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irunevenus · 2 months ago

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Vampires and Witches: The Use of Death and Children's Blood in Myths, Ancient Religions, and Beliefs about Eternal Youth

The figures of the vampire and the witch have long been synonymous with evil and supernatural power. Both share a dark characteristic: the belief in the use of death or children's blood to rejuvenate or acquire special powers. These myths, which fuel the popular imagination, are deeply rooted in ancient religious practices, human sacrifice rituals, and beliefs about the life-giving power of blood. In this article, we will explore the intersection between vampires, witches, and the use of children's blood as an elixir of eternal youth, delving into the reality of ancient religions and beliefs throughout history and investigating the controversial modern theory about adrenochrome, which links celebrities to the alleged use of this substance as a method for rejuvenation.

Vampires, Witches, and Children's Blood: Shared Myths and Fears

Both the myth of vampires and that of witches contain elements related to the use of human blood—especially children's blood—to achieve power, longevity, and youth. Though these myths differ in their cultural roots, they reflect the same human desire for immortality and rejuvenation, using the life and vitality of others as a way to sustain one's own body and soul.

Vampires: Blood as a Source of Immortality

Vampires are depicted as immortal beings who need the blood of the living to maintain their youth and vigor. The act of sucking blood, particularly from the young or children, is seen as a way to absorb the victim's vitality and energy. This concept is present in ancient myths, such as the striges of Roman mythology, demonic spirits that fed on children.

In medieval European culture, vampires were feared not only for their immortality but also for the belief that they attacked the most vulnerable, like children, to ensure their survival. Children's blood was considered especially powerful, symbolizing purity, vitality, and life force, making these victims the most desirable for vampires seeking eternal youth.

Witches: Sacrifices and the Quest for Youth

Witches, on the other hand, are often associated with child sacrifice, both in literature and legend. The story of cannibal witches who consume children appears in several cultures, including the famous tale of Hansel and Gretel, where a witch lures children to devour them. In medieval Europe, it was believed that witches performed black magic rituals, using children's blood and bodies to gain youth and power.

Countess Erzsébet Báthory, known as the Blood Countess, is an example of how these beliefs were projected onto reality. Báthory was accused of torturing and murdering young women to bathe in their blood, believing it would preserve her youth. Although the accusations may have been exaggerated, Báthory's story reflects the ancient belief in the power of blood to maintain vitality and delay aging.

Human Sacrifice and Ancient Religions: Blood as the Elixir of Youth

The idea that blood, especially that of children, could be used for magical and ritual purposes is not exclusive to the myths of vampires and witches. Many ancient religions practiced human sacrifice, including that of children, believing it would appease the gods, ensure good harvests, bring prosperity, and, in some cases, prolong the lives of the participants.

Human Sacrifices in Antiquity

One of the most well-known examples of human sacrifice is that of the Aztec civilization, which conducted rituals where victims, often prisoners of war, were sacrificed to the gods. Among the Aztecs, the heart was removed while the victim was still alive, and the blood was offered to the gods. Although the practice focused more on prisoners than children, the sacrifice of the young also occurred on specific occasions, with the belief that young blood was purer and more powerful.

In ancient Carthage, there were practices involving the sacrifice of children to the god Baal-Hammon, especially in times of crisis or need for blessings. These practices were seen as a way to appease the deities and ensure protection or prosperity for the community.

Adrenochrome and the Alleged Use by Celebrities: Reality or Conspiracy Theory?

In modern times, the idea that children's blood could be used to rejuvenate has gained new life through the controversy surrounding adrenochrome. Adrenochrome is a chemical substance derived from the oxidation of adrenaline (epinephrine), and it has been the subject of various conspiracy theories, which claim that it is extracted from children's blood during rituals and used by elites, including celebrities, as a kind of "elixir of youth."

What Is Adrenochrome?

Adrenochrome is a real compound, primarily studied in the context of neuroscience. However, contrary to what some theories suggest, there is no scientific evidence that adrenochrome has rejuvenating or longevity properties. The idea that adrenochrome can prolong youth was popularized by fiction, most notably in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (1971) by Hunter S. Thompson, where the compound is portrayed as an intensely hallucinogenic drug.

In recent decades, conspiracy theories have spread online, claiming that celebrities and global elites use adrenochrome, extracted from the blood of traumatized children, to maintain youth and power. These claims, although widely debunked by experts, persist as part of a conspiratorial underworld that blends ancient fears with modern narratives.

Reality or Fantasy?

Although legitimate research exists regarding the role of adrenaline in the body, there is absolutely no scientific basis for the claims that adrenochrome has any power to rejuvenate or prolong life. Thus, the connections between celebrities and the use of adrenochrome for eternal youth are unfounded and amount to nothing more than a modern version of ancient myths about blood consumption.

Blood as a Symbol of Life, Power, and Youth

Blood, throughout history, has been seen as a symbol of life, power, and life force. In many cultures, blood was considered sacred, used in rituals to connect humans to the gods, nature, or eternity. The belief that blood could offer special powers, such as longevity or immortality, is deeply rooted in mystical and mythological traditions.

In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, young blood, particularly that of children, became associated with rejuvenation. While the legends of witches and vampires distorted this idea into horror stories, the belief in the power of young blood remained in popular culture, feeding fears about child sacrifice and the desire for eternal youth.

Conclusion

The myths of vampires and witches, both centered on the use of death or children's blood for rejuvenation and immortality, are deeply rooted in ancient religious practices and cultural beliefs. While these myths are largely fantastical, they reflect a universal human fear: aging and mortality. The desire for eternal youth is a historical constant, and blood—both in ancient religions and modern conspiracy theories like those about adrenochrome—continues to be seen as a symbolic vehicle to transcend the limits of life.

Throughout the centuries, the use of blood, real or imagined, has fueled stories of power, fear, and corruption. And while contemporary claims of rituals involving celebrities are unfounded, they demonstrate how ancient myths can still resonate and evolve within the complexities of modern culture.

#witches #vampires #ocultism #mythology

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crimeculturepodcast · 3 years ago

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Hispanic/Latino horror movies

In honor of Hispanic Heritage month, this week we talked about horror movies out of Latin American and Spanish speaking countries. There were some we couldn’t get to so here is the full list:

Spain

The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Audience Score: 89%

Google Score: 85%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Critics Consensus: Creepily atmospheric and haunting, The Devil's Backbone is both a potent ghost story and an intelligent political allegory.

Description: “Set during the last years of the Spanish Civil War, The Devil's Backbone is a Spanish gothic horror movie that follows Carlos, a young orphan boy who is deposited at Santa Lucia School among several other children who have been displaced by the conflict. Though he finds friends in the professor and the head mistress, he is plagued by a wandering spirit with a link to the violent caretaker's secret past.”

Trivia: The movie, which he wrote in college and was in development for 16 years, is strongly inspired by Del Toro’s personal memories, especially his relationship with his uncle, who supposedly came back as a ghost. It is also included among the "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" edited by Steven Schneider. Although filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is Mexican, this film is set in the Spanish countryside (largely filmed in Madrid) that’s why it’s on the Spanish list. The Devil’s Backbone has all of the impactful elements of spirituality, horror, and the supernatural that come up again and again in Del Toro’s work. This film has been referred to as the “brother film” of one of Del Toro’s best known works, Pan’s Labyrinth.

[REC] (2007)

Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Audience Score: 82%

Google Score: 85%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Critics Consensus: Plunging viewers into the nightmarish hellscape of an apartment complex under siege, [Rec] proves that found footage can still be used as an effective delivery mechanism for sparse, economic horror.

Description: “Late-night TV host Angela and her cinematographer are following the fire service on a call to an apartment building, but the Spanish police seal off the building after an old woman is infected by a virus which gives her inhuman strength.”

Trivia: The movie was filmed chronologically in real locations (no sets were built for the movie). The actor’s were never given the script in its entirety and didn’t know what was going to happen to their characters until the day of filming. The movie is also a big inspiration for the horror survival game Outlast.

Considered The Blair Witch Project of zombie movies, REC had a lot of competition in the found footage style (it came out the same year as George Romero’s Diary of the Dead and the first Paranormal Activity movie). It more than holds its own among them, so much so that an American remake called Quarantine came out the next year. Director Jaume Balagueró keeps the movie disturbingly real and doesn’t fall prey to jump scare after jump scare.

Veronica (2017)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 49%

Google Score: 80%

IMDb: 6.2/10

Critics Consensus: A scarily effective horror outing, Veronica proves it doesn't take fancy or exotic ingredients to craft skin-crawling genre thrills.

Description: “During a solar eclipse, a teenage girl and her friends want to summon the spirit of the girl's father using an Ouija board. However, during the session she loses consciousness and soon it becomes clear that evil demons have arrived.”

Trivia: Based on the true story of 18-year-old Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro. I won’t go too far into it because we may do an episode on it in the future but if you want spoilers, watch the movie (if you dare).

Directed by Paco Plaza (same as REC), the possession theme is done over and over again in horror but this movie is a terrifying and fresh take.

The Bar (2017)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 55%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 6.3/10

Description: “In bustling downtown Madrid, a loud gunshot and two mysterious deaths trap a motley assortment of common urbanites in a decrepit central bar, while paranoia and suspicion force the terrified regulars to turn on each other.”

Directed by Álex de la Iglesia, it’s labeled as a horror-comedy. You can watch it on Netflix.

Who Can Kill A Child? (1976) - Tells the story of a happy couple, two English tourists who decide to vacation on a secluded island in the Mediterranean. There they discover – almost too late- that the island has been taken over by a group of murderous children.

The Baby’s Room (2006) - Featured on Six Films to Keep You Awake at Night. A new family renovates and moves into a grand old house. Nervous first-time mom installs a baby monitor but hears mysterious sounds on the other side. Once they install a high-tech video baby monitor, what they see chills them to the bone.

Sleep Tight (2011) - Apartment concierge Cesar is a miserable person who believes he was born without the ability to be happy. His self-appointed task is to make life hell for everyone around him, a mission in which he has great success. It has big home invasion/stalker vibes.

Timecrimes (2007) - A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences. It sounds like a “Happy Death Day” type of plot (but proceeding it by a decade).

Thesis (1996) - Angela is doing her thesis on the effect of violence in the media when she discovers a snuff film. This discovery leads her down a dark path where she must confront her greatest fears and question everybody around her.

Witching and Bitching (2013) - One article I read said it perfectly, “What Shaun of the Dead did for zombies and What We Do in the Shadows did for vampires, Witching & Bitching essentially did for the cinematic depiction of witches, albeit on a less visible scale.” Great pick if you’re looking for something a bit more lighthearted.

Mexico

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Audience Score: 91%

Google Score: 90%

IMDb: 8.2/10

Critics Consensus: Pan's Labyrinth is Alice in Wonderland for grown-ups, with the horrors of both reality and fantasy blended together into an extraordinary, spellbinding fable.

Description: After the Allies invade Nazi-occupied Europe, a sadistic captain sends a troop of Spanish soldiers to flush out rebels,bringing his new wife and her daughter along on his exploits. While his family resides in the countryside, he leads his men on a murderous rampage, much of which is witnessed by his step daughter. In an effort to escape her reality she plunges into Pan's Labyrinth, a mystical world at the border of her own.

Trivia: Guillermo del Toro is famous for compiling books full of notes and drawings about his ideas before turning them into films, something he regards as essential to the process. He left years worth of notes for this film in the back of a cab, and when he discovered them missing, he thought it was the end of the project. However, the cab driver found them and, realizing their importance, tracked him down and returned them at great personal difficulty and expense. Del Toro was convinced that this was a blessing and it made him ever more determined to complete the film. Del Toro also repeatedly refused offers from Hollywood producers, in spite of being offered double the budget, provided the film was made in English. He didn't want any compromise in the storyline to suit the "market needs" (he even did the English subtitles himself). The film received 22 minutes of applause at the Cannes Film Festival and in 2007, it became one of the few fantasy films ever nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars. It’s another on the list "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" edited by Steven Schneider with The Devil’s Backbone. It was on more than 130 top 10 lists in 2006. It is also the 5th highest grossing foreign language film in the US.

The Similars (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Audience Score: 49%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 5.9/10

Critics Consensus: A smart homage to genre filmmaking, The Similars is a fun and frightening film that balances socio-political issues with aplomb.

Description: A monstrous, once-in-a-lifetime thunderstorm strands passengers in a remote bus station outside Mexico City in 1968. As they listen to the radio, they realized that the storm has spread all over the world. As they look at each other, they also realize that everyone’s faces are slowly changing, and not for the better.

Trivia: The film used make-up and special effects techniques never before done in Mexico. Director Isaac Ezban was influenced by B-movies of the 50s and 60s as well as TV shows and movies like “The Twilight Zone”, “The Thing”, and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.

We Are What We Are (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 72%

Audience Score: 48%

Google Score: 77%

IMDb: 5.7/10

Critics Consensus: We Are What We Are is elevated horror that combines family drama and social politics, with plenty of gore on top.

Description: After a family patriarch dies, his survivors are tasked with continuing the rigid family rituals that involve hunting meat, preparing it for consumption, and eating it. The “meat” in question is human flesh, since they’re a family of cannibals. With two detectives hot on their tail, the family of cannibals strains to maintain their family traditions in a modern urban environment.

There was an English language remake in 2013 (86% on Rotten Tomatoes) with Wyatt Russell and Odeya Rush (Lady Bird, Dumplin’, and Goosebumps)

We Are The Flesh (2016) - A joint French-Mexican production released in Spanish as Somos la carne, this post-apocalyptic nightmare involves a brother and sister who roam the land desperately seeking food until a kindly old man takes them in under the condition that they help him renovate an abandoned building. Oh, and they also have to have sex with one another while he watches. And after he breaks their will by getting them to do that, he makes them do all sorts of other things. This film was one of only four in Mexico to receive a “D” rating—which is reserved for subject matter that is considered extremely disturbing and/or pornographic.

The Witch’s Mirror (1962) - An abusive and cheating husband kills his wife so that he can be with his mistress. The woman’s godmother was a witch who originally tried casting a spell on a mirror to protect her from domestic violence, but the spell failed. Still, she is able to bring the woman back from the grave, and the two witches set out to destroy the evil woman-beater.

Here Comes The Devil (2012) - A married couple lose their children while on a family trip near some caves in Tijuana. The kids eventually reappear without explanation, but it becomes clear that they are not who they used to be, that something terrifying has changed them.

Chile

Downhill (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 60%

Audience Score: 22%

Google Score: 43%

IMDb: 3.5/10

Description: Deeply upset by the passing of his best friend, a professional BMX rider accepts to partake in a race in Chile. Everything goes as planned until he stumbles upon a man who is infected by a mysterious virus and becomes the target of local assassins.

Trivia: Filmed in 13 days

Post Mortem (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 61%

Google Score: 70%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: In Chile, 1973, during the last days of Salvador Allende’s presidency, an employee at a Morgue’s recording office falls for a burlesque dancer who mysteriously disappears.

Aftershock (2012)

Rotten Tomatoes: 39%

Audience Score: 24%

Google Score: 61%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Critics Consensus: Aftershock hints at an inventive twist on horror tropes, but ultimately settles for another round of mind-numbing depravity that may alternately bore and revolt all but the most ardent gore enthusiasts.

Description: In Chile, a group of travelers who are in an underground nightclub when a massive earthquake hits quickly learn that reaching the surface is just the beginning of their nightmare.

Trivia: Horror icon Eli Roth wrote and stars in this film.

To Kill A Man (2014) - An attack on his daughter leads a mild-mannered family man to take revenge on the vicious street thugs who have tormented him and his family for a long time.

Columbia

Out Of The Dark (2014) This is in English

Rotten Tomatoes: 24%

Audience Score: 22%

Google Score: 77%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Description: A family moves to Colombia to take over the operation of a manufacturing plant, soon they learn their new home is haunted.

Trivia: Starring Julia Stiles (10 Things I Hate About You, Dexter) and Scott Speedman (The Strangers, You)

The Squad (2011)

Audience Score: 53%

Google Score: 82%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Description: After a secret military base ceases all communications, an anti-guerrilla commando unit is sent to the mountainous location to discover what exactly happened. The squad expects to discover that the base was attacked and taken over by guerrilla units, but instead find only a lone woman wrapped in chains.

Trivia: In one scene where the actors are shooting guns, one actor accidentally picked up a real gun instead of the prop and fired a real shot (no one was hurt).

Cord (2015) - On a post-apocalyptic world of never-ending winter, a sparse cast of outsiders live underground. Due to their unsanitary conditions, sexual contact has become dangerous. Masturbation has become the paradigm of sexual experience and an array of low-tech devices with this purpose has come into existence. In this bleak reality, a dealer of such machines a sex addict make a deal: she will allow him to experiment new devices on her body in exchange of pleasure. Soon however, their relationship goes out of control.

The Hidden Face (2011)

Rotten Tomatoes: 80%

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 86%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Description: Shattered by the unexpected news of their irreversible break-up, an aspiring orchestra conductor is puzzled by his girlfriend's mysterious and seemingly inexplicable case of disappearance. But, can he look beyond the facts?

Trivia: There is a Turkish version of this movie and a 2013 remake out of India called “Murder 3”

At The End Of The Spectra (2006)

Google Score: 83%

IMDb: 6/10

Description: A young woman who has become agoraphobic due to a traumatic incident is holed up in her apartment, she begins to suffer from hallucinations, paranoia and an obsessive neighbour.

Trivia: There is a Mexican remake called “Devil Inside” and there were once rumors of an American remake starring Nicole Kidman but that’s the end of that.

Uruguay

The Silent House (La Casa Muda) (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 68%

Audience Score: 37%

Google Score: 63%

IMDb: 5.4/10

Critics Consensus: Shot in a single take, The Silent House may be a gimmick movie, but it's one that's enough to sustain dread and tension throughout.

Description: A girl becomes trapped inside a house and becomes unable to contact the outside world as supernatural forces haunt it.

Trivia: The plot is supposedly based on a true story that occurred in the 1940s in a small village in Uruguay. With a budget of just six thousand dollars, it was filmed using a handheld high-definition digital single-lens reflex camera (the Canon EOS 5D Mark II), 2 handheld lamps, and a couple of lightbulbs over a time period of just four days. The claim that the movie was filmed in one continuous take are suspect. The Mark II camera can only record up to 15 minutes of continuous video at a time. Uruguay's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 84th Academy Awards 2012.

Monos (2019)

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Audience Score: 85%

Google Score: 69%

IMDb: 6.9/10

Critics Consensus: As visually splendid as it is thought-provoking, Monos takes an unsettling look at human nature whose grim insights leave a lingering impact.

Description: On a faraway mountaintop, eight teenaged guerillas with guns watch over a hostage and a conscripted milk cow. Playing games and initiating cult-like rituals, the children run amok in the jungle and disaster strikes when the hostage tries to escape.

Trivia: Moises Arias (Hannah Montana) and Julianne Nicholson (I, Tonya, August: Osage County) most of the other actors had never acted before. The movie draws inspiration from Lord of the Flies. Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider. It was selected as the official Colombian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.

Peru

The Entity (2015)

Google Score: 66%

IMDb: 4.3/10

Description: A group of students decide to study 'reaction videos' and are led toward an old film, hidden in the archive room of a cemetery. It appears that everybody who has witnessed the film has met an untimely demise under suspicious circumstances. When the students view the footage, they discover first hand, what the demonic spirit is capable of. Fulfilling the ancient curse of a woman cruelly killed during the Spanish Inquisition.

Trivia: The Entity has been billed as Peru's first 3D horror film and to have been loosely based on true stories. Review websites Flickering Myth and Nerdly commented that the movie suffered from being too overly familiar to pre-existing works (Blair Witch, The Ring).

The Vanished Elephant (2014)

Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 88%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: Crime novelist Edo remains obsessed with what happened to his fiancee Celia after she disappeared during an earthquake. When an enigmatic woman brings him photos that may help him solve the mystery, he senses he is being drawn into a dangerous game.

The Secret Of Evil (2014)

Google Score: 65%

IMDb: 5/10

Description: Video footage depicting a supernatural encounter is all that remains of a filmmaker and his crew who disappeared while exploring a haunted house.

When Two Worlds Collide (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 91%

Audience Score: 69%

Google Score: 93%

IMDb: 7.6/10

Description: An indigenous environmental activist takes on the large businesses that are destroying the Amazon.

El Vientre (2014)

Google Score: 81%

IMDb: 6.1/10

Description: Silvia, a beautiful 45-year-old widow, is obsessed with having a child and finds in attractive but naive Mercedes the perfect candidate to bear it. Silvia kindly offers her a job and a room in her house, and then manipulates her into seducing a young man named Jaime. They soon fall in love and Mercedes becomes pregnant. Silvia will do anything in her power to keep the baby, even if it means leaving a couple of bodies behind.

Argentina

Terrified (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes: 77%

Audience Score: 65%

Google Score: 82%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: Paranormal researchers investigate strange events in a neighbourhood in Buenos Aires.

Luciferina (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes: 83%

Audience Score: 25%

Google Score: 69%

IMDb: 4.6/10

Description: Natalia is a nineteen-year-old novice who reluctantly returns home to say goodbye to her dying father. However, when she meets up with her sister and her friends, she decides instead to travel the jungle in search of mystical plant.

Francesca (2015)

Audience Score: 67%

Google Score: 73%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Description: Two detectives track a serial killer who has been targeting the impure. To catch him, they'll have to solve the case of a girl who went missing 15 years ago.

Cold Sweat (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 75%

Audience Score:

Google Score: 58%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Description: The movie follows Román, who stumbles upon his ex-girlfriend Jackie, who has somehow gotten caught up in a torture cult run by two sadistic, old men. The aging political radicals have managed to put Jackie’s life in incredible danger. But when Román and his friend try to help Jackie out of her confines, the elderly psychos prove to be more than meets the eye.

Penumbra (2011)

Rotten Tomatoes: 50%

Audience Score: 26%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 5.5/10

Description: A woman desperate to find a tenant for her decrepit apartment apparently finds the perfect candidate, unaware of a sinister plot involving an imminent eclipse.

Venezuela

The House At The End of Time (2013)

Rotten Tomatoes: None

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 91%

IMDb: 6.8/10

Description: Dulce encounters apparitions in her house and unleashes a terrible prophecy. Thirty years later, Dulce, now an old woman, returns to unravel the mystery that has terrorized her for years.

Trivia: Winner of the Audience Award at Gävle Horror Film Festival 2016 (Sweden). Not only is it Venezuela’s highest-grossing horror film, it’s also the most distributed film from the country. By August 2016 it was announced that the American studio New Line Cinema acquired the rights of the film to make a remake for the American public. Hidalgo is still at the wheel so its chances of success are high.

Ecuador

Cronicas (2004)

Rotten Tomatoes: 71%

Audience Score: 77%

Google Score: 80%

IMDb: 6.9/10

Critics Consensus: An unsettling and absorbing cautionary tale with John Leguizamo playing an unscrupulous TV reporter who uses the medium to further his own goals.

Description: Reporter Manolo Bonilla (John Leguizamo) goes to a jail in Ecuador to interview Vinicio Cepeda (Damián Alcázar, Narcos, Narnia), a hit-and-run driver whose crime incited a riot. After Cepeda tells him he knows where a murderer called the Monster of Babahoyo buried a young female victim, Bonilla posts bail in the hopes that he'll learn more about the crime. Bonilla finds the girl's body, but, as he nears the scoop of his career, it looks as if Cepeda might be withholding some key details.

Trivia: Inspired by a true story? As well as being both a Cannes and TIFF favourite, Cronicas is the official submission of Ecuador for the 'Best Foreign Language Film' category of the 77th Academy Awards in 2005, it was produced by Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) This is John Leguizamo’s first film in Spanish. He said he felt awkward talking in Spanish while acting, like he didn't know the language.

English Language Horror

The Silent House (2011) This is in English

Rotten Tomatoes: 43%

Audience Score:

Google Score: 72%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Critics Consensus: Silent House is more technically proficient and ambitious than most fright-fests, but it also suffers from a disappointing payoff.

Description: Sarah is working with her father and uncle to renovate an old family home to prepare it for sale. Long vacant, the house has no utilities, forcing the trio to rely on battery-operated lanterns to light their way. Sarah becomes separated from her relatives and soon finds she is trapped inside the cabin, with no contact with the outside world. Panic turns to real terror as the young woman experiences events that become increasingly ominous.

Trivia: Elizabeth Olsen (Wandavision) The plot is based on a true story that occurred in the 1940s in a small village in Uruguay. Contrary to the marketing's claim that the film was shot in one uninterrupted take, the entire movie was actually shot to mimic one continuous real-time take, with no cuts from start to finish, as a result the time span of the film's plot is exactly 86 minutes. It was shot in roughly 10 minute segments then carefully edited to hide the cuts.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) - This along with the rest of the Dead series are the work of George A. Romero, whose father is from Cuba.

Ash vs. Evil Dead - I love the Evil Dead movies and although this series wasn’t perfect (I’m sure die-hard fans will say it's far from it), I still think it kept to the heart of the main story. Bruce Campbell is obviously perfect and the addition of Lucy Lawless is amazing, it’s really Puerto Rican actor Ray Santiago that steals the show.

The Others (2001) - Directed by globally renowned Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar, The Others starring Nicole Kidman is a Spanish gothic horror movie that combines elements of the supernatural, psychological, and mystical. It focuses on the strange events that occur at the estate of a woman and her young children, plagued by spirits in the aftermath of WWII. It has the distinction of being the only English-language Spanish movie to be given the Best Film Award at Spain's national film awards, the Goyas. In total, the movie has seven Goya Awards, including for Best Director. Although it might not read as particularly “Spanish,” it was produced, written and filmed all in Spain, shooting in Cantabria, Northern Spain and Madrid.

#Crime Culture #podcast #crime #true crime #murder #tcc #true crime podcast #pop culture #episode 198 #hispanic horror #latino horror #spanish horror #hispanic heritage month #horror #horror movies #spanish language horror #movies to watch

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foxwithakeyboard · 2 years ago

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The “Hunters” Internet Cult - Article #002

by FoxWithAKeyboard / CosmicSoda - NOTE: this is a fictional news article

Written: 14th August 2022

Cults are nasty business, and getting into one is easier than the casual observer may think. They involve drugs, trafficking, exploitation of minors, and suicide pacts.

Many people are aware of cults such as Aum Shinrikyo, People’s Temple and Heaven’s Gate which are run by people who want power and control. People who wish to control a group, and give them a set of beliefs. They have disturbing rituals and practices which the members believe are normal as that is what they’ve become accustomed to.

This story, however, begins on 4chan.

4chan is a place known for toxicity, racism and adult content. The users are mostly lonely people who are terminally online (a phrase referring to someone closely engaged with Internet culture) and therefore easy to manipulate.

On the 7th of March 2020, multiple posts were made on 4chan to various message boards. They have been found on “Video Games”, “Weapons”, “History & Humanities”, “LGBT” and “Very Important Posts”. There are slight variations, however the image below is the message found on /v/.

This was the beginning of a further mystery.

This is how they started recruiting.

Both the poster and the cult owner are unknown, but they call themselves “Hestia” - the Goddess of Domestic Life, Home and Hearth¹. Their identity is still unknown but it is presumed that as of present day they are dead or replaced. The significance of this name is likely the feeling they wanted to give off rather than them actually being a Greek God.

On the server were displays of a madman. Discussions of murders and sacrifices were common, with an entire text channel dedicated to finding targets. All that was needed was a name, date of birth and a reason, the latter of which is never fact checked.

Multiple ex-members have come forward with statements. They claimed to witness the “use of wizardry”, descriptions which could only be either the use of Visual Effects or the powers of a God. Sacrifices are made, displays of severe violence are recorded and meetings between members are held weekly.

I have seen no confirmed murders, however many mentioned in the “hitlist” text channel have missing posters and have not been found.

I’ve seen theories online suggesting that perhaps it is some ARG or online puzzle game but that would be a harmful misconception. There is no puzzle to this group.

As of present, the group is estimated to have 517 members, most recruited from the popular game “VR Chat”, and mainly composed of those aged 12 to 19, with few above that age range. I believe this is because children are the most easily manipulated.

The claims of the cult such as their number of kills and member count are difficult to confirm however what we can confirm is the strange rituals they partake in. Members were given paid tickets to fly to Greece, and stayed in local hotels when invited to participate.

They have been seen patrolling the Vikos National Park, Greece, with shotguns and fire torches. Ex-members have claimed they partook in cannibalism on the 17th day each month which they originally were told was bison, and they would “ascend” members by gathering atop Mount Olympus. They said during ascension the eyes would “glow like the sun was ingrained in their skulls”, and they would “float upwards” as the group sang hymns in latin.

Any updates on this group's activities will be posted on this site, certain footage isn’t allowed to be posted due to concerns from authorities.

¹ Hearth - the area round a fireplace (used especially with reference to a person's home or family life).

Website Link: https://celestialpublishing.wordpress.com/

#horror #news #fiction #writing fiction #writerblr #writers of tumblr #horror fiction #articles #journalism #news media #article #VR #Virtual Reality #4chan #fwak

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seddm · 4 years ago

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One Sentence Recaps - S1

Lately I’ve been getting a handful of Asks wondering about my episodes analyses and whatnot. But I’m extremely lazy, and with too many lifelong scars left by this series to revisit it as a whole, in depth. But I also had some free time, and regret for how dead the fandom is. So clearly the best thing to do was an extremely serious, synopses-like recap of the whole series, laser focused on the main themes and morals of the episodes. Enjoy, S2 sometimes tomorrow.

Yes I know it’s more than one sentence sometimes.

Star Comes To Earth - when a girl with no concept of responsibilities and impulse control inherits a weapon of mass destruction, she gets banished to the house of a boy with no friends and who’s scared to start living for real: a four season long journey of mutual growth begins.

Party With a Pony - Pony Head learns a lesson about responsibilities and friendship while being a fugitive and attempting murder; Star and Marco agree the best place in the multiverse is right beside each other.

Matchmaker - Star ruins a bunch of lives to finally prove she can be a good wingman; language barriers can hurt.

School Spirit - Marco manages to overdo friendship, Star ends up on seven different terror watchlists while experimenting the importance of having someone who understands your mistakes.

Monster Arm - Marco and Star learn firsthand that low self esteem can be an insidious killer, but a demonic tentacle can be a much more overt one.

The Other Exchange Student - being jealous and suspicious is rewarded when a foreigner with non completely disproved cannibalistic tendencies is involved.

Cheer Up Star - “Star is sad? Over my dead body!” says Marco. “I can help with that” says Ludo.

Quest Buy - Marco’s compulsiveness and Star’s violence: the teens’ best qualities save the day once again.

Diaz Family Vacation - Star bonds with her dad over almost having killed her best friend’s parents.

Brittney’s Party - when sarcasm flies over Star’s head, Marco enjoys a traumatic evening outside his comfort zone.

Mewberty - while battling Star’s hormones, Marco discovers that there are two things he can’t roundhouse kick on the face: nature, and the special place she has in his heart.

Pixtopia - when Marco messes up, Star gleefully realizes she’s not the only one who can be irresponsible. Barely averted cannibalism and disregard for age of consent laws ensues.

Lobster Claws - Marco nudges Star to challenge her preconceptions: several millions in public damage later the seed to Mewni’s change get sown.

Sleep Spells - saddened that his punches aren’t as strong as reality warping magic, Marco tries to make up for his lack of victories by helping Star on a less physical plane, to then save the day using blunt weapons. Improved mutual support and understanding ensues.

Blood Moon Ball - Star’s need for respect, Marco’s jealousy, and Satanism briefly allow them to experience their deepest feelings; casual bonding post party beats once in a millennia true love ritual.

Fortune Cookies - Marco learns the hard way that mocking someone for cultural differences is bad; Ludo ignores every possible red flag.

Freeze Day - when Star almost breaks reality as a whole, Marco starts to understand the importance of getting outside his comfort zone.

Royal Pain - Star sees things from her mom’s perspective for the first time, while Marco’s endless appreciation for the excitement his roommate finds a limit.

St. Olga Reform School For Wayward Princesses - Star overcomes traumas to save her friends, Marco uses individuality to become a successful interdimensional franchise.

Mewnipendence Day - Marco’s respectful nudges and Ferguson’s screams of pain convince Star to rethink her kingdom’s history; Ludo ignores even more red flags.

The Banagic Incident - Marco loses his mid day snack when he doesn’t trust Star enough

Interdimensional Field Trip - Star shows just how far she’d go to be Marco’s wingman by endangering her class as a whole; Janna dates a skeleton

Marco Grows a Beard - through Marco’s body horror Star learns a lesson about being more self reliant; Ludo's PTSD gets him fired.

Storm the Castle - after a fight over food gone awry Star learns just how much she’s ready to sacrifice for Marco’s safety; a maimed war veteran explodes.

#star vs the forces of evil #svtfoe

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vantablade · 4 years ago

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【 🌌 MYTHOPOEIA I. 】

TL;DR: Nocturne’s species is the same as her family name, which is one of royalty amongst her home planet. This species possesses two bodies, feeds on creative/life energy (mostly through sex and bodily consumption), manipulates sonokinesis and aquakinesis with ease. They are alluring and terrifying, always unsettling, and their native country depends on their existence.

The following lore post is a re-write of Nocturne’s lore regarding her species and some of her heritage. It references sex albeit not explicitly nor descriptively, as well as the conception and deaths of the species. There are non-descriptive references to cannibalism (of a supernatural kind). Information-wise, it includes the etymology of the family name, the chronology of their origins with vague references to the circumstances of said origins, some references to significant events and brief descriptors of Nocturne’s kinsmen. As I mentioned, it also includes a description of how the Ametsuchi are formed through conception and their life spans, as well as the usual circumstances of their death, and other biological tid-bits such as abilities, particularly their Glamours, and the cultural ideology that surrounds the species in their native land of Izana, Neo. Word count is girthy, so if you read the whole thing an acknowledging like would be very encouraging!

Ametsuchi, Nocturne’s family name, is both the moniker attributed to a royal family and a species; within their general cultural environs, the two are synonymous, for only members of the former can be the latter, due to a magical contract made with the Living Sea of Neo during the Sixth Epoch, after the Genesis Migration. The etymology of “Ametsuchi” is comprised of the characters suggesting, literally, “rain” and “earth”, however its meaning can be more symbolically interpreted as “Heaven and Earth” or, in some cases, “the Universe”, illustrating the duality of the Ametsuchi’s existence.

The Ametsuchi are not mortal by our understanding—the canonical term referring to any non-mortal being “Undane”—for their life spans and way of creation are jarringly different from that of a mortal life. An Ametsuchi can live, theoretically, forever, however rarely do they achieve such longevity due to the fact their appetite grows with age, forcing them to consume more and more to sustain their gigantic forms, not unlike the Earthly lobsters or the Terrawatas of the planet Cthylle, which has a similar aging approach. As well as the biological difficulties of maintaining the massive form that comes with old age, the Ametsuchis—particularly those who reign as or are immediately in line to reign as the High King—often are killed pre-maturely by assassinations or other politicalized deaths. Notable examples are Kamo, the High King two generations prior in the Fifth Epoch, to the current regent, and Nocturne’s great-grandmother, whose surprising gentleness became an instrument of irony as her tender heart led to her death by a rebel group within Izana. Another notable example is the Ametsuchi Massacre just prior to the turn of the Sixth Epoch, whereupon the survivor of the previous assassination—High King Kana the Unloved—was murdered by her third heir, the current monarch High King Kazumi the Good, alongside almost all of the living Ametsuchi.

Due to the severity of the upheaval, there is a remarkable shortage of Ametsuchi, as once they were a plentiful people who could reign as Lords among the various cities and villages of Izana as well as forming the sole security of the capital. Now, where once there were many, there remains only the High King; her Oracle Hitomi; her exiled heir High Prince Kimiko, currently absent and whereabouts unknown; Nocturne, whose existence is currently unknown to the Neoni populace; a lost heir sacrificed to Spider’s Eye shortly after her birth; the twins, Lords Hato and Karasu, children of the previous High Prince and nieces to the current High King, and Lord Komadori, who perished a few years prior to this blog’s currently timeline. Unusually, there is one other Ametsuchi, though she is the singular occurrence of a royal member—and the currently coronated High Prince, heir to the Ever-Drowning Throne—who is not also, biologically, an Ametsuchi, due to the unusual (and secretive) circumstances of her birth.

The conceptions and births of Ametsuchi are crucial to the biological formation of an Ametsuchi, as one does not inherit these traits innately from their parentage. Conception relies on the existence of three parents: the donor, the Ametsuchi, and the Living Sea. It is avian in nature, as it involves an external egg which is incubated by one of the parents, in this case the aforementioned Living Sea. The moment of conception is achieved when a donor, usually a Mundane but can be some form of magical entity, is “sacrificed” to the Living Sea and implanted with a part of the parental Ametsuchi’s mana. This mana is parasitic, rendering the donor comatose and paralysed but not dead, as it slowly consumes the life energy of the donor in order to transform it into something else. This transformation then becomes an egg, around six foot in height and three feet in width, comprised of a fleshy physical magic toxic to the touch. It is not dissimilar from the sort of alien eggs found in science fiction horror movies, as it is not clean nor smooth but rather a dark blue-brown flesh-like consistency that is ribbed and wet with slime. Encountering one is both highly unlikely—as they are incubated within the incredibly hostile and carnivorous Living Sea—but also deeply unwanted, as its appearance, while gross in description, cannot be over-stated for its deeply unsettling magnetism and its horrid stench of salt and decaying flesh, with the raw smell not incomparable to the exposed innards of a recent carcass. Approaching one, if it is somehow isolated from its environment, is also a fool’s errand: its “shell” emits potent magnetism; an allure that cannot be resisted by any but those with an impenetrable resistance to such a siren’s call. This allure, apropos to the previous metaphor, proves fatal to the innocent who falls under its enchantment, for the flesh is carnivorous and deeply starved, and will absorb the unlucky soul who touches it—and they will touch it, for despite its repulsiveness, its magic will convince the onlooker that it is a most desirable, peaceful and treasured object that speaks to their very soul.

This egg, its terribleness aside, incubates within the abyssal stomach of the Living Sea, an entity whose body is—as one can imagine—a great, black sea, possessing a wicked sentience and an odd morality that is difficult to comprehend. The Living Sea then “fertilizes” its innards, transforming the remains in a gruelling process into that of a living being, independent of the instruments that contributed to its making, which, stripped of the Ametsuchi glamour, appears to be a monstrous bird-like mortal-like creature that has only the simplest, animalistic of urges, the primary of which is the urge—the primal need—to survive, and as such has a fitting and horrifying hunger.

Until the new-born Ametsuchi is conscious enough to understand Glamours, it will remain in this bird-like form, which is protected from the eyes of mortals and Undanes alike who are not privy to the sacred and grotesque rituals of the royal family, until it can adopt a form which suits it. The form usually mimics the primary care-giver, likely the Ametsuchi which served to create it, at least in part, as well as harbouring some sort of semblance to the donor which served as its first meal and its energy donation. This is still of its own accord, of course, but as this is an instinctual first guise, it is often rooted in the subconscious will rather than the conscious ego, and once it has been adopted is unlikely to be utterly changed if only due to the Ametsuchi in question’s comfort in its regular form. As well as that, changing one’s body exerts a tremendous amount of will and energy and can be quite an exhausting process that bodes little to no reward. However, as the Ametsuchi grows into adolescence and adulthood, the latter of which is usually kept for far longer than the average mortal, due to the societal boons afforded to those with an unearthly youthful maturity, they will grow and adapt, often adapting to the societal standard of beauty to better attract unwavering loyalty and inspire a sacrificial martyrdom in its subjects. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this is a law that is engraved into the nature of the Ametsuchi: it is in their survival’s best interest to be seen as attractive, whether it be sexually or as a matter of character, and as such their appearance often fits the ideal of their surroundings consciously or otherwise. Of course, attractiveness is not always the key to survival; they possess an underlying aura of terror that unsettles as it lures, inspiring awe in its observer. In hostile environs, the Ametsuchi will adapt appropriately: becoming larger, more intimidating, more monstrous in appearance to better be suited for intimidation tactics.

As mentioned before, there is the matter of Glamours: these are half-conscious manifestations of a mortal body that conceals the magnificence of their original form, which is grotesque and avian in nature, and only grows with age until it is utterly titanic, thus the growth of its demanding hunger which becomes difficult to sate with the marching of time. As a half-conscious act, they can withstand most forms of unconsciousness depending on the strength of the Ametsuchi in question; one who has mastered, in some part, their own mind and harbours a deep understanding of their capabilities will find it easier to uphold the illusion, while those weaker in spirit will find it harder to maintain in various debilitating circumstances. For example, Nocturne withstood grievous wounds that penetrated the Glamour and mutilated the original would beyond reparation, which still only sufficed to put her in a near-comatose state where her consciousness was altered and foggy. Yet still, she maintained her Glamour. She had been raised in total isolation, with only the study of her strength and identity as an Ametsuchi as an anchor for her learning, and so had a better grasp on her anatomical manipulation than her peers. There was still a dire element—she was on the verge of total unconsciousness, and since she had no moral nor emotional obligation to those surrounding her at the time (rather, she was untrusting and borderline hostile towards her hosts), she had no subconscious desire to protect them from the immensity of her true body, despite the fact that had her illusion broke, her original form would have decimated her physical environment and thus damaged, if not killed, the people who surrounded her, including potentially breaking the magical ward that kept the locus—the Sepulchre—protected from evil eyes.

However, Nocturne in particularly struggles to maintain her Glamour if she is in a state of deep sleep. For this reason, she keeps to herself and refuses to allow others near her in such a state of tremulous vulnerability, if not entirely subduing herself to the vacuous space she titles her personal “Void”, a unique ability to her due to her emotional reliance on it since her severely traumatic youth.

The Glamour is not the Ametsuchi’s sole power, however it is exceedingly impressive: to speak in technical terms, of a sort, it “compresses” the pre-existing body so that it is appropriately condensed into the glamoured guise, including its impact on the environment and its navigating of the physical space. There is still a subtle feeling of “wrongness” when one looks directly at an Ametsuchi, but it is difficult to source the reason behind these feelings; the cultural mythos surrounding the original body is more that it is a secondary body, and the glamour is the original body, instead choosing to believe that the original body is a sort of “power-up” that can be utilized for the goals of decimation of one’s enemies. These myths are not negated in any real way, if only because it furthers their reputation for being dangerous enemies. It is believed by Ametsuchis’ personal lore that their Glamour comes in part from their lycanthropic ancestors.

Of their other abilities, several come to mind. Sonokinesis, the ability to manipulate sound, is innate to the Ametsuchi due to their siren heritage, and is capable of manipulating not only the physical world but the emotional world, either, as they tie in certain sonic movements with emotional results. Often, their powers are difficult to channel completely without some sort of vessel to articulate it to a level of fatality—or extreme potency—so they often have vessels that embody an instrument of their liking, usually a subconscious choice that is rarely changed not unlike their bodies in youth, which channels the sonokinetic ability through it. For example, Nocturne’s is a violin; Hitomi’s is a harp; Kimiko’s is a flute, and so on. Exceptional Ametsuchi do master the power of their own voice, such as Kazumi the Good, who orchestrates grand musical annihilations with only the slightest modulations to her voice. This is an ancient power, first attributed to the Divine of Music, Sona, the child of the Ancients Sirein and Iathan. Their sonokinesis is Generative, which means they can generate this ability from internal power-sources rather than having to manipulate the external environment’s pre-existing sound.

Aquakinesis, the ability to manipulate water, is an even more ancient power, being one of the Primordial Essences which form the foundation, alongside Fire, Earth, Air, Light and Shadow, of the (Essential) Universe. These are another gift attributed to them, however this gift comes directly from their relationship to the Living Sea, which serves as a patron to the species. Due to this generosity, their aquakinesis is not as powerful as their sonokinesis—it is instead Interactive, relying on external resources rather than internal resources. A notable exception would be the Oracle, Hitomi, whose Generative Aquakinesis only derives from the Chaotic implants placed in her body by her mother, the High King. (Of these experiments, each of the currently living Ametsuchi are victims, and have differing reactions; Kimiko has Chaotic Generative Aerokinesis, Hato has Chaotic Generative Phosphorokinesis, and so on and so forth. Nocturne’s ability to manipulate entropic forces and Chaos also stem from these, in part.)

They possess a higher level of strength, which does not rely on their Glamoured body but rather the size and capability of their true body, which can give them the appearance of possessing super-human strength for their stature. They are graceful, beautiful, and disarmingly so, which is a mental tactic that serves them well in combative and political situations equally well.

The Ametsuchi, due to their wavering numbers, are restricted to the capital of Izana, Yomi; known by some as the Cannibal City, others as the Half-Drowned City, and these are only the beginning of its ghoulish monikers. Their home is the Drowning Palace, a white shard that protrudes from the black abyss of the Living Sea like a jagged tooth, which hosts only their own kind, donors (temporarily), and the rare, honoured guest. Their existence is attached to the welfare of the surrounding country, whose lands are made fertile by the Living Sea, as once it had been barren. Only the historical sacrifice of a mortal woman, who would become the first Ametsuchi, cinched a union between the untouchable Living Sea and the Undanes who lived there. If the Ametsuchi were ever to perish, so would the landscape that hosts them.

As part of their symbiotic relationship with the Living Sea, Ametsuchi are removed from the life-death cycle naturally afforded to all living and unliving entities within the Essential Universe; their souls, rather than being re-shaped and re-distributed across the wide Cosmos, are instead given directly to the Living Sea for all eternity, preserving them in a state of half-life that, with the passing of time, becomes increasingly abstract. The dead are capable of being communicated with, but only the Oracle can do so; likewise, the Oracle, second only to the High King in the tiers of Ametsuchi noblesse, is the sole figure capable of communicating directly with the Living Sea. There is only one Oracle at any point, and as soon as one dies, the next is chosen from the ranks; usually the closest to being born, but the Living Sea can often be whimsical, and if their whims direct them so they may choose another. It is not unheard of for Ametsuchi rulers to deliberately manipulate circumstances to encourage an Oracle to be created in devotion to them; for example, Hitomi’s existence depended on the murder of the prior Oracle, Yumi, and was a deliberate move by the High King in order to assure total allegiance as the Oracle would be her eldest daughter, entirely subordinate and alienated from a world that would encourage her otherwise.

Culturally, they are revered and feared alike. This reverence assures their survival, as willing donors are plentiful; it is considered the greatest honour for those of Izana to devote their bodies to the conceptions of an Ametsuchi, despite the fact it guarantees their death. If not their bodies to conceive, then to satisfy: the Ametsuchis feed on creative energy, which includes the creation of life through fresh (often living) meat and sexual energy. There is an element of life or creative energy in everything, but in the aforementioned examples they are most prominent and thus most fulfilling. This is not to say there has never been a desire for revolt, but the Ametsuchi’s symbiotic relationship with the landscape often demotivates those with rage against their rulers. Instead, the rage is channelled into the cities, into the architecture, into the culture.

The history of the Ametsuchi are deep, rich and blood-soaked, as they like it. They are founded on a principal of sacrifice. They are objects of reverence and repulsion, inspiring legions of the devout. Nocturne is but a tiny part of a grander legacy, but not all legacies are born to last.

#mythopoeia #put under a read more for your scrolling's convenience lol #didn't spell-check or re-read any of this so forgive any spelling errors or grammatical fuck ups

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pyrrhiccomedy · 4 years ago

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Are you still doing your CoC campaign?

No. :( I was super hype about it when we teed it up, but...then coronavirus started.

Big problem with that #1: CoC is a game that is so reliant on atmosphere. Playing that kind of game over video chat, where you can’t make out anyone’s subtle facial expressions, people can randomly disconnect any second, nobody’s lighting environment is the same, you can’t be sure your players are hearing the sounds & music the same way, and you can’t even shoot a significant “yikes, I think Dunya is losing it” look to a specific other player during a scene is not...great.

Big problem with that #2: Fuck, y’all, we’re all so stressed, nobody wanted to be playing a game right now where “your helplessness in the face of inhuman forces of uncontainable evil” was a major recurring theme.

We’re still playing every Friday! But I spun up something a lot more lightweight. Right now they’re all hot 17th century fantasy-Germans trying to find out why the undead have been rampaging across the land ever since the end of the fantasy-Thirty Years War.

Here are the current ships:

PC: Hannah + NPC: Reynor

Hannah is a beautiful, good-hearted nun & nurse who, due to shenanigans, is now pretending to be the bastard daughter of the last fantasy-Holy Roman Emperor in order to claim the throne (genuinely for the good of the country).

Reynor is this Thomas Cromwell kind of motherfucker who has Big Plans for the whole party that he hasn’t chosen to explain to anybody, who served as the last Emperor’s secretary and also - maybe?? - killed him.

Hannah’s fascinated by this guy, and is, uh, also really into how, publically, he treats her as His Queen and obeys her unhesitatingly, but in private, he’s the master, Svengaliing her into a credible monarch. But the jury’s out on whether Reynor actually has feelings for Hannah that extend beyond physical attraction, or if he’s just using her to get closer to his own, unknown, objectives.

PC: Gunther + NPC: Christof

Gunther was a young farm boy whose home was destroyed by the war, became a knight, and saw his entire company get wiped out. Right before he died with them, the ghost of his former captain came to him and taught him to defend himself with necromancy. He’s spent the last several years roaming the dark forest hunting monsters, torn between the desire to use his abilities to protect people, and horror at what his methods involve.

No one’s quite sure what Christof is. She was a boy who was murdered and cannibalized by his own brothers, who came back from the slow, dark river as a shapeshifting, cannibalistic monster who stalked Gunther relentlessly. That monster came to possess, and then (by the actions of the party) merge with, a strange and beautiful witch, whose unearthly eyes saw in the monster the gateway to heaven.

Christof sees Gunther as wielding the power of angels, in his ability to reach into the land of the dead. Gunther sees in Christof the one thing he’s managed to actually fix, not just keep from getting worse. But no component part of Christof is human, and as they reach out with a fragile and hesitant tenderness towards each other, the gravity of the land of the dead pulls at the hem of her garments.

PC: Amalia + NPCs: Henrik & Fritz (& Roswitha, her lady, the evil vampire) (& kind of Hannah too, but she’s trying to get over that, yeah no Just Friends is...is great, it’s totally fine)

Amalia was the spy and assassin for a great lady of an extremely noble house. Though she loved her lady, her lady grew colder and crueler until it was revealed to Amalia that she was a vampire - and she turned Amalia into the same. Confused, betrayed, and horrified - and bound to perform a human sacrifice every 444 days to preserve her inhuman life - Amalia fled. Now she struggles with finding her own purpose, after a life spent as a tool...and daring to ask for the things that she needs, after years without permission to want anything.

She’s also messy as hell. Look at that list of love interests. I’m living.

Henrik is noble, honorable, chivalric, determined, and SO CURSED. His heart was cut out as part of a terrible ritual he doesn’t remember, and wherever he goes, the undead hunt him in droves. He has no memory of who he was before he woke, stumbling through the trees and fleeing for his life, five years ago. He and Amalia share an undeniable romantic bond...but the first time he kissed her, he was so wracked with guilt that he told her nothing could happen between them. Amalia just wants to help him uncover his past so he can hopefully move past whatever barrier is between them, so they can be together. He activates the best part of her nature.

Fritz is a werewolf. Before he was a werewolf, he was a well-bred wastrel, who gambled, took advantage of his friends, slept with whoever caught his eye, and didn’t care about anything apart from pursuing his own comfort and pleasure. And...becoming a werewolf hasn’t changed that. Kind of a sociopath, probably, but his devil may care attitude and his complete acceptance of what he’s become is seductive to Amalia, who is unhappy and messy and ashamed of what Roswitha made her, physically and spiritually. What she could potentially have with Henrik is good, but...what she could have with Fritz would be simple. And God, Amalia needs simplicity.

So there you go, that’s the core roster. The plot turns on them figuring out what the last Emperor did to fuck everything up so bad that he died and the undead started rising. Also he made dragons come back, probably? Reynor was there for the whole thing, but good luck getting answers out of him.

#dice matters #Anonymous

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thehundredplusone · 5 years ago

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Infodump: The Satanic Panic & Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA)

GRAPHIC CONTENT AHEAD! STRONG CONTENT WARNINGS FOR THE FOLLOWING:

Child abuse

Murder

Police abuse

Satanism

Mental illness

Cannibalism

TL;DR at the bottom.

I'm autistic and my "focus" or specialist subject is extreme religion, cults, and religious abuse. The subset I've been most interested in for several years is the satanic panic of America in the 1980s and 90s. This is the period of time which the idea of satanic ritual abuse comes out of. For those who don’t know, satanic ritual abuse or SRA is purported to be an organized form of child abuse and murder conducted by underground rings of “satanists”.

An important bit of context around these events: it was around this time that the fact that child abuse existed first entered the public consciousness. It's weird to think that child abuse wasn't considered a 'thing' at any point because we're so aware of it today but up until the 1970s, at least in the USA, no one really considered it. People ignored physical, mental, and sexual abuse in the home, considering it a private matter. "We believe the children" was such an important mantra during this time and so key to the SRA movement precisely because they were coming out of a period in which children were never believed about abuse at home and there was a major push to be aware of the symptoms of abuse.

The first ideas of SRA initially came from a book called Michelle Remembers, which is purportedly true account of a woman surfacing memories of SRA with her therapist. The book was a cultural hit and spread like wildfire, leading the authors, Dr. Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith (soon to be Dr and Mrs Pazder, as they both left their spouses and got married), to go touring the country to speak at psychology conferences, to newspapers, and on TV shows. They claimed that there were underground rings of satanists going around abusing children.

Interestingly, as people dug into Michelle's history to make sense of how this horrible abuse had happened to her, some inconsistencies showed up, like the fact that she had perfect attendance at school during the periods which she was supposedly being held captive by satanists. Michelle also claimed to have been directly healed by religious figures like Mary and the Archangel Michael, which was why she bore no physical marks from her abuse. Some have speculated that Michelle’s trauma was actually related to repeated miscarriages and the medical procedures she went through surrounding them. There are a number of elements which make the story suspect but they were brushed aside during that time.

Soon enough self-titled experts on SRA with no real qualifications other than attending a conference began to offer training sessions about recognizing the signs of satanic activity and abuse to police departments and teachers. Among their claimed signs that satanism was active in a community was one particularly dangerous suggestion. These experts, who often had little training in child psychology, claimed that while children never lie about being abused, children who were victims of SRA may lie and claim that they weren't abused. It was important, they said, to keep asking and make it clear that they didn't have to protect their abusers.

If you know anything about about psychology, your red flags might be going up right now, and with very good reason. Children are highly susceptible to suggestion and pressure. If they are asked a question over and over again by an adult who is pushing them to give a certain answer, they generally will. Adults are susceptible to this as well but to a lesser degree, which is part of why you see people confessing to crimes they never committed. Hold a person in a room for hours and hours, asking them constantly about something they want you to confess to and many people will eventually confess falsely just to get out of the room.

This is exactly what happened once things really took off. If you ask Americans about the satanic panic, those who know of it will often point to one key trial set right in the midst of the most frantic part of this cultural hysteria. That would be the McMartin preschool trial. So the McMartin preschool was a daycare in California run by a family, the McMartins. They were well regarded in the community and had quite a few kids attending their center. One day, a mother noticed an odd mark on her son's bottom and became concerned that he was being abused. After questioning him repeatedly, he finally said that his father, who was a teacher at his preschool, had hurt him. She contacted the police, and the police, seemingly knowing exactly what would send the community into a fervor, sent a letter to every parent at the preschool urging them to talk with their children and find out if they were being abused. More parents insistently questioned their children until they too confessed to abuse of all stripes. Another interesting note here: The mother who initially made the complaint had a history of mental illness and of suspecting others of abusing her son. She checked him for marks regularly and questioned him about possible abuse. While we can't say for certain this is what led to his confession, knowing that he'd had this line of questioning before makes it more likely he could have been coerced into a false confession.

The daycare teachers were arrested and all of the children were brought in to be questioned by social workers and police. They used the same tactics as described above, holding children in rooms for extended periods of time, asking them over and over about the same things until they agreed, telling them that other children had confessed to acts which they hadn't confessed to, and describing explicit, leading scenarios. The children questioned were very young, as young as two in some cases, and they were being prompted to agree with trained adults.

The adults also took any fantastical statement the child made as fact, going on the premise that they should believe the children. Claims taken seriously included dozens of babies being butchered and eaten, being flushed down a toilet into a secret room, and flying through the air. The daycare's entire building and property were dismantled and searched for hidden compartments or rooms and remains of the children supposedly killed. Nothing was ever found. The parents and children also met with Dr Pazder and Michelle in the run-up to the trial and it's believed that this influenced their testimony. SRA claims were also heavy in the medial around this time through a number of other cases and it's likely that children picked up on the stories and them subconsciously used what they'd heard from the TV or their parents in their own accounts. Ultimately, most of the charges were dismissed due to a lack of evidence. The few which went forward were eventually reversed, in some cases after the defendant served time in jail.

That's not the end of the story on SRA though. Remember the kids going through this? The kids who were trapped in rooms, separated from their families, forced to confess to graphic details of abuse which no child should ever have to hear, not allowed to leave until they told the police or psychologists what they wanted? That is scarring for a child. While some kids had enough of a sense of self to realize that none of it happened, many others had their very fragile sense of self ripped to shreds and tainted with the ideas people pushed onto them. They developed false memories of their childhoods. Normal scenes of happy families, playing with friends, going to preschool, were tainted by the anxiety and fear they were put through by people who should have been protecting them.

One story highlighted in a podcast I listened to highlighted a young man named J and his father, M. M was accused of satanic abuse by his ex-wife and ended up in jail. J and his siblings were sent to a therapist who convinced them that they were abused. The therapist told him he'd never be able to hold down a job, that he'd be stalked all his life by the satanic cult, and if he tried to be normal, he'd wind up abusing children the way his father did. J wound up depressed and involved in drugs but did eventually stop therapy and managed to pull together a life for himself.

When he was in his 30s, still fully believing that his father had abused him, his younger brother made contact with their dad. M sent the brother a long letter explaining what he remembered of the events and apologizing for them, which was forwarded to J. The letter ultimately helped J find cracks in the abuse memories which his mother and therapist had created and he began to question everything. He had been traumatized as a very young child into believing he was abused, but that itself was ultimately the abuse. Nothing had happened to him but a mentally ill mother and a manipulative, unethical therapist, but those were enough to leave him with years of scars and problems to work through.

I want to be clear that I’m not trying to discredit or harm people who have memories of SRA. While the acts never happened in nearly every case, the pain and trauma inflicted by being made to agree to graphic descriptions of abuse is very real. Their suffering is real. The blame for that suffering should be placed where it belongs. The only way we prevent something like this from happening again is to have accurate accounts of how it happened the first time. If you believe yourself to be an SRA victim, my heart goes out to you. I hope you’re able to heal in time and piece yourself back together.

TL;DR: SRA came out of a weird period of botched child psychology and hysteria. It's not likely anyone was ever ritualistically abused by satanists. People with memories from SRA cases have had false memories imprinted on them through repeated questioning by police, social workers, therapists, and parents. These people were their abusers, not satanists. They are abuse victims and they may have very real mental illnesses due to trauma.

If you want more info about this topic, I recommend checking out the podcasts "Conviction" (Season 2), "You're Wrong About" (Michelle Remembers episodes) and "The Satanic Panic".

#sra #satanic ritual abuse #cw child abuse #cw murder #cw police abuse #cw mental heath #graphic #michelle remembers #ritual abuse #infodump

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bookburnt · 5 years ago

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a primer course on T.MA for my mutuals who followed me from other blogs and would like to know what the fuck i’m talking about! (hi, guys. love you.) GONNA BE SPOILER-HEAVY IN HERE.

First off, big ups to the T.MA wiki, which you can consult on anything here, but this post is intended to serve as a very basic overview of the concepts relevant to this blog without forcing y'all to go into wiki levels of detail. The first part of this post is some general TMA terms and concepts, and the second part is some characters who have been relevant to Gerry's story specifically. If you're here for a better understanding of Gerry’s arc and don't care so much about the worldbuilding, scroll down to where I start talking about “who’s...?” and that should help you out.

what’s a “Leitner?” A Leitner is a book but spooky. They make bad things happen and, optionally, give you weird powers. They're usually tied to one of the fourteen(ish) Entities, which I will get into in a bit. Gerard hates these goddamn books, and has a knack for finding them and destroying them. His mother, Mary Keay, ran an antique bookstore that did serious business in them.

what’s an “avatar?” An avatar is a (former?) human working closely with one of the Entities. Over time, the influence of their Entity changes them, often granting them certain powers in exchange for a psychological and physiological need to serve their Entity.

what are these “Entities?” / what’s this “Hunt?” Put as simply as possible, the Entities are, like... fear elementals. There are roughly 14 different entities, though the boundaries between them aren’t clearly drawn in all circumstances. As follows, a quick overview:

The Eye. Fear of being surveiled. The need to know the answers to questions that may destroy you. The Eye is tied to the Magnus Institute. Its avatars can have the ability to magically Know things, understand all languages, and compel others to answer any questions they ask. Gerry was tied to the Eye and had some capacity for Knowing stuff, but wasn’t fully its avatar - or if he was, he refused to feed it, which must have hastened his death.

The Desolation. Fire, but without the warm fuzzy bits. Pure unhinged destruction. Desolation avatars can and will set you on fire with their minds. Gerry’s extensive burn scars are the result of fucking around with a Desolation cultist and finding out. (The cultist also fucked around with Gerry and found out. He’s not around anymore.)

The Hunt. Being tracked by something that won't stop until it kills you. The thrill of the chase. Hunt avatars are capable of killing other avatars, even those who would otherwise be unkillable. The possibility of Gerry being tied to the Hunt is never discussed in canon, but I’ve got my theories. (That last phrase is a link to a post discussing those theories, it just isn't showing up like a link on desktop for some reason.)

The End. Death and dying. Manifestations of the End often involve disruptions of the natural processes of life and death. For instance, the fucked-up necromancy book that Gerry got trapped in after dying was an outcropping of the End.

The Corruption. Bugs, disease, rot, etc. The Corruption's avatars may spread disease wherever they go, or they might just be chock full of worms. Potential of controlling a worm army.

The Flesh. The inherent weirdness of existing in a body. Cannibalism. Flesh avatars may be hulking, twisted parodies of the human form. They might steal your bones, turn you inside out, eat you, or all of the above.

The Distortion. The inherent weirdness of existing in a mind. Doors that shouldn't be there. Getting lost. Being unable to trust your own thoughts. Distortion avatars look, well, distorted when seen in reflections or through glass. Will probably try to get you to go through a door that wasn't there before. You won't like what's on the other side.

The Slaughter. War. Violence. Man's inhumanity to man. The Slaughter often manifests in groups as well as in individuals, so you could get an episode of mass hysteria where an entire small town turns to butchering one another, or you could get an office assistant who just aches to do murder.

The Web. Spiders. Being controlled by external forces. Can operate in extremely subtle ways. Can also just be an unkillable spider who wants you to have a bad time.

The Vast. Really big things. Heights. Your own terrifying insignificance on the cosmic scale.

The Buried. Claustrophobia. Being buried alive.

The Lonely. Being completely alone. Like, completely alone, and never coming back.

The Dark. What it says on the tin.

The Stranger. Something that's not quite right. A joke that you're not in on. Clowns and/or mannequins that might kill you and take your skin.

BONUS: The Extinction. While the other 14 fears have been established for a while (the most recent is the Flesh, which only really came into its own with the advent of mass meat farming), the Extinction is a nascent entity born of anxiety around the idea of the human race destroying itself, and/or being replaced by something else. The boundaries of what constitutes an Extinction manifestation, rather than just a warping of one of the other fears, are unclear.

what’s a “ritual?” Rituals are ways the Entities’ followers and avatars try to influence the world, usually with the end goal of making our world somewhere their Entity can live and feast full-time instead of just sporadically popping in.

what’s the “fearpocalypse?” The only successful ritual to date, as of the end of S4. Possibly the only successful ritual ever, given that it ended the world as we know it and let all 14 fears fully through the gate to fuck everything all the way up. The sky is full of eyeballs now and that's not even the biggest problem. This happened a while after Gerry’s death, but I have a verse where, due to his previous ties to the End and the general befuckening, Gerry is brought back to have a bad time with everyone else.

who’s Mary Keay? Gerard's mother, founder and proprietor of Pinhole Books. Had ambitions of starting a dynasty of supernatural power, starting with her only son Gerard, who ended up having other ideas. Flayed herself in a ritual to make herself “beyond death” via the fucked-up necromancy book mentioned earlier. Gerard was primed to take the fall for her seeming murder, but was let go after the book disappeared from evidence and several key witnesses retracted their testimony. Despite the ritual being incomplete, Mary remained tethered to the world of the living for five years before Gertrude Robinson finally wrapped that up.

who’s Gertrude Robinson? Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, and a stone-cold BAMF with a habit of sacrificing those close to her for (her idea of) the greater good. The late Eric Delano asked her to look after his son Gerry, so naturally she let him live in torment with his abuser’s revenant for five fucking years, then swooped in when he was truly desperate. She got rid of Mary Keay for good, and got Gerard to travel the world with her attempting to prevent various apocalyptic rituals. The two would often pose as mother and son to strangers. Being tied to the Eye, Gertrude seemed to be aware of Gerard’s impending death. After he passed away, she bound him into that fucked-up necromancy book and left him behind. (More on that here.) Gertrude was shot to death about a year later while trying to burn the Magnus Institute down and thereby prevent its head, Elias Bouchard, from doing anything apocalyptic. (Tragically, she did not succeed. SEE: “fearpocalypse.”)

who’s Eric Delano? Gerry’s father. Died too early to ever really get to know Gerry, despite the sacrifices he made to restructure his life for fatherhood. (We don’t need to go into the why of it here, but he did have to gouge his eyes out to try to be a stay-at-home dad. And he did it. We stan.) Unfortunately, he’d fallen in love with Mary Keay, who used him to produce an heir for her planned empire, then murdered him with a pair of garden shears and bound him into that fucked-up necromancy book. She later passed his page off to Gertrude Robinson, who spoke with him. In that conversation, he asked her to look after Gerry and begged her to burn his page, as being bound into the book was a world of suffering.

who’s Jurgen Leitner? A rich, reclusive Norwegian who thought it would be cool and smart to start a library explicitly for corralling forces beyond human comprehension. (He was wrong, and also stupid.) Collected spooky books and put his name in them, giving them their common name. Gerard hates this guy, associating him with the books that dominated his mother’s mind and indirectly ruined his life. He hunted Leitner down and nearly beat him to death for personal reasons. Upon meeting Leitner, he came away with the impression that this was just a scared old man, and couldn’t possibly be actually responsible for Jurgen Leitner’s library. Ultimately, he chose to spare Leitner's life. Unless we're talking about my canon-divergent Hunter!Gerry au, in which case he did not.

Anyways, hope this has been helpful. There's... a lot going on in TMA, but hopefully I've hit the parts that are most relevant to my writing here. If you have any questions about canon, please feel free to ask!

#and return from the ashes you call | RE: MARY ⚿#with all the lies in the books | RE: LEITNER ⚿#I'm writing this letter and wishing you well | RE: GERTRUDE ⚿#⁠he said son when you grow up— | RE: ERIC ⚿

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ncfan-1 · 6 years ago

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Revisiting ‘Thrown Away’

For a long, long time, I have wondered exactly what was up with ‘Thrown Away.’ I mean, I suspect we’ll never know exactly what was going on in that story, but I was left scratching my head as to which Power was involved in the episode. It’s the fifth episode of The Magnus Archives, and it continues to be an enigma in many respects. It’s told to us from the perspective of a complete outsider who has absolutely no insight into what’s going on; literally the only information he has is the stuff the culprit was throwing away in these trash bags.

But thinking about it, I think I can pinpoint which of the Powers was involved in this episode.

I think ‘Thrown Away’ was a Flesh episode.

If there have been other meta posts positing this theory, than I apologize for my lack of originality. But I’ve spotted a lot of parallels between ‘Thrown Away’ and episodes we know are Flesh episodes, enough that I really do feel like I can say I think ‘Thrown Away’ should be counted with them. There’s also the timeline to take into consideration—and given relatively recent revelations regarding the Flesh and its ritual, I think the timing of this particular episode might be significant. But let me put my money where my mouth is, so you can decide for yourself whether or not I actually seem like I know what I’m talking about.

[CN/TW: cannibalism, mutilation]

Recurring Theme 1: Christianity

Christianity is a recurring theme in Flesh episodes; agents of the Flesh are very fond of appropriating Christian imagery when going about their business, and seem rather preoccupied with Christianity in general.

‘Confession’ and ‘Desecrated Host’ from Season 1 are kinda ambiguous. There are some people who think they’re Flesh episodes, other people who think they’re Spiral episodes, and I think I’ve seen it theorized that they might contain a combination of the two Powers. Personally, I do think of these two as Flesh episodes, but since it’s ambiguous as to what exactly was going on here, I’m going to touch on the episodes that are unambiguously connected with the Flesh, and that also borrow motifs from Christianity.

- ‘Trail Rations’ features cannibal Eustace Wick entrancing Benjamin Carlisle by chanting a bastardized version of the Lutheran grace.

- ‘Takeaway’ features Tom Haan hiding out in his uncle’s old takeaway shop with a load of bibles, getting very irritated over the finer points of Christian history, i.e. whether or not early Christians really were cannibals as the rumors claimed. And given that Tom Haan tried carrying out The Last Feast nearly a year before this episode was set, it’s possible his studies involved him trying to reevaluate things after the explosives-induced failure of the ritual.

- And, of course, ‘Meat’ sees Tom Haan trying to carry out The Last Feast in the ruins of an ancient Gnostic temple.

The second trash bag found by Keiran Woodward and his coworkers at 93 Lancaster Road was full of a single strip of paper with the Lord’s Prayer written on it over and over again, and burned in places as if it had been held over a candle. In light of all of this, that does imply a connection.

Recurring Theme 2: Self-Replicating Body Parts

The third trash bag found at 93 Lancaster Road was full of, as we learn from Jon’s comments, 2,780 teeth, in varying states of decay, and all of which were genetically the same tooth. Not just teeth from the same mouth—the very same tooth. Boy, does that sound familiar.

- We return to ‘Takeaway’, where we saw a pile of severed fingers in the old takeaway shop. When Tom Haan severs three of Craig Goodall’s fingers with a knife and adds to them to the pile, Goodall later discovers that his hand is apparently uninjured, and yet his fingers are still on the pile; one of them is wearing a heavy ring he wore into the shop, while the corresponding finger on his hand is bare.

- In ‘Taking Stock,’ Mikaele Salesa walks in on Cook grinding himself up a new arm with the cursed meat grinder, having severed one of his arms and laid it out for cooking with.

We don’t really see self-replicating body parts with any of the other Powers, not like this. It’s not entirely clear what was happening with Jon’s finger when he kept trying to cut it off in ‘Flesh’; it may have been regenerating, and he had a pile of severed fingers out in front of him, or, given Melanie’s relatively unpanicked reaction to finding him in that situation, it’s possible that the finger was either automatically reattaching itself, or that the Beholding just wouldn’t let him maim himself like this.

Recurring Theme 3: Body Parts in General

A preoccupation with body parts separated from the whole, of taking the human body as just being a collection of consumable parts, is such an oft-recurring theme in Flesh episodes that I won’t even try listing all the Flesh episodes that cover it. You’ve got the teeth, and less directly, the doll’s heads and the crudely fashioned and yet very realistic metal heart Woodward found in the last trash bag at 93 Lancaster Road, after Alan Parfitt went missing. Yeah, the latter two are artificial and not actually human, but it still strikes a Flesh chord with me, especially given the detail about the heart being made to resemble an actual human heart, rather than a Valentine’s Day heart.

The Timeline

As mentioned previously, The Last Feast was attempted at some point in October of 2008, only to be foiled by Gertrude. In her comments in ‘Meat,’ Gertrude specifically singles out the need to watch out for ‘esoteric fall-out’ from the failed ritual, such as what was going on with Toby Carlisle from ‘The Man Upstairs.’ She also singles out Tom Haan as someone she potentially needed to watch out for; she was hopeful that he would just burn himself out, but was also aware that he might become erratic and lash out.

Alan Parfitt disappeared on August 8th, 2008, at a little after two in the morning. Gertrude felt the need to make printouts of the texts exchanged between Woodward and Parfitt. That she regarded this as important enough to take documentation beyond the simple statement makes me think that this was something connected to one of the things she was already keeping an eye on; we know she was watching out for The Unknowing and Sunken Sky, but that she was also watching out for The Last Feast, for the ‘esoteric fall-out’ from its failure, and for the buildup.

The culminating incident of ‘Thrown Away’ occurred around two months before the attempt at the Flesh’s ritual, and we know from the Stranger and The Unknowing that incidents and attacks involving a certain Power tend to ramp up as the date of their ritual approaches. We also know that a fair amount of preparation goes into getting ready for a ritual attempt.

One more thing. I was using the wiki as a resource in making this post, and at the end of the article for ‘Thrown Away,’ there is a note. The incident locations for ‘Thrown Away’ and ‘Takeaway’ are apparently quite close to one another. Before the takeaway shop closed in 2004, it was run by Tom Haan’s uncle, who took him on as an employee in the weeks before it was discovered that he had murdered his wife, Lan Ying, and was feeding parts of her body to his customers. What was left of Lan Ying’s body was found to have far fewer defensive wounds than would have been expected, and some of the wounds appeared to have been self-inflicted—which puts me very much in mind of ‘Trail Rations,’ and the death of Benjamin Carlisle.

The two sites are very close together. This may not be a coincidence.

#The Magnus Archives #Meta

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shatterstag · 6 years ago

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OC Meme: 13, 14, 16, 19, 22, 41, and Creator Qs) B, E, and F... for Bellamy and without going into spoiler territory. ♥

@coraltum BLESS U i was putting this off since i still havent properly introduced Bellamy on tumblr and i was thinking about finally doing it but i havent finished the nice art of him i wanted to post it with, so this goes out to the uncaring void of like 3 people who know and care about my dumb gay goth dad oc but:

DR BELLAMY BRIAR QUESTIONSSS

Bellamy is my dnd grave cleric oc who took on a life of his own outside of dnd and exploded into my favourite oc ever. he is a gay goth dad who lives in a shit gothic world (Barovia) and besides being a gay goth dad he is also a doctor, surgeon, plague doctor, cleric, sinner and occultist. after his daughter traumatically wasted away from a plague he couldnt cure, he ritualistically summoned his boyfriend an evil occult god of the unknown to beg for her life and in doing so was cursed/fucked up real bad/other spoiler things. :~) Now he wanders the countryside devoid of complex emotions and personality, a puppet to his god. he’s a very sad very lonely very bad man

13 // What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color?

Young!Bellamy probably thinks he looks best in white, After The Ritual!Bellamy of course wears pretty much exclusively black, and I love the associations of that.

But also young!bellamy wore a lot of black because he’s always been kind of a goth he’s just Ultra Goth now.

14 // What animal do they fear most?

HMMM UHHH he’s not very keen on spiders, and he’s got cat and dog allergies LOL. I have not really thought about what animal he would be scared of, maybe werewolves since they have some Bad Memories associated with them but also, he isn’t scared of much these days because he doesn’t have much reason to be. : )

16 // What makes their stomach turn?

Any form of abuse or neglect or violence towards children. It’s his hot trigger button and he’s gotten into trouble from it already in the actual dnd campaign

His feelings on this are extremely raw and complex because they are RIFE with severe debilitating guilt over the death of his daughter

19 // What is their favorite number?

Pulling this out of my ass right now but 13 is his favourite number because as a little kid the concept of a ‘baker’s dozen’ fascinated him immensely. Why is a baker’s dozen 13 when a dozen is 12? who decided this? why did this become the rule? how did everyone agree on this farce?

he probably also enjoyed that 13 is generally thought of as an unlucky number because his special interests as a kid veered towards horror stuff LOL

20 // How does jealousy manifest itself in them (they become possessive, they become aloof, etc)?

I think his jealousy manifests as very… selfish and possessive in self destructive ways. One of Bellamy’s fatal flaws is his selfishness, especially young/before!bellamy. His childhood was very lonely and sad and full of emotional abuse from his parents and in his adult life that manifested into a very toxic hunger for love and attention he repressed and never confronted. When he finally had a chance at real unconditional love and support and fulfillment with his adopted daughter who he absolutely adored and loved more than anything in the world, his jealousy and love for her ended up being terribly selfish, possessive and self-destructive as she was dying. His personality in general is very self destructive 😟

He very much throws himself into people in desperate attempts at receiving any kind of love no matter how manipulative and unhealthy (manipulative in HIS interactions included) and that happens a lot in his EXTREMELY MESSY relationship with The Hidden One, his nasty evil god, where Bellamy being his ‘favoured’ really sets off his possessiveness over their affair.

21 // How do they feel about children?

BELLAMY IS REALLY FUCKED UP OVER KIDS, SEE ABOVE.

In his younger years he always liked kids but never had that much interaction with them besides as patients at his medical practice. When he adopted Anya, he had no idea how to take care of a toddler let alone raise a child, but he very quickly got really good at it and he was a fantastic dad.

Until everything fell apart, she started dying, and he swan dived into the deep end.

He’s extremely empathetic and sympathetic to children, even with most of his personality destroyed and his emotions muted to almost nothing. Kids make him think of his daughter, make him think of how she died and what happened to him in his attempts to bring her back. When he interacts with kids he is at his most gentle and caring. Is it sincere concern and protectiveness? Or is it just awful guilt forcing him to seek some kind of redemption in his interactions with kids? He isn’t sure and he doesn’t have enough emotional insight anymore to think about that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

CREATOR QUESTIONS

B) What inspired you to create them?

I wormed my way into a dnd campaign my friends were starting and we decided we’d play Curse of Strahd and I was determined to make THE MOST TRAGIC GOTH character I could to fit the setting, so I went super fucking ham and combined all my favourite goth themes and aesthetics into one: ritual magic, the gothic, blood, the occult, cannibalism, death and murder, ghosts, demons, evil gods, horrible monster boys, evil gods and horrible monster boys falling in terrible love…

E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?

I’LL BE HONEST, YOUNG!BELLAMY HAS A TON OF BITS AND PIECES OF ME IN HIM AND WE WOULD GET ALONG RLY WELL.

After!Bellamy is impossible to get along with because he’s a nasty little empty bitch and fundamentally pretty unlikeable LOL

F) What do you feel when you think of your OC (pride, excitement, frustration, etc)?

Extreme excitement at writing out his story in prose, overwhelming love and adoration and affection, a healthy dose of ‘haha look at my awful fuck up son HE IS A TERRIBLE LOSER LAUGH AT HIM PLEASE’ and then also ‘one fear about introducing him to the internet because he is a legitimately extremely bad antihero/antivillain who does and gets involved in a bunch of legit awful shit’

#my ocs #my 2d #bellamy briar #grave doctor

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aboriginalnewswire · 7 years ago

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youtube

Cults That Never Were: The Satanic Ritual Abuse Scare (SRAS) > Introduction The satanic ritual abuse scare was a moral panic that began in the 1980’s in North America and lasted throughout much of the 1990’s. It was fueled by claims of Satan worship made up of several components: Child and sexual abuse Human ritual sacrifice Teenage abduction rumors Animal Mutilation Claims of actual Satanists (The Church of Satan and Temple of Set) Heavy metal rock and horrorcore music Violent and fantasy games During its time, the SRAS led to many criminal investigations based on little or no evidence of an actual occurrence of satanic activity or any criminal activity whatsoever. Although there are many components to the satanic ritual abuse scare, the incidents of sexual child abuse and abduction related to rumors of satanic cult activity will be the focus of this review. History and Evidence Since there were several components that led to the satanic ritual abuse scare, it is important to explore their individual histories in order to understand how they jointly created a moral panic in North America. History of the Church of Satan 1930 - Anton LaVey is born in Chicago, Illinois on 11 April. 1966 - Anton LaVey founds the church of Satan in San Francisco, California, and proclaims that the year 1966 is “the year one,” or Anno Satanas- the first year of the Age of Satan. 1967 - The Church of Satan performs a wedding ceremony for journalist, John Raymond, and socialite Judith Case, which prompts media interest in the group. 1969 - LaVey writes the Satanic Bible, which outlines the principles of LaVeyan Satanism and rituals. 1970 - LaVey appears in the documentary, Satanis: The Devil’s Mass, provoking more media attention and providing a vision of “Satanic rituals.” History of the Temple of Set 1975 - Michael Aquino, former member of the Church of Satan, founded the Temple of Set based on organizational and philosophical differences with Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan. The Church of Satan and Temple of Set provided evidence of actual “Satanists” living in North America. Although the actions of these groups did not qualify as Satanic Ritual Abuse, their mere association with devil worship made them a contributor to the Satanic Ritual Abuse Scare. History and Evidence of Animal Mutilation For the past several decades, animal mutilations have occurred all over North America. In the past, the mutilations were sometimes attributed to UFO’s. With the rise of all other contributing factors of the SRAS, conspiracy theories of animal mutilation began to become more frequent and were now attributed to satanic activity. Listed are only a couple of towns in the United States where animal mutilations were recorded. 1984 - Rumors of animal sacrifices in Edinburg, Illinois are attributed to teenage “devil worshipping” cult. 1986 - Mutilated animals found in Modesto, California are attributed to “devil worshipping” cult. History and Evidence of Satanic Rock Music 1985 - Police raid a suspected “cult house” in Holland, Ohio and confiscate rock music records, claiming they promote satanic activity. Rock musicians such as Ozzy Osbourne and ACDC are accused of contributing to satanic activity. History and Evidence of Violent or Fantasy Games 1988 - Teenage Dungeons and Dragons participants in Lancaster, Wisconsin are accused of animal mutilation and planned baby sacrifices in satanic ritual context. History and Evidence of “Recovered Memories” of Sexual/Child Abuse and Ritual Sacrifice Claims of sexual and child abuse are seen throughout history. Rumors of the abduction of a young female are classic urban legends. With the 1980’s, several other components contributed to this type of abuse being attributed to Satanism: The appearance of the child abuse industry The idea of posttraumatic stress disorder With the advent of the 1980’s, a change in home life occurred in the United States when both parents in a household began working full time. This left more children in daycare centers than there ever had been prior to this generation. For the first time, many children were left under the care of strangers. 1980 - Michelle Remembers, a supposedly true account of a young girl's torture at the hands of a secret coven of Satanists in Victoria, BC, is published. Michelle Smith "recovered" her memories while in therapy and under hypnosis by a therapist whom she later married. 1982 - Mary Ann Barbour believed her two young step-granddaughters were being sexually abused and eventually the children accused their father, Alvin McCuan. The girls were placed in the Barbour's care. Relentlessly grilling her two charges, Mary Ann Barbour reported that they had been used in prostitution and pornography, tortured, made to watch snuff films, and forced to allow animals to eat pet food out of their vaginas. Rumors in Victoria, BC spread about the planned kidnapping of a newborn baby by Satanists for sacrifice. 1983 - Judy Johnson accuses Ray Buckey – a 25-year-old worker at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California – of sodomizing her two-year-old pre-verbal son. 1984- 208 counts of child abuse involving 40 children are laid against Ray Buckey, the owners of the McMartin School, and four teachers. Preschool children in a Miami daycare accused Frank Fuster and his 17-year-old wife of abusing them. Allegations included pornography, the drinking of urine, eating of feces, etc. Clinton attorney-General Janet Reno was involved in this case. Frank Fuster is still in prison. | Two children in Richmond, Virginia accuse family members of killing a child and cannibalizing it during a satanic rite. 1985- Daycare operator Sandra Craig is accused of assaulting children with a screwdriver and a stick, animal torture and taking nude photographs. She is sentenced to ten years in prison. James Rodriguez and five others are charged and convicted of sexual abuse of two young brothers in California. Accusations include infanticide. 1986 - James Watt goes on trial charged with multiple counts of child abuse at a private daycare. 18 children testified to various acts of abuse. Defense lawyers said that children initially denied abuse but told "bizarre" stories after repeated interviews. Watt is sentenced to 165 years. Daycare workers in Carson City are accused of abusing 14 children. Children told of the murders of adults, animal killings, drinking blood and other rituals. 1987 - A workshop about the dangers of Satanism is presented in City of Rockford, Illinois after a son is accused of murdering his father and fellow teenager in a satanic ritual. 1989 - Little Rascals Daycare in Edonton, NC becomes one of the most famous ritual abuse cases in North America when several of the daycare’s employees were charged with several counts of sexual child abuse. Paul Ingram of Washington is accused by his two daughters of satanic ritual abuse. Devoutly religious, he believes he must have been influenced by Satan and repressed the memories of what he'd done. He pleads guilty, and then retracts his confession when he begins to doubt the truth of the accusations. Two teenage girls are murdered in Pennsylvania, and teenage boy accused of murders is suspected of doing so due to satanic cult activity. Rumor panic spreads throughout state, with many children being kept home from school. The Creation of the Satanic Cult With allegations of so many “evil” acts throughout the country, they all became attributed to a hypothetical “satanic cult.” All of these rumors merged in order to form one elaborate story. The social condition that emerged in the 1980’s produced an environment for these very different rumors to create one plausible story about an underground Satanic Cult that was operating secretly throughout the nation. Through media involvement and growing panic among concerned citizens, the “Satanic cult panic” grew into a North American pandemic. Several criminal charges were brought upon those accused of involvement in satanic cult activity, provoking national media coverage with a salacious position. By the mid-1990’s, skepticism grew concerning the realities of these allegations, and the rumors were eventually proven false. Myth The existence of a Satanic Cult was the biggest component of the myth. The cult was comprised of Satan worshippers who operate in underground networks and perform sacrificial rituals. The rituals and organization were the major components of the cult’s myth. Ritual The killing ritual is central to the idea of the Satanic Cult. Rituals of human and animal sacrifice are most prevalent. The abduction of newborn babies, usually from hospitals, for the purpose of ritually sacrificing a pure human being. The abduction of a blonde, blue-eyed virgin for the purpose of ritual sacrifice usually performed on Halloween or Friday the 13th. Animal mutilation and sacrifice, with body parts used in offerings for Satan. The sexual abuse of young children. The consumption of sacrificial blood from humans and animals. Organization and Leadership Tightly structured and secretive underground organization of Satanists throughout North America. The highest and most affluent members of society were accused of being involved in a Satanic Cult. Numbers of members are thought to be in the thousands, inferred from the number of alleged victims. Clergy members are often thought to be leaders of cult. Police implicated as members of cult. Because of this type of organization, the plausibility of Satanic Cult activity being able to occur in secret is accepted. The Rise and Fall of the Satanic Ritual Abuse Scare The Rise - Controversies and Media Coverage The establishment of Fundamental Christianity in North America and the Moral Majority political organization contributed to the growing controversy of the existence of a Satanic Cult. Also, several prominent figures in the media contributed to the rumor panic, creating more controversy than any of the alleged accusations. Adding to the controversy, citizens across the nation banded together to create organizations with an effort to stop the supposed satanic cult activity. 1983 - Dr. Roland Summit publishes an article about Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome, which convinces many therapists and prosecutors that if a child denies that anything happened to him or her, they are hiding the truth. Geraldo Rivera's special, "Satanic Cults and Children," airs on television. 1985 - 20/20 segment "The Devil Worshippers" airs. 1988 - Journalists Tom Charlier and Shirley Downing write a series of articles for the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, documenting over 100 ritual abuse cases across the country. Geraldo Rivera's special, "Devil Worship: Exploring Satan's Underground", airs on television. The “Lost Child Network” is established in Kansas City to investigate satanic cult activity. 1989 - Oprah Winfrey hosts a show on “Child sacrifice,” feeding into the SRAS. Sally Jesse Raphael airs a story on “Baby Breeders.” 1991 - Sally Jesse Raphael airs a story on “Devil Babies.” 1992 - Police patrol the streets of Martensville, Saskatchewan, Canada, with assault rifles because of rumors that Satanists are coming to attack the town. 1993 - HBO’s "Search for Deadly Memories" airs, a documentary that shows techniques used in efforts to find memories that are unknown to the patient. The program features many doctors and “experts,” who provide credibility for the notions. The Fall- Skepticism and Conclusions Although some skepticism of the Satanic Ritual Abuse Scare and the idea of a “Satanic Cult” began during its highest panic in the 1980’s, it was not until the mid-1990’s that skeptics became more frequent than believers. There were several SRA criminal trials in which those accused were acquitted of all charges due to lack of evidence. Many previous convictions were also overturned at this time. Toward the middle of the 1990’s, there was a shift in media coverage from that which supported the rumor panic to that which was skeptical of all SRA. Public media figures that had previously supported the rumor panics and contributed to their spread began apologizing for such oversights. 1987 - Journalist Debbie Nathan publishes "The Making of a Modern Witch Trial," in The Village Voice about a daycare case in El Paso, Texas. Nathan is the first prominent journalist to raise the national alarm about the injustices resulting from the daycare witch hunts. 1990 - After three years of testimony and nine weeks of deliberation (the longest and most expensive criminal trial in US history, costing California taxpayers 15 million dollars) the jury in the McMartin case acquits Peggy Buckey and her son Ray. The prosecution decides to retry Ray Buckey. District Attorney Alan Rubenstein, conducting an independent investigation of ritual abuse allegations against the staff of Breezy Point Day Care in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, concludes that "none of this ever happened," and drops all charges. 1992 - The FBI writes a formal report discrediting the Satanic Ritual Abuse Scare. 1993 - 20/20 show on suggestibility of children in accepting and believing stories. 1994- 60 Minutes looks at false/recovered memories. A jury awards damages to Gary Ramona, who sued his daughter's therapists for accusing them of implanting false memories of sexual abuse in her when she went to them for counseling for her eating disorder. 1995- Geraldo Rivera apologizes for promoting the satanic ritual abuse and recovered memory panics: "I want to announce publicly that as a firm believer of the 'Believe The Children' movement of the 1980's, that started with the McMartin trials in CA, but NOW I am convinced that I was terribly wrong... and many innocent people were convicted and went to prison as a result....AND I am equally positive [that the] 'Repressed Memory Therapy Movement' is also a bunch of CRAP..." HBO produces Indictment: The McMartin Trial, painting Ray Buckey as the victim of a rumor panic for the first time. Skepticism of allegations in the SRAS began with this film. 1997 - A long-buried tape recording of a child's interview with social worker Velda Murillo, in which Murillo pressures the little girl to accuse her relatives of molesting her, is turned over to the defense team for Jeff Modahl in Bakersfield, California. The tape establishes what the defense said all along -- that children had been coerced into making accusations. 1999 - All charges in the Little Rascals Daycare case were dropped. 2004 - The two boys whose accusations sent James Rodriguez and five others to prison recant their testimony, saying they were forced to make false accusations by their aunt. 2005- Kyle Zirpolo, one of the children in the infamous McMartin Preschool case, comes forward as an adult and says that his testimony was a lie. Zirpolo told journalist Debbie Nathan in the Los Angeles Times that he was pressured to make false accusations of ritual abuse. Virtually no evidence was ever discovered to support the allegations of satanic cult activity by the components that made up the SRAS. hat constituted “satanic ritual abuse” was never clearly defined in North America. By the mid-1990’s, those previously portrayed as criminals during the SRAS were now portrayed as victims of a severe rumor panic. The idea of a “Satanic Cult” created a much scarier threat for the nation than individual incidents that were not connected to Satanism. After almost two decades of allegations of satanic cult ritual abuse, the SRAS seemed to be completely fabricated in the end. Throughout the rumor panic, many lives were ruined through false accusations, and many still remain in prison for crimes that were never committed. The SRAS created a “cult that never was” in the form of satanic activity.

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