into denial like Simon did… It’d really show the growth of her, but also the series, and of course the fact that Grace and Simon were literal kids, and Amelia is a seasoned adult. And of course, there’s the existential questions, if Amelia is a different person without her memories, if those sins still apply if she can’t remember them anymore, if she’s essentially disconnected and detached, etc.

          We might see Amelia operate without any memories of her grief with Alrick, see how she is without that- And it might concern and frustrate Amelia, because she could conflate moving past Alrick, as being the same as getting rid of him truly… And the memory loss certainly doesn’t help. Who is she without her memories? It could lead to an identity crisis that echoes back to Book 2’s themes. Amelia without memories might learn to rediscover herself by looking into her past, perhaps existing without recollection, just this number she slowly figures out how to lower. Perhaps having a new, more detached/objective look at her own past, from a perspective as someone who doesn’t remember them, so it feels like the recollections of a stranger- It might contribute to Amelia really coming to terms with happened, with herself, and finally Acceptance.

           It really could be the culmination of the series; With how the age of protagonists for each Book gets progressively older, Amelia’s elderly age and Alzheimer’s would’ve been the end of the line, the final stop/destination for the train. It’d make Amelia the central Passenger of the show, who we’ve been following since Book 1, watching her progress, in a sense seeing her grow up- And then finally seeing her grow old and suffer from Alzheimer’s. The journey of the Infinity Train could be the journey of Amelia, from her boarding the train, to the final destination, literally and figuratively. It could tie into the arcs of Hazel, Samantha, and One-One, and finally deconstruct the Infinity Train with an outsider who did exactly like that!

           What do you guys think? I think it’d be quite the experience to watch Amelia grow and struggle as a person, so it really does feel personal and intimate to us, when we know her memories, only for Amelia herself to lose them... A fascinating, bittersweet study and journey of Amelia, but one we accept, because the journey made the destination worthwhile.

[alistonjdrake]

The Rusnak Party

Of Blood and Stone, The third book in The Saints’ Song Series,  showcases the Escana Empire on the verge of crumbling as a murdered king and a divided government threaten to tear the country apart. As some grapple for power and wealth, others decide to jump ship.

Season One World Building Posts:  1 2  3  4 5 6 7 8 9 10 

Season Two World Building Posts:  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

Season Three World Building Posts:  1 

Bonus Episodes: 1 2 3 

Main Wip Intro here 

People are never completely sure where Vito Rusnak came from. Born in 1698 (after the fall of our Saints), he was likely of Abenian origin or raised in Palogne. Both are usually considered, sometimes a combination of the two, for his supposed education and for his future work and attachment to Abenland as a country. Most of what is known about him was provided by the man himself as backstory during his involvement in the late 1730s riots that eventually lead to the creation of the Republic of Abenland in 1743.

In Rusnak’s own words, he was raised partially in a Dackten conservatory, a minority sect of the Santivian church which preached for the dissolution of of the “aristocratic” hierarchies of the church as well as holding all properties in common and the collective ownership of the “charity of Santivian men”. Presumably talented in music, Rusnak would leave this conservatory at the age of sixteen to attend Doxseth College in Nomworth, Palogne. He took his Dackten ideals with him. Nomworth, often being dubbed the city of scholars and made up of a supremely diverse population for its predominantly foreign students. It was not long, according to Rusnak, until he switched out of the school of music and landed into a study of law after joining a literature group where they read books likely continuing the criticism of the Santivian church’s power structure as well as antique philosophers (an assumption made on Rusnak’s future proclamations about primitive society and the happiness and richness of cultures and societies that had not yet discovered poverty, a claim also found in some antique writing).

At some point, Rusnak began writing his own work. His early pieces were reflections of the Dackten sect and their eventual prosecution by the more dominant Santivian groups throughout the east, but he eventually landed on writing what would later be called idealized pieces about egalitarianism, communal ownership, and the redistribution of property behind the world of the church. Rusnak was very likely influenced by the amount of failed protests going on in the east that was fueled by anti-monarchy sentiments and the increase of religious prosecution as Oskyan Orthodox Santivians rose to prominence in the region. 

Similar bodies of work to Rusnak’s work were outlawed by eastern governments in the aftermath of minor rebellions, but Rusnak sold his work as Utopian fiction and was able to bypass the book bans that targeted most of his colleagues, although any positive references to Dacktism had to be removed. 

Rusnak graduated in 1721 at the age of twenty-three with a law degree and moved back to Abenland where he struggled to find a job and would eventually find himself working as a music teacher for another conservatory. Although by the time he would return to Abenland, the Dackten groups had all been removed and he would instead find himself under the employment of Oskyan officials. As the Abenian government weakened, Oskyan influence in the country grew greatly. Many of the dukes of Abenland were paying for their favors. This was the spark of decades of uneasiness in Abenland, as the weakened government and the advantages taken by Oskyan officials allowed ruling dukes to get richer and gain more power while the rest of the country was stuck in a stagnant struggle. One that would eventually lead to the dissolution of Rusnak’s job as the commodification of education resulted in private tutors for the children of dukes instead of more open institutions. 

When the riots of the 1730s began, there was no such thing as the “Rusnak Party”. However, Vito Rusnak did become a prolific figure during them. It should be noted that while he was allied to many of the early leaders of the anti-duke and anti-Oskyan protests by the Abenian lower classes, he openly rejected armed revolution and instead advocated to “re-education” for the benefit of a classless society. However, due to the popularity of his writing at the time and the fact that he is credited with the messaging system rebels used to communicate, Rusnak is also usually to blame for the Kirdan Massacres.

The Kirdan Masscares is the term used for the event in which, as a reaction to the discovery from spies that many of the dukes had written for help from Oskyan forces (something that would surely squash the rebellion), so they planned a series of attacks on affluent dukes by smoking them out of their homes with controlled fires and shooting them down. Surviving members of noble families and those that fled the country in the aftermath of this event ultimately planned Vito Rusnak due to him being the most known rebel. As such, going forward all references to the rebels became dubbed as the “Rusnak party”.

The Kirdan Masscares are named after Arseniy Kirdan, the general of the Oskyan army at the time and the presumed receiver of the Abenian dukes’ letters. In the rebel party, they used Kirdan’s name to sign off all messages related to this plot. This event is also called “the Culling” by supporters and survivors on the rebellion side for obvious reasons. 

In the aftermath of this, the ruling party was so scattered and weakened, it allowed for the creation for what would be known as the Republic of Abenland in 1743. Rusnak was quickly recognized as someone who would help reframe and rebuild the country.

It should be noted, that not all of the nobility left. In fact, what is known as the Abenian Republic was actually a relatively small collection of its states united under the former rebellion council. The massacres only weakened them and further pushed the nation into poverty as the Oskyans pulled out in fear of similar attacks as it was clearly apparent to King Niclas at the time that they had no insiders in the party and could not predict their movements, and he had no reason to help Abenland if they could not pay him. 

With Rusnak’s familiarity with law, he was often called upon for insight on how to run the republic. It had its failings. The first being they had no money and the second being they were arguments about the future of governance. In the beginning, Rusnak wanted to turn to widespread Dacktism and political order based on popular sovereignty. He continued his criticisms about private property and in the injustices of unequal wealth and social classes, and while plenty agreed with him due to the bad taste left after the Oskyan Orthodox Consistory, there were few eager to back a movement fueled by religion.

The Republic also had many enemies since it’s creation. Many of the surviving dukes had fled to Oskya or Slovy and there were several attempted coups or the blocking of roads to isolate Abenians from much needed supplies. The remaining duchies also continually launched attacks in order to retake the Republic.

The Republic would crash in 1759 as a result of the failed assassination of Urs Felganhaur, a returned Abenian duke who had survived the massacres and had presumably captured someone with intel of the innerworkings of the Rusnak party. The shooter’s gunpowder would be too damp due to rain on the night of the plan and his capture would lead to the arrest of several of the republic’s key figures (including Valera de Martí, Rusnak’s mentee and then just sixteen going on seventeen). The invasion of Oskyan forces, now under the banner of King Vadik who took a much harsher stance against them, and the installation of dukes back to their abandoned duchies, killed the Republic and its leaders either went into hiding or continued to rebel in secret. 

This would result in the continuation of bloody altercations, affairs similar to the Kirdan event, planned food shortages, and mass executions of those considered to be part of the party. Vito Rusnak at this point likely gave up his ideals of revolution without arms as it would be said that going forward Rusnak rebels usually carried guns or would be to blame of bombings and other violent forms of protests. 

His books, along with the work of Valera de Martí, were banned and burned by the Oskyan forces. A jail sentence of four years was carried out on anyone to be found owning any of their writing, an increase of a year based on the amount of books owned. Rusnak himself went deep into hiding while his mentee spent much of his time in and out of Abenian prisons where he would write poetry, a brief history of the Republic, and further criticisms of the ruling class until he would be forbidden from having pen and paper during his repeated sentences. 

Vito Rusnak would eventually be found and arrested in 1767 after an increased Oskyan presence and the slaughter of several other rebel groups. He had time before his arrest to warn his own daughter, Darya Rusnak, and Valera de Martí to flee the country and the east before he was taken in by Oskyan forces. Some months later, Darya would be arrested trying to cross the border and she would give out the names and presumed locations of all of her father’s allies in exchange for her own life. 

in 1768, Vito Rusnak would be executed in Porsdal, Slovy in front of a crowd of Oskyan soldiers who would then take his head on a tour throughout all the major cities in Abenland to warn away any hiding or remaining rebels. 

Likely unbeknownst to the Oskyans at the time, the execution of Vito Rusnak only sparked a continuation of his ideology. 

Surprisingly, Valera de Martí escaped execution and was able to flee to Escan which exiled him instead of handing him over to the Oskyan government due to his being an Escana citizen. He is credited with spreading Rusnak Ideology to the west as he translated much of his mentor’s work and continued writing his own (before its eventual ban by the Escana government, much of his work was taught in schools due to his start in poetry). In fact, Valera was often more criticized for his open support of atheist beliefs. Much of Valera’s work was easier to swallow in the west, as even when he bemoaned about the things he thought was plaguing society the western (and importantly the Escana) powers saw it more as a criticism of the east instead of the inherent power structures carried by both nations. 

Rusnak and de Martí were not the only people who were critical about private property, social classes, and wealth distribution but they quickly became the most famous to the point where most writers and speakers from this era (and beyond them) either get lumped under Rusnak or Valerist theory. At their core, both ideals are the same except Rusnak and people like him tend to take a stance rooted in religious idealism whereas Valera, born from the pioneers of the Escana middle class, and the people who came after him tend to focus more of plights afforded to working and lower class people as well as mocking individualism or earlier sentiments that stopped at “common good” and “common wealth”. Most Valerists are considered to believe that that the Rusnak party was not ambitious enough and that a further step needs to be taken for the advancement of society.

There is however, very little record of just how much de Martí may or may not have disagreed with Rusnak as very little is known about their relationship beyond what Darya Rusnak said about them when she was imprisoned, claiming that her father saw de Martí as more of his own blood than her. Although, de Martí himself would go on to reflect on the Republic years later and would not be very kind to its leaders while he talked about all the missed opportunities. 

Even after Valera de Martí’s exile from the Escana Empire and the complete eradication of a rebellion in Abenland, the Rusnak party quickly spread throughout the continent and survives in much smaller but still active groups during The Saints Song series. All of the books outlining their early roots are illegal although a few are kept in university libraries in Palogne for the preservation of knowledge and it is also illegal for Rusnaks to assemble in parties larger than groups of four but whether or not that stops anyone is dependent on who you ask. 

[noodles-07]

Snow Days :)

Characters: All members of sleepy bois inc (Technoblade, Tommyinnit, Philza and Wilbur Soot

Summary: Techno flies to the UK for the winter because I wanted to hype myself up for cold season. Family fluff ensues.

Warnings: Very brief mentions of murder and strangling, but in a brothers-roughhousing way

Phil snorted from his position on the porch, watching his two youngest sons wrestle in the snow. Wilbur currently had Tommy in a headlock, but Tommy had a handful of snow and looked to be about three seconds from shoving it down Wilbur's shirt, so he doubted Wilbur would hold him long.

Techno would be arriving soon, then they would head out for a standard family day at the park, but until then he had forced the other two out of his house for fear of property damage.

Wilbur let out a very masculine screech and twisted away from Tommy, leaving the teenager cackling as Wilbur yanked off his scarf.

“YOU LITTLE BASTARD CHILD” Wilbur lifted his black-and-mustard striped scarf in front of himself and lunged, sending a scuff of snow across the driveway as he fought for leverage.

“Don't kill your brother,” Phil called passively from the porch, “Or at least wait for me to legally adopt him so I can get the insurance money”

Tommy made a noise that he would refuse to call a squeal as he dove away from Wilbur, just as Phil heard the distinct crunch of car tires on snow and glanced up to see Techno pulling into the driveway.

Phil raised a hand to wave as the drivers-side door opened, and bit back a wheeze when his pink-haired son just opened his arms to the sides and faceplanted into the snow with no hesitation.

“TECHNO!” Tommy exclaimed, bounding over like an overexcited puppy to dog-pile on Techno, with Wilbur right at his heels.

Techno grunted but didn't move for a few moments, when he finally did he rolled over unceremoniously and sat on top of his smallest brother- Wilbur was smart enough to get out of the way- for a moment before getting up and finally offering Phil a smile back.

Wilbur put an arm over Techno with a smile. “Nice to see ya, Tech.” Techno slow-blinked at him for a moment before spinning sharply and throwing his arms around Wilbur.

“I did not fly eleven hours for a hug that you're not even going to commit too, Wilbur”

Wilbur chuckled and hugged him back for aproximately two seconds before yelping and jumping back, arching his back. “TOMMY YOU GREMLIN BASTARD CHILD-”

He was cut off by Phil wrapping Techno in a hug with a laugh. “Let's get your stuff out of the car then we can wrangle the disaster children and head out.”

Techno ducked out of the hug and stepped around the front of the car, opening the passengers seat door and pulling out a small cat carrier.

“You have a CAT?” Tommy yelled from where he was sprawled on his stomach in the snow.

“No, I have a penguin.” Techno set the carrier on the ground and opened the grate, letting his small dog out. “It costs less to fly with a cat carrier than a dog one, Thomathy”

“Okay, ONE never call me that again, and TWO YOUR DOG IS SO CUTE” Tommy scrambled over to the driveway, sitting cross-legged in front of the car and whistling at the dog.

“His name is Floof and if you touch him I will obliterate you, Thomathy” Techno deadpanned, moving to join Phil at the back of the car to unpack his suitcase and duffel bag.

Phil hoisted the suitcase without much difficulty, Techno managing to wrestle his duffel bag away from the older man before he could grab both his bags.

“Let's get your bags in your room then we can attempt to corral the gremlin children” Phil laughed, heading up the stairs to the porch and fumbling with the doorknob.

Techno, of course, dropped his duffel bag right beside the door when he followed Phil inside.

Phil led Techno to the spare bedroom where he'd be staying, (Wilbur and Tommy were staying in a hotel nearby. Phil didn't think he could handle all three of his children in the same house overnight,) and set the suitcase on the floor.

Techno had, unwisely, trusted Wilbur and Tommy to get Floof inside, which resulted in Wilbur calling in the most guilty voice possible, “Phiiiiiiiiil?”

“oh god” Phil muttered, leaning out of Techno's doorway. “What, problem child #2?”

“Dogs are allowed on couches in this house right?”

Phil gently rested his palm against his face for a moment before calling back; “Yes, we have blankets on the couches for a reason.”

He faintly heard Tommy mutter “oh thank god” from the other room as Techno snorted behind him.

“You should unpack a bit then meet us in the living room, I'll either be wrestling the children or hiding in the bathroom” Phil informed, heading out of the room with a soft chuckle.

Techno unpacked the essentials; (see: red weighted blanket and laptop;) and headed back into the living room to find Tommy lying on his back on the floor with his feet up on the couch, probably the one position Phil wouldn't approve of.

Techno flopped onto the same couch as Tommy's feet, scooping Floof onto his lap and burying his nose in the fluffy white dogs head for a moment.

Wilbur stepped into the room from what could only be assumed to be the bathroom, and Floof hopped off Techno's lap... right onto Tommy's stomach.

Tommy wheezed and did a sharp sit-up, blue eyes bulging. Techno stifled a laugh.

“Techno! Your dog almost killed me!”

Techno pulled out his phone, looking at the blank screen as though it was the most interesting thing in the world. “It's a shame he failed”

Tommy was halfway across the room to grab a pillow to throw at Techno when Phil came back in, raising one eyebrow at the sight.

Techno, sitting on the couch looking at his phone without a care in the world. Tommy, in the middle of the room with his hand on a spare pillow, and Wilbur, leaning on the doorframe with half a smirk on his face as he watched the chaos unfold.

“I can explain...?” Tommy offered weakly.

“My dog jumped on his stomach and he tried to murder me,” Techno supplied without looking up.

Tommy looked to Wilbur, probably hoping he would cover for him, but Wilbur just held up his hands and said “I'm staying out of this one” with a half-concealed grin.

Phil clapped his hands together loudly before Tommy could protest, catching everyone's attention. “Alright my problem children, let's get dressed for the weather and go enjoy the weather while it lasts!”

Techno stood up far faster than he normally did and whooped. “Yes! Screw california I desire frostbitten toes and... whatever”

“You could have just like, driven up to canada or something.” Tommy suggested from where he still stood by the armchair.

“Bold of you to assume I can drive”

“I LITERALLY watched you pull into the driveway, Technoblade”

“... Bold of you to assume I can drive... legally”

“Alright Technoblade you're sitting in the back with Tommy” Phil interjected, hiding a grin of his own.

“HEY! I want to sit in the front” Tommy blurted, shooting Phil a glare as the oldest stepped into the next room and opened a closet that presumably held spare winter clothes.

“Sorry Toms, whoever's in the front seat gets to control the music and I'm not giving you that power” Wilbur cut in, pulling on his brown jacket and glancing around. “Has anyone seen my scarf?”

“I think I saw you trying to strangle a child with it” Phil offered, shrugging on his own green coat while Techno trailed into the room to loot Phil's closet.

He found a red coat with pink lining that was exactly his aesthetic and pulled it on, crouching to look for boots that would fit him while Wilbur attempted to grab Tommy in another headlock.

He pulled on brown boots that were just a little too small and called out, “Flooooof”

A long moment of silence passed, then he got up and sighed. “Sometimes he comes”

Tommy snorted, Wilbur taking the moment of distraction to pounce, while Techno went back to the living room to grab his dog.

“Is it safe for a dog to be out in this weather?” Phil checked, setting his striped hat on his head and delibrately ignoring the two wrestling like children on the other side of the room.

Techno gave his best shit-eating grin and pulled something from behind his back. A dog sweater. Phil snorted and buried his face in his hands with a cackling laugh. “Techno you did NOT”

“I didn't what?” he asked innocently, lifting Floof under the belly to pull him into the pink sweater.

“Don't you dare fucking say you also got dog booties.”

Techno raised his eyebrows with a grin. “You said it, not me”

“Techno. Why.”

“The correct question is why not, Phil. Floof's comfort means more to me than my own life.” he pulled red dog-booties out of the bag he'd dropped by the door and made grabby hands at Floof.

After an embarassingly long time attempting to wrestle his dog into boots everyone (including dogs) had gotten into clothes suitable for the weather and Phil was parading them out the door with waving arms.

Wilbur hopped into the front seat before Techno or Tommy even got off the porch, so they took the backseats, giving Wilbur matching glares.

Phil took the drivers seat and turned to look over his shoulder, putting his hand on the other front seat in the most dad fashion Techno had ever witnessed.

“Everyone ready to go? Nobody needs to pee or forgot to grab anything?”

“No, dad, we're all ready to go.” Tommy proclaimed, putting his feet up on the back of Wilbur's seat.

“If you kick my chair I will kick you in the shins as soon as we get out of this car” Wilbur informed him while Phil gave the wear-your-seatbelt-you-disaster-child lecture.

Techno tuned them out by putting in earbuds that were plugged into nothing and stared out the window until the car started moving. Wilbur took control of the radio and gave Tommy the most shit-eating grin in the rearview mirror and started playing the worst pop music he could pull up on his phone.

Tommy groaned and covered his ears, bending forward in his seat. “Whyyyyyy must you make me suffer this way, Wilbur?”

“Because it's very funny to watch.”

Techno pulled out his earbuds and grinned. “Think of the content he could get making a storytime about how he bullied Tommyinnit with Technoblade and Philza sitting by”

Phil silently reached over and turned the music dial all the way down, snatching the phone out of Wilbur's hand and tossing it back to Techno without looking away from the road. “Put on one of Wilbur's songs, most of them are on my iTunes”

Techno quickly thumb-scrolled through Phil's iTunes until he found one of Wilbur's albums, tapping a random song as Wilbur groaned dramatically.

“Think of the CONTENT, Wilbur. My video titles for the next three months will be nothing but talking about how I bullied Wilbur Soot”

“So you mean your next video and possibly the one after that if you're lucky?”

“Okay that one hurt a little bit. Phil save me.”

Phil turned up the music and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he swayed lightly to the guitar.

~

They pulled into the parking lot outside the park and Phil turned sideways in his seat to look over the back.

“Alright, I have four sleds and three hours before we have to get home. Whoever gets to the sleds firsts claims them unless I get there last in which case I get the good foam one with handles”

“Bet” Techno and Tommy said in unison, throwing open their doors and springing for the cars trunk.

Somehow Phil got there before Tommy and claimed one of the foam sleds, Techno snatching the other and leaving Wilbur with the toboggan and Tommy with the saucer.

Tommy shot him dagger-eyes as they trekked to the top of the hill, taking the path beside the slope to avoid getting run over by fellow sledders.

Wilbur set his sled at the top of the hill and got a running start, giving Tommy a shit-eating grin as he did a nosedive onto his sled, catching himself on the front of his toboggan and letting his momentum send him down the slope at high speed.

Tommy had been half-wrestling Phil up the hill for the other foam sled, Techno casually falling back to avoid the combat ahead of him. Tommy had finally accepted defeat and was trying to balance standing up on his saucer.

Techno took a moment to sit cross-legged on his sled before taking off- he wasn't unwilling to admit that sitting at a computer all day playing video games hardly did wonders for your physical strength- before grabbed the handles and awkwardly shuffle-hopping to the top of the slope and letting physics do the rest.

Phil stayed at the top to watch Floof, watching everybody race back to the top. Tommy took off like a cannonball, grinning from ear to ear and carrying his sled on his back like a turtle shell. Wilbur took a moment to look upslope for his scarf, which had landed about halfway down, and Techno spread his arms and legs once he hit the bottom and just spun.

Tommy got to the top first, naturally, and Phil grabbed his sleeve before he could take off again. “We're taking turns watching the dog, first come first serve.” he dropped the leash into Tommy's hand and took off before the teen could protest.

Tommy plopped down on his sled and lifted Floof to his lap, grinning as the dog snuffled at his red scarf. Wilbur hit the top and spent a while lining up his sled, so Tommy slid forward casually and gave the back of the toboggan the hardest kick he could without sending himself and Floof over the edge.

He was delighted to hear Wilbur shout “YOU LITTLE BASTARD CHILD” as he slipped out of hearing range.

Techno reached the top and peered over the edge to see Wilbur fall off his sled trying to grab the scarf and head downhill backward, letting out a “hah” before setting his own sled down.

“Don't you DARE leave me on doggy-duty again-” Tommy was cut off by Techno lying down on his stomach, gripping the handles and grinning at Tommy. “You little-”

Then he was gone, pressing his chin to the sled and letting himself build momentum. He didn't slow down across the flat stretch at the bottom until he stuck out his feet, noticing that the trails from other sleds going long weren't much farther than his had been. Oh-kay... time to get as far as I can and destroy whatever child holds the current record.

He raced back uphill to find Wilbur on doggy-duty, Phil seeing if he could kneel on the sled and go down (he could) and Tommy figuring out what the least practical way he could descend aside from standing on his sled (which had failed miserably).

Techno braced his sled at the edge of the hill, slightly slanted but no so much so as to go over the edge without someone pushing it, and braced himself on top of it, feet digging into the snow to prevent him from going too fast.

“Phil! I could use a shove!”

Phil instantly scrambled over to brace his hands against Techno's sled. “Tell me when to go, Tech”

“NOW” Techno yelped, pulling his arms up like a turtle for minimum air resistance and grinning like a child in a candy store as he shot downhill. He shifted his weight as he reached the flat bit, pressing as flat as he could for equal distribution across the ground.

On the slopes you could put your weight in the middle and let momentum carry you downhill, but on flat ground you needed to preserve momentum so that you didn't sit too hard on the front or back and bring yourself to a painful halt.

He got about three-quarters of the way to the longest streak and narrowed his eyes, following the streak uphill with his eyes. It looked like they'd gotten a boost from a long-destroyed snow bump, which he could only replicate by making a ramp. He temporarily ditched his sled and started packing snow into the best ramp he could.

He didn't start at the bottom, instead making it a branch from the slope itself so he couldn't nosedive his sled into the ramp and stop all him momentum, and it had to be well-packed enough to take the weight of a person at high speeds...

He got distracted until Wilbur whooped from somewhere above him and came spiraling back down to the base of the slope clutching his scarf victoriously above his head.

Most of the trip went similarly. People rotating out on doggy-duty (Phil once decided to take Floof down the slope with him and claimed it was the best time of either of their lives), Techno trying to destroy the record he was sure some twelve year old was proud of getting, and Tommy and Wilbur competing about things only brothers could find competition in.

They piled back into the car panting, grinning and wrestling for the front seat (see: Tommy and Wilbur). Phil slumped against the drivers seat as Techno lifted Floof from Wilbur's arms to his lap after buckling up.

He spent most of the drive playing with Floof's dog-booties and making baby-noises at him, tuning out Tommy screeching “Ten thousand bottles of beer on the wall, ten thousand bottles of beer-” and Wilbur fighting Phil for the radio.

Techno unclasped Floof's booties and jacket while they drove, the small dog wagging his tail and attempting to seize Wilbur's scarf (again) until Wilbur scooped him into his lap and cooed; “You're such a good boy aren't you?”

Techno scoffed dramatically. “I have been betrayed by the one person I thought I could trust!” he leaned back and draped an arm across his face, hiding his grin as Wilbur shot back “Yes you did” with a matching grin.

“Alright, we're back” Phil announced as he pulled into the driveway beside Techno's car, popping the drivers-side door open and peering over the back of his seat. “Make sure to get all human and non-human beings into the house in an orderly fashion, take off your snow gear and head into the living room single-file.”

“Okay dad” Tommy said, bursting out of his door and instantly facing karma as his feet decided not to stay under him and he spilled onto his stomach with a very dignified oof.

Techno made it inside first, setting Floof on the floor and sitting down to pull off his boots and jacket. So many layers.

There was no right for winter gear to contain so many layers. He had a coat with an extra lining, thick boots, a fluffy hat (which he was definitely stealing), AND Phil had suggested he wear an extra layer under his regular clothes, which he had reluctantly done.

He stole the armchair, flopping his legs across one arm and leaning his back on the other in order to achieve maximum inconvenience. Tommy faceplanted onto the couch and gave Wilbur a grin when the oldest of the siblings walked in. Wilbur quirked an eyebrow, walked straight to the couch and sat down on top of Tommy, making the latter squeal.

“Daaaaad! Wilbur just sat on me!” he called in the direction of the kitchen, where Phil had vanished after slipping around the corner mostly unnoticed.

“Suffer” was the only response, making Techno and Wilbur wheeze.

“So are we having a movie night?” Wilbur checked, casually setting his elbow on the armrest as though he wasn't sitting on top of a squirming teenager.

“Yup! We all pick a movie and eat dinner in the living room.”

“What're we eating? I'm withering away from starvation over here” Tommy called, resigning himself to his new position as an armchair.

Phil poked his head into the room with a grin. “Like the wonderful host I am I shall only serve my guests the highest cuisine: we're having frozen pizzas and/or macaroni and cheese!”

Tommy suddenly rolled from the hips, knocking Wilbur to the ground with a cackle and folding himself into one corner of the couch. Wilbur gave a sincere smile and flopped on the other corner, pulling out his phone.

Techno shifted position so he could rock back and forth, flapping one hand in front of his chest with the biggest grin Tommy had ever seen on him. Tommy casually grabbed a spare pillow and leaned back, taking aim for Techno's chest and cackling as the flapping hand knocked the pillow away before it made contact. Techno made eye contact and Tommy felt his heart stop in his chest.

Never challenge the blood god to a fight, no matter how petty. You will lose and he will stand laughing upon your corpse. This was a lesson Tommy learned the hard way, the battle only ending when Phil walked in to Techno pinning him to the carpet in a headlock and several pillows strewn across the room.

Wilbur was studiously ignoring them and biting back a smirk as Phil softly said “Techno... why”

In a heartbeat Techno had returned to his armchair and was looking at his phone like nothing had happened. “Why what?”

“You know what” Phil told him in The Dad Voice as he sat in the center of the sofa, grabbing the TV remote. “Has everyone picked a movie?”

“Eeyup” Techno muttered, distracted by tapping his fingers in rhythm across his knees.

“I have!” Wilbur announced, looking up from his phone. “Hey did you guys know that it's illegal to hunt whales in Oklahoma, which is a completely landlocked state?”

“I did not know that” Phil said cheerfully, right as the oven beeped to announce pizza time.

~

“Techno?” Wilbur asked abruptly about halfway through the third movie (Techno’s pick- Babe) when Tommy and Phil were both passed one on the couch. “Can I play with your hair?”

“Uh, shore” Techno slipped out of his armchair, sitting cross-legged in front of it and letting Wilbur sit behind him.

He tilted his head down to let Wilbur slide long fingers through soft pink hair, leaning into his hand with a soft hum of content as Wilbur gently scratched along his scalp.

He let his eyes drift closed as Wilbur played with his hair, pulling it gently into a soft braid, biting his lip lightly in concentration as Techno hummed softly. Wilbur started humming a soft tune to himself, a half-finished song he was working on.

Techno drifted to sleep as Wilbur picked up a hair tie from the table beside him and used it to keep the braid together, giving Techno’s scalp one last scratch before slipping out of the chair and lifting three spare blankets from the basket next to the sofa, tucking the other three in before heading to Techno’s room to steal the bed.

~

Techno woke up curled up next to the armchair, Tommy draped across Phil's chest on the sofa, with Wilbur leaning on the doorway in his pajamas with a light smile on his lips. He raised a hand in a light wave and Wilbur waved back before heading into the kitchen, presumably for coffee and/or an airhorn to wake up the other two.

<><><>

Reblogs > Likes please I need the serotonin

[spicybisous]

Gemini Murderers: The Tyneside Strangler, Mary Bell

Trigger Warning: This post contains themes of child sexual abuse, murder, sexual solicitation, and child abduction. Caution is advised.

The Tyneside Strangler

Mary (nicknamed “May”) was born Mary Flora Bell on May 26th 1957 to Betty Bell (nee Elizabeth McCrickett)). Betty was just seventeen years old when she gave birth to Mary. It was unknown who Mary’s true biological father was, though she spent most of her life believing that her mother’s boyfriend (and later husband) Billy Bell. Billy was a habitual criminal who was eventually apprehended by police and charged with armed robbery.

Mary’s Home Life

Mary’s mother, Betty, was born in Gateshead in 1939, and was often described as very depressive and erratic. She became a prostitute in her early teens, and would frequently spend days or weeks away from home in Glasgow working. She was just seventeen years old when she gave birth to Mary, and due in part to Betty’s young age and her occupation, Betty made it excruciatingly clear that she did not want her baby. Just moments after Mary’s birth, Betty ordered doctors and orderlies to “take that thing away from me.”

Though Betty would be gone for weeks at a time at work, she would often attempt to give Mary away to friends and family, who all urged her to keep her baby and take responsibility for her. In fact, during the first few years of Mary’s life, it is said that Betty made multiple attempts to kill her daughter, making it look accidental,of course. Family members grew suspicious after Mary fell from a second-story window, and again when she mistakenly consumed sleeping pills; on one notable occasion, one witness could recall Betty giving her daughter sleeping pills “like candy.” After the fall, Mary’s medical evaluation showed that she had suffered brain damage in her prefrontal cortex, the area associated with decision-making and voluntary movements. Mary later reported that she fell victim to repeated sexual abuse. She stated that from the age of four, Betty would force her to engage in sexual acts with men, presumably, for money.

Mary was said to have displayed a number of dysfunctional behavior from a very early age, as observed by her teachers and peers. They would go on to recall how she would become extremely aggressive when upset by another child; her head would begin shaking violently, and she would frequently grab her peers by their throats. There were also complaints of Mary burning another student with a lit cigarette. Her aggressive behavior caused her to become isolated at school, as the other students grew fearful of her. On the rare occasion that someone confronted Mary regarding her actions, she spoke candidly and with little emotion.

Norma Jean Bell (1955-1989)

Norma Jean Bell (not related to Mary) was Mary’s nextdoor neighbor. All though Norma was two years older than Mary, intellectually, she was years behind her peers; because of this, she was said to have been very agreeable and easily influenced by others.

The slums of Scotswood were slowly being demolished in attempts to regenerate the area. Mary and Norma spent much of their time playing on a partially demolished street scattered with various derelict homes known as “Rat Alley.”

ATTACKED: Pauline

On May 12th, 1968, a local woman filed a complaint with the police, raising allegations that Mary had attempted to strangle her daughter, Pauline. Pauline described the incident, stating that Norma had pinned her to the ground while Mary grabbed her by the throat. Mary then began shoving sand into Pauline’s mouth. Eventually, Norma loosened her grip in Pauline, allowing her to get free and run back home. Unfortunately, the police failed to investigate the incident further.

MURDERED: Martin Brown  (1964-1968)

On May 25th, four year old Martin was seen playing in the same neighborhood that Pauline was attacked in with his friends. Martin’s mother was alerted around 5:00pm that evening, claiming that Martin had seemingly been in an accident. When Martin’s mother arrived at Rat Alley, a group of neighbors stood outside as a man carried Martin’s lifeless body from one of the abandoned homes. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Newcastle hospital that night.

Though police were called to investigate Martin’s death, they were unable to draw a clear conclusion as to what had actually happened.

Nursery Break-In May 27th, 1968

On May 27th, just two days after Martin’s sudden and mysterious death, the Scotswood police were called to investigate a break-in at a local nursery. The police recovered three pieces of paper with the phrases “We murder. Watch out.” “I murder so that I may come back,” “We did murder Martin Brown” scibbled on them. Once again, the police dismissed the incident as a sick joke. The same day, Mary attended school and wrote the following excerpt in her daily journal:

“There were a crowd of people at an old house. I asked what was the matter. There has been a boy who just lay down and died.”

Near the bottom of her writing, she drew a picture of Martin with a bottle next to him, labelled with the word “tablet.” She also drew an emergency responder discovering the body. Again, this was brushed off.

MURDERED: Brian Howe  (1965-1968)

A few months later, on July 31st, three year old Brian Howe accompanied some of the neighborhood kids in watching a few homes be demolished in Rat Alley. It is suggested that during this time, Mary and Norma had abducted Brian and took him to a nearby patch of uninhabited wasteland. Mary and Norma were the last two individuals to see Brian alive.

The Scotswood police received a call that night; they were asked to respond to a patch of wasteland, where they discovered the deceased body of Brian Howe. This time, it was very obvious to the police that the boy had been murdered.

Brian’s arms and legs were sprawled out from his half naked body. Pieces of his hair had been cut, and there were many unusual puncture wounds on his legs. It was later confirmed that these wounds were inflicted after Brian’s death, and Brian’s murderer had also mutilated his penis. The police immediately came to the conclusion that Brian’s murderer was young and a postmortem exam concluded that Brian’s cause of death was strangulation, and that the wounds on his legs were a poor attempt to leave initials on his body.

During the investigation, police were able to link Martin Brown’s death to Brian Howe, after realizing the striking similarities, and it was at this point that the police released an official statement that they were actively searching for a child-aged killer. They began interviewing people within the Rat Alley community, noticing that Mary would almost always appear and show great interest in the investigation. Additionally, she went around her school playground bragging about how she had strangled a boy. Many of Mary’s peers felt that she had some connection to the two boys’ murders, and finally, school administrators began noticing how strage Norma and Mary had been acting. Running with the neighborhood’s tips, the police requested to speak with Mary about her possible involvement in the murders, but were threatened by Billy Bell, her assumed father, instead.

At this point, the police were at a loss as to how to proceed with their investigation. Unable to interview Mary, they were unsure what other avenues they could take to bring justice for Brian and Martin. Mary was going to get away with it. It wasn’t until an alleged witness came forward, stating that they had seen the entirety of Brian’s murder. A nine year old boy from the nieghborhood claims he saw Mary and Norma murder and abuse three year old Brian Howe. Though the witness was nine, he suffered from a cognitive disability, which resulted in his mental maturity and functionality being somewhere closer to about four years of age. The boy explained to police how Mary had offered to massage Brian’s neck, convincing him that he had a sore throat which she was going to make better. Eventually, her grip grew tighter and tighter until Brian was dead.

Dr. Monica Rowbotham Child Psychologist

Both Mary and Norma were then questioned by police. Due to their young age, the police interviewed the girls alongside a child psychologist; Dr. Monica Rowbotham. Dr. Rowbotham explained that Mary seemed to be very high-strung and anxiety ridden, but also very tough and self assured.

David Bryson Mary Bell’s Lawyer

Mary’s lawyer, David Bryson, expressed that his client maintained her innocence in the incidents. It was said that Mary was distracted, asking for her mother and where her dog was. Both Mary and Norma were taken into legal custody that night. Because of Mary’s impeccable manners and inability to clearly understand the severity of the situation, police pitied her. Though she repeatedly denied any involvement in the murders, the evidence began stacking up against her.

Police had previously recovered a pair of scissors from the scene of Brian’s murder, and the notes from the scene of the break-in, as wellas Mary’s daily journals from school were all re-evaluated following her and Norma’s apprehension. Police immediately took notice of the drawing of Martin next to a bottle of pills, noting that that information was never made public, and only someone who was involved in his death would know.

On August 8th 1968 Mary and Norma Bell were formally charged with the murder of Brian Howe.

“Tears in court as girls are accused go boys’ murder.”

Mary and Norma’s trial kicked off on December 5th in Newcastle. Since the girls were so young, the BBC and ITV banned reporting on their news bulletins. The girls’ lawyers were also asked to sit beside them throughout the trial in order to ease their stress.  During the trial, Mary and Norma both maintained their innocence, blaming one another for the murder. It was noted that Mary showed very little emotion (if any) until she underwent cross-examination. Only when she was asked if she attempted to strangle a pigeon, did she begin to cry. Throughout the trial, which lasted only nine days, Mary held her composure, and answered questions swiftly. Norma, on the other hand, seemed very unsure of herself and appeared coerced. After careful consideration of the girls’ testimonies and psychiatric evaluations, the jury determined that Mary had showed no remorse or anxiety throughout the trial process; they concluded thatMary demonstrated psychopathic tendencies and was a danger to society. Taking into consideration her mental evaluation, Mary Bell was found guilty of manslaughter on the ground of a diminished sense of responsibility. She was initially sentenced to life imprisonment. Norma Bell was acquitted of all charges on the grounds of being coerced and “simple-minded,” and she was able to return to her home in Scotswood.

Mary’s age was also greatly considered during her sentencing process, and the court determined that they needed to not only incarcerate Mary, but to rehabilitate her. Unfortunately, because of the uniqueness of her crimes, the court was unsure where to end her. It was reported that she was originally sent to an adult prison, but was later moved to Red Bank secure boarding school in Newton-Le-Willows, Lancashire. Oddly enough, she seemed to fit right in during her six years there. It is worth noting that Mary was the only female student among twenty-two male students. However, due to the struggle to properly accommodate Mary and provide her a secure place to live within the facility, she was later moved to Brentwood, Essex, and enrolled in a facility for maladjusted children.

“Two Nights of Freedom with Mary Bell.”

During her stay, Mary’s mother Betty did her best to visit, but their relationship was strained. Mary repeatedly wrote her mother, begging her to take responsibility for the way she raised Mary so that she could be acquitted of the murders.

In 1972, Betty, who at this point was dependent on both alcohol and drugs, gave an interview wherein she blamed arguments between Billy and herself as the cause of Mary’s behavior. She claimed that Mary was unable to form meaningful connections with others. Following this interview, the general public agreed that Betty’s public breakdown was just one contributing factor of Mary’s problems. It was reported later that Mary was selling interviews and stories to news outlets, and selling pieces of Mary’s handwriting.  In total, Mary spent just twelve years of her life in incarceration. Throughout her time served, she never once owned up to her crimes, nor did she display any sense of grief or guilt for the victims.

In 1972, the BBC show Midweek reported that Mary appeared in photographs, nearly naked and posed, as a child. The show also stated that Mary had been included in, as well as witnessed, sexual incidents while in holding. She was also apparently provided with pornographic books and photos. It is alleged that the photographs were taken by Mary’s mother, Betty. The photos ranged from Mary posed in her underwear, to Mary wearing some of her mother’s more suggestive clothing pieces. It was not clear at the time whether any staff members had been present when Betty took the photographs or not. In addition to the photos, the show made claims that Mary did not receive adequate mental assistance, and that the Department of Health and Social Security refused to investigate the issues accordingly.  In 1977, newsbroke yet again after Mary and another inmate had successfully escaped from Moor Court, the prison facility in Staffordshire. The two women were picked up by a motorist and spent two days and two nights exploring pubs and taking the local train. It was reported that Mary escaped the prison in order to lose her virginity. After being apprehended by police once more, Mary was sent to Risley Remand Center for the next three years leading up to her official release.

“Mary Bell turns down offer of new identity.”

By the age of twenty-three, the court deemed her no longer a threat to children, and agreed to release her. She was even offered a new identity, which she turned down. Mary did go on to give birth to a daughter following her release from prison. She made the decision not to discuss the nature of her crimes with her child until she felt she was old enough to handle it, however, after media reporters discovered her daughter (and their home), they were sent literally running from reporters with sheets through over their heads. At this time, Mary’s daughter was fourteen years old, and both were granted life-long anonymity and new identities. The court and many media outlets reported the intent of Mary’s incarceration to be supportive and extremely successful. They claimed that she was a spectacular case of criminal rehabilitation, however, newspaper reports clearly seemed to paint a much more candid picture of her experiences.

Sources:

Sereny, Gitta. Cries Unheard - Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999.

Sereny Gitta. The Case of Mary Bell. London: Arrow Books, 1972.

[wirewitchviolet]

Abuse I’ve just had to sit with forever

Right now I can’t look anywhere without seeing people speaking up about abusive monsters in various positions of power and it’s really triggering a lot of PTSD for me about all the times I’ve been in positions like that where nobody has ever listened or tried to help so... I’m just going to rattle off all the ones that come to my head, anonymously, and I don’t know, if anyone who knows me wants to ask me about any of these and/or try to really do something to help, maybe come talk to me about it through whatever private channel we talk in sometimes.

Family stuff. There’s a lot, and there’s no real way to talk about any of it anonymously because I mean being members of my family it’s already narrowed down way too much.

Someone once put me in the temporary care of a woman who savagely beat me because her own children were making too much noise when they should have been asleep. Bad enough that when I went back to school I was almost ripped out of my home by child protective services on the assumption that’s where it happened. Oh and she also force-fed me rotten food with maggots in it. I ended up pretty sick as a result, lost a whole lot of weight, and ended up with a serious eating disorder that’s plagued me since. I did eventually get out of there but I don’t know that I’ve ever really conveyed the full extend of it.

One of that woman’s children had some sort of torture kink, very nearly killed me, did put me in the hospital from injuries, and might have raped me. Hard to say because I was like... 7? Hard to translate those memories now that I have the context and vocabulary. I tried to explain that to anyone who’d listen at the time but, again, I didn’t have the vocabulary and I don’t think it came across that like... ropes and tools were involved, not just fists. Never got into that with therapists, because the first one I had really loved playing gatekeeper with trans stuff and liked the “maybe you just think you’re a girl because of abuse as a child” line of thinking too much already. I think I heard he eventually landed in prison though, so that’s something?

The first job I ever had. Games website. I was too young to be working but nobody ever thought to ask about it, and my family needed the extra income to avoid homelessness besides. The owner of the site... was really into open sexual roleplay in workplace text chats. I was so young and weirdly sheltered that I didn’t even process that that was even a thing, and 90% of it went straight over my head, plus I was in a weird state at the time with the whole trans thing where oh yeah, if anyone’s doing any roleplaying stuff on the internet, I’ll be in the character of me-but-a-girl but everything is pretend here right? So... there was a whole lot of mounting and thrusting being described and it took a few years to sink in that that was not in fact about him pretending to be a knight with me as a horse or something. And there was also a lot of... failing to pay me for years of backbreaking work, outright stealing from me, and I mean, I was up until like 4 AM every night working while still in high school. So, yeah. that was a lot. Never told anybody about any of this. So far as I know he still runs the site and nobody’s ever confronted him about anything.

Used to try to play various RPGs with some people in this extra niche-y game space. Sort of the first place I was ever read as a woman without offering anyone “corrections.” And... there was just this one guy who whenever he was GMing had some weird creative excuse for my character (usually the only woman in the party) to... be raped and/or impregnated just all of the sudden and totally out of left field. Which everyone was OK with somehow. And when he wasn’t GMing he was all over my character of course. Never really spoke up to anyone. I just left one day.

Ended up... in the inner circle of someone very famous. Mostly famous for being a victim of abuse. Which is why I ignored... every single red flag there is that someone is an abusive person and taking advantage of everyone around them. They controlled every aspect of my life for years. Had me do a whole lot of work for them, place myself in real physical and psychological danger, regularly. Directly asked me to severe ties with most people in my life. Install kill-switch sortware on my laptop for their piece of mind that none of our conversations would ever be seen by anyone, while also making me talk only in privately managed chat services where they logged everything and my screen wiped at regular intervals, and insisting I use an untraceable alias in it. All of this I was constantly assured was for my own safety as much as theirs, somehow, and that I was their most valued friend who they would keep safe, start paying a huge salary to soon, as well as help secure me a safe place to live and get properly started on medical transition stuff that I was unable to do in the increasingly unsafe place I was living at the time. I could keep going with this, but again, I don’t want anyone playing guessing games. Eventually, as serial abusers do, this person got sick of me, cast me out, and said presumably unspeakable things about me to everyone in that social circle, because everyone quite promptly cut all ties to me without a word. I once mentioned some small fraction of this publicly in defense of... multiple people attempting suicide as a result of this person’s abuse, and it was made very, very clear to me that this is not someone I will ever be able to safely speak about in public.

Another person who is very famous, with ties to abuse prevention stuff, added me to a blacklist to kill my career prospects and then kinda put a hit out on me on a neo-nazi website, but I’ve written about that incident. Nothing happened as a result of speaking out aside from the violence I was already being subjected to ramping up and more people cutting ties with me. Oh and those who didn’t are still quite friendly with her.

Several women with ties to... dangerous people randomly got it into their heads several years ago that I posed some sort of threat to someone I am told they “feel very protective towards” and... unleashed a hell on me unlike anything I have ever seen. I have spent the past 6 years now dealing with death threats from far right terrorist organizations who in some cases have very sizeable body counts, and those groups don’t scare me anywhere near as much as these people. Anyone else I have seen them paint a target on completely withdrew from the internet their careers and any sort of public life to try and stay off their radar. I have had multiple people privately confide in me that they had been threatened never to speak to me again before proceeding to make good on that. I have individually thrown myself at the mercy of every single one of them, explained that I have absolutely no ill will towards any of them, and had never even heard of this person they’re “protecting” before they started coming after me. Nothing has worked. They’ve never stopped. I’m legitimately afraid someone connected to them is going to murder me some day, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve confided in all of maybe 3 people about this. One might be dead, one is a total hermit, the third briefly tried supporting me, received threats, and promptly retracted everything, replacing it with a fire and brimstone speech about how I am an evil monster who tricked them. I have regular nightmares about this, and collapse into a shivering heap just seeing any of their names mentioned.

I... spent a good deal of time in social contact with a person I have been told I need to be friends with to advance in a career I would like to pursue. While doing so, he sabotaged a project that was fairly important to me, and I saw some him mistreat someone else in ways I find quite disturbing, but that’s her story to tell and not mine. I don’t feel comfortable around him, and have no real choice but to give up on those dreams. Haven’t really discussed this anywhere. The sort of work I can get would definitely vanish completely if I did.

The sort of work I can get also involves working for a variety of companies with people very high up the ranks who have seriously harmed a number of people I consider to be very good friends, in ways that in some cases include sexual abuse, and I... really would prefer not to ever work for anyone employing such people now that I am aware of this.

Yet another famous person, but one who I feel perfectly comfortable naming, Graham Linehan, used to follow me on social media with a level of enthusiasm that could arguably be better referred to as stalking. Then later he joined some extremist anti-trans hate group and rose to the top pretty quickly. And some years after that, it finally sank in that worshiping a trans woman while also leading a group of people bent on killing us all, so he has been very loudly and very publicly rambling about his hatred for me specifically. I don’t really have to speak up about this one because he’s doing plenty of that on his end, but I do have to note that while this famous person terrorizing me hasn’t really earned me any sort of public defense or sympathy, it has encouraged a whole lot of people to invent an alternate timeline of events where I am directly responsible for him being a bigot, leading to me getting dangerous threats from both horrible bigots and people who claim to hate horrible bigots but have suspiciously poor aim.

Hey speaking of celebrities, one of the stars of Firefly used to regularly send me photos of violently distended testicles. One of the stars of Star Trek once posted something encouraging millions of social media followers to attack me and left it up for a weekend. One of the producers of World of WarCraft once threatened to sue me for libel and went on a big PR tour about it, speaking on podcasts and such, and so many fascists pretending to be journalists have dumped so much crap on me...

And not to long ago in something of a wacky mixup, someone ELSE rather famous, who does diversity consulting no less, confused me for someone else and cut loose with a horrific bit of hate and gossip and throwing me under the bus, and misgendering me, saying random harassers baselessly calling me a pedophile were probably onto something. Privately told a handful of people about that, because I thought she was a friend and that was so heartbreaking, but anyone I told is just pretending not to have seen it.

Someone was once offering me help because I was in a dangerous situation, financially. I explained that things had been extra hard since coming out as trans. Suddenly he goes from helpful and concerned to just... violent. Screaming a me, openly trying to chase me out of the space we were both in. I reported this to the proper people. They tried talking, he left. The whole community mourned the loss and wondered who could have driven him off. Still doesn’t feel like a safe place for me.

I don’t really know why I’m bothering with all of this. Nobody is actually going to help. I’d say nobody is actually going to read this, but I’m sure plenty of people who hate me will to see if I’m talking about them and use it as justification to make things worse. Plus some people I’m not talking about I’m sure. I get plenty of that all the time.

Nothing ever helps and you can’t ever win. If you try to keep the abusers appeased by not outing them, the abuse never stops. If you try to speak up, their fans and friends treat it like declarations of war and pile on. If you just try to be there for other people when they’re being abused, you get singled out as a “troublemaker” and added to hit lists and black lists and... nothing works.

I don’t want a lot out of life. I want to know I have enough food, and have a place to live where I’m not at risk of dying from either temperature extreme, a bathroom, enough room for my book shelves, a bed, a couch, a dinner table, and a yoga mat. Maybe a space where my cats can run around a little enclosed semi-outdoor area for the fresh air and sun. I want to be able to deal with my medical problems. I want to see and talk to friends sometimes. If I’m really greedy, I’d like to have all that for a particular friend too who I’m constantly worrying about dying of poverty. And I’d like to be able to work on games. Maybe play them sometimes. Maybe watch things.

And that’s the really messed up part. Because abusive people and people supporting the structures of abuse always say they just want to focus on getting work done, or having fun, and it’s a lie. What’s most important for them is perpetuating abuse. They could just stop, or get rid of the people doing it, and the rest of us could live our lives and everything would be fine. But no instead we have to drop everything and make sure no woman anywhere feels safe enough to even breath.

[thedcdunce]

Blue Beetle

“I got magic armor, dunno how it works. Got a magic rock inside my body, can't get it out, Went into outer space n' helped them, but now the superheroes hate me, gonna kill me, I'm the Blue Beetle.” - Blue Beetle

Real Name: Jaime Reyes

Gender: Male

Height: 5′ 8″

Weight: 145 lbs (66 kg)

Eyes: Brown

Hair: Black

Equipment:

Blue Beetle Scarab

Universe: New Earth

Base of Operations: El Paso, Texas

Citizenship: American

Parents: 

Alberto Reyes; father

Bianca Reyes; mother

Marital Status: Single

Occupation: 

Adventurer

Student

First Appearance: Infinite Crisis #3 (February, 2006)

Last Appearance: Teen Titans Vol 3 #100 (October, 2011)

Equipment

Blue Beetle Scarab: Presently bonded to Jaime's spine, this symbiosis gives Jaime access to the Scarab's powers whenever he chooses. The Scarab can, and will, use its powers of its own accord; Jaime, however, can override the Scarab if need be. Should Jaime fall prey to a mind-altering power, the Scarab will take control of the armor.

History

Jaime Reyes was the third Blue Beetle, a member of the Teen Titans.

Origin

Jaime Reyes was a relatively normal high school student from El Paso, Texas. His father ran a garage, his mother was a paramedic, and his little sister was a brat. Jaime hung out with his two best friends Brenda and Paco, the mediator between the hard-working Brenda and the laid-back Paco. By both Brenda and Paco's accounts, he was a good friend, the kind of person who could let them be themselves, and who could always make things better. Jaime aimed to help his father out at the garage, but Alberto turned him down, not wanting to see his son grow up too fast.

Everything fell apart with the onset of the Infinite Crisis.

The Blue Beetle Scarab

Some while before, Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle, had come into possession of the Blue Beetle Scarab, the artifact which had given Dan Garrett, the first Blue Beetle, his powers. The Scarab had been presumed destroyed early in Ted's superhero career, but it was discovered intact in a pyramid in the Middle East. Ted lost the Scarab on a visit to the Rock of Eternity, home of the wizard Shazam. Shortly afterwards, he met his death at the hands of Maxwell Lord, Black King of Checkmate.

The Rock of Eternity was later destroyed in mystical battle between Shazam and the Spectre, its contents blasted across the world. The Blue Beetle Scarab came down in El Paso, fire and portent in its wake.

Jaime discovered the Scarab on the way home from school with Paco and Brenda, half-buried in a disused lot. He took it home, curious as to what it might be. That night, the Scarab came alive, and grafted itself to the base of Jaime's spine, inducing strange dreams in Jaime.

He also got into trouble with a local gang of magic meta humans called the Posse. Mistaking him for a magic meta human, they attempted to magically scan him and invite him to join. Jaime declined the offer, while the Scarab had no intention of being scanned, and it almost killed Probe. It easily bested the rest of the Posse.

The next night Booster Gold sought Jaime out, and took him to meet Batman. Booster had been to the future, where he had learned that Batman would seek out Brother Eye and fail - but he had also learned the Blue Beetle Scarab was the one thing capable of seeing Brother Eye.

Jaime went into space with Batman and his team. The Scarab saw where Brother Eye was hidden, and pulled the rogue satellite back into reality. Jaime, together with Black Canary and Green Arrow, destroyed Brother Eye's dimensional stabilizer, preventing it from escaping outside reality again. Once Batman's team had sent Eye plummeting Earthwards, the Scarab shunted Jaime outside dimensions itself, seeking to escape the Green Lanterns on the spaceship.

Unfortunately, the chaos of the dimensional stabilizer's destruction dilated time for Jaime. As far as he knew, he had only been outside dimensions a couple of minutes; on Earth, however, a whole year had passed.

One Year Later

The next thing Jaime remembered, he had come down in the desert outside El Paso, and Guy Gardner was trying to kill him. Once Guy realized he was fighting a kid, he broke off the fight, but not without promising Jaime he would be back.

Jaime eventually managed to find his way back home, only to discover his year-long absence. In that time, his father had been crippled, forcing him to walk with a cane, Paco had teamed up with the Posse, and Brenda had been taken in by her aunt after her abusive father died in a DUI. He revealed his identity as the Blue Beetle to both his his family and his two friends; while his father and friends were understanding, his mother became suspicious and disbelieving that he was really Jaime, and his sister Milagro became terrified of him. It wasn't until Jaime returned to the scene of his rearrival and recalled the memories of what had happened that the two finally reconnected with and accepted him.

Jaime's attempts to learn more about the Scarab led him to the Posse - and involved him in their conflict with El Paso's resident crimelord, La Dama, as she sought to bring the magical metas of El Paso under her control.

Her henchman Diviner even got so far in manipulating The Bottom Feeder to abduct the baby daughter of the Posse leader Damper, Alina Jaime fought to save the baby, discovering he could permanently slay the Bottom Feeder but despite of the Bottom Feeders own wishes he refused as Jaime was not a murderer.

After that, Jaime and the Posse launched a raid on Warehouse 13 where La Dama was holding her collection of magic-metas, only to find most of them were happy where they were. However, the Posse managed to convince a good half of them that they could return to their ordinary lives, promising the Blue Beetle would defend them. La Dama had no choice but to accept this, or risk facing her guests' "objections." Jaime and La Dama made a reluctant truce - both knew the other's secret identity, and could make it public whenever they chose.

Jaime initially believed the Scarab was a mystical artifact, up until Peacemaker arrived, revealing that it was a piece of extraterrestrial technology. Jaime's search for more information took him back to where he had crash landed in the desert, in an attempt to find out about his missing year. He then headed out on Dan Garrett's trail, looking to find out what the first Blue Beetle had known about the Scarab.

The Reach

The current Dan Garret was the original Blue Beetles granddaughter and claimed she had the right of the scarab, but since it was stuck to Jaime's spine she let it go.

However, it was Jaime's investigation into a cattle mutilation outside El Paso that would provide his biggest lead on the Scarab. His confrontation with the monstrous creation responsible led him to the Reach, the alien civilization who had created the Scarab and left it on Earth.

Jaime discovered that the Reach were galactic conquerors, who planned to add Earth to their list of conquests. Initially, the Scarab had been programmed to be obedient to the Reach, and to subordinate its host's will to them as well. The Reach had intended to present the Scarab's host as Earth's protector, before moving to establish their influence over the planet.

However, during the centuries the Scarab had spent on Earth, it had been infused with magic, the magical "corruption" preventing the Reach from controlling it. With Jaime's assistance, it had started to develop free will and independence, overriding the Reach's deepest programming.

Nevertheless, the Reach still intended to take over the planet, even without the Scarab to help them. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, the Reach were peaceful "galactic traders." Their secret bases and technology were hidden away, out of phase with the rest of the world, and Jaime was the only one who could see them.

Seeing Jaime and the Scarab as the biggest threat to their plans, the Reach attempted to eliminate them through the use of deniable agents, including Earth's supervillains. Jaime, meanwhile, tried to find out what the Reach were up to, and how he could stop them.

Worried that the Scarab might still be a threat, Jaime sought help from the local branch of S.T.A.R. Labs. An encounter with Livewire, who was being assessed there at the time, triggered a strange reaction in both Livewire and the Scarab, resulting in a fight. Superman put a halt to the battle, and helped to reassure Jaime about himself and the Scarab.

Jaime also assisted Traci Thirteen in foiling Eclipso's attempt to kidnap a baby with great magical potential and use it as a new, uncorrupted host. During the course of the adventure, Jaime and Traci developed a romantic interest in each other, and remained in long-distance contact after Eclipso' defeat.

When the Reach recruited Lobo to prevent the launch of a rocket containing anti-Reach technology, Jaime teamed up with the Teen Titans to make sure the rocket lifted off safely. Afterwards, the Titans invited Jaime to Titans Tower, so he could hang out with them, get training, and learn how to fight. Jaime took them up on the invitation - and found himself helping the Titans fight off their future incarnations, the Titans of Tomorrow.

Finally, Jaime and the Scarab managed to uncover the Reach's scheme and destroy it, but also ended up destroying any evidence of the scheme,

By this point, the Scarab had become an independent, free-willed entity in its own right, naming itself Khaji Da. Together, Jaime and the Scarab devised a plan to bring the Reach down before they tried conquering Earth again.

Jaime allowed himself to be captured by the Reach, giving the Scarab the chance to hack into the Reach's computers and broadcast their invasion plans worldwide. The Reach's Negotiator, driven to breaking point, ordered Earth's destruction - but again, Jaime and the Scarab intervened, stopping the world-rippers before they could be activated.

The Reach were forced to withdraw, claiming that the Negotiator had "gone rogue." The Scarab, however, had had a conversation with the other Scarabs onboard the Reach ship - a little surprise for the Reach.

Battle For The Border

Jaime is next seen with a man dog creature who was battling another man for the name Hell Hound. He tried to convince both of them to take other names and quit there fighting. The two did not and attacked Jaime. He quickly dispatched them both. Flying away he came to the border where Peacemaker was fighting a group of super powered criminals. When he arrived they took a hostage. Jaime had to call of Peacemaker to save her but the kidnapper threw her off the side of the cliff. Jaime saved her but the group had run away when he tried to use the Beetle to track them he found out there was to much interference. The girl he saved ended up needing a place to stay and ended up staying with Paco and his family.

Fun Facts

Jaime is Mexican-American; one of his grandmothers lives in Mexico City.

Jaime, or at least his family, is Christian; there is a picture of Jesus in the Reyes house, and Alberto makes mention of attending church.

One disturbing event in the Scarab's history suggests how alien the Scarab may be. During Ted Kord's time as Blue Beetle, the Scarab - or something using it - resurrected Dan Garrett, and the half-crazed Dan went on a rampage, searching for Ted. When Ted finally confronted Dan, the Scarab offered him its powers, claiming it needed a new host; Ted refused, and convinced Dan to break the Scarab's control over him, shattering the Scarab's physical form and sending Dan to his final rest.

Jaime's deepest desire is to be a dentist as revealed by Eclipso when she attempted to turn Jaime against Paco by using her powers to transform Jaime into his deepest darkest desires, expecting him to become a killing machine. This ends up working against her as Paco slaps Jaime down with a large stick and defeats him with ease.

[ghoultyrant]

Grimdark Tau

I’ve long felt Tau were plenty grimdark without slapping in grimderp elements, running with just baseline components. No need for "gifting" mind control helmets to supposed allies, pheromones assuring Ethereal leadership, or mass sterilization of human colonists to make room for Tau colonists. These just draw attention away from the actual, existing grimdark.

Let's take a look at the other factions of Warhammer 40k, and their grimdarkness. Orks are grimdark because they are a plague of violence for its own sake, virtually impossible to eradicate and fully capable of overrunning the galaxy through sheer breeding advantage combined with intrinsic military advantages. Even with a concerted effort by everyone else to exterminate them, there's no way to be completely confident they're all gone, and so long as they exist peace is not on the table. Craftworld Eldar are grimdark because they are smarter than you, stronger than you, live longer than you, are outright super psychics that see the future, and are completely disinterested in your survival or well-being if you aren't Eldar. The Imperium is grimdark because they treat everyone and everything like garbage out of sheer necessity. The Inquisition isn't the ruling body squashing political dissension using the veil of religion. They're fighting a threat fundamentally dedicated to the eradication of anything resembling civilization, and the only viable way to do so involves brainwashing, social manipulation, and outright genocide of problematic population. In other words, being good requires monstrous behavior in the Imperium, and that's depressing/grimdark. Tyranids are grimdark because EVERYTHING ENDS IN TYRANIDS. EVERYTHING. Also, Genestealer cults that are virtually impossible to detect before they reach a substantially threatening stage and the only real solution is to kill the infected. No good answers and we're all doomed. Pretty straightforward grimdark. Dark Eldar are grimdark because they do all the awful things they do to stave off the destruction of their immortal souls. Well, most of the things. Partially they're just that twisted, but then again that grows out of the necessity of inflicting suffering for their own survival, which is going to tend to weed out any Dark Eldar that's squeamish because their soul will be eaten. Net result; there's a reason to feel kind of sorry for the monsters even as they torture you for giggles, which is all kinds of messed up. Grimdark: achieved. Oldcrons are grimdark because their goal is extermination of all life, everywhere, wrapped up in a shell of barely sensate beings reduced to "I have no mouth and I must scream" as the means to achieve this goal, all directed by immortal people-eating monsters harvesting us like cattle. Not because they have to to survive, but because we're more delicious than stars. That's depressing because it implies a missed opportunity for peaceful cooperation with vast beings of cosmic significance, and also because, again, there's an urge to feel sorry for the mass-murdering killbots even as they literally atomize you, and again, that's all kinds of messed up. (Newcrons are... not really all that grimdark, by comparison, but whatever)

Chaos, is, of course, Chaos, and has layers of grimdark built in. Every thinking creature's every thought and random feeling contributes to the Immaterium, but then the Immaterium pokes back and encourages patterns growing in it, leading to a snowball effect where incidents in history of violence and anger and so on have made the Immaterium an unhappy and scary place, which then promotes violence and anger and so on, feeding in on itself. To fight Chaos is to feed Chaos. If you join Chaos, you are driven onward by a constant, eternal fear for your immortal soul, fully aware that your life and the quality therein now hinges on the whims of the pitiless and random Gods of Chaos, whom may turn you into an I Must Scream slab of tortured flesh because you bore them, or because you failed them one too many times, or because they thought it would be funny, or because they were actually trying to give you a gift and said gift was too much for your mere mortal flesh to handle. Also, your "allies" in Chaos are only slightly less likely to try to kill you than the opposition is. This isn't even getting into how horrifying it must be to find yourself a part of Chaos while having an actual moral compass. Oh, and enlightenment is demons and so is liable to explode your head.

-----------

So, the Tau.

The Tau trip all the happy feelgood terms and images of goodness. They speak of "The Greater Good", prefer diplomatic appeals to military aggression, have clean looking technology, invest resources into improving the quality of life of their people, and glorify individuals helping the collective. They're nice guys driven to make the world a better place for everyone in it, right? Let's look at some of these bits a little closer. Greater Good is rendered as "Tau'Va." in the Tau language. One can infer that Tau therefore probably means either "Greater" or "Good", either of which is somewhat alarming. Human cultures largely name themselves "the people" if you translate their name for themselves, which is a pretty neutral statement. The Tau are either saying they are the definition of goodness or that they are greater... than anything that isn't them, presumably. Neither of these suggests the Tau view their allies as equal partners. Reinforcing this is that Tau diplomacy is not aiming for an alliance of equals. You serve the Tau Empire, or you die. Certainly, the Imperium gives anything sufficiently inhuman just the "you die" option, but the Tau are not asking if you want to fight alongside them against external third parties. They aren't NATO or some other compact between equals. Being integrated into the Tau Empire means being suborned to the Tau Empire. They will bring you into their Empire, they won't take "no" for an answer, your government will be leashed to their will, or they'll just kill you and ship Tau into the area you once lived. Your governor may remain a governor, but that doesn't mean your government has any real power.

Ethereals are the leadership caste. The underlying assumption of the Tau Empire is that everyone in it serves under Ethereals. This is unilaterally declaring Ethereals the only valid authority, no argument allowed. You're not Tau, you're never in charge. You are Tau, but not an Ethereal, you're not in charge. There is no equal representation at the highest authority levels: first and foremost Tau interests will be represented. Even if they have a principle of allowing everyone their foibles and building the world to work in harmony for everyone, the command decisions will still be skewed towards Tau interests, even if the Ethereals genuinely believe in equal treatment for all, with no possibility of cycling in non-Ethereal leadership to soften the bias. Naturally, Tau priorities will then be skewed toward Ethereal interests over the interests of other castes, for extra special bonus grimdark. The Tau loathe individual expression, and box you in based on your biology. They are fundamentally racist in a way that goes well beyond any possibility of practical motives, including forbidding crossbreeding of Tau Castes. This is basically eugenics, and not some idealized "let's weed out life-ruining defects!" eugenics, but the arbitrary, politically-minded kind that, among other points, contributes to keeping Ethereals the sole authority. A Fire/Ethereal crossbreed is not allowed: you can't marry your family into a position of power. Based on their treatment of their own and their treatment of their allies, it seems likely that once the Tau settle on what they think humans are ideally suited for, they are going to attempt to lock them into that role, no arguing or accommodation for people who don't fit this idea. All unusual occurrences in any given species or Caste will not be given due consideration for not physically fitting their standard role, because the Caste system is absolute. A Fire Caste Tau who is clever with her hands and intellectually good with machines will not work within Earth Caste factories or laboratories. She will be given a combat suit and a gun, and off to war she goes. The Tau’s Greater Good is a patriotic ideal, not a philosophical/moral one. The Greater Good starts from being defined as the members of the Tau Empire, not the galaxy's whole breadth of species. There is a component of real-world philosophy to their ideology, in that they see no point to unnecessary fighting and don't understand why other species will die to a man for no clear benefit, and similarly will more readily ally against greater threats than many of 40k's factions. However, mostly it is largely the same as the Imperium's fanatical devotion to the Emperor, only directed at the Tau Empire as a whole. This isn't "what benefits the most people by the largest amount?" This is "Whatever the Greater Good Tau Empire demands." That's an implicit mandate that the Tau Empire can do whatever it wants and be morally justified. That they happen to angle it more toward seeming nicer than the Imperium's mandate of "Whatever the Emperor wants" gets used for doesn't change the fact that it's the same level of fanatical zeal unchained by ethics or a real moral code. The Tau ethos of sacrifice for others goes a bit beyond glorifying the individual dying to save everyone else where no other option exists and ranges closer to Imperial Guard "everyone is expendable" military philosophy. The expectation is you will die for your Empire on a moment's notice, even if it is merely convenient rather than necessary. It never openly ranges into calculating how much your death will buy... but a refusal to explicitly admit to something doesn't mean it isn't happening. The Tau are grimdark because they are, in many ways, villains with good PR. Sure, they won't treat you like crap just because they can if you join their Empire, and in general they have a policy of decent quality of life for citizens. That doesn't mean they are utopian or even as "good" as the surface image suggests.

It's redundant and gratuitous to have shenanigans like the Tau Empire sterilizing human populations or "gifting" mind control helmets to prospective allies, and I’ve always been a bit surprised at how normal it is for 40k fans to feel the Tau are undermining 40k’s grimdarkness such that the creators feel the need to slap in this nonsense.

I suppose it’s appropriate in a meta sort of way that the Tau PR engine is so effective it works through the fourth wall...

[aion-rsa]

Vigil Ending: Russian Spies, Navy Conspiracies and Murders at Sea

https://ift.tt/3CMoALA

Warning: contains Vigil finale spoilers.

Nobody could accuse BBC thriller Vigil of lacking plot. That series was a Matryoshka doll, in which each mystery broke in half to reveal another, then another, and another. What began with a sunk trawler, a heroin overdose and a whistle blower ended with a Russian plot, a multi-layered Naval conspiracy, a drowned activist, three dead crew members, and a saboteur in a cage, shitting in a bucket. Along the way there were family revelations, broken hearts, an extra-marital affair, and the deadliest tin of sliced grapefruit ever to feature on television. Join us as we straighten out anything you may still be pondering after this packed thriller’s post-finale.

Why did the Russians want HMS Vigil to surface?

It was all for the PR, apparently. The Russians wanted to engineer a situation where a British Trident submarine was shown to fail, then forced to surface and conduct an emergency evacuation onto a waiting Russian boat, which would tow it home, laughing all the way. Think of it as an exercise in national humiliation aimed at undermining Trident and attempting to influence the forthcoming parliamentary vote on whether to renew the UK’s continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent.

How did Doward sabotage Vigil?

He undermined it to DCI Silva from the start, telling her on their helicopter ride in that his usual boat – Virtue (the irony!) – was much less trouble than Vigil. Then at the end of episode one, he jimmied the lock on the RCMS panel to manually force the nuclear reactor to shut down. In episode two, he deliberately failed to notice the tanker with which Vigil almost collided until it was almost too late, generally putting the shits up everybody. Then in episode four, he left a note in Jackie’s apron threatening her to hurry up and release the nerve agent she’d been tasked with doing, which prompted her to fatally poison herself. Then he deliberately snagged the communications wire, taking the ship offline. That’s when he knocked out Silva, tried to drown her, attempted to suffocate Glover, and broke open the bilge tank valve to flood the boat, before stabbing Prentice to death and taking Silva at knifepoint to the control room. Busy boy.

Why had Doward become a Russian spy?

Unlike Jackie, who did her work for the Russians in order to save her son, we don’t know what motivated Doward, and perhaps it doesn’t really matter. “No comment” was his answer under interrogation (he’s obviously been watching too much of World Production’s other big BBC thriller Line of Duty). Silva surmised that Doward didn’t have any particular political allegiance to Russia, but undertook the sabotage because he was a narcissist and it made him feel special and powerful, and that’s as good as we’ll get.

Did Ben Oakley kill Jade Antoniak?

No, but he was hardly a friend to her. Jade trusted Ben, who was the leader of the Dunloch anti-nuclear peace camp where she lived. When Jade got suspicious about the presence of Peter Ingles at a protest, Jade took his photo, wrongly thinking that he was a plant for MI5. After her boyfriend Craig Burke died on board HMS Vigil, Jade showed the photo to Ben, wanting to expose the suspected MI5 plant. Ben had an existing relationship with Peter Ingles (a Russian agent whose real name was Piotr Vasilyev) and so recognised him. Ben then told Ingles about the existence of the photo and warned him to be more careful in future. Ingles, knowing that the photo would compromise the identity of Doward, the Russian asset he’d just planted on board HMS Vigil, asked Ben to arrange a meeting between him and Jade, where he would shine a light on what really happened to her boyfriend. Jade and Ben met with Ingles, who drowned Jade and stole her phone. Ben did nothing to help, knowing that he would look like Ingles’ accomplice if he involved the police.

Two hours after Jade died, Ben downloaded the photo from her laptop to his phone, deleted her copy and hid her computer. He later took the photo to Patrick Cruden MP (an old pal from their CND days and co-incidentally Jade’s secret father), pretended that he had taken it and planned to leak it to expose the fact that the Russians had a plant in the British Navy, thereby making Trident submarines look vulnerable to enemies and negatively influencing the upcoming parliamentary vote about Trident renewal.

What’s going to happen to Doward, Ingles and Ben Oakley now?

MI5 aren’t going to tell the Russians that they’ve uncovered and arrested Doward, they’re just going to hold a closed trial for him, convict him with the evidence gathered by DCI Silva, and let him rot in isolation in prison. Good riddance. Ben Oakley is going to prison for a long time for his part in the lead-up to Jade’s death, and for withholding evidence and trying to evade arrest, promises DS Longacre. And Ingles has diplomatic immunity which means he can’t be prosecuted in the UK and was flown back to Russia soon after his cover was rumbled. The GRU will probably give him a warm welcome.

Read more

TV

Vigil Episode 5 Review: You’ve Got Some Nerve, Agent!

By Louisa Mellor

TV

Vigil Episode 6 Review: a Thrilling Pay-Off

By Louisa Mellor

Why was Craig Burke killed?

The Russians needed to kill one of Vigil’s Sonar Operatives so that their plant CPO Doward could be brought in from another boat as a replacement, to work his sabotage. Peter Ingles (see above) had already approached Craig Burke (after an introduction by Ben Oakley) about becoming a Russian asset, but Burke refused. That left Ingles vulnerable to being identified by Burke, who had started a dossier on his fellow Vigil crew members, presumably in an effort to sniff out any who had also been approached by, and were working for, Ingles. Burke knew that the British Navy had covered up the serious incident in Port Havers, Florida and so knew that he couldn’t trust officials or his crewmates with what he knew. That’s why he amassed the evidence he’d collected on a hidden thumb drive intended for Jade. The Russians had Craig Burke murdered to kill two birds with one stone – getting rid of the threat to Ingles, and creating a premise for Doward coming aboard.

Who killed Craig Burke?

The boat’s cook Jackie Hamilton poisoned him with a nerve agent in exchange for the early release of her son from an Indonesian prison on a drugs charge. She had evidently also been approached by Peter Ingles, and coerced into acting for the Russians to help her son, and the pair had been communicating through coded messages on a fishing website. The guilt though, was too much for Jackie and so instead of enacting the second part of the Russian plan and releasing the nerve agent more widely to force Vigil to a surface evacuation, she deliberately opened the device when she was alone, then attempted to contain it, but died almost immediately as a result.

Why did the Rear Admiral lie about the Russians being responsible for the trawler accident?

Two reasons: 1) if it were known that the trawler nets had been dragged under by a US submarine, questions would be asked as to why one of our allies was secretly surveilling a British naval submarine. Those questions would inevitably lead back to the Port Havers cover-up, in which Vigil’s drunk, high and negligent crew combined with the boat’s ageing equipment almost caused a nuclear explosion to rival Fukushima (only averted by the fast thinking of engineer Gary Walsh), and killed two US marine workers, whose deaths were reported as accidental drowning. And 2) the Navy wants parliament to vote to renew Trident, so any way to put the fear of God into people about the Russians and a new Cold War would play into that.

Why didn’t Patrick Cruden MP release Jade’s photograph of the Russian agent and Doward?

Because the Navy can prove that the photograph was in his possession hours before the police saw it, in which time a naval officer was stabbed to death by the man who could have been identified in it. Never mind that Vigil didn’t have any communications at that precise time, so it wouldn’t have made much difference.

What made the Russian ships disperse in the finale?

When the USS Delaware made it look as though it was preparing to fire torpedoes at them. As the Rear Admiral told the US Defence Secretary, the Russians believed they were unopposed and it was the UK and US’ job “to change that perception”. There was some talk of making them shit their uniforms too, but let’s not sink that low.

Why did Captain Newsome ask Silva what would be in her report at the end?

Having just watched Lieutenant Commander Prentice zipped into a body bag, he wanted to know whether she was going to report his XO for taking heroin from Gary Walsh and planting it on Craig Burke’s corpse, and for punching Burke on the day he died. Silva’s reply indicated that she was going to give her findings on Jackie, Burke and Doward, but nothing else. That means she’s keeping Walsh, Prentice, Glover and Docherty’s wrongdoings out of it, and preserving their careers.

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[silyabeeodess]

Kuroshitsuji Chapter 129 Analysis: Gaging the Morality and Possible Lack of Self of R!Ciel

Now that we've got the twins, many recent posts within the Kuro fandom have debated whether or not R!Ciel can be classified as the "evil twin," following the event of Agni's death and in comparison with O!Ciel.  While it is possible to generalize him as such and it is most likely that he was one of the two killers that had attempted to murder Soma and killed Agni, it also opens up a lot of questions in how we might interpret his behavior and why he is the way he is. 

For now, let us start with the most recent chapter and the true introduction to R!Ciel's character.  As O!Ciel and Sebastian enter the manor, we find that R!Ciel is already inside and has already interacted with the other servants: Finnie, Meyrin, and Baldroy.  He greets his brother calmly, and even shows concern regarding O!Ciel possibly suffering from his illness as a result of being out in the rain knowing the latter's weak constitution.  He also tells O!Ciel that, "There is no need to worry anymore.  I will never leave your side again."    

Based on this, if we don't assume he's faking, we can interpret that he truly does care for O!Ciel, his brother.  There's no telling how much he knows as of yet in regards to what Ciel has been doing over the past three years, but he's not surprised and doesn't seem to care if he does know that O!Ciel has been posing as him.  He's acting almost as if everything is perfectly normal.

So what constitutes as 'normal' for R!Ciel?  First off, the obvious: He loves his brother.  If we reflect on R!Ciel's appearances throughout the manga prior to his reveal in this chapter, O!Ciel has always depicted him as this protective, comforting figure that he was always able to turn to.  During the Green Witch Arc when he was suffering and basically trapped within the confines of his own mind, it was his twin--out of all people--that he envisioned being there to console him beyond the guilt O!Ciel carries as a result of the other being sacrificed.  Now, while we can't fully trust those flashbacks due to the possibility of O!Ciel placing his brother in high regard as a result of familial love and as a result of his fragile state of mind, Chapter 129 would also support that R!Ciel is more of the protecting, loving sort where it concerns O!Ciel.     

Now, stepping into the Phantomhive manor, R!Ciel shouldn't have had any idea who Meyrin, Finnie, and Baldroy were as only Tanaka was among the original staff before the attack on the Phantomhives.  However, based on the fact that the three had no idea about the case of their being twins until the very end of the chapter, R!Ciel just accepted the fact that they were there and already knew who he was.  If he knew about O!Ciel posing as him, that just makes it worse, because then that means he purposefully led them to believe he was O!Ciel instead of explaining things to them before O!Ciel's arrival to the manor.  Why is this important?  Because he's the aristocrat: They're the servants.  As Tanaka had said during Book of Murder, "The head of the Phantomhive household should not be shaken by something as trivial as the death of a servant.  I never once saw the master lose his composure due to such trifles."  Now, we're talking about a human life here.  Being called "trivial" and "a trifle."  On top of that, they're servants of a dangerous family--always left at the risk of getting killed and being replaced.  This is how R!Ciel views Finnie, Meyrin, and Baldroy: Another trio of replacements for their last batch of servants.  Their presence is just something he accepts as a grim result of the attack.  This shuffle is normal to him.

Take that note to how the Victorian society placed a strong focus on social class, and it gets worse.  Even well into the Edwardian period following the Victorians, your class dictated your education, your social behavior, the places you were to go, the people you were to spend time with, and everything in-between.  For example, on the Titanic, its maiden voyage was celebrated by allowing 2nd class passengers to get a taste of the luxury of 1st class passengers by allowing them within certain areas of the ship for a short while that would normally have been excluded to them.  3rd class passengers were not allowed in these areas and the differences between the three of them were striking.  There was an African-American family on board that, while having enough money to purchase a 1st class room, was only allowed to purchase a 2nd class room because of their heritage--which leads me to my second point of what I'm about to say later.  Victorians, as a result of international colonization, also strictly differentiated each other by culture and heritage: They actually tried to come up with studies that dictated how human a human being was based on where they came from.  The elites of this era always tended to try to dehumanize others globally and among their own society.  They were elitists. 

R!Ciel shows strong hints of following that elitist mindset--in part, because he's a Phantomhive and then also because he's an aristocrat.  It's strongly hinted that he views himself as being better, or more human, than the Phantomhive servants--as well as with Soma and Agni due to their being from India.  That's why, if that's him from the previous chapter (which it's a guarantee, I just don't want to call it that since we didn't actually see a face) he says to Soma, "Don't you presume to touch me."  Soma may be a prince, Soma might've been living at the townhouse, but Soma's a stranger and is Indian to R!Ciel, and the latter doesn't view him as an equal.  He doesn't seem to be affected and even smiles when he's called out as an imposter, but he glares at Finnie when Finnie speaks up.  Because Finnie is a servant, who in his mind shouldn't have a place to voice himself: He just works there and should know his place. 

O!Ciel is a brat, but even so he treats the servants more like his family.  He tries to help Soma and protected Agni's identity when he could've just thrown him to the Yard.  He spares Sullivan instead of killing her and trusts her enough to be his ally while helping her in London--all while making sure the Queen doesn't get that deadly gas she has the ability to create despite it giving him more work and leaving him to be forced to rely on her faith and good nature.  He let Snake into his house, just the other servants, despite the attempt on his life and the possibility of Snake finding out the truth--because then Snake would really have to die.  He could've had Sebastian kill Doll right as soon as she showed up, but he didn't give the order until she attacked.  He's an Evil Noblemen and will sacrifice innocent people, but more often than not he does what he can to avoid it and he doesn't judge others solely by their origins.  The only time he's ever really killed someone for the sake of destruction was when he killed the children in Book of Circus--and I personally largely blame that on PTSD rather than an actual judgment call of "yeah, they couldn't be saved" made with complete sanity because he wasn't in his right mind at that moment and he himself is a living example of moving forward beyond tragedy, whether he believes it or not.   

"We're strangers, so of course we're different.  What is there to be ashamed of?  In any case, I'm free to choose my companions." --Ciel to Snake, in Chapter 52

R!Ciel though... He might take to the title of an Evil Noble far more than his brother.  He doesn't have to force people away, because it doesn't seem like he cares for them anyway.  He cares for O!Ciel because their aristocrats and their family.  If we take it that R!Ciel was also the one who said "I don't need any fake brothers," in the chapter Yana Toboso created in the second fan doujinshi, we can also assume that he likely even views other aristocrats as being less than him--highly possible considering the Phantomhive family's strong ties to the Queen and the amount of betrayal among the elites. (Who could you trust?)

This elitist mindset, this idea of "I must look after my brother," and the numbness to the deaths of others and the willingness to kill should be perfectly normal for a member of a family of Evil Nobles.  It fits well with R!Ciel's character, because this is what he probably grew up being taught to believe and act upon.  "I'm likely going to take up the work of a dangerous family that is involved in horrible things. Tragedy is going to happen both ways: Better get used to it."   He also fits well for the mantra of advice that the Undertaker claims to have been telling each generation of Phantomhives:

 "Even though I told him to hold each and every soul dear.  Because you hold great power you gradually fail to understand the importance of things that cannot be recovered.  You will realize that once it's too late.  How many times have I told you and others the same warning?" --Undertaker, Chapter 35      

The problem is, R!Ciel clearly has not learned that lesson yet. Granted, Undertaker is a hypocrite, but he basically is saying to cherish life.  R!Ciel shows no signs of doing that beyond a select few.  And that's jarring for multiple reasons: One because it reflects on the kind of person he was prior to his being sacrificed, and two because it can also reflect on the fact that he isn't human anymore.  What would he care about the precious fragility of life if either A.) He doesn't even have a soul to guide him and is truly just another puppet like all of the other Bizarre Dolls, or B.) Undertaker did by some miracle manage to save his soul, but he was revived anyway so what could it matter?  He's alive and so is O!Ciel.  I prefer A, however, because B would allude to him not caring for his parent's deaths either. 

Going off all of that... Let's get back to talking about how R!Ciel greets O!Ciel.  There's no talk of the tragedy or of their loss.  There's no warm, cherishing reunion of "I'm alive!  I'm alive and I'm here for you: I'm so glad you're alive!  Demon, get the heck out before I shoot a harpoon through your face: You're not touching the little cinnabon muffin that is my twin!"  Instead, it's just, "Oh, your back!  Welcome home!  You shouldn't be the rain," as if nothing that they went through happened.  A normal person does not act this way.  There should be emotion.  There should be an acknowledgment of what happened.  There isn't.  R!Ciel treats the situation as business as usual.

This hints very well to the fact that R!Ciel isn't human anymore and likely doesn't have a soul.  He's more like Agares, and is just another mindless doll under Undertaker's command.  You can't fake humanity.  You can try to recreate a person, but once they're gone, that's it.  Even if you cloned them perfectly, or saved the body, with a copy of their memories, it's just as Undertaker said: There's only one immortal soul.  One of them in the entire world.  Without it, everything else is just parts of a machine.  R!Ciel, this doll, remembers how it used to be before his death, and clings to that: It doesn't have the power to learn and change its morals beyond that.  (And I'm calling R!Ciel an 'it' now because of the high chances that 'it' is no longer a person.)  Really, it probably doesn't have any true essence of freewill.  If there's any actions done on its own accord, it's because it knows was the true R!Ciel would do and acts on that, or else what Undertaker--and maybe even O!Ciel--would want for it to do. 

I'm going to bring up the anime just for the sake of comparison: Drocell/Drossel Keinz.  Drocell was the anime equivalent of the Bizarre Dolls before they showed up.  The difference was though was that he didn't need to directly be fed commands as the others need.  Both of the Bizarre Dolls on the Campania and at Weston, while gradually being advanced, had to be basically kept on a leash whenever Undertaker didn't want them to go after a soul.  They knew some part of them was missing.  The first batch were like mindless beasts.  The second batch could talk so long as Undertaker fed them them right words, or they repeated words that their former selves would say and still attacked without otherwise being restrained.  This time, however, R!Ciel is likely a doll like Drocell, convinced that it's human and it's alive.  That it has a soul.    

"To think all this time I thought I was human." --Drocell, Kuroshitsuji anime

Unless Undertaker actually thinks he's giving O!Ciel more than just a walking, empty corpse, unless he's lost his sanity that badly due to his pain, returning R!Ciel like this... I can barely even begin to imagine how tortured and torn a person--O!Ciel--would be over that.  That a doll, a figment of someone you once cherished, could look and act exactly like the person you lost without ever being more than a husk.  Seeing that, knowing that it's a problem, and being faced with a sudden choice: "Do I accept this even though this isn't real or do I kill this lookalike? Do I destroy the one essence left of someone I cared about, or do I let this continue for my emotional benefit?"  People grieve after a loss and then they move on.  They heal.  Bringing R!Ciel back like this does not allow that for O!Ciel, Lizzie, or Undertaker. I don't know what is going through Undertaker's head right now, but this is the beginning of a downhill spiral of pain and misery...                        

[lievbios]

Angel || Angel

Name: Angel

Age:

Relationship: Single [Verse depending]

Sexuality: Pansexual

Job:

Faceclaims: David Boreanaz

Angel was one of the most well-known vampires in all of vampiric history, legendary for both his savage villainy and his great heroism. Born Liam in 1727 in Galway, Ireland, he was sired by Darla in 1753, taking the name Angelus, and was dubbed The Scourge of Europe, earning notoriety for being one of the most sadistic and brutal vampires in history. Both The Master and the First Evil recognized and appreciated how purely evil Angelus was. He was also known as The Demon with an Angel’s Face or The One with the Angelic Face because of his physical beauty. However, in 1898, Angelus was cursed by members of Clan Kalderash as vengeance for killing a member of their clan. They returned his soul, forcing him to live eternally in guilt over the countless crimes he had committed.

In the late 20th century, Angel, as he began calling himself, became an ally and lover (who he still deeply loves) of the current Slayer, Buffy Summers. After the two were forced to realize their limitations as a couple, Angel left Buffy and moved to Los Angeles, where he became a Champion of the Powers That Be and dedicated himself to “helping the helpless” in the hope of achieving atonement.

Eventually, Angel adopted the identity of Twilight and gathered a cabal of humans and demons who had become wary of the rise of multiple Slayers. As Twilight, Angel sought to keep these forces distracted as well as make Buffy grow more focused and stronger, and at the same time, try to keep the Slayers’ deaths as low as he could.

Angel was later discovered to be under the control of Twilight, a sentient dimension who had been manipulating him all along to destroy the Earth and recreate itself in the Earth’s place. When Angel came to his senses and rebelled against Twilight, it possessed him and battled against the Scooby Gang in the ruins of Sunnydale, where it killed Buffy’s beloved mentor and father figure, Rupert Giles, before Buffy destroyed the Seed of Wonder, the source of all the Earth’s magic. After being purged of Twilight, Angel, overcome with grief and guilt, fell into a catatonic state.

Upon awakening, Angel, along with Faith Lehane, once again dedicated himself to redemption, this time by resurrecting Giles. He eventually succeeded, and was soon after forced into conflict by Whistler, who wished to unleash a mystical plague over the world to ‘save it’ after the end of magic, even if it meant killing millions of people. Angel managed to reason with him, causing Whistler to give up his life by sacrificing himself. Once the world was saved, Angel decided to stay in London and help the people who were changed because of the minor plague released.

Angel was born a human named Liam in Galway, Ireland in 1727 to a linen and silk merchant and his wife. At the age of eighteen, Liam had a failed relationship with an aristocrat named Sarah Gilfried. As a result, he became disillusioned with the women of his era, and showed distaste for noblewomen in particular, describing them as “incredibly dull, simpering morons.” Above all, he sought to meet someone “exciting” and “interesting.” By his twenties, Liam had become a drunken, whoring layabout, whose only real ambition in life lay in someday seeing the world. Liam’s father displayed near-constant disappointment in him, and was not reluctant to call him out on his shortcomings. Despite his strained relationship with his parents, he and his little sister Kathy, had mutual affection for each other.

At the age of twenty-six, after a habitual night of drunken debauchery and failed attempts to seduce the family’s only maidservant, Liam and his father got into a heated argument; enraged by his son’s chronically reckless behavior, his father declared that Liam was wasting his life, and slapped him across the face. Liam argued that he was only what his father had made him, and voiced his decision to leave home. Though his father told him that he would only end up homeless and alone, Liam stormed out. He went to a tavern, where, drunk once more, he caught the eye of a seemingly affluent woman. After being kicked out of the bar for fighting, he followed the woman—the vampire, Darla—into an alleyway, where she promised to show him a whole new world, and then sired him.[2] Darla visited his grave afterward, where everything seemed clear to him right before he had his first taste of blood when an grounds keeper caught them and accused them of being grave robbers.

Liam quickly became one of the most twisted and effective vampires to ever exist. The price of such competence: Liam’s soul and capability to feel remorse for his actions. As a demon, Liam, now calling himself Angelus, acted on his darkest impulses, and gave in to his every sinful whim.

Liam’s body was buried; at some point during the night, he rose again, and in response to Darla’s assertion, set about slaughtering his entire village. First, he brutally massacred his own family, whose blood he later described as the “sweetest of all.” Believing her brother had returned to her as an angel, Liam’s little sister, Kathy, ignorantly invited him inside the family home. He killed her first, and then murdered his mother. As he killed his father, Liam boasted that despite his father’s disapproval, he had managed to make something of himself after all. Whilst gloating over his father’s corpse, Darla cruelly deflated Liam, claiming that in the end, his father had claimed the victory because his condemnation would haunt Liam for the remainder of his existence, while his father’s suffering, while painful, had been very brief.[3] Liam, as Angelus, would later employ this same logic in regard to Drusilla.

Liam took the name “Angelus”, presumably inspired by his sister’s mistaken belief that he was an angel. He was later described in historical volumes as the “one with the angelic face”, and the “demon with the face of an angel.”[4] After leaving Ireland behind, Angelus and Darla cut a bloody swath through Wales and Northern England before reaching London in 1760. During Angelus’ first meeting with Darla’s sire, The Master, he openly mocked the older vampire, and showed no fear despite the Master’s greater age, power and authority. Afterward, he confronted Darla about her decision to remain underground; won over by Angelus’ fearlessness, Darla chose to leave with Angelus, and temporarily abandoned her sire and Master.[5]

May, 1764: Angelus and Darla killed the wife and infant son of vampire hunter Daniel Holtz, and turned his young daughter into a vampire, forcing him to destroy her.[6] Holtz then devoted himself to capturing Angelus and Darla, and chased them across Europe. He managed to kill almost four-hundred other vampires in the process.

1765: Angelus and Darla had a near miss with Holtz in Arles after making too much noise by ordering room service and then eating the waiters. Darla fled to Vienna, knocking out and abandoning Angelus in a burning barn and riding off on their only horse. After meeting again in Vienna and eating a troubadour in Madrid, Angelus and Darla became acquainted with the vampires James and Elisabeth.[7]

1767: Holtz tracked them down in Marseilles and managed to put numerous arrows in Angelus.[7]“ After voyaging to Morocco, Holtz briefly lost them in northern Africa.

1771: Holtz tracked Angelus to Rome and captured him. With the assistance of Monsignor Rivalli, Holtz tortured Angelus while trying to figure out how to get Angelus to help him to capture Darla. But instead, Darla came to the rescue with a horde of vampires. Darla declined to kill Holtz, telling Angelus that she was having too much fun tormenting him and he was now "like family.” With this, Holtz abandoned his hunt and retired to York until 1773 when a demon named Sahjhan offered to take him to the future in exchange for his promise to kill Angel and Darla in the future.[8]

1786: Angelus sired a Puritan by the name of Penn, who mimicked Angelus by wreaking havoc on his father and killing his family. Over time, he began copying Angelus’ “signature” of the time, carving a cross-shaped mark on the face of his victims in order to spite God. The two appear to have maintained a relationship throughout Angelus’ time as a soulless vampire, as they were scheduled to meet in Italy before Angelus’ soul was restored.[4]

1789: A lone Angelus encountered The Beast in Prussia, standing in a field of bodies. The Beast sought Angelus’ aid in killing the Svear Priestesses, a group who wished to banish the Beast, whom he could not kill himself. When Angelus declined to assist the Beast, he was violently attacked, but a group of Svear priestesses banished the Beast while Angelus was passing out.[10]

December 25, 1838: Angelus won a card game in Dublin, Ireland, and when his opponent, a man named Daniel who was to be married the next day, could not pay, he took his winnings by killing him.

1860: a young woman named Drusilla from London caught the attention of Darla, who then presented her to Angelus as a gift. Drusilla was “cursed” with the “sight”; the ability of foresight, something her mother saw as “an affront to the Lord.” Drusilla and her sisters were all noted to be virgins, and Drusilla was described as being “sweet, pure and chaste.” While posing as her priest in order to torment her, Angelus killed her family in front of her, which caused Drusilla to flee to a convent. On the day she was to take her holy orders, Angelus massacred the convent. After having sex with Darla on top of Drusilla, Angelus finally pushed her over the edge into complete insanity. It was at that point that he turned her into a vampire. Drusilla was Angelus’ “masterpiece”, an everlasting testament of his finest cruelty, as her immortality meant that her torment would never end. Drusilla joined Angelus and Darla, as the duo became a trio.

1880: Desiring a companion of her own, Drusilla sired the mild-mannered and lovesick poet, William, to whom Angelus served as a mentor and role model for a while.[14] William went so far as to consider the elder vampire his sire and “Yoda.”[15] Angelus taught William about the art of mass slaughter, including an incident during a wedding party where Angelus beat the groom to death with his own arm. When he realized how much William cared for Drusilla, Angelus had sex with her just to hurt him and teach him a lesson, an action William would never forgive.[16] He abandoned Angelus’ mentorship, and took on a reckless, rebellious persona that brought constant danger to Angelus’ group, but remained a romantic at heart.

1883: Angelus killed a female servant named Margaret during a luxurious Christmas party in London. The woman had a young son, whom Angelus killed afterwards.

1890: Angelus attended a production of Giselle by the Blinnikov, a Russian ballet troupe run by Count Kurskov. Despite being soulless, he was moved to tears during the performance.[17] The same year, Angelus and Spike used a trick that involved them holding hands and beheading their enemies with a length of wire in St. Petersburg, Russia.[18]

1894: Angelus and Spike were captured in Rome, Italy by henchmen of The Immortal, a mysterious and seductive being with whom they both had a fierce rivalry. The two male vampires were restrained while The Immortal had a threesome with Darla and Drusilla, something that, incidentally, the female vampires never allowed Angelus and/or Spike to do. Angelus and Spike attempted to take revenge on the Immortal, but failed miserably.[19]

1920s: Angelus spent some time in Chicago, where he saved a little lap dog from being run over by a car; however, finding himself tempted to feed on the dog’s owner, a young woman who tried to seduce Angel, he harshly rejected her.[21] In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Angel had a disagreement with a demon named Boone over a “señorita”, for which Boone called him out. Angel fought Boone for three-and-a-half hours until the sun came up and Boone honorably let him go.[22] Angel then spent time in Missoula, Montana during the Great Depression.[23]

World War II: Angel was coerced into undertaking a secret mission by the Demon Research Initiative. When they call him Angelus he informs them that he has shortened his name to “Angel”. They sank him to the bottom of the ocean to rescue an American submarine crew from three vampires the Nazis had captured as part of their paranormal research activities: Spike, Nostroyev, and The Prince of Lies. After the American crew had captured the German submarine, the vampires had escaped their bonds and murdered most of the crew; the few survivors sought refuge behind a locked hatch. After the submarine suffered damage from a depth charge, Angel was forced to sire a mortally wounded Ensign Sam Lawson, as he was the only person who was able to repair the damage, and while Angel didn’t care about the mission, he needed it to succeed to get the US government to leave him alone, and he needed the submarine so he would not get trapped on the ocean floor. After these events, Angel went underground until the war was over.[24]

1967: Angel attends Elvis and Priscilla’s wedding reception in Las Vegas, since he attends the first taping of the Carol Burnett Show in Los Angeles.

Late 1970s: In New York, Angel witnessed a robbery at a doughnut shop. After the robber shot the employee and fled, Angel stayed with the man as he died. Unable to resist the sight and smell of the clerk’s still-warm blood, Angel succumbed to his urges and fed on the body. Deeply disgusted by his own weakness and realising he could never be a part of human society, Angel fled the shop, and then exiled himself to a life of homelessness, living in alleyways and feeding on rats.[21]

Angel had fallen in love with Buffy the moment he’d laid eyes on her in Los Angeles. Soon afterward, he moved into his own apartment in Sunnydale, where he put himself on a strict diet of pig’s blood. He didn’t show himself until after Buffy had relocated to Sunnydale with her mother; he met her in an alley, at which time he warned her about The Harvest and gave her a silver cross for protection.[26] Though they had a mutual attraction to each other, Buffy was not aware of Angel’s vampiric nature until several weeks after their first meeting. They kissed in Buffy’s bedroom, which caused Angel to unintentionally reveal his vampire face. Though he fled, Buffy was privy to his secret, and sought to kill him after she mistakenly believed he had attacked her mother. In reality, Angel’s sire, Darla, had tricked Joyce Summers into inviting her inside and then bitten her. Angel battled with Darla, and managed to kill her when Buffy involved herself in the fight. Afterward, he revealed that he was unique among his kind for possessing a soul, as a result of the curse placed upon him as a punishment for brutally murdering the favorite daughter of an ancient romani clan.[27] In the following days and weeks, Buffy came to realize that she had fallen in love with Angel. Though they both tried to deny their feelings, they simply could not resist their growing passion, and eventually began dating.

Angelus allied himself once again with Spike and Drusilla and took residence in their factory. Resenting the humiliation he felt because Buffy had made him feel like a human being, Angelus took immense pleasure in tormenting the Slayer and her friends. First, he helped Spike and Drusilla deploy the Judge to incinerate the human race.[29] After Buffy destroyed the Judge, Angelus embarked on a guerrilla campaign, lurking in the shadows, preying on Buffy’s classmates, sending her gruesome messages, drawing pictures of her as she slept and leaving them in her bedroom. He even revealed the fact that Buffy had sex with him to her mother Joyce, pretending to be an obsessed, unstable, love-struck boyfriend.

A few months later, Angel was unexpectedly released from Acathla’s hell, reappearing in his mansion in a feral state.[32] Because time can flow differently in other dimensions, he had experienced a century of brutal torment while only a few months had passed for Buffy, and had been reduced to a feral state. Buffy aided him in secret, fostering his rehabilitation. Angel remained feral and she had to chain him up, but he eventually broke out and came to Buffy’s rescue when one of her classmates turned into a monster and attacked her. Angel killed him and finally recognized Buffy afterward, regaining his sanity.[33]

In Los Angeles, Angel again began to isolate himself from humanity, in order to combat the lust for human blood that had been awakened within him after feeding on Buffy.. Soon enough, he received support in his attempts to redeem himself in the service of others. First, Doyle, a half-Brachen Demon and fellow Irishman with precognitive abilities was sent by The Powers That Be to be Angel’s guide. Doyle encouraged Angel not to shy away from human interaction, warning him that isolating himself from humanity would eventually lead to him forgetting why they need to be protected, and feeding on them. Almost immediately thereafter, Angel ran into Cordelia Chase, a former classmate of Buffy’s who had moved to Los Angeles to find wealth and fame. The trio formed Angel Investigations, a private detective agency whose mission statement was to “help the helpless.” Doing this, Angel attracted the attention of the evil law firm, Wolfram & Hart.[23]

Afterward, Cordelia was sucked into Lorne’s home dimension of Pylea, and the Angel Investigations team followed her. Eventually, after Angel defeated the undefeated Champion of Pylea, the Groosalugg, they returned with a new team member, Winifred “Fred” Burkle, in tow, and learned that Buffy had died.

Devastated by Buffy’s death, Angel spent several months mourning her in a Tibetan monastery in Sri Lanka, returning despondent and believing that he had betrayed Buffy by continuing to live while she was dead, though Cordelia assured him that he was in fact honoring her memory by continuing to fight the good fight in Buffy’s stead. After Buffy was resurrected a few months later by Willow, Angel was overjoyed and immediately went to meet her between Sunnydale and Los Angeles.[47][48] Despite his still untarnished love for Buffy, Angel eventually realized his previously platonic love for Cordelia had grown romantic. Before he had a chance to confess his feelings, however, Darla returned, miraculously pregnant. The previous year, Angel had endured trials in order to win a new life for Darla as she was dying.[49] However, Darla had already been given a second chance at life and Angel’s prize seemingly went to waste. However, thanks to the one night of passion the two shared together, Darla became pregnant which was thought to be impossible for vampires. Influenced by the soul of the child growing inside her, because she was dead and therefore could not give birth to the child, Darla staked herself, leaving only a crying baby. Angel was overcome with parental love, and named their child Connor, in recognition of his Irish heritage.

2003: When a very powerful demon known only as the Beast arrived and began an attempt to bring forth an apocalypse, Angel’s worst fears were realized when he had to strip himself of his soul and revert to his evil self in order to defeat it, after Cordelia had a vision of soulless Angel facing the Beast in the past which Angel did not recall (It was later revealed that a spell had been cast before the Beast’s arrival which erased all reference to it in this dimension, with Angel being immune because he technically didn’t exist when the spell was cast). While soulless Angel did indeed overcome the Beast, and was also deft enough to realize that the Beast was a mere “flunky” serving an even more powerful evil; the Beast he knew was only interested in smashing and slaughter, and it was unlikely that it would have become smarter in the years since his initial encounter with him.

Angel’s year spent running Wolfram & Hart was one marred with challenge and self-doubt. Trying to battle evil from within the belly of the beast proved to be more difficult than even he had imagined, with the lines of good and evil becoming ever more gray with every action taken, and he soon discovered that his friends and allies in the Scooby Gang, including Buffy, had deemed him untrustworthy. Shortly after Angel assumed control of the law firm, matters were further complicated when Spike appeared as a ghost, emerging from the amulet Angel had given Buffy and that was then sent back to Angel in the mail. Now both possessed souls, and both were still in love with Buffy; they had evolved into very different heroes in the war against evil. Forced to co-exist, they waged a protracted, insidious battle of wills, ending when they finally came to an understanding and accepted their unique brotherhood on their journey to redemption.

Angel was elated when Cordelia finally awoke from her coma. Cordelia and Angel discussed how skewed he got from his path and how lost he was without her, Cordelia was shocked to learn that he and the others had taken over “Evil Incorporated.” Before Cordelia took her leave, she and Angel finally revealed their feelings for each other, culminating in a kiss.[51] The kiss, more than just a symbol of love, was instrumental in Angel returning to his path; Cordelia passed onto Angel a single vision, which came later that night, and Angel realized what he had to do.[52]

During the battle, Angel was teleported away from Gunn and towards the dragon he later befriended, who had been tricked in fighting for Wolfram & Hart; Gunn was dragged away and subsequently turned into a vampire.[55] The Senior Partners sent all of Los Angeles to a hell dimension between moments of time, turning the city into an apocalyptic battlefield full of demons. At the same moment, they rendered Angel human to deprive him of his strength and immortality when he needed it most; unaware of the change, he leaped off a rooftop, breaking his legs and back. He was discovered by Wesley, resurrected as a ghost to act as liaison between Angel and the Senior Partners.[56] The dragon took Angel back to W&H, where he relied on neo-primitive healing salves and incantations to repair his broken body. The process took months, and Angel spent every second awake and in agony; to endure the pain, he spoke to an imaginary Cordelia. Believing he was talking to him, the dragon came to believe its own name was Cordelia.[57] With his body healed, Angel, using various spells and enchantments to provide himself with his vampiric abilities, began patrolling the hell-ridden city with “Cordelia,” rescuing citizens and sending them, anonymously, to a safe-house run by Connor, Nina, and Gwen Raiden. His mission was complicated by the deaths of the Demon Lords who had taken control over areas of Los Angeles.[58] Angel declared war on the Demon Lords, challenging them to a battle to liberate the city.[59] Initially alone in the fight, he was soon aided by his old friends, Spike, Illyria, Connor, Gwen, Nina, Groosalugg, Lorne, and Wesley,[60] and successfully tricked the Lords into killing themselves with the Hagan Shafts.[61]

At some point, Angel gained new abilities after a meeting with a shape-shifting higher power, including flight and invulnerability, which he quickly used to save a damaged airplane.[69] With governments and demons fearful of the new Slayers created by Buffy and plotting to destroy them, Angel was approached by Whistler, the very same demon who originally put him on his heroic path, and the higher power itself, who presented him with numerous possible future scenarios, those of which that depict Angel fighting alongside Buffy, ending with both of them dying in battle, and insisted that the only way for Angel to save them both was to fight against Buffy,[70] stating that if Angel did not do so, the entire world would go to Hell like Los Angeles did.[71] Though naturally reluctant to deceive Buffy, Angel assumed the identity of “Twilight” and gathered a cabal of those most likely to oppose the Slayer army, consisting of several demons, members of the United States military such as General Voll, and Lieutenant Moulter, as well as Buffy’s old enemies Warren Mears and Amy Madison, and her ex-boyfriend Agent Riley Finn, the latter of whom was acting as a double agent for Buffy, though “Twilight” was aware of this fact. His supposed goal was to bring about the end of magic and eliminate all Slayers. However, his true goal was to keep the anti-Slayer forces distracted with his supposed “master plan,” thus allowing him to coordinate the anti-Slayer movement and limit the potential damage that might result had these factions struck independently, while at the same time give Buffy a concrete threat to fight against, keeping her focused and ready for the challenges that lay ahead, while also guiding her into a position where she would somehow acquire powers similar to his.

Angel tends to be reserved and is often seen as more wounded up and uptight in contrast to other characters, sometimes even rivaling Wesley and Giles. His most prominent and mocked trait was his tendency to be overly gloomy and brooding. Before moving to Los Angeles, he was inclined to spend much of his time alone, and was never open with friends or allies, with the exception of Buffy to an extent, though he still kept quiet about his past from her, as he felt it would disgust her. The sins he committed when souless are constantly at the back of his mind, to a degree where he felt for a very long time that he did not deserve happiness or redemption. He defied Whistler’s wishes for him to help Buffy at first, and many years later, when he was offered a chance to live without his vampiric weaknesses with the Gem of Amara, he chose to destroy it instead, justifying that he needed to continue living with his punishment.[100] He also refused Drusilla’s offer to remove his pain with her Lorophage Demon because he felt that his guilt drove him to do good and kept Angelus at bay.[82] While Angel’s belief in his mission for redemption fluctates frequently over being worth it, he still continued to help others as a champion.

Angel was quite self-detrimental and was prone to long spells of doubt, depression and regret. He still felt that he was far from deserving of contentment, but worked tirelessly to prove himself to his peers and the Powers That Be. Still, for a long time he believed himself a lost cause. When he fed off the body of a shop keeper in a moment of weakness in the 1970s, he resigned himself to a life of homelessness, and was not stirred out of it until Whistler showed him Buffy Summers approximately twenty years later. Though this state of mind changed somewhat when he fell in love with Buffy, it wasn’t until he learned about the Shanshu Prophecy that he truly began believing in himself and his actions. Angel was also established as detached from reality, and didn’t find many things in his life he could look forward to. Unlike humans, who grow and learn as they age, Angel was frozen in time.[101] He has an almost unhealthy obsession with his destiny; he will follow almost any metaphorical road as long as he believes it will help people (specifically Buffy or himself) to achieve what they were destined for. Because of this, he could easily make dangerous decisions. This was made most obvious when he allowed himself to be manipulated by Twilight for what he believed was the greater good. Under Twilight’s influence, he was indirectly responsible for the death of two hundred slayers- defending it on the grounds that more would have died if he had done nothing-, created a dimension with Buffy that threatened to destroy Earth itself, and later and brutally murdered Giles (although it should be noted that Twilight was directly in control of Angel when he killed Giles rather than Angel doing it himself).

During his darker phases, Angel also smoked, such as his reversion to soulessness in 1998, his ensouled depression pre-Buffy, and his dark phase in Los Angeles in late 2000.

Angel’s most readily identifiable characteristic was his hair which varied in length.

Angel has a tattoo of a bird with the letter A in the tail on his back.

Powers

Enhanced vampire abilities: Angel had the standard powers and vulnerabilities of a vampire; he was immortal, regenerated damage, possessed superhuman physical attributes, and had heightened senses, able to track people by scent alone. He was also vulnerable to holy items and sunlight, could be killed by decapitation and a stake to the heart, needed to regularly ingest mammal blood to maintain his vitality, and could not enter the residence of a living human without being invited by a resident. Due to his advanced age, however, he was considerably more powerful than an average vampire; for example, he was able to run at such speeds that he appeared to teleport several meters,[22][118][157][158], was strong enough that he could lift up a heavy security gate[159], survive explosions and falls from skyscrapers with little injury,[160][161][157] and withstand prolonged exposure to sunlight and holy items to no ill effect. He also possessed a high pain tolerance, able to withstand prolonged periods of torture without succumbing.[155]

Advanced combat: Angel was a highly skilled combatant and generally fought unarmed, using circular attacks such as spinning kicks and back hands. In addition to his proficiency in many forms of martial arts, he mastered many varieties of weapons, favoring broadswords and sometimes axes. He is even more dangerous when Angelus takes over, since his soul-less self often fights with no remorse. During his lifetime, Angel successfully stood up to and defeated a wide variety of powerful and skilled opponents, including Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane, Marcus Hamilton and Connor, amongst others. Additionally, Angel beat Spike on numerous occasions, only losing to his protege once, when he was discouraged and suffering self doubt, in their century plus association.[16] Following Darla being sired by Drusilla, a cold, ruthless and driven Angel was shown to have single-handedly defeated around twenty vampires and demons in one fight.[144] Angel even survived a hand-to-hand fight with the ancient vampire Kakistos on one occasion despite living in seclusion for over a decade by the time of their fight.[162] Angel was also able to physically dominate The Beast, forcing the demon to its knees before finally succumbing to The Beast’s strength. Even when human, Angel was able to defeat opponents far stronger than him, including briefly getting the better of Spike, before Illyria stepped in, and defeating Charles Gunn who was, at the time, a vampire.[104]

Psychic abilities: Angel also possessed some cognitive abilities; he had a photographic memory[163] and displayed a psychic connection to those he had sired on at least one occasion.[4] While running Wolfram & Hart, he was given Cordelia’s visions[52] on her last day on Earth;[51] however, he believed that this was a “one-shot deal,” suggesting that this ability was not permanent.

Demonology and Occult aptitude: Because of his age, Angel had immense knowledge of both demonology and history (on occasion rivaling that of Giles and Wesley).

Sorcery: Angel also had some experience in magic, able to perform spells, exorcisms, and glamours, although he preferred to rely on others’ expertise if the option was available rather than doing them himself.

Immunity: Though not exactly a “power,” Angel was immune to Billy Blim’s power to induce misogyny because, as he explained, he gave up on hate long ago, and even as Angelus, he never felt anger or hate towards any of his victims.[138] As Angelus, he was unaffected by the Judge’s incinerating touch, as unlike his ensouled self, he had no humanity for the Judge to burn out.[29]

Psychological manipulation: As Angelus, he displayed considerable skill in manipulating others’ emotional states, using psychological tactics to attack both the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations both times when Angel lost his soul, though the most notable example was his driving Drusilla insane. He was also an expert in torture as both Angel and Angelus.

Leadership and tactical skills: Additionally, Angel was highly intelligent, possessed strong leadership skills, and had a natural flair for strategies and tactical planning; although he initially followed Buffy’s lead when working with the Scooby Gang, this could have been based around his own social uncertainty after decades of isolation and/or his attempt to help her grow as a Slayer, demonstrating greater skills and confidence when he moved to Los Angeles to set out on his own. Angel also appeared to be a master of intimidation; when Connor broke free of his restraints and beat down Gunn and Fred, Angel, despite his weakened condition after three months trapped at the bottom of the ocean and only a limited amount of recently-ingested blood to restore himself, quickly stood up to Connor and ordered him to sit down, which he did after only a slight hesitation.

Art and writting skills: He had “very nice handwriting”[54] and was a gifted artist, using charcoal crayon and China ink to draw portraits.

Motorist skills: Angel could drive and had a good eye for cars, owning a black 1967 Plymouth GTX and a Dodge Viper, along with an entire garage full of other cars as W&H CEO.

Multilinqualism: Angel could speak several languages, including English, Korean, Tibetan, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Belarusian, Romanian, and German, and attempted to learn the language of the Vinji and Sahrvin demons via an instruction tape

Other abilities: Angel was competent, but uncomfortable, with modern technology; he frequently struggled to understand cellphones (once claiming that they must have been invented by a “bored warlock”) and confused computer terminology such as “chatty rooms.”.[166] He also knew how to change diapers, but claimed to be more familiar with pins than the “new-fangled fasteners” of disposable brands. He was also a convincing improvisational actor, deceiving Faith and Mayor Richard Wilkins as well as later the Circle of the Black Thorn and his own allies into believing that he had either reverted to Angelus or gone corrupt. Additionally, according to Cordelia, Angel possessed remarkable cooking skills “for someone who’s on a liquid diet.”

VERSES

[stone-man-warrior]

July 22, 2018: 2:08 am:

July 21, 2018:<br><br>Has anyone noticed that the idiot who calls himself &qu... StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-07-21T21:16:49-0400 - Updated: 2018-07-22T05:08:31-0400

July 21, 2018: Has anyone noticed that the idiot who calls himself "Q", and the other idiot fake people who defend and support "Q" all showed up at the same time as Donald Trump showed up as President? Coincidence? Evidence! I am convinced that "Q" is actually "cue", as in the idea of a signal to advance, but presented to a large army over the internet and other media. A gigantic cue. In case anyone is wondering, I have given up on Donald Trump. I gave him a chance. He failed. The words "You're Fired" should be ringing loud and clear soon. Send a freight train filled with peach yogurt to: Donald J. Trump POTUS 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington DC, 20500 Mr. Trump has betrayed us all. He is the head Screen Actor. He is the head Seventh Day Adventist. He is the head Q. "Q" is an abbreviation for Quebec. POTUS, Donald Trump is the head terrorist. He has his generals in the Governors seat of the nation. The Governor Generals use their army of soldiers supplied by Screen Actor Guild to portray themselves as State Police Officers of the States they represent, with highly trained and specialized Canadian Mounted Police Officers leading those from the Guild while pretending to be State Police. With the uniforms, squad cars, guns, badges surveillance equipment and orders to carry out, they are destroying the country they are responsible for running. This unbelievable truth is overwhelming. False State Police in association with the Department of Motor Vehicles is currently in the ongoing practice of accessing the Driver License and State issued ID cards of US citizens. Soldiers from Quebec are summoned such that those soldiers look reasonably similar to the information printed on the Drivers License of the American Victim. The replacement soldier assumes the identity of the host American victim and occupies that persons home. Entire families and circle of friends are taken captive this way with the aid of the victims contact list in their cellular telephones and social media accounts. The replacement soldiers assume the VOTING REGISTRATION STATUS of the host American victim. Even if the information in the paragraph above turns out that Mr. Trump is not at the helm of the terrorist take-over, the truth is that he is at the helm of the United States of America and is the Commander and Chief. The Commander and Chief has been informed of the Screen Actor Guild take-over coup, he has not protected us from it. Some smart person in my life told me that when the problems we face are very important and are life threatening, then those who are not part of the solution are part of the problem. It may be a presidential quote. Who ever said that understood what freedom is. Freedom is the kind of thing that once it's gone, there is no way to get more of it. Ever. Freedom is quickly becoming obsolete. The absence of freedom is the presence of captivity. In the absence of Donald Trump, we would have Mike Pence. Mike Pence in charge would be a whole new kind of "Bible-Thumper". There does not seem to be a remedy for the sickness that has captured our nation. Freedom is being sold to captivity at a dys-count. Quantities are limited. Time is running out. Fight terrorism with a Bic Lighter. Don't get on the bus, never get on the bus. Send Peach Products to Washington DC, it does not even matter who you send it to at this point, just send the yogurt and drown the swamp. It would be wise to exit from FaceBook. Exit FaceBook by deleting the information there one bit at a time rather than deleting the entire account at once is my recommendation. Change your contact lists to nicknames or delete your contacts all together to keep them safe. You can find other ways of remembering their phone numbers. Enter the phone numbers of the police departments in your area in your phone instead of the numbers of your family. There are creative ways to fight this if you consider that a phone stolen is a map to your loved ones. My family is dead as a result this coup. If the Screen Actors Guild, movie stars, rock stars, entertainers, clowns, jugglers, organ grinders, news anchors, political analysts, the Easter Bunny, Santa Clause and Sheriff Clarke along with Fox and Friends ever wind up doing live streams from the Pentagon, we are truly doomed. At that point, Vladimir Putin would have no choice but to attack the USA if only to keep those fools away from all of those buttons, big guns, boats, and airplanes that are accessible from the Pentagon. And, to keep them from coming to his house to party. Mr. Putin gave Mr. Trump a gift. A clue. He gave him a ball made of Pentagons. What a ball game this is. Who's on first? Shared with: Public

+1'd by: Bryan Milen

StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-07-21T21:59:11-0400

July 21, 2018: What I cannot figure out, is why the Sheriff of Klamath County Oregon and members of the Jackson County Sheriff's office attempted to blow-up and kill Mr. Trump with a statue-bomb. You did not read about this in the news papers or see it on television because it happened in real life in Oregon. The bomb was real, it exploded. It was not supposed to explode until it reached Mr. Trump. The statue bomb exploded and blew up a bus... presumably with Noah Strohmeyer holding the coconut. Bananas. It's a banana republic with coconut bombs and Flintsone television, except it's not. The bomb, the bus, and people exploded in Medford Oregon in February 2017. I was there, I saw it, I nearly crashed into part of the bus as the bus bits sailed in front of my truck. Comey was part of the banana bunch. Why make a Sheriff statue bomb to blow-up trump if he is the leader of the coup? That is a mystery. And no one has asked about the explosion, or what I know of it! Coconuts!

StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-07-22T02:09:13-0400July 21, 2018:

(4-5-2019: Authors Note: There was a link here in the original Google+ posting. It’s gone. Google deleted it from the downloadable archive. The link was part oh a hit order to kill two police officers. Google arranged that my downloadable archive had been packaged by hand. That is, my archive was sorted through by Google, and many of the entries are not complete. All of them are scrambled a bit, and there is no continuity in the archive package received from Google resultant of their purging of the entire Google+ platform.)

StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-07-22T02:23:18-0400 - Updated: 2018-07-22T02:47:10-0400

The link above regarding the Officers is a hit. They were assassinated. The two Officers that died in the helicopter crash were likely to be good officers who would not do as the Screen Actors Guild had arranged for them to do. They were killed. Everything else about the event in Virginia that day is Bullshit. The events that took place were scripted. The photos we see are staged. The  people involved, each and every one of them, are actors. Hollywood Hit Helicopter. All of those different groups of demonstrators are figments of the imagination of a screen writer. Those groups are useful for terrorism performed at the hands of Screen Actors Guild. The two officers died. That leaves two openings on the police force there for Screen Actor Guild Canadian Mounted Police trained terrorist soldiers to fill. Near Langley Virginia, the terrorism is done a little differently than in Oregon. In Oregon, the police would have been killed and replaced without all of the fanfare. The part with the Dodge charger was practiced on the street I live on. The bumper of the car was supposed to fall off. I saw them practice and they used props to mimic the bumper falling off. Burton Mitchell Dietrich, and Richard Chartrand of 97526 played roles in this event that include the Charger, along with some other Oregon local young people in the demonstration who had large colorful flags. Some of them must have traveled to Virginia from Oregon, probably by private "Junket Jet". If you look at videos of this event with the Charger, look for the bumper and red bungee cords holding it on prior to impact. Red bungee cords were under the wheel wells to quick release the bumper Hollywood style. Since Donald Trump was made aware of the terrorism, he should be charged as an accomplice to the murder of these two officers. This activity is too close to Langley to ignore. Fight terrorism with a Bic Lighter.

[thinkdragonage]

Elissa’s Journal - 1st Entry

[This is a bit rough, but I haven’t written and posted in so long, I feel compelled to share it. These entries might wind up comprising the next chapter, but for now I’ll post them one at a time here, just because... I haven’t written in so long and I’m desperate for attention :P But seriously, I’m just happy to be finally getting out of this writing block,even if it’s just a little bit.]

[In large writing, covering the top of the first page of a leather-bound journal.]

Diary of Elissa M. Cousland, Warden of the Grey, Rightful Teyrna of Highever, daughter of Teyrn Bryce Cousland (8:80 Blessed - 9:30 Dragon) and Teyrna Eleanor Cousland (8:85 Blessed - 9:30 Dragon).

I am the last remaining survivor to the great Fereldan House of Cousland. My parents perished, along with the Lady Oriana Cousland (9:03-9:30 Dragon) and her son and heir, Oren Cousland (9:25-9:30 Dragon), when Bann Howe (8:79 Blessed, and will die in 9:30 should the Maker guide my hand to retribution) diabolically murdered and betrayed his old friend, attacking Cousland Castle in the night, after our soldiers had departed. Fergus Cousland (9:03 - 9:30 Dragon) died in battle in the Korcari Wilds around the time of the Battle of Ostagar, presumably.

[The entry ends here. There are several pages torn from the journal, and then the writing begins again in the same script, with different ink.]

I had thought to record our travels and travails in an objective and complete fashion, omitting opinion where it was not warranted, and divulging only the important events and decisions. I have recorded our mission and goals, our objectives to meet at each of the locations we visited, and what was accomplished and was not.

However, it is of my fellow warden’s ([Alistair Theirin is crossed out, replaced by Warden Alistair, which is then again crossed out and replaced by simply ‘Alistair (9:10 Dragon).’]) opinion that my writing does not engage the reader’s interest. Whereas I held my objective and factual prose to be a benefit, Alistair informed me it was anything but, and that my factual rendition would do little good if “no one can stand to finish it.” 

I have given the matter some thought, as I feel a great reluctance to taint my recollection with subjective analysis and individual perspective. However, the point nevertheless remains. If my personal style is too dry and academic, it would behoove me to adapt one more accommodating of my reader’s limited attention span.

As such, I shall swallow my trepidation, and attempt to record here not just the details of events, but my personal opinions and situational analyses, in the hopes that including this somewhat irrelevant information will increase the likelihood of my work retaining its worth.

I have little wish to recollect the particulars of my early days as a warden. Suffice it to say that I came to the organization through great tragedy, but not, as I first suspected, through any sentiment of charity. Duncan recruited me from my dying father, knowing that I had no martial skills or experience. I was much too overcome with grief and fear to challenge this negotiation, and by the time I regained my senses, I had accepted the additional weight of another duty. Thus I began my career with twin missions: avenge my family, fight the Blight.

I had little sense of what it all meant at the time, of course. Overcome with grief as I was, it was a simple thing for Duncan to guide my mute form to Ostagar.

Others have no doubt told the tale of that fateful battle, and I’ll not weigh down this narrative with tactical details that have surely been thoroughly examined and discussed by everyone with the free will to form an opinion by now. I’ll say just this: Alistair and I survived.

We were, improbably though it seems, rescued by a figure out of legend--at least according to the subject in question. Flemeth, she claimed to be, and while this writer can not ascertain what truth may lie in this assertion, I nevertheless must conclude that the power dwelling inside this individual is no small thing. Indeed, we are not quite sure how the seemingly old woman collected us and transported us to her hut in the Korcari Wilds, but as I have no other explanation for how we wound up waking therein, I can offer no alternative explanation.

It proved fortuitous in any case, as the witch woman knew of the Grey Warden treaties we held, and in fact considered our quest so grave and important as to offer up her only daughter as our companion, to help guide us out of the wilds and lend us aid in battle. And so, Morrigan joined our party.

It was also in the Korcari Wilds that I forged the beginning of an alliance with my fellow Warden. We vowed to each other to not rest until we’d fulfilled the treaties and seen to our personal vendettas (him, to the traitor Loghain, whose betrayal cost us the victory at Ostagar and our young king’s life, and for me, of course, the despicable Howe).

From there, we set out to call upon the aid of Arl Eamon, who had served as Alistair’s guardian in his youth. We discovered a village in turmoil when we arrived. The Arl, we would come to discover, had been poisoned by agents of Loghain, while the townsfolk were plagued by a horde of undead monstrosities. With our help, as well as the cooperation of the Templars and mages of Kinloch Hold, we managed to quell the undead uprising, kill the demon and save the Arl’s young son. 

Our success required a brief sojourn to the Circle Tower, where Alistair and I discovered yet another calamity was taking place. A group of blood mages had staged an insurrection, and the resulting fighting had torn open the veil, infesting the tower with all manner of demons and undead. Unwilling to walk away from the Tower without meeting our objectives, I insisted that Alistair and I attempt what the Templars were afraid to: we entered the Tower, and discovered a few survivors that helped us re-establish order by finding and defeating the demons, blood mages, and possessed Templars. When we discovered the First Enchanter alive and rescued him, we were finally able to deliver our treaty and gain their alliance for our upcoming war. 

By the time we arrived in Denerim a few weeks later, we had acquired a few more travelers to our party, including an Antivan Crow named Zevran Arainai (birth, unknown, and was offended when I asked), a sister of the Chantry, Leliana (8:98 Blessed), a Qun warrior (birth, unknown) and two mages from the Circle Tower, Solona Amell (9:10 Dragon) and Wynne (8:?? Blessed). Having failed at reproducing an antidote, it occurred to me that our best strategy to procure one would be to steal the original back from Loghain.

It took several weeks to put the pieces in place, and during this time the Wardens (including now, Solona) set off to discover an ancient keep in the hopes of reclaiming it for our use. We discovered more than just history within its crumbling walls--there was another living Warden residing there still. The old mage had extended his lifespan through who knows what magical methodology. He provided us few solid answers… though the recipe for the Joining proved to be a useful one soon enough.

Whilst in Denerim, we aided a young elf by the name of Darrian Tabris (9:10-, presumed 9:30 Dragon) by uncovering and dismantling through force the illegal Tevinter slave operation taking place in the city’s alienage. Our work captured the attention of the city guard, who kept a few members of the party gainfully employed during our stay in the city.

Our planning culminated into a covert operation at the Howe estate. Though it pained me greatly, I held back my vengeance during the mission. Securing the antidote for Arl Eamon was my utmost priority--I did not have the luxury of being selfish. But, perhaps irrationally, I am optimistic that my vengeance will not remain unfulfilled for long. My reckoning with my vile enemy is inevitable… so long as I am patient, I’m confident I shall be rewarded.

Through great planning and no small sacrifice, we managed to procure a cure for the poison that afflicted the Arl, and sent a vial of the antidote back to Redcliffe, born by the witch woman Morrigan, who possesses the ability to shapeshift into various animals, including a raven.

We escaped Denerim, barely, and unfortunately… the Tabris elf did not make it. I’ll not spend ink relitigating my decisions here. As I said, no small sacrifice…

In any case, once Morrigan departed toward Redcliffe, the rest of the party (save the dwarves and my devoted mabari, Prince, who I sent on ahead) ventured into the Brecilian forest, seeking the Dalish. We bore a treaty to enlist their aid during a Blight, and it was our intention to see this treaty fulfilled. Unfortunately, in something of a pattern, the Dalish were besieged by their own troubles when we finally met them. A band of hostile werewolves had attacked the clan, cursing several of their tribe with an ancient magical affliction. Though the clan’s elder… the Keeper, as the Dalish refer to him… appeared reluctant to request our help, we committed to the cause of curing them, and thus embarked on a wild and unpredictable adventure in the forest.

We entered the woods seeking the heart of a monstrous wolf named Witherfang, as the clan’s Keeper (Name? birth?) intimated that it’s acquisition was key to reversing the curse. As it turned out, the situation was a bit more complicated than presented to us, and by the time we saw it’s resolution, both my partner and I succumbed to the lycanthropic curse.

I don’t think I can properly describe the surreal and painful experience of transforming into a werewolf… Alistair has a flair for the dramatic and would likely provide a more salacious account of that ordeal. Nevertheless, I will say this: it wasn’t just a transformation of bodies that took place in the forest. Our relationship transformed as well.

I find myself struggling to form the words to describe this series of events, for reasons that are quite personal in nature. However, I suspect this is just the information Alistair meant for me to include (no doubt so he can gain the pleasure of reading my complimentary comments about him once I’ve finished). But I think this entry has taken long enough, so Alistair, my dear, when you read this, I’ll be happy to demonstrate explicitly my feelings about our relationship, in lieu of a written explanation here. I hope that will suffice…

[thewebofslime]

Eventually, having discussed income inequality, and global warming, and health care as a human right, and cancelling all student debt and making the “billionaire class” pay their “fair share of taxes,” Bernie Sanders gave the members of the Islamic Society of North America just what they wanted to hear. He denounced Trump for once saying that “Islam hates us.” There are many people other than Donald Trump who believe that Islam hates us. They are not all right-wing white nationalists. The famously left-wing Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci believed, from her extensive dealings with them, that Muslims were taught to hate non-Muslims. The ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali has described being raised in a society where people were taught to hate Infidels. Trump carefully did not say that “all Muslims hate us.” He was referring to an ideology, Islam, and not to the human beings, Muslims, who may accept, or reject, in whole or in part, what the Qur’an inculcates about non-Muslims. Some Muslims clearly do not hate all non-Muslims, do not wish to “fight” and to “kill” them, to “smite at their necks” and “strike terror in their hearts,” as the Qur’an instructs. But many Muslims around the world clearly do. The existence of “moderate Muslims” does not vitiate the claim that “Islam hates us.” We have only to read the Qur’an and some of the most celebrated hadith to come to that melancholy conclusion. One wonders if Bernie Sanders will ever take the time to read the Qur’an, or will he instead remain happily secure within his complacent ignorance, convinced that “of course” Islam, like all religions, must be based on the principles of “justice, compassion, and tolerance.” Doesn’t his own campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, demonstrate those very principles in his dealings with his Jewish employer and friend, Bernie Sanders? And surely, Sanders assumes, Faiz must be a representative, rather than an exceptional, Muslim. Sanders told his audience that because of Trump, many more Muslims ran for office and won elections in 2018. Is this true? There were two Muslim members of Congress before 2018; now there are three, a gain of exactly one. There does not appear to have been any discernible increase in the number of Muslims elected at the state or local level. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have simply attracted a great deal of attention as Muslim politicians, and made them seem more numerous and significant than in fact they are. Muslims are 1.1% of the American population; they constitute 0% of the Senate, 0.75% of the House, 0% of the Governors. Sanders needs to look again at the results of the 2018 election before making these psephological gaffes. Muslims in America and around the world are being unjustly tarred, Sanders insisted, with the brush of “terrorism.” Could the association of Muslims with terrorism have anything to do with the more than 35,000 terrorist attacks by Muslims since 9/11? Could it have anything to do with the existence of such groups of Islamic terrorists as Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf, Al Nusra Front, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Al Shebaab, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad? How much Islamic reality does Bernie Sanders expect us to ignore? Sanders told his Houston audience that he deplored the rise of authoritarian rulers, which he appeared, confusedly and unfairly, to blame on the West. But he left out aspects of recent history: some of the worst despots in the Islamic world have been eliminated, often with the indispensable help of the Western powers. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein, a sadistic monster, was deposed by the American military. Should we be apologetic for that? Would Sanders prefer that Saddam Hussein were still ruling over Iraq? in Libya, Muammar Qaddafi was removed – killed – by Libyans who had received critical military assistance from NATO, including naval bombardments by American and British ships, and aerial bombings by the French, of Qaddafi’s forces. Was his removal to be deplored? Other authoritarians, like the massively corrupt Ben Ali in Tunisia, were chased out of office by opponents, many of whom – like the technocrat Mohamed Ghannouchi — had been raised in a Franco-Tunisian intellectual milieu, with Western democratic ideals. Ben Ali and his wife grabbed 1.5 tons of government gold and managed to flee to Saudi Arabia, which had always supported Ben Ali and has refused to extradite him. It’s not the West that should be embarrassed about Ben Ali, but the Saudis. Authoritarianism, whose “rise” Sanders deplores, is nothing new in the Islamic world; the West is not to be blamed. It is the default political system for Islam. In the advanced democratic West, a government’s legitimacy is judged by how well it reflects the will of the people, however imperfectly expressed through elections. In the lands of Islam, a ruler’s legitimacy is judged by how well he reflects the will of Allah, as expressed in the Qur’an. As long as he remains a good Muslim, a despot must be obeyed. The ruling families of the Arab Gulf — the Al-Saud, the Al-Maktoum, the Al-Nahyan, the Al-Khalifa, the Al-Said, the Al-Mualla, Al-Nuaimi, Al-Qasimi, Al-Sabah, Al-Sharqi, Al-Thani – are all authoritarians, but they profit from the legitimacy of being considered good Muslims. They lavish their support on influential clerics; the clerics, in turn, provide their imprimatur to the rulers. One form of authoritarianism, monarchy, was replaced in Iran by another form, theocracy, when the Shah fled and the Ayatollah Khomeini took his place as Absolute Leader. In Pakistan, a pseudo-democracy has disguised a series of authoritarian rulers, mostly military men, some more (such as General Zia ul-Haq) and some less (such as the politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) fervent in their Islamic faith. In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become increasingly authoritarian, having exploited the failed July 2016 coup attempt as an excuse to imprison thousands of his political enemies, including many journalists, and to cause many others to lose their employment — as judges, lawyers, teachers, civil servants of every type — with the government. Erdogan has even built himself a 1,500-room palace, as befits the Ottoman Sultan he would no doubt like to be. Neither in Iran, nor in Pakistan, nor in Turkey, has the West been responsible for these authoritarian regimes. They are home grown. Sanders’ attempt to blame the Americans for this “rise in authoritarianism” is distinctly unfair. The Americans did not help put the Pakistani rulers in office. Nor did they promote or support Erdogan, who has always been anti-American and has become ever more so as he foresees a military contest “between the crescent and the cross.” Nor can the Americans be blamed for the seizure of power by the fanatically anti-American Khomeini in Iran. The Americans are to be faulted only for a naïve faith in the universal appeal of democracy. They tried, with a colossal investment in men and money, to install real democracy in Iraq; the failure of that attempt should be blamed not on America for trying, but on the Iraqis themselves for being so unwilling to compromise through electoral politics. The minority Sunnis in Iraq refuse to acquiesce in their loss of political and economic power when Saddam fell; the majority Shi’a are unwilling to relinquish any of the power that devolved to them when Hussein’s Sunni rule ended. Sanders blames America for the rise of ISIS. He didn’t explain this in his Houston speech, but presumably he means that Saddam Hussein had been sufficiently ruthless to suppress the most fanatical Muslims and should not have been overthrown. It was only in the chaos that followed his downfall that ISIS managed to fill the power vacuum in northern Iraq, and from there enlarge the Islamic State to control more of Iraq, including the key city of Mosul, and eastern Syria as well. Should the Americans have foreseen the rise of ISIS? Why? It was an unprecedented phenomenon, an attempt by fanatics to set up what they called a “caliphate” where life would be lived strictly according to the laws of the earliest Muslims. If the Arabs and Muslims could not have predicted the rise of ISIS, why should the Americans be criticized for failing to do so? Sanders might have told his audience the truth: “We went to Iraq with good intentions. We saw Saddam Hussein – correctly – as a monster of oppression and murder. He killed 182,000 Kurds in order to “Arabize” the Kurdish lands. He killed hundreds of thousands of Shi’a Iraqis to maintain the supremacy of his fellow Sunnis. But we underestimated the difficulty of transplanting democracy. It is a plant that requires long nurturing, and in our naïve enthusiasm we failed to realize that. We aimed too high. An enlightened authoritarian might have been the proper goal, as a political way-station on the path to a future democracy.” He might have; it would have been salutary; he chose to stick instead to the script his audience favored: Muslims always as victims. Bernie Sanders seems, however, to be determined to make the same mistakes that the Americans made in Iraq. He claims that “I will make the promotion of democracy and human rights a priority for the USA.” How does he hope to plant democracy in the stony soil of Islam? Where has a true “democracy” ever been successfully established, for the long term, in any Muslim country? As for “human rights,” how does Sanders hope to have women and minorities treated equally in Muslim countries, given what is said about women and non-Muslims in the Qur’an and Hadith? Sanders was indignant about India’s action in Kashmir, in abrogating Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which had given the Kashmiris a high degree of autonomy. He claimed that “India’s action is unacceptable…The U.S. government must speak out boldly….in support of a U.N.-backed resolution that respects the will of the Kashmiri people.” What “Kashmiri people” is he talking about? Does he mean to include the 300,000-600,000 Hindus (the “Pandits”) who were killed or fled Kashmir since 1990? Are they part of the “Kashmiri people” or does that phrase, for Sanders, only refer to the 96.4% of the population that is Muslim, now that so many Hindus have fled? Shouldn’t the hundreds of thousands of Hindus who were indigenous to Kashmir, but fled Muslim persecution and murder, also be counted as part of the “Kashmiri people”? And what about the people in Jammu, which has administratively always been, with Kashmir, part of one state: Jammu-Kashmir, J&K? Two-thirds of the people in Jammu are Hindus. Shouldn’t they be counted as well, as part of the population of the newly-declared “Union territory” of “Jammu and Kashmir”? Sanders has no understanding of what the Hindus of Kashmir have endured over the past 30 years. He thinks that the Muslims can justly claim to be the only “Kashmiri people” who count. Can Sanders really be unaware of the fate of the Kashmiri Pandits? Yes, I think he can; worse still, he assumes he is well-informed about the matter. Perhaps his campaign manager Faiz Shakir has provided him with a potted Muslim history of Kashmir. And what does Sanders know about Muslim terror attacks inside India? Does he know how many of those attacks were carried out by Pakistan-based terrorists? He fails to mention the role of Pakistan, for example, in supporting the terrorists who struck Mumbai in 2008, killing 166 people. Did he notice that just the day before he gave his Houston speech, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, becoming more hysterical every day, threatened to use nuclear weapons against India if the situation in Kashmir was not resolved to his liking? Shouldn’t Sanders have mentioned that astounding threat, or was he so dead set on taking the Muslim side, for that ISNA audience, that he wouldn’t admit to anything that might give others pause about Pakistan?

[trendingnewsb]

6 Actors Who Did The Same Crimes Their Own Characters Did

At the beginning of every episode of Jackass, the show has to practically beg you not to try any of what you’re about to see at home, which seems a bit redundant when the guys start stapling their own testicles to an enraged bull. But it’s necessary. Some people truly can’t help doing whatever they see onscreen, no matter how bloody, stupid, or painful the results. Sometimes that even goes for the actors pretending to do it …

6

A Sopranos Actor Was Implicated In A Real Mob Execution

Michael “Big Mike” Squicciarini was typecast as, well, himself, and his role as “Big Frank” on The Sopranos was no exception. Though it seems impossible for a guy who has played everyone from “Thug Joey” to “Henchman #2,” his real-life rap sheet had more mob stereotypes than his IMDb page. While he worked for the DiMeo crime family on the show, he worked for the family they were based on, the DeCavalcantes, in reality.

HBOHis quotes include, “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh that’s-a spicy meatball, capisci?”

Read Next

6 Hilarious Loopholes Normal People Used To Beat The System

Big Mike served five years for aggravated assault before officially graduating to murder in 1992, when he lured rival drug dealer Ralph Hernandez to a nightclub owned by mob capo “Joe Pitts” Conigliaro. Pitts was in a wheelchair because he and his partner failed so hard at shaking a dude down that they accidentally shot each other at the same time, but he didn’t let that hold him back. Someone (we don’t know for sure if it was Big Mike, but it, uh … it was probably Big Mike) locked Hernandez in a room with Joe, but didn’t stick around to see Pitts shoot the man in the forehead.

That would have been the end of it, had Big Mike not gotten stars in his eyes. Police were still investigating the crime, but all they had was a nickname, and you’d be surprised at the number of Big Mikes residing in that part of the country. Then they noticed that this Sopranos guy seemed suspiciously good at gangstering …

Bill TurnbullWhen they needed to make sure nobody snitched about the ending of the series, who do you think they called?

Witnesses were shown a few episodes of the show, and confirmed that it was an entertainment thrill ride (and also that Big Mike totally helped kill that guy). By then, Big Mike had turned his life around, but his crimes came back to haunt him. He passed away before he could stand trial, and Joe Pitts himself was eventually knocked off in a mob hit. Scorsese himself couldn’t have done better.

5

The Actor Who Played Young Ricky Bobby Really Did Like to Go Fast

In Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby, there’s a flashback to a ten-year-old Ricky, played by Luke Bigham. Bigham’s career soon fizzled out, meaning that Talladega Nights was somebody’s acting high point, and dammit if he wasn’t intent on reliving it.

Columbia PicturesLooking like “Young Will Ferrell” is a bit of a niche career.

Eight years later in Alabama, Bigham caused a five-car pileup after crashing his sedan going 80 mph in a 35 mph zone. It wasn’t Bigham’s last brush with the law. Later that year, after recovering from his minor injuries, he was arrested on domestic violence charges for pushing his mother down the stairs. In the film, Ricky Bobby’s kids are awful to their parents, and Bigham had apparently decided to method act for the rest of his life.

4

Louis C.K. Has Been Warning Us That He’s A Sexual Predator For A Long Time

For years, Louis C.K. dismissed accusations of sexual misconduct — specifically, that he’s forced women to watch while he masturbates — only to recently admit the stories were true. But if we had been paying attention, we would have seen him trying to confess in slow motion over the course of his career.

20th TelevisionOr sometimes point blank.

In one scene of his FX series, Louis appears on a talk show to defend the merits of masturbation. He’s introduced as an “aficionado of masturbation” who “even brags about it,” which came across as a silly bit at the time, but obviously did not age well. After apparently winning the debate, Louis turns to his pretty, young evangelical opponent and says, “You know what, I’m going to jerk off to you later and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He may as well have signed that confession note.

3

O.J. Simpson Attacks A Woman With A Knife In An Unaired TV Pilot

Before O.J. Simpson was a professional murderer, he was an actor (before that, he did something with football, which certainly sounds like a real sport). But shortly before being arrested and put on trial for the murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown in 1994, O.J. had appeared in an unaired pilot for a TV series called Frogmen.

NBCUniversal Television“What if we take the volleyball scene from Top Gun and add wetsuits and O.J. Simpson?”

Simpson starred as John “Bullfrog” Burke, a Navy SEAL on a mission to rescue an old friend who has since married his ex-wife. At one point in the pilot, Burke is surprised by his daughter, whom he believes to be an intruder, and briefly holds a knife to her throat. Of course, Nicole Brown famously died of multiple knife wounds, mostly to her throat. We can’t help but wonder if O.J. had some “creative input” on the scene.

NBCUniversal Television“CUT! O.J., man, you gotta stop yelling ‘I’LL SHOW YOU, NICOLE!’ That’s not the line.”

NBC had already declined to pick up the show by the time the murders occurred a few months later, and the pilot remains unaired, sealed in a vault at Warner Bros. When asked if they would ever consider releasing it, executives reportedly burst into laughter and then said “no” 17 times with 17 different inflections.

2

The Guy Who Played Ricky’s Killer In Boyz N The Hood Became A Murderous Gangster

Lloyd Avery II was a nice young man who grew up in a middle-class neighborhood, attended Beverly Hills High School, and played water polo. He was basically Carlton Banks. Then, everything changed when he met John Singleton, who cast him as the gang member who kills Ricky Baker in Boyz N The Hood. Because movie roles for young black men in the ’90s generally ranged from “Dead Thug #1” to “Dead Thug #2,” Avery continued to be cast as gang members until he apparently decided to cut out the middleman and become one. He moved to a crime-ridden neighborhood un-affectionately called “The Jungle,” got the word “Junglez” tattooed above his eyebrow, and eventually ended up sentenced to life in prison for double homicide, for which face tattoos are a notorious gateway.

Columbia PicturesDid you notice how his hat is color-coordinated with the car? That’s not by accident.

Sadly, life in prison wound up being a short sentence. While Avery did attempt to reform behind bars, he met way badder dudes than he could have ever hoped to be. Specifically, his Satanist cellmate, who killed him, created a pentagram with his blood, and performed a Satanic ritual over his body after an argument about — surprise! — religion.

1

An Actor In Rosemary’s Baby Went On To Start A Cult

Remember this guy from the party scene in Rosemary’s Baby?

Paramount PicturesWere talking about the creepy guy. Well, the creepy guy on the left.

That’s Michel Rostand. This is his only notable film appearance, and he apparently took it for an instructional video, because he soon founded a horrifying sex cult. The Buddhafield was ostensibly all about hippy enlightenment, and it began innocently enough, with a yoga class and some nature hikes. But as time went on, the focus shifted from personal enlightenment to worshiping Michel himself … literally. One follower carved sculptures out of fruit salads to give Michel every morning, while others carried his folding lawn chair around like a Roman emperor’s throne.

WRA ProductionsHe insisted the sculptures be made out of fruit because mashed potatoes seemed a bit too on the nose.

Now, the kind of power implied by human transportation and fruit art is notoriously corrupting, and things soon took a sinister turn. Michel started raping all the young men in his group. He had brainwashed them to the point where if any of them objected, he convinced them that they weren’t mad at him, they were mad at themselves, and this obviously meant they should continue having sex. Ah yes, the old “Why are you hitting yourself?” method of mind control.

When the group began to draw unwelcome attention from the normies, they bounced from California to Texas, then ultimately to Hawaii, where he’s still operating and presumably having sex of dubious consent to this day. That’s right: Somehow, impossibly, Roman Polanski was not the biggest creep involved in making Rosemary’s Baby.

Paramount PicturesReminder, Satan is also in the movie.

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[dark-ones]

John F. Kennedy conspiracy

The events that occurred on November 22, 1963 have invoked more intrigue than any other assassination of the twentieth century. Fortunately, because of the advances in technology, the assassination of President Kennedy was recorded in film both with motion and still photography. These graphic souvenirs have been the subject of much research and inquiry. More time has gone into investigating the two minutes surrounding the firing of the fatal shots than any other time period (Arnold, 1997). The assassination of arguably one of the greatest presidents of the United States was seen by hundreds of eyewitness spectators who all qualified as first-person witnesses. The debate that encompasses the assassination includes the dispute whether President Kennedy was the victim of an assassination conspiracy. As one examines the contradictions, eyewitness accounts, and support evidence, various the conclusions may be reached, the main notion that Lee Harvey Oswald may have not been solely responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but acted simultaneously with other unknown conspirators.

On Nov. 22, 1963 President Kennedy and his wife were in Dallas, Texas trying to strengthen his political campaign for his upcoming election. While in his motorcade, President Kennedy was fatally shot from a sixth floor warehouse window. As the shots were being fired, a member of the Secret Service jumped on the back of the car and dove on top of the president, shielding him (Groden, 1993). During the shooting, Governor Connally suffered injuries to his right side. Although the Governor was badly wounded, he survived. At 1:00 p.m. President Kennedy was pronounced dead at the Parkland Hospital. Later that afternoon aboard Air Force One, Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States of America (Groden, 1993).

As President Kennedy's motorcade turned left onto Elm Street a series of gunshots rang out. Kennedy was struck twice and Governor Connally was struck once. The public was outraged that President Kennedy was murdered and wanted an explanation. President Lyndon B. Johnson set up the Warren Commission, lead by Earl Warren, to head investigation. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin in the murder of John F. Kennedy. According to the official report from the Warren Commission all three shots came from the sixth story of the Texas School Book Depository (Kallen, 2003). Thus, the Commission surmised that Oswald had been completely responsible.

Lee Harvey Oswald was claimed as the sole assassin of President Kennedy. Oswald had been very disgruntled with the government ever since he had been discharged from the United States Marine Corps. Following his discharge, he moved to the Soviet Union attempting to acquire citizenship and after being denied citizenship, he returned to the United States (Newman, 1995). The year Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy, he moved to Dallas, Texas where he plotted the assassination of the president with numerous co-conspirators (Newman, 1995).

The angle of the bullets caused a lot of controversy. After the assassination, the first official autopsy on the human body took place on President Kennedy. There were two autopsies on President Kennedy, one in Bethesda Naval Hospital, and another in Parkland Hospital in Dallas. In Bethesda, the doctors said that the bullets had entered President Kennedy's body in this upper portion of the neck, and emerged out of the neck about 2 centimeters above his bow tie (Kallen, 2003). However, the doctors at Parkland

Hospital said that the back wounds were lower, and had different modes of entry. Parkland doctors found that the bullets entered about 2 centimeters above the President's bow tie, and emerged out of his lower back, about 14 centimeters below the entering wound (Kallen, 2003). With that trajectory, the gunman would have to have been situated well above the President, an impossible shot. The Warren Commission completely ignored these findings and did not make mention of them in the official report (Kallen, 2003).

The Warren Commission also ignored the opinions of experts as well as eyewitness accounts and the sounds coming from police radios. The latter of these proofs were the recordings captured on the radio traffic of the Dallas Police Department. These radios were in the possession of police officers who were positioned close to the motorcade and adjacent to a railroad yard and a grassy knoll. The first two gunshots could be heard faintly in the distance while the third was noticeably louder and presumably fired closer to where the officers were stationed (Prouty, 1992). The recordings were analyzed by experts and a joint conclusion was made. In December of 1963, two of the expert investigators, Mark Weiss and Ernest Aschkenasy, testified before the House Assassination Committee. In their conclusion Professor Weiss stated that "with the probability of ninety-five percent or better" the third shot came from the grassy knoll (Arnold, 1997).

Furthermore, several innocent bystanders also confirmed that gunfire came from the grassy knoll. These witnesses included six railroad workers who confirmed reports of smoke being seen in the area surrounding the grassy knoll immediately after the shooting stopped (Prouty, 1992). Additionally, several onlookers heard the sharp crack of a rifle report behind them as they observed the President's motorcade (Prouty, 1992). Perhaps the most compelling account is the description given by Senator Ralph Yarborough who rode in the motorcade a few cars behind President Kennedy's limousine. The Senator stated that after driving by the grassy knoll "you could smell [gun] powder on our car nearly all the way to Parkland Hospital" (Prouty, 1992).

The common link between the assassination of President Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald was Jack Ruby, the man who killed Oswald in the basement of the Dallas Police Department Headquarters. Many people questioned why Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Was this a cover up to keep him from talking about his part in this tragedy? Ruby was a nightclub owner and a local strongman with strong ties to organized crime (Lindopy, 1992). His associates included Joseph Campisi, a top-ranked Dallas Mafia member and Carlos Marcello, the head of the New Orleans crime family (Arnold, 1997). According to eyewitness accounts and swore affidavits, Ruby met with these men and other Mafia members in several meetings in the period of time leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy (Arnold, 1997). Also, numerous phone calls including long-distance calls were placed between Ruby and his Mafia associates before the assassination (Arnold, 1997). In fact Ruby was so involved with organized crime that he was referred to as "one of our boys" by the Mafia leadership (Prouty, 1992).

When the United States House of Representatives issued their final report in the spring of 1964, they reported that the "logical and probable inference" of the assassination of President Kennedy was that the President was killed "as the result of a conspiracy" (Prouty, 1992). This conclusion was in direct disagreement with the Warren Commission's presumption of Oswald as the lone gunman. There is strong evidence to suggest that the Mafia ordered the death of President Kennedy as a penalty for meddling with the affairs of organized crime. Jack Ruby was simply used as a pawn by murdering the only suspect.

By 1963, the Kennedy administration had become much evolved and somewhat successful in its attempts to prosecute the Mafia. This was evident though the Justice Department's triumph in sending several Mafia leaders to prison and dismantling its control over some parts of its realm including illegal gambling and loan sharking (Lindopy, 1992). President Kennedy's brother, Robert "Bobby" Kennedy, was the Attorney General of the United States and largely responsible for these Federal indictments and prosecutions. Bobby Kennedy could have overlooked the destruction of organized crime but instead chose to target the Mafia from the highest levels of its organization (Lindopy, 1992).

Additionally, the Mafia had set a precedent of killing or removing from power those opposed to their agenda. Examples of this treachery include the assassination of Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther and UAW-AFL President John Kilpatrick (Lindopy, 1992). Each of these men was murdered for opposing the Mafia's plans or speaking out against them. Thus the stage may have been set for the assassination of President Kennedy.

The second major theory surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy involves the United States' primary spy network, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). During the Second World War the Central Intelligence Agency possessed much power. Their policy and decision making affected nearly every aspect of the war from key military offences to the decree to drop the atomic bomb on Japan (Newman, 1995). After the War, the CIA continued planning governmental strategies and exercised great power until the failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro's Cuban government at the Bay of Pigs. Deeply angered by this CIA disaster, President Kennedy and his advisors decided that Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, and other top level staff must go (Prouty, 1992). In fact, President Kennedy was so angered by the botched maneuver that he vowed "to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces" (Prouty, 1992). In November of 1961, President Kennedy fired Director Dulles and his top aides throwing the CIA into a state of semi-disarray (Prouty, 1992).

Furthermore, President Kennedy was determined to remove all United States military personnel from Vietnam, effectively ending U.S. involvement in Asia. This move worried the CIA in addition to several large companies providing armaments for the war effort (Newman, 1995). The CIA felt that while the ending of the war may have economic implications, the main fault of this idea was that it would leave American interests vulnerable having no visible military presence in the Far East (Prouty, 1992). The CIA was resolute to reverse the President's plan no matter what the cost (Newman, 1995). In August through October of 1962, the CIA met with the President and his advisors to attempt to change his intentions in Vietnam. When President Kennedy refused to negotiate with the intelligence community the stage was set for his assassination (Newman, 1992).

After Kennedy's assassination and despite the overwhelming evidence of multiple shooters, the news reports spoke only of Oswald as the lone assassin. This lack of information to the public was the brainchild of the CIA in its attempt to cover-up the facts (Newman, 1992). This craftily constructed plot was carefully monitored by skilled agents who could control certain key facets of the bureaucracy, the Warren Commission and the news media (Prouty, 1992). This activity caused J. Lee Rankin, the commission's general counsel to say,

"Part of our difficulty in regard to the assassination in that they have decided that it is Oswald who committed the assassination. They have decided that no one else was involved" (Prouty, 1992).

Perhaps the most compelling evidence for the CIA's involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy was the quick reversal of Kennedy's policies by Lyndon B. Johnson, the man who followed John F. Kennedy in the Presidency. Whether for political reasons or for self-preservation, President Johnson both supported the Warren Commission's findings and reversed the course of Kennedy's Vietnam policy (Newman, 1005). Perhaps Johnson too, feared for his life and would not oppose the effective power of the CIA (Prouty, 1992). In any case, a strong argument exists to support the theory that the CIA was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

There is no serious question that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy and Governor Connally. Oswald took a rifle to work, claiming the long package contained curtain rods (Semple, 2003). There was no eyewitness to him shooting the rifle from inside the building, though a witness saw him from the street and gave a rough description to the police. The rifle was found hidden on the sixth floor. It was the same gun Oswald had ordered through the mail and it had Oswald's fingerprints on it (Kallen, 2003). The bullets causing the wound to President Kennedy and Governor Connally were matched to this gun. Boxes used to make the "sniper's lair" had Oswald's prints on them as well (Aynesworth, 2003). Oswald fled the scene and later shot a police officer who had stopped him for routine questioning. While in detention, he told numerous easily-discoverable lies to police interrogators (Aynesworth, 2003).

For many countries around the world, November 22, 1963 is just another date on the calendar. But for America, it represents one of the darkest days in the history of this still very young nation. It represented the end of America's innocence. It forced America to wake up, rub its virgin eyes and experience the world for what it really is: a cold, harsh reality that we were not ready to deal with. There is no question that Lee Harvey Oswald was directly involved in the shootings of President Kennedy and Governor Connally. But overwhelming evidence and contradictions support the theory that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was much more then just a lone attack, giving way to one of the greatest conspiracies ever imagined and changing America forever.