#but he was a space cop who murdered his superior for being corrupt???

[who-needs-words]

My (perhaps controversial) Jaster Mereel characterization goes something like this this.

Jaster age like. 19: the police Journeyman Protectors protect the community! I’m going to join.

Jaster like, two weeks later: hey dude you just took a bribe, that’s not cool. I’m going to report you. We can’t let one bad apple ruin our duty.

Jaster another week later when the police Journeyman Protectors protected their own: I can fix things from the inside right? Right.

Jaster age like. 21: so anyway the whole system is fucked and murder is the answer.

[hezuart]

That anaversary aizen looks absolutely fabulous, he looks like a figure skater xd.

I heard along time ago the last arc of the anime was being animated finally bc they pulled a 90s sailor moon were the last season was not either animated or dubbed untill decades later.

I recall near the end of the current 366 episodes there was an episode were the creapy demon ppl woke up in hell and we're all bitter, and there was the other guy who was like, iM cOmEiNg FoR u IChIgO, but then is never mentioned again after and I'm like,why? Why is lt there just plopted randomly into a different arc that seams unrelated.

And locking aizen up underground seems ok, but It deff won't hold, and he will. Escape, and he will kill, you either need that one spell from star, dubbed, the darkest spell of moon the undaunted, a powerfull dark spell that killed immortal beings, that came from best character, eclipsa, the queen of darkness.

We need that.

Or stick him I'm crystal like eclipsa was in star. Is there no one who could trap him in ice or crystal for all eternity.

How about throw him into the centre of a volcano trapped and caged , forverr being killed by heat?

I assume there's space travel, send I'm into a black whole, were a black whole don't fuckin care if your immortal or fat, you will die

:3

Yes, I love anniversary Aizen. His original octopus-butterfly hollow design was ugly so I'm glad he's back to being the fashion icon he is.

Locking Aizen up underground once is one thing, doing it twice after saying he got more powerful by just sitting there, and he escaped to battle the Quincy Soul King God... is another. I think he should have escaped at the end of the Quincy arc. That is the only feasibility.

I heard the anime is coming back for the Quincy arc as well, but because of COVID its probably going to be delayed. (I'm not gonna watch it until the Rain section of the arc then I'm dipping out. I'm only here for Zangetsu)

and funny that you mention that hell scene in the manga :)

-> spoilers for the new BLEACH 73 page anniversary chapter / thoughts/critique on it

So hey you had a premonition! Syazel .... returned? And his hole is outside of his body??? for some reason???

(I didn't understand the explanation or why / how that happens and what that means for the hollow)

And my friend and I were laughing because out of ALL the things. Kubo could do in this anniversary. He gave Syazel his dick back after going to hell. That is iconic. (that's where his hole was located, and now that its not on his body ... well...) This is the funniest thing Kubo has EVER pulled. Kudos to you, sir.

The entire internet is freaking out over Ukitake being in hell. Honestly Kubo has done far worse, and we've established that Soul Society is a corrupt system that hasn't changed, so I'm not surprised he would pull something like this.

At the same time, Kubo 1. cheated his audience. 2. continues to prove me right that he cannot bring himself to kill his characters

1. Hollows who have commit murder in their human life are sent to hell. Syazel and Aaorniero are two of these hollows, and yet, when they are killed, there is NO gates of hell scene. We see them there later in the hell chapter (which was more of a promotion for the fourth movie and I didn't believe it would hold any merit)

But the same goes for Ukitake. We never see the gates of hell take him. What, was hell late? Did hell's gates get lost like an uber before picking him up? It's bull. Withholding such vital information from your audience, not showing the gates of hell when they should pick up this soul IMMEDIATELY is ... I mean its a lie. Kubo lied to his audience.

2. Now we are told powerful shinigami are sent to hell when they die. First of all that sounds like a security threat. Wouldn't shinigami want revenge for that? Or attempt to escape? Why would they still hold loyalty after being sent to a prison of eternal suffering?

Also "Yhwach and Aizen" were the only ones keeping Hell's gates closed is way too convenient and doesn't really make any sense. I feel like Aizen should have deliberately gone to hell to retrieve powerful shinigami / hollows for his army instead of keeping it /closed/.

This is definitely a Kubo-doesn't-know-what-he's-doing-and-is -making- stuff-up-as-he-goes, but it might have a pinch of merit because of previous plot lines.... but either way, there's some big plot holes here, but again, its Kubo, so I expected nothing less.

Again, he can't kill off his characters. He introduced zombification, he introduced immortality through the hougyoku, he has Orihime and Hachigen's reversal / rejection abilities. He brought back Luppi, friggen.... a character who's entire upper half of his body was incinerated. Like.... come on. No. He's dead, you can't bring him back like that. That's a cop out and just weird. You're taking away consequences and grief.

(Also Yamamoto and Unohana deserve to be in hell far over Ukitake, they've done some fcked up stuff in their pasts unlike him)

Also Kubo's favorite character is Mayuri, which.... you're allowed to have a favorite problematic character. But Keeping said character alive and bared from the consequences of abusing his daughter, murdering innocents, and experimenting on your own squad members? Nah. Nope. Kill him, Kubo. Kill this dude.

(his weird attachment to Mayuri is probably why he keeps bringing Syazel back, since Syazel is Mayuri 2.0, but Syazel is the bad guy who does face consequences for his actions while Mayuri is not)

~

Also, I'm certain Kazui and Orihime are going to be THRILLED that their precious husband/dad is going to hell when he dies :)

(I just... Rukia teased Ichigo about leaving Orihime at home. She teased him about having a house wife who he leaves all the chores to. Orihime had two panels. She checks on her son who promised he would be at home and sleep. Kazui fcking breaks his promise like it never mattered to him and JUMPS out the window after pretending to sleep in front of his mother. ... An 8 year old... alone... in the middle of the night.)

Orihime is abandoned. She is not invited to SS, she is not informed of what is going on, her son leaves her.... I...

Orihime is a side character. She doesn't matter anymore. She hasn't mattered for a long, long time.

A part of me is glad she had little screen time, since she tends to waste it, but another part of me is embroiled with rage.

I've even see people try to defend this. "Orihime and Ichigo can't be together ALL the time, that's an unhealthy relationship!" and I'm like guys... that's not the point. The point is Orihime is not part of Ichigo's other life. Any shinigami stuff from now on is none of her business. She's going to stay at home while Kazui and Ichigo go off and save the world. Ichigo is going to be fighting by Rukia and Renji while Orihime watches from the sidelines, or worse, doesn't even know what is going on with her husband and son. Orihime is going to be uninformed and abandoned, because she has not proven she is capable of fighting by their sides(go on, @ me. I will fight this. She's a failure.), and also because she prefers a human life over a dead one. Which is ironic, because she married a dead man. Ichigo is a shinigami, and he will be one forever. god forbid she ever meets his Zanpaktou. She would tremble in fear at the monsters her husband harbors in his soul, especially when she realizes they don't care about her and would rather see her dead. (Zangetsu would absolutely kill Orihime. Not sure about Kazui, but Orihime has not accepted Zangetsu, she does not like either of them, and the feeling is assuredly mutual.) frick now I want to make a comic about this

Also still frustrated over Zangetsu's shikai / bankai regression. Kubo once again lied to his audience. Ichigo has no bankai. How ridiculous is that? The main character of BLEACH doesn't have a bankai. Insulting.

(RIP to Chad. He doesn't exist anymore. He's just gone. No mention, no cameo. Gone.)

Kazui is a demon child. That character from the novels? Hikone? They're the same character. Literally same personality, same power level. Its worse because Kazui is a liar. He constantly goes behind his parents' backs. He can summon creepy fish and creepy eyeballs and open portals like is ANYONE aware of this? How has SS not kidnapped Ichigo's son and experimented on him / locked away his powers yet? All substitute shinigami require a reiatsu controlling / spy badge to keep them in line. Where is Kazui's? Or is he just a weird fullbringer?

I was worried Kubo was gonna try and pull a knock off Boruto but luckily he kept the focus on Ichigo and the others. But that being said, Ichika and Kazui are now just... sort of there? Kazui was kinda just.... having his own adventure that doesn't matter to the plot at hand, and Ichika had some nice characterization at first but she just hid behind her dad the whole time.

I have a feeling Kazui is gonna step in at the last minute or do some major behind the scenes thing that indirectly interferes with the main plot so no one will realize how powerful and dangerous he actually is. Its sad because Ichika is the superior character in personality and likability, but she clearly is not going to have a bigger part in this.

Ichigo having a normal life after everything still feels extremely boring and uncomfortable to me. Everyone's like 'I'm still bLEACH!" but.... BLEACH just... doesn't feel like BLEACH anymore. It hasn't for a while now.

~~~

There's two new shinigami characters. Didn't care for the girl, but the Sign Language kid who talks to animals is adorable ... however... he just reminds me of Chad, and I just... it hurts knowing Chad has essentially been deleted. Chad and Orihime are officially benched. They have chosen the human world, and Orihime has given Ichigo his spawn so she has no more use/purpose to him anymore... ////sigh

~~~

Also. This is claimed to be a new "arc". So is the BLEACH manga coming back? What is happening. I thought Kubo was tired and didn't want to do BLEACH anymore. I thought Shounen Jump cut him off. People made so many excuses for Kubo and why the past two arcs have been so badly written the past 6 years and now almost everything they've attempted to defend him with has been revoked.

BLEACH is going to continue to screw up its plot lines and characters, so Its probably best for it to stay dead but I've seen a lot of Kubo stans drooling over this content, they're desperate for BLEACH's return, but its already given out all its possible revelations. There's really nothing else to top here. It's just going to make things up as it goes along ,and I'm not really here for half-assed writing like that, especially since the damage of rushing the previous manga has already been done. Kubo and Shounen Jump are riding off a money nostalgia. None of this was planned.

Honestly though.... overall feeling of this chapter, not as bad as it could have been.

Syazel stole the spotlight, and he's my friend's favorite character, so that's all that really matters.

[aion-rsa]

Evil Season 2 Episode 6 Review: C Is for Cop

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This Evil review contains spoilers.

Evil Season 2 Episode 6

Hands in the air. Dueling procedurals get arrested for resisting the officers on Evil season 2, episode 6, “C Is for Cop. This is one of the most harrowing episodes of the series on many fronts. The monster of the week is not a demon or a creature or one of the deadly sins. As Kristen (Katja Herbers) told her daughter Lila (Skylar Gray) last week: sometimes a monster is a person who forgets who they are. This week’s evil represents a constant reminder.

The team is called in to assess a very different kind of evil than they’re usually assigned. A white cop shot an African American woman at a traffic stop because he thought she was pulling out a gun. It turned out to be a cell phone, but he swears he saw a gun. He believes he saw the weapon because, well, the devil made him do it. The police brass says they’re loath to call in the clerics, but the young cop, who knows Kristen and can place her children as the “funny kids” in the school carpool, believes he was temporarily possessed at the time. More than that, he will swear to it on a stack of Bibles.

The team immediately pegs the cop as a racist trying to mount what Kristen calls a “Twinkie defense” in front of a grand jury. David Acosta (Mike Colter) walks out of the initial meeting, but he has been preparing for just this sort of scenario from the beginning of the season. Leland Townshend (Michael Emerson) has been race-baiting the soon-to-be-priest in the most passively aggressive ways. David’s superiors at the church have tried to curtail his homilies, they’ve turned a blind eye to his complaints about his special case exorcism. Now he is being asked to grant absolution to a big part of the problem.

The police sigil is an interesting invention. The producer Mick Carr (Fredric Lehne) says it is a TV good luck charm which goes all the way back to Dragnet, and can be seen on C.H.I.P.S and Starsky and Hutch, but it could be that Evil’s creative team just want to subvert an algorithm with a glut of Google searches. This episode is extremely subversive, not only in how it twists expectations, but in the way images interact with each other. During one scene, Carr takes Kristen aside during a walk-and-talk with the entire team. Ben and David are shot in very deliberately separate angles. It’s almost like they are not occupying the same space. When Orson’s ghost comes calling, it subconsciously mirrors encroaching reality.

Read more

TV

Evil Season 2: Katja Herbers Talks Jinn and Dark Tonics

By Tony Sokol

The LeRoux murder investigation gets so deep, it actually appears Homicide Detective Mira Byrd (Kristen Connolly) will close it. But, just like every foreboding entranceway any character encounters, it is bashed open, and cold as hell. “C Is for Cop” is a transitional episode into a larger conspiracy. The 4chan postings of the “Protectors,” and the subtle harassment beginning as a masquerade of solidarity are new dangers to the team. Who do you call when you need to call the cops on a cop? This episode shows you can’t even call a priest or the CIA.

Ben’s (Aasif Mandvi) night terrors are amazing during this episode. They are highlights with hidden epiphanies, and painful to watch and digest. No one wants to see Ben in pain. We certainly don’t want to see his demoness turn him into a pin cushion, but the kicker is even worse. She implies that he deserves it, and Ben makes an admission to David which says she is on to something.

I don’t know if the lie detector sequence is the most extreme gore the series has presented so far, or if it feels that way because Ben is a main character, but it was brutal. And he’s barely over his trip in the elevator. If he and David are being squeezed by whatever force is behind the police force while Kristen gets a get-out-jail-free card, something big is coming. They are being subtly separated by so many personal attacks, and the balance shifted during the episode. Ben and David bonded in ways “the magnificent” one had reserved for Kristen.

When Leland tried to reconcile with Sheryl Luria (Christine Lahti) after their implosive engagement, Kristen’s mother warned him he wasn’t the first demon she’s dated. Well, “Eddie, my Eddie” seems to be proof she was not bluffing. When Emily starts burning dollar bills in the name of unspoken truths, it sends Kristen’s daughter, Lexus, running out of the room. But that must have been the intent. The spell was on the girl, who rats her mother out the first chance she gets. Now even Kristen’s daughter knows she’s a killer.

Kristen is just asking to get caught in the final sequences. Why does she haul out her lucky axe? She’s got a couple dozen knives Detective Byrd already catalogued as having no serrated edges, but Kristen’s got to grab the one solid piece of evidence to hang her moments after she calls in her personal cop. The outcome of this raises more than the usual questions. Mira lets some killers go because some people deserve to die, she is part of that TV cop show syndicate which believes in injudicious justice.

Damnation comes in unexpected ways, and Evil is offering some signposts in Kristen’s slow corruption. The producer of the world’s biggest cop show tells her, outright, “we gotta stick together.” When Kristen gets her final reprieve, David and Ben are both sidelined by visible police harassment. She calls a cop friend, the same friend who offered the most rational reason for horrifically wrong fatal decisions. And the same one who tells Kristen to shut up and say she saw a Black man in the backyard. Mira and Kristen are conspirators.

The devil comes in many forms. Evil is having a blast expanding on them. The season is at its midway point, taking a short break before the next installment, and we still have no idea what sentence will be spelled out in the opening popup book. If ever we needed Sister Andrea’s (Andrea Martin) translational skills it is now. “C is for Cop” may be the end of a chapter, or the beginning of a new interpretation.

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Evil airs Sundays on Paramount+.

The post Evil Season 2 Episode 6 Review: C Is for Cop appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[questions-within-questions]

So I just saw Valerian and the city of a thousand planets. I've literally waited twenty years to see this film and during the opening sequence I literally bawled my eyes out I was so happy to actually be watching it. It was crap in all the ways I knew it would be crap and spellbounding in all the ways I knew it would be spellbounding. Any female character Luc Besson directs is just awfully awfully written and this is true in Valerian too. His saving grace is that he consistently cast actresses who somehow salvage really enjoyable portrayals from their shitty scripts. I'm not surprised that Cara Delevingne is already winning awards for her Lauraline. I remember being super excited for her acting debut in Suicide Squad, but really this is a far better realisation of her potential. The strengths of the film are of course that it's just apex space opera. It's visual style far more fun and engrossing than Star Wars and it's space politics sufficiently big and dumb. But really the main objective of the film is to have as much fun as possible given that Luc had crowd sourced the biggest budget ever. Every beat of the film is "what's a fun stupid thing that could happen now?" The weirdest thing about the setting is that for such an optimistic setting of "the international space station eventually becomes so big from collaboration that it becomes a planet" is that everyone is the government is just horrifyingly corrupt. I swear Valerian and Luraline are villain protagonists. Valerian during the course of his mission steals from civilians, assaults other officers including his superior, violates diplomatic sanctions, murders a king, and then says "I'm a soldier and I follow orders" good God. The pimp he visits doesn't even bat and eyelid when Valerian says he's an on duty cop, and even says he has to take Valerian's pistol as a safety measure. Do on duty cops often visit sex workers and then shoot up the place here? The commander has his own private army of horrifying murser robots he just brings to work with him each day. And there's no professional conduct. All the characters put their missions on hold to squable. Sure the film ends when them arresting the govern official who murdered six million persons, but I kind of feel like that's an empty win when you're entire government is staffed by privelaged kids who view their positions as status symbols. I do wonder why every woman in this film puts so much emotional investment in Valerian when he's quite clearly a human frog. At least in Fifth Element it made sense for Leelu to be invested in Bruce Willis because she'd literally never met anyone else ever. (Best trivia I've heard about this film is that Luc wanted to film in France even though this meant he wouldn't get tax credits simply because the film production would be able to provide jobs to twelve thousand people)

[liquidcatt]

Steven Universe characters described by Encyclopedia Dramatica

Note: Don’t take these seriously please. This is meant to be a joke, so don’t start screaming/sending death threats at me because I didn’t write any of these. Please have an open mind. This contains offensive content 

Steven Universe(DeMayo)- The main character. As the bastard son of Rose Quartz, he has inherited all of her powers; such as healing literally anything ever, creating life, possessing people, and others. If you pose a threat to the planet's existence, Steven will still see you as capable of changing; but if you hit on him, you're worse than Hitler. Has PTSD.

Greg Universe(DeMayo)- Steven's dad. He's an ex-solo-musician with cat hair and the poster child for how to fail at life but still get the best girl. Seriously though he met Rose because she's the only person who liked his music. Now Greg runs a Car Wash and lives in a van, so Steven lives with the gems.

Connie- Steven's obligatory love interest. Connie's mom is a doctor and her dad is a cop who works for multiple beaches in multiple cities so she isn't in the same place for long, meaning she can't make friends. Because she has no friends she spend most of her time reading books and looking at boats. This probably means she knows about Onion's status as Satan. [Insert Un-funny Lolicon joke here.]

Rose Quartz- Steven's mom who had to become an hero to give birth to him. Apparently, she can find beauty in anything(even this show's fandom), has magical healing tears, the power to create minions from plant matter, and she used to plant magic moss bent on devouring everything because she doesn't give a fuck. She's a girl imbued with white attire, pink hair extensions and magical powers linked to a gem who had tried to 'heal' the spirits of the corrupted gems and forsaken her physical form because reasons. The definition of a Mary Sue. She's later discovered to be a fucking murderer.

Pearl- She is a smart-ass who thinks she's superior inferior to anything surrounding her. Has an unquenchable thirst for Rose Quartz. She watches Steven in his sleep. Since she can't sex it up with Rose anymore, she'll settle for the next best thing: Garnet. Her weapon is a Spiral-tipped spear.

Amethyst- A Gem that was grown on Earth by evil gems. FAs on Tumblr can NEVER get enough of her because, like a disturbingly high number of characters in this show, she's FA-worthy. Constantly stuffing her fat face (even though apparently Gems don't need food, or drink, or sleep, or air). Used her shapeshifting power to turn into her fursona, "The Purple Puma" and wreck people behind Pearl and Garnet's backs. You learn later in the series that she is Jasper's bitch and has shown to be worthless as hell. Her weapon is a spiked whip.

Garnet- The Leader of the Crystal Gems since Rose died. She is secretly a fusion of two lesbians (lesbians exist in kids' shows now). Her powers include seeing into the future, swimming in lava, and a diva voice. The Gem Homeworld is full of Dixie Confederate Republican gems that didn't like Garnet being Garnet, so she joined Rose Quartz's army to fight for Earth so she could be free to be a black hole of faggotry. The french dub of the show censored Garnet's gayness spawning a sewer flood of hate. Her weapon is a pair of gauntlets.

Ruby & Sapphire- Dwarf lesbians that make up Garnet. A hot-headed red one with fire powers and a cool-headed blue one with ice powers. Completely Original. Can't last five seconds apart from each other. They are the real reason why people started to watch the show and Rebecca likes to milk them whenever she can.

Lapis Lazuli- A waterbender. The Crystal Gems trapped her in a mirror for 5750 years until Steven broke her free. She flew to her homeworld in space to find that if you give a civilization 5750 years they tend to advance. She fused with Jasper so she could use her water-powers to trap herself and Jasper at the bottom of the ocean forever. Fans want to fuck her because tumblr fags think they relate to her 'abused' past. Thus, making her the most overrated and second to boot meme'd SU character and all that cringy shit.

Peridot- A racist who uses prosthetics and jerks off to The Diamond Authority. She used to be a baddie but now she's a goodie because of Steven's selective character redemption powers. As an "Era-2" peridot, she's a shitty millennial whose only power as a gem to be magneto.

Jasper- A roid-rager who Peridot dragged her with to Earth, is Lapis' abusive girlfriend and thinks Steven is Rose Quartz. She fused with Lapis after being jelly that Garnet is infinitely better than her in every way (even though she thinks fusion is for pussies) but Lapis dragged their fused body into the ocean. After separating from Lapis, Jasper became obsessed with fusing with her again, but was thrown back into the ocean. She later created an army of corrupted gems, but fuse-raped one of them and got AIDS.

Bismuth- The blacksmith that made all the Crystal Gems' weapons. She treated the war like an actual war and got bubbled for it. Upon her chimp out in her debut, the fans started demonizing Fructose for having a "black-coded" character be loud and aggressive, and also for stating that murder is wrong. Steven refused to shatter other gems, and this made Bismuth turn apeshit against Steven, attempting to shatter him. Dead

White Diamond- Best girl.

Yellow Diamond- Gem-Hitler. She wants to destroy the earth because killed her baby sister. She is such a boss that even the crewniverse fangirls over her VA.

Blue Diamond- A Sith Lord who refuses to accept the fact the Pink is dead, also a massive emo.

Pink Diamond- Worst Diamond. Only had one planet to her name before Rose Quartz fucking killed her.

Fusions

Opal- Whenever Pearl and Amethyst aren't arguing for no reason, they can perform fusion to "form Opal": a four-armed giant woman; the gems claim that they only fuse when they have no choice but hardly ever do it when they need to and when they do it it's hardly ever when they need to. Fun Fact: Originally they were going to pose her arms to form a swastika as a Hindu reference but were forced to scrap it because culturally ignorant Jews and Social Justice Warriors would have been offended and that can't ever happen. Her weapon is a bow.

Sugilite- Whenever a mission can only be completed with brute force and lots of it, Garnet and Amethyst will fuse to form Sugilite. In exchange for that power the three succumb to roid rage. Is voiced by Nicki Minaj. Obviously the SJ-Wankers were appalled by how obviously racist her character is, which surprised us all since SJWs typically jerk off to and worship the Steven Universe characters. Sugilite's weapon is a flail.

Sardonyx- A fusion of Garnet and Pearl. A gap-toothed cricket who apparently works at a casino. Pearl lies to Garnet so they keep having to fuse into her, because she enjoys how it feels, causing Garnet to get butthurt and ignore her for several episodes until Pearl basically admits to being a worthless cunt who can't do shit on her own. Her weapon is a giant hammer.

Malachite- The Lapis-Jasper fusion that dragged it's horrid form to the bottom of the sea to save the C-Gems, getting kinky with each other with whatever shit they find down there to pass the time. It ultimately got it's shit wrecked by Alexandrite.

Stevonnie- The accidental shota/loli fusion of Steven and Connie who frequently suffers from hallucinations brought on by Steven's own mental instability, initially thought to be Connie's fighting 'skills' being overwhelmed by her edgy 14 year old mind, being the downward spiral moment of the series if it had any upping points.

Smoky Quartz- A fusion of Steven and Amethyst. A ripoff of sardonyx. This fruit is such a shit waifu that 4chan straight up gave up on fapping to every gem in this show. Immediately, Tumblrites started drawing the most disgustingly obese incarnations of him that could exist, doubling the demand in Clorox bleach. His weapon's a yo-yo. No jokes, he flings a giant yo-yo at his enemies to attack.

[l0ulabell]

Ideal PS4 Games 2019: Essential PlayStation 4 Launches

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It began with the family, the participants, after that the components of your house and then the spaces, so the youngsters are gradually learning what is everything about a household. Carl discovers his old friends and family in disarray, and also throughout the game he tries to re-establish his old gang, encounter corrupt police officers, and slowly deciphers the truth behind his mommy's murder. Controls lean more toward an arcade-style racer, however it makes for an obtainable and exhilarating auto racing game. You'll be investing a lot of time with your engineer as well as representative, the former will certainly investigate as well as create new upgrades for your racing group, while the latter manages your team's contracts. For now, Forza Motorsport 7 remains the benchmark for console racing as well as it will certainly be seventh paradise for all Forza followers anywhere. F1 2016 is additionally chock-full of trendy little details, like the enhancement of the ceremony lap-- the workout jaunt prior to a motorsport race where vehicle drivers inspect the safety and security of the track and also cars and trucks by travelling around at slow speeds. Race some of one of the most loved autos of our time in glorious high definition. At first it looks like a silly aspect to the video game, but it promptly ends up being a nice regimen that allowed's you flex the wheels and also brakes prior to relieving into a long race session. I do not suggest it as a very first project, yet you can always try. For 2-4 players. Doom wasn't the very first FPS ever before but most likely it was the one that make the category famous. Most likely hailed as one of the best racing games there is, Need for Rate is a timeless fave among the auto enthusiasts. Okay, Need For Rate Underground 2 rocked. The most "arcade-y" of the lot, Required for Speed: Opponents is the least most likely auto racing game to damage your simulator impulse, but it's a total blast to play.

[obaewankenope]

The Gospel of the Anakin Apologist + The General Rudeness of Unrelated Comments on a Post

So @stonefreeak had an anon show up and whine about Padme. I and @sanerontheinside added our two cents in then *waves hands* SOME ASSHOLE shows up and wants to play ‘Anakin is a victim and Padme is a stupid ho and Obi-Wan is to blame for EVERYTHING EVER’ on the post even though, amusingly enough, it has no bearing on the discussion in the slightest.

Ergo I got vexed.

Actually all of us did bc wow stupid much.

The rest is under a read more because wow this got long and salty.

Also I’m tagging people so they can share the salt: @meabhair, @kyberpunk, @maawi, @markwatnae, @lilyrose225writes, @knight-kennedy, @punsbulletsandpointythings, @deadcatwithaflamethrower, @myurbandream, @jhaernyl :)

You see, we were discussing Padme as a female character and the double-standard around female characters being expected to be perfect and male characters essentially being able to do whatever the fuck they want so long as they’re pretty (pick a fandom, any fandom, you’re guaranteed to see the same dichotomy in treatment of male - female characters).

Apparently we can’t do that shit tho bc ‘oh no you’re blaming my bae!!!’ like wow, really fucking stupid much.

Anyway, to explain why I’m raging (why all of us are raging actually: it’s glorious to behold and I feel so blessed to experience the righteous fury of my spouses and friends) I personally feel like this particular person has literally pulled the embodiment of that “she doesn’t even go here” meme because whoa boy, their reblog does not belong here.

Now, in general I’m usually quite happy to let the morons roll on by like the sad little tumbleweeds of ignorance they are. But not when it’s on a post informing others of the behaviour and perception of gender/sex relations and treatment of characters in fandom. When you show up here and want to blame a single character who is flawed, especially just to venerate and excuse the behaviour of another flawed character... well, then I feel obligated to respond.

It’s not personal it is it’s just in my nature.

Okay so, first paragraph of their reblog (and subsequent stupid dialogue included) sums up the situation on Mustafar as ‘Padme should have been a good wife and sided with her genocidal husband who just helped wipe out thousands of lives (including children) bc she’s his wife’ and that ‘Obi-Wan is responsible bc he tried to do his duty as a Jedi’ and apparently that’s wrong as according to the Gospel of the Anakin Apologist.

Of course, they make a general, sweeping statement about Obi-Wan, describing him as a ‘fantastic space cop but an asshole friend and a person in general’ which, as I’m sure you’re all aware, shows a typical lack of understanding of what the Jedi are in universe, and also the background of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s interaction.

This isn’t unusual and I’m not gonna berate people for not knowing about the EU (Extended Universe) materials, or those damned benighted Junior Apprentice (JA) novels about Obi-Wan’s padawanship (and Anakin’s later on). The thing is though, there is plenty of information available about Obi-Wan, his background and so on on various websites -- Wookieepedia, to name but one -- so I don’t think it’s fair to be so quick to judge a character, any character, without understanding their background.

Even if this blogger is uninitiated into the ranks of SW lore and such, even if they only have the movies to go on, I still consider them to have a shockingly particular mindset and perspective of the relationship between the three protagonist characters.

So, here’s the thing, the below is a direct quote from their post. As you can see it’s... a particular perspective.

Padme should have sided with Anakin or Obi-Wan clearly when Anakin confronted her about Obi-Wan being on the ship, Obi-Wan killed Padme by appearing while they were talking, Padme might’ve been able to talk some sense into Anakin or join him, i guess Obi-Wan was afraid Padme would flip sides and decided to burst out with his “hello there” bullshit, if i was Padme i would have immediately said            “that fucker snuck on my ship i had nothing to do with this, take care of him my love!” or “oh shit, well i didn’t plan this Obi-Wan tag in!”            i know she was shocked and all that jazz but lady think on your feet, you went to meet your fugitive husband who just killed a academy full of space coplings on isolated planet and a space cop popped out of your trunk, use your words and use them quick! Anakin choking his wife in anger is understandable when you think of it from his perspective,           “ok im on the hide from the law(Jedi), ill contact my wife and get her to safety” “hi love i came alone as you asked”            “oh thank god for a moment i thought you might sympathize with the corrupt jedi” *Obi-Wan dumb ass pops out of the shadows* “hello there bitches!~~”            “wtf Padme?! you brought a cop to our meet out?! you do know i am wanted dead right!? You little bitch! i did this all so i could keep you alive and this is how you repay me? i killed younglings to get this power Padme fucking younglings! you ungrateful little bitch ill kill you!” “hey bro let her go you said you wanted to save her right? kind of doing the opposite right now”            “… god damn it i hate it when he is right, lets fight!”

First of all, they’re working on the assumption that Anakin was hiding from the Jedi. Second of all, that he was hiding from the Law(Jedi). Perhaps their memory has failed them, but I’ll provide a little breakdown of how the third movie actually went so they can understand that their initial narrative is... well, to put it plainly, ‘wrong and really wrong’.

1. Separatists vs Republic battle with Obi-Wan and Anakin going after Dooku. Dooku dies by Anakin’s hands after being disarmed (this is murder btw, rules of war mean that if your opponent loses or surrenders, then you don’t kill them -- this is generally considered a war crime). 

2. Obi-Wan and Anakin talk about stuff and then Obi-Wan heads off to chase Grievous alone. This is after Anakin has been put on the Council by Palpatine even though he’s only been a Knight for a while. The Jedi do not approve, Obi-Wan is cautious and advises Anakin to be careful (Anakin ignores him by the way and continues to be friendly with Palpatine).

4. While Obi-Wan is off after Grievous, Anakin has Palpatine’s identity revealed to him. Gets played into saving him from Mace and co in order to keep Padme alive (even though she isn’t dead by the way). Anakin then goes to the Temple with a collection of Clones and helps murder every Jedi there. He purposefully murders the children in the Council chambers. 

5. Obi-Wan is nearly killed after defeating Grievous because of Order 66. He escapes and hides. Meets up with Yoda and Bail. Goes to the Temple. Finds out that Anakin killed Jedi and is heartbroken by this fact. Then he goes to Padme after being tasked by his superior to go and defeat Anakin. He tells her the truth and she refuses to believe him.

6. Padme goes to meet with Anakin who is on Mustafar, drowning in his angst-ridden guilt of now having become an accomplice to genocide. Obi-Wan tags along, knowing that Anakin and Padme love each other so much that both would forsake their duties. He hides and Padme doesn’t know. Anakin doesn’t notice.

7. Padme rejects Anakin BEFORE Obi-Wan shows himself, because she realises he’s literally gone crazy. Then Anakin turns on Padme and chokes her into unconsciousness, even though she’s heavily pregnant and he ‘loves’ her. Obi-Wan gets Anakin to focus on him and they fight.

8. They fight to the point where Obi-Wan has the high-ground and Anakin does a stupid and gets his limbs cut off. Obi-Wan leaves him to burn to death (brutal) and goes to Padme. He takes her for treatment and instead watches one of his oldest friends die while her children are made into orphans.

9. Movie ends with Anakin becoming the giant suit version of Vader and Obi-Wan on Tattooine delivering Luke to his aunt and uncle.

Anakin isn’t evading the law, aka the Jedi, he’s killed them. Obi-Wan is the one evading the law because it wants him dead. Anakin is on Mustafar because Sidious told him to take out the Sep leadership. Padme meets him there after hearing the truth from Obi-Wan and only believes it when Anakin admits it himself. Then she rejects him. Obi-Wan does his duty as a Jedi -- sworn to destroy the Sith -- and the end is that Padme dies because Anakin loses his temper and lashes out at her.

I may be Anakin apologist but considering his situation he didn’t act out of character, id be pissed off too if i contacted my wife when i am in hiding and she brings a cop there (it seemed like that to Anakin since he didn’t know Obi-wan snuck on board) before i can explain myself to my wife

Firstly, you are an Anakin apologist and he did act out of character. His behaviour after discovering Sidious’ identity and stopping Mace from killing a Sith Lord is out of character. Anakin is a bright, kind and friendly child with a temper issue. Anakin is someone who hates injustice and despises the way some people are treated by others for no other reason than because of where they were born or who they were born to. He was a slave and then he became a Jedi; he went from victim to protector. His final character jump sent him from protector to oppressor. That’s not in character, that’s specifically cultivated and justified behaviour because he puts his own needs above absolutely everything else.

He also had the chance to explain to Padme. He didn’t deny what he did and Padme actively rejected him when she realised he wasn’t sorry for what he’d done ‘in the name of love’. You’re justifying abuse and don’t even realise it.

Think of it like this, in a galaxy where there are force powers etc shit you keep seeing horrible nightmares of your wife dying, your mother gets kidnapped by space isis and killed,             you butcher the village in retaliation and tell your wife about it, after which the greatest political figure of your “country” tells you that there is a way to save your wifes life from the faith that seems foretold (like someone offering you a cure for cancer when you think your wife has cancer),            the old dude tells you you have to do something to get the cure (equivalent would probably be extracting stem cells from kids spines or something lethal), well you love your wife and can’t let her die because love,            well you go and do the dirty deed like a loving husband would can’t let your honey bun die, now you’re kind of in hiding waiting for your old dude friend to wipe out the cops (rought shit but it will all be worth it when i save my wife from certain death),            you contact your wife and tell her to meet you in some backwater planet where you two can talk it out, you can tell her why you did it and you can finally save her from her faith, your wife finally arrives the joy we are finally together, listen wife the reason i killed the younglings is “Everybody down on the ground, the Jedi man has arrived!”,            all your efforts to get the cure, all you did in the name of saving your wife and she brings a cop to execute you (that’s what he thought and can’t blame him, how the fuck did she not know Obi-Wan snuck on board?)

Firstly, Shmi Skywalker was kidnapped and tortured by Tusken Raiders on Tattooine, not ‘Space ISIS’. The settlers on Tattooine are the proverbial invaders of a planet where the Tuskens are the natural species. So your metaphor is inaccurate and shows but a lack of understanding and also a clear desire to produce extreme sympathy for Anakin. We don’t know why the Tusken’s took Shmi but it’s generally considered unusual behaviour. We do know that they have attacked farms on Tattooine before and that they have been united by an ex-Jedi at one point when Obi-Wan was in exile. This is all we know. So you’re making an assumption that they’re evil terrorists when you don’t even have the material to back you up. 

Anakin killed an entire village of Tuskens, including women and children. There is no excuse for that. Unless you think it would be acceptable for a US soldier to execute the children in an Iraqi village because some of the inhabitants were part of Al Queda? 

Obi-Wan had already informed Anakin in Attack of the Clones that ‘dreams pass in time’ referring to Anakin’s recurring problems with his dreams about his mother. Anakin didn’t inform Obi-Wan of anything after that and so Obi-Wan has no knowledge. He tried to help, in his own way. Anakin’s behaviour and fear of what he dreamt about Padme drove him to extremes of behaviour -- the love he held for her is what destroyed him because he was so selfish as to refuse to let her go.

The dangers of attachment isn’t of falling in love, it’s in that love turning into obsession which is what happened with Anakin. Palpatine used Anakin’s fears of losing Padme to sway him into his service and with Mace’s death, sealed his fate and that of Padme. 

Do you honestly think Padme would have died had she not been choked into unconsciousness by her ‘loving’ husband on a boiling planet of death, after the revelation that her husband had willingly committed genocide because of his love for her? 

If you do then there’s no hope for you.

The dialogue of the Mustafar scene is below, read it and perhaps recognise that Anakin admits to having become obsessed with power and paranoid. Perhaps also recognise how Padme only rejects him after he says he’s going to overthrow the Chancellor and together they can rule the galaxy.

Padme: Obi-Wan told me terrible things Anakin: What things? Padme: He said, you’d turned to the Dark Side. That you... killed younglings? Anakin: Obi-Wan is trying to turn you against me Padme: He cares about us Anakin: Us? Padme: He knows. He wants to help you... Anakin, all I want is your love Anakin: Love won’t save you Padme, only my new powers can do that Padme: At what cost? You’re a good person, don’t do this! Anakin: I won’t lose you the way I lost my mother. I am becoming more powerful than any Jedi has ever dreamed of. And I’m doing it for you. To protect you Padme: Come away with me. Help me raise our child. Leave everything else behind while we still can! Anakin: Don’t you see? We don’t have to run away anymore. I have brought peace to the Republic. I am more powerful than the Chancellor. I- I can overthrow him. And together you and I can rule the galaxy. Make things the way we want them to be Padme: [backs away, shaking head] I don’t believe what I’m hearing. Obi-Wan was right, you’ve changed Anakin: I don’t want to hear any more about Obi-Wan. The Jedi turned against me, don’t you turn against me Padme: I don’t know you any more. Anakin... you’re breaking my heart. You’re going down a path I can’t follow Anakin: Because of Obi-Wan?  Padme: Because of what you’ve done! What you plan to do! Stop! Stop now! Come back! I love you! Anakin: LIAR! Padme: No! Anakin: You’re with him! You brought him here to kill me! [Starts choking HIS WIFE] Obi-Wan: Let her go Anakin!

The end of this interaction is that Padme rejects Anakin for going power-mad, Anakin admits he’s become a stranger to her and then attacks her over a perceived betrayal -- out of character for someone who at the beginning of the movie thought Padme might have been cheating on him and then APOLOGISED for thinking such things in the first place. 

In conclusion to your post that I’m not going to ever reblog, but will link here so others can read it in full, I have to say that your ending paragraph is... well, a fantastic example of selective thinking and something I daresay several of my friends from my psych classes would have had a field day with the dispositional and situational bias you exhibit.

who nearly killed Anakin and Padme? Obi-wan freaking Kenobi, well done douchebag, be sure to lie to his son that Vader killed Anakin to pit a son against his own father, Obi-wan was a fantastic space cop but an asshole friend and a person in general, dude is the reason Luke’s father is a space cyborg and Padme is a corpse, but that’s not all let’s turn their son into a space cop and tell him to kill daddy cyborg, he’ll never know it was his father, if he did this could really backfire but who gives a shit ill probs be dead by then

[the-temple-pythoness]

Emotionally Distraught // Albert Wesker x Reader (part 2)

-I really don't know what's with the sudden interest in Marcus or even in the internal affairs of Umbrella. It's all gone now, the man is as dead as Napoleon

-Umbrella still has many secrets that we need to uncover, we owe it to the victims...to know what really detonated the outbreak, it's hard to believe it was a simple 'leak', the coorporation had too much experience to let something like this go under the rug

-You're right, Umbrella was the primary Bioweaponary producer back then. Wilpharma, Tricell, all of them wanted Umbrella's technology to have the lead

-Like the cold war space race?

-Exactly

-So? what happened with Marcus? obviously it was the detonant of the Racoon City outbreak

-...Let's say it was, I want something in return tho...nothing weird, a couple of books

-Anything special?

-Of course, I'm very picky. you have paper?...El Aleph by Borges, The Shining by Stephen King and this month's Vogue magazine

-...A fashion magazine? really?

-I have my guilty pleasures, cop

-Right, now start spittin' what you know

-Where's the fire my good police officer? Like you said before I'm going nowhere...

-Maybe you won't but I will, and I'm not in the mood to play the 'good cop' part today

-ah, a ruined date perhaps...in red, that is.

-how did you-

-It's really easy to read you my 'good cop'. She's no good you know

-Wesker was a terrorist yet here you are covering his ass even dead

-At least he gave it all in the small time we had of peace, like I said he was as civilian as he could be...I remember our small dates, we would visit museums or small coffee shops

-Ok, ok. Start from the beggining, How did you end up in Umbrella and the research you did for them?

-It’s not like it was unusual, I finished college and my abilities got me a pasanty in the French HQ. I remember I was the yongest of the team, everyone else had more experience but lacked the fresh and exciting nature of newbies. I proved myself competent enough to be chief researcher in a certain proyect...

Maybe the silence that followed that statement was indicating something more sinister, or nothing at all but

-exactly what proyect?

but Leon will never know, at least by her mouth

-I was moved to Rockford Island where I met the bratty Ashford’s, their father was a man who had ethics, not like his children. One night he came to my room in a rush, almost barged in with a look in his face that I still remember, he asked me to move to the Antarctic base to keep tabs on Alexia...I couldn’t, she was far more anoying than her brother in Rockford

-So you’re telling me that you said no to your superior? I won’t believe that, it doesn’t-

-I went there, but I have a feeling that she knew who sent me so she made her presence a hundred times more insufferable. I had no choice than request to move to Racoon City

-Why Racoon City?

-I met Albert while I was in France, I remembered him talking about Alexia being in the Arklay Research Facility, and how much William hated her

-So THE Albert Wesker told you that for the shits and giggles? we have records that say that even Racoon City was a taboo topic because of Spencer’s direct sponsorship, it’s hard to believe that a man like Wesker would blab that info so easily

-Well...you did your homework officer Kennedy, but Al and I were both youngsters in position of power, he more than I, but still shared the same visions and struggled with the same things, Umbrella’s intern affairs weren’t easy and many got caught in the middle. Besides, Albert saw potential in me, a coworker and not only another faceless underling without brains

-In other words he wanted to recruit you to further his research

-Yeah, and I’m not going to lie to you, the sex was good.

If the context allowed it,  Leon would have laughed, and actually snorted at the little blunt truth. Perhaps the scenario reminded him of his foolishness with certain spy, state of mind that almost always leaves him deranged, euphoric or angry

-you were right with Racoon City, I went there because dear Alexia couldn’t touch me if I was under direct protection of Lord Spencer. Even if I had not  met  Spencer back then, the place was like a black hole where everything was fair so far the Director was not perturbed

-so...

-I found myself in Racoon City, and believe me...the things I had to endure! Sergei was the worst. He used to distrust me because I came from the Antarctic and had strong ties with Chief Researchers Wesker and Birkin, besides he was the hag’s bitch so he had a sort of immunity. Once he tried to choke me to death! Thank God Al saved me from the sadistic bastard

-Could you tell me the research you did in Arklay?

-What I didn’t do?

-The other day you said you returned to an Eropean branch when dr Birkin became a ‘psycho’

-Ah yes, I returned to France when Al moved to the Intelligence division and returned in 96′ when S.T.A.R.S. was founded. I began to work in the underground lab with William again, HOWEVER

-however....

-William was bat shit insane by then, and his wife was not helping at all. He saw me as a threat to his research since I brought a new point of view from France, I also was the only one to argue with him that his practices were self destructive at best so...

-Why the long face?

-Wil got really mad at me once when I told him that he needed to ‘chill the fuck out’ and enjoy his time with Sherry, he grabbed me by the neck and would let me go, a guard that passed by had to restrain him or else he would kill me

-Knowing you, you left the same day

-yeah, but it took me the whole night to put my shit together. It was Wil, the same dorky Wil that was head over heels for his wife, the Wil that used to comfort me when the Colonel was an ass. It was so hard...

-So I left in the morning, packed my things and went stright to Albert didn’t care that he was in the Police Department undercover, I was scared and felt betrayed and had nowhere to run to. I remember that, when I made a beeline to the receptionist everyone was looking at me

-I said that I was a family member of Al and they just let me in, perhaps they weren’t used to random people asking for a specific member of S.T.A.R.S, or maybe the lady was too underpaid to care. Whatever, Albert was really mad at me for being at the station, all of the other member saw me and had no choice but introduce me as his girlfriend. So when we were finally alone and told him everything he was still mad, but I guess relieved I wasn’t dead, he lend me his house keys and started living together formally until the events of the Mansion

-You were quite a chatter today, what happened? change of heart?

-not really, it hurts that’s all. Wil hurts, Sherry hurts, Al hurts, what could have been hurts too

-He didn’t die, he was alive so he must have warned you of the biohazard threat

-...

-I already knew of the contaminated area, but...Albert really died that night. He...the man...he just...he was gone. The Al I loved did die, the possibilities were gone, the family, the love, the friends, what we built together WAS GONE ALL GONE, and suddenly I had a man with endless possibilities but I did not, I no longer had-have- what I wanted!

-a family, you wanted a white fence, a dog and the baby?

-You make it sound like something I should be ashamed of ‘coppy’, so what if I wanted that?! I had the chance so close but Spencer and company took that away from me! everything, Spencer took everything not only from me but from other people too, Sherry for example! I would have taken care of her so gladly, given her so much love

-I didn’t care about Umbrella, they can all rot in hell. I knew of Albert’s displeasure with the coorporation and at some point he would of have to leave for another rival company, and I would have followed because I don’t marry ethically corrupt companies that can turn their own employees into test subjects if they so desired with no one saying shit

-but he did that, he moved to Tricell and began working in Uroboros

-Oh don’t get me started!... He did left, so what? the man was gone, nothing more that a shell of what he used to be, but I stil......

....

-you probably think I’m stupid but...I followed, even when I knew he was a self destructive mess with a God complex, I followed, even when he manipulated Excella and allowed to rub her tits all over him...He was always a little too ambitious, something good in life that pushes you forward, but there’s a looooong distance from that to a mass murderer  new world creator

If the tears that left the glossy eyes of the woman wasn’t an indicator of her sadness and hurt, maybe the quivering voice she forced out of her mouth was. A broken soul bared to the harshness of an interrogation room, but still a destiny she digged up herself, it moved something inside the interrogator’s gut and decided to end it here, that today was no longer a good time to continue anymore. Perhaps if she wasn’t this cooperative he would have followed anyways but torture was never his thing.

But the next day, as alarms went off in the prision facility that contained the woman he started to think that he should have insisted that day. Who helped her escape was quite clear, even if the individual was still unknown the affiliation was clear, even if the exact bioterrorist group or pharmaceuticals were also unknown. But now that he thinks about it, she didn’t tell him something that he didn’t know, just an insight of the events in her point of view after all, her exact relationship with the dead man was certainly irrelevant so far they knew she had access to vital info

But It doesn’t matter anymore.

Nothing really matters anymore

[rolandfontana]

Wrongful Convictions: The Grisham Effect

Best-selling novelist John Grisham, a long-time member of the board of the Innocence Project, has dedicated extraordinary efforts to the problem of wrongful convictions.

The media gives Grisham a hearing, and Grisham uses the opportunities.

In a recent Los Angeles Times op ed piece, for example, he set out eight of the reasons for miscarriages of justice that social science surveys of exonerations have uncovered.  He pointed to poor police work, jailhouse snitches, prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective defense lawyering, junk science, false confessions, eyewitness error, and sleeping judges.

But as he struggles to nourish public support for reforms with evidence-based lists, Grisham also accepts Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s observation that  “No one ever made a decision because of a number.  They need a story.”

And Grisham has provided the stories.

Grisham’s most recent novel, “The Guardians,” mobilizes a character loosely based on Centurion Ministries founder Jim McCloskey to spin the tale of an innocent man wrongly convicted.  It offers a hero, and it offers villains.  The hero, like McCloskey, is a clergyman who has turned to innocence work, and he is menaced by a corrupt sheriff and a malignant drug cartel.  Angels wrestle with demons:  the plot zips along.

But Grisham also understands the power of a different kind of narrative, and he has used his prominence in the world of courthouse thrillers to boost true-crime writers who follow the same approach.

His Los Angeles Times essay is in fact adapted from a foreword he contributed to “The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist,” by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington.

The Safety Narrative

That book is a detailed non-fiction account of the cases of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both Mississippi African-American men wrongly convicted in the murders of two three-year old girls.  The girls had been, in fact, killed by a a man who had a prior conviction for a sex offense.

There is no lack of drama in the Brewer and Brooks stories.  The writing is taut.  Balko is an experienced journalist.  Carrington is an innocence lawyer, but one with a literary background.

Balko and Carrington muster a colorful cast.  The two title characters—Dr. Steven Hayne (The Cadaver King), a Mississippi pathologist who conducted up to 1,500 autopsies a year, and Dr. Michael West (The Country Dentist), a self-proclaimed expert in the pseudo-science of bite-mark comparison—contributed to the disasters. Depicting either would have kept Dostoyevsky busy for a year.

The ensemble of supporting players in the roles of judges, politicians, lawyers, sex offenders, and cops employs just about the entire Gothic Dixie Repertory Company familiar from the works of Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, and Harry Crews.

But the distinctive feature of the book is embodied in the decision by Balko and Carrington to give the last word to Kennedy Brewer, one of the exonerated men.

Brewer isn’t mad at any of his tormenters.   As Brewer sees it, it was nothing personal:  “The system’s gonna do what the system’s gonna do.”

I could be wrong—Balko and Carrington are not explicit about this—but I think readers who luxuriate in their sense of moral superiority over the title characters are missing the authors’ point.  You don’t need the conscious plans of an evil drug cartel to achieve a wrongful conviction; you just need a “normal accident.”

The title seems to promise two cartoonish villains, but the book delivers a careful anatomy of events.

The depressing fact is that no one involved in these cases cared enough about their victims to wrongly target and harm either Brewer or Brooks.

Near the root of each tragedy was, as Diane Vaughan said of the fatal Challenger launch decision, “A mistake embedded in the banality of organizational life.”

Despite its vivid character sketches and exotic atmosphere “The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist” is not a morality play. It is essentially a subtle and many-layered analysis of a safety disaster in a complex socio-technical system.

Along the way, the narrative implicates virtually every one of the eight sources of wrongful conviction that Grisham listed in his Foreword.

The police are poster boys for premature commitment and tunnel vision.  The forensic science is faulty in substance (West’s bitemark assertions) and in execution (Hayne’s wholesale autopsy practices).

The defense in one case is incoherent.  The judges are spineless.

But the book’s most important contribution is its recognition that no one of these “causes,” and no one of the drama’s players, would have been independently sufficient to convict Brooks or Brewer and leave the actual murderer free.

You can’t see the danger in this system in any one of its components any more than you can see “wetness” in any single molecule of H2O.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist are opportunistic bad guys, but they didn’t do it on their own.

The system’s features had to combine with each other and with latent system weaknesses.  Then there was a tragedy.

Like experts in safety analysis, Balko and Carrington resist the temptation simply to go “down and in” to find the isolated “eureka part” or “bad apple” that explains the disaster, they also go “up and out.”  To the question “Who is responsible?” they answer: “Everyone involved, to one degree or another, if not by making a mistake, then by failing to intercept someone else’s.”

And in Balko’s and Carrington’s telling “everyone” includes many actors far from the scene of the convictions.

Not Dead, Not Past

William Faulkner famously said that the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.  One of the virtues of the Balko-Carrington narrative is that it accounts for the influence not only of actors who are distant in space, but also of those who are distant in time.

The characters in the story’s foreground are shown trying to make sense of the environment they confront.  That environment—not some fixed determination to do evil—is what tempts them to zig when we know in hindsight that they should have zagged.

The Mississippi criminal justice environment was radically warped by an aggressive Jim Crow system of racial oppression.

The death investigation capacity of the system, designed to insulate white perpetrators from prosecution for the murders of African-American victims, is so under-resourced that it amounts to a vacuum. That is the vacuum that the Cadaver King and the Country Dentist contrived to fill.

Starved of resources, the whole justice system (and everyone in it) is under constant pressure, and, reacting to that pressure, the system’s players devise short-cuts, workarounds, and informal work rules.

“Practical drift” sets in, and today’s  “good enough” autopsy or investigation becomes the new departure point for tomorrow’s further minor departure from “best practices.”

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist are no paragons, but they are the heirs to this process as much as they are its creators.

The problem on display here is not the absence of “best practices” or even general ignorance of them; the book makes it clear that a vocal minority of scientists, police officials, and lawyers were screaming about them the whole time.

The problem the story illuminates is that too often no one involved feels that following the best practice is “locally rational.”

Paradoxically, the only thing permanent about best practices in a system under pressure is the drift away from them.

Accounting for Harms

Approaching wrongful convictions by a building a list of potential sources of error isn’t a bad thing.

Approaching wrongful convictions by sketching a poster that encourages us to smite the evildoers isn’t necessarily a bad thing either.  There really are individuals who intentionally perjure themselves or hide exculpatory material.  They have to be held accountable.

But neither of these responses gives us a good place to stop.

Safety writers remind us that an “account” is a debt to be paid, but it is also a story to be told.

That seems to be John Grisham’s opinion too, and the Balko and Carrington book that he championed vindicates his conclusion.

The stories of the Brooks and Brewer wrongful convictions disclose hundreds of moments when dozens of individuals who would now be horrified by the outcomes could have done something differently.

(Anyone who thinks the kind of ongoing forensic shambles that convicted Brooks and Brewer is purely a Mississippi phenomenon should take a look at the Massachusetts drug labs scandals and their aftermaths.)

Legislators (like Grisham himself, who served in the Mississippi Legislature and accepts this responsibility) could have funded the medical examiner and indigent defense systems; cops could have restrained their leap at the first suspect available; judges could have shed their see-no-evil reflex when presented with prosecution offers of bogus science.

The two stories show—as only stories could—that what we need is not more rules and harsher penalties for rule violations, but a cultural shift toward an environment in which each actor strongly feels his or her individual role in producing a just collective outcome.

Wrongful convictions can’t be depicted in mechanical drawings. They can’t be adequately captured by linear, sequential, analyses as if they were mechanical failures in an engine.  Wrongful convictions involve too many humans.

The factors that have to be identified are influences that bend the probabilities, not simple “causes” with inevitable “effects.”  The telling of wrongful conviction stories requires an understanding of science and technique, but also of character, contingency, history, and emotion.

Grisham’s approach shows one way to get the stakeholders to do something differently next time: involve all the stakeholders in telling the story—that is, in  telling their own stories and to each other.

That, at least, is the possibility now being explored through the Sentinel Events Initiative demonstration sites now being supported by the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

James Doyle

When your local system uncovers a mistake, don’t wait for Balko and Carrington to arrive and explain it to you. Bring everyone to the table and collaborate in carefully piecing together the story of how it happened and why.

Give everyone a chance to speak up—to do their best to put themselves in position to make a better choice when they are next forced to choose.

James M. Doyle is a Boston defense lawyer and author, and a frequent contributor to The Crime Report. He welcomes readers’ comments.

Wrongful Convictions: The Grisham Effect syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/